Worst Amiga model ever

[DisposableHero]

Workbench 2 was a massive improvement on 1.3, although the benefits didn't really become apparent for games users for a few years - the first thing most people noticed was SWIV, Lotus 1 et al not working. I think at the time there was confusion over the extent of issues, one company wrongly reported about a 90% failure rate when in truth it was more like a 90% success rate (if not higher). For the newer titles the companies should have taken the blame, as Kickstart 2 was out there on the A3000 and they should have ensured the games worked on that (would have meant a lot less A1200 issues too).

By contrast, nobody had any warning with the A600, no incentive beforehand to design games and software that didn't use the keypad - the fact that Deluxe Paint 3 was bundled with the A600 but not fully usable on it shows the lack of joined-up thinking behind that machine. So to me the A600 is the worst by a mile, although I agree that the A1200 was too little and too late, and the A1500 seems pointless (everything useful that could be done with an A2000 realistically needed a hard drive, so why remove it?). Commodore generally made a mess of marketing, promoting and developing the Amiga brand - I can't help wishing someone like Tandy or Amstrad had bought it instead....

[attle]

A2000A, i.e. with the revision <= 4.x boards, really should have been an option in the list.

[Amigajay]

The CD32 was only 'bad' because the A1200/A4000 before it! Had the AGA been better all the following AGA range would have been too, but it was too little too late.
As an Amiga console it was good and expandable, so it cant be blamed if the A1200/A4000 arent!

[mjnurney]

pah ive voted

Atari ST

[Bugala]

personally I think A600 had one thing in it that I think as beign something genius, especially now afterwards watching.

For it had that hardware copy protection thing. Im not sure how that worked etc. But had they been able to replace all A500s with A600s, or even better, put that same copy protection thingy to A1200 as well, maybe game companies had started using it more, and maybe it had prevented from software/games being copied so much, and perhaps we would be having much more lively Amiga still.

But, does anyone know if that Hardware copyprotection thing was a wroking thing at all?

To my understanding it was that if game supported it (and was there even any?) you were supposed to put something bit like cartridge inside the A600 to play that game, or it would refuse to work.

But was that ever used, and did that really help anything, or did pirates get round it the moment it was released?

I could easily see the problem being that if you would release a game that supported that hardware copyprotection thing, then you would only sell it to A600 users, or otherwise the ones with A500 version could crack it and copy it to A600 as well.

But anyone know about this better?

[B14ck W01f]

So, despite having a CF slot and the option of having a hard disk built in, the A600 is the worst model ever. That is ironic.

I voted for the A1500 (odd numbers) because it is exactly the same as a normal A2000.

But that is second to the A500+. Reason: incompatibilities with older software, leaky battery.

[Thorham]

All Amigas are awesome, how one could ask which one is the worst is beyond me

[GhstWlf]

I voted CD32 since it doesn't have a floppy drive or memory card to save to (the internal 1K is not enough).
Also it came at a time where nobody knew how to use the CD:s extra storage. Yes, that PlayStation was released soon after and it's first titles wasn't that great either.
Also, again, the time between the CD32 and the PlayStation release got developers ready to use the CD drive for more.
Ps. a small timeline: Final Fantasy VII in 1997, PlayStation in 1994 and CD32 in 1993.

[Amigajay]

Well the PS1 was Sep 95 in Europe a full two years after the CD32 which doesnt seem like long, but in the early 90s it was a massive gap...dont forget the Snes in Europe was only released in Spring 92!
The 1k nvram was awful yes, but CD was the future, it was great having a whole game on 1 disk instead if 12 on some adventures, and with cd music and speech, had Commodore lasted longer then more games of course been released for it.

[quahappy]

I voted CD32. The Joypad was shocking to say the least and the catalogue of games were very minimal and disappointing. It was a real shame to see many existing A1200 games thrown onto a CD-ROM with no or little extras. In the end I got rid of my CD32 and bought an external CD-ROM drive for my A1200 and all the existing CD32 games ran ok on it. Roadkill was a great game with a long FMV intro. As was Liberation.

[Devlin]

I voted the A500+. Probably would have voted A600 had I not had owned one in my childhood.

[jack-3d]

I voted A2000

But why is A600 "winning" this poll? Its the best oldschool (OCS/ECS) Amiga ever. Its smaller then A500/2000/3000, it has builtin IDE, PCMCIA, easy expandable chip memory, new production accelerators are available for it... A600 just rulez ;oP

[Twiggy]

I guess because some people are going by "back in the day" rather than "ever".

[DisposableHero]

When released, the A600 was an inferior machine to the A500+ - no keypad meant it couldn't use a lot of flight sims or serious software (including DPaint 3 which was bundled with it), and it wasn't until years later that accelerators were available for it, making the cheap hard drive upgrade less useful than it should have been. The PCMCIA card support was a bonus, but I believe it wasn't possible for a card to be readable on both Amiga and PC, and who was going to make games for non-AGA systems if A500/A500+ owners couldn't play them? At least it was supposedly more reliable than the A500 and A500+. By mid-1992 everyone was on top of A500+ compatibility issues, a decent range of hardware was out there - and suddenly companies had another new machine to adjust to, when Commodore knew full well there was another coming six months later? Madness.

If they hadn't wasted development time on trying to invent an unneeded budget version of the A500+, they might have got the intended AAA graphics ready for the A1200 rather than having to release the compromised AGA chipset instead. Or been able to delay it to mid-93, by which time other hardware costs would ahve made for a more powerful spec for the same price.