C64 mate

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

Hack your Wii U and put emulators on it. That could be a nice little project for you.

[Jerzy Bondov]

Why would anyone buy any sort of anything when one could simply get a raspberry pi and put retropie on it? That's what I want to know. That's what nobody has the guts to ask.

[madhair60]

Hack your Wii U and put emulators on it. That could be a nice little project for you.

I have!! It's not good enough!!!

Why would anyone buy any sort of anything when one could simply get a raspberry pi and put retropie on it? That's what I want to know. That's what nobody has the guts to ask.

BECAUSE I WANT SOME MEASURE OF AESTHETIC AUTHENTICITY WITHOUT SACRIFICING CONVENIENCE

[Jerzy Bondov]

simply buy a Commodore 64 and remove its ancient stupid guts and replace with a top of the line raspberry pi

[biggytitbo]

Don't buy a raspberry pi, simply make your own with a raspberry pi.

[Mister Six]

Why is everyone ragging on the C64 when it had better graphics and a larger colour palette than the Spectrum? Spectrum games all looked garish with that horrible cyan and yellow all over the place. Arseholes.

Garish, but with detail and charm. The C64's massive pixels made it look like everything was made of Lego. And the palette might have been bigger but it was weirdly chosen - all bland pastels, apparently chosen at random, so that every game ended up some combination of grey, black, brown and (if you were lucky) pink.

[boki]

The C64 version of Tetris is worth a skeg for the awesome music alone, but also it's Tetris.  We all like a bit of that, don't we?

[Sebastian Cobb]

Spectrum looked wank. But I say that as someone who grew up with a BBC micro.

[Twed]

Careful everybody, Sebastian Cobb's going to tell a teacher on us. Not sure what but the little BBC Micro-owning sap will find something.

[Uncle TechTip]

I have!! It's not good enough!!!

BECAUSE I WANT SOME MEASURE OF AESTHETIC AUTHENTICITY WITHOUT SACRIFICING CONVENIENCE

You could get an SD card interface for an original Speccy? Such things exist, they are seen by the Speccy as a drive just like the Microdrive or a +3. That's convenience on authentic hardware.

[Jerzy Bondov]

Frankly a modern smartphone can easily emulate any given computer or games console up to and including the Tiger Game.Com. simply buy a phone

[BeardFaceMan]

I stupidly got rid of mine a while back so I can't check but they're definitely officially supported. EDIT: Oh wait, I was thinking of the usb comp pros, I'm not sure of the situation with the original sticks. It's usb-only but might work with an adapter maybe.

Sadly the speccy situation is a bit of a shambles. There's the original Sinclair Vega but that's an odd fucking thing and the promised Vega+ ended up being a crowdfunding disaster that is a whole story all by itself. Notorious gobshites Elite (yes, the chrome logo Elite) released a bluetooth keyboard modelled exactly after a rubber-keyed speccy but that's not quite the same thing. Definitely the best thing on the horizon is the ZX Spectrum Next, but you're going to have to wait for another round of crowdfunding to get your hands on one of those. Also they are fucking expensive as it's basically a proper modern speccy and not just an emulator in a box.

Heh, you know for  minute there I thought they were charging over 200 quid for a Spectrum.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Heh, you know for  minute there I thought they were charging over 200 quid for a Spectrum.

Pfft, you could get an amiga for that!

[gmoney]

Music on Auf Wiedersehen Monty mate. Yummmm.

Blimey, you're not wrong.

[Cuntbeaks]

We had incredible mileage out of the text to speech synthesiser, Big Mouth.

We would write multi person sketches and labour over the phonetics until it was just right.

[PlanktonSideburns]

Don't buy a raspberry pi, simply make your own with a raspberry pi.

This made me chuckle

[PlanktonSideburns]

Frankly a modern smartphone can easily emulate any given computer or games console up to and including the Tiger Game.Com. simply buy a phone

BUT I WANT TO BUY A LITTLE TOY BOX I CAN PUT ON MY MANTLEPIECE AND FEEL GOOD ABOUT MYSELF BLOOD BLAH BLAH PETS HOP BOYS BOO HOO AT LEST I'M NOT A SMELLY WARHAMMER MAN BLOO BLAAA

[PlanktonSideburns]

Sorry wrong account.









Was supposed to be logged in as BostonCrabs

[lazarou]

Heh, you know for  minute there I thought they were charging over 200 quid for a Spectrum.

Bordering on reasonable compared to what the other projects were charging. Elite's speccy keyboards cost something in the region of 100 quid for a bluetooth keyboard you'd still need to hook up to something else to actually play, and even that's better than the Vega+, who charged another hundred or so for thin air.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Why would people want a spectrum keyboard?

Dk'tronics claimed 10% of Spectrum users had transplanted their machines into their keyboard enclosures and saga made aftermarket keyboards as well.

I could just about understand if someone made an Oric clone.

[madhair60]

BUT I WANT TO BUY A LITTLE TOY BOX I CAN PUT ON MY MANTLEPIECE AND FEEL GOOD ABOUT MYSELF BLOOD BLAH BLAH PETS HOP BOYS BOO HOO AT LEST I'M NOT A SMELLY WARHAMMER MAN BLOO BLAAA

:(

[madhair60]

Noticed a pronounced anti-madhair rhetoric on CaB lately, hurts my feelings really. Not sure why people deem it necessary to have a go at the nicest bloke on CaB, which YOU ALL voted for, how soon we fucking forget

[The Boston Crab]

Sorry wrong account.

Was supposed to be logged in as BostonCrabs

That doesn't make any sense as the post above reads like nothing I would ever write.

That's your first mistake freind.

[Howj Begg]

Noticed a pronounced anti-madhair rhetoric on CaB lately, hurts my feelings really. Not sure why people deem it necessary to have a go at the nicest bloke on CaB, which YOU ALL voted for, how soon we fucking forget

Not me, I voted for The Boston Crab #RespectThe3%

To make an on topic post, the C64 was my first computer, and the only games computer I ever had. I loved Creatures, Supremacy and Lords of Chaos. I was taunted in the playground by Amiga boys. I regret nothing.

[PlanktonSideburns]

That doesn't make any sense as the post above reads like nothing I would ever write.

That's your first mistake freind.

Actually that post is more like you than you can ever be, your just jealous

[The Boston Crab]

Get ready to meet at Liverpool St Station if you got the minerals

[JesusAndYourBush]

Why is everyone ragging on the C64 when it had better graphics and a larger colour palette than the Spectrum? Spectrum games all looked garish with that horrible cyan and yellow all over the place. Arseholes.

Because people always prefer the one they grew up with.  Even when someone pointed out the advantages of the other one, you always thought yours was good and the other one was wank.

Don't waste your money and time. They're absolutely shit these days. Maybe one second per game at most.

Yes, that's been my experience...

1.  Get all nostalgic about the old games.
2.  Research to find the best emulator.
3.  Download the emulator then download all the games that you remember.
4.  Load one of the games and get bored of it within 30 seconds.  Now the memory is ruined.

[Replies From View]

4.  Load one of the games and get bored of it within 30 seconds.

To be fair this is true of all computer games.

[madhair60]

Not me. I play old games all the time. Love em.

[buzby]

Garish, but with detail and charm. The C64's massive pixels made it look like everything was made of Lego. And the palette might have been bigger but it was weirdly chosen - all bland pastels, apparently chosen at random, so that every game ended up some combination of grey, black, brown and (if you were lucky) pink.

The double-width pixels in low-res colour mode was circumvented around 1986 by the fast graphic mode switching technique (pioneered by Martin Walker on Ouiksilva's Rupert The Bear In Toyland, and taken up by Ocean's Simon Butler on Platoon, Combat School Target:Renegade and Robocop) that allowed a high-res black and white sprite (usually an outline) to be overlaid into a low-res colour sprite.



For the games list, Wizball has already been mentioned (my all time favourite) as have the great converisons of R-Type, Arkanoid and Bubble Bobble, but I don't think any of the Thalamus games like Sanxion, Delta, Armalyte and Hawkeye have. I'd also throw in Thing On A Spring and Thing Bounces Back and Crazy Comets. Also the conversions of Bomb Jack, Ghosts & Goblins, Ghouls & Ghosts and Bionic Commando were pretty great (the latter two having excellent Tim Follin soundtracks). Tim Follin also soundtracked Firebird's Black Lamp, which also used the hi-res sprite overlay technique.

I had to sell my C64 setup many years ago to fund the purchase of an Atari ST, but now I have a C64 DTV (a 'C64 on a chip' system built into a Kempston-style joystick that had hardware designed by Jeri Ellesworth from the work she did on the C-One project) that I've modded with a keyboard and an SD2IEC SD-based virtual floppy drive.