Amiga ** Sorry this thread meant to go in Classic Gaming!

[Sharky]

I got an Amiga in 1993, but it began actually to disappointed me, as I expected it too last commerically at least till 2000. But it seems to start commerically dieing in 1993, and by 1994 I sold it.

 

Wasnt interested in the fab on 16bit consoles so I stopped playing games all together. So I had no gaming machine during the 94-97 peroid.

 

And PCs felt too complicated and unreliable and expensive to bother owning one.

 

Althought it looked like the 16bit consoles (Sega Megadrive, SNES, etc) were the reason for the fast declined in Amiga commerical games.

by the end of 1994, They seemed to have gone off the shelves altogether beening replaced with 16bit Console Games and Expensive PC Games.

 

I never liked 16bit Consoles as much as the Amiga (although u dont have to wait for any disk loading unlike Amiga). But the 3-button control pads I didnt like so much on 16bit consoles.

 

So was it the 16bit Consoles or the PC that killed the Amiga ?

cause I thought the Amiga 500 could of been pushed a lot further in its life.

 

[emkay]

The high colordepth and the needed memory for digisounds made too much discs neccesary for games. Maybe this killed the AMIGA as a gaming platform.

On the PC every game was installable on hard-disk, so you didn't have to continous-change Floppydiscs...

Other systems used Modules or CDs---> put in and play...

[Retro Rogue]

Yes, but many of the Amiga's either came in Hard Drive models (Amiga 2000HD, and later Amiga models where it was standard), or in the case of older ones could be upgraded to it.

[emkay]

My AMIGA 2000 has an ICD-SCSI Controller and 500MB QUANTUM

The original was a Prodrive 50MB HD but even this was never filled up with lots of games.... Most games had a copyprotection or didn't run from Harddrive...

I know only "Dune", that was fully playable from HD.

 

 

BTW: Is there a "wrapper" available, that simulated a Floppydisc from Harddrive?

[Ze_ro]

I'd say that IBM-PC clones killed off pretty much ALL of the other computers of the time... the Atari ST died for the same reason as the Amiga did, because there wasn't enough of a userbase. People didn't understand computers well enough to know that the Amiga was better than all the crappy 386's, so they just bought what they saw. It's unfortunate too, since the Amiga was a really good computer, and was far ahead of the PC's as far as capabilities.

 

However, the poor expansion capabilities of the Amiga didn't help either. Hard drives were a pain in the butt, and internet connectivity was a nightmare. I remember my brother (who was an Amiga zealot) struggling with AmiTCP for many hours... I guess Win 3.1's Winsock wasn't much better though.

 

--Zero

[Stein]

I think most of the blame falls on Commodore themselves, the way they marketed the amiga and managed their business.... trained monkeys could have done better.

[chrisbid]

Microsofts strategy of deliberatly putting everything else out of buisness is the main culprit

[Lord-Chaos]

One big problem of the AMIGA - especially the AGA models is that they don´t have a "byte per pixel",VGA-similar mode.

 

The AMIGAs are great for 2D games.AGA AMIGAs can create sprites in HiRes (1280*256) ,have SuperHires resolution (1280*512 or more with overscan) , 256 colors , HAM mode with 262144 colors and 1/4 pixel scrolling/parallax scrolling.

 

Plus internal IDE controller which supports up to 4Gbyte HDs.

 

But by 1993/94 3D games , Ego Shooters like Doom/W3d were modern and 2D games not.

 

It´s a problem to make fast 3D games on an AMIGA,because you have up to 8 bitplanes for 256 colors and have to do much more write operations than on a PC where one VGA pixel is exactly one byte.

 

That means the AMIGA isn´t good for 3D games , even not for games like Wing Commander , the 256-color version is quite slow on not accelerated AMIGAs.

 

Another problem was that AMIGAs didn´t have HD drives except the A4000.

More problems : Commodore gave the A1200 only a 68020 with 14Mhz and 2MB ChipRam.

They should have put a 68030 inside an change the RAM , because Chipmem is slow on AMIGAs an creating SuperHires games with 256 colors that would have killed the PC games of this time was simply impossible.

 

Just imagine games running in 1280*512 , flicker-free on multiscan monitors with 256 colors in 1993 !

 

They also used the same old soundchip (8-Bit Paula) from the A500,but by the time PC soundcards weren´t much better and it was easy to add IDE-CDROMs to the AMIGA and have full CD sound.

 

So my opinion is that if the AMIGA had a VGA-compatible mode so that Doom would have been possible in 93/94 , it would have survived.

 

(BTW Doom is available on AMIGA now,but you need an Accelerator Card with at least 68030 an 40Mhz for it + more RAM)

 

Thimo

[tyranthraxus]

Man your timing was pretty bad! Commodore went bankrupt in 1994!

Thats why they dropped off. In 1990 I was very close to buying a

A500 but went for a used IBM XT. While the XT turned out to be a bad

buy (286s and 386s had a big price drop not long after my purchase) I'm

glad I stayed away from the Amiga.

 

I was a C=64 owner so I had a lot of loyality to Commodore but I

really wanted a hard drive and expandibility and the PC had all of

that. The Amiga was too limited in expansion however it still was

an impressive piece of hardware for its time.

 

BTW there was harddrive options for the Amiga. My high school had

these cool plug-in 20 MB HD for the 500s and I am quite sure the

2000 and 2500 they had also had hard drives.

 

I think that with some more careful management the ST and Amiga

could have survived today as niche computers like the Mac. But

both companies made some pretty big mistakes like the Jaguar and

Commodores CD-TV console thingy.

 

John

[Gunstar]

well, I just got the A2000 and it came equiped with a hardrive, although it could have been added later, but as far as expanability goes, I can see problems with the A500 and maybe A600 etc., or even the A1000 (original Amiga), but it seems like the A2000/3000/4000 have PLENTY of expandibility to them, there are 7 or 8 card slots in my Amiga 2000, half of which are XT and AT(?) compatible, and you can get a "Bridgeboard" for it to make it fully PCXT compatible, with an 8088 chip and memory and everything! You can even partition the harddrive for both. Not to mention the Amiga specific card slots, and all the upgrade cards for it (I've already seen a TON, just browsing a couple of sites the last few days) so expandability was not a problem with the bigger Amiga's that came in PC style cases. There are even companies still supporting the Amiga with cards today! Not to mention the TONS of software that was already available, and even though Commodore went under, there was a large enough worldwide user base to keep software coming out for it into the late 90's apparently, some still produced to this day! Not to mention the fact that Amiga Corp. seems to be a reality and a new AmigaONE computer that runs at upto 800mhz is coming out/is out. the same is true with ST clones, like MILAN, a TOS based computer that is compatible with the ST/TT/falcon line, but with much newer technology. If you really wanted to stick with commodore, you could have, and still can, same with TOS based machines. PC's may dominate, but they are not the only way (besides macintosh) to this day. You just have to look for software&hardware support a little farther than the local Electronics Boutique. But easily found on the internet. No, you won't find the latest Halo game or latest Tom Clancy military espionage game on them, but they do get some support from small development houses and dedicated user/programmers. Good quality stuff too. You will find new web browsers and and genlock programs and utilities of other sorts as well as new no-name games and everything you need to work and have fun on them, just not what's known to the masses. you can play Doom and Doom clones on them, etc. Lots of "underground" goodies, which I feel makes it all that much more exciting and interesting a computer to use.

[Sharky]

Im starting to see it now.

 

Soo im guessing after reading the above posts that it was the PCs and 3D type games that killed off the beautiful Amiga.

 

But compared to PC 386/486 VGA Graphics what we most had, and DOS was uncomfotable to work with for some PC Owners. The 2D games for the PC didnt look as good as the Amiga and plus PC you need joysticks to calibrate everytime, sound setting to set etc.

 

I simply owned an Amiga 500 (1MB) and at the time it had better graphics than the 486s 256 VGA Graphics.

 

At first instead of popular computers getting better and better all the time, it felt as first the 486 VGA 256 colours fell back in time.

 

But Now I understand those PC has the speed for more advanced games like 3D Doom.

 

Plus lots of PC Versions of Amiga classics ended up to PC in EGA/VGA and just using the PC Spreaker for sound. YUCK !

 

How much I missed my Amiga after finally getting a 486 PC.

 

So obviously the 16bit consoles didnt have much to do with it after all!

[BoOchan!]

I'm fairly young (13) But I've been gaming for 10 Years. My first system was the 8 Bit Master System II, which still have to this day. Atari and Commodore were collapsing in Australia at this point, so In 1995 we got a 486 PC and a Gameboy. I was happy with the games on it until '97, when Our family got an HP 200mhz Top of the Line Computer. My 2nd console was a Playstation. I vaguely remeber some Atari ST and Amiga Stuff in the shops before '95, but it didn't effect our choice.

 

I was introduced to computers and consoles by our next door neighbour, who had a 286 at the time and I played games on it. She also had an Atari Lynx, which I remember quite a bit. Anyway, I only found out about the Amiga when I got one at an auction Last year.

[DeV0]

I loved my amiga and can honestly say the only reason i bought a megadrive and Snes was due to the amiga having a 1 button joystick.

 

Im still playing Ports of call Today!

[emkay]

@Lord-Chaos

 

I don't think the Bitplane Graphics on the AMIGA were a real problem for 3D. It's an equal thing if there is a graphics mode 320x200 x 8Bit or 320 x 200 x 8 Bitplanes (managed by a blitter). The Intel cpus were truely faster this time. On AMIGA it was possible to use less bitplanes and get more colors by the Halfbright mode. By clever usage of the colors, no one would have seen the difference... Please take note, that for a good 3D Screen the brightness variations of colors are more reasonable than the available colors themself.

 

I see parallels to the "death" of the ATARI X series... The system "died" due to unclever programming.

[Lord-Chaos]

@Lord-Chaos

 

I don't think the Bitplane Graphics on the AMIGA were a real problem for 3D. It's an equal thing if there is a graphics mode 320x200 x 8Bit  or 320 x 200 x 8 Bitplanes (managed by a blitter). The Intel cpus were truely faster this time. On AMIGA it was possible to use less bitplanes and get more colors by the Halfbright mode. By clever usage of the colors, no one would have seen the difference... Please take note, that for a good 3D Screen the brightness variations of colors are more reasonable than the available colors themself.

 

I see parallels to the "death" of the ATARI X series... The system "died" due to unclever programming.

 

The problem on the AGA Amigas is that the Blitter can´t handle the amount of data in HiRes + 256 color modes.The custom chips work with the chipmem and chipmem is slow.In 1280*512 and 256 colors , the AMIGA 1200 is VERY Slow.

 

With added FastRam even without new CPU , it gets much faster and with 68030/50 it´s quite fast.

 

But the missing Byte-per-Pixel mode combined with the the slow 68020 made Doom-like games with 320*200 impossible.

 

The first Doom-clones use a special graphics mode,but it´s resolution is bad.Look at the games "Fears" and "Gloom" and "Alien Breed 3D".They´re also available on the CD32.

 

They run smoothly on 14 Mhz machines,but are blocky.

 

There also were some racing games that used this technique or some kind of dithering , but they looked bad compared to PC games.

 

Commodore should have given the AMIGA 1200 a 68030 CPU with at least 16 Mhz and changed the RAM.

And a "byte per pixel" mode would have made the AMIGA even better for 3D games since the AMIGA already had a blitter and sprites,scrolling,sound DMA - which would have made the AMIGA better for 3D games than a PC with all its driver problems.

 

The later Doom-clones and Doom itself work fine on 50Mhz 030 AMIGAs , AMIGA Quake requires at least 68060.

 

There even are some Ego-Shooters that work on the A500 - Citadel works on 68000 , but is incredibly slow.Ambermoon is a role-playing game,but uses real 3D graphics and works on an A500.

Gloom Deluxe and Nemac IV work on accelerated (at least 68020) A500 systems.

 

I think that it was a big mistake by Commodore to use a "castrated" 68020 at only 14 Mhz , only 2 MB Chipram and no fastram , no PAULA change and no VGA-compatible mode.

 

With Shapeshifter you can play MAC games on an AMIGA if wou have a graphics card because AGA is so slow.They look better than the PC or the AMIGA versions.

That proves that the AMIGA was capable of all kind of games with enough CPU speed and VGA mode.

 

BTW. the ATARI Falcon had some sord of word per pixel mode (65536 colors) which made it possible to write 3D games for it.Unfortunately it´s CPU is only a 16Mhz 68030 which isn´t really fast enough , but better than a not-accelerated A1200.

 

And looking at 2D games , no computer can beat the AMIGA , only consoles like the Neo Geo maybe , but AGA chipsets beat SNES and Mega Drive.I don´t know another platform that can scroll 1/4 pixel ...

 

Thimo

[Sharky]

Damocles and Mercenary 3 were 3D games and they ran quite smooth and the Amiga.

 

But I can see your point that a full-screen textured 3D game wouldnt be a good idea to code on the Amiga like Doom.

[Lord-Chaos]

Damocles and Mercenary 3 were 3D games and they ran quite smooth and the Amiga.

 

But I can see your point that a full-screen textured 3D game wouldnt be a good idea to code on the Amiga  like Doom.        

 

There are ports of Doom , Heretic , Descent etc. for the AMIGA.They just don´t work on the A500 , but require an AMIGA with 68030 CPU and usually 8Mb RAM.

 

I have Doom on my AMIGA 1200 on it works ok.

 

There are still AMIGAs around today.An AMIGA 1200 or 4000 can be upgraded with a PPC Accelerator card and be fast as modern PPC , but this is very expensive,so it´s only a small market.

 

Thimo

[ElectricTroy]

Amiga died for the same reason Macintosh (almost) died in the early 90's: PCs have become the defacto standard, and people don't want to touch non-standard stuff.

 

Few people buy Beta. Nearly all buy VHS. Likewise, very few people buy Amigas or Macs. Nearly all buy PCs.

 

Result: Commodore went bankrupt, and Apple almost did.

 

So you guys can argue technology, and consoles, and improper programming, but in the final analysis it all comes down to the *market domination* by VHS and Intel PCs.

[Sharky]

At least a PC is a computer thats runs everythink.

 

It was a pain when all those (amigas, c64s, ataris, etc) were compatible at all with eatch other

 

If was the Joysticks that were compatible with them all!

 

[Lord-Chaos]

Amiga died for the same reason Macintosh (almost) died in the early 90's: PCs have become the defacto standard, and people don't want to touch non-standard stuff.  

 

Few people buy Beta.  Nearly all buy VHS.  Likewise, very few people buy Amigas or Macs.  Nearly all buy PCs.

 

Result: Commodore went bankrupt, and Apple almost did.

 

So you guys can argue technology, and consoles, and improper programming, but in the final analysis it all comes down to the *market domination* by VHS and Intel PCs.

 

I think it was a big mistake by Commodore to make PCs.They should have concentrated on the AMIGA.

 

They lost money with their PCs.

 

Apple survived by concentrating on the Mac´s strengths.

 

Thimo

[emkay]

Lord-Chaos wrote:

 

>The problem on the AGA Amigas is that the Blitter can´t handle the amount of data in HiRes + 256 color modes.The custom chips work with the chipmem and chipmem is slow.In 1280*512 and 256 colors , the AMIGA 1200 is VERY Slow.

 

The clue was, not to use this high colordepth...but to use AMIGAs features.

 

>They run smoothly on 14 Mhz machines,but are blocky.

 

The PC version of DooM was allways blocky too, and it was at least a 486/33 DooM was full playable with...

 

>I think that it was a big mistake by Commodore to use a "castrated" 68020 at only 14 Mhz , only 2 MB Chipram and no fastram , no PAULA change and no VGA-compatible mode.

 

A faster CPU was allways better this time.

The Bitplanes are not a real handycap for 3D and PAULA was better than every Soundcard on the PC in this time.

 

>And looking at 2D games , no computer can beat the AMIGA , only consoles like the Neo Geo maybe

 

The Neo Geo was(is?) by far the best 2D gaming platform.

[desiv]

I don't believe the Intel CPUs were faster than the Motorolla chips at the time...

 

I do believe that the chips that were still coming with the Amiga when they released the 1200 were slower than available Intel chips, but the 68030 was available, just CBM decided to cut costs..

 

I remember when I got my Amiga 500, I seem to remember being proud that the 68000 toasted the standard chip in most PCs. Can't remember what that was then... 386-16 or so I'd guess... CBM just didn't adapt quickly enough.

 

Now, there were upgrades, usually 3rd party, usually GVP... But they were too expensive...

 

Most people got the 500's or 1200's because of the quality AND price.. But it's hard to justify spending $600 on a PC, and soon, spending $400-$500 on a processor upgrade... CBM (Motorolla) was just too expensive for upgrades..

 

By the time I had money, it was $600 for a processor/RAM/hard drive upgrade for my 1200, or use that money at Jameco and piece together a 486-80... (And I was starting to program by then, and they didn't have Foxbase for the Amiga..)

 

So, I think price and CBM's lack of any real ADs (The Stevie ADs just didn't seem to work.. Remember those???) that killed the Amiga...

 

What made me sad wasn't the loss of a great game machine, it was the loss of a great OS!!!

 

The multi-tasking was efficient and SMOOTH!!! Multiple resolution screens could be overlayed (Ever drag down a lo-res desktop and see your HI-RES program start to appear (in HI-RES!!)?? Beautiful!!!

 

And the development libraries made it easy for even ME to make window friendly code!!!

 

Yeah, the early OS was a little blocky looking, (Better than the ST's tho, IMHO), but FAST and SMALL!! Heck, it RAN off of a single floppy!!!!!

(Of course, the HD was better.)

(I remember the Mac and Windows users telling me I should want real multitasking, because it slows down your computer.. Of course, that was when they only task switched!! Once they figured it out, then it was great..

 

I still miss my Amiga... (Closing music to Shane plays in the background)

 

Oh well....

 

desiv

 

p.s. 2 years ago, I found a website for an Amiga user I knew who I wrote a solitaire game for (Don't ask..).. I emailed her (I said don't ask..), and she floored me.. She still plays that solitaire game!!! (Or at least did 2 years ago...)

[emkay]

desiv wrote:

 

>I don't believe the Intel CPUs were faster than the Motorolla chips at the time...

 

On the AMIGA you had one thing: The optimized handling between CPU, memory, graphic- and soundchip. The PC lacks until today with that...

But the PC's CPU was allways faster (doubled performance) after 1988, when Games like W3D or DooM appeared. So the PC could calculate the 3D setup faster than it's actual competitor AMIGA (AGA)... this made the PC better for 3D games.

Please notice the difference between an available faster CPU and the machines that are actually used this time.

 

 

> The multi-tasking was efficient and SMOOTH!!! Multiple resolution screens could be overlayed (Ever drag down a lo-res desktop and see your HI-RES program start to appear (in HI-RES!!)?? Beautiful!!!

 

AMIGAS multitasking was the best ever. Switching of different resolutions in one screen was available on the ATARI XL already .

[ElectricTroy]

I remember when I got my Amiga 500, I seem to remember being proud that the 68000 toasted the standard chip in most PCs.  Can't remember what that was then...  386-16 or so I'd guess...  CBM just didn't adapt quickly enough.

 

In 1986 when Amiga500 was first released, Intel machines were still running 186s at ~4 MHz... about half the speed of Amiga. They had no sound capability (just the tiny internal speaker) and video was only 4 colors.

 

When PC makers saw the what the new machines like Amiga and Atari ST could do, they immediately started pushing for add-on boards to boost sound/video to higher levels. They were afraid to lose their home gaming audience to the Amiga. It took awhile but by 1990 PCs had matched the Amiga in speed, sound, and video.

 

Commodore saw their multimedia advantage had disappeared, so they responded with the Advanced Graphics chips. But, it was too little, too late. PC video/sound boards had already far surpassed the next-generation of Amigas.

 

And so Amiga died.

 

.

 

Of course, Amiga would have died anyway. Just as Beta died. The public choose PCs/VHS as the de-facto standard, and no company could turn the wave.

 

Nintendo and Microsoft are discovering that now with the Playstation 1/2.

[TREKSTER]

The only reason Amiga died was its lack of marketing, it was superior over anything MS was doing much better than Apple and as good as any console at the time, but when you ask someone about Commodore they only know of 1 machine the C64. People just did not know about the Amiga and what it could do. That's what killed it.