Was America nonchalant about Amiga arcade gaming?

[XDelusion]

I remember when I finally got my first Amiga in the mid 90's.

On the one hand I was seriously disappointed in many of the Arcade to Amiga conversions in comparison to their Sega Master System, NES, Genesis, and SNES counter parts.

It never failed that the Amiga got the short end of the stick in that territory considering that the Japanese were only in the business of Consoles in the American market.

As for U.S. programmers, they seemed to stick primarily with the 8-Bit Machines, and PC during the 80's, though there were a few exceptions.

Another thing that always irritated me about the Amiga as well as the Atari 8-bit Computer was the fact that they were one button centric. I HATE having to reach out and press the space bar for my second button. Too bad a Joyhack was never made that could resolve that.

(thankx for the list Cammy, I didn't realize there were so many)

Now back to the US Consoles, I always felt like their ports were lacking, or that they neglected to port some of the best titles. It wasn't until the Sega CD version of Forgotten Worlds came out that I finally played an Arcade port that seemed PERFECT to it's Arcade original on any system. Though now thankfully we have MAME which has satisfied me with all of my Arcade lust with the exception of Star Wars Trilogy Arcade. Drooooolllll!

[XDelusion]

I can not believe there are people out there that don't like Mario.

I mean seriously, have you played through New Super Mario Bros. Wii?!

That is hands down the most complex and most fun platformer I have ever played in my life, and I can't say any of the previous titles were a let down either. Not ever the Marioified Doku Doku Panic!

[XDelusion]

Did the Amiga ever get any software like AROS, and Windows has where you can assign Keyboard (and or mouse strokes) to your joystick? Or I wonder if the WHDLoad project could work in virtual second button support into games with certain pads. I.E. my Sega Master System game pad.

[XDelusion]

Cammy, your a sexy wellspring of information.

So I presume the Master System control pad's secondary button is useless as is? I was trying it with Aladin, but it didn't seem to do anything.

Can I just offer some advice to those people modifying their Sega pads to work on Amigas.

DO NOT USE THE C BUTTON!!! This is Fire 2 on the Amiga and is used by many games! If you are going to assign a button to be used as the UP direction for your games, please use A! It's unused and not connected for use on Amigas, so changing it won't effect any Amiga games, but changing C will make all those great games that already were designed for 2-button pads to not work properly! The B button as we all know is Fire 1 on Amigas.

You can modify a Sega pad so that all seven buttons (on a 6-button+Start pad) will work with Amiga games that support such a modified Sega pad. Some Amiga games make use of a modified 3-button pad (so A,B,C and Start work) and at least one game supports all the buttons.

There was a thread started about control pad and joystick modification here but it went nowhere, please feel free to bump it and continue the conversation because we need to spread awareness about Amiga control methods, especially as old joysticks become harder to find but we can still get Sega pads brand new.

Check here for more details - http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=50705

Of course there's still the Competition Pro, a joystick with four buttons on it that all do the same thing (Fire 1). But that's okay, because it has a switch on it to disable two of the buttons. (??) These are still in production and are great for Commodore 64s and 1-button Amiga games.

Now, WHDLoad! It already has the ability to remap keystrokes to button presses, but it's not global, it depends on the slave author to add the extra code to the install. Many WHDLoad games already have 2-button/CD32 pad patches applied, and you can now use a jump button in games like Ruff 'n' Tumble and New Zealand Story, as well as activate special weapons from a button rather than a key in Golden Axe and Battle Squadron, among other games. If there's a game that you think needs to have the keys remapped to 2-button or CD32 pads, let the author of the slave know and they might update it for you!