I think one thing is evident at that the NES games were often more polished than C64 games especially the ones that came from Japan at the time because they usually had a much longer development time, more people working on them and bigger budgets and resources available. Many C64 games were often done by a few people at most with a very small budget and development time.
The best on the NES can't be touched by the C64, but there was quite a bit of poor quality NES games just trying to cash in. The one man or small group approach could lead to some incredible games on the C64. Having both was always the best option, but if you only had one, you were doing pretty good.
@@MechanicoidI don't disagree but there were equally as many cash grab games on the C64 from companies grabbing any licenses they could just to knock a game out in a few weeks to sell to unsuspecting people. As someone who had both growing up I definitely appreciated the ones that had time and care put into them on the C64 every bit as much as my favourite NES games.
I do not agree, the C64 is the hardware thas was most pushed to the limits than any other 8 bit hw. NES sprites are more colorful than C64 ones and more importantly they do not trade color for resolution. Of course, the c64 is able to show more "BIG" sprites, but this is expecially due to the fact that C64 sprites can be zoomed and they are bigger by design. However C64 sprites only handle 8 sprites on screen and achieving more is a relatively complex task to do requiring scanline interrupts and taxing a lot the relatively slow cpu. NES sprites are only 8 pixels wide, but from the tech point of view they need data at they was 16 pixels wide and entirely monocrome, because color information require two bits instead of one for every sprite pixel. the ability to show more sprites on the screen on the NES, however, comes with a cost: due to the different architecture NES can only handle 8 small sprites x scanline. you do sprite rotation (that require a relatively medium cpu effort) and this causes the sprite flickering. The C64 did not have any distinction of number of sprites / scanline vs screen as the NES had. this is due to the fact that what are sprite attributes (x,y,etc) are not stored in video ram on the C64 but internally in VIC-II registers thus requiring no extra time to fetch those data from memory. Pratically the NES PPU had, for every scanline, the task to scan all the sprites table to determine which sprites will be shown limiting this number to 8. This extra time, reduce the number of available cycles to fetch sprite pattern data and limit the number of sprites/scanline. Allowing more sprites/scanline would have been hard because of increased complexity of internal buffers and also needed the availability of more memory fetch cycles to show more sprites involving faster cpu and ram chips.
Yea japan saw the future of gaming while in Europe and north America video games were very disrespected they couldn't get much investment .and people born before 1970 avoided them like the plague
My parents got me a VIC 20 when I was probably 6 and eventually I got a C128 when I was 8. If it weren't for spending hours typing in games and programs from magazines I would never have become a software developer. If they had chosen to get me an NES, and later a SNES I would have just played games and never got into making games and other programs. I understood how to amortize a mortgage before I was 10 years old. I would check out programming books from my local library and type in all that code too, eventually getting into PC programming, C and x86 Assembly.
I always thought the reason for the border on the C64 was because it was meant to be used as a general-purpose computer while connected to a TV which would have an unpredictable amount of overscan, so the border was how to guarantee that everything would be visible. Incidentally, growing up my family did use the C64 for a lot of word processing and productivity.
Yes, this. Not to mention, the borders appeared a bit smaller on NTSC televisions compared to PAL, especially the top and bottom as the main (non-border) area appeared proportionally taller in NTSC compared to PAL.
There are some homebrew ports somewhat recently that take full advantage of the border space. Check out Donkey Kong X2016 as an example of this done to perfection. It is a near-perfect arcade conversion.
Overscan was taken into account on the NES, but it isn't generally a huge deal. It was beneficial for Mario 3 though, since the NES can only scroll horizontally or vertically, not both. Tiles were manually updated left to right (to not glitch the HUD), creating glitchy looking sides on the farthermost partial tile, but not generally noticeable on a TV. Clearly visible on emulator.
@@SChristianCollins Both PAL and NTSC are 15625 kHz horizontal refresh. If you divide by 25 (50i PAL) or 30 (60i NTSC) you get 625 and 520 lines, or 312/260 lines in progressive. As most graphic chips did 200 horizontal lines, there were 2x30 lines borders on NTSC and 2x 56 lines borders on PAL.
I grew up on the NES, but I'm surprised how well the C64 holds its own when running the same games. No doubt the NES was the best at what it was designed for, but some crafty musicians and coders have gotten jaw-dropping results out of the C64. I really need to dig into C64 gaming someday.
If programmed right, the NES sound chip could also produce jaw-dropping results. Tim Follin proved that more than anyone else. His NES tracks surpass anything I've ever heard on a C64, even his own stuff he did on the Commodore. I think on the C64, people like Rob Hubbard quickly created music routines with all sorts of effects like fast arpeggios simulating chords, vibratos, slides, etc. which were fast becoming standard and used by many musicians. NES games were mainly inspired by arcade games and used the sound chip in a more basic way, just playing simple notes. When someone like Follin who came from the C64 had the chance to write for the NES, he used those advanced techniques and made the NES sound chip really sing.
Commodore 64 had some non-arcade games that are still played in remastered or other platform versions Like Pirates, Maniac Mansion, Zak McKraken, Defender of the Crown... They were really next gen games compared to NES. Arcade games in C64 were usually not that good compared to NES. But there was good ones too, like Paradroid, Barbarian, Kickstart II, Ugh Lympics, Airborne Ranger..
Many C64 games don't hold up well today, but there are some fantastic ones that are still very much worth playing. My all-time favorite C64 game is Wizball. It is unlike any other game either before or since, and the control scheme has a bit of a steep learning curve, but once you get it the game is simply fantastic. Plus it featured a brilliant co-op mechanic which was quite ahead of its time. Keep in mind that if you do delve into C64 gaming, it is often a good idea to read about a game before playing it, preferably the original release material. Most games from that era are very short on in-game information, partly because of space restrictions but also because at the time players were expected to read the manual for the game before playing it. Sometimes the "manual" is nothing more than a short backstory for the events of the game, but even that can give you a greater appreciation for a game. It is actually interesting how much difference it can make for your enjoyment of a game to have at least some information about what is supposed to be going on. "I'm shooting these _things_ because _they are there"_ does not make for nearly as compelling an experience as "I'm shooting these _demons summoned by an evil witch_ because _she wants to destroy my village to erect an altar on the site",_ or something along those lines. And the game itself usually won't give you that information.
Hindsight is always a funny thing. I started with a 2600 and went to NES a few years after it came out. I only experienced the C64 through friends. It was definitely fun and blew the 2600 out of the water visually. Now i have allmof them and enjoy them for different reasons. They all have their charm and a place in my collection. And lest we forgot, without the C64, we wouldn't have those awesome Llamasoft games.
I had a Commodore while some of my friends had Nintendos and Sega Master systems. I think the main pro of the computer over these other machines was that piracy was so rampant we basically counted games as free. I had hundreds of games and maybe a handful originals. While every game they got cost all their savings I just bought blank floppys.
You've also got to love how many legit new games would cost only about £2 when console carts could be £25 or more. Even the more expensive C64 games would be re-released in budget form, or in a compilation pack, after about a year. I'd hoped those days would come to consoles when CD-ROMs came along, but they didn't really do so.
I had both a C64 (in 1985 or 86) and the NES (Christmas 88), and i agree pirating games for the C64 was great, but i have to admit i didn't play C64 too much after we got the NES (but mostly because all the other kids at school had NES). But i still play both to this day, though granted via emulation. What a great time to be a kid.
@@Banderpop We lived out in the sticks so it was a long way to the nearest computer store. About 60 km or 37 miles. But there was enough teenagers with computers within biking- and later moped-distance to maintain some kind of circulation of new(ish) software. All little devious pirates!
And that piracy was also one of the main reasons why C64 development budgets were much smaller than on NES. Unfortunately that also meant lower quality games.
@@ilexgarodan Yes, but the Vic-20 based case for the C64 is more widely known, and the better selling of the C64 models, but I like both styles just as well, and after my original C64 Breadbin bit the dust due to the admittedly horrible US power supplies they came with I ended up with a C128 that I still have(sadly I think the SID chip is starting to die) in storage, but these days I use a C64 Maxi to play games, and demos on, or VICE on Linux for oddball stuff that won't run on it.
Do you still have room for a PS3, if you already have an NES? Seems like they'd complement each other well- or would it be a bit redundant? *aka George Foreman grill
For somebody who has never programmed any computer game on any machine, can I just say how fantastic your channel is, Sir. The time and effort you put into these videos is most appreciated by not only myself but I am sure many others. Thanks once again, and keep up the great work.
I know I'm showing my own bias here as an avid C64 fan in the 80s, but I think the ability for the C64 to be programmed by a kid in a bedroom was a huge strength. Yes, that sort of openness means you're going to get a lot of rubbish, but it also means so much more room for new ideas to come up.
True. Still if you look overall. How many really great news ideas really appeared? I still it’s great but it’s not mandatory that it’s always good. But for sure many great devs came from the open home computer scene. I myself started out my gamedev career there
@@Codetapper True that. My reply was deleted somehow. It said basically that many of those games was done under a Label and in that I see those diffrently . I was more referring to "bedroom" devs. Still even if many bedroom games was so so they kickstarted careers that otherwise would not have been possible.
Scrolling on C64 was a cpu-intense affair, having to completely redraw the tilemap for every 8 pixels of scroll. The NES only had to draw in a new column of tiles Stationary screen could much more easily go the C64’s way. Impossible Mission looks better than a lot of the NES library.
If you compare sound hardware, the C64 is actually WAY more capable. The only problem is that it just doesn't have enough sound channels, and few games devs were willing to drop sound channels for sound effects if music was playing. This resulted most games either playing only music or sound effects during gameplay. While the NES's PSG was technically inferior in most respects, the fact that it had two more channels meant that most games played music and sound effects. A developer could occasionally drop a channel for a sound effect as long as the main melody continued on. One thing that the NES could do better than the C64 was samples. While one of the modes still required a lot of CPU power, if you were willing to live with relatively low quality, you could at least use samples for music and gameplay. The nice thing too, was that this was a built-in features with its own sound channel rather than developers manipulating a sound chip. Both are great systems, but you can see the effects the C64 being a computer that happened to have great capabilities versus the NES being purpose built for games. This came into play during their lifespans. Neither was a wrong approach, it's just that there is a cost to each approach. I don't think you'd be disappointed with either back in the 80s. I personally prefer the NES just due to the all the issues involved with a system that mostly used floppy disks. That, and it's just not as simple to fix and work out the issues of a C64. Most of what goes wrong with an NES is the pins, and there's solutions and even permanent fixes to that (Blinking Light Win for example). It has so few chips in it, that it's relatively simple to diagnose and replace failed components. If own a C64, you'd better be prepared to pull out a multimeter and a soldering iron, maybe invest in an oscilloscope. One chip dies and the system can turn into a brick. C64s are notorious for chip failures. You're also going to spend a lot more money to setup a C64 than an NES. I own both systems, and wouldn't have any other way. I just think that you should know all the pitfalls of a system before you get into it.
Can you explain to me why each channel on the C64 needs its own DAC? Ensoniq continued with the half analog crap. Motorola 6809 showed that 8bit MUL was possible on that die size. I don’t need esoteric synthy effects. Parabola waveform
I have never seen framebuffer explained this well visually, you really did a great job this time! I'm turning on all notifications of the channel because of this video 👍
Sharopolis is great for the technical details. Some 8 bit computers that were able to make use of a hardware framebuffer included those that used the 6845 CRTC to drive the display, like the Amstrad CPC and BBC Micro. You draw to the back screen while displaying the front screen, then flip them around when you're ready. The flipping is instantaneous, so there is no flickering.
Monty on the Run got an NES port of sorts in Japan for the Famicom Disk System-- pretty much a completely different game, but it does have a take on the famous theme. And the waveform limitations really do show there; the SID really is a uniquely capable chip
This is a strange comparison. A computer versus a console. However, it's comparable to a point, especially as so many titles made it to both machines as they were so popular. The NES had several years on the C64, so not sure it's a very fair comparison in that sense either. I assume the C64 was quite a bit more expensive though, especially in the mid 90s, when it was still a capable machine compared to the competition. After 1987, deals could be had for the C64, as it was not very competitive anymore. The C128 would have been a great option, if it had more titles built specifically for it. Love both of them. Platformers and such, hands down the NES. It's not really close at all. Mega Man series for example. Strategy games and role playing games, I'd say the C64. Having a keyboard helped tons. Ultima series, Pirates! etc. Pirates! is a good example as it's on both systems. Shout out to the NES version of Robin Hood(movie license game) though. It is to this day the only NES role playing game that I know of where I can freely choose and equip weapons and armor from my inventory. Blew my mind!
With cassettes full of games, you were better off with a C64 as a kid. The NED kids only had six cartridges at most at home, while we C64 kids had thousands of games available, , because there was no money needed for them.
4:09 NONSENSE!!! It was deliberately designed with a border for a very good reason. It wasn't because it was "simpler and cheaper," it's because it's a computer.and not a games console. If 8 pixels are cut off on your NES, (by the TV) it's not that big a deal. if 8 pixels are cut off on your C64 (by the TV), you can't see the first letter on every line. EVERY 8 bit computer designed to hook to a TV and not a monitor has these borders for this reason.
never had a C64 (didn't even know it existed until years later) but I've always been impressed by the graphics/music/games of it. I'm a NES kid to the core, but C64 looked pretty cool
Home computers were a special time in gaming. Really, some of the best arcade ports out there back in the day. A lot of gems and games that were way ahead of their time. It was way more cool to have a home computer than any console. It was like a hybrid of a computer and console in one.
I was a collector of .SID music files, and while I always wanted the 2nd addon cartridge for stereo sound (I attempted to mix my own but the quality of the mixer I had could not maintain the tape speed in each recording and the audio would desync). However music in games like mario 3 and Batman were amazing on nes. It was rare but if a game used that pcm channel for percussion it elevated the quality a ton.
The C64 came out earlier at a time when computer power was doubling roughly every 18 months or less, also the C64 wasn't just a console and could do so much more, I certainly did much more than just play games, I learnt machine code on the C64 for instance and all this makes it an unfair comparison. The C64 still won easily with it's SID sound chip over the NES however, some tracks were so good I'd listen to them longer than playing the game it came with.
Big difference is of course C64 can be used for so much more than gaming. You can make your own games, programs, and even use it as a synthesizer. Having a C64 can profoundly change your life and your future.
Nope. They tried "expanding" the capabilities with the C128, but that machine turned out to be a disaster. Commodore never did 80-character mode right. Maybe you are confusing it with an Amstrad CPC, which DID have a massive amount of useful software besides games (killer version of Rick Dangerous II for example). For programming the C64 was horror too. C64 Basic was a nightmare, so was the manual. If you got a Speccy and wanted to make your own games, you were treated with the most astonishing manual ever made, and BASIC for the Spectrum had killer features for game making built in.
@@lovemadeinjapan are you serious? C64 had so much quality software it's ridiculous. Basic wasn't good for graphics programming, it was a peek and poke machine first and foremost..but for making real games you'd have to program in machine code anyway. The manual is not meant to be a good programming teacher, but there were so many other books that could do that, what a weird point.
@@Boxing_Gamer But if you had a Speccy, the manual was goregous, full colour, all the BASIC to make games was there, it screamed "MAKE YOUR OWN GAMES". No pokes needed. Sinclair was a men of class. Tramiel just a box shover. And to be honest, I can't think of really good C64 software. Stuff that was unique and unseen on any other machine and stands above the competition. And the hardware limitations were really bad. Even IF you managed to create say a half decent text editor for the C64, people were unable to store the files. You did not want to bucket with lists of time-stamps for a tape, tons of manual spooling and accidentially overwrite your thesis. Even the 1541 was too little too late.
@@lovemadeinjapan yes it was better to get started with, as was Commodore c16 and plus 4 as well because of the extra basic commands..but as I said, you'd have to switch to machine code anyway once you hit the speed limitations of basic, and then all of that don't matter anymore.
@@Boxing_Gamer Well tons of limits remain: bad video output, no decent storage solution, no room for expansion inside, bad power supply, ugly case, bad keyboard layout, abysmal font.... But I agree, with a good C++ compiler you generate 6510 and Z80 code on the fly today.
I lived, and still live in a somewhat small rural part of the southeastern US, so I was damn lucky as a kid to grow up with a Intellivision, Atari 2600 Jr, Commodore Vic-20(traded it for credit on for a C64)C64(later C128), Apple IIe, NES, and Sega Game Gear in my bedroom till the 16 bit gen, and IBM PC clones became more affordable, so I got the best of all of them, and I love different games from all of them, with the C64 holding some of my fondest memories like Giana Sisters that went toe to toe with SMB 1 IMHO, and being able to switch over, to a word processor for homework using GEOS, and being my first experience of going online dialing up BBS, and going on Q-Link, then when I was done with my C64, or Apple IIe for the admittedly few better software titles on it like Print Shop Deluxe, and a few exclusive games, I could then go down to the local video store on the weekend, and rent the new hot NES games everyone at school was talking about as very few of my friends even had a computer at home, and on long family trips being able to play Sonic, Streets of Rage, Shinobi, etc.. on my Game Gear. Ahh the memories of being an 80's, and early 90's kid 🙂
C64 used cheap tapes and disks, easy to copy and spread. And also to store users generated content, and related to that - C64 was a computer with decent game console hardware inside, so it was CREATIVE PLATFORM for any owner out there. One could actually make a humble game on his own in BASIC or any other language, or even really polished commercial game in machine code. Console like NES couldn't beat such concept at all, it made kids passive consumers and nothing more. Sure, NES was more powerful, however its games were strictly on carts and very expensive, but also quite often "more of the same thing", gameplay-wise. C64 has enormous catalog of very varied commercial and homebrew games, even zillion amateurish offerings with all kinds of cool and offbeat ideas. Easy to obtain for free in the days, or in the form of bootlegs for dimes (not nice, sure). But even legal games were quite cheaper than NES carts, and budget games (like Mastertronic's stuff) were very affordable.
Just made myself some tea with the intent of watching something interesting. Luckily this popped up, as I hadn't seen you for a bit. I've always loved your content. Just wanted to say thanks for the past couple years, and especially thank you for this afternoon's teatime entertainment!
If the C64 had a better colour palette and if its games supported more than one button on the controller there would be no contest IMO. I love the SID chip but the NES's sound was iconic in its own way as well. Great video, very interesting to see the two systems compared in detail like this.
Look forward to this. Some amazing stuff was done with the C64 with the right programmer and at the time, I felt the NES was ridiculously overpriced, some £50, especially when you could get great C64 games from between £2 and a tenner.
Yep, the fact big box C64 games were cheaper than budget NES titles makes it an easy winner here. I could buy a new game every week, if I had a NES I'd've got a new game for Christmas and that would be that.
Yeah this is why the NES never took off in Europe. £40 or more for games that graphically didn't really look any better than a decent full price c64 game that cost a tenner at the most.
The NES always had better games than the C64 because it was created with games in mind. I know the C64 was known for its games, but the creators of the system had to make sure it could do things besides games. Also, the NES had the advantage of cartridges that could increase the capabilities of the system by using special chips. The C64 had a cartridge slot, but for whatever reason games released on cartridge seemed to be cut down and simple compared to disk-based games. One point in the C64's favor is it did strategy and RPGs far better than the NES due to having a keyboard and an audience who enjoyed the cRPG experience. The few NES ports of cRPGs were terrible. Also, the C64 had text adventures, both graphical and pure text.
The c64 had the best sound chip of any 8 bit machine and it's not even close. It was the only one that sounded like a real musical instrument and not a computer trying to pass as one. Not surprising since after making the SID chip for MOS, Bob Yannes left and founded Ensoniq (the synthesiser company). C64 lacks the million-dollar games, but that was a big part of its charm. For any game that originated on the C64, the C64 is usually the best version to play.
Not so sure. In japan there were 8 bit computers based on z80 / 6502 that were equipped with YM FM Synthesis. The SID, is better than more of the Square Wave based Chips like the General Instrument a like or the Texas Instrument ones, but compared with YM ones it sound like a toad .
I beg to differ. SID is 3 tone generators that could do any of 4 waveforms. The NES had 2 pulse channels, 1 triangle, and a noise channel for MOST games. The SID channels offered up a bit more versatility because you could do several type of instruments. That said, nothing ever sounded realistic. These are worse then FM synth that we got later. The nes however had 1 more channel which could allow it to better do sound effects and music at the same time. The big elephant in the room however is the nes had a PCM channel. Because of the size of ROMs and lack of compression, digital samples were rarely used, but some games like the batman games and Mario 3 did use them for the percussion track, and it blew away any drums you could do on the waveform channels. Also in practice I find nes games offered more sound tracks than c64. While c64 teams were much smaller, back in the day the composer was always just one person.
@@MaNameizJeff I guess there's also an advantage to cartridge games being able to include their own hardware to expand sound capabilities (Castlevania III for example) but the developers need to go the extra mile to do that.
@@ccricers I recall the enhanced chip used for color reproduction but didn't recall any enhanced sound capabilities. I actually just loaded it up in droid sound tonight and it wasn't anything special. Now there is the issue where the famicom has some additional sound hardware, but the number of games that took advantage of it can be counted on one hand.
No way. The Atari 8 bit had a better sound chip. Four channels of the POKEY chip, which was used in arcade machines. The C64s three channels sounded nasally and farty in comparison.
The reason my parents bought me a NES and not a c64 was because NES was a lot cheaper. My family wasn’t rich enough to own a dedicated computer TV monitor and disk drives were too expensive. I just trade borrowed my Zelda to play the the big name titles which were better made than c64. Lots of kids had c64. Nes kids new what they were about
C64 all the way for me, hands down although what both machines could do with such a small amount of memory was incredible and beats games of today which have ridiculous amounts of memory but no soul.
of course it can win. the c64 was a computer and the nes a console when that meant something. Theres at least one entire genre, adventure games, that the c64 had that is barely even represented on the NES. Also, there was a huge gulf in software pricing. And then you have the SID. 2:28 It wasn't purely budget, most western releases of these games were licensed by third parties, where as the NES versions were usually put together by the original developers, or someone chosen by them. So the licenced versions tended to be loose adaptations, because usually all they'd have to work from was the arcade board, whereas licencees chosen by the developers would probably be Japanese and more likely to get documentation and support from the original developer.
While saying "there are many many [C64] games that you are unlikely to see on the NES", Pirates! for C64 is on the screen... but there is also an NES version of Pirates, so that's wrong. Heh.
My conclusion is that the C64 was a better platform, but the NES had better games. Development time is pretty much the whole reason, since Nintendo had a lot more money and thus staff to throw at creating games and could take a bit more time, they were able to really polish things. Just imagine if things had been on even footing and the C64 had been a huge hit as a gaming console slash computer. If only some manufacturer would make another bread-bin style computer, complete with a discrete graphics card, but not from a laptop.
Well, I don't agree. A NES game was restricted to 40KB. You could do more with bank switching, but at the cost of expensive cartridges. The C64s advantages that especially with games on multiple diskettes, games could have way more content than games on the NES. Stuff like Calfornia Games, Bard's Tale, Ultima etc. was the C64s speciality, allthough some of this was later ported to the NES after being succesfull on the C64.
@@danielmantione Yeah, and the NES had expensive cartridges that added functionality and space, and the C64 even had some great games too, but there were a lot more great games for the NES because they had the time and funding to back these projects. Which all brings me back to the C64 having better hardware, and the NES having better games, not that the C64 was incapable of good games, it just wasn't the norm.
Agreed. I've been trying to wrap my head around what the Ataris were capable of but it's so much more complicated than Commodore with its five simple graphics modes. I _think_ its low-res mode is almost 1:1 comparable with the 64's based on the screenshots I've seen of cross-platform games (of which there were many) but beyond that I'm stumped.
Late 1980s my friend had a C64. Loved the racing game, baseball game and Steel Thunder. Wanted one so bad. Not soon after got one from one of my mother’s friends either free or very cheap. Thing did not even turn on. Repair shop wanted maybe around $200 to fix. My parents weren’t going to pay that…..Not soon after I got NES (already had Sega Master System).
I find that the average NES game looks nicer than the average C64 game.... but the best C64 games look better than the best NES games. Oh, and most C64 games sound MUCH better than NES games - the SID chip was amazing.
C64 version of Mario may have had a few spells of slow down, but for a conversion done without REU (unlike the also excellent Sonic Hedgehog conversion) it was amazing. If it had been released in the 80’s in Europe it would have KILLED Nintendo sales. I got it along with my The C64 just before lockdown and it helped keep me sane 😂
The estimated amount of Commodore 64 games is around the 25000 mark, that does include basic programmed games. Overall software titles including tools is around 35000+
Family BASIC for the Famicom only gave you 2K (1984 Bytes) of memory and could only be expanded up to 4K of memory. Not enough memory to program with. BASIC for the Commodore 64 on the other hand gave you 38K (38911 Bytes) of memory, which is plenty of memory to program with.
As someone whose nearly entire circle of friends had both a C64 and, later, a NES in the house, I can say that once the NES came out, it became the go to for action games, while our C64s continued to see a ton of use for adventure / role playing games. On a weekend sleepover we might start with some Super Mario Bros, Mega Man, or Zanac in the afternoon, then settle in for a long night of Might and Magic, Wasteland, or Alternate Reality after dark. Oh, and a bunch of us also had modems and Q-Link. 📞
As usual, well explained by you. I was a C64 fanboy and eventually had to make peace with the fact that the NES is better suited for most 2D games. But the C64 has some intriguing (if obscure) advantages. The NES can only do 64 sprite*pixels per scanline. Even with the most pessimistic interpretation of multicolor sprites on the C64, it can put 96 pixels worth of those sprites on each scanline. You can overcome the tiny number of C64 sprites (8!) with multiplexing, plus the C64 sprites are way bigger than NES sprites. (C64: 504 pixels; NES: 64 pixels). You can also edit arbitrary parts of a sprites' data between frames, making it possible to animate characters without having to store entire separate blocks of sprite data as the NES would have to. (Note the Gameboy can also do this, and obviously this is a standard ability in the 16 bit generation). For less "traditional NES" style games, the C64 sometimes really shines. The higher horizontal resolution makes large amounts of text far more practical, and the programmer doesn't necessarily have to ship graphics data for every letter and number, as you must do on the NES. And if you do want to do your own brand new fonts, they only cost 1bpp, which is impossible on the NES.
One of the major contributing factors with the c64 vs the Nes which I am surprised was not mentioned was the price of the software itself. Admittedly, in the UK the cassette was the major way of sourcing games for the c64 due to the high price of the disk drive, you could get great games for just £1.99 (let alone the PD arena where it was more often than not - free - let alone piracy yar ma hearties etc which as a schoolchild at the time I never did, honest guv). Nes cartridges at the time were close to £30 and beyond for just 1 game, whereas you could get 15 Mastertronic/Codemasters games for that on the c64. For me the C64 was the real deal, the nes was but a toy.
The best looking NES games blow away the best looking C64 games by a mile. Just about anything from Konami, Capcom, Natsume, Tecmo, Sunsoft, and of course Nintendo. Play through Batman: Return of the Joker. No amount of sluggish polygons or background tricks is enough to come close to the visual splendor of that game.
@@davidaitken8503I agree that the best looking NES games easily beat the best-looking C64 games, sue. But I feel the best-sounding C64 easily beat the best-sounding NES games. But these things are subjective, so there’s no right answer. :-)
@@ScrapKing73 Agree. If I were to add something in the favor of C64, due to the "better" sound, some games just had an astonishing atmosphere. The Last Ninja for example. I'd say this atmosphere is not replicated on the NES.
Right off the bat, I have to say that I'm a C64 fanboy. I never had an NES, but I'm not a hater. However, I do think that the NES was overrated. It was a great system in its day, but not necessarily the greatest. I wouldn't say that the C64 was better, but it had advantages. Side-by-side comparisons of games on the two systems, the NES will most often win the battle on pure specs. But where I feel that the C64 regains the lead, is pricing. Games retailing at £30 to £50 on the NES would come in at £2 to £4 on C64 cassette. The margins of quality were not so vast that the C64's offerings were unacceptably inferior. The trade off in loading time is significant, which may nudge the NES back in front. But with the C64 being an open system to develop everything from homebrew to professional software, I feel that this is the killer blow it had on the NES. And, it has to be acknowledged, piracy. Friend has a game you like, it's yours for virtually free. Whether it was a right or wrong thing to do, it was a thing that was done. For me, the C64 over the NES. But it's a battle royale of two legendary systems, one being declared the winner doesn't make the other a loser.
17:28 Yeah the storage medium had a huge influence on what kind of content saw the light of day where tapes although slow allowed for much more experimentation while doing the same on NES was an electrical engineering project if Nintendo didn't have a mapper chip for what you wanted to do. Ultimately I think it was for the best putting software on cassette tapes rather than carts primarily, looking back on Atari history every single game console they made was hindered with inadequate cartridge sizes.
I think your conclusion is the right one, but as with the SNES and Mega Drive, once again the Nintendo system is permitted to bring foreign circuitry and processors into the comparison against a stock competitor, simply because there was a widespread culture of propping up the shortcomings of the Nintendo system with hardware in many SNES carts and virtually all NES carts. A comparison that didn't allow for additional hardware (including ROM paging) would turn the result on its head, as would one that allowed for the C64 to use the REU. But as there was virtually no culture of using this in game software, it's understandable.
That was the design philisophy of the NES/SNES - skimp on the hardware, but add the provision to include extra chips in the cartridges. They shifted the cost burden to the publishers creating the games (and the people buying them).
That's what I personally argue the most about MD/Snes "comparisions" (same happens with MS/Nes): starting from Mario Kart, many games like Starfox, Yoshi'd Island and so on are simply not possible on stock Snes without additional hw. If you allow chipped games in the "race", why not included 32X in MD "side", since it's something which actually run from MD cart slot? 32X it's additional hw in the end, just like Super-Fx2...
@@jsr734 that's just one game though, and a game that doesn't suffer much from having one small set of graphics for the entire game. A lot of early C64 games also stuck to using a single bank of characters and sprites, but it wasn't a hardware limitation - the C64 was really just waiting for ambition to catch up with what it could do (without additional hardware). The C64's RAM was essentially also its VRAM, you just had to point the video chip towards the bit you wanted to use at any given moment. So you've effectively got 8 times the video memory offered by an 8k NES CHR ROM, and because C64's graphics are 1bpp instead of 2bpp, that amounts to 16 times the screen coverage. Of course you couldn't use all that memory on graphics, but half of it wouldn't be uncommon. And you had the option to reload RAM with different graphics for new levels, etc meaning there was no specific limit on how large a game could be.
@@jsr734 Yes, but that is a bit unfair as it was made to be as accurate as possible - in effect trying to emulate the original, which was created on the NES and therefore was designed from the ground up to suit the NES. You could make a similar game on the C64 but instead make thousands of little design choices and graphics choices that would instead play to the C64's strengths.
An excellent and perfectly balanced summary of both machines! Also one thing you didn't mention was, the greater storage capacity of the Commodore 64 games came at a price, long load times. Especially if you couldn't afford a disk drive and had to load off of cassette.
The Nintendo was far more advanced because of memory all graphics on 8 bits are 8 by 8 tiles 1 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 any variation of these 8 x8 dots can be displayed depending upon the addition of these 8 dotss i use to have an acorn electron programming was quite easy i use to bitmap my mums knitting pattens they were 10x10 so i drew over it in 8s . There are 5,606 video games on Commodore 64. They were released between the years 1982 and 2023. 6,262 people from 1,778 developers and publishers are credited with these titles!
The c64 wins on sound/music, listen to some of rob hubbard or martin galway compositions, there is no comparison to anything on the nes. Arcade classics has a full on heavy metal soundtrack complete with sampled guitars and drums and green beret has a superbly atmospheric loading tune for example. Sanxion, midnight resistance, lightforce and the 2 cybanoid games are also exceptional in the music department. With graphics I always thought the NES flickered the sprites too much and the colours looked dull (especially when compared to its main rival the master system). For actual detail the NES was better than c64 though. The trouble with the NES in the UK was the fact it looked a bit crap with very expensive and bland looking games compared to everything else. I never actually played any NES games until emulation was a thing, no one I knew had one and I dont recall any local shops selling the console or games after the initial launch until the turtles pack revived interest in the 90`s (by which time the system looked really bloody awful compared to the megadrive and Amiga etc).
@@hicknopunk Just had a quick listen to some of the Recca92 tracks, they sound almost like the megadrive in a way. They are pretty good but still have that underlying tinny twangy sound (its hard to explain lol). The c64 with its pitch bending and sample manipulation just sounds nicer and less of a racket if that makes sense. I still think the c64 has the edge tbh.
@@meetoo594 when I discovered Recca it was mind blowing that a game had a proper techno soundtrack. Have you listened to Vortex on the SNES? It sounds like an Amiga demoscene program to me.
@@hicknopunkJust listened to some of the vortex ost, very impressive if a bit muffled at times. And yeah, it really does sound like Amiga tracker music.
Small error, but when you said "Rad Racer II", you showed footage of the original Rad Racer. Rad Racer II had a dashboard with larger numbers for the spedometer, showed speed in MPH rather than KPH, (but still topped at 255, so you're actually going faster!), and traded the score display for a power meter used exclusively for launch starts. I played it a TON back in the day!
Sharopolis, I like the way you explain things in an easy-to-understand way. Would you ever consider making a video about how emulators can cause bugs in games which do not occur when the game is played on original hardware? That Old Guy.
I've had both. For the most part NES is better, but I love that you can plug in a classic SEGA Genesis controller on the C64. I had a rare C64 RPG called "Legacy of the Ancients," That I would dare to say is better then most for the NES. Sure it's more basic, and doesn't really have music, but it's fun, unique, and from an Era when such games were more mature instead of being for children.
How long was the load times of the c64? With NES the ‘pick up and play’ was as fast as you could move. If I’m itching to get my game on and there’s a 2min load wait that could be a deal breaker
@@hicknopunk Carts were rather limited in number and reach. Also, anyone complaining about the mess that is the Switch e-shop is either too young or too much a pirate to remember trying their luck with random bargain bins. The NES library is bloated with trash, but Knight Rider is a great case study in how NES trash had a higher standard of quality than micro trash.
@@juststatedtheobvious9633 The comparative standards of trash are strongly mitigated by the fact that one piece of trash cost £50 & the other normally cost less than £5...
Yes, the NES is a better games machine overall. But there's one game that really shines on the C64 and that's Last Ninja. They ported LN2 to the NES and that's a sad display visually.
Jeroen Tel worked on both C64 and NES and has said himself C64 sound chip was objectively much more capable. Even though I enjoyed NES games, it would've been more impressive for it's time if it had a better sound chip. Shouldn't have increased retail price.
One more question to maybe ask in a comparison between the two platforms is "What did using it teach you?" For the NES, I expect the answer to that is "Not a lot", while using the C64 taught you a number of basic tech skills. In some ways, being less user friendly was actually a great strength of the C64. And the fact that it _could_ do so many more things than play games also meant that many C64 users _tried_ doing many more things than play games on it even if that is all they originally bought it for, simply because they _could._ Many developers of my generation started their programming journey coding BASIC on the C64, myself included.
Dig this format. You go over a lot of the same stuff we've learned from your "Games that push the limits of..." series, but it's always cool to hear about them and it's especially nice to see them "weaponized" with examples versus examples here, so to speak. Looking forward to seeing more "vs" videos here - it's easy to imagine stuff like the Amiga versus the Mega Drive, the SNES versus the Genesis (or the MegaGen or whatever you call it; I like how you squish the names together when talking about Sega's 16-bit machine, btw!) but this could go on to the PS2 versus the Dreamcast (I always heard the Dreamcast could do more with textures than the PS2) and other sixth gen platforms, I bet.
This is so damn cool! I will say that while you showed some great examples of the cid chips incredible sound I still think pound-for-pound the Nes has it. When I think of the iconic music from Mega Man, Ninja Gaiden, Castlevania, TMNT 2: The Arcade, Life Force, Metroid...it just goes on and on. Perhaps that was due to having higher budgets or better skill but the Nes sound was nothing short of amazing in the 1980's. I still hum Nes tunes today from my childhood.... You absolutely nailed it in this video! Your comparison is both fair and shows the good in each platform. I can't tell you how many videos like these that I've seen where the narrator declares one garbage and the other best in all of the land of gaming. I knew I subbed to your channel for a reason. ;) Addendum- Wait, wait, wait are you telling me the C64 has better samples than Bad Dudes on the Nes. (Seriously, don't look that up or you may go deaf). ;)
NES had better graphics, but C64 had much more "serious" games - simulations, strategies even adventures, where you would utilize full keyboard to issue commands. NES was at its core dumb console for dumb masses. C64 was on the other hand real computer . You could program, draw, calculate, even compose music . Many IT professionals cut their teeth on the C64, while NES users usually continued with newer consoles.
the fact that the c64 could even do smooth side scrolling was kinda a wonder, I know basically every piece of hardware had some developer figure it out eventually, but there's a reason Commander Keen was such a technical marvel in 1990
Graphically there's really no context. On the sound department there are some great tunes on the C64 for sure, but they usually sound like demoscene compositions instead of game music to me. Nothing beats a good Konami, Capcom or Sunsoft song on the NES. And there are so many of those. Controller: NES wins also. Load times: no contest. Would I have loved to have a C64 in the 80's? absofreakinglutely. Being able to code would have been so magical.
Are c64 cart games full of load times? I don't remember them having load times. Sure a floppy drive will be slower, but a better comparison would be loading tape games on both.
@@jsr734 while this is true my C64 experience was mostly on carts or a disk with a fast load cart. My nes experience was a sharp twin Famicom with lots of bootleg disk games and only about 10 cart games. So ones milage may vary.
@@hicknopunk Wow, that was a very special experience, i don´t think owning a Sharp Twin Famicom was very common in western markets. In my experience PC gaming was very limited to IBM PC clone computers with no hard disk drive, using monochrome crts (from the best b/w, orange, green, and the worst the yellow fosfor crts) with sound just been simple beeps from the internal speaker. In contrast the Nes was full color with complex scrolling and sound effects and music.
@@jsr734 my parents did a lot of business and got my sister and I a red one with a stack of bootleg disks. I do have a few legit ones though. We had an Amiga at home which also made my childhood a bit unusual as I played a lot of games probably mostly sold in Europe on it. I do have a USA NES now though as well, but I only have a handful of titles for it, it's really my 3DS I play these days. Sooooo many good games I have a few more years of backlog games to play before I get a switch. At the end of the day if you like the games, who cares what it is on.
i knew the nes could play 7-bit 40khz music but i was absolutely blown away when i saw the c64 able to play 8-bit 48khz music _without a dedicated pcm channel_
Some omissions: isometric games (always seem to be missed on the NES although they must exist), and text adventures that obviously can't exist on the NES.
@@danielespeziari5545 Good to know, but they never seem to get much attention, or am I missing something? I guess the NES hardware lends itself well to platform type games, and 2D shooters though.
I haven't done that yet, but my three 'Pushing the Limits' videos about 5th gen systems all talk about how they compare with other machines of the time. PlayStation: th-cam.com/video/7teA7Izpi7o/w-d-xo.html N64: th-cam.com/video/JpSW4p_cRuU/w-d-xo.html Sega Saturn: th-cam.com/video/8TDfWxWUBVs/w-d-xo.html But I think a straight comparison video would be a good idea for the future.
I noticed as a kid back in the day that I didnt know anyone cept one kid with a C64 here on the west coast but everyone had a nintendo and a PC. I got the internet early on in the 90s and found out that the friends I made on the east coast all had C64s so it makes me wonder if it was popular regionally in the USA.
A side note about frame buffers, since Sharopolis happened to mention them: The Commodore 64 had no designated video memory, just specific locations in the RAM that were the default place to look for what to draw to the screen. But there was a second location you could tell the VIC-II chip to look instead. This change would happen instantly. This meant that if you wanted graphics that would take multiple frames' worth of time to redraw and were willing to give up that pretty big chunk of RAM (that could normally be used for whatever you wanted), you could treat the pair of memory locations as alternating frame buffers. I'm pretty sure this is how the bitmap-mode games shown in the video worked. I've only ever known two games that used bitmap mode and didn't do this, because it wasn't worth it: _Leaderboard Golf_ and some text adventure game whose name escapes me that accompanied each location with a fullscreen still image. In both cases you could watch it "draw" the picture in real time because that's what it had to do.
@17:52 Cartridge games were not a brief flirtation, they were available from the start and largely supported by software publishers in the U.S. which is why many Brits thought they only emerged with the C64GS. In 80s I saw loads of C64 cartridge games available at the computer shows and bought them.
There was the 1982-1983 (maybe 1984) wave of cartridges, led by Commodore themselves, and then the 2nd wave around 1990 with the C64GS release. But there was a long gap between with very few cartridge releases, mostly because both disk and cassette were so much cheaper, and had so much more storage.
The games are all arcade conversions, which the nes did better biut the c64 had thousands more games, Adventure, 3d, indie, shooting (Uridium, Parallax, Rambo) that didnt have to adhere to the short gameplay of arcade games, way more varied and interesting, while the nes had mostly platformers that got old pretty quickly. Not to mention software. And if you were tight you could trade them for free
The C64, CPC and ZX Spectrum have over 500 text adventures each (around half with graphics), while the NES has a whooping total of 0. This, combined with the fact that you can learn to program your own games, makes any of these computers a clear winner to take to a deserted insland over the NES, where you would end up playing the same 2D platform game over and over after beating the top 5 games.
i was expecting a comparison with both maniac mansion. I'm actually glad i stayed till the end tho. As a kid i always had my C64 in my heart but all my friend had a nintendo, was a bit envious at time :D
Growing up in that era I always felt like computer games in general were slow, clunky and rigid, they felt so basic compared to their console counterparts, yet despite all that the PC was considerably more powerful and more capable, yet gaming somehow was more boring on the PC during the NES and SNES era, not sure why? It just was… Computer games stared to catch up in popularity and quality roughly around the PS1 / N64 era, yet it wasn’t until the next generation of gaming that PC gaming and Netcafe gaming really took off
The C64 has a higher resolution option but i believe it’s in 4 color mode,the nes soundchip isn’t that flexible but it does have a dedicated 7bit pcm soundchip.
Yep, and the NES can really sing under the right programmer with some games even having speech samples, but overall the SID chip is more flexible with programmers, and the demo scene finding more undocumented/unintended tricks they can do with it. Also go look up "Commodore 64 Dallas Intro" as people have managed to get full motion video to run on the C64 which just blows my mind!!!
There are two high-res modes: the one where each tile only has one color, and the one where each tile still only has one color but the background can be one of four colors instead of just one, at the expense of only having 64 unique tile graphics to work with.
Both native hi-res C64 modes support all 16 colours on screen. The limitation is that within each 8x8 pixel cell you can only choose 2 colours in 320x200 mode, or 4 colours per 4x8 pixel cell in 160x200 (double-wide) mode.
I think one thing is evident at that the NES games were often more polished than C64 games especially the ones that came from Japan at the time because they usually had a much longer development time, more people working on them and bigger budgets and resources available. Many C64 games were often done by a few people at most with a very small budget and development time.
The best on the NES can't be touched by the C64, but there was quite a bit of poor quality NES games just trying to cash in. The one man or small group approach could lead to some incredible games on the C64. Having both was always the best option, but if you only had one, you were doing pretty good.
Fast, good, cheap. Pick any two.
@@MechanicoidI don't disagree but there were equally as many cash grab games on the C64 from companies grabbing any licenses they could just to knock a game out in a few weeks to sell to unsuspecting people. As someone who had both growing up I definitely appreciated the ones that had time and care put into them on the C64 every bit as much as my favourite NES games.
I do not agree, the C64 is the hardware thas was most pushed to the limits than any other 8 bit hw. NES sprites are more colorful than C64 ones and more importantly they do not trade color for resolution. Of course, the c64 is able to show more "BIG" sprites, but this is expecially due to the fact that C64 sprites can be zoomed and they are bigger by design. However C64 sprites only handle 8 sprites on screen and achieving more is a relatively complex task to do requiring scanline interrupts and taxing a lot the relatively slow cpu.
NES sprites are only 8 pixels wide, but from the tech point of view they need data at they was 16 pixels wide and entirely monocrome, because color information require two bits instead of one for every sprite pixel. the ability to show more sprites on the screen on the NES, however, comes with a cost: due to the different architecture NES can only handle 8 small sprites x scanline. you do sprite rotation (that require a relatively medium cpu effort) and this causes the sprite flickering. The C64 did not have any distinction of number of sprites / scanline vs screen as the NES had. this is due to the fact that what are sprite attributes (x,y,etc) are not stored in video ram on the C64 but internally in VIC-II registers thus requiring no extra time to fetch those data from memory. Pratically the NES PPU had, for every scanline, the task to scan all the sprites table to determine which sprites will be shown limiting this number to 8.
This extra time, reduce the number of available cycles to fetch sprite pattern data and limit the number of sprites/scanline.
Allowing more sprites/scanline would have been hard because of increased complexity of internal buffers and also needed the availability of more memory fetch cycles to show more sprites involving faster cpu and ram chips.
Yea japan saw the future of gaming while in Europe and north America video games were very disrespected they couldn't get much investment .and people born before 1970 avoided them like the plague
My parents got me a VIC 20 when I was probably 6 and eventually I got a C128 when I was 8. If it weren't for spending hours typing in games and programs from magazines I would never have become a software developer. If they had chosen to get me an NES, and later a SNES I would have just played games and never got into making games and other programs. I understood how to amortize a mortgage before I was 10 years old. I would check out programming books from my local library and type in all that code too, eventually getting into PC programming, C and x86 Assembly.
c64 kills NES easy
I always thought the reason for the border on the C64 was because it was meant to be used as a general-purpose computer while connected to a TV which would have an unpredictable amount of overscan, so the border was how to guarantee that everything would be visible.
Incidentally, growing up my family did use the C64 for a lot of word processing and productivity.
Yes, this. Not to mention, the borders appeared a bit smaller on NTSC televisions compared to PAL, especially the top and bottom as the main (non-border) area appeared proportionally taller in NTSC compared to PAL.
There are some homebrew ports somewhat recently that take full advantage of the border space. Check out Donkey Kong X2016 as an example of this done to perfection. It is a near-perfect arcade conversion.
Overscan was taken into account on the NES, but it isn't generally a huge deal. It was beneficial for Mario 3 though, since the NES can only scroll horizontally or vertically, not both. Tiles were manually updated left to right (to not glitch the HUD), creating glitchy looking sides on the farthermost partial tile, but not generally noticeable on a TV. Clearly visible on emulator.
I seem to remember that "Mini Office 2" was available on the C64 (and also presumably "Mini Office 1" as well).
@@SChristianCollins Both PAL and NTSC are 15625 kHz horizontal refresh. If you divide by 25 (50i PAL) or 30 (60i NTSC) you get 625 and 520 lines, or 312/260 lines in progressive. As most graphic chips did 200 horizontal lines, there were 2x30 lines borders on NTSC and 2x 56 lines borders on PAL.
My brother was an English major, and he wrote most of his papers on a Commodore 64.
I grew up on the NES, but I'm surprised how well the C64 holds its own when running the same games. No doubt the NES was the best at what it was designed for, but some crafty musicians and coders have gotten jaw-dropping results out of the C64. I really need to dig into C64 gaming someday.
If programmed right, the NES sound chip could also produce jaw-dropping results. Tim Follin proved that more than anyone else. His NES tracks surpass anything I've ever heard on a C64, even his own stuff he did on the Commodore.
I think on the C64, people like Rob Hubbard quickly created music routines with all sorts of effects like fast arpeggios simulating chords, vibratos, slides, etc. which were fast becoming standard and used by many musicians. NES games were mainly inspired by arcade games and used the sound chip in a more basic way, just playing simple notes. When someone like Follin who came from the C64 had the chance to write for the NES, he used those advanced techniques and made the NES sound chip really sing.
Commodore 64 had some non-arcade games that are still played in remastered or other platform versions Like Pirates, Maniac Mansion, Zak McKraken, Defender of the Crown... They were really next gen games compared to NES.
Arcade games in C64 were usually not that good compared to NES. But there was good ones too, like Paradroid, Barbarian, Kickstart II, Ugh Lympics, Airborne Ranger..
Many C64 games don't hold up well today, but there are some fantastic ones that are still very much worth playing. My all-time favorite C64 game is Wizball. It is unlike any other game either before or since, and the control scheme has a bit of a steep learning curve, but once you get it the game is simply fantastic. Plus it featured a brilliant co-op mechanic which was quite ahead of its time.
Keep in mind that if you do delve into C64 gaming, it is often a good idea to read about a game before playing it, preferably the original release material. Most games from that era are very short on in-game information, partly because of space restrictions but also because at the time players were expected to read the manual for the game before playing it. Sometimes the "manual" is nothing more than a short backstory for the events of the game, but even that can give you a greater appreciation for a game. It is actually interesting how much difference it can make for your enjoyment of a game to have at least some information about what is supposed to be going on. "I'm shooting these _things_ because _they are there"_ does not make for nearly as compelling an experience as "I'm shooting these _demons summoned by an evil witch_ because _she wants to destroy my village to erect an altar on the site",_ or something along those lines. And the game itself usually won't give you that information.
c64 kills NES easy
Hindsight is always a funny thing. I started with a 2600 and went to NES a few years after it came out. I only experienced the C64 through friends. It was definitely fun and blew the 2600 out of the water visually. Now i have allmof them and enjoy them for different reasons. They all have their charm and a place in my collection. And lest we forgot, without the C64, we wouldn't have those awesome Llamasoft games.
I had a Commodore while some of my friends had Nintendos and Sega Master systems. I think the main pro of the computer over these other machines was that piracy was so rampant we basically counted games as free. I had hundreds of games and maybe a handful originals. While every game they got cost all their savings I just bought blank floppys.
You've also got to love how many legit new games would cost only about £2 when console carts could be £25 or more. Even the more expensive C64 games would be re-released in budget form, or in a compilation pack, after about a year. I'd hoped those days would come to consoles when CD-ROMs came along, but they didn't really do so.
I had both a C64 (in 1985 or 86) and the NES (Christmas 88), and i agree pirating games for the C64 was great, but i have to admit i didn't play C64 too much after we got the NES (but mostly because all the other kids at school had NES). But i still play both to this day, though granted via emulation. What a great time to be a kid.
@@Banderpop We lived out in the sticks so it was a long way to the nearest computer store. About 60 km or 37 miles. But there was enough teenagers with computers within biking- and later moped-distance to maintain some kind of circulation of new(ish) software. All little devious pirates!
And that piracy was also one of the main reasons why C64 development budgets were much smaller than on NES. Unfortunately that also meant lower quality games.
@@blaah4490 Well yeah, sorry for not making better decisions when I was 9 lol.
C64 most resembled a bread-bin, meanwhilst the NES most resembled one of those Breville sandwich makers. There's room for both in my kitchen.
"why do you have a bread box and a panini press in the living room, under the CRT TV?" is what the neighbors will say when you have them over
This is the best comment I’ve ever seen
The Commodore 64c ditched the breadbin aesthetic, and resembles a smaller Commodore 128.
@@ilexgarodan Yes, but the Vic-20 based case for the C64 is more widely known, and the better selling of the C64 models, but I like both styles just as well, and after my original C64 Breadbin bit the dust due to the admittedly horrible US power supplies they came with I ended up with a C128 that I still have(sadly I think the SID chip is starting to die) in storage, but these days I use a C64 Maxi to play games, and demos on, or VICE on Linux for oddball stuff that won't run on it.
Do you still have room for a PS3, if you already have an NES? Seems like they'd complement each other well- or would it be a bit redundant?
*aka George Foreman grill
For somebody who has never programmed any computer game on any machine, can I just say how fantastic your channel is, Sir. The time and effort you put into these videos is most appreciated by not only myself but I am sure many others. Thanks once again, and keep up the great work.
Thank you!
“C64 vs NES”
NES: “heh this should be easy”
C64: “look at my demoscene”
I know I'm showing my own bias here as an avid C64 fan in the 80s, but I think the ability for the C64 to be programmed by a kid in a bedroom was a huge strength. Yes, that sort of openness means you're going to get a lot of rubbish, but it also means so much more room for new ideas to come up.
True. Still if you look overall. How many really great news ideas really appeared? I still it’s great but it’s not mandatory that it’s always good.
But for sure many great devs came from the open home computer scene. I myself started out my gamedev career there
@@litjellyfishPlenty of original stuff like Nebulus, Stunt Car Racer, Sentinel, Pirates etc
@@Codetapper True that. My reply was deleted somehow. It said basically that many of those games was done under a Label and in that I see those diffrently . I was more referring to "bedroom" devs.
Still even if many bedroom games was so so they kickstarted careers that otherwise would not have been possible.
@@Codetapper Btw are you the Codetapper that has written tips about Amiga sprites copper tricks?
@@litjellyfish Yep that's me!
Scrolling on C64 was a cpu-intense affair, having to completely redraw the tilemap for every 8 pixels of scroll. The NES only had to draw in a new column of tiles
Stationary screen could much more easily go the C64’s way. Impossible Mission looks better than a lot of the NES library.
I’m glad you included Scarabaeus in the video. That game was unbelievable for the time, and aspects of it still haunt me.
If you compare sound hardware, the C64 is actually WAY more capable. The only problem is that it just doesn't have enough sound channels, and few games devs were willing to drop sound channels for sound effects if music was playing. This resulted most games either playing only music or sound effects during gameplay.
While the NES's PSG was technically inferior in most respects, the fact that it had two more channels meant that most games played music and sound effects. A developer could occasionally drop a channel for a sound effect as long as the main melody continued on. One thing that the NES could do better than the C64 was samples. While one of the modes still required a lot of CPU power, if you were willing to live with relatively low quality, you could at least use samples for music and gameplay. The nice thing too, was that this was a built-in features with its own sound channel rather than developers manipulating a sound chip.
Both are great systems, but you can see the effects the C64 being a computer that happened to have great capabilities versus the NES being purpose built for games. This came into play during their lifespans. Neither was a wrong approach, it's just that there is a cost to each approach. I don't think you'd be disappointed with either back in the 80s.
I personally prefer the NES just due to the all the issues involved with a system that mostly used floppy disks. That, and it's just not as simple to fix and work out the issues of a C64. Most of what goes wrong with an NES is the pins, and there's solutions and even permanent fixes to that (Blinking Light Win for example). It has so few chips in it, that it's relatively simple to diagnose and replace failed components. If own a C64, you'd better be prepared to pull out a multimeter and a soldering iron, maybe invest in an oscilloscope. One chip dies and the system can turn into a brick. C64s are notorious for chip failures. You're also going to spend a lot more money to setup a C64 than an NES.
I own both systems, and wouldn't have any other way. I just think that you should know all the pitfalls of a system before you get into it.
Can you explain to me why each channel on the C64 needs its own DAC? Ensoniq continued with the half analog crap. Motorola 6809 showed that 8bit MUL was possible on that die size. I don’t need esoteric synthy effects.
Parabola waveform
I have never seen framebuffer explained this well visually, you really did a great job this time!
I'm turning on all notifications of the channel because of this video 👍
same here! I always wondered what the hell was and now at 47 years old finally understand it!
Sharopolis is great for the technical details. Some 8 bit computers that were able to make use of a hardware framebuffer included those that used the 6845 CRTC to drive the display, like the Amstrad CPC and BBC Micro. You draw to the back screen while displaying the front screen, then flip them around when you're ready. The flipping is instantaneous, so there is no flickering.
Monty on the Run got an NES port of sorts in Japan for the Famicom Disk System-- pretty much a completely different game, but it does have a take on the famous theme. And the waveform limitations really do show there; the SID really is a uniquely capable chip
I owned a copy of it but never played it, it had a bearded prisoner guy as MC then the mole
This is a strange comparison. A computer versus a console. However, it's comparable to a point, especially as so many titles made it to both machines as they were so popular.
The NES had several years on the C64, so not sure it's a very fair comparison in that sense either. I assume the C64 was quite a bit more expensive though, especially in the mid 90s, when it was still a capable machine compared to the competition. After 1987, deals could be had for the C64, as it was not very competitive anymore.
The C128 would have been a great option, if it had more titles built specifically for it.
Love both of them. Platformers and such, hands down the NES. It's not really close at all. Mega Man series for example. Strategy games and role playing games, I'd say the C64. Having a keyboard helped tons. Ultima series, Pirates! etc. Pirates! is a good example as it's on both systems. Shout out to the NES version of Robin Hood(movie license game) though. It is to this day the only NES role playing game that I know of where I can freely choose and equip weapons and armor from my inventory. Blew my mind!
I love how you cover newer releases and aren't stuck in 1985 like most other channels about old systems
Thanks!
@@Sharopolisyeah, I like it and there are a lot of interesting and technically impressive games to look at
I like the c64 color palette because it's so natural, not over saturated like on the other computers/consoles.
Yeah, the softer colors when mixed in software modes made for a very pastel looking graphic, now synonymous with Commodore 64 graphics.
are you gonna cover the msx? There are some really interesting games on both the MSX1 and 2
With cassettes full of games, you were better off with a C64 as a kid. The NED kids only had six cartridges at most at home, while we C64 kids had thousands of games available, , because there was no money needed for them.
4:09 NONSENSE!!! It was deliberately designed with a border for a very good reason. It wasn't because it was "simpler and cheaper," it's because it's a computer.and not a games console. If 8 pixels are cut off on your NES, (by the TV) it's not that big a deal. if 8 pixels are cut off on your C64 (by the TV), you can't see the first letter on every line.
EVERY 8 bit computer designed to hook to a TV and not a monitor has these borders for this reason.
never had a C64 (didn't even know it existed until years later) but I've always been impressed by the graphics/music/games of it. I'm a NES kid to the core, but C64 looked pretty cool
Home computers were a special time in gaming. Really, some of the best arcade ports out there back in the day. A lot of gems and games that were way ahead of their time. It was way more cool to have a home computer than any console. It was like a hybrid of a computer and console in one.
I was a collector of .SID music files, and while I always wanted the 2nd addon cartridge for stereo sound (I attempted to mix my own but the quality of the mixer I had could not maintain the tape speed in each recording and the audio would desync). However music in games like mario 3 and Batman were amazing on nes. It was rare but if a game used that pcm channel for percussion it elevated the quality a ton.
Lets just say, NES got higher floor, but C64 got much higher ceiling. In both graphics and sound.
C64 did have a game that was exactly like Super Mario Bros, it was called "The Great Giana Sisters" it was so similar that they got sued by Nintendo
The C64 came out earlier at a time when computer power was doubling roughly every 18 months or less, also the C64 wasn't just a console and could do so much more, I certainly did much more than just play games, I learnt machine code on the C64 for instance and all this makes it an unfair comparison. The C64 still won easily with it's SID sound chip over the NES however, some tracks were so good I'd listen to them longer than playing the game it came with.
Big difference is of course C64 can be used for so much more than gaming. You can make your own games, programs, and even use it as a synthesizer. Having a C64 can profoundly change your life and your future.
Nope. They tried "expanding" the capabilities with the C128, but that machine turned out to be a disaster. Commodore never did 80-character mode right. Maybe you are confusing it with an Amstrad CPC, which DID have a massive amount of useful software besides games (killer version of Rick Dangerous II for example). For programming the C64 was horror too. C64 Basic was a nightmare, so was the manual. If you got a Speccy and wanted to make your own games, you were treated with the most astonishing manual ever made, and BASIC for the Spectrum had killer features for game making built in.
@@lovemadeinjapan are you serious? C64 had so much quality software it's ridiculous. Basic wasn't good for graphics programming, it was a peek and poke machine first and foremost..but for making real games you'd have to program in machine code anyway. The manual is not meant to be a good programming teacher, but there were so many other books that could do that, what a weird point.
@@Boxing_Gamer But if you had a Speccy, the manual was goregous, full colour, all the BASIC to make games was there, it screamed "MAKE YOUR OWN GAMES". No pokes needed. Sinclair was a men of class. Tramiel just a box shover. And to be honest, I can't think of really good C64 software. Stuff that was unique and unseen on any other machine and stands above the competition. And the hardware limitations were really bad. Even IF you managed to create say a half decent text editor for the C64, people were unable to store the files. You did not want to bucket with lists of time-stamps for a tape, tons of manual spooling and accidentially overwrite your thesis. Even the 1541 was too little too late.
@@lovemadeinjapan yes it was better to get started with, as was Commodore c16 and plus 4 as well because of the extra basic commands..but as I said, you'd have to switch to machine code anyway once you hit the speed limitations of basic, and then all of that don't matter anymore.
@@Boxing_Gamer Well tons of limits remain: bad video output, no decent storage solution, no room for expansion inside, bad power supply, ugly case, bad keyboard layout, abysmal font.... But I agree, with a good C++ compiler you generate 6510 and Z80 code on the fly today.
I lived, and still live in a somewhat small rural part of the southeastern US, so I was damn lucky as a kid to grow up with a Intellivision, Atari 2600 Jr, Commodore Vic-20(traded it for credit on for a C64)C64(later C128), Apple IIe, NES, and Sega Game Gear in my bedroom till the 16 bit gen, and IBM PC clones became more affordable, so I got the best of all of them, and I love different games from all of them, with the C64 holding some of my fondest memories like Giana Sisters that went toe to toe with SMB 1 IMHO, and being able to switch over, to a word processor for homework using GEOS, and being my first experience of going online dialing up BBS, and going on Q-Link, then when I was done with my C64, or Apple IIe for the admittedly few better software titles on it like Print Shop Deluxe, and a few exclusive games, I could then go down to the local video store on the weekend, and rent the new hot NES games everyone at school was talking about as very few of my friends even had a computer at home, and on long family trips being able to play Sonic, Streets of Rage, Shinobi, etc.. on my Game Gear. Ahh the memories of being an 80's, and early 90's kid 🙂
I would like to see someone do a book report in a word processor with embedded graphics on the NES
C64 used cheap tapes and disks, easy to copy and spread. And also to store users generated content, and related to that - C64 was a computer with decent game console hardware inside, so it was CREATIVE PLATFORM for any owner out there. One could actually make a humble game on his own in BASIC or any other language, or even really polished commercial game in machine code.
Console like NES couldn't beat such concept at all, it made kids passive consumers and nothing more. Sure, NES was more powerful, however its games were strictly on carts and very expensive, but also quite often "more of the same thing", gameplay-wise. C64 has enormous catalog of very varied commercial and homebrew games, even zillion amateurish offerings with all kinds of cool and offbeat ideas. Easy to obtain for free in the days, or in the form of bootlegs for dimes (not nice, sure). But even legal games were quite cheaper than NES carts, and budget games (like Mastertronic's stuff) were very affordable.
Just made myself some tea with the intent of watching something interesting. Luckily this popped up, as I hadn't seen you for a bit. I've always loved your content. Just wanted to say thanks for the past couple years, and especially thank you for this afternoon's teatime entertainment!
Thanks for watching! It's lovely to hear.
If the C64 had a better colour palette and if its games supported more than one button on the controller there would be no contest IMO.
I love the SID chip but the NES's sound was iconic in its own way as well. Great video, very interesting to see the two systems compared in detail like this.
Look forward to this. Some amazing stuff was done with the C64 with the right programmer and at the time, I felt the NES was ridiculously overpriced, some £50, especially when you could get great C64 games from between £2 and a tenner.
Yep, the fact big box C64 games were cheaper than budget NES titles makes it an easy winner here. I could buy a new game every week, if I had a NES I'd've got a new game for Christmas and that would be that.
Yeah this is why the NES never took off in Europe. £40 or more for games that graphically didn't really look any better than a decent full price c64 game that cost a tenner at the most.
The NES always had better games than the C64 because it was created with games in mind. I know the C64 was known for its games, but the creators of the system had to make sure it could do things besides games. Also, the NES had the advantage of cartridges that could increase the capabilities of the system by using special chips. The C64 had a cartridge slot, but for whatever reason games released on cartridge seemed to be cut down and simple compared to disk-based games. One point in the C64's favor is it did strategy and RPGs far better than the NES due to having a keyboard and an audience who enjoyed the cRPG experience. The few NES ports of cRPGs were terrible. Also, the C64 had text adventures, both graphical and pure text.
The c64 had the best sound chip of any 8 bit machine and it's not even close. It was the only one that sounded like a real musical instrument and not a computer trying to pass as one. Not surprising since after making the SID chip for MOS, Bob Yannes left and founded Ensoniq (the synthesiser company). C64 lacks the million-dollar games, but that was a big part of its charm. For any game that originated on the C64, the C64 is usually the best version to play.
Not so sure. In japan there were 8 bit computers based on z80 / 6502 that were equipped with YM FM Synthesis. The SID, is better than more of the Square Wave based Chips like the General Instrument a like or the Texas Instrument ones, but compared with YM ones it sound like a toad .
I beg to differ. SID is 3 tone generators that could do any of 4 waveforms. The NES had 2 pulse channels, 1 triangle, and a noise channel for MOST games. The SID channels offered up a bit more versatility because you could do several type of instruments. That said, nothing ever sounded realistic. These are worse then FM synth that we got later. The nes however had 1 more channel which could allow it to better do sound effects and music at the same time. The big elephant in the room however is the nes had a PCM channel. Because of the size of ROMs and lack of compression, digital samples were rarely used, but some games like the batman games and Mario 3 did use them for the percussion track, and it blew away any drums you could do on the waveform channels. Also in practice I find nes games offered more sound tracks than c64. While c64 teams were much smaller, back in the day the composer was always just one person.
@@MaNameizJeff I guess there's also an advantage to cartridge games being able to include their own hardware to expand sound capabilities (Castlevania III for example) but the developers need to go the extra mile to do that.
@@ccricers I recall the enhanced chip used for color reproduction but didn't recall any enhanced sound capabilities. I actually just loaded it up in droid sound tonight and it wasn't anything special. Now there is the issue where the famicom has some additional sound hardware, but the number of games that took advantage of it can be counted on one hand.
No way. The Atari 8 bit had a better sound chip. Four channels of the POKEY chip, which was used in arcade machines. The C64s three channels sounded nasally and farty in comparison.
Doom can run on both.
So the C64 was overwhelmingly more popular in your part of the world. In fact, many of the games you showed were only released in Europe.
The reason my parents bought me a NES and not a c64 was because NES was a lot cheaper. My family wasn’t rich enough to own a dedicated computer TV monitor and disk drives were too expensive. I just trade borrowed my Zelda to play the the big name titles which were better made than c64. Lots of kids had c64. Nes kids new what they were about
C64 all the way for me, hands down although what both machines could do with such a small amount of memory was incredible and beats games of today which have ridiculous amounts of memory but no soul.
Yep, I hear ya. As fun as the NES was, the killer feature on the C64 for me was being able to make my own games. That and Spy vs Spy.
NES for me, hands up. No loading screens, an the quality of lets say Super Mario Bros 3. The C64 had nothing that even came close.
of course it can win. the c64 was a computer and the nes a console when that meant something. Theres at least one entire genre, adventure games, that the c64 had that is barely even represented on the NES. Also, there was a huge gulf in software pricing. And then you have the SID.
2:28 It wasn't purely budget, most western releases of these games were licensed by third parties, where as the NES versions were usually put together by the original developers, or someone chosen by them. So the licenced versions tended to be loose adaptations, because usually all they'd have to work from was the arcade board, whereas licencees chosen by the developers would probably be Japanese and more likely to get documentation and support from the original developer.
I grew up with the c64 and only a few games had a border most games are full screen
While saying "there are many many [C64] games that you are unlikely to see on the NES", Pirates! for C64 is on the screen... but there is also an NES version of Pirates, so that's wrong. Heh.
oops!
My conclusion is that the C64 was a better platform, but the NES had better games. Development time is pretty much the whole reason, since Nintendo had a lot more money and thus staff to throw at creating games and could take a bit more time, they were able to really polish things. Just imagine if things had been on even footing and the C64 had been a huge hit as a gaming console slash computer. If only some manufacturer would make another bread-bin style computer, complete with a discrete graphics card, but not from a laptop.
Well, I don't agree. A NES game was restricted to 40KB. You could do more with bank switching, but at the cost of expensive cartridges. The C64s advantages that especially with games on multiple diskettes, games could have way more content than games on the NES. Stuff like Calfornia Games, Bard's Tale, Ultima etc. was the C64s speciality, allthough some of this was later ported to the NES after being succesfull on the C64.
@@danielmantione Yeah, and the NES had expensive cartridges that added functionality and space, and the C64 even had some great games too, but there were a lot more great games for the NES because they had the time and funding to back these projects. Which all brings me back to the C64 having better hardware, and the NES having better games, not that the C64 was incapable of good games, it just wasn't the norm.
I remember Pac-Man on C64 looking better than the NES version. That’s probably about it.
I would love to see a video showcasing the Commodore 64 vs the Atari 8-bit computers the same way!
Agreed. I've been trying to wrap my head around what the Ataris were capable of but it's so much more complicated than Commodore with its five simple graphics modes. I _think_ its low-res mode is almost 1:1 comparable with the 64's based on the screenshots I've seen of cross-platform games (of which there were many) but beyond that I'm stumped.
I seen this thumbnail and thought "oh thank the heavens, finally something good to watch"
Thank you for these. Theyre awesome
Late 1980s my friend had a C64. Loved the racing game, baseball game and Steel Thunder. Wanted one so bad. Not soon after got one from one of my mother’s friends either free or very cheap.
Thing did not even turn on. Repair shop wanted maybe around $200 to fix. My parents weren’t going to pay that…..Not soon after I got NES (already had Sega Master System).
I find that the average NES game looks nicer than the average C64 game.... but the best C64 games look better than the best NES games.
Oh, and most C64 games sound MUCH better than NES games - the SID chip was amazing.
what a fantastic concept for a video! tackled gracefully. thanks!
It's the best NES vs. C64 comparison on youtube, hands down!
Thanks to both of you!
C64 version of Mario may have had a few spells of slow down, but for a conversion done without REU (unlike the also excellent Sonic Hedgehog conversion) it was amazing. If it had been released in the 80’s in Europe it would have KILLED Nintendo sales. I got it along with my The C64 just before lockdown and it helped keep me sane 😂
The estimated amount of Commodore 64 games is around the 25000 mark, that does include basic programmed games. Overall software titles including tools is around 35000+
Family BASIC for the Famicom only gave you 2K (1984 Bytes) of memory and could only be expanded up to 4K of memory. Not enough memory to program with. BASIC for the Commodore 64 on the other hand gave you 38K (38911 Bytes) of memory, which is plenty of memory to program with.
As someone whose nearly entire circle of friends had both a C64 and, later, a NES in the house, I can say that once the NES came out, it became the go to for action games, while our C64s continued to see a ton of use for adventure / role playing games. On a weekend sleepover we might start with some Super Mario Bros, Mega Man, or Zanac in the afternoon, then settle in for a long night of Might and Magic, Wasteland, or Alternate Reality after dark.
Oh, and a bunch of us also had modems and Q-Link. 📞
As usual, well explained by you. I was a C64 fanboy and eventually had to make peace with the fact that the NES is better suited for most 2D games. But the C64 has some intriguing (if obscure) advantages. The NES can only do 64 sprite*pixels per scanline. Even with the most pessimistic interpretation of multicolor sprites on the C64, it can put 96 pixels worth of those sprites on each scanline. You can overcome the tiny number of C64 sprites (8!) with multiplexing, plus the C64 sprites are way bigger than NES sprites. (C64: 504 pixels; NES: 64 pixels). You can also edit arbitrary parts of a sprites' data between frames, making it possible to animate characters without having to store entire separate blocks of sprite data as the NES would have to. (Note the Gameboy can also do this, and obviously this is a standard ability in the 16 bit generation).
For less "traditional NES" style games, the C64 sometimes really shines. The higher horizontal resolution makes large amounts of text far more practical, and the programmer doesn't necessarily have to ship graphics data for every letter and number, as you must do on the NES. And if you do want to do your own brand new fonts, they only cost 1bpp, which is impossible on the NES.
One of the major contributing factors with the c64 vs the Nes which I am surprised was not mentioned was the price of the software itself.
Admittedly, in the UK the cassette was the major way of sourcing games for the c64 due to the high price of the disk drive, you could get great games for just £1.99 (let alone the PD arena where it was more often than not - free - let alone piracy yar ma hearties etc which as a schoolchild at the time I never did, honest guv).
Nes cartridges at the time were close to £30 and beyond for just 1 game, whereas you could get 15 Mastertronic/Codemasters games for that on the c64.
For me the C64 was the real deal, the nes was but a toy.
As a C64 owner since 1983, I remember being fairly unimpressed by the NES's graphics. Nice to have a joystick with more than one button, though.
The best looking NES games blow away the best looking C64 games by a mile. Just about anything from Konami, Capcom, Natsume, Tecmo, Sunsoft, and of course Nintendo. Play through Batman: Return of the Joker. No amount of sluggish polygons or background tricks is enough to come close to the visual splendor of that game.
@@davidaitken8503I agree that the best looking NES games easily beat the best-looking C64 games, sue. But I feel the best-sounding C64 easily beat the best-sounding NES games.
But these things are subjective, so there’s no right answer. :-)
@@ScrapKing73 Agree. If I were to add something in the favor of C64, due to the "better" sound, some games just had an astonishing atmosphere. The Last Ninja for example.
I'd say this atmosphere is not replicated on the NES.
One button? How dare you. How very dare you.
@@davidaitken8503 Nothing comes close to Beach Head II
Right off the bat, I have to say that I'm a C64 fanboy. I never had an NES, but I'm not a hater. However, I do think that the NES was overrated. It was a great system in its day, but not necessarily the greatest. I wouldn't say that the C64 was better, but it had advantages. Side-by-side comparisons of games on the two systems, the NES will most often win the battle on pure specs. But where I feel that the C64 regains the lead, is pricing. Games retailing at £30 to £50 on the NES would come in at £2 to £4 on C64 cassette. The margins of quality were not so vast that the C64's offerings were unacceptably inferior. The trade off in loading time is significant, which may nudge the NES back in front. But with the C64 being an open system to develop everything from homebrew to professional software, I feel that this is the killer blow it had on the NES. And, it has to be acknowledged, piracy. Friend has a game you like, it's yours for virtually free. Whether it was a right or wrong thing to do, it was a thing that was done. For me, the C64 over the NES. But it's a battle royale of two legendary systems, one being declared the winner doesn't make the other a loser.
Top work as usual! Loved my c64 and still play the games and discover new ones.
17:28 Yeah the storage medium had a huge influence on what kind of content saw the light of day where tapes although slow allowed for much more experimentation while doing the same on NES was an electrical engineering project if Nintendo didn't have a mapper chip for what you wanted to do.
Ultimately I think it was for the best putting software on cassette tapes rather than carts primarily, looking back on Atari history every single game console they made was hindered with inadequate cartridge sizes.
I think your conclusion is the right one, but as with the SNES and Mega Drive, once again the Nintendo system is permitted to bring foreign circuitry and processors into the comparison against a stock competitor, simply because there was a widespread culture of propping up the shortcomings of the Nintendo system with hardware in many SNES carts and virtually all NES carts. A comparison that didn't allow for additional hardware (including ROM paging) would turn the result on its head, as would one that allowed for the C64 to use the REU. But as there was virtually no culture of using this in game software, it's understandable.
That was the design philisophy of the NES/SNES - skimp on the hardware, but add the provision to include extra chips in the cartridges. They shifted the cost burden to the publishers creating the games (and the people buying them).
That's what I personally argue the most about MD/Snes "comparisions" (same happens with MS/Nes): starting from Mario Kart, many games like Starfox, Yoshi'd Island and so on are simply not possible on stock Snes without additional hw. If you allow chipped games in the "race", why not included 32X in MD "side", since it's something which actually run from MD cart slot? 32X it's additional hw in the end, just like Super-Fx2...
Nope, even mapperless Super Mario Bros looks better than the C64´s as show in the video.
@@jsr734 that's just one game though, and a game that doesn't suffer much from having one small set of graphics for the entire game. A lot of early C64 games also stuck to using a single bank of characters and sprites, but it wasn't a hardware limitation - the C64 was really just waiting for ambition to catch up with what it could do (without additional hardware). The C64's RAM was essentially also its VRAM, you just had to point the video chip towards the bit you wanted to use at any given moment. So you've effectively got 8 times the video memory offered by an 8k NES CHR ROM, and because C64's graphics are 1bpp instead of 2bpp, that amounts to 16 times the screen coverage. Of course you couldn't use all that memory on graphics, but half of it wouldn't be uncommon. And you had the option to reload RAM with different graphics for new levels, etc meaning there was no specific limit on how large a game could be.
@@jsr734 Yes, but that is a bit unfair as it was made to be as accurate as possible - in effect trying to emulate the original, which was created on the NES and therefore was designed from the ground up to suit the NES. You could make a similar game on the C64 but instead make thousands of little design choices and graphics choices that would instead play to the C64's strengths.
Apple vs. orange. How do they compare?
An excellent and perfectly balanced summary of both machines! Also one thing you didn't mention was, the greater storage capacity of the Commodore 64 games came at a price, long load times. Especially if you couldn't afford a disk drive and had to load off of cassette.
The Nintendo was far more advanced because of memory all graphics on 8 bits are 8 by 8 tiles 1 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 any variation of these 8 x8 dots can be displayed depending upon the addition of these 8 dotss i use to have an acorn electron programming was quite easy i use to bitmap my mums knitting pattens they were 10x10 so i drew over it in 8s . There are 5,606 video games on Commodore 64. They were released between the years 1982 and 2023. 6,262 people from 1,778 developers and publishers are credited with these titles!
The c64 wins on sound/music, listen to some of rob hubbard or martin galway compositions, there is no comparison to anything on the nes. Arcade classics has a full on heavy metal soundtrack complete with sampled guitars and drums and green beret has a superbly atmospheric loading tune for example. Sanxion, midnight resistance, lightforce and the 2 cybanoid games are also exceptional in the music department.
With graphics I always thought the NES flickered the sprites too much and the colours looked dull (especially when compared to its main rival the master system). For actual detail the NES was better than c64 though.
The trouble with the NES in the UK was the fact it looked a bit crap with very expensive and bland looking games compared to everything else. I never actually played any NES games until emulation was a thing, no one I knew had one and I dont recall any local shops selling the console or games after the initial launch until the turtles pack revived interest in the 90`s (by which time the system looked really bloody awful compared to the megadrive and Amiga etc).
Recca '92 rocks as hard as anything the C64 has music wise.
@@hicknopunk Just had a quick listen to some of the Recca92 tracks, they sound almost like the megadrive in a way. They are pretty good but still have that underlying tinny twangy sound (its hard to explain lol).
The c64 with its pitch bending and sample manipulation just sounds nicer and less of a racket if that makes sense.
I still think the c64 has the edge tbh.
@@meetoo594 when I discovered Recca it was mind blowing that a game had a proper techno soundtrack. Have you listened to Vortex on the SNES? It sounds like an Amiga demoscene program to me.
@@hicknopunkJust listened to some of the vortex ost, very impressive if a bit muffled at times. And yeah, it really does sound like Amiga tracker music.
Small error, but when you said "Rad Racer II", you showed footage of the original Rad Racer. Rad Racer II had a dashboard with larger numbers for the spedometer, showed speed in MPH rather than KPH, (but still topped at 255, so you're actually going faster!), and traded the score display for a power meter used exclusively for launch starts.
I played it a TON back in the day!
Sharopolis, I like the way you explain things in an easy-to-understand way.
Would you ever consider making a video about how emulators can cause bugs in games which do not occur when the game is played on original hardware?
That Old Guy.
Yes that's an interesting topic!
@@Sharopolis I'll keep watching. :-)
7:16 TILES!!!
That classic line we're all waiting for.
Yes, I end up saying it in every damn video.
I've had both. For the most part NES is better, but I love that you can plug in a classic SEGA Genesis controller on the C64. I had a rare C64 RPG called "Legacy of the Ancients," That I would dare to say is better then most for the NES. Sure it's more basic, and doesn't really have music, but it's fun, unique, and from an Era when such games were more mature instead of being for children.
How long was the load times of the c64? With NES the ‘pick up and play’ was as fast as you could move. If I’m itching to get my game on and there’s a 2min load wait that could be a deal breaker
The C64 has games on carts, disks and tapes. So your load times WILDLY vary depending on the media it is stored on.
@@hicknopunk Carts were rather limited in number and reach. Also, anyone complaining about the mess that is the Switch e-shop is either too young or too much a pirate to remember trying their luck with random bargain bins.
The NES library is bloated with trash, but Knight Rider is a great case study in how NES trash had a higher standard of quality than micro trash.
@@juststatedtheobvious9633
The comparative standards of trash are strongly mitigated by the fact that one piece of trash cost £50 & the other normally cost less than £5...
Actually nes trash like LJN titles were like $25 to $30 when I was a kid
Yes, the NES is a better games machine overall. But there's one game that really shines on the C64 and that's Last Ninja. They ported LN2 to the NES and that's a sad display visually.
Jeroen Tel worked on both C64 and NES and has said himself C64 sound chip was objectively much more capable. Even though I enjoyed NES games, it would've been more impressive for it's time if it had a better sound chip. Shouldn't have increased retail price.
Monty soundtrack is like a keyboard solo during a concert gone way out of control, and im here for it!
What's the game at 18:10? had a major flashback when I heard the music!
One more question to maybe ask in a comparison between the two platforms is "What did using it teach you?" For the NES, I expect the answer to that is "Not a lot", while using the C64 taught you a number of basic tech skills. In some ways, being less user friendly was actually a great strength of the C64. And the fact that it _could_ do so many more things than play games also meant that many C64 users _tried_ doing many more things than play games on it even if that is all they originally bought it for, simply because they _could._ Many developers of my generation started their programming journey coding BASIC on the C64, myself included.
Dig this format. You go over a lot of the same stuff we've learned from your "Games that push the limits of..." series, but it's always cool to hear about them and it's especially nice to see them "weaponized" with examples versus examples here, so to speak. Looking forward to seeing more "vs" videos here - it's easy to imagine stuff like the Amiga versus the Mega Drive, the SNES versus the Genesis (or the MegaGen or whatever you call it; I like how you squish the names together when talking about Sega's 16-bit machine, btw!) but this could go on to the PS2 versus the Dreamcast (I always heard the Dreamcast could do more with textures than the PS2) and other sixth gen platforms, I bet.
Nice comparison. Worth calling out that c64 was a computer first, while the nes was designed for gaming.
@16:25 This is the first Rad Racer for the NES, not the second one :)
This is so damn cool! I will say that while you showed some great examples of the cid chips incredible sound I still think pound-for-pound the Nes has it. When I think of the iconic music from Mega Man, Ninja Gaiden, Castlevania, TMNT 2: The Arcade, Life Force, Metroid...it just goes on and on. Perhaps that was due to having higher budgets or better skill but the Nes sound was nothing short of amazing in the 1980's. I still hum Nes tunes today from my childhood....
You absolutely nailed it in this video! Your comparison is both fair and shows the good in each platform. I can't tell you how many videos like these that I've seen where the narrator declares one garbage and the other best in all of the land of gaming. I knew I subbed to your channel for a reason. ;)
Addendum- Wait, wait, wait are you telling me the C64 has better samples than Bad Dudes on the Nes. (Seriously, don't look that up or you may go deaf). ;)
Great video, cant wait to check out the rest of your channel
NES had better graphics, but C64 had much more "serious" games - simulations, strategies even adventures, where you would utilize full keyboard to issue commands. NES was at its core dumb console for dumb masses. C64 was on the other hand real computer . You could program, draw, calculate, even compose music . Many IT professionals cut their teeth on the C64, while NES users usually continued with newer consoles.
Don't forget to mention that the games were much cheaper on the C64 and you could copy them tape to tape. That's a huge Bonus for the C64.
the fact that the c64 could even do smooth side scrolling was kinda a wonder, I know basically every piece of hardware had some developer figure it out eventually, but there's a reason Commander Keen was such a technical marvel in 1990
Graphically there's really no context. On the sound department there are some great tunes on the C64 for sure, but they usually sound like demoscene compositions instead of game music to me. Nothing beats a good Konami, Capcom or Sunsoft song on the NES. And there are so many of those. Controller: NES wins also. Load times: no contest. Would I have loved to have a C64 in the 80's? absofreakinglutely. Being able to code would have been so magical.
Are c64 cart games full of load times? I don't remember them having load times. Sure a floppy drive will be slower, but a better comparison would be loading tape games on both.
@@hicknopunk The difference is tape games were very standard on the C64, and cartridges were very standard on the Nes/Famicom.
@@jsr734 while this is true my C64 experience was mostly on carts or a disk with a fast load cart. My nes experience was a sharp twin Famicom with lots of bootleg disk games and only about 10 cart games. So ones milage may vary.
@@hicknopunk Wow, that was a very special experience, i don´t think owning a Sharp Twin Famicom was very common in western markets.
In my experience PC gaming was very limited to IBM PC clone computers with no hard disk drive, using monochrome crts (from the best b/w, orange, green, and the worst the yellow fosfor crts) with sound just been simple beeps from the internal speaker. In contrast the Nes was full color with complex scrolling and sound effects and music.
@@jsr734 my parents did a lot of business and got my sister and I a red one with a stack of bootleg disks. I do have a few legit ones though. We had an Amiga at home which also made my childhood a bit unusual as I played a lot of games probably mostly sold in Europe on it. I do have a USA NES now though as well, but I only have a handful of titles for it, it's really my 3DS I play these days. Sooooo many good games I have a few more years of backlog games to play before I get a switch. At the end of the day if you like the games, who cares what it is on.
i knew the nes could play 7-bit 40khz music but i was absolutely blown away when i saw the c64 able to play 8-bit 48khz music _without a dedicated pcm channel_
Some omissions: isometric games (always seem to be missed on the NES although they must exist), and text adventures that obviously can't exist on the NES.
There are a lot of isometric games on the NES: Solstice, Isolated Warrior, Snake Rattle'n Roll, just to name a few
@@danielespeziari5545 Good to know, but they never seem to get much attention, or am I missing something? I guess the NES hardware lends itself well to platform type games, and 2D shooters though.
King´s Quest V, Dejavu, Shadow Gate, Maniac Mansion, Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom,Portopia, and lots of japanese exclusive games.
I'd like to compare the 5th generation consoles altogether since each of the top 3 had their own strengths
I haven't done that yet, but my three 'Pushing the Limits' videos about 5th gen systems all talk about how they compare with other machines of the time.
PlayStation:
th-cam.com/video/7teA7Izpi7o/w-d-xo.html
N64:
th-cam.com/video/JpSW4p_cRuU/w-d-xo.html
Sega Saturn:
th-cam.com/video/8TDfWxWUBVs/w-d-xo.html
But I think a straight comparison video would be a good idea for the future.
I noticed as a kid back in the day that I didnt know anyone cept one kid with a C64 here on the west coast but everyone had a nintendo and a PC. I got the internet early on in the 90s and found out that the friends I made on the east coast all had C64s so it makes me wonder if it was popular regionally in the USA.
I had both back in the day and they both were amazing in their own right.
A side note about frame buffers, since Sharopolis happened to mention them: The Commodore 64 had no designated video memory, just specific locations in the RAM that were the default place to look for what to draw to the screen. But there was a second location you could tell the VIC-II chip to look instead. This change would happen instantly. This meant that if you wanted graphics that would take multiple frames' worth of time to redraw and were willing to give up that pretty big chunk of RAM (that could normally be used for whatever you wanted), you could treat the pair of memory locations as alternating frame buffers. I'm pretty sure this is how the bitmap-mode games shown in the video worked. I've only ever known two games that used bitmap mode and didn't do this, because it wasn't worth it: _Leaderboard Golf_ and some text adventure game whose name escapes me that accompanied each location with a fullscreen still image. In both cases you could watch it "draw" the picture in real time because that's what it had to do.
Some modern games use static bitmap background because it offers more color attributes. Basically the idea why the Amiga only has bitmaps.
Last Ninja
@17:52 Cartridge games were not a brief flirtation, they were available from the start and largely supported by software publishers in the U.S. which is why many Brits thought they only emerged with the C64GS. In 80s I saw loads of C64 cartridge games available at the computer shows and bought them.
There was the 1982-1983 (maybe 1984) wave of cartridges, led by Commodore themselves, and then the 2nd wave around 1990 with the C64GS release. But there was a long gap between with very few cartridge releases, mostly because both disk and cassette were so much cheaper, and had so much more storage.
The games are all arcade conversions, which the nes did better biut the c64 had thousands more games, Adventure, 3d, indie, shooting (Uridium, Parallax, Rambo) that didnt have to adhere to the short gameplay of arcade games, way more varied and interesting, while the nes had mostly platformers that got old pretty quickly. Not to mention software. And if you were tight you could trade them for free
The C64, CPC and ZX Spectrum have over 500 text adventures each (around half with graphics), while the NES has a whooping total of 0. This, combined with the fact that you can learn to program your own games, makes any of these computers a clear winner to take to a deserted insland over the NES, where you would end up playing the same 2D platform game over and over after beating the top 5 games.
How are you going to program without a reliable source of electricity?
Excellent video, a very enjoyable watch, cheers!
i was expecting a comparison with both maniac mansion. I'm actually glad i stayed till the end tho.
As a kid i always had my C64 in my heart but all my friend had a nintendo, was a bit envious at time :D
Good analysis in here. Well thought through. Can you do one for Atari 800/xl family vs C64 please.
Dear Thumbnail,
How do you type with boxing gloves on?
Growing up in that era I always felt like computer games in general were slow, clunky and rigid, they felt so basic compared to their console counterparts, yet despite all that the PC was considerably more powerful and more capable, yet gaming somehow was more boring on the PC during the NES and SNES era, not sure why? It just was…
Computer games stared to catch up in popularity and quality roughly around the PS1 / N64 era, yet it wasn’t until the next generation of gaming that PC gaming and Netcafe gaming really took off
Cool video! Surprised not to see Giana Sisters on the Super Mario comparison.
I loved both, but i think my real heart goes to the C64!
The C64 has a higher resolution option but i believe it’s in 4 color mode,the nes soundchip isn’t that flexible but it does have a dedicated 7bit pcm soundchip.
Yep, and the NES can really sing under the right programmer with some games even having speech samples, but overall the SID chip is more flexible with programmers, and the demo scene finding more undocumented/unintended tricks they can do with it. Also go look up "Commodore 64 Dallas Intro" as people have managed to get full motion video to run on the C64 which just blows my mind!!!
There are two high-res modes: the one where each tile only has one color, and the one where each tile still only has one color but the background can be one of four colors instead of just one, at the expense of only having 64 unique tile graphics to work with.
Both native hi-res C64 modes support all 16 colours on screen. The limitation is that within each 8x8 pixel cell you can only choose 2 colours in 320x200 mode, or 4 colours per 4x8 pixel cell in 160x200 (double-wide) mode.