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

[runequester]

It's funny. I realize that we probably needed something more like super VGA, and it'd have been nice if we had gotten a more significant upgrade than what AGA was.
And we've all wondered about the AA prototype stuff Haynie showed in the Deathbed Vigil video.


But am I the only person on the planet, who doesn't think AGA was all that bad?

People sing the praises of VGA, but when I grew up, rather than in hindsight, plenty of VGA games looked similar or worse than even OCS/ECS games, let alone AGA. Games like Virocop and Banshee looked amazing, compared to similar offerings on the PC.

Sure, FPS games didn't run so good, but how much of that was processing power? When I see videos of people running Doom on an 040 it runs pretty slick. Memory glosses things over, but Doom was pretty choppy on a 386 back in the day. There's a few videos on youtube to remind you.


So eh. I know it's one of those things where you are supposed to hate it, but I think AGA was pretty cool

[runequester]

For me it's a matter of worshipping mediocrity. I seem to find that really hard to do. Everytime i think about AGA all i can wonder is what could have been and what they gave us :rolleyes:

I agree that Banshee was amazing to look at and i also agree that the AGA games looked better than our IBM counterparts. My friend showed me what he thought was amazing graphics - Prince of persia. It was crap!      :confused:

OK i know this might be more PC vs ECS/OCS and not AGA but i still think this is relevant to your point. Games always looked better on Amiga's than on PCs. Personally i think the beige box is partly responsible. Ugly looking case ugly graphics period.

But i disagree that Doom looked good because it didn't. I hate the fuzzy pixels and i hate the chunky looking feel of the game. Even today with Freedom i feel this way. There were far superior looking games than Doom. Please note i'm talking about the graphics not the gameplay. Doom is ugly.

I agree with you that AGA is good despite it's shortcomings in that i appreciate the Amiga's uniqueness compared to everyone else.

yeah, Doom did look fuzzy. What I meant was more in regards to speed. I personally think Breathless looked as good, if not better, though it required equivalent gear to run.

A lot of people get fussed over "You need an expensive amiga to run Doom!"
My original PC ran Doom okay'ish and cost some 1500 US dollars in the very late 90's. Thats pretty damn expensive


I think we're on the same page though. It could have been a ton more than it was, but what it was wasn't a bad thing. Given Commodore's self-destruction at the time, I guess we were lucky we actually got a new graphics chip at all :madashell:

[runequester]

I don't hate it.

I was in awe of it when it first came out (I was 15). Yes, it could have been better and we know where corners were cut but that meant it was affordable!

(By comparison, look at modern graphics cards. You can buy the super-duper latest card for £600, or the 'ultra cut down version, don't bother cos it'll be slower than what you already have' for £100 - the only problem with AGA is that we were only given a cost-saving version, not the super duper version.)

Heck, I remember seeing VGA cards for 300+ dollars, and that was after they'd been out for a while.

I remember seeing an old add for the IBM EGA card from 1985 or thereabouts. It was 600 dollars, and you needed a special monitor on top of that

[runequester]

Breathless made my jaw drop and I still love the game.

I think AGA was great, althoug, in the clear light of hinsigt, it did ofcourse have some lacks. But nothing that a scandoubler couldnt fix.

And yes, all this talk about expensive amiga gear, really makes me laugh, sort of, because a great PC also cost an arm and a leg. And especially in the 80/90s.

yeah, our first PC was 1500 dollars, and was shite. A proper "gaming PC" was easily 2000 or more. This was very late 90's

Almost everyone I know who had PC's in the early 90's or late 80's paid 2000+ dollars for their machine, often having to add sound cards (and late 80's sometimes VGA) on top of that cost.

So when people complain that "amiga upgrading was expensive" I tend to laugh. Even if an 030 card was a thousand dollars, you'd still have money left over for software, extra joystick and a printer

People tend to assume that PC's always cost what they do now, where 500 bucks will get you a decent machine.

[runequester]

I think most of us agree that AGA was not quite enough to put the Amiga back in the lead in graphics, but it kept Amigas in the race a lot longer than OCS or ECS could of done if the Amiga had stade at them.

Its a shame that AGA was under used in games but I think some people on here are forgetting that when it was used properly the gaphics blew away what could be on OCS/ECS.

Slam Tilt, Microcosm, Capital Punishment, super stardust, Theme Park, Myst, simon the sorcerer, sim city 2000, gloom, onEscape, napalm etc

Even to this day I still think the best pin ball game in feel, looks and stlye is Slam Tilt, its a MUST for any AGA owner out there!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXaAfLJuhrs (might have to load it up for a quick go!)

Slam Tilt is pretty damn awesome, and the music is rad too


Good responses btw guys. I think most of us have the same perspective on things.

[runequester]

As one of the people who went A500 to A1200, I was very please with AGA at the time.
Yes, there were some incredible OCS/ECS games, but I loved AGA.
 
And even now, when I look at some of the demos by TBL and such for AGA Amiga's with 060's, I think the problem was more processor than graphics....
 
desiv

It always amazes me when people look at a 1200 with an 030 running Doom, and blame AGA for it being pokey, when the same game running on a PC needed a 486 to actually move at a decent clip.
 
Same deal for stuff like Wing Commander really. People ran it on their 486 with tons of RAM, and then complained that the amiga 500 ran it slow.
Really ?

[runequester]

Exactly my point...
 
The big problem was that it cost much more to accelerate the Amiga..
 
I was able to buy a complete PC with a fast (at the time) 486 for less than the cost of the an accelerator for the 1200....
 
desiv

Maybe this is regional cost, but my first PC was just over 1500 US dollars for the cheapest junk machine the store had, compared to a bit under 500 dollars for my 1200. In 93 or 94, did an 030 card with a bit of RAM really cost that much ?
I never had one as a kid, so I don't know what they cost back then.
 
This was in Denmark, so I don't know if costs on PC's were noticeably cheaper in the US or UK.

[runequester]

Yikes. Digiman is letting rip
 
I fundamentally agree with you man. I just prefer looking at what was cool about it

[runequester]

Its worth pointing out that there were more to computers than arcade games.

Nobody made PD games for the NES (ROM hacks I guess)

You couldn't play Civilization or Battle Isle on the master system.

Not a lot of people used their super nintendo for animation.

I never got the hang of writing a high school paper on the playstation.

[runequester]

hey guys, lets keep it polite and friendly

[runequester]

Doom runs fine on 386DX33 with on-motherboard L2 cache and full 32bit bus.

Doom running on 386SX33 with 16bit bus http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vETjEH0Vo9I

There's obviously different definitions of "runs fine" in use here.

[runequester]

I don't recall spending  $1500 for Intel Celeron-A (Mendocino) + LuckyTech P6ZX3 (Intel 440ZX) + NVIDIA TNT2 M64 in the late 90s.

Well, you're down under, and I grew up in Denmark. Prices were likely rather different.

[runequester]

So this thread has appeared again! it's been a few years since the last one
 
My answer is the same as then, AGA was cool but slow. I think we can blame the later commodore management for that, we all know by now what Haynie and crew wanted in there.
 
Even so, for viewing pictures, creating 2d artwork, and viewing 3d renders- it was cool, hundreds of thousands of colours in high rez cool (for 1992). Just a shame they never got workbench running in HAM/8.

Wasn't there even tools for converting jpg to HAM8, or did I imagine that?