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Face Off: ZX Spectrum vs. Commodore 64 - Digital Foundry

Commodore 64 was my first games machine, I used to love marble madness even though i was shit at it and i had Terminator that came on a cartridge that plugged directly into the commodore rather than a tape for the tape deck, i was amazed by this.
 
Good article. Agree with the conclusion that while C64 might have used what on paper is better hardware for arcade games in reality the pixels never looked right compared to the glorious zx spectrum. If you wanted to see great imaginative games from people exploring the limits of what is possible then speccy was great but if all you wanted was a game about a poop or piss coloured sprite moving smoothly across the screen then the C64 is the only logical choice.
 
Hell yeah, C64 that's where my game programming career started. I still know the VIC and memory-tables by heart, as if I worked on C64 games just yesterday. It's too bad that so few C64 games ever got released on the virtual console, but at least we got IK+.
 
C64 wins. No contest. Not saying the Speccy was bad, but it was nowhere near as influential as Commodore's machine.

C64 was the birthplace of the scene, and without that European software development would not be the same. Most importantly it led to the dominance of the Amiga era (with the Atari ST taking the runner up role again due to its focus on raw CPU grunt over custom hardware), which provided a bridge for many small teams into SNES/Megadrive(Genesis) development and in time PSX.

Not a bad article, but its missing a lot of detail and nuance. Failing to mention the Atari 400/800 line which predated both C64 and Speccy (well, ok he mentions "more powerful hardware" in relation to the Lucasfilm games) is a bit poor, because ultimate its prohibitive expense was ultimately what allowed Commodore to succeed.

RIP Joffa. Still can't believe he's gone.
 
C64 was my first games machine and obviously my first computer.

Loved that machine, one of my best christmas memories waking up aged 8 and getting my hands on it.

Uridium was the bomb by the way, the Last Ninja series and IK+.
 
mocoworm said:
It's really good. Everyone should read this :)
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Yeah it was pretty interesting, Leadbetter even did some audio comparisons, he doesn't even do that with current games. :P It's also funny how he can't be objective even in a retro piece. :lol It's aight though, it's an article mostly about the Spectrum.

I'm a C64 kid and to me there's just no comparison. Reading that article made a lot of memories flush back in...like how most games were completely undecipherable and impossible to finish. Only today thanks to longplay videos I'm finding out what exactly I was supposed to do in many of the games I used to own. Truly uncharted territory for gaming, back then. :P

I think my most favorite games back then were Karateka and Bruce Lee. I also had a soft spot for Antiriad because of how cool the graphics were for its time, although it was one of those games where I had no fucking idea where to go or what to do. I just liked to switch into the armor and see the sprites become magically more colorful, hah.
 
Antiriad is one of minority of games from that era that I actually finished.

But the number of times I tried Airwolf for the spectrum or Manic Miner only to get stuck on the same screens again and again is pretty silly. I used to watch Airwolf every Saturday lunchtime with a cheeseburger then get out the spectrum thinking that this time it was going to be different.
 
They are both as important as each other, the birth of an industry effectively for the UK. Although for me personally the lure of the C64's hardware scrolling, sprites and above all the SID chip made me jump ship. I loved the tricks that could be done with the C64, and things like Uridium and Paradroid were games born from that hardware. Plus you had Jeff Minter doing his thing with it, and I loved the gameplay concepts he came up with.

Very good article though, especially how it highlighted the lack of things like that with the Spectrum led to games like Knight Lord which was jaw-dropping at the time. Ultimate really shone on the Spectrum.

Great times, when creativity was king and this carried over to the Amiga which was the Golden Age for me.
 
Dont think I will ever have the sheer joy for gaming that I did when I had the C64.

But mostly that was because I was so happy when my cassette deck managed to load a game from tape.
 
The fanboy wars was insane.

Anyway, it was the good ol Speccy for me. I tried to get into B.A.S.I.C. but it just seemed like too much effort for not enough immediate results. Hey, I was a kid. I wanted a C64 but it was more expensive iirc.

Wasn't it the Speccy's 30th birthday last week? How time flies eh.
 
Great article. It's always nice to go back and read about the history of these machines and the games involved, especially if you grew up playing them as a kid.
 
TTP said:
Never understood the success of the Spectrum myself. I assume it has to do with it being made in UK (and UK being the biggest VG market in EU).
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It was very low-cost compared to everything else, many people's first home computer.

Mine included :)
 
Now that's a good piece of gaming journalism.
 
I never got exposed to the Spectrum growing up, and I still don't know too much about it, so C64 is obviously the better machine with the better library.
 
More Fun To Compute said:
Antiriad is one of minority of games from that era that I actually finished.

But the number of times I tried Airwolf for the spectrum or Manic Miner only to get stuck on the same screens again and again is pretty silly. I used to watch Airwolf every Saturday lunchtime with a cheeseburger then get out the spectrum thinking that this time it was going to be different.
Click to expand...


Antiriad!

The first game I put on the morning I got it ....... just searched on youtube, played a video and recognised the sound effects straight away!

24 years later!

nostalgia.
 
TTP said:
Never understood the success of the Spectrum myself. I assume it has to do with it being made in UK (and UK being the biggest VG market in EU).
Click to expand...

The Spectrum took the European market I think due to launch timing and price. The C64 - at least in my memory - never quite caught up due to price and always trailing with install base (although globally and in US in particular I believe it sold a lot more).

Again just memory but the Spectrum in Europe seemed to have a much larger and more interesting library of games, and in particular the Ultimate games and how much they pushed the envelope with their 3D (sorta) titles really stood out.
 
I always though the Spectrums graphics looked cleaner than the Commodores. Color clash was a huge problem on the Spectrum, but the later games introduced color while avoiding that problem. Some of the arcade ports towards the end of its life were particularly impressive.
 
EmCeeGramr said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2FpgEZI96E
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Fine choice sir. Jonathon Dunn's theme is without doubt one of the finest and most memorable tunes of the C64 era.

It made its way (in a slightly altered form -maybe Gameboy version?) onto TV in an Ariston ad campaign later in the decade and has been remade/remixed/rearranged several times since.

Most magnificently by Andy Gilmour and Lman here although I remain very fond of Jogeir's Amiga mod version which somewhat confusingly is name "Just Married!" (couldn't find it on Youtube sadly).

You can get the Robocop remix (AND YOU SHOULD!) from remix.kwed.org.

Worth a visit purely for a sense of the extraordinary musical legacy of the C64.
 
Not to turn this into an iOS thread, but there is a fantastic app called Sid player on the iPhone. It has pretty much the entire C64 music library from what I can see, including remixes etc.
 
Back in the day I had a C64 and my mate had a Speccy. Both great machines but I still much preferred the C64.

Uridium and Guardian (a cracking Defender clone) was a godly experience. Some games took over 20 mins to load though.
 
alexandros said:
I find the lack of Amstrad in the article disturbing.
Click to expand...

It's actually mentioned by one of the developers being interviewed:

"We did meet the designers of the Amstrad CPC464, they walked up to our stand at one of the first exhibitions and accused us of modifying the hardware of the Amstrad on our stand because it was doing something they regarded as completely impossible," he says.

"What I was doing was changing the video mode several times during the active video period so that I could mix the different resolutions and have more than four colours, but still use the high resolution mode - that was in Tank Busters... They were quite aggressive about it. I remember being fairly rude about a number of mistakes they'd made in the design. It could have been so much better with a couple of tiny changes that wouldn't have cost anything at all. Gah..."
Click to expand...
 
EGM1966 said:
The Spectrum took the European market I think due to launch timing and price. The C64 - at least in my memory - never quite caught up due to price and always trailing with install base (although globally and in US in particular I believe it sold a lot more).

Again just memory but the Spectrum in Europe seemed to have a much larger and more interesting library of games, and in particular the Ultimate games and how much they pushed the envelope with their 3D (sorta) titles really stood out.
Click to expand...

I believe the Spectrum was mostly popular in the UK and Spain. France was quite fond of Amstrad machines. The rest of Europe was C64 country.

I was a C64 owner BTW My favorite program was Chris Hullsbeck "sountracker". So many hours spent making chiptunes...
 
C=64, SID Chip and Rob Hubbard. What a combo!!!

Rob Hubbard - Commando [C64]

images
 
Excellent article down memory lane. Germany was of course C64 country and it was the first computer I owned (50%, the other 50% belonged to my brother).
 
Glad someone mentioned the almighty SID Chip.

It was really weird for me as i went Spectrum -> C64 -> Atari ST -> Amiga

Early ST games sounded worse than C64 games a lot of the time :( - but hey #datmidi
 
jett said:
I'm a C64 kid and to me there's just no comparison. Reading that article made a lot of memories flush back in...like how most games were completely undecipherable and impossible to finish. Only today thanks to longplay videos I'm finding out what exactly I was supposed to do in many of the games I used to own.
Click to expand...

Yeah, for me it's so fascinating going through longplay videos of C64 games after all these years... games I played countless times as I child but never got close to finish, either because they were way too hard or that I just had no idea what to do.
My only problem is trying to remember the titles of all the games I actually played back then. :P
 
How timely considering the R2 update just landed for the 2012 Edition of the C64 Forever project.

http://www.c64forever.com/

Essentially the king of the shadows when it comes to a C64 environ preservation and enhancement, among other things the update added this bit of crazy:

C64-specific improvements include better keyboard translation, mouse support and the addition of GEOS, the amazing graphical 8-bit desktop suite, to the list of preconfigured systems. Special thanks to Brian Dougherty and his team for this contribution.
Click to expand...

C64 was definitely a history-making platform right up there with the Amiga.

Besides, it still has one of the most insane RPG undertakings ever....if not THE most insane, probably due to finally come out this year in the form of Ultimate Newcomer.

http://www.protovision-online.com/games/newcomer.htm
 
It's funny, I jumped to PC really early from the C-64 (I guess in '87 or so?) and it was such a shock going from C64 graphics and sound to the 4 color CGA (I had an amber monitor, too) and the onboard speaker
 
Rob Hubbard's great but personally I've always been more of a Chris Hülsbeck fan, or back when programmed the C64 Jeroen Tel (also known as Wave from the Maniacs of Noise) made a lot of SID music.
 
Apenheul said:
Rob Hubbard's great but personally I've always been more of a Chris Hülsbeck fan, or back when programmed the C64 Jeroen Tel (also known as Wave from the Maniacs of Noise) made a lot of SID music.
Click to expand...

Hülsbeck, Hubbard and Galway are the holy SID trinity for me.
 
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