Defining moment you HAD to have an Amiga?

[zzip]

2 hours ago, youxia said:

S'funny, back in 1995 my feelings were completely the other way around. I was looking at Doom et al and sulking that my poor A500 will never be able to do this I'd swap it for an 486 in a heartbeat.

That's what made me finally decide to jump to PC too, but 1980's PC hardware was boring for anyone into gaming

[Keatah]

At what point did the PC become exciting for games? For the masses I mean. Personally it was the beginning/middle of the 486 era for me. But I'm sure it started happening earlier. 386SX-16 maybe? 386DX-40?

[youxia]

Amiga was the Queen of "serious" gaming for a few years, I'd say between 87-91/2. But once PC got the Soundblaster, SVGA, and games like Ultima Underworld, it was all she wrote.

 

As for specs it's hard to say since you couldn't really play Doom on a weak 386, unless it was stamp-sized screen size. I do recall playing Wolfenstein on my friends 286 though, and that was another thing Amiga couldn't pull off. 486 era would be probably a good call, though it's also price-relative....not  many people could afford such rigs early on. So that's why Amiga was still kinda going on till 1995, with some nice games, but I knew this is a prolonged swansong.

[zzip]

28 minutes ago, Keatah said:

At what point did the PC become exciting for games? For the masses I mean. Personally it was the beginning/middle of the 486 era for me. But I'm sure it started happening earlier. 386SX-16 maybe? 386DX-40?

There was a few innovations that raised the PC's gaming profile:

VGA: 1987     PC could deliver graphics that exceeded Atari ST/Amiga, but didn't always have the speed required for gaming (see VLB below)

Ad-lib: 1987    (Mostly a music card, not great for Sound Effects)

Soundblaster (8-bit): 1989   (included ad-lib and digital sound playback)

Soundblaster 16:  1992

Vesa local bus: (486 only) 1992 (made fast screen updates possible that older ISA cards struggled with)

 

So by 1992, PC had everything it needed to exceed Amiga, I think.

Edited August 28, 2020 by zzip

[+OLD CS1]

On 8/28/2020 at 2:32 PM, Keatah said:

At what point did the PC become exciting for games? For the masses I mean. Personally it was the beginning/middle of the 486 era for me. But I'm sure it started happening earlier. 386SX-16 maybe? 386DX-40?

My guess is the 486 era, but that is simple anecdote.  Many of my friends had computers in their homes starting with 486 and some sports games.  I cannot recall their names but there were a few football games they played, one of which could multi-play over modem.   Doom was a BIG thing for my friends, which I did not have nor could not run, but my Amigas still held their respect for its collection of games.

[Daedalus2097]

Yeah, I had an early 486 at the time, and it was definitely impressive for some specific games. I wasn't that interested in Doom, but flight simulators, while they still weren't texture mapped or anything, were significantly smoother than on the Amiga. The sound was dreadful, and I still used the Amiga for most of my games, where 2D and sound were still still superior. A little while later I got a 68060 CPU for my Amiga which brought it up to scratch speed-wise, but at that stage there weren't many new games coming out for the Amiga, and the PC was definitely showing its muscle in the games arena. So I'd say possibly the 486 era too, when sound cards and CD-ROMs started to become more common, though 3D acceleration was where it really took a leap for me.

[Dauber]

I don't think there was a single defining moment, but it was kind of gradual. A high school friend (still among my best friends to this day) was singing the praises of Amiga and how much better it was over all other platforms. I had a Commodore 64C at the time. Well, fall of 1991 during homecoming week, my friend had managed to borrow a big-screen projection screen TV at the school, and during one of the mixers he had said TV set up with his Amiga 500, and that demo of Pinball Dreams running. It was stunning. But I kind of dismissed it because I felt I'd never be able to get one. (I had a $4-an-hour part-time job; I have no idea how my friend managed to get an Amiga!) That was my senior year. I started college the next fall, and basically the situation was my C64 was proving to be progressively more useless for anything but playing games, and I needed to upgrade. I hated Wintel machines (still do), and I felt...crippled...using a Mac. So Amiga was my choice. And I looooooooooooved that thing once I got it. (More in the next episode of Autobiography of a Schnook.   )

[Keatah]

Being the type (at that time) who always wanted to see what the other guy was doing I had initially wanted to get a IIgs or MAC. But, naturally, didn't have enough money. I got wind of the Amiga by way of messages on a IIgs BBS. It really sounded like the ideal machine and an affordable way to get high resolution graphics.

 

Eventually I got one, but over time, I started looking at what others were getting. Other capabilities, other software. PC stuff. Wintel stuff. I had kept holding onto the notion that one day all that cool Wintel stuff would make its way over to the Amiga. I even went as far to fantasize that it was taking so long (for Amiga versions of stuff) because there was so much of it and the programmers were seriously backlogged. And I even imagined they were enhancing the stuff to be even better than Wintel.  Just gotta wait a little longer and it'll be here. What a flunker I was to believe it!

 

 

[Laner]

On 8/28/2020 at 1:32 PM, Keatah said:

At what point did the PC become exciting for games? For the masses I mean. Personally it was the beginning/middle of the 486 era for me. But I'm sure it started happening earlier. 386SX-16 maybe? 386DX-40?

For my money, it was 1990-92; specifically Wing Commander and Ultima VII  - those two games in particular shone on the PC, and the other platforms weren't able to keep up.

Edited October 3, 2020 by Laner

[bluejay]

A few weeks ago I was introduced by the Amiga's graphics and sound capabilities, how it worked, and the story behind it. I watched a video copy of the original Amiga's launch, and every single commercial I could find on Youtube. I've only used a Compaq Portable II (PC AT clone with monochrome CGA) and a little of a 512k Mac, and neither managed to amaze me (well the Compaq kinda did with 8088MPH and 8088 Domination, but the green phosphor monitor isn't exactly visually appealing)

When I saw the bouncing ball demo and the still images it could produce, along with the music it could play and the speech synthesizer, I knew the Amiga was THE 16 bit computer to have. I didn't care about the software or games, or anything else. If it could do what I saw, I had to have it.

Sadly Amigas are expensive and I can't afford one.

[howerton]

I came into the Amiga very late. My moment was when I saw a boxed Amiga 500 from Canada in perfect condition on eBay. The box said made the USA (Which is where I am from.). I had to have it. I was well aware of the Amiga for 20 years, but lacked the means to purchase one or even get one running until recently. I bought a Atari ST in 2015 and I saw how hard it is to find certain games that were easy to find on Amiga. Now I know this a Atari forum but now I have been bitten by the Amiga I may never buy for the poor ST again.

[MHaensel]

On 6/19/2020 at 5:55 AM, pixelmischief said:

Ready to be unimpressed, I popped Dragon's Lair in the drive.  Holy.  S%&t.  The color and sound were explosive.  The animation was fast and fluid.  I couldn't believe what I was looking at.  No PC could do this!  Needless to say, I have been a fan and patron ever since.

That was my "has to have an Amiga" moment too! Late 1989/early 1990, I saw an Amiga in the mall running the Dragon's Lair demo. That kind of fluid, full-screen, full-color animation was jaw-dropping at the time. A computer can do this?!

 

I was sure this kind of power meant it would be incredible at other things too. That demo sold me on the Amiga for the next decade.

 

On 8/28/2020 at 11:32 AM, Keatah said:

At what point did the PC become exciting for games? For the masses I mean. Personally it was the beginning/middle of the 486 era for me. But I'm sure it started happening earlier. 386SX-16 maybe? 386DX-40?

I'd vote 486. My 386DX-25 was stodgy for games. When I sold it and bought an Amiga 600, I played more games on the A600 than the 386.

 

On 9/16/2020 at 10:36 PM, Keatah said:

Being the type (at that time) who always wanted to see what the other guy was doing I had initially wanted to get a IIgs or MAC. But, naturally, didn't have enough money. I got wind of the Amiga by way of messages on a IIgs BBS. It really sounded like the ideal machine and an affordable way to get high resolution graphics.

 

Eventually I got one, but over time, I started looking at what others were getting. Other capabilities, other software. PC stuff. Wintel stuff. I had kept holding onto the notion that one day all that cool Wintel stuff would make its way over to the Amiga. I even went as far to fantasize that it was taking so long (for Amiga versions of stuff) because there was so much of it and the programmers were seriously backlogged. And I even imagined they were enhancing the stuff to be even better than Wintel.  Just gotta wait a little longer and it'll be here. What a flunker I was to believe it!

 

 

I had that phase too! I was so sure the Amiga was going to take off. The years went by, but it was just about to bust out . . . any day now . . . I annoyed the heck out of my husband from 1991-1999!

 

Some reasons it was going to win:

• Any program can have the screen resolution and color setting it wants
• Digitized sound that beat everything else until 16-bit stereo sound became commonplace
• An operating system and hardware design that felt knowable - the design work of a few smart people really showed through
• Smoothly drag the screen down to see another program with different resolution/color settings, have both on screen at the same time . . . it still feels miraculous.  "Hey y'all, look at this!"

 

[Domeshtan]

Marble Madness. Dumped like $15 into an arcade version on a field trip to Great America. Same reason I got a C64, but the Amiga version... Wow! Had to play it in black and white for a few months until I could get a color monitor.

[6502wrangler]

For me the "I NEED THIS" moment was seeing Shadow of the Beast on a demo Amiga 500 at a local computer store. I had never seen anything like that outside of an arcade. At the time the Amiga was so far ahead of the competition. I soon upgraded from the C64 and the games were so much better on the Amiga. The Amiga version of Test Drive (that I got along with the Amiga 500) was miles ahead of the Commodore 64 version in graphics and gameplay. I was hooked.

 

The Amiga is kind of a sad story. It was so far ahead of the competition, but, fundamentally, the tricks they pulled in the design to get that performance ended up being barriers to innovation (especially given Commodore's meagre R&D investment). It was hard going from the guy with *by far* the best gaming computer to seeing my friends with their PCs start pulling ahead and then away by 1991 or 1992 or so. 

[shoestring]

On 8/29/2020 at 4:32 AM, Keatah said:

At what point did the PC become exciting for games? For the masses I mean. Personally it was the beginning/middle of the 486 era for me. But I'm sure it started happening earlier. 386SX-16 maybe? 386DX-40?

I was late to the party. I didn’t like anything enough pre Pentium but I did start gaining some interested in it a little more over time. For me it was around when Win 95 came out, the system I built was a breath of fresh air and gaming was exciting for me once again with titles such as C&C, Quake and Destruction Derby. I wanted to keep using the Amiga but by that stage my hardware was getting old and worn, maintaining it was no longer affordable and no new software was coming out. The Pentium 120 met my needs

[Keatah]

It was as early as the 286-12 that I started noticing software beginning to make advances over the Amiga. The variety was picking speed in many directions. Hi-res MS Flight Simulator. Things to explore fractal mathematics. DOSshell menu. Plenty of planet stuff. Abundant astro stuff.

 

All of this was several years before vintage DOS gaming as we know it. Even pre-multimedia. Changes were on the menu and the butler was serving champagne.

[Henry Lee]

 

We had our first Amiga 2000 when it just came out in the 80s. By in the late 90s, our Amiga 4000 running Mac OS (with the Emplant board) was stolen when thieves broke into our house.

 

By that time, our Amiga was stuffed with my father's designs, my drawing and animations. A decade's worth of memories. We never did any backups. 

 

But for the thieves, it was bad timing since they didn't know what they were  stealing... I am convinced they didn't get much for it.

 

That was our defining moment ? (and an end of a decade of Amiga for us.)  We then bought a PowerMac.

 

[WhataKowinkydink]

On 5/3/2020 at 12:24 AM, OLD CS1 said:

or even those from back-in-the-day who banned me from #Amiga for asking about UAE.

Hahah- i hope there aren't those sentiments around here as i'm a newbie (sort of) Amiga user with no access to real hardware (and i've got some questions in-coming to ask) ?

[+OLD CS1]

6 minutes ago, WhataKowinkydink said:

Hahah- i hope there aren't those sentiments around here as i'm a newbie (sort of) Amiga user with no access to real hardware (and i've got some questions in-coming to ask) ?

Nah, I think you are pretty safe now-a-days.

[Keatah]

7 minutes ago, WhataKowinkydink said:

Hahah- i hope there aren't those sentiments around here as i'm a newbie (sort of) Amiga user with no access to real hardware (and i've got some questions in-coming to ask) ?

There's a few minority purists around here and there. But nothing to get anyone thrown out. As time goes on emulation is being accepted more and more, to the dismay of those dwindling purists.

 

Bring on the questions!

[amiman99]

It was probably 1991 or '92, I was in the mall and saw Space Ace demo running in the window, I was mesmerized. New A500 was still $699, so I could not get it.

Some time later I was able to get used in the box A1000 for $225 with Shadow of the Beast 3 and 2MB ram expansion. 

Best day ever.

 

 

[Keatah]

What were some of the things that absolutely most impressed & surprised you about the Amiga. And oppositely, what was most disappointing about it?

[zzip]

7 hours ago, Keatah said:

What were some of the things that absolutely most impressed & surprised you about the Amiga. And oppositely, what was most disappointing about it?

It was not easy to find a place to see an Amiga in action,  but I was reading magazines like Compute and there was a lot of hype around the new 16-bit machines.    They would print screenshots from Amiga and ST, and they both looked impressive-- graphics like we had never seen at home before.   But I knew from the specs that Amiga could outdo ST graphics,  but they also had GUIs,  Scalable, proportional fonts for WYSIWYG applications. (Again something we really hadn't seen at home before)

But the Amiga went beyond, including hardware chips from Jay Miner,  and some features I couldn't quite grasp at the time

- digital sound.  This was before I even owned a CD player, so I didn't quite know what that meant.  Before this all computers either had "Beep boop" sound or robotic speech synthesis.   I didn't really know you could make digitized sounds and play them back in hardware.   So I didn't understand the hype for the Amiga sound chip until I heard it in action.

- multitasking - coming from a 6502 world were most code was not written to be relocatable, I could not grasp how multitasking could possibly work.   "How can you load more than one arbitrary program at once?  What if they need to reside in the same memory locations?"

- genlock - I gather it had something to do with syncing with TV signals, but to do what?   Overlay graphics onto a TV signal?   I never really saw it explained well, just that it was a revolutionary feature for some reason.

 

What disappointed me was the OS.   Not that it wasn't powerful (it was), but it seemed it was not great for a floppy-based system.  Probably would have been more suited if you had a hard drive.  It also wasn't very user friendly.   Compute magazine gave the impression that all these new GUI systems that were coming out were roughly equal.   But after using them all, clearly the Mac was the most user friendly.  Atari ST's GEM tried to be like a Mac but was much less polished.   Amiga's OS was almost a different beast altogether in how it works.   Kind of a pain in the ass to get more advanced operations, especially if you are working on a single floppy system

[Keatah]

1 hour ago, zzip said:

It was not easy to find a place to see an Amiga in action,  but I was reading magazines like Compute and there was a lot of hype around the new 16-bit machines. 

I actually got to play with one at Farnsworth Computers prior to purchasing. There wasn't much to do with it other than look it at and imagine everything the magazines were telling me. If I was smart I would've learned not to trust articles that used words'n'phrases like "will be coming", "in development", "coming soon", "available soon", "potential", or "possibilities" - for none of that told me what I could do with the computer once I got it home.

 

To be completely clear, I learned the bulk of the Amiga's specifications through 1 or 2 commodore ads and a haphazard mix of BBS text files and message snippets. Much of it was conceptual and allowed my imagination to run wild with vague delusions of grandeur. And even more vague impressions of what was to come.

 

It was somewhat different with the Apple II. I already knew a lot about BASIC. I knew of specific games I wanted. I already had ideas for a "hello world" program, among more sophisticated stuff, like:

10 A = A + 1

20 PRINT A

30 GOTO 10

..with grand plans to see how high a microprocessor could count. Left it running while in school or out for the weekend. Totally blown away that I could interrupt the program with <CTRL-C> and write down the value of "A" to CONT it the next day or something if I wanted to do something else. Kept that nonsense up for like a month or more. But to a kid it was real programming and real exploration.

[zzip]

10 minutes ago, Keatah said:

I actually got to play with one at Farnsworth Computers prior to purchasing. There wasn't much to do with it other than look it at and imagine everything the magazines were telling me. If I was smart I would've learned not to trust articles that used words'n'phrases like "will be coming", "in development", "coming soon", "available soon", "potential", or "possibilities" - for none of that told me what I could do with the computer once I got it home.

Oh yeah there's a funny thing about "potential".  When fanboys online start their system wars, they are always arguing potential rather than the actual results of a system.  

I always wanted an Amiga but never got one, I settled for an ST which was maybe half the cost.   But boy did the Amiga fans lord their potential over you online.   Gave me this impression about how much better things were on Amiga.   So when I finally got a roommate with an Amiga, I finally got to spend time with the system.   It was an unexpected shock in some ways.   For one most of the games were virtually identical to the ST version!   Clearly it was easier and cheaper to design games to a spec that both systems could handle, and that's exactly what most developers did.   Sure the Amiga had potential to do much more but it wasn't being realized.   No wonder Amiga fans online crowed about Defender of the Crown and Shadow of the Beast so much, they were among the exceptions to the rule where there actually was enhancements in the Amiga version.   For most games, I didn't see significant differences

 

Of course not much has changed.   These days you will see guys with RTX 3090's video cards trying lord it over everyone else, even though games are designed to run on mainstream cards like the nVidia 060 series.   The higher-end cards might get better textures or framerates,  but nothing that really gives a different game experience.   Often you can place the high-end video card gameplay against lower end cards or consoles and be hard-pressed to spot the difference.   And if you do spot a difference, it's slight and hard for me to justify spending hundreds of dollars more.   The high-end cards simply don't hit their potential until they've been on the market for years, and by then newer models will have come out that will get lorded over everyone.