ZX Spectrum or Atari or Commodore

itguyinaction

Hi,

Which computers was the most popular among your friends/schoolmates?

And which one do you find as the best from technical perspective?

Regards

itguyinaction

Btw, Here you can find detailed technical comparison Atari vs Commodore on YouTube (perhaps not perfect, but still quite good). As I can't give any link as new user, please search for "The real fight Atari versus Commodore" on YT.

Tork

This is a real "how long is a piece of string?" question.

touts

Some had ZX Spectrums. Some had Commodores.

One lad asked his parents for a computer and they got him a second hand IBM running some strange system by a company called Microsoft. Really hard to get games on it. It wouldn't connect to the TV. He had to have a special monitor and everything was green. We thought it was rubbish and it would never catch on and Spectrum and Commodore absolutely kicked its arse.

Eoinbmw

I ended up with a sony hit bit way back when after looking for a Commodore 64 lol!

MAJJ

Amstrad CPC464 got my vote

Swindled

Based on technical specifications only ? Absolutely none of them.
Based on getting the absolute most gameplay, fun, and bang for your buck, from limited resources . . that's a different ballgame.

An Ri rua

The Amiga was the king of home computers then.
But too pricy for most of us plebs here.

The ZX spectrum 48k scene pushed out fantastic games on very little horsepower. Extraordinary programming skill.
The C64, I recall playing Barbarian on it and being wowed by it. But still, loved my Spectrum. We had a 128k+2, after friends had ZX81s and then 48Ks.
I sold Elite, perfect boxed new condition, to a dude in Japan a few years ago for....€100. Yes indeed.
Have to say, when I saw Elite originally, it blew my mind. again, so much vista and gameplay on so little.
Even more mind-blowing a few years ago was getting a Spectrum emulator running on my old E61. And marvelling at it. As you do. Knowing how powerful it is hardware-wise to a Spectrum. Yet still marvelling.

krissovo

C64 is a bit of a no brainer from this list of that era and probably the main influence of next generation PC’s, personally I had a Oric 1 but the Oric Atmos was my dream machine at the time. i always had soft spot for the underdog and still do to this day.

Spectrum gave us mainstream, commodore gave us the future!

Westernyelp

Still have fond memories of the Spectrum 48k. listening to the tape deck loading up Dizzy or R type.
Those 4-5 minutes seemed like an eternity

Tom Mann Centuria

I think it was pretty much 50 50 with Commodore 64 and Spectrum owners in my school. Some games were better on the Spectrum, some on the C64, and the CPC etc. I think they all had their strong points and weaknesses. But I love my Sinclair machines from the kings of bodging.

CiDeRmAn

Atari Jaguar...
If you a regular, you'd understand the need to have included this as a poll option....

itguyinaction

Tork wrote: »

This is a real "how long is a piece of string?" question.

What do you mean by that?

itguyinaction

Swindled wrote: »

Based on technical specifications only ? Absolutely none of them.
Based on getting the absolute most gameplay, fun, and bang for your buck, from limited resources . . that's a different ballgame.

Well, perhaps it's never only on technical specification, but mostly...

I'm a bit surprised by not so many voting for Atari which seems to be more powerful than ZX Spectrum or Commodore in many aspects...

Btw, Have you perhaps seen the video I mentioned at the beginning of the thread?

itguyinaction

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

Atari Jaguar...
If you a regular, you'd understand the need to have included this as a poll option....

:rolleyes: I rather focused on 8-bit computers...

itguyinaction

Btw, what do you think about MSX computers? That seemed to be quite interesting standard but unfortunately not enough popular...

Drexel_3

We used to swap our megadrive for a friend's c64 with loads of games the odd time. Then spend the next week loading them all up, play each one for a few minutes until we realised we hadn't a clue how to play the game. Then move on and wait a half hour for the next one to load!

One friend had T2 on a carriage for the c64 too. Only one I've ever come across. Think the same guy had street fighter 2 as well for it

rubadub

itguyinaction wrote: »

I'm a bit surprised by not so many voting for Atari which seems to be more powerful than ZX Spectrum or Commodore in many aspects...

I am not familiar with the Ataris you listed, and guess others are not.

I am not sure of your age or where you are based. In Ireland in the 80s spectrums & commodore 64s were the most common.

Some might have had ataris in the early 80s but I cannot remember the models.

I wonder if they were officially released here at all.

Tork

itguyinaction wrote: »

What do you mean by that?

It's such a vague question

Dr Bob

rubadub wrote: »

I am not familiar with the Ataris you listed, and guess others are not.

I am not sure of your age or where you are based. In Ireland in the 80s spectrums & commodore 64s were the most common.

Some might have had ataris in the early 80s but I cannot remember the models.

I wonder if they were officially released here at all.

The Ataris ( especially the Atari 800XL )were both released and assembled here . Peats in Dublin used to sell them ( and Mosney used them in their computer centre for a few years.)
They arguably could outperform the c64 ( and definitely the speccy) , at least if the programmer knew what they were doing, but the problem was that they didn't get as many games as the other 8 bits, by 88 there was pretty much nothing being released over here.
I had one , and a few other people from school did as well , but I ended up selling it and buying a c64 ( as they had so much more games available for them)

Dr Bob

itguyinaction wrote: »

:rolleyes: I rather focused on 8-bit computers...

'Atari Jaguar ' was an old boards joke whereby every poll used to feature it as a joke option

CiDeRmAn

itguyinaction wrote: »

Btw, what do you think about MSX computers? That seemed to be quite interesting standard but unfortunately not enough popular...

Ollie is the resident expert on all things MSX.
Certainly the MSX2 is worth owning but it is oh so expensive.
The standard MSX... not so much.
I have one and it reminds me of the Speccy, which makes sense seeing as it shares the Z80 with it.
Also, it wasn't popular here, C64 and the ZX Spectrum were too strong, but it enjoyed a lot of support in France and the rest of mainland Europe, as far as I know.

rubadub

itguyinaction wrote: »

Which computers was the most popular among your friends/schoolmates?

itguyinaction wrote: »

I'm a bit surprised by not so many voting for Atari

you asked 2 questions for the same poll

tjhook

Maybe just being argumentative here, but in terms of raw specifications the Texas Instruments TI99/4a was very impressive - considering it was released in 1981, a year before the C64 or Speccy.

It had:

• 16 bit CPU (in 1981!!!)
• hardware sprites
• multi-channel sound
• peripheral devices could be chained to the right of the computer (though you might need a loong desk)

There was also an optional speech synthesis module that was miles ahead of anything on other systems (e.g. Currah microspeech).

Of course, it was weak in some other areas, such as having little RAM, and the most uncomfortable joysticks ever. So a lot of the games weren't terribly impressive.

I think very few people owned one in this corner of the world, but I had one for a while, and it was fun.

itguyinaction

Hardware sprites were also available for C64 and Atari 8-bit, but not for ZX Spectrum.

Multi channel sound as well was available in C64 and Atari 8-bit and for newer ZX Spectrum.

Not sure about other computers, but Atari allowed peripheral devices to be chained (although in a bit different way) and it was also possible to buy a box similar to PC computers to put some extensions cards there (in theory as in practice it was not at all popular).

But I agree that 16bit processor for TI99/4a was something innovative then even if it had some limitations concerning next 16-bit processors. Was TI popular in Europe or only in USA?

CiDeRmAn

Much of the joy to be had with those machines polled was to watch as clever programmers treated the limits of the devices as challenges.
Your computer can't do that?
Watch me do that on your computer!
Case and point is Uridium on the Spectrum.

NIMAN

I always look back on those times with great fondness, it was exciting.

A guy in our street got a ZX81 and we used to go after school to play 'games' on it.
The games were as advanced as downhill skiing, where you had to keep your little 'X' away from the walls of '****'.

Then he got a 16k memory pack, and the games got so much better (not).

Then as time moved on, he got a Spectrum, the games then looked to be from a different world.
Jet Set Willy et al. Lords of Midnight with 64 million different scenes, all of them looking the same! Jet Pac, Daley Thompson, Knight Lore.

I got a C64 for Xmas, another mate even got the disk drive, which amazingly slower than the tape deck.

Remember all the game copying, I got in contact with a guy in England who would have copies of all the American games we couldn't get over here, and then they started spreading around school.

The excitement of the next Rob Hubbard soundtrack, which was more important than the game itself.

Tony Crowthers latest. Used to love Suicide Express. Hated the Jeff Minter stuff btw.

I also had an Oric, not sure where that came in the order. I remember thinking "I wish I had got a Spectrum", as the supply of games was so poor.

Next came an Atari ST, I remember seeing the flying bird demo and I was blown away. I had to have one. We were on a shopping trip to Belfast and I was in a computer store and I told my parents thats what I wanted for Xmas. It was £399 iirc. I got it too, and God knows how much hardship that put on my parents that Xmas, as we had 5 kids in the family.

That all took me up to around the age of 18, then I headed off to college and left gaming behind, never got back into it.
I look at the games now on PS4 and am amazed just where they have reached.

rubadub

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

Much of the joy to be had with those machines polled was to watch as clever programmers treated the limits of the devices as challenges.

I was amazed to see what they eventually did on the spectrum

Skerries

this recent Aliens platformer is a good game for the Spectrum

https://zxonline.net/game/alien-game/

itguyinaction

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

Much of the joy to be had with those machines polled was to watch as clever programmers treated the limits of the devices as challenges.
Your computer can't do that?
Watch me do that on your computer!

Very good point. Being in one or another computers fan club caused many emotions then (and even now...). Pity we don't have such strong brands (=causing so strong emotions) nowadays.

itguyinaction

rubadub wrote: »

I was amazed to see what they eventually did on the spectrum

Do you know any technical details how they did that?