Were the Atari ST's big for gaming or just the 8 bit line?

[Crazyace]

As far as I'm concerned the only mistake or bad decision was not including scrolling in the ST design. ( Having a packed pixel mode rather than bitplanes like the Apple 2GS would have been nice as well ) No scrolling meant that the CPU had to waste a lot of time moving the background - in many cases a 50fps game on the Amiga would be at least twice as slow on an ST - as almost one frame of time would be needed to repaint the background to simulate the scroll.

Scrolling, simple hardware acceleration (line copy, fill, etc) short of a full blitter would have been nice, but how much would chunky/packed pixels have sped up software rendering? (let alone double the CPU speed)

And for non-game applications, do you think that a 256 color display mode could be more significant than added hardware acceleration. (especially if that meant 8-bit chunky pixels speeding up software blits and focusing on faster CPU speeds) Especially after the fact (without hardware acceleration initially) boosting CPU speed would mean all (non timing sensitive) older programs would be faster as well. Not to mention 3D stuff or software scaling and in the context of porting PC games you'd be dealing with software renderer engines as well, and with VGA games especially you'd have 8-bit chunky pixel frambuffers being focused on. (the Amiga version of Wing commander was pretty limited, but imagine a port to a 16 MHz 68k system with a 320x200 8bpp linear framebuffer -did the Amiga port even use the blitter?)

Of course if they were competing with VGA, that did had hardware scrolling as well, but I'd think in many cases the 8bpp chunky framebuffer and 256 indexed colors (at least 12-bit RGB) would be generally more significant. (again, especially looking at non-game applications as well) If they didn't bump to 12-bit RGB they might as well do away with indexing and go to plain 8-bit direct RGB (maybe a toggle for 3-3-2/3-2-3/2-3-3).

 

Scrolling is the most important one - as it free's up a massive amount of CPU time in scrolling games. Without it the ST was hamstrung when trying to replicate common 8 bit games.

Other stuff ( blit/256 colours ) would require a lot more silicon. ( Imagine a 10MHz cpu at launch though , that would have been nice )

Didn't VGA ( or MCGA ) come out in 1987? 16 colours was a good choice - ( Amiga was better, but it was a much better design )

[carmel_andrews]

As far as I'm concerned the only mistake or bad decision was not including scrolling in the ST design. ( Having a packed pixel mode rather than bitplanes like the Apple 2GS would have been nice as well ) No scrolling meant that the CPU had to waste a lot of time moving the background - in many cases a 50fps game on the Amiga would be at least twice as slow on an ST - as almost one frame of time would be needed to repaint the background to simulate the scroll.

 

 

 

 

 

Perhaps you forget the groundbreaking ST games by Steve Bak (Goldrunner and return to genesis) which proved that the ST could smooth scroll without a specific hardware scroll register (and almost just as good as any amiga scroll i saw)

[Crazyace]

Goldrunner and Return to Genesis are both well programmed games - but they prove my point. Neither is full screen, and Goldrunner's background is only 4 colour.

Return to Genesis scrolling area is 288x96 - less than half the screen area, but the parallax is excellent.

 

( There's some info about RTG here: ftp://ftp.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/magazines/TheGamesMachine/Issue06/Pages/TheGamesMachine0600063.jpg )

[carmel_andrews]

There was another game that did smooth scrolling on the ST....Anarchy by Wayne Smithson (published by psygnosis), i think it's almost a full screen scroll (basically a defender clone)

 

Shame he didn't use the scroll routines in the slightly better known game 'blood money', bearing in mind he slated or slagged of the ST programmer behind the ST version of 'Menace'

 

Just remembered another ST game that had decent sideways scrolling (almost full screen), Super Stario Land (top byte), basically an SMB clone and the best SMB clone on the ST....beats Giana sisters by a country mile

Edited November 1, 2010 by carmel_andrews

[Christos]

There are lots of examples of smooth scrolling games on the ST but that's besides the point. The ST was good for what it was. People bought it, used it and enjoyed it and it was a commercial success. If someone doesn't like it that's just fine and they can go enjoy their amigas and everything.

Anyway, indeed the amiga was 2xST in price

[Crazyace]

Anarchy is pretty nice - much more fullscreen, but it's not really a full background - more a repeating pattern that fills the screen. It's an excellent technical feat though.

 

You are missing the point though Carmel - with hardware scrolling there would be almost no CPU cost involved in scrolling, leaving more time for other things such as sprites or particles.

 

(Edit spelling mistake on name)

Edited November 1, 2010 by Crazyace

[Crazyace]

Never saw Super Stario land before - It's pretty cool - seems to need 1MB though - I wonder if everything is drawn as 'sprites' against a blank screen

[carmel_andrews]

Anarchy is pretty nice - much more fullscreen, but it's not really a full background - more a repeating pattern that fills the screen. It's an excellent technical feat though.

 

You are missing the point though Carmel - with hardware scrolling there would be almost no CPU cost involved in scrolling, leaving more time for other things such as sprites or particles.

 

(Edit spelling mistake on name)

 

 

 

 

 

In that case....what was the point in the STe....Apart from being an 'amiga-ised' ST...if you remember the interviews contained within the review ST format gave when the STe was launched the programmers like Bak, smithson et al, weren't exactly heaping wholesome praise on the system (i guess though, they stopped short of slagging the machine off)

 

In relation to 'super stario land' here is the zip file (stx format, so you will need pasti to run it on emulator)

Super Stario Land (1995)(Top Byte)cr Elitem Atariforcet +14.zip

Edited November 1, 2010 by carmel_andrews

[Crazyace]

You are missing the point though Carmel - with hardware scrolling there would be almost no CPU cost involved in scrolling, leaving more time for other things such as sprites or particles.

 

In that case....what was the point in the STe....Apart from being an 'amiga-ised' ST...if you remember the interviews contained within the review ST format gave when the STe was launched the programmers like Bak, smithson et al, weren't exactly heaping wholesome praise on the system (i guess though, they stopped short of slagging the machine off)

 

The STe was just too late , after all you still had to support the normal ST in your titles. Scrolling hardware support should have been in from day 1 , by the time the STe came out the Amiga was way ahead.

[carmel_andrews]

I think that the miggy only caught up with the ST because commodore were basuically giving them away (pricewise that is), which commodore knew unless they could reduce manuf'g costs (which they couldn't) and they started hitting the pc/mac market share considerably then commodore were sunk

 

Both machines suffered big time because they didn't support the hard drive software format from the word go (that is where the pc and mac basically took the market away from atari and commodore), had atari and commodore supported HD's as standard media of software dev. like the pc and mac's were starting to, i reckon that both machines would still be with us in some form or other

 

And because neither atari or conmmodore were going to support HD format for software development, it hurt their chances of the atari/commodore cd devices ever succeeding

Edited November 1, 2010 by carmel_andrews

[Crazyace]

ST's supported harddrives from day 1

[Thorsten Günther]

The STe was just too late , after all you still had to support the normal ST in your titles. Scrolling hardware support should have been in from day 1 , by the time the STe came out the Amiga was way ahead.

 

The STE was "too little", not "too late". People were IIRC (as I read in some magazines) expecting a 256 or even 4096 colour mode and a faster (16MHz) CPU plus an internal 1.44 meg disk drive. If the 1040STE had had these enhancements, it would have fared much better, and two of these three enhancements were readily available as third-party products back then and only needed to be integrated into the mainboard.

 

As it was, customers (at least here in Germany) could hardly recognize the differences between the 1040STE and the STfm (because hardly any software used the enhancements), plus the STfm was cheaper and was continued by Atari - this didn't help to raise STE sales and thus the STE didn't gain the necessary momentum.

 

Thorsten

[Goochman]

The STe did add those nifty 'digital' joystick ports right?

 

Atari blew it big time not brining in 68020, 1.44, and new graphics when the STe line came out.

[carmel_andrews]

It (the STe) may have supported harddrives from day one, but not as the default medium (which was the point being made), whereas, the mac/pc was supporting hard drives as the default medium (as standard), which is why they (and not atari/commodore) got the support from the heavyweight publishers, like ashton tate, borland, adobe, etc etc

[Crazyace]

I seem to remember both Mac and PC only having floppies at launch - at least the ST had the interface there at the start

I agree with Thorsten that the STe was too little. It should have been more like a combination of the Mega STe and TT - 8/16MHz switchable 68k for maximum compatibility, along with 256 colour / VGA graphics. Scrolling wasn't enough - it should have been in the ST, not left almost 5 years...

[Thorsten Günther]

I seem to remember both Mac and PC only having floppies at launch - at least the ST had the interface there at the start

I agree with Thorsten that the STe was too little. It should have been more like a combination of the Mega STe and TT - 8/16MHz switchable 68k for maximum compatibility, along with 256 colour / VGA graphics. Scrolling wasn't enough - it should have been in the ST, not left almost 5 years...

 

I would not even have asked for a VGA mode - 160x200 at 256 colours would have fully sufficed and only taken the same 32K of RAM the other 3 modes also used. In combination with the blitting and scrolling capabilities, this would have been a great enhancement for game programmers, and - most important - a very visible one (and thus easily marketable)! RGB isn't worse than VGA in picture quality and RGB monitors were pretty common back then.

 

An 68020 was intended for the EST, which evolved into the TT030 eventually. IMHO this CPU would have been way too expensive for the STE.

 

Another thing that would have helped the STE: an internal IDE connector - the STE+ prototype had one along with an onboard Intel 80286 for emulation purposes.

 

Thorsten

Edited November 1, 2010 by Thorsten Günther

[OldAtarian]

As far as I'm concerned the only mistake or bad decision was not including scrolling in the ST design. ( Having a packed pixel mode rather than bitplanes like the Apple 2GS would have been nice as well ) No scrolling meant that the CPU had to waste a lot of time moving the background - in many cases a 50fps game on the Amiga would be at least twice as slow on an ST - as almost one frame of time would be needed to repaint the background to simulate the scroll.

Scrolling, simple hardware acceleration (line copy, fill, etc) short of a full blitter would have been nice, but how much would chunky/packed pixels have sped up software rendering? (let alone double the CPU speed)

And for non-game applications, do you think that a 256 color display mode could be more significant than added hardware acceleration. (especially if that meant 8-bit chunky pixels speeding up software blits and focusing on faster CPU speeds) Especially after the fact (without hardware acceleration initially) boosting CPU speed would mean all (non timing sensitive) older programs would be faster as well. Not to mention 3D stuff or software scaling and in the context of porting PC games you'd be dealing with software renderer engines as well, and with VGA games especially you'd have 8-bit chunky pixel frambuffers being focused on. (the Amiga version of Wing commander was pretty limited, but imagine a port to a 16 MHz 68k system with a 320x200 8bpp linear framebuffer -did the Amiga port even use the blitter?)

Of course if they were competing with VGA, that did had hardware scrolling as well, but I'd think in many cases the 8bpp chunky framebuffer and 256 indexed colors (at least 12-bit RGB) would be generally more significant. (again, especially looking at non-game applications as well) If they didn't bump to 12-bit RGB they might as well do away with indexing and go to plain 8-bit direct RGB (maybe a toggle for 3-3-2/3-2-3/2-3-3).

 

Scrolling is the most important one - as it free's up a massive amount of CPU time in scrolling games. Without it the ST was hamstrung when trying to replicate common 8 bit games.

Other stuff ( blit/256 colours ) would require a lot more silicon. ( Imagine a 10MHz cpu at launch though , that would have been nice )

Didn't VGA ( or MCGA ) come out in 1987? 16 colours was a good choice - ( Amiga was better, but it was a much better design )

 

Yeah, just look at the ST port of Grest Giana Sisters. It plays on one screen at a time instead of scrolling and even the C64 version can scroll. If the Blitter chip had been present on all ST's it could have been written to scroll just like the other systems.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sr58eAozSM4

Edited November 1, 2010 by OldAtarian

[Crazyace]

I would not even have asked for a VGA mode - 160x200 at 256 colours would have fully sufficed and only taken the same 32K of RAM the other 3 modes also used. In combination with the blitting and scrolling capabilities, this would have been a great enhancement for game programmers, and - most important - a very visible one (and thus easily marketable)! RGB isn't worse than VGA in picture quality and RGB monitors were pretty common back then.

 

I was initialy thinking about the most important thing missing from the original ST - and scrolling wins hands down. But a 256 colour mode ( either 16 pallette + 1:2:1 low RGB bits , or just 332 RGB direct ) at 160 pixels as an additional mode would be great. I find blitting less important - I'd much prefer a slightly faster CPU.

 

VGA might only be important for the 'new' STe - In 89 VGA would be out - so moving to a 64 bit memory bus would give 320x480x256 and 640x480x16, and a 16MHz 68000 would give 2x the cpu speed with a minimum of compatibility issues.

[carmel_andrews]

The Question is...were the ST and Amiga really competing with eachother

 

I ask this because I have seen on various commodore fan sites that commodore put the C-128 as the direct competitor to the ST (even though it only used an abridged/modded version of the venerable 6502)... Perhaps commodore had better and bigger plans for the Amiga and that didn't involve Atari (or it's ST)

 

And I don't think crazyace is playing fair, seeming as though he is a codehead (i.e he programs etc)

Edited November 1, 2010 by carmel_andrews

[+wood_jl]

The original Mac was during Jobs' first tenure.

 

Yeah, he worked there. So it was his creation? He was running the show and not CEO John Sculley? I thought Jobs was just a pitchman.

[kool kitty89]

Scrolling is the most important one - as it free's up a massive amount of CPU time in scrolling games. Without it the ST was hamstrung when trying to replicate common 8 bit games.

Other stuff ( blit/256 colours ) would require a lot more silicon. ( Imagine a 10MHz cpu at launch though , that would have been nice )

12.5 MHz would have been available too, but that would be more expensive obviously, but perhaps for a higher end model alongise the base 8 MHz unit -especially if they had something like the MEGA at launch. (and 12 MHz would be simpler to manage as a common multiple/division from a master clock also supplying 8 MHz -not the max 12.5 MHz, but close and 10 MHz wouldn't cater as well, and a 32 MHz master clock would have easily allowed division to 8, 12, and 16 MHz)

 

But color depth aside, using packed pixels would help a lot for software rendering (especially in cases where it's inconvenient to write in 8-pixel row increments -in which case using bitplanes wouldn't be so bad, but those cases are a bit limited in practical use -or at least more of a headache to optimize for). So if the ST had had 1/2/4-bit packed pixel modes rather than planar, that alone could have helped though with design trade-offs (bitplanes being simpler to vary color depth)... but packed pixel is what the A8 used, and what might have been really neat is if they added an additional pixel accumulation mode (like GTIA) to allow a 160x200 8bpp mode (though again, likely using direct 8-bit RGB color) if not using accumulation to vary the depth in general (all using linear framebuffers). You would lose the simple lossy compression (variable depth) capabilities and some other tricks native to bitplanes, but in most cases it would probably be worth it. (assuming the shifter could still be designed in time)

 

More of the disadvantages of bitplanes are offset with hardware acceleration though and hardware V/H scroll registers (along with simpler copy or fill functions) would obviously help a lot without going near real blitter functionality. Provisions for expandability would have been nice though, so even if the initial SHIFTER lacked those features, they could have it socketed and allow drop-in replacement (as with CTIA to GTIA), let alone allowing the additon of a blitter or such -at least on high-er end models if the lower-end stuff was soldered/surface mounted... but even then you had potential for clip-on chips as Cyrix did for 386SX upgrades and even the original 520 STs had socketed ROMs and sockets for TOS ROMs prior to them being built-in. (for general expansion like blitter/sound/etc, a simple but comprehensive expansion port would have been great, again probably in place of the cart slot, a 16-bit port with the system bus and the full address range -including that used by the SHIFTER so a blitter could coppy into the display buffer, DMA/interrupt lines, audio in, and some various system/video clock signals and such -64 pins would have been great but they might have made do with a fair bit less: the Genesis's cart slot uses a rather standard 64-bit edge connector and has most/all of those features and then some, enough to skimp a bit and cut pin count or trade for other features while 8-bit ISA uses 62 pins but with a lot of redundant/reserved/unconnected lines or simply extra/unnecessary features like +/- 12V and -5V more IRQ and DACK lines than really needed for a bare minimum and still have pretty flexible expansion) Hell with a flexible expansion port, maybe even omit some of the standard features on the lower-end models and allow for expansion. (ACSI, RS-232, MIDI, etc) And obviously any box form factor higher-end units could have multiple internal expansion slots as well. (maybe even so like the 1090XL and allow such expansion for the lower-end models too through a general expansion system docking to the main unit)

 

 

Didn't VGA ( or MCGA ) come out in 1987? 16 colours was a good choice - ( Amiga was better, but it was a much better design )

Yes, and PC didn't get hardware scrolling until VGA either (so a big boost over using unaccelerated EGA bitplanes with limited color -I think Tandy's TGA used packed pixels though), but my comments on the higher-color stuff was mainly in the context of later upgrades opposed to what happened with the BLiTTER , TT in 1990, and Falcon in '92. Even with the ST released as it was in '85 (unaccelerated bitplanes and all), the path to succeeding models could have been a lot better (and even without added hardware, simple provisions for expansion could have opened that up a lot with minimal change in cost or development time -and actual potential for reduced cost by dropping standard features on the lowest-end models and offering them via expansion -keeping only the most necessary peripheral ports... maybe even removing the keypad -but not the cursor keys). Same thing for the faster CPU... if not 10/12 MHz from the start, at least boost it by the release of the MEGA (preferably 16 MHz for that given it was higher-end and there would have been 16 MHz 68ks reasonably available by '87, but the 12.5 MHz one had been released back in '82), and the 256 color thing was more for '87/88 to match VGA.

Focusing on adding simpler acceleration to the shifter could have been a very good move too, maybe allowing such by '86 even and much sooner adoption to baseline units (and had the original shifter been socketed, easy upgrades as well). Some form of chunky pixel support (chained bitplanes, chunky to planar conversion logic, etc) would have facilitated software blits in any case regardless of bumping it up to 8bpp. (so if they added scrolling and chunky pixel support after the fact, there's be an even bigger boost, let alone bumping the CPU speed -and if they adopted 12 MHz, it would have made it to lower-end units before 16 MHz could)

 

Standards that could be easily added and/or were soon integrated into all major models would be important in gaining support, so simpler and earlier additions had a better chance of that. (and even with no sound upgrade, faster CPU means more potential for sample playback via the YM chip... and there were off the shelf options like the YM2203 adding 3 4-op FM channels and 2 programmable interval timers with full backwards compatibility and a similar pin package, but you'd be stuck with the PSG/SSG channels for PCM playback in software -definitely push DMA audio eventually if AMY went down the drain, but the YM2203 is something that should have been quite possible at reasonable cost by '86/87 and you had the super low-end YM2413 but that's really limited even with 9 channels plus it would need to be included on top of the YM2149 unlike the backwards compatible 2203) Actually, I wonder (assuming it was available in quantity) if the YM2203 would have been practical to use back in '85 (it was in use in Japan already) and particularly how much the cost would be offset by the added timer functionality if that allowed some other components to be omitted. (2 programmable interval timers)

 

 

Hmm, what is the master clock generator used in the ST, is it simply 8 MHz? (it it were 4 MHz that would easily allow for multiplication to 12/16/20/24/28/32/36/40 MHz, etc, or a significantly higher clock allowing more flexible division, but plain 8 MHz would complicate things unless the later models used different master clocks to facilitate flexibility)

 

I seem to recall you mentioning the SHIFTER also used an 8 MHz dot clock, is that correct? (which would mean a pretty hefty horizontal boarder on normally calibrated TVs/monitors -more so than the Amiga... and also really non-square pixels in NTSC -too tall- but for a stright to the edge 320 wide display on SDTVs you'd want about 6.7 MHz -which the MD does- or a little higher to ensure no overscan at all, and a big problem with higher dot clocks is worse artifacting in composite video, especially NTSC especially with anything above ~5.4 MHz though also depending heavily on the video encoder and TV used) For RGB that doesn't matter at all though and even less for monitors with easy to access H/V scan adjustment. (plus you get more Hblank time, if that's useful)

 

 

I seem to remember both Mac and PC only having floppies at launch - at least the ST had the interface there at the start

I agree with Thorsten that the STe was too little. It should have been more like a combination of the Mega STe and TT - 8/16MHz switchable 68k for maximum compatibility, along with 256 colour / VGA graphics. Scrolling wasn't enough - it should have been in the ST, not left almost 5 years...

Or if not there from the beginning, very soon after as an upgrade, like 1 year later tops. (socketed would have helped, but a clip-on arrangement with a couple jumpers available as an upgrade at service centers -short of voiding the warranty- should have been feasible as it was). They could have done without a proper blitter entirely, just some simpler hardware acceleration and pure CPU grunt like VGA PCs did later on, but more provisions for external expansion could have made the blitter and sound expansion easier to introduce across the board. (faster CPU would mean all non-timing sensitive applications would automatically be faster though) And again, I think pushing higher color modes and a larger palette (and chunky pixels) should have been a priority over a real blitter. (the problem with doing higher color as a simple drop-in upgrade is the need for more address lines as a 32k range wouldn't be enough... some jumper lines could probably solve that though as long as there weren't other conflicts/contention, and just expanding to 64k would be enough for 320x200x8 or 640x200x4, so you could go simpler than the TT SHIFTER even)

 

Does the TT Shifter use packed pixels?

 

 

I wonder if any of the Atari Inc coprocessor designs from their shelved 16-bit chipsets would have been useful to add to the ST after the fact or at least to speed up development. (that didn't happen with Amy though, much less the graphics chips... and a better expansion port than the cart slot could have allowed a plug-in AMY module too) But even without expansion, simply adding the delayed features in '86 would have been very significant. (especially if the added features included more expansion -for a MEGA type machine that's more of a given though)

 

 

 

 

EDIT:

I was initialy thinking about the most important thing missing from the original ST - and scrolling wins hands down. But a 256 colour mode ( either 16 pallette + 1:2:1 low RGB bits , or just 332 RGB direct ) at 160 pixels as an additional mode would be great. I find blitting less important - I'd much prefer a slightly faster CPU.

Yeah, and again even if not from the very beginning, the first upgrade made. (unless AMY had been completed about the same time and not abandoned -odd that they pushed it off to the XEM rather than keeping it as a planned later addition to the ST -dropped from the ST due to time constraints)

And after that, packed pixels... if that wouldn't have been practical from the start. (with 1/2/4 bpp packed -if not 8bpp in 160x200)

 

VGA might only be important for the 'new' STe - In 89 VGA would be out - so moving to a 64 bit memory bus would give 320x480x256 and 640x480x16, and a 16MHz 68000 would give 2x the cpu speed with a minimum of compatibility issues.

You'd probably want lower-res modes with the higher-color support too for faster rendering. (320x240) Hell, even limited to 16 colors, it might have been nice to have a plain 160x200x16 color mode on the ST simply to allow for faster rendering at full screen size.

And some of that could/should have been done a lot sooner, at least on higher-end models (MEGA should have been 16 MHz from the start, more emphasis on features other than the blitter, etc -SHIFTER upgrade, off the shelf sound enhancement if AMY was a bust or too expensive, etc)

Another thing for audio short of actual DMA could have been a simple IC with a DAC (8 or maybe more to allow better software mixing) built-in and FIFO for PCM writes (full/empty flags, maybe ability to trigger interrupts) and either timer input or built in programmable timer to set the playback rate. (and then there's the really basic DMA set-up that the MAC used with its DAC). A PWM DAC would have been even cheaper but kind of poor sounding. (squeal problems, especially at low sample rates, so a resistor DAC would be preferable)

 

Heh, this same thing came up on Sega-16 for better possible options the Genesis's PCM. (granted it has the Z80, but aside from backwards compatibility that's not a very cost-effective option... and it's implemented in a less than ideal fashion anyway -crappy serial bank switching, no interrupts from the YM's timers, still too slow to really push multi-channel mixing, and a CPU/MCU added to the ST would be similarly inefficient short of providing other hardware acceleration -hence why my musing on using a 6502 with the YM or POKEY for PCM as a hack isn't really attractive)

Edited November 1, 2010 by kool kitty89

[svenski]

Were Atari and Commodore competing with each other with the ST/Amiga ? Of course they were.

 

There were hundreds of games releases for the Atari ST, many were bad or average ports, many were not. You can't just generalise and dismiss the majority of ST games as "shitty" or "crap".

 

The 520STm and 520STfm were part of a normal evolution process, if you like. Atari were surprised by how successful the original 520ST was, at its original selling price.

 

The Archimedes: There was originally no intention to push it as a home computer. Acorn were quite happy pushing it into Schools and making a lot of money out of it. The place I worked for made a tiny sum supplying to local education and selling to teachers who used to get incentives to buy one.

 

The Archimedes was considered pretty awful for gaming. Acorn finally decided to dabble in the home computer market with the 3010, which was launched in '92 and finally featured joystick ports. It retailed at £399.

 

With the ST Atari had a head start and whilst they had that, they did very well. When Commodore released the A500 the war was back on. Pricing isn't everything and I believe the ST suffered because (a) there was the usual Atari lack of direction when it came to marketing and channel support, and (b) the market was aware the Amiga was a superior product.

 

Yes the Amiga was better, yes Commodore were smarter and generally did things better when it came to PR, marketing and supporting the dealer channel but, despite all that, Atari still sold huge numbers in Europe, primarily the UK, Holland and Germany.

 

Was the ST big for gaming, the answer is yes, of course.

 

The answer to everything else is 42.

 

I think Wood_jl as already summed up the whole thing very well.

[kool kitty89]

Were Atari and Commodore competing with each other with the ST/Amiga ? Of course they were.

And the PC and Mac. (technically the IIGS even if you get down to it) Though in Europe it was mainly those two until the early 90s with decent PCs at decent prices finally starting to cut in. (and Atari and CBM both failing to compete in a number of areas -especially timely hardware upgrades-)

 

The Archimedes was considered pretty awful for gaming. Acorn finally decided to dabble in the home computer market with the 3010, which was launched in '92 and finally featured joystick ports. It retailed at £399.

The hardware had tons of potential though... just imagine if they'd pushed it in a low-cost form factor alongside the higher-end units. (and joystick support obviously)

Acorn missed out on the 8-bit market too with the screw-ups of the Electron (a fully functional low-cost Beebe would have been much better), but that's another issue.

 

With the ST Atari had a head start and whilst they had that, they did very well. When Commodore released the A500 the war was back on. Pricing isn't everything and I believe the ST suffered because (a) there was the usual Atari lack of direction when it came to marketing and channel support, and (b) the market was aware the Amiga was a superior product.

Usual Atari Lack of direction? You mean like other Atari Corp products? Anything prior to 1984 wouldn't apply to that at all as the AInc was a totally different company with very different management (and that changed substantially as well from Nolan's funky business sense to the Warner/Atari dual management conflicts and Ray Kassar not really knowing the industry well, to finally having a really good case with James Morgan but Warner still interfering and then splitting up the company's assets and turnign Atari Inc into a corporate shell in '84 while Trammel Technologies Ltd lived on as Atari Corp).

Wgungfu mentioned it before, but the biggest problems with Atari Corp (and a consistent downward spiral) started about the time Sam took over in '89. (albeit the lack of upgraded hardware up to that point was already quite significant)

 

Yes the Amiga was better, yes Commodore were smarter and generally did things better when it came to PR, marketing and supporting the dealer channel but, despite all that, Atari still sold huge numbers in Europe, primarily the UK, Holland and Germany.

Hype, marketing and PR were things Warner Atari Inc did rather well, so again, that's more Atari Corp specific. (albeit Warner Atari didn't seem to grasp the EU market very well either... though Kassar's push for the A8 as an appliance computer didn't fly in the US, among other management issues)

 

Was the ST big for gaming, the answer is yes, of course.

There are few computers with good software support that weren't good for gaming by contemporary standards... but "good" is a matter of oppinion.

[Christos]

 

There are few computers with good software support that weren't good for gaming by contemporary standards... but "good" is a matter of oppinion.

 

Yeah, all of them. Anything before 2007 isn't good for gaming by contemporary standards. Whether someone likes ST games or not is a matter of taste. A good game is a good game regardless of platform, and with over 5000 games released for the ST the numbers speak for themselves. And speaking of numbers, ST game sales accounted for 10% of overal sales in December 1992 in the UK according to ST format.

[The Usotsuki]

The original Mac was during Jobs' first tenure.

 

Yeah, he worked there. So it was his creation? He was running the show and not CEO John Sculley? I thought Jobs was just a pitchman.

Jobs *founded* Apple. And while Mac wasn't his creation - that would be Jef Raskin - Jobs did have quite a bit of say into the Mac project when the Apple /// project went chest up.