Is the Amiga Scene slowing down

Djay · 02 October 2002, 23:01

Is the Amiga Scene slowing down, infact is the emu scene coming to a grinding hault...

with PCs becoming "Super-Computer" statis and consoles becoming PCs, do you think that a lot of retro gamers are moving over to the latest games?

i say this because, compared to a few years ago there seems to be less and less web-site devoted to emulation, i hate to say it, but i've also kinda let it go a bit...

your thoughts?

Fred the Fop · 02 October 2002, 23:17

I don't agree. Emulation is bursting and alive and kicking.
And retrogames sites are all over the place, just less now because of the improving quality of the better ones make he other ones redundant.
I think.

Antiriad · 02 October 2002, 23:29

Each to themselves Djay.
I tend to agree with Freds slant. Even if he is a Vincent Price holding an egg

Saying that, i never got "into" retro gaming, i just never got into modern 3d games from 1993 onwards...

02 October 2002, 23:37

I disagree Djay, with faster PC's we're having more horsepower for emulation in our hands

RetroMan · 02 October 2002, 23:43

The Problem with the emulation sites these days is, that there are less free webhosters ! Hate to say this, but to make a really nice page with some downloads you have to spend money for your server/webspace ! And if you find a nice one, you get bombed with Spam, like Popup´s and annoying banners

Fred the Fop · 03 October 2002, 00:45

Stop complaining about the problem and make a website with me about Atari ST gaming, Retro.

Ay, Antiriad...that's me, not Vinny Price.
Really, it is. Look how cool I am with my silver scarf.

Oscar Castillo · 03 October 2002, 03:28

There will always be retro addicts, but in decreasing numbers. I mean did you ever try and mention a C64 to your niece or nephew? Their retro means Sega Genesis, maybe even Super Nintendo. Most have no interest at all and beevr will be exposed to what we grew up with. Or at least those here old enough to have bought a C64 or Amiga new.
Also the new kids today interested in coding demos will do so on the new hardware which provides tremendous firepower and overabundance of utilities to get their wildest creations done and reach the widest audience.

Korodny · 03 October 2002, 04:45

I can hardly imagine somebody moving from retro-gaming to the latest games. It's a completely different gaming experience.

Even if you like all the 3D and realtime stuff out there and forget about the nostalgia factor of retro-gaming, old games are still a totally different gaming experience.

Nobody produces stuff like Speedball2 or SWOS anymore. Or good 2D Jump'n runs, Shoot'em ups etc.

Miggy2TheMax · 03 October 2002, 05:00

Just as the retro gaming generaton don't understand what is so special about 3D games, the new generation of gamers don't understand what is so special about retro 2D games. This means its unlikely there will be "new" retrogamers coming to the scene. The new gamers will have their own set of games that in time they will classify retro and so a moving window effect will happen.

Only the die-hards will carry on our retrogames and those numbers I'd imagine would be slowly dwindleing. Imagine if the internet was as wide spread when the amiga was in prime. Boards like EAB would be flooded with ppl. Its got to be slowing down, as they say "you can't stop progress" ....

Amiga1992 · 03 October 2002, 06:51

Quote:

Originally posted by Djay
Is the Amiga Scene slowing down, infact is the emu scene coming to a grinding hault...

Err... I find *shocking* that you mix up Amiga emulation scene with Amiga scene!

Sorry, but why are you stucking the Amiga scene just to what happens with lameulators?

Fred the Fop · 03 October 2002, 07:04

I don't think Djay mixed the two. But if you did, Djay, it could be because the majority of people who play Amiga games use WinUAE, WinFellow,Amiga De, AIAB, Cloanto or Amithalon. Alll are emulators. Face it, man.
But, there is a difference. People write software for the actual machines and not emulators, I'd suspect.
I could be wrong.

03 October 2002, 09:55

Quote:

There will always be retro addicts, but in decreasing numbers. I mean did you ever try and mention a C64 to your niece or nephew? Their retro means Sega Genesis, maybe even Super Nintendo. Most have no interest at all and beevr will be exposed to what we grew up with. Or at least those here old enough to have bought a C64 or Amiga new.

Mega Drive and SNES are retro machines but the definition of the term retro is different between people in different age groups. Today, we tend to like to use the systems we used during our "active" computing experience years, or we grow an interest for old computers, just in order to use what we've missed, or for other reasons. There is difference between two groups, I have friends who have used amiga and still like the old amiga games but for example, they aren't interested in MSX for they value their memories, not old computers themselves. Our Amiga enthusiasm will die with us, then amiga will be a part of the history. I do believe computing will be taken more seriously in the future though. In a hundred years, people will examine this forum and will try to understand why we were having all these conversations, maybe retrocomputing will be a rising trend after that

Tim Janssen · 03 October 2002, 10:03

Somehow I don’t think the current consoles and PCs will have a huge retrogaming-base within a few years time. A couple of reasons exist for this:

No small scene:
The 8-bit and 16-bit scene emerged in the Eighties and beginning Nineties. Joe Public wasn’t interested in gaming and computers in general and left it to the ‚geeks‘. During this time the number of users was small but a real community existed. I for instance visited every month an Amiga meeting, copied the latest games and played a match of Dynablaster. The Amiga was not a computer, it was a lifestyle

. Nowadays everyone owns a console and PC. Computers have become anonymous consumer-products and there is no real scene.

Ongoing innovation:
Next year will mark the 10th anniversary of the first decent 3D-FPS: Doom. Where are the retro-addicts with their sites dedicated to games based on the first 3D-engines? They can (apart from a single soul) nowhere to be found. I still don’t know the exact reason for this, but I suspect the ongoing innovation of 3D-engines is debit to this. The chapter of 3D-engines has not ended yet.

Lack of innovation:
Yesteryear’s software is programmed by a single bedroom-programmer who does not have to take a time- and money-limit into account. The most creative games were programmed back in the Eighties. Now try to come up with something original in the 21st century: It has to be financially feasible and not be too risky. This kills off every creative idea. Of all games produced the last ten years, very few deserve the title ‘Classic’ because they cannot be distinguished from each other.
I cannot imagine kiddies from now will emulate the current monotonous trash called ‘games’ in future Emulators.

I think retrogaming will exist also in the near future although the userbase will decrease because of the current lack of innovating softwaretitles.

03 October 2002, 11:18

Year 2000 was totally dead but it got better since now it's pretty ok.

Big-Byte · 03 October 2002, 12:04

At the weekend I went to my niece's first birthday party. They had a playstation in one room for the kids. I got beat at Tekken 3 by an eight year old and his mates. Then when I put on the Namco classics cd I found that they hadnt seen or heard of Pacman!! (They asked if it was a karate game)

:eek :eek

Twistin'Ghost · 03 October 2002, 12:35

Quote:

Originally posted by Tim Janssen
The Amiga was not a computer, it was a lifestyle

What a quote! I love it!

I agree with most of what you said, in fact. But much the way when I got into music when I was a kid (not only listening to the current hits, but all of the hit music from way before my time), I think there will be a nice cult of up and comers that will discover the Amiga and retrogaming experience and trip out on it. The teens and pre-teens I have showed my real Amiga to, running demos and games, were far more fascinated with it than anything they have on their current boxes. And they expressed this in no uncertain terms without my coaxing. They just need to be exposed to it. The same way I needed to be exposed to old twist records, doo wop, Billie Holiday, etc.

These kiddies probably won't get that buzz from running games and demos on an emulator right now, but they will totally respond when exposed to a real Amiga. And as the emulation improves and PC's get faster, they may tune in and turn on to the experience via emulation, as well.

The Amiga is the Beatles of computing (artistically). And look how long they have stayed in the general public's collective conscious!

Unknown_K · 03 October 2002, 14:25

Retro gaming for most people starts with the first machine they owned or played.

Mine would be the atari 2600 game machine and space invaders/pacman/centipede/battlezone arcade machines (34 yrs old). So basically I grew up at the start of the home video game industry and at the start of the switch from pinball to video arcade machines. There is a whole other generation before me that retro means pinball machines.

The funny thing is that each generation of game type from the atari 2600 to the present day interests me. I find it funny how people that liked the old systems cant stand the new ones. Done get me wrong there is alot of crap released today on the PC, but there are some excelent titles coming out also. There was also alot of crap released with the old systems but we only remember what we liked.

I also like to split the retro scene into 2 very different categories, the people who emulate and the ones who buy the old hardware and run the games as they were meant to be (full frame rate, exact audio sound etc). I think the people in the retro scene using real hardware is dropping like a rock, everything is emulation on the PC these days.

The reason I like the retro gaming scene is because there are games that will never be redone in todays system. Back in the day 1 or 2 people would create a game that they would like to play and release it. You had alot of inovation going on since 1 person controlled the whole game from start to finish, anything done today is by commitee and ends up more of a mishmash of features then a coherent playable game. Still the few games today that I love could never have been done in the past by 1 or 2 people even with the current hardware, too much content.

The demo scene like I seen in the c64 era is dead because of a few things. One is that nobody programs direct to the hardware anymore, and few have the deep knowledge of the hardware to even try it. That and todays computers can basically do anything, back in the day people could make the c64 and the amiga do something nobody thaught possible.. well the new hardware makes just about anything possible and its alot harder to impress somebody.

I think gaming is like fashion whats old will eventually become new again. The games you liked on the amiga are coming back in the form of GBA roms that a new generation is falling in love with.

7-Zark-7 · 03 October 2002, 14:44

I don't think I could add to some of the excellent comments about the 2D gaming,& 8bit/16bit computer scene that everyone has already said about.
Although what's been said about programmer's not "hitting the hardware" anymore seems sadly quite true. It use to be a challange once to see how far an individual machine could be pushed,now its a case of,"which latest whizz-bang console/3D gaming card can handle this game most easily". They don't try to push the existing machine to its limitations,they merely dump it & go instantly for the newer technology without trying.

But in relation to Djay's posting,I have a question for the WinUAE developer's. What do they regard as being the finite "final" version of WinUAE? One that handles all of the technical specs of the "classic" A500/2000/3000/1200/4000 in emulation?
Or would it be a WINUAE that handles those function's and adds on emulation specific features?

I'm just curious what Toni & the other WinUAE guy's "ultimate goal" will be for the project?

Djay · 03 October 2002, 21:53

mmm....

the main problem i have (now having broadband, i can get everything)... is that because i have a million adfs, REAL Amiga software... buckets of snes and MD roms, that i can't decide what to play....

i agree with the above statements about how easy it is to get stuff... but there doesn't seem to be any heart involved... like geoff goldblum said in Jurassic Park... "You have got all this stuff, but it didn't take any effort"... (i am powerphrasing here)

.... maybe its a lack of spare time.... i don't know....

i have to say i do truly love retro gaming.. esp. Amiga stuff, for me its the bollocks....

mmmm... i just can't put my finger on it!!!

CPC464 · 03 October 2002, 23:43

Maybe...for some

It's the fact that some people have grabbed everything Emulation wise they can.......and that leaves the question:

What Now ??

02 October 2002, 23:01	#1
Djay 95th User Join Date: May 2001 Location: Brighton/UK Age: 48 Posts: 3,120	Is the Amiga Scene slowing down Is the Amiga Scene slowing down, infact is the emu scene coming to a grinding hault... with PCs becoming "Super-Computer" statis and consoles becoming PCs, do you think that a lot of retro gamers are moving over to the latest games? i say this because, compared to a few years ago there seems to be less and less web-site devoted to emulation, i hate to say it, but i've also kinda let it go a bit... your thoughts?

03 October 2002, 05:00	#9
Miggy2TheMax Junior Member Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Australia Age: 45 Posts: 381	Just as the retro gaming generaton don't understand what is so special about 3D games, the new generation of gamers don't understand what is so special about retro 2D games. This means its unlikely there will be "new" retrogamers coming to the scene. The new gamers will have their own set of games that in time they will classify retro and so a moving window effect will happen. Only the die-hards will carry on our retrogames and those numbers I'd imagine would be slowly dwindleing. Imagine if the internet was as wide spread when the amiga was in prime. Boards like EAB would be flooded with ppl. Its got to be slowing down, as they say "you can't stop progress" .... Last edited by Miggy2TheMax; 03 October 2002 at 10:00.

03 October 2002, 10:03	#13
Tim Janssen Junior Member Join Date: Apr 2001 Location: Den Bosch / The Netherlands Age: 47 Posts: 1,271	Why retrogaming will decrease… Somehow I don’t think the current consoles and PCs will have a huge retrogaming-base within a few years time. A couple of reasons exist for this: No small scene: The 8-bit and 16-bit scene emerged in the Eighties and beginning Nineties. Joe Public wasn’t interested in gaming and computers in general and left it to the ‚geeks‘. During this time the number of users was small but a real community existed. I for instance visited every month an Amiga meeting, copied the latest games and played a match of Dynablaster. The Amiga was not a computer, it was a lifestyle . Nowadays everyone owns a console and PC. Computers have become anonymous consumer-products and there is no real scene. Ongoing innovation: Next year will mark the 10th anniversary of the first decent 3D-FPS: Doom. Where are the retro-addicts with their sites dedicated to games based on the first 3D-engines? They can (apart from a single soul) nowhere to be found. I still don’t know the exact reason for this, but I suspect the ongoing innovation of 3D-engines is debit to this. The chapter of 3D-engines has not ended yet. Lack of innovation: Yesteryear’s software is programmed by a single bedroom-programmer who does not have to take a time- and money-limit into account. The most creative games were programmed back in the Eighties. Now try to come up with something original in the 21st century: It has to be financially feasible and not be too risky. This kills off every creative idea. Of all games produced the last ten years, very few deserve the title ‘Classic’ because they cannot be distinguished from each other. I cannot imagine kiddies from now will emulate the current monotonous trash called ‘games’ in future Emulators. I think retrogaming will exist also in the near future although the userbase will decrease because of the current lack of innovating softwaretitles.

03 October 2002, 11:18	#14
JoJo Posts: n/a	Amiga Scene slowing down Year 2000 was totally dead but it got better since now it's pretty ok.

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02 October 2002, 23:17	#2
Fred the Fop flaming faggot Join Date: Apr 2001 Location: Versailles Age: 55 Posts: 2,808	I don't agree. Emulation is bursting and alive and kicking. And retrogames sites are all over the place, just less now because of the improving quality of the better ones make he other ones redundant. I think.

02 October 2002, 23:29	#3
Antiriad The Sacred Armour Of Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Sussex, UK Age: 44 Posts: 1,141	Each to themselves Djay. I tend to agree with Freds slant. Even if he is a Vincent Price holding an egg Saying that, i never got "into" retro gaming, i just never got into modern 3d games from 1993 onwards...

02 October 2002, 23:37	#4
oldpx Posts: n/a	I disagree Djay, with faster PC's we're having more horsepower for emulation in our hands

02 October 2002, 23:43	#5
RetroMan Registered User Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: Germany Age: 51 Posts: 3,704	The Problem with the emulation sites these days is, that there are less free webhosters ! Hate to say this, but to make a really nice page with some downloads you have to spend money for your server/webspace ! And if you find a nice one, you get bombed with Spam, like Popup´s and annoying banners

03 October 2002, 00:45	#6
Fred the Fop flaming faggot Join Date: Apr 2001 Location: Versailles Age: 55 Posts: 2,808	Stop complaining about the problem and make a website with me about Atari ST gaming, Retro. Ay, Antiriad...that's me, not Vinny Price. Really, it is. Look how cool I am with my silver scarf.

03 October 2002, 03:28	#7
Oscar Castillo Junior Member Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: New Jersey, USA Posts: 291	There will always be retro addicts, but in decreasing numbers. I mean did you ever try and mention a C64 to your niece or nephew? Their retro means Sega Genesis, maybe even Super Nintendo. Most have no interest at all and beevr will be exposed to what we grew up with. Or at least those here old enough to have bought a C64 or Amiga new. Also the new kids today interested in coding demos will do so on the new hardware which provides tremendous firepower and overabundance of utilities to get their wildest creations done and reach the widest audience.

03 October 2002, 04:45	#8
Korodny Zone Friend Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: Germany Posts: 812	I can hardly imagine somebody moving from retro-gaming to the latest games. It's a completely different gaming experience. Even if you like all the 3D and realtime stuff out there and forget about the nostalgia factor of retro-gaming, old games are still a totally different gaming experience. Nobody produces stuff like Speedball2 or SWOS anymore. Or good 2D Jump'n runs, Shoot'em ups etc.

03 October 2002, 07:04	#11
Fred the Fop flaming faggot Join Date: Apr 2001 Location: Versailles Age: 55 Posts: 2,808	I don't think Djay mixed the two. But if you did, Djay, it could be because the majority of people who play Amiga games use WinUAE, WinFellow,Amiga De, AIAB, Cloanto or Amithalon. Alll are emulators. Face it, man. But, there is a difference. People write software for the actual machines and not emulators, I'd suspect. I could be wrong.

03 October 2002, 12:04	#15
Big-Byte Long time member Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: UK Posts: 754	At the weekend I went to my niece's first birthday party. They had a playstation in one room for the kids. I got beat at Tekken 3 by an eight year old and his mates. Then when I put on the Namco classics cd I found that they hadnt seen or heard of Pacman!! (They asked if it was a karate game) :eek :eek

03 October 2002, 14:25	#17
Unknown_K Registered User Join Date: May 2002 Location: Ohio/USA Age: 55 Posts: 1,380	Retro gaming for most people starts with the first machine they owned or played. Mine would be the atari 2600 game machine and space invaders/pacman/centipede/battlezone arcade machines (34 yrs old). So basically I grew up at the start of the home video game industry and at the start of the switch from pinball to video arcade machines. There is a whole other generation before me that retro means pinball machines. The funny thing is that each generation of game type from the atari 2600 to the present day interests me. I find it funny how people that liked the old systems cant stand the new ones. Done get me wrong there is alot of crap released today on the PC, but there are some excelent titles coming out also. There was also alot of crap released with the old systems but we only remember what we liked. I also like to split the retro scene into 2 very different categories, the people who emulate and the ones who buy the old hardware and run the games as they were meant to be (full frame rate, exact audio sound etc). I think the people in the retro scene using real hardware is dropping like a rock, everything is emulation on the PC these days. The reason I like the retro gaming scene is because there are games that will never be redone in todays system. Back in the day 1 or 2 people would create a game that they would like to play and release it. You had alot of inovation going on since 1 person controlled the whole game from start to finish, anything done today is by commitee and ends up more of a mishmash of features then a coherent playable game. Still the few games today that I love could never have been done in the past by 1 or 2 people even with the current hardware, too much content. The demo scene like I seen in the c64 era is dead because of a few things. One is that nobody programs direct to the hardware anymore, and few have the deep knowledge of the hardware to even try it. That and todays computers can basically do anything, back in the day people could make the c64 and the amiga do something nobody thaught possible.. well the new hardware makes just about anything possible and its alot harder to impress somebody. I think gaming is like fashion whats old will eventually become new again. The games you liked on the amiga are coming back in the form of GBA roms that a new generation is falling in love with.

03 October 2002, 14:44	#18
7-Zark-7 Zone Friend Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: Brisbane/Australia Posts: 1,270	I don't think I could add to some of the excellent comments about the 2D gaming,& 8bit/16bit computer scene that everyone has already said about. Although what's been said about programmer's not "hitting the hardware" anymore seems sadly quite true. It use to be a challange once to see how far an individual machine could be pushed,now its a case of,"which latest whizz-bang console/3D gaming card can handle this game most easily". They don't try to push the existing machine to its limitations,they merely dump it & go instantly for the newer technology without trying. But in relation to Djay's posting,I have a question for the WinUAE developer's. What do they regard as being the finite "final" version of WinUAE? One that handles all of the technical specs of the "classic" A500/2000/3000/1200/4000 in emulation? Or would it be a WINUAE that handles those function's and adds on emulation specific features? I'm just curious what Toni & the other WinUAE guy's "ultimate goal" will be for the project?

03 October 2002, 21:53	#19
Djay 95th User Join Date: May 2001 Location: Brighton/UK Age: 48 Posts: 3,120	mmm.... the main problem i have (now having broadband, i can get everything)... is that because i have a million adfs, REAL Amiga software... buckets of snes and MD roms, that i can't decide what to play.... i agree with the above statements about how easy it is to get stuff... but there doesn't seem to be any heart involved... like geoff goldblum said in Jurassic Park... "You have got all this stuff, but it didn't take any effort"... (i am powerphrasing here) .... maybe its a lack of spare time.... i don't know.... i have to say i do truly love retro gaming.. esp. Amiga stuff, for me its the bollocks.... mmmm... i just can't put my finger on it!!!

03 October 2002, 23:43	#20
CPC464 Junior Member Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: York Age: 54 Posts: 393	Maybe...for some It's the fact that some people have grabbed everything Emulation wise they can.......and that leaves the question: What Now ??

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