Amiga Vs Neo-Geo (scaling and rotation)

[Psy]

cantido wrote:
Consoles and arcade platforms have always been closely related since consoles came about. The consoles usually being a slightly less powerful version of the arcade platform.

Always? slightly?

The Sega Master System is no where near as powerful as Sega's System 16 arcade board.  

The Amiga is a multimedia computer which can do games but isn't limited to just that and that is why the designs differ.

The Amiga is also a game console or did you forget about the CD32?

Also Commodore lasted for 4 years after the release of the Neo Geo, it says something if Amiga in 4 year couldn't at least catch up to the Neo Geo.

The Amiga also cost a fraction of what a MVS board + carts would have set you back when they were released.

Not if you are talking the high end Amiga models to the AES home console

[cantido]

Psy wrote:
The Sega Master System is no where near as powerful as Sega's System 16 arcade board.  

I'd say the System 16 is pretty close to the Megadrive..
The Master system uses a Z80 as it's main processor and is probably more closely related to Z80 based boards sega made, and specifically the System E which has the same VDP as the mastersystem, only it has two of them. Funnily enough they were both released in 1986.. weird that eh?

More recent consoles like the Saturn and Dreamcast are directly related to the STV and the Naomi hardware respectively.

The Amiga is also a game console or did you forget about the CD32?

The CD32 was an afterthought not the original intention.

Also Commodore lasted for 4 years after the release of the Neo Geo, it says something if Amiga in 4 year couldn't at least catch up to the Neo Geo.

Not if you are talking the high end Amiga models to the AES home console

The A500 was released at around 100 dollars less than the AES. Which is the more (generally speaking) capable machine?

You're comparing oranges an apples.. The neogeo was designed for games, and the amiga was designed for "multimedia", one has hardware rotation and scaling, the other has a keyboard and enough ram to run an OS and applications.

[Speelgoedmannetje]

cantido wrote:

The Amiga is also a game console or did you forget about the CD32?

The CD32 was an afterthought not the original intention.

The CD32 was indeed an afterthought, but the initial plans for the Amiga 1000 was to make a game console. :rtfm:

[Psy]

cantido wrote:

Psy wrote:
The Sega Master System is no where near as powerful as Sega's System 16 arcade board.  

I'd say the System 16 is pretty close to the Megadrive..
The Master system uses a Z80 as it's main processor and is probably more closely related to Z80 based boards sega made, and specifically the System E which has the same VDP as the mastersystem, only it has two of them. Funnily enough they were both released in 1986.. weird that eh?

The MegaDrive was released in 1988 and quickly was out done by the NeoGeo and Sega's own System 32 arcade board but the gap was far more narrower then the Mater System and the System 16 board.

More recent consoles like the Saturn and Dreamcast are directly related to the STV and the Naomi hardware respectively.

Yhea that is when the gap pretty much vanished.

The CD32 was an afterthought not the original intention.

An afterthought that sold pretty well considering it was released just before Commodore went under.

The A500 was released at around 100 dollars less than the AES. Which is the more (generally speaking) capable machine?

You're comparing oranges an apples.. The neogeo was designed for games, and the amiga was designed for "multimedia", one has hardware rotation and scaling, the other has a keyboard and enough ram to run an OS and applications.

Yes but by since arcades were losing their edge shouldn't that means the Amiga should have closed the gap to arcades?

[RichP]

I really want to answer this because i love both these machines!

Psy wrote :- I was wondering which system had the more powerful video chip the Neo-Geo or the Amiga, I heard the Amiga does its scaling and rotation in software instead of in hardware like the Neo-Geo if this is true was Commodore planning on giving the Amiga hardware scaling and rotation?

I have read both the Amiga and Neo Geo hardware manuals so i know quite a lot about this. To start with the Neo Geo has sprite scaling but it *can't* rotate sprites. Games which have rotating sprites - either store all possible rotations or have an additional chip in the cartridge. + I cant actually think of any games that have proper rotating sprites offhand.

The answer is that the Neo Geo has a vastly more powerful video chip for games (huge number of hardware sprites, and multiple playfields) but if you are talking about computer tasks - e.g. drawing/artwork/3D rendering then the Amiga has a more powerful videochip with many screen modes and much higher resolution than the Neo Geo. The Neo Geo doesnt have a blitter so if you arent talking about sprites then it would probably be slower plotting to the screen with a Neo Geo.

Cantido wrote :- Metal Slug n does look nice,... bit it slows down a lot once there are a few sprites on the screen (on real hardware).

That is just bad programming, not a problem with the hardware. The Neo Geo can display a huge number of sprites onscreen with no processor overhead. The only overhead comes from handling them. Metal Slug 3 for example has no slowdown and more on screen than Metal Slug 1.

This is the latest Neo Geo release Fast Striker (2010) and it can display a huge number of objects on screen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_tnqgKFnto.

It's worth noting the pseudo 3D backgrounds in this game whilst very impressive are done by animating + looping sections of the background - not by any real 3D ability. looks great though

The A500 was released at around 100 dollars less than the AES. Which is the more (generally speaking) capable machine?

not a fair comparison, do you know how much Neo Geo games cost at the time? £150-199 for one game! The Neo Geo has very little onboard memory which was expensive in those days. The Neo Geo was the same hardware as what you would have found in arcades so it was much more capable for games, and you would expect so at that price.

The Amiga CD32 was an appalling games console at the time, I was really disappointed, it couldnt even really compete with the SNES from a technical point of view ( a console released a couple of years earlier) I'm not sure what Commodore were thinking. Putting a computer into a console never works. It is great now though for playing all the old Amiga games on CD  (yes i have a CD32 lol)

[SamuraiCrow]

The Amiga CD32 was an appalling games console at the time, I was really disappointed, it couldnt even really compete with the SNES from a technical point of view ( a console released a couple of years earlier) I'm not sure what Commodore were thinking. Putting a computer into a console never works. It is great now though for playing all the old Amiga games on CD  (yes i have a CD32 lol)

They were thinking that the hypertext revolution would hit the CD-ROM market like the CDTV used to use.  And thinking of ways to line their pockets instead of researching and developing new technologies.

[Elvir]

Neogeo or any 2d consoles at that time never had something fast like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjprwy6SoJM

[commodorejohn]

They were thinking that the hypertext revolution would hit the CD-ROM market like the CDTV used to use.  And thinking of ways to line their pockets instead of researching and developing new technologies.

A-yup. The "Multimedia!" fad claimed worse systems than the CD32 when people got bored of it. (Sadly it also claimed better, oh the poor Sega CD...)

Weighing in on the main topic: the Neo-Geo AES is basically a Sega Genesis with a more powerful (if weird) video chip, only they wanted 3.5× as much for it (to say nothing of the absurd game cost.) The A500 cost more upon release but by the time of the Neo-Geo's release had undergone a substantial price reduction (£499 to £399, according to Wikipedia,) had way more RAM, and was usable for stuff besides games. The hardware wasn't as powerful for gaming as the Neo-Geo's (being five years older and not specifically game-oriented,) but quite obviously good enough for a lot of titles.

In a nutshell, the Neo-Geo: a powerful but inaccessibly-priced niche machine with a smaller but excellent library and a deservedly huge cult following. The Amiga: an affordable but somewhat older machine with a large library of varying quality and a deservedly huge cult following

[psxphill]

http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/amigaaaa.html
 
No mention of those two, but maybe you could bug Dave Haynie? (I wonder why that matters anyway though).

Hombre would have been able to scale & rotate. Although whether it would have shown up in anything like what we'd call an Amiga is another matter.
 
neogeo is alot better than any stock amiga.

[Digiman]

1. If you don't like SNK 2D beat em ups you're screwed (80% of games were just that)

2. Scaling & Rotation in hardware? Riding Hero isn't exactly better than Chase HQ [arcade] graphically or Lotus 2[Amiga].   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnD8f_DvTbo
(Space Harrier 1 on Amiga has nice scaling...only the tiled floor is rubbish)

3. 99% of technically advanced arcade conversions on Amiga were crap mildly improved ST ports. Still they cost 80% less than £250 Neo-Geo carts.

4. Had C= not lost Needles & Mical the A500/A500+ may have had the hardware scaling of the Lynx instead of the inferior [to A1000] A500 those no talent ass clowns took nearly 2 years to come up with. Ditto A2000 identical chipset.

5. Very few Amiga artists were as talented as their arcade counterparts (ditto complex custom chip 68k coders) and point 3 meant the few who were able to supply true arcade quality graphics never got the chance due to ST sized graphics imposition/bandwidth in game design. Gauntlet 2 is a perfect shrunk in wash/colour faded crap conversion. 2 colour ST port floors FFS.

6. Few arcade games were on more than two Amiga disks.

7. Few games used the Amigas 2 independent fire button feature.

[Digiman]

Hombre would have been able to scale & rotate. Although whether it would have shown up in anything like what we'd call an Amiga is another matter.
 
neogeo is alot better than any stock amiga.

Hombre would have been in a machine costing maybe 2x more than PSX1 and was still unfinished in 94. Not even sure it was produced even as an alpha chipset.

I can't see anything making Viewpoint impossible to convert to Amiga reasonably, given enough space to store audio/video.

[phoenixkonsole]

Hi guys,

i had an NeoGeo CDZ.. which came out 1996.
There was a single speed CD version called Neo Geo CD before... both allowed to buy great looking games for around 50DM in germany.(70-80$ new).

So the stuff about having two boards in a cartridge wasn't needed to allow huge sprites and many of them plus great SFX. Way better than an Amiga with 8MB could handle.

The CD-Version had 7MB integrated in the system.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0jdvL5jln0

How much came a cd32 with sx32 and 8MB Fast Ram?

My Favorite Game http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWoi6W3JTkQ


But all in all i would still say there where only a few games which used the CD32 the right way.. with the space a CD offered they wasted a lot potential of using prerendered Backgrounds..

[phoenixkonsole]

BTW i am still looking for helping hands... especially coders
to make an clone of this for the cd32
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpaXvvug5qc

[bbond007]

The AGA was a bit more then a bug fix but anyway back the Amiga ECS chipset can kinda hold it own against Sega's System 16 arcade board (games like Outrun and Space Harrier were not on the System 16 boards but on dual 68000 boards were one 68000 did the scaling and rotation) so one would assume the Amiga in the 90's would be still be able to hold its own against arcade boards of the time as game consoles of the time was narrowing the gap.

It has 4x the bandwidth of OCS the bandwidth and supports 8bit in all modes. Thats more than a bug fix. ECS on the other hand was underwhelming.

[Digiman]

Can't think of any 4mb Arcade conversions on Amiga let alone 7-8mb ones! 7mb is excessive, most Win 95 PCs were about that level.

I guess it would be like having 8mb chip ram? Anyway you'd need 4mb to do something like Viewpoint I guess....and a hard drive/CD.

I liked that game that was kinda like rampage (and Viewpoint)

12Mhz 68000 on the Neo-Geo though....exactly what the A500plus needed (or 14mhz for ease of integrating into chipset DMA)

[Digiman]

It has 4x the bandwidth of OCS the bandwidth and supports 8bit in all modes. Thats more than a bug fix. ECS on the other hand was underwhelming.

Except using an 8 bitplane method for 256 colour screens pretty much used any new bandwidth increase. 8 bitplanes and no byte per pixel mode clearly shows AGA was a quick fix as the speed was affected badly due to this omission. Byte per pixel VGA was 4-5 years older than AGA too.