Enhanced Chip Set (ECS) Games

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by TCD

If somebody finds those previews it would be great to add that piece of information to the HOL entry.

http://amr.abime.net/amr_search.php?...=0&action=Find

In the previews from the One december 1992 and CU Amiga may 1993. (Sorry I'm on phone, hard to past images)

[TCD]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

http://amr.abime.net/amr_search.php?...=0&action=Find

In the previews from the One december 1992 and CU Amiga may 1993. (Sorry I'm on phone, hard to past images)

Thank you Info added to the HOL entry.

[Herlock]

Hi,

I have been wondering for a while which non-AGA games *really* benefited from more than 512kb chip ram, especially during the years 1991-1992, when the A500+ then the A600 were out but the 1200 was not available yet. I other words, was buying an A500+ or A600 as a stop-gap machine (or hacking the A500 to get 1Mb Chip ram) worth it ?

There has been a lot of confusion around the notion of "ECS game". More than often, a game requires 1Mb ram, but it doesn't have to be all chip ram, even to get all the enhancements. Sometimes a game even requires 1.5Mb total, but you get every feature with 512k chip + 1Mb fast !

So I decided to assess every game from the 1991/1992 era claiming to have enhancements with 1Mb Chip Ram, reading manuals first, and then testing the actual adf files in PUE. I found out that most of theses claims are false! I could only find 4 games from this era which are actually enhanced with 1Mb Chip Ram:

1) Great courts 2 / Pro Tennis tour 2 (early 1991): This first one was not designed for the A500+ which had yet to exist, but for the A3000. The manual explicitely claims that you need 1Mb chip to have the speeches and mixed games. This is confirmed by actual testing.

2) Rise of the Dragon (10/1991): The manual explicitely claims that you need 1Mb chip ram to be able to raise the detail level to high, and indeed this is the case. Note: this game comes on 10 disks, so without a hard drive it is unplayable anyway...

3) Fantastic Voyage (12/1991): The manual claims that you need 1Mb of Chip ram to have the music during gameplay, and this is true, although I fail to see why it is so greedy.

4) Fire and Ice (05/1992): The manual claims that "additional chip ram" (without saying how much? Maybe freeing the original 512k by adding 2mb of Fast ram would be enough?) will allow a third screen for smoother scrolling. I could not verify this claim, but I give it the benefit of the doubt...


Some games are enhanced with 1Mb Chip Ram but also require additional hardware for this to make a difference: Simant and Simearth from Ocean require 1Mb chip ram for the high-rez version, but also require a 16mhz processor and a flicker fixer...

Some of the claims from manuals are plain wrong:
- Heart of China (12/1991) from Dynamics as for Rise of the Dragon, also claims (only in the German manual, not the English one) that you need 1Mb chip for the detail level to be set to high. But this is not true, with 512k/512k you can set it to high. You need 1.5Mb total for better music, but the 512k chip + 1Mb other mem is sufficient to achieve this goal.
-The Adventures of Willy Beamish (03/1992), also from Dynamics, has this claim in the manual too. .. but has no detail level slider to begin with !!! Same, 512k chip + 1Mb other is enough for the better music.

I read some claims about Mega lo mania and Hare raising Havoc being enhanced with 1Mb Chip, but nothing supports these claims - neither the manual nor the tests. Mega lo mania has all speeches and sound with a standard 512/512 config...

I am in doubt for one game: I read in this thread that Conan the Cimmerian (late 1991) would have an enhanced intro on A500+ compared to the A500, but I could not demonstrate that. In fact, the adf I could find (2 different versions) even fail to boot with 1Mb Chip Ram only! You need to add some fast ram, whereas the standard 512/512 works fine, which is very strange. The box says "1mb chip ram recommended", but the manuals says nothing more about it. This maybe related to hard drive installation? Any clue ?

Of course, in 1993 more and more games making use of additional chip ram appeared: The Settlers, Walker, Hired Guns, Lemmings 2, Ishar 2, seek and destroy.... But by then, the A1200 was available.

So, to me it seems that no significant game was designed for the A500+/A600... Am I wrong ?

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by Herlock

Hi,

Some games are enhanced with 1Mb Chip Ram but also require additional hardware for this to make a difference: Simant and Simearth from Ocean require 1Mb chip ram for the high-rez version, but also requires a 16mhz processor and a flicker fixer...

Are you sure about recquiring a 16mhz processor ?
And for the flicker fixer it isn't mandatory. You could play in HiRes without it.
A-Train also got an HiRes mode.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Herlock

So, to me it seems that no significant game was designed for the A500+/A600... Am I wrong ?

Maybe a bit over-simplified, but essentially correct. There are multiple reasons why, but the main one should be that the machines were released too close to each other and very soon afterwards superseeded by the A1200. The main contribution they had was that 1 MB RAM became the standard for OCS/ECS games. You can of course argue that this would have happened without those two new machines anyway.

[Megalomaniac]

There were a few later that needed 1Mb Chip RAM without necessarily having AGA enhancements, like Hilsea Lido and the standard version of Ishar 3. Tubular Worlds needs 1Mb Chip RAM to have any sound whatsoever. And didn't Conan the Cimmerian go unreleased?

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

And didn't Conan the Cimmerian go unreleased?

It was released: https://amiga.abime.net/games/view/c...immerian#scans

[Herlock]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

Are you sure about recquiring a 16mhz processor ?
And for the flicker fixer it isn't mandatory. You could play in HiRes without it.
A-Train also got an HiRes mode.

Simearth manual: "De-interlacer, such as Flicker-fixer with at least a 16MHZ CPU recommended for high resolution". I understand that even with all this, playing in high rez far exceeded the A500 capabilities and was a pain. This was designed for the PC.
As for A-Train, 1) it is from 1993 so kind of out the scope of my study, and 2) the box only says that 1.5mb ram is required for high-req, it doesn't mention chip ram as the other 2, and I think i once ran it in high-rez with just 512/512 + 1mb fast, so don't think it fits the bill.

[Herlock]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

There were a few later that needed 1Mb Chip RAM without necessarily having AGA enhancements, like Hilsea Lido and the standard version of Ishar 3. Tubular Worlds needs 1Mb Chip RAM to have any sound whatsoever. And didn't Conan the Cimmerian go unreleased?

Yes, those are 1994+ games, there are quite a few, but they are out the scope of my study, which was "should gamers gain anything by upgrading to the A500+ or A600 before the next generation (A1200)".
As for Conan the Cimmerian, it was indeed released, somebody claimed that the intro was different in A500 with 512/512 and A500+, and I failed to reproduce that. The intro is strictly the same in both A500 512/512 and A4000 2mb/8mb configurations. And it fails to boot on a bare bone A500+ configuration, which is insane and may be due to the cracks on the adf...

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by Herlock

Simearth manual: "De-interlacer, such as Flicker-fixer with at least a 16MHZ CPU recommended for high resolution". I understand that even with all this, playing in high rez far exceeded the A500 capabilities and was a pain. This was designed for the PC.

Yes but that's "only" a recommendation. You could play it without it, albeit it was probably a bit slow or eye intensive .

This was mainly designed for expanded Amiga which were a bit more common in the US (where the game was designed) VS Europe. Most of US designed games use expanded capabilities of the Amiga (HD, fast ram etc). It wasn't considered as a fixed hardware there like it was in Europe.

[Herlock]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

Yes but that's "only" a recommendation. You could play it without it, albeit it was probably a bit slow or eye intensive .

This was mainly designed for expanded Amiga which were a bit more common in the US (where the game was designed) VS Europe. Most of US designed games use expanded capabilities of the Amiga (HD, fast ram etc). It wasn't considered as a fixed hardware there like it was in Europe.

Yes, I understand that. But I also understand that this game was next to unplayble in High Rez without the expansions, and even with them, it was a pain. Just like the hard disk is only "recommended" for Rise of the Dragon, but if you don't have it, swapping 10 disks will drive you crazy and will remove all the fun from the game, regardless of the detail level...

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Herlock

Just like the hard disk is only "recommended" for Rise of the Dragon, but if you don't have it, swapping 10 disks will drive you crazy and will remove all the fun from the game, regardless of the detail level...

Playing Monkey Island 2 and Indy 4 from floppy was a hassle, but they were still fun games regardless. In hindsight I wouldn't do it ever again, but at the time swapping disks wasn't that big of a problem.

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by Herlock

Yes, I understand that. But I also understand that this game was next to unplayble in High Rez without the expansions, and even with them, it was a pain. Just like the hard disk is only "recommended" for Rise of the Dragon, but if you don't have it, swapping 10 disks will drive you crazy and will remove all the fun from the game, regardless of the detail level...

I'm not sure that this was such a pain with a faster processor. It would be interesting to test them on a stock A1200.
I've quite intensively played them in HiRes on my A1200 but granted, this was with a Blizzard 030/50mhz (and with the indivision, gone is the flickering problem).
I wish more games had that possibility. Syndicate in HiRes, as it was intended at first (the PC version is just in HiRes 16 colors).
On the contrary, that's too Bad they didn't included a low res version of SimCity 2000 but as far as I know that problem there isn't just the resolution.

[derSammler]

Originally Posted by DamienD

Yes it rare I guess; from memory out of the 2400 or so OCS / ECS games in my collection about 130 required 1MB Chip RAM.

Originally Posted by masteries

If memory serves me well, Dungeon Master 2 requires 2 MB chip RAM.

Instead of telling "from memory", why don't you all just look up a cover scan or the specs at MobyGames? It will tell you if it needs 1 MB Chip RAM or not. Everything else is spreading wrong information.

There were very, very few OCS/ECS games that needed more than 512 kb of Chip RAM (many could utilize more, however), as most publishers wanted their games to run on the gold-standard A500 with Kickstart 1.2 and 512 kb chip/slow each.

Exceptions are pretty much all games you can install onto HDD. They all need 1 MB Chip RAM once running from HDD.

As for Dungeon Master 2, it's a game for the A1200, so yes, it needs 2 MB Chip RAM and a 68020 (and no, it does not matter that it makes no use of AGA).

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by derSammler

.

As for Dungeon Master 2, it's a game for the A1200, so yes, it needs 2 MB Chip RAM and a 68020 (and no, it does not matter that it makes no use of AGA).

Yes it does matter since it works on an Amiga 3000.

Cf Amiga Format and CU Amiga reviews of the game https://www.amigareviews.leveluphost.com/dungeonl.htm

[Herlock]

Originally Posted by derSammler

There were very, very few OCS/ECS games that needed more than 512 kb of Chip RAM (many could utilize more, however), as most publishers wanted their games to run on the gold-standard A500 with Kickstart 1.2 and 512 kb chip/slow each.

And, among those many that could utilize more Chip RAM, very few were released in 1991/1992, that is to say, in the transition period between the A500 and the A1200. I counted 4, one of which (Fire and Ice) i'm not even sure, I couldn't see any difference...

[Herlock]

One thing that I find puzzling is that the Amiga 3000 (released mid-1990) was not the first machine to have 1Mb chip out of the box. As early as mid-1989, Commodore, without telling anybody, starting to ship A500s and A2000s with the new 1Mb Agnus.

A500s were configured as before: 512K chip, and the trapdoor expansion would still be slow ram at $C00000. Only a hardware hack could turn this into a 1Mb chip machine. Probably because Commodore didn't want to be bothered with people complaining that their favourite badly programmed game wouldn't work anymore, expecting slow ram...

But A2000s were a different story: 1Mb chip ram out of the box, one year before the release of the A3000 ! I used to own one of those. Probably Commodore thought that game compatibility was not an issue for this professional machine, but more chip Ram for better handling of windows, hard drives, deluxe paint...
To my knowledge, no game took advantage of this for 1,5 years. The first one was Great Courts 2 / Pro Tennis Tour 2 (end 1990/early 1991), clearly targetting the A3000 (not the mainstream gaming machine !) and the few recent A2000s with 1Mb Chip Ram...

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Herlock

One thing that I find puzzling is that the Amiga 3000 (released mid-1990) was not the first machine to have 1Mb chip out of the box. As early as mid-1989, Commodore, without telling anybody, starting to ship A500s and A2000s with the new 1Mb Agnus.

Not sure if I find it puzzling. As soon as the new Agnus was ready Commodore just used it. Producing two different chips would be more expensive I guess. Would be interesting to know if anybody found out about and modded their A500 or A2000 in between mid 1989 and mid 1990.

[Herlock]

Originally Posted by TCD

Not sure if I find it puzzling. As soon as the new Agnus was ready Commodore just used it. Producing two different chips would be more expensive I guess. Would be interesting to know if anybody found out about and modded their A500 or A2000 in between mid 1989 and mid 1990.

I agree with you. What I find puzzling is not that Commodore would use the new chip and drop this old one, this is normal. What I find puzzling is that difference of treatement between A500s and 2000s: for A500 the main new feature was deliberately disabled. It would have cost nothing to Commodore to produce motherboards that would automatically turn the trapdoor expansion into chip ram rather than slow ram, but they chose not to do it, so that they don't have to explain that new A500s are more powerful but slightly less compatibles than the old ones... Yet they had this problem for the A500+, on a much bigger scale, since the KS 2.04 was much more of a source of incompatibility problems that then RAM configuration !

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Herlock

I agree with you. What I find puzzling is not that Commodore would use the new chip and drop this old one, this is normal. What I find puzzling is that difference of treatement between A500s and 2000s: for A500 the main new feature was deliberately disabled. It would have cost nothing to Commodore to produce motherboards that would automatically turn the trapdoor expansion into chip ram rather than slow ram, but they chose not to do it, so that they don't have to explain that new A500s are more powerful but slightly less compatibles than the old ones... Yet they had this problem for the A500+, on a much bigger scale, since the KS 2.04 was much more of a source of incompatibility problems that then RAM configuration !

That's Commodore in a nutshell