How would a game console amiga have competed?

[Crazyace]

I was watching the excellent video about the Amiga design, and one comment here was interesting

 

https://youtu.be/DOo1HA66BWw?t=413

An Amiga games console with only 32K of chip ram. It would be interesting how this would have looked to the market, and the kinds of programming tricks that would have been needed.

I think, even with 32K it would have competed with the NES and SMS.

For scrolling - 336x192x8 colours would fit in 24k , leaving 8k for h/w sprites and Copper lists

A pseudo colour mode could be implemented by replicating some plane data over multiple lines...

336x192x2 for 2 full screen bitplanes + 336x(192/4)x2 would give 16 colours using 1x by 4y 'attributes' in 20k

The CPU would be busy copying data from cartridge rom ( like fast ram) to chip ram for graphics updates during vblank, and any blitting would need to chase the beam as double buffering would need too much ram to be practical.

[LoTonah]

There was an Amiga video game system--the CD32. Unfortunately, it came on the market during the 90's, not during the 80's when it may have gained some traction. Competing against the Genesis and the Super Nintendo wasn't the brightest of moves.

[carlsson]

At one point, the CD32 was the best selling 32-bit gaming console.

 

Anyway, the TurboGrafx-16 (1987) contains 8K of system RAM + 64K VRAM, and the Genesis (1989) has 72K of system RAM + 64K VRAM. I don't see why an Amiga console should settle for far less, given that even MSX2 systems in the mid-80's had at least 64K VRAM, as well as the Commodore 128DCR came in a version with 64K VDC memory.

 

Although memory at one point became expensive again, I would imagine the Amiga chipset in 1987 still being so expensive to produce that it would not make much difference to cut down on the amount of memory in order to obtain a lower price. As a proof of concept perhaps they could put together a reference system with just 16 kilowords = 32 kB of memory as mentioned in the video, but I doubt it would've been practical.

 

Also the Lorraine prototype at Winter CES 1984 supposedly had 128K RAM. At one point it was planned to be more of a console than a computer.

[Crazyace]

I'm guessing the 32K comment from Joe Decuir would be for a console in the 1985 timeframe - so competing against the NES.

I think that even with 32K an Amiga cartridge machine would provide much better games - Marble Madness would be pretty much the same as it was on the real Amiga for example.

With 128K and carts there would be room for almost all of the effects that people used on the 512k Amiga computers.

[Bill Loguidice]

There was an Amiga video game system--the CD32. Unfortunately, it came on the market during the 90's, not during the 80's when it may have gained some traction. Competing against the Genesis and the Super Nintendo wasn't the brightest of moves.

 

Its predecessor was the CDTV, although that was obviously priced much higher and targeted more as a set top box, which was thought to be a market at the time. Obviously that wouldn't start to be a thing until the post-DVD era.

 

I don't think there are many scenarios where a cartridge-based 1980s Amiga game console would have been a success, particularly one fronted by Commodore. As we know, one reason for the NES's level of success was its access to the best third party content and killer first party titles. Commodore would have had none of that, and it likely would have been more along the lines of the reception the XEGS got, with its more computer-centric games line-up.

[simbalion]

Yeah, during the NES era Nintendo pretty much locked the third party developers from doing games for anyone else but them. Something I think they had gotten slapped in the chops about by the time the Sega Genesis appeared on the scene. One has to wonder how other platforms might have fared if Ninnytendo hadn't been so tight fisted with the third party developers at the time...

[+save2600]

1st off, introduce a real controller suitable for the damned system. Amiga should have never been released with the CX-40 Atari joystick scenario as standard. Amiga was designed from the get-go to be a game system, so WTF?!

 

2nd, re-write your friggin' games so that jump is not UP on the gamepad.

 

3rd, up the standards by not allowing sloppy ST translations.

 

4th, speaking of standards - make damn sure the old C64 ports are NOT superior to those on your latest/greatest machine.

 

[Crazyace]

 

Its predecessor was the CDTV, although that was obviously priced much higher and targeted more as a set top box, which was thought to be a market at the time. Obviously that wouldn't start to be a thing until the post-DVD era.

 

I don't think there are many scenarios where a cartridge-based 1980s Amiga game console would have been a success, particularly one fronted by Commodore. As we know, one reason for the NES's level of success was its access to the best third party content and killer first party titles. Commodore would have had none of that, and it likely would have been more along the lines of the reception the XEGS got, with its more computer-centric games line-up.

 

 

You should disregard both the CDTV and CD32 from this discussion - they both arrived much later ( 1991 and 1993 ) and were based on Amiga computers. I'm thinking of a 1985 launch where it would compare to the NES and 7800 at launch ( and non launch for the 7800 )

I doubt it would have the same reception as the XEGS - that was old technology way behind the competition - Amiga was state of the art technology in 1985.

[Bill Loguidice]

 

 

You should disregard both the CDTV and CD32 from this discussion - they both arrived much later ( 1991 and 1993 ) and were based on Amiga computers. I'm thinking of a 1985 launch where it would compare to the NES and 7800 at launch ( and non launch for the 7800 )

I doubt it would have the same reception as the XEGS - that was old technology way behind the competition - Amiga was state of the art technology in 1985.

 

I wasn't making that point, I was just pointing out in reference to the CD32 thing that we shouldn't forget about the CDTV.

 

A 1985 launch would have likely been impractical. It wasn't exactly cost-effective technology. It all comes down to what you'd ultimately sacrifice in the final product. I suspect by the time you get it down to a reasonable production cost, it wouldn't be terribly more impressive than what was ultimately produced for that era's consoles. Again, I think my point stands in that you have to consider who'd Commodore get to produce games for the thing. Nintendo had most of the good third parties locked up.

 

A 1985 launch also wouldn't be realistic. The NES was only in limited release in late 1985 and it wasn't until well into 1986 that it was clear that consoles were becoming a viable product category again. So I think a more realistic hypothetical would be releasing an Amiga console in 1987, about a year before the Japanese release of the Genesis/Mega Drive, and about two before its North American release. So they release a next gen console at that time, but there's still a question of what games are available for it and how that impacts the Amiga computer. It's not like the Amiga computer started selling in reasonably large numbers until after the release of the Amiga 500 in late 1987 anyway. That would have probably been too much effort for Commodore to handle.

[carlsson]

I read more about the Lorraine as per the 1982-1984 concepts. The cartridge port seemed to be used for CPU or other hardware upgrades, rather than ROM plugin games. Instead both prototypes and concept drawings were based on floppy drives - either 5.25" or 3.5" ones which was quite early on given that Sony announced the SMC-70, which was the world's first computer with a 3.5" drive, somewhere between June and October 1982, and it started to sell in December the same year.

 

Of course it is possible that if Atari had bought the design and intended to use it as a games console, they might've gotten rid of the keyboard and floppy drive. In that scenario, perhaps there had been more games available for the Atari Lorraine 16-bit console, as I imagine Atari had a better reputation in the game world than eventually Commodore had. But even that is rather speculative, as Atari suffered quite a lot from the "crash" and a super advanced, as well as quite expensive video game console might not have been their first choice.

 

Anyway, most Amiga games automatically load when you pop in the floppy disk, so except for loading times, you could consider it to be a console with keyboard and several interesting ports on the back side. In modern times, it seems console makers sell their hardware at discounted prices, in order to get their money back on game sales but I'm not sure anyone in the mid 1980's had been willing to take that financial risk, assuming the Amiga chipset even with a lower amount of RAM was more expensive to produce than say e.g. the Famicom hardware.

[awhite2600]

Even with programming tricks it would be difficult to work with only 32 K of chip RAM. There's a lot of data that needs to be in chip RAM - display, sprites, blitter objects, copper data...and sound samples. A tight squeeze. Even simple Amiga games would also require at least a few KB of RAM for game data. This all assumes no / limited OS and "bare metal" programming.

 

As others have stated, the bigger stumbling block would have been the cost of the other hardware - the 68000 and the Amiga custom chipset. Saving a few dollars by reducing the RAM to only 32K wouldn't have reduced the cost of the console that much. I suspect that even a "console" Amiga with no keyboard, no disk drive, no serial/parallel ports and reduced RAM would still have to retail for well over $500 in the mid-80s.

 

This whole argument reminds me of the Neo-Geo console. The price would be too high for the high end experience.

[Crazyace]

I would counter that 1985 would be a viable launch - this isn't an Amiga computer, i expect it would be a lot cheaper as a bare bones console. Given the timeline where the h/w was near complete in 1984 for the computer , there would still be a year for software dev.

In that situation an Amiga console would launch against the early NES - and in my opinion a 32KB '7800 style' amiga would outperform the NES dramatically....

 

I dont know how this would have affected the Amiga computer. I'm actually thinking more about this technically. - In terms of games though I think an Amiga console would actually get better games, as there would be no Atari ST ports that dont use the hardware.

 

Given better hardware in the US market would the NES have managed to dominate as much as they did?

 

I assume a 32K Amiga would be more expensive to build than the 4K NES , but the 5200 already had 16K of ram , so it would be possible to price as a console for $299

 

As Awhite2600 says, it would need programming tricks to work with only 32KB of chip ram.... that's what is interesting to me. I expect that a lot more software would rely on the hardware sprites - and the lack of memory for double buffering or blitter object data would be challenging. But the 2600 only had 128 bytes after all, and 32KB is more than the 4K on the NES, ( and the 8K+16K of the Master system )

[carlsson]

The 5200 though was based on a chipset that already had been manufactured for three years, not entirely new. Of course if the manufacturer has a lot of money so they can postpone reimbursing costs for R&D in the beginning, perhaps the sales price could be reduced too.

 

If we leave out the DMA sound and get something simpler - why not a SID if we're imagining this would be a Commodore console, and they actually threw SID chips in a lot of hardware between 1982 and 1985 (with the exception for the TED series), there is no immediate need for RAM to play sounds. I still think 64K would be more likely, as game programmers would find themselves limited by a capable hardware that has nearly no memory to work with.

[Bill Loguidice]

I would counter that 1985 would be a viable launch - this isn't an Amiga computer, i expect it would be a lot cheaper as a bare bones console. Given the timeline where the h/w was near complete in 1984 for the computer , there would still be a year for software dev.

In that situation an Amiga console would launch against the early NES - and in my opinion a 32KB '7800 style' amiga would outperform the NES dramatically....

 

 

For a 1985 launch, you'd have to also make the assumption that Commodore would have to pull a Nintendo (who marketed the NES as a robot toy initially) and use some clever ploy to actually get into stores. Retailers wanted little to nothing to do with videogame stuff until the NES started gaining momentum in the latter part of 1986, so even with all of the obvious technical and cost hurdles aside, it's not realistic to think that Commodore would simply release an Amiga-centric console as-is at that time, particularly when the Commodore 64 at that point was console priced and still selling like relative gangbusters. In other words, with a lack of a market, there would be no logical reason to release a videogame console until it was clear that consoles were a thing again. So again, if we're going to play "what if?" here, it's realistic to think that Commodore wouldn't even consider releasing an Amiga-centric console until at least late 1986, if not 1987.

 

I still have to ask where the games are coming from (that's as important a point as any). Sega had a lot of first party content to leverage, Atari leveraged old license agreements and struggled to get any notable new software or third party support, etc., and both struggled against the NES, which had awesome first party stuff and had locked up a lot of third parties exclusive to their system. It's not like Commodore would be programming very many state-of-the-art games on its own dime. So what exactly would be left after Nintendo, Sega, and Atari snatched up what they snatched up? It wouldn't be until Sega released the Genesis that Nintendo's lock on the best third parties was finally broken, and that wasn't exactly immediate either.

 

If you're going to argue that Commodore would "win" based on brute force of the tech alone, that's simply never been the case. It's always been about the games first and the technology second (or third). It's also easy enough to argue that even 86/87 would be too early to realize the potential of that type of technology in a console package anyway.

[carlsson]

Oh yes, I completely forgot about the Commodore 64! I use to argue that one of the major reasons why Commodore didn't really strive to upgrade to an even better 8-bit computer was that the C64 already was market leader, and a stable platform for third party software publishers. Constant upgrades would only confuse the market what to go for, and adding a 16-bit console into the mix would've made it even less clear. Actually it could've killed off the C64 much sooner than what happened, put Commodore into even more debt and uncertainity where to go next and possibly marked the end of the company with an early, rushed, cut down Amiga release.

 

Regarding Nintendo's success, the Famicom was released in July 1983 but I think it took a year and a revision upgrade before it started to take off in Japan. In the Western world, Swedish importer Bergsala got to see the Famicom early on and pestered Nintendo for two years to be granted the rights to import and sell it. They were just about to get it adapted for PAL, when Nintendo changed their mind and wanted to introduce the NES in the US before Europe, and had to wait further until September 1986 for the first European release. However it is noted that Bergsala may have been the only Nintendo distributor worldwide that saw the greatness about the Famicom in the aftermath of the video game crash.

 

In the "what if" world, I use to go back to the June 1984 CES where it is said that Dave Morse at Amiga held presentations to a number of companies including Sony, HP, Philips, Apple and SGI before being granted a loan from Atari. Assuming Sony already then would've had an interest in video games - after all, they made a bunch of MSX computers and even published some games for that format - and also had witnessed what Nintendo and Sega were starting to do in Japan - that is an alternative reality as good as anyone else. Honestly I don't know which kind of contacts with game companies Sony had in the mid 80's, but they seemed to get along with at least Konami. That could've been your PlayStation 1 in 1986, probably floppy disk based with a CD-ROM upgrade 3-4 years later...

Edited February 11, 2016 by carlsson

[JamesD]

FWIW, there were supposedly some arcade machines that were based on Amiga hardware. I saw a few of the games.
I think a game console could have done well if it were implemented properly.
Cartridges would have had to allow at least some of the ROM to be mapped to CHIP memory.
If cart memory could be mapped as CHIP or FAST it would have allowed as much of either as you need since you could page either one.
The one major drawback to this is that a dual buss architecture would require a dual buss interface.
There might be a way around that by multiplexing some buss lines but I wouldn't even want to guess how nasty that would be.

The CDTV was late but it could have been a CD based version of the console if they had released a console.

The CDTV should have had a 2x CD and the cpu should have run at double speed either way.

[+save2600]

FWIW, there were supposedly some arcade machines that were based on Amiga hardware. I saw a few of the games.

 

Two I know of for sure:

 

Magic Johnson's Fast Break Basketball and Rick Davis' World Trophy Soccer.

 

And according to KLOV, these were also made by Arcadia:

 

Road Wars, Sidewinder, Xenon and AAARGH!

 

-edit-

 

​Yep, looks like an A500 mobo wedged in there! lol

 

[carlsson]

Unless otherwise mentioned, the below systems seem to be based on the Amiga 500 or unknown model:

 

The Arcadia Systems machine offered 12 different games:

http://www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=2005

 

Up Scope (Amiga 1000): http://www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=38

Riverboat Queen: http://www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=55

1000CS Virtuality System (Amiga 3000): http://www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=56

Pinball 2000 Holopin: http://www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=57

Battletech: http://www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=58

 

There may have been more, those were the ones I could easily find.

[Crazyace]

For a 1985 launch, you'd have to also make the assumption that Commodore would have to pull a Nintendo (who marketed the NES as a robot toy initially) and use some clever ploy to actually get into stores. Retailers wanted little to nothing to do with videogame stuff until the NES started gaining momentum in the latter part of 1986, so even with all of the obvious technical and cost hurdles aside, it's not realistic to think that Commodore would simply release an Amiga-centric console as-is at that time, particularly when the Commodore 64 at that point was console priced and still selling like relative gangbusters. In other words, with a lack of a market, there would be no logical reason to release a videogame console until it was clear that consoles were a thing again. So again, if we're going to play "what if?" here, it's realistic to think that Commodore wouldn't even consider releasing an Amiga-centric console until at least late 1986, if not 1987.

Hi Bill,

 

I'm not making any assumptions really, just following up the comments by one of the original designers ( Joe Decuir in the video ) about the Amiga being designed for 32k as a console ( I'm guessing that 128K was the computer version shown in 1984 ). Whether an Amiga computer from Commodore would actually happen if the console had been picked up is a completely different question.

It's not as if the NES sold amazingly well in it's first year anyway - and that was in a market where it was technically superior.

 

 

I still have to ask where the games are coming from (that's as important a point as any). Sega had a lot of first party content to leverage, Atari leveraged old license agreements and struggled to get any notable new software or third party support, etc., and both struggled against the NES, which had awesome first party stuff and had locked up a lot of third parties exclusive to their system. It's not like Commodore would be programming very many state-of-the-art games on its own dime. So what exactly would be left after Nintendo, Sega, and Atari snatched up what they snatched up? It wouldn't be until Sega released the Genesis that Nintendo's lock on the best third parties was finally broken, and that wasn't exactly immediate either.

 

In 1985 Nintendo didn't have all of the US developers locked in. Also an Amiga console may not have been a commodore product ( If Commodore had announced a console they would have produced software - after all, there would be no intuition or Amigados required, so companies like EA would have been offered gamedev opportunities with the lorraine devkits in baremetal mode )

 

If you're going to argue that Commodore would "win" based on brute force of the tech alone, that's simply never been the case. It's always been about the games first and the technology second (or third). It's also easy enough to argue that even 86/87 would be too early to realize the potential of that type of technology in a console package anyway.

 

 

There's no argument that it would win , but it would be in the market in 1985, with way superior technology - at the same time as the initial NES launch with ROB and duckhunt

 

 

FWIW, there were supposedly some arcade machines that were based on Amiga hardware. I saw a few of the games.

I think a game console could have done well if it were implemented properly.

Cartridges would have had to allow at least some of the ROM to be mapped to CHIP memory.

If cart memory could be mapped as CHIP or FAST it would have allowed as much of either as you need since you could page either one.

The one major drawback to this is that a dual buss architecture would require a dual buss interface.

There might be a way around that by multiplexing some buss lines but I wouldn't even want to guess how nasty that would be.

 

The CDTV was late but it could have been a CD based version of the console if they had released a console.

The CDTV should have had a 2x CD and the cpu should have run at double speed either way.

 

Cart memory as chip would be nice - but I think better as 'fast', If code is running from ROM there wouldn't be as many stalls,

I was thinking that graphics would be copied from ROM to the 32k ram via movem.l sequences - and only the actual writes would actually stall, ( after all on the ST the CPU handles all graphics, and still there were games running at 60Hz )

[JamesD]

...

 

Cart memory as chip would be nice - but I think better as 'fast', If code is running from ROM there wouldn't be as many stalls,

I was thinking that graphics would be copied from ROM to the 32k ram via movem.l sequences - and only the actual writes would actually stall, ( after all on the ST the CPU handles all graphics, and still there were games running at 60Hz )

I figured if they put both CHIP and FAST buss signals to the cart you could run code at full speed and directly map in graphics without having to copy them to RAM.

 

 

 

 

For a 1985 launch, you'd have to also make the assumption that Commodore would have to pull a Nintendo (who marketed the NES as a robot toy initially) and use some clever ploy to actually get into stores.

...

If you're going to argue that Commodore would "win" based on brute force of the tech alone, that's simply never been the case. It's always been about the games first and the technology second (or third). It's also easy enough to argue that even 86/87 would be too early to realize the potential of that type of technology in a console package anyway.

Stores were certainly cautious of game consoles and the NES did have a nice store display thanks to the robot and light gun.

But I'm not sure that was required for the stores to pick up a new game console.

Amiga definitely would have needed stellar pack in game(s) and a flashy store demo.

The titles available for the Amiga at launch were pretty pathetic, so I'm not sure it would have gone well, but that's when it was released as a computer.

Without having to put resources into an operating system, GUI, etc... resources and cash could have been spent towards games.

 

One big problem Amiga would have had is no videogame licenses.

If the Amiga game console ends up an Atari product... no problem. Otherwise... good luck.

Another problem is that people had started shifting from game consoles to computers to play games.

Some games need a keyboard.

 

[carlsson]

The Amiga 1000 cost $1295 at launch, with 256K RAM, unwanted keyboard, floppy drive and a load of ports that we could do without.

 

The Atari 520ST cost $599 at launch, with 512K RAM, but no floppy drive. It was bundled with a 360K drive and mono monitor for $799.

 

I found references that 256K RAM might've cost at most $200 in early 1985. A full height 3.5" floppy drive cost $400 in January 1984, not sure what it cost in 1985 but from a manufacturing point I'd cut away no more than $300, probably far less.

 

Keyboard - $50?

CIA chips and ports - $30?

Don't implement DMA sound and use a SID instead - $100?

 

That would reduce our $1300 computer to a $600 video game, quite far from $299. Perhaps my estimates are off by some, but I think the bulk of the cost for the Amiga 1000 came from the advanced chipset, not from support RAM, ROM and inputs.

[Crazyace]

Having FAST and CHIP on the cart port would complicate things. I was thinking that 68k only rom could be slow, and still work at the same time as chipset ram accesses

[Crazyace]

Hi Carlsson,

I'm not worried about the price too much. It was being designed as a console, so I'm just assuming it must have been possible to price as one.

[carlsson]

Well, perhaps Jay Miner and the others at Hi-Toro weren't that worried about pricing. Also if the concept begun forming already 1982, with prototyping in 1983 before the air had gone out of the console market, more expensive but also powerful consoles may have been viable, in particular if games were to be distributed on inexpensive floppy disks so customers would save money on game purchases.

[Nebulon]

Of course the original Amiga was technically capable of some pretty nifty console-style games for its time (like Uridium 2 shown in this very cool review):

 

http://superadventuresingaming.blogspot.ca/2013/06/uridium-2-amiga.html