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Favourite machine?
Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2007 2:49 pm
by Gunness
I've been wondering what oldies machine you people out there are using to get your daily adventure fix?
I really like to shop around the various 8-bit formats - recently I've dabbled in the Jupiter Ace (how many people have ever heard of that one??), but at the moment I mainly play BBC games. They're usually pretty well made and lots of them haven't been solved yet.
Overall I'm still a C64 chap, but I just enjoy a little variation now and then

Posted: Sun May 27, 2007 3:01 am
by Amby
The main one I play via emu is the Apple ][ since it's one I did not have back in the day.
Posted: Thu May 31, 2007 4:47 pm
by Marco
Apple II all the way. You would not believe how crushed I was when that line of computers was abandoned.
Marco.
Posted: Thu May 31, 2007 7:23 pm
by Gunness
I know this is sacrilege, but... considering that Apple II-games are disk based, I think a disappointingly large number of them are technically primitive. On my native C64, disk based games often had advanced parsers, or at least they had excellent graphics.
Still, I've dug into the Apple II on a number of occasions and have had several fun experiences.
Posted: Thu May 31, 2007 10:29 pm
by Alastair
Jacob, I don't know why you would consider it sacrilegious as the Apple II is both older and not as advanced as the C64. That said, I recall reading an article by games designer Chris Crawford who stated that as Apple refused to get in to the price war then current between Atari and Commodore, many people came to the conclusion that the more expensive Apple II was a "real" computer and the (technologically superior) Atari 8-bits and the C64 were mere toys.
Posted: Thu May 31, 2007 10:46 pm
by Marco
Hmm, yeah, well, Apples were always overpriced. And that was part of Apple's downfall. When the company decided to abandon the Apple II line after the IIGS, they tried to tell all of us upset Apple II fans that we needed to move on to the Mac. The two problems with that were 1) Macs weren't backwards-compatible and wouldn't run the ton of Apple II games that were out there, and 2) In those days, if you wanted color on your Mac, you needed to spend about $7,000 or so on a Mac 2. Like I said, way overpriced.
So many disgruntled Apple II users like me bit the bullet and got a PC. Still miss my Apple IIGS, though. But you are all correct, the Apple II+/IIe weren't as good for games as the C64/C128, just like the IIGS wasn't quite as good as the Amiga and Atari ST.
Marco.
Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2007 8:06 am
by Gunness
Alastair wrote:Jacob, I don't know why you would consider it sacrilegious as the Apple II is both older and not as advanced as the C64.
Well, I suppose it's because so many people hold it in high esteem. That said, I've always found it odd that the Apple II emulation scene is so relatively small compared to what is available for some of the more obscure European machines (Oric, anyone?)
Yes, graphically and sonically the C64 had the edge over the Apple II, still, the latter ran highly advanced games like Trinity and the rest of the Infocom range. I guess the ever knowledgeable Crawford's remark hits the bullseye. As Marco writes, the Apple machines were expensive and so there wasn't the same amount of geeks being able to experiment on it. And geeks does make the world go around
I think the C64 lasted a lot longer than anyone expected because the hordes of users kept finding new, odd hardware bugs that could be exploited for various programming gains. I'm sure that the Apple II could have been pushed further, too.
I've never had any experience with the IIGS, but I'll check it out. As for its lack of backwards-compability, I think that was a problem with more or less every machine released in the 80s
