Question - How did the Amiga shape up against the SNES/MD?

[Festoon]

1 hour ago, dumpster said:

 That panpipes sample was on every sample CD going.  I remember when Future Music launched with a sample CD on the cover and suddenly every module you heard had them used. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ah FMCD01, that stuff is still everywhere!

[Rex Grossman]

On 14/11/2019 at 09:38, MajorRob said:

 

Being from different arbitrarily defined "generations" doesn't change the fact that they were still sold at the same time, and consumers had to compare them.

 

In 1990, Grattan asked its customers to compare an Amiga 500, the C64C, Spectrum 128 and a CPC464:

(http://www.nostalgianerd.com/christmas-catalogues)

 

 

In 1992, Curry's asked customers to choose between the Megadrive, SNES, Gameboy and Amiga 600:

(http://mhill46-holdthefrontpage.blogspot.com/2012/02/windsor-castle-fire-1992.html)

 

 

Did Grattan not bother with the ST? It felt like the ST was an afterthought from 1990 as the Amiga started to boom.

[Anne Summers]

On 25/09/2022 at 08:15, mwaawm said:

Got an ST in 88, was more than happy with it for gaming and general computing tinkering (eventually upgrading to a 4mb STE with 235mb hard drive) now by 91 I could see that many Amiga games were now slightly better than their ST versions and being an avid gamer started looking at an upgrade path but felt no need to 'upgrade' for the marginal difference the Amiga would offer so instead was planning to get a megadrive so borrowed a mates Megadrive for a couple of weeks and loved the quality of shooters on it but equally felt the library was a bit one dimensional and beyond lots more parallax didn't feel compelled enough to choose it especially given cart prices.

 

Most of my friends had Amigas so did continue to see it's library in the 90s but as you say very little lasting legacy, the early forays into 3d were pioneered and delivered better on my ST in the 80s and early 90s the Amiga when it finally emerged from the STs shadow seemed to offer a confused library of sub console quality console type games.

I eventually went on to own a snes and jaguar (doh!) before everything went 3d in the late 90s.

 

The trouble with the Amiga I feel was it was a bit better than the ST making it able to try and compete (poorly) with consoles so Amiga owners remained invested in gaming on it for far too long so there was a market to sustain a library which looked back upon now seems very poor.  As you mention most of the good games were better on other platforms its exclusives / killer apps feel like weird curios now that offer little to those interested in actual gaming and gameplay.

 

Even its once vaunted sonic abilities when you listen back to much of its audio today seem amateurish with tons of poor quality sampling used that has dated badly in a way that in contrast the raw chip tune output from the ST seems to stand up to better. Nostalgia plays a big part here but playing audio to those that have no experience of either machine often results in non invested listeners  stating the Amiga output isn't the one they prefer. 

 

Its legacy for gaming is probably more to do with fostering a generation in Europe that learnt to code on the platform but then again that is heavily shared with the ST and 8 bit platforms. So in summary if you didn't own one very little reason to go back to its library today (I tried for a bit via emulation but quickly realised it was much more fun exploring games on other platforms)

Have you literally never heard of commas?

[Anne Summers]

15 hours ago, Festoon said:

 

That's definitely a take. As an ST owner in '91 when I heard Amiga game music I was BLOWN AWAY. Specifcally Lemmings, a Myth demo (yeah, I know...) and the Tracker Track 'Take A Trip From Me'. I couldn't believe such a sound was possible on a home computer. I still think 8-bit tracker music has an incredible warmth to it due to the frequency limitations.

 

Weirdly, I have one specific example though of what you describe. I had Dragon's Breath for the ST and loved the music. Years later I saw a YouTube video of the Amiga version and I was like "Wow! I wonder how much more amazing the Amiga music was!". And, yeah, as you say, it's less good and certainly has aged worse than the ST chip music.

 

Direct comparison.

 

ST

 

Amiga

 

Amiga music doesn't seem to play back well via emulation for some reason. At any rate, a lot of the games I load up in WinUAE or whatever seem to sound crackly and hissy compared to how they used to sound on a proper Amiga. 

[Anne Summers]

12 hours ago, mwaawm said:

 

 

The Amiga guys sure loved their pan pipes.

I think it came from Shadow of the Beast? That was the first time I head that kind of music on an Amiga and lots of games and demos seemed to copy it afterwards. 

[mwaawm]

29 minutes ago, Anne Summers said:

Have you literally never heard of commas?

There's one right there in the first sentence!

 

Be grateful I actually bothered with paragraphs.

[ianinthefuture]

Guys I just watched a video of The Chaos Engine being played on ST and the war is over, all opinions are moot, we have a clear winner. And it's not the home of plinky-plonky doot-doot-doot Chaos Engine:

 

[K]

This discussion is all very The One letters page circa 1990. It's fine to prefer the Atari ST's music to the Amiga's, in much the same way that it's perfectly OK to prefer Gobots to Transformers, but that Chaos Engine video should hopefully have settled things more or less permanently. 

[Zio]

17 hours ago, Gabe said:

As has been mentioned by many people, the Amiga & SNES libraries in particular were very different. Sure, there was overlap, and in general the Amiga would fare worse when in direct comparison, but it also had a lot of stuff that the SNES didn't - which largely correlates to WRPGs, simulation games, strategy titles etc. And if you liked that sort of stuff, it was great. If you preferred platformers, scrolling shooters, fighters etc then sure, the SNES was a better bet.

 

That's it really, isn't it?

 

I mean Final Fight on the Amiga is crap, yet it's excellent on SNES and Mega CD. You wouldn't want to play Street Fighter 2 or Mortal Kombat I and II on the Amiga.

 

But there was no Megadrive or SNES port of either the first two Monkey Island games, nor was there Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. I couldn't play The Clue or Subwar 2050 on console. It took the release of the Playstation for a console port of X-COM. The original Amiga versions of all the Bitmap Bros games were easily the best, and Cannon Fodder, Lemmings and Syndicate never worked as well with a controller as they did a mouse.

[Rex Grossman]

1 hour ago, Zio said:

 

That's it really, isn't it?

 

I mean Final Fight on the Amiga is crap, yet it's excellent on SNES and Mega CD. You wouldn't want to play Street Fighter 2 or Mortal Kombat I and II on the Amiga.

 

But there was no Megadrive or SNES port of either the first two Monkey Island games, nor was there Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. I couldn't play The Clue or Subwar 2050 on console. It took the release of the Playstation for a console port of X-COM. The original Amiga versions of all the Bitmap Bros games were easily the best, and Cannon Fodder, Lemmings and Syndicate never worked as well with a controller as they did a mouse.

 

Monkey Island was on the Mega CD though.

[Mr Monday]

And Fate of Atlantis was in development but wasn’t released.

https://segaxtreme.net/threads/unreleased-sega-cd-indiana-jones-and-the-fate-of-atlantis.15672/

 

It’s also had a port of Dungeon Master II.

 

 

[Festoon]

5 hours ago, Anne Summers said:

Amiga music doesn't seem to play back well via emulation for some reason. At any rate, a lot of the games I load up in WinUAE or whatever seem to sound crackly and hissy compared to how they used to sound on a proper Amiga. 

 

Use OpenMPT instead.

[MikeJ]

4 hours ago, Zio said:

 

That's it really, isn't it?

 

I mean Final Fight on the Amiga is crap, yet it's excellent on SNES and Mega CD. You wouldn't want to play Street Fighter 2 or Mortal Kombat I and II on the Amiga.

 

In a strange twist of the norm at the time, MK1 on Amiga is actually very good - definitely more fun than the SNES version and as good as the MD one I would say. This is down to the SNES/MD versions not being very good rather than any Amiga superiority. 
 

 

[bplus]

3 hours ago, MikeJ said:

In a strange twist of the norm at the time, MK1 on Amiga is actually very good - definitely more fun than the SNES version and as good as the MD one I would say. This is down to the SNES/MD versions not being very good rather than any Amiga superiority. 
 

 

They were all done by probe weren't they? Mortal Kombat 2 on the snes was definitely a step up though.

[DarhkFox]

If i remember correctly though, Mortal Kombat was 4 discs - and you had to change discs between each fight, Fine if you had an external drive or HDD though.

 

Also, didn't you have to press space or something like that to change between upper/lower kicks etc? I can't imagine how it played with one/two buttons pads. I remember playing it quite a bit though. 

[K]

I think Sculptured Software did the SNES version of Mortal Kombat, while Probe did the Mega Drive and Amiga versions. 
 

@DarhkFox you might be thinking of the Amiga version of Street Fighter 2. Mortal Kombat on the Amiga was quite a tidy conversion, and it’s not like Mortal Kombat’s gameplay was so sophisticated you couldn’t fit the controls onto one or two buttons 

[Rex Grossman]

Technology-wise was there anything stopping one of the big European joystick manufacturers creating a 3 or 4 button controller in about 1990 when they saw how consoles were utilising their joypads?

 

We all know the Amiga games that aged best were those that were fine with one-button input or use a mouse.

[DarhkFox]

2 hours ago, K said:

I think Sculptured Software did the SNES version of Mortal Kombat, while Probe did the Mega Drive and Amiga versions. 
 

@DarhkFox you might be thinking of the Amiga version of Street Fighter 2. Mortal Kombat on the Amiga was quite a tidy conversion, and it’s not like Mortal Kombat’s gameplay was so sophisticated you couldn’t fit the controls onto one or two buttons 

 

Yes you are right - got the two mixed up.

[dumpster]

There was a lot of lazyness too - see how many CD32 games still used up to jump, despite having a control pad. How long would it have taken to change one line of code to assign jump to a button? And similarly how could you possibly expect to recreate the feel of the arcade with only one fire button? Amiga supported Megadrive and Master system pads, but you rarely got a game that utilised more than one button.  In a world where playstation brought us 8 button pads with a d pad and 2 sticks, it's surprising we could even make Turrican walk without falling over.

 

Also I think a few posts above really hit the nail on the head.  On Megadrive, PC Engine, SNES etc the games were coded by the actual company responsible.  Final Fight for example was a Capcom game, the console versions were also made by Capcom.  The Amiga version would be a conversion from a company like Tiertex, Probe, or whoever.  That's a massive issue, especially as games became more complex with more secrets to discover.  Often the programming team would have an arcade game for reference but the actual conversion is being written by someone who is playing the game and trying to make their most accurate copy based on that experience.  Capcom, Konami etc would surely have all the code and assets to refer to.  

 

And my god, I shuddered as I typed Tiertex.. who the fuck were they and why we're all their conversions so fucking terrible?

 

[MikeJ]

A lot of SNES/MD games were ported by different companies but generally seemed to fair better, probably not unrelated to the fact that both consoles were much more powerful and had greater colour abilities than the Amiga (which by the time the SNES came out was ancient) enabling even lazy companies to get a better result by default.
 

An exception to this would be the sound in a good number of MD games which seemed to rely on its rubber-band-on-a-biscuit-tin twangy synth a lot. 

[mwaawm]

21 hours ago, Rex Grossman said:

 

Monkey Island was on the Mega CD though.

Remember the teeth gnashing in the ST Community when Monkey Island 2 was pulled from the ST, one fan sent in his own (very good) mockups of screens converted down to 16 colours but obviously changed no one importants mind at Lucasarts.

The moaners that didn't understand it was market forces and not technical considerations that dictated such things were in the minority in the ST a marked contrast to the Amiga where the die hards held sway to the bitter end. 

 

On the subject of Monkey Island 2 there is however a happy ending for the ST....

 

 

 

There's even a pan piped version for those with an STe

 

[spanky debrest]

1 hour ago, dumpster said:

How long would it have taken to change one line of code to assign jump to a button? And similarly how could you possibly expect to recreate the feel of the arcade with only one fire button?

 

I checked out Amiga Ghouls n Ghosts last night mainly to hear the original Follin music. 

 

The one button-ness breaks the game in half because you can't fire upwards without jumping first. 

 

No way to dress this up as anything but basic contempt for the end user.

[Anne Summers]

1 hour ago, spanky debrest said:

 

I checked out Amiga Ghouls n Ghosts last night mainly to hear the original Follin music. 

 

The one button-ness breaks the game in half because you can't fire upwards without jumping first. 

 

No way to dress this up as anything but basic contempt for the end user.

Can't you hold fire and press up? I had G'n'G on the Amiga and don't remember it being that broken. 

[spanky debrest]

14 minutes ago, Anne Summers said:

Can't you hold fire and press up? I had G'n'G on the Amiga and don't remember it being that broken. 

 

I didn't try that!

 

I take it that this is a common workaround?

 

I'm keen to see more levels and hear more music so will definitely return to it.

[ianinthefuture]

I know it's "hey just buy a thing in 2022" - so categorically not a solution to a very real problem in 1990 - but you can get convertors these days that, through some jiggery pokery, auto-assign up to a button on a controller. So you can indeed press a button to jump. It makes Alien 3 on Amiga so much better (though really I should just play it on MD and shut up).

 

I remember some sticks being specifically marketed as 'two-button', and they meant as in the Amiga recognised them as separate inputs - at least on games supporting it. My brother had a two-button stick, I was lumbered with a Powerplay Cruiser that I hated so much I... err... rebought one a few months ago. PINK AND GREEN, BABY.

[dumpster]

Powerplay Cruisers were the bomb.  

 

Just while we're at it, how about the fact that many Amiga games were not Pal optimised? So many games used to leave about a quarter of the screen black (at the bottom) and I remember if you have a cracked version you could often use a bootblock app to switch to 60hz and see everything full screen. It all looked way better

 

[K]

I used to love the pink and green Cruiser too, until I discovered that Mega Drive pads worked on the Amiga, were considerably more durable than your average stick, and allowed you to use two buttons. Hired Guns even had instructions in the manual showing you how to rewire the pad so that the Amiga could recognise all of the buttons, but you'd have to be pretty hardcore to do that.

[SozzlyJoe]

Was always a sore point, the single button joystick. Even the ones with half a dozen buttons. Oh wow, that'll be great for games! No, they are all map as the same button, just you know, maybe you want to push it with your thumb for a while. For variety. Not like joysticks were even expensive peripherals, amazed some pioneering manufacturer didn't do at least a two button one. But there was just some incredible inertia there.

[Swainy]

 

I had one of these for my Amiga and you could use both buttons for the games that supported them.

[Protocol Penguin]

2 minutes ago, Swainy said:

 

I had o e of these for my Amiga and you could use both buttons for the games that supported them.

Three games that come to mind which used a two button joystick are Turrican, Turrican 2, Star Ray. I'm sure there were a few more (although sadly there weren't many that did).