A1200 or a SEGA Megadrive - which is better...

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

Yeah but what about games like Starwing or Yoshi's Island 2 that use a special chip added on the cartridge to run on the SNES ? (Same thing for Virtua Racing on the MD).

These chips are quite important and powerful, Frontier Elite 2 was canned on this machine because the chip was mandatory but too expensive to add on the cartridge considering the sales expected for this game.

If the Amiga devs of the day wanted to ship their games with bespoke Fast ram cards in their boxes then they could have.... it's no different.

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

Yet, there are some 3D games that worked on unexpanded A1200, like Alien Breed 3D, Breathless, Gloom... etc... that I heavily doubt would ever be even possible on Sega (or SNES for that matter).
Hell, even 3D games on Amiga 500 like Gunship 2000, Frontier, F/18 Interceptor, No Second Prize, Frontier, and many more, are not (from my knowledge) available for either Sega or SNES.

And what about all other genres we are speaking all the time?
Anytime (before or now), I'd pick A500 over the Sega or SNES.

I haven't denied any of that.

I'm saying that suggesting games like Genetic Species, Napalm: The Crimson Crisis that require accelerators and oodles of RAM is not a fair comparison.

[coder76]

This Virtual Karting game runs on an unexpanded A1200, can the MD do similar? It uses some pretty ugly dithered texturemapping, but speed is good. You get 50 FPS with a faster accelerator card.

[ Show youtube player ]

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by chb

There are some, like Bloodshot, Duke Nukem 3D, Zero Tolerance or the 3D Levels from Toy Story... albeit they technically are rather less advanced than those you mentioned. But Bloodshot e.g. is 1x1 with some tricks...

Thanks for these examples... I didn't know about some of them.
I actually played Zero Tolerance on my Megadrive back in the day. It was Ok.
Never knew about Bloodshot, and I tool a peak on youtube, and it doesn't look any more impressive then Zero.
However, that Duke Nukem is very cool. Very nice framerate, and it looks like gameplay is very good too.

Now, you can't deny that Rise of the Robots is better on A1200?

Originally Posted by DamienD

I haven't denied any of that.

I'm saying that suggesting games like Genetic Species, Napalm: The Crimson Crisis that require accelerators and oodles of RAM is not a fair comparison.

Yeah... agree...
If we compare those, then we can add 32x to Sega and do a comparison.
Well, that's not a bad extension of discussion...
---------------------------
What expanded A1200 could compare with Sega 32x?
030/040...? ... how many ram?

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by mcgeezer

If the Amiga devs of the day wanted to ship their games with bespoke Fast ram cards in their boxes then they could have.... it's no different.

Well... Amiga devs didn't have exactly the economic strength, the market in every part of the world and the sales figures that Nintendo had on the SNES, making viable to add a chip on every cartridge for just one game (or a ram extension).

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by drHirudo

But the possibility to expand the Amiga 1200 makes it head and shoulders above any crap gaming console, including the Sega Mega Drive (Genesis).

Exactly. The A1200 was sold without any expansions to keep the entry price down, but most of us intended to upgrade as finances permitted. It's one reason we bought an Amiga rather than a console.

And we didn't mind, because upgrading has always been an Amiga tradition. The A1000 only came with 256k, so of course the first thing owners did was expand it to 512k. Many (most?) A500 users upgraded to 1MB to run the latest games, and A600 RAM expansions were also very popular. These expansions were standard items that could be installed at time of purchase.

Originally Posted by mcgeezer

for clarity...it's stock Amigas and not mega expanded ones that require 4Mb of Fast Ram to run a game.

Limiting the comparison to an unexpanded Amiga 1200 is not fair, because it was intended to be upgraded. At a minimum it was expected that most users would add a RAM expansion and hard drive (As many A500 users had done in the past). By the time games like OnEscapee and Alien breed 3D2 came out, many A1200 owners had already installed a hard drive and RAM expansion or accelerator card, so such games were viable. Meanwhile Megadrive owners were stuck with an unexpandable machine that would never be able to play more advanced games.

So when when we ask "A1200 or a SEGA Megadrive - which is better..." the Amiga wins hands down. Not just because of what it could do 'out of the box', but what it can do when expanded. We knew when we bought it that the potential was there, even if some of us didn't make use of it (because there were plenty of awesome games that ran fine a stock A1200). And now, 25 years later, its superiority is obvious.

But was the Megadrive ever better than an A1200 for games? I say not. No keyboard or mouse so you couldn't play more sophisticated genres, expensive cartridges that were uneconomic to pirate or hack, no floppy drive to run magazine coverdisks or PD software, and a plethora of boring unoriginal games. Some games on the Megadrive were technically superior to their Amiga equivalents for sure, but moving more tiles around the screen faster doesn't necessarily make a game better. Having too much high-speed action on screen can actually make it worse.

Yesterday I installed The Faery Tale Adventure on my accelerated A1200, and was surprised to find that it was less enjoyable to play than on the A500. Why? Because the extra speed made it too slick. Not unplayable, but too much like an arcade game where you don't have time to think. It spoilt the atmosphere of the game.

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Limiting the comparison to an unexpanded Amiga 1200 is not fair, because it was intended to be upgraded. At a minimum it was expected that most users would add a RAM expansion and hard drive (As many A500 users had done in the past). By the time games like OnEscapee and Alien breed 3D2 came out, many A1200 owners had already installed a hard drive and RAM expansion or accelerator card, so such games were viable. Meanwhile Megadrive owners were stuck with an unexpandable machine that would never be able to play more advanced games.

So when when we ask "A1200 or a SEGA Megadrive - which is better..." the Amiga wins hands down. Not just because of what it could do 'out of the box', but what it can do when expanded. We knew when we bought it that the potential was there, even if some of us didn't make use of it (because there were plenty of awesome games that ran fine a stock A1200). And now, 25 years later, its superiority is obvious.

But was the Megadrive ever better than an A1200 for games? I say not. No keyboard or mouse so you couldn't play more sophisticated genres, expensive cartridges that were uneconomic to pirate or hack, no floppy drive to run magazine coverdisks or PD software, and a plethora of boring unoriginal games. Some games on the Megadrive were technically superior to their Amiga equivalents for sure, but moving more tiles around the screen faster doesn't necessarily make a game better. Having too much high-speed action on screen can actually make it worse.

As a reminder... the question is "which machine is better as a gaming machine...". Fair or unfair it makes no odds because when I started the thread I was only considering stock machines.

Technically, which machine is better for games? ... the answer is in the genre of games?
It seems people agree that the Megadrive is better for platformers and shooters where the A1200 is better at strategy/3d based games...which is fine, when you look at it as a whole you can see technically why that is the case.

As a platform and in my opinion the A1200 is better because it offers a better all round gaming experience and an open development environment that appealed to the bedroom coder.

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by mcgeezer

As a platform and in my opinion the A1200 is better because it offers a better all round gaming experience and an open development environment that appealed to the bedroom coder.

This is true, consoles were a little limited in their diversity in that era.

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by DamienD

8><--------


The SNES was an amazing piece of kit.

The ports were close to Arcade perfect.

...and I don't think an A1200 could do games like the "Donkey Kong Country" series any justice, or "Star Fox" etc.

Sure SNES was good, but StarFox with its GSU-1 coprocessor on the game cartridge is not the best example of the SNES's power.

[ZEUSDAZ]

I still have my original A500 which I bought back in the day and still love it as along with my ZX Spectrum Toastrack it gave me the greatest fun gaming days ever, however the A1200 felt so empty to me, a fraction of the library the A500 has and came too late, it just didn't give me much joy so I sold it,...now my Megadrive on the other hand is amazing, the sound chip is incredible and there are sooooooooooooooo many games and shmups on it.
So in other words I'd have a megadrive over a A1200 any day!!!

[DamienD]

I must admit that I never had an A1200; I've only experienced it via emulation.

...but purely from a "games" perspective, I agree with a lot of comments here. Most A1200 games are just slightly rehashed A500 games at the end of the day; as it was released too late, and developers didn't really get to sink their teeth into this hardware before Commodore's collapse.

Yes there are exclusives like Banshee etc... but there can't be more than 30 exceptional games? I'm talking stock A1200 here.

So, I would definitely rather have a Sega Mega Drive or Super Nintendo (which I did, both in fact) as opposed to an A1200 from a "games" perspective... but at the same time I still had my A500. All these were great machines!!!

Final point, as most of you know I'm an old school arcade junkie, so really the Sega Mega Drive and Super Nintendo won over the Amiga in this department

[roondar]

Originally Posted by ZEUSDAZ

however the A1200 felt so empty to me, a fraction of the library the A500 has

Just to point this out once (aimed at the thread, not you per se): the A1200’s library includes almost all of the A500 library. After all, the question here isn’t “if you already had an A500, would an A1200 be better to buy than a Mega Drive”, but rather “if you had to choose between just the A1200 and the Mega Drive, which is better”.

Ignoring the A500 games feels very odd to me in that regard.

Originally Posted by DamienD

but there can't be more than 30 exceptional games? I'm talking stock A1200 here.

Which is no different from either console really, so I don’t get that point?

[sokolovic]

Not taking in consideration A500 games for the A1200 is absolut non sense, especially considering the A1200 isn't just the AGA but had other additions.

Many many A500 non twitch games were vastly improved on the 1200. Faster, smoother, better loading or disk change management, HD playable without needing extra RAM, Hi-res for some etc... Frontier, The Settlers, Dune 2, Indy IV, A-Train etc... In fact all the non twitch games that were correctly coded benefits from the better A1200 specifications (and even some twitch games like MK1&2, Turrican 3, AB Tower Assault...).

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by roondar

Which is no different from either console really, so I don’t get that point?

Really I was being generous with saying 30 for a standard A1200

If I actually took the time to list them it would probably be less than half that number...

Like I mentioned; most are rehashed A500 games with very little improvement.

[Tigerskunk]

As I have understood McGeezers initial post, though, he was asking about technical differences between the stock machines (A1200 and MD) and which is superior here, and not about the library or potential upgrades.

This thread is going many places it wasn't intended to go, imo.

[roondar]

Originally Posted by Steril707

As I have understood McGeezers initial post, though, he was asking about technical differences between the stock machines (A1200 and MD) and which is superior here, and not about the library or potential upgrades.

This thread is going many places it wasn't intended to go, imo.

I agree, it has gone far from the original intent. Not just with the library stuff (which was partly due to me) but also the many comparisons with the A500, SNES or PC instead.

Anyway, if we are to look at it on those terms: I'd say the A1200 is either equal or better than the MD in all areas, apart from one. That one area being the number of objects it can display in a frame* before it starts to slow down.
You could perhaps argue about the sound chip, but the A1200 can effectively match the MD here with some clever programming or simply using higher quality samples. This includes the number of audio channels playing: I tried out implementing software mixing on the A1200 a while back and it's a surprisingly cheap effect, if you're a bit clever in how you approach it.

Edit: The above might not be fully clear. I mean to say that the A1200 is more powerful in many areas, equal in a few and worse in only one.

*) To be clear, I'm talking about objects of reasonable sizes you might see in games, such as say 32x32. For smaller objects, the A1200 actually outperforms the MD in terms of numbers of objects per frame.

[vulture]

I think audio is the one department any Amiga slays both MD and SNES even with less channels available. No comparison in terms of quality, it's night and day (especially vs the MD), it just takes a good composer and some clever coding.

[Turrican_3]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Limiting the comparison to an unexpanded Amiga 1200 is not fair, because it was intended to be upgraded.

As an Amiga owner who always expanded its hardware I totally understand your point (especially with the A1200 that easily became my most powerful Amiga ever), BUT in the context of gaming I believe the comparison is indeed fair, as the expandability actually turned out being an issue*, further exacerbated by the low install base and the plethora of accelerator boards actually available on the market - and let's not even start talking about PC competition that was starting to become mainstream nor piracy that plagued the Amiga as a whole.

* = issue as in, you had to spend much more than a Megadrive hardware, and this further fragmented the already limited market; hence, hardly unexpected, most of the developers just targeted the A1200 as an enhanced A500, with AGA and the A1200 vastly bigger expansion capabilities ending up being rarely exploited. :-\

[vulture]

@roondar

Wouldn't you say that the A1200 outperforms MD at large objects as well? Based on 64 pixels wide/unlimited height hw sprites of AGA?

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by vulture

I think audio is the one department any Amiga slays both MD and SNES even with less channels available. No comparison in terms of quality, it's night and day (especially vs the MD), it just takes a good composer and some clever coding.

This.

Back before handheld Amiga emulation was really a thing, my portable fix was with SNES and MD versions which were much lighter on the poor ARM CPUs we had. I was always disappointed with the sounds and music, especially the MD.