What Makes The Amiga CD32 The Best Amiga?

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

For me, the best Amiga is A500, because it was way ahead of it's time (especially considering pricing and what you get).

Now that I can 100% agree on

[Gilbert]

Some good points and interesting posts.


I do think a lot of people are dismissing Amiga gaming while forgetting that most people originally bought their Amiga's to game. The coding/creativity was something that developed afterwards. I didn't do any coding on my Amiga 500 until AMOS came out. Amiga BASIC was useless and Assembly was too big a step for a beginner to take with no decent books out there to help. Look at the people now using Dreams (or whatever it's called) on PS4 (PS3?)

Originally Posted by Amigajay

But if you are just talking Amiga gaming, the benefits for CD32 owners:

7 button controller as standard
CD Music and SFX
Video/Animated Intros
Larger game worlds, more textures, extra levels
No Disk Swapping

Yes great reasons. Remember how popular Street Fighter 2 was back then? Needed a 6 button joypad at least! and of course no disk swaps. SF2 was probably the biggest reason so many people jumped ship to the consoles. That's when I got my SNES too.

Originally Posted by Predseda

It is a point of view. In my eyes CD32 is THE WORST Amiga, because from a creative computer it was degraded to a console for consumers of already complete games. No possiblity to code, draw or compose on that (stock) machine.

I suppose that's a fair point, even if the CD32 is clearly not the worst Amiga. But it's pretty easy to get an expansion if you want to code. Just like you wouldn't stick to the 512k in the A500 for long. Think of all the extra power and potential you would have to code with!

[Gilbert]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

For me, the best Amiga is A500, because it was way ahead of it's time (especially considering pricing and what you get).
CD32 is nice console, a little bit outdated when it's released, and they should have add something little bit more for 3D stuff, apart from Akiko chip.

I absolutely loved the A500 but I always did somehow feel it was a little underpowered. 8 sprites?? Just not enough. 16 sprites would have been spot on.The C64 had 8 sprites! The 8 bit consoles had way more than that. So much development time on Amiga was spent just with needless hardware tricks to get more objects on screen

Here is David Pleasance (head of Commodore UK) explaining why CD32 kicks Sega Mega CD into touch.

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by Gilbert

I absolutely loved the A500 but I always did somehow feel it was a little underpowered. 8 sprites??

Yeah, but keep in mind it was released 2 years before Genesis (4 years, if you count A1000), and 4 years before SNES.
Even with 8 sprites A500 was more then capable to compete long after it's release.

Yeah, very hard to program, but still, even in 1994 we had such gems like Ruff 'n' Tumble, that even Snes would be proud of it.

[E-Penguin]

I wouldn't say "best" but it's probably the one I use the most (with TF330) - it's allowed in the living room under the TV. With whdload it's perfect for a quick bit of retro gaming. Retro computing is done on my wedge Amigas though.

[Konrad]

@Gilbert: Wonderful marketing blah-blah. Please compare sales figues of CD32 and Mega-CD . And no, it's not just bad marketing.

The Amiga 500 was great. In fact, as opposed to your opinion, I loved to be creative with it. I was 6 when we received the Amiga 500, and I drew ALOT with dPaint, composed music, got interested in programming (although just simple Amiga Basic).
Same for my brother and even my friends. Even the console owners. Besides playing games Kids also love to be creative sometimes .
This flexibility and possibilities were what made me a big Amiga fan back then. I owned two A500, A2000, A6000 and A4000).

In the CD32 I had high hopes and was utterly disappointed, as there were just few games which showed what the CD32 could achieve. I didn't need A500 or AGA games conversions, I already had those. Yes, talkie in Beneath A Steel Sky or Simon the Sorcerer is great. Microcosm was shit. What else was there ?
It was a console and had to compare to MegaDrive and SNES. If you wanted to play games, which availalable console had the best games available ? Well, not the CD32, I can tell you that.

Of course you could upgrade it to a full personal computer. But then it got more expensive and would have to compete with other options. Why should I switch from my Amiga 2000HD, or others from their Amiga 1200's, to a CD32 ? There was no reason, definitely not for 5 or 6 interesting games, nothing overwhelming here. I rather thought about adding a SNES or Genesis to my collection.

Today you have some nice options for the CD32 and can enjoy it much more.
But I'm convinced the CD32 was a total disaster.

[jotd]

problem is that the A1200 wasn't powerful enough (not enough sprites for AGA, no chunky for 256 colors...) and the CD32 was based on that...

Akiko didn't make a difference. Akiko is just hardware c2p (wrapped in WritePixel(s) syscall), but not offering natively chunky display mode.

[Gilbert]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

Yeah, but keep in mind it was released 2 years before Genesis (4 years, if you count A1000), and 4 years before SNES.
Even with 8 sprites A500 was more then capable to compete long after it's release.

Yeah, very hard to program, but still, even in 1994 we had such gems like Ruff 'n' Tumble, that even Snes would be proud of it.

Ruff n tumble is good but...

C'mon man the Amiga it was realised 6 years after Intellvision which had 8 sprites. 8 sprites is not enough! Not to mention it cost a fortune when it was first released.

I love the Amiga but so many of the games are 16 color only, 25fps or don't even fill the screen. What annoys me now is that homebrew coders spend 2 years making a schmup and think that developers in 1989 who had 6 months to make a game and no internet, should have been able to do that too.

[Gilbert]

Originally Posted by Konrad

@Gilbert: Wonderful marketing blah-blah. Please compare sales figues of CD32 and Mega-CD . And no, it's not just bad marketing.

The Amiga 500 was great. In fact, as opposed to your opinion, I loved to be creative with it. I was 6 when we received the Amiga 500, and I drew ALOT with dPaint, composed music, got interested in programming (although just simple Amiga Basic).
Same for my brother and even my friends. Even the console owners. Besides playing games Kids also love to be creative sometimes .
This flexibility and possibilities were what made me a big Amiga fan back then. I owned two A500, A2000, A6000 and A4000).

In the CD32 I had high hopes and was utterly disappointed, as there were just few games which showed what the CD32 could achieve. I didn't need A500 or AGA games conversions, I already had those. Yes, talkie in Beneath A Steel Sky or Simon the Sorcerer is great. Microcosm was shit. What else was there ?
It was a console and had to compare to MegaDrive and SNES. If you wanted to play games, which availalable console had the best games available ? Well, not the CD32, I can tell you that.

Of course you could upgrade it to a full personal computer. But then it got more expensive and would have to compete with other options. Why should I switch from my Amiga 2000HD, or others from their Amiga 1200's, to a CD32 ? There was no reason, definitely not for 5 or 6 interesting games, nothing overwhelming here. I rather thought about adding a SNES or Genesis to my collection.

Today you have some nice options for the CD32 and can enjoy it much more.
But I'm convinced the CD32 was a total disaster.

That was only because Sega got the CD32 banned. They obviously felt threatened enough to dig up that old cursor patent. That's why there aren't more interesting games for it. As a piece of hardware it is the best Amiga for sure.

You missed games like Guardian, Super Skidmarks, Alien Breed Tower Assault, Gloom, Roadkill, ATF, versus fighters where you didn't have to swap disks every fight.....

I wasn't talking about you specifically. I was saying *most* people bought an Amiga for the games then later got into the scene and the creative side.

[Gilbert]

Originally Posted by jotd

problem is that the A1200 wasn't powerful enough (not enough sprites for AGA, no chunky for 256 colors...) and the CD32 was based on that...

Akiko didn't make a difference. Akiko is just hardware c2p (wrapped in WritePixel(s) syscall), but not offering natively chunky display mode.

I think the main fault was no FAST ram but it's still the best Amiga. Commodore really had no idea what they were doing tbh, they got lucky with the C64 and then used the money to steal the Amiga from Atari. For me The Atari Lynx shows what AGA should have been.

Akiko also contains DMA and make the CD32 more powerful than any other Amiga and also makes it able to run more games than any other Amiga.

[jotd]

Akiko DMA is just CD drive read DMA. It allows to copy raw track data into memory directly (which still needs decoding). It doesn't do any other DMA than for the CD drive

[Konrad]

Originally Posted by Gilbert

That was only because Sega got the CD32 banned. They obviously felt threatened enough to dig up that old cursor patent. That's why there aren't more interesting games for it. As a piece of hardware it is the best Amiga for sure.

Those are rose tinted glasses if you really think that's the reason for the CD32 not being successful .

Originally Posted by Gilbert

You missed games like Guardian, Super Skidmarks, Alien Breed Tower Assault, Gloom, Roadkill, ATF, versus fighters where you didn't have to swap disks every fight.....

CD32 vs Consoles
Guardian - a good game. But repetitive. I'd prefer Star Fox on a SNES (very linear, but storytelling and bossfights)
SuperSkidmarks - available on Megadrive
Alien Breed TA - don't know any comparable game from my head.
Gloom - SNES had DOOM, the "real" thing, much better than Gloom in my opinion
Roadkill - I like that one very much. Still enough other top down racers available
Versus Fighters - Almost all ports of fighting games were better on the consoles (but I did like Mortal Kombat on Amiga)
Adding to that you had very good arcade ports for StreetFighter2, MortalKombat, OutRun, FinalFight, TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles, SunsetRiders, ... the list is endless.

CD32 vs Amigas
Super Skidmarks - Available for ECS/AGA, including HD installer
Alien Breed Tower Assault - Available for ECS/AGA
Gloom - Available for ECS/AGA including HD Installer
Roadkill - Available for AGA. I had a HD Install back then, don't know if official though
ATF? Do you mean ATR, All terrain racing ? Available for ECS/AGA
Versus fighters where you didn't have to swap disks every fight - Please tell me which official ports you mean ? Rise of the Robots had HD installer. SF2T had HD-installer. Fighting Spirit had HD installer. Which other versus fighters were relevant ?

Where are now your "relevant" CD32 titles ?

Originally Posted by Gilbert

I wasn't talking about you specifically. I was saying *most* people bought an Amiga for the games then later got into the scene and the creative side.

That's your opinion, as my experience with all people I knew owning Amigas was different. And again, also "console-buddies" coming over to do graphics and music.

Originally Posted by Gilbert

I think the main fault was no FAST ram but it's still the best Amiga

If you are not talking money, then I think the best for me is A4000. I liked the case, space for HD and CD-Drive. Mine even had a CD burner. Graphics cards, better cpu from the start and accellerators available...the whole expandability. All in one case !
Second place (because cheaper as A4000) A1200. HD from the Start, AGA, and if you added an external cdrom you could play almost any CD32 game. Plus also expandability.

[eXeler0]

For many years I lamented Commodore´s lack of vision and foresight when they released the CD32, only staring back at the already outdated SEGA CD as their only competition.

But then one day I realized it was pretty much the only machine Commodore were capable of releasing at the time given the circumstances.
Someone here at the forums used the term "commodore´s last roll of the dice" and I agree that its exactly what it was..
They reused so many old stocks of hardware they already had so that they wouldn't have to spend a dime more than necessary.. AKIKO was new but it actually replace a lot of earlier chips, so it was about reducing cost primarily. not adding more new cool features that would matter in the future. The C2P feature was added as an afterthought because hey why not, it was easy to implement.
So.. The CD32 was what Commodore could realistically manage at the time and get it out on the market in a short period of time. If they really had the finances and the foresight they would obviously had given the console a bit more breathing room with a faster cpu, faster RAM, maybe some additional co-processor that could do neat tricks (DSP maybe?)

The Sega Saturn hit the market 1 year later and it absolutely destroys the CD32 specs wise. CD32 came about 2 years after the Mega-CD in japan, but looking at the games, you couldn't really tell the 32-bit vs 16-bit advantage in any significant way by judging the software library.
So when it was released, I was disappointed and from day 1 thought it was unimpressive and wouldn't be able to compete. (I already had a 1200 at the time and I was saving money for an accelerator card).

In retrospect things and views can change, it's kind of nice to have an Amiga that will play CDs out of the box without hassle and of course now it can be upgraded to what it should have been from the beginning.. Fast 030, fastram and a better controller ;-)

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by Gilbert

Ruff n tumble is good but...

C'mon man the Amiga it was realised 6 years after Intellvision which had 8 sprites. 8 sprites is not enough! Not to mention it cost a fortune when it was first released.

Amiga got 8 hardware sprite. this limit can be outpassed by coding tricks (multiplexing, use of bobs etc). Btw how many hardware sprites did IBM PC, Atari ST or Macintosh, the direct competitors of tha Amiga in late 80's, had at that time ?

I love the Amiga but so many of the games are 16 color only, 25fps or don't even fill the screen. What annoys me now is that homebrew coders spend 2 years making a schmup and think that developers in 1989 who had 6 months to make a game and no internet, should have been able to do that too.

Homebrew coders take 2 years because they are homebrew coders. In 1989, developers were mostly professional. Their time was dedicated to make a game, it wasn't an afterwork hobby.


About the initial subject, an out of the box CD32 isn't, in my opinion the best Amiga. Of course it can be expanded, but so is the A1200.

[mc68060]

Originally Posted by jotd

big thumbs up for Zool & Zool 2: blue for jump, CD music and one extra level (even compared to the AGA version). => how ALL CD32 games should have been.

And let's not forget that both Zools had nice rendered 3D intros and also rendered 3D animations between the levels on the CD32.

[jotd]

yeah, Gremlin didn't take customers for cashcows. Another example is 1 CD for all 3 lotus games. Okay no new stuff but 3 games for the price of one, and a cool menu intro with music.

[mc68060]

Originally Posted by jotd

yeah, Gremlin didn't take customers for cashcows. Another example is 1 CD for all 3 lotus games. Okay no new stuff but 3 games for the price of one, and a cool menu intro with music.

And let's not forget that they came up with completely new box art both for the CD32 versions of Zool and the Lotus Trilogy. I really like the CD32 box art of Zool on a CD in outer space.

[Gilbert]

Originally Posted by Konrad

Those are rose tinted glasses if you really think that's the reason for the CD32 not being successful .




CD32 vs Consoles
Guardian - a good game. But repetitive. I'd prefer Star Fox on a SNES (very linear, but storytelling and bossfights)
SuperSkidmarks - available on Megadrive
Alien Breed TA - don't know any comparable game from my head.
Gloom - SNES had DOOM, the "real" thing, much better than Gloom in my opinion
Roadkill - I like that one very much. Still enough other top down racers available
Versus Fighters - Almost all ports of fighting games were better on the consoles (but I did like Mortal Kombat on Amiga)
Adding to that you had very good arcade ports for StreetFighter2, MortalKombat, OutRun, FinalFight, TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles, SunsetRiders, ... the list is endless.

CD32 vs Amigas
Super Skidmarks - Available for ECS/AGA, including HD installer
Alien Breed Tower Assault - Available for ECS/AGA
Gloom - Available for ECS/AGA including HD Installer
Roadkill - Available for AGA. I had a HD Install back then, don't know if official though
ATF? Do you mean ATR, All terrain racing ? Available for ECS/AGA
Versus fighters where you didn't have to swap disks every fight - Please tell me which official ports you mean ? Rise of the Robots had HD installer. SF2T had HD-installer. Fighting Spirit had HD installer. Which other versus fighters were relevant ?

Where are now your "relevant" CD32 titles ?


That's your opinion, as my experience with all people I knew owning Amigas was different. And again, also "console-buddies" coming over to do graphics and music.


If you are not talking money, then I think the best for me is A4000. I liked the case, space for HD and CD-Drive. Mine even had a CD burner. Graphics cards, better cpu from the start and accellerators available...the whole expandability. All in one case !
Second place (because cheaper as A4000) A1200. HD from the Start, AGA, and if you added an external cdrom you could play almost any CD32 game. Plus also expandability.

There was a rumour that when Atari when found out Sega had been using it's joystick ports - they did a deal with Sega which meant Sega had to take down Commodore. The official story was that Sega agreed to let Atari use any of their IP - except Sonic - but how many games did Atari release using Sega characters? Hmmm

As for comparing CD32 with consoles - it never got started so not fair, Also Starfox/Doom etc used Super FX or Super FX 2 chips. The SNES was basically a video passthrough. You could expand the Amga so it runs a better version of Doom.


You missed that Guardian on CD32 is much better than the A1200 version. Also Banshee on CD32 maybe be better. The CD32 had the best version of all those games

You reminded me of something that makes the CD32 way better than any other Amiga - it can have 4 channels of sound effects and play music. So many Amiga games suffer from reduced music quality or worse - only music or SFX.

HD's don't count - because you could buy a CD drive for A1200 if you wanted and almost make it a CD32. That's extra hardware

A4000 is good but like you say expensive - buy a Sharp X68000 instead and play arcade perfect games (Final Fight etc) and do creative work.

[Gilbert]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

For many years I lamented Commodore´s lack of vision and foresight when they released the CD32, only staring back at the already outdated SEGA CD as their only competition.

But then one day I realized it was pretty much the only machine Commodore were capable of releasing at the time given the circumstances.
Someone here at the forums used the term "commodore´s last roll of the dice" and I agree that its exactly what it was..
They reused so many old stocks of hardware they already had so that they wouldn't have to spend a dime more than necessary.. AKIKO was new but it actually replace a lot of earlier chips, so it was about reducing cost primarily. not adding more new cool features that would matter in the future. The C2P feature was added as an afterthought because hey why not, it was easy to implement.
So.. The CD32 was what Commodore could realistically manage at the time and get it out on the market in a short period of time. If they really had the finances and the foresight they would obviously had given the console a bit more breathing room with a faster cpu, faster RAM, maybe some additional co-processor that could do neat tricks (DSP maybe?)

The Sega Saturn hit the market 1 year later and it absolutely destroys the CD32 specs wise. CD32 came about 2 years after the Mega-CD in japan, but looking at the games, you couldn't really tell the 32-bit vs 16-bit advantage in any significant way by judging the software library.
So when it was released, I was disappointed and from day 1 thought it was unimpressive and wouldn't be able to compete. (I already had a 1200 at the time and I was saving money for an accelerator card).

In retrospect things and views can change, it's kind of nice to have an Amiga that will play CDs out of the box without hassle and of course now it can be upgraded to what it should have been from the beginning.. Fast 030, fastram and a better controller ;-)

The only problem with the CD32 was that it was a consolized computer (A1200) rather than an actual games console. I've been saying the A1200 was underpowered for years but hardly anyone agrees with me. The CD32 is still the best Amiga though

[Gilbert]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

Amiga got 8 hardware sprite. this limit can be outpassed by coding tricks (multiplexing, use of bobs etc). Btw how many hardware sprites did IBM PC, Atari ST or Macintosh, the direct competitors of tha Amiga in late 80's, had at that time ?



Homebrew coders take 2 years because they are homebrew coders. In 1989, developers were mostly professional. Their time was dedicated to make a game, it wasn't an afterwork hobby.


About the initial subject, an out of the box CD32 isn't, in my opinion the best Amiga. Of course it can be expanded, but so is the A1200.

The ST wasn't a proper computer. It's well known it was rushed out after Atari lost the Amiga project to Commodore. It was just a 68000 in a box. The other computers weren't designed for the games market. The Sharp X68000 has 128 sprites with 32 on one line, and has very high quality games.

That was my point - you have to use hardware tricks when they should have given you a load of sprites to start with. You can still multiplex sprites on systems that have 64 or 128 sprites if you need to! But there is a reason the Megadrive and the SNES weren't given 8 sprites to start with...

Blitter is not that fast. You have dramatically reduce colors in objects or give up a playfield to speed things up

Fair enough if you don't agree with CD32 being the best. But I think a lot of people don't like it without taking into account the improvements it made to the other Amiga's

Homebrew coders get to know the best-way to do everything without any effort. Even the best way of doing hardware scrolling wasn't standardized until quite late in A500's life. Xenon II didn't use hardware sprites and hardly used the blitter as far as I'm aware. Look at Rainbow Islands - great game but narrow field of view. Nowdays that could be done fullscreen. But it wasn't like the developer was lazy. That was a massively praised conversion (even if it did miss out all the hidden islands)