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> "PCs were definitely at a disadvantage for anything involving a lot of motion, [...]." Not on a strictly technical level, especially not in the world of 3D.

> "PCs were definitely at a disadvantage for anything involving a lot of motion, [...]." Not on a strictly technical level, especially not in the world of 3D. 2D arcade games à la Silpheed came out for the PC in 1989, running maxed-out on machines that were already a possibility, with VGA graphics and Adlib or MT-32 sound, from late 1987 onwards, roughly the same time the A500 was released in the United States. The notion that PCs had "a bad rep for games" after the release of titles such as Wing Commander doesn't really hold much water. It was mostly economical factors and some specific usecases that made home computers an excellent, and often superior, choice for many of its future users.

zozbot234 1y ago
> Not on a strictly technical level Yes, there were strictly technical limitations. Memory throughput to the video framebuffer did not allow for arbitrary full-screen updates at native frame rate, and there were no hardware sprites or other display hacks to cope with this limitation - the framebuffer was all you had. These limitations became gradually less important throughout the 1990s, depending on what resolution and color depth you were running.
- spankibalt 1y ago
  > "Yes, there were strictly technical limitations." Precision, friend. I never disputed that there were no (strictly) technical limitations for PCs. I only argued against the notion, emphasis mine, that "PCs were definitely at a disadvantage for anything involving a lot of motion, like arcade-style games, platformers, shoot em ups, fighting, and racing games. [...] That disadvantage was gone, at least on a technical level, by 1992-94." Amigas never saw the light against IBM and compatibles in a lot of ways, and that already before 1992. Two famous titles I already mentioned; one had no Amiga port (Silpheed, 1989) AFAIK, the other (Wing Commander, 1990) came out later as a technically inferior, albeit atmospheric, hand-me-down. When people reminisce about the graphics capabilities of home computers, especially Amigas, they often forget whole, shall we say "inconvenient", genres. Et cetera.
  - vidarh 1y ago
    It's not that we forget "inconvenient" genres, but that at the peak of the Amiga popularity, while high end PC's could compete, the vast majority of people did not have those high-end PC's with the requisite graphics and sound cards. We continued to laugh at people with PC's pretty much until Doom, because most of the PC's our friends had were still low end, and lacked expensive graphics- and sound cards, while at the same time, certainly there was a mounting concern over what was trickling down for PC's from the high-end. With respect to Silpheed, the original version is a graphically primitive 8-bit game and the 1989 version was ported to Apple II-GS - it was hardly performance that was the reason it didn't get an Amiga release. Even the 1993 Sega CD version doesn't contain much that'd be difficult to do on an Amiga (you'd "cheat" and pre-render more version of the ships and rely on the blitter to compensate for the expense of polygons, and possibly use dual playfields and copper lists to allow for the updating background). Wing Commander, I agree with. The AGA version is nice, but too late.
    - zozbot234 1y ago
      High-end PC's were also extremely costly prior to the mid-1990s or so (the "Multimedia PC" era). You could've bought an Acorn Archimedes home computer that would have run rings around the Amiga on a pure CPU compute basis and given you the same emerging multimedia (graphics+sound) capabilities, for less than the cost of a high-end IBM-compatible PC.
      - spankibalt 1y ago
        > High-end PC's were also extremely costly prior to the mid-1990s or so (the "Multimedia PC" era). I saw the first PCs starting to appear in East German households in 1990. Typically a VGA-capable 286 machine, 16 MHz, 1 MB RAM, two HD FDDs (one 1.44 MB 3.5", one 1.2 MB 5.25"), one 20 to 40 MB hard disk. No sound card. Without monitor, in early 1991, such a machine cost new about 1,500 DM. At the same time, a new Amiga 500 with 512 kB memory extension cost about 900 bucks, the A590 external 20 MB hard disk an additional 700 DM, for a grand total of 1,600 DM. In other words, we roughly on equal footing here. A barebones A2000 without hard disk and 1 MB of RAM cost also about 1,600 DM in the same time period. The costs racked-up even quicker to furnish out that bird. Coincidentally, 1,500 DM is the same price I payed in early 1993 for a well-cared for second-hand 386DX-25 (387 FPU included) graphics workstation. And the Acorn Archimedes? That machine was essentially a unicorn where I'm from; the Amigas had at least some visibility here.

zozbot234 1y ago

> Not on a strictly technical level Yes, there were strictly technical limitations. Memory throughput to the video framebuffer did not allow for arbitrary full-screen updates at native frame rate, and there were no hardware sprites or other display hacks to cope with this limitation - the framebuffer was all you had. These limitations became gradually less important throughout the 1990s, depending on what resolution and color depth you were running.

spankibalt 1y ago
> "Yes, there were strictly technical limitations." Precision, friend. I never disputed that there were no (strictly) technical limitations for PCs. I only argued against the notion, emphasis mine, that "PCs were definitely at a disadvantage for anything involving a lot of motion, like arcade-style games, platformers, shoot em ups, fighting, and racing games. [...] That disadvantage was gone, at least on a technical level, by 1992-94." Amigas never saw the light against IBM and compatibles in a lot of ways, and that already before 1992. Two famous titles I already mentioned; one had no Amiga port (Silpheed, 1989) AFAIK, the other (Wing Commander, 1990) came out later as a technically inferior, albeit atmospheric, hand-me-down. When people reminisce about the graphics capabilities of home computers, especially Amigas, they often forget whole, shall we say "inconvenient", genres. Et cetera.
- vidarh 1y ago
  It's not that we forget "inconvenient" genres, but that at the peak of the Amiga popularity, while high end PC's could compete, the vast majority of people did not have those high-end PC's with the requisite graphics and sound cards. We continued to laugh at people with PC's pretty much until Doom, because most of the PC's our friends had were still low end, and lacked expensive graphics- and sound cards, while at the same time, certainly there was a mounting concern over what was trickling down for PC's from the high-end. With respect to Silpheed, the original version is a graphically primitive 8-bit game and the 1989 version was ported to Apple II-GS - it was hardly performance that was the reason it didn't get an Amiga release. Even the 1993 Sega CD version doesn't contain much that'd be difficult to do on an Amiga (you'd "cheat" and pre-render more version of the ships and rely on the blitter to compensate for the expense of polygons, and possibly use dual playfields and copper lists to allow for the updating background). Wing Commander, I agree with. The AGA version is nice, but too late.
  - zozbot234 1y ago
    High-end PC's were also extremely costly prior to the mid-1990s or so (the "Multimedia PC" era). You could've bought an Acorn Archimedes home computer that would have run rings around the Amiga on a pure CPU compute basis and given you the same emerging multimedia (graphics+sound) capabilities, for less than the cost of a high-end IBM-compatible PC.
    - spankibalt 1y ago
      > High-end PC's were also extremely costly prior to the mid-1990s or so (the "Multimedia PC" era). I saw the first PCs starting to appear in East German households in 1990. Typically a VGA-capable 286 machine, 16 MHz, 1 MB RAM, two HD FDDs (one 1.44 MB 3.5", one 1.2 MB 5.25"), one 20 to 40 MB hard disk. No sound card. Without monitor, in early 1991, such a machine cost new about 1,500 DM. At the same time, a new Amiga 500 with 512 kB memory extension cost about 900 bucks, the A590 external 20 MB hard disk an additional 700 DM, for a grand total of 1,600 DM. In other words, we roughly on equal footing here. A barebones A2000 without hard disk and 1 MB of RAM cost also about 1,600 DM in the same time period. The costs racked-up even quicker to furnish out that bird. Coincidentally, 1,500 DM is the same price I payed in early 1993 for a well-cared for second-hand 386DX-25 (387 FPU included) graphics workstation. And the Acorn Archimedes? That machine was essentially a unicorn where I'm from; the Amigas had at least some visibility here.