Off with the rose-colored glasses! The hard look back at your Amiga childhood

[jizmo]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

No way. Almost every game on the Amiga sucked. Most games on the PS4 are pretty damn good.

Not most, but I do agree that the fierce competition, visibility to what others are doing and online reviews and videos make it pretty hard to release an utter crapfest of a game these days. If you do, most people will be able to read about it in reviews and forums and will steer clear away from them.

Now, compare this to the Amiga era when quite a lot of our game purchases had to be based purely on the box art and/or the IP. Some bad/ill-adviced investments were made, no doubt about it.

Like mentioned before, I personally find the common drawback of many Amiga games the way they copied bad game design conventions from western 8-bit machines and the arcade. While the games got better towards early 90s, it was already the era when Genesis and SNES took much bigger evolutionary leaps forward and build upon best conventions from the Japanese 8-bit consoles (playability, frame rate, level codes, controllers with multiple buttons). As someone who missed SNES when it launched, I'm in hindsight amazed by the quality of the titles, and how well they have fared the test of time compared to, say, early PSX games.

Ruinashiro's list is pretty much spot on. While Amiga was the swiss knife of home computer and gaming device, the best titles of various genres are to be found on other platforms – excluding the pinball games, which I still love to bits.

[ruinashiro]

Originally Posted by jizmo

As someone who missed SNES when it launched, I'm in hindsight amazed by the quality of the titles, and how well they have fared the test of time compared to, say, early PSX games.

Same here. I had horse blinders on in my amiga days. Once I saw what other systems were capable of, I started gaming on other platforms and never looked back. The genesis/snes came out in 89/90. So, the Amiga really only had perhaps a few years of gaming supremacy.

Originally Posted by jizmo

While Amiga was the swiss knife of home computer and gaming device, the best titles of various genres are to be found on other platforms – excluding the pinball games, which I still love to bits.

Yep. What was great about the amiga to me was the compromise of power over price and mixture of computer+gaming. The X68000 game library destroyed the Amiga for every game genre I care about, but my first X68000 in 1990 cost me $3,000 (with 4MB ram and HDD). My first Amiga (1MB A500) in 1989 cost me $500.

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by ruinashiro

Yep. What was great about the amiga to me was the compromise of power over price and mixture of computer+gaming. The X68000 game library destroyed the Amiga for every game genre I care about, but my first X68000 in 1990 cost me $3,000 (with 4MB ram and HDD). My first Amiga (1MB A500) in 1989 cost me $500.

Being in Japan you were blessed with having these options.

X68000 was completely unheard of here in Europe, and the Megadrive/Genesis and SNES didn't really appear before 91/92 here...

After that, and with the synchronous onslaught of VGA PCs taking the Amigas cake within the simulator, adventure game and RPG space, it was really over for the Amiga. It couldn't compete with these far better machines.

The Amigas greatest time was 87 to 90, imo.

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by ruinashiro

Same here. I had horse blinders on in my amiga days. Once I saw what other systems were capable of, I started gaming on other platforms and never looked back. The genesis/snes came out in 89/90. So, the Amiga really only had perhaps a few years of gaming supremacy.

The SNES came out in Europe in mid-1992, around the time Amiga games were actually becoming good.

[jizmo]

Pointing out that the genre bests are to be found on other platforms doesn't naturally mean that Amiga games are bad – actually far from it. Many of the games are completely enjoyable, and definitely better than what there was on market for Atari ST and Hercules/CGA/EGA PCs (although some C64 versions are superior in playability to Amiga ones).

For me as a person who didn't buy Amiga for games, but to compose music and to draw/animate, it was particularly the shareware/PD side of Amiga (Space Taxi, Masterblaster, Rocketz, Viper, Megaball, Klondike AGA, Superworm, Bratwurst) that offered numerous titles that made – and still do make – Amiga uniquely awesome.

Considering that games were always secondary for me, I always felt I got quite a sweet gaming machine in the same bargain that landed me a home computer ahead everything available in the European market at the time. Even if SNES or X68000 had been available at the time, it wouldn't have crossed my mind to make the switch.

[Unkown]

Originally Posted by jizmo

Klondike AGA

Oh my i almost forgotton about that game.. Love to play it again someday on any amiga computer i buy in the near future...

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Steril707

After that, and with the synchronous onslaught of VGA PCs taking the Amigas cake within the simulator, adventure game and RPG space, it was really over for the Amiga. It couldn't compete with these far better machines.

VGA PCs cost a HECK of a lot more to gain the usability of a standard Amiga, AGA or not, and it wasn't really worth it when you already had excellent software and games. Simulators might gain an advantage from speedier CPUs, but adventure games and RPGs? NAAAAH.

The Amigas greatest time was 87 to 90, imo.

Really? The time when it was in receipt of the most ST ports going, and only at the end of that time was it starting to break free of its lesser rival?

[AmigaHope]

The really funny thing was that even after gaming on VGA became a big deal, applications were never as usable on x86 systems until Win95 came out. It was only at that point that I became impressed with what you could do in Microsoft land.

[Photon]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

No way. Almost every game on the Amiga sucked. Most games on the PS4 are pretty damn good.

Saying that makes me think you haven't looked, though. All the mobile game ports, retro entries, unchallenging kid's games, simplistic party games, 3 hour content playthrough titles with no replay value, open world games with thousands of boring fetch missions, and games not performing to meet platform expectations among the 2353 games confirm the crap-to-hit ratio.

Games are compared to the range on offer each year. I think this is primarily what made the Amiga sell so well, but it has no bearing on the ratio. The games they bought it for would have been the hits that were better than other offers elsewhere at the time.

[roondar]

<shrug> almost all 'classic' games aren't all that good.
So yeah, most Amiga games from the 1980's and 1990's are not all that good.

Main difference between systems is (IMHO) that for the Amiga this is generally admitted (or at least -correctly- asserted by many people) and for 8/16 bit consoles and 1980's/1990's arcade games we're all still pretending the games for those systems are much, much better than they really are*.

*) barring some very small number of exceptions

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by Photon

Saying that makes me think you haven't looked, though. All the mobile game ports, retro entries, unchallenging kid's games, simplistic party games, 3 hour content playthrough titles with no replay value, open world games with thousands of boring fetch missions, and games not performing to meet platform expectations among the 2353 games confirm the crap-to-hit ratio.

What you're describing sounds like the exact opposite of the Playstation Store.

No point arguing this any further. Anyone who thinks the Amiga can come close to comparing to a console as a gaming machine is living on another planet.

[roondar]

Seems we still have a long way to go until we can accept just how overrated 8 & 16 bit consoles and their games are. Let alone modern consoles, which are basically just a poor mans PC. Oh well.

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by Photon

Saying that makes me think you haven't looked, though. All the mobile game ports, retro entries, unchallenging kid's games, simplistic party games, 3 hour content playthrough titles with no replay value, open world games with thousands of boring fetch missions, and games not performing to meet platform expectations among the 2353 games confirm the crap-to-hit ratio.

Yep. It's a problem of budget too, modern games are so ridiculously expensive that there are forced limitations on what will be implemented in them. No glorious story driven quests that take you several hours to complete and make you feel like you've experienced something: fetch and kill quests is what you get.

Streamlining is the modern day game's curse IMO.

[DrFruit]

Dr fruit... back then it was my favourite (hence my forum nick) but looking back now damn the controls were rubbish! Still it was my 2nd a1000 game and I still hold fond memories for it!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[rare_j]

I did really like New Zealand Story back then, and I suppose some of the early levels are charming, but I realize now it all too soon descends into a horrible and dull maze em up.
Play it for 15 mins and you've seen all there is to see.

[donnie]

I always thought amiga fans or worse the amiga press had an deluded idea of what is a good game.

With that said. There are alot of awesome games on amiga. I actually PLAYED(as in beat them) from 2010 and onwards, with fresh eyes.

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by donnie

I always thought amiga fans or worse the amiga press had an deluded idea of what is a good game.

Exactly. An amusing example of this is that Zool was meant to compete with Sonic the Hedgehog. What a joke.

[roondar]

A person can't really be deluded about what constitutes a good game, since a game being good or bad is a purely subjective quality. Apart from measurable technical elements (which are much less important in terms of what is and isn't enjoyable than people tend to think), every single other element of a game is just about personal opinion.

If you like a game, then for you it is a good game. No matter what anyone else says. Similarly, if you dislike a game then for you it's a bad game. No matter what anyone else says. Delusion doesn't come into it.

As an example: to this day, I still can't understand how people can defend any game that features the player getting knocked back on a hit. It's such a terrible piece of design, it kills games stone dead for me. Yet many people seem to not mind it much. Some even seem to think games having this are better than those who don't.

Such is the way of opinions: what I find terrible design, others like. And vice versa. And no one here is 'correct'. There is only opinion, not fact

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

Exactly. An amusing example of this is that Zool was meant to compete with Sonic the Hedgehog. What a joke.

But it did!

Just not very well Still, I prefer Zool 2 to Sonic, there is only so much speed that I like in a platformer.

[EugeneNine]

<puts on flameproof suit> I think the Amiga was the downfall of (electronic) gaming. Prior to it you had to use your imagination since the graphics/sounds were so basic so the game makers focused on play. But with the Amiga it became a contest to see who could do the best graphics, best sounds, etc but game play suffered. Maybe its just me getting older (get off my lawn!) but I've never been able to play any games like I could prior to the Amiga, nothing since the old c64 had been able to hold my attention for very long. Even today I see my own kids playing PS4/XBOX, etc with fancy lifelike graphics but its the same play level after level.