Was anyone else disappointed with the A1200?

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by Dunny

D4rk3lf: But you were just one tiny insignificant person. The vast majority of people were not like you, and they did want Doom. Just because you did not does not invalidate this.

I've never stopped wanting Doom. Endlessly replayable.

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by Dunny

D4rk3lf: But you were just one tiny insignificant person. The vast majority of people were not like you, and they did want Doom. Just because you did not does not invalidate this.

Yeah, that's ok, I basically agreed.
Just saying it was not for all of us "all about Doom". I guess, some 10-15% of people didn't cared for it at all.

Btw , Doom is amazing game indeed. With very smart level designs, really good gameplay mechanics, but visually, I really don't think much of it.
Ultima underworld that was released before Doom, looked much better to me. Or even Amiga Cytadel, had really interesting graphics.

[scu98rkr]

"Doom changed the landscape of gaming simply because they didn’t like it themselves."

I dont think we're saying that. Im just saying the whole FPS shooter thing kinda past me by until Half Life. Im not saying I didnt like Doom. I do remember playing it on my Uncles PC.

If you were into other genres Doom didnt seem that big a deal.

I actually remember playing Dune II on my Uncles PC more and really wanted to get it for my Amiga 600, I played it to the end on the 600 even !

I think retrospectively it was a big deal. But even when I got my PC in 1995/1996, I didnt get a FPS until I was at University and loads of people were playing Half Life.

I dunno how much of a base the Amiga would of required to limp on, but for some Doom was just another game.

[gimbal]

It really does matter how you were first introduced to it. For me it came as a complete shocker. I used to go around a school mates' house nearly every day and we'd play classic PC games like Wolf3D, XWing, Dune 2 and Sam & Max on his 386 machine. It's where I learned to use Dos long before I had a PC of my own. It was a quaint little machine with 40mb of harddrive space and 2mb of ram.

And then all of a sudden one day I come by in the weekend, and I learn that he had upgraded his machine to 4mb of memory for which he had been saving for eons (mindblowing at the time). Why? Because he got Doom. I didn't even know that the game existed, even though Doom 2 was also already out. I was so stuck in Amiga land it had completely passed me by that there was some kind of gaming sensation going on. And the bleeper never mentioned it to me once, he kept it a complete secret.

When I saw it boot up for the first time, the skull in the menu and and the menacing music and then the first glimpse of the 3D world which was infinitely more detailed than Wolf3D... it didn't matter that it moved choppy and we had to reduce the screen size, it was the coolest thing I had ever seen - and heard, because the music is still legendary even in general midi form.

[phx]

Originally Posted by scu98rkr

If you were into other genres Doom didnt seem that big a deal.

Right. Same here. I remember I played Doom (2, I think) once or twice on my father's 486, and it was impressive. But it was not a game I absolutely wanted to play. Even more impression on me did the fiddling with an antiquated MS-DOS system to make a game work. I was always happy to return to my friendly Amiga.

The whole FPS genre was never a reason for me to get a PC. In fact I didn't get one before Elite Dangerous, Kerbal Space Program and RimWorld forced me to do so. That's my genre.

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by gimbal

It was a quaint little machine with 40mb of harddrive space and 2mb of ram.

And then all of a sudden one day I come by in the weekend, and I learn that he had upgraded his machine to 4mb

Hah.. It was EXACTLY THE SAME case with my friend too.
386 DX/40, but only 2MB of Ram, so 80% of the 386 games were not working on his machine. He got bigger HD then your friend, though... I think something like 100-200MB.
Man, how he suffered for that lack of ram, and understandably... so little to get all kinds of game... but unreachable.

I remember how happy he was, when I said to him that strategy Battle Bugs will work with only 2MB (I read that in some magazine).

Later, the poor guy upgraded, but at that point, I think 486's were common everywhere.

[Dunny]

I worked for a small outfit writing code for the local authority, so we have 286s and a couple of 386 boxes in the office. Myself, I had an A1000 512Kb and comparing games (such as Zool, Jazz et al) between the two platforms was laughable. The PC just didn't feel right at all and came across as clunky. Even Ultima Underworld on the 386 didn't impress much.

I got my 1200, enjoyed it immensely, and Doom completely passed me by. It wasn't until I saw Quake running on a Pentium that I finally realised that my accelerated and upgraded 1200 was not gonna cut it anymore. Shortly after, I jumped ship.

But I still loved that 1200. Even though it was rapidly becoming less and less relevant in the world of computing.

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

Man, how he suffered for that lack of ram, and understandably... so little to get all kinds of game... but unreachable.

Hm, I don't remember that. Doom was the first game in the 386 era which minimally needed 4mb. We were always playing the whole range of Apogee and Epic Megagames stuff for example. For a 386 machine, even a DX40, it was kind of ludicrous and a waste of money to upgrade to 4mb, but you know... Doom!

I can't imagine that the other games he couldn't play ran very well after the upgrade, they would likely have been 486 generation games.

[d4rk3lf]

Well, I remember he was complaining that for 70-80% of the games he needed 4MB.
We weren't talking so much about Doom, as nobody of my friends (neither me) was so impressed with that game.
But other games , like Mortal Kombat 2, maybe some strategies, adventures, I know he mentioned all the time, the plenty of games, that should work just fine on 386 didn't worked, because of that 2MB ram.
Yeah, and win 95 required 4MB minimum, but nevermind that, because I doubt he would have installed it, even if he had whole 4MB.

I remember he made a deal with his father to get all A's in the school (or 5's in serbian school), and he did, but father still didn't bought him 2MB, but made a new deal for A's of next year in school.

It was tragic.

Meanwhile, on my other friends Amiga 500, with only 1MB of Ram, games played and looked so much better, polished. I had C64 at the time, and for me it was perfectly clear, which comp I want to have next.

[freehand]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

Correct.
The whole PC experience, for me, was rubbish in comparison to Amiga and Workbench.
Only after Win XP, things started to look better.
Everything on PC run, either to slow, either too fast. When they do today comparison of some games on Amiga and PC, they just start the gog versions of that games, and nobody remembers how these games runs on PC's back then.
I remember Mortal Kombat 2 on my friend 386DX40 - 4MB, Color monitor. During the gameplay it changed speed from slow to fast. Very jerky, ruins the gameplay completely. Pixels were HUGE.
However, on my friends Amiga 500, on only 1 MB, I admit, a little bit slow loading, and a lot's of disk swapping, but when the round starts, it plays perfectly. No slowdowns, everything smooth, and graphics looked amazing on TV.

Any dos based game with a dx33- dx50 or dx2 66 just made the the 1200 look silly in comparison unless you was still into scrolling games.

Doom was like the coming of the lord.

Disappointment was an under statement for me personally I know 3D games are not the begin and end all but back then it was for me.

That being said when I moved on from the amiga my love for programming was gone.

[Lord Aga]

Originally Posted by freehand

Any dos based game with a dx33- dx50 or dx2 66 just made the the 1200 look silly in comparison unless you was still into scrolling games.

Yeeah... I don't know...

DX this or that is kind of a blanket statement. What graphics card? How much RAM? Sound card?

In hindsight we think of these machines as maxed out complete configurations. In reality, CPUs and mobos were expensive, good graphics cards were expensive, RAM was expensive, sound cards were expensive. Sure you could pour a ton of money and have an impressive gaming PC back then, more capable then a basic, or even an expanded Amiga configuration. But most PCs were "compromise" configs. I saw a ton of them back in the days. People playing Doom on PC beeper, or Mortal Kombat on EGA (CGA?) monitors.

It's kinda like taking a maxed out 060 AGA A4000 as a reference point for comparing with other computers/consoles. Sure they existed, but how many of us really had one?

So I get what d4rk3lf is saying. A lot of games looked more polished and complete on the Amiga when compared to PC versions. Probably because of the all-in-one (CPU+RAM+graphics+sound) standardized package.

[lesta_smsc]

Originally Posted by Lord Aga

playing Doom on PC beeper

That was cool. My cousin had an Escom PC and everything was PC speaker lol. Surprisingly, this was around the same time Commodore 64 actually a 'weaker' machine had much more to offer.

Monkey Island still sounds great using PC speaker but when you compare that to Roland MT-32... wow, what a difference.

Cost was a big factor. This is why I stopped chasing the computer hardware to keep up to date and instead go with consoles which had games set up to run 'as is'.

[amigang]

I always remember going round to my friends house and he was showing off Command & Conquer and Magic Carpet on his PC, I remember thinking I wish my Amiga could play games like this, I did'nt know about Dune 2 at the time, ask my local game shop if he knew of any game like C&C for my Amiga, lucky he did know of Dune 2 and put me a order in and got it the following week and didn't come off my Amiga for the next month.

[mrv2k]

Around 1992 I had an a1200, an A3000 and a Cyrix 486DX4/100 all hooked up together. The PC was pretty good spec and had a CDROM. The PC and the Amigas were connected by null modem and I could transfer files easily between them. I "gave" the A3000 to a guy named Charlie who ran the Fairlight BBS for free access and a load of CD's full of games. The A1200 had a MIDI interface, a sound sampler and a Vidi Amiga capture card. Honestly I used the A1200 all the time and the PC only for games. Ironically I fired up my A1200 today for the first time in 20 years and it worked as if it had never been switched off (it's going for a recap though) The A1200 is definitely iconic in my computer history. If you knew how to get the most out of it, it was a very powerful beast.

[freehand]

Originally Posted by Lord Aga

Yeeah... I don't know...

DX this or that is kind of a blanket statement. What graphics card? How much RAM? Sound card?

In hindsight we think of these machines as maxed out complete configurations. In reality, CPUs and mobos were expensive, good graphics cards were expensive, RAM was expensive, sound cards were expensive. Sure you could pour a ton of money and have an impressive gaming PC back then, more capable then a basic, or even an expanded Amiga configuration. But most PCs were "compromise" configs. I saw a ton of them back in the days. People playing Doom on PC beeper, or Mortal Kombat on EGA (CGA?) monitors.

It's kinda like taking a maxed out 060 AGA A4000 as a reference point for comparing with other computers/consoles. Sure they existed, but how many of us really had one?

So I get what d4rk3lf is saying. A lot of games looked more polished and complete on the Amiga when compared to PC versions. Probably because of the all-in-one (CPU+RAM+graphics+sound) standardized package.

Sure if you was still at school and not working then I agree High end PC was expensive and peoples first impression would not be a good one.

But not every one was in the same boat.

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by freehand

Any dos based game with a dx33- dx50 or dx2 66 just made the the 1200 look silly in comparison unless you was still into scrolling games.

Unless, I was still into scrolling games?
Well, the vast majority of the games at that time (if we are talking about 1992-1996) was 2D games (with scrolling).
Even some huge AAA hits:
- Diablo
- Earthworm Jim
- Warcraft 1 and 2 (later: Starcraft)
- Rayman
- Alladin
- Lion King

So, just try to understand my perspective.
From one side, we have A1200 (or even A500), with such amazing 2D games that were still very popular (up to 2000's), and from the other side, you had some crappy (very overpriced) PC's that could run faster some (imho, pretty ugly) early 3D games, and sucks in 2D completelly (again, it don't suck unless you pay price for 2 Amiga's)
So, who's is the winner?

I switched from A1200 - no HD (only CD Rom(with bunch of games)), to K62, Win 98, huge HD, etc.
It felt like a big downgrade.
(and some of you telling me that 386/486 is worthy upgrade to Amiga)
I liked Might and Magic 6 (still doable on (high) Amiga's), Master of Orion 2 (even more), but the whole experience was tiresome.

And still is.

[redblade]

@d4rk3lf: Yes it would be interesting to see what an A1200 standard could produce as a war craft clone.

But people comparing a 386DX33 to a 68EC020FG16 is...

[freehand]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

Unless, I was still into scrolling games?
Well, the vast majority of the games at that time (if we are talking about 1992-1996) was 2D games (with scrolling).
Even some huge AAA hits:
- Diablo
- Earthworm Jim
- Warcraft 1 and 2 (later: Starcraft)
- Rayman
- Alladin
- Lion King

When I was referring to scrolling I was talking about smooth scrolling like shoot em ups the pc was terrible at the time amiga has hardware scroll so very good most of the time.

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

So, just try to understand my perspective.
From one side, we have A1200 (or even A500), with such amazing 2D games that were still very popular (up to 2000's), and from the other side, you had some crappy (very overpriced) PC's that could run faster some (imho, pretty ugly) early 3D games, and sucks in 2D completelly (again, it don't suck unless you pay price for 2 Amiga's)
So, who's is the winner?

I have never read anyone consider Doom as some pretty ugly early 3D game maybe today but not back then.

Personally l like Amiga 3d demos and games but each to there own not for every one I guess.

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

I switched from A1200 - no HD (only CD Rom(with bunch of games)), to K62, Win 98, huge HD, etc.
It felt like a big downgrade.
(and some of you telling me that 386/486 is worthy upgrade to Amiga)
I liked Might and Magic 6 (still doable on (high) Amiga's), Master of Orion 2 (even more), but the whole experience was tiresome.

And still is.

What can I say a PC is not for every one.

[Ulysses13]

Originally Posted by Anakirob

I was quite dissapointed with the A600 when it was current, but in retrospect there is a lot to like about this compact ECS machine.

Agree with this.

I had a A500+ back in the day, but was very envious of my mate's A1200. He bought one of the HD ones, but had terrible problems with it. In the end it was replaced with a non-HD one and 4 external drives!

Now I'm looking at getting my perfect Amiga together, I'm going straight for the A1200.

[Lord Aga]

Originally Posted by freehand

But not every one was in the same boat.

Originally Posted by freehand

What can I say a PC is not for every one.

Dude, you're so much better than the rest of us. We envy you so much