English Amiga Board - View Single Post - Was anyone else disappointed with the A1200?

Stejjie · 07 April 2017, 09:34

I got my A600 just after (like a month or two) the 1200 was released - I knew about it 'cos I bought issue 42 of Amiga Format before I got my Amiga, which had a big, positive feature about 1200. So I guess my disappointment was not being able to afford one at the time, or subsequently during my first "Amiga period". My memory is it was largely very positively received at the time, and the briefest of brief looks on Amiga Magazine Rack confirms that.

Now I have an A1200, I must admit to being slightly underwhelmed at the step up from my 600 (or how I remember my 600 in any case); it just doesn't seem to be the generational-shift that it was touted to be at the time. And that seems to be confirmed by the stories of how rushed out AGA was etc.

I also wonder if it, in terms of the gaming competition, it fell between two stools: on one hand, it didn't seem able to chuck sprites around like the 16-bit consoles could; on the other, Doom was just around the corner on the PC and the 1200 had nothing with the wow-factor that Doom did and, prseumably, couldn't. Plus, on the productivity/business side, Windows PCs were becoming the standard and the Amiga didn't seem able to compete with that: I remember there being a big thing about whether the Amiga had a word processor/publisher that could compete with MS Word: it didn't, and I think that hurt it.

So I think there wasn't any killer app; any game or software that made the machine a "must have" either above existing Amiga machines, or from PCs or consoles. Can't help wondering if Commodore should've worked with software houses to encourage development of 2 or 3 killer apps at launch that would've made it a must-buy. (Also, would some kind of upgrade offer for existing Amiga owners have been worthwhile?)

One last thing: the 1200 never seemed to get a compelling bundle, like the Batman or Cartoon Classics (or Wild, Weird or Wicked?) packs were. Perhaps this is due to the lack of killer apps, but Commodore never seemed able to create an A1200 bundle that caught people's attention, that had classic games that showed off the machine's power and made you want to buy it.

A lot of that's from memory and the technical details may well be wrong (I'm not very 'up' on the technical side of things), but that's how I see the disappointments of the A1200. I'm still glad I've finally got one, though!

07 April 2017, 09:34	#24
Stejjie Registered User Join Date: Feb 2017 Location: Urmston, Manchester, UK Posts: 23	I got my A600 just after (like a month or two) the 1200 was released - I knew about it 'cos I bought issue 42 of Amiga Format before I got my Amiga, which had a big, positive feature about 1200. So I guess my disappointment was not being able to afford one at the time, or subsequently during my first "Amiga period". My memory is it was largely very positively received at the time, and the briefest of brief looks on Amiga Magazine Rack confirms that. Now I have an A1200, I must admit to being slightly underwhelmed at the step up from my 600 (or how I remember my 600 in any case); it just doesn't seem to be the generational-shift that it was touted to be at the time. And that seems to be confirmed by the stories of how rushed out AGA was etc. I also wonder if it, in terms of the gaming competition, it fell between two stools: on one hand, it didn't seem able to chuck sprites around like the 16-bit consoles could; on the other, Doom was just around the corner on the PC and the 1200 had nothing with the wow-factor that Doom did and, prseumably, couldn't. Plus, on the productivity/business side, Windows PCs were becoming the standard and the Amiga didn't seem able to compete with that: I remember there being a big thing about whether the Amiga had a word processor/publisher that could compete with MS Word: it didn't, and I think that hurt it. So I think there wasn't any killer app; any game or software that made the machine a "must have" either above existing Amiga machines, or from PCs or consoles. Can't help wondering if Commodore should've worked with software houses to encourage development of 2 or 3 killer apps at launch that would've made it a must-buy. (Also, would some kind of upgrade offer for existing Amiga owners have been worthwhile?) One last thing: the 1200 never seemed to get a compelling bundle, like the Batman or Cartoon Classics (or Wild, Weird or Wicked?) packs were. Perhaps this is due to the lack of killer apps, but Commodore never seemed able to create an A1200 bundle that caught people's attention, that had classic games that showed off the machine's power and made you want to buy it. A lot of that's from memory and the technical details may well be wrong (I'm not very 'up' on the technical side of things), but that's how I see the disappointments of the A1200. I'm still glad I've finally got one, though!