what do you regret about the amiga ?

[Phantasm]

i regret not keeping in touch with people from the scene.

[gimbal]

My biggest regret is the day that my parents went out to buy a couple of new arcade joysticks and came back with the news that Commodore had gone bankrupt. My heart broke that day.

[sokolovic]

The 1k memory for saving on the CD32. Even back in 1993, it was a limitation

How could they have thought on that time that 1K was enough ?

[Thorham]

My only regret is not having the cash to reproduce the AGA chip set and license 688030/60 to make brand new Amigas with up to date connectivity.

Originally Posted by sokolovic

The 1k memory for saving on the CD32.

Yeah, absolutely ridiculous.

[SilentBob]

That Commodore didn't put into the A1200:

1) A full 68020 or at even a 68030. (The 24 bit address space of the EC020 and the blasted PCMCIA wall was an eyesore)
2) 16 bit sound, or at least an improved Paula with more voices.
3) A high density floppy drive. (Really, this would have been so much more costly? Yes, I know Paula couldn't handle HD by default, but the "hacked" floppy would have been fine)

In addition, a DSP would have been cool, but I suspect it would have added too much to the cost, and the computer would have been too costly with a harddrive. (I was still a poor student back the, with very limited funds).

That Commodore didn't release the A3000+ based model, but stuck with the A4000. It really was an inferior design...

[stevsurv]

No regrets at all. Loved the PC back then but the Amiga blew me away! Amiga was fun, fun, fun!

[Zoltar]

Originally Posted by SilentBob

That Commodore didn't put into the A1200:

1) A full 68020 or at even a 68030. (The 24 bit address space of the EC020 and the blasted PCMCIA wall was an eyesore)
2) 16 bit sound, or at least an improved Paula with more voices.
3) A high density floppy drive. (Really, this would have been so much more costly? Yes, I know Paula couldn't handle HD by default, but the "hacked" floppy would have been fine)

A full 68030 over a EC020 would have been nice but would it have made much difference to the machine's performance?

An EC020 at 28mhz would have been at least as powerful as an 030 based A3000 and been a fair bit cheaper for both C= and us. Of course, it would have needed to be combined with Fast RAM, which was another thing that really held even the 14mhz A1200 back. Even 2mb of Fast RAM as standard would have made a huge difference and a 68882 on the board would have been icing on the cake. The 16mb limit of the EC chip was more than enough, I think.

I'm afraid, though, that even a full 68030 and 68882 running at 28mhz wouldn't have had a hope in hell of running Magic Carpet. That game needed at least a Pentium to manage a decent frame rate on a DOS PC. Even an 040 would have struggled with it.

I agree with you that an HD floppy drive would have made a big difference but I didn't know that Paula couldn't deal with an HD drive. Why's that then? I guess it was down to corners being cut by C=?

[Phreaker]

I don't know the average age of people here so forgive me. But back when the scene was big in Australia. Amiga was ahead of both the PC and the Apple market. In every way. I remember showing my friends State of the Art Spaceballs and they were instantly sold on the Amiga. They were magic times. My only regret is that Commodore lost the race.

[edd_jedi]

Although there are many Amiga games I love and are arguably best-in-class (mainly strategy and adventure/RPGs) I always found its platform games very disappointing. The A1200 should have been able to piss over the SNES/Megadrive, but I'm sure anybody being honest would agree that there aren't any Amiga platform games that come even remotely close to Sonic, Mario etc in either playability or graphics. As far as I understand it wasn't due to hardware limitations (and floppy disks are no excuse either, most 16-bit games are well under 1mb in size) so it must have been due to the lack of talent or budget in development. IMO the best platform game on the Amiga is Aladdin AGA, but even that pales compared to the Mega Drive version which came out over a year earlier!

Also, I didn't like the way games manufacturers assumed everybody used a zipstick and couldn't possibly buy a CD32 controller. Lots of great games were spoiled due to the lack of buttons or using up to jump.

EDIT: sorry one more - as touched on by a couple of others, US Gold's abomination of Street Fighter 2 in 1993. I don't think they realised what a huge missed opportunity that was - SF2 was THE game of the early 90s, and was the only reason I and many of my mates bought a SNES. If they had released a decent version with perhaps limited graphics but good playability and 6 button support, kids would have been perfectly happy with their Amiga. As above with the platform games, surely the Amiga was capable of it?

[killergorilla]

If any of it really makes you angry you probably need to rethink your attitude

I feel pleased to have had one and got to use it with my friends, family and remember the experiences fondly

No time for regrets about something as trivial as a computer!

[dJOS]

IMO the main travesties committed by C= were:

1: not putting SCSI on the a500/a600/a1200's - this made CD-ROM's prohibitively expensive for the average punter and meant that Amiga missed the Multimedia boat it was perfectly positioned to Captain!

2: not putting SIMM/DIMM slots on all Amiga systems for fast ram expansion (even on wedge Amigas), this made ram expansion more expensive and prevented use of industry standard ram upgrades.

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by dJOS

IMO the main travesties committed by C= were:

1: not putting SCSI on the a500/a600/a1200's - this made CD-ROM's prohibitively expensive for the average punter and meant that Amiga missed the Multimedia boat it was perfectly positioned to Captain!

2: not putting SIMM/DIMM slots on all Amiga systems for fast ram expansion (even on wedge Amigas), this made ram expansion more expensive and prevented use of industry standard ram upgrades.

Both of those were certainly massive design flaws. The 1 button joystick also belongs in that list. Up to accelerate? You've gotta be kidding me.

[dJOS]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

Both of those were certainly massive design flaws. The 1 button joystick also belongs in that list. Up to accelerate? You've gotta be kidding me.

Oh, that is a doozy - making it worse is that button 2 is actually physically supported on pin9 but almost never used as it wasnt an "official" button #2.

[edd_jedi]

Originally Posted by dJOS

1: not putting SCSI on the a500/a600/a1200's - this made CD-ROM's prohibitively expensive for the average punter and meant that Amiga missed the Multimedia boat it was perfectly positioned to Captain!

Or the A4000 - what were they thinking!?

[jack-3d]

Selling my A1200 PPC for Pegasos in 2003.
Not buying A4000 earlier then this year, now I see how great is that machine.

[edd_jedi]

Originally Posted by jack-3d

Selling my A1200 PPC for Pegasos in 2003.
Not buying A4000 earlier then this year, now I see how great is that machine.

This also reminds me - I traded my A1200 for an NTSC SNES in 1997. not a terrible trade at the time, A1200s were pretty much worthless by then and this was before 60hz TVs were widespread so NTSC consoles were very popular and pretty expensive still. But, I do wish I still had my 'childhood' Amiga.

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by edd_jedi

This also reminds me - I traded my A1200 for an NTSC SNES in 1997. not a terrible trade at the time, A1200s were pretty much worthless by then and this was before 60hz TVs were widespread so NTSC consoles were very popular and pretty expensive still. But, I do wish I still had my 'childhood' Amiga.

If all you wanted was to play games, I wouldn't regret that at all. As much as I love the Amiga, an NTSC SNES was a far superior gaming machine. There is nothing worse than a PAL console back in those days though, absolutely worthless.

[Noth]

Originally Posted by kamelito

Frankly I wanted to write slow CPU and no VGA screen. But the Falcon did have these and died too.
The BeBox and BeOS should have been the Amiga of 96 and beyond but they switch it to an internet appliance OS which finish to kill it. (this plus Jobs choosing Next)
But in another hand, we have a stable (read fixed) HW that can be known inside out to have fun and that is more than enough.
Kamelito

Actually Gil Amelio chose NeXT and Jobs as it's CEO invaded Apple

I totally agree that the lack of an Amiga standard for multi button joysticks/pads was a fatal flaw, as was the difficulty for RAM upgrades, but you have to remember that back in the 87-92 period there was no one standard type for RAM and no one could really predict what sort would come out on top... Imagine if the A500 used ZIPs only, or something daft.

Commodore used the A500 as their golden egg laying goose for far too long, the A1200 came out too late and underspec... if at least it had HD floppies and 2 Megs of Fast Ram that could have made a big difference. The choice of the IDE interface on the A600 & A1200 was a pretty good move actually, but not so much on the A4000... Neither SCSI nor IDE drives were cheap back then (92-96), I pined for years to get a decent 2.5" IDE drive for my A1200!

One other cheap mistake was the lack of a MIDI port. Had that been made available in the base A500 it could have expanded the market massively and relegated the ST and friends to the dustbin of history. All it would have added was maybe 25$ to the design!

[killergorilla]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

There is nothing worse than a PAL console back in those days though, absolutely worthless.

Yeah, ok, sure.

I'd much rather sit and play no games at all, than play them slower and with borders.

[Retro-Nerd]

Not only slower with borders in PAL, squeezed too.