Help! Need to prove the Speccy's worth
A friend of mine who used to own a C64 (well, alright, not a friend, an aquaintance ;) ) was saying how good Dropzone was, and how it proves that the C64's games are better than the Spectrums. Leaving aside the fact that even if Dropzone (a Defender type game) has no equal on the Spectrum, then that only represents one genre and not a complete "C64 games are better than Spectrum games" proof, can anyone tell me what horizontal games (if any) on the Spectrum are better than Dropzone on the C64?
I don't play these type of games, so I can't really say myself, but I did get him to try R-Type on the Spectrum, as even I've played (and been impressed by) that, but he said Dropzone was better, although that was after about twenty seconds of R-Type, so he'd not seen any impressive bosses or weapons (we were talking by phone, and he was using the emulators on his PSP, so I couldn't take him through the first level of R-Type).
So can anyone name any Spectrum horizontal shooter games to show him that put Dropzone in the shade?
I don't play these type of games, so I can't really say myself, but I did get him to try R-Type on the Spectrum, as even I've played (and been impressed by) that, but he said Dropzone was better, although that was after about twenty seconds of R-Type, so he'd not seen any impressive bosses or weapons (we were talking by phone, and he was using the emulators on his PSP, so I couldn't take him through the first level of R-Type).
So can anyone name any Spectrum horizontal shooter games to show him that put Dropzone in the shade?
Post edited by ewgf on
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(it worked for me at school)
(penetrator is the unrivalled king, of course, but i'm afraid, your friend wouldn't be able to realize it in a few minutes. so don?t throw pearles before swine... :-) )
If tries to fob you off with the likes of Elite or Mercenary, just laugh back at him very loudly.:lol:
Sadly smooth scrolling wasn't the Speccys strongest point.
We don't need a C64 emulator on our machine.
You could argue the toss until doomsday about games on either platform.
The C64 was graphically superior - on paper. It seldom looked it. Better sound and more memory but the games never seemed that innovative.
The Spectrum however is a design classic and one that had a marked impact on UK industry as a whole.
Oh, and if there'd been no Spectrum, there'd arguably be no wonderful RARE games today...
Although monochrome, the graphics were very good and smooth. Very playable once you have spent 10 minutes on it.
A vague description, but does anyone remember it? It's been linked here a couple of times in the past. That would beyond doubt silence your Commodore loving chum.
[Edit: Aha found it! Except no mention of the Amstrad which was rubbish anyway.
http://www.alfonsomartone.itb.it/fztsmo.html. And the forum link to it: http://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/showthread.php?t=8065 ]
Forget the shooters, show him something like STARSTRIKE II (something that uses a lot of processing power, rather than hardware scrolling). Then when he's down, stamp on his bollocks by comparing TURBO ESPRIT.
:)
http://www.alfonsomartone.itb.it/fztsmo.html
(Yet, horrendously loooong! But it does prove a few points ... ;-))
Ooh, I don't know... that came out first on the C64 and was absolutely superb.
A better one is Paradroid - an excellent C64 game that was reborn in an even better form on the Spectrum as Quazatron.
The thing is, he's showcasing a game that really shows off what the C64 was good at, fast scrolling with lots of small sprites and decent sound fx. (Although I will say that as a similar-ish type of game, JetPac is equally as good as Dropzone, if anything it is more addictive).
As was said above, ask him to show you a game approaching anything near Carrier Command on the C64, or Starstrike 2. Hell as we're talking Realtime Games get him to show you a game that played a decent version of the arcade game Star Wars (a great arcade shoot 'em up if ever there was one) as well as Starstrike 1 did.
Or you could make him cry by putting The Staff of Karnath (the best Ultimate C64 game) next to Knight Lore or Alien 8.
That wont work, he'll just come back with Head over Heels.
Which is only good on the C64 because it looks like a Spectrum game
True but proof that the C64 was capable of it and I guess that means Ultimate were not up to the task of coding Knightlore or Alien 8 for the c64 (or too lazy).
The C64 had that! I am well and truly gob-smacked!
well, i´ve checked C64 dropzone and it´s not bad... yet, i see no point in playing it today, as the snes version of the same game seems to me to be simply better. in contrast, i believe, you cannot replace jatpac or lunar jetman with any better version of the same. they´re unique, they´re speccyfique.
(typical...)
:wink:
I'm sure I read that Ritman had to change some of the rooms on the C64 version of Head Over Heels because the CPU wasn't quite fast enough to cope with them.
Edit - Here's the link: http://www.jonritman.f2s.com/games/hoh/index.htm
Still, it's pretty much the pinnacle of isometric 3D gaming, regardless of platform.
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0012757
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0013118
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0017189
i really do believe, there is a specific speccy-feeling of games you hardly find elsewhere, being probably largely due to specific speccy?s limitations in graphics, combined with other relatively strong aspects of the machine.
(i believe, specific speccy games are less coin-op like than e.g. C64's, what saves them from being perceived as just poorer versions of somethig else.)yet, i guess, there?d be also something like specific C64-ness, which the best games display, showing C64 as a unique machine. (it cannot be just smooth scrolling, which were the arcades better in even then, already...)
perhaps, i should ask elsewhere, but still - could those of you who know C64 as well name some such games and/or directlly their unparalalled qualities?
I had a shot of the C64 version and it is quite an impressive achievement and runs surprisingly fast although there's noticable slowdown if there's more than a couple of sprites on screen. That and the sound isn't as good as the Spectrum's. I really don't think Knightlore (which has some slowdown issues even on the speccy) could have been happily converted to the C64.
Knightlore was the first incarnation of Ultimate's iso engine and I think they managed to improve on it as time went on.
I believe the issue with Ultimate was not that they were too lazy to convert to the C64 but that they insisted the conversion be done with the same engine doing things the same way, which the C64 could not hope to reproduce at the same performance. C64 isos cheat with sprites mingled with regular graphics which can be made to work with many (but not all) iso rendering. At least that's what I understand from C64 folk.
There is an emerging 3d isometric game engine written for a C compiler on the Oric that looks to be: 1- a *real* iso engine and 2- quite good. That is also a 1MHz 6502 machine and I'd be interested in seeing how quick it is on that. If the engine turns out to be as good and flexible as it seems to be, I'd be interested in porting it to z80 machines and including it in z88dk if acceptable to the author. Looks nice :-)
Write games in C using Z88DK and SP1
they both had class and shite games in equal measure.
that's what i believe, could you recommend a handful of C64 ones displaying according to you a special "poetics" of that machine?
Sentinel, Gunship, Uridium, Commando (just for the music), Warhawk (also just for the music), Paradroid, Pirates!, The great giani sisters, Last ninja series, International Karate +, Manic Mansion
Serveral available on other formats but 'at home' on the c64 (for me).