Was anyone else disappointed with the A1200?

[Nishicorn]

Originally Posted by Gilbert

Was anyone else disappointed with the A1200?

Yes and no. Some things were disappointing, others were great, and I had a lot of fun with it, and I still use it for graphics (the best machine for that). Some AGA games were also the best of their genre (AB3D was better than Doom, gameplay-wise and atmosphere-wise, plus, it was real 3D instead of 2.5D).

Most Amiga users and magazines seemed to be very happy with the A1200 when it came out.

Well.. faster CPU, more memory, more graphics memory, heavily upgraded special chips, graphics capabilities that surpassed the VGA and reached towards SuperVGA, amazing demos, some pretty amazing games as well - what's not to be happy about?

Mostly, it was the -potential- that got me excited about it. Compared to Amiga 500, Amiga 1200 gave me WAY more freedom and multi-tasking, and it was the first Amiga I felt compelled to add a hard drive to, and then some .. the sheer expandability of the machine was just through the roof!

(The fun and times I had with this machine, I would love to go back and live that era over and over again, ahh.. and the DEMOS!!)

I just saw the same games with more colours and a bit smoother. There was no wow factor.

Really? What games were you 'seeing'? Super Stardust was certainly a bit like that, but it still looked awesome with all that VGA-like-but-better AGA-based anti-aliasing and the tunnel effects, etc. How about Pinball Fantasies, Slamtilt, Skidmarks that allowed for more cars (and insta-loading from hard drive), Banshee... really? No WoW-factor?

I take it you never saw the AGA demos, then..? Just watch the TBL stuff, like Tint, and tell me there's no 'wow-factor'.

After that I stuck with the Amiga 500 (with half meg memory expansion) and my Super Famicom (Jap SNES).

Ah, unfair comparison was the reason for your unreasonable dissatisfaction with something wonderful.

You do realize AGA can do way higher resolutions and more colors than Super Famicom can? Did you ever compare games - the Amiga versions are way better. Desert Strike, Chaos Engine, Jim Power... Super Famicom-versions can't even come close. (Ok, Desert Strike is pretty good, but still miles off).

Amiga IS a computer, after all, you can't draw pixel graphics or animations on Super Famicom, you can't compose music on Super Famicom, you can't watch demos on Super Famicom (there are only a handful, and they're not that good). Super Famicom had some impressive stuff, but Amiga has just so much more potential and more possibilities.

Doom on Amiga+Shapeshifter kicked the crap out of Super Famicom's Doom, just for one example. Amiga is customizable, you could play so many different versions of Doom, too. Not so on Super Famicom.

So your comparison isn't only unfair from the get-go, but comes from a completely one-dimensional place that doesn't take everything into account. How do you do 3D modeling on Super Famicom again? OBVIOUSLY a machine that's designed to do 'games only', is going to excel, you know, in GAMES ONLY.

Amiga had so much more to offer, if it wasn't as brilliant in games, it should've been EASILY forgiven, as it's not meant for games only.

Here's what Commodore got wrong

Ok, then we'll discuss what YOU got wrong, ok?

1. Too much focus on creating higher-res screen modes with more colours (and also making the blitter work in these different screen modes)

If you already have Super Famicom, why do you need Amiga to be another Super Famicom? Why can't Amiga be a COMPUTER instead of a game console?

Why would it be bad to let people use higher resolutions on a COMPUTER, when Super VGA was doing just that on the PC side at the time? Are you saying Amiga shouldn't have been able to compete with the PCs, only tried to compete against some game-only consoles? Come on, be reasonable.

I think it's GREAT that Amiga can do so many resolutions, I can, for example, create graphics on a real, honest 160x240 resolution to mimic the C64-style, while still being able to have lots of colors. It's brilliant. God Bless Commodore for doing this!

Just to be clear, I am 100% in disagreement with your game-focused narrow-mindedness here.

and not enough on enhancing gaming(8 or maybe 16 sprites when the comparitively old Megadrive and SNES could manage 64 and 128 respectively). It's a bit like the original Amiga - yes it can display 4096 colours on screen, but the majority of the games for the system were 16 colours (Albeit some had added some Copper magic) and most didn't even run at 50/60 fps. That was fine back in 1985 but 7 years(!) later you expect a significant upgrade.

By the way, Super Famicom used a non-standard, quirky, weird, typically japanese 256x224 resolution that's pretty low for its time, every 'normal' system used AT LEAST 320x200 or higher. Amiga was capable of way higher resolutions, and you see this as a bad thing somehow..

(The good thing about that resolution was that it looked similarly
'flat' in pixel proportions to the C64's 160x200 pixels)

2. There was a mild improvement to dual playfield mode. Great!... when the SNES had 5(?) playfields and could scale and rotate whole screens. Commodore seemed to have no sense they were competing here....

Where do you get this 'playfields' information? I'll put that aside, but you do realize Amiga's playfields are completely different than anything
Super Famicom does? Researching the Super Famicom GPU specs and such, I see no mention of 'playfields' whatsoever. So what are you pointing to, and where did you get this information?

After looking at different spec sheets, all I can find is "scroll planes" or "layers", and it looks like there are only four of them at maximum. At a mode that probabl no game ever used.

Mode 0 is the only one that has four layers (nothing has five, as you claim), but each layer only has 4-color palette, giving you 16 colors total.

The more colorful modes have only two layers or just one, so your point is pretty much invalid here. Maybe Commodore was NOT competing against Super Famicom - ever think of that?

Maybe they 'had no sense they were competing here' because they weren't..

To add, what you're talking about is Mode 7, which is a very limited mode that can just put one plane of graphics on a 'mapped angle' so you can basically twist and turn one picture any way you want. Pretty limiting, but it IS fascinating what the programmers were able to do with it - Pilot Wings, F-Zero and even the maps in some RPGs are impressive enough.

You are talking about it, as if it was more versatile and usable than it actually was. It was basically a simple texturemapping with only one plane and one, big texture. Amiga was able to do so much more. You can compare Super Mario Kart to Xtreme Racing - it's the Amiga side that offers you more options, while still doing everything the Mode 7 stuff does.

So I really don't see your gripe here.

2. Sound chip needed 6 channels to get a decent track playing with sound effects. Again SNES and Megadrive have 6 channels each. Using the same sound chip from 1985 was ridiculous!

Sound chips can't have needs.

Super Famicom (and SNes) had EIGHT (8) channels, so you're wrong AGAIN.

Why didn't you check before writing this post?

Also, it's not like you would have known all this information back in the day, unless you read some data spec sheets very carefully from some magazines. How many playfields or layers some system has would not have mattered to someone back in the day, only what the games looked and sounded like.

Eight, six or even four channels also wouldn't matter, only how it sounds in practical reality (good or bad). Eight-channel music can sound bad, four-channel music can sound good. It's not that big a limitation, as Amiga's sound chip was fine, and solid design to begin with.

AGA Amigas could do 8-channel 14-bit music easily anyway (though games didn't do it usually), so I don't get this gripe.

Also, even if you were right (and you're not), six-channel sound is not THAT big an improvement.

Also, what about the 8-bit and 22kHz-nature of Amiga's sound chips? You focus only on channels without even mentioning the sound quality? What about Super Famicom's DSP? No mention..?

Somehow specs matter to you, but then suddenly they don't?

3. Like the original Amiga, if you wanted to get a good number of objects on screen with a lot of colours and scrolling, you had to spend ages using hardware tricks or specific techniques.

As a user, consumer and player, how the heck would this have anything to do with anything? You wouldn't suffer from this, besides, that sounds awfully biased. What hardware tricks and 'specific techniques' do you refer to here? Please elaborate.

What do you mean by 'ages'? What's a "good number of objects"?

Where else would the games be but on the screen? I think you should've said "onscreen" anyway.

So you are claiming that you can easily put a 'bad number of objects offscreen with a few colors and no scrolling', but if you want to have 'good number', 'onscreen' and 'lots of colors' and 'scrolling', then suddenly you have to spend 'ages', and use 'hardware tricks' OR 'specific techniques' (could you BE more vague?)

Isn't that what the hardware is for, to use its tricks? What's wrong with using 'specific techniques'? Do you think Super Famicom offered everything to a programmer just by having them press a button?

Programming is hard and tricky, no matter what system you use, and it 'takes ages' nevertheless, so what difference does it make?

Time = money

So if I ask "what's the money right now", you'll tell me the time?

I think you realize yourself that this can't be true, or we wouldn't have separate words for both, completely different concepts.

Also, is it really that difficult to type "is", that you have to substitute it with a mathematical sign? This is a conversation, and you're typing a sentence, it's bad form to use that kind of shortcuts. Just type 'is' when you're writing, and use those signs when you're doing mathematical formulas.

and developers aren't going to want to spend 2 years making an arcade quality game on the A1200 when simpler systems exist....

Did it take two years to make every single game for Amiga 1200?

By the way, it's also bad form to use numbers instead of the written words for numbers when talking about small numbers, especially between one and ten.

What do you mean by 'arcade quality', and how do you know that's what people were trying to do? What if they were just making good games and enjoyed programming them? There are plenty of great games for AGA Amigas, and I am sure they didn't all take two years to make, so I think you're not only exaggerating, but being purposely unfair here.

Remember that Amiga is a COMPUTER, not a dedicated games console. Games are always going to be harder to make for a computer that can do 'anything', than a dedicated games system that's designed to ONLY run and play games.

So you wanted Amiga to be SIMPLER? Why? Isn't it enough you already have Super Famicom?

I do have a CD32 now, but it's not very impressive from a technical point of view, even the mighty Banshee is bettered on both the SNES and Megadrive.

CD32 is a weird failure that you shouldn't use as an example of anything. Is THAT what you're basing all your unfairness on? Holy moly.

What Banshee is or isn't, has NOTHING to do with what CD32 is; Banshee can be played on an Amiga 1200, and it does showcase the AGA's abilities nicely (though lacking of music, making the gun always sound the same, and boring aural world hurts that game a lot - plus, the extra weapons collecting system is awful) - it has super smooth crossfades, really good graphics and nice explosions, plus the gameplay is excellent.

To say something bad about Banshee as a game, you'd have to come up with better reasoning than "it's bettered" (a weird way of saying something anyway).

Bettered by which games, exactly? I don't think it's "bettered", there are different games that may or may not be as good or better, perhaps, but Banshee deserves to exist, as it's unique and beautiful in its own right.

Why do you call it 'mighty', though?

So you admit something is 'mighty' on the Amiga side, basically countering all your own previous 'points' (such as they were), after all..

Nothing can touch Banshee on the Sega Genesis/Megadrive side, though, because Banshee, not only has 256 colors, it actually has more, due to the incredibly smooth fog and crossfade-effects. You'd have to come up with ACTUAL examples - Megadrive can't touch the Amiga in most cases, all conversions are sub-par, Amiga versions truly shine.

If Banshee was ever converted to Super Famicom OR Sega Genesis/Megadrive, it would be much worse, too. The resolution would be lower on the Super Famicom, and it still couldn't do all that smooth colorfade stuff. Color amount would be -signifigantly- reduced for Sega Genesis/Megadrive, sample quality would drop through the floor, the Amigalike fades and effects would not exist, it would be terrible.

So I don't see how it could even in THEORY be 'bettered' by either system's offerings, therefore you're wrong ... again.

The reason I like it is because it offers something a bit different and it's an Amiga

Your reasoning isn't convincing, as you never provide actual reasons for anything. You like something because it's something. What?

Different? Didn't you just mock Amiga for being too different? Try to make up your mind at least.

It's fairly obvious it had no hope of competing long term.

What's obvious and why?

Hope of competing against what or whom? Do you honestly think Commodore was trying to compete against dedicated game consoles, like Super Famicom?

You seem to be forgetting that Amiga is a _COMPUTER_. How many times do I have to say this?

If Amiga competed, it competed against VGA/SVGA PCs, and it continued beating them up for a long time, until PC CPUs became powerful enough, until Windows 98 started utilizing similar multi-tasking options, and even then, you couldn't still do everything on a PC that you could on the Amiga.

Amiga + ShapeShifter actually took you VERY 'long term' into the future, you could basically play most of the best PC and DOS games, and even use things like Photoshop. What's not long term about that?

I think you are just spouting opinions here, and your opinions certainly were NOT 'fairly obvious' at all, and still aren't.

There was always hope of 'competing' (though why everything has to be a competition all the time, is beyond me - can't something just be a good, enjoyable COMPUTER?), and I am still using Amiga for graphics, because nothing else feels as smooth and good to create graphics with, or inspires the user as much while doing creative things.

So I don't really know what you base these opinions on..

I just find it hard to see what Commodore was thinking with the AGA architecture??

Really?

So you're basing everything on your own inability to see? Basically, your whole post and disappointed is based on your own blindness.

I can easily see what they were going for...

1) Let's improve upon the Amiga architecture
2) Let's give the user more screenmodes, more colors, faster CPU, more memory, more graphics memory, more expanadbility, all in a great, stylish, compact casing
3) Let's give the user a BRILLIANT, properly multi-tasking operating system that the maxxed-out modern Amiga hardware supports
4) Let's give the user autoconfig (instead of calling it plug-n-play, which is so childish and meant to charm the lowers common denominator)
5) Let's bring Amiga to modern era by giving AGA a full, 24-bit color palette that's always usable in every screenmode (what I mean is, you can always choose colors freely from 24-bit palette, even if you use fewer colors - the RGB color slider has 256 choices for each color every time)
6) Let's make it possible to port the beautiful VGA games to Amiga, but give the Amiga an upgrade over the "256 colors out of 262144 palette" system

Now that I have rebutted and debunked your, let's say 'thoughtless' post, let me tell my reasons why I was sometimes a bit disappointed:


- The sound chips were great and I had lots of fun with them and most games and wouldn't really need anything better, but I missed the C64's 'living synthesizer' stuff, and I was envious at the 16-bit 'Gravis Ultrasound''s great, pure sound, and as a musician, the sound channels seemed limited until I figured out how to use eight and more channels (with 14-bit sound quality, too!)

- Chunky mode would've been great, but thankfully, the extremely fast C2P-routines saved the day when I got a '060, so this was not an issue anymore

- 2 MB CHIP memory wasn't enough. This should've been 8 MB as default, and expandable from there

- It's the DEFAULT Amiga 1200 that I had a problem with, but after expanding it enough and having 14-bit 8-channel (or more) sound for music composition and fast C2P routines for 3D stuff, Shapeshifter for games and utilities and even perfectly good C64-emulator, when you had a fast enough CPU, all those problems were basically fixed.

The default A1200 couldn't compete with a PC or any console, so it was a bit of a weak and shameful display. The default 68020 CPU should've been at least a fast '030, if not '040. The CHIP memory should've been at least 8 MB, there should've been at least 16 MB FAST memory as default machine, expandable from there. There should've been either a proper chunky mode or Akiko-chip style stuff by default. Eight sound channels would've been the best - especially with 16-bit quality and at least some kind of decent synth chip. Doom should've been converted as soon as possible and given free with every Amiga 1200 (and optimized so it'd run well).

The only thing you might be correct about is the sprites and bobs - more everything, bigger and more sprites, more colors per sprite and so on, with a special chip that can handle a big amount of them moving fast and smoothly without ever slowing down.

They just didn't dare go deep enough in improving the old Amiga tech, and there were no visionaries anymore, so there wasn't anyone who could've boldly re-designed the system properly, so all they could was 'add some stuff' and then release the machine. They needed someone practical that looked over the fence, saw what the PC was doing, and what was necessary for Amiga to shine, and then done it.

The thing is, that kind of Amiga would probably have cost a lot more, but Commodore could've sold it at a loss at first, because it would've been such an attractive system, enough people would've soon bought it and developed software for it and that would make more people buy it, they would still have been able to make profit at some point.

Oh well, such is this world..

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Nishicorn

I was envious at the 16-bit 'Gravis Ultrasound''s great, pure sound

We were all envious of the latest PC products of the time. However that envy faded pretty fast for those of us who had to maintain them. We hated them.

Gravis Ultrasound

The first UltraSound was released in early October 1992 [same month and year that the A1200 was released].... one of the first PC soundcards to feature 16-bit, 44.1 kHz, stereo.

Computer Gaming World in 1993 criticized the UltraSound's Sound Blaster emulation and lack of native support in games, stating that "it is hard to recommend this card to anyone other than a Windows MIDI musician"...

As the GF1 chip does not contain AdLib-compatible OPL2 circuitry or a codec chip, Sound Blaster compatibility was difficult to achieve at best. Consumers were expected to use the included emulation software to emulate other standards, an activity not necessary with many other cards that emulated the Sound Blaster through their sound hardware. The emulation software ran as a huge TSR that was difficult to manage in the pre-Windows days of complicated DOS extenders.

Some game developers of the time noted problems with the software development kit and the product's hardware design. On the user-side, the Sound Blaster emulation was especially hard to get right out of the box, and this resulted in a substantially high number of product returns at the store level and thus soured the retail channel on the product. Bundled software was refined over time, but Gravis could not distribute updates effectively.

The company itself also created its own trouble. When Gravis's list of promised supporting game titles failed to materialize, the company lost credibility with consumers and commercial developers. Several publishers and developers threatened to sue the company over misrepresentation of their products — pointing to outright fabrication of Gravis's list.

Meanwhile the A1200 still had boring old Paula, which just worked. Testing for compatibility was easy on the A1200 - boot the game disk, does it run? Yes, you're good to go. On the PC it was pointless. No matter what PC you tested it on the customer was bound to have a different configuration. So we ended up having to (try to) install customer's games for them - a frustrating experience at best. I hated selling PC games back then, and lived in fear of the infamous Gravis Ultrasound.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Nishicorn

The default A1200 couldn't compete with a PC or any console, so it was a bit of a weak and shameful display.

Not exactly true. I sold A1200's in my shop alongside similarly specced and priced PCs, and the Amiga put them to shame. Consoles were... consoles - not even in the same league.

The default 68020 CPU should've been at least a fast '030, if not '040. The CHIP memory should've been at least 8 MB, there should've been at least 16 MB FAST memory as default machine, expandable from there.

You're dreaming. Only high-end PCs had that much RAM in 1992, and they were ridiculously expensive. But the A4000 did have an 040 and was capable of taking 16MB FastRAM on the motherboard, and also cost about the same as a similarly specced brand name PC. The A4000 was also '8MB ChipRAM ready' so Commodore was looking at that option - though in practice 2MB has proved to be plenty enough for most applications. But of course the A4000 was far too expensive for most Amiga fans, so it was dismissed out of hand.

There should've been either a proper chunky mode or Akiko-chip style stuff by default. Eight sound channels would've been the best - especially with 16-bit quality and at least some kind of decent synth chip.

The AAA chipset was going to have chunky modes and 8 channel 16 bit sound and more, but after many years of development they couldn't get it to work. AGA was the best Commodore's engineers could produce at the time. Perhaps if they had started with a less ambitious specification they might have done it sooner with more features.

Doom should've been converted as soon as possible and given free with every Amiga 1200 (and optimized so it'd run well).

That would have been nice (especially for ID software), but a little tricky to arrange when Doom didn't exist until 1993.

The thing is, that kind of Amiga would probably have cost a lot more, but Commodore could've sold it at a loss at first, because it would've been such an attractive system, enough people would've soon bought it and developed software for it and that would make more people buy it, they would still have been able to make profit at some point.

An interesting theory.

In reality they would simply would have gone bankrupt faster. In fact chasing the high end was one of the things that got Commodore into trouble in the first place. The A3000 was only on the market for 2 years, and most were probably sold at below cost. By the time Commodore corrected course and produced the A1200 they were already on the way down.

[rare_j]

I already had an A500+ with 2mb chip ram when I upgraded to the A1200.
I was excited for the faster processor and more colours to use in dpaint and the new games.

In reality, the cpu wasn't that much faster without fast ram, and the new colour modes were so slow I didn't use them. Also, the jump from os2 to os3 wasn't that big a difference. I didn't play any AGA games - they was mostly shovelware, in my opinion.
What I did get was the ability to add a hard drive, and accelerator/fast ram. Although these were expensive upgrades on top of the original purchase!

With the benefit of hindsight, I didn't need an A1200. I could have kept the 2mb A500+, bought an A530 (or other hard drive and accelerator), and upgraded to os3.
But I didn't know that then.

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by rare_j

I already had an A500+ with 2mb chip ram when I upgraded to the A1200.

Did you frequently have problems running games on the A500+ I wonder?

[activist]

Originally Posted by Nishicorn

Nothing can touch Banshee on the Sega Genesis/Megadrive side, though, because Banshee, not only has 256 colors, it actually has more, due to the incredibly smooth fog and crossfade-effects. You'd have to come up with ACTUAL examples - Megadrive can't touch the Amiga in most cases, all conversions are sub-par, Amiga versions truly shine.

Have to disagree there. Banshee is overrated. Visuals are v nice but the gameplay and pacing is not quite right at all. Battle Squadron, Mega Typhoon, Hybris wipe the floor with it gameplay wise. The 1200 could probably do Thunder Force III/IV. But not certain.

[redblade]

Originally Posted by activist

Have to disagree there. Banshee is overrated. Visuals are v nice but the gameplay and pacing is not quite right at all. Battle Squadron, Mega Typhoon, Hybris wipe the floor with it gameplay wise. The 1200 could probably do Thunder Force III/IV. But not certain.

I wonder if the A1200 got hi quality ports of Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter 2 with the CD32 pad on launch, if it would have helped shift more units.

[rare_j]

Originally Posted by gimbal

Did you frequently have problems running games on the A500+ I wonder?

Not that frequently. There was a copy or relokick on the cover of a magazine that made a lot of things work.

[redblade]

From the comp.sys.m68k faq which dates January 6/1996It advertises a 68020@16 PGA for $20USD on a California brochure probably in bulk as the Canadian price was $72.37CND for the same chip

obviously the http://motserv.indirect.com/cgi-bin/pg no longer works and I have not had much luck with wayback machine

[Lord Aga]

Originally Posted by activist

Banshee is overrated.

Blasphemy

Banshee is a superb game. A bit tough. There is a learning curve. But top quality overall.

[dreadnought]

~early Nineties PCs and consoles sucked~

I see that even after 64 pages this thread is still as bonkers as it was in the beginning.

Keep it up, folks

[indigolemon]

I love what this thread title does to anyone who posts in it when you see the summary on the index page

Anyway, sorry for the offtopic - carry on ...

[Glen M]

My A1200 was the first Amiga I ever owned so I cant say I was ever disappointed and personally I never ran into the issue of games not working when swapping with friends who had the 500 or 600.

One thing I would throw out there though is that by having the 1200 as my first Amiga and getting used to AGA games I now find going back to my A500 with its pistorm disappointing since its got the pace but its missing the AGA and most software looking the pace wants the AGA. Does that make sense.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Glen M

I now find going back to my A500 with its pistorm disappointing since its got the pace but its missing the AGA and most software looking the pace wants the AGA. Does that make sense.

Yes, that makes sense.

When I got my A1200 I immediately noticed the improvement with AGA compared to the A600, and even putting an 030 accelerator card in the A600 didn't help. I now have a Vampire in the A600 and use RTG almost exclusively. It's great for web browsing and compiling C code, but I still prefer the A1200 for general use.

My A500 is reserved for older stuff that won't run on my other Amigas. I started building a Terriblefire 030 board but haven't finished it because the 030 in my A1200 would still be better with AGA.

[freehand]

The rose tinted glasses become thicker year by year.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by freehand

The rose tinted glasses become thicker year by year.

Not sure who or what you are referring to, but I use my A1200 for several hours every day programming, playing games, browsing the web and listening to music etc. Sometimes it stays on overnight playing mods to help me to get to sleep, then I get up at 3am to do programming, check out Aminet and read the latest posts on this board.

I have a large collection of vintage computers that I have lost interest in, and my other hobbies are being neglected. My glasses aren't just rose tinted, they are completely opaque to anything but the Amiga. Modern PCs leave me cold. Other retro platforms are frustrating and unsatisfying. Am I blinkered, addicted, besotted, insane? I can't describe my feelings for the Amiga, but one thing I know for sure - there are a lot of disappointing things in this world, and the A1200 isn't one of them.

[redblade]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Not sure who or what you are referring to, but I use my A1200 for several hours every day programming, playing games, browsing the web and listening to music etc. Sometimes it stays on overnight playing mods to help me to get to sleep, then I get up at 3am to do programming, check out Aminet and read the latest posts on this board.

I have a large collection of vintage computers that I have lost interest in, and my other hobbies are being neglected. My glasses aren't just rose tinted, they are completely opaque to anything but the Amiga. Modern PCs leave me cold. Other retro platforms are frustrating and unsatisfying. Am I blinkered, addicted, besotted, insane? I can't describe my feelings for the Amiga, but one thing I know for sure - there are a lot of disappointing things in this world, and the A1200 isn't one of them.

Can you post a pic of your A1200 set up please Bruce.

Thanks

[Mixel]

I was definitely not disappointed at the time.. Absolutely loved it. At the time the amount of colours for graphic creation was amazing, and although the potential for AGA games went largely unrealised I really appreciated it when it was there.

With hindsight I wish things had gone differently and we’d seen an A3000-like (2MB chip) wedge before the A1200, and then that the A1200 itself had come with literally any amount of fast ram on board (1MB even would have been enough to drastically improve usability heading into the early internet era.)

I don’t think the A1200 should be saddled with “it should have been way more powerful” though, I mean, yeah maybe but at the time it wasn’t designed to be the final home Amiga, there could have been later 030, 040, even PPC wedges and set top boxes if Commodore hadn’t bollocksed everything up.

I never really had many problems with incompatible games either, maybe I Jess just lucky but we had a ton of games.

[khph_re]

I remember Peter molyneux saying the A1200 was 6x faster...I was into imagine at the time, and I was disappointed with the rendering speed.
I didn't really understand bitplanes back then, and couldn't understand why more colours made the machine bog down.
2.5 HDD's were expensive, and the floppy should have been HD.
On the other hand...HAM8 was a thing of beauty, rendering to that was a joy. And some of the demo art in that mode is incredible. Uni Macs where 256 colour until we got power Macs.

It was easy to write to Mac and PC disks for Uni.
In fact my whole graphics design degree was done through a mac emulator on the A1200.
Multitasking was, and is, amazing on the Amiga. The way I work began on the Amiga.
The OS is a great, fun to mess around with and understand.
Amiga sound was still great in '92. My mate had a PC midi card, all awful built in sounds...sounded like an old mobile phone ringtone.

so the A1200 was a mixed bag for me...but while I sold my A4000T, and gave away my A4000, the old workhorse remains....although the sound has gone.

[lmimmfn]

Controversial, but as a huge Amiga fan when i read reviews of the Atari Falcon, i wanted that but couldnt afford it.

Honestly the A1200 i got i was happy with, AGA games mostly sucked but i was more into DPaint and Imagine. Other than the colours it didnt seem any faster vs my A500 with extra 2 Meg Ram or a2000 with extra 8 Meg Ram and 18 Meg HD(also had 286 board but never used it).

Always felt it was inferior to the Falcon, i only cared about gfx at the time.