I think the Commodore Amiga’s potential as a gaming platform was never truly taken advantage of despite the massive hardware advancement from the C64, and that save for a handful of exceptions, its game library is mostly poorly designed shovelware that people only go back to for nostalgia.
I had an Atari ST and, in a childish and tribalistic way, hated the Amiga - although looking back it was clearly superior by almost every metric! I betrayed my childhood self and got one a few years back. The games are generally smoother and sound better, but the nostalgia itch is only truly scratched when I power up the ST.
I mean, they took the ST as far as it could go graphically. To this day there are people trying to mod fully expanded STEs so it’ll run something close to Doom, but really I feel they just couldn’t cut it. 8mhz and a display limited to 16 colours (without special sync tricks) from a pallette of 512/4096 (depending on which machine you had) was a bit of a bottleneck. There’s proto-open world games like Hunter, but in general side/vertical scrolling shot-em-ups was pretty much it’s bag, and games like Turrican, Killing Gameshow and Xenon 2 all pushed the limits of what could be done as far as I recall.
I believe graphically both the ST and Amiga were used to their full potential, I just think the games available on them aren’t actually designed well, as in they had access to so much more memory, but for the most part didn’t know how to create a compelling gameplay or story experience with the additional creative freedom those better specs allowed.
As I say there are a few exceptions on both platforms, I think Another World on the Amiga is a good example of a developer using that extra power extremely well to create a truly novel and innovative experience that stands the test of time.
Hunter is definitely trying to be innovative, but the hardware wasn’t ready for a full 3D open world, and personally I don’t think it holds up as a ‘good game’ today.
I guess the point I’m trying to make is that within the still existing limitations of that era of hardware, most Amiga and ST devs did not have the design chops or writing ability to create a compelling game within those restrictions that would make it a standout even today. Consoles from around the same period such as the Sega Genesis and SNES have pretty similar hardware restrictions to the Amiga and ST, but still have a fairly beloved library of games due to those seeming to attract more talented designers.
I take your point. I suppose it’s worth mentioning that a lot of games were either straight-up arcade conversions or derivatives. There are a few decent YouTube channels from former artists and coders that talk about the dev process. By today’s standards it was insanely restrictive and the teams were comparatively tiny. True game development was just at such an early stage then, which I guess is partly the point you’re making.
Accurate statements of objective historical facts are not hot takes.
The Amiga had…probably the second best computer sound system ever made after the PC Soundblaster, and rather unique graphics performance for the time. It had potential that seldom got realized. Paraphrasing Ashens, most of the time Amiga games were ports from the Atari ST with added music.
Oh and don’t forget how big the 16 bit era of game consoles were. I’m a veteran of the SNES vs Genesis war, chiptune version of Fortunate Son starts to play YOU DON’T KNOW, YOU WEREN’T THERE!
My understanding is, the Amiga failed to find a niche. DOS/Windows PCs were heading toward monopoly, the Atari ST with its built-in MIDI support had a following in the music world, Apple at the time was big in education and desktop publishing and proto-content creation, and Dick Van Dyke had an Amiga.
I think the main issue with the Amiga is it was never picked up by businesses much like the PC was, and from what I remember it was more costly to add a hard drive in comparison to other platforms?
The final nail was that Commodore was essentially killed from the inside by the new CEO that gutted the company to enrich himself and the shareholders. Without the R&D to keep up with x86 processors gaining huge leaps in power, the Amiga, at least in the US, quickly lost appeal to gamers. And it likely didn’t appeal to most families who also wanted to use productivity software, where PC was superior for the most part.
In the UK though, the Amiga was quite the success, but, and I think this is partly why I consider it a hot take somewhat, I think almost all UK game developers at the time just weren’t very good designers, save for a few (X-com as an example, which is to this day a masterpiece).
On the US market, the Amiga was basically irrelevant. I wouldn’t be surprised if you told me Commodore did better in the UK than domestically. And Commodore made cool computers.
I think the Commodore Amiga’s potential as a gaming platform was never truly taken advantage of despite the massive hardware advancement from the C64, and that save for a handful of exceptions, its game library is mostly poorly designed shovelware that people only go back to for nostalgia.
I concur, the Amiga was excellent from a hardware standpoint, but it’s software library was weak.
I had an Atari ST and, in a childish and tribalistic way, hated the Amiga - although looking back it was clearly superior by almost every metric! I betrayed my childhood self and got one a few years back. The games are generally smoother and sound better, but the nostalgia itch is only truly scratched when I power up the ST.
To be honest, I feel the same wasted potential also applies to the ST :/
I mean, they took the ST as far as it could go graphically. To this day there are people trying to mod fully expanded STEs so it’ll run something close to Doom, but really I feel they just couldn’t cut it. 8mhz and a display limited to 16 colours (without special sync tricks) from a pallette of 512/4096 (depending on which machine you had) was a bit of a bottleneck. There’s proto-open world games like Hunter, but in general side/vertical scrolling shot-em-ups was pretty much it’s bag, and games like Turrican, Killing Gameshow and Xenon 2 all pushed the limits of what could be done as far as I recall.
I believe graphically both the ST and Amiga were used to their full potential, I just think the games available on them aren’t actually designed well, as in they had access to so much more memory, but for the most part didn’t know how to create a compelling gameplay or story experience with the additional creative freedom those better specs allowed.
As I say there are a few exceptions on both platforms, I think Another World on the Amiga is a good example of a developer using that extra power extremely well to create a truly novel and innovative experience that stands the test of time.
Hunter is definitely trying to be innovative, but the hardware wasn’t ready for a full 3D open world, and personally I don’t think it holds up as a ‘good game’ today.
I guess the point I’m trying to make is that within the still existing limitations of that era of hardware, most Amiga and ST devs did not have the design chops or writing ability to create a compelling game within those restrictions that would make it a standout even today. Consoles from around the same period such as the Sega Genesis and SNES have pretty similar hardware restrictions to the Amiga and ST, but still have a fairly beloved library of games due to those seeming to attract more talented designers.
I take your point. I suppose it’s worth mentioning that a lot of games were either straight-up arcade conversions or derivatives. There are a few decent YouTube channels from former artists and coders that talk about the dev process. By today’s standards it was insanely restrictive and the teams were comparatively tiny. True game development was just at such an early stage then, which I guess is partly the point you’re making.
Accurate statements of objective historical facts are not hot takes.
The Amiga had…probably the second best computer sound system ever made after the PC Soundblaster, and rather unique graphics performance for the time. It had potential that seldom got realized. Paraphrasing Ashens, most of the time Amiga games were ports from the Atari ST with added music.
Oh and don’t forget how big the 16 bit era of game consoles were. I’m a veteran of the SNES vs Genesis war, chiptune version of Fortunate Son starts to play YOU DON’T KNOW, YOU WEREN’T THERE!
My understanding is, the Amiga failed to find a niche. DOS/Windows PCs were heading toward monopoly, the Atari ST with its built-in MIDI support had a following in the music world, Apple at the time was big in education and desktop publishing and proto-content creation, and Dick Van Dyke had an Amiga.
I think the main issue with the Amiga is it was never picked up by businesses much like the PC was, and from what I remember it was more costly to add a hard drive in comparison to other platforms?
The final nail was that Commodore was essentially killed from the inside by the new CEO that gutted the company to enrich himself and the shareholders. Without the R&D to keep up with x86 processors gaining huge leaps in power, the Amiga, at least in the US, quickly lost appeal to gamers. And it likely didn’t appeal to most families who also wanted to use productivity software, where PC was superior for the most part.
In the UK though, the Amiga was quite the success, but, and I think this is partly why I consider it a hot take somewhat, I think almost all UK game developers at the time just weren’t very good designers, save for a few (X-com as an example, which is to this day a masterpiece).
On the US market, the Amiga was basically irrelevant. I wouldn’t be surprised if you told me Commodore did better in the UK than domestically. And Commodore made cool computers.