*Warning* C64 Lack of Love on this board!

[K-J N.]

That title theme is excellent. Wasn't that Huelsbeck with Ramiro Vaca? And I really like the SID rendition of the stage 1 theme (up there with the better remakes of that tune)

Yes Chris Hülsbeck did the title screen, hi-score, ending, stage 6 and stage 8 tunes while Ramiro Vaca did the music for level 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, boss, game over and stage clear.

[MJR]

For real C64, it's certainly good idea to buy an MMC64; since now the tools for it such as dreamload (which you can download from http://retrohackers.org/ ) support multiple disk images and even saving, in some games. Not to mention the possibility to put the entire HVSC collection on your memorycard; to be browsed from your C64
retro replay cartridge is a good add, too.

[captain ahar]

[quote="MJR"][/quote]
i'm sorry, i just gotta say i love the avatar.

[MJR]

Thanks!

I painted it years ago when I was bored at work

penguins rule, especially when they're on uppers

[Ed Oscuro]

For real C64, it's certainly good idea to buy an MMC64; since now the tools for it such as dreamload (which you can download from http://retrohackers.org/ ) support multiple disk images and even saving, in some games. Not to mention the possibility to put the entire HVSC collection on your memorycard; to be browsed from your C64
retro replay cartridge is a good add, too.

Whoa, spendy. But this, this is just sick, even though pass-through technology is nothing new:

The latest expansion (only!) for the MMC64 is called MP3@64. It is an MP3 expansion module for the clock port connector featuring a DSP and a 20-bit D/A converter, enabling the Commodore 64 to play MP3 files in CD quality!

@_@

...actually, I think I'll just stick with my proper PC box, thanks though!

[MJR]

Yeah.. they also got their C64 on the net these days; there are some websites done with C64. Don't have links with me, but you can google em' up.
Also, on retrohackers site there is artillery game that you can play online with your friends. on a real c64. that is sick

talking about the costly, what I want is the SuperCPU for the c64, so I can play elite and stunt car racer on full framerate. It used to be on a price range of 300-500 euros, but maybe it's getting to come down.. it's on my must have list of nerdy hardware I must get.

[Ed Oscuro]

Yeah.. they also got their C64 on the net these days; there are some websites done with C64. Don't have links with me, but you can google em' up.
Also, on retrohackers site there is artillery game that you can play online with your friends. on a real c64. that is sick

This is actually very close to the state-of-the-art for MSX computers these days (MSX2 at the least, however - the fanbase is mainly in die Nederlands and elsewhere where people had those systems, as noted earlier). I've seen expansions allowing USB and modems to be used (and maybe even IDE hard drives, not sure). The MP3 player is a new one on me though.

[Shatterhand]

MSXs can play MP3s.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkp4eSZLsJg

There are also video players on MSX, but I don't know in what formats.

SCSI, IDE, USB, Ethernet cards, there's also the project called "joynet", where you can connect MSXs in a PPP network using the Joystick ports (and there are some games that support this, like a Tetrinet clone), multi-tasking Os (SymbOS and Uzix) , Internet browsers, FTP servers and clients, IRC clients, and more stuff.

Brazil, Netherlands and Spain are the countries with most MSX fans today AFAIK. We know there are a few in Japan too, but communication with them is usually difficulty.

[Super Laydock]

I think it's also the biggest MSX 1 game around (384 kb if I remember correctly,

Normally I am not the one to challenge you on your knowledge of the MSX platform but Hydlide III (MSX1 version of it) is on a 512 Kb (4Mb) cartridge...

I've seen expansions allowing USB and modems to be used

MSX had a modem released for it back then already. Did you know there´s even a "network" version of Super Laydock.*


*though I admit not knowing what this actually did for the game

[Shatterhand]

I thought Hydlide 3 was an MSX 2 game? I am not much into RPGs anyway

F1 Spirit Special could be played "networked" too. Never tried it though.


EDIT: Hydlide 3 got an MSX1 and an MSX2 release, so.. yeah, at 512 kb, it's the biggest MSX 1 game around


I know there are at least 3 titles that are 1mb big. Of course, there are also the Floppy Disk games, some of those are huge (Illusion City coming in no less than 11 disks..)

[Turrican]

I did get the impression that C64 became a cultural phenomenon in Europe, while the MSX is mostly remembered on shmups boards thanks to Konami and Compile.

Well, not quite - MSX computers had a huge impact in northern Europe (especially the Netherlands), South America, and to some degree Russia and parts of the Middle East.

Actually, I wasn't talking in terms of regional influence, but more about a legacy of franchises. But yeah, I stretched that comparison... MSX at least gave us Parodius and Metal Gear...

I spent more time playing Terra Cresta than Raiden III recently. Can't see this just as an optical illusion.

See, that doesn't make sense at all, because this is what I'd do. Where does Xenon II fit in???

You seem to think I should be particularly fond of Xenon II, probably because I'm a well known amiga lover around here. That means your vision is rather stereotypical.

And by the way, I'm still of the idea that an MSX fan trying to buy us with Space Manbow is like an Atari fan pretending 7800 games are for 2600, or an Amiga user selling AGA stuff for ECS. Play it clean!

[Shatterhand]

Actually, I wasn't talking in terms of regional influence, but more about a legacy of franchises. But yeah, I stretched that comparison... MSX at least gave us Parodius and Metal Gear...

And Puyo Puyo and Zanac and Aleste and in a certain way, Castlevania. And some people could even stretch it and say "Pro Evolution Soccer".

And by the way, I'm still of the idea that an MSX fan trying to buy us with Space Manbow is like an Atari fan pretending 7800 games are for 2600, or an Amiga user selling AGA stuff for ECS. Play it clean!

But that's the fun way to do it. You have to ignore everything bad your machine has, and just cheat as must as you can. If someone came and said "Gradius on MSX has shitty scroll", i'd say something like "Yay, shut up!"

[Super Laydock]

And some people could even stretch it and say "Pro Evolution Soccer".

Say what?

You´re not talking konami´s Soccer there are you now, are you...
That wouldn´t be "stretching" it...but something more dramatic and violent...

[Turrican]

Actually, I wasn't talking in terms of regional influence, but more about a legacy of franchises. But yeah, I stretched that comparison... MSX at least gave us Parodius and Metal Gear...

And Puyo Puyo and Zanac and Aleste and in a certain way, Castlevania. And some people could even stretch it and say "Pro Evolution Soccer".

Compile: yes. Castelvania: no.

The Famicom Disk System demands its own medals not to be stolen


I agree that this system war is just for fun though.

[Ed Oscuro]

And by the way, I'm still of the idea that an MSX fan trying to buy us with Space Manbow is like an Atari fan pretending 7800 games are for 2600, or an Amiga user selling AGA stuff for ECS. Play it clean! :P

Actually, whoever said I was an MSX fan? I know of virtually nothing on the vanilla MSX that I like. MSX2 and above nearly exclusively for me.

On the Radon II comment - well, you DID spend a bit of time defending it in the GB thread! On the other hand, the theme music is an awesome choice, and this little discussion introduced me to the Bomb the Bass "remix" of John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct (9 District 13), which is definitely awesome. No complaints here.

The Famicom Disk System demands its own medals not to be stolen :wink:

*high five*

OK, despite your love of collectathons and Radon II, you're back in the door as far as I'm concerned. ;)

[fl0w]

3 pages and still nothing from Minter?

"Revenge of the mutant camels" FTW!

[MJR]

..And batalyx, trippiest game I've ever seen!

*high-five!*

[Shatterhand]

from what I read, some people who worked in Konami's Soccer also worked in ISSD on SNES... which has some people who later would work in the Winning Eleven/PES ganes.

So.. erm...

Yes, I was just joking

I never got right the order of the Castlevania releases, so whatever. I've heard more than once that the MSX version had begun development before than any other version, but I always thought the arcade one was released first, then the MSX, and then the Famicom one...

[soniq-man]

Ok, this may be just my 5 cents, but I figured what the hell. Here my point of view on the C64 shoot 'em up scene of the late 80s and early 90s.

Two things come to mind right away:

1. The SID made you want to play some games just to hear the music.
2. The C64 was absolutely great for smooth scrolling and supported tons of multi-coloured sprites (ships, shots etc.).

So... you had this popular 8-Bit machine with lots of developer support and a huge user base, you had good hardware capable of providing great sounding, smooth games with loads of objects flying around. In my mind, a definitive machine for shoot em ups. Consoles at the time were great, but the home computer scene had that special "underground" feel to it. Plus, you'd find lots of very talented programmers getting their first jobs and pushing the machine to its limits. Looking back today, the games were on a par with NES titles with some much better sound and really great innovations, e.g. Wizball).

Here's my DEF list of C64 shoot em ups:

1. Wizball (psychadelic atmo, AMAZING tunes, very hookable)
2. Delta (again, fantastic sound, very smooth)
3. Armalyte (superb 2 player aciton and TONS of enemy ships!)
4. I.O. (cool design, very addictive)
5. Turrican (not as legendary as the Amiga version, but hey, it's Turrican!)
5. Uridium (Braybrooke's scroling legend)
6. Zamzara (Budget title, big action)
7. Slap Fight (yes, I loved the C64 version!)
8. Salamander (only great if you had a disk drive...)
9. Retrograde (late 64 greatness, very cool graphics)
10. Katakis (huge sound (again) and excellent R-Type clone)

Best,

Rafael

[MJR]

amen to that

I did complete retrograde, but had strange love/hate relationship to it, as it took hours and hours to complete, and it was at the same time tedious but addictive. Just had to get another crystal..

[ED-057]

what I want is the SuperCPU for the c64, so I can play elite and stunt car racer on full framerate. It used to be on a price range of 300-500 euros, but maybe it's getting to come down..

AFAIK, these are being made by hand by one guy, and he has been seriously behind keeping up with orders, for some years, unfortunately.

Since the system wars are on, I should mention that the Atari 8-bit troops are also equipped with IDE and SCSI controllers, and soon a 32K colors video upgrade board. If we're lucky someone will make a cool shmup for it.

[Shocky]

And Puyo Puyo and Zanac and Aleste and in a certain way, Castlevania. And some people could even stretch it and say "Pro Evolution Soccer".

And let's not forget SNATCHER!

And by the way, I'm still of the idea that an MSX fan trying to buy us with Space Manbow is like an Atari fan pretending 7800 games are for 2600, or an Amiga user selling AGA stuff for ECS. Play it clean!

[/quote]

Yeah, MSX1 and MSX2 should always be separated when comparing to C64. Then again, Space Manbow isn't even in the top-3 shmups for MSX1/2, or in the top-5 games... the fist that MSX1 used to crush C64 technical/quality-wise was of course "Konami MegaROM", cartridge games with game designs that are ageless and sometimes included nice extra like the SCC sound chip.

Some unmentioned C64 shooters that gave me good vibes: Zynaps & Cybernoid 1-2. Graphics and music were great for the time, but today these would probably suck royally with their crappy playability.. there was also a the Gradius/Nemesis port, but who in their right mind would want to play the worst (or second worst, don't know how GB version compares) version of the game?

Almost all C64 games look just too damn ugly nowadays, but luckily the fabulous SID tunes can be listened to separately. I think all the remaining C64-only gems (like Nemesis the Warlock) should be excavated and the good ideas stolen to produce some new state-of-the-art versions, like they did with Paradroid '90.

[Shatterhand]

I think Snatcher was made first for the PC-98 computer, and I heard the MSX port had some heavy compromises. Both versions still end in Act-2 though.(Unlike the SEGA-CD and later ones, which has an extra act). There are 2 theories for this, some people say that the big heads at Konami argued the ending in the original Snatcher was too depressing, so they wanted a better ending, so Kojima made an extra act and gave the game a "better" ending.

The other theory, which I bet it's the real one, is that the game was already waaaay past its deadline, so they just published the game without actually having finished it.

[Shocky]

I think Snatcher was made first for the PC-98 computer, and I heard the MSX port had some heavy compromises. Both versions still end in Act-2 though.(Unlike the SEGA-CD and later ones, which has an extra act). There are 2 theories for this, some people say that the big heads at Konami argued the ending in the original Snatcher was too depressing, so they wanted a better ending, so Kojima made an extra act and gave the game a "better" ending.

The other theory, which I bet it's the real one, is that the game was already waaaay past its deadline, so they just published the game without actually having finished it.

Hmm, right, according to Wikipedia the PC-88 version was released a month before the MSX version, but the differences aren't so radical. Seems like the original MSX version suffers from bad coding.

Yeah, that second theory about Act-3 sounds more credible, although when I played the Mega-CD version, Act-3 felt somewhat glued-on. I was happy with the ending of Act-2, but even though this new chapter kind of broke the rhythm of the game, it's still made of the same wonderful Kojima magic and to get more of that is good thing by default. It might be that Konami had already produced the game quite far when Kojima got more and more ideas and started to plan Act-3, but it was already too late, and they weren't willing to risk the project deadlines...

[mr_m0nks]

*Warning* C64 Lack of Love on this board!

thank god.

zoinks!

WinVICE seems to be where it's at for C64 emulation.

IRT Shatterhand's screenies:

Actually, some of those almost look better to me on the C64 (HORRIBLE GODAWFUL NONSQUARE PIXELS aside).

The TERRIBLE C64 PALETTE nearly ruins everything, although the MSX has awful Spectrum-style colors. Take the Yie-Ar screenshot - I think the distant gate looks better in the C64 version.

The 1942 screen - eh, the MSX version is playing in a tiny window, no screen scrolling. I'm not going to say anything about C64 programmers being better because I'm thinking of Sky Shark for NES (also runs in a window).

Outrun - which system actually runs it at a higher frame rate?

MSX:
Processor: Zilog Z80A running at 3.58 MHz

C64:
MOS Technology 6510 running at 1.02/0.99 MHz

HMM, I can't guess! However, the Commie had more memory as standard (64K standard, MSX machines had memory split between RAM and VRAM, although if you had a cartridge that more than nullfied the problem).

All that is almost made up for by the SID chip. SID-programmers bypassed the unreliable crystal oscillator and made some AMAZING TUNAGE happen.

POST ! I RESURRECT THEE!!!!!

sorry to be a pain but ive never heard of the SID having a crystal oscillator (in fact ive never heard of a crystal oscillator at all)

it was basically a small digitally controlled analog synth on a single chip with 3 multi waveform oscillators with osc sync, multimode filter, 3 ADSR's, and a rand modulation generator.

as some of you probably know it was also capable of playing digital samples, ok so this doesnt sound that impressive now but when you consider that on a C64 in 1982 you could playback a 4 bit digital sample for about £150 when a Fairlight CMI II digital synth with 8 bit sampling would see you back $25000!!! it still amazes me to this day what an amazing little machine the C64 was!

on a personal note i believe the SID chip is one of the greatest sound generating devices ever created, up there with the Minimoog and Gibson Les Paul/Marshall Stack.



and how many other videogame sound chips has anyone bothered building fully function synths out of???

http://www.sidstation.com/


ah the sweet sound of heavily distorted osc sync!!!!

[Shatterhand]

I think Snatcher was made first for the PC-98 computer, and I heard the MSX port had some heavy compromises. Both versions still end in Act-2 though.(Unlike the SEGA-CD and later ones, which has an extra act). There are 2 theories for this, some people say that the big heads at Konami argued the ending in the original Snatcher was too depressing, so they wanted a better ending, so Kojima made an extra act and gave the game a "better" ending.

The other theory, which I bet it's the real one, is that the game was already waaaay past its deadline, so they just published the game without actually having finished it.

I know this post is like a year old... but I just want to add that the guys who translated MSX Snatcher said its code is a huge mess, it seems they made the game in a script-language that would generate the MSX code, and everything is a real mess.

[Ex-Cyber]

sorry to be a pain but ive never heard of the SID having a crystal oscillator (in fact ive never heard of a crystal oscillator at all)

it was basically a small digitally controlled analog synth

Only the filtering is analog; the actual synthesis is digital. The "smoking gun" here is that it doesn't support a sine wave, which is easy to do with analog and hard to do with digital. However, people who have looked at the output on a scope also say that it very clearly looks to be DAC output.

[320x240]

Braybook was a genius, and Sensible Software had a great time with the machine too...

Braybrook, like Crowther, Fasoulas and the rest was so wastly overrated it wasn't even funny. Most of their games are built around some graphics-effect rather than a gameplay idea.

Truth be told, they didn't have that great of a programming provess either. My then fifteen year old brother used to laugh at their games, and considering the things he did back in 86/87 he was right. The only 'famous' programmer he respected was Chris Butler. He ripped off Butlers scrolling routine from 'Z', made it fullscreen, made it color-scroll, added sprites everywhere (i.e in the border etc), before finally making it into a split-screen, 8-way color-scroller without a single visible flicker - even with music turned on. I doubt this has ever been done on a C64 since but I can't be sure. It's to bad he stopped programming in early 87.

The Sensible boys had gameplay, or rather control, first, which made their games stand out from all the rest. Parallax was a bit boring though. Wizball was fun. Oh No was a little bit of fun too

[stuntman]

My then fifteen year old brother used to laugh at their games, and considering the things he did back in 86/87 he was right. The only 'famous' programmer he respected was Chris Butler. He ripped off Butlers scrolling routine from 'Z', made it fullscreen, made it color-scroll, added sprites everywhere (i.e in the border etc), before finally making it into a split-screen, 8-way color-scroller without a single visible flicker - even with music turned on. I doubt this has ever been done on a C64 since but I can't be sure. It's to bad he stopped programming in early 87.

20 years on, I'm sure some of the incredibly talented demo-sceners have managed to achieve effects close to that of your brother

Braybrook, like Crowther, Fasoulas and the rest was so wastly overrated it wasn't even funny. Most of their games are built around some graphics-effect rather than a gameplay idea.

Truth be told, they didn't have that great of a programming provess either.

Prowess? Don't be too hard on the early C64 programmers. They developed the early techniques which were building blocks for later coders. As for Fasoulas, I thought (then and now) the presentation of Delta was just about flawless. And being drafted for Finnish military service perhaps denied us all of the 8-bit greatness he might have achieved.

[320x240]

20 years on, I'm sure some of the incredibly talented demo-sceners have managed to achieve effects close to that of your brother

No doubt they could if they tried. But would they try something as game-related?

Prowess? Don't be too hard on the early C64 programmers. They developed the early techniques which were building blocks for later coders. As for Fasoulas, I thought (then and now) the presentation of Delta was just about flawless. And being drafted for Finnish military service perhaps denied us all of the 8-bit greatness he might have achieved.

The best Fasoulas game was the Amiga one he never could get published.