old loyalties, reconsideration.

Stoner wrote: »

I still remember my friend laughing when he saw how you had to stop the tape deck on the spectrum.

yeah having to mash the keys together because there was no dedicated stop button, totally forgot that

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Micro machines was on the SNES.

.

No J cart though so immediately inferior

limnam wrote: »

Was it though?

C64 came with it's own tape deck AFAIK.

Speccy you had to purchase it separate before the 128k+

The amount of games on C64 compared to speccy

I'm sure there's tons more reasons the C64 was superior

Originally the C64 tape deck had to be purchased separately, on top of the considerably more expensive bread bin, and if it fupped up, you had to buy another expensive datacorder from Commodore, which again, much more expensive than standard. A Spectrum will load from virtually any cassette player you have/had in the house. I know which I'd prefer.

Oh, and pedant mode on, You had to purchase it separate before the PLUS 2. The 128k toastrack, or 128k+ still took any tape player you might want.

I'm sure there's kilograms more reasons why the Spectrum is superior to the c64. :pac:

Honestly though, I'd happily have both now. Lots of great games for both, terrible games for both, but as a youngster, unless you were lucky to have parents who were a bit flush, the Speccy was THE machine, games cheaper too. Class war comrade, the speccy was the machine of the masses and Eastern bloc and Brasil, Spain and Portugal.

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I've a feeling most C64 users got into the console late once the C64 price had dropped to reasonable levels where it could compete with the speccy. The early 80's were all about the spectrum as the price was far better than the C64. I know I got my C64 xmas 90 or 91.

Console? Wash your whore mouth out.

The C64 was a computer, as the wiki amusingly puts it, one of the top two best selling 8 bit computers of the era in the UK.

Or as I'd put it, the second best selling computer, the 2nd best, the 2nd best.........

Don't forget Alien Soldier. Everyone always forgets Alien Soldier

(still better than Gunstar Heroes IMO!)

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I've a feeling most C64 users got into the console late once the C64 price had dropped to reasonable levels where it could compete with the speccy. The early 80's were all about the spectrum as the price was far better than the C64. I know I got my C64 xmas 90 or 91.

Snap. 1990 for me although a rich friend had one since 1985 that came with some compilation called softaid that we eventually wore out the tape on.

This is a...bit of a funny one for me.

Long story short, I grew up with a Commodore 64...and as a kid I thought it was pure and utter cr@p. A stance on which I made a 180 degrees turn when, as an adult, I discovered just how much of a revolutionary machine it was and for how long it remained significant in a market that, by nature, moves very quickly.

The reasons for my childhood stance were pretty much two:

- Software availability: in Italy, you'd find "compilation tapes", 100% pure pirate stuff, with 10-20 games sold by newsagents for pocket money (average price around what would today be 5 Euro). They were pretty much the only source of games - "big box" games were sold in computer and toy stores, but almost nobody bought them - we simply didn't know the difference. Obviously, the compilation nature of these pirate tapes made it so that simpler, single-load, small games were over-represented. In brief, muck. Bigger games were often modified and/or butchered to fit the tape with 9 other games. Have a look here if you're curious about these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1xuaC4jEx8

- Culture: see, in primary school pretty much nobody had a computer and there was little to no talk about "videogames". Then the other kids started getting Nintendo, Sega and Amiga hardware; A minority even had access to MS-DOS PCs. So when talk about games started spreading, we were already in the dawn years of te C64 (1990-1994) and every time...pretty much everyone made it a special task to relentlessly sh1t on my C64.

And that's it - the poor Commodore was pretty much the worst ever in the eyes of 10-years-old-me.

One very representative moment of all the above came when in 5th grade, circa 1989, a friend tells me he absolutely needs to show me this phenomenal Formula 1 game his dad had on their PC (IIRC it was a 286, Olivetti of course!). So we go to his office, my friend fires up Accolade's Grand Prix Circuit...and it IS phenomenal indeed! The graphics! The "realism"! Cars that actually look like the real ones (at least in the selection screen...)! Qualifying and a real race with positions!!!

I was mesmerized...but also really sad, my "sh1tty" C64 could never, ever, ever play a game like that. I went home, loaded Pole Position with its generic cars, generic tracks and no actual race, and despaired at how hopeless it was.

What I didn't know back then was that the same Grand Prix Circuit had a Commodore 64 release, which you couldn't find on the pirate newsagent tapes due to its complex multi load nature.

What I also didn't know was that the C64 version was actually the BETTER of the two - a bit slower, sure, but not that far off graphically, with much better sound and most importantly, features that were completely missing in the PC version, such as different colours cockpits depending on the player's car and bumps on tracks...

limnam wrote: »

Was it though?

C64 came with it's own tape deck AFAIK.

Speccy you had to purchase it separate before the 128k+

The amount of games on C64 compared to speccy

I'm sure there's tons more reasons the C64 was superior

It’s really a close call between the spectrum and the c64.

I’ll put it this way.

If you told me I could I could only have ever played one machine and I had to erase one from my gaming life then I would give up gaming.

Both computers had magic. Both exposed my generation to a wonderful world of fun. And both exposed a generation of future IT professionals into what the future could hold.

And btw some Tesco value products are quite nice.

Although I’d consider the spectrum to be Lidl value

The Oric-1 was Tesco cheap beans