Atari vs Amiga article

[mrknight]

Interesting article, I will read it through later. Falcon is a nice computer, spec wise, but I can't understand why Atari opted for a 16bit wide data bus. Why? Where they really that desperate to save a few microcent on copper tracks? It's 1992. Even PC were up to 32 bit standard by then. With a full 32 bit bus this would have been a serious competitor for A1200, especially with that sound system. And despite the graphics.

[mrknight]

32 bit needs double the number of ram chips than 16 bit. Even if they halved the size of the ram chips it would still be more expensive.

I wouldn't neccesarily say that.  It's a matter of how many chips you have, the width of the chips and how many 'symbols' you can store per chips. Althought 32 bit chips would probably have been more expensive that 16 bit chips, at least as cent/bit is concerned, the total amount of RAM would affect the price more that width of the chips.
However, you need a more sofisticated RAM controller and custom chips for 32 bit memory access. Maybe the design decision was made because they had 16 bits designs for custom chips etc. that could easily be added to the Falcon (reuse=lower development cost)? I would call that a lazy approach;)

I found this development document for AAA. It looks pretty neat on paper and much, much better than AGA. It was cancelled in 1993 in favour of more advanced architectures. Probably a good thing by -93. But imagine an Amiga with this architeture in 89-91. Awesome!
http://www.thule.no/haynie/research/nyx/docs/AAA.pdf

[mrknight]

Either way having 16bit access to ram is considerably cheaper than 32 bit access.

I agree with that. I'm just questioning if that saving would be worth it due to the decrease in performance. But anyway, I'm not here to argue so I'll be quite regarding this from now on

The problem was that nobody at commodore had the vision that cheap crappy 3d rendering would be such a big deal.

You can say that again. Mid-ninties had heaps of horrible looking 3D games. Suddenly when 3D became possible, everything should be 3D. I still think Castlevania - Symphony of the Night was the best game on Playstation. Why? Because is was 2D, something the console did really well.

[mrknight]

I wasn't just talking about graphics, 3D games did revolutionize gaming. I'm not questioning that. But to move a game to the third dimention doesn't nessesary make for a better game. It still have to be a good game. PSX did have some really good 3D games but there were also a lot of bad 3D games. Games that seems to be sold for the only reason that is was 3D. But 3D was hot at this time and everyone wanted to jump on the train without having a good grasp how to design a 3D game (I'm talking about a game that plays better in 3D). Personally, I'm not too picky about graphics as long as I enjoy the game.

2D or 3D, I still consider SotN to be one of the best game on Playstation. Gameplay, music, plot and puzzle solving. Epic! It is a true classic game.

Seems like I'm starting an argument with everyone in this thread...

[mrknight]

How is that 3D? It's a flat world. If this is 3D then so is Dungeon Master.

DM is 3D. It is 3D because you can only see what the camera is pointing at. Enemies etc. can hide behind object you are seeing, thus being ínvisible' from you. This is not the case with 2D games where you can see anything on the screen.
Think of a football game. The field is flat but it doesn't make it less 3D. If you are a player, you might still not be able to see an opposing player because they are behind you or behind another player.