Commodore 64 vs ZX Spectrum - The Great British Computer War - Kim Justice
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ย. 2024
- #retrogaming #c64 #zxspectrum #documentary
Today's video is a lil' special...we're looking at the biggest British computer war of the 1980's! In one corner, the all-conquering Commodore 64, and in the other the ZX Spectrum, the hometown hero defending this green and pleasant land. We'll be looking at the culture, the differences between Sir Clive and Jack Tramiel, the differences between the two machines, how everything panned out over the decade...oh, and obviously an absolute ton of games. Enjoy!
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how bad was the situation in the 80's?
Loving the comments! It's basically the playground all over again but with the benefit of 30 extra years of tech understanding! 😃👍
In USSR it was "handmade" Speccys all around. They were so popular because of price and simplicity of DIY. We had a lot of clones which were compatible with Speccy. The only competition with Spectrums were Atatri's , and by "Atari" every person from Eastern Europe mean Atari 65/130 XL/XE series, we never knew "Atari" as 2600. We loved Atari for flashy and beauty and Speccy for more in-depth gaming
I´m from Brazil. The brazillian ZX Spectrum clone sold extreme well here...
True. Beside DIY, a lot of small companies was making ZX clones in a post-USSR region. I remember one company was making and selling 128kb version of ZX with an AY sound module and 3.5" floppy up to 97!
Shur Murray
During 1980s, how easy was buy a 8bits clone computer in Moscow?
Eduardo Chueri it was super easy. But I think it's popularity grown in about 1987 - when it almost died in UK . First it was DIY clones. 48k Speccy costed 1300 rubles at average wage of 180-200 rubles/month. But Atari 65 xe/xl costed around 4000 rubles and was equal to a good soviet car. Factory clones like Dubna, Delta-c came in around 1989-1990
Eduardo Chueri
Can't tell exactly (never lived in Moscow). The home computers come to USSR later than in the world. All the good things become available here only with the shut down of the "iron curtain" - it's all happened after the mid of 80s. The wide spread of ZX and other home computers (MSX and clones, 8bit consoles like NES and so on) happened at the end of 80 and in early 90 - well 10 years behind USA and Europe. And almost no one here heard of C64, Amiga, Apple... Shortly after the era of ZX/MSX all jumped directly to IBM's.
I had both, got the Commodore a bit after the Speccy, and honestly I preferred the Spectrum, for the reasons you said - the games simply had more ingenuity and you felt on a subconscious level the pure passion of the devs who made the games. As you say again, the style and personality made it uniquely brilliant.
Great video once again Kim.
+Lee K I had both and hated the specturm.. gave it to my nephew. Loads more original titles on the C64
The C64 manual and the C64 programmer's reference guide was where I learned how to code. The manual was a basic level BASIC course and the programmer's reference guide was the advanced course.
Thank God somebody said it!!!!
The Vic20 and C64 had the best manual ever make... That's a fact!!!!
I like Kim's videos, but she has no clue what she's talking about, when it comes to the C64!!!
@@wargameboy72 I'm not from either camp, I do have both, I picked both manuals from my collection, C64 and ZX Dutch user manual, and seriously, it is a TOTAL WIN for the ZX manual. It is pure excitement of computer joy. The C64 one is B&W and makes a balloon sprite YAY! The ZX Spectrum book is full colour and has over 25 colour screens with various graphics and shows how to program those. It has flow-charts of both sample programs and the inner hardware structure. It even has a picture of the PCB telling everything. It has a very extensive BASIC reference with 80 commands, only 58 on the C64, glossary with computer vocabulaire. Don't let the pagecount fool you, there is much more information on the 80 pages of the ZX one than on the 174 in the C64 one. Only downside is that I need glasses for the ZX manual.
Kim, I'm addicted to your videos, they are fantastic! So much work must go into them. Please do a video on the Sam Coupe / Super Spectrum. Such an underated computer !
Ahh, I love that music from Last Ninja 2 at the beginning. Takes me back!
The Spectrum was pretty big in New Zealand as well. Had one there and loved it. Loved the fact that BASIC was present the moment you switched it on, no need to load a programming language. Can't remember if the C64 did that, but a lot of other competing computers couldn't. When I went to Australia, it was definitely a C64 market, but no one there that I knew could programme, unlike all the ZX kids back in NZ. I read somewhere on the BBC that Dundee in Scotland has an unusually high number of programmers because the parents that worked at the ZX Spectrum factory used to pass around "faulty" Spectrums to their kids and friends kids and loads of them grew up to start up software companies.
As an american, I'm always happy to see coverage on the C64 vs ZX Spectrum since I don't know anyone personally that had either of them when I was younger.
In the States, I had my C64 that I cherished for years. Your videos got me to start playing Speccy games in my 40's and I'm really impressed so far, it has so much character!
"Oh I wish my parents bought me a Spectrum instead" said no Commodore 64 owner ever.
:P
inphanta --- it was the other way around in the UK, when all of your mates owned a spectrum and everyone was passing tapes around. The one lonely guy sitting in his bedroom with a C64 and no one to share with wished he had a spectrum after all.
I am from the UK, and I never had that problem.
Dont engage with the poverty stricken, speccy peasant.
Makes me feel sorry for the UK to have to play ugly looking conversions of popular games...
@@SuperHoraceWimp Lol you cheeky bugger.
I have played and loved both of them First the Spectrum and then the C64 the games Spectrum came up with with such limited tech and memory is nothing short of ingenious and then C64 polished that even more with its power and amazing sound chip for the time,you have to take your hats off for those accomplishments
The ZX Spectrum was also big in the Balkans. Mostly because it was cheap and there were lots of games for it, 99% of them pirated, of course.
Far more games for C64 all in all, just keeping things factually correct, thanks.
ZX Spectrum was huge in South Africa. I bet you know the program "The Key"
In Eastern Bloc had Spectrum strong fortress. Sinlair licenced it to local manufacturers and they manufacture it and countless clones of it. My first computer was clone of Spectrum in 1986, and they were used in schools as well! But funny thing is that Spectrum clones were competing with MSX and Atari 8-bit machines like 600 and 800XL in Eastern Bloc, not with Commodore 64.
MSX! i really wanna get one of those >.> but i don't really have enough space for a bunch of old computers, so i don't let myself get any, lest i find myself with too many before i know it.
I understand perfectly. I gave my girlfriend my old Amiga 1200 just because I ran out of space, I am developer for Playstation platform, so I have piles of games for PS2, PS3, PS4, PSP and Vita, plus my collection of Sega Saturn games, plus some Mega Drive and PC Engine for a good measure. MSX gaming is pretty interesting and I am too tempted to give it a shot, it's incredibly hard to find floppy disks, let alone disks which works after 30 years, in former Eastern Bloc were never released any games officially for MSX, so I must go online to buy any. Or just modify my machine to read SD cards.
if i had one, i would definitely use one of those SD or USB or CF adapters, yeah
I had my Amiga modified same way because kickstart disks were unreliable and older Amiga OS can't boot directly from HDD. It would be interesting if somebody release something like that emulation machine for ZX Spectrum, but for MSX.
Tip: It's pretty easy to use SD cards as mass storage devices on an MSX. They're even produced by different manufacturers nowadays, like:
www.msxcartridgeshop.com
www.8bits4ever.com
www.reprofactory.com
And be welcome to join the MSX community on www.msx.org and ask for questions! :)
in italy the c64 wa sso great and popular that we had a hundreds of magazines with various italian homebews games weekly
During this time period, I was a loyal fan of the Atari 600xl in 1984, then ST in 1988, followed by Amiga 500 shortly after. I was so desperate for anything that was an actual computer in the early 80s that I wanted a Timex Sinclair 1000, but dad bought me an Atari 600xl with data set...great video Kim. I was always angered by C64 owners, including my Computer's 9 teacher who even owned one. Today, I own pretty much everything, including an SX 64, but retro vintage computers from Europe...I do not even know if NTSC versions of software of vintage machines like the Speccy were ever provided here in Canada...cheers.
Great video! I enjoyed it immensely and learned a lot. I must however push back on "wholly incompatible" as being Commodore's business practice. On the contrary, one of the biggest hamstrings for the C64 was peripheral compatibility going back to the PET. That's actually the reason it's floppy drives contain an onboard 6502 processor and are as large as the C64. It's also the reason the tape drive loads so slowly. Granted you can't run games from PET or VIC, but frankly the C64 games are so much better...
When I saw this, I thought 'Oh God, another ZX Spectrum review....", but you made this really interesting, talking about the personalities involved and your own analysis of the era. I found this to be well written and engaging. Well done. :)
Spot on Kim! Great trip down memory lane - Thank you 👍
Let me tell you now. In the early eighties, everybody young person I knew in the UK, either owned a 48k Spectrum or wanted one. Trading Spectrum cassettes at school, was a standard practice.
carbiify -- yup, and that's why the spectrum was a success. We didn't care about the more colourful (washed out) graphics of the C64, we loved the speccy.
Yep, spectrum 48k in the living room, mom's best plates in a G-plan sideboard unit & dad's orange allegro on the drive.......cos he was on strike.
@@pecker2-9 lemme guess, voting brexit 33 years later....
I have chosen Sinclair Spectrum because of its strong Basic and also the beauty of Z80 assembly language, C64 was for gamers, Spectrum was for programmers. That was in 1984. By 1986 I got my first Sinclair QL, I have enjoyed its wonderful Super Basic, c, and Pascal. Old nice days.
We had the ZX vs Commodore war back in my schoolyard too. In 1984. This in Norway. About half had ZX and the rest had C64. There was a couple Dragons. And a few Ataris.
Oh, memories! One of my best friends had a Speccy, just like me, the other two had C64. We had such loud arguments in the tram that people usually backed away from us, leaving us loads of space to sit down and continue arguing. :)
Basically, it boiled down to:
- C64 goodies: much better sound (SID), better graphics (sprites), better keyboard
- Speccy goodies: better basic, much better CPU (especially if you were into programming!), cheaper, doesn't look like a bread box. :)
The bottom line: both were GORGEOUS machines, which inspired loads of young people to dive into programming. They sparked the entire gaming industry. The dawn of the PC was where the ugly and boring took over, unfortunately.
Thank you both Clive and Jack!
Back in 1983 my dad bought us a C64 2nd hand from a mate of his. I'm pretty sure it still cost him £300 and it's only recently struck me just how much that was back then because my parents were definitely not middle class (at least at that time), they just worked hard! Once the novelty had worn off the C64 was pretty much forgotten about in our house until about 3 years later when I met some other kids who owned them. That sparked an interest in gaming that has continued till today- I now make a living in the games industry. I wonder what I'd be doing now if my dad had brought home a Spectrum? :D
I had a spectrum 16k second hand and got jetpac and in blew me away. i got the memory upgraded( for about the price of 6 gig now lol) to 48k and played the ultimate games and matchday and it was so good. such a personal experience. Then i managed to persuade the parents to get a me a C64 and got paradroid. defender of the crown etc and again it was amazing. i got an amiga and whilst it was fun it did not rekindle that amazement. i got that again, for games, from PS1. Some games have blown me away like COD., last of Us, Red dead redemption, gta. But there is something about these old systems that make me play an emulator at least a couple of times a week. As for who won the war or who was best... its like picking your favourite child. Pointless and someone would get hurt for no reason or benefit
8:48
10 PRINT "Fuck Thatcher"
20> Go TO 10
10 PRINT "Fuck Starmer."
20 GOTO 10
Having the Commodore 64 back in 1985 was like having the arcade in your bedroom. Great times....Speccy didn't really catch up to the C-64 until the 128K model was released.
Got a feeling you don't like Sir Alan, "you're fired," Sugar!
He bought Sinclair computers and wrapped them up so they would stop competing with his Amstrad computers. Yeah, speccy fans have no love for A.M.Sugar TRADing.
Brilliant documentary mate, very well researched and put together.
I bought the 48K Spectrum xmas 1983 and a couple of years later the C64. Both had different characters but overall I enjoyed the Spectrum more. I also owned the Amiga 500 in the early 90's, but never had that same sense of fun as the Speccy or C64. I then bought the SNES for my son in the mid 90's which blew them ALL away!! Today everyone of those machines bar the Spectrum was given away or sold at some point, and that little 48K machine still resides in my loft in it's original packaging awaiting the day when I can sell it and retire (LOL).
You should be directing full-length documentaries and writing articles for books and magazines! Excellent work!
Spectrum never registered as a competitor to the C64 and the Amstrad CPC, in Germany. If anything it was an emergency solution for people who were desperate to have any computer but couldn't afford to buy a "useful" one. For whatever you would apply "useful" in that context. Maybe I should rather say "one that the market responded to". But it was rather difficult to find Spectrum games, especially after 1986.
Great video, Kim! I am C64 dude, but I always admired ZX for various reasons. I think both of these computers were working-class oriented (C64 is something like NWOBHM band, ZX is more DIY punk-rock), if kept as tape-drive system only. Ok, perhaps different subclasses. C64+disk drive was something else, and not really justified with its pricing.
I also think both of these two computers kinda reincarnated (combining their features) in next-gen superb computer, Amiga 500. Again, I refer ONLY to a stock machine. Plugged to TV, and HiFi, using standard C64/Atari joysticks, working straight out from the box and with reasonable price for a such powerful piece of hardware (1987 and on).
A500 had advanced chipset with elements known from C64, but it was mandatory bitmap-based machine (no char-mode), so it had that ZX flavor too (or CPC) because of it. Let's not mention Atari technology here, long story.
I had them both back in the 80s, both had their strong points but that SID chip blew me away!
What this video really makes me realise though is just how incredibly innovative programmers had to be within the limits of the machines. My kids play XBox etc, and the games are fun, but it's so rare now to come across something that's not generic. Ico and Shadow of the Colossus on PS2 spring to mind as rare exceptions - from maybe 2 decades ago. I'm sure there must be more but I'm hardly a gamer these days so don't keep up beyond what my kids play - Fortnite (and all the other clone shooters). Although I do have a soft spot for Minecraft.
And what I am really nostalgic for is the days when programmers were like low-key household names to me and my friends. I suppose the natural Tesco-isation of successful industries made it inevitable as a big few software houses basically cornered the market and then just kept feeding us more ot what was successful but we used to love chatting about the likes of Jeff Minter, Tony Crowther, Rob Hubbard...
WHAT! The Commodore 64 booted right to BASIC, came with a user's guide that taught you how to program your computer, and mine came with the Programmer's Reference Guide. Lots of programmers of a certain age got started programming their Commodore 64 at home. "Yer talking shite, mate."
I loved the Commodore 64. It was a fairly good computer and had some of the best music on it
This is just for people who say you could buy a new game every week if you owned a Spectrum because they only cost a quid or two... If you had a C=64, like me and my older brother did back in the day, you didn't need to buy a new game every week. Because Pirates! Gunship, Silent Service, Defender of the Crown and Labyrinth lasted for months if we ever stopped playing them. It also helped that if you had a C=64, you knew people who knew people who could provide you with hundreds of games. For free. But the titles I mentioned we did purchase and the games we got for free, only Winter Games was the game that had repeat value. Now I just remembered another source for games. I knew that a schoolmate of mine had a mother who owned a pawn shop. She also provided C=64 gamers with free games! Without needing any introduction from my schoolmate, I simply walked into her shop and asked, casually, would you happen to have any C=64 games, M'am? At first she looked at me, filled with suspicion but then she replied, almost reluctantly: Yes, we do have C=64 games. Then she handed me a cassette which I copied back home and returned the next day. I did this a few times and funny thing is, I never purchased anything in her shop and she never said a word about that. Must have beenb the C=64 community vibe LOL.
Watched, again, thank you for re-uploading it, and #ScrewTheBBC
For me it was the ability to program. I tried it on the C64 and you had to we everything. The machine code was also extremely limiting with only 150 total command combinations vs over 700 on the Z80.
ZX basic was just great compared to C64.
Pretty good video! Worth the watch. There is a hidden funny part....Ill leave it at that!
The C64 is better than the Spectrum in every possible way however the Spectrum (thanks to it's low cost) brought computers to millions of people. If there was no Spectrum it's fair to say the majority of generation X would have not gone on to do other things in computers. We would be living in a very less developed country now.
I think today we will always feel more connected to the computer we grew up with which of course will make us biased. I grew up with the Spectrum +2 and of course now I own quite a collection of old computers. The C64 hardware was of course far superior. But I love how this video goes deeper than that, and goes into how the computers were perceived. We really did have loyalty to our platform back then. We'd holy appreciate the strengths and not care about the weaknesses. Not dissimilar to the iphone vs android wars we see today.
Wooo Quazatron and Skool Daze, I spent many many hours playing them, fantastic stuff! I never had a C64 but I loved the Speccy, so many great games. Practically anything by Ultimate was brilliant too. Loved the target Renegade music as well, that was a great game.
+mintydog06 Spectrum 128 FTW Speccy had the most polished games particularly isometric and all driving games ..none of the other systems could touch it ... all comparisons should be directly with the Speccy 128 machines in terms of software. The C64 won for the first 3 years but when 1986 came around Spectrum coders were making the spectrum run rings around Commodore
That's complete nonsense. Aside from the extra memory, the only advantages the 128 had over a 48k Spectrum were from the improved sound capabilities, which still couldn't touch the SID. And its graphics were just as weak as those of the basic Spectrum: no proper colour bitmaps and no hardware scrolling. The 64 remained the superior machine technologically.
Many of these videos concentrate on the hardware, but being neutral in this 'war' (due to being way late to the party), for me it's more interesting to concentrate on the games library. Two of my favourite games were R-Type and Chase HQ, both of which were horrible on the C64. I remember feeling bad for recommending Chase HQ to a C64 owning friend and then getting to play it. It's barely the same game.
More than that though there were interesting exclusives (or software that led on a particular platform). Certainly from the perspective of today, where people are looking back and playing around with emulators and things, it's more interesting to see the unique titles. I mean, does it really matter about 8 bit ports of arcade games when you can play the real deal? Beyond sheer nostalgia of course. I suppose arcade ports provide a sort of benchmark to compare games, but in retrospect they're mostly the least interesting part of these systems. Except for miracle-working like Spectrum R-Type perhaps (the programmer has an awesome free ebook about it's development on his site btw).
My favourite Spectrum game of all time is Chaos - and it absolutely stands up amazingly to being played today. Also, it's the beginning of a lineage that stretches to the modern X-Com games. In the end, everything was generally ported everywhere, but often the original version of the games remain the best and most definitive - I certainly associate the Ultimate games much more with the Spectrum for instance.
The C64 version should have been much better, but after the original coder struggled and was pushed off the project, it ended up getting finished up in a rush to market withing weeks. So you have things like the rotating snake thing on the first level being static, and glitches with the weapons. The Spectrum is obviously the weaker machine, but it's a more faithful conversion in this case, which is certainly a rarity. The C64 version does have some of my favourite SID music of all in it though.
In Sweden they were pretty evenly matched for the first years. I had both but I liked the Spectrums graphics better. It had something special to it that none of its competitors could duplicate.
I had the basic C=64. My friend had the ZX128 with the micro tape drive, and all the add-ons you could imagine. And every game. He gave me a show-and-tell and I was very impressed. But in the end, monochrome boxes, wtf.
Ps, I also *lusted* after an Acorn Archimedes when the 68030 version was new. I remember actually fondling the case at a trade show. Go UK.
The whole UK context is really important as so many videos just mix in US history with UK and a permanently talking about Apples. I disagree with you bud on the programming thing though, I had a c64 when I was a young lad and I used to code on it all the time. As well as basic I even did a bit of assembly on there. I'll agree with you though you could do a beep sound and notes easier on the ZX as you have to code the SID chip which involves sawtooth and different waveforms.
The Vic20 and the C64 manuals were absolutely amazing!! Those books made everything fun and understandable. By the time I got to Highschool, I was making my own simple video games.
So I also disagree with the programming thing...
Fanboys going "HURDUR C64 WAZ BETUR DOOH". Well, it cost twice us much, so obviously. And yet it had laughable CPU speed (1 MHz vs 3.5 MHz in Spectrum).
Peterkray : hahah lol, you should get some information about CPUs before posting, if you don't want to be laughed about. 6510 at 1 MHz actually runs faster than a Z80 at 3,5 MHz, because the Z80 divides its clock frequency by 4.
CaptainDangeax Actually, a 1 MHz 6502 is roughly twice as fast as a 1mhz z80. So no, it doesn’t. However, the c64 has hardware sprites and scrolling- so anything with small sprites and scrolling is likely going to get much better performance, but for anything that requires cpu horse power is going to perform better of the Spectrum. In those terms, the Speccy shouldn’t be as a fast as it is for arcade games, but that 8k screen turned out to be an accidental work of genius. It’s never going to get as good sprite performance as the c64, though. Sometimes those overlaid high and low res sprites could look mindblowing for a £400/$695 released in 1982.
So was the c64s CPU speed laughable? Depends what you’re trying to do. The C64 version of Nightshade is shocking. But someone has recently (finally!) converted Knight Lore (from the z80 code apparently) and it runs exactly like the Spectrum version. Let’s not mention Hard Drivin, Castlemaster or Carrier Command, though, eh?
Last Ninja 2 on the Spectrum? Quite a miserable affair going back to it., although having it in monochrome is quite stylish. The c64 version is fantastic- doesn’t matter if you have to wait for it to draw the screen, the sound and look of it was epically cool and still is.
Also, I agree that the c64 fanboyism in these comments is a little bizarre (and interestingly isn’t going both ways!) Having owned both machines in the 80s may be the reason I’m not taking part, though. As Kim said, it’s purely a preference. They are sufficiently different - an elegant genius design, made efficiently as possible, performing ludicrously further than it was ever intended, or the luxury games computer with a mind blowingly cool sound chip.
Oh, and you can get 50fps on a Spectrum. Check out an ESI demo.
Well, here in North America Spectrums were not a thing. He did have the Timex Sinclair computers, but they had a lot of compatibility issues with UK speccy games. Plus they were poorly marketed on top of it.
The big two at the time here were the C64 and Atari 800
I would say going by what I understand
The spectrum was basically the layman's computer
The c64, was for more the upper middle class
and the super rich had BBCs
Here the main warm was between Commodore and Atari, and maybe the Texas Instruments computers along with the Radio Shack computers. I don't know anyone who personally owned an Apple II back in the day except one.
At the risk of being pedantic the clip of Last Ninja 3 at 15:46 is mislabeled as Last Ninja 2.
Anyway great video Kim 👍
You should do a video about all the 3rd party hardware that was available for these systems.
There was so much amazing hardware available for the C64, such as the JiffyDos, FD2000, Ramdisk, SuperCPU by CMD and a bunch of stuff from German companies.
Still a fascinating subject. Could watch it over and and over again
Getting your parents to buy you a computer must be a British thing. I paid for my C64 by selling my Kenner Star Wars toys (ouch) and my Atari VCS2600 and earning the remainder with summer jobs. I'm from the Netherlands BTW.
this is what its all about, Whe these two were the big boys back in the ealry 80s i was on a c64 but i did have a rubber keyed speccy as well. It was only the Amiga vs Atari ST war that i actually took sides (amiga)
Magic times. I think the C64 has to be the clear winner for those with the money, but I was enthralled with machine code programming on the Spectrum. Everything I wrote crashed it must be said.
I was an Oric and C64 person back in my teens but now love Spectrum and BBC games just as much having played them via emulation. The C64 was best technically but time has allowed me to appreciate gameplay over technical ability! :)
C64 games were objectively better.
Best-selling ZX games like Karnov were rubbished when they were given a straight port to the C64.
That's not true. Sure if your games were scrolling 2d games with sprites, the C64 kicked arse. But if you were doing 3d or more strategic games the fast Z80 won over. For example: Sentinel, Castle master, Carrier Command, Lords of Midnight, etc.
Even though I'm a C64 Loyalist (not a fanboy, there's a difference)
I actually do believe some games were actually better on the Spectrum. For example, pretty much any game that involved vector graphics for one (save for maybe Elite). The C64 was great when it came to handling sprites, but it was meh when it came to handling vector graphics. which was why the Speccy versions of Star Wars and Battlezone were far better. Now we didn't have Speccy's here in Canada, I'm only going by what I've seen from using emulators of both C64 and the Speccy, even though I did own two C64s as a kid.
And speaking of vector graphics, even the Commodore VIC-20 was far better at handling them than the C64
All you have to do is compare the VIC-20 version of Omega Race to the C64 version, and the C64 version was just pants.
There was never any contest other than in Spectrum owners' heads. The C64 absolutely piddled all over it.
The documentary you do are really great being a c64 fan myself
I owned both The Timex Sinclair and the Commodore 64, the only thing impressive about the Sinclair was its size... that's it. The C64 was so impressive to me for what it could do that I decided to learn machine language with it. As I needed to understand why my games done in basic was so much slower than the games that loaded onto the machine. C64 was fun to the ears, eyes and senses it gave great memories and fun times what more could you want.
I had the Spectrum and loved it and its games however I appreciated the 1960s design of the VIC 64 and it appeared to be more reliable as you played games on it.
I got a codebook with my C64 breadbox, it was thick as a brick and served me well as a coaster :p
You should do an article about Creative Micro Design who made lots of amazing hardware for the C64, such as the 20mhx SuperCPU, 16MB Ramlink, JiffyDos, Their HD floppy drive and more. This was not very well known in the UK.
When are the British going to stop talking shit about us. The ZX spectrum was a shitty computer which did not even sell in the US that well, there is no comparison with the commodore 64 *NONE* This is laughable.
I felt the c64 reflected its country of origin amazingly well - big and loud but actually quite lumpy and unappealing once you'd seen a couple of glossy show tricks up front [yeee hawwww! back atcha grumpy Cowboy!].
Amazing how a 32+ year old rivalry still gets some all hot and bothered. Kinda sad.
You see, that is exactly what I am talking about, always talking shit, non-stop 24/7. Well we sold a lot more of out unappealing computers than you did of your shitty ones.
***** I do not know what you are talking about
If you wanted gaming you chose C64. Spectrum and Amstrad were jokes back then.
I owned the Spectrum but it was so obvious that the C64 was the superior machine in just about every way. There were just more Speccy owners and therefore they carried more clout.
I'm always a bit suspicious of the sheer amount of British people that claim to have had a C64 as a kid in the early 80's. In the early days I knew virtually nobody with a breadbin C64, all the kids had spectrums, electrons (like myself), that one more well off kid with a full on BBC Micro and a handful with various other British micros, the C64 was a system that someone's dad usually had and didn't become almost ubiquitous in bedrooms across the country until nearer the time that famous games bundles started to churn out later on.
This seems to be pretty well backed up by conversations I've had at events with people from all over the UK as well as on various groups online, by the time the C64 became truly massive in the UK the 48k speccy, electron and the like were already struggling anyway.
I got a C64C the january before I got an Amiga 500 because they were dirt chap in the sales with a huge bundle of games and I loved it, games under £3 from Smiths and Woolworths, was a great year, but I think there's a lot or rose tinted spectacles and bandwagoning when it comes to C64 nostalgia.
We had a very interesting discussion across a couple of retro computing Facebook groups where we pretty much established that it seemed to be extremely regional, which hadn't previously occurred to me.
Folks from certain areas seemed to remember more kids with Spectrums, then others from other parts of the country remember all their friends having Electrons etc. No idea why that never occurred to me before, seems a pretty logical explanation.
Still there were very few people from the UK that had any memory of the C64 being around in the early 80's, notably more those old enough to remember them being used within small businesses.
how much will it cost for a ZX spectrum 128 with an adaptor for NTSC TV's. also, is the 128 backwards compatible with the 48k?
Good fun video. Although both machines were equally open and programmable. In fact all machines of the era were!
around the 6min ... Batman the Movie on the ZX? ... and whats the one playing around the 16-18min mark?
Kim, this should be aired on BBC / Discovery. I love your videos!
Hi Kim,
not sure if you're reading the comments here... - I'd like to rund exactly this video "in a loop" on a ZX Spectrum Next on a German retro exhibition in the HNF (Heinz Nixtorf Forum (EDIT: worlds biggest Computer Museum - as far as I know - by the way...)) :)
I would run it "as is" including the audio if I'm able to transcode it. - Am I allowed to do this?
THNX 4 the info and let's get in contact.
MfL der Eratosthenes
The comments section of a 6-year-old video definitely isn't the right place to ask this, but, would a British TV set from the 80s be able to work in the US on a 240v circuit, or did they require 50hz as well? I'd like to get a Speccy someday, and ideally I'd want to use a period-appropriate monitor, but there aren't a lot of those here that can handle PAL.
If it requires 50hz, I think the only way would be to take it through DC with a 12v power supply and car battery inverter
They were both awesome machines that I have loads of fond memories of (my best mate as a kid had a C64) but you can't beat that plucky little speccy and my literal bin bags a games for it.
Right off the bat :))) I've seen what's you did there! Niceee.....
I didn't have either, I had the Atari 800XL, which, to be frank, blew them both away.
The 800 is an interesting machine for sure, I sometimes think it never had a PAL version, they are totally absent here in the EU used market. The XL seems a bit flimsy compared to the original. I like the bad-ass look of the original 800 with its massive chunk of aluminium inside.
Hey, can you tell me what music is played at 17:04?
C64 Has Speedball 2!
It’s even faster than the Amiga version!!
I recall taking my C64 around my friends house where he would play it while I played his Spectrum good times, but I have to say I really hated that rubber keyboard
You know, I'd have to refute the assertion that the two main consoles of today, the Xbox One and PS4, are basically the same and that the 'console war' is less meaningful today. Personally, in the current generation I have zero interest in having an Xbox, because many, if not most of my favourite recent games are PS4 exclusives. The fact is Sony's console has many more Japanese games, and they tend to be the ones I prefer.
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the Xbox, I got over the belief that anyone with a different opinion to me is a moron back in the mid 90s... prior to which I was a Sega fanboy for life, yo! Although... obviously not actually for life :P
I'm interested in linguistics, and I have to say, I'm intrigued by the fact that the way you pronounce /r/ sounds closer to /w/ than any other /r/ sound I've heard. I think I read somewhere that this was a feature of a dialect of British English - so tell me, what part of Britain are you from?
or don't. I don't wanna invade your privacy or whatever
Commodore sales records puts the c64 sales at 12.5 million.
Nicely done! I cut my teeth on the Commodore 64 over in the U.S.
I had a spectrum but was very jealous of my friend who had a commodore 64. He eventually "borrowed" it me and he never got it back lol
The Commodore was OK for a machine that only had 38K, and a CPU slower than its' sales.
You know the commodore 64 boots right into freaking commodore basic right? I programmed for the commodore 64 right out of the box when I bought mine in 1984. What the hell are you talking about?
Enjoyed that, thanks !
I loved my C64 but the Spectrum was a great games machine too. 3D Starstrike and Knightlore were utterly mindblowing at the time.
I personally had a C64 and my mates had Spectrums. Never really arguments between us about them, They would come round mine to play the 64 and I would play their speccys :)
You had the C64 vs Speccy arguments in the 80s too. I remember them well.
Well that war was even more stupid than Amiga vs Atari. At least Amiga and Atari were somehow similar machines, the both were using MC680x0 processors, both were similar in design using the same floppy medium, both had GUI operating systems. Speccy and C64 were very different architectures, different graphics and color palettes, sound, keyboard usage, etc. Even the tape data loading worked a lot different where Speccy could use any sound source to load data through audio jack and C64 had dedicated magnetophone with it's own I/O port. The only real similarity was that both machines were loved by the devs and the community resulting with tons of software for both. It's like comparing apples and oranges.
I had both; My C64 just sat there gathering dust. Every man and his dog had a Speccy. The games were miles better and more popular on the Speccy; take all the games from 'Ultimate Play the Game (the Rockstar of their day) for example. The Stamper brothers only coded on the Speccy, the games that were released on the C64 like Outlaws and The Staff of Karnath were dreadful.
Sure the C64 was more powerful, however much like the Ps4 pro v Xbox1X, the Ps4 has far better games and is more popular.
you have to love the 8bit era such were the very clear differences between each machine. Whichever one it was you were generally quite proud unless envy crept in. I love them all
I loved my Spectrum. I had been nagging my mum for a ZX81 for months because my friend had one. Imagine my joy when I peeled back the Xmas wrapping paper one day, saw the Sinclair Research logo on the box thinking I'd got a ZX81 and was overjoyed... Then peeled back the wrapping even further and saw it was a 48k Spectrum. It was the best Xmas ever!
Loved the rubber keys. Loved the games. Even loved the thermal printer!
The C64 was "virtually inaccessible" when it came to coding? And "there was a sense you were not supposed to mess with it"? This is complete nonsense. The C64 came with a book telling you how to program in basic.
+rooneye Exactly. The first thing I did when I did when I got my C64 back in '86 was starting with the BASIC tutorial in the manual. Manually calculating sprite design, and having them move across the screen had me sitting with my arms above my head. And all that was nicely described in the manual.
+rooneye The Commodore 64's manual could have been more userfriendly. But even I managed to create some moving sprites but then I completely lost interest because I knew I didn't have the knack for programming complex stuff. I got as far as creating a mini text-adventure with some dodgy ascii graphics. But the games, oh man... One of The Greatest Games Ever must be Sid Meier's "Pirates!" It featured a basic sailing vessel simulator, mini wargame when you tried to defeat the Spanish militia and cavalry and swashbuckling fencing. It was also a decent privateering simulator. You could play it as "Ironman" by simply saving it only to continue later from that point, *not* reloading a saved game if your expedition failed miserably. [EDIT] Forgot to mention: LABYRINTH.
+rooneye Yes, ti was virtually inaccessible (without quotes). I programmed both systems in both assembly and basic (and for C=128D too). C=64 basic was hmmmm... very basic :) ... and almost useless without using of assembly language. Documenting such a crippled basic wasn't making any sense anyway :) Spectrum was equipped with a pretty advanced basic for the time and well documented.
Working in assembly was much easier for Spectrum thanks to great Z80 CPU compared to "almost risc" 6510 chip. Z80 has an instruction for everything, even for some 16 bit operations, with much more neater and shorter assembly programs. Moreover, Z80 has separate I/O bus compared to messy memory-overlapped I/O access in 6510.
The greatest advantage od C=64 was additional hardware for graphics, sprites and sound. It's like 80s version of DirectX - you load some registers, set some bit and you have moving object on the screen without much programming. Unfortunately, there were no commands for that in basic, so you could use that advanced hardware by POKE a,d command only (which means "put value d to memory location a). In fact, that was easier to accomplish in assembly.
C=64 sound is even more advanced with it's great SID chip. Spectrum haven't any sound hardware at all. To make a sound, you had to move the speaker membare up and down in an assembly loop executed by main CPU.
Huh? The commodore 64 was great for programming games. It had built in sprites with auto collision detection and expansion. It made it really easy to make arcade games. The only problem, which applied to all computers of the time, is to get speed you had to write in assembly.
+Nevets The big breakthrough came when you bought the programmers guide. This clearly showed you how to do everything with graphics sound ports machine language etc etc. I agree with you, complete nonsense. Having said that, the spectrum did have a much better version of basic which enabled quick and dirty games.
The Spectrum and C64 are not dead, THEY LIVE!
You read the comments here and then wonder, why people think toxic communities and childish fanboyism is a new thing?
4 years ago but very underated comment. I never have and never will understand the toxicity that follows this stuff around. You like your thing, I like my thing and that's just fine.
I agree with you. The dust has settled and honestly, different computer enthusiasts expressed themselves differently. That unites us.
I grew up in Durban, South Africa. Got my ZX Spectrum 48K in 1983, bought at Game Discount Stores for ZAR300+ . I remember working through all the BASIC code samples in that manual. It was a huge influence in my life and opened up the world to me as an IT professional! I'm glad to see that that English ZX Spectrum Spirit lives on today with the Rasberry Pi and its ecosystem!
The ZX Spectrum was never intended to be a gaming machine, its whole HW setup was made for text-based programs. So it is unfair to speak about a war between such completely different systems, the Spectrum just lost before it even began - when it comes to games. I like the Spectrum for its use of Z80 CPU which is by far better than the cheap MOS6502 (6510) which was used in the C64 and which is IMHO quite a pain to program in Assembler. So the ZX Spectrum was/is definitely a nicer machine to learn programming and the C64 is - no doubt - a very good computer for games, with an outstanding sound chip.
Z80 need more clock cycles to do the same than a 6510. If you are programmer you know that.
And price ? Not everyone was as rich as you back then to buy. Spectrum was also a good computer on a budget. Mayby without hardware scrolling and sprites - but natural colour and exelent prize. Version 128K, +2, +3 witch AY he had music on a par than C64. It had less but more natural and vivid colors.The graphic resolution was at the start better than in the C64...
and theres at least 100 titles that use 3d vector graphics not just scrolling n sprites use your imagination speccy wins hands down
@@samcoupe4608KB And twice as many programs on the spectrum - 20.000 titles...The C64 turned out to be an arcade console, but many titles are not necessarily missing on the C64 apart from arcade.
im afraid i just dont agree the sheer volume and variety and quality of software on the zx spectrum even towards the end of her life the software houses were banging out titles for the 128k that were 16bit like starglider & 2
Great explanation. From Spain. ZX Spectrum forever in my heart
Regarding sales figures, bear in mind that in Russia and eastern Europe there were lots of cheap Spectrum clones made which resulted in the system being incredibly popular in that region. But they wouldn't show up in any official sales figures for obvious reasons.
Rest in Peace my beloved c64. I will never ever forget you.
I learned to program on a ZX Spectrum. It was a gift from our English friends. 25 years later, I'm still programming, so Clive got his way :)
I can only imagine how many hours it takes to produce this quality content! Bravo.