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[Fuchalmania]

Is it too late for mods to rename this thread, "Amiga could never stand the test of time because pure logic shows it was never a good gaming system because it never had a title that sold over 100k units"?

 

[Afro Republican]

He's arguing that the sprite hardware wasn't fast, which might not be completely wrong, but I think that's an unfair comparison.

The 500 came out in 87, and was a stripped down 1000 which came out in 85, basically making the 500 1984 level hardware. Comparing that to systems like the Mega Drive, which has late 80's parts and the Super Nintendo, which had end of 80's-early 90's parts, doesn't make sense.

A better comparison to the speed of the Mega Drive would be the 1200, which is much more capable and faster than the mega drive and would only come out a bit later than the SNES outside of japan. It would give the Neo Geo a run for its money at half the price.

There's a theory that you can upgrade the 1200 or later Amiga models to match the Jaguar, although I've only seen one demo attempt to reach that benchmark, but was never really finished. It would be cool if someone had the time and patience to see if that was possible. The Jaguar got ports and unreleased AGA Amga games early on so it may not be completely out of bounds.

 

[Negotiator]

Is it too late for mods to rename this thread, "Amiga could never stand the test of time because pure logic shows it was never a good gaming system because it never had a title that sold over 100k units"?

Amiga had rampant piracy compared to cartridge-based consoles (basically 0%).

 

[Afro Republican]

Is it too late for mods to rename this thread, "Amiga could never stand the test of time because pure logic shows it was never a good gaming system because it never had a title that sold over 100k units"?

Actually based on Freedoms posts in the past this should be the thread title:

"Amiga is the best computer of all time, the most advanced and sexy, because it doesn't have a Blu Ray drive installed, allowing for safe game disc insertion into the tray without the Blu Ray cancer cancer or diabetes." -Freedom Gate Co.

OR

"As you know Amiga is only remebered because it doesn't have a Blu Ray drive, if it did, three sprites on screen would cut it's GPU by 75% making it so only 2 colors can be on the screen at once, and the OS would crash without extra ram. I checked with experts." -Freedom Gate Co.

If you don't get the joke it's from this thread he made: https://www.neogaf.com/threads/blu-ray-has-been-detrimental-to-the-video-game-industry.1468194/

Also this one:

Why the PlayStation 5 still using Bluray will make most of its revealed specs useless and void, and why they should ditch it for alternatives.

It has been revealed in the same interview as the "PS5 Specs" that the PS5 will continue to use bluray. Not only does that show innovation in the physical space is dead, but will actually be a detriment to the specs "cerny" was touting. I was expecting at least using the niche improved and...

www.neogaf.com

 

[Freedom Gate Co.]

Afterburner looks better on the Megadrive because it was made in-house by SEGA on newer hardware (With Blast Processing). Naturally it was going to be a better port.

Lets not forget that there are crappy Genesis ports of classic Amiga games like Syndicate, Canon Fodder, and Worms.

Amiga:

Genesis:

No.

The Amiga doesn't have anything as fast as any of the early genesis scaler games, especially with as many objects on screen. Developers can't fix a problem that can't be fixed due to Amiga 500 hardware limitations.

 

[Negotiator]

Actually based on Freedoms posts in the past this should be the thread title:

"Amiga is the best computer of all time, the most advanced and sexy, because it doesn't have a Blu Ray drive installed, allowing for safe game disc insertion into the tray without the Blu Ray cancer cancer or diabetes." -Freedom Gate Co.

OR

"As you know Amiga is only remebered because it doesn't have a Blu Ray drive, if it did, three sprites on screen would cut it's GPU by 75% making it so only 2 colors can be on the screen at once, and the OS would crash without extra ram. I checked with experts." -Freedom Gate Co.

If you don't get the joke it's from this thread he made: https://www.neogaf.com/threads/blu-ray-has-been-detrimental-to-the-video-game-industry.1468194/

Also this one:

Why the PlayStation 5 still using Bluray will make most of its revealed specs useless and void, and why they should ditch it for alternatives.

It has been revealed in the same interview as the "PS5 Specs" that the PS5 will continue to use bluray. Not only does that show innovation in the physical space is dead, but will actually be a detriment to the specs "cerny" was touting. I was expecting at least using the niche improved and...

www.neogaf.com

Oh god, he's the "Blu-Ray cancer" meme guy? Thanks for reminding me that.

 

[Birdo]

The Amiga doesn't have anything as fast as any of the early genesis scaler games, especially with as many objects on screen. Developers can't fix a problem that can't be fixed due to Amiga 500 hardware limitations.

Yes, as you keep telling me. And?

I don't give a crap about Genesis games. The Amiga 500/600 was a mid-80's computer with mouse and keybaord. It was more comparable to the Atari ST than the newer Genesis and Snes.

And even then, I think it did pretty well to keep up with the visuals of the newer consoles. Lets not forget that some amazing console games started life on the Amiga, like Flashback and Another World.

 

[silentstorm]

Honestly, that was why a lot of developers didn't try to make platformers or arcade like games that were as fast as their console brethren for the most part and stuck with games that were slower.

Not that computers couldn't have fast games, it just was a bit harder to do, plus, there was a whole keyboard and mouse to use alongside joysticks, and the strength of computers led to genres like simulation, strategy, western RPG's and others florishing in a way that they rarely did in consoles, often times with more depth and complexity, even if consoles still had the odd game or two that were pretty complex, but they were rarer.

And again, looking at videos of games like Lotus Turbo Challenge which are on Kim Justice's top 100 games(saw the video on the first page) list does show that the Amiga could do fast paced sprite based games.

 

[Birdo]

I just remembered that I had my first open-world sandbox experience on the Amiga.

Who remembers this gem? It was like a slower Just Cause

 

[lmimmfn]

Answering the question "Has Amiga stood the test of time?", most definitely yes, i still play my original A1200 from November 1992, in fact its on the desk here beside me .

Play it usually once every 2 weeks, games and deluxe paint/Brilliance.
Was only just playing Ruff & Tumble and Turrican 2 at the weekend, and i love playing games that i never had back in the day but always wanted.
My reflexes aren't what they used to be and damn but games from that era are hard as nails still havnt finished Project-X or Silkworm but can get to the last levels.

I had it in storage up until 5 years ago but have been getting bits and pieces for it since then.

The Amiga vs Megadrive vs SNES argument never really made much sense to me in europe, maybe if i was rich i would have had all 3 and large libraries for all 3, but in reality the console games cost a fortune here vs Amiga game prices and yes a lot of games being copied among friends, but i had a large library of Amiga originals and i would never have been able to amass such a library on a console. Sadly i sold most of those with my old A500

 

[Ivan]

A500 was my childhood, I loved it to death, but it really wasn't that good gaming system when I think about it today.

There was almost no 60 fps games on the amiga. Low framerate was basically the standard. Then, the shittiest controller type ever: one button joystick. Up to jump. Most joysticks were very imprecise and shaped like a flight stick and were too tall. Weird half-circle and diagonal+button combinations for basic moves. Disk swapping.

All that was no big deal for a kid in the 90s, but when Mega Drive and SNES came out, I was shocked by the quality of gaming experience as a whole they offered compared to the Amiga.

Before that, it was nice having arcade ports at home, but I never actually enjoyed playing them, the only satisfying thing was not having to pay quarters, but I still did at the arcades whenever I had the chance.

There were many reasons for that situation on the amiga, but it doesn't matter. Even NES had really polished 60 fps games that were joy to play. Even gameboy did! You could feel those were more premium gaming systems, I'm not gonna lie. Who cares if the reason was the shitty ST port if that's all I can play?

Amiga developers were a few friends in a garage way too often. You could tell in every aspect of game design. Sometimes I even felt there was no actual game desing there - just a sprite that you're controlling and it could look very nice in some examples.

There are gems like on every system, of course, something like swos, cannon fodder etc. Also, there was much more variety compared to console games, If that was your thing. No sidescrollers only situation. But still...

It affected me in a big way, I LOVE IT, but it really wasnt that great experience if I'm being honest. I wished I had something better all the time.

 

[silentstorm]

I think the capabilities of computers and general audience led to a market that eventually stopped focusing on platformers and sometimes didn't have the most talented people working on ports or just console and arcade style games, only in maybe between 2004 and 2008 when Cave Story and Braid were released did you get to see a shift in PC gamer tastes as indie games made more and more platformers, shmups and what have you and more and more people playing them.

And nowadays, you get console style games working just as well on a PC if not better, but PC's are a lot more powerful than they used to be.

As for being made by a group of people or just one person, that's part of the reason why people love Amiga, even in Retro Gamer i remember reading letters about people hating modern games because they didn't have the same soul as they used to when games were 100% the vision of one person or a small group, as it was filled with their personality or something like that, the bad design coming from a small or solo crew is part of the charm.

Though i guess it would be a tough sell to explain that to more modern gamers...or maybe not since indie games are pretty much the modern successor to that idea of a small developer making and selling a game.

 

[Ivan]

It's weird... I'm all for smaller teams and against heartless approach, but the Amiga situation was a bit too much. And I somehow don't feel that today's indies fill the same space. For me, they filled some different void and I (mostly) don't care about them. It's just not the same as some legendary (then small) teams working their best.

 

[Afro Republican]

Platformers were never a big genre, that's why almost every platformer outside Mario clones tried to be a hybrid with another genre and that would be the pull to get the customer or the parents to buy the game.

This is especially true on computers where for the longest time the best platformer that tried to ne neutral was Commander Keen which aged like a fine toasted shit left on your dining room table for 5 years.

Sonic even had to add a new element for it to work and that was speed, just like the arcades.

One reason why I believe that Computers in the 16-bit generation were so slow is because the advancements in computing has taken away the ability to do so.

If you look at 8-bit gaming computers you would have fast games with sprites flying around the screen like someone had a seizure, and that's because the game was using most of the computers hardware. but once you got to the 16-bit consoles computing became much more complicated and you could only use 60% or so of the hardware power on games. If you wanted to push graphics in one area, you were limited by RAM and bus.

This didn't get fixed until Windows 7 honestly, where you could easily divert resources to a game that was running without having to keep an eye on your statistics.

I just remembered that I had my first open-world sandbox experience on the Amiga.

Who remembers this gem? It was like a slower Just Cause

Hunter was a pretty good game but you had to spend some cash to get that game to run fast. I know many people that still loved the game without doing so, but it's just way too slow and jittery for me without enhancements.

The best part about upgrading for 3D games on the Amiga is it helps speed up other 3D games as well so it was a pretty good investment and still is. I do prefer 3D games on an STE most of the time though.

The CD version came out the same time as a Alone in the Dark and while I like me some Alone in the Dark Hunter was the much more ambitious and content rich game.

 

[OldBoyGamer]

If everyone already knows why can't you list any?

The actual fact of the matter is not one Amiga game was a major hit that sold on bar with the better selling ST and DOS/WIn games at the time. The strategy was to pump a bunch of games as fast as possible and because they didn't really have a first-party or any sort of internal management, nor did they promote promising games by third parties themselves usually, you never had a game sell well. The best Amiga games didn't even sell 100k althougnh there's debate one game did with questionable sources.

Meanwhile ST had several games with over 100k, the DOS/Win PC's had games that sold 500k and some that got over 1 million, the SNES had several 5ook games and some that broke 1 million, and the Genesis, the closest relative to the Amiga, had gotten some 500k games and a few million sellers.

You say that this is common knowledge yet you have none to share, weird.

So you’re just saying that the Amiga didn’t have many 100K+ selling games? Ok. Fine. Given that the 16bit computers were disparate in terms of companies that made software, I’m not sure how reliable your sources can be. Unlike the SNES and mega drive, anyone could publish games on the 16bit machines and their sales figures could go unrecorded in terms of historical data.

Regardless, What’s the relevance of the point? This entire thread is made up mostly of people sharing how much they loved the machine and what their favourite games were and just how many great games were in it.

Does your point about sales figures contradict those comments?

 

[Handy Fake]

Heh.

Thoroughly enjoying the ST fanboy choosing this thread as his hill to die on.

 

[silentstorm]

It's weird... I'm all for smaller teams and against heartless approach, but the Amiga situation was a bit too much. And I somehow don't feel that today's indies fill the same space. For me, they filled some different void and I (mostly) don't care about them. It's just not the same as some legendary (then small) teams working their best.

Maybe it's the different way we get them and we talk about them?

Back then, people just liked to get games, whether they were from small developers and big ones, you had games on BBS boards, shareware games, disks with lots of games and demos being on magazines and being covered and reviewed.

But then, AAA games took over on the computer landscape, and when indie games finally came back, there was no shareware scene anymore, people got into them because they were tired of AAA games or they wanted something different, it's pretty much just digital unless it gets a Limited Run release, there is a big Early Acess scene to let players shape the game, and the attention that indie games and developers get feels different from before.

Though in the Early Acess thing, one could say that was always present, you just didn't have to pay for it always, i remember roguelikes just constantly updating as fans gave their feedback and waited for a new update which happened long before Cave Story was a thing, it just wasn't that common.

As for me, i do care about indie games, they are a lot of what i play these days even.

 

[blastprocessor]

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[AquaticSquirrel]

So it's pretty much confirmed then that Freedom Gate Co. is the worst poster on GAF?

His ramblings make him seem the like the somerset of Gaming side.

You can literally disregard 70% of what he says entirely and the other 30% simply invert the meaning to get the truth.

MiyazakiHatesKojima I once heard Freedom Gate Co. say that Kojima wasn't a good game director and should stick to movies!

 

[Freedom Gate Co.]

So you’re just saying that the Amiga didn’t have many 100K+ selling games? Ok. Fine. Given that the 16bit computers were disparate in terms of companies that made software, I’m not sure how reliable your sources can be. Unlike the SNES and mega drive, anyone could publish games on the 16bit machines and their sales figures could go unrecorded in terms of historical data.

Regardless, What’s the relevance of the point? This entire thread is made up mostly of people sharing how much they loved the machine and what their favorite games were and just how many great games were in it.

Does your point about sales figures contradict those comments?

It's pretty easy to find sales figures for several games with some research, and you'll find the upper 60k is basically the highest your going to see.

As I said, this is the fall with commodore not having any internal management, no first-party, and no real third-party partnerships, including advertising relatively popular third party games.

it shouldn't surprise you that barely anything sold, why it failed as a game machine at retail, and why it's hard to really place any identity on the Amiga or mention games that defined it. There's a niche enthusiast community and a nostalgia community and that's basically all the Amiga has currently.

The issue is, people view this as an attack or some fanboy rant (even though I never directly said any system was "superior" to the Amiga")

Yet people will constantly have no issue talking about how poorly run Commodore was and how many bad decisions they made, it's nothing but contradiction. Those bad decisions are why its legacy outside Enthusiast circles and nostalgia heads is burning into pieces and being forgotten.

And yes this does matter hen arguing whether the "Amiga stood the test of time" as much as you want to pretend it doesn't.

Heh.

Thoroughly enjoying the ST fanboy choosing this thread as his hill to die on.

Never compared ST directly to the Amiga.

Compared Amiga being poorly run by Commodore (well known fact) to DOS/ST/Consoles

Still says I'm an ST fanboy.

Yep you're retarded. Not the only one in this thread either, lots of desperation here.

 

[NXGamer]

No.

The Amiga doesn't have anything as fast as any of the early genesis scaler games, especially with as many objects on screen. Developers can't fix a problem that can't be fixed due to Amiga 500 hardware limitations.

It does not need to, it has a vast collection of titles that it excells at and competes with both the Snes and Megadrive. In terms of sound the AMIGA's Paula chip, 8-Bit samples created music and sound clarity the Megadrive could not achieve and this came out almost 5 years AFTER the Amiga. The sound was so good it was really only a small improvement with the SNES's DSP as the AMIGA had been created sampled dance tracks, reverb and mixing way before the SNES was an itch in Nintendo's (and Sony's) pants.

The DMA use and blitter were a key factor in the Amiga being such a competant machine, along with the Copper methods and co-processing features that elevated it above anything at the time. Sure the Megadrive could push more sprites and was an all round better arcade machine, not a surprise coming from the Arcade masters and actual Board design. But many games looked and ran worse on the Megadrive than Amiga, Shadow of the beast, Xenon II James pond 2 and many more. The versatality of the AGS chips and later EGA and on made it the original master of all machines, the Amiga has 100% stood the test of time.

A500 was my childhood, I loved it to death, but it really wasn't that good gaming system when I think about it today.

There was almost no 60 fps games on the amiga. Low framerate was basically the standard. Then, the shittiest controller type ever: one button joystick. Up to jump. Most joysticks were very imprecise and shaped like a flight stick and were too tall. Weird half-circle and diagonal+button combinations for basic moves. Disk swapping.

All that was no big deal for a kid in the 90s, but when Mega Drive and SNES came out, I was shocked by the quality of gaming experience as a whole they offered compared to the Amiga.

Before that, it was nice having arcade ports at home, but I never actually enjoyed playing them, the only satisfying thing was not having to pay quarters, but I still did at the arcades whenever I had the chance.

There were many reasons for that situation on the amiga, but it doesn't matter. Even NES had really polished 60 fps games that were joy to play. Even gameboy did! You could feel those were more premium gaming systems, I'm not gonna lie. Who cares if the reason was the shitty ST port if that's all I can play?

Amiga developers were a few friends in a garage way too often. You could tell in every aspect of game design. Sometimes I even felt there was no actual game desing there - just a sprite that you're controlling and it could look very nice in some examples.

There are gems like on every system, of course, something like swos, cannon fodder etc. Also, there was much more variety compared to console games, If that was your thing. No sidescrollers only situation. But still...

It affected me in a big way, I LOVE IT, but it really wasnt that great experience if I'm being honest. I wished I had something better all the time.

I guess you only played arcade ports based on the above, the Amiga had a huge amount of 60 (well 50 in Europe) titles that ran exceptionally well some even ran progressive and not at fields per second. The Demo scene of the time was always a relevation of just how much it could be pushed in specific circumstances.

Zool 1& 2
James Pond All
Shadow of the best 1& 2
Unreal
X-out
Turrican (my man, Turrican, come on)
Chuck Rock 1 & 2
.........

If games were made with the Amiga as the lead, they were leagues ahead. The issue was at the time the Atari ST was the lead platform and not until later 89/90 did this start to change and many teams targeted the Amiga over the ST.

A cracking machine and a special, speacial time.

 

[Birdo]

Never compared ST directly to the Amiga.

Meanwhile.....

The ST and DOS had top selling titles that brought in many units, while most Amiga games barely could break 50k.

Hurrrrdurrrrr.

 

[_PsiFire_]

I remember playing a game called 'Wizball' on it; really enjoyed that.

Then there's Frost Byte (just had to look it up).

The only other memorable game I played on it was Faery Tale Adventure. Never got too far in that game - so hard.

 

[Freedom Gate Co.]

Meanwhile.....



Hurrrrdurrrrr.

I see you can't read. I didn't compare the ST tot he Amiga directly. You're quote basically proves this 100%.

I also said this

Compared Amiga being poorly run by Commodore (well known fact) to DOS/ST/Consoles

I know you're a bit slow but try to actually keep up with the class before you think you can throw a gotcha at someone.

 

[Thanati]

A500 was my childhood, I loved it to death, but it really wasn't that good gaming system when I think about it today.

There was almost no 60 fps games on the amiga. Low framerate was basically the standard. Then, the shittiest controller type ever: one button joystick. Up to jump. Most joysticks were very imprecise and shaped like a flight stick and were too tall. Weird half-circle and diagonal+button combinations for basic moves. Disk swapping.

All that was no big deal for a kid in the 90s, but when Mega Drive and SNES came out, I was shocked by the quality of gaming experience as a whole they offered compared to the Amiga.

Before that, it was nice having arcade ports at home, but I never actually enjoyed playing them, the only satisfying thing was not having to pay quarters, but I still did at the arcades whenever I had the chance.

There were many reasons for that situation on the amiga, but it doesn't matter. Even NES had really polished 60 fps games that were joy to play. Even gameboy did! You could feel those were more premium gaming systems, I'm not gonna lie. Who cares if the reason was the shitty ST port if that's all I can play?

Amiga developers were a few friends in a garage way too often. You could tell in every aspect of game design. Sometimes I even felt there was no actual game desing there - just a sprite that you're controlling and it could look very nice in some examples.

There are gems like on every system, of course, something like swos, cannon fodder etc. Also, there was much more variety compared to console games, If that was your thing. No sidescrollers only situation. But still...

It affected me in a big way, I LOVE IT, but it really wasnt that great experience if I'm being honest. I wished I had something better all the time.

lol at the “no 60fps” part. Seriously? Of course it couldn’t push that amount!

 

[Birdo]

I see you can't read. I didn't compare the ST tot he Amiga directly. You're quote basically proves this 100%.

I also said this

I know you're a bit slow but try to actually keep up with the class before you think you can throw a gotcha at someone.

I give up. This guy is nuts.

I almost think i'm being trolled.

 

[Handy Fake]

It's pretty easy to find sales figures for several games with some research, and you'll find the upper 60k is basically the highest your going to see.

As I said, this is the fall with commodore not having any internal management, no first-party, and no real third-party partnerships, including advertising relatively popular third party games.

it shouldn't surprise you that barely anything sold, why it failed as a game machine at retail, and why it's hard to really place any identity on the Amiga or mention games that defined it. There's a niche enthusiast community and a nostalgia community and that's basically all the Amiga has currently.

The issue is, people view this as an attack or some fanboy rant (even though I never directly said any system was "superior" to the Amiga")

Yet people will constantly have no issue talking about how poorly run Commodore was and how many bad decisions they made, it's nothing but contradiction. Those bad decisions are why its legacy outside Enthusiast circles and nostalgia heads is burning into pieces and being forgotten.

And yes this does matter hen arguing whether the "Amiga stood the test of time" as much as you want to pretend it doesn't.




Never compared ST directly to the Amiga.

Compared Amiga being poorly run by Commodore (well known fact) to DOS/ST/Consoles

Still says I'm an ST fanboy.

Yep you're retarded. Not the only one in this thread either, lots of desperation here.

There there. I'm sure you'll feel better about it after a good night's sleep.

 

[silentstorm]

Oh yeah, remembered something, weren't there some attempts to bring back Amiga franchises or games with remasters?

I think Superfrog HD is a thing, pretty sure Shadow Of The Beast got a PS4 game, Gods Remastered is at least on Steam with new graphics and improved frame rate(alongside other changes, mostly quality of life improvements) while allowing you to play the original, Speedball 2 HD is a thing too, there was an Alien Breed game in 2010, Wings Remastered Edition is also a game and there is a CANNON FODDER 3 made in 2012.

Never heard anything about those games after release, i just remembered Gods because Retro Gamer had a relatively recent article about it and it made me look for recent remasters or new games in classic franchises, but they don't seem to have had much of an impact if any, though it seems some remasters aren't great, and Cannon Fodder 3 was pretty mediocre apparently so maybe it's not that the games aren't popular or ones that modern gamers would care about, but they either pick bad games to remaster or the new entries kinda suck.

 

[JohnSpartanLee]

Of course game sales were low due to very generous alternative publishers like Quartex, Skid Row, Paranoimia, Fairlight, Red Sector and many more.

 

[Havoc2049]

The first Amiga computers didn't even have CD-drives. Hell if I recall correctly the first CD Amiga was the CDTV and then almost all future Amiga computers had CD-drives pre-installed af

The Amiga didn't have 14mhz or 2MB of ram until the 1200. Old school Amigas had 500KB of ram and 5-7mhx processors.

Old Amigas could only place 32 colors on screen while the SNES could place 256.

The average size was 1MB for games while the SNES had 2-3MB games within its first full year. The 1200+ era did see increases once more developers moved to CD, but the first two waves of CD games early on where just enhanced ports of existing Amiga games with a higher color count and CD audio.

The 1200 didn't come out until 1992 which was also the year that CD was becoming a standard for Amiga games, but it took almost two years for there to be a moderate number of games that took advantage of the new technology, and by 1994 Amiga was way behind, the 3DO and Jaguar were on the market for the year, the Saturn and PSX just came out in Japan and announced they would launch within a year in America and Europe, The Atari Falcon was rumored to be a super machine, and Windows was so far ahead some retailers though the Amiga 1200 was cancelled only two years into the market and thought Commodores "new gaming computer line" was going to quickly replace it.

Just stop! Almost all the BS you spout is factually wrong.
-The Amiga 2500 was released in 1989 and came standard with either 2 or 4MB of RAM and either a Motorola 68020@14MHz or Motorola 68030@25MHz.
-The Atari Falcon wasn't a rumor in 1994. The Falcon came out in late 1992 and was discontinued by Atari in 1993.

It's pretty easy to find sales figures for several games with some research, and you'll find the upper 60k is basically the highest your going to see.

As I said, this is the fall with commodore not having any internal management, no first-party, and no real third-party partnerships, including advertising relatively popular third party games.

 

[Birdo]

EA had some good ports on the Amiga. Two I remember were Road Rash and Desert Strike (I actually think Desert Strike looks better on the Amiga).

 

[silentstorm]

Ah yes, the legendary almost forgotten times when EA was liked, when they released a lot of different games, quite a few of which were good, and then in the 90's they started just buying and destroying developers and franchises, and just got worse and worse.

Quite the contrast really.

 

[Negotiator]

Ah yes, the legendary almost forgotten times when EA was liked, when they released a lot of different games, quite a few of which were good, and then in the 90's they started just buying and destroying developers and franchises, and just got worse and worse.

Quite the contrast really.

Remember Activision back in the Atari VCS era? I 'member...

 

[CJY]

 

[RAIDEN1]

Thought I'd throw this in here:

 

[OldBoyGamer]

It's pretty easy to find sales figures for several games with some research, and you'll find the upper 60k is basically the highest your going to see.

As I said, this is the fall with commodore not having any internal management, no first-party, and no real third-party partnerships, including advertising relatively popular third party games.

it shouldn't surprise you that barely anything sold, why it failed as a game machine at retail, and why it's hard to really place any identity on the Amiga or mention games that defined it. There's a niche enthusiast community and a nostalgia community and that's basically all the Amiga has currently.

The issue is, people view this as an attack or some fanboy rant (even though I never directly said any system was "superior" to the Amiga")

Yet people will constantly have no issue talking about how poorly run Commodore was and how many bad decisions they made, it's nothing but contradiction. Those bad decisions are why its legacy outside Enthusiast circles and nostalgia heads is burning into pieces and being forgotten.

And yes this does matter hen arguing whether the "Amiga stood the test of time" as much as you want to pretend it doesn't.

I see. So you’re trying to paint the Amiga as a failed games console?

Fair enough. As I said. That’s an opinion and all our realities are different because perception trumps reality.

My perception is of a games machine that destroyed its closest competitors at the time which for me was the spectrum and Amstrad home computers, it’s own predecessor in the C64/128 and the Atari ST.

The 8 bits were inevitable simple because this was the next gen machine but the Atari ST was THE machine at the time being hailed as above everything else.

You can talk about the first Amiga’s failing (the A1000 I think???) but when the A500 came along it destroyed all in its path.

It’s popularity in the UK (I’ve no idea about America and Japan) was off the scale and a bi product of it being the best selling 16 bit computer was that it literally killed the ST.

Your comparison with the consoles doesn’t hold water for me because none of the 8 or 16 home computers operated in the same way that console platforms did and do. None of them controlled the software on their platform and the idea of first party titles was very limited for those machines. Yes thyme existed but their importance was marginal. I’m struggling to remember any first party spectrum commodore or amstrad developed games that were deemed console sellers.

The best games in those days and on those platforms were all third party. Atari May have had some first party software on the ST and before the A500 they may have helped but once the A500 was released its days were numbered.

If that failure fair enough.

 

[silentstorm]

Never that popular in America and never heard anything about it's presence in Japan aside from maybe some studios using it?

I do know that Kanye West had an Amiga as he talked about it in an interview, but nothing Commodore did really had a big impact in America where the PC reigned supreme even when the capabilities of high-end PC's were pathetic compared to an Amiga.

People have debated over the reasons why the Amiga never found it's market outside of UK but not much that is concrete has been said aside from people perceiving the Amiga has just an expensive gaming machine and bad marketing campaigns in America where it sold less than a million units in it's commercial timeline.

It did sell close to 5 million but in it's years in the market, it sold at best 700,000 units in America, and even in Europe, the Amiga was much more popular in UK and Germany than the rest, though it was still a popular computer, just not to the same extent.

As for it's sales in Japan, seems to have been very few, but again, studios did use it, there are artists who used it, most of the soundtrack in the first few Pokemon games were apparently done on Amiga computers and then converted to the game's music format.

That being said, looking at an interview, it seems that Amigas weren't even sold in Japan usually, and when it launched, it seems Commodore only sent 10,000 units because even the Commodore 64 failed there, but the Amiga was such an amazing computer for art that artists and studios who heard about it bought it.

For example, in said interview, a guy mentions he can't even do a meeting between Amiga fans and apparently never had one even when the computer was on the market because it was that unknown and unpopular, with, again, only artists and studios using it.

 

[Freedom Gate Co.]

I know you're slow but that's EA themselves going to a Magazine to publish their story about the Amiga.

Notice Commodore has nothing to do wit EA, notice Commodore didn't advertise those games, and noticed that Commodore didn't do anything for EA in adverting.

Thank you for proving my point, maybe if you took the fan goggles off. IBM even helped developers for a short time, and Microsoft had worked with many companies, had management, and a first party on PC, even the ST had internal management and pushed a few popular games, Amiga just sat there and did nothing.

NOTHING.

I give up. This guy is nuts.

I almost think i'm being trolled.

Nice dodge for your lack of reading comprehension, it's normal for one to not response and make a random statement to run away from the argument their losing.

The word "directly " is apparently a word you weren't taught in 1st grade. It was never compared in a vacuum and your own attempt to "get me" proves that since it also mentioned PC's(DOS).

What a clown.

 

[Birdo]

Nice dodge for your lack of reading comprehension, it's normal for one to not response and make a random statement to run away from the argument their losing.

The word "directly " is apparently a word you weren't taught in 1st grade. It was never compared in a vacuum and your own attempt to "get me" proves that since it also mentioned PC's(DOS).

What a clown.

Are you incapable of posting anything without an insult? I posted an example of you comparing the ST sales to the Amiga. That is literally comparing the two You can move the goalposts all you want. You were caught contradicting yourself.

 

[silentstorm]

Of course game sales were low due to very generous alternative publishers like Quartex, Skid Row, Paranoimia, Fairlight, Red Sector and many more.

Insane to think some of those groups are still around, it's a part of Amiga's overall influence on gaming that i suspect PC game developers don't like.

But piracy has always been a problem with computers, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, PC's and others had big piracy problems too leading to a big history of copy protection methods...that being said, i can't recall if the MSX and other japanese computers had this problem too but i am going to say they did considering what was happening in the West.

It just seems that Amiga was particularly struck by piracy though since it seems to be mentioned a lot as one of it's main characteristics and problems for developers.

For a non-Amiga user, can anyone tell me, were the games just that easy to pirate, were the games too expensive, or was that just the fashion and it so happened that the Amiga got groups dedicated to pirating games and people who wanted pirated games?

 

[sunnysideup]

There where no npd in the early 90s in yurop. There are no real game sales figures to get. Its all hearsay.

With that said.


Alien breed around 90000 in the uk alone.
mortal kombat around 120000 in uk
lemmings 55000 on its first day of sales in the uk.
swos 100000

Just to understand how big amiga was in the uk. Amiga format magazine sold over 150000 copies each month´in its prime.

 

[Godzilla Emu]

"Has the Amiga stood the test of time?"



....

OP, this is a redundant question.

The successor to the almighty C64, the Amiga, was an absolute beast of a computer and gaming platform.

The Amiga 1000/500, was a monster of multimedia gaming performance rig in the 1985/86/87' era. It was like getting a preview of 1992, over half a decade early. Hell, the exact same hardware was still being sold and being considered competitive half a decade later; that's unheard of now. Imagine buying a video card or a mobile/cell phone that has performance and an operating system that was only equaled ~4+ years later. Good times.

PC's in 1985:

Amiga's in 1985:

Rest assured, the OG Amiga crew are still quietly preserving and enjoying their Commodore hardware . Good times.

BRB: Off to play a rematch of Sensible Soccer with a couple of mates this weekend (along with some Turrican 2, Pinball Dreams, It Came from the Desert, Wings, Flashback & Superfrog.)

 

[petran79]

lol at the “no 60fps” part. Seriously? Of course it couldn’t push that amount!

At least native Amiga games run at 50hz with normal speed, unlike the various consoles NTSC to PAL conversions

 

[JohnSpartanLee]

For a non-Amiga user, can anyone tell me, were the games just that easy to pirate, were the games too expensive, or was that just the fashion and it so happened that the Amiga got groups dedicated to pirating games and people who wanted pirated games?

The inbuilt disk drive could read and write so for the price of one floppy disk (about 1 buck) you got a full game (except for those games that came on multiple disks).
Many people bought an Amiga specifically because games were "free".

NES gamers had a couple of great games, we had disk boxes containing 200-300 mediocre to great games.

In a way the Playstation 1 was the successor of the Amiga 500 once CD recorders became affordable...

Btw., the Amiga had a couple of basically arcade perfect conversions like Arkanoid and Pang and plenty of games ran at 50 fps.

 

[hariseldon]

The inbuilt disk drive could read and write so for the price of one floppy disk (about 1 buck) you got a full game (except for those games that came on multiple disks).

Many people bought an Amiga specifically because games were "free".

NES gamers had a couple of great games, we had disk boxes containing 200-300 mediocre to great games.

In a way the Playstation 1 was the successor of the Amiga 500 once CD recorders became affordable...

Btw., the Amiga had a couple of basically arcade perfect conversions like Arkanoid and Pang and plenty of games ran at 50 fps.

It's true that with a read/write drive you had the ability to copy but a lot of work went into copy-protection by making the disks bloody hard to copy. This is where the warez scene groups came in - they'd extract the content into a readable disk and then everyone would get one and be able to copy it. One funny thing I remember from my ST days is how the magazines would big up the demo scene while quite rightly shaming pirates - at the time I had no idea but it was the same people doing the demos that were cracking stuff. The magazines either had no idea or were turning a blind eye in a nudge-nudge-wink-wink way.

 

[silentstorm]

Cane and Rinse, a gaming podcast i hear which has it's hosts being from the UK and who grew up with an Amiga, recently did a 3 hours and 48 minutes long episode where they discuss their history, their experiences with the machines, talk to an American Amiga user and then talk about it's games:
https://caneandrinse.com/commodore-amiga/
Just...not as positive as i would expect?

They have great memories of Amiga, and they do talk about games they like, but their opinion is very much "It had some amazing and unique games, there was an auteur sense to them in a few cases, but there was a lot of crap, and even a lot of it's most highly regarded games didn't age well or have big design flaws that make it very hard to recommend picking up an Amiga these days over one of the 16-Bit consoles or a PC" so be warned.

Then again, maybe their tastes are just the kind that lends too much into consoles despite growing with an Amiga, they still did make a long episode about it, but it's not the most positive podcast they could have done.

 

[Godzilla Emu]

In the vintage gaming age (VinGAF?) of the mid to late 1980's-era, computer game audio was primarily defined by the almighty PC speaker (nostalgia warning):




Meanwhile, Amiga owners were enjoying this instead:





^ Behold: SNES-tier audio six years before it became available to the American Nintendo gamer and four years before the first PC Creative SoundBlaster hit the market, worldwide.

The (otherwise, beastly) MegaDrive was incapable of producing a good version of this Gremlin Amiga classic (same with Turrican), sadly. The conversion had to use a lower resolution and used less colours and lost the amazing soundtrack (even with the fantastic YM2612).




...And as a kid of the mid-late 80s/90s: Yes, I did teach myself to rap dance to Amiga game audio.

And no, that did not help me find girlfriends in the 90s

(their loss).

 

[sunnysideup]

This forum needs an retro section. There is definitely enough threads and traffic for it.

 

[sunnysideup]

 

[DrCheese]

It's true that with a read/write drive you had the ability to copy but a lot of work went into copy-protection by making the disks bloody hard to copy. This is where the warez scene groups came in - they'd extract the content into a readable disk and then everyone would get one and be able to copy it. One funny thing I remember from my ST days is how the magazines would big up the demo scene while quite rightly shaming pirates - at the time I had no idea but it was the same people doing the demos that were cracking stuff. The magazines either had no idea or were turning a blind eye in a nudge-nudge-wink-wink way.

haha yes - You couldn't just grab a retail game and slap it through the built in diskcopy option. You'd have to use something like xCopy but developers then started making it hard to use that so you'd rely on crackers bypassing the copy protection. Usually they'd put cracktros (Complete with awesome music) on disks they copied and added trainers (Cheats) before the game would load.