by Harvey » Sat Mar 10, 2012 2:07 pm
I find it strange that people can get so worked up over a Vic-20. When I had a good look at some Vic-20 games running, at a Christchurch address - I was very unimpressed. Now, if you were to compare the same sort of games running on an Atari 400 - can you tell which one is better?
I did eventually buy a C-64, and got the essential AR-II cartridge, disk drive - and sampled the best of the various C-64 games. Everyone should know by now - the difference between the Atari computers and the C-64. The C-64 had a fixed colour palette, whereas you could choose your colours on the Atari. The C-64 had more sprites available, that were independent, whereas the Atari had a limited sprite system - and they were essentially single-coloured, whereas the C-64's were multicoloured. You had to perform programming tricks on the Atari to make the sprites there, more versatile, and to make them appear to be multicoloured. I believe that the design of the Atari 400/800 hardware were done around 1980? Amiga owners/users will know that Jay Miner was responsible for the chip design. With the C-64 design done 2? years later - it is no wonder it had an edge over the Ataris. Tramiel's takeover of Atari - led to the 65XE and 130XE design, or rather re-design - in which there was no major redesign done at all - that is the problem when you stay compatible with the old software. The XE's show that they had cheaper manufacture in mind, because anyone knows that the 800XL had the nicest keyboard to touch type with, and it has nice solid construction overall. I've owned an Atari 800, Atari 800XL and a 130XE. I should have kept them - but because of money problems - I always sold my old computer to help purchase a new one. I've owned a C-64, Atari 1040ST, Amiga 500 and two desktop PCs - and have only purchased my first laptop PC of late. I also purchased a Sega Megadrive and a Nintendo SNES - the later with a cartridge copy device, that enables you to load ROMs from 3.5" floppies.
I did not do much with the C-64, although I did draw a few graphics - which are on Youtube - along with all the artwork I've done on the Atari 800, and Atari ST.
I did make contact with some C64 moder or demoguy in Wellington - but our contact did not result in anything much. I always made better contacts with Atari enthusiasts...
Harvey