Pre-NES System War

Both had a shitload. The C64 had more. Everything you can think of was ported to it, even Ninja Spirit and Street Fighter 2.

Like I said earlier, the C64 was great for early '80's arcade ports but later on stuff was getting ported that it could not handle. Although, Power Drift was surprisingly decent.

Burgundy, that's why I said somewhat. The C64 was far more console-like than computers from IBM and Apple. The console crash of 1983-4 was partly a result of computers cutting into console territory. The markets were overlapped to a certain degree.

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Originally posted by NeoZeedeater
Burgundy, that's why I said somewhat. The C64 was far more console-like than computers from IBM and Apple. The console crash of 1983-4 was partly a result of computers cutting into console territory. The markets were overlapped to a certain degree.

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That may be true, but Nintendo in particular went out of its way to market the NES as a toy to distance it from the failures of Atari and the like and the computers that had usurped the console market. And there's still the price point issue - even if the Commodore CPU wasn't much more costly, there were still monitors and disk drives and peripherals to purchase. And the NES was a lot less daunting to consumers who by and large couldn't figure out how to program their VCRs.

I don't deny that consoles and computers are separate markets. I just think they definitely affected each other, especially before the NES arrived. Many parents in the '80's bought their kids/household a computer instead of buying a console from Atari or Coleco because they were perceived as more useful.

The C64 was more expensive than consoles but most people hooked it up to their TV instead of buying the expensive monitor.

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Originally posted by NeoZeedeater
I don't deny that consoles and computers are separate markets. I just think they definitely affected each other, especially before the NES arrived. Many parents in the '80's bought their kids/household a computer instead of buying a console from Atari or Coleco because they were perceived as more useful.

The C64 was more expensive than consoles but most people hooked it up to their TV instead of buying the expensive monitor.

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My parents fall into that group, but I got a IIc instead. It was pretty useless in terms of games, but managed to keep my interest away from the NES until 1989, ironically.

The IIc couldn't run a lot of software on a TV resolution (or couldn't run it well) but I guess the C-64 was a lot more amenable.

The NES caught my eye right away. It had a friggin' robot! R.O.B. pretty much sucked but man, that was an eye catcher and really set the machine apart from its predecessors.

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Originally posted by burgundy
That may be true, but Nintendo in particular went out of its way to market the NES as a toy to distance it from the failures of Atari and the like and the computers that had usurped the console market. And there's still the price point issue - even if the Commodore CPU wasn't much more costly, there were still monitors and disk drives and peripherals to purchase. And the NES was a lot less daunting to consumers who by and large couldn't figure out how to program their VCRs.

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By 1985, you could buy a Disk Drive for $180 and the C-64 computer for $150. Loading games on the C-64 was as easy a load:Donkeykong,8,1


It was a lot nicer than the $1,000 Apple II and you were'nt force to buy a monitor to use a C-64. I had mine connected to a 19" color television in my bedroom.

I think the one thing that impressed me more about the C-64, over the NES, was it's outstanding soundchip, which I believe, was even superior to the peice of shit Z-80 soundchip that Sega decided to use in the Genesis.

It was

LOAD "*",8,1

:)

The sound in the C64 was amazing, it slaughtered even the earliest sounds blaster and AD lib cards.

It wasnt stereo, but some of the timing tricks they could pull off and get it to sound like 10-20 voices..

The C64 was home to some of the best video game music ever composed although people who didn't grow up with it might find it a little too low-tech now.

Barbarian and the Last Ninja games stand out for their awesome soundtracks.