Freedom Gate Co.
Banned
The Amiga debate ended long ago. It's been shouted as a quality gaming machine by a loud minority that are still holding on to the days where there was something arguably better than PC's, or those who really want to justify their purchases, or Europeans.
Amiga started off with no strategy, the original machines had good capabilities but they were clearly made for the time of the original Amigas release, by 1992, several years after the launch of the Genesis and over a year into the SNES, most Amiga games still had the gameplay and the visuals of games from 85-87.
Very few games took advantage of the advancement of hardware, which yes, was superior to the competition, and is why Amiga released two failed gaming consoles to see if they could use this hardware for something profitable. Of course having no vetting and single person nobody dev teams hurt overall quality as well.
The library is a mess, a lot of games are just ports from the ST, DOS, or WIN3, often worse outside of audio, and several titles had stiff controls and many were programmed by like 1 guy who decided to throw some shit together and join a publishing program that had no vetting because Commodore was trying to bury the ST in software regardless of quality since the St was selling more software at a faster rate.
The few games that took advantage of upgrades or the 1200 era were very few, and a lot of them were ports. There were some original titles but nothing that caught the attention of any large number of gamers. This explains the lack of "popular" selling games.
The ST and DOS had top selling titles that brought in many units, while most Amiga games barely could break 50k. They never had a major stand out title during their time of relevancy. We are talking about PC SPEAKER shit tier games on Dos.
The games that could have changed the game for Commodore were 3D games. 3D was a very popular thing at the time and throughout the 90's would dominate gaming talk.
However, the best versions of the 3D games it had were also on the ST or in some cases, DOS/WIN. If you didn't have some later 1200 Amigas or upgraded your machine the gap between the Amiga and ST for 3D games was drastic, and that would include most Amiga owners at the time, those that did have upgraded or later 1200 models would still find the ST version to run better and smoother but the gap was reduced somewhat. This meant that one of the main drivers to adoption at the time was superior on both competitors and are what non-enthusiast are playing those games on today, not the Amiga.
The Amiga has a very similar problem that the Genesis had, where Sega and Commodore made numerous partnerships and threw everything they could at the wall to see what would stick. The only difference is that Sega, mostly due to SOA, was able to save itself with games like Sonic, and partnerships with companies like Midway that brought in MK and Nba Jam, nothing on the Amiga really sold well in any capacity.
While there's an active scene currently among enthusiasts, the average gamer that's interest in old classic computer games and stand out titles are going back to the 64, Speccy, ST, DOS, and the old Atari 8-bit lines. There's almost zero non-enthusiast interest in anything Commodore Amiga related outside a small niche or the CD32 system.
I see more legit non-enthusiast interest in the CD-i ironically. What's funny is even that had some titles people actually brought (Burn:Cycle sold like half a million.)
But still, the Amiga was a starting point and was important, might not have really been much of anything, but it had its uses for media and did get some developers started, so it's not a complete disaster.
Amiga started off with no strategy, the original machines had good capabilities but they were clearly made for the time of the original Amigas release, by 1992, several years after the launch of the Genesis and over a year into the SNES, most Amiga games still had the gameplay and the visuals of games from 85-87.
Very few games took advantage of the advancement of hardware, which yes, was superior to the competition, and is why Amiga released two failed gaming consoles to see if they could use this hardware for something profitable. Of course having no vetting and single person nobody dev teams hurt overall quality as well.
The library is a mess, a lot of games are just ports from the ST, DOS, or WIN3, often worse outside of audio, and several titles had stiff controls and many were programmed by like 1 guy who decided to throw some shit together and join a publishing program that had no vetting because Commodore was trying to bury the ST in software regardless of quality since the St was selling more software at a faster rate.
The few games that took advantage of upgrades or the 1200 era were very few, and a lot of them were ports. There were some original titles but nothing that caught the attention of any large number of gamers. This explains the lack of "popular" selling games.
The ST and DOS had top selling titles that brought in many units, while most Amiga games barely could break 50k. They never had a major stand out title during their time of relevancy. We are talking about PC SPEAKER shit tier games on Dos.
The games that could have changed the game for Commodore were 3D games. 3D was a very popular thing at the time and throughout the 90's would dominate gaming talk.
However, the best versions of the 3D games it had were also on the ST or in some cases, DOS/WIN. If you didn't have some later 1200 Amigas or upgraded your machine the gap between the Amiga and ST for 3D games was drastic, and that would include most Amiga owners at the time, those that did have upgraded or later 1200 models would still find the ST version to run better and smoother but the gap was reduced somewhat. This meant that one of the main drivers to adoption at the time was superior on both competitors and are what non-enthusiast are playing those games on today, not the Amiga.
The Amiga has a very similar problem that the Genesis had, where Sega and Commodore made numerous partnerships and threw everything they could at the wall to see what would stick. The only difference is that Sega, mostly due to SOA, was able to save itself with games like Sonic, and partnerships with companies like Midway that brought in MK and Nba Jam, nothing on the Amiga really sold well in any capacity.
While there's an active scene currently among enthusiasts, the average gamer that's interest in old classic computer games and stand out titles are going back to the 64, Speccy, ST, DOS, and the old Atari 8-bit lines. There's almost zero non-enthusiast interest in anything Commodore Amiga related outside a small niche or the CD32 system.
I see more legit non-enthusiast interest in the CD-i ironically. What's funny is even that had some titles people actually brought (Burn:Cycle sold like half a million.)
But still, the Amiga was a starting point and was important, might not have really been much of anything, but it had its uses for media and did get some developers started, so it's not a complete disaster.