19 January 2015, 10:16 | #1 |
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Best all round machine?
Having owned pretty much every UK released 8/16 bit home computer (and consoles) in the past 30 or so years I was wondering what was the general consensus on which was the best all round machine? By this I mean in terms of what you got for your money!
The Amiga must rate quite high not only because of it's technical capabilities but also it's longevity? But I wonder if there is a 'list' not based on popularity but cold hard technical facts and UK retail price at launch? my own opinion for top three contenders are: 1. ZX Spectrum -High res colour graphics, sound and plenty of software at an affordable price 2. Amiga A1200 - Versatile and useful beyond it's shelf-life 3. N64 - Tech spec and Game library, still good to play today! Of course this is just my opinion but the Amiga may come out top in an offcial poll (not just fanboys) |
19 January 2015, 10:31 | #2 |
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You are mixing wildly different hardware classes. Two of your examples are neither 8 or 16 bit. The A1200 is 32bit and the N64 is 64bit.
However, to answer your question, the machine with most impact and bang for buck must be the original Playstation. |
19 January 2015, 12:31 | #3 |
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Really meant any machine from any period that offered the best machine compared to it's competitors at the time, for price/performance
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19 January 2015, 13:02 | #4 |
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I would say C64 belongs in there. Was manufactured and sold for 12 years without any major changes (only new case, IC process changes and general cost down). It offered a lot of bang for the buck for home entertainment.
The best Amiga in my opinion from a market point of view was the 500. Like the C64, it was way ahead of the competition and provided the best value for money for games and home productivity (simple word processing, spreadsheet etc. which could be used without HDD). The 1200 was too little and too late. |
19 January 2015, 19:55 | #5 | |
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Quote:
But Speccy BASIC C64 = Better Graphic + Sound but harder to Programme |
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19 January 2015, 20:21 | #6 |
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I believe I enjoyed using my Spectrum the most but I think that was because of my age at the time. I mapped Driller, Dark Side, CastleMaster & Total Eclipse. Played Jet Set Willy through (with cheats). Tens of hours of 2-player Way of the Exploding Fist.
The N64 is the machine I racked up the most hours playing (Mario64, Banjo Kazooie, Banjo Tooie, Conkers bad Fur Day, Perfect Dark, Golden Eye, Ocarina of time, Majora's Mask, Paper Mario. Say 30+ hours each!) The N64 saw way more action than PSOne for single player. Xbox-1 is the machine which hand the most longevity in this house (mainly due to XBMC + Xport Emulators). I bought it in 2002 around launch day and it was retired with the RaspBerryPi got XBMC (2013?). So 10+ years! |
20 January 2015, 10:40 | #7 |
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I think thats rather harsh. The 1200 was a good compromise on hardware and cost. I'm sure Commodore specifically wanted to keep the 1200 down to the £399 price point that they dominated so successfully with the 500. Improvements to the sound and a high density floppy would have been nice but would have pushed the price up. The Atari Falcon had some of these features but I think the price point was not competitive. PC's were still expensive at the time the A1200 was released. I can't think of any other machines that competed strongly against the A1200 in late 1992. The machine had a run of around 2-3 years which at that time was a reasonable run. Technology was progressing at a fantastic rate around that time. The Playstation was released around 94/95 and PC's were much more affordable both of which pretty much destroyed any other systems.
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20 January 2015, 11:18 | #8 |
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20 January 2015, 16:58 | #9 |
namm namm AMIGA
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AMIGA - (1985)
PS1 - (1995) DREAMCAST - ( 1999 ) (my opinion) Those baby´s set new standarts at the time and you got the most for your´re money. |
20 January 2015, 17:15 | #10 |
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I loved my Dreamcast
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20 January 2015, 17:43 | #11 |
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Well, I have c128, A1200 and many different pc configuratins (+ I try to emulate other consoles) - hard to select best one system - each one have some crap games and ones that are exclusive gems.
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20 January 2015, 18:31 | #12 |
namm namm AMIGA
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20 January 2015, 19:05 | #13 |
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20 January 2015, 19:46 | #14 | |
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I don't think so as I actually have the same opinion.
Quote:
68030 CPUs were rather cheap in 1992 already so they could have (optionally) used that one instead of the 68020. The biggest mistake IMHO though was to sell it without any fastram. 32 bit CPU and chipram only sure makes sense, not! There should have been a better/faster blitter and also a hardware c2p since bitplane mode is way too slow when dealing with 8 bitplanes. And good old Paula definitely should have been improved too! |
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20 January 2015, 19:56 | #15 |
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C2P support on the CD32 costed as much as 2 megs of fast RAM! I agree with everything else though.
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21 January 2015, 00:01 | #16 | |
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Quote:
Dreamcast Software sold very well. I never had a burned game, and if you think of the PS1, THAT was a PIRATE BAY !!. Microsoft and Sony killed the Dream. MS screwed SEGA BIG TIME... but thats another story Dream on |
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21 January 2015, 10:19 | #17 | |
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Quote:
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24 January 2015, 20:42 | #18 |
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In 1992 a dx 33 running alone in the dark made the 1200 look silly for 3d I sold after a very short time we was expecting so much more from the 1200 processor wise.
And yes I am aware of the other goodness of the amiga hardware and the restrictions but 3d was the way forward for me. |
24 January 2015, 22:39 | #19 |
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Memotech MX512 by a country mile
They made Kelly LeBrock with one! [ Show youtube player ] |
24 January 2015, 22:46 | #20 | |
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Anyway for the best value, and long support and cost. 1.) Commodore A500 2.) ZX Spectrum 3.) Sega Megadrive |
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