Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Gaming => Topic started by: sammyfox on January 25, 2017, 02:16:11 PM
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I tried games like Mortal Kombat (both of them) on my amiga and I can't believe people tolerated such butchered and limited controls back then. Was there a technical barrier to using keyboard controls like on PCs? (on msdos I liked to use a ASZXQ and arrows scheme that is basically an inverted snes pad layout)
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Personally, I only favor this when its an option, not a default.
Although I can see the reasoning behind it for a game like Mortal Kombat where having several keys assigned to different tasks would useful.
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Fighting games are horrible with a keyboard. They're one of very few cases where keyboards don't work well.
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I know it's more annoying to read the keyboard using hardware on an Amiga (which involves manually pulsing the keyboard communication line to clock in scan codes) than it is on the PC which just stores key presses until a program reads them.
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It seems joysticks were always the most natural device for playing games on Amiga. Maybe it's because many still hooked up their Amiga to their TV, just like the C64 and NES, rather than using a proper desk and monitor? With a joystick (or gamepad), you can sit comfortably in a couch/chair, even when the computer itself is on the floor in front of the TV.
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It seems joysticks were always the most natural device for playing games on Amiga. .
yep especially when the machine was mainly marketed as a games machine. I only remembered using the keyboard when I didnt have joysticks or later on when playing something like Leisure Suit Larry.
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yep especially when the machine was mainly marketed as a games machine. I only remembered using the keyboard when I didnt have joysticks or later on when playing something like Leisure Suit Larry.
True, but PC gamers scoff at controllers and consider keyboard and mouse the only way to play games. There are lots of "gaming keyboards" and mice being marketed as well. It's kind of weird that joysticks were the de-facto control scheme on Amiga.
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True, but PC gamers scoff at controllers and consider keyboard and mouse the only way to play games. There are lots of "gaming keyboards" and mice being marketed as well. It's kind of weird that joysticks were the de-facto control scheme on Amiga.
Yep I remember all my PC friends using pretty much keyboard only. When they did have a joystick it would be a analog one that you had to calibrate first.
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I reckon the games which forced you to use the keyboard most on an Amiga were flight sims. Tornado ADV was certainly overboard in that respect. Had some nice detailed scenes in it too. I guess most 3D games had something to show, and they mostly used analogue joysticks as well as mouse.
Some had rudder foot controls mapped to a joystick, so you could use foot controls.
But yeah, I think the Amiga... was just terrible for letting you remap controls. Not very reliable if most people are booting from floppies, that was the issue.
If the controls are all hard set, that saves resources. Times were hard back then, resources and time spent faffing around with floppy disks just stopped you playing the game at all. Keyboard remapping has been possible with the OS for a long time, but never with games that ignore the OS. Which is 95% plus of arcade Amiga games. Precious few would go there...
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Was there a technical barrier to using keyboard controls like on PCs?
Yes, there are some technical limitations when several keys are being held down. See http://amigadev.elowar.com/read/ADCD_2.1/Hardware_Manual_guide/node019E.html
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I tried games like Mortal Kombat (both of them) on my amiga and I can't believe people tolerated such butchered and limited controls back then. Was there a technical barrier to using keyboard controls like on PCs? (on msdos I liked to use a ASZXQ and arrows scheme that is basically an inverted snes pad layout)
Are you for real? My PC owning 'friends' would attempt to play Mortal Kombat on the PC with an analogue joystick back in the day :laughing:
The only thing the Amiga was missing was CD32 support. 2-button joypad support was present on MK2 which was better than most. Why we had to tolerate pathetic single button fighting games back then I'll never know. The keyboard should not even be considered for fighting games. PC gamers were morons in the early 90s and even preferred Commander Keen to Amiga platformers :lol:
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Fighting games are horrible with a keyboard. They're one of very few cases where keyboards don't work well.
Only exception I can think of to this rule was Karateka. While not really what most would consider a fighting game toady, it definitely was a predecessor.
The terrible games are the ones that require both a Joystick and a Keyboard...
I can readily think of at least Flashback on the Amiga and Gateway to Apshai on the Atari 8-bit and Xenon 1 on the Atari ST. Gauntlet (all versions on all platforms with single button joysticks) also had that issue where you had to reach out and press a key for the magic.
I think the main reason PC games mostly used the keyboard is because A) they had a proprietary connector, when back in the day any of the computers used that standard DB9 controller. That only changed really on the consoles for the NES, and then the Saturn I think was the first Sega system that didn't use DB9 (probably because Atari decided to sue them). And B) because they were expensive, terrible analog things up until USB arrived. And of course by that time, people actually WANTED analog controls.
Also, if you think about it, a lot of the 8-bit/16bit era games were either arcade conversions or similar, where of course the joystick was king. DOS really didn't get a whole lot of the arcade conversions, and usually when they did, they were terrible.
Oh, and the reason for Gaming Keyboards and Mice... I have 14 buttons on my Roccat Tyon (oddly, I don't game that much, but holy crap for production usage it is AWESOME!), and my Roccat Ryos MK Pro is fantastic for gaming because you don't really have to press that hard on a key for it to do something, less input 'lag' I guess you could say since you don't have to slam down the key like you do with a lot of the spongy keyboards out there. Getting knuckle pain in my old age makes it actually tolerable to type again with mechanical keyboards.
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... Getting knuckle pain in my old age makes it actually tolerable to type again with mechanical keyboards.
It's a factor, beyond the 30s you really do have to pay attention to early symptons of arthritis. Cod liver oil capsules and similar Omega 3 boosters recommended.
Probably didn't help that I spent a lot of time early on with mechanical typewriters. They hurt at the time, let alone now.:hammer:
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Good idea, I will have to try that out and see if it helps. Those mechanical typewriters are murder, that's for sure!
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Fighting games are horrible with a keyboard. They're one of very few cases where keyboards don't work well.
I beg to differ. the MK games always had simple motions for their special moves, like down and forward and such. On a keyboard these are much easier to pull off than say, anything in street fighter.
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Are you for real? My PC owning 'friends' would attempt to play Mortal Kombat on the PC with an analogue joystick back in the day :laughing:
The only thing the Amiga was missing was CD32 support. 2-button joypad support was present on MK2 which was better than most. Why we had to tolerate pathetic single button fighting games back then I'll never know. The keyboard should not even be considered for fighting games. PC gamers were morons in the early 90s and even preferred Commander Keen to Amiga platformers :lol:
Commander keen was tons of fun though :c
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@sammyfox
I don't understand the Commander Keen thing at all. I actually prefer Altered Beast on the Atari ST and that was considered a bad game! Fine I understand the PC hadn't demonstrated smooth scrolling until that game and iD pushed the envelope on the technical side. However, in the 286 days it must have been an exercise is polishing a turd in the sense the PC was so behind the Amiga which could do parallax scrolling and Commander Keen looks like it's using the 8-bit Paperboy palette. Dizzy, Ruff N' Tumble, Fire & Ice, etc etc were all better games than that joke.
Was it just a case of most American families already had a PC because daddy needed it for work and the whole continent went crazy for a mediocre game on a machine they already had?
Back on thread. Keyboard controls and mouse works for RTS and first person shooter games but that's it. Joysticks and gamepads are far superior for arcade games like Commander Keen tried to ape.
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@sammyfox (http://www.amiga.org/forums/member.php?u=19395)
Just to clarify I've downloaded the port of Keen Dreams for the Amiga and I'm giving it a go (using a CD32 Competition Pro/Honey Bee Gamepad ;-)). It's fine for a quick bit of platforming but it reminds me of an Amiga Public Domain release to be honest. Sorry if this is a favourite childhood memory of yours but the Amiga had an almighty advantage over the PC for this stuff. It's like the U.S. just put their fingers in their ears and ignored the Amiga in preference to the NES and early under-specced PCs! Both had horrible colour palettes (CGA was poor) and very basic hardware.
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@sammyfox (http://www.amiga.org/forums/member.php?u=19395)
Just to clarify I've downloaded the port of Keen Dreams for the Amiga and I'm giving it a go (using a CD32 Competition Pro/Honey Bee Gamepad ;-)). It's fine for a quick bit of platforming but it reminds me of an Amiga Public Domain release to be honest. Sorry if this is a favourite childhood memory of yours but the Amiga had an almighty advantage over the PC for this stuff. It's like the U.S. just put their fingers in their ears and ignored the Amiga in preference to the NES and early under-specced PCs! Both had horrible colour palettes (CGA was poor) and very basic hardware.
Unfortunately it has always seemed to me that the US likes to go cheap rather than what is better technology. By cheap I mean quality, not price. Also by whatever is fed to us on TV.
Basically Atari and Commodore didn't really advertise here, and game machines sold for kids and adults bought the computers. so unless you were a nerdy kid that went out of his way to find computer information and then talked your parents into buying an Amiga or ST, you wound up with an IBM compatible, or just a game console.
I never did own a NES, we went from Atari 800XL, to Sega Master System, to Genesis to Atari Mega STe, then my older brother bought his friend's A500 when he had switched to a Windows 95 system. Then we also got a crappy windows 95 system that I was constantly fighting to get sound or modem working...
Joysticks are always what I preferred, and we only out of sheer luck discovered that Spy Hunter on the 800XL actually used the second Joystick's button to use the weapons besides the machine gun. Imagine how awkward that is...
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@sammyfox (http://www.amiga.org/forums/member.php?u=19395)
This is right up your street;
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=62474
Check out DarkNESs an NES emulator that gives you the chance to play Super Mario Bros 3 but only with a keyboard! This is made for PC users who've stumbled across the Amiga and thing it's too much like a games console :-)
Note: Read your history and you'll know it acts more like a game console because initially that's what it was going to be!
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@slaapliedje
Basically Atari and Commodore didn't really advertise here
Sad :-( All that was needed was a Mac killing Superbowl advert in 1985 and the US would have loved the Amiga forever!
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I never did own a NES, we went from Atari 800XL, to Sega Master System, to Genesis to Atari Mega STe, then my older brother bought his friend's A500 when he had switched to a Windows 95 system. Then we also got a crappy windows 95 system that I was constantly fighting to get sound or modem working...
On the subject of Pieces of Crap, I've been combating an IRQ conflict on my Winblows XP machine today after purchasing a sound card.
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... and I've been installing a new SCSI Hard Drive into my classic setup! The 'miggy is almost like a person; grumbling at change before coming round to the idea i.e after partitions generated in HDToolbox in this case!
They are such fun even when there are niggles!
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... and I've been installing a new SCSI Hard Drive into my classic setup! The 'miggy is almost like a person; grumbling at change before coming round to the idea i.e after partitions generated in HDToolbox in this case!
They are such fun even when there are niggles!
Ha, probably the reason I like Linux, I always like to tweak things to see if I can get thins set up the way I want it to be, instead of how some twit in Redmond wants it.
Also why I bought an Amiga, because Linux 'just works' these days.