Atari thread.

[TheSonicRetard]

You're 6 days older than the Sega Genesis, I'm not going to trust the views of someone who reads about what it was like over my own views who experienced them. The Vic 20 and Apple IIe and all those other computers were no where near the mainstream success the C64, Mac, and IBM PC were. It doesn't do any good to list every single computer ever released in the US and claim that they were integral to the history of computing -- where is the Altair 8800 in said list anyways? The history of mainstream computing in the US goes C64->Mac->IBM PC. Those are the computers that average people bought.

[tz101]

^
I think leaving Atari and Texas Instruments computers out of that string of succession is a little misleading.

[TheSonicRetard]

I just wanted to apologize for my previous remark - I've been in an awful mood this morning, but that's no excuse, and I shouldn't be brushing aside informed members of this forum with such broad strokes. I do stand by my comments that the Vic-20 and Apple IIe aren't really on the level of success that the C64, Mac, and IBM PC enjoyed in the home market. Apple IIe saw most of its sales in business, but that's not really the same market as personal computing, i.e. in the home. The C64, the Mac (even though it sold overall less than the Apple II), and the IBM PC were really on a much different level when it came to bringing computing home to the common man. But my comments were still out of line, and I apologize.

[Chilly Willy]

You're 6 days older than the Sega Genesis, I'm not going to trust the views of someone who reads about what it was like over my own views who experienced them. The Vic 20 and Apple IIe and all those other computers were no where near the mainstream success the C64, Mac, and IBM PC were. It doesn't do any good to list every single computer ever released in the US and claim that they were integral to the history of computing -- where is the Altair 8800 in said list anyways? The history of mainstream computing in the US goes C64->Mac->IBM PC. Those are the computers that average people bought.

Perhaps just where you lived. It was completely different from my perspective. It was Apple II -> Atari 8-bit -> C64 -> Amiga -> PC. The Mac is NOWHERE in the list... it was never big outside of publishing companies until almost the very end of the 68K based Macs... 68LC040s Performas were mildly popular for a little while, but the Mac REALLY didn't break into the scene until the G3 iMac. THAT was when Mac took off.

[segaddict]

Nothing defines retro better than the Atari. Matter fact I actually just hooked up the old 2600 a couple weeks ago. I have the lesser common junior model. Had a blast playing missile command and centipede. Been meaning to pick up Spider-man, Frogger and Pitfall.

[goldenband]

Perhaps just where you lived. It was completely different from my perspective. It was Apple II -> Atari 8-bit -> C64 -> Amiga -> PC. The Mac is NOWHERE in the list... it was never big outside of publishing companies until almost the very end of the 68K based Macs... 68LC040s Performas were mildly popular for a little while, but the Mac REALLY didn't break into the scene until the G3 iMac. THAT was when Mac took off.

And it was different in turn where I lived in those years (call it roughly 1984-1994). Macs were very common, even in 1985, whereas Atari 8-bit and Amiga were practically unknown. Apple II had a strong presence in educational settings (as did the Mac) but I don't remember encountering any in people's personal collections until I met my first self-consciously "retro" computer enthusiast, in 1994. C64 was fairly strong, and Tandy CoCo and TI-99/4A were seen now and then.

The dominance of PC/DOS didn't really seem to begin until around 1994/95, when half the people I knew had suddenly gotten 486s or Pentiums. It seemed to happen almost overnight.

[kool kitty89]

Perhaps just where you lived. It was completely different from my perspective. It was Apple II -> Atari 8-bit -> C64 -> Amiga -> PC. The Mac is NOWHERE in the list... it was never big outside of publishing companies until almost the very end of the 68K based Macs... 68LC040s Performas were mildly popular for a little while, but the Mac REALLY didn't break into the scene until the G3 iMac. THAT was when Mac took off.

Even after the iMac arrived, it remained a niche product, vastly overwhelmed by PC market share, and it's still that way to this day.

And as for your personal perspective, that's obviously different than the average mainstream userbase in the country too. My family (or my dad more specifically) went from TRS-80 to ST/Amiga (albeit mostly loaned/shared work computers while at Metacomco -which did include game playing ) to PC (with some back and forth with PC and Amiga until the early 90s) and then definitively PC in the early 90s. (which is also when he built our first shared family PC -along with his separate work/games PC in his office)

But that's obviously not the standard fare for the US market either.

And while it's easy to see (techinically) that the ST and Amiga were both far better values in the mid/late 80s than Macs (and for many average users, PCs as well), the market at large didn't perceive them as such, or (more importantly) wasn't aware of them much or at all. (and for business users, DOS-specific applications were a significant factor as well)
But even so, the much lower price point and general consumer/games application support of the Amiga (and ST for that matter) must have been at least somewhat compelling to the average home user. (especially those on a budget -where Macs obviously wouldn't be attractive)

You're 6 days older than the Sega Genesis, I'm not going to trust the views of someone who reads about what it was like over my own views who experienced them. The Vic 20 and Apple IIe and all those other computers were no where near the mainstream success the C64, Mac, and IBM PC were. It doesn't do any good to list every single computer ever released in the US and claim that they were integral to the history of computing -- where is the Altair 8800 in said list anyways? The history of mainstream computing in the US goes C64->Mac->IBM PC. Those are the computers that average people bought.

It should be noted that, prior to around 1982/83, no computers were mainstream in the US at all. The Apple II, Tandy, Commodore, Atari, TI, Timex, IBM (and various Z80 CP/M boxes) were all part of a signifcant but overall niche market at the time (the only really mainstream consumer electronics at that point were video games).

The C64 was the first platform to really go mass-market mainstream in the US (sort of like the Spectrum did in Europe), and the PC paralleled that in going mainsteam in the higher-end/business market segments of the time (vs the C64 being mainly a home computer for the lower-end market).

Mainstream aside, there were still people (especially well-informed tech-minded people) who went against the popular standards . . . the Atari 8-bit line was an excellent choice from a practical and technical standpoint if you wanted to avoid the horribly slow disk drive of the C64, high prices of Apple products (let alone IBM stuff), and especially if you wanted some games capabilities on top of that. (and if the expansion support of Apple and IBM stuff wasn't necessary either -or 80 column text)

The problem with that was software support becoming more and more limited as time went on, for games as well as other applications.
But by the time you really needed to upgrade, there were some compelling alternatives to the PC and Mac for sure, both in price and performance, with software support being the main limiting factor. (and expansion and upgradability -though the Mac was generally worse than the Amiga or even ST in those regards too, and flexible upgradability also tended to be crap on any PCs using non-standard form factors -having a standard case, power supply, keyboard, etc would mean saving a ton on board/CPU upgrades later on . . . at least once off the shelf PC parts -and dealers catering to that- became common -and the only major change that's happened from the mid 80s to this day is the switch from the AT/baby AT form factor to ATX)

Anyway, the ST and Amiga obviously eventually stopped being options altogether for modern computers, so only overpriced Macs and a variety of PCs (from crap/overpriced to others of quite good value -especially custom-built ones from dealers or capable home system builders), albeit with PCs you still had options on the OS end (and obviously tons of hardware variety too).



My only other point was that the Mac was never really mainstream at all . . . at schools it was significant at some points due to Apple's niche in the educational market (depending on region and time period in question), and obviously for some niches like desktop publishing and apples core userbase niche (more so after the iMac arrived), but it was never a mainstream seller and was never dominant in any market even prior to computers going mainstream in general. (unlike the ST and Amiga, which were undoubtedly mainstream in Europe, and NEC's computers in Japan up to the early 90s)

[NeoZeedeater]

However, there's the issue of how many people threw their old computers away (or recycled them) rather than selling/giving them away

This often crosses my mind. I hardly ever see Commodore 64 stuff locally anymore even though it was very popular in my area in the '80s. A lot of people probably threw the stuff away, especially since a lot of disk drives for it were dead by the '90s. Cartridge-dominated consoles were probably less likely to have been chucked.

[Zz Badnusty]

This often crosses my mind. I hardly ever see Commodore 64 stuff locally anymore even though it was very popular in my area in the '80s. A lot of people probably threw the stuff away, especially since a lot of disk drives for it were dead by the '90s.

Up until a couple years ago I had a great condition Apple IIe from my childhood over at my Dad's house. Relatively mint even. I noticed it was gone one day. When asked, my Dad said he donated it to a rural Christian School which was advertising for free computers to be donated for their students. I was pissed. Of course they were looking for modern Windows machines, and besides he didn't give them any of the discs so the thing was useless to the students.

[magicalsoundshower]

What's this I read about people preferring Turrican 2 on ST? Doesn't that version run at 25FPS? Why do you people do this to yourselves?

Personally, I still think Amiga Turrican 2 is a very attractive-looking game but maybe this is just nostalgia talking. After all you have to keep in mind that T2 came out before most developers attempted to pull off console-style graphics on the system. It still looks miles better than T3 which is simply butt ugly and has "rushed port" written all over it.

Speaking of the volcano level in Lionheart: Doesn't that stage have next to no enemies? I don't think this would have worked all that well in a game like Turrican 2. I really need to play the C64 version of Turrican 2 one of these days, though, I keep on hearing it's super impressive for the system.

[Kamahl]

What's this I read about people preferring Turrican 2 on ST? Doesn't that version run at 25FPS? Why do you people do this to yourselves?

Yes it runs at 25fps, but you can't expect more from the ST. What you shouldn't expect either is the huge amount of enemies onscreen while having super smooth scrolling on the ST. Now that's amazing. The In-Game music is better too, but that's not really surprising considering how low quality the instruments used in Turrican 2 for the amiga are.

Personally, I still think Amiga Turrican 2 is a very attractive-looking game but maybe this is just nostalgia talking. After all you have to keep in mind that T2 came out before most developers attempted to pull off console-style graphics on the system.

It's a pleasant looking game, but pretty simplistic and doesn't really use more than the basic stuff you'd expect in an Amiga game (it's only 16 color not counting the gradient!). It's the ST version bumped to 50 fps and with a smoother gradient... a bit disappointing. It's better for that alone but... Disappointing.

It still looks miles better than T3 which is simply butt ugly and has "rushed port" written all over it.

Turrican 3 has some of the worst usage of Dual Playfield mode on the system.

Speaking of the volcano level in Lionheart: Doesn't that stage have next to no enemies? I don't think this would have worked all that well in a game like Turrican 2.

The problem isn't the enemies but the color. If you make all enemies the same color as the fire balls that appear you could fill the level with millions them , much more than the number you could have in turrican 2 (3 bitplanes vs 4 bitplanes).

I really need to play the C64 version of Turrican 2 one of these days, though, I keep on hearing it's super impressive for the system.

The colors are horrid, but it has parallax scrolling (made using dynamic tiles).

[magicalsoundshower]

I still think I'll enjoy T2 for C64, I happen to really dig the C64's palette. It's what I grew up with and I still think it's better-suited for games than the EGA graphics on PC and the lackluster NES palette. It has pleasant blues, the flesh color is just right and the shades of grey are great for shading. This is entirely a personal preference, of course.

[Thenewguy]

What's this I read about people preferring Turrican 2 on ST? Doesn't that version run at 25FPS? Why do you people do this to yourselves?

Essentially, to me playing Turrican II on Amiga is like playing Super Mario Bros 1 on SNES through Allstars, sure its better, but it doesn't feel right for the system, it feels "upgraded" 8-bit in both graphics and design, the only thing which is making it look better than a good SMS game are the copper backgrounds, and the rock solid, non-flickering sprites.

Personally, I still think Amiga Turrican 2 is a very attractive-looking game but maybe this is just nostalgia talking. After all you have to keep in mind that T2 came out before most developers attempted to pull off console-style graphics on the system. It still looks miles better than T3 which is simply butt ugly and has "rushed port" written all over it.

I would say that Turrican III looks significantly better than Turrican II, Turrican III is often low colour, but it looks, and plays like a proper 16-bit game.

I can't even bring myself to play Turrican 1 or 2 on Amiga they're so pathetic, really basic colour use (both in numbers, and bland choices), next to no detail etc, C64 is my choice of system for the 1st two games, Mega Drive is my choice for the 3rd (though I can quite happily play the Amiga game in that example), I might think about picking up the ST version to give me something impressive to play on the system, and for the in-game music, but never the Amiga version, I hate the sight of it

[Kamahl]

There's a lot of C64 games that make good use of the color pallet, turrican 2 is not one of them.
This is bad:


This is good:



Still, there's much worse in that area.

[Thenewguy]

Dude, never take pictures from Lemon64, or Gamebase, or Shmups.com, after years of arguments with Spectrum fanboys about the C64 being drab, these guys have developed a complex, they turn up colour saturation on all of their screenshots (shmups is the worst for this)

With default setting on VICE that area looks slightly less garish (this is what it looks like on my actual C64)



with default setting on CCS64 Emulator you get this



Also, that has to be (no exageration) the absolute worst looking area in the entire game!

Here's some from me -




And yeah, I made an ass-up of the GIF (time is going up and down head is flashing wrong, background less smooth), I know LOL, but it took too long as it is