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The Official AMIGA "Rosetinted" Thread
- Thread starter Gowans
- Start date
Well to be fair this remains a heavily USA-centric discussion forum, right?
And as a gaming platform the Amiga was basically non-existent over there, contrary to Europe where it enjoyed a nice degree of success.
Is anyone else reading Commodore The Amiga years by Brian Bagnall? Is it just a incomplete version so far like an early release for the kickstarter backers, I think the whole book should be out in a couple of months for everyone.
Anyway, really enjoying it despite all the typos etc.. actually had a fair amount of details about the birth of Amiga and the goings on inside Commodore which I haven't seen or heard about in previous documentaries or interviews.
Such a shame that a company that had their hands on such an amazing computer architecture and also filled with brilliant engineers had completely inept and greedy managers and owners.
Anyway, really enjoying it despite all the typos etc.. actually had a fair amount of details about the birth of Amiga and the goings on inside Commodore which I haven't seen or heard about in previous documentaries or interviews.
Such a shame that a company that had their hands on such an amazing computer architecture and also filled with brilliant engineers had completely inept and greedy managers and owners.
runnin_blue
Banned
This is the common feeling about GAF, but I see so many British, Aussies, Swedes, Germans, Italians etc on here everyday, that I don't think that is the reason.
Maybe back in 2007, yeah, I'll give you that.
petran79
Banned
One teen we knew was fortunate.His dad bought him an Amiga 2000 for 2000DM in late 80s. I remember this was the main talk in my friends video game circle, mainly consisting of NES, Gameboy and Atari console kids.
Used to visit him a lot in order to play or watch as many games as I could.
Though my cousin had an AtariST. He was into composing and today works in a major radio station. He showed me a live AtariST music composition in his small studio.
Games I remember the most:
-Bubble Bobble
-Dynamite Dux
-Shinobi
-Dragon Ninja
-Ducktales
-Wonderboy in Monsterland
-Warlock's Quest
-North and South
-Golden Axe
-Prince of Persia
-Gremlins 2
-Budokan
-Elvira:Mistress of the Dark
-Fiendish Freddy
-Test Drive
-Mike the Magic Dragon
-Ninja Warriors
-Ninja Spirit
-Weird Dreams
-New Zealand Story
-Robocop
-Loom
I think people in the UK and Germany who grew up with it often overestimate it's success.
Only 5 mill. Amiga's were sold over all models and in over 8 years.
~2/3 of that in the UK and Germany, no other country sold >1 mill.
Compared to 17 mill. C64 (even the C128 sold 4.5 mill.), 62 mill. NES and 49 mill. SNES.
CrustyBritches
Gold Member
American here, but we had Amiga 1000 and 2000 units in the late 80s and imo they were the best gaming platform at the time. Defender of the Crown, Rescue- The Embassy, Bubble Ghost, Operation Wolf, Stunt Car Racer, Discovery, and Earl Weaver Baseball.
Loved the mod and text-to-speech support for Amiga. I have fond memories of listening to Bach and making the TTS say "fuck you". Deluxe Paint was great. Just an amazing system for the late 80s.
Loved the mod and text-to-speech support for Amiga. I have fond memories of listening to Bach and making the TTS say "fuck you". Deluxe Paint was great. Just an amazing system for the late 80s.
Kremzeek
Member
yeah i read that ars article - i had no idea about all the executive turmoil.
i had an A500 back in the day - i loved that computer so much! i even bought an external hard drive for it (it had to be connected by a ribbon cable that was fed thru one of the seams in the case).
i even had this software for it: http://www.retroist.com/2013/03/11/remember-disney-animation-studio-software/
runnin_blue
Banned
Man, I just remembered the Hardball series of baseball games too. They were great!
hooijdonk17
Member
And the music.. Oh man, the music.. Paula was a magical audio chip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvSfqBJi0ss
Sit back and enjoy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvSfqBJi0ss
Sit back and enjoy.
petran79
Banned
Amiga 500 outsold Sega Mega Drive in Germany by a tiny margin. For 16-bit era this was huge.
Yeah, it took me a while to realise that Amiga wasn't as popular worldwide as I thought.
Growing up in Finland in the late 80's, early 90's it seemed like half the people I knew had Amiga 500's.
Amiga was a pretty big thing in the nordic countries in general afaik. Very very active Amiga scenes in Sweden and Denmark too for example.
hooijdonk17
Member
Consoles just did not sell worth shit in Eastern Europe until the Playstation became a huge smashing success; I remember local retailers trying to push the Master System and Mega Drive really hard but it hardly made a dent. Lack of piracy was a real issue; however you cut it cracking and piracy scene in Europe was huge and really contributed to Amiga's success as a gaming computer. The less well off kids who had a computer (which actually meant they were quite well off, in hindsight, just not as rich) in my grade school had C64s (I had an Atari 800XL) and the really rich had Amiga 500s. Eventually we all had Amiga 500s by 90-91. Not one friend I had actually had or wanted a console.
Castef
Banned
My very quick Amiga top 20:
- James Pond: Operation St4rFi5h
- Gods
- The Chaos Engine
- Fighting Spirits
- Mortal Kombat 2
- Black Crypt
- Ruff'n Tumble
- Ghosts'n Goblins
- Paradroid '90
- Super Skidmarks
- ATR
- Alien Breed: Tower Assault
- Rainbow Islands
- Rodland
- Mr. Nutz
- Zool 2
- Starglider 2
- Frontier
- Syndicate
- Civilization
My, what a computer!
- James Pond: Operation St4rFi5h
- Gods
- The Chaos Engine
- Fighting Spirits
- Mortal Kombat 2
- Black Crypt
- Ruff'n Tumble
- Ghosts'n Goblins
- Paradroid '90
- Super Skidmarks
- ATR
- Alien Breed: Tower Assault
- Rainbow Islands
- Rodland
- Mr. Nutz
- Zool 2
- Starglider 2
- Frontier
- Syndicate
- Civilization
My, what a computer!
Clear
CliffyB's Cock Holster
True, but given that its success was concentrated geographically in Europe and it had such a creatively active userbase and culture, raw sales numbers don't really do it justice.
Its also worth considering that C64 was also around and selling strongly in those same territories for a good chunk of its service life.
It still saddens me a bit that despite the immense influence Commodore's hardware had on the entire computer/gaming scene they never seem to be given the same historical importance as the other major players.
Maybe they're younger as well. Who knows?
Hmm, are you sure?
I'm quite confident I've read about 10 millions Amiga, but I'd have to look for accurate sources that I don't have right now close at hand.
GeordieMark
Member
God bless the Amiga. Easily my favourite games machine of all time. If I had to single out any particular forgotten games for some love I'd have to pick Gods from the Bitmap Brothers. Its still a good looking game now.
michaelius
Banned
We barely even knew what that Nintendo even is in Poland since everyone had Amiga or earlier Commodore/Atari.
Thanks, it seems my memory has failed me, the discrepancy is huge. :-\
I'll try to investigate anyway, I still have all the Amiga magazines and books at home.
I just watched this ..
and realized that I have played every single one of those 100 games.. only about 10 of them I couldn't remember the name of..
fuck I played a lot of games back then..
mitchman
Gold Member
Yeah.
Btw people, I still host my Haynie Archives with the collection of documents given to me by Dave Haynie way back: http://www.thule.no/haynie/. A little history, I suppose.
Well, now I know who I have to thank.
(I pulled down everything a long, long time ago... both fascinating and sad stuff)
hooijdonk17
Member
I never got the love for GODS; I played it for 4 hours the other week, on real hardware and on emulation, and it still plays like shit.. It looks good, I'll give you that but the platforming is atrocious.
Wow, so cool.
Boy Wander
Member
Something always sounds a bit off to me about some of the samples they used to use in Amiga tunes though - especially electric guitar type samples - always sounded like they were slightly off key to me.
CrustyBritches
Gold Member
Just remembered this excellent joystick for Amiga. Test Drive was godly on this thing.
It always was. No time to react to daggers flying from nowhere, so a lot of memorization needed. Bullshit deaths due to traps. Screen scrolling only when you're almost at the edge of the screen doesn't help at all.
Ivan
Member
It's interesting that this might be the only place that did some research about Amiga sales.
I'd like to see some other sources too.
ichtyander
Member
I think one of the major reasons for this is the lack of a games library that actually stood the test of time, as well the obvious popularity in certain geographic and cultural clusters. I'm not saying all Amiga games are shit, it's just that a lot of developers followed a game design path that was almost diametrically opposite to the Japanese school of meticulously refined action gameplay mechanics.
Just like the aforementioned Gods, most action games on the Amiga (and by extension to PCs) were designed around memorization, unavoidable hazards (as in, no way to avoid damage, so either learn the level by heart or design the game that there are also a lot of health pickups around) and questionable, unresponsive controls (animation priority over actual responsiveness, so it looks really cool but often plays badly). Although, that indeed created a special feel to most of these games which was unique and set them apart from the rest of the popular console and arcade games, but that was also their downfall. A lot of those games were unforgiving and not as approachable, so the people that stuck with it became fans for life while others just didn't bother (and understandably so).
On the other hand, it spawned entire genres that were pretty much non-existent on console platforms and maybe more importantly, nurtured a wave of extremely talented and creative developers that contribute to the industry to this day. So it was a very fertile breeding ground for creative talent and experimentation, but not as much for long lasting game franchises (with a few exceptions of course).
I guess that's kinda true for a lot of really creative subcultures, you hear about these few people and end results but rarely about where they really came from. Like the demoscene, it's this incredible, unique art form that's specific to the medium and the technology, but it's virtually unknown and rarely mentioned. Yet this subculture spawned studios like DICE, and many others.
hooijdonk17
Member
I believe this criticism is fair for platform games and in most cases shmups. However, Amiga really had an incredible library of the best versions of games in other genres that truly defined it as a great gaming machine, namely Strategy, Adventure, RPG and Simulation. The real issue here is that most of these games were or later became available on the PC, a platform which survived the same era while the Amiga's flame went out, and these games mostly became ingrained in memory as DOS classics. Amiga never spawned a library of platform exclusives like Mario or Sonic. It just coexisted as the best example of m68k and 8086/286 machines of its era. It was the future, but when it died the winners wrote history.
ichtyander
Member
Yeah, I completely agree, it's why I was mentioning action and arcade games for the most part. And it's probably worth noting that platformers, shmups and various action genres in general were (and have always been) much more approachable and popular genres, compared to strategies, adventures and simulators, so this also influenced the popularity and the eventual historical recognition. And this transferred over to the earlier PC era as well, at least until the advent of 3D games, racers, FPS etc. so these genres transferred to the PC platform but computer games in general never really caught up to assimilate the historical strengths and ideas of these other action oriented games, up until the last decade or so, of course, when gaming platforms really started to fuse together into the same thing.
EDIT:
Worth noting though that I'm a fan of the entire culture of the C64 and Amiga computers (grew up with the C64, never had an Amiga, sadly), the raw creativity and genius of a lot of this stuff, so I'm saying all this from a place of love and appreciation, it's just that I've been slowly going through the Amiga catalog of games recently, and it's pretty clear what were the strengths and weaknesses of the system, or rather the developer philosophies that released games on the system, which often weren't all that beneficial to the overall quality of its game library.
It is worth noticing that the shmups/arcade ports on Amiga was handled by greedy companies like US Gold with no skills. Typically an arcade port was outsourced to a few guys with often no access to the original code or graphics.
It is well documented that the port of Space Harrier was done by the programmer playing the game in arcade and his pal taking photos of all levels off screen.
When the ports ended good (and a few are very good), it was nothing short of a miracle.
The real meat of Amiga software is in its original library, that was often available in poorer form on PC.
ichtyander
Member
This is a pretty cool bit of history, I did not know that, but it makes a lot of sense.
Hahah, there were all sorts of shenanigans going on in those days, I think Rob Hubbard was called over to Elite to have a listen to the Commando arcade machine and had to compose the tune overnight on the spot. But yeah, it was the wild west with often little regard given to the developers from various publishers. It's interesting though that when I look at various lists people make of their favorite Amiga games, a lot of them are often (not always) arcade ports, but that just might mean they're the good ports.
Still though, and this might just be me, but sifting through the Amiga library I've continuously ran into original Amiga games that are pretty difficult to get into or get the hang of (for often annoying reasons), even with some of the most famous and beloved titles like Gods, the Turrican series, the James Pond series, the Shadow of the Beast series, Myth, Magic Pockets, Zool and plenty of others. These are some gorgeous looking games with a wonderful presentation, but they feel annoying in the most fundamental ways, making me frustrated that I would be glad to invest a lot more time in them if they had just a few little tweaks here and there. Which is frustrating to me even more because I really believe there aren't enough games today with those sensibilities and sources of inspiration in mind, and devs might even learn a few things from these games, but they're often regarded as trashy and not worth the time, and I can sympathize in some way, but it is a shame.
On the other hand, I've often found myself thoroughly enjoying some of the more puzzle oriented Amiga platformers like Benefactor or Rick Dangerous II (maybe it's cheating but I'd probably add Lost Vikings in there as well) which I think are really tightly crafted games, but maybe the deliberately slower pacing and the puzzle nature of those games happened to be a better mix for the design philosophies of the day, since tight physics, highly responsive controls and unavoidable player damage weren't that important in such a gameplay environment.
Now that I think about it, it's probably not that strange that the cinematic platformer genre (Another World, Flashback, all the way to INSIDE
) came out of such a game culture, with a slower paced, realistic, more precise and deliberate movement and actions.
Nitty_Grimes
Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
I used to play Championship Manager 93 to death back in the day with the cheat formation that meant you would normally win 99% of your matches each season.
That and I actually managed to finish the first Cannon Fodder.
That and I actually managed to finish the first Cannon Fodder.
Z..
Member
This. Aside from Turrican 1/2, there really aren't any truly great games that weren't both available AND better somewhere else.
Still a great system at the time and that sound chip remains as godly as ever.
petran79
Banned
Amiga often got lot of poor AtariST ports.
Some games were still better on Amiga though.
Especially 2d games.
Eg the BGM in Elvira:Mistress of the Dark is by leaps and bounds superior to any other version.
Slam Tilt Pinball, released in 1996,ported to Windows in 1997, is still better on the Amiga.
Worms
irector's Cut, the last Amiga exclusive in 1997 is regarded as one of the best Worms games.Amiga for me was such an important machine. Had an a500 and a 1200 with 8mb, 030 processor CD drive and a 1.7gig he (which was massive for the time)
Games (fondest)
Turrican (series),
Flashback
Another World
OnEscapee
Swos
SWIV
Subwar 2050
Worms!
Project X
Alien Breed (all)
Rtype
Breathless
UFO enemy unknown
Data storm
Gauntlet
Adams Family
Superfrog
The Settlers
Frontier elite 2
..... so many more
Special mention goes to RBF softwares OctaMed and although not a game was probably responsible for getting me into music production.
Games (fondest)
Turrican (series),
Flashback
Another World
OnEscapee
Swos
SWIV
Subwar 2050
Worms!
Project X
Alien Breed (all)
Rtype
Breathless
UFO enemy unknown
Data storm
Gauntlet
Adams Family
Superfrog
The Settlers
Frontier elite 2
..... so many more
Special mention goes to RBF softwares OctaMed and although not a game was probably responsible for getting me into music production.
Stiflers Mom
Banned
Well.. This thread seems rather dead and I really think it shouldn't be. Alas, I'll try to revive it by pimping a recent piece of hardware I bought, the ACA500Plus by Individual Computers.
It's basically a modern A500 accelerator with a Motorola 68EC000 CPU at 14Mhz (which can comfortably be OC'ed to 42MHz), KickStart 3.1/1.3/1.2, 8MB Fast Ram, 8MB Flash ROM (which comes with all Workbench 3.1 floppies on it, and you can add custom kickstarts to softboot from), incorporates an Action Replay III, two Compact Flash ports which can hassle-free use Compact Flash cards greater than 4GB (thanks to injection of resident updated scsi.device) as boot or storage hard drives using any Amiga File System as well as FAT95 (yes you can boot FAT95). Oh, and it's compatible with ACA12xx accelerator boards so you can keep expanding that way.
So go ahead and buy it. I don't know any better way to celebrate the 30th birthday of the Amiga 500 (born January 1987).
Hey, I bought it as well..
Amazing piece of hardware. Brings your Amiga 500 back to live..
Amiga often got lot of poor AtariST ports.
Some games were still better on Amiga though.
Especially 2d games.
Eg the BGM in Elvira:Mistress of the Dark is by leaps and bounds superior to any other version.
Slam Tilt Pinball, released in 1996,ported to Windows in 1997, is still better on the Amiga.
Worms
Dungeon Master was a late ST port, but a good one, even though it needed 1MB of RAM.
It is tricky thinking about games that are both 1) exclusive, and 2) stood the test of time. Even Dungeon Master has a PC port that has better graphics. Arcade ports are better through MAME, and others aren't that good anymore, but we made do because they were great at the time - hello the entire Bitmap Brothers oeuvre, for instance. I have wonderful memories of playing Amiga games, like Dungeon Master, and the same feeling of exploration and risk/reward I had playing that I have playing the SoulsBorne games. But even something like Turrican 1 and 2, which I returned to a couple of years back, irritates due to occasional input lag. And I loved those games when they were new - completed both of them a couple of times.
I agree that arcade ports are better played in MAME but that also the case for all the NES/SMS ports. Going back to that time, it was foolish to think that those very expensive coin op would be playable at home (more or less legally).
Amiga was also a land of very (very) cheap games. Compared to the NES, you could have tons of games. In terms of retro gaming, everything is quite available now, but at that time it was having a NES with a hand of games and having a AMIGA with tons of games easily transferables.
As for gameplay, those pads were quite hard to master, and binding jump to UP was both a necessity and a gameplay disaster.
For the period 88-91, Amiga was still king of graphics and sound (no, MT32 does not count). Lack of vision for Commodore killed the beast.
In Europe, Amiga and Atari were the obvious choices. Nintendo was almost absent, Sega did not really try before the Megadrive and the PC engine (more contemporary to the amiga) was sold in two shops only.
Amiga was also a land of very (very) cheap games. Compared to the NES, you could have tons of games. In terms of retro gaming, everything is quite available now, but at that time it was having a NES with a hand of games and having a AMIGA with tons of games easily transferables.
As for gameplay, those pads were quite hard to master, and binding jump to UP was both a necessity and a gameplay disaster.
For the period 88-91, Amiga was still king of graphics and sound (no, MT32 does not count). Lack of vision for Commodore killed the beast.
In Europe, Amiga and Atari were the obvious choices. Nintendo was almost absent, Sega did not really try before the Megadrive and the PC engine (more contemporary to the amiga) was sold in two shops only.
I used to regularly carry my Amiga AND my TV a few miles up and down a very steep hill to play Stunt Car Racer this way at a mate's house around 1990.
Thinking about it this probably explains why I've had a fucked back ever since.
Worth it, though..!
Strongly disagree about Turrican.
I understand it might sound slightly biased coming from me, but I think 1/2 (3 to a less degree) were objectively on a different league compared to the other games you mention.
Hmm, I don't know. *shrugs*
Stuff like Rainbow Island was, and still is basically unplayable to me with the jump/shoot separate keys binding, to the point back then I even disassembled a PSX pad to build a custom adapter, so that I could use a standard Amiga joystick. :-D
eso76
Member
Well, i wouldn't say "any" aside from Turrican.
It's true that back then very few western developers knew how to properly design action games or shmups, but there were still a few for both categories.
I would say though, the games that better stood the test of time and better define the Amiga were in other genres.
Btw, I also never liked Gods. Actually I never really got the love for Bitmap Bros (ok Speedball 2 was amazing, Chaos Engine was ok, but that's it) and Team 17, besides the lovely pixel art in their games.