Commodore 64 vs. Amstrad CPC - 8 games from 1986

[@madd20]

worth remembering here The C64 was launched in 1982 CPC464 in 1984 and cost with color monitor £299 (approximately $390) Commore64 cost $219 in 1984, but a year later it was only $149 (ok, need monitor - tv set but i believe that everyone have one already). Even if the amstrad had better colors, it was definitely outdated for its time. Moments later, the Amiga was available :)

[@covidenslavement8918]

Glad I had a c64😂

[@Brianck1971]

Moments later ? Amiga A500 was not released until 1987. 3 Years after the Amstrad CPC 464. And the A500 was $699 when it was released so not even in the same market. The Amstrad had better graphics in general than the C64 not just a better colour pallet.

[@nickolasgaspar9660]

The CPC was a real computer, as most programmers of big software houses stated. It was compact with a drive but it was cheap without custom silicon .

[@trocoloco]

see that's your POV, in Europe C64 was expensive, let alone paying for a slooow disk drive more expensive than the computer itself. When you buy a CPC you get an all round machine and no need to use the living room TV. I don't know about you, but in those times that was the only TV around the house. CPC started 1984 Amiga 3 years later and very expensive. Moments away? lol

[@iXien]

"Ok needs a monitor - tv set but i believe that everyone have one already" Yes, and that's why Alan Michael SUGAR decided to comercialize its computers with a monitor, because serious market researches told him that no one needed it 🙄 Back in 1985, Amstrad CPC was far cheaper compared to a C64 if you added a tape recorder and a colour monitor. And C64 was renowned for breaking down quite often, which cost Commodore distributors a fortune in after-sales services. Sugar asked to his guys a computer that would be cheap, reliable and all-inclusive, even if this means a machine less powerful than some of its competitors, but offering sufficient capacity at best price for the masses. And here Amstrad clearly won the deal, particularly in France and Spain. From France, C64 was a powerful but rare, expansive and unreliable computer. That's as simple as that. And that's not the music from Rob Hubbard on C64 that will make me regret to have played "Auf Wiedersehen Monty" on my CPC as fast as on the original version and with its bright colours. The same for Bomb Jack, so playable on CPC, without this cheap MAgnetic Fields music completely off-topic. There are good and bad games on each system, often judged through the filter of childhood memories, but stop to tell the C64 was so great, and the CPC so bad. At some point you have to grow up. We're no longer in the schoolyard.

[@FatNorthernBigot]

The C64 had sprite graphics and smooth scrolling. Everything looked a little erm... brown, but it was an all round better gaming machine than the CPC. I had both. As someone else pointed-out, the Amiga was just around the corner.

[@jazzdub4958]

Yeah but for a kid, that corner was years away having to wait lol

[@FatNorthernBigot]

@@jazzdub4958 it's an eternity 😂

[@config2000]

Same here. I had both. The only really good thing the Amstrad offered was a much better BASIC programming language, and being an all-in-one system.

[@jazzdub4958]

@@FatNorthernBigot 😆

[@FatNorthernBigot]

@@config2000 Amstrad BASIC was very good. The C64 had a very poor implementation of BASIC. If the Amstrad was just a little faster, or had a few hardware niceties such as decent scrolling or sprites, it would be a far superior machine. They did address this in future iterations, but then there were also 16 bit machines in the near future, too.

[@jazzdub4958]

Ahh my beloved era of home computer gaming after school, and to be honest well into the middle of the night where I'd be falling asleep in class the following morning. Although my machine was the Spectrum 16k, 48k and later 128k in my last year of senior school. Only got a 2nd hand C64 right at the start of 1990 and loved it. Miss the 80s, the sounds and basic sprites, Jack the Nipper is a stone cold classic. Glad it's never been remade and any reboot crap like that these days. It retains it's bygone era magic and vintage status. Todays gamers just get pandered to with 30 hour long cinematic stories and bland gameplay from an earlier version game 10 years earlier.

[@C64sidVSsid]

We should not criticize one or the other machine. Each has its qualities. I have owned an Amstrad CPC 464 and after C64. I think that in general the C64 is superior in general compared to the CPC when the games require complex scrolling with the management of many sprites. The SID chip is also unbeatable, even the Amiga didn't do better with Paula despite its 4 voices. A colder sound... and yes the sid chip is a synth chip, created by the founder of Ensoniq. .mod and sampling have contributed to its myth. On the Amstrad this did not prevent certain versions of games being better than the c64. Gryzor or Renegade are a perfect example, the best 8-bit versions. What I liked about Amstrad was its brighter colors than the c64, better chromatics. The demo makers show us that currently our old 8 bits are still underfoot and have resources that we would never have imagined!

[@retrononame]

Agreed! Each machine had it's own qualities.

[@nickolasgaspar9660]

Everybody knows CPC's issues and bad programming made things even worse. But it was a compact machine first real home computer )with an excellent color palette and a great build in basic. On the other hand,the C64 was a failed attempt to match Jay Miner 8bit machine's capabilities. It came with monotonous dirty grey screens, muffled twisty soundchip trademark of the porn industry of the era but with excellent memory management and even better hardware spritesand scrolling . I have both machines but since I grew up with an Atari 8bit I am far more interested in the CPC machine than Commodore's cheap clone of the Atati machine. I do enjoy both but I prefer the British machine.

[@jssonstevens59]

Atari fan boys bs. You comment is laughable. Get real!

[@CaptainRufus]

C64 basically slaughters the Amstrad. Sorry France you chose the wrong 8 bit micro.

[@ncurtis1970]

I agree but also lazy programming on the straddy play a bit part, just ports of speech games and updated gfx didn't help

[@ncurtis1970]

Speech, I mean speccy

[@trocoloco]

haha cpu wise? right...

[@hadorstapa]

There’s definitely some Amstrad versions there that are less impressive, but there are also some where it wins out. Bright colour palette, good frame rates when properly programmed. BomberJack for example is far superior on the CPC.

[@iXien]

At some point you have to grow up. We're no longer in the schoolyard.

[@bonzobanana1]

Definitely a C64 win here, a bit of a slaughter really. However there are no 3D vector games or forced 3D isometric type games like head over heels. The C64 had better sound, scrolling and sprites but it didn't have much cpu power and it didn't have pixel by pixel colour change like the Amstrad. It would be easy to come up with a range of games that show the Amstrad CPC much stronger. I seem to remember some C64 games were downgraded compared to Spectrum and Amstrad like Carrier Command I think and a few others. The french did some utterly amazing cpc games that really showed off the hardware.

[@iXien]

Yup! Nothing more to add 👍

[@gavinw3277]

I think the biggest differentiator is what machine the game was developed on. More often they were developed for C64 and ported to the Amstrad, and they didn't take advantage of what the Amstrad could offer. Funny to see folks arguing over this stuff decades later :)

[@iXien]

@@gavinw3277 That's what is interesting discussing about these old things so many years later. It's not always so simple. Of course, if a game is clearly created on a system and then converted to other ones, some problems can emerge from the architectural differences. But usually, when a game was developed 'in-house', the games was designed trying to take part of the constraints of all systems in a single process. Yes, absurd, but true. So the C64 shines with scrollings and hardware sprites, and CPC is perfect with its colour palette and hability to swap colours pixel by pixel. The two sound chips have there powers and flaws too. But appart from that, games not always took part of a system capabilities in any version 🤪

[@bonzobanana1]

@@iXien I remember loving many C64 games but hating others and the same for Amstrad CPC, Spectrum and Atari XL which I had. I remember playing Renegade and Target Renegade on C64, Spectrum and Amstrad CPC and weirdly I ended up preferring the Spectrum versions because the sprites felt nicely weighted and there was more animation frames it seemed in the characters even though they looked rubbish. I don't remember liking the C64 versions at all as the sprites felt weightless. Maybe I'm remembering badly it was a long time ago. Maybe it was a different game that had those issues. Sometimes its how a game feels rather than how it looks or sounds. I remember those times fondly as it seemed much more exciting back then as gaming was something new that was only a few years old.

[@dennyhaynes3]

1. Rambo, easy C64 destroys the CPC. 2. Mikie, win again for the C64. 3. Heartland, C64 win but I do like the colour palette of the CPC. 4. Bombjack, I'd have to say CPC takes this one but music is better in the C64. 5. International karate, again the C64 destroys the CPC version on all accounts. 6. Nomad, Personal presence is the C64 version but the CPC isn't bad either. 7. Jack the nipper, another win for the C64. 8. Ghosts n goblins, C64 yet again destroys the CPC version.

[@Brianck1971]

On The C64 of version of Ghosts n goblins half the screen is taken up with the scores. On the Amstrad its full screen. Much more vibrant colours on the Amstrad as well.

[@cat29242]

@@Brianck1971 no real scrolling for an arcade game?

[@hadorstapa]

I agree on some of these, but Jack the Nipper is way better on the CPC.

[@hadorstapa]

Rambo: C64, easily Mikie: pretty even actually Heartland: C64 Bombjack: probably the strongest showing for CPC in this collection International Karate: C64 looks better, but CPC actually plays better Nomad: CPC looks better, but C64 plays better Jack the Nipper: C64 is a bit faster, but CPC looks and sounds better, and actually I think the speed works well Ghosts and Goblins: again C64 is quicker, and that music is way better suited. CPC looks good, though, and plays well. C64, but not by a lot.

[@iXien]

I just love so much the terms of the recognizable C64 fanboys. When the game is better on C64, it DESTROYS !!!!!!!!! While when the CPC wins, it's just good and music is better onC64, of course 🤮 For my part, I'm already searching why the Magnetic Fields in Bomb Jack... Mikie and Heartland are as good both systems, that's it. Jack the Nipper... hum, here nobody to tell that there is a music on CPC and not on C64, that GFX in 320x200 are more detailed on CPC than in 160x200 on C64, of course 🙄

[@kommissar.murphy]

IK is a GOAT game.

[@MephProduction]

Bombjack on the c64 was so disappointing, cpc did a much better job with it, also prefer heartland and nipper on the cpc too.

[@gabormiklay9209]

After watching these videos on the channel, I can safely say Amstrad CPC had the better hardware. Although sloppy programming on the Amstrad CPC made it the worse than the C64. 02:52 Just watch International Karate. It has a butter smooth animation on the Amstrad. And it's not the only game that was much faster than the C64 version (it's obvious in previous videos). Programmers made the C64 the best hardware. (Yeah, I had a C64 back in 1988, and I loved it)

[@jssonstevens59]

Err apart brighter colours and faster cpu, the c64 blew the cpc out of the water hardware wise. It's easy to make a game rub faster when you only have 2 frames of animation. The C64 version of international karate out the water. Wipes the floor with the cpc in almost every game here.

[@GenMaster]

CPC ♥️

[@May_Day45]

I had the best of both worlds...but could only use the C64 on a quiet Sunday afternoon when nothing was on the TV to watch, and I had to book a space for it ...at LEAST 3 to 4 hours given the time to load in a game, play the game and errors loading it as well 🤣 (was it just me the found if you sweet talk to the C64 tape deck it seems to load the game in without errors ?) AHHHH the 80s....I'd STILL trade place now if i could 😉

[@apokalip6]

Amstrad forever

[@spacefractal]

Only Bomb Jack is a much better game on the Amstrad than the C64 one. There is some very good Amstrad games when done right.

[@Edgel-in6bs]

On the face of it a complete spanking for the CPC, but at least bombjack is much better on that system.

[@gavinw3277]

Probably all/most of these games were developed on C64 and ported to Amstrad.

[@iXien]

@@gavinw3277 Yes, clearly a selection of C64 games converted to CPC. What explain the lack of music. Quick conversions without real care.

[@AtariForeva]

All I can say that Amstrad devs were lazy when it comes to utilizing AY sound chip. It's way more capable than this Spectrum like beeps on majority of titles here. My Atari 520ST has a Yamaha almost identical chip to AY and it can pull off some great tunes, like Atari ST Bubble Bobble for example.

[@spacefractal]

Spectrum 128 did add AY as well. Some game did it well using it. Amstrad and Spectrum has same chip, but in different mhz, which meant the pitch is not the same when a tune is direct ported from Spectrum..... That would sound pretty bad really.

[@stewsretroreviews]

I prefer the Spectrum any day!!😂 😜

[@iXien]

🤣Well said !

[@drzeissler]

SID Chip and hardware-scrolling vs. better colors...

[@iXien]

SID isn't so great in games. It's a powerful soundchip but lot of game lack to use it correctly. And there are so fabulous music using AY on CPC too. AY/YM is the real sound of the 80's. A chip used in so many consoles, computers and arcade systems 😉

[@marcin4xm]

Amstrad has 16 colors .This are wery bad game ports on amstrad