Amiga guilt and time distortion.

[Digiman]

Yes, it's true that for horsepower x86 kicks any other desktop architecture's ass these days, but that wasn't nearly so true back in the early '90s

The point PC was viable future winner for UK computer gamers was mass adoption by software houses of VGA graphics as standard. Why?

386 VGA/SBLASTER owner buys SF2....pretty slow and unplayable. 18 months later sells it and gets 486DX66 +GRAVIS etc....suddenly old unplayable game is arcade quality. Had 256 colours but is faster and sounds better automatically.

A500 owner buyss SF2...32 colour slow rubbish....3 years later he gets a 4000/030 and loads SF2....STILL rubbish (same speed, 32 colours, SFX/music). Has to pray a good AGA version is released and buy a 2nd copy if it is ever made! No reward for his £999 investment!

And that my friends is the problem, in 1990 most arcade games on PC had 256 colour graphics like Super Nintendo and their old PC games bought before upgrading to better PC automatically improved without the need for a single line of game code to improve. VGA mass adoption was the key. EGA Cinemaware games will forever be inferior to Amiga versions even on an running on Intel i7 920 PC today. After VGA though it was game over. 256 colours was enough even for 3D games like Doom or Screamer Rally  comparedto PS1 RidgeRacer/Doom.

Big problem for AGA AND Atari Falcon potential purchasers no?

[runequester]

It depends on how the game was coded. There's amiga games that benefited from a faster CPU, and some expected it (try running AB3D2 on a 68020 without fast RAM if you don't believe me), and there's PC games that became unplayable at faster speeds.

In any event however, its completely irrelevant today. Why bother worrying about it?

Amiga guilt is why.

[Khephren]

The point PC was viable future winner for UK computer gamers was mass adoption by software houses of VGA graphics as standard. Why?

386 VGA/SBLASTER owner buys SF2....pretty slow and unplayable. 18 months later sells it and gets 486DX66 +GRAVIS etc....suddenly old unplayable game is arcade quality. Had 256 colours but is faster and sounds better automatically.


A500 owner buyss SF2...32 colour slow rubbish....3 years later he gets a 4000/030 and loads SF2....STILL rubbish (same speed, 32 colours, SFX/music). Has to pray a good AGA version is released and buy a 2nd copy if it is ever made! No reward for his £999 investment!

And that my friends is the problem, in 1990 most arcade games on PC had 256 colour graphics like Super Nintendo and their old PC games bought before upgrading to better PC automatically improved without the need for a single line of game code to improve. VGA mass adoption was the key. EGA Cinemaware games will forever be inferior to Amiga versions even on an running on Intel i7 920 PC today. After VGA though it was game over. 256 colours was enough even for 3D games like Doom or Screamer Rally  comparedto PS1 RidgeRacer/Doom.

Big problem for AGA AND Atari Falcon potential purchasers no?

Hmm. So having the game run shit on your £1000+ 386 is a good thing?
So the fact that it was badly written for the 386 is good thing?
And we all have the money to then buy a new computer every 18 months?
Ever wonder why gamers have switched from the PC upgradathon to an Amiga like console lifespan of 5+ years?
The switch over to most games being VGA did not occur in the UK at least,  as early as you say it did.
Also, the game will not suddenly improve. EGA and VGA were often different boxes for disk versions.


Your exactly illustrating what's being talked about here.

[Khephren]

In any event however, its completely irrelevant today. Why bother worrying about it?

RQ we are posting on a forum dedicated to a computer that realisticaly died in '94. It's all irrelevant. But it obviously matters, else none of us would be on here.

[commodorejohn]

386 VGA/SBLASTER owner buys SF2....pretty slow and unplayable. 18 months later sells it and gets 486DX66 +GRAVIS etc....suddenly old unplayable game is arcade quality. Had 256 colours but is faster and sounds better automatically.

A500 owner buyss SF2...32 colour slow rubbish....3 years later he gets a 4000/030 and loads SF2....STILL rubbish (same speed, 32 colours, SFX/music). Has to pray a good AGA version is released and buy a 2nd copy if it is ever made! No reward for his £999 investment!

You're undermining your own point. Yes, OCS/ECS Amiga games don't suddenly get better when you play them on an AGA machine. But EGA games don't get better on a VGA box, either. The only real difference is that AGA came too late in the game and didn't offer enough improvement, not that VGA was some kind of instant market-conqueror.

[Iggy]

I feel no guilt.
Amiga's were great when they were current.
I continue to use an Amiga derivative every day for almost all my computing needs.

[cecilia]

Windows 95 ended the debate.  It was solid, graphical and cheap.  There was a brief moment for Amiga and then it was gone.  .............

not so short.

The first year the Newtek Toaster came out a million Amigos sold and many of those Amiga were used in cable stations, for local video companies and many many artists making their way in films.

I can't say enough that the very existence of Amiga CHANGED the way people worked in these fields. It opened people's eyes and fueled their imagination.

There's no going back. You may think the moment came and went

I say the Amiga Effect continues to this day

[Iggy]

not so short.

The first year the Newtek Toaster came out a million Amigos sold and many of those Amiga were used in cable stations, for local video companies and many many artists making their way in films.

I can't say enough that the very existence of Amiga CHANGED the way people worked in these fields. It opened people's eyes and fueled their imagination.

There's no going back. You may think the moment came and went

I say the Amiga Effect continues to this day

Amigos?
Actually Amiga did start a revolution in cheap video manipulation and low cost special effects.

[sparkeyjames]

Windows 95 ended the debate.  It was solid, graphical and cheap.  There was a brief moment for Amiga and then it was gone.  I believe there was no winning hand.  The direction the industry took was inevitable.  Instead of crying over the past let's just enjoy our little corner of it.

The Amiga really never had a huge chance. IBM already dominated the business world. A world where the Amiga would never be able to penetrate. I mean look at it this way. The Amiga was in production in various guises for 9 years and in those nine years NOT ONE MAJOR maker of software for business ported their stuff to the Amiga. As much as we all hate to admit it the Amiga was a nitch computer. It could have moved into the area where the Mac went for a number of years and that is Desktop publishing. C= was killed from inside by Medhi Ali before that could happen in any serious way.

[runequester]

The Amiga really never had a huge chance. IBM already dominated the business world. A world where the Amiga would never be able to penetrate. I mean look at it this way. The Amiga was in production in various guises for 9 years and in those nine years NOT ONE MAJOR maker of software for business ported their stuff to the Amiga. As much as we all hate to admit it the Amiga was a nitch computer. It could have moved into the area where the Mac went for a number of years and that is Desktop publishing. C= was killed from inside by Medhi Ali before that could happen in any serious way.

From memory wordperfect was ported. And Electronic Arts are chopped liver i guess?

What type of software did the amiga lack that ibm machines had?

[TheBilgeRat]

From memory wordperfect was ported. And Electronic Arts are chopped liver i guess?

What type of software did the amiga lack that ibm machines had?

microsoft word

[runequester]

microsoft word

Today sure. In a pre internet world i dont know. There were plenty of word processors and dtp stuff on the miggy.

[sparkeyjames]

From memory wordperfect was ported. And Electronic Arts are chopped liver i guess?

What type of software did the amiga lack that ibm machines had?

It isn't that there wasn't software that was aimed at business for the Amiga it was the BIG names that were missing. 1 big name software package out of a few hundred that ran under PCDOS/MSDOS is not a BUT But but moment. It is also doubly hard when your company is looked at by businesses as a games machine maker.

[desiv]

I don't think the "thousands" mattered at all..
WordPerfect was a huge deal....
And there were alternate solutions for most everything else that were pretty good..
But, in my mind, it comes down to MS.
No MS Word.  No MS Excel.
2 platforms had those.  Windows and Mac.
2 platforms survived..
I'm not a fan per se (although Word 4 for the Mac was awesome..), and not everyone had to "use" those in business.  But it sure seemed like you had to "have" it available to be taken seriously...

desiv

[runequester]

Macs had some of this software available and didnt make much of a splash in the business world either, outside a few niches.

IBM/DOS grabbed the corporate market and that was it.

Commodore didnt need that market to survive and aiming at the consumer is where the focus should have fallen.

[Franko]

Various symptoms may manifest themselves, such as feeling a need to post in as many conversations as possible with any of the following:

How much commodore sucked

They didn't, they brought us the Amiga, it was down to little sh!tes like Mehdi Ali that brought about the downfall of Commodore & the Amiga not all the other folk at CBM who worked to bring us the Amiga...

How much PPC sucked

It didn't, it just arrived too late (after Commodore had folded) and was still too new and expensive to be a mass Amiga market hit...

How terrible the amiga was compared to the PC

Bollox...

How much every amiga model past the 500/1000/2000 was awful and terrible

More Bollox...

How much better Turrican 2 was on the C64

Possibly...

That x86 solves everything

Biggest load of Bollox ever...

How terrible AGA was

AGA was and still is, the best thing since sliced bread, end of story...

That the X1000 is super expensive, in case you hadn't heard

Maybe, but consider how much you spend on PCs/ Macs/ Consoles etc... then for a new small market product it aint that bad and if your too miserable to part with the cash then stop ruddy complaining about it...