Why didn't more games use the keyboard?

[BozzerBigD]

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:

[BozzerBigD]

@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.

[BozzerBigD]

@sammyfox

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.

[BozzerBigD]

@sammyfox

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!

[BozzerBigD]

@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!

[BozzerBigD]

... 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!