Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: runequester on January 19, 2011, 07:40:14 AM
-
So what other things from the "amiga era" (85 to 94 for the purpose of this discussion) do you miss?
What things would you happily trade out to replace modern day equivalents?
For me:
Movies. There's a good share of new movies I've enjoyed, but a lot of my favourites are from the 80's and early 90's, particularly for old fashioned action, comedies (that were actually funny) and so on.
TV shows: Terrible at watching these, but I'd miss Futurama. On the other hand, I'd have Max Headroom :)
Music: Hard to say. An awful lot of my music is from the 80s and 90s. Dance type of music was actually good (eurodance is kind of a guilty pleasure for me). Metal and hard rock was really coming into its own too.
Tabletop games: My other big hobby. A lot of the best RPG's were either in their prime or at least still around (Traveller, Rolemaster 2nd edition, AD&D, Warhammer FRP etc)
What about you ? What things do you miss (or still prefer) to their later counterparts, and what parts do you prefer now?
-
One of the biggest ones for me would have to be music. It seems as time goes on more and more "music" is little more than processed garbage manufactured by large corporations with video clips being nothing more than commercials for said products. There's always been plenty of bad music, but bad music I can happily ignore whereas this processed garbage annoys me. Unfortunately the longer this trend continues the more it's accepted,.. somewhat a ripple effect, to a point where a good portion of people these days not only accept it, but rather embrace it.
Movies were going down this road too for a while, but for whatever reason the trend changed there and there's just as many good movies as there are braindead showpieces these days as well. Partly due to the idea of going against the usual mindless hollywood grain became a little trendy I suspect, but whatever the reason it caught on to a point that it's no longer all about glamour and effects.
While there's plenty of good older t.v. shows and plenty of newer garbage I find that t.v. in general has improved compared to the "amiga era".
There's aspects of the modern computing world that I prefer, but also parts of it that have gone downhill. The modern "consumerism" side (a lot of which apple is to blame for) bugs me, as does the massive waste of resources available (heck even modern c/c++ compilers arent as efficient as its brothers of yesteryear, let alone attrocities like flash and so on)). To a degree the massive budgets of modern software leads to less software that isnt just a re-iteration of existing "safe" options, but there are examples of good software that simply couldnt be created years ago. On the other side of the coin there was still a lot of clone type software back then as well, and the general flexibility of "multimedia" usage these days is something I use daily. The raw power of modern hardware makes a lot of types of software I use a more pleasurable experience (but that said a lot of software of yesteryear is more direct and to the point and fun).
-
TV Shows:
- Transformers G1, especially with Starscream (whose ghost seems to be possessing some individuals in amiga boards from time to time) :)
-
Music
80s Sci-Fi movies
-
I don't know why it hasn't come up yet, but I couldn't live without my broadband internet connection! There were plenty of good cars around which were pretty sophisticated in the 90s but didn't have the very modern, can't-be-worked-on thing that newer cars have. My car for example is a 1995 Golf GTI 16V with electric everything, ABS, airbags, all that good stuff, yet I can service and repair it fully myself.
I'm glad it still exists though - that way I can have a car I love and broadband which I need :)
-
Game watches, NOT the Nintendo game & watch crap but actual wrist watches with games on them to play like Nelsonic's range.
Today you could make a watch with a colour 1.5" TFT colour screen and probably get enough CPU speed as a 100mhz PC so could make your own games.
Game Watch + Blitz Basic type development kit =WIN!! :)
TV, Films, Music is still mostly rubbish now as it was then, you just don't remember how terrible TV?Film/Music was in the 80s/90s....just the stuff you like ;)
Amiga/ST/Acorn still being here and Apple being bankrupt in 1994/5 is what I would trade in a heartbeat today.
-
One of the biggest ones for me would have to be music. It seems as time goes on more and more "music" is little more than processed garbage manufactured by large corporations with video clips being nothing more than commercials for said products. There's always been plenty of bad music, but bad music I can happily ignore whereas this processed garbage annoys me. Unfortunately the longer this trend continues the more it's accepted,.. somewhat a ripple effect, to a point where a good portion of people these days not only accept it, but rather embrace it.
True, but also untrue. The usual pop music biz really got worse. The wentdown of music television is symptomatic. Also the mp3 thing wasn't helpful to the mass market in a sense of keeping the album thing alive and to value music. But on the other hand there is plenty of good music still today, new bands have now the opportunity to reach a worldwide audience thanks to the internet w/o havig a major label backing them up.
What really changed is that 15 -20 years ago I could just go to the record shop and the guys there had good proposals, it was fun to talk with them and even the charts were often inspiring. Today most record shops are closed.
Also MTV, Viva (in Europe/Germany) and the radio shows were really inspiring. Today you need to seek for good music for yourself, but it is still there. And I am sure it will stay, because there are pretty many ppl out there (even youngers) who actually still value good music. The mass market has been always full of junk.
All in all the 90ies were a great time. Technology took off, the cold war was over and new threats were rather little. All were eagerly waiting for the future (Y2k). And then it came...
But that's life, time goes on, world changes and while diffrent to the 90ies (and other times before) I enjoy life today as much as back then.
-
I could do without posts that belong in the Coffeehouse being posted in Amiga General Chat!
-
You know what I miss is big box games, ok dvd cases are great for space savers, but I always like the amiga games coming in a big box and all the nice art work that would be involved.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomscholes/40539815/
Tv shows like A-team and Knight Rider, where are these type of shows. Hell even sci fi, now with star trek, stargate, battlestar all over, there seem to be no sci fi space shows, however I do plan on checking out V.
PD market, use to be a stall in market that sell Public Domain game for something like £1 each or 6 for £5, every month I would make a point of going and getting my self some weird and wonderful little collections of games.
-
Nopothing to see here
misread the question.
There is nothing from that era that I miss
-
Rock bands that were worth a crap. Today's music is just awful, no creativity, and formula based. Same goes for TV shows.
-
My balls... :(
(married in '96)
One of the first things she did was made me get rid of two of my busted Amigas, then she said that 'she' didn't make me get rid on them.
All is good though almost 14yrs of wedded bliss, I do miss them balls though...
-
You know what I miss is big box games, ok dvd cases are great for space savers, but I always like the amiga games coming in a big box and all the nice art work that would be involved.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomscholes/40539815/
Tv shows like A-team and Knight Rider, where are these type of shows. Hell even sci fi, now with star trek, stargate, battlestar all over, there seem to be no sci fi space shows, however I do plan on checking out V.
PD market, use to be a stall in market that sell Public Domain game for something like £1 each or 6 for £5, every month I would make a point of going and getting my self some weird and wonderful little collections of games.
Kind of odd that the only Sci-Fi show going on is a remake of one from the 80s. I saw the first few episodes of it, and as hot as Morena Baccarin is, it's missing Mark Singer.
Too bad they didn't bring back Firefly... anyhow, I digress.
I'll have to agree with the music thing, though I'd say good music stopped being made roughly around the time Commodore started to really sink (around late '92).
Even games and such were far more creative, simply because developers had to be creative to compete. They had to make games that were fun! These days you may as well be playing an interactive movie, with the majority of games lasting roughly the length of watching the extended edition of Lord of the Rings.
I think most of all, I miss the competition. Remember all the great arguments of Atari vs. Amiga vs. PC? Oddly I never knew a single person who owned a Mac. Only schools really had them back then.
I still vividly recall a guy I knew saying that he bought a sound card for 250 bucks to get stereo sound, and my friend laughing and saying that it came in his Amiga 500. Ah the good ol' days...
slaapliedje
-
Too bad they didn't bring back Firefly... anyhow, I digress.
While being a little late to get into it, I did finally check it out a few months ago (borrowed the "box set" from a friend) and I absolutely loved it. Quite possibly my all time favorite sci-fi t.v. show. I guess the "problem" was that it didnt really fit into an easily marketable box, but rather relied on it's quality. It's dumb, but unfortunately the way things are looked from a networks perspective these days.
Other great "recent" t.v. shows that Ive gotten into are things like Arrested Devlopment (I managed to pick up all 3 seasons for $12 in total recently :)), Masters Of Horror, Buffy (perhaps a little young for me now, but quality t.v. nonetheless that a lot of people write off because on the surface it appears to be something like the godawful Charmed (which is funny in a way seeing as buffy is supposed to be a little ironic and makes fun of Charmed, etc.), Angel (superior to Buffy and aimed at a slightly older audience), American Gothic (Lucas Black was amazing, probably the best child performance I've ever seen), Scrubs (although it probably should have finished more gracefully rather than push the last few seasons), Boston Legal, Dexter, Tru Calling, Veronica Mars, Lost (1st few season anyway), and I guess Simpsons should get an honourable mention here too, although it did start 21 years ago.
I personally think t.v. has in general improved in recent years. There's a lot more well written and clever television these days compared to the predominantely dumb and camp series of the 80's and early 90's. There's always exceptions, but I guess in the face of increased competition and I suspect also due to the fact t.v. shows are heavily collected on DVD these days there seems to be a genuine attempt to make good shows.
Im sure some of you will disagree here, both with my tastes in television and my opinion that t.v. has improved, but to each his own.
-
yeah, I guess this belongs in the coffee house. If a mod could move, thatd be great
-
my youth..sigh
-
I could do without posts that belong in the Coffeehouse being posted in Amiga General Chat!
Problem? :lol:
-
On a more serious note... I miss the excitement and the leaps and bounds made by the early generations of computers. It's not so much that those improvements have slowed any, but rather many seem much more subtle these days.
As for the rest, sorry, as far as I'm concerned the 80s and early 90's can burn for their crimes against good taste.
-
Problem? :lol:
Yes, not enough beer. It's since been remedied.
-
I'll go the other way. I wouldn't trade a clunky VCR for a terabyte HDD of ripped DVD ISOs.
Also old mail order via a magazine versus shopping online.
I suppose I miss when the local BBS owner bought a new CD of PD software, it was like striking gold when you dialed in. Nowadays the possibility of messing up my system (Windows and Amiga) put me off trying out a lot of freeware and shareware software.
-
my youth..sigh
Don't forget mine :D
-
Being about to buy things on physical media, rather than just downloading files. I loved those big boxes with floppy disks in and 12 inch records.
Robert
-
@fishy_fiz
You know that Charmed was made because the the popularity of Buffy right? Buffy was a bit campy because the original movie was a comedy.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103893/
If you have Netflix, you can watch it here:
http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Buffy_the_Vampire_Slayer_The_Movie/60020928?trkid=2361637#height1749
-
Did I accidentally log on to curmudgeon.com?
-
What do I miss about the 90's? My waistline! *rimshot*
I sure like my iphone. I really dislike what the broadband market has become. I used to get DSL through local ISP's that let you do whatever the hell you wanted on it, as long as you didn't hork all the BW. then they just unplugged you and called you up and told you to ease up. Comcast is annoying as all get out. I do get a cheap laugh when I hand them my laptop so they can "install" the broadband. I have yet to find one who knows what linux is. Maybe next time I'll point them to an A2000 with a NIC in it :lol:
-
Firefly is definitely one of the best sci show to come around and it got canned :madashell: very annoying so glad they got the movie to finish off the story but would of liked it as a Tv show, it was literally a space western.
Other great shows I loved were X-files (for the most part), Due South, Quantum Leap and Sliders great fun tv. Oh and of course Babylon 5.
Dont get me wrong I think newer shows are definitely a lot clever and maybe couldn't get away with the plot holes that some series have had, they are also starting to look as good as mini movies just look at 24 and Heroes some of the special effects are pretty stunning.
But I do have a problem with most of these new shows, is too many have gone the 24 root and have a complete series to tell a stories it ok if the writers can really think of clever plot and stories that can last a season or more but most them I feel would work much better as three or four part stories, I think star trek enterprise final season was so clever to go that root, tell longer stories but conclude them in sensible period dont stretch it out, Lost and Flashforward proved you can only hold the stories and plot for so long I wish more shows when this root mainly becuse too many show force you to commit to watching every single ep to get whats going on, how shows like this expect to bring in new audience mid way though the season i dont know.
-
Nopothing to see here
This reminded me of an incident when I tried to reboot my A1200 from the command line and wondering why the "rebopot" command was unknown...
-
I could do without "reality TV"...
-
What I could do with out, have to be any piece of HW starting with "i" and all those HW companies trying to sell the next ipad and what not.
Any tv shows I miss, not really.. I do like "modern" tv shows like bones, House M.D. Ohh yeah I miss Monty Python
-
Good album artwork! CDs were a big improvement, but the smaller packaging left no room for good artwork.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/65/Sad_wings_of_destiny_cover.jpg)
-
Well I still play Call Of Cthulhu and own a stack of TCR track and cars. Still got my Sisters of Mercy and Nephilm vinyls..... so the only thing I miss is the hordes of sexy girls, the drugs and the hope of a future utopia. Oh bugger....now I am depressed.
-
eurodance
An emoticon has not yet been invented that would adequately describe how much I fucking hate that word, along with eurodisco and britpop.
Coincidently the actual music is also naff to the power of infinity.
-
@fishy_fiz
You know that Charmed was made because the the popularity of Buffy right? Buffy was a bit campy because the original movie was a comedy.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103893/
If you have Netflix, you can watch it here:
http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Buffy_the_Vampire_Slayer_The_Movie/60020928?trkid=2361637#height1749
The series also had comedy elements. As for the movie, it came out a little wrong, Joss Whedon was happy to do the series so as to remedy the movie a little. As for Charmed, sure, that is quite funny. The people behind that completely missed the idea of Buffy and instead just did a clone of what Buffy mocked :)
-
This reminded me of an incident when I tried to reboot my A1200 from the command line and wondering why the "rebopot" command was unknown...
What, you mean it's not Magaggies birthday ?
Hehe, first thing I thought of when I saw the "rebopot" was a stoner version of an ED-209 :)
-
The series also had comedy elements. As for the movie, it came out a little wrong, Joss Whedon was happy to do the series so as to remedy the movie a little. As for Charmed, sure, that is quite funny. The people behind that completely missed the idea of Buffy and instead just did a clone of what Buffy mocked :)
Joss Whedon takes himself (and this property) far too seriously.
The movie had the right take.
Buffy "You mean my secret power is PMS?" -funny stuff
How in the world could you take this seriously?
-
Personally I see nothing wrong with a person not wanting to compromise thier creative vision too much. Buffy (both movie and t.v. show) are meant to be something akin to a dark comedy, but the movie lost the dark edge it was intended to have.
Incidently he also wrote the movie.
-
Personally I see nothing wrong with a person not wanting to compromise thier creative vision too much. Buffy (both movie and t.v. show) are meant to be something akin to a dark comedy, but the movie lost the dark edge it was intended to have.
Incidently he also wrote the movie.
Sorry, I appreciate your interest in the series, but I was unfortunate enough to see a couple of the final episodes of this series recently in syndication and they weren't 'dark comedy', they were just poorly scripted and painfully stupid.
Like I said, they took the TV series too seriously.
-
I must admit season 6 on upwards did start losing the comedy element and only had a handful of good episodes. The 1st four years are much better, and why the series is held in high regards. Episodes like "Hush" and "The Body" are good examples of why. The problem with the latter series is that it could have ended at any point, so they tried to give the audience what they wanted before the show finished (closure on certain things), which took the focus away from what was good about the show in the 1st place. I can understand why people who onbly watched a handful of random episodes may liken it to something like Charmed, but it really is like chalk and cheese.
-
I miss diversity and privacy!
All of the radio stations in the US are owned by a handful of corporations. They have played 300 tunes from each genre for the last 20 years.
There is less choice in all things.
-
I guess this one is a bit obvious considering the thread title, but I miss good, new, original commercial Amiga software. While I completely understand why most new "amiga" software is either very humble, or a port from the open source world, original Amiga software had a certain appeal/charm that's hard to find elsewhere (in my opinion/taste). This sort of software, though now quite old is why Im still here, and why MOS/AROS/OS4.x dont appeal to me as much as the classic Amigas. I still enjoy the Amiga-esue aspects, and am to a degree an AROS supporter still, but there's very little they offer that isnt available elsewhere in a superior manner. (all a little off topic, but an attempt to appease the almost innevitable typical crap that is spouted when someone has an amiga opinion that can differ from others).
The c64 as well mirrors my classic amiga thoughts, so I'd have to say I miss that too :)
-
What I miss ?
Plain simple cartoons:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOuNwIRuCdA[/youtube]
On the Amiga side I miss the fun of the old club days, where Amiga's where setup and you would be ..... , well you know how some got so many floppy's :)
I would do anything just to relive that sort of moments, walking into that hall again, seeing all your Amiga friends, playing some games, ha the good old days.
But don't get me wrong here, there are so many things why I wouldn't want to go back to that time.
I couldn't live without my HD reciever/ HDD recorder (bit like Tivo).
Music I'm more of 90's fan, but I don't miss it, I enjoy modernday trance by the one and only Armin van Buuren.
I also couldn't live with the idea of going back to Windows 3.11 and 95, just makes me wanna smash those pc's :madashell: