When you first bought an Amiga, what games were you looking to play?

[TCD]

Originally Posted by DanyPPC

A game I would have liked to see on Amiga is Wec Le Mans, never converted to 16 bit computers.

It almost was: https://amiga.abime.net/games/view/wec-le-mans#scans (quite a few ads claiming that it is coming to Amiga)

[Jope]

Marble madness would have been a specific game I wanted to play, but it was always about everything the machine could do. I spent time with the user's manuals, TheVeryFirst, poking around the workbench disk, poking around the CLI packs full of games/utilities I received and so on.

First Amiga experiences 1987, finally got my own in the summer of 1989.

[grond]

A lot about the technology alone was very impressive. I mean, I was a datasette kid, my neighbours had 1541s which already was far out of reach for me. Then one of them got an A500 and it had an inbuilt floppy. No way around having a floppy! And not only that, it wasn't huge, clunky, slow and unreliable, it took those new hardcover floppy disks that loaded so quickly. It felt very much like the upgrade from floppy-only Amiga to having a harddisk and much later like upgrading from a magnetic disk to an SSD. With all this, how would I have to actually look at the games catalogue to make up my mind whether I wanted to have one or not? And which of the games would be appealing to me? It was the best thing I had seen and I wanted one.

[Lilura]

Originally Posted by TCD

It almost was: https://amiga.abime.net/games/view/wec-le-mans#scans (quite a few ads claiming that it is coming to Amiga)

Would have been nice to have on the Amiga in 1988 in addition to Super Hang-On of 1988.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Lilura

Would have been nice to have on the Amiga in 1988 in addition to Super Hang-On of 1988.

According to The One it was cancelled in late 1988 or early 1989, so it would have been released in 1989.

[NorthWay]

I remember seeing Mindwalker and DotC in my local shop. That was of interest. I also lusted after Marble Madness and several Magnetic Scrolls games.
I think one of the first cracks I got in 88 with my 2000 was Katakis.

But one of the main motivations was actually to get hold of the many fantastic demos that were next-level compared to my C= 64.

[Megalomaniac]

Games you were hoping you'd be able to play, but never could, are an interesting sub-thread here. There are plenty of individual games that it would have been nice to see on the Amiga in those early days. Coin-op conversions the 8-bits got, from WEC Le Mans to Gauntlet to Rastan. Great C64 action games like Hunter's Moon and Cosmic Causeway, as well as disk-based C64 gems like Wasteland and Project: Firestart. All manner of ST games from Oids and Sundog, through games that all the big machines except the Amiga got, like Rana Rama or Uridium. Isometric classics like Get Dexter AKA Crafton Et Xunk or Where Time Stood Still. Not only would a hypothetical Top 50 Amiga Games list in late 1988 have featured most of those if converted well, but the chances are that most of us only ever got to play a small percentage of these, especially if we had Amigas by 1988 or so. Nice that open-source conversions or unofficial clones have filled in a few of these gaps.

[dirkies]

I did buy all the Fred fish CDs and all aminet CDs if that counts

[Lilura]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Replacing a C64 with an A1000 in 1986 meant missing a lot of great C64 games, and having a long wait for a really rounded catalogue of great Amiga games.

Dude, that no-brainer was expressed in the 8 bit games vs. 16 bit games thread, where several EABers said they did not shelve their C64s after getting an Amiga, including me.

You know, the thread in which dreadnought tried to argue that 1987 16 bit games > 8 bit games; that there was, and I quote, "no contest". Truly a shitpost for the ages.

And that was the same thread in which you tried to argue that 1989 ST serious games > 1989 IBM PC serious games (and flat-shaded games). And in which you implied that Wing Commander of 1990 was 3D after previously saying that WC employed texture-mapping, when it is was actually naught but a lowly 2D sprite-scaler. You were corrected twice over two threads and never acknowledged your error, yet continue to cite WC like you know anything about it.

And now you seem to be slowly back-pedaling on ST serious games > IBM PC serious game -- but only in other threads, and only with regard to flight sims, after I made you aware of EGA 640x350 Jet 2.0 of 1987 and the like?

How odd.

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Marble Madness were a quantum leap from what you were used to.

No Amiga game from 1985-87 constitutes a quantum leap over 8 bit games. No. of on-screen colors and palette range is not enough.

Marble Madness is nothing special. It is only considered special because the Amiga had nothing much of substance on offer from 1985-87 to veterans of 8 bit games.

Still, F/A-18 Interceptor and Millennium 2.2 were certainly beyond what an 8-bit could hope to do ... Speedball ... Xenon, Menace, Goldrunner and even Insanity Fight

Why are you jumping ahead by two years now (three for M2.2), I wonder?

I know why -- it's because 1985-87 Amiga games have nothing on 8 bit equivalents. So now you start talking about 1988-89 Amiga games.

And so you drop the names of four Amiga 87-88 shooters, but truth be told no C64 shoot 'em up aficionado would be jealous of the Amiga's 87-88 shooter line-up either, even with Hybris of 1988 (which you conspicuously omitted).

Reminder of C64 shooter (masterpiece-only) line-up of 1985-86:

Paradroid 1985
Crazy Comets 1985
Gyruss 1986
Iridis Alpha 1986
Sanxion 1986
Uridium 1986
Alleykat 1986
Terra Cresta 1986

But now you want to jump forward to 1987-88? Ok, let's do that. Again, masterpiece-only line-up, not slop like Menace:

Delta 1987
Hunter's Moon 1987
Gradius 1987
Light Force 1987
Bulldog 1987
Slap Fight 1987
Mega-Apocalypse 1987
Hades Nebula 1987
Task 3 1987
Salamander 1988
IO: Into Oblivion 1988
Armalyte 1988
Zamzara 1988

[grond]

Coming to think of it, fixed palettes may have been the most important single reason why everything on 8bit and PCs looked so ugly in comparison to Amiga with its 4096 colour palette you could choose from. I never understood why they even transferred the horrible PC colours to Amiga for some ports. They could easily have chosen better colours than bright purple, cyan blue and so on without having to change the graphics. Arkanoid or similar may have been just as playable on C64 as on the Amiga, but it didn't have colour gradients (well, I haven't actually checked whether my memory is right, I guess you'll correct me) and just didn't look as colourful. That was one important factor for me as a young person. A more seasoned gamer would probably have cared more about actual gameplay and perhaps a good story line and found all that on the PC.

[Megalomaniac]

This feels personal now. Plenty of people broadly agree with me, yet you only quote me. Every single time. You also ignore the post where I said I'd be reluctant to be an 'early adopter' because there were so many great C64 games after 1986, and so few great Amiga games in 1986. I mentioned those 1988-1989 Amiga games (all previously mentioned by other people - yet you only quote me) because others had mentioned them - the opening post said "I'm most interested in the expectations of 1985-87 Amigans, but I don't mind if you bought an Amiga after 1988." (i.e. I don't mind if we discuss expectations of 1988 (or later) Amiga buyers).

Still, dreadnought actually did respond to you, referring to "the big computer exclusives" such as Dungeon Master and Sundog as "the Cyberpunks and Skyrims of their era" whereas "modern folks seem to be fixated only on arcade-style games" (when discussing retrogames) and the theory that nobody cared about awkward joystick port placements once they'd seen the screenshots. You may disagree with his mindset, but at least analyse the whole comment.

I notice the selective quoting too - saying that

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Which 8-bit you had, and perhaps whether it was cassette or disk, influences whether e.g. Bard's Tale or Marble Madness were a quantum leap from what you were used to.

is not the same as saying Marble Madness was a quantum leap in itself (compared to the 8-bit versions, or similar 8-bit games such as Gyroscope). Other games mentioned here will have felt like a quantum leap because they were such new styles and new concepts, not purely because of colours or palette.

Likewise I said

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

shoot 'em ups took time to find favour on 16-bits (though Xenon, Menace, Goldrunner and even Insanity Fight had their fans at the time)

which implies that I don't think that list were especially great games. I omitted Hybris (which is indeed wonderful) because nobody other than you or I have mentioned it, and it seems that it wasn't widely available outside the US until 1989 anyway (check review dates as evidence). Overall, shoot 'em ups have barely been mentioned, either in terms of wanting to buy specific games or in terms of looking forward to new shoot 'em ups, by people buying Amigas in 1988 or earlier. Yes, the C64 still led for shoot 'em ups until 1988 at the earliest, but how many of the biggest Amiga games (later, let alone earlier) were traditional shooters? Maybe Hybris was relatively ignored at the time because people who'd bought 16-bit machines at that early stage largely wanted new styles rather than more shoot 'em ups? It's only when people look back from a retrogames perspective that it becomes more popular than the early Amiga games which did new things but were superseded later in terms of how they did them? You seem to assume that everyone wanted shoot 'em ups when they bought an Amiga, despite evidence to the contrary. Also, not everyone who had an 8-bit had a C64 (which particularly excelled in shoot 'em ups) - would it be worth replacing one of the other top 8-bits with a C64, just for one genre?

True about Wing Commander not actually being texture-mapped, though it was sometimes referred to as such at the time, and it looks like it compared to sprite-based PC games of the time (the Commander Keen stuff , or even conversions like Xenon II or Rick 2). It still looked and felt like something new though. It was the first PC game where people who weren't into flight sims or maybe adventures would see the screenshots and think "wow, that's better than my Amiga can do" (as the later but slow-on-an-A500-despite-only-16-colours conversion implies, they were partly right)

[Lilura]

Originally Posted by grond

Coming to think of it, fixed palettes may have been the most important single reason why everything on 8bit and PCs looked so ugly in comparison to Amiga with its 4096 colour palette you could choose from.

And yet the limited 8-bit palettes often resulted in superior clarity. An uncomfortably significant number of 8 bit coinop ports played better than 16-bit equivalents as well.

No. of on-screen colors + palette range is overrated. I'm not saying limited color palettes are always better, I'm saying there is a sweetspot for coder and graphician to aim for.

I never understood why they even transferred the horrible PC colours to Amiga for some ports. They could easily have chosen better colours than bright purple, cyan blue and so on without having to change the graphics.

Because it was easier to EGA-ify an Amiga original based on the fact that it would subsequently be ported to IBM PC.

A more seasoned gamer would probably have cared more about actual gameplay and perhaps a good story line and found all that on the PC.

I'd say that real gamers care most about gameplay, not story or palette. And real gamers care about gameplay-facilitating code, such as scrolling and sprite-shifting routines, over palette as well.

[grond]

Originally Posted by Lilura

And yet the limited 8-bit palettes often resulted in superior clarity. An uncomfortably significant number of 8 bit coinop ports played better than 16-bit equivalents as well.

No. of on-screen colors + palette range is overrated. I'm not saying limited color palettes are always better, I'm saying there is a sweetspot for coder and graphician to aim for.

Since you can always choose the fixed palette colours from the freely chosen colour palette, I only see disadvantages. OK, the extra degree of freedom the Amiga gave means that you can make bad choices and end up with a game that looks worse than the competition to most people while with a fixed palette all games will look equally bad. Is it that what you are saying? I have to say that I never felt the C64 was missing colours even though it had less than the C16 I owned before the C64 (and which had very few games titles, so who cares for colours?).

Because it was easier to EGA-ify an Amiga original based on the fact that it would subsequently be ported to IBM PC.

I believe you misunderstood me, I was talking about the trivial case of ports from the PC to the Amiga where they missed the opportunity to just so slightly adjust the colours to make them a little more eye-pleasing.

I'd say that real gamers care most about gameplay, not story or palette. And real gamers care about gameplay-facilitating code, such as scrolling and sprite-shifting routines, over palette as well.

Mature gamers certainly do. When I was a kid, I probably gave gameplay much less thought and was duely impressed with screenshots on cover boxes...

[Lilura]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Other games mentioned here will have felt like a quantum leap because they were such new styles and new concepts, not purely because of colours or palette.

Just so you know, that statement doesn't constitute an argument. It's just a statement. In addition, "new styles and concepts" is a big claim.

And "feels like" is not factual. Do we care if a 1985-87 Amiga game felt like a quantum leap to someone with no 8 bit pedigree or affinity? If the Amiga was someone's first computer game machine, does their assessment of its game catalogue even count?

Only in an Amiga vacuum.

You seem to assume that everyone wanted shoot 'em ups when they bought an Amiga, despite evidence to the contrary.

I only used shoot 'em ups as an example. I was mainly hoping to correspond with veterans of 8 bit genre in general; those with affinity to certain 8 bit genre; veterans of such genre who gravitated to the Amiga.

True about Wing Commander not actually being texture-mapped, though it was sometimes referred to as such at the time,

WC just employs pre-rendered sprites that scale, shift and rotate. It doesn't matter if back in the day people referred to that as texture-mapping -- it wasn't.

Just like back in the day people referred to King's Quest and Knight Lore as 3D games -- they weren't. Not in the real sense, the polygonal sense and 3D-space relational sense. And these people continued to refer to such as 3D games even after the advent of Elite on the BBC Micro in 1984.

and it looks like it compared to sprite-based PC games of the time (the Commander Keen stuff , or even conversions like Xenon II or Rick 2).

Did you mean WC compared well to other sprite-scaling PC games of 1990 and before? If so... I suppose? Well, Operation Wolf of 1989 on IBM PC was rock solid, but I must admit to not being all that interested in games that sprite-scaled in 1990 because fully-3D flat-shaded games had reached their height of complexity one year before (and were getting good by as early 1987).

It still looked and felt like something new though. It was the first PC game where people who weren't into flight sims or maybe adventures would see the screenshots and think "wow, that's better than my Amiga can do" (as the later but slow-on-an-A500-despite-only-16-colours conversion implies, they were partly right)

Again with the "looked" and "felt."

WC was not the "first" non-flight-sim on IBM PC that would have impressed Amigans.

There are plenty of pre-WC/1990 IBM PC games that either:

1.) Did things the ST/Amiga couldn't do.
2.) Did things better than ST/Amiga.

Numerous examples could be cited from the flat-shaded IBM PC catalogue alone. Here's just a few from 1989, a year before WC came out:

DeathTrack 1989
Vette 1989
MechWarrior 1989
F-19 Stealth Fighter 1989
Carrier Command 1989
Indianapolis 500 1989
F-15 Strike Eagle 1989
M1 Tank Platoon 1989
Midwinter 1989

M1 Tank Platoon and MechWarrior are simply better games than WC. And technically more impressive; they are real sims, elite sims. Moreover, they are 3D. WC is just a cinematized sprite-scaler with an adventure-game component.

And let us not forget the IBM PC advantage in fidelity that stetches back to 1984:

Cyrus Chess 1984 640x350
Space War 1985 640x400
Risk 1986 640x350
Tetris 1986/7 640x400
Jet 2.0 1987 640x350
Microsoft Flight Simulator III 1988 640x350/720x348
SimCity 1989 640x350/640x480

Fidelity is important in "serious games" because you can fit more stats and text on a single screen.

Also, I have not listed wargames, cRPGs and strategy games on the IBM PC yet.

Main point: There is more to the IBM PC games catalogue than Wing Commander. Much more. Just because something's popular or oft-parroted by youtube vidslop, doesn't make it good. Or first.

[AestheticDebris]

Originally Posted by grond

Since you can always choose the fixed palette colours from the freely chosen colour palette, I only see disadvantages.

You can, but often people didn't. A lot of early art on machines like the ST and Amiga doesn't do well on palette choices, with artists often picking a light and dark shade of each colour. It took time to really learn the skills of optimising palette choices and to make the most of custom palettes. In contrast the fixed palettes of 8-bits tended to force artists hand. Sometimes more choice is not ideal.

Originally Posted by Lilura

Just like back in the day people referred to King's Quest and Knight Lore as 3D games -- they weren't. Not in the real sense, the polygonal sense and 3D-space relational sense. And these people continued to refer to such as 3D games even after the advent of Elite on the BBC Micro in 1984.

Now this I absolutely have to disagree on. Just because Knightlore has a fixed camera (like Resident Evil) or is based on a grid system (like Tomb Raider) it doesn't mean it's "not 3D". Objects within the game are absolutely tracked in 3D space and that's what makes it 3D, not using polygons.

You can certainly make arguments about games like Marble Madness or Outrun, but Knightlore is unequivocally a 3D game.

[Lilura]

Originally Posted by grond

I believe you misunderstood me, I was talking about the trivial case of ports from the PC to the Amiga where they missed the opportunity to just so slightly adjust the colours to make them a little more eye-pleasing.

Oops. Yeah, I agree. I'd venture to state that EGA 16-from-64 was indeed a tyrant; perhaps moreso than ST 16-from-512 was (depending on the genre one was into).

But from what I've observed of wargames, cRPGs and adventure games, while the Amiga versions may have been spruced up a little, they did not necessarily look better or play better; in many cases, they played slower in terms of screen-updates and sprite animations.

And since I'm an Amigan first and foremost, I would have preferred that such be coded, drawn and composed as Amiga-firsts.

[Lilura]

Originally Posted by AestheticDebris

Now this I absolutely have to disagree on. Just because Knightlore has a fixed camera (like Resident Evil) or is based on a grid system (like Tomb Raider) it doesn't mean it's "not 3D". Objects within the game are absolutely tracked in 3D space and that's what makes it 3D, not using polygons... Knightlore is unequivocally a 3D game.

My definition is as follows: If the objects and actors are rendered in polygonal 3D on-the-fly as per floors, ceilings, walls and terrain; if the 3D objects and actors seamlessly adhere to the 3D world-space -- that's a 3D game.

Knight Lore employs 2D images and image-masking, not polygons. You cannot even flip around its isometric perspective like in Ant Attack of 1983, which also isn't a 3D game.

The devs of Ant Attack and Knight Lore called their games 3D simply because they had 3D-ish aka pseudo-3D gameplay and playfield presentation, but they are not 3D games like Elite of 1984.

Knight Lore doesn't have a camera. It is a fixed-screen, flip-screen 2D isometric game, not a 3D game.

[Megalomaniac]

Originally Posted by Lilura

I only used shoot 'em ups as an example. I was mainly hoping to correspond with veterans of 8 bit genre in general; those with affinity to certain 8 bit genre; veterans of such genre who gravitated to the Amiga.

Strange. TCD, Zak, Grond, Dunny and Northway all explicitly mention having been veterans of 8-bits (C64 specifically in 3 cases) before getting an Amiga fairly early on. All mention the games they were most keen to play. Most are primarily interested in games a C64 or Spectrum couldn't do. Shoot 'em ups, and action games in general, are barely mentioned. And these are mostly people who got a $700ish A500 in 1988ish, not a $1600ish A1000 in 1986ish. Maybe what you wanted just wasn't typical of what other early adopters wanted, maybe their affinities was to different 8-bit genres to you?

In most cases, people did choose which fairly new system to upgrade to based on the 'look' and 'feel' of the games. Even if it turned out that the game that stunned you in the magazines (or from 15 minutes pay at your friend's house) didn't have gameplay to match, at least you'd seen proof that it could be done. You were at least partly considering which games would be available in 2-3 years (by which time a newly-bought PC would need heavy upgrading to avoiding being outdated, of course). If for Christmas 1983 you were offered a C64 (more potential) or a Vic-20 (better catalogue), which would you have chosen?

There's another thread of "PC games which made the Amiga look like s**t' (i.e. games which looked (not necessarily played) better than what was on the Amiga) from before 1991. It now runs to 68 pages. Nobody seems all that wowed by the games you've mentioned, either the 640x350 EGA or the 1989ish (PC Midwinter was late 1990, but never mind) polygon stuff. I'm still to see any evidence that a large number of Amiga owners were tempted to jump ship by the games mentioned. Also, remember that almost every game you've listed is American in origin, and mostly in styles or scenes that just weren't that big in Europe - were Indycar oval racing (now try doing all that detail for 16 tracks with right turns as well.....), tank sims, commercial flight sims, Risk etc mainstream concepts here?

Isometric games are seen as 2.5D, rather than 2D or 3D, but the nature of the movement and the vertical and horizontal nature of the puzzles makes them closer to Elite than to Manic Miner in my book (and in most people's books at the time).

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by Lilura

Knight Lore doesn't have a camera. It is a fixed-screen, flip-screen 2D isometric game, not a 3D game.

Back in the day, every company wanted 3D in their name.
I think you could find barbershop, and their advertising will tell you that they are doing a 3D haircut
(witch is true in reality.. it's actually 4D with time included).

Turbo - Mega - Giga - 3D

Ahh.. good ol' times.

[Lilura]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Strange. TCD, Zak, Grond, Dunny and Northway all explicitly mention having been veterans of 8-bits (C64 specifically in 3 cases) before getting an Amiga fairly early on. All mention the games they were most keen to play. Most are primarily interested in games a C64 or Spectrum couldn't do. Shoot 'em ups, and action games in general, are barely mentioned. And these are mostly people who got a $700ish A500 in 1988ish, not a $1600ish A1000 in 1986ish. Maybe what you wanted just wasn't typical of what other early adopters wanted, maybe their affinities was to different 8-bit genres to you?

All input from others is being read and acknowledged. This is early days of a thread that may get bumped out of the blue 20 years subsequent. Active EAB membership has changed a lot since EAB's inception; we are but a small sample of what is and has been.

There's another thread of "PC games which made the Amiga look like s**t' (i.e. games which looked (not necessarily played) better than what was on the Amiga) from before 1991. It now runs to 68 pages. Nobody seems all that wowed by the games you've mentioned, either the 640x350 EGA or the 1989ish (PC Midwinter was late 1990, but never mind) polygon stuff.

Again, a small sample collected over a short period of time... you may think 68 pages of "commentary" is notable, but I've written 3,000 articles on computer games. And people were citing some fool's fave 50 IBM PC games as being indicative or even authoritative; it isn't. Thus, I make my own thread.

I'm still to see any evidence that a large number of Amiga owners were tempted to jump ship by the games mentioned.

I'm about as interested in providing evidence of that as I am in seeing your evidence that Amigans jumped ship because of WC or Doom. I simply cited games that:

1.) Did things the ST/Amiga couldn't do
2.) Did things better than ST/Amiga

If you disagree, that's your problem: you weren't playing the best version of some of the greatest games of all-time.

Did you play Civilization only on the Amiga as well? It's way better on IBM PC. As are scores of other strat-games, wargames and cRPGs.

Also, remember that almost every game you've listed is American in origin, and mostly in styles or scenes that just weren't that big in Europe - were Indycar oval racing (now try doing all that detail for 16 tracks with right turns as well.....), tank sims, commercial flight sims, Risk etc mainstream concepts here?

And most of your "insights" are laughably UK-centric and US-ignorant, as well as IBM PC-ignorant. For example, no heyday IBM PC gamer would think that Wing Commander of 1990 was 3D and employed texture-mapping.

And you have cited the game many times in your "arguments." No offense, but the word "fraud" comes to mind.

Isometric games are seen as 2.5D, rather than 2D or 3D, but the nature of the movement and the vertical and horizontal nature of the puzzles makes them closer to Elite than to Manic Miner in my book (and in most people's books at the time).

Axonometrically projected games (dimetric, isometric etc) are by definition 2D games, not 3D games. That they employ verticality in gameplay is irrelevant; that they employ a reference grid is irrelelvant; it's simply 2D trickery and the illusion of 3D.

Note that I consider some isometric games to be some of the greatest games of all-time (Knight Lore is one), but they are not 3D, they are 2D.