PC games that made the Amiga look like Shit

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

The regular Amiga bashing here is sometimes a bit exhausting.

What is exhausting is the changing of topic. Trying to find PC games that in some ways outdid the usually superior Amiga version back in the days of PCs as office donkeys is a fun topic. One I would expect to produce a list of at most a handful of games. Literally, maybe at most 5 games. But I was hoping to be surprised. I was genuinely deeply interested in this thread when it was first created and was having a lot of fun with it.

It is also another example of how we must contain ourselves. Don't use this kind of title. Just don't. It's too provocative. If you want to have a serious discussion, use neutral language.

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by TCD

I think grond's point was that if you had a PC or had to get one for work anyway there was no point in getting a 'gaming machine' besides it from the early 90s on.

He's specifically saying that "if you happened to be bored by 2D shooters and jump'n'runs, it might have been a better choice just for games alone.".

EaB is full or thread with people explaining how shit the Amiga was because shooters and jump and run were better on console and the rest better on PC. Of course nowhere or never is mentionned the price of such a set up for just gaming alone in the early 90. Go ask your parents born in the first half of the XXth century to spend that money for your gaming comfort.
Now that we can play to almost every system for free and instantly we're totally lost in these kind of utterly anachronic comparaisons.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

Of course nowhere or never is mentionned the price of such a set up for just gaming alone in the early 90. Go ask your parents born in the first half of the XXth century to spend that money for your gaming comfort.

Well, we (that's my brother and myself) owned a lot of consoles and by 1994 two Amiga 500 and a PC. Still not sure how we managed to finance that, but we did.

Anyway, like gimbal said this thread was initially about which games were better on the PC than on the Amiga (worded in a 'CLICK ME ON YOUTUBE' way). I don't think the fact that the Amiga wasn't as expensive makes games 'better'. There's a lot of games on both machines that I would consider 'better' on the Amiga, but there are some that aren't. Of course this thread very quickly became other iteration of 'Which is the better machine', which frankly is just a bit sad.

[grond]

Games were better on the Amiga but I could only afford a C=64 saving my pocket money for a long time. Yes, that doesn't mean games on the C=64 were any better than they really were. What the PC could do was this:

- dad pays to get the PC for serious stuff
- later: kid talks dad into getting a better graphics card
- even later: dad needs a newer PC anyway, kid gets outdated PC

But again this is off-topic. I agree with sokolovic that several of the games listed didn't look like shit on the Amiga but we have to admit that they were better on the PC already that early with still quite a few years to go until Win95 came around.

[Megalomaniac]

If you (or dad) already had a 286 or faster PC for work, and wanted things like adventures and flight sims, then maybe adding a VGA card and a Soundblaster card might have been worth it by 1991 (though they'd cost about the same as an A500) - in general the former would look better and the latter would move faster, and increasingly both were released first. Still, most of the listed games were just as good on the PC, and most of them for the Amiga were hard drive installable and were enhanced by accelerators if you had them

However, other than Wing Commander (though the much later CD32 version has the graphics and the speed from the PC) and Caveman Ninja (which got an utterly ghastly Amiga version (inexplicably most reviewers other than Amiga Power scored it in the 70s)) action games on the PC rarely matched the same or similar things on the Amiga. For 2D action games you'd need a 486 to match A500 performance, and 3D action games were a rarity until Doom.

[rKickrkds]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

Looking better or being Faster doesn't means that the Amiga version was looking like shit in comparaison.
Sim City, Populous, Dune or EoB are top class games on the Amiga.

I disagree about being faster not meaning shit in comparison, it completely kills these games on Amiga.



A10-Tank Killer, 1989, runs smooth on my 286 12mhz with VGA (used on average 140+ colors in game). Also only needed 512KB to run in DOS.
Amiga version came out in 1991, needed 1MB, only uses on average 27 colors in game and runs like a slide show.
Speed was very important in those types of games and I was disappointed when I got my Amiga after playing this and comparing it on my 286.

Wing Commander, 1990 VGA used on average 120 colours in game, ran very well on my 286 (there were complaints about it even being too fast on a 386). Got Amiga release in 1992, 16 colours and far too slow to play.



Ignore Dune from 1992, but I had both and the PC version uses 100+ colors in game compared to Amiga 32.


Budokan was one my my favorite games from 1989. Vga averages 120+ colors on PC and it still plays smoother during fights on my 286 than the Amiga version I played in 1992

Eye of Beholder , 1991. PC used 150+ colours in VGA mode, Amiga averaged 28, needed 1MB and was slower compard to same game on my 286. (also only needed 590KB to run on PC).



Most PC games were cra@p in the 80's because it took until around 1989-90 for PC devs to stop targeting their games at 8086 and actually using 286 as the base. All the above games I was expecting to be better than the PC versions I had when I got my Amiga in 1992, but they clearly were inferior, which was a surprise for me at the time.

I agree what you say about the cost of PCs. My father had our 286 free as part of his job in exports. You can forget any 386 in the 1980's, even 1989, ,unless you were a millionaire or remortgaged your house.
But a 286 is to this day laughably underrated and what it could do with VGA.

[Karlos]

One of my all time favourite games was Syndicate. The DOS version played identically but there's no denying the presentation was better, with 256 colour menu screens, animations and most significantly, the high res in game display.

Didn't stop me playing the Amiga version to death, though

[grond]

Originally Posted by Karlos

One of my all time favourite games was Syndicate. The DOS version played identically but there's no denying the presentation was better, with 256 colour menu screens, animations and most significantly, the high res in game display.

Didn't stop me playing the Amiga version to death, though

My friend couldn't get Syndicate to run on his 386SX-40 with 4MB of RAM because of all this driver and memory layout mess they had on the PC. On my A600 it was just enter disk, play game. Yes, it would have been nice if there had been a full-featured version for AGA+hdd but Syndicate was one of those few triumphes I enjoyed with my Amiga over my friend's PC.

[Karlos]

The best thing about syndicate was that the gameplay mechanics were identical, bug-for-bug compatible. I took advantage of the various AI bugs, e.g. enemy agents always hunting your players in a deterministic way (and ignoring any others as long as not shot at), not developing weapons you have found but not yet researched, the ability for countless enemy agents to congregate on a single spot below or above the targeted player. Couple that with the one shot, guaranteed kill of the flamer. You can imagine. Most of the time I'd clear levels with 4 v3 agents each with a full complement of long range rifles (which enemy syndicates never develop regardless save the odd few that have them to begin with). Enemies couldn't get close.

Never lost a single agent this way, even the Atlantic accelerator was a piece of cake once these bugs are understood.

[grond]

Originally Posted by Karlos

the ability for countless enemy agents to congregate on a single spot below or above the targeted player. Couple that with the one shot, guaranteed kill of the flamer.

Yes, I remember this very well. I cleared the Atlantic platform level with its 100+ enemy agents simply by luring them into chasing me and then waiting behind a corner and toasting every single one of them with the flame thrower the moment they turned around the corner. They didn't learn from the burning running dead ahead of them...

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by grond

My friend couldn't get Syndicate to run on his 386SX-40 with 4MB of RAM because of all this driver and memory layout mess they had on the PC.

Hm, never had that problem with Syndicate. Dune 2 was always the hard one. But yeah, that was terrible. I was blessed with a combination of hardware that happened to fit quite snuggly without much tampering, on the machine of a friend we had to really jiggle everything before we squeezed out the necessary extra kilobytes of conventional memory to get most games working.

[Megalomaniac]

I didn't get a PC until Windows 95 was out, but most games were still DOS, and I remember the horrors of drivers, boot disks and conventional memory (and how could Expanded Memory and Extended Memory be two different things?). A big contrast from the simplicity of floppy based Amigas, although much faster when it did work. Windows 95 made things a lot easier, but DirectX was a headache sometimes. Still, once you added a hard drive Amigas aren't as simple anymore.

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

(and how could Expanded Memory and Extended Memory be two different things?).

Expanded memory was pretty much the PC's version of the trapdoor memory expansion slot in the 808x days. Eventually emulation was used to fake software into thinking the computer had expanded memory even though it only had extended memory. Still a pain though that software required specifically EMS or XMS memory.

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

I didn't get a PC until Windows 95 was out, but most games were still DOS, and I remember the horrors of drivers, boot disks and conventional memory (and how could Expanded Memory and Extended Memory be two different things?). A big contrast from the simplicity of floppy based Amigas, although much faster when it did work. Windows 95 made things a lot easier, but DirectX was a headache sometimes. Still, once you added a hard drive Amigas aren't as simple anymore.

I think you are slightly exaggerating - DOS 6.xx (earlier?) introduced multiple config (multi boot) so making optimal configuration for games was not so difficult... and himem.sys was relatively simple, issues was drivers but usually you could workaround some issues by using other driver (for mouse, cd-rom etc)
At some point you could find information how to squeeze most of mem - something like: https://www.mdgx.com/mem6.htm#M6 (of course not in internet but usually trough printed magazines etc)

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by rKickrkds

I disagree about being faster not meaning shit in comparison, it completely kills these games on Amiga.

Perhaps you are forgetting that faster Amigas were also available. In 1988 Commodore released the A2500/20 with 14 MHz 68020, and you could get a 14 MHz 68020 for the Amiga 500. In 1989 Commodore released the A2500/30 with 25 MHz 68030. Several of my friends had these (I got a 25MHz A3000 in 1991).

It could be argued that speed has some effect on what a game looks like. However this becomes moot when running the game on a suitably fast Amiga. A 14 MHz 68020 should be at least as fast as a 12 MHz 286.

A10-Tank Killer, 1989, runs smooth on my 286 12mhz with VGA (used on average 140+ colors in game). Also only needed 512KB to run in DOS.
Amiga version came out in 1991, needed 1MB, only uses on average 27 colors in game and runs like a slide show.

The amount of memory needed is irrelevant to this discussion.

V1.5 of A10 Tank Killer (released in 1991) could run in up to 64 colors (extra halfbrite) and used HAM mode for static images. When set at maximum graphics level you have to look closely to tell the difference between the Amiga and PC versions. Surprisingly the cockpit looks better in the Amiga version (IMO) due to the more muted colors. The static HAM screens appear to have been converted from the 256 color VGA graphics, so they are not as good they could be (but still pretty good).

Speed was very important in those types of games and I was disappointed when I got my Amiga after playing this and comparing it on my 286.

The 80286 takes 2-3 clocks per memory cycle compared to the 68000's 4 clocks, so a 12 MHz 286 should (all else being equal) be ~3 times faster than a 7 MHz 68000. The Amiga's blitter and copper etc. aren't of much use here because 3D calculations take up most of the CPU time. That is why informed Amiga fans knew that a faster Amiga was desirable for running flight simulators etc.

I played A10 Tank Killer on an A1200 with FastRAM, and it was plenty fast enough. The in-game graphic detail wasn't fantastic (nor was it on the PC), but it didn't need to be. What made the game great was the simplified simulation controls and interesting missions.

Amiga screenshots.



PC screenshots.

[lmimmfn]

Originally Posted by pandy71

I think you are slightly exaggerating - DOS 6.xx (earlier?) introduced multiple config (multi boot) so making optimal configuration for games was not so difficult... and himem.sys was relatively simple, issues was drivers but usually you could workaround some issues by using other driver (for mouse, cd-rom etc)
At some point you could find information how to squeeze most of mem - something like: https://www.mdgx.com/mem6.htm#M6 (of course not in internet but usually trough printed magazines etc)

The main issue outside of himem config etc. was IRQ conflicts for your various hardware, sound cards, controlkers etc. which I'm told was a nightmare. I didn't get a PC until 2002 so never had those issues other than helping fixing them for friends PCs.

The first time I realised a huge gulf between Amiga games and OC games was when CVG reviewed F15 Strike Eagle 2(might have been 1) but the VGA gfx just looked stunning back then.

*Edit* Found the review - https://archive.org/details/cvg-magazine-095
Page 55
October 89 - thats when I realised PC was much better at 3D(and I wouldn't have an Amiga until a year later lol ).
Love looking at those old mags lol

[TCD]

Originally Posted by lmimmfn

The main issue outside of himem config etc. was IRQ conflicts for your various hardware, sound cards, controlkers etc. which I'm told was a nightmare. I didn't get a PC until 2002 so never had those issues other than helping fixing them for friends PCs.

It was mainly once an issue to find out the IRQ and DMA settings for your sound card. A bit more hassle if you had a seperate MIDI device. Never had an issue beyond that with controllers on a PC obtained in 1994.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by TCD

It was mainly once an issue to find out the IRQ and DMA settings for your sound card. A bit more hassle if you had a seperate MIDI device. Never had an issue beyond that with controllers on a PC obtained in 1994.

Lucky you.

Many sound cards came with 'drivers' that configured the card settings, and possibly installed TSR code to emulate certain features. If you didn't run this 'driver' with the correct parameters the card might not work properly or at all, or you might get conflicts with other devices using the same I/O ports or interrupts.

Why should a gamer have to be concerned about such low level details as I/O port addresses and interrupts? On the Amiga (and some Commodore PCs) it was taken care of via Autoconfig. On a DOS PC that couldn't be done because there was no defined protocol and no cooperation at the hardware level. You had to set switches or jumpers on the boards and/or go into the BIOS setup to choose the correct settings. This was highly technical stuff that even experts sometimes had trouble with.

What's worse is that there was no internet back then like we have today, where you can just google it and download everything you need. I used to keep copies of driver disks and manuals, and in later years CDs burned with all the stuff we needed, so when a customer brought in a machine whose hard drive had been corrupted we had it all ready to go. They of course didn't bring in their own disks and manuals, perhaps because they had lost them.

And unlike the Amiga there were literally thousands of different cards and systems that were different enough that you couldn't just use generic drivers and manuals. A motherboard or card might have several different revisions with jumpers in different places and no hint as to what they did. 'Plug'n'Pray' cards were worse because you often couldn't tell which drivers to use with them. It was a nightmare!

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by lmimmfn

The first time I realised a huge gulf between Amiga games and OC games was when CVG reviewed F15 Strike Eagle 2...

thats when I realised PC was much better at 3D

Yes. You can see from the screenshots below how much better the PC version was:-

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Why should a gamer have to be concerned about such low level details as I/O port addresses and interrupts? On the Amiga (and some Commodore PCs) it was taken care of via Autoconfig.

If vendors actually cared (or care) about autoconfig. There is more than one hardware, even more recent ones, that do not care and use some proprietary protocols to get their hardware identified. P5 hardware is prone to such defects, but such bad habbits seem to become popular again, either because their vendors do not know better, or they are just ignorant...