The Amiga's gaming legacy is pretty amazing when you think about it

[sokolovic]

Yeah. Saying that the existence of affordable 16bit home computers was negligible is a bit too much.

We're about to open another alternative timeline where Team17, DMA designs, Reflections, Gremlins, Core Design, Bullfrog, Factor 5, DICE jump straight from the C64 to the PC, MD and SNES without the learning curve they had by practising on the 16bits home computers.

That said, in the US and Japanese market it was true. But many European houses would'nt exist nowadays because they just needed this step to progress.
And those houses doesn't deny this fact by the way.

[AestheticDebris]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Without the Amiga and ST, 8-bit developers would have potentially had to either go straight to the PC, which was ill-suited to pure 2D action games until much much later, or to the consoles,

Agreed. The PC couldn't really fill that role until DirectX came along.

Originally Posted by sokolovic

Yeah. Saying that the existence of affordable 16bit home computers was negligible is a bit too much.

Which is why I didn't say that. I said you could take away any one platform and it wouldn't really matter. Be that one of the two main 16-bit machines or frankly any of the multitude of 8-bit platforms.

The "home computer" scene in general was vital to the way the UK industry formed and developed. It would certainly have been a detriment if you'd pretty much had to get a job at a professional studio in order to gain access to console Dev kits (and that's why I think the UK scene was so much stronger than the US).

I just don't think it mattered enormously which platform you had access to. If the Amiga hadn't existed, likely the same people with similar game ideas would've surfaced on the ST instead.

[Megalomaniac]

Even in the US it did have some minor impact - Raven Software who did Heretic and Hexen debuted with Black Crypt on the Amiga, and a few of Lucasfilm and Westwood's Amiga programmers started with that and stayed with them to work on their later PC games - but not much, most of the Cinemaware / FTL / Discovery guys sadly did little in games after their companies folded. It saddens me that America largely skipped the 16-bit home computers, I think it was to the detriment of the public.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Even in the US it did have some minor impact - Raven Software who did Heretic and Hexen debuted with Black Crypt on the Amiga...

I'm just reading 'Doom Guy' by John Romero and it's interesting how he was (a bit) reluctant to change to PC from Apple 2 and how he met with Raven. So the US wasn't all PC from 1981 on, but the 16-bit machines didn't matter as much mostly due to consoles (read that as the NES) playing a much bigger role than computers for gaming in the 80s.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

We're about to open another alternative timeline where Team17, DMA designs, Reflections, Gremlins, Core Design, Bullfrog, Factor 5, DICE jump straight from the C64 to the PC, MD and SNES without the learning curve they had by practising on the 16bits home computers.

Ultimate/Rare bypassed Amig/ST completely in this timeline. They did work on arcade games prior to that but these were early ones.

Seems to have worked out pretty well for them

[Megalomaniac]

Ultimate / Rare were definitely the exception though, I'm struggling to think of any other European developers who made games for consoles or PCs before about 1990. They will have had to give up a degree of independence and creative control to be part of the Nintendo machine (for every Captain Skyhawk or Snake Rattle n Roll there was a Jeopardy or NARC, a conversion or license they probably didn't enjoy), but yes, they were a big loss to Nintendo when they went to Microsoft, and they've made at least some of the highlights of every systemt ehy worked on (except maybe the C64).

[lionagony]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

That said, in the US and Japanese market it was true. But many European houses would'nt exist nowadays because they just needed this step to progress.
And those houses doesn't deny this fact by the way.

Very true. I liked what Martyn Brown from Team 17 said just the other night when asked about the era, "It was a tremendous time. I'm so grateful for the Amiga to be an open platform, the guys at Commodore were a lot of help, good relationship with David as well, so just good times" from 3:53:31 here [ Show youtube player ]

[lionagony]

Just for fun I looked at the Wikipedia pages of Core Design and Psygnosis. I counted how many games they put out for each system in the 16 bit era before their first Playstation game. A lot of these games were on multiple platforms but here are the totals. Core Design since 1988 had 38 Amiga games, 17 Atari ST, 13 Sega, 11 DOS and 2 SNES. Psygnosis since 1985 had 57 Amiga games, 29 Atari ST, 28 DOS, 14 Sega and 7 SNES. Comparing some of the Atari ST to Amiga versions I can't see how the ST would have ever lit up the gaming imagination in the same way as the Amiga.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Ultimate / Rare were definitely the exception though, I'm struggling to think of any other European developers who made games for consoles or PCs before about 1990. They will have had to give up a degree of independence and creative control to be part of the Nintendo machine

You are playing the what-if game, and I gave an example of what has really happened. It's impossible to say whether they were an exception or not in a hypothetical scenario because the 16 bit computers did exist.


If they didn't, I think it's most likely more 8-bit devs would transit either to consoles or PC, because this hobby is quite addictive (especially at that trailblazing time) and I wouldn't expect them to take up knitting instead. And the fact they remember Amiga fondly is in no way a proof that they would give it all up in a very unlikely case it (or some equivalent) didn't exist.

As for the loss of "independence and creative control", well, you're talking about Nintendo, responsible for some of the most innovative franchises of all time, and Rare were very much were part of that - just look at their portfolio. Same with Sega (Dreamcast, anyone?) or other Japanese devs/publishers. Kojima et al started some of their biggest hits on the MSX, which wasn't even 16 bit.

Also, nature abhors a vacuum, as some clever sod said, so I'm quite sure something else would take place of either ST/Amiga, should they somehow fail to materialise. Perhaps PC evolution would speed up (though the likes of Starflight, King's Quest or Civilisation didn't need flashy gfx to innovate) or some other company would release a fitting equivalent.

[sokolovic]

Sure but why does the other UK house didn't followed the same path ? Probably because Nintendo (or Sega) would'nt have funded the entire UK VG industry. We can suppose that the existence of a market we're you could release games made by beginners or small teams, at a low budget without the quality control of Japanese big houses was attractive to them and helped them to ultimately acquire a bigger reputation.

You surely know that they did at the end jumped the Amiga ship for consoles and PC, after levelling up their productions.

By the way Rare did well, but also DMA Design or DICE.

[TCD]

I remember a thread in which I was reminded that the European market hardly qualifies as leading the video game industry Would video games today be different without European developers using home computers to create games in the 80s and 90s? Most likely. Was one (or more) particular machine(s) more influential than the rest? Also quite likely.

'AAA' games don't seem to have much to do with those European roots anymore though. 'Indie' games seem to be mainly influenced by console games. The majority of the gaming world didn't use a 16-bit home computer and while some influential developers did, their input doesn't seem to have had a big impact on gaming today.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

You surely know that they did at the end jumped the Amiga ship for consoles and PC, after levelling up their productions.

I know, and I never said otherwise (to the contrary, in fact, before in other posts). In the last one I was replying to the "what if 16-bit machines did not exist" scenario.

Originally Posted by TCD

I remember a thread in which I was reminded that the European market hardly qualifies as leading the video game industry [...]'AAA' games don't seem to have much to do with those European roots anymore though. 'Indie' games seem to be mainly influenced by console games. The majority of the gaming world didn't use a 16-bit home computer and while some influential developers did, their input doesn't seem to have had a big impact on gaming today.

Eh, not sure I could agree with that. That's why I think this thread could be much more interesting if we looked at what has actually happened and examine particular games (eg the ones from page 1) than drift into fantasy scenarios of the multiverse yet again

[TCD]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

That's why I think this thread could be much more interesting if we looked at what has actually happened and examine particular games (eg the ones from page 1) than drift into fantasy scenarios of the multiverse yet again

Sure. The recent Tomb Raider games have very little in common with the original Core games. Lemmings is pretty much dead (last activity was ports to mobile platforms around 2010). The Warcraft connection to Lemmings is a stretch. GTA and Crash Bandicoot are still around albeit in a quite altered state. So that leaves Worms which is pretty much the same idea as on the Amiga still being relevant today.


Still fail to see how my post was a 'fantasy scenario of the multiverse' to begin with, but I hope this is non-fictional enough.

[alexh]

The video games industry despite an explosion a few years ago is very incestuous. The best float to the top and regularly cross between companies.

Tim Moss (Atari ST Demo coder, co-wrote A Prehistoric Tale on Amiga) worked with his Brother at Argonaut (just before I joined) went on to become technical director of Sony and co-wrote lots of their top selling PS2/3/4 games including God of War. Now he's at Meta/Oculus.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by TCD

Still fail to see how my post was a 'fantasy scenario of the multiverse' to begin with, but I hope this is non-fictional enough.

That was directed in the general direction of the thread, not your post(s). My phrasing wasn't really up to scratch here ( I see the implication - sorry).

Originally Posted by TCD

The recent Tomb Raider games have very little in common with the original Core games. Lemmings is pretty much dead (last activity was ports to mobile platforms around 2010). The Warcraft connection to Lemmings is a stretch. GTA and Crash Bandicoot are still around albeit in a quite altered state. So that leaves Worms which is pretty much the same idea as on the Amiga still being relevant today.

If you look at it this way, then obviously there is a very little connection but tracing direct lineages seems a bit harsh requirement (although could also be interesting in itself).

So I'd be more interested in actual ideas / concepts which might've started (or at least were heavily amplified) on Amiga and are still in use today. Eg, (after my 1st post ITT):
-Populous really did kickstart the whole "god game" genre

-Midwinter & Hunter were pioneering 3D open worlds, with use of multiple vehicles and non linear gameplay.
-Corporation - truly fluid first person espionage (8-bit Freescape engine games were a bit too slow)
-DotC has shown that strategy games don't have to be dull and genres mixed. And its gfx was really a dawn of new era. It's a bit like seeing CP2077 with path tracing RTX enabled
-Lemming >> Warcraft might be a stretch, but I think there are a lot of games which employ this mechanic of non direct control of a critter horde (Pikimin?)

[TCD]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

So I'd be more interested in actual ideas / concepts which might've started (or at least were heavily amplified) on Amiga and are still in use today.

I guess it depends how you define those ideas and concepts Let's take Lemmings and Brat. Basically the same idea (if you only look at the 'indirect' control aspect). That aspect continued to the RTS genre. Yet Dune 2 which is pre-cursor to Warcraft was inspired by Herzog-Zwei on the Genesis/MegaDrive.


Guess I'm saying it's not easy to isolate ideas that originated on the Amiga in today's game design. There were certainly developers inspired by the Amiga's capabilities and those ideas went on and evolved. On the other hand a lot of ideas most likely existed without the direct influence of the machine they were implemented on.

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

That was directed in the general direction of the thread, not your post(s). My phrasing wasn't really up to scratch here ( I see the implication - sorry).

If you look at it this way, then obviously there is a very little connection but tracing direct lineages seems a bit harsh requirement (although could also be interesting in itself).

So I'd be more interested in actual ideas / concepts which might've started (or at least were heavily amplified) on Amiga and are still in use today. Eg, (after my 1st post ITT):
-Populous really did kickstart the whole "god game" genre

-Midwinter & Hunter were pioneering 3D open worlds, with use of multiple vehicles and non linear gameplay.
-Corporation - truly fluid first person espionage (8-bit Freescape engine games were a bit too slow)
-DotC has shown that strategy games don't have to be dull and genres mixed. And its gfx was really a dawn of new era. It's a bit like seeing CP2077 with path tracing RTX enabled
-Lemming >> Warcraft might be a stretch, but I think there are a lot of games which employ this mechanic of non direct control of a critter horde (Pikimin?)

Another World maybe ?
The cinematics integrated in the gameplay.
Note that this game is part of the MOMA collections.
And it is a pure Amiga game, also designed on an Amiga and because of the Amiga specs.

[petran]

Originally Posted by TCD

I guess it depends how you define those ideas and concepts Let's take Lemmings and Brat. Basically the same idea (if you only look at the 'indirect' control aspect). That aspect continued to the RTS genre. Yet Dune 2 which is pre-cursor to Warcraft was inspired by Herzog-Zwei on the Genesis/MegaDrive.


Guess I'm saying it's not easy to isolate ideas that originated on the Amiga in today's game design. There were certainly developers inspired by the Amiga's capabilities and those ideas went on and evolved. On the other hand a lot of ideas most likely existed without the direct influence of the machine they were implemented on.

Impossible to limit it in just one system.
Eg Qwak creator mentions:
https://www.gamedev.net/tutorials/in...odhouse-r2625/



Influences for Qwak? There would have been so many!! The kind of games I used to really love playing back then; Starforce, Krull, Gauntlet, Defender, Starwars ... hmmm, not many platform games there! I must have played Bubble Bobble, oh, and Flicky (awesome platformer, featuring a bird character), and a whole load of other platform games on the Beeb [BBC Micro - ed]; Frak, Monsters, and too many others to recall; I was really saturated with games in my younger days.


Interesting! Actually, the games you mentioned are completely different from the ones I thought about: Pengo (bird character!), Pooyan (not sure why...musically maybe), Mappy...

Sure, I would certainly have played Mappy and Pengo in the arcades. I played a lot of games back then, when I was a kid, seaside amusement arcades and all that!

[TCD]

Originally Posted by petran

Impossible to limit it in just one system.

Indeed. sokolovic just gave a great example of an Amiga-ish original game that had a quite big impact on the gaming world. It's clearly inspired by Jordan Mechner's games from the Apple II. There are some truly unique ideas in gaming, but for the most part people get inspired by various other (gaming related or not) ideas.

[sokolovic]

TCD, Amiga original but not exclusive