TCD magazine finds

[Megalomaniac]

It lasted longer for the C64 to die out in Europe than the US (like the Amiga, and ST, and even the Atari 8-bit). 1992 was the last big year for big publishers making games, I think the UK shops had stopped selling C64s by Christmas 1992, and largely stopped selling the games (aside from the odd biggie like Lemmings) not long after that. Mayhem in Monsterland was mail-order only, certainly. Germany had CP Verlag making great stuff after 1992, like the Fred series, Lions of the Universe and Shaman, but that's about it, and I doubt you could get C64s that late.

[TCD]

Somebody mentioned in a thread that the Acorn Archimedes never made it out of the UK and I posted an Archimedes only magazine from Germany then. Here is another proof that Acorn did sell the Archimedes at least in Germany (from ASM 1/1992):

[Etze]

Acorn even did ads in my beloved "Amiga Magazin". For example in issues 1/94 and 10/94.

Edit: 1/94 with a "left-handed" keyboard...

[TCD]

That right page will haunt me in my dreams tonight

Would be interesting to know if it was only sold in Germany or also in other European countries.

[Etze]

I've found two more.

[TCD]

Laura Bow II: The Dagger of Amon Ra planned for Amiga:


In mid 1992 there are quite a number of games that were PC exclusive, but also quite a few that were still announced for Amiga but eventually weren't released.

[TCD]

Ami Berlin 92 without Commodore, the next Cologne expo isn't called Amiga '92 anymore... times are changing (ASM 6/1992):

[TCD]

I found this in ASM 9/1992 (in stores late August 1992):

"Get the newest technology: Amiga CDTV!"

About two months before the A1200. The CDTV is 18 months old by that time.


Edit: Or how about you trade in your A500 for it? Just 999 DM (~£360) extra and the future is yours!

[oscar_ates]

They were clearly trying to empty the stock that did not sell. What was the cdrom software that would justify buying cdtv? To my best knowledge none

[grelbfarlk]

From Amiga World January 1994. Keep in mind the prices here are USD. Which compared to GBP were twice as high. As in I want to buy this card at $500 that would have been something like 450GBP plus shipping which was much more expensive back then.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by oscar_ates

They were clearly trying to empty the stock that did not sell. What was the cdrom software that would justify buying cdtv? To my best knowledge none

They tried to empty stock while they knew that AGA and a CD based system was coming. There's another thread about how people were disappointed with the A1200. I just wonder how many didn't bother to try it given these 'clever' marketing ideas.

[TCD]

Just found this:

"Thalion promises that Amberstar 2 (aka Ambermoon) will be released for the ST." Ouch

[Megalomaniac]

$1500 could get you a seriously good A1200 spec at that time, but of course it was dwarfed by similarly powerful PCs that didn't cost much more but had so much mroe software making use of them.

Thalion were ST demosceners originally, unlike most of Germany they didn't go straight to the Amiga for games, so not being able to do Ambermoon probably hurt them.

Dagger of Amen Ra's PC specs (required 640k, VGA and a 286) suggest that it was doable on an A500, though it'd be a slow experience without a hard drive.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Dagger of Amen Ra's PC specs (required 640k, VGA and a 286) suggest that it was doable on an A500, though it'd be a slow experience without a hard drive.

Yep. King's Quest VI that was released the same year for PC was ported two years later to the Amiga (I guess because Sierra hoped their biggest series would still sell), but the performance without a HD wasn't very good (to be nice ). It also didn't look great as the automatic conversion from VGA to the Amiga's 32 colours wasn't very good either (to be nice again ).

I posted it to show that around mid 1992 the 'big' US publishers lost interest in the Amiga as a conversion platform. I think the misconception sometimes is that it was because games couldn't be converted, but the reality is that it simply didn't make sense financially to do so (just like 8-bit ports a bit before).

[derSammler]

Wasn't that always the issue with all Sierra games on the Amiga? They never used the additional colors when porting the 16-color games, and they never cared about doing a good conversion of the 256-color games.

Sierra was really bound to the PC/PCjr. (and hence Tandy) pretty much from day one.

[dreadnought]

I've just had a go at playing KQV on A500, to remind myself if it really is as bad an experience as I remembered. Well, it is, at least if you only had one FDD - I had to change floppies 30+ times before I managed to get to the gameplay, and then it wasn't much better after either.

With 2 floppies it's much better, but the game itself is very sluggish anyway.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

With 2 floppies it's much better, but the game itself is very sluggish anyway.

It's much better than using one floppy drive and much worse than using a HD Back when I first got into Amiga emulation I set up a WB 1.3 HD and installed as many games as I could. The difference between playing Sierra and Lucasfilm/Arts games from floppy (even with 4 drives) and HD is quite astonishing.

[arcanist]

I played all of the Sierra and Lucasarts games on an A600 with no hard disk. My sister was in charge of taking notes and disk swapping. (I offered to let her play many times but she preferred to watch.)

The only ones I recall being unbearable were Willy Beamish (a lot of disk swapping and sluggish animation) and Fate of Atlantis, which ran at about 2 seconds per frame in Algiers for some reason.

We were big fans of Colonel's Bequest so I looked in the shops for years for an Amiga copy of Amon Ra. There is a spiritual sequel to the Laura Bow games called The Crimson Diamond, which I hear is almost finished now.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by arcanist

There is a spiritual sequel to the Laura Bow games called The Crimson Diamond, which I hear is almost finished now.

Do you have a link? I really enjoyed both Laura Bow games and it would be great to play a sequel.

[arcanist]

Originally Posted by TCD

Do you have a link? I really enjoyed both Laura Bow games and it would be great to play a sequel.

Here you go: The Crimson Diamond. There's a playable demo on there.

It's been in development for quite a few years. The developer is active on Twitch and one of their viewers recently told me they're close to finishing it now.