by Harvey on Fri Mar 09, 2012 8:33 pm
For comparisons, I prefer to look at the software - and let them (the games) tell the story?
But even this method has to be viewed with caution - because more often than not, you are comparing the quality/competency of the programmer(s) responsible.
The ultimate test, has to be the same programmer doing both versions - of which "Dropzone" comes to mind.
I think it was first written on the Atari 800? I have not done any side by side comparisons - but like a classic SNES to Megadrive comparison, the Atari version looks better (better choice of colours - because you can choose from a wider colour range), and it has a larger screen size. Dropzone is by far the best Defender game, because the official Defender from Atari - was very disappointing indeed, when it first appeared.
An unfair test, would be to look at Zaxxon - because I thought Ron Fortier's effort was not up to scratch - for the Atari's, whereas the Synapse version on the C-64 was a very faithful rendition. The same could be said for "Blue Max" - which looked way better on the Atari, and so it was poorly converted for the C-64.
A favourite game of mine is "Bristles" - and I would expect it to appear almost identical for both C-64 and the Ataris. I have only seen and played the Atari version.
Anyway - an early landmark groundbreaking game for the early Atari 400/800 computers, was "Star Raiders" which is like putting you in control of a space fighter, within a Star Wars movie - this was real-time fast paced 3D action/simulation - and it used a low graphics mode and was programmed in only 8K. Now was there any equivalent to Star Raiders, on the C-64, BBC, Spectrum, etc etc?
Maybe only "Star Wars" for the Atari ST/ Amiga comes to mind? I think Star Raiders came out about a year or two after the movie Star Wars?
I did end up buying a C-64 - at a time, when games software for the Atari 8-bit computers started drying up...
Harvey