12 August 2023, 09:14 | #41 | |
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The Sega Mega Drive was released in the UK in September 1990, yet Amiga sales were still strong 2 years later. I think people buying computers rather than consoles did so because they wanted something more versatile and interesting. Looking at the top Amiga magazines of the day we see that they were chock full of articles talking about things other than games, and the adverts were chock full of stuff other than games too. I reckon Amiga users were into a wider range of activities on their computers than PC users were. |
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12 August 2023, 10:01 | #42 |
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Even if you were only buying it for games, when compared to a Megadrive or SNES an Amiga had cheaper games (even if you ignore piracy, which was clearly part of the appeal) - by the time you'd bought 10 games for each system, the combined cost of console and games was similar to that of the Amiga and games, especially if some were budget), the availability of PD and coverdisks to further close the gap (some of which were just as good as some commercial games, though usually shorter-lasting), and a greater variety of game styles. Was a console where most games were in a few narrow styles really a better buy? Even if you ignore 'heavy' game styles that didn't transfer to consoles, most of the really original and innovative games of that generation (Lemmings, Populous, Speedball, Prince of Persia, Mega Lo Mania, Cannon Fodder) were released for computers first and consoles later. And, of course, just because you only wanted action games (or indeed games in general) as a 10 year old in 1990 doesn't mean you'd still only want them 4 years later.
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12 August 2023, 11:28 | #43 | |
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16-bit home computers were mostly justified on the old "it'll help with the homework" argument. Or bought by people for whom games playing was, at most, a secondary reason. |
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12 August 2023, 11:55 | #44 |
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I'm not sure the argument that everyone is growing out of action games and into more cerebral titles holds up either. If it were the case, they'd be topping the charts by now. And Sim City was a launch title for the SNES and not a bad port either, yet never sold as well as F-Zero.
It's not that there isn't a market for such games, it's just never been that large. |
12 August 2023, 12:47 | #45 | |
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12 August 2023, 15:10 | #46 |
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18 August 2023, 22:55 | #47 | |||
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The CD32 looked cheap, its joypad looked cheap and its games looked cheap.
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Carts are expensive, but not ridiculously expensive if they are the size of a CD32 game – some three to five percent of a CD-ROM's full capacity. They also bring the price of the console itself down, and consumers might prefer to buy a cheap console with pricier games rather than an expensive console with cheap games. Iff the CD32 had had games that actually needed the CD-ROM medium, the notion of using cartridges would have been ridiculous, but given that the vast majority of CD32 titles were floppy games, it's not so ridiculous. Quote:
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18 August 2023, 23:11 | #48 | |
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Guardian does look nice, but not a contender to Starwing as far as I can tell. Shadow Fighter, meanwhile, looks decidedly amateurish next to SNES SF2, and, to add insult to injury, was released as late as 1995. Fightin' Spirit, on the other hand, looks great but was released as late as 1996/1997, sadly too late to be noticed even by the surviving Amiga owners of the day. So if we grant that at least some of these were console-class, they were either too late to play a part in the CD32's fate or reputation, or just looked like second-rate console games. Not bad games, and they do their part in restoring the CD32's reputation, but too late or just not good enough. |
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19 August 2023, 00:17 | #49 | |
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Well again if we're just talking looks I think Elfmania on OCS/ECS looks better than even SF2 on the SNES. If Elfmania 2 would have come out for AGA/CD32 I think you'd be looking at close to PS1 2D quality. So if OCS/ECS Elfmania, Agony, Lionheart, Shadow of the Beast etc. can match the best of what the SNES can do then the CD32 could by default beat it in the right hands. Sadly with less than 8 months on the shelf with an owner it's full potential was never realized. Obviously AGA/CD32 could have been better, I fantasize about what the original Los Gatos team would have come up with if they stayed on. However, for the short time the CD32 existed it did get some great new games plus a lot of older ones that had already been ported to/from the consoles so obviously it was "console class". I'd rather games be "Amiga class" since in my opinion it has the best 2D action library of any system ever. Last edited by lionagony; 19 August 2023 at 00:25. |
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19 August 2023, 18:07 | #50 |
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People buying consoles are not interested in dither-tastic slightly choppy ports of Mortal Kombat even if it's £20 less than the Amiga version vs the fantastic SNES version. £250 buys probably a years worth of games for most console owners, who also had the option to rent games too for a weekend/day which Amigans didn't in order to avoid utter garbage developments. There was also no multi-button standard set by Commodore for Amiga in 1990, most games that did support it used the Megadrive controller as a requirement for their code.
Doesn't really matter what I say, the facts speak for themselves. The combined sales of C64 and C128 (99% which may as well have defaulted to the GO 64? command instantly on boot up for what little time they spent in C128 40 column mode compatible with domestic TV) are very close to the equally long lasting Atari VCS console. The Amiga vs even Japan only PC Engine can only be considered a sales failure by Commodore, some 75% less than sales of C64+128. Sales of the A500 worldwide are a mere pimple of the enormous ass of combined worldwide sales of NES/SNES/MD, even the Japan only PC Engine sales are phenomenal from day 1 in 1987. The simple fact is Amiga games were not worth £50 and being sold for £25-30, the reality is most Amiga hyped releases are not even worth £10. THIS is why piracy existed, people got fed up with bullshit like Afterburner/Turbo Out Run. The Amiga was sold to people in the market for a computer, it's not something you would buy instead of a PCE/SNES/Megadrive. The only computer ever to come close to that situation is the Commodore 64 vs first generation 8bit consoles like VCS, Intellivision and Coleco. Games like Beach Head may have been 66% cheaper than Coleco titles but they were also massively superior to the MSX-tastic Coleco games. Amiga had it the other way round, son of bitch to write games as good as the best looking/moving arcade quality games, cost 250% more than a console, less colours on screen, less sound channels (usually with rubbish PD Soundtracker instrument disks used for commercial game soundtracks for the super cheesy Amiga gaming experience we all remember), less quality control at the software houses pushing out turd like 'arcade' games running at 15-18fps half the time with 16 colour ST graphics more often than not in it's library. Yeah that sounds like a recipe for Amiga conquering the consoles....which clearly never happened unlike how a C64+tape deck sent the console world packing and even stopped NES sales in the EU becoming anything other than chump change to the US sales. If 512kb AAA quality C64 games were stuck on John Twiddy's C64GS cartridge hardware for £25 year it could have worked, would have boosted sales of C64 computers at £199, a bit like how Nintendo produced the PPU chip for their aging Famicom 1983 tech inside NES. But it would also require a pair of modified CP5000/Zipsticks to ram home the advantage of not having joypads for some game styles like shmups...or a decent gamepad to help ease the culture shock for 'new' home gaming consumers eyeing up the competition along with some talent in the cost reducing area to make it as cheap as the more advanced less shitty looking Sega Master System (except for sound of SID which is the king of 8bit computer sound chips of course). |
19 August 2023, 18:53 | #51 |
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Ignoring the CD32's potential for non-arcade games (and multimedia usage, and for being turned into a computer with add-ons) which making it a cartridge system would have severely impacted, none of this resolves the issue of how you would convince developers that the failure of the C64GS and Amstrad GX4000 wouldn't happen again with an Amiga cartridge-based console. What were Commodore supposed to do, tell developers "they failed because your games were rubbish. So, will you write games for us?"
The C64 could take cartridges from day one, and there was still no demand for a cut down version using old technology - Ocean aside, very few companies released anything for it, and not that many actually announced or planned games for them - the GX4000 (which at least was enhanced from the original 1984 CPC) fared marginally better on this count. By contrast. the CD32 got releases from most major Amiga developers of late 1993 onwards - EA, Psygnosis, Team 17, Gremlin, Virgin, Core, Ocean, Mindscape, MicroProse, Millennium et al all supported it, mostly at least some with exclusive content which wouldnt't have been feasible from cartridges. Whether they'd've done the same for a cartridge version, who knows? Would Amiga hardware magically stop being "son of bitch to write games as good as the best looking/moving arcade quality games", or would developers suddenly not be "less quality control" releasing "bullshit" as you put it (much as I think this is an unfair portrayal of most major releases that weren't ST ports, so most major releases by 1991 or so), simply because they were making games for cartridges rather than disks or CDs? Would Japanese developers suddenly be attracted to develop for a cartridge-based equivalent of the CD32, when they weren't for the CD version, despite Sega and Sony going for CDs over carts for new machines at that time? Last edited by Megalomaniac; 21 August 2023 at 21:48. |
21 August 2023, 13:35 | #52 | ||
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21 August 2023, 19:11 | #53 | |
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Even later, the 3D graphics card of Playstation 1 alone would have cost at least 400 USD if it was released on PC with the same specs. |
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21 August 2023, 23:48 | #54 | |
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The Amiga had a paddle standard from day 1 too but racing games didn't use it. (But it DID come with a mouse, so lots of racing/breakout-type games supported the mouse). |
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22 August 2023, 10:04 | #55 |
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Yep, that's part of it, though developers had their part to play as well. Commodore didn't ship a 1-button joystick with each system either. Support for multiple buttons was there and documented from the beginning. The main issue was that most developers simply ignored the documentation and didn't even include an option for multiple buttons, and without that, 3rd party hardware manufacturers had no reason to make multi-button controllers. A few developers did add support though (both for multiple buttons and for analogue controls), and that support did sell controllers.
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22 August 2023, 10:55 | #56 |
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I'd say it was also more economical to produce joysticks that would work on 'all' home computer systems than to produce one only for Amiga. It's a bit of a chicken and egg situation: Wasn't there joysticks because there were no games or the other way around.
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22 August 2023, 19:06 | #57 |
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Plus, if games were being developed for Spec/Ams/C64/ST as well, was it worth the effort of giving the Amiga version fundamentally different controls to the others? What about the time needed to rebalance the gameplay to prevent (say) having separate fire and jump buttons making it easier? Would it kill the appeal of games that were designed to squeeze as many options onto a single-button system (Kick Off 2 being the obvious example)?
Still, could you say that even our joysticks were lame ST (and C64/VCS/Amstrad) ports? |
30 August 2023, 16:13 | #58 |
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Here are two ads for the CD32:
UK version: German version: Neither shows any games. Just noticed that today when I found the German one. Edit: In another edition of 'You can't make this up' the next issue of the German magazine the CD32 ad was in has a job offer from Commodore Germany. Searching for a young marketing person for market analysis. In a magazine published in March 1994. Two months before Commodore went into voluntary liquidation. Last edited by TCD; 30 August 2023 at 16:51. |
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