Subliminal Extacy
#03
01 апреля 2001 |
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Is C64 Better Than Speccy?
Is C64 Better Than Speccy? by Factorб That's THE question. Just about every Speccy man says:"It isn't! What crap! C64 suxx!" Yes, C64 was made in the same year like Speccy, in 1982 by Commodore Business Machines. Its "father" - like Speccy's Sir Clive is Sam Tramiel (who left CBM then for Atari). CBM had to make a concurrent product to Sinclair's Spectrum. It was a successful turn, a C64 was very popular as much as Speccy was. Quite every game which exists on Speccy, exists on C64. Now, in 2000, it's a PC era. Everybody has next to their 8-bit computer some Pentium. Shit, but PC helps a lot with Internet, data storage, gfx converting, etc. There is the scene. Every computer has its own subscene. Speccy, C64, ... Amiga, PC. Basically, C64 has a much bigger scene than Speccy. It's a fact. It's the most widespread 8-bit computer in Western Europe. The C64 scene exists also in the U.S. and Australia. What about Speccy? Poor scene in England, Middle Europe and quite big in Russia. Not outside of Europe. Do you know any non -European demo group? Me neither. Why? The C64 is better? Hmm, let's compare some technical data: C64 Speccy ---------------------------------------------------------------- Processor 6510 @ 0.9MHz ;-) Z80A @ 3.SMHz (wow!) RAM 64K 128K (wow!) Graphics 320x200 1бcolors, 256x192 8colors+bright,attibutes attributes no gfx hardware :-/ 160x200 1бcolors, multicolor gfx hardware for sprites, smooth scroll, etc. (gfx chip @ 17MHz) Sound SID (Зchn, 8oct, AY (Зchn, 8oct, one type of instrument synth) tone) (it rulez!) C64 Speccy ---------------------------------------------------------------- Speed slow without using faster than C64 without using gfx hw gfx wh ;-) Disk original Commodore various - much faster than C64 vvverrry sllowww :/ IDEбЧ, max.8GB HDD IDE, better specifications So, the Spectrum wins just about in every category. C64 is better in gfx, but when you don't count a special gfx chip for hardware sprites, scrolling and so on, the faster machine is Speccy. As an example, look at the game R-Type on both computers. What a cool game on Speccy! All the levels from the original arcade machine, super playability, everything is moving. But the movement is ensured by attributes, because of an attribute colour collision fault. On C64 it's crap. It's smooth, fast, with music, but there is a lack of levels, it's in 160x200 (classic C64 "gaming" video mode). Some sprites don't move, some monsters are so crappy.. You must laugh when you know the Speccy version :-) In this way Spectrum won. Another game: Turrican II. On Spectrum an attribute gfx, everything looks rather comic. No in-game music, the playability is low. On C64 it's a really good game. Very nice sprites in 160x200 mode, everything is fast, smooth and colourful. Ok, the game comparison is about fifty -fifty (There are good and bad games and conversions on both computers). Now, some applications. Fore example, Art Studio, which is on both computers. On Speccy (the original) it's nearly the best gfx editor. Cool, fast, nice user interface, easy to use. On the C64 there are two versions. One is identical to the Speccy version. It's in 320x200 and uses attribute gfx. The second (Art Studio II) is in 160x200, you can draw multicolour pics. The main thing you notice is that both C64 versions are sllooww as hell. It's caused by the main processor's timing. 0.9MHz is really -not much- :-0 So the Spectrum wins. Demos. On Spectrum, often used is a monochrome dithered gfx, some effects are really in real time. For example Extreme's REFRESH. Nice demo with lots of dithered realtime 3D objects which are "in" nowadays. The AY sounds nicely playing a weird techno tune. C64 demos are also superb. Colourful effects, vectors, attribute plasmas... But many effects are precalculated (because of that "speedy" processor). The SID sounds really cool and it's one of the better things of the C64. Take a look at Byterapers' demo Unsound Minds. Many effects were firstly done on C64 and then used in demos on Speccy, e.g. attribute plasmas were on C64 somewhere in 1992. We can say, the Speccyers "copy" old C64 effects. It isn't 100% true, of course :-) So, let's say C64 won in demos. Storage. A special category I need here. The Speccy hasn't got it's own disk system as the C64 has. There are +Ds, Opus Discoverys, MBO2s, D40/80s, Betadisks, but none of them are standards (except Betadisk, but it's Russian :-) don't count on it now) A different system - different options. What can you do with one, you can't do the same thing with another disk system. So there is a big mess on the Spectrum's side. The C64 has from the beginning had its own disk system - The 1541 disk drive. It's 5,25" single sided !damn! slow system with crappy filesystem. Loading of fucking 5OKB takes about 2 minutes (!) using system DOS. The demos use their own turbo loading routines to break this handycap. You can use a turbo routine installed in a ROM cartridge, so there's not a problem. It can do something while loading, play music, use gfx chips. It's quite good. It's the one and only system, everyone owns it, so some special loading problems or other is unknown here. There are also harddisks. On Speccy an IDE interface by PVL and Tritolsoft, which is very powerful in connection with an MBO2+. It's still in development, but it rocks! Tritol has connected a CD-ROM and a CDRW drive (!) to it successfully. On 64 - I know about one interface called IDEбЧ. As I read about it, it's not so fast, has limited FAT, limited size (8GB) of drive. So I think Speccy wins again! Sound. AY vs SID. The C64's SID (Sound Interface Device) is a really lovely thing and there are over 12,000 tunes for it. AY is a really good sound chip, but it doesn't reach the quality of SID. There are lot of tunes available for it, but SID wins. Scene. On Speccy there is a big lack of demogroups. Yes, there are lots of them in ex-ussr, but in Europe? Let's count: Raww Arse, Hooy-Prg, KЗL (they do nothing), ESA (dead at this time), ... insert the rest I forgot here. On the C64, there are lots of groups, really lots. Scandinavia, Denmark, Germany, The Netherlands, France, Poland... They are active and they do demos, diskmags, musicdisks and so on. In this case, C64 wins and Speccy plays the role of an outsider. Please, don't slap me if I forgot the diskmags written in russian language. I don't count them because they are unreadable by most of people outside of ex-ussr states. So C64 wins in this case. So, the result of our "non-official-quite-lame-comparison" is: C64 is as good as Spectrum :-) In some cases Speccy is better, in others, C64 is better. So, let's keep 8-bits alive (...'til they are, because the scene is the main thing which keeps them above the water surface). Don't say "my type of computer is better than yours", don't start the forgotten "cold war" between 8-bit users ;-) c ya Factorб
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