Re: Commodore 64 kills APPLE II

["Marc Walters" <mwalters@hunter.apana.org.au>]

"Martin" <martinf@ot.com.au> wrote in message
news:1045105127.107020@envoy...
> "Stede Troisi" <stede.troisi@verizon.net> wrote in message
> news:tAA2a.31975$F25.2892@nwrddc02.gnilink.net...
[snip]
> (2) Disk drives. The apple disk drives beat the commodore range hands down
!
> I have numerous Commodore drives at home (1541, 1571, 1581) for my C64s
and
> 128s and everything I have available for my apples (Duo Disk on the IIe
and
> 5.25" & 3.5" Apple drives on the IIgs) is much faster and more compact
than
> the commodore beasts !

The later non-CBM drives for the C64 are nice, such as the CMD FD-2000 3.5"
drive, and the CMD-HD SCSI hard drive. But I agree with you about the
standard CBM drive. But you Apple guys had an unfair advantage - Steve
Wozniak! That guy built the Apple disk drive prototype in two days, and it
stayed pretty much the same for many years.

> Back in the 80's when I had my original apple IIe, the gfx (or sound)
didn't
> bother me at all. A lot of the C64 games made it over to the Apple (and
vice
> versa) ... they had the same great playability, and thats what it was all
> about back then. And not all of the Apple games had poor gfx and sound,
one
> of my faves (Karateka) is excellent in both departments if you ask me !

Some Apple games, maybe those that originated on that machine, had better
graphics. I'm reminded of "SkyFox" - the Apple game was great, but I was
very disappointed with the C64 conversion. It had no sun, fewer animations
and lacked the Apple version's presentation.

Ditto with "Karateka". Also the sound was better on the Apple, as well as
the speed (it's glacial on the C64).

I suspect that the disparity between early Apple and C64 versions of a game
was often due to the Apple programmers being more familiar and experienced
with the use of software sprites. This, combined with the Apple's more
favourable screen format, enabled softsprites on the Apple to work better
than those used on the C64. And when C64 programmers resorted to using
hardware sprites, they accepted the limitations of hardware sprites - such
as a loss in moveable onscreen elements, or altered the game play to
accommodate those limitations. Both ways resulted in an inferior C64
conversion.

Broderbund seems to be one of the few software houses to make their early
Apple/C64 ports equally as good.

There now, hopefully this will generate some interesting and intelligent
Apple versus Commodore 64 discussion, regardless of the anti-flamewar
protests from one or two Apple naysayers.

Marc Walters