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> major limitations in the graphics/sound hw of the Zx That's exactly the case. The C64 had hardware sprites and scrolling, and one of the best sound chips of
by mrob 7y ago
> major limitations in the graphics/sound hw of the Zx
That's exactly the case. The C64 had hardware sprites and scrolling, and one of the best sound chips of all time with the SID. The Spectrum had a memory-mapped bitmap display with low resolution color, and a CPU-controlled beeper. And the Spectrum's CPU advantage wasn't as much as the clock speeds suggest, because the 6502 could get more done per cycle, and the Spectrum's CPU had wait states when accessing the 16K block of RAM containing the graphics RAM.
I played a lot of Spectrum games as a child, but looking at it objectively, the C64 is a far superior machine. However, both systems were crippled by the single-button joystick standard of the time. The greatest feature of the NES was the B button.
- karmakaze 7y agoI never really thought about the joystick button limitation at the time. The original Atari 800/400 had 4 joystick ports so someone could have used two ports 10-bits of input per player for a 2-player game. Each cardinal direction (NSWE was 1-bit with pairs being closed for diagonals).
- Marazan 7y agoWell if you look at the amazing conversion of Carrier Command on the Spectrum compared to the thing that was called carrier command that was released on the Commodore I don't see how anyone can wi h a straight face say the Commodore was a superior machine. For a certain type of game to Commie could produce faster smoother games, but outside that niche (side scrolling plafomers/horizontal shmups) it barely even got to the start line vs the speccy.