Should I get an ST or an Amiga?

[Christos]

depending on the era, early stuff was made mostly for ST then ported to Amiga.

Well the OP wanted to play fire and ice and that's better on the Amiga. You will need a 16MHz machine for it to approach the Amiga version.

[ParanoidLittleMan]

Back to the original question: "which one is the most import friendly and which model would be the best to get, so I can play PAL games like "Fire & Ice" in the states?"

In case of Atari the key here is the monitor. It is easy to set any Atari ST(E) to 50 Hz (PAL) mode by SW. All you need is RGB cable and proper monitor or TV - which can work at 50 Hz refresh rate.

I thunk that best is to avoid diverse scan doublers and go straight solution. Look threads about LCD monitors capable to work at 50 Hz. Used one may cost less than scan doubler.

[Win16fan]

Wow, didn't expect so many replies. Thanks guys.

 

I don't have any historical ties to either machine, so either would be an new experience for me, which is something I am looking for. I am largely a console gamer, but I do play some PC games and have experience with MS-DOS and classic MAC OS. I love 16-bit graphics, so these systems like the ST and Amiga appeal to me.

 

I want to play more than Fire & Ice, it's just the starting off point for hopefully more games. I've played the Master System port and I really like it, but I've heard the ST/Amiga versions are the definitive versions.

 

I've done a lot of comparing and contrasting and watching reviews and reading forum threads on these systems, but the one question that I couldn't find a clear answer to was how to play import games.

 

So far it seems like the ST might be better since there are software tricks to get games to run, whereas only the Amiga 1200 offers software tricks (I read that the 500, which is the Amiga I like the look of the most, requires hardware mods to be able to switch between PAL and NTSC.) I could be wrong though. It also seems that it all depends on the game.

 

I considered getting a PAL Amiga and using an American PSU with it, but there seems to be no one on ebay currently that sells American Amiga PSUs separately. If I had a PAL ST, I would need a power transformer to use it in the USA, since the power supply is internal.

[atarian63]

Well the OP wanted to play fire and ice and that's better on the Amiga. You will need a 16MHz machine for it to approach the Amiga version.

There is starglider and several others better on the st when it was the primary selling machine but I get you

[Major Havoc 2049]

Fire and Ice takes advantage of the Atari STE (enhanced) hardware.

As for Fire and Ice: Amiga>Atari STE>Atari ST

 

If you get an ST or STE, just get it with 1MB of RAM (tons of good games require 1MB) and a color monitor. If you have an Atari monitor, you don't have to worry about the whole PAL NTSC issue. All the games will work, regardless of region.

Not that many ST games were published by American publishers after 1988. Even American publishers like Microprose had their ST games published by their UK division starting around '88 and the games were imported into the US.

[Nebulon]

Well, if you're every planning to play Faster Than Light's game "Oids" or any other ST-only game, then the Atari ST is the way to go.

 

However, Fire and Ice is pretty amazing on the Amiga.

 

As for the PAL/NTSC issue, an Amiga 500 with a 1MB blitter can be hardware switched easily enough. Just run a wire from the blitter's pin (41, IIRC) to an external switch. You can change modes in software too, although it's not quite as effective. Note: the first generation blitters are not switchable.

 

 

[Nebulon]

I should also mention that the Atari ST and the original generation of Amigas have a different look to their graphics.

 

The graphics on the Atari ST are very sharp/crisp looking while the Amiga is very colorful (yet a bit fuzzier and with some perceptible flicker). As others have mentioned, they each have a unique 'feel' to them. An emulator might be a good way to determine which one best suits your taste.

 

As an added note, the number on the PAL/NTSC switchable Amiga blitter is 8372A. It's a PLCC chip so it can be easily swapped (although I'd recommend using a PLCC chip-puller so that the existing blitter pops out evenly).

[Win16fan]

Wow, sorry I haven't replied to this topic in months. Since posting this thread, I ended up getting an NTSC Amiga 500. Maybe one day I'll get an ST, but in the end the Amiga appealed to me more. I got a lot of NTSC and PAL games with the system (along with a PAL boot disk), a couple I liked, some I didn't. When it comes to PAL games, I found that some work and others don't. I bought a NEC 1970NX monitor for the PAL games that won't work. Now I'm just waiting for the VGA adapter to come in from Poland. I'm hoping this solution works, if not I'm not gonna worry because worrying about PAL compatibility made this whole purchasing decision much more difficult than it should have been. If it comes to it I'll just use a video capture device with my modern laptop, making my laptop the "monitor" for my Amiga.

[cjameslv]

I feel its also about budget. Getting into actual hardware just isn't cheap anymore due to all the demands we put on what we "need" to be able to do with our systems. Getting into hardware is a pretty solid commitment, i would recommend to anyone to try testing out emulation first, to really see if this is the way you want to go.

Edited January 3, 2017 by cjameslv

[Cyprian]

Hello,

 

So I was thinking about getting an Amiga or ST and I'm trying to decide which one to get. I live in the US and there's a game I want to play that was released for both systems called "Fire & Ice", but it only came out in Europe. Comparing the Amiga and ST, which one is the most import friendly and which model would be the best to get, so I can play PAL games like "Fire & Ice" in the states?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

if you are focused on games, get Megadrive or SNES they are much better consoles than amiga. In other cases get STE.

[cjameslv]

 

if you are focused on games, get Megadrive or SNES they are much better consoles than amiga. In other cases get STE.

That comment is plain stupid. So many good titles on amiga and atari st that are not on genesis or snes. Do us a favor and delete your account. Thanks

[Cyprian]

cjameslv your post is very immature and offensive.

 

I agree that there are so many great titles on Atari ST and I would suggest to buy it. But in case of amiga I can't see any reason to buy it, I would buy better console.

 

That's my personal opinion.

[cjameslv]

...

 

I agree that there are so many great titles on Atari ST and I would suggest to buy it....

 

Should of just said this in the beginning.

[D.Daniels]

As a kid I had an ST, but the Amiga is better for games quality (colour/sound/full screen etc), and it was supported way into the 90's where as the poor ST got left behind by developers, so the Amiga is probably the better option unless your an Atari collector.

Edited January 6, 2017 by D.Daniels

[leech]

I currently have 1 Amiga 4000D, and most of the Atari 8-bit and ST line. I think as far as hardware quirkiness, seems the Atari is in the lead, whereas the Amiga is there for OS. Granted, when you get into MiNT and more advanced things on the ST, then it becomes pretty close. But when you need to so hardware upgrades/fixes, it seems most in the Amiga community making such things make them more or less plug and play. A lot of the Atari mods require soldering skills to install.

 

Yet with the Amiga, you have to install a ton of various patches to make the OS stable. Though as old hardware goes, the Amiga's most definitely need a recap, where as the Ataris really only need it in the PSU from what I've seen/read.

 

OP went with the Amiga 500, which is a great machine. Just don't accidentally plug in a null modem cable into the parallel port. Apparently my friend's older brother did that and fried his Amiga back in the day. Granted it was still under warranty, so he got a free upgrade to the 500+

 

Funny thing is, with my A4000D, I ended up changing the jumper on the motherboard to PAL and it fixed screen corruption that I was having for all of the games. So yeah, I'd suggest doing whatever hack you need to just leave it at PAL, I'd say most games were probably meant to run in PAL and only switched to NTSC as an afterthought.

[oky2000]

The timing is so specific on Amiga that PAL games seem to have more problems running at 60hz (which is a pseudo kludge thanks to the fatter Agnus of 1mb chip ram Amigas and not quite as reliable as the 50/60hz program the ST used in my experience) however if you had got an Amiga 600 or 1200 there is an easier way to put the machine into 50 or 60hz mode (still NTSC video output in either case). Oh and of course in PAL mode the Amiga does 320x256 (basically removing bottom border you would see) but the NTSC machines can not open this screen mode and so would crash the machine if it need to open a 320x256 rez screen I guess as 320x200 is max for NTSC lo-res. The ST is always 320x200 whatever the TV system.

 

Of course OP has made a choice already and if you have an NTSC Amiga 500 the first thing you should do is load up Lotus Turbo Challenge II and revel in amazement at how this 1985 chipset is just drilling the SNES a new poop shoot and double the speed and smoothness of Outrun on the Megadrive There is also a specific version of Shadow of the Beast that still works at 60hz, the others don't work properly....however if you don't like 2.5D games like Outrun or Rastan Saga arcade games and prefer solid 3D filled polygon games all but one (Elite) will be slower on the Amiga.

 

Also, if you can, grab a Gotek USB drive or similar which is the best way to run thousands of single loading games from the TOSEC on real hardware, just the other day I was playing a fixed version of Lotus III for A1200 which is as fast and smooth as the CD32 or PC version.

[juansolo]

Even though I never owned an Amiga myself (my brother had one, I had the ST), I'd choose the Amiga. In most respects it's the better machine. As has been mentioned, early on a lot of Amiga games were ST ports and they're usually better on the ST. But as soon as the Amiga overtook it in popularity (the Amiga was HUGE in the UK), the tables got turned in that respect and the Amiga got some stunning games and the ST ports tended to be weaker. There are exceptions but not many. Also the Commodore developed the Amiga more quickly than Atari did the ST adding things like internal HDD and much more poke seeing the machine mature into a really quite impressive piece of kit by the time it was done.

 

I plan to have both eventually but I'm emulating the Amiga at the moment until I can snag a good A1200. The ST ironically I got today, but it's PSU is toast, so my next job is to re-cap the whole machine and stick another 512K of RAM in there. But for about an hour I had Jimmy White's Snooker and Carrier Command running

[Keatah]

I was always told one buys the Atari ST "because Atari", where as one buys the Amiga "because fun".. Having said that I own neither systems but enjoy them through the magic of emulation.

[dakidski]

For just that one game, get an Amiga. Or a CD32.