Thanks for making this! Even though I own one of these machines already, I learned a few things I hadn't noticed about it. It's also one of my prized possessions, but objectively it was a terrible machine, and the games they designed for it were pretty bad even for the standards of 1982. I think an atari 2600 has a much better selection of games. And yes, if I had to choose between this or a VIC-20, I'd easily choose the VIC-20 any day.
I wonder if the Atari 2600 had better games because many more were released, and developers got a better handle on the system? Perhaps had this been a success, much better games would have been developed and released? Atari 2600 and Commodore 64 launch games weren’t all that impressive either, that I recall.
@@stonecodfish2365 I started gaming on a Pong clone plugged into the TV set, so I remember those days well! :) I think it's an uneven comparison to compare a handful of games for a rare system vs. a system with (according to Wikipedia) 532 games. And still counting!... more 2600 homebrew than MAX Machine homebrew, I suspect. :) But life isn't fair. I think the MAX Machine was capable of better games than the 2600, but I think it didn't get the chance to show that.
@@ScrapKing73 Yes, I think T8BG was referring to selection. The best arcade carts of the time on the C=64 were published by AtariSoft, but I think they only released about 17 of them (and I'm not sure those were all carts). The C64 had some objectively much better games than an Atari 2600, but most of them required the greater memory of the C64 and usually the disk drive - which puts the MAX at a huge disadvantage when it comes to game selection.
@@3vi1J Oh, for sure. And re-reading it, yes, T8BG did specify game selection, so that's fair enough. It was his pairing of that comment with saying the Max Machine was an objectively terrible machine that conflated the issue for me. I only had a small selection of carts for the C64, only played two of them (Choplifter, and one that I can't remember the name of off-hand) with any frequency. Love me some Choplifter. One of these days I'd love to try the Sega Master System version.
I agree, although I prefer the MAX version of Avenger (Space Invaders clone) to the version we got on the C64. It was much closer to the original VIC-20 version, which played much better than the C64 version did
So each cartridge has to include its own character set? Because I noticed some of them use the PET character font while others use the C64 character font. And that version of Wizard of Wor makes really bad use of the SID chip, too -- it sounds like an Atari 2600 game!
Yes, all graphics including character sets have to be either in the upper 4K of the 8K cartridge ROM, or copied/generated with code into the meagre bit of free RAM.
I noticed another keyboard quirk @12:10 in the video. The keyboard designer messed up on the Commodore+B PetSCII character, unless it's actually reversed in the cart ROMs compared to a normal C=64. The white areas on all the other keys indicates transparent/background color. Notice how it's correct on the 64C's keyboard. Another great video! Keep up the good work, Robin.
Well, nowadays all computers do nearly nothing without loading stuff, operating systems in ROM are severely out of fashion. A trend set by the Ultimax? ;-)
My only knowledge of the Commodore Max Machine was from a single-paragraph article in an issue of Popular Science back in the day. Seeing one live like this had me on the edge of my seat for the whole video.
Back in the day, I only knew of the MAX Machine (or Ultimax) from the _Commodore 64 Programmer's Reference Guide_ , and I always wondered why I had never seen such a beast in the wild. I figured it was canceled entirely, but much to my surprise, years later I learned that it did indeed exist, at least in Japan. And now I want one! 😄
It's always been amazing to me that HAL Laboratories is behind a lot of these early Commodore games. I didn't realize it at the time, when I was playing them on my C64, but it's obvious with the Japanese lineage behind the MAX that there'd be a Japanese company writing the games. Their c64 version of pool is an especially fond memory.
The importance of Commodore in Japan is often overlooked because both the C64 and the Amiga failed to make any impact there. But the Vic-20 had been a huge success in Japan before Commodore managed to lose all its marketshare in Japan. Still Commodore of Japan kept its relevance when it came to hardware design and manifacturing.
Another GREAT video! TY for all your content! Talk about your video being timely to me! I just got my MAX-04 rev. A on Friday! I was very lucky to get it from an auction site in Japan. If you saw the photo, I tweeted of it you would have seen it is MINT with no scratches or marks whatsoever. When I opened it yesterday to see what rev. board I had so I could plan the composite mod, I was amazed at how it has to be the cleanest board I've ever seen when opening a retro computer! Not one spec of dust. All the chips are from 1982 and I loved seeing an VIC-II 6566 for the 1st time in person.
31:20 Minor correction - it's music from Moon Cresta. Loved that game, possibly the best music and audio from that game era. Terra Cresta was a sequel that was looked like a 1942 reskin. Interesting video, as always.
I grew up in Germany with the VC-20 (and later the C128D and the Amiga) and can still remember games like Mole Attack, Avenger and Radar Rat Race very well. Today I am very happy to also have this fascinating Commodore Max Machine in my collection. Thank you very much for this great and very interesting video👍
that's funny that this version of mole attack uses keyboard only. We had the Vic 20 cart and I'm pretty sure that uses joystick. Also, I remember , as a kid in 89-91, we had a game disc ,copied from a neighbor, that was just labeled 'Max games'. it had all of these on it.
The Atari 2600 can use a Light pen. I have Sentinel for the 2600 and it uses a light pen / gun. Also Atari did release a primitive BASIC programming cartridge, though Spectravideo would be the company to release a keyboard / computer accessory for it.
25:26 the 6703 is indeed a PLA that is a lot simpler than the one on the c64. The MAX 6510 & VIC both see a unique view of the memory (internal RAM & external RAM/ROM located on the cart), while on c64 there are many views depending on the state of $01 and the expansion port pins GAME and EXROM. No bank switching via $01 for the MAX.
It's funny that HAL made that Mole Attack game and then 40 years later, we're doing much the same thing in a Kirby game on much more sophisticated hardware.
The same Terakura that worked for Commodore on the MAX also worked for HAL, where he served as a mentor to one Satoru Iwata. This is why HAL got picked to develop so many early Famicom games, as they were very familiar with the 6502.
I remember reading about the Ultimax settings in the Programmer's Reference Guide back in 1985/6 and not knowing what it referred to. Fascinating to see the synchronicity between the production date of the chips between your Max and silver label C64, and the differences on the motherboard. I do like Mole Attack as a game, but I had not tried Bowling before. Think I will have a play of those Max exclusives myself. Of course, Kick Man and Wizard of Wor were officially licensed from Bally, after Commodore's unlicensed clones on the VIC-20 (Jelly Monsters and what became Radar Rat Race).
Hello, from British Columbia, Robin! Thanks for sharing. You mentioned Burnaby, which is where I grew up. I'm surprised at the amount of 8-bit stuff that went on in the region. There was an 8-bit magazine created in a city within this region in those days. I'd have to look up the magazine name, though.
1:20 Now THAT is a keyboard worth challenging yourself for National Novel Writing Month with. We could do typing speed tests against my Atari 400! Deductions in speed scores for the number of groans per sentence. 6:25 not that I need another project, but a modern version of spiders of mars may have to happen 19:50 the VIC 6560 in he VIC-20 happens to have 65 cycles on the NTSC version and 71 on the PAL. Facts for nerds ;) Been interesting to try to do the Composite with the two standards in FPGA 23:50 The best explanation of how the tape protocol works is the the Toolkit KERNAL book by Compute! 25:00 Also from the VIC-20 26:00 It's a gate array and acts as the PLA for the MAX. They are very rare, hope that one keeps working 27:25 phew, good thing you corrected. Now we can get back to arguing about why VI is WAAAY better than Emacs
A C64 (or Max) Spiders of Mars would be awesome. I only just searched now: I was unaware that it was actually made for the VIC-20, released by Umi? Woah, it was programmed by Peter Fokos - I've met him! So maybe that was an actual 3rd party Max game that was planned. I'll see if I can find out more.
I'll never stop being amazed by how many resources Commodore wasted on developing completely bottom barrel systems on unrealistic timelines. Given enough development time, the C128 could have shipped with a different VDC, like Tandy or PCjr compatible, an 8086 instead of a Z80 for CPM-86, and doubling the SIDs and a clock chip for proper stereo 8 bit DAC. Instead we got rushed and half baked. The system I suggest could have competed with Tandy for the low end of PC compatibles. Eventually, they developed most of these ideas into the C65, minus PC compatibility - but it competed with the A500 so no good. That deterred existing customers from upgrading, because of the incompatible peripherals - modems, printers, mass storage devices - all were useless and barely the monitor could be used in place.
According to Bil Herd, the C128 was really just a stopgap, so that Commodore would have something to show at CES after Jack Tramiel left but before the Amiga was ready. And it wasn't originally meant to have the Z80 CPU -- that was just the result of discovering that the C64's CP/M cartridge wouldn't work with it, so they fixed the problem by integrating the equivalent of its circuitry into the C128.
@@SuperHammaren In those days that particular CPU was very expensive, its a 16bit part after all (while using an 8 bit bus). There was a big division from 8bit and 16bit, with 16bit being for the "serious" business. The "non serious" business would use the cheaper 8bit machines like the Apple II with Visicalc (a spreadsheet program) rather than the one figure more expensive PC with Lotus 123.
That symbol isn’t a zero, it’s an empty-set. Though in fairness, it was common in early microcomputers to represent zero with the empty-set symbol to more clearly differentiate it from “O”.
The Apple II family did as well, the docs said they did it to differentiate it better from the letter O. I thought this would catch on like * is used in computers instead of X for multiplication, but it didn't.
Excellent video on this retro computer! I’ve read that book on the history of Commodore that you mentioned on my iPad. I’m glad I did, because Amazon lists it for sale new for $117.00 US!
Surprised to hear the Moon Cresta music coming out of Jupiter Lander. HAL... I wonder if Satoru Iwata had a hand in any of those games considering he did those ports on the VIC-20.
Thanks, yes, I said Terra Cresta but it's Moon Cresta. As far as I know Satoru Iwata was only involved in the VIC-20 games, but maybe we'll find evidence of his involvement in the C64 too; I still haven't looked through all those C64 HAL games closely yet.
I might have mentioned before that Commodore's eventual efforts to compete with the likes of the Sinclairs would have been better served by just making a cost-reduced VIC-20. This case and keyboard design seem like they would have been perfect for that. I also noticed that the second and third rows of the keyboard are offset by a half key width rather than the usual quarter. I've never seen another keyboard that did that.
Back in the day, I remember retailers making a big deal of membrane keyboards being "spill resistant" although I doubt their claims since there were plenty of places around the edges for liquids to get inside.
I noticed that on the Max the PETSCII diagonal character above the letter "B" is mirrored compared to that on the C64C. Wonder what comes on the screen when you use that character with BASIC on the Max?
9:07 Huh? Why does the Max have a cassette port? It has too little RAM to load any decent games that way. To save game progress? 38:20 I guess they are actually able to do a little bit graphically with only 2K of RAM. Is the memory mapped in such a way that the VIC can access character glyphs and sprite frames directly from ROM? 1K is instantly gone to the screen, and .5K to zero-page and the stack, leaving only .5K for any RAM grahics. 43:44 Wow, a use for the cassette port! But there's not much RAM available for songs.
I will cover most of this in the next Max video, but yes, the cassette port is an oddity and seems to be there just to support their claim of it being a "real computer". Even the Mini BASIC cartridge doesn't support the cassette, but the MAX BASIC cartridge does allow you to load and save, and includes an extra 2K of RAM so you actually have a little to work with. The cartridge ROM at $Fxxx is mirrored (shadowed? mapped?) to $3xxx so the VIC-II can access it while also having a little bit of RAM to use for graphics as well.
@@8_Bit: Oh yeah, if the main ROM didn't go at $E000-$FFFF, there'd be nothing there for the startup vector. Is this ROM remapping for the VIC only, or does this create a hard limit of contiguous RAM for the BASIC cartridge?
I'm replying just to see if there is any response to the "for the VIC only" question. I thought that there was a way to subscribe to comment threads without interrupting the conversation. Does anybody know?
3:50 Can confirm, VIC sounds close to a German four letter word that means intercourse, and thus the same reasoning as renaming Puck-Man to Pac-Man for the American market applies. Calling it VolksComputer (People's Computer) was a pretty great marketing move though.
Fantastic video! Thanks for the reminders of all the hours I spent playing Jupiter Lander, Wizard of Wor, and Kick-Man on my C64. 😃 And I’ve just subscribed. 👍 I’ve queued up several of your videos and I’m especially looking forward to your videos about Mapping the Commodore 64 (my “Bible” in the ‘80s 😂) and the Jim Butterfield tribute. (One of my heroes, who I finally got to meet in the early ‘90s.) And speaking of Jim Butterfield, have you thought about making a video about TPUG and its influence? Shortly after I got my C64 I joined the local Commodore club. (We met at a pizza place in San Dimas, CA.) As a new member I got two disks full of TPUG software. They had lots of cool utilities and some simple text-based games. To this day I think they played a big part in the success of the C64 in the USA and Canada.
0:01 Thanks for putting up the video with all that great information. Never knew anything about the max until now. Now for the big question, when are you going to release a video about the mini basic and basic cartridges for the max? Went through your whole channel and your second channel and never saw one. If I missed it, please link it for me. Otherwise, please do one for the heck of it. Thank you for all that you do in the commodore community and would love to see more 128 videos. That's the one my interest is in now
Interesting machine! Re: Mole Attack, I had that game on my VIC-20, and it supported joystick. I remember our first joystick was the terrible Commodore one, and I wrecked it playing this game, because I usually just held down the button and continuously thrashed the joystick around without regard to where I actually needed to hit. Needless to say, I didn’t score very well due to all the negative points I got. I was around 3 or 4 years old at that time.
Road Race is a rather brazen clone of the Atari arcade game Night Driver. The car is actually pretty close to a paper cutout that sat in the middle of the display on the original arcade game.
So, since there is no KERNAL ROM in the Max machine, did Music Maker have some subset of the Kernal (or perhaps an entire kernal) to access the cassette drive?
I'm amused in the one document you displayed saying that 'Ultimax sounds too much like a feminine hygiene product' as the reason for the name change. :-)
I always appreciate when RU-vidrs showing the Japanese version of products hold the writing up to the camera long enough so that I can get a nice clean image to pause on - it allows me to add 'reading video game packaging' to my list of Japanese lessons :D Really enjoyed the video!
I'm wondering how much more C64 compability can be achieved through clever use of the cartridge port. Missing Roms, extra Ram? Even the disk drive port? (If I understand the pinout correctly, not very likely for the diskette port...)
Some of the games that you show in this video were developed by a company called "HAL Laboratory". They were also creating games for Nintendo and for Japanese NEC PC-6001 and PC-8001 computers that were among the most popular computers of that same era. Commodore would have a very hard time in Japan competing against NEC, Fujitsu, Sharp etc. So I wonder why HAL Laboratory decided to invest their time and resources in such a minor platform like the MAX.
HAL Laboratory actually got their start, unofficially, making hobbyist games for the Commodore PET, mostly clones of existing arcade games around 1979-1980. Then as the VIC-20 needed launch games, Commodore went to HAL Labs to port their existing games to the platform in 1980-1981. So it was natural for HAL Labs to continue this process with the Max and Commodore 64 in 1982. Then as Commodore failed to take hold in Japan, HAL moved on to those other platforms. That's the way I understand it, anyway. If you search my channel I made a video about Satoru Iwata's VIC-20 game, Star Battle, and included some of this info in it, though I didn't know as much then.
Almost all the games you showed made by HAL Laboratory and possibly programmed by Satoru Iwata since he knew perfectly the architecture of Commodore computers since he bought his own Commodore PET in the 70s And he spent his time debugging software in the offices of Commodore Japan.
Yes, HAL Laboratory was responsible for many of the launch titles for Commodore's VIC-20, Max, and Commodore 64 systems. The only commercial Commodore game that we know Satoru Iwata made for sure is Star Battle for the VIC-20, which is based on Galaxian. I made an in-depth video about finding his hidden easter egg here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-QJCwsi6O5xU.html
Ha.. just rode on Cameron in Burnanby last week! It's all different now... Max is cool, Im a Commodore guy, But this vid made me love my Atari 400 more!!
The music for jupiter lander which you stated sounds like terra cresta also sounds like astro wars which is an electronic game from grandstand. People from Britain will hopefully know what I'm talking about!
The CIA behavior is interesting on the MAX. Without a cartridge, the CIA chip is actually "disconnected" from the system (its chip select pin is not connected to anything). On the other hand, the 6703 PLA has a CIA_PLA pin that is asserted when accessing memory $DC00-$DFFF which correspond to CIA1,CIA2,IO1,IO2 on a c64. Both CIA_PLA and the CIA chip select pins are exported to the MAX cartridge port. The MAX cartridge must connect these two pins otherwise the CIA can never be selected. If you look at a MAX cartridge you will see this hard connection on the PCB. Why did the designers did this ? we can speculate it's to allow potential addition of other chips on a MAX cartridge in the range $DC00-$DFFF via extra selection logic (the MAX CIA actually doesn't have to be at $DCxx but i assume it's preferable for compatibility with the c64). For example, the second c64 CIA could be easily added on a MAX cartridge @ $DDxx to support the disc drive and userport.
Amazingly, everyone goes on about RAM costs back in the 80's, yet one could buy 64K (8 x 8KB) Dynamic Ram for $9.99 Retail, so wholesale would have been much cheaper.
Are you saying 64K of DRAM was $9.99 retail when the C64 launched in August 1982? I'd expect that price to be later in the '80s. What are your sources?
Can't remember having seen a Commodore Max in Europe. 1982 was the breakthrough year for home computing, but perhaps I should say 1983 because that's the year sales really started picking up. The BBC Micro, ZX Spectrum and C64 were all released in 1982, but most people bought them in 1983 or 1984.
Great vid. The "Alien" game you demo on the Max is a variation of "Heiankyo Alien" by the Tokyo University Theoretical Science Group (1979). Here's a vid of the original program as written in BASIC: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-WAVHBGzR4Z0.html
I was just wondering, and it's a long shot, but if you attached your SuperCPU with JiffyDos disabled and only mirroring the screen RAM if it would boot and run Basic. As, I believe that the SuperCPU will have its own copy of the 64's basic ROM. With JiffyDos disabled you may be able to use the cassette port.
@@8_Bit I just discovered that the cassette port wont work, even with JiffyDOS disabled. I'm creating a SuperSPU clone and obviously it cannot access the IO port of the internal 6510. Therefore, it cannot access the signal traces that control the cassette port. The only way I can get my clone to use the cassette port is to add an adapter that replaces the internal 6510 and sits in its socket with a cable to the cartridge. But I probably wont do that. A SuperCPU simulates the 6510's IO register for bank switching the ROMs and IO area. Therefore, I could get my cone to simulate the cassette port and get it to emulate a cassette from a TAP file on a SD card, which is a more reasonable idea. Additionally, down the track, I could add another cassette port to the SuperCPU clone cartridge where you could use a real datasette as this would allow the SuperCPU's CPU to control those signals. However, I still think that the Max would boot to Basic. But, it is totally understandable that you don't want to try it.
Looks like Max's Wizard of War uses multicolor sprites for players and monsters. C64 sprites are monochome and thus sharper looking (warlock may be multicolor). C64 version most likely has larger rom, thus better musics and speech support.
42:44 there was actually a "Music Machine" tie in cartridge for the atari 2600. The music included parts of the title song and "Love, love, love" but gameplay was a bad clone of Mad Bomber.
I think Avenger (space invader clone), the one version with the right side score bar (so not the full screen one), was also a Max Machine game, but im not sure
@@8_Bit - Stab in the dark - perhaps some modern C64 cartridge and some code relocating might offer a door into the machine? - perhaps from max basic you can do some pokes that'd allow another cart to work via your funky multi-cart adapter? perhaps even address an REU?
@@8_Bit - From Wiki "The MAX compatibility mode in C-64 was later frequently used for "freezer" cartridges (such as the Action Replay), as a convenient way to take control of the currently running program." Doesn't that suggest that some freezer carts run in that mode and might work in some capacity?
@@JohnnyWednesday I don't think I could get Super Snapshot or any other utility cart working with the Max, but the REU might. I'm a bit nervous to try anything weird though as some of the Max chips are extremely rare and there's no substitutes available.
Lel, as a German I never thought of that "VIC" would be spoken like "fi...k" in German, and thus meaning the f-word. Unbeleavable. Haha, thanks for clarification.
I don't think the extra address lines are on the board, but it does have a full 6510 CPU so it might be possible with some jumpers and logic glue. Probably best solved with a daughter card that goes in the CPU socket with the extra RAM on it.
what? never heard of this machine before :D Imagine owning one of these back in the days, would be called liar to have such a machine. Heard of people owning +4 and other uncommon stuff here in the northern europe back in teh day, but this.. no
I wonder if the Commodore Max 2Kb memory was in response to the Timex TS-1000 having 2Kb built in? This was double the built-in memory of the European Sinclair ZX81 and was the absolute cheapest starter personal computer you could purchase in 1982, at least in the UK.
35:30 Mole Attack & Bowling title screens say copyright 1982 HAL LABORATORY! The developer who makes Kirby and Super Smash Bros games. Since it predates the release of the Famicom, these are the few games of theirs I'm aware of that wasn't published by Nintendo.
Yes, they actually got their start making Commodore games on the PET, VIC-20 (VIC-1001 in Japan), Max Machine, and finally Commodore 64. They also made MSX games before the Famicom. They made a surprising number of games for these platforms before the Nintendo days.
Very interesting and honest review. It seems that nothing in the library really used the hardware anywhere near enough to show its true potential. I have seen better vic20 games! Thanks!
@@telemedic5142 Yes, for the Max the Cartridge provides all the ROM code (there is no ROM internally). A cartridge could also provide more RAM, as does one of the BASIC cartrideges. But the design decision to include only 2K SRAM for the VIC chip's VRAM (display buffer), limits the graphic modes available that a game developer can use. i.e. Only those modes that require no more than 2K of video ram for the display buffer.
@@telemedic5142 Yes, the VIC-II just uses normal memory mapped RAM for most of it’s Video RAM, so RAM available for video memory could be expanded via SRAM included in a cartridge. But, back then, SRAM chips were expensive! Which is probably why they went with only 2K internally in the Max (instead of 4K or 6K), to meet a target retail price. Once this decision was made, cartridge game developers would have been restricted in what they could achieve, by the available 2K of RAM, as it would have massively increased the cost of their game cartridges if they had to include additional SRAM inside their cartridge (in addition to the game code ROM chip).
