8 Bit Wars 2

[Swainy]

After lengthy discussion, lawyers and C15 cassettes changing hands the second installment of 8 Bit Wars is finally upon us. Join Paul Davies as he looks to wrangle Dean Swain, Steve Erickson and Chris ORegan into agreeing whether the Commodore 64, Amstrad or ZX Spectrum came out top from a specially-selected list of 10 classic retro games. Expect plenty of heated discussion and laughter along the way as we decide which 8 Bit system comes out on top this time round. Including: Cobra, Jack the Nipper 2, The Trap Door, Turbo Esprit, Wizball, Nebulus, Spy Hunter, Shadowfire, Green Beret and Salamander.


http://traffic.libsyn.com/retroasylum/episode132.mp3

Retro Asylum - The UK's Number 1 Retro Gaming Podcast by Retro Asylum/Castaway

[reidrac]

I liked it, although Chris wasn't great this time (IMHO).

He wasted too much energy defending games that were definitely a Speccy game (eg, "The Trap Door"), and then seemed too keen on praising the C64 instead of choosing games where the CPC could get some more points (why did he choose "Shadowfire"? only to give 3 points to the C64? ).

I know, I know; this "war" is just for fun and it was fun indeed; but Steve and Swainy did a better job.

All together I recommend listening it, but I think the first 8-bit wars was better.

[TFM]

Reading the names of the games is like reading a list of the best games for the c64. For the CPC there would be 10 different games.

[ivarf]

I like these wars. In the first war, the CPC won. The second one the CPC ended last. But its nice to hear the c64 and Speccy guys in many cases prefering the Amstrad over their favourite computer

[chinnyhill10]

I like these wars. In the first war, the CPC won. The second one the CPC ended last. But its nice to hear the c64 and Speccy guys in many cases prefering the Amstrad over their favourite computer

In the first one the CPC guy spent half the time saying he got rid of his CPC in 1988 and got an ST instead and therefore didn't know much about the final years of the CPC.


Meanwhile the C64 owner kept making green screen jokes until I would have enjoyed nothing more than smashing a GT65 over his head.

[CraigsBar]

For head smashing I find the mm12 has more impact

[ivarf]

In the first one the CPC guy spent half the time saying he got rid of his CPC in 1988 and got an ST instead and therefore didn't know much about the final years of the CPC.


Meanwhile the C64 owner kept making green screen jokes until I would have enjoyed nothing more than smashing a GT65 over his head.

Their attitude towards the Amstrad CPC seems to be changed during the process of playing 20 games on it

[MacDeath]

You can simply use a whole PCW instead, best to crush heads... 

[dcdrac]

In the first one the CPC guy spent half the time saying he got rid of his CPC in 1988 and got an ST instead and therefore didn't know much about the final years of the CPC.


Meanwhile the C64 owner kept making green screen jokes until I would have enjoyed nothing more than smashing a GT65 over his head.

At least it came with a monitor and felt like a real computer that could do other things than just games

[chinnyhill10]

At least it came with a monitor and felt like a real computer that could do other things than just games

Depressing isn't it? Imagine buying your first computer and all the possibilities that go with it and then only playing games on it?


That's the whole problem with these "8 bit wars" and why I find them so tedious. The people and arguments used are essentially of the viewpoint that their computer was a games console and could be used for nothing else. They don't see the irony in the fact they sit in from of a PC or Mac today that can do a bit of everything yet when they reflect on the older machines it always must be games games games.

[dcdrac]

Depressing isn't it? Imagine buying your first computer and all the possibilities that go with it and then only playing games on it?


That's the whole problem with these "8 bit wars" and why I find them so tedious. The people and arguments used are essentially of the viewpoint that their computer was a games console and could be used for nothing else. They don't see the irony in the fact they sit in from of a PC or Mac today that can do a bit of everything yet when they reflect on the older machines it always must be games games games.

I personally do not see the point of rehasing the old debate, the spectrum was good at some things, the C64 was good at some things, the CPC an all rounder, I was using mine until 1991 for wordprocessing and coding,

[Zoe Robinson]

I personally do not see the point of rehasing the old debate, the spectrum was good at some things, the C64 was good at some things, the CPC an all rounder, I was using mine until 1991 for wordprocessing and coding,

I'm very much with you on this. The CPC was definitely an all-rounder (and deserves a lot more credit than it was ever given) but the Spectrum could do a hell of a lot more than the average 8-bit fan of the time gave it credit for. It was no supercomputer, but it could do all sorts if you were prepared to put up with the limitations of its design.


The C64, on the other hand, was hampered by its slow loading; even from disk. Once it got up and running, it was pretty good for most thing. I never saw a word processor or other office software running on it myself but I can't see it having too many problems doing that stuff, compared with the Speccy.


My heart stays with the CPC; which I was using every day until late 1992 and ran my first businesses from. It was an amazing piece of machinery, whichever version you had.

[chinnyhill10]

I'm very much with you on this. The CPC was definitely an all-rounder (and deserves a lot more credit than it was ever given) but the Spectrum could do a hell of a lot more than the average 8-bit fan of the time gave it credit for. It was no supercomputer, but it could do all sorts if you were prepared to put up with the limitations of its design.

"Games! Games! Everywhere I go games! This is what my lifetime of achievement has been reduced to! Clive Sinclair the man who brought you Jet Set fucking Willy!"


Indeed it could do all sorts. But it was originally hampered by a horrific keyboard, lack of a decent screen, a weird and limited graphics mode and no 80 column mode.


The later Amstrad models fixed some of these things and you could use proper printers with them. But it never really got over the limited graphics modes. The Spectrums ultimate problem was it was done on the cheap and lacked alot of the things that made it a sensible choice for serious work. That's why Clive devised the QL (although that also had a hopeless keyboard).


Ironically the Electron was hopeless for games, but had a fairly decent library of productivity software.

[dcdrac]

My brother had an electron it was a decent little machine.

[TMR]

That's the whole problem with these "8 bit wars" and why I find them so tedious. The people and arguments used are essentially of the viewpoint that their computer was a games console and could be used for nothing else. They don't see the irony in the fact they sit in from of a PC or Mac today that can do a bit of everything yet when they reflect on the older machines it always must be games games games.

That works both ways though, there are people here talking about the C64 as though it wasn't used for anything else and yet there were people like me regularly word processing (GCSE English homework done with Easyscript and an MPS803 printer because i've always had terrible handwriting!), all those Americans with their beefed up C64s used for desktop publishing club newsletters in GEOS and the demo scene with all those coders, graphics artists or musicians...

But your average 40-something remembers the games even if they did other things, those were fun whilst spreadsheets or desktop publishing were... well, work. For example, how many word processsors or assemblers have you covered on your YouTube channel... and why not more?

[chinnyhill10]

But your average 40-something remembers the games even if they did other things, those were fun whilst spreadsheets or desktop publishing were... well, work. For example, how many word processsors or assemblers have you covered on your YouTube channel... and why not more?

You'll have noted that the latest video has a specific focus on serious applications including Protext.


And you don't know what plans I have for 2016, but some of it has come about because of feedback from the latest video. As a famous TV producer with a taste for horrific shirts often said "stay tuned".



Also I never knew a C64 owner who did anything remotely serious with their system. Printer? You can't even plug a standard printer in without a lot of faff. Whereas I knew plenty of CPC owners with printers and there were still ex Amstrad users local soldering on with DMP2000's into the 90's (which is why it was so easy to get hold of the printer ribbons locally even though the printer was long since obsolete).


The C64 might be able to try and claim the high ground on games, but serious software? Nope. Come back when you can run an industry standard OS like CPM without a lot of faff (external cartridge that only works on very specific models IIRC).

[mahlemiut]

The C64 might be able to try and claim the high ground on games, but serious software?

Back in primary school, we had a single C64 in the classroom, with a printer, and was used for word processing.  There was also a Franklin, and this was used for the occasional game
In intermediate school, there was a whole room of C64s (and a C128), and these were largely used for games (were allowed to bring your own games and play them during the lunch break), but only 4 disk drives shared between about 15 systems was rather annoying, remembering how painfully slow the 1541 was... 

[Zoe Robinson]

Back in primary school, we had a single C64 in the classroom, with a printer, and was used for word processing.  There was also a Franklin, and this was used for the occasional game
In intermediate school, there was a whole room of C64s (and a C128), and these were largely used for games (were allowed to bring your own games and play them during the lunch break), but only 4 disk drives shared between about 15 systems was rather annoying, remembering how painfully slow the 1541 was... 

I'm always amazed at the range of computers different countries used in their schools. When I was at school, we started out with the BBC Model B (one computer for the entire school, rolled in on a trolley) and used it for word processing, plus one or two educational programs (I recall one logic puzzle about getting a fox, chicken and grain across a river). It was a moderately competent computer but we all thought it sucked balls because it wasn't an Amstrad, a Spectrum or a C64.


In secondary school, we ditched the BBCs in favour of the Acorn Archimedea A3000. It was a brilliant piece of technology for the time, and incredibly advanced. Unfortunately we, being kids, thought it sucked balls because it wasn't either an Amiga or a PC and those were what we had at home.


I recall a school trip to France, where we visited a French school. They were all running PCs, so I thought they were immensely advanced compared to us - they were using a "real" computer, in my mind.

[MacDeath]

I was lucky my parents were cool... they invested into Colour monitor versions, be it my first 464 in 1984 or the 6128 that came 1-2 years after...

anyway in 1984-1987 while child... the first computer you had was always some magnificient thing, especially when it is complete (with both mass data storage and monitor "built-in" or "sold-with"...)

And a christmas with a compilation with Renegade, Barbarian, Rampage and so on was best X-mas ever... 1987-1988 were really great years when you had a CPC6128 with colour monitor but were offered some nice compilations for it.

My school had some "shitty" thomson TO7/70... some friends were disgusted/jealous I had an Amstrad CPC464 while being only 6-7 years old...

Nice to be the real first digital generation (and manga generation as well)


damn I'm getting old and pathetic...

I'm always amazed at the range of computers different countries used in their schools.

basically the 1980-1985 era was really rich into the many 8 bit different and all uncompatible formats... and many countries had their own nationnal product/project...

Even some eastern europe countries from behind the Iron Curtain (numeric curtain ?) would release their equivalent of Thomsons computers or somewhat speccy clones.
But yeah, UK was leading the way in europe, thx Alan Turing legacy.

Sinclair, BBC/acorn, ORIC, then freaking Amstrad nailing it.


Olivetti made some nice cheap compact CGA compatible IBM PC as well... (thx Italia)
look at this freaking beauty :
could run LOOM, Indiana Jones III (scumm one), Populous (and data disks)  and many other games in 320x200x4 + beeper... one of my friend had this... love the 2 floppy ports/drives possible... 512k + 8mhz XT... feels like an Amstrad PC1512 fitted into an Amiga600 casing, in 1987...
on one hand you could say "yes my CPC can do better graphics and sounds" but on the oother hands you had the richness of 16bit games (scumm games, populous) on thoses and built in 720k floppies...

[mahlemiut]

I'm always amazed at the range of computers different countries used in their schools. When I was at school, we started out with the BBC Model B (one computer for the entire school, rolled in on a trolley) and used it for word processing, plus one or two educational programs (I recall one logic puzzle about getting a fox, chicken and grain across a river). It was a moderately competent computer but we all thought it sucked balls because it wasn't an Amstrad, a Spectrum or a C64.


In secondary school, we ditched the BBCs in favour of the Acorn Archimedea A3000. It was a brilliant piece of technology for the time, and incredibly advanced. Unfortunately we, being kids, thought it sucked balls because it wasn't either an Amiga or a PC and those were what we had at home.


I recall a school trip to France, where we visited a French school. They were all running PCs, so I thought they were immensely advanced compared to us - they were using a "real" computer, in my mind.

At intermediate school, some classrooms had their own single C64, which was usually used for the occasional educational game.  Although I remember someone playing Last Ninja II on it also.
The only educational thing done as a class, was to learn Logo.
Secondary school was different, while we were still allowed to bring our own games to play at lunch time, there were two main rooms, one with PCs (I think they were either 12 or 16MHz 386s, later upgraded to 33MHz), and the other with Mac Classics (and those tiny black and white monitors). Not many games played on the Macs, though, other than the occasional Sim City.  The PCs were at least VGA, although no sound hardware.
There were also four or five fancier Macs with proper monochrome monitors in between the PC and Mac rooms.  Often used those as part of a desktop publishing class.
Disabled students also had an Apple IIe in their common room.

[TMR]

You'll have noted that the latest video has a specific focus on serious applications including Protext.

No, but i've been busy trying to get a small demo finished for the "festive season" [spit] and have a lot of catching up to do on YouTube.

Also I never knew a C64 owner who did anything remotely serious with their system.

That doesn't mean it didn't happen though, or that it wasn't fairly common.

You can't even plug a standard printer in without a lot of faff.

i remember Star and Citizen selling their standard printers with an interface slot which could take a Commodore standard IEC serial interface, so there must have been a surprising amount of demand from all those people not using their C64 for serious things. And the C64 user port to Centronics cables we used to shift when i was doing that for a day job weren't exactly difficult to use; they needed compatible software of course, but anything half decent usually did.

The C64 might be able to try and claim the high ground on games, but serious software? Nope. Come back when you can run an industry standard OS like CPM without a lot of faff (external cartridge that only works on very specific models IIRC).

Hang on, when did anyone try to "claim the high ground" here?! My point was that the C64 could also do other things than games despite how it was being misrepresented in this thread, not that it was better or worse than anything else - you filled that gap on your own.

The term "serious software" is pretty vague anyway, there are thousands of utilities at the CSDb for editing disks, writing text in various forms, running or connecting to bulletin boards, linking two machines for data transfer (locally or over the phone), copying or (un)archiving disks, assembling, disassembling, compiling or decompiling code, drawing various kinds of graphics, composing music or creating sound effects, calculating sine curves, compressing executables...

[reidrac]

Olivetti made some nice cheap compact CGA compatible IBM PC as well... (thx Italia)
look at this freaking beauty :
could run LOOM, Indiana Jones III (scumm one), Populous (and data disks)  and many other games in 320x200x4 + beeper... one of my friend had this... love the 2 floppy ports/drives possible... 512k + 8mhz XT... feels like an Amstrad PC1512 fitted into an Amiga600 casing, in 1987...
on one hand you could say "yes my CPC can do better graphics and sounds" but on the oother hands you had the richness of 16bit games (scumm games, populous) on thoses and built in 720k floppies...

That was my first PC after I moved on from the speccy. I was stuck with it for 8 years; because of money

It could run up to DOS 3.3, but at some point software started to require 640K nd its 512 were not enough. Anyway, very nice machine.

[dcdrac]

Now that would be interesting the serious side of the CPC make a video showing just how versatile it was/is

[andycadley]

Indeed it could do all sorts. But it was originally hampered by a horrific keyboard, lack of a decent screen, a weird and limited graphics mode and no 80 column mode.

I don't think those things were really anything like as limiting as you might imagine. 64-column text was fine for word processing and no more of a hindrance at the time than the lack of, say, 100 columns mode on the CPC was. And the Speccy had the considerable cost advantage for many people. I know I certainly managed to do a lot of "real" computing on one, despite the limitations of the time.

One area where the Spectrum really stood out was it's manual (the original ring bound orange cover one, not the later thin + model version) which stands head and shoulders above the others as the best computing manual I've ever seen. The Amstrad one is a pretty close second, but it just didn't feel quite so comprehensive. And, oddly, the Spectrum's single keyword entry system practically begged you to learn programming on the machine. It was hard to look at that keyboard full of odd, enticing words and not want to learn more.

[MacDeath]

some french scientists managed to create their own mouse for the CPC664...


for the frenchs :




oops sorry those pictures are freaking huge... open them into another window.