Amiga features in Greatest Home Computers list

[Matt_H]

Hey, we're all critical of the PC to some extent, but don’t go knocking Commander Keen!
Those games are a masterpiece and the fact that we didn’t get an Amiga port is one of the greatest software tragedies of the early 90s.

[Matt_H]

@Matt_H

... but don’t go knocking Commander Keen!
Those games are a masterpiece and the fact that we didn’t get an Amiga port is one of the greatest software tragedies of the early 90s.

It's only because it was the first time a PC was shown to be capable of scrolling smoothly. The art style was memorable and I remember the green aliens from episode 1 but the bright gaudy graphics didn't do it for me! Sonic and Mario were the games that developers were shooting for. The Great Giana Sisters is far superior to Commander Keen and that was 3 years earlier! Keen looks like an Amiga PD game. There is an Amiga port of Keen Dreams now but I seldom play it for more than 5 minutes. It's got a kind of fever dream atmosphere to it!

To each his own, I suppose

See, Giana Sisters never did anything for me. I loved it on the C64--it was a marvelous 8-bit game--but I expected so much more from it for the Amiga era. The levels were still one-dimensional (i.e., one screen tall) and exceedingly difficult, and it still had that blocky 8-bit look, with almost everything drawn within 8x8 (or whatever) grids.

I thought Commander Keen, apart from being a technical achievement for the inferior PC, had lots of variety in level design, a friendlier learning curve, more nuanced gameplay with the pogo stick (and ammo conservation being a key component of the earlier games), and some *huge* monsters. The performance they got out of the usually awful PC speaker fit the design aesthetic of the game (1950s space pulp) well, and they made excellent use of the 16-color EGA palette, especially by the 4th game, Goodbye Galaxy. Now imagine what they could have done on the Amiga with a 32-color or 64-color EHB palette, parallax scrolling, sampled sounds, and a full MOD soundtrack... Gaah! It's almost painful that we never got it. Still, as much as I love Superfrog and Zool 2, Commander Keen might edge them out on my list of favorite computer platformers.

Keen Dreams is the weakest of the series, though, so I don't blame you for not liking that one.
(But really, give Goodbye Galaxy a try--that's the best of them )

[Matt_H]

Unfortunately, I think the PC's dominance in the home was inevitable once it had conquered the office, all having to do with the simple fact that people like to play games instead of working. They'll play those games using whatever tools are at hand. People wrote games for the big Unix servers in the 70s because the machine was simply there. Likewise, in the 80s, people wrote games for PCs because the machines were simply there at the office. Once the hardware from the office got cheap enough for individuals to own at home (and price competitive with the existing home computers)... well, that would have been a hard tide to turn back.