CD32 vs Floppy versions

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

CDTV and CD32 games should have been the equivalent of the PC CDROM games for the A500 and the A1200 (or MegaCD games for the MD).

Instead, most of the games were indeed direct shovelware with no improvement at all.
Commodore should have commercialized CDROM drives for Amiga computers users first, then release eventually an all in one CD solution. They did release A570 but it was far too late (and I don't even speak of the CD1200).

But what would have been the point of buying an A570 to have the exact same game that you had on a basic A500 (same thing for the CD1200) ?

I remember an interview of David Pleasance saying to Amiga users not to buy the A1200 because the CD32 was a better machine.

Alot of early PC CD games are just disk versions on CD too, same could be said for PC Engine CD games, bar the odd CD soundtrack there was nothing that couldnt be done on card.
CD drives failed i.e the A570 because it was too expensive, which wasnt Commodores fault as PC drives were just as costly, and Amigas on average were £300, people didnt want to spend another £300 on a cd drive that didnt have a killer game, and there wasnt enough desktop owners buying games to bother making a desktop drive.

But back to the point for those who did buy one, cd audio, cdxl video, no disk swapping, multimedia disks and thousands of pd, demos on 1 disk for £20 instead of £1 per floppy, there were lots of reasons, but the high price put off consumers and hence developers were put off.

[sokolovic]

But many Amiga CD games not even had a sound improvement. Look at Team17 games on the CD32 for example. They are pure floppies conversion.

I mean, PC Engine CD games were'nt existing on card format with exactly the same version, sound included. The CDROM² system have its own library, not exactly the same as the PC Engine, and therefore, it has is own interest.
(and just one thing, people were buying CD drives at that time. Not for the Amiga maybe, but they were. If not, we would'nt have such a fantastic CD library on the PC Engine nor on PC or Mac CD-rom in the beginning of the 90's. Even the Mega CD library is far more interesting than CDTV/CD32 ones)

[Amiga1992]

I have to say that cost efficiency and lack of disk swapping is a great bonus compared to floppy counterparts.

Is it enough of a pull for Amiga floppy machine owners to switch, though? I don't think so.

And we go back to: the already existing Amiga userbase should NOT have been the target audience for machines like CDTV or CD32. It should have been aggressively and exclusively focused on converting new people to the platform. When David Pleasance says to -existing- Amiga users "don't get our other product, get this product", you can tell they fucked up. They failed to figure out a way to dip in a new market so they went for the existing userbase. Lame move.

Would exclusive software had been a pull for the existing userbase and also for new people to adopt? Probably. But they didn't promote that. They made the tech, but forgot that without a "killer app" (Sonic, Starfox), they would have gotten nowhere. Microcosm definitely wasn't a "killer app".

[Gzegzolka]

So many wasted opportunities and good ideas under bad Commodore decisions. I like cd32 for its games and I hate it for that console design. As people above said it have some pros and cons, some games were straight ports from floppy version without good pad support, some actually use well what CD have to offer.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

But many Amiga CD games not even had a sound improvement. Look at Team17 games on the CD32 for example. They are pure floppies conversion.

I mean, PC Engine CD games were'nt existing on card format with exactly the same version, sound included. The CDROM² system have its own library, not exactly the same as the PC Engine, and therefore, it has is own interest.
(and just one thing, people were buying CD drives at that time. Not for the Amiga maybe, but they were. If not, we would'nt have such a fantastic CD library on the PC Engine nor on PC or Mac CD-rom in the beginning of the 90's. Even the Mega CD library is far more interesting than CDTV/CD32 ones)

Most Team 17 games had other extras like intros and cd audio, only the double packs and a couple of others were straight ports.
PC Engine CD was different though, releasing a game on CD and cart was not commercially viable, where as on Amiga and CD32 it was.

NEC somehow released a CD addom for cheap price ($399), wasnt the same story for PC, Mac and Amiga, first Mac CDROM in Mar 1988 was £895 ($1199) first PC drive in Oct 1991 was £450 ($549) people moaned at the CDTV being £599 at launch in Mar 1991 but compared to a PC standalone drive it wasnt bad, plus A570 in Apr 1992 being £349.
By 1993 prices were starting to come down, but as previous examples of CD32 outselling MegaCD, CDi and PC CD combined in early 1994 shows in the UK at least PC CDROM took alot longer to take off than people remember.

Well its a bit unfair to compare the CD32 library against the MegaCD one, one had the rugged pulled under it after 7 months and the other had millions ploughed into the launch, i’m sure the CD32 would have turned out some more great games had it had the chance, which is also why it got alot of straight ports as the devs knew it wasnt worth spending more cash on dev when theres no new units going into retail.

[Juz400]

Other thing to consider was the cost of the equipment to develop on CD.
The networking company I worked at 96/97 during 97 it was decided that we needed to offer our drivers on CD, most PC`s and laptops came with one then.
Im sure it was at least £1000 for the HP burner and a good SCSI controller.
We spent a fortune on blank CD`s from everyone who made them back then. Trouble was the burner was pretty crappy with 1 in 8 a succesful working CD.
In the end we have to buy a dedicated standalone unit that had 4 drives, 2x1TB SCSI drives and a SCSI port. (it was basically a PC inside)
This cost us £10,000
You have to test and test and test before you have a `GOLD` release CD that went to be duplicated thousands of times!
In 1991/2 Im sure the process was similar but even more expensive!
CBM should have released an external unit that plugged into the 25way D on the back of the A590 and maybe an updated ROM for it too
Having to disconnect your HDD to use a CD drive?? MADNESS!!

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by Amigajay

NEC somehow released a CD addom for cheap price ($399)

I think that "somehow" was the magic of "Made In Japan"

Well its a bit unfair to compare the CD32 library against the MegaCD one

All things considered, the Mega CD library is poor.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by Akira

I think that "somehow" was the magic of "Made In Japan"


All things considered, the Mega CD library is poor.

Well it was wasnt bad for an add-on that most thought would fail straight away, it had the money and devlopers to make the most of the cd space, and sure cinepak was crap it at least got people excited about cd technology in some regards, the CD32 didnt have chance to produce its own crap motion video games from big publishers, all we got was some dodgy bloke on a speedboat hoping his homemade cdxl game would entice 10 people to buy a copy!

[Amiga1992]

You speak like if Road Avenger, Time Gal, Night Trap or the like, were any kind of good games! They were absolutely dismal!
I love my MegaCD but all the games I like have nothing to do with that, more with the extra storage and capabilities of the add-on (it had a whole other 68k and could do mode7 type shit), and they are few anyway.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by Akira

You speak like if Road Avenger, Time Gal, Night Trap or the like, were any kind of good games! They were absolutely dismal!
I love my MegaCD but all the games I like have nothing to do with that, more with the extra storage and capabilities of the add-on (it had a whole other 68k and could do mode7 type shit), and they are few anyway.

Well they were limited in gameplay sure, but drove sales as they couldn't be done on the Megadrive, but no i wasn't talking about them, more Thunderhawk, Sonic CD, Terminator, Soul Star, Batman Returns etc

[malko]

Originally Posted by Amigajay

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1q9l_bYXIOvvCMxMVmaoSCy2CHxxNiq2YXUSJd3r-ZaQ/htmlview [...]

Originally Posted by Amigajay

[...] and Amigas on average were £300, people didnt want to spend another £300 on a cd drive that didnt have a killer game, and there wasnt enough desktop owners buying games to bother making a desktop drive. [...]

And at that time we were ~teenagers thus with not so big purse...

Originally Posted by Akira

[...] But yeah A1200/CD32's biggest drawback was that it kept compatibility with shit old machines that were working in a way that didn't allow for console-like action to happen at its best, whether it be 2D or 3D. [...]

Try to see it in the point of view of a publisher. What would you have done to pay the people working for you ? Yep, developing for the computers/hardware well established, thus trying to have as much as possible money back, and only port on the new platform. Sad in the customer's point of view, but it still happens today . Also remember the early days of the Amiga, when 8bits software were "ported" to 16bits.

Originally Posted by Akira

[...] It was doomed from the beginning.
The hardware was able. They could have done a lot of good stuff with it if they had any clue.

Maybe companies like Psygnosis or Ocean (or ...) that were "big names" at that time could have done something... Anyway, we have to admit that the marketing made for the CD32 by C= at that time was really far from optimum. So bad that I always saw the CD32 as an A1200 with a CD in a console form factor... and since console were not my cup of tea, equation resolved.

Originally Posted by Akira

You speak like if Road Avenger, Time Gal, Night Trap or the like, were any kind of good games! They were absolutely dismal!
[...]

. I do like that kind of games . Dragon's Lair, Space Ace, etc. I confess that they have unusual gameplay but are excellent games .

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by malko

Maybe companies like Psygnosis or Ocean (or ...) that were "big names" at that time could have done something...

Not really.
Psygnosis was given early access to the CD32 and the shit they came up with was Microcosm. Which wasn't even exclusive.

[Ian]

Originally Posted by slx

What is the difference between the games what released on CD32 and the floppy version of the same games?
I checked this list
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Amiga_CD32_games
and I can not imagine what is the difference between them.
For example the 'International Karate +' CD and floppy version.
Have all the CD versions contain CD audio music?
OK, I think the 'Simon the Sorcerer' has speech, too. But the others?

You forgot lack of a decent save option.

[sokolovic]

Don't misundertand me, I love the CD32 (and the CDTV). The only thing I have with these machines is that it has slowed down, even killed, real CDROM developpement for the Amiga, at a time that was becoming a big thing everywhere.

Commodore, among a lot of others bad choices, have created his own concurrency.

Instead of having real improved CD Version of Amiga games on CDTV/CD32 (and a CDROm solution for the computers), and games completely impossible to have on floppies, some devs have made just plain shovelware therefore, a big part of their library isn't complementary of the Amiga computers but completely redundant (what is the point of Turrican 1&2 on the CDTV ???).
The aiming market should have been the existing base of Amiga users that will buy a CD drive AND new users that will go for an all in one Amiga CD solution. (sorry for this "what if ?" phrase. The past is past, of course...)

And pardon me for having bad taste, but I would have love, back in those days, to see CD-Rom games with crappy fmv on the Amiga (which would have been far better than on the MegaCD btw). This is why I love the works made by Earok to port Time Gals or Road Avenger nowadays on the Amiga. This works make me considering now adding a CD Drive on my A1200.
(plus..., I'm still hoping to see an Amiga CD version of Dune.)

[Amigajay]

Well yes most games were shovelware, but you cant blame the devs as per the norm Commodore screwed up in some way or another with each CD launch, it was too risky to develop cd only games when the userbase for cd only games was so small, by the time developers were porting cd only games for the CD32 some due out end of 1994, Commodore went under, so its not surprise nothing happened in this respect, had Commodore lasted even just 1 more year we would have had some great looking cd only games to ‘play’

[sokolovic]

I agree that this was Commodore's fault, in every ways.
I don't blame the devs.

When you considers that one of the only game that was supported financially by Commodore was Dangerous Streets.... Can you imagine how they self destroyed the image of their machine with such a game ?

[alexh]

Originally Posted by Amigajay

Whoever thought to release a couple of ancient games when they had Lionheart a perfect console game?

These games were not published by Thalion. They were published by UK publisher Unique (aka Grandslam) who didn't own a license to publish Lionheart. Grandslam published Thalion games in the UK between 1989-1990. Grandslam used the (arguably expired) licenses they had for Chambers of Shaolin & Seven Gates of Jambala to re-publish for CD32. When I asked the Thalion developers they never knew about these CD32 releases. While non were still members of the Thalion management I suspect these games were probably released without Thalion even being told.

Originally Posted by Amigajay

i know it was planned along with No Second Prize, but even so old A500 games being sold at full price hurt the CD32 more than not releasing them.

I was told by Thalion developers they had an A1200, CD32 and Atari Falcon 030 in the office but never developed anything on any of those platforms. They were considered not economically viable. In 1993/4 the A500 was the only economically viable platform which is why Lionheart and Ambermoon were ECS only.

[donnie]

In hindsight cd was mostly a waste of time, if you like handpixeled art.

with the few resources available, there just wasn't man hours to do hand pixeled art.

The extra space just means more room for laziness, and bad choices. In the end it just means shitty voice overs, fmv, use of prerendered backdrops, digitized graphics, photoshopped graphics. Everything i dislike.

A500 with its 800kb floppies was completely balanced.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by donnie

In hindsight cd was mostly a waste of time, if you like handpixeled art.

with the few resources available, there just wasn't man hours to do hand pixeled art.

The extra space just means more room for laziness, and bad choices. In the end it just means shitty voice overs, fmv, use of prerendered backdrops, digitized graphics, photoshopped graphics. Everything i dislike.

A500 with its 800kb floppies was completely balanced.

Half of that i agree with, but having Chris Barrie do the voice for Simon The Sorcerer made the game for me, plus not having to swap what was 11 odd disks was a great reason, and having cd audio in games esp in games that no sfx+music option on the Amiga was a great bonus, so i dont see how cd was waste of time, plenty of pixel based games too on 3do, ngcd, sat, ps1 etc cd was a very welcomed for most who didnt want to pay increasingly £60-£70 for a cartridge

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by Amigajay

cd was a very welcomed for most who didnt want to pay increasingly £60-£70 for a cartridge

Funny how that's what a game still costs despite the cheaper media being used (in many cases, NO MEDIA at all!)