How early 8-bit arcade machines differed in design from 8-bit home computers

Re:How early 8-bit arcade machines differed in design from 8... by cmrdporcupine on Tuesday October 09, 2018 @10:32AM (#18176261)

Well it almost certainly was cost. Memory was expensive. Address space was limited to 64k. And most importantly, user's displays were color TVs with terrible resolution. Arcade games shipped w/ high quality CRTs. Back in the 80s very few of us had that luxury. My display on my VIC-20 was a 9" B&W TV that my parents had lying around.

Also if you look at something like the Atari 800, it had at least a subset of what you're talking about as far back as 1979. As a result it was more expensive than the competitor machines, and also many software developers didn't make good use of the features that were there.

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Re:How early 8-bit arcade machines differed in design from 8... by axilmar on Wednesday October 10, 2018 @09:37AM (#18184687)

Our TVs where fine for the resolution of, for example, ZX Spectrum. C64 and Atari and Amstrad CPC graphics looked extremely blockly on our televisions/dedicated monitors (well the Amstrad had such a beast).

I had connected all the above (spectrum, c64, atari) first to a 40 inch b/w tv, then to a 32 inch color tv. Guess what? the spectrum image was visibly blockly, and the c64/atari image was incredibly blocky.

Furthermore, you didn't need another 64k for video ram; there where a lot of palette tricks that could be done. Even if 64k ram were added, the price difference would be small in the end.

So I don't buy it it was the cost; most probably it was the shortsightedness of the designers.

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