I adore old computers because same games were so different. It's like a trip to another dimention! They look the same today on PC and consoles. Who can tell me what melody Automania plays?
When my family visited Europe, I remember seeing Sorcery running in a store window. I was really wowed by it. I didn't see the computer attached, and I wouldn't have recognized an Amstrad model anyway, but I knew from the look that it wasn't a C64. I only saw it in attract mode, so I had to imagine what the actual gameplay was like.
En España el Spectrum llegó a más hogares, ya que se vendió más al estar más disponible en las tiendas y a su vez al tener un catálogo más amplio de juegos.
Nice content mate, being a speccy owner back in the day, the C64 graphics always seemed very blocky to me, and the colours were quite bland at the time, and I know the speccy definitely wasn't perfect either, but whatever micro you had, you always loved it 😊
Thank you. For me - I was also Speccy owner and did like colors on ZX more than on C64. However, C64 got a definitive advantage in music/sfx and scrolling/sprites (if used properly).
I had both systems... in fact I started with a ZX81... and frankly, you would have to be high to think the graphics were better on the speccy than the 64... like REALLY high. Color clash was the speccy's most famous flaw... something the 64 did not suffer from... fewer pixels and characters onscreen, etc.
that is because of the resolution. The C64 tended to use multi-color mode for most games, since it allows more colors, but at the price of less pixels per character (8x8 block) which made it more blocky. The same is true of most other systems as well. The C64 also has a HIRES mode, which looks like spectrum gfx, as it allows more pixels but only 2 colors per character. Minus the color clash since the C64 has sprites. There were plenty of lazy games that were ported from speccy to C64 with minimum effort, so they just used the hires mode, and so the C64 version looked pretty much identical to the speccy version. Dizzy games would be one example.
@@RussMichaels The C64 had another advantage: raster interrupts. You could get most of the advantages of a multicolour bitmap display when using multicolour tiled mode to tweak the VIC-II's registers and colour RAM as well as enabling sprite multiplexing.
C64 was the better machine, but back in 1983 it was out of the price range of many. Nice we can still enjoy it today using platforms such as MisterFPGA.
I'm more in the camp of there are things better on C64 and there are things better on ZX. However, I do think that probably, when all the hardware is used to it's potential, the C64 just "takes the crown" for being a tad better gaming machine (and I owned ZX Spectrum in the 80s ;) ). The only thing really bothering me (a lot) is the color palette on C64. But that's a personal preference and probably not something one can say was better or worse. Thanks for watching!
@@retrononame yeah it depends on the game... I personally prefer Speccy stuff but both have great games you shouldn't be without if you're a fan of retro computer games, both systems are a goldmine of software, and so is the Beeb and several others.
The main issue I have with these comparisons is they are in no way representative of how the games looked on a 4x3 14" CRT screen of the time, usually through a standard RF antenna input. It made the games look much less pixelated and jerky than they do here.
True. And the slight persistence or "afterglow" to the image on a CRT tube meant that the sprite flickering wasn't anywhere near as obnoxious as it looks on modern displays.
In the early days there was not a huge difference between the two platforms as programmers were not yet taking advantage of all the extra hardware capabilities the C64 had over the primitive Speccy. You should do some comparisons from like 1987 onwards and the differences start to become massive. Plus, it is interesting to see how programmers/devs started going in different directions with ports to better suit the different hardware of the machines.
@@retrononame Cooliez! It will be interesting to see the progression of both platforms through the decade. Any chance of going through to around 93? It is just that some of the most technically amazing games that pushed both platforms came out in their twilight years.
@@ru55ells Lol, you call those monochromatic splodgy messes that jerk about at 2 frames per second "sprites"?!?! Lol, you MUST be a Speccy fan. :) If you want to find out what REAL sprites (with like colour and all) look like and how they are supposed to move.... with that magical thing called scrolling, then you may want to check out a few titles such as Mayhem In Monsterland, Katakis etc.
I think an interesting comparison is Bruce Lee. Although it was ported from the Atari 8-bit, the C64 version is almost the same. The ZX Spectrum port has interestingly different graphics, but the gameplay is faithful I think. (I have NO IDEA what they were thinking with the BBC port.) I don't know when the ZX Spectrum port for Bruce Lee was, though. The C64 version is from 1984, but maybe the ZX Spectrum port is from 1985 or something?
Different authors. Tony Crowther programmed the C64 version and Pete Harapp programmed the spectrum version. Mr Harraps version sold better therefore Monty on the Run was the same game on both the C64 and Spectrum versions.
Because Tony Crowther (author of the C64 version) decided that making a mod of his own game "Son of Blagger" (from the previous year, 1983) would be a lot less work than creating a faithful port of the Speccy original :)
Much closer than 83, with a mix of some better on both machines. Remarkable how many developers mastered the speccie much sooner than the C64 - especially the SID! By 85 I'd say it'll be almost all C64...
Agreed. Not sure of being all C64 in later years, but yes, I also think the majority of the games will have a slight "edge" on C64 over the Speccy - especially in the "music department" and scrolling/sprites (C64 having the hardware sprite support that Speccy lacks). It will be interesting though and I'll release the 1985 video very soon - already working on it. Thanks for watching!
I would actually say the opposite. The C64 was designed somewhere around 81-82 with games like Pac-Man in mind. As you progress towards late 80s you clearly see programmers hitting limits with this eatly 80s text mode+sprites setup not the mention the very slow CPU. Spectrum's simple but relatively flexible bitmapped display given the CPU speed actually allowed for more graphics creativity in later Spectrum games. And there are many of them who also play better on Spectrum (Robocop, Myth, Captain Dynamo... just straight out of my head)
Here in the USA, developers got up to speed on the C64 very quickly. The Atari 400/800 were released in 1979, and the C64 had similar hardware (although with some interesting new capabilities, such as more sophisticated sprites and tile based color capabilities). You can see Epyx pushing the new C64 capabilities in 1984's Summer Games, and to a lesser extent Impossible Mission. Ghostbusters used the C64 hardware to a respectable degree. Raid Over Moscow made good use of the C64 capabilities, and even some CRPGs like Questron took advantage of C64 features not available for Apple ][ (simply moving around in Questron is less sluggish than Ultima III-VI due to the use of character mode instead of bitmap mode). 1984 is still largely the era of Apple ][ and Atari 8-bit ports, but you start to really see C64 exclusives that take full advantage of the C64's specific hardware capabilities. For example, Wizard is basically similar to Jumpman, but it takes advantage of larger sprites and character mode color flashing and animation ... it would have been difficult to port satisfactorily to other systems.
I got info it was in 1984 from Lemon64 site. Checking the wikipedia now, it was 1984 for ZX and then C64 version 1985. So it seems you are correct about C64 coming out later, but it looks like it was not a 2 years difference. It's very good port too. The games are very similar between the 2 systems.
This was before the days of most games being released for both systems, so these comparison videos miss a lot of the best games of the time - for example Pitstop II, Space Taxi and Realm of Impossibility never reached the Spectrum, whereas Knight Lore, 3D Starstrike and Technician Ted never reached the C64. Already you can see that the C64 was more capable with 2D games (which are what it was primarily designed for), but for 3D or '2.5D' the Spectrum probably wins. Worth saying that almost all the featured games originated on the Spectrum, a system which encouraged and rewarded originality and invention much more.
i do think the spectrum looks better when doing theses simple basic graphics, probably because the colours are so vibrant, but once the c64 starts being more detailed and complex things will change. Game play wise they're pretty much the same, and the sound is also poor on both at this stage.
@@b213videoz Exolon always looked much better on the c64, Compare Out of This World, or New Zealand Story. or look at the new Sonic the Hedgehog. Speccy can only dream of looking as good as theses games.
@HHR have you not played Sam's journey, Sonic the Hedgehog or Soul Force on the c64? You don't get that sort of detail on a speccy all it can do is mash colours together and then you can't see what anything is.
@HHR the early days were a bit like that but that soon changed when the developers got better, and are still getting better. just look at a modern release to see what the c64 is capable of. doesn't matter when a game came out its still the same hardware, processor and limitations.
Wow they really haven't yet discovered the hidden powers of C64 that early...
(still way better though)
I adore old computers because same games were so different. It's like a trip to another dimention! They look the same today on PC and consoles.
Who can tell me what melody Automania plays?
Agreed about old computers.
I have no idea about the tune from Automania though.
Automania melody is Laurel and Hardy tune
I think it's called the Cuckoo Waltz
Actually, after all of these years of thinking it was called the Cuckoo Waltz, it's the Dance of the Cuckoos
@@stevesrover thanks, it's amazing that this theme is more than 90 years old
Sorcery on Amstrad looked best there
Will explore CPC gaming in the 80s soon, so I'm looking forward to trying Sorcery on it as well.
Thanks for watching!
When my family visited Europe, I remember seeing Sorcery running in a store window. I was really wowed by it. I didn't see the computer attached, and I wouldn't have recognized an Amstrad model anyway, but I knew from the look that it wasn't a C64. I only saw it in attract mode, so I had to imagine what the actual gameplay was like.
En España el Spectrum llegó a más hogares, ya que se vendió más al estar más disponible en las tiendas y a su vez al tener un catálogo más amplio de juegos.
Nice content mate, being a speccy owner back in the day, the C64 graphics always seemed very blocky to me, and the colours were quite bland at the time, and I know the speccy definitely wasn't perfect either, but whatever micro you had, you always loved it 😊
Thank you.
For me - I was also Speccy owner and did like colors on ZX more than on C64. However, C64 got a definitive advantage in music/sfx and scrolling/sprites (if used properly).
@@retrononame Totally agree 👍🏻
I had both systems... in fact I started with a ZX81... and frankly, you would have to be high to think the graphics were better on the speccy than the 64... like REALLY high.
Color clash was the speccy's most famous flaw... something the 64 did not suffer from... fewer pixels and characters onscreen, etc.
that is because of the resolution. The C64 tended to use multi-color mode for most games, since it allows more colors, but at the price of less pixels per character (8x8 block) which made it more blocky. The same is true of most other systems as well.
The C64 also has a HIRES mode, which looks like spectrum gfx, as it allows more pixels but only 2 colors per character. Minus the color clash since the C64 has sprites.
There were plenty of lazy games that were ported from speccy to C64 with minimum effort, so they just used the hires mode, and so the C64 version looked pretty much identical to the speccy version. Dizzy games would be one example.
@@RussMichaels The C64 had another advantage: raster interrupts. You could get most of the advantages of a multicolour bitmap display when using multicolour tiled mode to tweak the VIC-II's registers and colour RAM as well as enabling sprite multiplexing.
C64 was the better machine, but back in 1983 it was out of the price range of many. Nice we can still enjoy it today using platforms such as MisterFPGA.
I'm more in the camp of there are things better on C64 and there are things better on ZX. However, I do think that probably, when all the hardware is used to it's potential, the C64 just "takes the crown" for being a tad better gaming machine (and I owned ZX Spectrum in the 80s ;) ).
The only thing really bothering me (a lot) is the color palette on C64. But that's a personal preference and probably not something one can say was better or worse.
Thanks for watching!
I heavily disagree, Spectrum to me was better in graphics and gameplay 😉
@@retrononame yeah it depends on the game... I personally prefer Speccy stuff but both have great games you shouldn't be without if you're a fan of retro computer games, both systems are a goldmine of software, and so is the Beeb and several others.
The main issue I have with these comparisons is they are in no way representative of how the games looked on a 4x3 14" CRT screen of the time, usually through a standard RF antenna input. It made the games look much less pixelated and jerky than they do here.
True. And the slight persistence or "afterglow" to the image on a CRT tube meant that the sprite flickering wasn't anywhere near as obnoxious as it looks on modern displays.
In the early days there was not a huge difference between the two platforms as programmers were not yet taking advantage of all the extra hardware capabilities the C64 had over the primitive Speccy. You should do some comparisons from like 1987 onwards and the differences start to become massive. Plus, it is interesting to see how programmers/devs started going in different directions with ports to better suit the different hardware of the machines.
I'm planning to do all remaining years of the 80s decade (so from 1985 and up to 1990 or so), so stay tuned for that ;)
@@retrononame Cooliez! It will be interesting to see the progression of both platforms through the decade. Any chance of going through to around 93? It is just that some of the most technically amazing games that pushed both platforms came out in their twilight years.
You might be better off not seeing the massive sprites of Final Fight or Mortal Kombat fella.
@@ru55ells Lol, you call those monochromatic splodgy messes that jerk about at 2 frames per second "sprites"?!?! Lol, you MUST be a Speccy fan. :) If you want to find out what REAL sprites (with like colour and all) look like and how they are supposed to move.... with that magical thing called scrolling, then you may want to check out a few titles such as Mayhem In Monsterland, Katakis etc.
I think an interesting comparison is Bruce Lee. Although it was ported from the Atari 8-bit, the C64 version is almost the same. The ZX Spectrum port has interestingly different graphics, but the gameplay is faithful I think. (I have NO IDEA what they were thinking with the BBC port.)
I don't know when the ZX Spectrum port for Bruce Lee was, though. The C64 version is from 1984, but maybe the ZX Spectrum port is from 1985 or something?
Wondering why Monty Mole was a different game on the C64.
It is strange, isn't it?
Different authors. Tony Crowther programmed the C64 version and Pete Harapp programmed the spectrum version. Mr Harraps version sold better therefore Monty on the Run was the same game on both the C64 and Spectrum versions.
Nice. Thanks for the explanation.
Because Tony Crowther (author of the C64 version) decided that making a mod of his own game "Son of Blagger" (from the previous year, 1983) would be a lot less work than creating a faithful port of the Speccy original :)
Much closer than 83, with a mix of some better on both machines. Remarkable how many developers mastered the speccie much sooner than the C64 - especially the SID! By 85 I'd say it'll be almost all C64...
Agreed. Not sure of being all C64 in later years, but yes, I also think the majority of the games will have a slight "edge" on C64 over the Speccy - especially in the "music department" and scrolling/sprites (C64 having the hardware sprite support that Speccy lacks).
It will be interesting though and I'll release the 1985 video very soon - already working on it.
Thanks for watching!
@@retrononame looking forward to it!
I would actually say the opposite. The C64 was designed somewhere around 81-82 with games like Pac-Man in mind. As you progress towards late 80s you clearly see programmers hitting limits with this eatly 80s text mode+sprites setup not the mention the very slow CPU. Spectrum's simple but relatively flexible bitmapped display given the CPU speed actually allowed for more graphics creativity in later Spectrum games. And there are many of them who also play better on Spectrum (Robocop, Myth, Captain Dynamo... just straight out of my head)
Here in the USA, developers got up to speed on the C64 very quickly. The Atari 400/800 were released in 1979, and the C64 had similar hardware (although with some interesting new capabilities, such as more sophisticated sprites and tile based color capabilities).
You can see Epyx pushing the new C64 capabilities in 1984's Summer Games, and to a lesser extent Impossible Mission. Ghostbusters used the C64 hardware to a respectable degree. Raid Over Moscow made good use of the C64 capabilities, and even some CRPGs like Questron took advantage of C64 features not available for Apple ][ (simply moving around in Questron is less sluggish than Ultima III-VI due to the use of character mode instead of bitmap mode).
1984 is still largely the era of Apple ][ and Atari 8-bit ports, but you start to really see C64 exclusives that take full advantage of the C64's specific hardware capabilities. For example, Wizard is basically similar to Jumpman, but it takes advantage of larger sprites and character mode color flashing and animation ... it would have been difficult to port satisfactorily to other systems.
I prefer Underwurlde on C64 because there is no colour clashing and there are fewer monsters 🤪 Otherwise the versions appear identical
They are very similar indeed.
I got info it was in 1984 from Lemon64 site. Checking the wikipedia now, it was 1984 for ZX and then C64 version 1985. So it seems you are correct about C64 coming out later, but it looks like it was not a 2 years difference.
It's very good port too. The games are very similar between the 2 systems.
This was before the days of most games being released for both systems, so these comparison videos miss a lot of the best games of the time - for example Pitstop II, Space Taxi and Realm of Impossibility never reached the Spectrum, whereas Knight Lore, 3D Starstrike and Technician Ted never reached the C64. Already you can see that the C64 was more capable with 2D games (which are what it was primarily designed for), but for 3D or '2.5D' the Spectrum probably wins. Worth saying that almost all the featured games originated on the Spectrum, a system which encouraged and rewarded originality and invention much more.
Fancy the spectrum not having the colour brown back then
The C64 had better sound than the ZX Spectrum.
i do think the spectrum looks better when doing theses simple basic graphics, probably because the colours are so vibrant, but once the c64 starts being more detailed and complex things will change. Game play wise they're pretty much the same, and the sound is also poor on both at this stage.
Are you kidding? Once C64 becomes "more detailed" you see the coarse graphics of C64: compare Exolon on C64 Vs ZX
@@b213videoz Exolon always looked much better on the c64, Compare Out of This World, or New Zealand Story. or look at the new Sonic the Hedgehog. Speccy can only dream of looking as good as theses games.
@HHR have you not played Sam's journey, Sonic the Hedgehog or Soul Force on the c64? You don't get that sort of detail on a speccy all it can do is mash colours together and then you can't see what anything is.
@HHR lol so in other words you don't know what you're talking about
@HHR the early days were a bit like that but that soon changed when the developers got better, and are still getting better. just look at a modern release to see what the c64 is capable of. doesn't matter when a game came out its still the same hardware, processor and limitations.
8 badly made games, sheesh.
Sorcery spectrum =Berkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk Caca
Are you OK? Looks like you faceplanted the keyboard halfway through that sentence :)
Sorcery sucks on every system, it's just not a great game, way overhyped..