Atari vs Commodore: Battle of the 8-bits

Here we pit two of my favorite systems head to head against each other in a battle of the 8-bits.
I use 5 criteria to compare them versus each other:
1 - Physical build quality / Ports and connectivity
2 - Technical specifications
3 - Early software
4 - Late commercial life software
5 - Modern homebrew software

[@ecdhe]

And in a great twist of irony, the team behind the Atari 8-bit ended up designing the Commodore Amiga, whereas some of the guys who worked on the Commodore 64 (Shiraz Shivji) ended up designing the Atari ST.

[@8bitrocketstudios]

Very ironic. i had 800 then ST. At the time, we didn't know who designed what and it didn't really matter all that much. But now, I appreciate the unique design of the Amiga by Jay Miner and team. Ironically, an STE comes REALLY close (but not all the way) to an A500 in capabilities but it look a little too long to get there

[@ecdhe]

@@8bitrocketstudios for having written some demos on both the Amiga and the STE, I found programming on the Amiga much easier than on the STE (it may also be because there's way less resources about the latter online). The Amiga Copper for example (which the STe lacks) handles the right timing to modify the system registers or when you want to "race the beam".

[@mmille10]

Yeah, what I always think about with this is in a totally different subject area, you sometimes hear people talk about how two groups "switched sides," which didn't really happen, but re. Atari and Commodore, it really did. :) Not to say that there weren't Atari holdovers that continued on with the company, helping to develop the ST (I think their role was mainly in porting Digital Research's GEM, and other system software, to it), but the main designers of the 8-bit were with Amiga, later Commodore, and the main designers of the ST were former Commodore engineers.

[@nickfifteen]

In an alternate timeline, it might have been the Atari Amiga and the Commodore ST. Just think: * Atari Amiga 500 * Commodore 520ST * Atari Amiga 1000 * Commodore 1040STFM Or maybe even: * Atari Amiga 520 * Commodore 500ST * Atari Amiga 1040 * Commodore 1000STFM Ahh... What might have been...

[@ecdhe]

@@nickfifteen and no matter what, the PC would have likely ended up killing both companies ;-)

[@IntoTheVerticalBlank]

Awesome Job! The C64 was and is better at Sprite-based graphics and the 16 colors in high-res can make some really cool looking arcade games. The A8's strength is pushing A LOT of awesome multi-colored particles and color bands to the screen at once, used in 3D and also games like Blaster and Zarjaz spewing games from Minter and the like. Both machines though, in the the right hands hand be made to mimic the strengths of the other. The SID can do Pokey Style sounds and combining the the 4 Pokey 8 bit channel into 2 16bit can be used to almost approximate the SID.

[@mmille10]

Re. the later Atari software, I remember listening to an interview with Clinton Parker, the author of the Action! language on the Atari, and something he and the interviewer noted was that there wasn't a lot of commercial software written in Action!, despite its features and performance, and I think it was Parker who attributed this to the fact that it came out in 1983, and that "this was close to the end of the Atari's life." What was meant by that was that Atari under Warner really gave the Atari 8-bit computers the most support they ever had. Looking back on the sales stats recently, I saw that the Atari 8-bit line had its best success from 1979 to 1983, beating out a couple other computers that were sold at the time, the Apple II, and the Commodore PET. Once Atari imploded in 1984, 8-bit sales dropped into the tank, and the C-64 had taken off like a rocket by then (Apple II sales actually did a lot better from 1984 to 1988). Something I saw in another video that I didn't think about until I saw it was another thing that happened was that all the major retailers dropped Atari computers. They didn't like Jack Tramiel from their experience with Commodore. They didn't like how he did business, and thought he'd do the same as head of Atari. So, by the time I got my 130XE in 1988, the only place I could get it was either by mail order, or from small mom-and-pop shops that were authorized dealers. There was not a thriving Atari 8-bit software market by then. I agree that the only place one found really good Atari software by that point was from Atari itself, or in the homebrew scene. Re. late Atari homebrew - In addition to what you showed, I'd recommend looking at Space Harrier. I compared the Atari homebrew to the C-64 version (through videos), and was surprised. The Atari version was much better. Even though the colors sometimes looked garish compared to the arcade version, and sometimes it was difficult for me to pick out what was going on, because the contrast wasn't so great, the action was as close to the arcade version as you could get. Really smooth animation, even though the objects looked blocky. The late homebrews I've liked are Scorched Earth, Adam Is Me (an adaptation of "Baba Is You"), and Space Taxi (a port from the C-64). I think, though, that what we see in game quality has much more to do with the skill of the developer than just the hardware capabilities, and how much memory was available when the original game was written. I've seen a bunch of examples of this, that you can get the impression from playing a game on either of these platforms that it was the best that could've been done on them, but then you see a homebrew developer prove you wrong; that it could've been done much better, but the other developer didn't have the time to make it better, or was dealing with the early memory limitations of the platforms (which now are not an issue). That's the thing I've noticed with the late Atari homebrews. Once you expand the available memory, the quality of the games goes up significantly, because you can have more detailed character information, better game logic/AI, more animation, maybe more variation in display list setup (because you can define more of them), and nicer sound effects, due to using sound samples with the Pokey's DAC.

[@buffalodebill7986]

I think both were awesome in their own right.. As a group of three kids from three different families, we played games on both the 800XL which I had, the breadbin C64 and ZX Spectrum of my two friends, respectively. The differences were pretty much ignored (especially those between Atari and C64), as for us kids, the key was fun - and those platforms delivered just that fairly effortlessly. Truly, some of my sweetest childhood memories are those of us sitting tightly around a TV and playing games together, both competing against each other or trying to beat some level by helping and advising one another.. I wouldn't give those times up for anything in the world. However, from all the 8-bit computers, having had the 800XL, I admit to gradually gaining and having since a rather strong preference for Atari - for a number of reasons, most of which are based on my personal experiences and preferences. E.g. I like the POKEY chip sound output more than that of SiD chip, even though the latter is superior. I prefer the Atari case and keyboard, which is much easier and more comfortable to type on. I like the Atari graphics much more (despite lower max resolution), as it was so much easier to handle programatically, especially when using BASIC to do so. And not to forget - I know how easy it was to upgrade the RAM (I got the +256kB CompyShop upgrade), add another OS (selectable Q-Meg OS, in my case), replace the Atari BASIC by the superb Turbo BASIC XL (unfortunately I never got that) and install a built-in DOS (customized TT-DOS for me). All these made the 800XL a true beast, in terms of the scale of its usability - I remember using it well into '96, just because I was already so familiar with it and I still think that combined with the 1050 disk drive, the setup was close to perfect - the specs & performance were really more than sufficient, all the SW delivered exactly what I wanted and needed, the games were fun, the peripherals (printers, modems) were good and got cheaper and cheaper by each year.. Yeah, the list goes on. Maybe a side note here - since approx. '93, I also had the Mega ST2, which was a beast in its own way, but I have never quite grown to love that machine like I did the 800XL - which is why I kept using my beloved 8-bit beast for so long. LbnL - nice & simple but still an informative video - thumbs up 🙂

[@lorensims4846]

the Atari Home Computers could typically display four colors at a time from a palette of 128 different colors, in well over a dozen graphic modes. Sound was four channels., with half-a-dozen different tone qualities. The Commodore Vic-20 and C-64 seemed to have primarily bit-mapped graphics, and a more limited palette of colors, and only three sound channels. The custom graphic chips on the Atari handled screen display completely, releasing the CPU from having to continually update the screen display. The CPU sent data to the screen, ANTIC & C/GTIA would work out how the data was displayed on the screen. 80-column text was always offered for the Atari, but only as third-party after-market modifications. The Atari also included a modem within the cassette interface so that straight data was NOT written directly to the audio tape, but the was first converted into audio tones that the cassette tabes were designed to record. This made the cassette tape system to be much more reliable than on other home computers of the time. Atari BASIC included many graphics and sound commands to make it easy for anyone to write simple programs to demonstrate the graphics and sound capabilities of their new machines. I understand most of these features had to be accessed on the Commodore only through PEEKs and POKEs. The fact that Atari BASIC came on cartridge made it trivial to use an updated revision of BASIC or advanced versions such as BASICXL, BASIC A+, and Microsoft BASIC. You could also replace the BASIC cartridge with the Assembler/Editor cartridge if you REALLY wanted to take advantage of the capabilities off these systems. The 400/800 were introduced at a time that "video game machines" were derided for excessive radio frequency interference wit TVs and other nearby electronic equipment. The FTC and FCC were creating standards for such interference and beginning to crack down severely. The Coleco Adam was said to be delayed, as was the TI 99/4, due to excessive RF interference. This is the primary reason the Atari 400 and 800, as described in the computer magazines at the time described them, were "built like Raquel Welch." If you need ports, get the Atari 850 Interface module which connected by SIO and offers RS-232-C and Centronix-standard Parallel printer port. The 400 was the "budget" version, directed to consumers who might be using it more as a game machine. Atari BASIC also included abbreviations for most commands so it really wasn't all that difficult to enter BASIC programs on that Arati 400 keyboard. My brother always insisted that his Commodore 64 was superior to my Atari 800, but he could never really explain why. He usually said multicolor sprites. The Atari could overlay multiple 'players' to show multiple colors. Jack Tramiel was all about making cheap computers. When he ran Commodore, that's what he built. When he ran Atari, that's what he built.

[@another3997]

I'm an Atari fan, but your assertions aren't correct. The Atari display slows down the whole computer UNLESS you disable the display updates. This is because the CPU and graphics both use the same memory bus. So you lose a lot of CPU performance due to interrupts. Atari BASIC was available on cartridge, known as versions A, B and C, but after the "A" version of the 400/800, they were just bug fixes to the built in version. Atari BASIC was flexible, but due to original memory and time constraints, it was VERY SLOW. Much better third party programming languages were available for both systems, so the point is moot. The A400 keyboard was pretty bad, despite the option of abbreviated keywords. And guess what? A lot of other BASICs had that feature too. 80 column text on the Atari was a mixed bag... slow and difficult to read software versions, expensive 3rd party add on boards or the official Atari XEP-80. The latter is nothing more than an external "dumb terminal" text generation chip that was adapted to output to a separate monitor. It couldn't output or pass through the Atari's standard graphics modes, so was very, very limited. The C64 and many other 8 bits had options for 80 columns. The C64 had 3 >>> 16 bit channels 8 bit channels

[@lorensims4846]

@@another3997 My favorite "feature" of Atari 8K BASIC was that it was so slow, due to a bug in the floating-point routines, and ALL NUMBERS in Atari BASIC were floating point, even the line numbers. Combined with the built-in commands to jump to a machine language program at a specific address, the built-in command to get the address of a string, and the fact that strings could be up to 32K long, meant it was dirt-easy and we were highly motivated to get into 6502 Assembly Language. Add to that, Atari, and other publishers, released detailed information about the basic workings of all aspects of the Atari Home Computer.

[@lorensims4846]

@@another3997 My point was that this is a coprocessing environment where, yes, ANTIC can interrupt the 6502 when it needs access to the RAM bus, but the 6502 ISN'T driving the screen display, as it does in many other computer systems. On the Atari, that's ANTIC''s job. Yes, both processors are sharing very limited resources, but at least there's no duplication of effort. Atari 8K BASIC was slow due to a bug in the floating point routines and the fact that ALL numbers in Atari BASIC are floating point, even the line numbers. All the more reason to learn Assembly Language, especially with those handy Atari BASIC commands to jump to a machine language program at a specified address, to get the address of a string, and the fact that strings in Atari BASIC can be up to 32K long. Three sixteen bit audio channels can't produce the sound of a chord as well as four eight bit sound channels can. I've also heard that console speaker used as a rhythm line. "Don't be blind to reality"?! How many other BASICs checked syntax upon line entry instead of waiting for the program to be run? Read De Re Atari if you haven't in a while. It's available from Atari Mania.

[@bierundkippen720]

"Vic-20 and C-64 seemed to have primarily bit-mapped graphics" Nope. The vast majority of games used character-based graphics.

[@mmille10]

I think I've seen you make the comment before about how the cassette interface converted digital info. into tones, which no other system did. That's not my understanding. *All* of the cassette systems on other platforms had AD/DA converters, because they all used conventional analog tape drives, which could only record analog info. So, the digital info. *had* to be converted to analog (tones) before being sent to the tape drive, or else it wouldn't have worked. Perhaps you mean that the info. was converted to a modulated sine wave (like a modem would), rather than a square wave (in tones), and this made storage more reliable? Perhaps. I don't have enough knowledge in media to judge that. The C-64 natively supports more colors on screen at once, at higher resolution, than the Atari does. The Atari can get more colors on screen at once (like 256) by using some tricks with display lists, but this limits the situations where that number of colors can be used. If you draw the screen carefully, and set up your interrupts right, you can get some pretty impressive displays. The Atari natively supports a greater number of colors on screen the lower the resolution is. This is largely due to the amount of memory allocated to screen RAM (I think it's 5K for graphics modes 1-6, and 8K for 7-11). If it supported using more RAM for the screen, you could get more colors at higher resolution. I used to think that the Antic, GTIA, and Pokey acted like coprocessors that somehow allowed them to act in parallel to the 6502, because that's how they used to be described in trade publications, but they can't, because as @another3997 said, they share the same memory bus. Really what happens is like a relay race. The bus is handed off to the different chips at certain times, and whichever chip doesn't have it is put to sleep for a bit, including the 6502. It's true that because of this, it affects the 6502's performance. I think the figure is that you can speed up the 6502 by 30% by turning the screen (Antic/GTIA) off. Often, I've seen computationally intensive programs turn the screen off to run faster. You can emulate having more sprites onscreen than the Atari natively supports, by using display list interrupts, and carefully designing the game screen. I've heard this is called multiplexing. My understanding is the C-64 can do this, too. The real value of the custom chips is, IMO, that they're designed to do certain tasks more efficiently than the 6502 can. The thing I think is neat about the Antic chip, for example, is it literally has its own programming language! That's what display lists are, a sequence of opcodes and data that only the Antic chip understands. They tell it what to display on each scan line, which is why you can display multiple graphics modes at once. The Antic also handles some scrolling tasks. It's able to shift the display through memory, which enables you to have smooth or course scrolling, such as in a word processor, or a game. Re. the different Basics This is an interesting story in contrasts, because both Atari and Commodore dealt with the same problem, how to fit Basic into 8K of ROM, and came to different solutions for it. Atari went the route of throwing a few features of Basic out (strings, and string arrays), substituting a byte-buffer construct for strings, and reducing the accuracy of its floating-point routines, so they could fit some features like graphics and sound commands into the language. Commodore went the route of buying a generic, royalty-free version of Basic from Microsoft, and making very few changes to it, because not much else would fit. That's the reason people had to use pokes to do graphics and sound on the C-64. Incidentally, this was also the version of Basic used in the Commodore PET. Atari wanted to make MS-Basic their standard Basic really badly, but they couldn't get all the features they wanted into the 8K ROM size. So, they went with a version from Shepardson Microsystems, which became Atari Basic. Personally, I like what Atari did with it. It made Basic on the Atari approachable. It could've had more features (if they had more room), such as commands for defining and moving P/M graphics (sprites), but they came to a good solution, overall. There were better versions of Basic, like Basic A+, Basic XL, Basic XE, etc., from OSS, and later Turbo Basic, from Happy Computer Magazine, all of which were designed as supersets of Atari Basic, and which improved performance. Atari (under Tramiel) sold an 80-column card for the Atari, the XEP-80, but the reviews on it have been negative, mainly because it has slow screen updating, due to its serial interface (it uses a joystick port). As I've heard, there were better solutions from third parties. It was even possible to do 80 columns in software. When I was in college, I got a VT-100 terminal emulator that worked on my Atari. It used Graphics mode 8 to create an 80-column text display. It had a slow screen update, but it worked. It did a very competent job emulating the VT-100.

[@djp_video]

I believe the Atari's SIO system needs to be given a little more credit. It was a very elegant and clean design that performed really well and was easy to use. Being able to daisy chain multiple devices back-to-back and for it to just work, and do so at high speed, was impressive. And to only have to worry about one type of interface and one type of cable for all of your peripherals. The ability to play audio from and read data from a cassette simultaneously was cool. And you've got to give credit to Atari for building the ability to boot right from disk or cassette into the OS from day one, especially since Commodore had the opportunity to incorporate that into the C64 and chose not to. And along those lines, the fact that Atari had a proper DOS should count for something as well. From the outside it looks like Commodore didn't even think about disk drive support when building the OS. And we don't even need to talk about comparing the two versions of BASIC they came with... in terms of those capabilities the Atari mopped the floor with the 64. The capabilities and performance of SIO, at least in my mind, should more than make up for the missing chroma connection on the 800XL. (Which could be fixed with a piece of wire and a soldering iron. And Atari did remedy it on the XEs.)

[@powerofvintage9442]

Agreed

[@RetroComputo]

I really liked this comparison, very well focused and done. Although the Atari 800XL and the Commodore 64 are quite similar, I think that in general terms quality, reliability and durability I like Atari better.

[@10MARC]

Great comparison for sure. I truly love both systems. Atari seems like it should win with superior graphics with it's increased color palette, but it seldom does. I usually think the C64 games often look better. Both handle audio great in their own way. The SID is technically superior, but it is also years newer than POKEY. The Atari audio does a great job. Totally accurate about the disks speeds, but a good 80% of Commodore users just bought an EPYX fast load cart and disks loaded 8x faster. The 170kb vs 90kb (bigger later of course) made a difference. I got the Commodore because it was $600 cheaper at the time!

[@powerofvintage9442]

Both are just awesome though. Really game changers.

[@ShamrockParticle]

Commodore was also able to build chips in-house. Atari couldn't. That helped lead to the C64 being lower cost.

[@reggiebenes2916]

As a kid I got stuck with an Apple II, and I wanted a C64 like most of my friends. I don't even remember knowing that Atari made computers until many years later. I had Apple because my parents were teachers, but I think most everyone had a C64 because they sold them at K-Mart. Back then, unles you lived in an area with a computer shop, you were probably only exposed to computers that were sold in retail stores or your school.

[@powerofvintage9442]

Totally agree, as a kid, you saw what you were exposed to in your area, or with your friends, or with your family.

[@USWaterRockets]

The C64 has a couple of advantages in that the SID has better music generation waveforms, but having 3 channels as opposed to 4 makes this less of an advantage, especially for in-game muslc and effects simultaneously. The SID has a strange history and different revisions of the chip sound better than others, which is kind of a negative in my book. The certainly C64 has better sprite hardware allowing more colors per sprite per scanline, but the limited color choices diminishes this advantage in that they both can change color palettes on every scanline, the Atari had a wider palette to choose from. Speaking of which, the Atari had a lot of different graphics modes and could mix and match them on a scanline by scanline basis, giving the ability to have more colors and more variety on the screen at one time. On I/O the original Atari 800 has a monitor port with S-video too, and the 800XL has the port and the circuitry for this but you have to add a jumper wire to bring it out. I guess for marketing reasons they left it off. Having S-video on the C64 isn't that big of an advantage because the video circuitry was noisy and suffered from jailbars and other issues that you just didn't have to deal with on the Atari. The SIO port and having models with 4 joystick ports is definitely a win for I/O. On build quality, I think the XEs are on par with any of the C64 models except when it comes to keyboard quality. Inside, the PCB's look cheap on both. Over the life of the machines, the C64 shipped from the factory with a lot more bodge wires, and the C64 seems plagued with chips that fail over time, like PLA chips, and SID chips, and video chips that run excessively hot. The Ataris had much better reliability and fewer bodges. Also, it seems that there were a lot of issues with power supplies for the C64 overheating. I think Bill Herd mentioned that one power supply overheated so much they just filled them with epoxy and shipped them. Atari had a similar power supply called the "ingot" which was epoxy filled, but it didn't overheat. The problem with the ingot is that when the caps go bad 40 years later, the supply fails and outputs more than 5V and kills the computer. You can't re-cap them because they are sealed and epoxy filled. But that's not a build issue like the C64 overheating problem. On software, you could have compared Yoomp! on the Atari to the C64 to see how they compare. That "Prince of Persia" example pretty much sums up the real state of affairs if you're doing a hardware comparison. The Atari's wider color palette and multitude of graphics modes shows off what the hardware was truly capable of. It had a lot more untapped potential that could be exploited to provide a much more "16-bit" looking game. You hit on the reason in the video that we never saw this. The C64 was aggressively priced (at the cost of quality) and established a foothold in the market that caused developers to focus on the C64 and the Atari didn't get as much software. So based on sheer volume of titles, the C64 wins, but if you're doing a technical comparison the Atari could do more graphically. One item which you never touched on was the "BIOS" software in these machines. The Atari was miles ahead of the C64 in terms of the BIOS. I've never seen a definitive comparison of the BASICs available for these machines, so I can't comment on that here, but I did use both and found they each has strengths and weaknesses. However, the Atari had a much more polished BIOS and it was much easier to use. Autobooting disks, a better Disk Operating System, and support for external modems and printers over SIO without typing cryptic commands was much nicer. Most people favor the C64 because that's what they had, but it was much later on the market than the Ataris, and was inferior in most ways except for pricing, which is why so many people had them and have fond memories of them. I could go on, but if I could only have one 8-bit computer in my life it would be an Atari 800XL with the Alps keyboard and S-video mod and 1050 disk drive.

[@nickolasgaspar9660]

The Sid chip was the best synth chip ever used in a computer...but synths were a dead end for the industry and Miner knew that from his days at Atari while designing Pokey (his team), Pokey was the first chip able to produce soft/digi samples like a PCM chip with high pass filtering (low pass was dropped for economic reasons). A mature version of Pokey's technical characteristics can be found in Paula's four channels. (Miner explains the similarities if the chips in his talks). The following might be my subjective evaluation but like in graphics the Atari machine can produce a larger diversity of sounds while the C64 produces the same sounds limited by the nature of the chip. That doesn't make it worse it makes it monotonous.

[@USWaterRockets]

@@nickolasgaspar9660 I said the SID was better for music. SID had a wide variety of waveforms and filters and could produce a wider variety of subtle sounds. Just as you say the Atari could make a wider range of colors. The downside of the SID was having only 3 channels, compared to the POKEY's 4 channels. This is an issue for games where sounds effects had to be dropped more often when the number needed exceeded the number of available channels. I understand that the C64 could fake more colors by switching them every frame, and the Atari could do more waveforms and filters in software. So each one could even the playing field at the expense of software effort. It's sad that hardware has advanced to the point where nobody has to do these optimizations any longer.

[@nickolasgaspar9660]

@@USWaterRockets I will focus on the sound and will say that the argument on SID music not accurate even if I do love SID music . I understand that many people are not familiar with the ASMA project but in my opinion Pokey can deliver a wider variety of styles compared to the SID chip. I can point out 8-10 Pokey songs where the character of the "instruments" are so different, where SID;s style (curvy solo and deep bass) is identical in every single tune and so recognizable. I only mention the graphics of the systems because most of the C64's games use the same colors again and again

[@USWaterRockets]

@@nickolasgaspar9660 I believe that the POKEY can do a lot more with software than it does in hardware alone, but I can't think of anything the POKEY can do in software that the SID couldn't copy using software as well. It then comes back to the pokey has more channels, so it wins. I actually prefer the POKEY sound, but respect what the SID can do in hardware alone.

[@buffalodebill7986]

I'd say you summed up most of the key points very nicely - thumbs up 🙂

[@sideburn]

The Atari had DOS as well which was better than the c64’s clunky way of loading files and listing directories.

[@glenndoiron9317]

Commodore's DOS was built into the disk drives. This had advantages (from the main CPU's perspective, its all just file streams, no tracking of directories/files/sectors had to occupy system RAM), and disadvantages (disk drives needed their own microprocessor, which made them more expensive). When you type LOAD"$",8 on the C-64, it tells the disk drive it wants to read the file called "$". The DOS on the disk drive recognizes this symbol and instead of looking for a file called $, it constructs a CBM BASIC program listing where each line number is the number of blocks, followed by cleartext with the file name and file type.

[@glenndoiron9317]

Don't you need an addon program just to list directories on the Atari 8-bits? AFAIK there's no built-in directory command in the Atari DOS. Why is LOAD"$",8 clunkier than booting to a dos shell (which might not even be available on your current disk)?

[@sideburn]

@@glenndoiron9317 you have to remember the syntax for one and if your want a directory you have to type out some command and it generates a BASIC program and then you have to LIST the program to see the directory. Kinda cheezy. There were many versions of DOS for the Atari and some just gave you a prompt like PC DOS and Linux / Unix.

[@GandaMelgao]

I tried an Atari 800 XL in the late 80s. Played quite a bit on it. To me it's bellow the C64, the Amstrads CPC, the Zx Spectrum. Everyone I knew back in the day felt pretty much the same. But if you like it, use it 😊

[@sfurta]

I have the same experience as you. Atari 800 was very much an American (NTSC) thing of the early eighties. Almost all old games don't run correctly on PAL machines. Later European games were only extremely small niche when compared with dominant platforms, some UK games, but most of them from Poland. Another sad thing is 90% of new games don't run on stock machines. Vanilla 800XL is practically a dead machine. Well known classics like Commando were not ported to stock 800XL, this is unfogivable. There are some things on 8bit Ataris I consider a technical marvel but gaming wise, those computers are stuck in the Atari 2600 era (PAL user point of view).

[@powerofvintage9442]

@@sfurta I totally get both of these comments. Really, everyone's experience is rooted in how they experienced the computers, the software available and tried at those times as well. If I was looking at the Atari 8-bit line in the mid - late 80's, I'd go C64 all the way.

[@GandaMelgao]

@@sfurta I had a lot of fun playing Commando on the ZX. I almost bought a 130 XE back in the late 80s. Problem was, I was expecting better versions of my ZX games. But almost none of my favourite games were available for the 130 XE, or any Atari 8 bit. Nowadays, I've seen many videos about the Atari 8 bit, and so many people praising the machine. But I''ve never seen one game that I would like to play on it. Technically, the machine might be superior to the Spectrum or the C64. But in practical terms, it is not. At least for me it's not. Others will have a different opinion, and that's quite alright. 🙂

[@GandaMelgao]

@@powerofvintage9442 Yes, that's basically it. By the way, I didn't bought a C64 after the ZX Spectrum. I went for the Amiga. 🙂

[@xXTheoLinuxXx]

@@sfurta I had never issues to find PAL software. But you're right about the Atari software from today, since ram chips are cheap and the 8-bit Atari computers are easy to upgrade you see a lot of software that requires more memory.

[@ecdhe]

If you ever do an Atari ST vs Commodore Amiga comparison (especially over the lifetimes of the systems), I would suggest splitting the graphics in 3 categories: low-res graphics (those used by video games), high-res graphics (used by productivity applications) and graphics accelerations (blitter, copper, etc.)

[@powerofvintage9442]

I had thought about it, but less focused on the graphics and more on the productivity versus games....it will probably be a while before I do another "vs" video :)

[@ecdhe]

@@powerofvintage9442fair enough. Looking forward to your next video, whatever it is

[@tonycosta3302]

Atari never sold a monitor for 8-bit systems so there was no need for a dedicated monitor port, or standard monitor port to add on since each manufacturer had their own. Either way, price was the C64’s best feature and contributed significantly to its success.

[@nickolasgaspar9660]

Some more details. The configuration of European Ataris was a bit different. i.e. Most 800xls came with the Chroma signal connected and all 600XL came with a monitor port (No svideo). RAM wise Ataris can go up to 4MB (SUBCart+PBI connector Axlon4M and/or ANTONIA 4MB memory expansion). Now about the speed of the systems one thing is sure....they are not equivalent. Sure we can all agree that C64's advanced hardware sprites and scrolling "speed up" the machine but when games demand cpu and graphics "firepower" the Atari line is hands down faster. i.e. a. Matt Heffernan's "8-Bit Battle Royale" series revealed a huge difference in Basic execution of a Mandelbrot Set fractal (Atari 2:16 vs C64 3.23). b. Stunt Car racer. The game on the Atari machine (based on the C64 port) is 21% faster. c. in games like Yoomp, Rescue on Fractalus, Total eclipse, Koronis Rift, Eidolon, Guard (vs Tangent) etc the frame rate and screen size are considerably higher and larger. The commercial life of the Atari platform in Europe was longer, mainly due to English and Polish releases. There are commercial releases well in to the 2000s (polish software houses). I will agree that Atari , in the homebrew era, edges out C64 slightly mainly because of its faster architecture, large color palette and Pokey's maturity (ASMA collection). Here are some games on both machines that allows us to make the comparison. a.Yoomp(Homebrew on both platforms) Hands down the atari version is superior. b. Assembloids (Homebrew on both platforms) Better graphics and one can argue better sound. Better gameplay due to symbol's graphics on the Atari. c.Prince of Persia (Homebrew on both platforms) As you said the Atari port is better. d.Atari Guard vs Atari Tangent (late commercial release for the Atari) . Way faster scroll on the Atari and more colorful. c. Lunar blitz (Homebrew on both platforms) equally good, the music on the atari port is better. d. Nipply,(Homebrew on both platforms) Great on both platforms, the Atari version is more colorful, but it sounds better on the C64 Lets not forget "Space Harrier" which is the best 8bit version, Pang and Bombjack.

[@powerofvintage9442]

Love all these awesome details! My experience was very "US based". I really enjoy learning all about these fantastic machines.

[@nickolasgaspar9660]

@@powerofvintage9442 The Eastern European library of games is huge. From the latest home-brew marvels to the 90s and early 2ks late commercial releases the total number is around 18.000games (6.000 accounting for different versions) and 8.000 demos. The ASMA library is huge with great songs making the SID chip sound like a nose blown harmonica. Just kidding, I enjoy SID but most of the time its way to monotonous like the constant "dirty grey/purple" theme displayed by most C64 games.

[@rabidbigdog]

My Atari 800XL got me through university and into my computing career. I couldn't afford a PC and couldn't stand the Mac (so that was fine). My Atari 800XL still works, while most of my friends' C64s died along the way. Having said that, the various C64 never claimed to be a high 'quality' computer. They certainly won the volume war, not that this turned out to be much of measure of success as both the Commodore and Atari businesses were mismanaged. The Wintel PC industry was always going to win because of Gene Amdahl's(?) lesser known law "In computing, compatibility beats innovation. Everytime."

[@powerofvintage9442]

The XL line and earlier really are tanks. XE's...less so.

[@belstar1128]

i wonder what would have happened if these systems used the 8086 instead of the 6502.

[@nickolasgaspar9660]

@@belstar1128 they would cost 5 times more than they did....

[@belstar1128]

@@nickolasgaspar9660 yea but people still bought more ibm computers anyway

[@nickolasgaspar9660]

@@belstar1128 people buy apple products....that answers everything...

[@genblob]

I absolutely agree on the Atari winning on the homebrew side of things. The 8-bit line missed out on so many amazing games released later in the C64's life and most of the C64 ports it did get didn't take much advantage of the hardware. I'm glad you showcased Prince of Persia because that's a prime example of what games on the Atari could have been if it still had strong commercial support in the late 80's and early 90's.

[@IntoTheVerticalBlank]

I think you need to play C64 Turrican in PAL mode. One thing about the mature games, the A8 was only really getting budget software , with the exception of a few XEGS carts in from 1987 on, while the c64 could move units of high prices games. There was much more time and effort, deservingly, put into games like Turrican on the C64, which is quite possibly, the best 8bit computer arcade style game ever made. In comparison, Atari put out Battlezone at the is time. A nice version, but no where close to the time an money spent on C64 Turrican.

[@belstar1128]

the atari 8 bit is very impressive its even older than the c64. i think its probably the oldest system not counting arcades and super computers that can have "nintendo" like games (maybe the ti99 could do it too) with in game music that sounds decent and with a lot of levels that look different and a simple story too .but since its so old most games didn't use its full potential until the end. but the c64 was cheaper and most of its iconic games were made later on and were more ambitious

[@michaelstoliker971]

You said that the parallel port didn't get much use, but some are aiming to change that. I recently bought a caseless 1090XL expansion system (a modernized 1091XL is available), an 80 column board, and a 320K memory card. Having invested the money in that, I hope that other upgrades will be forthcoming. There is a total of 5 slots on the 1090.

[@powerofvintage9442]

Hey the more use the better. From what I learned, the port has tremendous access.

[@nickolasgaspar9660]

AVG cart and SUB carts make use of the PBI connector allowing 512kb and 1mb/4mb axlon memory expansion respectively. Jurgen's SYS-check is also a PBI card that offers diagnostics and 512kb memory upgrades. There is also a Rambo 512kb compatible solution available but I don't know the author. Candle o Sin is also planning the release of a PBI version of the ultimate 1mb card.

[@powerofvintage9442]

@@nickolasgaspar9660 cool use of the PBI! In the 80's I could only find information on about 5 or 6 products. There definitely could have been more, but it was clearly underused at that time.

[@michaelstoliker971]

@@powerofvintage9442 Like you said, the more, the merrier as long as they share the bus and play by the PBI rules.

[@stephenwhite506]

Funny you chose chocolate vs vanilla analogy. There is way more vanilla ice cream sold than chocolate. I like both however, I find I hardly ever use my Atari machines but use my Commodore ones almost daily. People love to complain about the 64's slow disk drive even though there were many contemporary solutions. Also, they complain about the poor basic, however these factors had little consequence on the actual impact the Commodore 64 had on human endeavor. As, according to the Computer History Museum, 60% of the programmers that developed the internet and the apps that run on it over the last thirty years, can trace their roots back to a Commodore. This was a consequence of the price war that put home computers into the masses. I could never see the appeal of the game Prince of Persia, I think it is slow, monotonous and repetitive.

[@powerofvintage9442]

The point of PoP was the graphical differences due to color availability and vibrancy. I agree with you that the C64 had more impact on the world in large part due to the number of people exposed to them. The comparison really comes down to the criteria used to measure them against each other. Both really are awesome!

[@bierundkippen720]

You forgot to mention * sprites. The C64 surely wins here. * raster interrupts (C64: yes, Atari: no) * the filter capabilities of the SID which is actually the thing that makes the SID superior over the Pokey And - really - the C64 version of PoP looks so much better and cleaner than the pixely Atari version.

[@mmille10]

I wonder what you mean by Atari not having raster interrupts. My understanding is it does. They're called display list interrupts, which allow the 6502 to run a bit before each scan line was drawn, so that short routines can, as a few examples, track which scan line will be drawn, alter the scan line's color, move a sprite, or change its shape.

[@djp_video]

The Atari's Display LIst and Display List Interrupt capabilities were better than the C64's. You could do all kinds of wild things with them.

[@ecdhe]

Comparing the graphical capabilities of the two systems is a bit more complex than that. The C64 allows to displays more colors on the screen but with some constraints. By contrast, when a graphic mode on the Atari 8-bit has, say, 4 colors, any pixel can have any of these 4 colors. The C64 seems to also have more sprites than the Atari 8-bit. But overall it seems like games on the C64 tended to have more colors.

[@powerofvintage9442]

Agree wholeheartedly. A whole video could have been made just on that.

[@ecdhe]

@@powerofvintage9442 I've only programmed on the Atari 8-bit, but it seems like the C64 has similar capabilities (hardware scrolling, interrupt system, etc.)

[@ecdhe]

@@powerofvintage9442 but your video made me realize that the color palette of the C64 was only 16 colors. I assumed it would be comparable to the Atari 8-bit but that's not the case. So thank you for pointing that out.

[@glenndoiron9317]

@@ecdhe The C-64's VIC chip has a scan-line interrupt source, which the 6510 can configure to make mid-screen transitions or multiplex sprites (to show more than 8 sprites on the screen at a time) similar to the ANTIC's DLI, but usually with a finer vertical resolution - the C-64 can set the interrupt to happen on any scan line (as opposed to the Antic which only interrupts at the end of whatever it currently counts as a display line). The C-64's sprites are 24x21 pixels (1-color with transparency, 320 pixel line width) or 12x21 pixels (160 pixel line width, 3 colors per pixel, 2 of those colors are shared among all sprites on that scanline), and there is optional X and Y size doubling (hardware, for free), but you can re-use them with only a single blank scan line after the previous data is displayed. Vertical sprite position on the C-64 is determined by a write to a single Y-position register, no shuffling of sprite data is required. The 21-pixel tall limit is of course inferior to the full-screen Y-size of the Atari's player graphics, but on the C-64 you set an interrupt and change the sprite's X position, Y-position, data pointer, and color (a total of 5 register accesses) to display a new object with the same hardware sprite on the screen. On the Atari, you would need to adjust the X-position, color, and more importantly, also re-build the player image data each frame if any image that object displays has moved vertically. Where ANTIC really gets annihilated is with the horizontal width and number of sprites. ANTIC can only place 5 players on any given scanline (assuming using the missile objects as well), which on a scanline (5 sprites x 8 pixels, on a 160 pixel scanline) amounts to 25% of the display area while displaying a single color on each player object. The C-64 can fill (8 sprites x 12 pixels, on a 160 pixel scanline) 60% of the scanline with sprite data (120% if you used X-doubling), while having 3 colors on each sprite. And the C-64 can move those sprites to ANY location on the screen without manipulating the sprite data, while the ANTIC can only do horizontal movement with registers. The background hardware scrolling on the C-64 is also different than the ANTIC. There is no equivalent LMS register* (*the register on the C-64 has a 1024 multiplier and is really used for page flipping, not scrolling), and screen data always* (* demo sceners have actually found a way around this to do character-cell hardware scrolling but AFAIK no game back in the day used this, and it certainly wasn't in the C-64 Programmer's Reference manual) begins at a 0x400-multiple page within whatever 16K bank of memory is selected for the VIC-II. There are X-scroll and Y-scroll registers which shift the entire display image (except sprites) 0 to 7 (320 width) pixels with just a register write. When it comes time to scroll the next pixel, the CPU needs to race the beam and move the screen (and probably color) data and reset the scroll register or rebuild the new image in another page and flip to that page. ANTIC (AFAIK) can only scroll horizontally on byte boundaries. ANTIC's vertical scroll is almost always better than the C-64's, being able to fine scroll without typically needing to redraw the screen data. The horizontal scrolling however, is typically 3x more efficient on the C-64 as you only need to manipulate the screen every 4 pixels scrolled, (8 if you are using hires 320x pixels) whereas on the ANTIC the display list is not your friend until you cross that byte boundary (i.e. you need to redraw whenever you are shifting by something other than a multiple of pixels which is exactly a byte). As the 6510 on the C-64 has access to EVERY hardware register (unlike ANTIC) you can also change color registers (sprite, background, foreground, etc) via the scan line interrupt.

[@ecdhe]

@@glenndoiron9317 thanks a lot for this detailed description of the C64 graphic capabilities. ANTIC does however have a horizontal and vertical pixel shift, which allows to perform smooth scrolling by modifying just a couple of registers (you find a very similar mechanism on the Amiga). And ANTIC can also change colors in its display list interrupts.

[@goddessesstartrekonlinefle3061]

Good summary and well presented! Thanks for sharing ^^ :). I felt it was a little unsporting to include the C128 vs the Atari 8bits. I know they're both 8 bit systems, so I get the choice, but the 128 was so much later and is more comparible to the PC's which where being released in the 4 or so years before it's release. I think weighing in the C128, even as an big Atari fan, I would give the 128 props for its potential. Also, on the graphics front, whilst I agree the Atari is loaded with way more potential with its colours, I personally would have given the edge to the C64 (though I can't say I'm unhappy my favourite childhood micro won anyway hehe). Can totally get behind your reasoning though and enjoyed very much seeing the side by side, thanks again!

[@nasty_niff]

Plenty of software released for atari into the 90s

[@powerofvintage9442]

Please share any good software released to a large market in the 1990's...I'd love to check it out!

[@mmille10]

My guess is you're talking about public domain or shareware/homebrew. I saw plenty, too, but it was on the internet, like at Atari Archive (now offline), or on BBSes, not commercial.

[@sideburn]

When I was a 14 year old software pirate my platform of choice was the 800xl / 130xe and we all called the c64 Commode Doors 😂 🤦‍♂️ Now I have both of course and love Space Taxi on my SX-64!

[@mmille10]

"Commode Door" - Yep, I heard that name a lot when I was in college, not by Atari fans, but, it seemed, by PC owners. Also heard "Trash-80" a lot, referring to the TRS-80 Color Computer, I guess.

[@nickolasgaspar9660]

Many viewers may disagree with your conclusion but there is a relative objective metric that verifies it. Many popular retro channels have stated that the Atari 8bit line has either become their favorite machine among the machines they discovered on the way or they acknowledge the superiority of the platform in some aspects compared to the C64 . Those channels are. The 8bit guy, Jan Beta, RMC, Mr Lurch, the Lairds Lair.

[@desiv1170]

That is, by definition, the opposite of objective.

[@nickolasgaspar9660]

@@desiv1170 You are using a different definition of the word.....

[@desiv1170]

@@nickolasgaspar9660Um... No... The definition is that it is NOT influenced by personal feelings or opinions. When KZbinrs (even big ones) are saying they prefer it, that is by definition subjective and not objective... Unless this is like one of situations where people are using the word to mean the opposite, like: "Kids changing definitions of words just because is literally killing me." ;-)

[@bierundkippen720]

I disagree.

[@cellarboy72]

I’ve never cared for the competition between the two camps myself - whatever plays what you like is the best system. However I do have to call out the Prince of Persia thing, particularly since you hung such a hat on that game in particular. The Atari version was made a full decade after the C64 version and the C64 version looks like a more faithful version of the original game, whilst the Atari looks like a port of the Amstrad or Master System version. Not really a comparison of the two versions on their merits, more on the aesthetic choice of that particular developer. You might have well been comparing the Apple II version to the Genesis - ostensively the same gameplay with two differing aesthetic approaches.

[@powerofvintage9442]

Good points. Maybe I didn’t clarify..but the point is more that the PoP demonstrates the graphical capability differences due to the availability of more and more vibrant colors for the Atari…less the style.

[@pelculator]

Yeah, was about to say that as well; the C64 PoP port tickles my nostalgia bone as it looks identical to the PC version I played on my Commodore PC 10-III (8088 with 640k RAM and Hercules graphics)

[@desiv1170]

Yes, and the C64 version, getting it all in 64k, is technically pretty darn impressive. I also have that one as a win for the C64. And while there is some great homebrew for the Atari, the 64 homebrew and demoscene are legendary. I thought it was interesting that one was a win for Atari too. But agreed that both are great lines.

[@charlesdorval394]

Coming from someone that never own these machine and only have a side interest in them, I always found the colors on the C64 a bit... lackluster.

[@powerofvintage9442]

It still is pretty amazing what can be done with those colors on the C64!

[@bierundkippen720]

@@powerofvintage9442 Indeed. You can even create new colors. There are multiple techniques to do this.

[@xXTheoLinuxXx]

You forgot one quite important thing, BASIC :) In Atari BASIC you could do pretty much everything, with Commodore BASIC well..

[@djp_video]

Unless you wanted to do Player/Missile graphics, or manipulate Display Lists. Kinda sucks that Atari never embraced that in BASIC. Or fixed some of its horrendous performance issues. I switched to Basic XE as soon as it came out and never looked back.

[@erebos007]

Thanks for the vid BUT it's totally biased. How is it possible to say that modern homebrew is better on thé Atari ? Really ? Did you play A Pig quest or eye of the beholder ? 😁

[@powerofvintage9442]

I love eye of the beholder and it's really amazing. In the end while I personally rate the Atari better. Both are fantastic. Vanilla or chocolate...both are awesome, but I prefer chocolate.

[@erebos007]

​@@powerofvintage9442 Sure you have every right to prefer chocolate :) BUT you can't say that modern software is better on the Atari because C64 homebrew scene is running circles around Atari 8 bit scene. Still, PoP is on awesome the A8 ;)

You're sooooooo wrong ! ;) ;) ;)

[@powerofvintage9442]

I love them all!

@@powerofvintage9442 I know :) Me too :) Although c64 is better of course :)