AGA games on non-AGA hardware - a curiosity

[squirminator2k]

Not interested in pursuing making this happen, more just trying to sate a curiosity that my Googling efforts have not been super-duper great at resolving.

I vaguely recall, many years ago, that some graphics cards or accelerator boards/mods/what have you for some non-AGA Amigas like the 500 and 600 might have allowed for what I would suppose is AGA emulation. I'm not sure if I imagined that, or if it was a pipe dream that never got realized, but I'm suddenly very curious about it and wondered if it were a real thing or just something I imagined.

Again, not looking to actually do this - I'm quite happy with my A1200! - but I just wanted to know whether it was real or not, and how effective it was.

[Schlachtwerk]

The only way is a Vampire Accelerator, but i dont know how many will working.

[squirminator2k]

Vampire! That sounds about right. Fascinating. I'll have to Google it and dig up some more info.

[saimon69]

Another L.A. amigan showing here in short time! They are usually a rare sight

[gururise]

There used to be a fake program called "SoftAGA", that purported to capture gfx system calls and translate them to ECS on the fly, allowing one to run AGA games/programs; however, it turned out to be fake.

[Gunbot]

I believe there were a few games, mostly sims I think that could take advantage of 16 or 24 bit color if you had a Picasso card or similar in your non aga Amiga. I'm thinking Sim life might have been one of those games.
Or maybe I'm just talking out of my ass.

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by gururise

There used to be a fake program called "SoftAGA", that purported to capture gfx system calls and translate them to ECS on the fly, allowing one to run AGA games/programs; however, it turned out to be fake.

Something like this could probably work, however the problem is most games/demos don't use system calls.

[grond]

Originally Posted by squirminator2k

Vampire! That sounds about right. Fascinating. I'll have to Google it and dig up some more info.

That's not too difficult as the Vampire is actively being developed and by many considered to be the hottest Amiga Hardware since Commodore's demise. There should be some videos on YouTube or Vimeo where the Vampire does an early AGA or OCS via digital out and the same visuals get generated by the Amiga's custom chips by effectively copying all writes to the Amiga's custom chips to the Vampire's reimplementation of the Amiga hardware. I'm pretty sure we had some tests with AGA software that came out pretty well on the A600's ECS custom chips with just some colours and sprites missing.

[zipper]

For instance Alien F1, the demo of Virtual GP (AGA/RTG) did run happily on my ECS A500, 2 MB Chip (with blizzard2060, in tower) but naturally with strange colours.

[Glen M]

Another part of this could be that I think there are a few so called A1200 games that actually aren't an AGA game but more so require the extra RAM of the A1200 and would work fine on an A500 with 2mb chip. Don't ask me to name any but I'm fairly sure I've read about this somewhere before.

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by Glen M

Another part of this could be that I think there are a few so called A1200 games that actually aren't an AGA game but more so require the extra RAM of the A1200 and would work fine on an A500 with 2mb chip. Don't ask me to name any but I'm fairly sure I've read about this somewhere before.

This is right. Aside of 2MB chip they may also need 68020+ cpu. An example is Dungeon Master 2.

[hansel75]

Originally Posted by Glen M

Another part of this could be that I think there are a few so called A1200 games that actually aren't an AGA game but more so require the extra RAM of the A1200 and would work fine on an A500 with 2mb chip. Don't ask me to name any but I'm fairly sure I've read about this somewhere before.

Jungle strike and Primal rage need 2mb chip but don't require the Aga chipset!

[sokolovic]

I'm pretty sure Star Trek 25th anniversary isn't AGA but recquires 68020+, HD and 2mb chip. (Same thing for Dungeon Master 2 indeed).

In fact the game was previewed as an ECS one in 64 extra HB colors mode.

Ocean have comercialized fake AGA games like Shaq Fu or Burnin Rubber alongside with ECS versions. The only difference was more graphical detail due to more extra ram (shit games anyway). Same thing for Jungle Strike, the ECS and AGA versions have no differences at all, except for the title screen.

[squirminator2k]

Originally Posted by saimon69

Another L.A. amigan showing here in short time! They are usually a rare sight

Wahey! I'm originally from the UK, moved here in '07, just after my 21st birthday. My dad was the Amiga expert - I just used it to play games and do my schoolwork on and so forth - so my technical know-how is very limited when it comes to Amiga hardware. I'm happy with my A1200 and the handful of games I have.

[Matt_H]

I think it was DCE that had a prototype AGA chipset add-on for the A500 in the mid/late 90s. I didn't find out about it until the late 2000s/early 2010s when a picture of it in a display case at an Amiga show made it online. It never made it to market.

Concerning earlier Amiga history, AGA appeared right around the time as the first popular 24-bit Zorro RTG cards. I remember there was a lot of excitement in the American magazines at the time. Because the cards could generate a 256-color screen and other AGA-like screenmodes, there was hope that they could be used to bring AGA to A2000s and A3000s. Obviously that's not the case, but because the result is functionally similar, misinterpretation/misunderstanding of the cards' capabilities at the time probably started the "AGA-compatible" rumor.

[Mrz]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

Ocean have comercialized fake AGA games like Shaq Fu or Burnin Rubber alongside with ECS versions. The only difference was more graphical detail due to more extra ram (shit games anyway). Same thing for Jungle Strike, the ECS and AGA versions have no differences at all, except for the title screen.

yep this is correct, and
apart from Ocean there is lot of fake AGA games out there done by other coders


authentic AGA games only a few exists



Aladdin
Lemmings 3
onescape
banshee
capital punishment
slam tilt
Alien Breed 3D2
xp8
genetic species
putty squad




and I think the authentic list end up here

[dlfrsilver]

Bloodnet AGA
Simon the sorcerer AGA

[grond]

The Lion King?

[Daedalus]

Worms: DC?

[DanyPPC]

Flink ?