C64 vs. Atari 800XL - 8 games from 1986
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- Опубліковано 10 вер 2024
- Hello and welcome to the fourth episode of Commodore 64 versus Atari 800XL games.
In this video, 8 games released in 1986 (with 2 exceptions - noted below) are shown running on both machines so you can see how different (or similar) they were.
PLEASE NOTE : I, again, had difficulties finding relevant, quality games released for both machines in 1986, so I made 2 exceptions here (as far as I know).
1. Beach Head 2 was released in 1985 for C64 (not 1986)
2. Kikstart was released in 1985 for C64 (not 1986)
Thanks for watching and let me know in the comments section below who "wins".
And, of course, see you in the next RetroNoName episode
70s vs 80s hardware. Atari was impressive for its time.
Just bought an 800xl had a c64 back in the day, then Amiga, C64 was certainly an awesome machine
The Atari International Karate *has* Rob Hubbard music on it. They are turned off in this video for some reason. Pokey sounds very close to SID in this game, in ways. The in game tune drops a channel for some reason when the sound effect sample comes, however on the Atari. The demo is as normal.
its nigh on identical, you are right. The versions look almost identical in every way, largely because the late Archer McClean knew his stuff and was a genius on both machines. The disappointing one is green beret, could have been better but it narks my why Atari never fixed their sprite system, it 8 pixels wide. Should have been 24 or 42, and split int 16 or even better 32 sprites. They could have fixed this with the XL machines and released an upgrade cartridge on the older machines. Sure that must have been possible. Plus a base 16 colour GFX mode
I think the original version of Leaderboard on the C64 looked basically the same as the Atari version - no trees, just polygonal land and water.
Sid chip on C64 was and still is pretty special
It was more advanced but I still prefer the pure electronic tones of pokey. Sid did - and still does - sound like a buzzy battle of high pitched bassoons and clarinets fighting!
Some body compared SID to the sounding of a chainsaw 😁🤣🤪
...I disagree but the comparision is giggleworthy.
As for me SID sounds majestically and like nothing else in the realm of 8-bits, I'd give POKEY the second prize.
Sound effects were poop.
@@b213videoz SID maybe the best Synth chip ever used on 8bit machines but Pokey, even if it was an earlier chip was the future. PCM capabilities, soft synth and a number of filters could easily transform the character of the chip.
I get that most people ignore the East European scene for the Atari 8bit but a brief search in the archive is enough to see how advanced Pokey was.
I love the Atari computers and always wanted one duing my C64 days. On reflection I'm glad I had the C64 over the Atari but the Atari had some gorgeous looking games and it also ran faster too for games like Rescue on Fractulas. Given the gap from when the Atari to C64 released it's amazing Atari could hold it's and even outperform the C64 in some ways. Overall though the C64 comes out on top I would say but I would have still enjoyed having this great machine
Lol the guy goes flying when you crash on Atari kickstart
Thanx, for bringing back a lot of good Memorys. Kind regards from Vienna/ Austria, Chris.
Thank you!
I'm glad you liked the video!
I first saw IK for atari 800xl in this video and for a moment I thought it was the C64 version, both versions are practically identical except of course for the Sid of the C64.
Both versions of IK are fantastic. Very close in playability.
As you said, the main difference is the music.
Thanks for watching!
Yes. Keep in mind the 800XL version can also have music playing during gameplay. Toggling back and forth between graphics in this vid, the 800XL has better colors and resolution of Sydney. Maybe the colors (purple sky etc) for C64 is from PAL/NTSC issue.
I had IK on disc for the 800XL. The music was ace. Also far faster than the C64 version due to the 1.79MHz clock speed v the 1MHz on the C64
@@gamedoutgamer c64 wins easy . Atari was just garbage
C64color palette is garbage.
C64 can be defeated ;) But it's not easy. Atari has fairly complex co processors and slightly faster CPU. A flight simulator might run better on Atari. Oh. And the colour palette is on Atari's favour. I've seen some Atari demos which show off the capabilities. Some of them would be hard to sort out on C64. SID sound is overwhelming... but then again, AtariXL can do 16bit PCM sound, I hear??
Yes it can while moving complex graphics on screen. SID may be the best synth chip but it was a dead end. Pokey...even if it came earlier was the future.
leaderboard golf - i still played that game in 2007 on my work laptop and emulator :)
Interesting video, never owned either machine or played the games. From your video the 800XL had the better visuals,
The Atari has a better palette with 128 or 256 colors, depending on the screen mode, compared to the 16 colors on the Commodore so it can look really great. I find some of the C64 colors quite drab. Both systems were limited to about 4 colors but could get around that in different ways. The Commodore can display more of those 16-color colors although it was limited to each 8x8 cell. The Atari can display more of those 128/256 colors, although it is limited to each scan line.
@thecouchtripper SID always sounds muffled. Pokey sounds cleaner and was used in many arcade cabinets so many early arcade ports sounded better on the Atari.
@thecouchtripper Pokey sounds clearer than SID, since it's purely a digital device. SID has analog filters, which means it will never sound as clear as Pokey.
@@aaronbrowne7862yes I always preferred pokeys pure tones. The c64 always sounded to me like high pitched bassoons and clarinets fighting though a blown out speaker. But it’s subjective of course.
@@datacipher or a cybernetic cat
The only true way to compare what each machine can do is by their demo scenes, and I still believe the Atari 8 bit is better. It’s faster, more colorful, has better scrolling, and more flexibility. And let’s not forget it came out before the 80’s.
These videos are not really meant to compare the quality of hardware, just to compare how the same games looked on both machines.
Thanks for watching!
@@retrononame I know.
Just wanted to point out however, that the C64 has yet to beat NUMEN running on a 1084K Atari 8 bit computer.
@@ecernosoft3096 c64 fucks Atari easy
@@ecernosoft3096 both were great and did things better than the other
Overall you'd say the c64, Ninja looks smoother on the atari (never played either) and never played BMX simulator or leaderboard on tbe Atari...
Kick-start on the 800xl was great. The C64 version not so much!
Hmmm C64 version was awesome. The Atari version didn't feel right
I hate to break it to you, but both versions were good...your preferences are based on your nostalgia for the specific port.
didn't know magic knight was in the Atari, that's cool.
Why did you turn off the music (while game play) in the Atari version of International Karate? It had an excellent Pokey version by Rob Hubbard himself.
Also BMX simulator had a Pokey version of the music in the title screen by David Whittaker.
It depends on the version (disk, cassette, rev...)
The Atari's palette was slightly better and it ram faster, though not always evident. The C64 was a better machine. On another channel an Atari fan boy said the Atari was far far far better. For its age it was an awesome machine. C64 programmers were a bit lazy, until 90's they did not really know how to get the best out of the machine.
"Slightly better" doesn't really describe the actual difference between those two systems' color palettes. The C64 , as a newer architecture had better Color and Memory management but the system's small color palette was a huge weakness resulting to the familiar "dirty purple-grey" look found in almost all its games (with some few exceptions of course) and the unavoidable psychedelic Speccy-like coloring of hires pictures. The same monotonous pattern was also true for C64's sound. Even if SID was really capable and unique for the era it quickly became obvious that almost all tunes were composed by the same "instruments" and bass. On top of that the same sounds were porn music industry's go to style. The C64 had a far better software library for many good reasons. The A8 was more difficult to program but as the homebrew scene keeps showing us, it's powerful specs allow the programs to deliver titles that look superior on the system than any other early /mid 80s computer. (I.e. prince of Persia, total eclipse, pang, Bomb Jack, Stunt car racer, guard/tangent, Yoomp, Space Harrier etc.) . In addition to that the system's large color palette, fast cpu and Pokey's hybrid nature allow the playback of video with pcm sound in a way that no other 8bit machines can achieve.
TIL there was an 800XL version of Green Beret. But it seems very fast ! Is it a PAL NTSC emulator thing?
You were probably better off not knowing about it... The Atari version was an absolute disgrace, shockingly bad, if it was 30 years later, you'd be waiting for a series of patches to fix it.
International Karate - You never hear them in the video, but the C64 version also had digitized sounds of the fighters grunting when hit.
Leaderboard - That's actually Leaderboard: Executive Edition for the C64. The original Leaderboard was the same as the Atari version, just with slightly different colors.
Beach Head 2 - The C64 version is supposed to have digitized sounds when the guys get shot, either a scream, "Medic!" or "I'm hit!"
The Atari version of International Karate also had digitised sound samples from Enter The Dragon.
Atari IK version is faster
So basically Commodore had better colours and much much better sound
Atari had 256 colours that were bright, not dull and washed out. Its pokey sound effects didn't sound poop. The pokey IMO was better suited to oriental music in particular. Never liked the SID's muffled uncompressed and empty sounds.
Commodore Amiga? sure....
Atari is percentage behind I get it. 800xl had TWO cartridge slots for copying stuff
When it gets to late 86 and 87 you will have to compare the early ST games to the C64 as the A8 stopped getting as many games. That will be fun because by that time the developers could make the C64 do pretty much anything they wanted and they didn't yet know how to do much on the ST. This usually made C64 versions a little better game-play wise or at least didn't suffer much in the graphics department.
Agreed. everyone thought that in 1988 the 16 bit ports of games buried the 8 bit versions, but that wasn't the case. There are loads of C64 games that, whilst visually inferior to Atari ST and even some early Amiga versions, play much better than them. Look at Last Ninja 2 and Armalyte for example
ST was a pile of crap: no hardware sprites at all, pathetic AY3 "sound chip". Soundwise Atari 800 is far better than Atari ST.
THE A8 machines never really stopped getting games. That was true for Europe. Graphic wise people tend to base their points on the "immature" period of the Atari machine. Unfortunately Atari tactics and competition allowed the machine to reach software maturity after its commercial life.
1200xl took it to new level.
I prefer Ninja on Atari. Quicker and the music has more impact.
I hated and i still hate with a passion that BMX simulator. Horrid game.
I liked it :)
Never was any good at it mind you, but did like pedalling around like a maniac.
@@retrononame i had more fun stamping the tape into the ground.
Haha
Fair enough :)
I love the game. Sometimes I just played the first level to improve my time
Nice cherry-picking there. Not just finding specific games that look better in C-64 (I didn't see Ballblazer or Rescue on Fractalis -- oh, that's right, c64 wasn't capable enough for those games), but also way out of context. The Atari 800xl is just a slightly dumbed-down version (except for the memory) of the Atari 800, designed YEARS before the C64. I've never understood the comparisons. Where are the Apple ][ comparisons to the Atari 800? LOL. Also, by 1986, the Atari 8 bit line was dying, as it was at that point long-in-the-tooth, and the user base of the El Cheapo C64 was thriving -- so the latest games were more likely to target the Crapadore 64. That race to the bottom is what killed the video game industry at the time. So, yay C64 and all you posers who came late to the game (pun intended), a day late and a dollar short. So happy those days are long gone.
So much salt! The price point of the C64 was a marketing strategy that worked well in its favour, so that will not feel hurtful for the c64 crowd. Regarding cherry-picking, what games would you choose that is better on the 800xl than the C64 or is more comparable on both systems?
@@perholmstrom7050 I wouldn't bother. It's not a relevant comparison between the two systems. Read my salty point again. ;)
and BAM! School yard fight!
@@perholmstrom7050 Mr Do, Rescue on Fractalus, Spy vs Spy (about the same), The Eidolon, Dropzone (I found out today that Archer Maclean died last year. RIP)
Both computers had their strengths and weaknesses but making up childish names for the C64 is something I would expect to have heard from a teenager back in the 80's.
Atari 800 was issue in 1979…. I call it the Apple II killer .
Until 1984 was the best computer.
Actually the c64 was very short : after one or 2 years during the C64 had better version generally speaking than the atari 800 then came the Amiga and ST who were like a weapons of massive destruction compare to the C64 who became a computer for rubbish when amiga and st were available in the market.
we all dumped them for a pc lol
We did.
Got my first PC (286 VGA) in May 1991.
Color better on Atari. SID chip C64 better than Atari. Graphics wise I prefer C64.
Except for the music in C64, IK versions look and sound almost identical...this called my attention
Another game where these two systems look and sound very similar is Bruce Lee.
IK on the Atari also had music by Rob Hubbard himself. Not as good as the SID version but excellent for Pokey standards. Unfortunately in this video the music is turned off.
Compare the Sydney background in IK and you'll see the 800 version has much better color and slightly higher resolution. C64 has purple sky, off purple water, sail boat looks worse, etc etc. Might be a PAL/NTSC issue unsure. Pause at 1:44 and use right and left arrow keys to switch back and forth. There is IK with music during gameplay on the 800 and it sounds great.
@@robert2098 Yes. The Pokey version is not far off however.
Awesome video as always. The C64 was the best 8-bit American game system after the 2600. by far!
With the exception of just a few games after 1985, there just was not enough $$ in it to put as big an effort into the A8 versions as the C64. For example, they could have put more colors in the hi-res mode on the A8 using PMGs and could have made a 3 channel pokey version of the tune in Spellbound, but just didn't.
for a £3 game that would sell tiny amounts compared to the speccy or c64?
There wasn't much difference between the systems, it really depended on the programmer's ability and time, and Atari's dev tools and cooperation. Green Beret for the Atari was one of the worst conversions ever and a truly terrible example of what the Atari could do, same with Beachhead 2. There are some truly impressive Atari games out there. In the hands of a skilled programmer the graphics could be awesome, and the POKEY sound chip was as good as the SID. Remember the Atari 8bit came out in 1979, 3 years before the C64.
The Atari colors are so dark and dull. Or is it just the video?
Not sure what you mean but probably the video. The Atari had a much more vast palette and much brighter colors. C64 biggest weakness was the ugly ugly palette - it just didn’t have pleasant or very bright strong colors. Mind you it had its advantages over the Atari as well.
@@datacipher not sure why you are not sure what I mean, the question is self explanatory. What part don't you understand exactly?
@@datacipher The C64 colors appeared more saturated in NTSC-land. On PAL displays, everything was notably more muted. Makes sense, I guess, since the C64 colors were picked based on NTSC appearance.
@@SChristianCollins no. I live in NTSC land, it's the colors themselves. I first paid attention to it back when an artist friend - who became a pro artist later, would come to my house after school and we'd take turns making Dazzle Draw pictures on my Apple. He was endlessly fascinted by the very bright colors....and would remark how much better it was than his c64. Confused, I said: but it's 16 colors, c64 has 16 colors...
He pointed out that they were so much brighter and he just couldn't create what he wanted.... I looked at the c64 colors and realized what he was saying...such a stark difference between the two, and the difference in our work on both was very striking!! The c64 would have looked...incredible if it had had the colors that the Apple 2 or Atari were capable of using. I've never looked into whether there was a technical reason for the specific color choices.
twitter.com/BarrySkellern/status/1443485614301761537?s=20&t=Ydz2S40FcfT63SrGCRV0ug
@@datacipher Your Apple also had a dedicated monitor, whereas the C64 had to work with televisions via composite cable. Too much color saturation and the colors bleed (AFAIK NTSC was worse than PAL in this regard). You could always adjust your TV's color saturation to get more vibrant colors, assuming you didn't mind the aforementioned increase in color bleeding. While the C64's palette is undoubtedly less saturated than other systems, its appearance--at least on the NTSC televisions I had when I was younger--was noticeably more vibrant than the palette shown in the Twitter thread you referenced. Orange looked properly orange, and the yellow glowed, etc.
Beach head 2 was a big let down on the xl , I really expected the speech etc , such was life in gaming back then
The Atari can do speech - see Bezerk and Ghostbusters.
wow Atari800 seems to be better than C64
3:35 That's not Leaderboard it's Leaderboard Executive Edition. You're comparing the C64 version of Leaderboard Executive against original Leaderboard on the Atari. Original version of leaderboard on the C64 is still better than the Atari version though.
Atari the way
Maybe some Atari experts could tell me how colours could be used on an Atari 800 as it seems only really Ninja and International Karate had similar sprites and backgrounds to each other. Spellbound seemed to have a very limited palette yet multicolour sprites compared to c64. The Atari seemed to be able to do scan line raster colour changes but it seems c64 could simply have all colours on screen (obviously with its own attribute limitations). What were the limitations of the 800xl in this regard?
The Atari palette counts 256 colors in total with monochrome HW sprites. The number of colors on screen depends on the graphic mode . I believe that 4,7-16 colors were the popular choices with homebrew games changing everything we knew about color limitations of the platform.
A great example of the Atari's abilities (Display List interrupt) is "Time Slip" with more than 40 colors.(btw C16 also has a great colorful port of this game).
By '86 the A8's were getting low quality, low cost ports from C64. Almost always a game will be best on the native platform it was developed. IK is a great and quality release for A8. Spellbound looks cheap and even bad on A8. Unsure about gameplay. Green Beret and Commando were also bad ports. At this point it was about cost vs predicted return on investment, not about what the hardware could do.
The Atari had a dedicated additional graphics processor. It could even be user-programmed. So at the end of each scan line, you could have the processor run a few quick instructions, time enough to change the contents of color registers (color indirection at work), and so basically create all the colors on one screen, but only a limited subset on them on one scan line respectively. The numbers of colors possible on one scan line depended on the graphics mode, but using the display list program, you could define your own graphics modes with changes of pixel size and color palette every scan line. This was impossible on the C64. Some assembler coders went even further and changed color modes mid-scan line (while the electron beam was on its way from the left to the right), but this required tight (manual) timing and didn't leave much room for other software to run. And it tended to create visible flicker of some sort.
Have to give each round to the C64, only international karate come close but was out done with crisper sounds and music.
W grach z tego okresu widać już wyraźnie 16 - kolorową przewagę c64 i lepsze sprite'y. Dziwi mnie, skoro World Karate na Atari wyświetla 16 kolorów, to dlaczego w innych grach były tylko 4? I jeszcze jedna uwaga do autora jeśli chodzi o World Karate. Na Atari również można słuchać muzyki w czasie gry. Reasumując, Commodore bezdyskusyjnie wygrywa, ale np.w Spellbound muzyka to jakieś zdzieranie tynku. Tak bywa często z SID'em, jeśli oczywiście ktoś nie umiał odpowiednio wykorzystać tego znakomitego układu.
Z Atari trzeba było się bardziej postarać, c64 miało słabą paletę kolorów, ale prosta do wykorzystania w trybie hi res. Sprajtow można było nawrzucać ile chciałeś, a na Atari …widać nawet po dzisiejszych grach, że wymagają więcej RAMu niż 64kb z uwagi na spritey programowe. Zresztą Jack Tramiel uśmiercił 8bit Atari bo cała para poszła w ST właśnie około 1986, choć oficjalnie tego nie powiedział. W ogóle Atari było niechlujne i nie dbało o swoje produkty, wypuszczali masę sprzętu typu Atari 7800, a uśmiercali po chwili.
C64 wins every game with International Karate a draw (they're pretty identical)
Oh dear. 64 wins every time, both graphics and sound. 😀
Sorry, not the case with Ninja, but you might be right with the rest.