Am I the only one who doesn't hate AGA?

[save2600]

You'd actually have to have some serious issues to hate it though.

I'm with Karlos here. Yes, AGA should have been incorporated by the time the A3000 was released, but I don't see what's to "hate". I'll admit though... owning an AGA capable machine (1200/4000/C32) is not on my high list of system ownership. My only real complaint video wise is that Commodore went "backwards" in thought by not including Amber in the last two computers. Once the A3000 had 31khz capability, that should have been the standard from there on out. IMO, that's one of the largest reasons many could never take the C= products seriously. Such a simple thing as a flickerless display and they totally overlooked that necessity, despite all the complaints and third party add-ons to correct their blunder.

One other thought about AGA is how it was implemented in the A1200. Looking back, you really can't help but see the major design flaw of utilizing a 14mhz 020 in that model. Completely stupid in hindsight. As others have pointed out, AGA was slow as anyone who's loaded a pretty picture on their wedged Miggy will attest. AGA was a great concept, but the hardware and architecture that supported it was severely underpowered, making 030+ ownership a must. Which is a ridiculous notion by the budget computer standard that Commodore themselves set. Hell, even Atari had the gee-whiz to pop an 030 in on their last wedge.

[save2600]

Even a hard drive would have improved the quality and complexity of games, but no, people kept their floppy only A500's.

Because Commodore did not include HD's as standard equipment, unlike the competition. And to upgrade your A500 to have a HD was cost prohibitive. Case certainly was never designed for one anyway. Had 2.5" drives been affordable and there was a place to install one internally without having to get a Shuffleboard and removing your internal floppy, that might have been different. But just as the argument of having certain capabilities built-in, the practically "unexpandable" A500 was doomed from the start that way. Just as the big boxes were, thanks to them being overpriced by early 90's standards

If  more people did buy an A1200, the software houses might have been convinced not to write their software to run on 512k A500.

I disagree with this because, by that time, it was already too late. Software houses had already seen the writing on the wall. And ultimately, it was C= fault for not knowing how to market their system(s).

I was an early A1200 adopter and guess what I had to do in order to add an affordable HD to my system? Purchase an ugly external box that housed a 3.5" HD w/ external power supply, with a bare naked IDE ribbon cable coming out the back of my system. Yeah, that was great. Didn't look half-assed at all (sarcasm). 2.5" drives were simply cost prohibitive. Was I being cheap? No. I was trying to be practical. By the time I ended my spending spree... I had nearly $1400 (before monitor) wrapped up in the stupid thing. Little wonder I bought 386 and then a 486 shortly after. Course now, the Windoze platform and its chinsey hardware isn't allowed in the house at all, but I digress. lol

[save2600]

CDROM at the time of Commodore was bloody expensive, so if people were too tight to ditch the A500, why would Commodore push CDROM?

When did Commodore push CD-ROM? They barely got their CDTV out the door  

I agree with much of what you're saying - but it's rather like the chicken and the egg scenario. C= got soooo much wrong. Easy to say in hindsight, but there were some obvious F-ups, even back then. The A1200's case CAN indeed handle a 3.5" HD as we all know, but it wasn't part of their plan. Hence the PCMCIA port. They were in portability mode for sure, but what the consumer ended up with was a half-assed wedge system that really didn't make a whole lot of sense during the time it was released. And pretty much, everyone knew it and that's exactly how it was received.

Had it truly been released as a portable system - fine. But it wasn't. It was released as a home-desktop "upgrade" to the A500 so many years later, even though C= themselves were well aware of their demographic (or not). Weak. Extremely weak IMO.

[save2600]

@2600.  The A1200 wedge design was for portable computing on the cheap: the built in composite out meant no monitor needed, just plonk it in front of a tv, and boot up.  Even with just 2 meg and no hard drive you would probably boot up faster than a hard drive PC with Win 3!  

The real shame was that too few users saw what the A1200 could do with a hard drive and extra ram:  Word Process, Spread sheet, database, video, art, animation, music, mutitasking GUI OS, and even 3D.  Everything that an expanded A500 could do and more, for less than an A500 upgrade.

I once cursed the limitations for expansion, of an all-in-one wedge design, but I now realise what i wanted the A1200 to be what it wasn't designed to be.  Thats what the A4000 was.

The A1200 was NOT marketed as a "half assed" (which is clearly what it would have been, had they even tried) portable machine here in the States as you're projecting. It was supposed to be an evolutionary step up from the A500. And are you kidding about the A1200 and A4000? Umm.... remember the cost difference? Totally inexcusable. Even worse than the A500 and A2000. Commodore simply didn't know what they had or how to even price it. The Amiga was left to monkeys after the A1000 was designed. Pure and simple.

+10 Digiman!

[save2600]

A1200+

30 MHz 030
1 MB Chip RAM
2 MB Fast RAM
30 pin SIMM Sockets on mobo
High Density internal floppy drive
AGA graphics w/ enhanced blitter/copper and true Amber 31khz VGA monitor compatibility with the stupid VGA adapter included or better yet, with the standard S-VGA output built-in
8 channel DSP sound at 16-bit equiv and Roland MIDI compatibility

£499/$750

That spec and price isn't too shabby and quite a realistic proposal for a 1992 launch.

Would it have been enough to save the ship?

Fixed those specs for you, but still... would have failed. A slower death maybe. But failure personified thanks to C= not evolving with consumer demand, trending and good old common sense.

I still think it's pure mental retardation that Tramiel became Atari's owner and C= was left in the hands of misc. generic failed computing execs. What a crock computing history has turned out to be. Even then, we all knew it was bad news. But it was allowed to happen. Once again: irresponsible capitalism and corporate politics ruined yet another couple of great "entities" that had more of an impact on computing in their demise, than when they were "alive".

[save2600]

In general-and the people here are an exception, we'd have to be to still be even thinking about Amiga- Amiga users were the biggest tightwads.  Yes Commodore made horrendous business decisions, but whereas PC users plonked $3,000 on a 486 PC to play Doom, Amiga user complained about the price of a hard drive!

You bring up lots of good points, but I can't help but wonder, had Commodore included HD's as standard equipment in their lower end machines (no option), how the general public would have received them. You talk about how developers always have the least common denominator in mind, well, had HD's been standard, imagine how the platform would have benefited. I still think there was too big a price gap between models though and Commodore were their own worst enemy that way as they molded their client base to be "cheapies" as such. I do remember the $3k-$4k price tags on some of these big box models though. Pretty funny when you think about Commodore's leasing program. :lol:

[save2600]

IF only the Amiga had "blast processing" to go along with AGA  :lol:

Sonic does suck though. Not much of a game there at all. Let's see how fast we can blow through a level, while trying to nab as many coins as possible. Yay. Yawn.

[save2600]

Surely, you can come up with some better excuse to evade my actual point.

Nah, I wasn't trying to make an argument either way. Truth is, when it comes to arcade-type games, I've not seen too many examples where classic computer gaming outshines their console counterparts. Rarely, if ever happens. No need to go into all the 'why', 'if', 'ands' and 'buts', but I suspect it's a combination of what's already been spoken about: lazy programmers, bad ports and the fact that the hardware *is* different from consoles. Having your entire program dumped to ROM on a cartridge has its obvious advantages too. As far as Sonic having 10 channels of sound - whoopee. The sound out of a Genesis/Megadrive is heavily distorted and offends anyway. There's no denying though that being forced to choose either sound effects or music, is lame. I like what someone said a while back about Paula needing another channel or two. Would have been nice!

[save2600]

I suggest you listen to this, which was produced for and recorded from a Mega Drive, before you make any assumptions about its sound capabilities.

I'll have to give that a listen when I get home. Using a crippled PC at work here  

BTW: I've owned several Model 1's, Model 2's and Model 3's throughout the years and am intimately familiar with how all of Sega's consoles sound. Currently have a model 2, 32X and CD unit (fugly combo if ever there was one). You're right about the 2 and 3 system though. Awful sound compared to the original! Video even took a slight dive too  

Same with SID on the C64. C64c's SID sounds 'different' and to these ears, not always in the most flattering way.