Posted By
MMS
on 2022-01-20
15:14:04
 |  Re: Where are these type of games for Commodore Plus/4???
@Charlemagne
1) Well, this Another World is not THAT Another world. This is Turrican / SOTB clone, not related to the Amiga game. Not bad at all, but no parallax scolling, no 2D vector gfx.
2) Unfortunately you are not right. Tramiel planned the C116 (the basis if the 264 series) to be a direct competitor of the ZX Spectrum 16K with a $50 price. It was better in every aspect than the Spectrum. It has the same amount of RAM, but has more compact code, higher resolution, more colors and 2x more sound channels. As Tramiel wanted to have a really cheap computer to kill 16K Spectrum from the UK market, the sprite and very advanced sound was not important.
When Bil Herd joined, they realized, how flexible the TED chip, so they created the 232 (32KB in Plus/4 housing), 264 (64KB in Plus/4 housing), 364 computers (a 264 + numeric keyboard + speech IC).
Unfortunately the 16K Spectrum quickly disappeared from the market, as Sir Sinclair also noticed the 16K is not enough for serious programming or languages (it was his ONLY focus), so you could even send back your 16K Spectrum to upgrade to 48K. Only the simpliest games were made for 16K, with 48K rather complex games started to be created to ZX Spectrum (Tir Na Nog or Elite to name few).
After the 264 series showed on the CES, Gould and Tramiel started to fight with each other (Tramiel pushed to create ASAP a 16 bit or 32 bit computer), while Gould was happy with the C64, as it generated a lot of profit.
Tramiel left, and there was a ready computer series, but the ZX Spectrum 16K disappeared, and the C116 could not compete with the 48K Spectrum?
The new management was in trouble, and at the same time the demand for C64 was huge for their production lines. But as the TED series was very cheap to produce, they decided to maximize profit and turn the problem into big earnings. They finally created a same priced computer as C64, and to compensate it's missing features (sprites and advanced sound) they called it home office computer with built in applications =Plus/4
To fit into that crazy defintion, they quickly ordered to create the 3+1 software, but in the last minute the cut the program size into 32K. I do not know, why the program became so weakling, as even one of the best and most complex C64 text editor, Easy Script (used at a lot of real home office and company office) was only 20KB and as released in 1982! It also worked with datasette. So if they would order Easy Script to fit into 16KB ROM, could be a much better option with much happier customers. Or some extrea features could fit into the remaining 14KB, who knows.
https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Easy_Script
Anyhow, during the time C= Japan created the C16, to make the available C64 moulds fit into ther new range (a a further potential cost saving for long term, after C116 moulds worn out), and as the moulds were ready for C116 and 264 series, they started to create them.
As the built-in 3+1 was not up to the expectations at THAT price, and the hardware was not able to compete with C64 at THAT price, and the C64 demand was growing (and C= could easily sell the C64 to "milk the cow") they stopped to support 264 series very soon.
I have a theory, that C= planned some cartridges for Plus/4, and used is's black housing for C64 cartridges. I suppose these cartridges planned for Plus/4 originally. These are the Sound Expander (with 11 channel Yamaha chipset (noone understood why it was necessary for C64 next to SID, but WE know how we could use it), IEEE488 (C64 had already a lot, but we still do not have any) and a Sound Digitizer cartridge.
So in short: Plus/4 (or the 264 series) was never meant to compete the C64, but C116 to kill Sinclair and Timex. The big demand to C64 also surprised Commodore, and they were lack of production capacity. The Plus/4 created by the Marketing team, without the support or Bil Herd project team.
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