What Makes The Amiga CD32 The Best Amiga?

[sokolovic]

Not to forget that the A1200 was also released as standard with a HDD by Commodore.

[Gilbert]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

An A1200 without hdd was indeed a bit silly. I knew maybe 3-4 people (including me), but we all got a hdd after a few weeks. Then it was fun, a lot of games around 1993 had hd-installs.

The thing is everyone on EAB would probably have a HDD but ordinary members of the public - probably not. So games aren't made to make use of the HDD - apart from to install on it. But every CD32 has a CD Drive so they can do cool streaming things with it and play music from it as standard

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

Mega Drive Controller 1993 (one of the best for 2D games0

CD32 Controller 1993 (surely Top Five of the worst console controllers ever)

No discussion, really!

That's not true though the original Megadrive controller from 1988 is 3 button. You showed one from 1993. Only about 10% of MD games use the 6 button controller I'd guess. So you are stuck with 3 buttons for most of the time.

The Megadrive is a good machine but it is just not in the same league as the CD32. A good example is Shadow of The Beast, Rainbow Islands (so much flicker because it doesn't have enough horizontal sprites to draw the rainbows), Gods. They are not even as good (in looks) as the original A500 games. How can the MD compete against a machine 3-4 times more powerful with over 16 million colours?

Originally Posted by S0ulA55a551n

Snes pisses all over a cd32. And I love amigas, but im not mad. Nintendo are the gos of game making an design.

The SNES is good too but if you look at the recent version of Sonic the Hedgehog they made for it - which is pretty much perfect - it still has a small display window size because of it's lower resolution (less of the level is visible onscreen compared to the MD)

[ Show youtube player ]

Putting the Megadrive or SNES against the CD32 is like putting a Cruiserweight in against a Heavyweight boxer. Sure the Cruiserweight will maybe win 1 out of 10 times but 9 of 10 times he will get crushed and hurt very badly.

Originally Posted by S0ulA55a551n

But as previously stated the mega drive had such better graphics capabilities ( colours aside).

I once did a little research (read about it online) into it's graphics chip and I was impressed at how versatile it was - it can do per tile (column or row) scrolling and per-line scrolling, vertically and horizontally. So you can do things like layered scrolling and rotation effects etc

But on the negative side - I think (I am not an expert on this stuff) both the SNES and MD have to copy the graphics from ROM into VRAM before they can display them. So they aren't as powerful as people think. If you run out of VRAM space - you have to delete something and DMA something else in. So you have to store all your basic sprites and background tiles in VRAM. Very easy to run out of space. More powerful 2D systems (e.g. arcade systems) can just use a reference to an image in ROM

So CD32 is way better.

[Retro-Nerd]

That's not true though the original Megadrive controller from 1988 is 3 button. You showed one from 1993

Of course. But the CD32 was released in 1993! So, a pretty valid comparison.

[roondar]

To be fair, I never saw that many 6 button controllers or 6 button controller supporting games in The Netherlands. Even the Mega Drive mini is sold with a 3 button controller over here. So it doesn't really seem like it was 'the standard' for the system by a long shot. I'd guess most MD's just have 3 button controllers and only a small percentage got the 6 button controller.

Note that this is completely separate from whether or not the controller is any good. And well... I don't like the CD32 controller at all. But I do like the MD one. So I'd still rank it higher even though it normally has fewer buttons.

[Retro-Nerd]

3 Button/6 button is a preference, sure. But the d-pad on the newer MD 6-button controller was a real game changer. Gazillion times better than the sharp edged and mostly very imprecised (in the diagonals) one from the 3-button controller.

So games aren't made to make use of the HDD - apart from to install on it.

Yeah, they load only much faster and you don't have to change discs. Pretty useless, a hdd.

[Gilbert]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

Of course. But the CD32 was released in 1993! So, a pretty valid comparison.

So you are saying the fact that you can use a 6 button controller on very few games means the Megadrive is better than the CD32 - which could use it's 6 button controller on ALL of it's games? Sorry but CD32 wins here

CD32 also has better 3D capabilities too.

Originally Posted by manossg

I would choose a CD32 every time over the Mega Drive or the SNES or both combined.

Great comment!

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by Gilbert

Putting the Megadrive or SNES against the CD32 is like putting a Cruiserweight in against a Heavyweight boxer. Sure the Cruiserweight will maybe win 1 out of 10 times but 9 of 10 times he will get crushed and hurt very badly.

Man, you really are a CD32 cultist Only a true zealot would try to employ extreme cherrypicking, such as using SotB port for MD or some Sonic homebrew as example of MD/SNES capabilities, while blissfuly ignoring all the other games which actually matter, eg Castlevania or Guardian Heroes.

Nevermind that CD32 joypad has been universally panned, hey, it's got 6 buttons! Who cares about ergonomics, or the fact that most games only use one?

This thread is a trainwreck but it is also amusing to watch, in a way. Every forum has an occasional Don Quixote who's on a mission to prove that some ancient flop was actually a misunderstood powerhouse. Tilt away, sir!

[Retro-Nerd]

So you are saying the fact that you can use a 6 button controller on very few games means the Megadrive is better than the CD32 - which could use it's 6 button controller on ALL of it's games? Sorry but CD32 wins here

The CD32 loses BIG, because the original controller was unusuable. Even the 3rd party Honeybee/Competition Pro controller couldn't compete with the good Sega quality. The D-pad was much better, form factor/shape and buttons too. There is no real discussion. Ask people what their favorite controller for 2D games was back then. Sega MD 6-Button and Sega Saturn Japan/PAL model 2 controller.

[sokolovic]

CD32 original pad is bad for sure but original Megadrive pad, even if better is also not very good, a part from his iconic design. The round shaped D pad is a nightmare VS the Nintendo classical cross.

Gilbert, sadly, not every CD32 games use all the buttons. Many were just 1 button, 2 at best, like Shadow Fighters which is a mystery for me considering this is a VS fighting game (don't know for Body Blows but I'm not sure it use many buttons also).

[Retro-Nerd]

Gilbert, sadly, not every CD32 games use all the buttons. Many were just 1 button, 2 at best...

That correct too. Because a lot of games were just 1:1 disk ports. They didn't even care to change the controls to support all the multi buttons.

[roondar]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

...Castlevania...

I still sometimes feel quite salty that the Amiga never got a proper Castlevania (or "metroidvania" in general). This type of game would fit the hardware very well yet it never happened.

And NO that abysmal Castlevania "port" does not count.

[sokolovic]

Yeah. There is a gap to fill on this particular type of games but making such a games recquires gigantic amount of work in term of level design and game logic.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by roondar

I still sometimes feel quite salty that the Amiga never got a proper Castlevania (or "metroidvania" in general). This type of game would fit the hardware very well yet it never happened.

It's an interesting question, but unlike sokolovic I don't think it was because of difficulties in designing such game, at least not as a sole reason. We had plenty of talented devs after all. Maybe because this style wasn't actually that well-known at the time as it is now? I might be wrong, but I think during "Amiga years" there were only 2-3 actual metroidvania games released.

[S0ulA55a551n]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

It's an interesting question, but unlike sokolovic I don't think it was because of difficulties in designing such game, at least not as a sole reason. We had plenty of talented devs after all. Maybe because this style wasn't actually that well-known at the time as it is now? I might be wrong, but I think during "Amiga years" there were only 2-3 actual metroidvania games released.

I if we take the amiga years to be up till 94

Then arguably 5 , defo 4

A journey to the centre of the earth - questionable
Metroid
Blaster Master
Wonderboy 3
Super Metroid

So would probably agree they were not that popular. The original castlevania games don't really fall into the category until the later releases, they very linear.

But if we were just laking about catlevania games y( the first three were still good) , given they were nes games, the amiga could have had good ports.

And before anyone starts , no the amiga could not have have a good version of super castlevania

[DanScott]

Originally Posted by S0ulA55a551n

And before anyone starts , no the amiga could not have have a good version of super castlevania

I'll start....

There's not much in Super Castlevania IV that would trouble the CD32/A1200

The hardest thing might be the swinging chandelier/candelabra , but even that can be done. Some of the transparency colour effects are fairly doable too.

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by roondar

I still sometimes feel quite salty that the Amiga never got a proper Castlevania (or "metroidvania" in general). This type of game would fit the hardware very well yet it never happened.

And NO that abysmal Castlevania "port" does not count.

A little bit OT but am not sure if people remember when was helping by my own initiative team R3D in pushing their Flashback style Metroidvania couple years ago - that would fit well both Amiga HD and CD formats - and did seem nobody was interested too much (maybe because was looking for funding i guess)

[ Show youtube player ]

[TEG]

I fact I learned in this video (French one, the author owned a games store at the time): [ Show youtube player ] is the fact that the CD32 suffer from a lot of games cancellation a few time after its launch. This is near the end of the video.

He made another good point about the fact that Commodore did not imposed a format for CD32 games boxes. So it was a mess for:
1/Customers to recognize CD32 games
2/Dealers who simply pile up CD32 games where they can instead of having a nice shelf

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by TEG

He made another good point about the fact that Commodore did not imposed a format for CD32 games boxes. So it was a mess for:
1/Customers to recognize CD32 games
2/Dealers who simply pile up CD32 games where they can instead of having a nice shelf

The lack of Design guidelines regarding Amiga products was widespread, i remember; personally i was pretty jealous of the Megadrive original japanese boxes with color manuals that, however, had a fixed box size and fixed features (and an higher price tag btw). They did try to establish some guidelines with the more adult targeting of CDTV but that did not transmit through.

[EAUniW]

The CD32 controller was great, you could tap the shoulders easily and the buttons were well spaced and the D-pad wasn't slippy like the Mega Drive's.

[FOL]

Originally Posted by EAUniW

The CD32 controller was great

I agree people give them so much greif. Say they are cheap and break.
I do not agree. I find everyone is to heavy handed.


In the last few months, I have had to a few PS4 controllers. I can't see how you would ever break one. I still have every single original controller with every console I have ever owned and they still work perfect. Even my mint PS1, I bought when I was 18, has perfect working controllers.