All-time Favorite Sega system?

[Zoltor]

I kind of expected the Genesis to win, obviously. But 9 for the Dreamcast? How is the Saturn beating the Dreamcast!? Nobody cared about the Saturn until well after it was written into the history of obscure commercial failures. At least I remember there being hype for the Dreamcast, and people actually owning one.

Yea people actually owned a DC when it was in print( a lot of people), I didn't know a single person who owned a Saturn, and I seriously doubt many people even today has played a SAT, where most people probally played a DC(especially those on a Sega forum).

[kool kitty89]

The Spectrum was designed to be built as bare bones and cheap as absolutely possible, you can't really undercut that.

Well the C64 ended up in a price war so dramatic in the US that CBM was selling it at a loss at one point (and remember they had the advantage of vertical integrated and rather cheaply construction to boot -to the extent of reliability problems early on), so extreme that it killed a lot of competing companies or forced them to leave the market. (it wasn't particularly healthy for Commodore in the long run either, but that may have been tied to subsequent management too -it did keep the Japanese out which was one of Tramiel's fears)
I don't think that was quite the case in Europe though, that and electronics were generally more expensive, at least for imports. (lacking domestic manufacturing/distribution in Europe -that could have been a major factor too, investing in European manufacturing facilities or a partner/licencee for the region)

Well cheap and still minimally capable, in that case having fairly high resolution graphics, but limited color, and a lot of RAM from the start.
The ZX81 was even cheaper, but far less useful... VIC-20 was super cheap too, but more in line with the speccy if anything, though with limited RAM stock. (and only 1 joyport)
The BBC Micro seems similarly cheap too (at least in design), and if not initially in price, perhaps by the time the Speccy came out. (and of course the cost reduced Electron)

The Atari 400 might even have been competitive (again limited RAM) price wise... had it gotten an earlier redesign than the 1983 600XL, that probably would have helped a fair bit. (large circuit boards, sockets, big case and aluminum casting, etc)

The CoCo might have been the most comparable machine in the US in terms of design concept, a rather different machine though, but similarly limited and fairly game oriented, it started off as a slighly higher-end machine than the Speccy in 1980, but by '82/83 it was probably closer to Spectrum range. (it did have a DAC rather than the speccy's initial beeper, but the spectrum later got a proper sound chip, the CoCo sticking with the 6-bit DAC, all software rendered too)
Europe got that as the Dragon 32/64, but those actually had more features, though I don't think they were very popular.
The C64 was the most popular for home computers though.

It didn't help that most early C64 games looked like arse anyway, really blocky like Atari games.

Hmm, really, blocky how? I know VIC-20 games tended to be really low-res, but I've not seen many C64 games like that. Hell, even Atari 2600 games weren't limited to blockiness, just the early ones with small ROM sizes, later games actually show the full 160x192 screen and use a lot more color, mainly with palette swapping (allowing multicolor sprites too, albeit only 1 per line). That also tended to apply to early A8-bit games, but as game sizes increased, the limit showed less and less, perhaps it was some simple ports of contemporary A8 games or such.
By '82 most games were at very least looking competitive with speccy stuff on the A8 and C64. Both had lower resolution in multicolor mode (160 wide), but a lot more flexibility with color, plus there was 320 wide mode with 8x8 2-color characters, so better than the speccy in general there. (not just black+color but 2 colors per character and higher resolution) Edit, I got mixed up there... Spectrum attributed work with 2 selected colors. (a lot of games just tend to use black as the common color; plus there's the "highcolor" 8x1 attribute mode somewhat like the MSX's TMS9918's mode 2, except no sprites and a weaker palette)

However, the 320 wide mode on c64 and especially A8 was rather worthless on TVs and composite monitors as the blur would make it more like 160 wide and at least for the A8-bit resulted in artifacts (exploited as artifact colors in a couple games). On Y/C monitors as standard for the C64, that wasn't a problem. (and there are qute a few high-res games, though the vast majority use multicolor)
Then there's a few bad games which look like monochrome or semi-monochome Spectrum games. (not even always ports either)

The Spectrum's colour clash problems only started to become a major issue when games started to have background graphics in them (as opposed to the mono black you'd get with early 80s games) so a lot of those early games looked comparable on the two systems anyway, making the C64 look frivolous with its higher cost, when the scrolling arcade style games started to appear in the mid 80s, thats when the graphical difference became hugely notable. Apart from that the Spectrum had the two killer aps in 1983 anyway Rareware's Jetpac (at this stage Rare were known as Ultimate play the game), and Manic Miner, take a look at CVG's multiformat awards for 1983 -

Well that really depends, I know there were a lot of early 80s games with colorful backgrounds and overlaid sprites, even without scrolling. Pitfall in particular comes to mind, and more particularly pitfall II (neither scroll horizontally but could have, of course, like A boy and his blob and treasure island dizzy), but that's from the top of my head, I know there are a lot of others, particularly activision titles come to mind. There's a lot where the black+color graphics of the Speccy and limited RGB-I palette (even worse than CGA) generally made games a bit ugly, though by contrast the C64 tended to look a bit desaturated (but facilitated good shading and good color for most games, definitely better color in general than RGB, though the A8 showed its much broader 128 color palette too, there were limits to that -2600 has the same plaette, hence the level of shading effects seen in some games).
I suppose it's a matter of taste, but I don't really care for the speccy's color in general, in fact I think I often prefer cases where monochome was opted for instead, avoiding any clash, but I suppose that's personal taste. (in some cases I'd think I'd even prefer the look of CGA games as limited as their palette configurations were -not counting composite artifact colors or PCjr/TGA modes -with artifacting, 160x200x16 colors could be approximated as in King's Quest) That and a few of the better late 2600 games in some respects too, namely color/art design. (especially examples like from Activision) But that's only in some respects, of course, and there's obvious trade-offs -and personal prefrence. (that and the 2600 is exceptionally limited due to miniscule RAM and CPU resource dedicated to driving the display, but I'm digressing now)

Every single game here is a Spectrum original or exclusive, the only look in the C64 gets is Llamasoft getting 4th for software developer of the year (obviously for Attack of the Mutant Camels) from this year onwards Rareware became the game developer in the UK, achieving almost a Nintendo like mythic status here, they ruled the early-mid 80s, with each release hyped up more than the last, and they never really bothered with the C64, moving from Spectrum to NES when they released Wizards and Warriors.

OK, the Speccy had the market for sure, especially early on, that makes sense: it had the price, it had the advantage of being a domestic product, it appears to have had the marketing applied that others lacked: Atari was there early but apparently never pushed into the market well (even though the prices seem rather competitive). The BBC Micro was there earlier too, but not as cheap either...
The CPU probably didn't contributed though as the other early 80s competition was all 6502 based other than the ZX81 up until the CPC and MSX arrived... (Atari, BBC Micro, VIC-20, C64)

I think it really was tooled for that market too, I don't think such a machine would have gone anywhere on the North American or Japanese markets: preexisting competition established, cheaper costs in general for such competition (so such extreme cost cutting was less necessary), maybe the large amount of RAM, high resolution modes, and potential for CP/M could have been attractive. (definitely needed a disk drive) The chicklet keyboard would have been a big turn-off though, the US market seemed particularly sensitive about cheap keyboards and even wowed by high-end ones. (It's bee noted that the quality IBM keyboard being part of the marketing success of the PC as a business machine) That was part of the problem with the Atari 400. (not so much an issue for primarily a game machine though)

It almost certainly would have done better than the Timex T-1000 (ZX81) though...

No, this mode was rarely used for Amstrad games, the commonly used mode was the 320X200 4 colour mode.

Really, the most I've seen online seems to be the blockier looking higher-color 160x200 mode... But perhaps I'm only looking at later games. (Storm Lord, Human Killing Machine, Renegade 3 come to mind -the latter due to Ashen's reviews)
I should look around some more.

I know I was wrong about the Spectrum resolution, it's usually 256x192 with 32x24 attributes on the speccy. (lots of different modes, but that's the standard one)

The MSX did get some Spectrum ports, but I think it just seemed like a very Spectrum-like machine, arriving later and with far less software, it didn't really offer very much that the Spectrum and C64 weren't already offering, the Amstrad had a few of its own features, as well as being sold as an all in one system, and marketed as a more professional system.

I guess there wasn't a big market for translating Japanese games then. (that would have been a massive source of potential games -even if you sorted out the "too Japanese" ones or modified them to be more suitable)
That and there was the MSX2 coming in '86 that was more in line with the 16-bit computers in some respects. (a lot of MSX2 games look more like ST or SMS games, then the sound upgrade too -YM2413 cheapest and most common) Then the 2+, but that was even later. If they didn't have a strong translation market, that would largely negate any possible advantage for the MSX.

The advert actually has July 1983 written in the title, which makes sense tbh as I've seen a price of £300 for the 800 for 1983 on old-computers.com, and I would imagine that the price cuts the advert talks about may well be due to the UK release of the C64.

Ah, in the URL, good catch.
Yes,and again the 400 should have been a good bit cheaper, note the ad mentions the recent drop from £199.99 for the 400, so that would have been the price a good bit prior to that. (and the 16 kB 400 was fine for something like 95% of cart games and a fair number of disk/tape software) The lower cost XL series should have been moving in some time following that too, unless that was particularly late to Europe. And again, it seems like the main issue would have been marketing... that and Atari had some serious problems in 1983 to 1984 which likely tie in as well. (given how critical that time was it seems to have lost them both Europe and US for a potential long market, the management issues, '83 crash, unfortunate halt on products in fall of '83, sale of the consumer division to TTL in mid '84 becoming Atari Corp, etc -unless they still had a chance in '84 and Tramiel had pushed for such -I think he pushed for the C64 in Europe too)
If they hadn't gotten on the ball with tapes by that point, that would certainly factor in as well.

Dunno dude, most people i've spoken to seemed to just use them to play Spectrum ports, and every game I've played thats been recommended to me in Atari Vs C64 threads has been pretty laughable tbh. I guess some of the games would've been pretty competitive pre-1983 in comparison to 2600 games, but 1983 and later were probably the years the home micros took off around here.

Hmm, I think that's a matter of perspective as well, as I said a lot of the later speccy stuff looks less appealing than earlier C64 or A8 stuff by comparison. There was a ton of late C64 stuff too, but less so for the A8 as it had declined, there's a few, but the most impressive is homebrew stuff (Like Bomb Jack) with the sort of dedication a lot of the best late commercial efforts had. (it certainly seems to have had weak support by EU developers)

What I meant was that for the early 80s (80-84) when it was actually popular and competitive in general, it would have had an advantage in terms of library to carry over, especially up to '83 before the C64 really pulled ahead in the US. (it already had the market shar but it had to play catch-up in terms of software)

Hell, even some early 16-bit games like the 1984 King's Quest look rather primitive in some respects. (the original PCJr/Tandy 1000/CGA version, not the EGA remake -the PCJr/Tandy graphics, but using mostly the 160 wide mode onscreen -apparently switching for text- that also ended up catering very well to artifact colors for CGA pseudo 160x200x16 color mode)

Mobygames has it down as a US release for 1987 but it could be inaccurate I guess, the Hardcoregaming101 site has a section on it which says it was "probably the first JRPG released in the US" and Phantasy Star is down as a 1988 US release, but the Sam Pettus article says that Phantasy Star was the first console RPG released in the west,

Petus's source might not have been accurate and it could have been an oversight. (plus I think one of the Ultima games may have been on a console first, but for a JRPG MW might be the first in the US...)

either way Miracle Warriors would've been very late 1987 at earliest, so maybe they changed the box art right at the end of 1987.

It seems liek the marketing shift took place before for TV ads in late 1987 too, but for the solid first year after launch it was pretty much continually mediocre.

The Sam Pettus article states Tonka taking over 1988, but this says 1987 http://classicgaming.gamespy.com/Vie...&id=29&game=10 so I guess there's a possibility Tonka took over around the end of 1987 sometime.

Hmm, that would make some sense of the dramatic shift, if it's true, it's a bit of a shame they didn't go with Tonka for marketing in '86. (short of someone actually capable at SoA handling marketing -Katz and Kalinske both certianly were, both with significant past with toy companies as well -but a good bit of electronic/games too, especially for Katz; Katz was at Atari Corp though that period though)

EDIT: I just had a look at a screen shot of the back cover or Miracle Warriors and it says "1988 Tonka" so I guess Mobygames is wrong on that one coming out in 87' in the US, I find it pretty cool that the quality of the cover is an indication of year though, I never knew that. So I guess the bad Master System packaging was around in the US for about 1.5 years.

Hmm, OK then... I wonder if the 1987 dates on some of the ads I was looking at are right as some seem to carry over very well to the 1988 ones.
But the boxes certainly seem to have shifted in '88.
That would have meant they finally got a shift to some better marketing by the time Nintnedo already had a massive lead and even Atari had a signifcantly better market share (at least in composite with 7800+2600 sales -and the small amount of XEGS sales).
The figures here from 1988 seem particularly poor:
http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic...0#entry1878590

That says something about Atari's marketing though, or rather Katz with the limited funds they had and particularly limits of new software trickling out they managed a pretty decent hold on the market againts Nintendo's onslaught. (granted they pretty much had the budget end of the market, that and a few old-time Atari fans -and there were indeed some good early 80s arcade ports if you were really into that -the best home versions of Robotron and Joust prior to the greatest hits collections a decade later, not really competitive with what Nintendo had overall, but probably enough to get your money's worth, at least if you had a fair interest in the primary genres on the system -it had a killer version of Xevious too)

Also if you think the US cover of Miracle Warriors is cool, look at the Japanese one

That's a bit to risque for the US market though... at very least for consoles. (Stormlord comes to mind though)
The western art seem to have taken a surprisingly good interpretation of the Japanese are too, definitely not one for the "f*cked up American box art thread" .
The absolute simplest modification would have been a bit of modest censorship of the JP cover which probably would have worked fine too, but what they ended up with has got to be among the top game box art on the western SMS, especially so soon after the crappy cover art.

[N.Saibot]

Yea people actually owned a DC when it was in print( a lot of people), I didn't know a single person who owned a Saturn, and I seriously doubt many people even today has played a SAT, where most people probally played a DC(especially those on a Sega forum).

This is a strange situation in fact. I once played a Dreamcast in an advertising kiosk type
of setup (it ran a copy of Virtua Tennis, that look PHOTOREALISTIC back then). I never
played or even touched a Saturn, but after watching videos on youtube, the Saturn is
the one I would like to own the most. Somehow the DC does not feel like a real Sega
console to me anymore.

Sonic started his decline with the DC, the gamepad looks like some other company made
it (it may be convenient and all, but that's not a pad for a sega-system) and I've seen a
ton of extremely interesting games for the Saturn, however only veeery few titles for the
DC that I wanted to play badly.

[Thenewguy]

Well the C64 ended up in a price war so dramatic in the US that CBM was selling it at a loss at one point (and remember they had the advantage of vertical integrated and rather cheaply construction to boot -to the extent of reliability problems early on), so extreme that it killed a lot of competing companies or forced them to leave the market.

Dude, there's no way the C64 could compete with the Spectrum in price, there'd have to be selling at a huge loss just to equalise it, have you seen a Spectrum before? they're tiny (like 1/3rd the size of the C64 and half as deep), they only have RF out (no monitor out) they don't have joystick ports, they have a rubber keyboard, everything in them is pretty much off the shelf parts, there's no LED, there's no on switch (you just plug it in to turn it on and pull the lead out to turn it off) the material used to make it feels cheaper too.

By '82 most games were at very least looking competitive with speccy stuff on the A8 and C64.

I more meant they looked arse in comparison to what the system could achieve, they were still certainly competitive with the Spectrum, sometimes better (better colour, very low resolution though) but not notably better enough to warrant the higher price, not until later.

However, the 320 wide mode on c64 and especially A8 was rather worthless on TVs and composite monitors as the blur would make it more like 160 wide and at least for the A8-bit resulted in artifacts

All I can say to that is that US TV's and monitor's must've been very poor quality, the difference between 160 and 320 is clear as day even using RF on my TV.

Well that really depends, I know there were a lot of early 80s games with colorful backgrounds and overlaid sprites, even without scrolling.

I just checked through a huge selection of 1983 releases for C64 and roughly 80% of them had mono colour backgrounds (mainly black).

OK, the Speccy had the market for sure, especially early on, that makes sense: it had the price, it had the advantage of being a domestic product, it appears to have had the marketing applied that others lacked: Atari was there early but apparently never pushed into the market well (even though the prices seem rather competitive). The BBC Micro was there earlier too, but not as cheap either...

You're looking at it too much as an American, you need to look at it as a British person

You can go on about marketing and product features all you like, at the end of the day people over here, and in Spain simply loved the Speccy, they loved everything about it, the design, the size, the stupid colour clashing graphics, people loved the idea of it. You talk about marketing, Clive Sinclair didn't market the machine to kids/teenagers at all, he hated the fact that his machine was being used to play video games, the adverts for the ZX Spectrum were just black and white pages with reams of writing, it wasn't until many years later when it was becoming apparent that a big British video game industry had pretty much been created by the machine that he became proud of the fact it had become gaming orientated, he built it because he wanted people, normal people in Britain to have access to an entry level computer to learn with and give them prospects for the future, you're thinking from the "American" Bill Gates screw-people-over-nerd side of the computer business, Clive Sinclair was more of a dopey entrepreneur.



Amongst other things we've already talked about, those machines you're bringing up like the Atari 400, are ugly, bloated, expensive, and generally uncool products, I know Americans liked those oversized boxy machines in the 80s but people over here didn't, at least the C64, whilst expensive had kind of a less angular design to it, to the stage where people could affectionately refer to it as "The breadbin" as time went on.

Really, the most I've seen online seems to be the blockier looking higher-color 160x200 mode... But perhaps I'm only looking at later games. (Storm Lord, Human Killing Machine, Renegade 3 come to mind -the latter due to Ashen's reviews)
I should look around some more.

People generally consider the 160X200 mode to be the true CPC graphics, however, to the annoyance of Amstrad owners most of the big companies didn't bother to use this mode, if you've mainly seen multi-colour mode games thats hardly surprising as most people gravitate towards those games because they look better.

I guess there wasn't a big market for translating Japanese games then. (that would have been a massive source of potential games -even if you sorted out the "too Japanese" ones or modified them to be more suitable)

You're overestimating the amount of support the Japanese gave the MSX, the MSX was released the same year as the Famicom, with only a few companies dedicating a lot of time to the machine, such as Konami, Hudsonsoft, Enix, Compile and Sega (with Sega quickly moving on to support their own machines).

Also, a lot of the good MSX software didn't even start coming out in Japan until 1984 (Athletic Land, Antarctic Adventure, Circus Charlie, Magical Tree)

Lastly, you need to take into account that the Spectrum started off a videogame revolution in Britain during 1983, everybody and their cousin started making videogames in their bedrooms, there was a huge fad around with kids reading up on programming and drawing on bits of graph paper saying that they were going to get rich making video games (and a good few of them did) companies like Mastertronic started printing big ads in magazines saying "send your games to our address, if we like what we see we'll publish the game, give you £2000 and 10p for every unit sold" The Spectrum was getting 30+ games released every month, all the more popular older arcade games such as Donkey Kong, Space Invaders, Galaxians, Asteroids, Pacman, and Frogger had multiple clones available (over five releases of each game) within the first year of the machine's lifespan. The system was just swamped with software extremely quickly, even if there had been tons of MSX software to bring out they wouldn't have been able to bring it over in anywhere near the numbers to keep up with the speed Spectrum game library was growing.

Yes,and again the 400 should have been a good bit cheaper, note the ad mentions the recent drop from £199.99 for the 400, so that would have been the price a good bit prior to that. (and the 16 kB 400 was fine for something like 95% of cart games and a fair number of disk/tape software) The lower cost XL series should have been moving in some time following that too, unless that was particularly late to Europe. And again, it seems like the main issue would have been marketing... that and Atari had some serious problems in 1983 to 1984 which likely tie in as well.

The earliest advert I've got is from the First issue of CVG from November 1981, the prices at that stage were according to the add

400 with 16K - £345
400 with 32k - £395
800 with 16k - £645

Tape Deck sold separately at £50
Disk Drive sold separately at £345

The ZX81 advert 2 pages later says

Kit - £49.95
Built - £69.95

Vic-20 advert says

System - £189.95
Cassete deck - £44.95

There's also a whole load of other computers being advertised, some of which I've never heard of (Atom, Dai, Video Genie, Sharp, PET)

Hmm, I think that's a matter of perspective as well, as I said a lot of the later speccy stuff looks less appealing than earlier C64 or A8 stuff by comparison.

Well, I just looked at a top 100 on some site called Atarimania and it was horrendous, mainly classic arcade games like Defender, Pacman, Berzerk, Mario Bros etc (ie games which were available on pretty much every micro on mass) and old multiformat C64 games, some of which are actually rated ~20% on the C64 Lemon site, there's even some buggered ports of Spectrum classics such as Starquake and late homebrew software there , everything looks blocky and many of the games look like crude single screen 2600 games without scrolling, they're more colourful than most Spectrum games though, I'll give them that.

[ApolloBoy]

Well, I just looked at a top 100 on some site called Atarimania and it was horrendous, mainly classic arcade games like Defender, Pacman, Berzerk, Mario Bros etc

And this is a bad thing how? I've got two A8s and it's one of my favorite classic computer platforms next to the C64 and VIC-20.

[kool kitty89]

EDIT: Moving OT discussion to a new thread: http://sega-16.com/forum/showthread....316#post277316

Dude, there's no way the C64 could compete with the Spectrum in price, there'd have to be selling at a huge loss just to equalise it, have you seen a Spectrum before? they're tiny (like 1/3rd the size of the C64 and half as deep), they only have RF out (no monitor out) they don't have joystick ports, they have a rubber keyboard, everything in them is pretty much off the shelf parts, there's no LED, there's no on switch (you just plug it in to turn it on and pull the lead out to turn it off) the material used to make it feels cheaper too.

OK, that's a pretty big difference though do note that "off the shelf" is not necessarily cheaper than custom parts, that's the key to vertical integration: in-house developed chips with full ownership of the IP and no licensing or overhead to deal with: on top of that CBM manufactured all their own chips (they owned MOS), so no overhead from a chip vendor either. (that's one thing atari didn't have)
Having RF only and sheer size of the system aren't automatic qualifiers either, with RF in particular it was often cost saving to have only a monitor A/V out and external RF if any as it skated FCC requirements tied to RF transmission. (something that considerably drove up cost and forced the overbuilt design of the original atari 8-bits) Hell, the VIC-20 doesn't even have metal shielding, but aluminized cardboard inside. (plus, for RGB based systems, you could go even less than that and drop composite video altogether with only RGB out, like the CPC, early Atari ST, and French Master System II -which they got away with due to SCART being standard) FCC regs changed in the early 80s facilitating less extreme shielding, hence such odd trade-offs disappearing with Atari's XL line, the C64, etc.

The extra 16 kB in the C64 could have been significant, and the keyboard too, and the larger PCB probably as well, and in that case there was actually onboard RF unlike the VIC 20.
http://zxspectrum48.i-demo.pl/hardpics.html
http://zxspectrum48.i-demo.pl/hardpi...otherboard.jpg
http://www.old-computers.com/museum/...inboard_s2.jpg

So the Speccy's PCB definitely looks a lot more cut-down... And wow, the Spectrum doesn't even have any Joystick ports? OK, that is cheaper than even the VIC 20 in some respects. (lack of sound chip too, but a lot more on board RAM facilitating graphics considerably, not to mention cassettes)

I more meant they looked arse in comparison to what the system could achieve, they were still certainly competitive with the Spectrum, sometimes better (better colour, very low resolution though) but not notably better enough to warrant the higher price, not until later.

http://img197.imageshack.us/i/loderunner.png http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/8441/loderunner.png

That's a really odd example there and a very odd way to go. For quick and dirty Speccy to C64 conversions the 320x200 mode should have been used (2 colors per 8x8 cell) and actually have higher resolution and hardware sprites. (albeit monochrome)

All I can say to that is that US TV's and monitor's must've been very poor quality, the difference between 160 and 320 is clear as day even using RF on my TV.

It depends the composite output, but specifically it's related to NTSC colorburst being only 3.58MHZ to PAL's 4.43 MHz, significantly lower color resolution in NTSC (the same reason you don't see rainbow banding on the MD). On top of that, it's tied to the errors in composite video encoding native to some systems as the issue is much less in S-video (separate Y and C opposed to composite and RF which has those signals merged to a single line). Not sure about the C64 (it's monitor was S-video anyway), but the Atari 8-bits, CoCo, and PC CGA suffered from this heavily to the point where it was taken advantage of by developers due to the artifact colors being more flexible than native video modes. (much less common on Atari in part due to the later GTIA video chip having different artifacts than the early CTIA)
See CGA for a really drmatic example, especially 640x200 monochome:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_G...color_monitors

That issue is only tied to the color signal, hence many computers having luma only modes that disabled the color carrier. In that case luma is identical in NTSC and PAL as well as equivalent to RGB and identical to the luma of component video, you can literally plus the green luma line from component into a composite jack and get a sharp grayscale picture. (you can do HD resolutions easily on a single analog luma line, and that's exactly what you get if you only plug in the green luma cable for component video)

So in short, it's due to the lower resolution color carrier combined with crosstalk of chroma and luma degrading the signal further, and particularly due to errors in the video encoding circuitry interpreting certain luma frequencies as chroma. (again the 640x200 GCA mode is rather striking, and again, with color disabled you get a very nice display in composite and RF)

This article demonstrates it too and in particular how the 640x200 mono mode could simulate 160x200x16 colors of the Tandy/PCJr very well.
http://ipggi.wordpress.com/2008/03/1...pcjr-hercules/

I just checked through a huge selection of 1983 releases for C64 and roughly 80% of them had mono colour backgrounds (mainly black).

What does that mean? Most games have a single main BG color (like blue for sky or black -C64 often black as there had to be a common color and black was most often used -hence black sky in Pitfall II and Dizzy -Pitfall II looks much better on the A8-bit IMO, even on the 2600 in some respects and sounds better too -granted the 2600 version had an add-on)

Every time you pass by an enemy or climb a latter or set of stairs on the speccy, you've got major clash issues with a multicolor game, but that's mainly due to the lack of sprites. (character modes on C64 and MSX would have similar issues, the A8 and CPC have actual framebuffer bitmap modes -like the ST- and thus avoid the problem of attribute clash in such cases)

You're looking at it too much as an American, you need to look at it as a British person

You can go on about marketing and product features all you like, at the end of the day people over here, and in Spain simply loved the Speccy, they loved everything about it, the design, the size, the stupid colour clashing graphics, people loved the idea of it. You talk about marketing, Clive Sinclair didn't market the machine to kids/teenagers at all, he hated the fact that his machine was being used to play video games, the adverts for the ZX Spectrum were just black and white pages with reams of writing, it wasn't until many years later when it was becoming apparent that a big British video game industry had pretty much been created by the machine that he became proud of the fact it had become gaming orientated, he built it because he wanted people, normal people in Britain to have access to an entry level computer to learn with and give them prospects for the future, you're thinking from the "American" Bill Gates screw-people-over-nerd side of the computer business, Clive Sinclair was more of a dopey entrepreneur.

That doesn't make sense... why like a product for no real merits at all?
it seems to me it was all about price and the fact that it actually got support and pushed cassette media, plus was a domestic product (so loyalty could factor in and the cost advantages of domestic production and distribution).

The compact size is good, the price is good, the amount of RAM is good, the cassette support is good, the software support, etc; the keyboard not so much (though better than the 400's membrane), sound was weak, graphics OK, resolution was good but color limited (again there's cases where I'd prefer a monochrome display, and indeed some speccy games took that route with a single fixed color: b/w black and yellow, etc). The lack of a joystick port would be critical I'd think... playing on a keyboard is not that fun, especially without a more ordered arrangement and cursor keys as on a PC and some other home computers. (PC/ST/Amiga key layout are very favorable)
Plus that would limit the practicality of multiplayer significantly. (even with the VIC you could have one joystick and one keyboard player)

Amongst other things we've already talked about, those machines you're bringing up like the Atari 400, are ugly, bloated, expensive, and generally uncool products, I know Americans liked those oversized boxy machines in the 80s but people over here didn't, at least the C64, whilst expensive had kind of a less angular design to it, to the stage where people could affectionately refer to it as "The breadbin" as time went on.

The Araris were big out of necessity to FCC regs and onboard RF as I said, and it cost them...
However, those models had been discontinued in 1982, selling off old stock only and replaced by the XL series, with the streamlines 600XL and 800XL in 1983. Similar in size the C64 at least in the 600XL's case and cart slot front and center.
http://www.probertencyclopaedia.com/...20%28PD%29.jpg


Then the redesign under Atari corp for the even more cost cut XE series in 1985. (somewhat smaller than the 520ST)
http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/atarixe/h/xe65.jpg

But I'd imagine asthetics came into play, and the atari stuff wasn't big for looks (other than the 5200), but out of necessity, and the big aluminum castings for RF shielding certainly didn't help cut cost. (they were a bit late in shifting to a cost-cut redesign following the FCC's more lax regulations too, and botched that with the 1200XL too)

People generally consider the 160X200 mode to be the true CPC graphics, however, to the annoyance of Amstrad owners most of the big companies didn't bother to use this mode, if you've mainly seen multi-colour mode games thats hardly surprising as most people gravitate towards those games because they look better.

Yeah, all the games here seem to use the 160x200 mode:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2EqX3rpJ6M

You're overestimating the amount of support the Japanese gave the MSX, the MSX was released the same year as the Famicom, with only a few companies dedicating a lot of time to the machine, such as Konami, Hudsonsoft, Enix, Compile and Sega (with Sega quickly moving on to support their own machines).

Don't forget Game Arts... though they had an even stronger focus on NEC's killer PC8801 series, the #1 8-bit micro in Japan. (I wouldn't be surprised if it outsold the Famicom) MSX was 2nd and cheaper/more game oriented, plus it got some hefty enhancements with the MSX2 and so on.
It got a lot of support, maybe not as much as the PC8801 or Famicom, but a lot. And a significnat number of games went to it first and were ported to the Famicom or not released at all. (or PC8801 first) Hell, the PC8801 got an officially licensed port of Super Mario Bros. (Super Mario Bros. Special) I think the similar FM-7 also got that. (it had the advantage of being rather similar to the PC8801 technically, if considerably less popular -much closer than the CPC/Speccy in hardware terms)

Also, a lot of the good MSX software didn't even start coming out in Japan until 1984 (Athletic Land, Antarctic Adventure, Circus Charlie, Magical Tree)

Yeah, the home games market really didn't get big there until 1983 and later. (so yeah, that would be a factor too)

Lastly, you need to take into account that the Spectrum started off a videogame revolution in Britain during 1983, everybody and their cousin started making videogames in their bedrooms, there was a huge fad around with kids reading up on programming and drawing on bits of graph paper saying that they were going to get rich making video games (and a good few of them did) companies like Mastertronic started printing big ads in magazines saying "send your games to our address, if we like what we see we'll publish the game, give you £2000 and 10p for every unit sold" The Spectrum was getting 30+ games released every month, all the more popular older arcade games such as Donkey Kong, Space Invaders, Galaxians, Asteroids, Pacman, and Frogger had multiple clones available (over five releases of each game) within the first year of the machine's lifespan. The system was just swamped with software extremely quickly, even if there had been tons of MSX software to bring out they wouldn't have been able to bring it over in anywhere near the numbers to keep up with the speed Spectrum game library was growing.

Yeah I've heard those stories, and that spawned a bunch of low budget development houses in particular (Codemasters comes to mind). Though that was also true in the US in a much broader sense, but not in quite the extreme manner and started a bit earlier I think. (but you had a lot of people in the industry in the 80s and 90s who'd gone straight from high school -and while still in high school- or dropped out of college to do that stuff, not just programming, but hardware design too: lots of such garage/basement enterprises in the 70s and early 80s -GCC is one that popped to the top of my head, started making speed-up kits of arcade games including one that was adapted into Ms Pac Man, and then went on to design the 7800, among other things)
But maybe that was more just the hobby community at the time being huge in the new, fast-growing industry, not the same kind of phenomenon as in the UK.

The earliest advert I've got is from the First issue of CVG from November 1981, the prices at that stage were according to the add

There's also a whole load of other computers being advertised, some of which I've never heard of (Atom, Dai, Video Genie, Sharp, PET)

OK, but that was '81, 1982 compared directly against the speccy would be important too. (the point of the 400/800's size mattered too as you said, though the 400 isn't really bigger than the VIC/C64 but too much: a bit taller and deeper but narrower, but the weight was big due to all that cast aluminum)

That and the date of the 600 and 800XL arriving could be important too, should have been cheaper than those mid 1983 400/800 prices too.

Also what about the BBC Micro, wasn't it on the cheaper end too at least compared to the Atari stuff (wiki lists 223 pounds in 1981 for the model 1)?

Well, I just looked at a top 100 on some site called Atarimania and it was horrendous, mainly classic arcade games like Defender, Pacman, Berzerk, Mario Bros etc (ie games which were available on pretty much every micro on mass) and old multiformat C64 games, some of which are actually rated ~20% on the C64 Lemon site, there's even some buggered ports of Spectrum classics such as Starquake and late homebrew software there , everything looks blocky and many of the games look like crude single screen 2600 games without scrolling, they're more colourful than most Spectrum games though, I'll give them that.

What are you talking about, those are awesome timeless classic games, and many look pretty good... but more importantly they're fun as hell and good fast-paced pick-up and play (often addicting) kind of games.
There's a lot of better looking stuff too, but not usually so close to the top, especially with the early 80s games being the biggest in the US on hoe computers. (interest shifted to ST, Amiga, and especially PC in the late 80s)
Maybe I'll make a list later on.
However, it may be a matter of taste: a lot of the UK stuff seems to be simple (arguably tedious) platform/adventure type stuff...
Especially games like Jet Set Willy which have a huge following in the UK, and while I won't be as hard as some (ie call it one of the worst games ever made), it's pretty ugly and fairly tedious alogn with the rather grating sound of early speccy games (beeper only) along with the growingly annoying blippy conversion of Fiddler on the Roof's "if I were a rich man" looping over and over. Compared to many other home computer games I've seen and played, including early 80s US ones and many UK ones (especially code masters') it's not particularly appealing.

Pitfall II on the A8-bit (or 2600, C64, or Colecovision) in 1984 (same year as Jet Set Willy and many early speccy games) is much better looking, better sounding, and more fun IMO. (a true platform adventure game) The original pitfall is better looking and sounding IMO, even the 2600 version. Had that game had horizontal scrolling that would push even more. (it does vertical though)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akKQfQ7ssiA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFZAY_uOfeo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Su6JQcBUS-s





CPC games tend to look far better, better than C64 games at times too even... (BBC Micro/Arorn Electron tended to be better much of the time too, though not CPC or C64 level for sure) other than cost and initial boost in software and development from an early release and establishment, I can't see why the Speccy would maintain such popularity. But in that case it's kind of like the IBM PC, not particularly impressive but a big boost early on and massive proliferation. (though not cheap for sure, it was THE business machine as far as business professionals were concered, had the IBM brand and then the following clones of course)
Did the speccy end up getting cloned too?

[The Coop]

Talk about derailments.

Amtrak would be proud, boys

[kool kitty89]

Talk about derailments.

Amtrak would be proud, boys

And with that comment comes drastic action!
http://sega-16.com/forum/showthread....316#post277316

[StarMist]

#1 = Saturn.
#2 = Genesis.

These were very close and it would've been an impossible decision had the Genesis any great Japanese exclusives that weren't shooters. Well there's Surging Aura but only that.

Perhaps we Should Make another poll to determine which is the worst Sega console?

[eddiespruce]

The Genesis of course, is my favorite Sega console. It's that perfect equilibrium. The Master System would be second to it for me, followed by the Game Gear, then the Saturn, and the Dreamcast at the bottom. Don't get me wrong, they're all great consoles, but the Genesis is king.

[QuickSciFi]

In order:

1. Sega Genesis
2. Saturn/Dreamcast tie
3. Sega Mater System/Game Gear tie

[Thenewguy]

Perhaps we Should Make another poll to determine which is the worst Sega console?

I don't think that realistically anyone would rate the SG-1000 as being better than any of Sega's other consoles, so it would probably be a whitewash.

Though I have had a little bit of enjoyment with a few SG-1000 games, its just that there's not really anything that notable about the system in comparison to Mega Drive/SMS/Saturn/Dreamcast

[StarMist]

Realistically members would vote on which system they'd played, ruling out a console 90% of them haven't even in emulation. 2nd favourite Sega console might've garnered more interesting results, the Mega Drive's just not going to lose.

[Zoltor]

Realistically members would vote on which system they'd played, ruling out a console 90% of them haven't even in emulation. 2nd favourite Sega console might've garnered more interesting results, the Mega Drive's just not going to lose.

Genny/Sega CD combo would easily be my 2nd Favorite Sega system.

To Warmsignal: Yea It's complete BS.

[Thenewguy]

Realistically members would vote on which system they'd played, ruling out a console 90% of them haven't even in emulation. 2nd favourite Sega console might've garnered more interesting results, the Mega Drive's just not going to lose.

2nd favourite would be Saturn by a landslide, like I've said before, here the bias is centred around Mega Drive and Saturn, the majority of the members on here wouldn't p#ss on the SMS and Dreamcast if they were on fire.

I mean jeez, say the PS1 has better racers than Saturn and you have a mass of protest and support appear, loads of iffy lists turn up, etc, but if you make a trully ludicrous statement, such as "the NES had superior graphics to SMS" there's virtually no challenge from anyone, whatsoever, at all.