An unbiased comparison of Megadrive vs A1200 graphics?

[Aulapatchuc]

Originally Posted by Tsak

At least for the end user this is definitely not cheap. Cause with every game you buy that uses this chip you end up purchasing the same hardware several times over. In general consoles were definitely more costly overall, with just 4 50$ games you end up spending a whooping 200$. Together with the cost of the console itself that's more than the cost of a brand new a1200.

But at least you had/have a 7 year cycle of the life of the console where all games would work right out of the box. Not mixed results with very different hardware (OCS/ECS/AGA), no fast RAM, fast RAM, accelerators, etc.


I invested 200€ for my SNES in 1993, and it was that. Only buying cartridges.

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by Aulapatchuc

But at least you had/have a 7 year cycle of the life of the console where all games would work right out of the box. Not mixed results with very different hardware (OCS/ECS/AGA), no fast RAM, fast RAM, accelerators, etc.


I invested 200€ for my SNES in 1993, and it was that. Only buying cartridges.

Well I'm not saying that this wasn't a smart move especially for Nintendo. History have proven this was what people wanted.

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

Somebody mentioned that the AGA chipset has a bandwidth of 7mb/s (presume on the unexpanded A1200 as that was what the thread was about).

I think it is way more than 7MBps - you can display super hires in 256 colors i.e. over 16MBps (1280*512*25) and there is still bandwidth to do other things.

[Keops/Equinox]

An unbiased comparison of Megadrive vs A1200 graphics?

Considering the Megadrive was released 4 years before the A1200 and cost half the price of an A1200, I fail to see how this can be a fair / unbiased comparison.

Try to compare the A1200 to a PC released in 1996 that cost twice the price of the A1200 and you will get the same biased comparison.

[vulture]

Originally Posted by pandy71

I think it is way more than 7MBps - you can display super hires in 256 colors i.e. over 16MBps (1280*512*25) and there is still bandwidth to do other things.

I'm not sure that's how it works. I mean, what if you try to scroll that screen, effectively changing every pixel per frame? Will it be able to maintain a steady 25 fps then? I think not.

[redblade]

Originally Posted by touko

I see no point using a chip wich is not required for a game, in a very large majority of games(98/99%), the stock hardware is enough .
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Most games were in slow rom so the snes CPU run @2.68 mhz (even RR²), the simple use of fast rom boost the CPU wich can runs @3,56 mhz .

Had to watch that Rendering Ranger 2 in 720@60hz to see that bit in better action. The audio for the kick and snare sound good. (Normally I'm reading about people complaining about the audio on SNES/Genesis). Could tell that game was from Europe as it had a kind of scene feel to it, were the developers ex Amiga or Atari demo sceners? A lot of talent and love went in to that.

I wonder if the Amiga 1200 sprites via multiplexing would be able to handle the player status bar, main player sprite + bullets? There are a lot of player bullets being shifted.

Maybe the Starfox DSP chip could have been used on the Amiga to also help out with applications, spread sheets, Imagine, Real 3D?

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by vulture

I'm not sure that's how it works. I mean, what if you try to scroll that screen, effectively changing every pixel per frame? Will it be able to maintain a steady 25 fps then? I think not.

You have 32 bit bus and clock 3.58MHz (to simplify) so you should be able transfer at least 14MBps over memory bus... super hires in 8 bitplanes saturate almost whole available bandwidth and to perform 25 fps i think you should have at least twice bandwidth (as you need to modify memory content and push data to video port) but probably you need to have triple bandwidth (read, write, read by video subsystem to videoport).

[ImmortalA1000]

Originally Posted by Keops/Equinox

An unbiased comparison of Megadrive vs A1200 graphics?

Considering the Megadrive was released 4 years before the A1200 and cost half the price of an A1200, I fail to see how this can be a fair / unbiased comparison.

Try to compare the A1200 to a PC released in 1996 that cost twice the price of the A1200 and you will get the same biased comparison.

Well you said it, Commodore's own lame ass 'engineers' had 4 years to come up with a Megadrive beating chipset. THAT is what I want to know, what areas are still inferior to the 1988 Megadrive chipset. Sound is a bit twangy on the Megadrive but the graphics are very well designed for 2D games, ditto for the PC Engine too.

Computers always cost more than consoles, the VIC-20 cost more than the VCS the C64 cost more than the Coleco or Famicom (although the Famicom is Japan only it was designed by people who had worked for/on behalf of Commodore Japan).

PC isn't a spec, you can spend peanuts on a PC or spend thousands instead of getting a PS1, the A1200 is a fixed spec and fixed price.

Mario paint is a pathetic product, inferior to Dpaint 1 so you pay extra to do more than play games BUT I wanted an unbiased technically founded answer to whether an A1200 can perfectly replicate the graphics, if not the audio, of something like Thunderforce III. I know the Lotus games on Megadrive are nowhere near as fast/smooth as Lotus II running on a 1985 Amiga 1000, but what about full screen parallax with scrolling very colourful 2D game engines etc. Is it a lack of development talent or lack of Commodore engineering talent?

You only have 4 16 color sprites per scanline, that makes them an added bonus rather than a comparable bit of hardware to use the same way a C64, PC-E or Megadrive uses sprites so you have to use the blitter, which I presume is what the 7mb/s business is all about. Apart from displaying a massive boss or a pair of 128 pixel wide characters on a beat 'em up the AGA sprites are of limited use so their bandwidth is pretty meaningless. Not quite as bad as the single hardware sprite of the Archimedes but not that useful unless you want 3 colour Famicom quality sprites to get 8 per line.

The A500 was already outdated compared to the cheap PC Engine of 1987, lucky for Commodore it was such a massive success of a launch NEC had to give up any idea of releasing it outside Japan due to massive demand, and who can blame them.

I specifically did not say SNES as that is a lot closer to when the A1200 came out so I don't expect an A1200 to be capable of doing anything like Axelay or Wings on the SNES hardware, 80s tech of Megadrive that fought the SNES is fair game though for a 1992 computer IMO, like I said Commodore had 7 years to do a true worthy successor to A1000 chipset, did they do enough is the question.

A1200 was only competing with 16bit consoles, not PC. You could argue A4000 was competing with PC (and lost badly given my 1992 Sept 486 25mhz cost half the price of the A4000/040 and did 3D better and 2D OK like Street Fighter II/MK1 for DOS).

Also don't forget if you upgraded from a 386 PC to a Pentium 75 your copy of Street Fighter II improved, running SF2 on an A1200 it is the same garbage as running it on an A1000 so the A1200 is not really in the same demographic of consumers as PC in 1992 and it enjoys none of the advantages VGA PC DOS games did as far as getting more miles per gallon from your past software purchases AND you get to play new PS1 style games on your Pentium or DX4-120 etc PC, no such games came out in 1992-95 for A4000 IIRC, Elite II: Frontier has no texture mapping option on Amiga, it does on PC so even if you sold your A1200 and got a used A4000-040 it's not the same thing.

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[vulture]

@redblade

Reshoot R moves more stuff than R2 at times and operates at 320*224 not 256*224 of SNES so, yes, I think, if programmed right, AGA could move those stuff around too.

[Cris1997XX]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

Well you said it, Commodore's own lame ass 'engineers' had 4 years to come up with a Megadrive beating chipset. THAT is what I want to know, what areas are still inferior to the 1988 Megadrive chipset. Sound is a bit twangy on the Megadrive but the graphics are very well designed for 2D games, ditto for the PC Engine too.

Heck, there is even the PC Engine's forgotten successor, AKA the Supergrafx. They basically added a second graphics chip and more VRAM, which put it above other 16-bit consoles of the time. If it weren't for the limited color palette and PSG sound, it would've beaten the crap out of the Amiga
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[ImmortalA1000]

Originally Posted by Cris1997XX

Heck, there is even the PC Engine's forgotten successor, AKA the Supergrafx. They basically added a second graphics chip and more VRAM, which put it above other 16-bit consoles of the time. If it weren't for the limited color palette and PSG sound, it would've beaten the crap out of the Amiga
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I played R-Type with Julian Rignall at the PCW Show one year (I always had a trade pass and went on day 1). Magazines went crazy for it, CVG, TGM, ACE etc etc, all couldn't wait to get one and then it never left Japan really. I had one because Ocean weren't man enough to do Salamander for Amiga (thank god, it would have been rubbish looking at their 1988/89 Amiga coding like Operation Wolf garbage). That's really the issue, consoles rarely have badly coded/pixeled game developments, Amiga had loads so it makes it tough to gauge. PC E can't do Lotus II or Shadow of the Beast 1 overground level as well but can Amiga 500 do Twin Hawk or Salamander as well as PC-E, we will never know. But for the Japanese the PC Engine was dirt cheap in 1987 and had great games more often than not, Afterburner on PC-E is more impressive than the mediocre Megadrive port IMO.

But that's the thing, Amiga hardware is OK but the developers were not so kind to it back then so PC Engine faired better in the eyes of the games player. I would be interested to play Tinyus on an A500/1000 and PC Engine Gradius one after the other to compare, Konami/Ocean could never have done what the makers of Tinyus have done for us. Still waiting for the CDTV ISO hint hint

Supergrafx only had 1 decent game (ghouls n ghosts), and 4 in total? lol I do have Battle Ace for the Supergrafx (never buying the console, not worth the money for what you get to play). It's part of the retirement fund now

[Cris1997XX]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

Supergrafx only had 1 decent game (ghouls n ghosts), and 4 in total? lol I do have Battle Ace for the Supergrafx (never buying the console, not worth the money for what you get to play). It's part of the retirement fund now

It's not worth the money because it was rushed out the door, with next to no games aside from Capcom's (There's also a rumored Strider port that never came out!). I'd say 1941 is another great game, it shows off the enhanced graphics really well

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Keops/Equinox

An unbiased comparison of Megadrive vs A1200 graphics?

Considering the Megadrive was released 4 years before the A1200 and cost half the price of an A1200, I fail to see how this can be a fair / unbiased comparison.

What has the release date or price got to do with it?

The Mega Drive was being sold at the same time as the A1200 and even afterwards.

If Commodore had produced an Amiga with no keyboard, no floppy drive, and no OS for about the same price as the Mega Drive, would that make it 'fair'?

The closest analogue we have is the CD32 vs Mega Drive with Mega CD. The Mega CD was released in the UK in April 1993, only a few months before the CD32. The Sega Mega Drive / CD combo cost £369. The Commodore CD32 was £299, £70 cheaper.

Or is this irrelevant to a discussion that is only comparing graphics and nothing else?

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

What has the release date or price got to do with it?

A lot People keep defending Amiga games from the 80's era as well. They're allowed to be shit because it was early on.

[Retro1234]

Graphics does it have Vista, Dpaint, Aladdin 4D, Lightwave?

[Auscoder]

Originally Posted by redblade

Could tell that game was from Europe as it had a kind of scene feel to it, were the developers ex Amiga or Atari demo sceners? A lot of talent and love went in to that.

Was Manfred Trenz of Turrican fame. One of two SNES games he made. Not sure why this was released in JAPAN only with limited numbered. Difficulty very brutal maybe too brutal, but surely decent, technically and lovingly crafted.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Auscoder

Not sure why this was released in JAPAN only with limited numbered.

According to Wikipedia nobody except the Japanese branch of Virgin Interactive was interested to publish it. It's indeed a bit weird that nobody in Europe was interested to publish it.

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

Graphics does it have Vista, Dpaint, Aladdin 4D, Lightwave?

Yeah. Plus the tiny little thing that you could make a Megadrive game on an Amiga but not the reverse.

This comparaison is a bit silly from the start. The Amiga is a computer that can mimick console abilities to play games. The Megadrive is a pure console. You can't make any productivity things on it. Just plug a game and play. It was (well) designed around that.

The versatility of the Amiga which was its strenght back in the days is now seen as a burden. People forget/forbid the easy expandability of the Amiga and adding fast ram is seen as cheating because "console have fixed hardware" but the Amiga wasn't a console anyway (and console did use some expansion with their cartridge format).
Strangely PC aren't obliged to be judged on their lowest possible configuration when it comes to compare them to the consoles (or the Amiga).

[Samurai_Crow]

Amen! I agree completely about adding accelerators and Fast RAM.

[Cris1997XX]

Originally Posted by Samurai_Crow

Amen! I agree completely about adding accelerators and Fast RAM.

Accelerators are kind of a stretch (Especially PowerPC, yuck), but I think fastRAM is fair game...especially since it helps the CPU running faster lol