Amiga in Japan

[Echo Pox]

Was Amiga big in Japan? Does anyone have boxed games from Japan? I never see them searching around... c64 was at least semi popular.

[AmigaHope]

Almost totally unknown in Japan, mostly due to a near-total lack of Japanese language support in the OS.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by AmigaHope

Almost totally unknown in Japan, mostly due to a near-total lack of Japanese language support in the OS.

Didn't stop this demo from being made. I would link to the video with its great tune, but there's a lot of (ahem) implied "m" activity in it.

[britelite]

Originally Posted by Foebane

Didn't stop this demo from being made.

Are you sure that one is actually from Japan?

[dlfrsilver]

There are Japanese amiga user, I even found ntsc softwares for amiga at akihabara.

[chb]

AFAIK the Amiga was very rare in Japan, especially in its role as a game/home computer. But apparently it had some niches in the animation/video market.

There's an old thread about Japanese games here.

No idea about the Japanese demo scene, it is quite small in general, and mosty PC oriented AFAICS.

Fun fact: Fumito Ueda, the main designer of the Sony games "Ico", "Shadow of the Colossus" and "The Last Guardian", started his career on the Amiga: http://shmuplations.com/ueda/

[Old_Bob]

IIRC, there's a bit in The Deathbed Vigil mentioning something about selling the things over there. I think C='s management ended up blowing the deal, somehow?

B

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by britelite

Are you sure that one is actually from Japan?

No, it most likely isn't, being shown at the Finnish Amiga Party 2015, but it's the only Amiga demo I've seen on Pouet.net with Japanese Hiragana characters in the name.

[Psiq]

This guy found a sign in Tokyo

http://amigax1000.blogspot.com/2018/...a-sign-in.html

[Spyros]

That demo's title doesn't sound very flattering to the Amiga though!
The other characters shown in the demo are some Hotel's/Inn's name: Koishiya

[Foebane]

What does the Hiragana actually say?

[Spyros]

@Foebane
"Amiga is a gay nonsense computer"

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Spyros

@Foebane
"Amiga is a gay nonsense computer"

EDIT: I never thought to Google Translate the title myself, but I just did, and it's even meaner than "nonsense", apparently.

[chip]

So, i just discovered to be gay

[Spyros]

@foebane
Ah, yes looks like GT gives a more "smelly" version.
Anyway, tawagoto means (talking) nonsense, rubbish, etc. as far as I know, but you'd better ask a native to be sure.

[T_hairy_bootson]

I remember reading about a small dedicated japanese amiga user group at least.

[Glen M]

Well if anything Pixel Vixen off youtube is out there rocking her 600. Probably one of the few to be honest.

[d4rk3lf]

Well, not surprised because it's a "mother country" for the sharp 68000, that is much more powerful then Amiga (although, 5 times more expensive).
But yet, with good marketing, and low price, I think it could may be very successful in Japan.

One of the many, Commodore, wasted opportunity, because Japan is very big market for high-tech.

[chb]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

Well, not surprised because it's a "mother country" for the sharp 68000, that is much more powerful then Amiga (although, 5 times more expensive).

The X68000 is a very capable game machine, without question, but the operating system is rather primitive (Human68k is an MS-DOS look-alike), and while the hardware supports very high resolutions thanks to the use of VRAM, there isn't anything that assists in drawing graphical user interfaces (like the blitter does), so those need to be drawn completely by the CPU and tend to be rather slow. According to this page, every pixel takes two bytes regardless of the screen depth (even if only 4bpp), which is nice for adressing single pixels and chunky type effects, but very ineffective when copying larger blocks around with the CPU. I'm not sure if there was a GUI computer at the Amiga's/ST's price point in Japan during that time, so yes, could be a missed opportunity.

[Revenile]

Originally Posted by Old_Bob

IIRC, there's a bit in The Deathbed Vigil mentioning something about selling the things over there. I think C='s management ended up blowing the deal, somehow?

B

Yep there was, according to Haynie, and this is a direct transcribe from the Deathbed Vigil here:

"Commodore had worked out a deal with a major Japanese company, for resale of the Amiga in Japan. This was a major market, and not yet dominated by the IBM PC Clone. Only Apple was making headway, as Macs did Kanji well, something the Amiga could too with the right software support. It came down to formality, the traditional meeting between company heads, and Commodore management blew it. Twice!"