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Has Amiga stood the test of time?

nkarafo

Member
Which is possibly true, given it was a new platform launching at that time.
Dunno, i highly doubt it was outselling the Mega Drive even for a single day in 1993 or 1994 or whenever it was launched in Europe. Early-to-mid 90's were probably the peak of popularity for 16bit consoles.

Also, i know Greece isn't a representative country or anything but the Amiga brand was actually pretty big over here, with the Amiga 500 being a very popular machine. So, for what is worth, i have never seen a CD32 in person. I never saw it back in the day. I never knew a single person having it or anyone knowing someone else having it. I saw at least a couple of Phillips CDIs and even played with one myself but never a CD32. So the idea of it outselling the Mega Drive, even for a short time period, sounds weird to me.
 
Dunno, i highly doubt it was outselling the Mega Drive even for a single day in 1993 or 1994 or whenever it was launched in Europe. Early-to-mid 90's were probably the peak of popularity for 16bit consoles.

Also, i know Greece isn't a representative country or anything but the Amiga brand was actually pretty big over here, with the Amiga 500 being a very popular machine. So, for what is worth, i have never seen a CD32 in person. I never saw it back in the day. I never knew a single person having it or anyone knowing someone else having it. I saw at least a couple of Phillips CDIs and even played with one myself but never a CD32. So the idea of it outselling the Mega Drive, even for a short time period, sounds weird to me.

I can imagine it outselling MegaDrive (and by proxy, SNES) on its launch day in at least a couple of territories, probably Greece for example since as you say Amiga was a strong brand there. But then it definitely would've dropped off afterwards. Like for example I don't know how strong the Amiga brand was in Germany but CD32 only did about 25,000 units there in its lifetime.

Amiga computers were a different story; microcomputers as a whole still outdid MegaDrive and SNES combined across Europe by the end of 16-bit gen, but those two consoles closed the gap pretty strongly compared to their predecessors. And there is source that CD32 outsold MegaCD and other CD add-ons and drives in the region.

But there's not a single source verifying it was outselling MegaDrive in any part of Europe for any notable length of time, except, again, maybe on launch day, and probably only in a country where SNES had a bit more presence than MegaDrive. Even in that case, couldn't imagine it being for more than a few days, that's not a sufficient lapse of time most people use when discussing something outselling another in context of gaming platforms.
 

RAIDEN1

Member
Even by 1993 standards the CD32 was well behind the curve, I couldn't see it handling even a Daytona, let alone a Ridge Racer...I had one at launch....by 94/95 I jumped onto the PC games bandwagon...CD32 just ended up gathering dust, and so what I meant by it being a Dreamcast of its time, was basically from a graphic standpoint being a step above what was out on the 1200 etc....or hell even the Amiga 500/600...by and large you were just getting more of the same...a system that would have struggled with a Doom, let alone a Virtua Fighter...
 
Any sources for this?

Any sources for what? The CD32 had no shelf space in the US.

The CD32 was released in Europe and in Canada, but Commodore was unable to sell it in the United States due to a legal injunction for non-payment of patent royalties to a company called Cad Track

Whatever made it were imports from Canada sold at limited retailers, I saw one myself at a Funcoland. It also didn't help that the Amiga wasn't popular, and while the ST wasn't the bees knees in the US it at least was a bit more popular, and of course it helped that Atari had their own retail stores, which in hindsight was a massive money sink that didn't go anywhere long-term but eh.

Or are you talking about it doing well in Europe? Even the wikipedia page mentions that. It was a big seller in the UK and was the main driver of CD-drives at the time.

Infact, the brands strong European performance is why Gateway (back then) based their international headquarters in Germany back when it acquired the brand with Europe the main target market. I remember still seeing some CD32 sold in stores, I assume it was likely backstock that Gateway put out for cheap to make some money.

He has none, or he would've done so when quoting me. He insists outselling as in, a given time range after the system was first released, in certain territories.

The top selling console on some charts was the top selling console on those charts!?!?!?! Conspiracy!!

Still waiting for evidence on the Model 1 running on Nvidia hardware and when you were the "first" to mention NBA JAM and MK in this thread.

90s Atari didn't have much of internal dev teams, either (the console side, anyway).

Multiple games were made by Atari intternal Studios and the Jaguar, and especially the Lynx (not to mention Computers but that's a different topic) and they released multiple games a year.

What you believe is that because they didn't put out 10-20 games a year they didn't have a dev team, no the reason why they had limited releases was money. But they did put out several games and had dev studios. It also didn't help the dev teams were making things like the CD add-on, the VR headset and other money wasting experiments.

Hardware like the Lynx were done by external teams that Atari then arranged partnerships with

Err, no, the Lynx was straight out brought by Atari, there was not partnership. Epyx had a cool device and Atari said "give me." . Which also caused it be be delayed one year from when it was supposed to. Curious what would have happened if Atari was not having Tramiel infighting and launched in in 85.
 
Even by 1993 standards the CD32 was well behind the curve, I couldn't see it handling even a Daytona, let alone a Ridge Racer...I had one at launch....by 94/95 I jumped onto the PC games bandwagon...CD32 just ended up gathering dust, and so what I meant by it being a Dreamcast of its time, was basically from a graphic standpoint being a step above what was out on the 1200 etc....or hell even the Amiga 500/600...by and large you were just getting more of the same...a system that would have struggled with a Doom, let alone a Virtua Fighter...


To be fair the PS1 and the Saturn couldn't run Ridge Racer and Daytona either lol.

Dunno, i highly doubt it was outselling the Mega Drive even for a single day in 1993 or 1994 or whenever it was launched in Europe. Early-to-mid 90's were probably the peak of popularity for 16bit consoles.

Also, i know Greece isn't a representative country or anything but the Amiga brand was actually pretty big over here, with the Amiga 500 being a very popular machine. So, for what is worth, i have never seen a CD32 in person. I never saw it back in the day. I never knew a single person having it or anyone knowing someone else having it. I saw at least a couple of Phillips CDIs and even played with one myself but never a CD32. So the idea of it outselling the Mega Drive, even for a short time period, sounds weird to me.

This doesn't really make sense, the Mega Drive wasn't selling boatloads in Europe in 1993. Only the SNES would be peaking at this time and it wasn't really a contender in Europe.
 
Err, no, the Lynx was straight out brought by Atari, there was not partnership. Epyx had a cool device and Atari said "give me." . Which also caused it be be delayed one year from when it was supposed to. Curious what would have happened if Atari was not having Tramiel infighting and launched in in 85.

ROFL 85?

88 at earliest, the tech would have been too expensive otherwise, that's why they used such a cheap screen and cut corners, to reduce costs.

Even if it did come out in 1988 instead of 1989, I don't think it would have made a difference. Sure, being one year before the Gameboy would have given the Lynx higher sales figures, but Atari still would have only been able to ship a few hundred thousand units in its first year, so the Gameboy spanking still would have happened.

The Lynx was powerful and profitable, but it was not designed to be a system that would sell 60 million units. The mindset was that Atari and Nintendo would kickstart the portable gaming market and in the end, both would likely sell a few million to 10 million units at best, and the successors would increase the size of the market overtime. I remember watching an interview with the creator of Chip's Challenge about how everyone was shocked that the Gameboy was leaving everyone behind. Even Nintendo themselves were surprised at how well it was selling.

The Lynx selling ~5 million units, likely a bit more since we don't have any idea how it did in Europe, is exactly what Atari was expecting to sell before launch. The fact it reached that number as fast as it did, and only didn't sell more due to shifting focus to the Jaguar, likely surprised Atari themselves.

The Lynx had powerful hardware that was only profitable if produced in limited numbers. If for the first 2 years, Atari produced 3 to 5 million Lynx units a year chasing after the Gameboy's success, which was dirt cheap to produce, Atari likely would have gone bankrupt before the Jaguar even came out!
 

Daniel Thomas MacInnes

GAF's Resident Saturn Omnibus
rFU9AfZl.jpg


Again, we're drifting away from the subject of Commodore Amiga, but a couple notes on the Atari Lynx:

The Epyx "Handy" was not completed until 1989. Its first appearance was at the Winter CES that year, with all the electronics hidden behind closed doors. The deal between Epyx and Atari Corp was signed just before the start of Summer CES '89, and was a partnership where they would share the machine, and Atari would manage the hardware while Epyx created the software. Within this contract, there was a provision where Atari could grab the handheld rights completely if their partners failed to deliver software as promised, and this was a deliberate scam designed to steal it outright. Many people have spoken about that issue including RJ Mical and Dave Needle.

There were no hardware delays on Lynx. Atari never bought it from Epyx, they essentially stole it from them and bankrupted the company in the process. And the hardware was not completed until 1989. Finally, it has been understood that Lynx sold 3 million units, but no official sales documents have been shown. By the time it was discontinued in 1995, Nintendo GameBoy had sold 16 million units (most of its sales occurred after Pokemon).

Much of this misunderstanding comes from misreading a couple interviews online, which were then copied onto Wikipedia and recited like Gospel. The best sources for Lynx will be the magazines from '89, specifically VG&CE and EGM.

Okay, now that we've cleared that up, enjoy this cool screenshot of the new indie translation of Rygar on the Amiga. Looks and sounds terrific, just like the arcade classic. So, yes, that would mean the Amiga has stood the test of time. We're still getting new games.

Thanks to Indie Retro News for their coverage and all their hard work.
 
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rFU9AfZl.jpg


Again, we're drifting away from the subject of Commodore Amiga, but a couple notes on the Atari Lynx:

The Epyx "Handy" was not completed until 1989. Its first appearance was at the Winter CES that year, with all the electronics hidden behind closed doors. The deal between Epyx and Atari Corp was signed just before the start of Summer CES '89, and was a partnership where they would share the machine, and Atari would manage the hardware while Epyx created the software. Within this contract, there was a provision where Atari could grab the handheld rights completely if their partners failed to deliver software as promised, and this was a deliberate scam designed to steal it outright. Many people have spoken about that issue including RJ Mical and Dave Needle.

There were no hardware delays on Lynx. Atari never bought it from Epyx, they essentially stole it from them and bankrupted the company in the process. And the hardware was not completed until 1989. Finally, it has been understood that Lynx sold 3 million units, but no official sales documents have been shown. By the time it was discontinued in 1995, Nintendo GameBoy had sold 16 million units (most of its sales occurred after Pokemon).

Much of this misunderstanding comes from misreading a couple interviews online, which were then copied onto Wikipedia and recited like Gospel. The best sources for Lynx will be the magazines from '89, specifically VG&CE and EGM.

Okay, now that we've cleared that up, enjoy this cool screenshot of the new indie translation of Rygar on the Amiga. Looks and sounds terrific, just like the arcade classic. So, yes, that would mean the Amiga has stood the test of time. We're still getting new games.

Thanks to Indie Retro News for their coverage and all their hard work.


Atari could have gotten the Lynx out in 88 if they went for the first version of the hardware, not necessarily a "delay" per say but you could call it that. Also the 3 million is from Wikipedia and from what I understand, comes from some random blurt out with no source. Also I think Rygar was on the Lynx wasn't it?

Back to the Amiga, and staying hopefully, I don't think it stood the test of time. Many of it's games are shovelware because Commodore had no quality control in place, and was fighting itself on whether the Amiga was to be a business machine or a gaming machine. You could also play almost all it's biggest games on other platforms with better performance, at least the ones I keep seeing on top 50 & top 100 lists.

For example, why would I play Kings Quest 3 or Outrun on the Amiga?

I do like some of the software made for it, and I think it was a pretty cool machine, but if we are talking about the Amiga as a gaming device, as we are on Neogaf, I have to ask you and other Amiga fans a simple question:

I have had an ST, have a Mega Drive, a Super Nintendo, a CD-i, a VIS(don't laugh), an old 386, a 3DO, and a Jaguar,

So what games are on the Amiga that are not only high quality, but also either only on the Amiga, or perform best on the Amiga if it's not exclusive? Because if I want to play a game like say, Lemmings, I have two consoles listed above that play it much better than the Amiga.

List some games that meet this criteria and you will convince a lot of people to give the Amiga a chance.
 

nkarafo

Member
Any sources for what? The CD32 had no shelf space in the US.
Sources for your claim that CD32 was outselling the Mega Drive for any time.


This doesn't really make sense, the Mega Drive wasn't selling boatloads in Europe in 1993. Only the SNES would be peaking at this time and it wasn't really a contender in Europe.
https://segaretro.org/History_of_the_Sega_Mega_Drive
When the Super NES arrived late in April 1992, it was unable to unseat Sega as the dominant video game force in the UK. Across the continent, however, the picture is more mixed, with Sega leading France and Spain, and Nintendo having an edge in Germany and parts of Scandinavia. Much of this is due to a change in Super NES fortunes with the release of Donkey Kong Country in 1994, as well as Sega shifting focus towards the Sega 32X and Sega Saturn "32-bit" markets.

920,000 and 880,000 Mega Drive units were sold in the UK during 1992 and 1993, respectively (versus 680,000 and 720,000 for the Super NES)

I don't understand where your "Mega Drive wasn't selling boatloads in Europe in 1993" comes from, especially considering the Mega Drive was very big in Europe. Would you like to provide proof?

The SNES really outsold the Mega Drive during the Donkey Kong Country era but that was later in 1994/95.

And even during any time when the Mega Drive "wasn't selling boatloads" it was still selling more than the non-existent CD32.
 
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So what games are on the Amiga that are not only high quality, but also either only on the Amiga, or perform best on the Amiga if it's not exclusive?
Apidya
Hunter
It Came from the Desert
Lionheart
Lotus I-III
Moonstone
Pinball Dreams
Shadow of the Beast III
Turrican (personally I also prefer Turrican II on Amiga because the DOS version's main sprite looks weird)
Wings

To name a few.
 
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Guess it's the Sega thread then.

I don't understand where your "Mega Drive wasn't selling boatloads in Europe in 1993" comes from, especially considering the Mega Drive was very big in Europe. Would you like to provide proof?

The SNES really outsold the Mega Drive during the Donkey Kong Country era but that was later in 1994/95.

And even during any time when the Mega Drive "wasn't selling boatloads" it was still selling more than the non-existent CD32.

You're conflating two arguments from two different people in your post BTW. I'm not arguing about the CD32.

The Mega Drive sold only 4 million units in the UK by 1997, that's not boatloads. While the Mega Drive did better than any console previously, Europe was still a relatively small market until the PlayStation came out. I'm not saying the CD32 outsold the Mega Drive, all I'm saying is you might be thinking the Mega Drive was bigger than it actually was based on your claim the Mega Drive peaked in the mid-90's when it sold ~700k in 1994, ~500k in 1995 and ~200K in 1996, a clear decline and nowhere near it's peak of 1.1 million in 1991.

Also you're using a poor source, the SNES in the UK sold 300k in 1992 and 500k in 1993. It only sold 1.7 million by 1997.

So about the Amiga.
 
Apidya
Hunter
It Came from the Desert
Lionheart
Moonstone
Pinball Dreams
Shadow of the Beast III
Turrican (personally I also prefer Turrican II on Amiga because the DOS version's main sprite looks weird)
Wings

To name a few.

Hunter runs better on the ST.

Also didn't know the Amiga had ICFTD, and it's completely different from the TG16-CD version.

I'll take a look at the other games you listed.
 
One of the most controversial debates in gaming is whether the Amiga had high quality games comparable or better to the SNES/GEN/TG16/NG/CDi/WIN with amazing titles, or whether like half or more of its library are equal to some flash games we saw in the 2000's or very poor games that just aren't either fun to play or have bad gameplay.

I'm curious where people on Gaf, place the Amiga in 2019, I'm only talking about the Library.

I myself only have 197 games, the Amiga has a LOT of games. Just like other gaming devices of its time.

So whats your opinion? I'm talking about everything Amiga, from the computers, to the CDTV and the CD32.

IMG_0539.jpg
It had the gold box Ad&d games minus pools of darkness and a ton of other 80s and early 90s crpgs and with full color while DOS was still using 4 or 16 color CGA/EGA and lost to dos once VGA adapter were affordable and standard. I remember as I had an 8088 pc with 256k CGA adapter and my cousin had an Amiga. My pc had no hard drive, 5 1/4 floppies and couldn't play many games post 1987, and the Amiga had hard drive 3 1/2 hard floppies, mouse and gui that was amazing from what I remember. This was back in 1987/88. Of course once I got my 80386sx with 1x CD rom and windows 3.0 and a 1mb SVGA card my pc ran circles on their Amiga and I could play CD versions of wing commander 2, Ultima underworld and disk games like civilization, Sim city, wolfenstien, doom, might and magic iv, etc.. VGA graphics and 80286/386 pushed pc ahead in the gaming sphere. Amiga didn't follow suite or if it did wasn't successful like in the 80s. Hence the shift. Then by windows 3.1 - 95, pc sealed the deal. The Amiga, Mac, Tandy, commedore, Atari pcs didn't stand a chance.
 
While we're at it:






Ah man, that Peter Molyneux doc is sooooo good. Learned a lot watching it; pretty sad what's become of his legacy these days. People seem to remember more for the controversy surrounding the latter Fable games than the games themselves or his role in them.

To be fair the PS1 and the Saturn couldn't run Ridge Racer and Daytona either lol.

RR1 wasn't really an issue for PS1 because the arcade board Namco made it on was just slightly stronger than PS1 and based around a lot of the same performance targets.

By comparison, the gulf between Model 2 and Saturn was almost literally a full generational leap (or just about). You were never going to get near arcade-perfect visuals of Model 2 games on any of the Big 3 at that time, certainly not Saturn. Even the best of its Model 2 racing ports like Sega Rally were noticeably cut down from the arcade version visually.

Sometimes it makes me think that they should've designed those games with the Titan board as the base and then up-ported to Model 2 for upgraded visual/feature releases a bit afterwards. Say, Titan release, then enhanced Saturn port 6 months/1 year later, then a Model 2 upgraded version 6 months/1 year after that.

It's always easier to port up than port down.

Still waiting for evidence on the Model 1 running on Nvidia hardware

You definitely misread that quote; I said it inspired efforts such as Nvidia's first graphics card. Inspired, as in conjuring a point of reference or sparking ideas and principals to carry forward iterative on other products, in this particular example.

I NEVER said nor implied the NV1 used Model 1 circuitry right on the card, so you can stop with that.

Err, no, the Lynx was straight out brought by Atari, there was not partnership. Epyx had a cool device and Atari said "give me." . Which also caused it be be delayed one year from when it was supposed to. Curious what would have happened if Atari was not having Tramiel infighting and launched in in 85.

That just supports the point that Atari did not do their own internal R&D with things such as the Lynx and later the Jaguar (they did do more with the Jaguar internally, actually, so I can't say they didn't do any internal R&D there). And whether they were outright purchases or longer-term collaborative efforts (which I'm willing to admit with the Lynx it was more of the former), that is still a form of partnership.

And it likely would've benefited Atari to have done a larger collaborative partnership with Epyx for that hardware to iron out problems and hit better power targets at lower costs. Never mind that they did end up with a form of longer-term partnership with Epyx, who developed several games for the Lynx, and later the Jaguar and Jaguar CD (Blue Lightning for example).

So, yes, that would mean the Amiga has stood the test of time. We're still getting new games.

And that should pretty much answer the question altogether. Amiga, MegaDrive, SNES, Neo Geo, PC-Engine, Saturn, Dreamcast, Jaguar, NES...all of these systems are still getting new releases. Some extremely high-quality ones as well, ones that would've commanded AAA pricing and stature if they were retail games for their respective systems back in the day.

The Amiga in particular, I'm pretty sure is still used by some Jungle/DnB producers even today who rock analog setups, because a lot of them and some musicians in other genres used Amigas in their music production. It would be really cool to see a return of those abstract-by-today's-standards 3D animations the Amiga excelled at, but I guess that would be asking too much for so many of today's 3D artists who are spoiled by modern APIs, workflows, UIs and resource-rich machines in terms of GPU power and RAM.

Still though, it'd be nice to see some of those come back.
 
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Nickolaidas

Banned
Dunno, i highly doubt it was outselling the Mega Drive even for a single day in 1993 or 1994 or whenever it was launched in Europe. Early-to-mid 90's were probably the peak of popularity for 16bit consoles.

Also, i know Greece isn't a representative country or anything but the Amiga brand was actually pretty big over here, with the Amiga 500 being a very popular machine. So, for what is worth, i have never seen a CD32 in person. I never saw it back in the day. I never knew a single person having it or anyone knowing someone else having it. I saw at least a couple of Phillips CDIs and even played with one myself but never a CD32. So the idea of it outselling the Mega Drive, even for a short time period, sounds weird to me.

Γεια σου, πατριωτάκι!

I think a huge reason the Amiga sold well in poorer European countries like Greece was the price of the games, and the high-level of piracy for home computers. It was impossible to illegally own a MegaDrive / Genesis game. A Genesis non-used AAA game used to cost 20 thousands drachmas (about 70 dollars - back in the 90s!), while an Amiga game used to cost about 2.5 thousand drachmas (about 10 dollars - back in the 90s). And if you pirated it? Chances are it would cost about a single dollar.

So, basically, the Greek's options to buy a video game were:
- Buy one for 70 dollars for the Genesis
- Buy one for 10 dollars for the Amiga
- Pirate one for one dollar for the Amiga

To give you an idea, as a teen in Greece - in the early 90s - my allowance was about 4 dollars each week. So, yeaah … if I wanted to buy a Genesis game, I would have to save for about 20 weeks. Almost half a year.

Which is why it's a no-brainer why home-computers in the 80s till the mid 90s were much more popular in poorer European countries.
 
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RR1 wasn't really an issue for PS1 because the arcade board Namco made it on was just slightly stronger than PS1 and based around a lot of the same performance targets.

By comparison, the gulf between Model 2 and Saturn was almost literally a full generational leap (or just about). You were never going to get near arcade-perfect visuals of Model 2 games on any of the Big 3 at that time, certainly not Saturn. Even the best of its Model 2 racing ports like Sega Rally were noticeably cut down from the arcade version visually.

Sometimes it makes me think that they should've designed those games with the Titan board as the base and then up-ported to Model 2 for upgraded visual/feature releases a bit afterwards.

The Saturn was originally designed to run Model 1 and Scaling titles, the only reason why Sega shifted and tried porting Model 2 and other powerful arcade software to the Saturn was because competitors were already beyond that point.

Non-textured 3D only lasted a short time. Everyone already moved to more complex 3D games. Atari made the same mistake with the design of the Jaguar, but unlike Sega, couldn't have done anything to improve the final product and the 68k bottled-necked it's most powerful chips, Tom and Jerry.

In hindsight I think Sega made a huge mistake with how they handled the Saturn. What they should have done is take Model 1 games, and less taxing Model 2 games, then used the strength of the Saturn to to make new and improved versions with more polygons, better animations, complex backgrounds, and textures.

An example of this would be the first Virtua Fighter, which was ported to the Saturn with virtually zero improvements.



The Saturn version is only marginally better than the 32X version which was already downgraded in some aspects (both the original and the Remix ver.).

While VF2 was clearly too much for the Saturn to handle, the Saturn port showed that the Saturn could do wayyyyyyy better than the graphics displayed in Virtua Fighter 1, so they could have done a lot more with that Saturn port, especially since outside of japan VF1 and VF2 released on the Saturn the same year, and likely caused some confusion.

I think what ruined the Saturn is that Sega didn't really make games with the Saturns hardware in mind, and instead porting down from hardware that was a lot more advanced than the Saturn as long as it was playable. I'm also not sure why Sega didn't port System 32 and Multi-32 2D games to the Saturn considering it's capabilities, and instead porting 80's games like Galaxy Force and Outrun.

This also goes back to the AMIGA.

The Amiga in the last couple years, was trying really hard to push outdated and closed hardware to match consoles and PCs, but even when Commodore put out the best hardware it could, the Amiga struggled with even Pre-Doom level games. The Amiga couldn't even run Blake Stone.

The best we saw during the Amigas lifespan was Alien Breed, which was slow, pixelated, and washed out. Instead Amiga should have pushed for the 3D it was good at, and took advantage of it's above average 2D capabilities.

This is the lesson that companies have to learn, a business model focusing primarily on trying to catch-up to the competition doesn't often work.
 

Shifty

Member
Is there any benefit in quad vs triangle rendering?

I thought quad failed because it was too hard for game devs.
Not really. Since triangles are the simplest convex polygon, they're also the simplest to derive rasterization algorithms for. Being the simplest also makes them the most flexible, since you can build any other polygon - convex or otherwise - from a set of triangles.

Quad-based renderers tend to be the way they are because they're built on hardware that wasn't made with 3D rendering in mind, like the Saturn.

Its drawing engine deals in 2D sprites, but can apply a 'transform' to them- think the position, rotation, scale, shear, etc. tools in photoshop. With that, you can warp a flat image so it looks like it's being displayed in 3D space, but as far as the renderer cares it's still just 2D.

So, Saturn developers abused the hell out of that functionality to apply perspective transforms to tons of sprites and compose 3D scenes from them, the absolute mad lads.

Digital Foundry Retro's Tomb Raider episode has a section (timestamped) that illustrates this really well by turning off the perspective transform for all the sprites:

 
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Is there any benefit in quad vs triangle rendering?

I thought quad failed because it was too hard for game devs.


No, most tools are based in triangles due to the fast and real-time nature in games, while in films 3D is usually done in Quads because of much slower rendering (could be hours) and no need to do anything in real-time since it's going to be a movie you play at a theater or at home that's prerecorded.

The 3DO and Saturn both used Quads for 3D, and where the only gaming systems that did. The difference was that the 3DO actually drew polygons naively with Quads, while the Saturn did not and it drew it's quads from distorted sprites. This is why some people think the Saturns 3D isn't 'real' but that's another discussion.

The 3DO was designed with Quads in mind, which is why the systems slow processor doesn't hinder it from creating games that can match early PSX games, and why it was one of the easiest systems to develop for at the time. 3DO company preparing tools ahead of time helped a lot as well.

The Saturn was originally a system that focused on model 1 tier 3D and fast sprite technology, when they upgraded the system with an additional VDP, this placed the Saturns capabilities beyond the 3DO, but it would take a lot of time and money to get games that would display this advantage. When you look at Saturn games in action, assuming the Saturn and the 3DO are using the same display setup, the 3D on the Saturn is worse than the PS1's. It's not clean, it's jagged, it's blurry, it's smushed, it's pixelated, it's static, and so on.

On the 3DO the graphics are much cleaner on average, not perfect but just looking at a car in Need For Speed gives you 3D graphics that are smooth and stable. Interpolation helps with that as well.

Since the Saturn has to draw polygons with distorted sprites, and the base hardware wasn't built for complex 3D, developers had to put in extra effort to program for all 3 chips and work around the architecture to produce results. This is why many 3D games on the Saturn where very subpar.

If you put in time, you could potentially come out with better results, as seen with late Saturn games, but most developers had zero interest in wasting time and money to put out decent looking Saturn games that would still be behind the PS1 and N64.

So it's not so much that quads were the issue, but rather Sega's architecture was an issue with Saturn development, as the 3DO didn't have any of the Saturns development problems and it also used Quads..
 

petran79

Banned
I can imagine it outselling MegaDrive (and by proxy, SNES) on its launch day in at least a couple of territories, probably Greece for example since as you say Amiga was a strong brand there. But then it definitely would've dropped off afterwards. Like for example I don't know how strong the Amiga brand was in Germany but CD32 only did about 25,000 units there in its lifetime.

I remember a page of a German computer magazine pdf stating that Amiga 500 outsold the MegaDrive in Germany, both having around 1 million sales

Γεια σου, πατριωτάκι!

I think a huge reason the Amiga sold well in poorer European countries like Greece was the price of the games, and the high-level of piracy for home computers. It was impossible to illegally own a MegaDrive / Genesis game. A Genesis non-used AAA game used to cost 20 thousands drachmas (about 70 dollars - back in the 90s!), while an Amiga game used to cost about 2.5 thousand drachmas (about 10 dollars - back in the 90s). And if you pirated it? Chances are it would cost about a single dollar.

So, basically, the Greek's options to buy a video game were:
- Buy one for 70 dollars for the Genesis
- Buy one for 10 dollars for the Amiga
- Pirate one for one dollar for the Amiga

To give you an idea, as a teen in Greece - in the early 90s - my allowance was about 4 dollars each week. So, yeaah … if I wanted to buy a Genesis game, I would have to save for about 20 weeks. Almost half a year.

Which is why it's a no-brainer why home-computers in the 80s till the mid 90s were much more popular in poorer European countries.

One reason arcades were relatively cheap in Greece too, at least till the mid-90s. You did not even need to own a gaming system if you had an arcade mall nearby. Eg a SNES game like Donkey Kong Country cost 100 dollars. An arcade coin was equal to 9 cents.

Whereas in Germany arcades in cities were restricted to adults only and hence Amiga and consoles were the best way to experience arcade games
 

Havoc2049

Member
TBF at the time of the early '90s Atari didn't have much of internal dev teams, either (the console side, anyway). Hardware like the Lynx were done by external teams that Atari then arranged partnerships with, but Atari themselves did very little R&D on them internally. Most of the notable games for Jaguar, like AvP and Tempest 2000, were contractual gigs with 3rd parties (as 2nd-party contract releases, I suppose).
That just supports the point that Atari did not do their own internal R&D with things such as the Lynx and later the Jaguar (they did do more with the Jaguar internally, actually, so I can't say they didn't do any internal R&D there). And whether they were outright purchases or longer-term collaborative efforts (which I'm willing to admit with the Lynx it was more of the former), that is still a form of partnership.

And it likely would've benefited Atari to have done a larger collaborative partnership with Epyx for that hardware to iron out problems and hit better power targets at lower costs. Never mind that they did end up with a form of longer-term partnership with Epyx, who developed several games for the Lynx, and later the Jaguar and Jaguar CD (Blue Lightning for example).

ATD (Cybermorph and Battlemorph) was the 2nd party co-developer of Blue Lightning for the Jaguar CD. Epyx was dead and gone by the time the Jaguar came out. Atari published probably around 90% of all the games on the Lynx and Jaguar. Atari did have some 1st party games during that time as well. For 2nd party titles, Atari took care of all of the production side and game testing of all the titles they released and would even assist in the programming and other aspects of game development as well. It was more of a co-developer partnership with 2nd party studios when it came to game development. Like Blue Lightning on the Jaguar CD for example, one of the producers, John Skruch and one of the artist, David West and all the game testers were all Atari employees.

When Jeff Minter developed Tempest 2000 and the Virtual Light Machine for the Jaguar CD, he was an Atari employee and worked out of Atari HQ in Silicon Valley. The producer of Alien vs Predator, James “Purple” Hampton, was also an Atari employee and he had to get heavily involved in the development of AVP, as Rebellion was sending Atari a bunch of buggy code. Hampton is credited for turning AVP from a buggy mess, into a great game.
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Ya, C64 and then Amiga were the best computers at the time, but it never caught on when I was young. I knew people who had a C64, but I don't think I knew one person with an Amiga, but everyone knew Amiga's had the best looking games. But a bunch of us had Apples and PC XT and 286s. I don't think Amiga ever caught on in Canada.

For faster better looking games, most of us also had consoles like NES, Genesis and SNES.

No point getting an Amiga anymore when Genesis/SNES were rocking. And when PC gaming took off when CDs and Win 95 were the norm, Amiga had already disappeared.

It was all Windows gaming and consoles, and PS1 just coming out.

ONe day, I'll read up on the whole Commodore/Amiga collapse. Should be a fun ride because on a purely home computing basis, Amigas ran laps around Apples and PCs at the time. Way better sound, visuals and games.
 
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Ya, C64 and then Amiga were the best computers at the time, but it never caught on when I was young. I knew people who had a C64, but I don't think I knew one person with an Amiga, but everyone knew Amiga's had the best looking games. But a bunch of us had Apples and PC XT and 286s. I don't think Amiga ever caught on in Canada.

For faster better looking games, most of us also had consoles like NES, Genesis and SNES.

No point getting an Amiga anymore when Genesis/SNES were rocking. And when PC gaming took off when CDs and Win 95 were the norm, Amiga had already disappeared.

It was all Windows gaming and consoles, and PS1 just coming out.

ONe day, I'll read up on the whole Commodore/Amiga collapse. Should be a fun ride because on a purely home computing basis, Amigas ran laps around Apples and PCs at the time. Way better sound, visuals and games.

Why are you listing the NES? That was an outdated machine when it was released and more outdated when it was re-released outside Japan.

As for the C64, from what I understand it was cheaper and very popular than it's direct competition, however it seems the Atari 8-bit line was more powerful.

Amiga 500 was basically a more powerful Genesis, so when the 1200 came out the Genesis was pretty much left behind outside of Speed.

The SNES took about a year to get in gear but when it did the Amiga was a very hard sell in countries the SNES sold well in. The SNES was cheaper and most of it's games were more impressive while the Amiga was getting a bunch of shovelware titles from devs that didn't understand the potential of the more powerful hardware.

It's even more interesting when you consider the fact the Amiga could do 3D without a superFX chip, yet only a handful of developers even bothered. That's what happens when there's no quality control. If Amiga had operated like a games company things MIGHT have been different, but the Amiga was trying to take over the business market PC had in spades.
 
One thing about the Amiga I forgot about.

Amiga trying to be a business computer throughout most of it's life instead of strictly being a gaming and media machine was likely the number 1 stupidest decision the higherups at Commodore made. Bar none.

Why? Because the C64 couldn't even really get anywhere in that market, which even Atari was able to do with a small, insignificant piece of the pie, while PC's, Macs, Acorns in Europe, and Nec in japan, were all taking chunks of the business share.

The C64 was considered a "toy" because it was flashy and was a popular gaming device that was dirt cheap. While the Amiga was expensive, it was clearly built with games in mind as well as media, which business users outside graphics design had little interest in. Even it's interface was criticized by business users, so the fact Commodore though the Amiga 1000 and 500 would even have a chance in the business market was insane.

But what gets me is by 1989, this was obvious, it was very clear that Amiga was not considered a serious computer, instead buyers gave it the reputation of being a media and gaming machine. So instead of going in that direction capitalizing on it, they still tried to break into the business market, after nearly 5 years of failing. It's even worse when you consider most of their business attempts in software and hardware were costly and every failure was money Commodore wouldn't get back.

When they were running out of money, the only thing top staff at Commodore could find to save the company was to produce a new product aiming specifically for the gaming market. Heh, this is one of the most poorly run tech companies ever conceived by man. Even then they still had computers on the side while the CD32 released JUST IN CASE, which of course didn't work and never made any logical sense, were all the executives on cocaine?

As a result of such a dumb decision, they screwed themselves. They needed, according to one ex-Commodore staffer, 300,000 CD32 units to possibly save the company from ruin, but that was not guaranteed. However, because of that last line of production toward business users, Commodore ran out of cash before the CCD32 launch, and was not able to negotiate better deals with suppliers, so they were only able to make 100,000 units or so of the CD32!

This is the type of story you would read in a fictional book where the author gives a hypothetical scenario a company should never follow to avoid closing shop. But this would be one of the examples that people would laugh at because it sounds completely ridiculous.

But it happened in real life! The only company that fucked up worse than Commodore in tech that I can think of is AOL. This is a real thing that happened! People actually made decisions that never made any sense and thought it would work! But they already had evidence it wouldn't for years!
 
I said it inspired efforts such as Nvidia's first graphics card. Inspired, as in conjuring a point of reference or sparking ideas and principals to carry forward iterative on other products, in this particular example.

I NEVER said nor implied the NV1 used Model 1 circuitry right on the card, so you can stop with that.

Yes you did.

First off the first sentence is just bizarre.

Secondly, you not only said that Nvidia and Sega worked together to make the first influential 3D accelerator card as quoted: Lie.

But when I mentioned the Nv1 (which you didn't name so you didn't even know what it was called until I mentioned it) was not influential you literally responded with the Model 1 as being influential as if the NV1 was in it.

So yes you did say/imply that the Model 1 was using the Nv1, and just like lying to another user saying you were the first to mention NBA Jam and MK in this thread, you got caught and are trying to scramble.

You had a poster correcting you on Atari's "lack of devs" as well. Not a good thread for you I'm afraid.

And that's that.

I knew people who had a C64, but I don't think I knew one person with an Amiga, but everyone knew Amiga's had the best looking games.

For some reason Commodore never released a cheap mass market priced Amiga model. If they had, they might have stayed alive a few years longer.
 
I think what ruined the Saturn is that Sega didn't really make games with the Saturns hardware in mind, and instead porting down from hardware that was a lot more advanced than the Saturn as long as it was playable. I'm also not sure why Sega didn't port System 32 and Multi-32 2D games to the Saturn considering it's capabilities, and instead porting 80's games like Galaxy Force and Outrun.

While that's definitely true in the sense of the arcade ports they did (also in that regard, a mistake they did with many of them was having very few extras for the home releases: even at the beginning Namco knew to enhance their arcade ports with tons of extras that were home-exclusive, especially with later releases like Tekken 3), they technically did make games from the start exclusively with Saturn in mind. Panzer Dragoon, Astal, Clockwork Orange a few examples.

But I think the perception that they didn't do those kind of games too frequently (besides the fact they did have a lot of arcade ports) is because their biggest pushes with the system during holiday seasons were the arcade conversions. Even when they were releasing NiGHTS, during the holiday season that year I think it was the arcade ports that got the most coverage.

I think both SEGA and the media at the time were a bit guilty of creating that scenario, especially one that's stuck around in hindsight. SEGA set those (relatively unrealistic) expectations on themselves since they were the ones pushing the "arcade-at-home" experience, so that obviously meant they would've created expectations for people to expect Saturn to get arcade-perfect ports of Model 2 games, their most recent board at that time. And because of that the media had those same expectations.

That's the big reason I feel why SEGA spent so much time with arcade conversions and pushed them to the forefront, but I think the efforts between arcade ports (I'm not counting Saturn games that were later ported to the Titan or may've been released on Titan first but developed with Saturn in mind) and console-exclusive games from them was relatively even. Yeah, you had VF, VF2, Virtua Cop 1 & 2, Fighters Megamix, Vipers, Last Bronx, HOTD etc., but there were also PD, Zwei, Saga, Deep Fear, Astal, NiGHTS, Burning Rangers, Rayearth, BUG!, Mr.Bones, Scud etc.

This also goes back to the AMIGA.

The Amiga in the last couple years, was trying really hard to push outdated and closed hardware to match consoles and PCs, but even when Commodore put out the best hardware it could, the Amiga struggled with even Pre-Doom level games. The Amiga couldn't even run Blake Stone.

The best we saw during the Amigas lifespan was Alien Breed, which was slow, pixelated, and washed out. Instead Amiga should have pushed for the 3D it was good at, and took advantage of it's above average 2D capabilities.

This is the lesson that companies have to learn, a business model focusing primarily on trying to catch-up to the competition doesn't often work.

True, and I think adding to that is the fact Commodore didn't have a 1st-party software development team for video games, so if they wanted Amiga games that were designed exclusively with the Amiga hardware in mind, it would've had to come from a 3rd party or through some sort of partnership with one of them (similar to what we saw between Sony and Insomniac this generation)..

AFAIK, however, they never did this, and it didn't help they didn't want to position the Amiga line as gaming computers. Which is crazy, because since you bring up 3D: if they had done so, a lot of the early innovations with 3D gaming we associate with the PC and arcade scenes, could've possibly happened in the Amiga scene. I get that rendering 3D isn't quite the same as applying real-time 3D, but something that can do the former can do at least some of the latter, and the Amiga was very strong at the former for its day.

I remember a page of a German computer magazine pdf stating that Amiga 500 outsold the MegaDrive in Germany, both having around 1 million sales

Now I can believe this on face value, because the 500 was a microcomputer, Amiga was arguably the biggest microcomputer brand in Europe at the time, and microcomputers still held an edge over dedicated videogame consoles even with the 16-bit marketshare gains of MegaDrive and SNES (all things considered).

But the 500 is not the CD32 . This point of contention wouldn't even be a thing if a certain person with an 'A' (oddly appropriate) starting off their username, who brought up that point, had even a lick of sense to provide sources verifying their claim (or most of their other claims, to be quite honest) ;)
 
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While that's definitely true in the sense of the arcade ports they did (also in that regard, a mistake they did with many of them was having very few extras for the home releases: even at the beginning Namco knew to enhance their arcade ports with tons of extras that were home-exclusive, especially with later releases like Tekken 3), they technically did make games from the start exclusively with Saturn in mind. Panzer Dragoon, Astal, Clockwork Orange a few examples.

But I think the perception that they didn't do those kind of games too frequently (besides the fact they did have a lot of arcade ports) is because their biggest pushes with the system during holiday seasons were the arcade conversions. Even when they were releasing NiGHTS, during the holiday season that year I think it was the arcade ports that got the most coverage.

I think both SEGA and the media at the time were a bit guilty of creating that scenario, especially one that's stuck around in hindsight. SEGA set those (relatively unrealistic) expectations on themselves since they were the ones pushing the "arcade-at-home" experience, so that obviously meant they would've created expectations for people to expect Saturn to get arcade-perfect ports of Model 2 games, their most recent board at that time. And because of that the media had those same expectations.

That's the big reason I feel why SEGA spent so much time with arcade conversions and pushed them to the forefront, but I think the efforts between arcade ports (I'm not counting Saturn games that were later ported to the Titan or may've been released on Titan first but developed with Saturn in mind) and console-exclusive games from them was relatively even. Yeah, you had VF, VF2, Virtua Cop 1 & 2, Fighters Megamix, Vipers, Last Bronx, HOTD etc., but there were also PD, Zwei, Saga, Deep Fear, Astal, NiGHTS, Burning Rangers, Rayearth, BUG!, Mr.Bones, Scud etc.

Those games were not pushed, Sega pushed the hell out of arcade ports for the Saturn everywhere because they wanted to make it seem like their machine was powerful, and as good or better than the competition. Games like Panzer Dragoon were thrown aside for arcade ports or for games that attempted to break into new sub-genres like BUG! with 3D platforming.

The Saturn was originally not going to do much better than Virtua Fighter 1 and games like Galaxy Force. While the Saturn was in development that WAS the arcade-experience at home and they still could have pushed that given how it took the PS1 2 years to finally start producing games that showed a gap from Early 3D PC's.

They wanted to catch the PlayStation instead of focusing on unique experiences, so they ended up getting the worse versions of nearly every 3D game making the system a hard sell. The 3DO didn't do that at all, and was able to have several multiplatform games that ran better than the Saturn and PS1 versions due to its unique feature set. Sega was trying to win a battle they already lost, if you run marketing on direct arcade ports against a machine that's more powerful, you will always have the weaker port, and the competitor will be what consumers will buy..


True, and I think adding to that is the fact Commodore didn't have a 1st-party software development team for video games, so if they wanted Amiga games that were designed exclusively with the Amiga hardware in mind, it would've had to come from a 3rd party or through some sort of partnership with one of them (similar to what we saw between Sony and Insomniac this generation)..

AFAIK, however, they never did this, and it didn't help they didn't want to position the Amiga line as gaming computers. Which is crazy, because since you bring up 3D: if they had done so, a lot of the early innovations with 3D gaming we associate with the PC and arcade scenes, could've possibly happened in the Amiga scene. I get that rendering 3D isn't quite the same as applying real-time 3D, but something that can do the former can do at least some of the latter, and the Amiga was very strong at the former for its day.

The biggest issue is Commodore never did much marketing for gaming despite supporting developers to create games for the platform. They did spend a lot of cash, burning it even, to market the Amiga to corporate users. Which by 1990, they already tried and failed doing so for 5 years, and would still do it for another 5 years until they ceased to exist.

Games like Hunter were extremely innovative, yet Atari had the marketing deal for that game. Commodore never had a marketing deal for any title because they wanted to be a business machine, and they would make themselves go bankrupt to be a business machine, even if their staff already had data showing they would never success in trying to be a business machine.

Even IBM was losing ground to clones by the 90's and losing revenue, so I have no idea why Commodore was salivating so much wanting grab the business segment of the market. They never had a significant portion of it since the Vic-20, Commodore machines were "toys" in the eyes of enterprise users, and that never changed.
 
Hunter runs better on the ST.
The framerate is only marginally better, the ST's sound effects are atrocious:





The Amiga's sound effects create an atmosphere that far outweighs the slight framerate difference:




The sound of the sea and the seagulls alone make the Amiga-version of Hunter the superior experience.
 
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Those games were not pushed, Sega pushed the hell out of arcade ports for the Saturn everywhere because they wanted to make it seem like their machine was powerful, and as good or better than the competition. Games like Panzer Dragoon were thrown aside for arcade ports or for games that attempted to break into new sub-genres like BUG! with 3D platforming.

The Saturn was originally not going to do much better than Virtua Fighter 1 and games like Galaxy Force. While the Saturn was in development that WAS the arcade-experience at home and they still could have pushed that given how it took the PS1 2 years to finally start producing games that showed a gap from Early 3D PC's.

They wanted to catch the PlayStation instead of focusing on unique experiences, so they ended up getting the worse versions of nearly every 3D game making the system a hard sell. The 3DO didn't do that at all, and was able to have several multiplatform games that ran better than the Saturn and PS1 versions due to its unique feature set. Sega was trying to win a battle they already lost, if you run marketing on direct arcade ports against a machine that's more powerful, you will always have the weaker port, and the competitor will be what consumers will buy..




The biggest issue is Commodore never did much marketing for gaming despite supporting developers to create games for the platform. They did spend a lot of cash, burning it even, to market the Amiga to corporate users. Which by 1990, they already tried and failed doing so for 5 years, and would still do it for another 5 years until they ceased to exist.

Games like Hunter were extremely innovative, yet Atari had the marketing deal for that game. Commodore never had a marketing deal for any title because they wanted to be a business machine, and they would make themselves go bankrupt to be a business machine, even if their staff already had data showing they would never success in trying to be a business machine.

Even IBM was losing ground to clones by the 90's and losing revenue, so I have no idea why Commodore was salivating so much wanting grab the business segment of the market. They never had a significant portion of it since the Vic-20, Commodore machines were "toys" in the eyes of enterprise users, and that never changed.

No I agree they weren't pushed; my statement was more along the lines of absolutes regarding just in general what their 1st-party output actually was, all things considered. They didn't push their original stuff hard, but that doesn't mean it wasn't made. It just means the arcade ports were front and center, and because SEGA had a reason to do that (prove it could outdo PS1 in 3D when it couldn't, at least in most instances outside of select games for certain periods of time, i.e VF2 with the hi-res mode for a fighting game at that time on home systems), the media focused on the arcade ports primarily as a result, as did gamers.

But it was a losing proposition both because they were chasing PS1, and because no matter how good the home ports were they were never going to match the visual fidelity of the arcade games since they were based on hardware a generation ahead of Saturn (for 3D games).

Yeah I'm aware sadly that's how they chose to market the Amiga. I suppose it's because they saw the business sector as so profitable, as it was for IBM, Apple, Atari etc. during the '70s and '80s. But there just wasn't much a market in the business sectors for the type of features the Amiga excelled at when it first released, and for a long time afterwards. And eventually Apple would sweep in and capitalize on the creatives and education markets as their prime targets in marketing and distribution later on.

The frustrating part is those are the same markets Commodore could've targeted primarily, if they were so adverse to pushing gaming as a sector worth putting serious marketing into. They saw all these gamers and creatives utilizing their systems for those purposes yet kept trying to chase business professions as their crown jewel, ignoring good potential right at their front door because they wanted to chase after a car that never saw them in its rear view mirror.

And by the time they kinda-sorta made that pivot to audiences who were with them a long time, they didn't have the money to capitalize, so others swept in. It's stuff like that which makes certain alternative scenarios frustrating in retrospect.
 
The framerate is only marginally better, the ST's sound effects are atrocious:





The Amiga's sound effects create an atmosphere that far outweighs the slight framerate difference:




The sound of the sea and the seagulls alone make the Amiga-version of Hunter the superior experience.


Most people like getting the version that looks and runs better. Everyone already knew Amiga had superior audio to the ST for years before Hunter came out.

Either way no one really hyped up Hunter so it's a game that never got a chance to be popular despite Atari having some kind of deal with the company that made it iirc. I only know a dozen or so people who actually played it when it was relevant. Sad but all those 3D Amiga games were doomed from the start, especially after Alone in the Dark came out on PC and got mass coverage.


No I agree they weren't pushed; my statement was more along the lines of absolutes regarding just in general what their 1st-party output actually was, all things considered. They didn't push their original stuff hard, but that doesn't mean it wasn't made. It just means the arcade ports were front and center, and because SEGA had a reason to do that (prove it could outdo PS1 in 3D when it couldn't, at least in most instances outside of select games for certain periods of time, i.e VF2 with the hi-res mode for a fighting game at that time on home systems), the media focused on the arcade ports primarily as a result, as did gamers.

But it was a losing proposition both because they were chasing PS1, and because no matter how good the home ports were they were never going to match the visual fidelity of the arcade games since they were based on hardware a generation ahead of Saturn (for 3D games).

Yeah I'm aware sadly that's how they chose to market the Amiga. I suppose it's because they saw the business sector as so profitable, as it was for IBM, Apple, Atari etc. during the '70s and '80s. But there just wasn't much a market in the business sectors for the type of features the Amiga excelled at when it first released, and for a long time afterwards. And eventually Apple would sweep in and capitalize on the creatives and education markets as their prime targets in marketing and distribution later on.

The frustrating part is those are the same markets Commodore could've targeted primarily, if they were so adverse to pushing gaming as a sector worth putting serious marketing into. They saw all these gamers and creatives utilizing their systems for those purposes yet kept trying to chase business professions as their crown jewel, ignoring good potential right at their front door because they wanted to chase after a car that never saw them in its rear view mirror.

And by the time they kinda-sorta made that pivot to audiences who were with them a long time, they didn't have the money to capitalize, so others swept in. It's stuff like that which makes certain alternative scenarios frustrating in retrospect.

Even if we gave them more time, by 1992 when the 1200 came out the Amiga was 7 years old, they were already known as a media and gaming company because theirr main product excelled in those areas. Commodore were already were losing money due to poor operations. All they had to do was pivot right at the release of the 1200 and the CD drives, and they would have awesome 2D and early 3D games with insane audio quality at a cheaper price than any competitor.

Even when Gateway brought Amiga after Commodores collapse, the staff they brought over to run that division decided to ignore the market Commodore finally pivoted to when they died, gamers with the CD32, and pivoted BACK to targeting enterprise only to finally fail one last time.

Commodore always was a joke back in the day in office settings. The C64 was a huge deal that sold well pretty much everywhere, including some African countries, and only did poorly relatively in Asia. Games and audio were a major appeal of the C64 and Commodore did nothing with it other than release a poorly marketed game console that allowed you to easily play C64 games on a TV, the C64GS. They never made created 1st-party teams, they never really marketed toward gaming, they would at best use proxies to attack Atari and Nintendo, and wanted the C64 to be an entry level business machine for corporate and education.

The C64 and the Amiga had tons of games, tons of third-party software for graphics design, video editing, and more. Yet, Commodore did nothing with it. During the years between the C64's peak and the release of the C128 and announcement of the Amiga, Commodore had tons of money and could have brought pretty much any company they wanted to. Goes bankrupt less than 10 years later.

I always found it to be the most spectacular failure in tech. Mainly because you keep asking yourself how this happened, so it's always interesting to hear from ex-Commodore engineers, salesmen, retailers, and other key people on what the fuck was happening over at HQ.

Sega was mismanaged as well but they were nothing like this. You could at least comprehend what happened for the most part, but Commodore is jarring to say the least. It's even worse when you learn their market research already had the data and they always ignored the data since the early 80's.

As for the Saturn, I think a big issue with it putting downports at the forefront is many Model 2 games had limited to zero replay value and were spectacle games. This means that many games in the Saturns library wouldn't really have much content or a reason to play them again after the first 1 or 2 times. Sony was advertising many different types of games all the time while most of Segas ads were hey guys, look at this compromised model 2 port.

Many popular 3DO and PS1, and later N64, games weren't even in the arcade. In fact, the top 20 of all those systems didn't have many arcade games included. Going the arcade port route only works if your hardware at least matches or comes close to matching the arcade hardware. Look at all those 60fps Saturn fighters that replaced polygons with gradients, sprites, or empty backgrounds.
 

Jigsaah

Gold Member
Only really as nostalgia for those of us who had them. I don't think other people would see the appeal, since Amiga games didn't have an "Identity", like Sega or Nintendo.
I think this one is before my time...or maybe I just wasn't aware because I was like 5 years old when this was out maybe?

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Looked it up...oh shit I was 3 years old.
 
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I am currently going through some of the earlier Amiga titles I missed out on. Mind Walker has got to be among the most interesting.




A really stylish title from 1986.

The Faery Tale Adventure is also incredibly impressive for its time (1987):

 
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