Was America nonchalant about Amiga arcade gaming?

[Amiga_Nut]

I ask this because [sadly] most of the arcade conversions are identical on both sides of the pond, and even worse they were mostly produced by greedy UK software houses hiring the cheapest, and therefore least talented, groups to do conversions.

Notable exception I can think of is Afterburner, but other than that USA either didn't bother to port arcade games, for example Simpsons Arcade was only for PC and C64 in USA and not Amiga, or they had the same horrible versions as produced in the UK like Outrun/Chase HQ/Gauntlet II etc.

Was PC gaming where it was at  in the late 80s/early 90s then? I can only assume it was for home computing as I don't exactly see a lot of US specific produced arcade conversions for Amiga, and ST and Mac wasn't doing anything unique either. Or was it simply because in the early days kids were messing about with the NES and later on the Sega Genesis during the formative years of Amiga 86-91?

I can understand with the Genesis, quite a nice machine for the price technically and not very difficult to convert arcade games for, but still it is a shame if so little effort was put into the Amiga market that all that was on offer to Americans were the pathetic UK produced conversions of technically challenging arcade games.

A travesty, would like to know why though.

[Jope]

Americans played Nintendo and other consoles back when we played Amiga games. In the beginning, most of the quality Amiga games came from the US, but nearer to the 90s it was Europe in the lead and USA had confined the Amiga to be a host to the video toaster card.

Look at any "top 100 games since 1970" lists in US based blogs and that wretched Mario is on top of each one.

The world is full of fine platformers, Mario is not one of them. ;-)

[KThunder]

wretched?
Any product that sells millions and millions of copies and spawns multiple successors can't be that bad, it might not be your cup of tea...

such as my disdain for all "hardcore" games

[save2600]

I wonder if the fact that natively, the Amiga, having only a single buttoned mindset had anything to do with it. Most of the arcade games at the time utilized 2-3 or more buttons next to their joysticks. Or Overscan. Dedicated consoles have this way of filling up the entire screen. Many of the arcade conversions on the Amiga had you playing with an invisible border .75" thick it seemed. Another attribute that's not very "arcade" like  

[TheBilgeRat]

I think it was mainly due to the uncommonness of the Amiga in many areas, and then another subset (geek) of people on top of THAT.  You could go to the Sears or local box store and buy a console that was simple and just worked.  I had the luck of being a friend of a kid whose uncle ran an amiga store, so we spent a lot of time on his A500 playing the crap out of whatever games we could get our hands on.  I also had a nintendo, and played the crap out of it too.

[B00tDisk]

I hated amiga "Gaming" by and large.  That whole "boot off a floppy disk, don't have an expanded machine, no this won't install on that $500 10mb HD you just bought, oh and it runs in PAL so expect difficulties there, too" was just crap.  Utter, utter crap.  I wanted a general purpose computer that had games available for it.  I think the A500 with a half meg of fast half meg of chip scene crippled Amiga development as much as penny-pinching by money siphoning upper management.

Flight sims?  Yeah, loved those on the Amiga.  RPGs, too.

[Amiga_Nut]

Sure Streetfighter II and Mortal Kombat were going to be compromised with the 1 button Joystick, but they could have coded for Sega Genesis pads too. Lack of effort, and graphically SF2 is a half hearted effort compared to the me-too clone Shadow Fighters.

But the fact Lotus II on Amiga and Genesis look identical, but Outrun on Amiga looks like a steeming turd with steel wheels is a joke, it should have looked as good as the Genesis version or even the NEC TurboGrafx.

And the PAL problems some people had in NTSC land, here in PAL land most games had a massive stupid border on the bottom of the game due to it running in 320x200 not 320x256 PAL mode, and to make it worse still some games like Buggy Boy just used the graphics designed for the ST version, so the Amiga buggy is squashed. FAIL!

I suspected it was probably due to the NES, was very big seller in USA. In the EU it pretty much flopped, most consoles did until the Sega Genesis.

It's still a shame though, a real shame, apart from conversions of technically simple arcade games we got pretty shafted. Thank heaven for such ingenious coders as hired by people like Gremlin for things like Shadow Fighters and Lotus II These games clearly show technically the Amiga wasn't the problem causing the rubbish conversions.

Early games were much better, look at Marble Madness and Cinemaware stuff from the USA, truly beautiful efforts if not execution which you never begrudged paying 2x as much as a C64 disk game to play. Then it kinda went down hill I feel as the big boys got involved.

[Crom00]

Amiga was damned if it did and damned if it didn't.

Great repuation for games...
But then no one took it seriously becuase of the Commodore association with cheap game computers. Retailers wanted a plug in replacement for the Commodore 64 a refresh item. The Amiga was too expensive in comparison... the Amiga 500 needed to be a $200 item with backwards compatiblity to C-64 titles... Including a cartridge slot would have gained support from publishers due to the hacking issues with floppies.

Great Graphics for Productivity
Yet...I remember PC trade show folks saying stupid things like "who need 4096 colors and sound.. it's a toy"

PC caught on because Work PCs were all IBM then folks got home IBM PC's beucase they could bring software home.

Just a lot of weird bad energy towards the Amiga machine and their makers.

[Crom00]

Also most American game companies were PC based. So when the Amiga offered more colors and sound not all of then used the advanced capabilities.

You have to realized that consoles had the benefit of a cartridge format. If they NEEDED to they could add more features into the console. Nintendo and it's Super FX chip was a good example of this. Also... the load times were faster on the carts.

Anyone remember sawpping floppies... I got  3 disk drives only to realize many games didn't support multiple drives... or how about getting to disk 3 of your game and realizing it's corrupted..?

I bought my games but when Who Frammed Roger Rabit had a faulty disk I was accused of being an Amiga Pirate at Software Etc. becuase I wanted an exchange.

Meanwhile I don't know one mac or Pc person that has EVER purchased software unless they had to... even then they do so kicking and screaming.

[save2600]

That cartridge/disk relationship was befuddling. The perception of value that is. IMO, gaming companies should have never asked $50+ for their software on diskette. It was just absurd back then. Especially when you knew damn well they saved themselves TONS of money by not purchasing and producing expensive chips, circuit boards and cases. So that scenario did always kind of loom in the back of a lot of peoples minds here.

[KThunder]

I think the home computer crash and susequent rise of the pc affected us more quickly than Europe too. By the end of the 80's it was consoles and pcs. Atari and Commodore limped into the 90's as far a popularity here.

I had my 8-bit ataris and commodores but what I really wanted at the time was a TG-16, I had a Genesis and my brothers had an nes and snes.  I only remember a couple of ads and articles on the Amiga, and I wanted one but I had to wait till I got my 1st a1000 with 2.5megs of ram. I liked the others, I loved the Amiga!

[Crom00]

Had the CDTV actually been CD32 spec device released in late 91 instead of 93... well it makes you think. What a difference just 2 years could make.

I think C= did a good job on the CD32, just a bit too late. It got good reviews in the jaded US game mags (not an easy thing, then ornow) CD32 was touted as offering the best value for dollar. something Sega should have looked at when developing MegaCD and hinting at expansions that allow tapping into the hug floppy library...

you'd have had folks buying cd32's and turning them into A1200's.

[Cammy]

I wonder if the fact that natively, the Amiga, having only a single buttoned mindset had anything to do with it. Most of the arcade games at the time utilized 2-3 or more buttons next to their joysticks. Or Overscan. Dedicated consoles have this way of filling up the entire screen. Many of the arcade conversions on the Amiga had you playing with an invisible border .75" thick it seemed. Another attribute that's not very "arcade" like  

Only the idiot programmers of the time had this "Amiga only has one fire button" mindset. Anyone with a hint of curiosity would have plugged in a Sega control pad, seeing that the plugs look the same as Amiga ones, and discovered that the second fire button on those pads is exactly the same as the Amiga's Right Mouse Button, therefor ALL Amiga games from the very start were capable of using two buttons. Many games have the option to use a controller with 2-buttons.

There was never an official Amiga joystick. Commodore released the machine with 2/3 button capability, but it was the third party programmers and peripheral manufacturers who were lazy and didn't take advantage of this fact.

Commodore DID release an official control pad, the CDTV pad, and it did have two fire buttons. They later released the CD32 pad with six fire buttons so from 1993-onwards there was no excuse not to include support for extra button control pads in games.

Because of these lazy or oblivious programmers and peripheral manufacturers, yes many Amiga games were ruined and plenty of console owners laughed at these poor attempts to simplify the gameplay to use a single button.

The thick black borders around many Amiga arcade conversions are a result of quick and nasty ST-to-Amiga ports where none of the extra hardware in the Amiga is taken advantage of, and we're stuck with this 16 colour, restricted view area game instead of a true Amiga port that takes up the full screen or uses overscan, has dual playfields or 32/64 colours and super fast, smooth scrolling like the Amiga was capable of.

[J-Golden]

I'm getting confused...
 
Every Amiga joystick that I've owned had TWO buttons on it as well as every game use TWO buttons.  Why does everyone keep talkiong about single-buttoness?  That was the C-64 & Atari...

[save2600]

MOST Amiga games certainly did NOT take advantage of a dual button joystick. MOST 2-button joys are actually wired to be one button - just in different positions. Usually one on the base and one up top.

Cammy is absolutely right on all counts, especially about lazy programmers.

Out of the boxes and boxes I have of just about every DB9 joystick ever made, only ONE of them is wired to be 2-buttoned. It's an extremely rare Epyx one too.