What Makes The Amiga CD32 The Best Amiga?

[d4rk3lf]

So to conclude...
This thread have wrong title.
A1000 >>>> CD32

Number of sprites:
A1000 = 8
CD32 = 8

Date of release
A1000 = 1985. World never saw anything like it. Way ahead of it's time. It could compete with the consoles released many years later
CD32 = 1993. When it's released, it brings nothing new to the market. A1200 and A4000 already existed, and so the Genesis and Snes.
-------------

So, A1000 (and A500) is still the best Amiga's (considering every aspect) for me.

[jotd]

that is a good conclusion. Good job Commodore.

[Gilbert]

Originally Posted by jotd

that is a good conclusion. Good job Commodore.

Worst conclusion ever. I like the A500 but it's no CD32 and the A1000 was pretty much useless with it's low memory. Even the A500 needed an expansion


Btw why did i think AGA had 16 sprites? I'm sure magazines at the time reported this. This could be an example of the Mandela Effect!

[chip]

A500 is the best Amiga, then A1200

[Gilbert]

Originally Posted by Konrad

The CD32 nowhere crushes the A4000, not even the CD32. You are leading now Akiko as argument, where I can just shrug with my shoulders. Seems you overestimate Akiko a little. But I understand you require positive arguments for the CD32 ;-).

And again you pull a bad example like Xenon2 to support your argument, ignoring that there were much better results possible. See my mentioned titles. Just pulling negative examples, where are also very good ones is not a really objective way to discuss.
Sure, more channels would be nice. But you pulled this argument to show how outstanding the possibilities with cd-audio are. And my examples show you that it's just a "nice" feature is, nothing more. As you say by yourself: more channels, now THAT would've been an improvement.

I played Microcosm not in an Emulator, but on an Amiga 4000 with cdrom and cd32 controller on an Amiga screen. There is factual NO difference in gameplay sound and everything else compared to CD32. I don't know where you get that idea from. It's a railshooter! It' boring to me. If you like it, good for you.

Also, no reaction to other Amigas also being able to fully address the CD32 gamepad :-D?

I read a thread where people claimed the Amiga could do what Akiko can do, almost as fast - but the point of Akiko is it can do the calculations while the Amiga is doing other things. Also - over time skilled coders would probably be able to use it for things it wasn't intended for.

I agree that some Amiga games sound good with 2 channel music - but most don't! And some even forgo Music for sound effects and vice versa. I think maybe Banshee does this and it may still do on CD32 but that was lazy (sorry moderator!) of the coders if that is true.

My point was you can have the CD32 play the music (as many channels as you want) and then use 4 channels for sound effects. So on CD32 there is no limit to how good the music can be

Microcosm was a game for the time. It's more of a graphics showcase for CD technology. But other CD32 games you need to play on CD32 to get the full experience. Also A4000 is not as good as a CD32 - you don't get the start up experience for example

I didn't address the CD32 joypad being useable on other Amigas because you could probably also use a Megadrive and SNES pad too if you wanted. But the point is the CD32 made that possible for you. If the CD32 hadn't existed you would still be pressing up to jump and playing one-button versus fighters

Also think about how the CD32 can stream in extra graphics data during a level. It's like having maybe 10MB extra storage. Maybe you have some knights at the start of the level with 100 animation frames that look amazing and then when the player has passed those - you can start streaming in the end-of-level boss animations. Standard Amiga's just can't compete here and will have jerky animation in comparison

[Gilbert]

Originally Posted by chip

A500 is the best Amiga, then A1200

A500 was the best Amiga for the time it was released for sure. No other Amiga made as big an impact again

[sokolovic]

Gilbert, every sounds in Microcosm are paula based, not CD. The CD isn't playing any music.
By the way this is a good exemple how the Amiga sound chipset was powerful. When Microcosm CD32 was released everybody in the press was praying the fantastic techno style in game music while in fact it wasn't thanks to the CD at all. An Amiga 1000 with no expansion can perfectly play the music files of Microcosm.

[d4rk3lf]

Microcosm is okay-ish...

But, imho, something like this would sell console much better:
[ Show youtube player ]

It's a shitty game - yes, but I remember some of my friends purchase it only for the showcasing movie graphics.

So, while I think that CD32 could been much powerful, hardware wise, Commodore still didn't know to promote it good with the specs that it have.
If they thrown in few games like the above, few fast 3D shooters and racing games, few Encyclopedias, many more peope would want to purchase it, imho.

[Gilbert]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

Gilbert, every sounds in Microcosm are paula based, not CD. The CD isn't playing any music.
By the way this is a good exemple how the Amiga sound chipset was powerful. When Microcosm CD32 was released everybody in the press was praying the fantastic techno style in game music while in fact it wasn't thanks to the CD at all. An Amiga 1000 with no expansion can perfectly play the music files of Microcosm.

Maybe they needed the full bandwidth to stream in the video background? Don't forget Microcosm was an early game. If the cD32 had been successful it would have been basic looking and sounding game compared to the later releases. Stop with that Amiga 1000 talk you guys

[Gilbert]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

Microcosm is okay-ish...

But, imho, something like this would sell console much better:
[ Show youtube player ]

It's a shitty game - yes, but I remember some of my friends purchase it only for the showcasing movie graphics.

So, while I think that CD32 could been much powerful, hardware wise, Commodore still didn't know to promote it good with the specs that it have.
If they thrown in few games like the above, few fast 3D shooters and racing games, few Encyclopedias, many more peope would want to purchase it, imho.

Yes that would be better for sure. Not sure what year that was but maybe could have been a port?

I agree it wasn't designed or promoted as well as it could have been but it was actually selling really well when Commodore went bankrupt. I think Commodore did a good job in one way - getting so many games released on it in such a short time. They were mostly shovelware with minor improvements but it was a good way to get the Amiga base interested and as a result build the audience and get more developers on board for the future

[sokolovic]

D4rk3lf, yes. I remember very well that time. Everybody was craving for fancy fmv games like Microcosm or Rebel Assault. CD32 was doomed since the most anticipated games of that time were all cancelled on the machine : Dune, Lost Eden, Megarace, Lawnmower Man, Novastorm where all due to be released on the CD32, some of them where mostly finished but neither of them where actually published. Microcosm was the only one big CD game that was published on the machine (best version of the game by the way, by far... Even the 3DO version isn't on par with the CD32 one).
And yes they are all, retrospectively big crappy games, except for Dune but they were the system sellers of 93/95 era, just before the Playstation arrived in Europe with real time textured 3D games WITHOUT being obliged to buy a high end PC to play them.

[Gilbert]

Originally Posted by jotd

Akiko does chunky to planar but slower than a 040 would do... No game is using it, unless the game is using graphics library write pixel routines. But as everyone knows, using the OS for action games is just slow, and scrolling, double buffering are difficult (impossible?) to pull off.

What would have been awesome would have been native chunky 256 color mode and yes, 8 channels.

But then all games would have needed complete rewriting...

sorry I missed this. Yes but faster than an 010 or 020 would do it. Also the CPU is free to do other things (I hope Commodore!)

I think BC Racing and one of the Doom clones uses Akiko. No one much was making CD32 specific games.

[pipper]

Akiko could have been much more useful if it was a true DMA device doing the c2p conversion in parallel to the CPU. They should have made the c2p conversion a new DMA device or implement it as a new Blitter mode, but I guess they didn’t have the time to do it properly.

[Foebane]

So Gilbert, as an example of Amiga Paula music, ignores the Turrican series entirely and cites the godawful Xenon II soundtrack as a prime example instead.

My God, don't let Gilbert near the high quality of Amiga Demoscene music, especially high-end 68060 stuff, as it will blow his mind!

[Revenile]

And to think, there's another timeline where Commodore didn't make the CD32, and instead released a CD rom drive like two years before as an addon to their computer line, bringing the computer systems to a new level, where companies like Cinemaware could have REALLY stretched their creative muscles.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

Sure, in 2D games (or, arcade 2D games, to be precise). The ones PC crowd did not care much about because they were already leading with 3D games, and also had a slew of exclusive/superior adventure/RPG/strategy/sim ones. So perhaps not so "low-end" after all.

Doom was released on December 10, 1993 as shareware. Before that there was little interest in 3D games apart from flight simulators (the only true 3D commercial game I can think of before then was Ultima Underworld). Adventures and RPG/Strategy games were preferred partly because they didn't tax the graphics hardware as much, since most PC owners had older and/or lower spec machines that were not powerful enough to run 2D action games well.

But PC sales always outstripped Amiga sales by a factor of 10 or more, so there was a ready market for even the crappiest PC games - and PC gamers weren't picky. If they could get a game to work on their machine at all (which was by no means guaranteed) they were usually happy.

On July 16, 1993 when the CD32 was released, Doom was months away and texture mapped 3D games were a niche market. 2D action games and CDROM based graphical adventures were the big sellers, both of which the CD32 was well suited to. The main reason it didn't attract as many titles as consoles or PCs wasn't so much the hardware as the user base. As games became more sophisticated and expensive to produce (especially in CD format) the small potential market for Amiga productions wasn't worth the effort.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Doom was released on December 10, 1993 as shareware. Before that there was little interest in 3D games apart from flight simulators.

That sounds like a scenario from a parallel universe. The one in which Wolfenstein 3D (from May 5, 1992) was never released, and gamers did not anticipated, read, and talk about newest advances and trends. In my universe 3D was the holy grail and something we were all loking forward to, even if it'd be years before I was able to afford a capable machine.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Adventures and RPG/Strategy games were preferred partly because they didn't tax the graphics hardware as much, since most PC owners had older and/or lower spec machines that were not powerful enough to run 2D action games well.

Yeah, people totally played Civ, Ultima or Leisure Suit Larry only because they were "less taxing", and not because they were awesome, groundbreaking games.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

PC gamers weren't picky. If they could get a game to work on their machine at all (which was by no means guaranteed) they were usually happy.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

On July 16, 1993 when the CD32 was released, Doom was months away and texture mapped 3D games were a niche market. 2D action games and CDROM based graphical adventures were the big sellers, both of which the CD32 was well suited to. The main reason it didn't attract as many titles as consoles or PCs wasn't so much the hardware as the user base. As games became more sophisticated and expensive to produce (especially in CD format) the small potential market for Amiga productions wasn't worth the effort.

2D action games were peaking at the time, and were rather well covered on platforms such as SNES, Megadrive, or even A500/1200. CD "multimedia/interactive" games were present on PC since at least 1991, but were ultimately a fad, and a bubble that burst sooner than later. Of course CD has stayed on as a storage method, but the most important games were the ones which CD32 could never handle, be it because of lack of 3D capabilities or HDD for the "big" 2D games from the PC.

Overall, CD32 could definitely do better, but not by much. Released in the period when the likes of SNES were dirt cheap and the likes of Saturn/PSX just around the corner, it did not have a snowflakes chance in hell of making any significant dent in the market.

[FOL]

Originally Posted by gulliver

This is a new one to me. As far as I recall it was to distance themselves from the AA https://www.aa.org/.

Maybe it was both?

Well AA auto company is first thing I thought off. Certainly not Alcholics Annoymous.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

That sounds like a scenario from a parallel universe. The one in which Wolfenstein 3D (from May 5, 1992) was never released, and gamers did not anticipated, read, and talk about newest advances and trends. In my universe 3D was the holy grail and something we were all loking forward to, even if it'd be years before I was able to afford a capable machine.

In my universe Wolfenstein 3D was a curiosity - a quaint little shareware game with cheesy graphics, a somewhat suspect premise and no depth. It might have been groundbreaking on the PC, but compared to the Amiga games we were playing it was meh.

In 1993 most of my PC customers were buying 386SXs, and mostly for business or education use not gaming. In 1991 when I took over the business I purchased a number of PCs for display, including a 486SX-25 with 8MB of RAM which at that time was a very high-end machine. Took 3 years to sell it (at a loss of course). It wasn't until Windows 95 came out that such machines suddenly became desirable, as people discovered their venerable 386's couldn't cope.

Amigas were flying out the door so fast I couldn't get enough of them, and not just A500s and A1200s. Many of my regular customers had A2000s stuffed to the gills with accelerator cards etc., or (later) A4000s. I also sold a lot of hard drives and accelerators for the A500, and many other accessories such as RAM boards, kickstart ROMs etc., so people could expand their machines to run the latest games and/or for more 'professional' use.

What I didn't sell a lot of was games. Piracy was rampant in New Zealand with a well established distribution network, so I had to rely on a small number of honest customers. But blank disks sold like hotcakes. On the PC side I sold a few commercial titles but mostly shareware and PD collections. I don't remember there being much piracy in the PC market, probably because most PC users were responsible adults who could justify paying for the business apps they needed.

That was my world, until Commodore went bankrupt in 1994. At that point I had to pivot to selling PCs only, but still did good business selling second hand Amigas and parts for them. The average A500 trade-in included around 500 pirated games, and many of the machines were worn out due to heavy gaming use.

Yeah, people totally played Civ, Ultima or Leisure Suit Larry only because they were "less taxing", and not because they were awesome, groundbreaking games.

Leisure Suit Larry was a 'ground breaking' game? Considering that the original release used the same game engine as King's quest (released in 1984 for the IBM PCjr, and for DOS and Amiga in 1986) I would hardly call it that. And of course it was also ported to the Amiga (which how I got to play it, as well as several other Sierra adventure games). Yes there was a remake in 1991 with 256 color graphics (woohoo!) and a point-and-click interface (PCs finally got a mouse?) but I think that just spoilt the game.

'Civ' = Civilization I presume. Well Amiga users were playing that too! as well as many other games of the same genre. Two of my favourites are The Settlers and Dune 2, which me and my friends spent countless hours playing.

The fact that you are describing these games as being unique to the PC suggests you were stuck in that world at the time, not knowing there was another one out there called Amiga. This is what I experienced from some insulated PC users who had no idea what the Amiga was about.

2D action games were peaking at the time, and were rather well covered on platforms such as SNES, Megadrive, or even A500/1200.

This is true. One reason the Amiga started losing popularity at that time was an overload of console style 2D actions games that all looked and played the same. I think the main reason for this was developers trying to copy console hits such as Sonic the Hedgehog etc., which IMO was a mistake. Unfortunately the A1200's better graphics encouraged developers to concentrate on producing technically superior games without considering other factors that are often more important, such as providing a unique experience. Not to say that a well done platform game isn't worth playing, but if it is just an uninspired variation on Sonic then why not just play Sonic?

But consoles are meh. I sold Sega Megadrives in my shop for a bit, but the slick graphics didn't make up for the fact that the machine was only good for playing game carts and nothing else. Plus the carts were expensive and pirating them was practically impossible. It didn't take long to figure out that while cheap, it was actually much worse value than an A500.

Compared to the A500 or A1200, the CD32 had several advantages and a few disadvantages. The CD drive gave it massive storage capacity, fast loading, the ability to play high quality background music and of course practically no piracy! (though some would say this was a bad thing...). The small form factor and low price meant it could compete with eg. the Megadrive, but it was expandable to full computer specs equivalent to an accelerated A1200. You could also plug in a keyboard and mouse for those games that needed them, and due to its high compatibility existing Amiga games could be ported to it with virtually no changes.

On the down side adding a floppy drive was expensive (which is why I developed a cheap floppy drive interface board to do this) so users were stuck with buying games on CD rather than playing pirated disk-based games.

Adding a mouse, keyboard and disk drive unlocked the CD32's true potential, and if you were lucky enough to have a CD writer to make your own CDs then it was (IMO) one of the best Amigas. I regret selling mine, particularly now that they are going for ridiculous prices.

CD "multimedia/interactive" games were present on PC since at least 1991, but were ultimately a fad, and a bubble that burst sooner than later. Of course CD has stayed on as a storage method, but the most important games were the ones which CD32 could never handle, be it because of lack of 3D capabilities or HDD for the "big" 2D games from the PC.

This is true, but nobody could have expected a machine of that stature to magically keep up with future advances. Its primary purpose was to extend the life of the existing Amiga platform, not the one which we all knew had to come if future Amigas were to be competitive with PCs (of course we now know that this was impossible anyway).

When we look at high-end PCs of the time, they too would soon be thrown on the scrapheap. Even today a PC more than 3 years old is generally considered too under-powered to run the latest software well, and gamers spend ridiculous amounts of money just to get fast enough graphics etc. (yet strangely the games aren't any more fun to play...).

Overall, CD32 could definitely do better, but not by much. Released in the period when the likes of SNES were dirt cheap and the likes of Saturn/PSX just around the corner, it did not have a snowflakes chance in hell of making any significant dent in the market.

I disagree. Had Commodore not gone bankrupt when it did, the CD32 could have become quite popular in that short time before PSX came out, and even made good sales afterwards.

If Commodore had been in better health they probably would have released an upgraded CD32 with FastRAM, built in floppy interface etc., or even a 3D graphics chip. With the advantage of being able to run existing Amiga games (many of which the console market had not yet experienced) and easy ports to CD format, it would not have suffered the initial problem the PSX did of limited software. Imagine being able to play the entire library of classic Amiga games and 3D games like Tomb raider! (which probably would have been produced for it first since Core design were Amiga developers).

I bought a PlayStation for one purpose only - to run Tomb Raider - and that's all it ever did (all other PSX games sucked). I first played it on a PC, but preferred the PlayStation because PCs were too difficult to set up properly, too big and too expensive. So for me the PSX was just one game. The Amiga is many games, so while I would love to see Tomb Raider ported to the Amiga it's no big deal if it doesn't happen. Right now I am getting back to playing some of the early Amiga games I loved, such as The Faery Tale Adventure (for which I still have the original disk!).

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Revenile

And to think, there's another timeline where Commodore didn't make the CD32, and instead released a CD rom drive like two years before as an addon to their computer line, bringing the computer systems to a new level, where companies like Cinemaware could have REALLY stretched their creative muscles.

You mean like the A570?

It worked well, but suffered the same problem that the CDTV did - lacklustre perfomance from the single speed drive and ChipRAM only 68000. I wrote the code for a multimedia CDTV title that we developed, and Commodore was surprised by how fast I got the images to load. Yet the CD32 loaded from the same disc (original CDTV version, not modified for CD32) more than twice as fast. The lack of expandability of the CDTV also affected the A570, as many users already had a hard drive that couldn't be plugged in at the same time.

The price of the A570 wasn't bad, and the potential for enhanced gaming was real, but it was bound to fail because 1. it limited expansion choices, 2. not enough CDTV titles were available to justify it, and 3. there would never be a sufficient userbase to justify producing or porting games to it.

But we should be glad that Commodore produced it, as it is technically an interesting and quite useful addon for the A500 - a lot more useful today because burning CDs is now cheap and easy.