Was the C64 good or bad for the games industry?

[Photon]

Only addressing the kinda weird thread title.

All home computers were great for the games industry. The proof is all of the small companies that burst onto the scene, some of which flowered into multi-platform release studios (e.g. Cinemaware, Graftgold, Electronic Arts, Hewson, Gremlin Graphics, Konami to name a few).

The 8-bits were limited enough to give everyman an affordable home console - except these were computers(!!) and nobody had to get a suit, haircut, and employment to make games. The result was a staggering 30,000+ games for the C64 alone (and counting), but also useful utility programs, used for office and industry applications.

The home computer games were as valuable as console games and their IP closely guarded. Some were licensed to both coin-op and consoles from home computers, which tells you how influential they were. Examples: Choplifter, Boulder Dash, Tetris, etc.

Not only that, but on home computers you had things unavailable on consoles: memory, file storage, and keyboard. This opened up entire new genres that would never make the narrow-minded, action-games-only coin-ops and consoles which mostly only had shooters, fighters, racers, and platformers. Absolutely no room for fantastical space games, sims and strategy games of every type imaginable, or games with actual story/campaign. Everything was watered down severely on consoles to fit the "play for a few minutes" mode inherited by consoles to imitate coin-ops.

Computers also had proper multiplayer games in a big way, and linked multiplayer before consoles.

If not for the C64 and home computers like it, the old way of thinking about games perpetuated by consoles might have been the only thing we knew, and we'd be unable to fathom how games could work differently.

I'm very thankful that the corporations with their limited systems and minds didn't completely win, and that the modern non-console and even some console games today inherited some of the visions of those pioneering devs on home computers: all kinds of perspectives, modes, and tempos of play, not just frantic action games; ambitious worlds instead of perpetuating the "levels" and the "boards"; innovative game ideas where you manage lemmings, a band of troops, a city or a realm, and role-play actual characters instead of the blank-faced sprites with inane dialog and zero depth of console RPGs.

Most of this is thanks to a free market emerging; creativity and expression explodes and creators and consumers alike find an outlet for their passions. On consoles today, licensing and 'stores still put a choke leash on devs so that you have to be influential to release anything that isn't more of the same with updated graphics.

[roondar]

So, on a whim, I googled Amstrad CPC tape loading times, because I was really curious about all these claims of the Amstrad tape loaders being so super fast. Turns out there's a guy on YouTube that did a bunch of side-by-side C64 and Amstrad CPC464 tape loading tests in real time that show exactly how long it takes both systems to load.

I didn't look at all 121 games he compared, but I did check out a bunch. You can find the playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...XDgE_ZPzr7zQP4 and judge for yourself.

Since I have not watched all of them, just a bunch at random (plus one specific game), it is possible that what I've seen was not entirely representative of the whole playlist. However, what I saw roughly follows this pattern: most of the games I saw loaded (significantly) faster on the C64 than the Amstrad CPC. A few games were effectively a tie and a small percentage had the CPC winning.

Now, CPC games were indeed usually larger than C64 games. However, I think that this is not all that relevant. What is relevant is how long you end up waiting for the game to load. So even if the CPC ultimately loads more bytes/second (which, considering the results doesn't seem all that likely), it actually doesn't matter - the games still often take longer to load on the CPC. And that is what was being compared.

The game I do want to point out is "Elite", as this was pointed out in this thread.
Here's Elite loading on both systems side by side: [ Show youtube player ]
The CPC takes nearly 11 minutes, the C64 was done in 8.5.

The point I'm making here is not that the C64 was super fast at loading from tape, by the way. The point is that most of the claims around loading times presented in this thread are way off what actually happened. I have no clue where people got the idea that Elite took 90 seconds to load on the C64, or how they claim tape games normally took around 90 seconds to load on the CPC, but as we can see this is just not correct.

Every single example I've found online (not just this playlist) shows that both systems took quite a long time to load from tape. The CPC tape loading time data I could find isn't showing any evidence at all of the CPC loading faster either in terms of bytes/second or in terms of actual loading times. Similarly, when it comes to maximum speeds of C64 tapes, the evidence does not suggest that C64 turbo loaders were inherently slower than Amstrad CPC ones.

The issue was and is one of reliability. Neither games for the C64 nor Amstrad used such fast loading on commercial releases precisely because using very high baud rates was unreliable for duplication.

[Megalomaniac]

Interesting analysis there roondar. I'm assuming these examples are all loading to the first gamepay point in each case, and all the games are either multiload on both systems, or on neither? A fair few C64 games (e.g. Turbo Outrun) have multiple loading sections with non-interactive sections, before you get to loading the actual game.

Looks like fans of the respective machines are prone to exaggerating the difference, but in these cases the C64 generally loads quicker than the Amstrad when comparing tapes. Presumably emulation is a reliable comparison? Not sure which can load 1Kb of data faster - on the one hand, C64 games more often have loading music, which will take up more data? However, CPC Last Ninja 2 takes roughly 3/4 as long to load as the C64 version, when it's a Spectrum 48K port, which feels indicative of similar 'raw speed', but with Amstrad games often larger than C64 ones?

However, by definition this comparison only includes games released for both systems, and I'm guessing that the slowest loading C64 games may be:

a) the earliest C64 games (often released before the Amstrad existed) and
b) American C64 games designed around disks, with a cassette version as an afterthought

Both the above are less likely to have an Amstrad version to compare to.

Also, it's clear that Amstrad disks are much faster than C64 disks, despite a 1541 costing as much as an entire CPC6128 including screen. With the C64 having more great disk-only games than the Amstrad, that has to be considered a disadvantage of the C64.

As for Photon's point (and CCCP said something similar earlier), yes - any successful home computer was better for the industry than almost any console, or the contemporary PCs. Home computers encouraged more innovative game designs, though there certainly WERE original games developed first for the consoles too. More crucially, home computers allowed people to start development from home, on a relatively cheap system with little specialist software, as a hobby borne of enthusiasm (especially on systems with a good supplied BASIC, perhaps?). Lots of great 8-bit games were developed by one man (on boy, often) in his bedroom, and even in the 16-bit era you got the odd game where most of the work was done by one person, often without a publisher being attached at that point (Worms sticks out as a rare late example). Eventually PCs would become friendlier and more affordable, and academia learned to offer computer games development courses, but I'm not sure that had happened once the Amiga died out in the mid-90s, let alone when the 8-bits were active.

The question was more - did the C64 have as much benefit as the Atari 8-bits, or Spectrum, or BBC? I still have some misgivings, and do wonder what would have happened had the C64 not existed, or had launched later, and some or all of those 12.5m+ sales had gone to other machines instead - but overall I think it may well have done.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

The question was more - did the C64 have as much benefit as the Atari 8-bits, or Spectrum, or BBC? I still have some misgivings, and do wonder what would have happened had the C64 not existed, or had launched later, and some or all of those 12.5m+ sales had gone to other machines instead - but overall I think it may well have done.

I'm not sure why you are making this out as some great mystery. What would have happened? The short answer is "nothing much". The world would keep on turning, seeing as the computer revolution was well underway by 1982, and nothing would've stopped it. People would simply just buy other existing micros, or maybe another new strong contender would've appeared.

As for software, I guess a few games might've not been made (eg Turrican), if individual devs didn't buy C64. But bigger companies such as Lucasfilm, Microprose or SSI wouldn't close down, they would just implement their ideas on other platforms.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

People would simply just buy other existing micros, or maybe another new strong contender would've appeared.

Which is not specific to the C64. I still have no idea why the C64 would be any different or special. Just to be clear: not talking about your statement, just the thread in general

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by TCD

Which is not specific to the C64. I still have no idea why the C64 would be any different or special.

Sure, I'd say the same about any other micro disappearing, including Amiga
It'd be tempting to say maybe Sinclair machines could be a bit different, what with being really cheap, but I'm sure somebody would step in, in case Sir Clive had only wanted to make space bikes or some such. Nature abhorrs a vaccum, they say, so it's a bit like iPhones and subsequent cheap handsets for the masses.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

It'd be tempting to say maybe Sinclair machines could be a bit different, what with being really cheap, but I'm sure somebody would step in, in case Sir Clive had only wanted to make space bikes or some such. Nature abhorrs a vaccum, they say, so it's a bit like iPhones and subsequent cheap handsets for the masses.

The very cheap machines certainly helped to shape the market in the early 80s, but I doubt that computer (games) history would be drastically different if the entry level price for a machine would have been twice as much.

Anyway, maybe we should just hand Megalomaniac a puppet and ask where the C64 hurt him

[AestheticDebris]

Originally Posted by roondar

The game I do want to point out is "Elite", as this was pointed out in this thread.
Here's Elite loading on both systems side by side: [ Show youtube player ]
The CPC takes nearly 11 minutes, the C64 was done in 8.5.

The point I'm making here is not that the C64 was super fast at loading from tape, by the way. The point is that most of the claims around loading times presented in this thread are way off what actually happened. I have no clue where people got the idea that Elite took 90 seconds to load on the C64, or how they claim tape games normally took around 90 seconds to load on the CPC, but as we can see this is just not correct.

I'm not sure anyone has actually made any of those claims (I'm largely ignoring the nonsense comparisons of a turbo loading C64 disk to a CPC tape loader).

Turbo loaders are just too hard to compare without doing deep analysis, although the point that the user experience matters more is a valid one. I'd put money on the loading speed of Elite being roughly equivalent, but the CPC loading screen (which is essentially unnecessary loading time) is ~16K of data where the C64 on is probably nearer 1K. Assuming everything else is equal, that extra 15K or so is probably where the difference lies. I'd say that's in line with the general notion that tape loading speeds were more likely capped by publishers being more concerned by returns due to poor reliability than theoretical peak speeds.

Anecdotally, I'd have said that Amstrad owners were more likely to have disks than the other two machines, at least in the UK. Aside from sheer cost, it's hard to quantify that in any real capacity though. Amstrad Action and Commodore Format both offered tape-to-disk conversions for cover software, so presumably there was some demand on both platforms. Tape emulation on Amstrad is rare, with a lot of copies being conversions back from disk images rather than genuine samples (and those disk images themselves are often cracks). It seems less common on the C64 too, but I'm not sure if that's the US influence (where having a 1541 was considered essential).

[AestheticDebris]

Originally Posted by TCD

The very cheap machines certainly helped to shape the market in the early 80s, but I doubt that computer (games) history would be drastically different if the entry level price for a machine would have been twice as much.

Anyway, maybe we should just hand Megalomaniac a puppet and ask where the C64 hurt him

It might have been. A lot of games were the product of kids coding from their bedrooms and that was more likely once the price came down. Sinclair was especially aggressive in that space, but sooner or later someone else surely would have tried. Amstrad lived in that market space for other electronic equipment (and were instrumental in bring PC prices down) and, if not then, Acorn would've surely gone down the Electron route to capture more of the market sooner or later (probably more successfully).

What I can't really understand from the original question is how the C64 (or any other system) could really be bad for the industry? I mean, maybe you could make the argument about the NES where restrictive licensing rules might have slowed innovation, maybe. But any random computer, even if all it's games were just derivative shovelware (which I wouldn't say of the C64!), doesn't really have a net negative effect on the industry as far as I can see.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by roondar

So, on a whim, I googled Amstrad CPC tape loading times, because I was really curious about all these claims of the Amstrad tape loaders being so super fast. Turns out there's a guy on YouTube that did a bunch of side-by-side C64 and Amstrad CPC464 tape loading tests in real time that show exactly how long it takes both systems to load.

It depends completely on the type of scheme used to load the game.

You can have Ikari Warriors loading "faster" on the C64 and the same game loading very slow on the CPC due to the normal blocks loading used.

There are no fixed rules on that matter.

I didn't look at all 121 games he compared, but I did check out a bunch. You can find the playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...XDgE_ZPzr7zQP4 and judge for yourself.

Ok i will have a look.

Since I have not watched all of them, just a bunch at random (plus one specific game), it is possible that what I've seen was not entirely representative of the whole playlist. However, what I saw roughly follows this pattern: most of the games I saw loaded (significantly) faster on the C64 than the Amstrad CPC. A few games were effectively a tie and a small percentage had the CPC winning.

C64 games are smaller to begin with, than those you can find on the Amstrad CPC.

I have preserved 2200+ commercial tapes on the Amstrad CPC.

There are 2 things to notice : there are a tons lot more tape games on the C64 than on the CPC, so just on this matter you will find more games loading faster on the C64.

However, on the games that have turbo loaders on the CPC, it loads faster than the games on the C64.

Most speedlock games and gremlin loader 2/3 loads faster than their C64 counterparts, if you consider the fact that CPC games are bigger (more data to load) than the c64 games. On the CPC, we have encryption that doubles the size of the blocks to load, this doesn't exists on the C64 (always small blocks and small size).

Now, CPC games were indeed usually larger than C64 games. However, I think that this is not all that relevant. What is relevant is how long you end up waiting for the game to load.

It is of course relevant. It's exactly the same thing with Atari ST games and Amiga games. The ST seems to loads faster just because the games are smaller in size. A game can be 2 or 3 disks on Amiga and just 1 filled to the max on the ST. Of course, the amiga will take longer to load the datas as they are bigger. There's no magic in there. bigger = longer.

So even if the CPC ultimately loads more bytes/second (which, considering the results doesn't seem all that likely), it actually doesn't matter - the games still often take longer to load on the CPC. And that is what was being compared.

It does matter. If CPC games were as small as C64 games, it would takes way less time comparatively to load considering the CPC turbo loaders speed.

The game I do want to point out is "Elite", as this was pointed out in this thread. Here's Elite loading on both systems side by side: [ Show youtube player ]
The CPC takes nearly 11 minutes, the C64 was done in 8.5.

Elite on CPC, original tape release take 10:30 to load.

Why is it like this ? Simply because the average speed is 845 bauds. This is due to the copy protection, which requires a slow loading (it has a defect, which has been corrected in the bleepload v2 scheme. It needs a sound level at 15% in order to load without breaking).

If Elite had used 1800 bauds blocks, the time to load would have been Less than 4 minutes !

Bleepload scheme comes from the BBC computer btw.

The point I'm making here is not that the C64 was super fast at loading from tape, by the way. The point is that most of the claims around loading times presented in this thread are way off what actually happened.

Sorry but i gave the exact loading time. I have all the CPC tapes in original made with all the loading length ready to check in goldwave.

I have no clue where people got the idea that Elite took 90 seconds to load on the C64, or how they claim tape games normally took around 90 seconds to load on the CPC, but as we can see this is just not correct.

You misread what i read way above. I wrote that Elite on CPC disk version takes 90 secondes to load, i was not talking about the tape release.

Every single example I've found online (not just this playlist) shows that both systems took quite a long time to load from tape. The CPC tape loading time data I could find isn't showing any evidence at all of the CPC loading faster either in terms of bytes/second or in terms of actual loading times.

This is normal, you're not into software preservation, so therefore you lack 1) the knowledge on the CPC tapes/hardware/informations 2) you don't know where to get the informations needed to determine what is what between each machine. Since i'm doing preservation on CPC since a long time, and i'm also used to the C64, i have access to those, and i have also the hardware for each machine to check and verify.

Similarly, when it comes to maximum speeds of C64 tapes, the evidence does not suggest that C64 turbo loaders were inherently slower than Amstrad CPC ones.

They are. Unless you use a rom that accelerates the loading on C64, It's a nightmare on slow loading on the C64, either with the 1541 or 1541-II and the use of the tape deck C2N 1530 from commodore !

The issue was and is one of reliability. Neither games for the C64 nor Amstrad used such fast loading on commercial releases precisely because using very high baud rates was unreliable for duplication.

It did on Amstrad CPC. fast loading schemes using speedlocks tape schemes were industrially duplicated in UK by Ablex Audio Video, and gremlin loader 2/3 were mastered for gremlin graphics by the company called Protoscan located in Sheffield.

Bad Cat Amstrad CPC tape 4000 bauds tapes were also duplicated industrially by Ablex or Protoscan.

The hardware used to duplicate tapes were much much better than the regular CPC tape deck or even the C64 tape deck (and faster as well !).

The reliability problem came on schemes that were too complicated to replicate. We have tons of exemple of these even in the Amiga software stories !

[TCD]

Originally Posted by AestheticDebris

What I can't really understand from the original question is how the C64 (or any other system) could really be bad for the industry? I mean, maybe you could make the argument about the NES where restrictive licensing rules might have slowed innovation, maybe. But any random computer, even if all it's games were just derivative shovelware (which I wouldn't say of the C64!), doesn't really have a net negative effect on the industry as far as I can see.

Yep, that's my main problem with it too.

Still I don't think that you would miss much innovation in computer games if you wouldn't have that many cheap machines back then. Elite was programmed by two university students. The Lords of Midnight was coded by a school teacher.

[roondar]

Before my replies: I am only really interested in the aspect of loading tapes, not disks. I have no issue in accepting that the CPC normally loaded from disk faster than the C64. I'm pretty sure the differences are being exagerated as usual, but the slower nature of the IEC bus of the C64 is well documented and I don't see an issue in accepting that even using fastloaders you'll likely fall short of the normal speed of the drive mechanism.

Also, this post was way too long so I cut down quite a bit of my reply (and hence also the posts I replied to).

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Interesting analysis there roondar. I'm assuming these examples are all loading to the first gamepay point in each case, and all the games are either multiload on both systems, or on neither?

For the games I looked at, the loading was usually to the point where the final title screen was displayed, even if that took multiple loads.

Originally Posted by AestheticDebris

I'm not sure anyone has actually made any of those claims (I'm largely ignoring the nonsense comparisons of a turbo loading C64 disk to a CPC tape loader).

There's a bunch of statements in this thread about baud rates of tape loaders in use on both systems. It was these statements that I was refering to. Though I admit I thought the Elite comparison was about tape to tape, so I misread that one

Turbo loaders are just too hard to compare ... although the point that the user experience matters more is a valid one. I'd put money on the loading speed of Elite being roughly equivalent, ... where the C64 on is probably nearer 1K. ... I'd say that's in line with the general notion that tape loading speeds were more likely capped by publishers being more concerned by returns due to poor reliability than theoretical peak speeds.

That feels fair, though I do want to point out that the Elite loading screen on the C64 (like most of them) is not in character mode, but multi-colour bitmap mode. This mode uses 9K of space, not 1K.

As a side-note, here's a neat video of the 'world record' speed for data transfer using a standard C64 with a standard datasette: [ Show youtube player ] (This shows a loading rate of ~13000 bits/second or ~1625 bytes/second).

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

It depends completely on the type of scheme used to load the game. ...
There are no fixed rules on that matter.

Absolutely. Which is a big part of why your claims that C64 tapes generally load slower than Amstrad CPC tapes are not accurate.

However, on the games that have turbo loaders on the CPC, it loads faster than the games on the C64.

As of yet, I have seen no evidence of this. You've said this many times, but I can't find any independent source for this. All comparisons and data points I've seen show the C64 consistently loading from tape either at the similar speeds, or faster.

If you have video evidence to the contrary, I'll gladly take a look.

This is normal, you're not into software preservation, so therefore you lack 1) the knowledge on the CPC tapes/hardware/informations 2) you don't know where to get the informations needed to determine what is what between each machine.

It is best to not assume the knowledge level of other people. As it happens, I do have quite a bit of knowledge about C64 tape loaders and have captured several hundreds of C64 tapes. Certainly enough to see you make claims about C64 tape loading speeds that are incorrect.

Common commercial C64 tape loaders run between 2000 and 3000 baud. There's a few that are slower and a few that are faster. Notably on the 'faster' side there are some commercial games that actually use the standard 'Turbo Tape' format, they reach around 475 bytes/sec or 3800 baud. Magazine covertapes also often (though not always) used this, or similarly fast formats.

A notable exception on the 'slower' side is Cyberload, which was slower than most and usually harder to copy/more finicky when loading (I presume this was the point), it ran at around 200-220 bytes/sec or a maximum of 1760 baud.

In many cases the duplication machinery was the issue, not the tape drive. As an example, Paul Hughes of Freeload fame had an earlier loader he offered to Ocean that ran at 4000 baud, but the duplication machines couldn't deal with it, so he lowered it to 3000 baud, which they could handle.

Similarly, budget re-releases often used a slower turbo tape loader because of duplication issues using cheaper duplication machines.

It did on Amstrad CPC. fast loading schemes using speedlocks tape schemes were industrially duplicated in UK by Ablex Audio Video, and gremlin loader 2/3 were mastered for gremlin graphics ... Bad Cat Amstrad CPC tape 4000 bauds tapes ...

Gremlin loader 2 and loader 3 are not that fast, they clock in at 1900 and 2500 baud respectively. Likewise, Speedlock maxes out at 1900 baud. Well inside the bandwidth of what was done using commercial C64 tape turbo loaders.

Other sources put Bad Cat at 3500 baud (CPC wiki). 3500 baud is still in range of what some commercial C64 games used as I pointed out above.

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by TCD

Yep, that's my main problem with it too.

Still I don't think that you would miss much innovation in computer games if you wouldn't have that many cheap machines back then. Elite was programmed by two university students. The Lords of Midnight was coded by a school teacher.

I still think that the games industry as a whole would have been actually better off had the C64 debuted at a more competetive price point.

The Spectrum gained a foothold due to the higher price of the 64. Had that not happened I'm pretty much convinced that gaming would have benefitted and we might have hit certain milestones a little sooner.

Wonder how the story of Sir Clive would have played out...

[AestheticDebris]

Originally Posted by roondar

There's a bunch of statements in this thread about baud rates of tape loaders in use on both systems. It was these statements that I was refering to. Though I admit I thought the Elite comparison was about tape to tape, so I misread that one

I posted some of them. I did try to make it clear that was standard loaders only and that turbo loaders existed for all tape based machines, possibly not clear enough.

Originally Posted by roondar

As a side-note, here's a neat video of the 'world record' speed for data transfer using a standard C64 with a standard datasette: [ Show youtube player ] (This shows a loading rate of ~13000 bits/second or ~1625 bytes/second).

Neat. I think that's around the same kinds of speed reached with OTLA on the CPC, but that's cutting out the incredibly unreliable actual magnetic tape bit and sending data from a cleaner digital source.
[ Show youtube player ]

Originally Posted by roondar

As of yet, I have seen no evidence of this. You've said this many times, but I can't find any independent source for this. All comparisons and data points I've seen show the C64 consistently loading from tape either at the similar speeds, or faster.

No I'd expect most commercial loaders, especially from the later years when games started filling RAM, to be similar. They'd all pretty much be capped by what Ablex could duplicate reliably.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by roondar

Absolutely. Which is a big part of why your claims that C64 tapes generally load slower than Amstrad CPC tapes are not accurate.

All the C64 commercial tapes i have bought run indeed slowly comparatively to most of the CPC commercial tapes i own. And most games i own on C64 are using turbo loaders.

As of yet, I have seen no evidence of this. You've said this many times, but I can't find any independent source for this. All comparisons and data points I've seen show the C64 consistently loading from tape either at the similar speeds, or faster.

Simple : buy a full set of CPC 464, connect it to a TV, and do the same on your C64. You'll be surprised.

It is best to not assume the knowledge level of other people. As it happens, I do have quite a bit of knowledge about C64 tape loaders and have captured several hundreds of C64 tapes. Certainly enough to see you make claims about C64 tape loading speeds that are incorrect.

A hundred of tapes ? That's nothing ! I have processed and preserved more than 2200 commercial tapes, just on Amstrad CPC ! So as i said, you can't have a good overview with just this small amount of tape. And you don't really know the CPC either, as most C64 users.

What i say about C64 tape loading speed is correct. You mismatch probably the speed between real hardware and emulator(s).

Common commercial C64 tape loaders run between 2000 and 3000 baud.

The commercial softs i have on C64 runs mostly 1800 bauds at best. I met none running between 2000 and 3000 bauds.

There's a few that are slower and a few that are faster. Notably on the 'faster' side there are some commercial games that actually use the standard 'Turbo Tape' format, they reach around 475 bytes/sec or 3800 baud. Magazine covertapes also often (though not always) used this, or similarly fast formats.

It remains very slow on my C64 (breadbin or C64C german model) connected to C2N 1530.

A notable exception on the 'slower' side is Cyberload, which was slower than most and usually harder to copy/more finicky when loading (I presume this was the point), it ran at around 200-220 bytes/sec or a maximum of 1760 baud.

A lot of games use Cyberload, it's a very common turbo loader on C64.

In many cases the duplication machinery was the issue, not the tape drive. As an example, Paul Hughes of Freeload fame had an earlier loader he offered to Ocean that ran at 4000 baud, but the duplication machines couldn't deal with it, so he lowered it to 3000 baud, which they could handle.

Of course. the duplicate tape machines could only do 4000 bauds after 1990.

From 1990 and after, U.S.Gold used Digital Master Tapes, and they went very high quality recordings.

For example, Shadow Dancer Amstrad CPC version uses the hexagon encrypted blocks, those were recorded at 96khz mono ! The precision in term of baud was very high. And bad luck for Paul Hughes, Bad Cat from Rainbow Arts has been recorded at 4000 bauds, in 1987 ! The Amstrad CPC has no reliability to read tapes recorded at 4000 bauds. Ablex was ocean duplicator company, i guess their hardware was not able of that.

Similarly, budget re-releases often used a slower turbo tape loader because of duplication issues using cheaper duplication machines.
Gremlin loader 2 and loader 3 are not that fast, they clock in at 1900 and 2500 baud respectively. Likewise, Speedlock maxes out at 1900 baud. Well inside the bandwidth of what was done using commercial C64 tape turbo loaders.

Gremlin loader 2 is above 2000 bauds and Gremlin loader 3 used only on Mask is 2500-3000 bauds.

Speedlock maxes at 2000 bauds (Speedlock v4). Speedlock v6 is limited to 1650 bauds, Speedlock v2 is either 1800 or 2000 on some games.

Other sources put Bad Cat at 3500 baud (CPC wiki). 3500 baud is still in range of what some commercial C64 games used as I pointed out above.

This is average speed. The speed specified by the CPC coders is 4000 bauds.

[Retro-Nerd]

You guys are masochists. I borrowed a C64 datasette for testing in 1987, just out of curiosity. Had a good laugh about handling/speed and used my 1541 again. Are people still using real tapes/digital tapes in 2024?

Nowadays i prefer EasyFlash converted games. Fast as real cartridge games, works for multi-part games too. This is by far the most comfortable way.

[Megalomaniac]

There's a definite charm to using the original hardware, the feel of opening the tape case and inserting it, pressing play, even the loading noises (though that's very 'you had to be there' thing). Remember that in the UK a majority of people only had cassettes with their 8-bits. If we're comparing loading times on two different systems though, we need to be using tapes - in an ideal world they'd be original tapes, but it takes time and money to collect them, and of course each load is taking you one day closer to the hardware failing.

Originally Posted by Dunny

I still think that the games industry as a whole would have been actually better off had the C64 debuted at a more competetive price point.

The Spectrum gained a foothold due to the higher price of the 64. Had that not happened I'm pretty much convinced that gaming would have benefitted and we might have hit certain milestones a little sooner.

Wonder how the story of Sir Clive would have played out...

Commodore sold the C64 for less than it cost to make for a time, especially in America in 1983, which squeezed rivals out of the market. They may have done the same in the UK to an extent?

In any case, you'll be flabbergasted to hear that I don't agree. The C64 couldn't do everything, and it certainly couldn't do everything easily. I wonder if its relatively poor BASIC compared to the Spectrum and especially the BBC might have been a barrier to entry for new would-be programmers too? I don't know that some of the big isometric and other 3D games of the early 80s, many of them international successes which launched long-lasting careers, would have happened if the C64 had been the only successful system? Though of course, likewise, without the C64 we may not have had Maniac Mansion (which definitely spawned an entire genre by itself) or perhaps Creatures or Wizball?

Maybe having multiple 8-bit systems with different strengths and weaknesses was a good thing? Another angle might be to look at a company like Graftgold - a collaboration of primarily Andy Braybrook - a C64 guy who's mostly done 2D action games (Paradroid, Uridium, Gribbly's) and Steve Turner- a Spectrum guy who'd mostly done 3D games (the Seiddab series, Quazatron) and adventures (Avalon and Dragontorc) (plus the endearingly quirky Ranarama). On the Amiga ,we got Fire & Ice and Rainbow Islands from the former, and Realms and Simulcra (plus Super Off Road Racer, slightly out-of-genre for him but really good) from the latter - plus they collaborated a few times. Would we have got all those games if either C64 or Spectrum hadn't existed?

[roondar]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

All the C64 commercial tapes i have bought run indeed slowly comparatively to most of the CPC commercial tapes i own. And most games i own on C64 are using turbo loaders.

And yet, you can't even show me a single example of that. It's all claims but no evidence from you. Show me the videos of all these super-fast tape loading CPC games that run rings around their C64 counterparts and I'll glady admit you're right.

I provided public sources that people can check and judge for themselves. You've provided "trust me" and "buy a CPC", which are not convincing arguments.

A hundred of tapes ? That's nothing ! I have processed and preserved more than 2200 commercial tapes, just on Amstrad CPC ! So as i said, you can't have a good overview with just this small amount of tape. And you don't really know the CPC either, as most C64 users.

This is called an argument from authority, a common fallacy. Just because you sampled more tapes doesn't mean you know more. In particular, you very clearly know little about C64 tape loading as you are 100% incorrect about C64 loaders and their speeds.

As for my CPC knowledge, I simply look at publicly available information. I have exactly zero reasons to not trust what is found online on places like YouTube and the CPC Wiki. The sources I've shown are not biased against the CPC and they're not doing any weird stuff, they just show it as it is (indeed, the video playlist I linked doesn't even skip the "FOUND <x>" prompt on the C64 by pressing the Commodore key, making it wait a few seconds longer than it has to).

Which, interestingly, is consistently rather different from how you claim it to be.

What i say about C64 tape loading speed is correct. You mismatch probably the speed between real hardware and emulator(s).

Yes, because capturing real cassettes on a real C64 to .tap file and testing both the original cassette and the .tap on a real C64 will show a mismatch in speed compared to using a real C64 with real cassettes

Also: C64 emulators actually play back tapes at the same speed as the original tapes. Everyone who has actually, you know, used those emulators to play back .tap files knows this. It's also super easy to test that I'm correct about this, so I have no clue why you even try to bring it up as an argument.

The commercial softs i have on C64 runs mostly 1800 bauds at best. I met none running between 2000 and 3000 bauds.

Then you've not looked very well or don't have many C64 games on tape. There are tons of Freeload titles, which according to it's own author on it's own website runs at ~3000 baud:

"All Freeload titles load in 14 parts (excluding the initial boot load that pulls in the loader) at roughly ~3000 baud (which is x10 faster than the original Commodore routines)" - http://www.pauliehughes.com/freeload.htm

Note: Freeload is but one example, there are plenty more commercial tape loaders on the C64 that exceed 2000 baud.

A lot of games use Cyberload, it's a very common turbo loader on C64.

Not really, it was mostly used by System 3 and affiliates. Other systems, such as Freeload were used in way more games and were considerably faster. Again, it's quite clear you just know very little about C64 tape loading.

Gremlin loader 2 is above 2000 bauds and Gremlin loader 3 used only on Mask is 2500-3000 bauds.

Speedlock maxes at 2000 bauds (Speedlock v4). Speedlock v6 is limited to 1650 bauds, Speedlock v2 is either 1800 or 2000 on some games.

This is average speed. The speed specified by the CPC coders is 4000 bauds.

I see no reason to take your word over what the CPC Wiki says. They have no reason to lie about this.

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Commodore sold the C64 for less than it cost to make for a time, especially in America in 1983, which squeezed rivals out of the market. They may have done the same in the UK to an extent?

IIRC when first released the C64 was almost twice the cost of a Spectrum, and remained so for the best part of two years in the UK which gave the Spectrum a real leg up into people's homes.

However...

I wonder if its relatively poor BASIC compared to the Spectrum and especially the BBC might have been a barrier to entry for new would-be programmers too?

That BASIC certainly was awful but at the same time it was pure Commodore. Are we surprised that the Commodore that so badly screwed up the Amiga were also responsible for royally screwing up the BASIC in the '64?

Cos I ain't


And yeah I think that had they spent a few dollars on contracting MS to update the BASIC for the hardware they would have had a reasonable shot at eating the other 8bits' lunches if we're talking about garnering bedroom coders.

As it was, the cost of entry in terms of both £s and shenanigans getting the BASIC to do anything were just enough to allow the Spectrum to rule for a short while.

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

Are people still using real tapes/digital tapes in 2024?

My Spectrum emulator has the fastest tape acceleration there is - bar none - but my ZX Omni and my ZX Spectrum Next both load tapes (real and digital) in real time.

You can't beat that sound, and there's something about playing those games after waiting a few minutes that makes them... just more fun, I guess.