/vr/ - Retro Games

>>3800835
Commodore 64 had a floppy drive according to my research a while another computer built in to it but with less I/o but cost as much thats why it was slow but not as slow as press play on tape.

>>3800835
The Spectrum was better for games than the C64. They may not have looked as good, but they ran smoother and faster.

>>3800835
The 64 was King in Australia, I know we had the Amstrad, can't recall ever seeing a speccy in the wild here. It was only through emulation I got to try the spectrum years later.

>>3800870
We did have the Spectrum and ZX80 in Australia, you can find the user magazines online. Same with the SC-3000, which seems to have been more popular in New Zealand.

>>3800835
>Spectrum vs Commodore 64

What? Wasn't it Atari 800XL vs C64? How could Spectrum compare to C64 in the first place?

In Italy C64 was the absolute King during the 8bit era, mainly because anti piracy laws didn't apply to software until the late 80s, so every little shop was full of barely legal cassettes sold for cheap full of games.
Rich kids had NES, SMS was a late bloomer that started to sell well immediately before and after the MD era, which was much more popular than the SNES, due to the SEGA machines in every arcade and the efficient marketing campaign, even if it was tacky.
Never met anyone with a Speccy during those years, occasionally some kid used their monochrome dad's Amstrads for some game.
Gameboy sold well by the way, in my middle school was extremely popular amongst girls because of Tetris.
That's what I remember.

There's a shop in Rome that still bravely hold their old sign "Commodore" even if they sell only smartphones now, the owner was in love with the C machines (since Plus8 to Amiga).

>>3800861
>The Spectrum was better for games than the C64. They may not have looked as good, but they ran smoother and faster.

[THIS IS WHAT BRITBONGS ACTUALLY BELIEVE]

>>3800880
Depends on the country, m8. Don't get flustered.
>>3800883
It's not a matter of belief.

>>3800889
Looks like someone is a Creationist

In my time we all had Win 9X computers.

>>3800882
>SMS was a late bloomer that started to sell well immediately before and after the MD era
after the MD??? so everyone went retro?
I've heard in Brazil that the sms was the only console and they've only recently stopped selling them there. 3rd party games also still being produced

>>3800882
>due to the SEGA machines in every arcade
What did the arcade scene look like in Europe? How popular were they and were there European made games?

>>3800926
The Master System II came out after the Mega Drive and the Master System was supported up to 1995.
>>3800928
There were a few British arcade games, like Killer Instinct, but there really wasn't enough money in the industry to support writing arcade games.

>>3800928
>What did the arcade scene look like in Europe? How popular were they and were there European made games?
In Germany, there were only a few arcade halls. At least where I used to grow up.
Poland however looked different. There were quite a lot of those. Not only in the bigger cities but in some small villages as well.

>>3800928
I live in a small town from the deep south so only went to real arcades when travelling somewhere else in the country, but in Spain you had a small cabinet in pretty much every coffe shop or pub for the kids to play with. That's where I used to play the most. Lot's of Sega, Capcom, SNK and Super Pangs, for some weird reason.

>>3800926
Mh, not exactly, it was just that often both consoles were in the same ad and the SMS was considerably cheaper than the MD, so it was an alright alternative, at some point price was incredibly low (I think something around the today equivalent of 25€) and the adverts were everywhere, so it was definitely popular beyond its natural cycle.

>>3800928
During late 80s early 90s there was at least an arcade hall in every town, plus every cafè or every bar had at least a couple of those machines, SFII and other classic were often there but I still remember vividly the first time the Out Run cabinet came to the cafè under my flat, I was there with my mom and all the male adults stood in queue to witness the newest marvel.
Last time I saw an arcade machine was around 2007-2008 inside a bowling alley, never saw one anymore since then.

>>3800928
There was an Outrun little car cab in every damn arcade I ever visited.

It only started getting sparse once Cruisn' USA and World became more common.

>>3800936
>There were a few British arcade games, like Killer Instinct, but there really wasn't enough money in the industry to support writing arcade games.
So, was Gaelco the biggest European arcade developer? They even used their own 3D hardware, which was rare.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaelco

>>3800979
>In Germany, there were only a few arcade halls.
I heard that arcades weren't a thing here, wonder who played Konami's Asterix then.

In the early 2000's I used to visit Sardigna, by ship and I am pretty sure it had an arcade room. My memories aren't detaield, but I do think I saw Metal Slug and... Mega Man!?
They only time I saw arcades in real life and I didn't knew what it was.

>>3800882
Another Italian here, can confirm this post 100%, C64 was the king in here, not only for games mind you, but also for music, same with the Amiga which was pretty damn successful and loved.
>>3800928
>How popular were they and were there European made games?
I lived at the end of the arcade era, but I still remember that people did go to arcades to play Daytona, KoF and the occasional Virtua Fighter, but even according to some of my older relatives, arcades were never really big in here except in the bigger cities.
In some places there are still a few arcades in some big places like malls or bowling halls but there's really little outside some lightgun games and a few FG like VF or Tekken.
I can also confirm>>3801160 as I live in Sardinia and our ships had indeed a few arcade machines up until some years ago, I've been travelling by plane since a decade or so by now so I can't say whether it's still a thing though.

>>3800990
>Super Pang
loved the original arcade game and the snes version

any sequel or similar game worth playing?

>>3800835
>Did you go through the same arguments
Nobody was dumb enough to have a spectrum in Australia.

>>3800880
>How could Spectrum compare to C64 in the first place?
It had a higher resolution and was much cheaper even though it was garbage until the 128K model that didn't even have a fucking power switch; it turned on when you plugged it in and turned off when you unplugged it.

>>3800861

You can't be fucking serious

>>3800861
For isometric, vector and early poly games definitely, but 90% of anything with scrolling would be better on the C64. The real acid test of how a game would turn out would be whether it was developed specifically around either of the machines/was a better fit for the hardware.

How much percentage of the libraries of the ZX Spectrum, Atari ST and BBC Micro are ported over to the C64?

>>3800835
It was Apple vs C64 here. Both were good in their own way but the C64 was so much cheaper. It was also Amiga vs ST. The ST has a few better games and midifag shit but the Amiga was all around better.

>>3800861
Sounds like you might have some settings wrong in your 64 emulator champ.

What your computer says about you as a Britbong. 100% pure fact:
C64 - You were part of the glorious gaming master race.

Spectrum - You lived on a council estate and your parent (singular) didn't love you. You got a Specturm because Argos were out of stock on TV Pong games and it was the next cheapest option to stop your whining. You told yourself that "Gameplay is what matters!" but still died a little inside when you got any multiformat game home and compared it to the screenshots on the box.

BBC Micro - You were a posh spaz, probably named Tarquin, and almost certainly a teacher's pet. You'd try to defend your system by talking about Elite, or Exile, or Repton but everybody knows you spent your nights wanking to Granny's Garden, you posh spaz.

CPC - You were a good guy with a good system. Shame you were the only one in your class. Nobody cared then, few care now.

NES - You're a unicorn. Or a liar.

>>3802153
Literally nobody who was young enough to get caught up in system wars here in the UK had any real idea what MIDI really was, or why they might want a MIDI port. They just knew that the Amiga didn't have one and clung to it like a liferaft in their river of shit peasantry. That and Oids.

>>3801892
>it was garbage until the 128K
it was the same as the model before it, just a case revamp, an inbuilt tape or sometimes disk drive. 128k was just the name, the actual memory and power you could use was a lot less.

it didn't do anything the 48k couldn't do.

>>3802282
I have a tonne of friends who started making drum & bass, jungle, happy hardcore, bouncy techno and even house music. I think the program was called QBase

It probably kickstarted a whole subculture of bedroom DJs and raves.

>>3802257
>Spectrum - You lived on a council estate and your parent (singular) didn't love you. You got a Specturm because Argos were out of stock on TV Pong games and it was the next cheapest option to stop your whining. You told yourself that "Gameplay is what matters!" but still died a little inside when you got any multiformat game home and compared it to the screenshots on the box.
surprisingly close to me and my friends (minus the council house). However there were loads more games in WHSmiths for the speccy and loads more people to trade games (and copy) with.

I chose the speccy over the c64 even though my cousin had one. Simply because it was more popular and had games from 50p

>>3802282
Amigafags made better tracker music than most people could with MIDI anyway. I had a bunch of midi stuff but I still used an Amiga. A midi port was only like an extra $50 anyway.

>>3802257
>CPC - You were a good guy with a good system
Wasn't the CPC slow as hell because it was made for business?

Finland here...

>C=64 vs rest

There was never much rivalry because practically everyone had a Commodore 64. I mean, when I was 15 or so there were only one or two boys in my class who didn't own one.

Everything else was rare. My cousin had a MSX at one point and I even managed to see it action, but soon he switched to C64.

>Amiga vs ST

Well this was a thing what I observed (I owned either). I guess it was the general usability vs usability rant.

>>3802557
you mean cubase

it exists to this day

>>3800861
t. literally has no fucking clue what he is talking about

>>3800835
Can't say for sure but the MSX was the most popular computer here, C64 was 2nd I think

In Russia it was Dendy vs ZX Spectrum.

>>3803768
What's "here"? I mean, it's interesting.

>>3803789
Netherlands

>>3800873
I always suspected they did come here, I just meant as far as my local area was concerned I didn't know anyone who had one.

>>3803787
The dandy(nes clone) is obviously superior as far as gaming goes and this isn't even a debate.

>>3803787
Russia sure did love their spectrum clones, didn't they? Kinaman just recently did a video where he talked about the speccy but unfortunately it doesn't have English subs.

>>3800861
I wouldn't agree with that.

But I would say Spectrum games had more charm about them. And I was C64 owner back then.

>>3804497
Link?

>>3802257
Still got my NES from 1990.
Still works too.

>>3804497
Yep, it was by far most popular computer there, until x86 PCs became more affordable in the late 90s. People even assembled speccy clones themservels.

>>3805482
https://youtu.be/vToeTj5EqCA
spectrum stuff starts about 20 minutes in.

>>3805640
huh? how did they replicate the ULA chip?

>>3804158
You can't make games with Dendy, Anton.

>>3800835
>Did you go through the same arguments,
No, because I had a Commodore 64 and disc drive what else would I need.

>>3806551
A less shitty colour palette?

>>3806579
That's why I eventually bought a Tandy 386sx.

>>3806525
It looks like clone chips were produced by soviet factories
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gate_array

>>3803306
Nope, was a gaming machine first, they tried to sell it to business thanks to the monitor, real keyboard and CP/M support but was primarly marketed as an easy to use machine for homes.

Maybe you are thinking about the PCW...

>>3800835
In spain everything was mostly spectrum vs amstrad cpc. All the people who had microcomputers had one of other.

The only ones who didn't was a cousing who had a C64 (the only C64 I've seen outside a store, apart from the one I own now) and a weird guy in school who had a MSX.

Oh, and some friend got the NES in 1990, We teased him hard for getting that expensive shit instead a good computer like everybody else... "spending like (today's) 100$ on a game?, are you nuts?"

In my country there was never really a console war, the clear winners of each generation where the ones which were the cheapest, aka china bootleg consoles.
For 3rd gen it was Family Game, which was the Famicom clone. Had many variants (like the russian Dendy), but the most generic one that looked like the original Famicom was the best. Games were plenty and pretty cheap. Multicarts were the best way to get worth your money.
SNES didn't got any clones afaik, but Sega Genesis/Mega Drive did, tons of them.
Contrary to the Famicom, the Genesis clones mimicked being original SEGA licensed hardware pretty well. Carts were also plenty and cheap, and they even included a box sometimes. No manual though.
SNES also got bootleg games, but were still generally more expensive than Sega games, and bootleg games were more scarce, Nintendo had an official presence in my country in the 90s so most stores carried only original Nintendo stuff, while they didn't have problem selling Sega bootlegs.
And just the same happened with PlayStation, modchips were really fast to arrive, in fact most consoles sold already had the chip because the only games you could find on stores were bootlegs.
N64 bootlegs were extremely rare, and Saturn had very little presence, you'd rarely see Saturns at stores.
During 16-bit though, a lot of people still had a SNES, not as many as Genesis, but I'd say it was a 35%-65%, and I don't remember real console wars, like kids arguing.
My best friend back then was a Segakid, and I initially got a SNES, but he convinced me to get a Genesis as well. I loved it, and had a lot of fun with both the SNES and Genesis.
I also lent my SNES to him many times (like when I went to vacations, etc). He and his older brothers loved the shit out of the SNES so much that eventually they sold their Genesis to buy a SNES. They kept my F-Zero and DKC2 carts though, the fuckers.

>>3807334
country?

I also loved both the Genesis and the SNES, I had had the Genesis for about a year when I also got a SNES. I eventually sold the Genesis and built up my SNES library. Never saw one copy cartridge in the UK. But plenty of 3rd party converters and peripherals.

When the PSX came out loads of people started modding and buying burnt discs.

>>3807361
>UK
>Genesis

>>3807334
Honestly your country sounds kinda weird, I don't think I ever saw a bootleg console or cartridge as a kid, Nintendo dominated the console market here in Australia until 8th gen although more hardcore gamers tended to prefer disk based consoles because they usually owned modded consoles that could play disks that were burned and/or imported from Asian countries where the games were far cheaper.

You're right about Saturn tho, I don't think I knew a single person who had one, even the rich kid who had a NES, SNES, Master System with all the addons, Game Gear, Gameboy Color, N64, Playstation and even a Neo Geo didn't have one.

>>3807334
Basically the same story as in Russia. Except SNES was very rare. I might have seen just a few SNES cards in local stores, and maybe they were N64 carts, because I didn't know SNES existed back then, for me "Nintendo" was associated with single console, it was 64 bit, but used carts.

>>3802557
Atari Teenage Riot didn't get their name from nowhere.

>>3807376
yeah, completely used to saying Genesis now
But we always called in the MegaDrive

>>3803306
It was supposed to be everything and had a disk drive and green screen monitor available to make it look more serious, but it was fine for games except for shitty scrolling.

When I was a kid - my cousins had an Atari 800xl. I was always die-hard Commodore (I had a c64 at the time).

I remember using their computer and modem and dialing Atari BBSes. Atari had it's own spin on character sets (ATASCII, much like Commodore's "PETSCII"). There was one BBS that had an ATASCII animation of a battle between Atari troops and Commodore troops. The Atari troops heads were Atari (fuji) logos. The Commodore troops heads were "C=" to represent the Commodore logo.

Question to the people questioning the speed of the spectrum wasn't its processor 3.5 times faster as in it ran a 3.5mhz while the c64 was 1mhz and not even that in the PAL region so why would the spectrum not run games smoother? I know cycles per second isn't everything when measuring a cpus power but wouldn't that at least give smoother framerates. I don't know shit about either of these systems other than what I have seen from videos so please educate me.

>>3808129
C64 had hardware sprites and scrolling which took care of a lot of things. The ZXS had to brute force everything.

What about the 7800?

>>3808594
wut about it

>>3808594
Why are you mentioning a home console from 1986 in a thread about home computers from 1982?

>>3800835
I remember going to W.H Smith on Saturday mornings and looking through all the 99p games that were crap.

Couple of £1.99 / £2.99 games were OK, like the Dizzy games.

>>3810139
Loved Dizzy.

Do you remember a couple of games called Vampyre and phantasm? Could be wrong on the names as It's been so long. The were platform exploring games

>>3808129
The speccy was built for a home office scenario. And people just started making games for it. It was never meant for those things but It's popularity was its driving force.

>>3810204
Target renegade cost me about 8 quid I think

>>3810204
The top shelve had the top 10 PC Games that came in huge boxes.

The best thing was buying a game, taking it home and copying it onto a blank tape. Then take it back and ask for another game. Rinse and repeat.

>>3810358
it wasn't easy finding a doable tape deck or hooking up 2 together. And one little mistake would fuck the whole game, I had a few that would just take ages loading then not start.

>>3810208
If the Spectrum was meant for a home office it would have an actual keyboard. It was just meant to be relatively cheap, which meant a lot of kids got it, which attracted game development.

>>3811682
nope.
as i said it wasn't built for games or kids home use.
.
they envisioned a future of home office and hopefully education usage.

But it was so cheap everyone bought it, and everyone wanted games. So 3rd parties started selling shit tonnes of games and the rest is history.
All unplanned and even Clive Sinclair found it hard to call it a success because it had taken such a totally different path to the one planned.

>>3808401
makes sense thanks

>>3812952
The ZX81 or the Spectrum?

>>3800861

>>3814214

Isn't everything that the ZX has ported to C64?

>>3814458
not at all. there's literally thousands of games that were spectrum exclusives.

>>3814482
But were they good?

>>3814574

Depends on how many isometric platformers you can stomach. There's a few good games that don't fit that category, like pic related and Cybernoid.

>>3814215
>>3814214

Another comparison, this time with R-type. It's considered the greatest Spectrum port of all time, and it still can't hold a candle to its C64 counterpart.

>>3814708
>>3814574

Also, Dark Star. It's a cut down version of Star Wars, but it's far more playable than any 3D shooter on the C64.

>>3814458
and what about the Amstrad cpc?

>>3814723
At best the games were more colorful C64 ports, at worst games were blobbier Spectrum ports. Diskettes were nicer than cassettes but cost much more.

>>3814716
Spectrum version is a lot smoother there.

>>3814716
prefer the speccy version. Better gameplay.
tho c64 versions often looked nicer

>>3808594
Nothing to do with the topic at hand, but in terms of mid-to-late '80s console wars it was significantly cheaper than the NES while having roughly comparable hardware (sound notwithstanding,) games especially were a helluva lot cheaper if you could find them.

>>3814716
too bad the C64 port was rushed

it looks and sounds nice, but it plays nothing like r-type