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My late dad was a huge Amiga fan back in the day. I was just a little kid at the time and didn't see what the big deal was. Looking back at what it was capabl

My late dad was a huge Amiga fan back in the day. I was just a little kid at the time and didn't see what the big deal was. Looking back at what it was capable of though...they were doing 256 colors and sampled audio at a time when x86 was still pushing 16 colors and could only produce generated tones through the speaker built into the case. There was some really good music on the Amiga, too. Some of my favorites: Hybris theme: https://youtu.be/Siwd7b0iXOc https://youtu.be/Siwd7b0iXOc Pioneer Plague theme: https://youtu.be/JSLcN6GBzO0?t=17 https://youtu.be/JSLcN6GBzO0?t=17 Treasure Trap theme: https://youtu.be/n5h_Wu7QRpM https://youtu.be/n5h_Wu7QRpM And of course, you can't mention Amiga music without also mentioning Space Debris: https://youtu.be/thnXzUFJnfQ https://youtu.be/thnXzUFJnfQ

reaperducer 5y ago
they were doing 256 colors and sampled audio at a time when x86 was still pushing 16 colors 4,096 colors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hold-And-Modify https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hold-And-Modify
- Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
  I knew it could do 4,096 colors and I played around with it in Deluxe Paint, but I don't recall any games that used it. Being a kid at the time, the games were all I cared about.
  - vidarh 5y ago
    Games span a bit of a range. With the copper you could change the palette while the screen updated, so you could do more than 256 on AGA or more than 64 on ECS Amiga's, but even on AGA Amiga's (A1200, A4000, CD32) it was rare for games to even reach 256 because of memory bandwidth. 32-64 was a more common range. Even that often used copper tricks, because using fewer bitplanes meant less memory bandwidth used, and so it was often worthwhile using copper palette tricks. A handful of games did use HAM for up to 4096 colours, but mostly for static screens (there's somewhere in the region of half a dozen exceptions total)
vintermann 5y ago
The Hybris music is kind of peculiar for the Amiga, since it uses a ton of fast arpeggiated chords, like you had to do on the 8 bit computers to play chords at all (but on the Amiga, you could just sample the chord and still have three hardware channels left for the rest of the music). It was essentially retro even when it was made! Hybris was a gorgeous game too. It was top notch arcade quality graphics back when it came in 1987.
btbuildem 5y ago
Yeah, Amiga was light years ahead of PC and others in the music scene. It was truly incredible at the time. ProTracker blew my mind -- you could just.. make music, by hand. So many games had rich soundtracks. Not to mention the demo scene, arguably an art form, blending audio and visual effects in a constant race of one-upmanship while squeezing every last bit of performance from these ancient chipsets. Or the whole genre of cracktros (short intros put in bootloaders before games by the crackers / pirates distributing them). I still have this as a ring tone lol: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAmTHCgvtnQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAmTHCgvtnQ Edit: I'm just going to throw this in here for good measure: the Lotus Turbo Challenge II soundtrack https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vETonlaTZ4c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vETonlaTZ4c I mean, somebody made an instrumental cover of it years and years later, that's how it stuck in some people's minds! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6Ijk17osUc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6Ijk17osUc

reaperducer 5y ago

they were doing 256 colors and sampled audio at a time when x86 was still pushing 16 colors 4,096 colors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hold-And-Modify https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hold-And-Modify

Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
I knew it could do 4,096 colors and I played around with it in Deluxe Paint, but I don't recall any games that used it. Being a kid at the time, the games were all I cared about.
- vidarh 5y ago
  Games span a bit of a range. With the copper you could change the palette while the screen updated, so you could do more than 256 on AGA or more than 64 on ECS Amiga's, but even on AGA Amiga's (A1200, A4000, CD32) it was rare for games to even reach 256 because of memory bandwidth. 32-64 was a more common range. Even that often used copper tricks, because using fewer bitplanes meant less memory bandwidth used, and so it was often worthwhile using copper palette tricks. A handful of games did use HAM for up to 4096 colours, but mostly for static screens (there's somewhere in the region of half a dozen exceptions total)

vintermann 5y ago

The Hybris music is kind of peculiar for the Amiga, since it uses a ton of fast arpeggiated chords, like you had to do on the 8 bit computers to play chords at all (but on the Amiga, you could just sample the chord and still have three hardware channels left for the rest of the music). It was essentially retro even when it was made! Hybris was a gorgeous game too. It was top notch arcade quality graphics back when it came in 1987.

btbuildem 5y ago

Yeah, Amiga was light years ahead of PC and others in the music scene. It was truly incredible at the time. ProTracker blew my mind -- you could just.. make music, by hand. So many games had rich soundtracks. Not to mention the demo scene, arguably an art form, blending audio and visual effects in a constant race of one-upmanship while squeezing every last bit of performance from these ancient chipsets. Or the whole genre of cracktros (short intros put in bootloaders before games by the crackers / pirates distributing them). I still have this as a ring tone lol: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAmTHCgvtnQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAmTHCgvtnQ Edit: I'm just going to throw this in here for good measure: the Lotus Turbo Challenge II soundtrack https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vETonlaTZ4c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vETonlaTZ4c I mean, somebody made an instrumental cover of it years and years later, that's how it stuck in some people's minds! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6Ijk17osUc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6Ijk17osUc