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[Wildebeest]

How on earth did Commodore go bust, they had a machine ahead of anything else by far

Jack Tramiel made the Atari ST as a spoiler product, and it worked, since early games were held back by the need to be compatible with both. Just a couple of years after Amiga was released, even more impressive home computers came out that made less of a splash than Amiga. It was a very competitive market back then for different platforms.

 

[calistan]

It was something like going from Snes to Psx.

More like NES to SNES, I'd say.

 

[cartman414]

Yes and although I still play on the modern consoles, my favourite time was always the Amiga era, great 2D graphics and THAT Paula sound chip. How on earth did Commodore go bust, they had a machine ahead of anything else by far

Being run into the ground by complete imbeciles will do that.

The engineers wanted to do so much more with the Amiga, but were denied the funding at every step.

 

[Seider]

More like NES to SNES, I'd say.

Snes went out 5 years after the Amiga.

And i remember a huge technical jump from Spectrum to Amiga. A lot bigger than from Nes to Snes. And in a shorter lapse of time. Amige came out 3 years later than Spectrum and the difference was abysmal. Snes came out 7 years later than Nes.

Spectrum = 1982
Amiga = 1985

Nes = 1983
Snes = 1990

 

[Wildebeest]

Snes went out 5 years after the Amiga.

And i remember a huge technical jump from Spectrum to Amiga. A lot bigger than from Nes to Snes. And in a shorter lapse of time. Amige came out 3 years later than Spectrum and the difference was abysmal. Snes came out 7 years later than Nes.

Spectrum = 1982
Amiga = 1985

Nes = 1983
Snes = 1990

The goal of Spectrum and Amiga was totally different. Spectrum was meant to be a bare-bones platform, so people could get their first experience of computing. The Amiga was designed as being a workstation capable of doing the 32bit addressing required for windows based operating systems. A full competitor to Apple.

 

[RoboFu]

Liked the amiga. It was like the wests x68000. That was back in the day where there were like three cpus with a few variations each for like 10 years.

 

[calistan]

Snes went out 5 years after the Amiga.

And i remember a huge technical jump from Spectrum to Amiga. A lot bigger than from Nes to Snes. And in a shorter lapse of time. Amige came out 3 years later than Spectrum and the difference was abysmal. Snes came out 7 years later than Nes.

Spectrum = 1982
Amiga = 1985

Nes = 1983
Snes = 1990

SNES to Playstation was arguably the biggest jump in console generations. You went from an essentially 2D machine that could display a handful of unshaded polygons at sub 20 fps, to a console that could handle Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy VII. It was from a different planet.

Commodore 64 to Amiga and NES to SNES seem like similar jumps in tech to me. NES was more capable than the C64, SNES was more capable than the Amiga, but they all did essentially the same thing. The same games with more colours, better sound, etc.

Also, the Amiga technically did launch in 1985, but it was massively expensive and unpopular until they brought out the A500 two years later. You can't compare Sinclair's Spectrum, which was underpowered even for its day, with an exotic computer that cost 10 times the price.

 

[Thanati]

Being run into the ground by complete imbeciles will do that.

The engineers wanted to do so much more with the Amiga, but were denied the funding at every step.

This. All of this.

 

[Seider]

More like NES to SNES, I'd say.

Snes went out 5 years after the Amiga.

And i remember a huge technical jump from Spectrum to Amiga. A lot bigger than from Nes to Snes. And in a shorter lapse of time. Amige came out 3 years later than Spectrum and the difference was abysmal. Snes came out 7 years later than Nes.

Spectrum = 1982
Amiga = 1985

Nes = 1983
Snes = 1990

SNES to Playstation was arguably the biggest jump in console generations. You went from an essentially 2D machine that could display a handful of unshaded polygons at sub 20 fps, to a console that could handle Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy VII. It was from a different planet.

Commodore 64 to Amiga and NES to SNES seem like similar jumps in tech to me. NES was more capable than the C64, SNES was more capable than the Amiga, but they all did essentially the same thing. The same games with more colours, better sound, etc.

Also, the Amiga technically did launch in 1985, but it was massively expensive and unpopular until they brought out the A500 two years later. You can't compare Sinclair's Spectrum, which was underpowered even for its day, with an exotic computer that cost 10 times the price.

Amiga was technically superior in a lot of features to Snes, being released 5 years before.

And you say they are esentially the same technology leap. One in 1985 and the other in 1990.

And the same i can say about Snes, it was released only in Japan in 1990. It arrived two years layer to Europe in 1992, where i live, and in 1991 in EEUU.

I still think its unnaceptable Amiga had a resolution in games of 320x200 while Snes was a 256x224 system launched 5 years later.

 

[Ozzie666]

Honest question, how many Amiga owners actually bought software? I'd say even less than Atari ST owners. There was something to be said about software availablity and easy access and massive collections.

 

[Reficul]

Honest question, how many Amiga owners actually bought software? I'd say even less than Atari ST owners. There was something to be said about software availablity and easy access and massive collections.

Are you telling me that we could BUY Amiga games? Get out of here.

 

[calistan]

Spectrum = 1982
Amiga = 1985

I'm not really sure why you're comparing those. Spectrum was a dirt-cheap, barebones computer built for the masses. It was less powerful than many of its direct competitors.

Amiga was a high-end machine that cost 10 times the price of a Spectrum. And it was considered rare and exotic until they repackaged into a consumer version with double the RAM in 1987.

 

[calistan]

Honest question, how many Amiga owners actually bought software? I'd say even less than Atari ST owners. There was something to be said about software availablity and easy access and massive collections.

I bought a few, but sometimes copied them and took them back to swap for something else. The best scam I had going, for games with the latest copy protection, was to slice down the side of the disk case with a razor, take out the disk inside, swap it with the failed copy, and take it back because it didn't work.

 

[Seider]

I'm not really sure why you're comparing those. Spectrum was a dirt-cheap, barebones computer built for the masses. It was less powerful than many of its direct competitors.

Amiga was a high-end machine that cost 10 times the price of a Spectrum. And it was considered rare and exotic until they repackaged into a consumer version with double the RAM in 1987.

In Spain and Europe was typical that a Spectrum user upgraded to an Amiga. Spectrum was the most successfull 8 bit computer in Europe in the 80´s. Amiga was the same but in 16 bit range.

 

[Badlucktroll]

I was thinking of getting a Power Mac G5, and installing MorphOS to convert it into a high end Amiga.

 

[lionagony]

New videos of Grind for the Amiga out, first one running on standard A500 and second on A1200 with 8 MB Fast Ram. Over 4k views in one day is very impressive for an Amiga game.

 

[Nitty_Grimes]

Honest question, how many Amiga owners actually bought software? I'd say even less than Atari ST owners. There was something to be said about software availablity and easy access and massive collections.

Bought loads. Had access to copies but I liked my simulation games back then (microprose) so tended to buy those big boxes. Instruction manuals were amazing.

Bought Cannon Fodder cos my cracked copy bombed on disk 3. Only years later reading Galahad of Fairlight on English Amiga Board did I realise I was doing it wrong. How would I have known back then lol.

 

[lionagony]

One of the most impressive things I've seen in ages came out today, the author of the game Hamulet put out a proof of concept of using animated HAM bobs and HAM parallax on an A500 with 1 MB in this video. The results are spectacular!

 

[Mephisto40]

Also this came out 3 weeks ago:



Great soundtrack! so addictive

Looks like it was made with shoot em up construction kit

 

[Thanati]

New videos of Grind for the Amiga out, first one running on standard A500 and second on A1200 with 8 MB Fast Ram. Over 4k views in one day is very impressive for an Amiga game.

That actually looks beautiful!

 

[Clear]

That’s harsh, they published lots of games:

Amiga Games by Psygnosis - Lemon Amiga Game Database

Amiga games database with information about every Amiga game ever released!

www.lemonamiga.com

But Agony had issues no doubt. Even the much talked about Shadow of the Beast was mostly played because of the graphics and parallax scroll. 1 and 2 were insanely difficult games, even the git gud crowd would struggle.

I loved Lemmings though, one of my favs. I really liked Killing Game Show too, incredibly difficult but it was so unique, was made by the founder of Bizarre Creation btw. And Blood Money was lots of fun. Nitro was a great top-down racer, fun with friends. Walker was unique too.

Not saying they didn't publish anything good, just that a lot of titles they put out were basically sold on the box-art and screenshots.

Shadow of the Beast is a pretty poor game with great graphics for its time, but I liked both sequels quite a bit. Generally speaking quality improved over time (particularly the externally developed stuff), but there was a lot of filler too. Especially during the early years when they were leading on Atari ST - their initial releases were pretty atrocious.

If you think I'm being unfair, here's a list of their releases. Pretty sure no matter how deep you were into the scene at the time, you'd be hard pressed to remember many of these.

 

[Holammer]

One of the most impressive things I've seen in ages came out today, the author of the game Hamulet put out a proof of concept of using animated HAM bobs and HAM parallax on an A500 with 1 MB in this video. The results are spectacular!

That's literally crazy. Even more so if it results in a practical application.
If someone demonstrated that back in 1988 it would be akin to showing Fanta in Space in 1982.

 

[lionagony]

That's literally crazy. Even more so if it results in a practical application.

For those who haven't tried it there is a playable demo of Hamulet that uses this same engine, it doesn't have the bobs or the parallax but it's a great looking and playing game and some of the intro pictures are fantastic. You can download it here https://aminet.net/package/mags/misc/WhatIFF2.10 Here's a video of it:

 

[Fredrik]

If you think I'm being unfair, here's a list of their releases. Pretty sure no matter how deep you were into the scene at the time, you'd be hard pressed to remember many of these.

I actually remember a ton of them, getting nostalgic from just seeing some of the pics there lol

Btw saw Benefactor from Digital Illusions there, I first heard about that one through a serie of dev diaries posted in Swedish Datormagazin. It’s always cool to think back at how those guys started out in the demo scene and then Pinball Dreams and ended up as the gigantic DICE.

 

[lionagony]

I have finished the second level demo of my AGA Scorpion game called Silhouette Threat. This one is auto-scrolling so the gameplay is different from level one. I've also simulated 6 overlapping layers of parallax which hasn't been done on the Amiga before to my knowledge. My daughter helped out with some of the artwork. It's a free download if you want to give it a try at https://lionagony.itch.io/silhouette-threat-aga-amiga Thanks. You can also watch a video of some of the level here:

 

[mansoor1980]

dont know when its releasing but amazing results on a stock A500