chunky pixel mode

[runequester]

Chunky mode would have helped, but processing power was more of a bottleneck in my opinion. 030's vs 486's isn't really any reasonable comparison for a CPU intensive game.

[runequester]

But the 486s were in £1000+ systems, and the A1200 was a £400 (then £300) system.

Which brings us onto the other failing: No £600 A1230 with 40MHz '030 and 4MB RAM at release. Upselling - Commodore hadn't heard of it, apart from that hard drive included SKU.

At Release:
A1200 2MB '020 14MHz: £399
A1200 4MB '020 14MHz: £479
A1200 4MB '030 25MHz: £549
A1200 4MB '030 40MHz: £599
A2200 4MB '030 40MHz: £799 (A1200 in desktop case w/ separate keyboard)

People would have easily been persuaded to get a higher level A1200 in shops because the price increments aren't too shocking.

Oh, I agree completely. When people have brought this up in the past, the response is usually some sort of resigned "well, PC's were faster anyways, so nobody would have bought it", but the stock 1200's sold extremely well. A 1200 with even a bit of FAST RAM and either a faster 020 or a decent 030 would have sold just as well.

[runequester]

I get that it wasn't the upgrade Commodore maybe needed, but I'll be honest, I  don't recall anyone bitching about AGA back in the day. We were all pretty stoked about, and the games suddenly looked nicer.

[runequester]

On PC games got better with faster CPU but on Amiga (2D) games rarely got better with faster CPU.

For a certain type of games sure. We'd all have loved to have UFO Enemy Unknown be less pokey. But there were plenty of areas where CPU power was important: Coding, all sorts of applications (including graphics which was a popular use of the amiga community), and later games.

It'd also permit more advanced games. Look at things like Genetic Species and Onescapee for some simple things that were possible with a decent 030 and AGA.

[runequester]

This is true, but those were solvable problems ultimately. RTG, AHI and PCI sound cards, PowerPC stuff. They just weren't solved at the time it needed to happen.

[runequester]

Would the Amiga have been able to function with as little RAM as it had, using Chunky modes, or is that not an issue?

[runequester]

You could fit a 640x512 truecolour (24 bit) screen in just under 1Mb.  I'd recommend a bit of FAST RAM as well, though.

Put simply, a chunky mode wouldn't use any more RAM than the equivalent planar mode.  Planar modes only save memory if you're not using all 8 bitplanes, except HAM8, which is clever but not much use for games (and in theory you could have a Chunky mode HAM anyway).

Thanks for the clarification. So by the time we're talking 256 colours, there's no savings involved in planar?