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👍😁😜 Thank you a lot for this long comment and so many interesting threads. However I can't agree with that the Atari image was not sharp. It's rather the question how computer was connected to tv. You could easily get a very good quality image when using s-video (true that the first XL copies had only video composite). Concerning ANTIC/GTIA I agree that some good start was somehow wasted with bad "construction" of graphics modes. Ex. they could divide image on 8x8 pixel blocks and give the possibility to define ex. 2 different colours for each block etc. (sth similar like in C64). Moreover observing Atari development, I was really disappointed that they didn't propose new updated versions when it counted about hardware, ex. sth like XL+ with 8MHz, new graphic modes etc.). In practice it was the same 8-bit computer produced during so many years with very minor modifications like new case, more RAM (but using it was not so easy) etc. Another thing is that quite often software companies were preparing the same game for few different computers (Atari, Commodore, ZX Spectrum etc.) aligning it to the computer with the lowest possibilities and not using many tricks (specific to only one platform) which could make that software much better. P.S. I hope you will visit my channel from time to time! 😉😀👍

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😟 Lately I've stopped preparing new videos. Perhaps there will be sth at the end of year/the beginning of the next one. I don't have motivation when putting so much effort, I get so less interest... probably due to yt algorithm rules... Thanks for nice words and this info!

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Actually, an unreleasesd version of Star Raiders II exists - it is fairly similar to the 1st one, in terms of look and feel, but present a few enhancements (sounds, graphics, gameplay). To my knowledge, Aric Wilmunder worked on it and got it to the point of being almost finished, but it was shelved, for some reasons. I got my hands on it and frankly, I was impressed by it - much more than I was by the "Last Starfighter renamed" version (which is otherwise a very fine game and stands on its own).

@@buffalodebill1976 🤔 Business decisions... They had huge influence on IT and they still have...

🍺🏆👍 Yeah! At that 8-bit era computers were delivering much more excitement that nowadays...

I miss the days, not the excitement they offered..because we are essentially living the golden era of the 8-bits right now! Never before we had so many things available to our disposal!. New games, demos, music, programs in a monthly basis, hardware add-ons and upgrades and a global network for their distribution . We even are able to repair our own machines by posting a description of the problem we are experiencing. Most of us have some additional cash allowing to enjoy more systems than just the platform of our childhood..not to mention emulation. For me the era never really ended to be honest. I always had my 8bit and 16bit either hooked on a CRT or emulated them on my PC and I followd the homebrew scene without really taking a serious break. I had the pleasure following the Polish Atari 8bit scene, almost from the start, through the classic webpages of the platform even if I always lived miles away.

@@nickolasgaspar9660 👍 👍 👍 I really enjoy reading the comments like yours! Yeah the 8-bit era has never really ended!

Well, if you want to show C64 only games, it would be also fair to present Atari only games. Concerning colours, I don't agree. At the beginning, after release, it was true that many games didn't use more advanced tricks. But with time it changed a lot...

@@ITGuyinaction But since the mid-1980s, Atari games have no longer been produced. There are no newer and better ones. There are a lot of great games on the C64 from the late 80s and 90s, as well as modern ones. Show these colorful Atari games? How many are there? Most games have 4 colors - black, gray, brown and grey :D

@@BaltazarZX Please just have a look on my other videos on my channel. And for sure you will find also many more videos on other channels. Games for Atari are still being developed. Sure not commercially but it's even better...

​@@BaltazarZX There is a webpage called Indie retro news. There you will find lists of homebrew games for all 8bit platforms by model. The atari 8bit homebrew scene is only third behind the C64 and Speccy and in hardware add-ons and upgrades its up there with the most popular retro machines (if not first). In addition to that, most significant modern game ports tend to look and play better on the Atari platform. The correct statement should be "Some C64 games are more colorful and others are not". Here are some games as an example. Shared tiles:Bosconian, Attack of the Mutant Camels, Encounter, bombjack, Elektra glide, Frogger II, Guard(Tangent), Assembloids, Mr Robot and his Factory, stealth, Space Harrier, International Karate RC/RCX Exclusive titles: Albert, Animal Party, Betty issues, Breakit22, Callisto, Contagion, Crownland, DITCH, Dimo's Quest/dungeon, Rainbow walker, The extirpator, Excelsor, Marbled, The last squadron, RGB, Timeslip, Bubble shooter, Cavernia, Creep, Crystal Crisis, Cygnus, Heli in Caves, Deathzone, Detonationix, Dizzy, Fire chief, onEscape, skyscraper,

Oh yeah! 🍺🏆👍

As an Atari user for the last....40 years, I can say PoP is a great example on what Atari can do, but there is nothing graphically in that game that the C64 can't reproduce. (except maybe the lack of slowdowns that all 8bits and ST experience but not on the A8). The C64 isn't a bad system. The only bad thing about it was that even if it came 3 years later it didn't really managed to offer something more compared to the A8s. Many say that "SID was en evolution" and I remind people that all synth chips were a de-evolution compared to the Pokey "Hybrid" (synth/PCM capabilities).

@@nickolasgaspar9660 👍 👍 👍 I believe that SID could be and interesting subject for one of next videos... Do you have perhaps any interesting comparisons of both?

@@ITGuyinaction So your goal is to start a war! lol. I have been browsing ASMA project for years now and I can offer many suggestions. If you need any information about such a video I will happily share whatever I have learn about those two chips.!

@@nickolasgaspar9660 👍 👍 👍 I can't promise such a video in the nearest time as you can see lately I have less time and less motivation for making videos. However if you have any interesting papers, please feel free to send them to me. I will be more than happy reading them! ❤

🤔🤔 Thanks for this comment! As I can see you are definitely from C64 team! 😀

@@ITGuyinaction That is only because Commodore knew how to price package and promote their product. Technically, the C64 lacks in hardware gfx but makes up for it in SID. For a machine that came out 4 years AFTER the Atari 8 bit, I expected more.

@@GORF_EMPIRE Yeah, I also expected more. But sometimes marketing changes a lot... and it's one of the cases!

💪😁🔥🔥🔥 Europeans usually prefer PAL (some also SECAM) and we are not compatible with NTSC... 🤪

🤔🤔🤔🤔 Why do you think so?

@@ITGuyinaction Take a look at how the ST and XE computers were constructed. Like a happy meal box.

@@John-ik2eg What do you mean?

@@John-ik2eg Tramiel with all his faults, and he had many, made Atari viable again in the late 80's and early 90's. Of course the F'd up the whole Jaguar buy putting a monster chip set in to a weak design with an outdated 68k( dont getme wrong..excellent processor, just way past its prime for a 64 bit chipset.) I do understand how you feel because I used to see it like that until I realized the genius of the man...look how he ran commodore.... Vic-20.... first home computer to sell over 1 million units. C64...biggest selling 8 bit home computer of the 80's. I'm an Atari 8 bit fan over both those machines and I own all three. The biggest trouble is Tramiel shooting off his mouth, and not being able to deliver. Again, at the time, nothing had the available power of the Jaguar other than PC with 486's in them. The problem is, very few of the developers dare learn how to make the Jaguar. That is mostly due to the Horrid dev kit that offered nothing but an assembler, no working C compiler and very little help support from Atari. These things killed the Jaguar, not so much is bad design or abilities.... it had great potential.

Atari was basically bankrupt when Tamriel bought it, I don't know how he could have made things worse. With very little resources he brought out a new computer in very little time out of the ashes of a former giant and he kept the brand alive for another decade.

Yeah, it was converted from Atari. However it was quite common at that time that a game created for one computer was next transferred to other platforms, sometimes to 10-20 different ones.

@@ITGuyinaction Lazy greed is why the second thought machine get's little more usually than making it function on another machine. Common in the industry back then and even now. But as a business man I get their thinking, but Quality is still important...even in business.

@@GORF_EMPIRE 🤔🤔🤔🤔

With sound, it might be risky...

@@ITGuyinaction Look, the SID chip is a nice sound chip but there isn't anything the POKEY can't do that it can...it just needs it to be done in software. Also remember the 6502 runs almost 2 x the speed of the commodore so it can and often does handle the sound load even with high quality impressive gaming going on. Truth be told, the POKEY is about a zillion times more reliable than the SID......they failed alot then and over time tend to blow up now. The C64 was a great machine but It was hardly technically superior to the Atari 8's.

@@GORF_EMPIRE True that SID is much easier to be programmed than POKEY. And perhaps there is a secret which explains why so many people think that SID is much better. And let's add to this better marketing...

Actually there is a contest, mainly due to personal aesthetics and preferences. This is why different people prefer different things. Both systems are great, they do things differently and they manage to trade blows in so many aspects which is fun.

@@nickolasgaspar9660 ❤😏 Yeah!

👍 👍 👍 👍 👍 👍 👍 Thank you for nice words! And it's absolutely fascinating that guys born in 1996 might be fascinated by the 8-bit world! Yeah, I really regret that channel growth is so slow and that made me not to believe any longer in success. I'm tired with fighting against yt algorithm rules... But from time to time I hope to publish new videos so please keep your subscription active! 😀👍

🤔🤔🤔 What do you mean?

@@ITGuyinaction ANTIC+GTIA still outclasses the VICII in abilities but some clever C64 boys out there can do some impressive stuff with that machine.

👍 👍 👍 👍 👍 👍 👍 Of course! 😀 Seriously, what do you think about C64?

@@ITGuyinaction C64 was a great 8 bit computer of course, one of the very best. But I really believe the Atari 8 bits series didn't get all the recognition they deserved, that's why I'm pushing for the 800 xl here.

@@2001pl 👍 👍 👍

🇵🇱➡www.youtube.com/@Informatykwakcji/featured

Perhaps yes, perhaps no... CPC had quite good technical possibilities but much less software and was much les popular... At least it's my humble perspective... 🤔🤔🤔

@@ITGuyinaction popularity is never a good measurement of quality, only of marketing. I like to see like this: what would you get now, in 2024? The Atari is out of the question: really hard to find. And the C64 is plagued by a BASIC that the new generation does not understand. The weird behaviour of upper/lowercase/petsci, ugly display output, awkward keyboard layout with strange modifier keys, no insert at the cursor, you get nuts straight away. CPC offers a very decent experience to newbies, and they are easy to get for decent prices.

@@lovemadeinjapan Yeah, there is sth in that what you are writing. I have to admit that Atari is the closest computer to my hearth... and that I don't know too much CPC. Perhaps is that time to change that second thing?

Nope 😂

@@titusjones1389 🤔🤔🤔🤔

😀👍 Thanks a lot for this comment. You have great knowledge! Sometimes I'm wondering why Atari (and not only) floppy drives were made as "separate computers". From IT engineer perspective it was a great idea, but from end user one it made the floppy drives very expensive and computer didn't have too much work when "downloading" data from floppy drive. When it comes about prices, probably the perspective from Poland was much different than the one from USA... Concerning Forth, the way of making calculations you describe is exactly the same way I wanted to describe in my video, but perhaps I made too big simplification wanting to keep it short (or perhaps you should watch it once again ha ha... 🤔🙃). Thank you for this very nice visit and I hope you will return to my small channel from time to time! All the best!

@@ITGuyinaction - I agree that SIO was a good idea. I'm not sure why Atari came up with it. My impression is it was about ease of use. Atari focused a lot of attention on making their computers consumer products. It seemed like the main idea of SIO was that the user should not have to load device drivers themselves. They should be loaded dynamically, and the best way to do that was from the devices themselves. At least with the peripherals from Atari, during the Warner years, that's how they worked. If you hooked up a disk drive, it sent over its own device driver from a bootable disk. If you hooked up an 850 Interface Module, it sent over its RS232 interface driver (which it had stored in ROM). The printer driver was already built into the Atari's OS ROM. If you listen to a few of Atari's former engineers talk about it today, SIO was an ancestor to USB. They say you can actually trace that from the technical spec's, and the people who worked on developing it. When I thought about that, it made sense. USB devices work in a similar fashion to the way SIO devices did. This is a somewhat different topic, but one of the things that really attracted me to Atari computers was its idea about device drivers, of which you could add more. It wasn't the first to come up with that concept, but the principles they use continue to impress me today. If you look at Fujinet, a lot of its power comes from the fact that Thom Cherryhomes added a couple device drivers for accessing his hardware add-on; and my goodness. Look what you can do with it!

👍 👍 👍 👍 👍 👍 👍 I fully agree with you!!!

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🤔🤔🤔🤔 Jest sporo gier dziejących się w zamku, ale by miotać głazami w zamek... 🇵🇱 ➡️ www.youtube.com/@Informatykwakcji

@@ITGuyinaction Czyli nie wiesz. No nic, będę szukać dalej. I tak, zdążyłem zauważyć że prowadzisz kanał również po polsku 😅

@@optiorespb 😀👍

🤔🤔🤔🤔 Well, If you investigated the subject a bit deeper, you would know, that's it's exactly opposite. It's the Polish secret agent who fights against the Germans. There are even some comments here concerning this aspect. Do you really believe that Polish developers would create any game praising that what you are writing...?

🤔🤔🤔🤔 Concerning surname, there are many comments. Please have a look when having a bit of time.

If you mean the 80s and 90s, that's true. Now there are many great new titles on Atari, including... The Last Ninja! 🤪

@@ITGuyinaction Nobody has done Impossible Mission yet

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Which games are the top of the top ones for C64 and showing the best its possibilities (especially from the latest years) in your opinion?

@@ITGuyinaction excluding homebrew mayhem on monsterland pushes the hardware the most and exploits undocumented tricks. Almost looks like a 16-bit platformer. With homebrew included: Super Mario Bros. and Sonic the Hedgehog.

Correction: Mayhem in Monsterland (not on)

@@pjsampras7072 👍

Well it was never a war to begin with. The video attempted to compare two 8bit platforms with different architectures and custom silicons. C64 won the market during their commercial life but things changed when people without monetary interest started creating stuff on the A8. I will argue that both machines have pros and cons but I need to point out some examples where the A8 proves it value against its worthy competitor. Lets start with newer titles that can be found on both platforms. 1.Yoomp! the Atari version is better, the screen is bigger, the animation and trajectory of the ball is superior, the effects are far more colorful. 2. Total Eclipse. Superior framerate. 3. Stunt Car racer, Superior framerate 4. Guard (A8) vs Tangent(C64), Superior speed and colors. 5. You already mentioned Space Harrier 6.Prince of Persia. Superior graphics without those annoying slowdowns. 7. Assembloids, Superior graphics. 8.Bomb Jack/Gacek at least equally good if not better in some aspects (screen real estate ) Now the Atari also have the 16-bit(ish) platformers , like Albert, Betty Issues and Crownland(my friend thought I sent him a mame game video). You can also check RGB, Mario bros Arcade XE, Timeslip, the new IK RC and RCX which also look great and of cource TRAX (Chaos engine) on the making. And what About Dimo's quest/dungeon, Atari blast, Callisto, Break it 22, Marbled, The last squadron...etc etc etc. I can go on and on talking about so many amazing creations of talented people on the A8 but the point is that the winner of the commercial "war" was not that special imho.

👍 Using limited Ram memory was rather result of some historical limitations of previous models. C64 didn't have any older compatible brothers.

😉👊 Very good remarks! In fact, if Atari engineers had proposed a different color display model, e.g. defining colors per 8x8 pixel area, it would have been much easier to create attractive graphics.

Totally agree and amazing how the 16 bits character basically were the opposite of companies ethos but then Jack switched too

@@kennethgibson456 👍

People who didn't live through this period (early 80's), simply can't comprehend what Star Raiders looked like in 1980 - a true 3D space game with action AND strategy elements. Also, seeing all those colors in the demos meant a LOT back then in an age where most computers that had color had 8 or 16 at MOST. I was SOLD. Most people who had an older 8-bit probably used a TV. I did on my Atari 400. The result was that more colors overcame resolution that you really couldn't see on a TV anyway - between pixel blurring and color drift. To this day when I use Altirra, I purposely give the image a 'fuzzy' adjust, as this is what I remember from those days. Now for games... Tile-based games? Commodore wins, no question. But look at any of the Lucasfilm games (Fractalus, Ballblazer, etc.) The custom display lists on the Atari, coupled with the color ranges and greater CPU speed meant a WAY better experience on the Atari machines. It really depended on what kind of games you enjoyed. I wasn't into the beat-em-ups or vertical scrolling shooters, and that definitely mattered because Commodore did those best. Basic was horrific on BOTH machines - worse on the 64, but only slightly. Basic on the Atari was one of the slowest out of any 8-bit machine. However, as on the C64, there were other options. I ended up getting into compiled languages through something called 'Action!' Action would compile very BASICy commands into machine language, which you would then execute. I coded an anti-aliasing program originally written in pseudo-code in Byte magazine. That could take 7 minutes in Mode 9 to process a full screen image. In Action!, it took less than 5 SECONDS. Either machine was a great introduction to IT, and that's where I still work today.

@@Chordonblue Yeah, some theoretical possibilities were partially destroyed by not enough good software provided especially in the first years after release, including far from being perfect BASIC. Although there were many BASIC improved versions. If you only had it on cartridge, it was changing a lot. And sure your example with BASIC/Action! shows very well lost opportunities. Please just have a look on the games developed for both computers in the latest years...

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😉👊 Ineed! Please be my guest and have a look on other videos about Polish software for Atari!

I think it might be related with some good business decisions. During communism it was in general difficult to buy foreign electronic devices but Atari computers were easily available in the chain of shops called Pewex when you could buy them by paying in dollars (it's for sure not our national currency). Of course they were very expensive but at least having money you could easily buy them. It could have some impact on the situation although it doesn't explain all. And for sure it has influence on Atari world in the next years until now in Poland... Sometimes good grain gives good fruits...

​@ITGuyinaction oh my god, thank you for answering this! I always wanted to know why and how Atari even existed during communist Poland, especially considering, well, it was the Cold War and western products generally weren't available in the Eastern Bloc! And yet somehow Atari was available back then. This always confuse me, but you helped answer the question. Thanks!!❤

@@nickfifteen 🤔🤔🤔 There were some export limitations but they didn't concern all electronic equipment... Thanks for visiting my small channel! 😀🙏

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@d4qatoa 👍

you forgot the CPC and the MSX systems.😉

So hard to buy? 🤔🤔🤔🤔

Yep...in the UK it was. @@ITGuyinaction

@@siturl5834 Yeah, I've heard that Atari computers were not at all popular in UK. And it was so much different comparing ex. to Poland...

Our famous Dutch 8-bit computer came with a "Steam store" before the internet. With a subscription of 10 guilders/month, you could download all the games you liked. You also paid 10ct per 512byte, so a game of like 20kB was another 4 guilders in download fee. Still cheap if you considered C64 games to cost like 60 guilders. All games were with a freeware license, so you were allowed copying on events or with friends.

❤😏🇵🇱 www.youtube.com/@Informatykwakcji

If you take into consideration Atari 400/800, then true. And in fact differences between 800 and 800XL were quite small. The biggest was memory size. In many countries, Atari 800XL was the most often compared with Commodore 64 and that's why I decided to prepare this video. I still think that Atari 400/800/1200XL/800XL/... was a revolutionary project!

@@ITGuyinaction Yes, that's what i mean too. The Atari 8-bit was a great computer that stood up well against the C64 even though it was 3 years earlier with other competitors in mind. I like the pokey sound more ;) I think zx spectrum was slightly bigger than Atari here in Sweden.

@@ingegas100 What were the most popular 8-bit computers in Sweden?

@@ITGuyinaction Commodore 64 was the most popular computer and before that Vic 20.

@@ingegas100 👍

Pity that both Atari and Commodore didn't improve I/O (although in case of Atari disk drives were quite ok but tape readers...). Thank you for visiting my small channel. I hope you will visit me more often! Regards!

I can't say too much about monitors as... I used normal tv-set then... Lucky you!

@d4qatoa 👍 👍 👍 🍀

to be precise, Commodore only built the plastics for those monitors .

Many games developed in 80s were "aligned down" which means were prepared to work on the computer with the lowest possibilities... and when doing conversion they didn't profit for some additional features of better computers. Life and... business... Thanks for visiting my small channel. I hope that you've decided to subscribe it. 😀🙏

I wouldn't call POKEY as chip giving dirty-sounding ha ha... One thing is sure, both chips give so much different sound. In my humble opinion it's a real pity that POKEY and SID were not doubled in each computer to make depending on some switch either stereo sound either 2 times more channels mono sound. Now it's for sure possible to get such an extension but at that time...

I really like the Pokey. It has way more charm than the C64 bubble-overdose we have in our brain. Not so harsch (dirty is the last word I would relate to the Pokey), it is butter smooth! Especially some Atari arcade cabs pushed the Pokey to amazing heights. For example Super Sprint is one of the best sounding Pokey machines ever.

@@2kBofFun 👍 Yeah, both sound chips produce so much different sound...

As far as I remember (as the video was prepared so much time ago) the link to the app was delivered with the robot itself.

At that time consoles and computers were sth fully new thus... not sure if others really knew what would be the expected lifespan. But true that after very good start, Atari seemed to be quite passive later... They offered for long time almost the same products... and their Atari ST was also quite average on the marked when released...

Yeah, I fully agree with you! Thank you for visiting my small channel and please do me a favour and visit it from time to time! 🙏😀

👍 Thank you for this very interesting comment. Why did Commodore decide to limit C64 colour palette so much according to your opinion? As I can see here some kind of discrepancy. Very interesting music chip, quite good sprites (it's difficult to compare them directly with Atari but trying to be short I would say that C64 had slightly better sprites than XL/XE or at least much easier programmable) and... other graphics possibilities below average... (although again it was easier to get good results without using so many tricks as in XL/XE).

🤔🤔🤔🤔 What is wrong with my English? Pronunciation? If you can't understand it, why don't you use captions? They are manually added by myself so they should be ok. However yt ai algorithm doesn't have any problems when making automatic captions basing on my recordings thus I believe it's possible to survive with my English (especially that algorithms are still not so good as humans in voice recognition). When creating my channel I rather though about people for which English is their second language and for them this level of English should be acceptable... Pity that I disappointed you... C'est la vie!

​@@ITGuyinaction good for you. Stand up for yourself.

🤔🤔🤔🤔 Well... Decision about buying MOS was a very good one! However business is business. I've never heard about any serious shortages in 6502 delivery for others thus it means Commodore didn't mind that other companies produced their computers basing on that microprocessor. However it might also mean that their margin on C64 was much higher that ex. margin of Atari on Atari 800XL. We could have a long discussion about that area with a big glass of good beer. 🍺 Concerning Eastern Europe, I have impression that Poland could be a specific case. Atari computers were so popular here that probably it wasn't the case of any other Eastern European Bloc countries. Jack Tramiel roots counted here? However C64 and ZX Spectrum/Timex devices were also quite common. And true that in Soviet Union, but also in many other countries, ZX Spectrum clones were created, including Poland. However I've never heard about any Atari XL/XE clone in my country. Do you know any story about such a case? It might be related with the fact that making a copy of POKEY, ANTIC or GTIA was quite challenging... Thanks for visiting my small channel and I hope that you are supporting it by your subscription! 👍

I'm wondering how much SID was better than POKEY and how much marketing guys told us it's better. Still I believe it's good to return to those days. Thanks for visiting my small channel! Please don't forget to subscribe! 🎅👍

@@ITGuyinaction well, as a music producer who's deep into chip tune stuff (and also an 80s kid) , I can exactly tell you : SID has some more waveforms and modulation possibilities, and it has filters. Pokey doesn't have filters. That's pretty much it. And that's where it becomes subjective, because filters strike me as a rather pointless bonus in the context of 8bit chiptune aestethic. The best way to make the c64 sound nicely era-appropriate is to turn the filters off. And then we are left with the polyphony that is not enough for the basics. Soundtracks like M. U. L. E. Or alternate reality demonstrate that problem nicely: if you want "drums", you can only do one bass and one melody note. No chords for you. And quick arpeggios as fake polyphony (as I. E. alternate reality used) only get you so far. As a result, both of these iconic soundtracks sound lame on SID. It just doesn't have the polyphony to properly reproduce the composition. It's for that reason that to me personally, even though I'm very much an ensoniq guy (that's the people who created SID), SID and Pokey see much more eye to eye than most people admit. Cause pokey was also much fatter. Both in single oscillator mode, but especially when you decided to double a voice with a slight pitch offset for extra fatness, something the SID of course could also do, but people rarely did because then you've burnt already 2 voices and have only one left. Long story short : Sound is more complex than just going "look, there's filters on the feature list of A, but not B, therefore A wins".

@@zorglub667 Wow! Thank you a lot for sharing this! You are a real expert here! I can only learn from you! I'm sure that your comment will be very interesting to the viewers of my small channel! All the best for New Year 2024!

"Truth be told, since the SIDs filters always felt a bit out of place within the 8bit retro sound context, I'd much rather take pokeys higher voice count and authentic 8bit brutality :)" In what way? For me the SID is the best sound chip used in an 8 bit micro hands down based on how tunes created with the chip sound, which to me is the only metric that should be used to judge a sound chip. What the SID lacked in voices, it benefitted from what you could do with those voices and the POKEY only had one more voice than the SID. You weren't comparing a chip with only 3 voices and another with 8. The AY had 4 voices, the 2A03 had 5 and an (official) way of playing samples (the SID sample playback was done through a bug which they "fixed" in the 8580) you weren't going to avoid appregios on the Atari machines. Also, what do you achieve by doubling the POKEY's voices? 16 bit resolution? That gives you TWO voices with that, the SID already had THREE voices with that much resolution. I thikn you're talking less through your credntials as a chiptuner and more through nostalgia for your own childhood system. You were an Atari kid rather than a Commodore one!

@@GeoNeilUK 🤔🤔🤔 Interesting remarks!