From the Forum issue 99

[yethboth]

I love the Spectrum because of it's ability of creating well detailed sprites in games in general as well as almost arcade perfect looking sprites when it comes to arcade conversions. This makes up for the lack of and monochrome colours that the Spectrum has. Also the Spectrum 128K soundchip when it comes to music and sound effects is more or less just as impressive as the Atari ST soundchip.

[NorthWay]

That was a joke, right? A proper computer like the C= 64 or a DIY doorstop like the ZX-82? Tough choice, but I might just go for the C= 64...

But let me give you the kind of answer you were looking for: I _loved_ my C= 64 because it had the best of "both worlds". It was popular in both the US and the EU, and you got a lot of different game styles thanks to that. Only the Amiga has held the same position (before the market was totally globalized anyway).
Also, random access storage devices give a lot of possibilities a streaming tape can't. Oh, and don't forget Rob Hubbard.

[joefish]

For me, the Spectrum. First and foremost for the price, that made it affordable to a lot of families that couldn't otherwise dream of owning a computer. The simplicity of the keyboard and the compact design were hardly things worth counting against it. And it was compatible with your own tape recorder, instead of being railroaded into buying an over-priced extra.

Next, for having a fast and powerful processor in it - superior to its original competitors. It may have only had one graphics mode, but it was an efficient one with sharp colours, high resolution square pixels and a small memory footprint (even if the FLASH bit was a waste). What's more the hardware didn't dictate the type of game to you - you could do your own thing with the power of the processor available to you instead of having to fall in line with all the specialist hardware.

Decent sound didn't come until later, with the 128 models, but by then a huge, and more importantly varied, seemingly never-ending games library had been established. Again, the machine may have lacked superficial accoutrements but it's design principle was efficiency.

And for its expandability - admittedly a joystick interface cost extra (though peanuts compared to the initial saving), and the variety of interfaces that sprung up from the simple and open interface design were endless; like analogue controllers, speech synthesisers, video capture, mice, robotics, improved storage from cheap high-speed tape drives up to industry-standard disk drives.

And everybody loves Clive Sinclair. Who could pick Bob Russell out of a line-up?
And NorthWay, I think you'll find your old VIC-40 makes for a far more efficient doorstop...

[Mire Mare]

The C64. No Blu-tack required.

[joefish]

The C64. No Blu-tack required.

Eh? For what?

[r0jaws]

I guess he's referring erroneously to the ZX81.

I'm a Spectrum man by history, loved the games and gameplay. But I spend most of my time now exploring my C64 and it's library. Sure it's a better computer in many ways, but the speccy was diverse, available and cheap which meant nearly everyone had one. That meant there was always more software and games.

[joefish]

The amount of drivel coming out for the C64 is bewildering in this day and age. Let's straighten a few things out:

The ZX Spectrum came in two memory options, 16K or 48K. There was no plug-in RAM expansion like the ZX81. The only memory you could replace with a plug-in was the ROM.

No-one had to buy a tape recorder specifically for loading games on any of the 8-bit machines - everyone had one already as for kids in the 80s a tape recorder was the main way of listening to music. That's why they all chose that for the media, just like no-one had to buy a television purely to use as a monitor. Commodore making you use their own tape recorder was a bit of lock-in to extract more money from the customer, just like Amstrad with its monitors.

The C64 may have been able to display pink and brown, but it couldn't manage a decent shade of red and the yellow was highly dubious. But since when has 16 colours been 'twice as many' as 15?

And I'm tired of hearing about how the C64 had a full set of travelling keys from people who have only ever pressed two of them in their entire life. You got a full keyboard, but you had to pay more for it. You could get a replacement keyboard for the Spectrum for a lot less than the price difference between a Spectrum and a C64. And a joystick interface. If you're going to ignore what you got for your money then let's compare what sort of Spectrum you could get for £400. Well, you could buy two of them, for a start!

[felgekarp]

SPECCY RULES!

[DreamcastRIP]

The ZX Spectrum came in two memory options, 16K or 48K. There was no plug-in RAM expansion like the ZX81. The only memory you could replace with a plug-in was the ROM.

Great post, joefish.

Regarding the part I've quoted, there was of course also a 128k Speccy. Also, the RAM of 16k models could be upgraded to 48k. I could be wrong but I think Sinclair provided the upgrade service.

[Mire Mare]

I guess he's referring erroneously to the ZX81.

Ahh, tut tut, making an assumption. Shame on you

Not only the ZX81 required such a technical marvel as the blue tacky stuff. The Specrum 48k, owned by one of my old school chums, had a joystick interface, that looked a lot like this , hanging out of the back. This device also required Blu-Tack, or something supporting it, to maintain a good connection.

[joefish]

Well he either had a dodgy interface or some very uneven surfaces. Probably a dry solder joint where the interface connects to the circuit board. Either that or the interface was dangling unsupported. Certainly not a common fault, or people might have known what on earth you were on about.

There was 16K->48K upgrade for the Spectrum but it required soldering inside. So most people who had one sent it off to be done for them. Incidentally, you could buy 3 16K Spectrums for the price of a Commodore 64, though the 48K was by far the biggest seller.

The 128K was a lot later, and it did have exactly the same sound chip as the Atari ST. It's not necessarily a fair comparison though as let's also not forget there was also a Commodore 128 - though that was priced far more outside the home user market.

[thevulture]

The old C64 Vs Speccy debate will never die.

Some curio comments already on this thread, both machines got fantastic software support, although as a C64 owner was 'narked' to not see Chaos, Rebelstar and Rebelstar Raiders make it across, along with Speccy versions of R-Type and Chase H.Q and Robocop being better than the C64 versions.

I'd counter blocky C64 sprites and slow 3D with colour clash and poor sound chip on 16K and 48K Speccy.

But 1 thing i'd love to see a return to in this or the next generation, games written for host machine strengths, rather than ported over.

Virgin/Gang Of 5's Dan Dare:different game on C64+Speecy, bloody brill.on both though.

[joefish]

I'd counter blocky C64 sprites and slow 3D with colour clash and poor sound chip on 16K and 48K Speccy.

There really wasn't a sound chip at all. There was 1 bit that you could turn on or off to make the speaker pop in and out. Anything more than a flat farting noise was down to some very clever programming (and exploitation of the properties of particular capacitor). Particularly so if there was a game going on at the same time. Though I'd trade fast hi-res fast 3D rendering for in-game tunes any day.

But then the C64 had it's own peculiar form of 'colour clash'. Each 'multicolour' sprite only had one unique colour; the other two were shared, which is why so many games had mostly grey sprites. It could also only have two colours (hi res) or four colours (lo res) per character space, and there were shared colours there too. You couldn't just put any colour anywhere, though good programming could try to hide the fact. The main advantage it did have was that the sprite colours wouldn't interfere with the background colours. But if those sprites weren't big enough for your in-game objects, you were in trouble.

The C64 did have some good-looking games, but it also had a lot of very samey and pale looking games that did nothing to disguise the fact that the game was designed to fit the hardware. You certainly didn't get double-your money's worth (for hardware, rather than software) in terms of graphical performance, and you got positively robbed in terms of flat-out processing power.

[Havantgottaclue]

The Commodore 64. It was a computer, the ZX Spectrum was a toy.

[Mire Mare]

Well he either had a dodgy interface or some very uneven surfaces. Probably a dry solder joint where the interface connects to the circuit board. Either that or the interface was dangling unsupported. Certainly not a common fault, or people might have known what on earth you were on about.

There was 16K->48K upgrade for the Spectrum but it required soldering inside. So most people who had one sent it off to be done for them. Incidentally, you could buy 3 16K Spectrums for the price of a Commodore 64, though the 48K was by far the biggest seller.

The 128K was a lot later, and it did have exactly the same sound chip as the Atari ST. It's not necessarily a fair comparison though as let's also not forget there was also a Commodore 128 - though that was priced far more outside the home user market.

I'm wondering is this thread going to overtake this one as your most active topic, Joefish?

Pro and cons with both machines. Now I own a few different Speccys and Commodores it's nice to make objective comparisons for my own interest. However, strip back that objectivity and all I see is the C64 in all it's wondrous glory.