The Amiga: Why did it fail so hard in the United States?

[carlsson]

Perhaps the processor instructions to work with chunky pixels are more costly than those to work with bitplanes, even if the number of RAM accesses will even out in the end?

[Nebulon]

If I recall correctly, ID Software (and others that followed) essentially took advantage of a feature of VGA when they created their original first-person shooters. The VGA chipset made that sort of game fairly trivial in the same way that bitplanes made side-scrolling games trivial for the Amiga (and conversely smooth 2D scrolling was a tough job for early VGA cards).

 

Putting things into context for the early 80s, it made sense to use bitplanes for a games console. Popular games like Defender and Sinistar were heavy on 2D scrolling. And of course, the Amiga idea was cooked up around 1982 -- at the height of that type of game. Then you have R. J. Mical coming from Williams Electronics (a company that made pretty heavy use of blitters in their arcade machines) coupled with a number hardware engineers that were big into planar graphics and blitters and you get a sense of the attitude toward video game graphics at the time.

 

The success of Wolfenstein 3D caught the industry off-guard to some degree. It certainly marked a shift in gaming trends.

[JamesD]

That's why a hardware blitter is important. Sadly, the Amiga blitter was pretty limited.

A generic set or get pixel would have solved the problem on all models.

*edit*

Well, that doesn't completely solve chunky to planar.

The blitter would need to automatically increment to the next pixel, otherwise you have to update the pixel location for every single write.

[D.Daniels]

did arcade games use planar, or would they have been chunky?

Edited February 8, 2017 by D.Daniels

[zzip]

did arcade games use planar, or would they have been chunky?

 

It probably depended on the game. I remember Compute! magazine doing an article on this 'new' way of representing graphics (planar) after the ST and Amiga came out, so presumably most systems were chunky before that.

[JamesD]

did arcade games use planar, or would they have been chunky?

 

I think the majority of bitmapped systems were chunky.

 

A lot of earlier arcade games used custom character generators and character sets plus sprites.

Some used a dual playfield (foreground overlaid over a background image) and hardware assisted screen masking to draw images.

Scrollable backgrounds, tile based graphics, vector graphics, blitters... all appeared in arcade hardware.

So there was a vast array of choices beyond just chunky and planar.

[D.Daniels]

 

I think the majority of bitmapped systems were chunky.

 

A lot of earlier arcade games used custom character generators and character sets plus sprites.

Some used a dual playfield (foreground overlaid over a background image) and hardware assisted screen masking to draw images.

Scrollable backgrounds, tile based graphics, vector graphics, blitters... all appeared in arcade hardware.

So there was a vast array of choices beyond just chunky and planar.

 

thanks for reply

I suppose then, there was no limit as arcade machine were expensive and state of the art

but I guess smaller arcade companies used whatever was available or affordable

Edited February 8, 2017 by D.Daniels

[Keatah]

Arcade machines tended to be one-off, dedicated, and custom to the software being run.

[D.Daniels]

Arcade machines tended to be one-off, dedicated, and custom to the software being run.

 

true

I guess overall that's also why the Amiga failed in the US, as arcade games/ports like Afterburner (US version) look really close to the arcade, but you can see why the arcade hardware used 2 Motorola 68000, as the Amiga cannot match the arcade. The Nes was ten times cheaper and not expected to do anything as close as the arcade, so the Amiga looked weak. Commercial software was really bad. Outrun on the ST is bad but the Amiga version is almost a sick joke. It looks worse than the Master System and the driver and girl swap places when you turn at certain points.

Edited February 8, 2017 by D.Daniels

[Keatah]

I also want to add that when I got a modem for the Amiga 500 I had at the time. It didn't feel well integrated with the host machine or host software. Felt like the modem supported a lot of tricks and features and stuff but the terminal software available to me did not. Felt like the modem was a half-supported dongle.

 

Definitely not like on the Apple Cat II where software was practically custom written for it. Even ProTerm which came out like 5 or 10 years after the Cat and supported a lot of generic modems was well integrated and matched.

 

Had good experiences, too, with ProComm Plus on the PC. Modems controlled by it worked well and trouble-free.

 

So it wasn't just graphics that the Amiga had difficulties in, communications and word processing were other areas.

[zzip]

Arcade machines tended to be one-off, dedicated, and custom to the software being run.

 

yeah, for arcade you choose the hardware that suits your game rather than making your game suit the hardware for home versions.

 

But- there were lots of arcade games that shared hardware with other games. The manufactures even offered conversion kits where the owner changes the rom boards, decals and presto, brand new game!

[zzip]

I also want to add that when I got a modem for the Amiga 500 I had at the time. It didn't feel well integrated with the host machine or host software. Felt like the modem supported a lot of tricks and features and stuff but the terminal software available to me did not. Felt like the modem was a half-supported dongle.

 

Definitely not like on the Apple Cat II where software was practically custom written for it. Even ProTerm which came out like 5 or 10 years after the Cat and supported a lot of generic modems was well integrated and matched.

 

Had good experiences, too, with ProComm Plus on the PC. Modems controlled by it worked well and trouble-free.

 

So it wasn't just graphics that the Amiga had difficulties in, communications and word processing were other areas.

 

Many modems supported the Hayes AT command set. So even if your term program didn't specifically support some modem feature, you could often send the AT command to the modem and make it do what you want

[Keatah]

In short, modems felt tacky on the Amiga. And often times I needed two or three separate terminal programs to do a "session" of whatever it was I was doing.

 

Weird, but accessing S-registers and AT commands on the Amiga was crude. But on the Apple II it was just like hacking and finding secret things.

[D.Daniels]

so is the apple II a better computer computer than the Amiga (we didnt really use apple II's over here in the UK, and the Amiga was used mainly by us kids for games, it was the Snes/Genesis and Neo Geo of home computers before the Snes and Genesis)

Edited February 8, 2017 by D.Daniels

[zzip]

so is the apple II a better computer computer than the Amiga (we didnt really use apple II's over here in the UK, and the Amiga was used mainly by us kids for games, it was the Snes/Genesis and Neo Geo of home computers before the Snes and Genesis)

 

heh, well to be honest, the Apple II was rather weak. Sure It was built like a tank and had an open architecture, but in terms of raw power, it was the weakest of the 6502-based 8-bit computers in North America, and also by far the most expensive. Apple had a deal to be in many schools, which made them desirable, and also got it unique software.

 

I make an exception for the Apple IIgs- that had more power and decent graphics and sound but was also hobbled by Apple so as to not cut into Mac sales. So it wasn't very popular compared to the IIe or IIc.

[D.Daniels]

 

heh, well to be honest, the Apple II was rather weak. Sure It was built like a tank and had an open architecture, but in terms of raw power, it was the weakest of the 6502-based 8-bit computers in North America, and also by far the most expensive. Apple had a deal to be in many schools, which made them desirable, and also got it unique software.

 

I make an exception for the Apple IIgs- that had more power and decent graphics and sound but was also hobbled by Apple so as to not cut into Mac sales. So it wasn't very popular compared to the IIe or IIc.

 

cheers for info, I guess then that's like the BBC micro we had over here in schools, me and a friend had to dump a load of them in the trash for our teacher, we should have kept them, there be worth a fair bit on ebay lol

[Keatah]

The Apple II was a more polished computer. I always thought the Apple II was better in its respective time frame than the Amiga was in its time frame.

[zzip]

 

cheers for info, I guess then that's like the BBC micro we had over here in schools, me and a friend had to dump a load of them in the trash for our teacher, we should have kept them, there be worth a fair bit on ebay lol

 

Sounds like a similar situation, but I just looked up the specs of the BBC Micro, and it looks they also exceeded the specs of most Apple IIs

[D.Daniels]

 

Sounds like a similar situation, but I just looked up the specs of the BBC Micro, and it looks they also exceeded the specs of most Apple IIs

 

think the BBC was 82, where as the apple was 79 (memory), but the BBC was designed within a week , so I assume it was made to fit a purpose as opposed to fight any spec war lol, even know people did buy them

 

its a shame the A500 couldn't have been used in all schools, as things like deluxe paint and amos were good beginner programs for all ages but also allowed a higher degree of skill

Edited February 8, 2017 by D.Daniels

[BillLoguidice]

In short, modems felt tacky on the Amiga. And often times I needed two or three separate terminal programs to do a "session" of whatever it was I was doing.

 

Weird, but accessing S-registers and AT commands on the Amiga was crude. But on the Apple II it was just like hacking and finding secret things.

 

As another anecdote, I never had issues accessing BBS's, transferring files, etc., with my Amiga 500 and the two serial modems I had. I even got on Compuserve with it briefly in college without issue.

[BillLoguidice]

I make an exception for the Apple IIgs- that had more power and decent graphics and sound but was also hobbled by Apple so as to not cut into Mac sales. So it wasn't very popular compared to the IIe or IIc.

 

 

I'd place that thought as more oft-repeated myth than actual fact. Maybe Apple was indifferent to the IIGS after a year or two, particularly once sales slowed, but there's little evidence to support active hobbling. And in their defense, the Macintosh probably was the only path to the future for them.

[Keatah]

As another anecdote, I never had issues accessing BBS's, transferring files, etc., with my Amiga 500 and the two serial modems I had. I even got on Compuserve with it briefly in college without issue.

 

It's not that I couldn't get the job done or anything. The terminal programs felt rather incomplete. Always a little something missing here and there.

[carlsson]

the BBC was designed within a week

Really? I seem to recall that Acorn had been working on the Proton for a while, and rapidly whipped together a computer that in no way matched BBC's spec. Somehow they convinced them their computer was better than the spec, which was tailored to match the Grundy NewBrain before it went bancrupt. Perhaps it took them a week to go from the Proton prototype to a mostly working BBC Micro.

[tjlazer]

The Apple II was lame. I remember it being inferior to the Commodore 64 or Atari 800/XL/XE line. No comparison. Not even going to try and compare it with the Amiga!

[Osgeld]

The Apple II was lame.

 

Totally depends on what you were doing, if all you used a computer for was games then yes it was lacking