The Sierra AGI Apple II ports do not require a 65C02, and I do not know of any games that require it to use the Double High-Resolution Mode of the Apple IIe/IIc. It only would speed up software that used it. The Double High-Resolution Mode and 128K were introduced in the Apple IIe, before the Apple IIc or Enhanced Apple IIe were released.

The PCjr. is slower than an IBM PC because it shares memory between the CPU and the Video controller. While the Tandy shares memory, it is dual ported so the speed hit is not present.

The IBM PC/XT use an 8-bit memory and input/output bus, so whatever speed improvements are internal to the processor, and the 6502 can execute instructions in far fewer clock cycles, so it isn't a cut and dried comparison.

The AGI ports for the Amiga and the Atari ST sound similar to the PCs using the Tandy sound chip, so I would rather say that the systems were not utilized to their full potential. The ports for the Apple IIgs sounded far superior to the PC or Tandy.

Sierra probably focused on the Apple IIs because there were millions of them in schools. Most companies ported their titles to the system well into the late 1980s.

Actually, the introduction of VGA in 1987 and the Adlib and MT-32 in 1988 put the PC on par or better with the C64 or Amiga. Took software a while to fully take advantage of this.

Virtually no US publisher fully embraced either the ST or Amiga. The allure of the "IBM PC Compatible" label, which these machines could not use, drove customers away. Business, school work and then games were the priorities.

The Sierra AGI Apple II ports do not require a 65C02, and I do not know of any games that require it to use the Double High-Resolution Mode of the Apple IIe/IIc. It only would speed up software that used it. The Double High-Resolution Mode and 128K were introduced in the Apple IIe, before the Apple IIc or Enhanced Apple IIe were released.

As I understood it, the standard IIe had the following specs:

*64k
*80-column text+lowercase letters (which the earlier II/II+ didn't have unless you got an optional 80-column card)
*Cursor keys (also not present on the II/II+)

The //e and IIc added:

*128k
*DHGR mode
*65C02

Incidentally, the 65C02 wasn't simply faster, it also had additional instructions+addressing modes.

The PCjr. is slower than an IBM PC because it shares memory between the CPU and the Video controller

On the first 128k. All expansion memory of course is not affected.

The IBM PC/XT use an 8-bit memory and input/output bus, so whatever speed improvements are internal to the processor, and the 6502 can execute instructions in far fewer clock cycles, so it isn't a cut and dried comparison.

That is true. The actual speed difference between a 1Mhz 6502 and 4.77Mhz 8088 is minimal.

The AGI ports for the Amiga and the Atari ST sound similar to the PCs using the Tandy sound chip, so I would rather say that the systems were not utilized to their full potential. The ports for the Apple IIgs sounded far superior to the PC or Tandy.

Sierra probably focused on the Apple IIs because there were millions of them in schools. Most companies ported their titles to the system well into the late 1980s.

Sierra was active in educational software in large part thanks to Al Lowe, who was a teacher himself and had written games for his son on the Apple prior to being hired by them. But of course they always strongly supported Apple machines because the A2 was the platform that they initially developed for and they had a lot of experienced programmers for it. So they definitely put a lot more effort into the IIgs ports of their games than the Amiga or ST.

The IIgs's slow 4Mhz CPU was a handicap though and the main reason Sierra didn't put any SCI games on it.

Virtually no US publisher fully embraced either the ST or Amiga

Generally no. During the 85-89 period, US game devs were mostly centered on the C64 or PC since they had the largest user bases. Aside from Microprose, most American devs didn't seem to care that much about the Amiga and thus produced sloppy, low-quality games on it. It wasn't just Sierra, LucasArts's Amiga stuff was not very good either. Most of the arcade ports on the Amiga were actually produced by Ocean or other Eurodevs and imported to North America (coincidentally this was also true of many C64 games during the late 80s).

kao wrote:

As I understood it, the standard IIe had the following specs: […]
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The Sierra AGI Apple II ports do not require a 65C02, and I do not know of any games that require it to use the Double High-Resolution Mode of the Apple IIe/IIc. It only would speed up software that used it. The Double High-Resolution Mode and 128K were introduced in the Apple IIe, before the Apple IIc or Enhanced Apple IIe were released.

As I understood it, the standard IIe had the following specs:

*64k
*80-column text+lowercase letters (which the earlier II/II+ didn't have unless you got an optional 80-column card)
*Cursor keys (also not present on the II/II+)

The //e and IIc added:

*128k
*DHGR mode
*65C02

Incidentally, the 65C02 wasn't simply faster, it also had additional instructions+addressing modes.

The PCjr. is slower than an IBM PC because it shares memory between the CPU and the Video controller

On the first 128k. All expansion memory of course is not affected.

The IBM PC/XT use an 8-bit memory and input/output bus, so whatever speed improvements are internal to the processor, and the 6502 can execute instructions in far fewer clock cycles, so it isn't a cut and dried comparison.

That is true. The actual speed difference between a 1Mhz 6502 and 4.77Mhz 8088 is minimal.

The AGI ports for the Amiga and the Atari ST sound similar to the PCs using the Tandy sound chip, so I would rather say that the systems were not utilized to their full potential. The ports for the Apple IIgs sounded far superior to the PC or Tandy.

Sierra probably focused on the Apple IIs because there were millions of them in schools. Most companies ported their titles to the system well into the late 1980s.

Sierra was active in educational software in large part thanks to Al Lowe, who was a teacher himself and had written games for his son on the Apple prior to being hired by them. But of course they always strongly supported Apple machines because the A2 was the platform that they initially developed for and they had a lot of experienced programmers for it. So they definitely put a lot more effort into the IIgs ports of their games than the Amiga or ST.

The IIgs's slow 4Mhz CPU was a handicap though and the main reason Sierra didn't put any SCI games on it.

Virtually no US publisher fully embraced either the ST or Amiga

Generally no. During the 85-89 period, US game devs were mostly centered on the C64 or PC since they had the largest user bases. Aside from Microprose, most American devs didn't seem to care that much about the Amiga and thus produced sloppy, low-quality games on it. It wasn't just Sierra, LucasArts's Amiga stuff was not very good either. Most of the arcade ports on the Amiga were actually produced by Ocean or other Eurodevs and imported to North America (coincidentally this was also true of many C64 games during the late 80s).

At least for many 16-color PC games, Sierra and LucasArts did the ports in-house. The VGA ports vary widely in quality and were more often third-party.

The Apple IIe and Enhanced IIe (except for the platinum version with the numeric keypad) do not have the 80-column text or Double High-Res graphics features by default, you had to purchase a 1K 80-column card (text) or a 64K extended 80-column card (text + graphics). The 65C02 is faster only if you use those extra instructions and addressing modes, otherwise it would probably break lots and lots of Apple II games.

The IIgs runs at 2.8MHz or 1.02MHz, accelerators were always in demand for the machine.

Most PC booter games do not believe that a PCjr. can have more than 128KB of RAM due to the mistaken belief that it could not be upgraded. Booters requiring 256K or more will refuse to run, and games content with 128K will use the first 128K, where the performance slowdown occurs.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2.0 is the only known booter exception, it will detect 256KB or more on the jr. and is it to overcome the speed issue.

The IIgs runs at 2.8MHz or 1.02MHz, accelerators were always in demand for the machine.

Right...they intentionally crippled the IIgs to prevent it from stealing Mac sales since it was in most other regards a more advanced machine (the Macs at this time lacked color graphics, expansion slots, a detachable monitor, or decent sound capabilities). The 65816 could run at much faster speeds - for example 4Mhz in the SNES.

Ok I was incorrect about the Apple II line's system specs. The IIe had a standard 6502 and the //e had a 65C02 but the 80-column card and expansion RAM+DHGR graphics were optional on both models.

http://www.sierragamers.com/uploads/24082/the … _1_tech_ref.pdf

BTW here's the manual for the Apple version of KQ1 and it mentions nothing about needing a //e, just a IIe with the 64k+DHGR card. So I would assume there was no 65C02 code in there.

The Apple KQ1 appears to not save games in the same way as on the PC booter version because the latter doesn't have the INIT DISK command and instead just makes a duplicate of the original floppy that you play off of and save to. (it looks like Apple KQ1 uses the same save method as the booter KQ2 and Black Cauldron)

Most PC booter games do not believe that a PCjr. can have more than 128KB of RAM due to the mistaken belief that it could not be upgraded. Booters requiring 256K or more will refuse to run

Actually that's because >128k booters didn't appear until after the PCjr's short sales life ended. The reason they don't work is simply because the video buffer cannot be moved and games like Pirates! will overrun it in the process of loading. MS Flight Simulator is the lone exception as you mentioned.

While most booters were 128k, you did have the 256k ones like Microprose games and Quicksilver made 512k booters of Bad Dudes, Guerrilla War, and Karnov. They appear to have been the last dev to release PC games in this format and the only ones to need that much memory.

BTW, I found a Usenet post from 1988 made by a cracker group announcing their release of Karnov. It made for very interesting reading because Quicksilver wrote their booter games in C and modified the compiler's library routines to perform INT 13h calls instead of DOS ones (the crackers had to go through the laborious process of turning them back into DOS calls)

I have never found any Apple II game that stated it required an Enhanced //e as opposed to a IIe with 128K. I would assume that no game used a 65C02 instruction or checked the CPU or the firmware first before using such instructions.

While the Quicksilver Software ports are true booters, they still use a cut down version of DOS to a certain extent. The directory structure with the Bad Dudes, Guerilla Warfare and Karnov floppies can be viewed in DOS, they have discrete files and their executables are present, although they use a .PRG extension.

Great Hierophant wrote:

I have never found any Apple II game that stated it required an Enhanced //e as opposed to a IIe with 128K. I would assume that no game used a 65C02 instruction or checked the CPU or the firmware first before using such instructions.

That would be because RAM was still very expensive in those days so if anyone ever released a game that required a memory upgrade beyond what came standard that game would flop because only a handful of people would be able to play it. Even today when I acquire a machine from the Apple II line it is very rare that I find one with a memory upgrade board installed though once in a rare while I do still manage to hit the jackpot and find a machine with every expansion slot filled with cards of some kind. That's when I do the Snoopy dance of joy. 😁

sliderider wrote:

Great Hierophant wrote:

I have never found any Apple II game that stated it required an Enhanced //e as opposed to a IIe with 128K. I would assume that no game used a 65C02 instruction or checked the CPU or the firmware first before using such instructions.

That would be because RAM was still very expensive in those days so if anyone ever released a game that required a memory upgrade beyond what came standard that game would flop because only a handful of people would be able to play it. Even today when I acquire a machine from the Apple II line it is very rare that I find one with a memory upgrade board installed though once in a rare while I do still manage to hit the jackpot and find a machine with every expansion slot filled with cards of some kind. That's when I do the Snoopy dance of joy. 😁

I think I was not sufficiently clear about my prior statement. I am talking about games requiring the double high resolution graphics mode, which requires 128K on any Apple IIe. Apple IIe computers until the Platinums with the keypad came with 64K standard and 64K could be expanded via a memory expansion card. The Apple IIe uses a 6502 and Enhanced //e uses a 65C02, but both can use the double-high resolution mode. I have never seen any game requiring 128K and stating that it would only work on an Enhanced Apple IIe or a IIc.

I have never found any Apple II game that stated it required an Enhanced //e as opposed to a IIe with 128K.

Maybe only applications used it.

While the Quicksilver Software ports are true booters, they still use a cut down version of DOS to a certain extent. The directory structure with the Bad Dudes, Guerilla Warfare and Karnov floppies can be viewed in DOS, they have discrete files and their executables are present, although they use a .PRG extension.

Ok makes sense. They have DOS files instead of raw data, but are set to self-boot. I actually thought for years that Bad Dudes was a DOS game because all the abandonware copies had ordinary files.

That would be because RAM was still very expensive in those days so if anyone ever released a game that required a memory upgrade beyond what came standard that game would flop because only a handful of people would be able to play it.

In fact DHGR games were pretty common, but of course you also had the IIc and IIgs to run them. Otherwise you've said that it was pretty rare to find IIe machines with the 128k upgrade. It wasn't so much RAM prices but more the fact that people with 64k models couldn't run the thing. Some Apple II games like the Microprose "Command" trilogy are dual-mode, with the 64k HGR version on one side of the disk and the 128k DHGR version on the other.

Returning to the original topic of the thread, I saw an old thread somewhere where a guy said he remembered a magazine from about 1986 claiming that the Sierra AGI games were coming to the C128, but nothing ever came of it. They may have briefly considered doing ports, then remembered that the VIC-II's limitations were still an issue.

Another interesting discussion I was a part of once was whether you could put NES games on the C64. It should be possible for the most part, but you'd lose a lot of music/SFX and load times would kill you on bigger stuff (the awful thought of playing Dragon Quest 3 or 4 off a 1541). And no, as much as some people loved Giana Sisters, it's still only half the game SMB is despite being actually larger (54k versus 40k)

A few applications may have required it, but consider all those hundreds of thousands pre-Enhanced IIes in the schools. What publisher would be willing to cut itsself out of that market or deal with thousands of complaints from school administrators and home users saying that it won't work on their machines?

The C128 almost certainly was capable of displaying AGI graphics with its Video Diplay Controller (as opposed to the VIC-II included for C64 compatibility) exactly as they would have appeared on an IBM PC with EGA or Tandy 1000. Unfortunately, the chicken and egg issue doomed susbstantial gaming support for the C128.

The amount of work to be done in converting NES to C64 games is not for the faint of heart. Although both systems use tile graphics, there are different resolutions and color limitations. They use the same style of sound generators, but there are many differences. Finally, the NES runs 75% faster than the C64.

Some european C64 fanboys love to claim how much better The Great Giana Sisters is over Super Mario Bros. As a C64 game goes, it is excellent. But Super Mario Bros is far superior. Some of that has to do with the console, with no cassette loading times and a D-pad with two buttons. Some of that has to deal with how slavishly most of the elements are copied from SMB without corresponding innovation. The enemies aren't particularly memorable and the music doesn't have the same catchiness as Koji Kondo's.

The C128 almost certainly was capable of displaying AGI graphics with its Video Display Controller (as opposed to the VIC-II included for C64 compatibility) exactly as they would have appeared on an IBM PC with EGA or Tandy 1000. Unfortunately, the chicken and egg issue doomed substantial gaming support for the C128.

You'd have numerous advantages there like faster disk access plus the VDC RAM is on a separate bus and not in the CPU address space, thus unlike the VIC-II, no memory is stolen for the video buffer. The problem was that they continued producing the C64 alongside the C128 instead of replacing it outright with the newer machine.

Some european C64 fanboys love to claim how much better The Great Giana Sisters is over Super Mario Bros. As a C64 game goes, it is excellent. But Super Mario Bros is far superior. Some of that has to do with the console, with no cassette loading times and a D-pad with two buttons. Some of that has to deal with how slavishly most of the elements are copied from SMB without corresponding innovation. The enemies aren't particularly memorable and the music doesn't have the same catchiness as Koji Kondo's.

It's only half the game SMB is. The levels are much less varied and a lot of the little touches in Mario are missing like enemies falling off the screen when killed (they just lay there dead). As for load times, GGS is pretty painful because as I said, it's a huge single-load game that uses almost all of the memory in the computer (everything from $800 to $CFFF).

Point well taken about Euro fanboys. I saw a comment on Lemon 64 about Castlevania where some guy said "This is a typical bad Japanese platformer that exists to spawn retarded fanboys and sell tons of merchandise. We should be playing our own original C64 games and not Jap crap."

The amount of work to be done in converting NES to C64 games is not for the faint of heart.

It was actually done though with several Konami games like Castlevania and nothing was lost in translation except some of the music.

Although both systems use tile graphics, there are different resolutions and color limitations. They use the same style of sound generators, but there are many differences. Finally, the NES runs 75% faster than the C64.

In some ways they're not too different; both have three color sprites and 8x8 tiles, but the NES's graphics system is actually pretty horrible to work with compared to the C64 because colors are based on NTSC instead of RGB values and the palette, while containing 52 colors, is lousy and lacks such features as a real shade of yellow. Also every block of four tiles has to share colors. Where it does have an advantage is CPU speed and that scrolling is vastly simpler on the NES, since you just set up your tiles and adjust the X and Y scroll registers. On the VIC-II, you have to slowly shovel the next row of characters an the off-screen buffer unless using the Virtual Screen Position register (Mayhem in Monsterland exploits this for super-fast scrolling). NES programmers also never had to worry about screen tearing since the PPU memory and registers cannot be touched except during the vertical retrace.

NES games aren't as code-dense as on the C64 because it takes less code to scroll the screen and bank ROMs from a cartridge as opposed to loading disk files. Castlevania was only 128k on the NES while the C64 port took three 170k disks. Also as I mentioned, SMB is a much more advanced game than Giana Sisters despite actually being smaller in size (I don't think SMB would be possible on a C64 without multiloads). Kung Fu on the C64 is missing some music and other minor things even though it's also bigger than the NES version.

That said, if you were willing to compromise a few things, most NES stuff should be possible unless they used advanced mappers like the MMC5.

The reason why the C128 never replaced the C64 is that the C64 was still flying off store shelves. You don't mess with success. The C128 was also marketed at a more advanced user while, let's face it, the C64 was a games console with a keyboard. Also, there would have been little software support for the C128. Any software that required the unique features of the C128 to run wouldn't work on a C64 so all those millions of C64 users out there wouldn't be buying it. It was the same when Atari "upgraded" the Atari ST to the STe and got almost no support from developers because they didn't want to alienate owners of the earlier models and limit the sales of their games so they wrote them to run on the lowest common denominator, which was a 512mb ST with single sided floppy drive. Most of the software that runs on the C128 also runs on the C64. Very little actually required a C128 to run at the time although the homebrew scene has been exploring the uniqueness of the C128 in more depth and coming out with some C128 only titles in the years since Commodore went bankrupt.

The amount of work to be done in converting NES to C64 games is not for the faint of heart. Although both systems use tile graphics, there are different resolutions and color limitations. They use the same style of sound generators, but there are many differences. Finally, the NES runs 75% faster than the C64.

NES wins easily as far as platformers and JRPGs (the latter obviously because of its Japanese origins). C64 wins at WRPGs, strategy, and adventure (the traditional computer gaming genres) because those need a keyboard to be played properly.

RPGs like DQ can be done on the C64 pretty easily since they have small sprites and not much animation going on. As I said above, a lot of platformers would be very tough, like trying to recreate Dr. Wiley's spaceship in MM1 when you only have 8 sprites (NES has 64).

MMC3 games like SMB3 and Kirby are out of the question since they switch in sprites and tile data on the fly (like Kirby's different weapons). Those would only be feasible if you used an REU, C128, or both.

Some european C64 fanboys love to claim how much better The Great Giana Sisters is over Super Mario Bros. As a C64 game goes, it is excellent. But Super Mario Bros is far superior. Some of that has to do with the console, with no cassette loading times and a D-pad with two buttons. Some of that has to deal with how slavishly most of the elements are copied from SMB without corresponding innovation. The enemies aren't particularly memorable and the music doesn't have the same catchiness as Koji Kondo's.

There aren't too many C64 games with the cinematic, larger-than-life quality of the best NES titles. Moreover, being able to instantly bank-switch a cartridge was a huge advantage. The average size of a C64 game is 40-192k while NES games are typically 128k-400k, and it's pretty likely that the horrible load time on tapes and disks discouraged devs from making games on an NES scale.

Some european C64 fanboys love to claim how much better The Great Giana Sisters is over Super Mario Bros. As a C64 game goes, it is excellent. But Super Mario Bros is far superior. Some of that has to do with the console, with no cassette loading times and a D-pad with two buttons. Some of that has to deal with how slavishly most of the elements are copied from SMB without corresponding innovation. The enemies aren't particularly memorable and the music doesn't have the same catchiness as Koji Kondo's.

If you compare the two games, it's obvious right away that SMB is more than double the size and complexity of GGS

http://c64.krissz.hu/docs/giana-sisters-terkep.png
http://ian-albert.com/games/super_mario_bros_ … io-all-1280.gif

Also my earlier post was incorrect. GGS is not 54k, but actually 36k. So in fact it's only smaller than SMB by 4k. Not sure how much difference that extra memory would have made in allowing for a more complex game. Theoretically, a single-load C64 game could be up to 51k if it occupied everything from $801 to $CFFF which is more than the NES is capable of (it maxes out at 40k before you have to use banking).

The C64 has both hires (2 color) and multicolor (16 color) bitmap graphics modes, as well as many software modes which increase either color, resolution or both.
It also has multiple character graphics modes, high res, multicolor and extended background color mode.

Yes the c64 has sprites, but the system is hardly based around that... for games sure, sprites are very necessary for smooth object movement, while leaving raster time open for the cpu to do more important things. In fact, the video chip does the same thing for the character and bitmap graphics modes, like any other computer of the time. The VIC II also has a raster line counter and programmable raster interrupts. But it lacks the display list feature the atari computers had. Graphically, they are superior to the apple in every respect.

As for the 128, it also had the 8563 video chip, which had a more modern port based system of programming, and higher resolution. However this proved to be impractical for games programming as a 6502/6510/8502 is too slow to program games on it for the most part. Also the lack of sprites pretty much kills game programming.

Don't listen to people on Lemon, 95% of them are complete idiots, and are emulator users who never had a real 64, and talk out their asses.

Sierra just chose not to support the 64, and the low quality stuff they did do, didn't make them money as they looked at the 64 and treated it like a cheap console, instead of a real computer. I think they were just biased against it, choosing instead to support apple. I seriously doubt the engine could NOT have been ported to the 64 by a competent programmer or two. Some truly amazing games were written for the 64, just as good if not better than some NES games. Some of them even rivaled the Amiga versions of the same games.

There are games which are in excess of a megabyte too, on disk, tape and cartridge. The 64 is perfectly capable of bank switching as well. It was the prohibitive cost of ROM and cartridges that kept such things from being made. Disk and Tapes were MUCH MUCH cheaper to produce...

The 64 also could give full midi support via cartridge, and was used a lot by musicians because of it actually...

Could we say that a game like Maniac Mansion or Zak McKracken are of similar complexity to games such as Space Quest 1 and 2? The loading times would be quite annoying, but otherwise it doesn't sound too unrealistic...

Yeah they are just as complex. As well are many other games like Legacy of the Ancients, Wasteland, Mars Saga, all the AD&D games, Alternate Reality, Bard's Tale 1 through 3, etc etc.

Thinking about it. The Lucasarts games had larger characters and also scrolling. Static rooms like in Space Quest should be simpler...

I have a problem with space on my floppys. Had anyone tried to rip the agi-games down to one version.
For my xt-hercules I only need the hercules-files, how do I get rid of all the other files that are not needed
to play the game on xt in hercules-mode?