retro gaming

[Richmond Clements]

We should start a support group!

We could call it "Bitter people whose parents wanted their kids to have a 'proper' educational computer but couldn't afford a BBC Micro".

Amen!

But, as you say, it boggles me to think of the effort they went to to get the thing for me.
I remember them calling round computer shops, then (as we didn't have a car) getting someone to drive us to Belfast on a rainy night to pick one up...

[I, Cosh]

We should start a support group!

We could call it "Bitter people whose parents wanted their kids to have a 'proper' educational computer but couldn't afford a BBC Micro".

Amen!

HA! Absolutely true.

[IndigoPrime]

C64 was better than the Spectrum, but was only owned by spods or insufferable poshos. I had an Acorn Electron.

That's a bit like saying "Leather jackets were only ever owned by spods or insufferable poshos in the 1980s. I had a (cheap) blazer!"

Speccy: Brit design, cheap, great for vectors and forcing programmers to be extremely clever. Shit audio.
C64: BIG and BRASH and AMERICAN. Great for arcade games and sound. Chunk-o-vision graphics.
Amstrad CPC: Alan Sugar making a computer, despite not understanding the Spectrum and the C64.
BBC Micro: What parents bought their kids when told by a Dixons staff-member that the machine was "educational". Rubbish for games.
C16: What parents bought their kids when they wanted to save money and were told by the lying git at Dixons that "the C16's pretty much the same as the C64".
Acorn Electron: Like the C16, but with the BBC Micro.

[Spaceghost]

C64 was better than the Spectrum, but was only owned by spods or insufferable poshos. I had an Acorn Electron.

That's a bit like saying "Leather jackets were only ever owned by spods or insufferable poshos in the 1980s. I had a (cheap) blazer!"

Speccy: Brit design, cheap, great for vectors and forcing programmers to be extremely clever. Shit audio.
C64: BIG and BRASH and AMERICAN. Great for arcade games and sound. Chunk-o-vision graphics.
Amstrad CPC: Alan Sugar making a computer, despite not understanding the Spectrum and the C64.
BBC Micro: What parents bought their kids when told by a Dixons staff-member that the machine was "educational". Rubbish for games.
C16: What parents bought their kids when they wanted to save money and were told by the lying git at Dixons that "the C16's pretty much the same as the C64".
Acorn Electron: Like the C16, but with the BBC Micro.

In conclusion: Commodore 64 roolz!

As I said.

[Pyroxian]

Speccy: Brit design, cheap, great for vectors and forcing programmers to be extremely clever. Shit audio.

Until the 128k model came along, which had the same sound-chip as the Atari-ST

The c64 was nice, but did have a slow, cheapo processor (compared to the z80 anyways). Plus if you wanted decent colour out of it, you had to put up with pixels as big as your head. Its sound chip was awesome though.

The BBC had the more expensive version of the C64 processor, running at twice the speed, which made it great for vector graphics. It had some top games on it too, with the added bonus that you could play them at school in the computer lab .

The Amstrad wasn't actually a bad little machine, and had some nice games for it.

Of course the real war is Amiga vs. Atari ST vs. Archimedes

[M.I.K.]

Audio on 128k Spectrums was far better than on the 48k. Some of the music sounded better to me on that than on the C64 versions of the same games, although, most of the time the C64 definitely had the edge.

Preferred the Spectrum, though. Just seemed to have more character and feel less poncy than the C64. Also tended to prefer versions of games on the Spectrum, though I did prefer some of the C64 ones too. Buggy Boy was far better on the C64, for example.

Amstrad CPC seems to have been a wasted opportunity, played a couple of games via an emulator that would suggest that the computer had a lot of potential, but most of the stuff available for it appears to have been lazy ports from the Spectrum, made to look worse.

[IndigoPrime]

Until the 128k model came along, which had the same sound-chip as the Atari-ST

You mean the awful sound chip that saddled the ST and made its audio a running joke for the entire life of 16-bit platforms? Yeah, great.

The c64 was nice, but did have a slow, cheapo processor (compared to the z80 anyways).

About 80% of the speed, wasn't it? And it could shift some grunt work on to other chips/processes. This is why arcade games worked really well on the C64, with sprites, but why it sucked for vectors.

The BBC [...] had some top games on it too, with the added bonus that you could play them at school in the computer lab .

I can't recall that many 'top' BBC games, frankly.

Of course the real war is Amiga vs. Atari ST vs. Archimedes

Which is a bit like Manchester United versus Sheffield Wednesday versus the footie team from the local posh boys' school.

[Pyroxian]

Until the 128k model came along, which had the same sound-chip as the Atari-ST

You mean the awful sound chip that saddled the ST and made its audio a running joke for the entire life of 16-bit platforms? Yeah, great.

Hence the smiley - but it was still quite a nice sound chip, but admittedly not for a 16-bit machine.

The c64 was nice, but did have a slow, cheapo processor (compared to the z80 anyways).

About 80% of the speed, wasn't it? And it could shift some grunt work on to other chips/processes. This is why arcade games worked really well on the C64, with sprites, but why it sucked for vectors.

The C64 chip ran at 1mhz, whereas the spectrum ran at 3.5 mhz. The z80 also had more registers too, which helped The BBC had a 2mhz, better version of the C64 chip, which was blisteringly fast though

The BBC [...] had some top games on it too, with the added bonus that you could play them at school in the computer lab .

I can't recall that many 'top' BBC games, frankly.

Elite, Revs, Zalaga, Citadel, Frak!, Repton (and sequels), Thrust, Sentinel, Twin Kingdom Valley, Exile stand out in my mind. Plus it had good ports of most Ultimate games and a lot of unofficial ports of arcade games. Admittedly it didn't have the range of games that the C64/Speccy had, but it had a much better wheat-to-chaff ratio.

[I, Cosh]

C64 was better than the Spectrum, but was only owned by spods or insufferable poshos. I had an Acorn Electron.

That's a bit like saying "Leather jackets were only ever owned by spods or insufferable poshos in the 1980s. I had a (cheap) blazer!"

It's almost as if that was the joke in the first place.

[radiator]

8/16-bit was more my generation. At the risk of coming across a bit 'fanboy' - though I cringe to use such a term - I've always thought Sega (both consoles and games) is/was a tad overrated.

I've been a big gamer for many years, but have never really loved a Sega title or console (with the possible exceptions of Jet Set Radio and Rez), and comparing their software output to that of Nintendo - for me there's simply no contest. Mega Drive games like Golden Axe, Shinobi, Streets of Rage etc seemed a bit edgier and a bit faster than that of the Snes, but always seemed very 'arcadey' and a little shallow to me, whereas Nintendo titles always seemed to be a lot more innovative and have a lot more longevity to them.

And later on, I struggle to see why the Saturn and the Dreamcast are so highly regarded by a lot of gamers - undoubtedly each have a handful of great titles, but so do pretty much all of the other systems. Perhaps folk just like backing the underdog or maybe there's a unique appeal to Sega's games that I just don't get?

[Radbacker]

oi Radiator in the yard wont have anyone rubbishing my beloved Sega.
I'm an old school fan boy through and through, Sega rocked and it was my machine of choice at the time, i did also get a SNEs as there was no way i was going to miss out on the Ninty exclusives like Zelda, Mario, Castlvania and Metroid (quite possible the best 2D game ever).

I think its perception of who the 16bit machines were for that helped Sega, being first and undoutably pushing the Megadrive as a COOL machine helped with its popularity where as NIntendo were seen at the time (and still) as the more Kiddy option (in other words Nintendo was what your parents brought you to be safe but the Megadrive was what all the cool teens had, at least that was the perception i had).  Mega Drive had the blood and more adult like hardcore action type games (Desert Strike, Mortal Combat with blood code) and sports title where as the big Nintendo games were cutsy type Platformers and family friendly games.  Of course sega then destroyed all confidence in them releasing a bunch of shitty hardware upgrades (who honestly thought the 32X was a good idea?). 
The DReamcast rocked simply because it was a nice powerful machine, games looked better than the first gen of PS2 software and had some phenomenal games released Soul Calibur 2, Jet Set Radio, Project Gotham Racing, Shenmue (though it could be argued if this game was any good it was certainly ground breaking and unfortunatly company breaking too, cost so much money to make that even if every Dreamcast owner purchased a copy it wouldn't have turned a profit Sega never recovered.)

CU Radabcker

[Keef Monkey]

I was never allowed a games console as a kid (eventually got my folks to buckle and get me a SNES pretty late on though), but they did get me an Amiga 500 for xmas because they figured it would be more educational. I loved that Amiga, fantastic system so it was. And Zipsticks!

Cannon Fodder, Speedball 2, Chaos Engine, Alien Breed, Monkey Island, Indy&The Fate of Atlantis (on TWELVE DISCS NEEDING CONSTANTLY SWAPPED), SWIV, Robocop (the first game I ever got to the end of), Batman...I could go on forever. The Amiga was king. Feeling all nostalgic now.

[radiator]

The DReamcast rocked simply because it was a nice powerful machine, games looked better than the first gen of PS2 software and had some phenomenal games released Soul Calibur 2, Jet Set Radio, Project Gotham Racing, Shenmue

Meh - all pretty good games at the time (aside from Shenmue which is a load of turgid, pretentious cack), but they were all bettered by titles on other systems like the PS2 and Xbox within a year or two (Jet Set Radio Future>Jet Set Radio, Project Gotham Racing>Metropolis Street Racer etc). Even Rez, one of the better DC games, was soon ported to PS2.

Just fail to see what was so special about the system and why it is so romanticised by many gamers. I think the quality of it's game library is hugely exaggerated by people wearing rose-tinted spectacles or as I said, by those who like to champion the underdog.

[Pyroxian]

Meh - all pretty good games at the time (aside from Shenmue which is a load of turgid, pretentious cack), but they were all bettered by titles on other systems like the PS2 and Xbox within a year or two (Jet Set Radio Future>Jet Set Radio, Project Gotham Racing>Metropolis Street Racer etc). Even Rez, one of the better DC games, was soon ported to PS2.

That's the point - They originally came out on the DC and you had to wait a few years for them to come out on other platforms, which they may not have done if they hadn't have been successful on the DC originally. Your argument's like saying that arcade machines were rubbish as they were all ported to home computers.

[IndigoPrime]

The C64 chip ran at 1mhz, whereas the spectrum ran at 3.5 mhz.

Erk—forget the Speccy chip was so fast (for the time). Still, sprites and SID offloaded a lot of grunt work on the C64, and in the same way the Speccy could get decent colour/arcade games when programmers were really ace, the same's true on the C64 for 3D/vectors (Mercenary and Space Rogue, for example); kind of rare though.

Elite, Revs, Zalaga, Citadel, Frak!, Repton (and sequels), Thrust, Sentinel, Twin Kingdom Valley, Exile stand out in my mind. Plus it had good ports of most Ultimate games and a lot of unofficial ports of arcade games. Admittedly it didn't have the range of games that the C64/Speccy had, but it had a much better wheat-to-chaff ratio.

I think it just had fewer games. There was plenty of crap on the BBC, and the odd gem, same as any other platform. Thrust is one of the ones that will sadly probably never get properly covered in Retro Gamer, since the creator passed away years ago. Top game though.