When did you stop playing 8bit games?

[Lilura]

Originally Posted by Dunny

I ain't mad, just a little miffed at a perceived slight is all. It's good. And no the ST was not great and the 8bits had plenty to offer in '87. Even on the Speccy. Just look at Cecco's output - Cybernoid didn't come out until '88 and that was amazing.

That's cool, man. I am actually glad that you would feel miffed at the legendary Speccy being compared to the lowly ST.

I have no problems with 8 bit Speccy and its games-catalogue. But 16-bit "Speccy" I have a problem with (the ST) because it didn't break rock-hard ground like the Speccy did (with the exception of MIDI Maze). But one game ain't enough. You need a ton of good games to create genre pedigree and a unique platform.

For gaming, I can't think of a worse Western micro than the ST -- not one that sold like the ST did, at any rate. ST was lowest of the low.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Lilura

ST was lowest of the low.

Making that statement on an Amiga forum takes some true courage

[Lilura]

Originally Posted by TCD

Making that statement on an Amiga forum takes some true courage

I just need to make sure if I am posting on the right site.

[Lilura]

Here are a few "tribute" infographics that I made for the Speccy in 2024:

(Note sure how to reduce image size in post. Moderators may need to edit this post.)

[Megalomaniac]

Originally Posted by Lilura

Because the ST was essentially a 16-bit ZX Spectrum + MIDI. A soulless off-the-shelf-parts micro, unlike the Amiga, C64 and Atari 8 bits.

When you can't scroll the screen smoothly just make flip-screen and fixed-screen games. Like the ZX Spectrum.

I also read this as saying that the Spectrum was soulless and couldn't scroll, language barrier I guess. "A is like B, and A is soulless" sounds to me like "B is soulless too". Funnily enough R-Type and Ant Attack are two of the games I though of to rebut the latter idea.

As for the ST not having other ground-breaking games, I'd add Dungeon Master, Carrier Command and Starglider. Populous if we also count joint ST/Amiga developments released simultaneously. And which PCs are you comparing the ST to for 3D games? In 1987 you could get an ST for £300, an EGA monitor alone cost more than that. For that plus a full 8086 PC with EGA, beeper sound and a single 360k floppy drive you're talking over £1000 - you'd never buy a system like that purely for games, even 'serious' games. To beat an ST for 3D you'd need at least a 286 with VGA and Ad-Lib sound, when did that become affordable? Amiga beats ST, unquestionably, but ST beats even expensive PCs of its era for 'serious' games, at least until 1989 or so (once you could buy a PC that was fast enough for Wing Commander without needing upgrading, I guess).

[alexh]

I got my Amiga in the summer holiday of 1990 and upto July I would have been buying and using Spectrum Sinclair +3

[Karlos]

I stopped as soon as 9-bit games appeared...

The Amiga was special, the only 16-bit machine that could handle 17-bit Software

I'll get my coat.

[Anubis]

If anyone interested, you can still play 8bit in retro gaming league, currently we are playing Green Beret for Spectrum.

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/retr...rum-t1630.html

[Lilura]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Starglider.

Again, to repeat myself, Starglider of 1986 was wireframe. I'd rather play Elite of 1984 on the BBC Micro.

Carrier Command doesn't count, it's 1988.

For the last couple of pages, we've been talking 1987.

IBM PC stamped its 3D authority via Jet 2.0 of 1987, which featured a 608x345 render-field in EGA 640x350.

But I already said that on the previous page, which you and some others ignored. Just as you ignored my citation of 88x C64 shoot 'em ups and 30-odd masterpieces contained therein, against which no 16-bit micro could hope to compete until Hybris of 1988 on the Amiga.

You say that shoot 'em ups are just one genre. But shoot 'em ups are THE genre ON MICROS from 1976 to the advent of id Software FPS, improving on IBM PC and Amiga up to the advent of Quake. The game-catalogues speak for themselves. The Refinement. The pedigree. The aptitude of the coders, graphicians and composers.

And actually, I seem to recall now, weren't you the guy that posted a troll topic about the C64 basically "sucking" a few months ago? You were saying things like the C64 was for shallow action-gamers; that the C64 didn't exploit non-action genre?

Seems like cope. C64 blasted the asses of rival Western micros in arcade-action up to 1987, so it must have neglected other genre and ruined the industry...

And yet, the C64 pioneered the modern flight sim via Gunship and Project Stealth Fighter; originated the SCUMM-engine adventure games via Maniac Mansion and Zac Mckraken; was the first to host Sid Meir's Pirates and SimCity; hosted a Flashback-esque game back in 1984 etc.

[Lilura]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

And which PCs are you comparing the ST to for 3D games? In 1987 you could get an ST for £300, an EGA monitor alone cost more than that. For that plus a full 8086 PC with EGA, beeper sound and a single 360k floppy drive you're talking over £1000 - you'd never buy a system like that purely for games, even 'serious' games.

My commentary does not care about the price of things, only the technical merits of the games and their gameplay. Bear with me:

If it was a commercial home computer of Western origin, it counts. If it was a game that could be run on a commercial home computer of Western origin, it counts.

IBM PC had enough market penetration to get a ton of good games by the late-80s. Many may not have bought an IBM PC just for games, but many had one. And played games on one. Because they were everywhere.

To beat an ST for 3D you'd need at least a 286 with VGA and Ad-Lib sound,

You didn't need VGA. Up to 1989, VGA was overrated in comparison to EGA just as texture-mapping of 1991 was overrated in comparison to flat-shaded (because early t-mapped games had laughably small render-fields and flat-shaded equivalents were full-screen).

IBM PC only needs EGA to beat ST in 3D games. Palette is not as important as it is made out to be. 16 from 64 is good enough for 3D flat-shaded games, as my Jet 2.0 infographic shows. You don't need 16 from 512 or 32 from 4096. All you get out of that is sky gradients and nicer cockpits, which have nothing to do with mechanics or gameplay.

All else being equal, I would take 16-color EGA 640x350 flight sims over 256-color VGA 320x200 flight sim any day of the week.

If IBM PC coders had focused on EGA 640x350/400 instead of VGA 320x200, there would be no contest in late-80s and early-90s cRPGs, strategy games, adventure games or flight sims; any "serious non-action genre" that could benefit from higher fidelity (because it can fit more stats or readouts on a single screen).

ST beats even expensive PCs of its era for 'serious' games, at least until 1989 or so (once you could buy a PC that was fast enough for Wing Commander without needing upgrading, I guess).

Wing Commander came out in 1990, not 1989. And WC is nowhere near the best IBM PC had to offer in 1990. As it pertains to technical merit and gameplay, WC is a third-rate game for IBM PC in 1990; massively overrated by mainstream mutts. But we can argue about that when we get to 1990, if you like.

In 1989 the IBM PC was hosting the following "serious" games (And this is just me referencing my own commentary based on direct experience, not using moby games or wikipedia as a crutch for what I don't know first-hand):

Cyrus Chess of 1984 runs in 640x350
Space War of 1985 runs in 640x400
Risk of 1986 runs in 640x350
Tetris of 1986/7 runs in 640x400
Jet 2.0 of 1987 runs in 640x350
Microsoft Flight Simulator III of 1988 runs in 16-color 640x350 or 16-color Hercules 720x348
SimCity of 1989 runs in 640x350 or MCGA 640x480

And those are just the ones that ran in resolutions that would not be outstripped until several years had past (by square-pixel SVGA 640x480).

And that also isn't factoring in IBM PC CGA games that came out before the ST/Amiga themselves came out, in the early 80s (a ton of games).

By 1989 IBM PC hosted the best versions of F-19 Stealth Fighter, Carrier Command, Indianapolis 500, F-15 Strike Eagle 2, F29 Retaliator, M1 Tank Platoon and Midwinter.

The ST/Amiga did not have DeathTrack, MechWarrior or Vette. These are king-tier 1989 games.

In their wildest dreams the ST/Amiga could not host Jet 2.0 or Microsoft Flight Simulator III at their max IBM PC fidelity and settings in 1989.

Of course, if we go to the next year (1990) the IBM PC takes a massive dump on the ST. And in 1991 you can multiply that dump by 10 and in 1992 by 100.

Only the Amiga could find a haven and do well once that storm hit. The ST went down like the sack of shit it always was.

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

For me it was mid 1988, Salamander C64 is the last 8bit game I bought/played then the C64 was packed away forever.

You?

Never. Why would you?
Even after I got an Amiga, my C128 was being used, so many games I loved to keep playing.

[donnie]

I wonder what would have happened if commodore would have repackaged the c64 with dual sid and an internal 3,5 floppy drive in 86-89. With an atari st power pack like game bundle.

I wish i would have gotten that instead of the atari st in 88-89

Looking back the biggest thing holding back the c64 was the absolutely terrible cassette format.

You can really tell the difference between the american made floppy games and many euro ones made for cassette.

[Megalomaniac]

For an updated C64, there's some truth that cassettes were a limitation by 1988, especially while the US was still producing so many games which required (or were much better from) disks). Did you mean a 3.5" drive like the Amiga and ST had, or a 5.25" drive like C64s had been using? Either way, I have some concerns, rightly or wrongly. Would the second SID be widely supported by developers, or would it be relatively undersupported compared to the established models?

Staying 5.25" would mean that the high cost of the 1541 has to be factored in to the launch cost, as well as the cost of adding a second SID (and the hardware changes to interface with it), and of licensing and duplicating all those games - I doubt you could match, let alone undercut, the £400 that the ST Power Pack cost. Going 3.5" would probably take the cost down (single-sided drives would still be as big as two-sided 5.25" disks used in the 1541, so £250 maybe, at a push?), perhaps to the point where you could add a second 6510 like the C128, to partly offset the 16-bits' clock speed advantage (and potentially eliminate the one big advantage of the Spectrum and Amstrad - again, if programmers were willing to fully exploit it), but people would still need either a 1541 or a C2N to play most existing games, and (unless 3.5"s were heavily sold as an external upgrade for existing C64 users) would other publishers support it?

As for 1980s PCs, my commentary, based on the real world where not everyone was rich, says that the price of something DOES matter. Even an Amiga's £400 RRP in 1988 was the equivalent of £1000 today, a decent PC was 5 times that, and the PC was obsolete sooner. Until Wing Commander, nobody bought PCs just for games in the UK - if your work bought you a business PC, even the cost of adding graphics and sound cards and a game port to it was as much as an Amiga. WC was what started the idea in the UK of using PCs for games, whether you personally like it or not is irrelevant to that. I don't like Shadow of the Beast, but it was clearly a killer app. And what I meant was that a typical 1988 wouldn't be fast enough to run Wing Commander (in the resolutions on the box at a decent speed) when it launched in late 1990 (without further upgrades), but a 1989 PC would. I should have been clearer. Same goes for late 1993's Doom not being decently playable on most 1991 PCs, but just about getting there on most 1992 PCs, as it happens, but that's off-topic.

That's hardly a fair summary of the C64 thread you refer to either. I was really positing a theory as to whether the C64's overall global commercial dominance (outselling 8-bit Ataris, Spectrums, Amstrads and maybe Apple IIs combined) was actually beneficial, given that programming with its custom chips was a relatively specialist skill that wasn't all that transferrable to later systems, and also factoring in its relatively poor BASIC as a barrier to entry for programming. The kinds of examples you mention do at least partially placate me on that. The C64 was a great system, origin point of some great games, it had its limitations but so did all 8-bits.

But anyway, you have your opinions, I have mine. Think I'll go and play some classic 8-bit games instead of arguing anymore...

[TCD]

I'm still really surprised that most people where I lived and I didn't consider wealthy could afford to own a C64 with a disk drive. The same folks would get PCs in the early to mid 90s. I guess it really mattered where you lived in the world during the 80s and 90s when it comes to how you perceived those big technological leaps (and if they were within reach or not).

[Lilura]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

As for 1980s PCs, my commentary, based on the real world where not everyone was rich, says that the price of something DOES matter.

The games in my IBM PC "serious" game list (posted above) would not have been made if there was no market for them.

And note how influential some of those games were. Guess they must not have failed, guess people played them.

Just because YOU weren't playing the likes of Jet 2.0 in 1987 in 16-color EGA 640x350, doesn't mean others weren't. Same goes for the other games in the list (which is a short one based on my own commentary, only).

And that's without factoring in pre-1989 CGA, CGA+ and EGA IBM PC game catalogue (the stock 320x200 games), which was enormous and backwardly compatible with VGA in the vast majority of cases. How many "serious" games do you think would be in that list? No need to answer.

And while you think about how IBM PC 3D flat-shaded games thrashed the ST in 1989 in terms of framerates and fidelity, you may also like to spare a thought for the IBM PC adventure game, cRPG and wargame that always ran better on IBM PC than ST equivalents in terms of speed of screen updates and the like, which is important in games that feature many modes of operation via screen-switching.

When it comes to "serious" games, IBM PC was strong since the early 80s.

Until Wing Commander, nobody bought PCs just for games in the UK

Which youtube e-celeb vidslop spammer and subscription-beggar are you parroting there?

And even if that was true (it isn't), UK is just one country. This topic does not have a UK qualifier.

You really like that mainstream mutt game known as Wing Commander, don't you. it's just a lowly sprite-scaling shooter and cinematizer with a stupid story, not a 3D simulator; it's not 3D. And you didn't need a high-end PC to run it. No need to quote the moby games reqs: my site has a more thorough rundown.

That's hardly a fair summary of the C64 thread... given that programming with its custom chips was a relatively specialist skill

That's a good thing, keeps the low-ballers out. Which is why the C64 has epic-level coder, graphician and composer pedigree with which only the Amiga can contend. And of which the ST can but dream.

But anyway, you have your opinions, I have mine.

No shit sherlock.

Think I'll go and play some classic 8-bit games instead of arguing anymore...

I'd suggest you start actually playing C64 games. Might stop you from starting C64 threads that get "DOA" responses.