Well, for starters, the better game artists actually understand the constraints of digital art and are willing to work within them. (Take a look at Adrian Carmack's magnificent models for DOOM sometime, and compare them with the little sprites that were the end result. Sure, the models are nicer, but the DOOM team did an amazing job of capturing the details in images only a hundred-plus pixels tall.) If, on the other hand, you're stuck with prima donnas like the ones you're describing, you can always have someone else do the job of adapting it to the target platform, for the sake of team harmony.
But seriously, the more you crank up the requirements, the smaller your potential target audience gets. Sure, I have a 50MHz 030 and 32MB RAM, but how many people don't? Very few people who've just pulled their old Amiga out of the attic to play with are going to be able to run a game that requires 32MB RAM, and are they willing to hunt down a couple hundred bucks' worth of accelerator just for that?
And as Thorham says, package size has very little to do with the quality of a game. Super Mario Bros. 3 is still a beloved classic to this day, and it's all of 384KB.
Its this kind of thinking that hinders us. Its ridiculous to code for the least common denominator when accelerators and ram expansions are plentiful.
If games had been coded for A3000/4000 spec instead of 500/600/1200 we might of had some much nicer games with way more levels and such.
Typical pc users in the day had no problem upgrading machine,but amiga users cry and whine if it does run on a bog standard 500/1200 and they have to spend some money. think of accelerators of investments on amiga! its one of the few things you can play with 2,3,5,10 years and probably sell it and breakeven. Seems good value to me.
