Scrolling 2D: why so good on Amiga?

[Britelite]

The same goes for the C64. There is only 8-pixel scrolling and a lot of smooth platformers obviously run on this, too. No changing of viewports (well, on the C64 there actually is to some extent but only in terms of screens, not pixels), just copying new data into video RAM. These are both proven "reasonable" platforms for 2D scrolling.

Erm, what? You do know that the c64 is able to smoothly scroll the whole screen with pixel precision in hardware? (or is it maybe this you're referring to with 8-pixel scrolling?) So, it's nothing like chunky pixels.

[Britelite]

I didn't say that it was anything like chunky pixels, but as far as I know the C64 is only able to scroll 8 pixels smoothly in hardware before having to copy the character blocks to move them further. I'm sorry if I was misinformed, and I'd be happy if you could explain the trick for scrolling the whole screen (or point me to a resource that explains it). I'm only dabbling in C64 coding, so 8 pixel scrolling is the only hardware scrolling I understand.

Ok then, I kind of misunderstood you. But still, you actually kind of do the same on the amiga too to scroll smoothly horizontally (hardware scroll for 16 pixels and then move pointers). And there are some tricks on the c64 to "move" the screen without needing to copy all the memory around, but I'll leave you to find out more of that