Off with the rose-colored glasses! The hard look back at your Amiga childhood

[saimon69]

@EugeneNine

Well, if you were like me and, beside playability, were looking for IMMERSION, then is with Amiga that things started to get interesting!

Even if there are very immersive games even on 8-bit; Saboteur, Project Firestart, Elite comes to mind...

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by EugeneNine

<puts on flameproof suit>Prior to it you had to use your imagination since the graphics/sounds were so basic so the game makers focused on play.

Ironic, since in ALL of the Atari 8-bit games I have known back in the day, it was actually the gameplay mechanics that were absolutely BASIC as well as the graphics. Which is why I ditched them all in the last couple of weeks, and I actually think the Amiga is only slightly better in gameplay mechanics.

[EugeneNine]

Maybe its just my memory, the c64 games I had were more 'fun'. Could be because I was younger then.

[rare_j]

Originally Posted by EugeneNine

Maybe its just my memory, the c64 games I had were more 'fun'. Could be because I was younger then.

Probably you just outgrew video games not long after that time. I think this discussion is more for people who never outgrew games, and look back at those earlier fond memories with a more discerning eye.

[AmigaHope]

I've said it before and I'll say it again, the Amiga's Achilles Heel was it was almost entirely support by the Bedroom Coder culture. It was a culture of poorly organized small groups that could show amazing coding, amazing game design, and amazing audio/visual experiences, but rarely coordinated enough or funded enough to produce all three at once.

On the 8-bit systems, it was less work to create the needed components. A competent coder with a great game design could create a great game for not a lot of time and money. A great coder with an okay game design could create something impressive though maybe not as fun to play.

The Japanese made the best games because they had the best organization and funding to coordinate the work of talented coders, designers, and artists. American studios took a while to catch up, partly because they didn't have as much emphasis on code quality, but they did have the organization. Europeans, with their bedroom culture, took *much longer*, and the studios that finally managed to organize well enough were mostly funded for projects that would target platforms with global appeal rather than the mostly Euro-only market of the Amiga.

In the modern world you can see a lot of the same barriers, only without as many geographic differences. The number of people you have to coordinate and pay to make a good AAA 3D game in a reasonable amount of time is in the hundreds. There are no more mass-market games made in bedrooms because it's simply not possible.

On the other hand, retro "16-bit style" games have gotten better and better. The tools and sheer power available mean you don't need an expert coder anymore, just a good game idea, a decent artist, and perseverance. The bedroom developer (though we call them "indie" now) can make a great experience that would have easily been AAA-quality back in the Amiga days.

What could have given the Amiga better games? Better organization of its software development. Look at what the Japanese managed to do with absolute shite systems like the PC-9801. When they were given a roughly Amiga-equivalent system (I'd say the PC Engine was pretty close -- though its sprites were better and it had a tilemode, and a far worse CPU) they worked graphical wonders like the great Amiga coders did, but they paired it with great game design.

[EugeneNine]

Originally Posted by AmigaHope

On the 8-bit systems, it was less work to create the needed components. A competent coder with a great game design could create a great game for not a lot of time and money. A great coder with an okay game design could create something impressive though maybe not as fun to play.

This is why I say games changed going from 8 to 16 bit. The graphics and sounds were simple enough that a coder could handle them. 16 bit they got better quality but then came the rise of specializations. So now instead of budgeting a coder or two, you had to budget a couple coders, a couple graphics designers, a couple musicians, a couple of creatives to design the game play and then the dreaded project mangers. Now you had 10x the people so you had to have multiple projects and each a smaller slice of time on each project.

Then came release schedules so some things had to be dropped to get it out the door on time.

Then the magazine reviews so you had to one up the other guy in graphics and sound knowing that the reviewers were on time constraints as well so you had to wow them at the start. This led to the flashy intros to get the good reviews but the long term game play was the first to get dropped hoping the reviewers wouldn't get far enough to notice.
It made the perfect storm for the downfall of game design.

Originally Posted by Hewitson

Exactly. An amusing example of this is that Zool was meant to compete with Sonic the Hedgehog. What a joke.

To be fair , Zool wasn't a bad attempt at creating a mascot type character for the Amiga , I also was never a fan of Sonic games, played the 1st game a little, did the 1st couple of worlds and never bothered with it since.


Whereas Zool 2 held my attention for a good while longer, and still play it on occasion now, where i haven't touched a Sonic game in years.


Many games on the Amiga were terrible admittedly, but it did have a few gems that still stand up today when compared with the Megadrive & Snes.

[Hewitson]

Zool was a terrible attempt at creating a mascot. I'm not saying the Sonic games are brilliant, they're not, but they're a million times more playable than Zool. You can't even have music + SFX at the same time on that piece of shit.

music/fx , same with most Amiga games, limitations of the hardware.

Sonic wasnt that playable, speed through the levels as fast as possible missing half of it out and finishing the entire 1st game in less than 3 hrs many ppl finished it in under 2 hrs at the time, not much playability there.

Maybe terrible to you as a mascot , but it did well enough sales wise to justify a sequel , and a Zool 3 was apparently planned.

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by xubidoo

music/fx , same with most Amiga games, limitations of the hardware.

The fact that a stock A500 can't play Quake is also a limitation of the hardware. Ultimately, having to choose between music and sound effects had an impact on the perception of games, especially when compared to contemporary platforms that had similar games without such obvious compromises.

Sonic wasnt that playable, speed through the levels as fast as possible missing half of it out and finishing the entire 1st game in less than 3 hrs many ppl finished it in under 2 hrs at the time, not much playability there.

But replayability was excellent, because you could spend hours exploring the levels and finding new areas. It sounds like you weren't interested in playing it.

[sneckburger]

I'm a bit burnt out with the Modern $60/£50"AAA" titles you buy today for the latest platforms as they seem to be similar to each other in design or a sequel of an previous game. In short creative new ideas are risky investments when new games now cost millions to make, so Investors bank their money on things that are proven.

i.e. they'll keep peddling the CoD franchise as long as people keep buying it. Hopefully though at some point everyone will realise they've been buying the same game over and over and Activision have been playing them like a mug.

Most now seem to be an epic 24 hour playtime journey padded out with boring chores to boost your progression while playing part in a Movie like story which TBH most times are a bit cheesy in comparison to an actual good movie or tv series.

There's plenty of new games around at the moment and as an avid "casual" gamer I end up buying new games a few months after release as I can't keep up. Now I look a games and if it looks like an epic 100 hour game I tend to avoid it as I simply haven't the time anymore (Reddead 2 was an exception)
The Amiga though even the ones you needed to put hours in are short in comparison and most are great for just a quick blast to kill an hour or two.
You can still get short games in the Indy areas on the Ps4 and some are great. but the selection is small and why pay for something when there's a huge catalogue of similar stuff on my Amigas HDD.

[Turrican_3]

Not sure I understand the Amiga vs PS4 comparison: it's mostly an apple to oranges one IMHO, too many things have changed especially at retail, where your average AAA game has likely more or less the budget of the whole Amiga commercial output combined.
(^^ this is meant to be a bit of a tongue-in-cheek statement, but not THAT much considering there are modern games with budget in the hundred of millions dollars)

I'd argue that the closer thing to the average high profile Amiga game nowadays is the indie scene, and that alone says a lot about how unfair is the comparison.

Having said that, as a person who grew up with Commodore computers but later moved to consoles and rediscovered past platforms that I couldn't afford at the time when the Amiga was still commercially viable I'm quite convinced that a lot of games compared very unfavourably to their console counterparts, and that many many Amiga hyped titles were not as good as the reviews pretended them to be.

I'm a firm believer though that a well refined gameplay is usually able to stand the test of time. That's why trying to play 20-30 years old games is usually quite telling about their "true" (assuming such a thing even exists, that is) quality.

[gimbal]

I don't think you're far off actually when it comes to the cost comparison. The costs to license, design, build, package, deliver and market a single modern AAA title is ludicrous.

Give it time though, the indie scene is becoming more AAA every day. It's bloody amazing what one or two people can get done with something like Unreal Engine 4. And I've seen what you can get done in VR with nothing more than Unity... that's also amazing.

[Turrican_3]

Originally Posted by gimbal

Give it time though, the indie scene is becoming more AAA every day.

Agreed!
But not necessarily in a positive way.

I mean, the bar has been rising for a while so I think it's becoming more and more difficult (and arguably expensive, despite the huge help from popular engines you mentioned) to achieve success while keeping a relatively low budget and putting out a reasonably acceptable technical level.

And let's not even start talking about how crowded is the modern videogame landscape... which I guess in turn keeps costs high (promotion and so on) and makes selling well difficult unless you're *very* lucky with word of mouth. But how common is the latter?

[Shatterhand]

music/fx , same with most Amiga games, limitations of the hardware.

I'm sorry, this is not a limitation of the hardware.

Lots of games have both music and fx while running from 512kb Ram. You just need some proper planning.

4 channels are enough for this. The MSX has just 3 PSG sound channels and STILL every frigging game have both music and sfx. Of course sound with a PSG is basically memory-free while on Amiga you need to use memory for them, but it's still no reason.

I'd still prefer a modest soundtrack with a few sound effects than have to choose between a great soundtrack OR great SFX.

Not only that, but most games that would make you choose between music or SFX didn't even had so great soundtracks OR sound effects to start.

-

I do think people on Amiga scene usually overrate stuff made for Amiga, some things people consider AWESOME are many times medicore or just really very shit (Like Xenon 2, oh my God)

In the other hand I see people downplaying the Amiga a lot.

I do have the amiga in a warm place at my heart because it was my main gaming machine when I was growing up and I spent a LOT of my youth in front of one.

But nowadays I still love retrogaming a lot , have a big collection of systems and still play them a lot. It's easy to see many games on Amiga aren't that great, and sometimes you were grateful just to have a game that worked properly, ran at a decent framerate and didn't have a ridiculous control scheme.

STILL, the Amiga really has a GREAT library of games, there are many very good games on it, lots of good exclusive-content and it is a very competent system from a gaming point of view. It does have its quirks with the stupid 1 button controller, but still has a very good amount of good games to make it a very worth gaming system.

[Tigerskunk]

Sound & Music playing at the same time is DEFINITELY not a limitation of the system.
You just have to decide what you spend your RAM on.

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by xubidoo

music/fx , same with most Amiga games, limitations of the hardware.

Not true. Most games successfully managed to mix music and sound effects.

Originally Posted by xubidoo

Sonic wasnt that playable, speed through the levels as fast as possible missing half of it out and finishing the entire 1st game in less than 3 hrs many ppl finished it in under 2 hrs at the time, not much playability there.

As previously said I don't think Sonic is a brilliant game. But it's a far better, and far more playable game, than Zool. This is not an opinion, but a fact.

[Muzkat]

The Amiga is remembered for many things, and one them is its impressive games catalogue. People are still discovering "hidden gems" to this day, 30 years on, which speaks volumes about its amazing array of quality titles.

The Amiga was well ahead of its time, upstaging the NES, Master System and PC. The Amiga also arrived a few years before the SNES and Megadrive really took hold, and so I feel comparisons to these systems are slightly unfair. They were playing catchup, were following in the Amiga's footsteps and learning from its mistakes. They were also dedicated games machines whereas the Amiga wasn't. It's like comparing an older car that's a station wagon to a newer model which is more sporty - of course the flashy coupe will have refinements that make it seem better. Then again, the fact that the Amiga could still compete alongside the SNES and Megadrive well into the nineties just goes to prove how amazing the humble Miggy was.

If you were going to compare the Amiga's games library to a modern day system's, the closest comparison would be Steam. The two share a number of similarities, in that they both feature a sprinkling of AAA titles amidst a sea of independently made games created by bedroom developers. And the Amiga game catalogue wins hands down.

Steam is a very sorry sight these days, with shoddily made shovelware, C grade horror titles and thinly veiled hentai outranking quality titles 100 to 1. Most Amiga games were, and still are, playable and somewhat interesting, with so many proverbial diamonds in the rough.

A few more points I'd like to address:

Originally Posted by Hewitson

No way. Almost every game on the Amiga sucked. Most games on the PS4 are pretty damn good.

Most games on the Amiga were playable and somewhat fun. Have you seen the PS4 library nowadays? I'd say 20% of it is worthwhile. 40% of it is a portrait of indie failure. The other 40% is sexy girl outfit DLC.

Originally Posted by ruinashiro

FPS: Doom on PC would take #1. In fact, anything 3D would.

Simulation: Some PC simulation game on a 486 (released '89) would take #1

Turn-based strategy: Some PC game like Civilization on a 486 would take #1

Shoot'em'up: Any number of shooters on the x68000 would take #1, #2, #3, ... then the rest would be taken up with PC-9801 games...

Arcade port: Any number of arcade-perfect ports on the x68000 would take #1, #2, #3, ...

Platformer: again, x68000 or PC-9801, etc. would take #1, #2, #3... (x68000 has Castlevania Chronicles so that's my vote for #1)

1vs1 Fighting: x68000 Street Fighter 2

Scrolling Beat'em'up: x68000 Final Fight

RPG: x68000 or PC-9801 would win for JRPG. Obviously, PC for western RPG

Pinball: Amiga would take #1, #2, #3...

The only way your bet would work would be to limit it to US computers (even then PC would dominate FPS, 3D, CPU-intensive genres), and you've already limited it arbitrarily by not allowing arcade machines or home consoles.

I don't know anything about the x68000. Having said that, you can't go past the following Amiga gems:

Platformers: Turrican 1 and 2 are universally acknowledged as two of the finest platformers ever made. I would add Gods to that list, but I know that would be contentious.

Sports: SWOS, Kick Off, On the Ball and Speedball 2 are still regarded as some of the best sports games on any platform.

Racers: Stunt Car Racer and Lotus 2 are still thought of as some of the greatest racing games ever made.

Puzzle: Ever heard of a little known game called Lemmings?

Arcade conversions: Not the Amiga's strongest suite, but still some really good ones such as Toki, Pang and the R-Types. Heck, one magazine even thought the Amiga's conversion of Mortal Kombat was better than the SNES and Megadrive's.

Originally Posted by Hewitson

Exactly. An amusing example of this is that Zool was meant to compete with Sonic the Hedgehog. What a joke.

Sure, games were hyped up. Everyone was doing it. Remember how Tuff Enuff and Eternal Champions were supposed to be Street Fighter killers? Blood Storm and Way of the Warrior were going to be the end of Mortal Kombat? Rival Turf was better than Final Fight? I could go on. Embellishment was standard fare for reviewers, and still is.

The Amiga had its shortcomings, which lent its games eccentricities, not to mention a certain style (eg: lots of gray in the palette, disk swapping, difficulty combining sound and music etc). However, all this doesn't mean its games were bad. I personally feel blessed to have had the Amiga as my "childhood system," as it enabled me to enjoy the unending array of eclectic and quirky titles that were available.

In short, I couldn't disagree more with this thread.

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by Muzkat

Platformers: Turrican 1 and 2 are universally acknowledged as two of the finest platformers ever made. I would add Gods to that list, but I know that would be contentious.

And that's what I was talking about earlier - I couldn't for the life of me figure out the appeal of Turrican. Sound was relatively poor, graphics were average, and the gameplay was pretty dull with some awkward mechanics. When you compare that to something like Super Metroid, you're talking a different league altogether.

Sports: SWOS, Kick Off, On the Ball and Speedball 2 are still regarded as some of the best sports games on any platform.

True, other than On the Ball.

Racers: Stunt Car Racer and Lotus 2 are still thought of as some of the greatest racing games ever made.

Stunt Car Racer has its moments, but it's certainly not a game I'd have bought a system for, and not one I've ever loaded up myself more than once or twice. F1GP on the other hand... But that needed to be patched to have a decent framerate. I found it kinda difficult to like in its original guise, but as soon as I had F1GP-Ed to fix it, it became a great game.

And I was never a fan of the pseudo-3D racers in the Lotus style, where the road was a fixed direction. Just felt too much like those old Tomy driver toys from the '80s. Especially when racers like F-Zero and Mario Kart were in the world.

Puzzle: Ever heard of a little known game called Lemmings?

I don't think anyone's saying the Amiga didn't have gems, and I haven't seen anyone say Lemmings was a bad game, but it was the exception. There were hundreds of puzzle games that didn't go on to be multi-platform blockbuster franchises. And even Lemmings itself had some less-than-favourable entries - did you ever play Lemmings 3?

[Cherno]

To be fair, Super Metroid came out much, much later.