Your shittest console

[Sebastian Cobb]

I youtubed a microcosm playthrough.



Is it a fantastic-voyage type thing where you fly in through the 'arris?

[fflip]

Were there any aftermarket accelerator cards?

I'm not an expert (half of this I've only learned in the last half hour), but I think so. Most of the Amiga graphics cards needed a 'big box' Amiga (A2000/A3000/A4000, with a "Zorro" slot) with the exception of the BlizzardVision PPC which according to the manual, could "be fitted into a A1200 Desktop case [though] its operation is not intended in it due to electrical supply requirements". This card and I presume most of the others also required your system to have been upgraded with a PowerPC CPU card, in the A1200's case via a Blizzard PPC 603e in the trapdoor slot.

Mainly, I was just stunned to learn that an officially-licenced version of Wipeout 2097 was released for the Amiga in 1999. Love how the CD goes into the computer in the video there - I guess it's a mod. (Another video shows it running a bit smoother, presumably on one of the bigger Amigas.)

I think these lists - Lemon - HOL - cover all the games that were released for accelerated Amigas. Just think, if you had spent a grand on add-ons for your Amiga instead of on your first PC you could have played... some of the same games, a few years later. (But I do wonder if there any hidden gems in there, and if they can now be emulated.)

[thelittlemango]

I had a game.com and definitely vote for it being the shittest console I've ever owned.

Lured in by the promise of the internet on a handheld device (our family didn't have a desktop pc with internet at the time) I saved up pocket money and my whole family clubbed together to get it for me for my birthday. Adverts talked of Duke Nukem 3D, which for an adolescent who could only steal minutes of gameplay at friends house was exciting, the possibility to play grown-up 3D games on the go.

My birthday arrived and I opened my presents, a sparkling game.com with Lights Out included plus Solitaire built-in and for some reason (I think it must have been bought in a bundle) copies of Family Fortunes, Batman and Robin and Sonic Jam. I couldn't wait to try it out, and the addition of PDA features made it feel even more grown-up, I could digitally manage my diary (school, homework, football, wank) and then kick back with a selection of games powered by the latest in technology.

Turns out that:
1) You couldn't go on the internet without buying one of their modems and an internet connector thing (neither included in the box)
2) The internet was text only, you could also receive e-mails but the device didn't have the capacity to store them
3) The games were almost entirely shit, sluggish, hard to see (playing Sonic Jam in black and white was quite a desolate experience) and in the end Family Fortunes and Lights Out were the ones I played the most because they didn't stretch beyond the machines capabilities and didn't feel like cheap knock-offs of other developers work.
4) The release of games dried up very quickly, I was left with an unwieldy PDA (with free stylus!) that could play Family Fortunes and which I felt obliged to use and carry everywhere for the next year so that I didn't hurt the feelings of my family who saved up to buy it for me.

Recently went home to clear out the last of my possessions from my parents house and found it again, dashed in the bin without a moments thought. Shite.

[MojoJojo]

I'm not an expert (half of this I've only learned in the last half hour), but I think so. Most of the Amiga graphics cards needed a 'big box' Amiga (A2000/A3000/A4000, with a "Zorro" slot) with the exception of the BlizzardVision PPC which according to the manual, could "be fitted into a A1200 Desktop case [though] its operation is not intended in it due to electrical supply requirements". This card and I presume most of the others also required your system to have been upgraded with a PowerPC CPU card, in the A1200's case via a Blizzard PPC 603e in the trapdoor slot.

Mainly, I was just stunned to learn that an officially-licenced version of Wipeout 2097 was released for the Amiga in 1999. Love how the CD goes into the computer in the video there - I guess it's a mod. (Another video shows it running a bit smoother, presumably on one of the bigger Amigas.)

I think these lists - Lemon - HOL - cover all the games that were released for accelerated Amigas. Just think, if you had spent a grand on add-ons for your Amiga instead of on your first PC you could have played... some of the same games, a few years later. (But I do wonder if there any hidden gems in there, and if they can now be emulated.)

Note that the PPC card that is using is a CPU accelerator, not a graphics accelerator. The cards listed there seem to be mostly for supporting high resolution modes for things like desktop publishing.

The problem with trying to make an accelerator card for the Amiga was that all the power of the amiga was in the graphics chipset. If you put a 3dfx card in one all you have is a 3dfx card in one all you have is a 3dfx card with a Motorola 68020 hanging off it.

[Dewt]

Yeah, the Amiga lost its USP as soon as things like fast blitting became easy on consumer hardware.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Yeah, the Amiga lost its USP as soon as things like fast blitting became easy on consumer hardware.

Genlock though.

[Dewt]

I'll lock your gen you Babylon 5 prick!

[Dewt]

Sorry I do not know what came over me.

[I.D. Smith]

Bah!  Awful game.  "Let's take our series renowned for beautiful hand-drawn graphics and replace that art with ugly early 3D polygons because technical superiority is obviously the same thing as artistic superiority.  Also, let's take our inventory based puzzles and add a ludicrous number of crate pushing puzzles, like some kind of shit Tomb Raider knock-off.  Oh, and be sure to add in some badly programmed stealth sections too because everyone loves them".

That's progress for you.

Oh no, I do agree. The move to 3D, with its pointless and frustrating addition of stealth and box pushing sections, added nothing and if anything detracted from the game. It also had an inappropriate end credits song (musically a slight hint of The Manic Street Preachers to me, although I might be just getting that because it's called 'Love Us'):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1ep2aYBPac

Despite all that I still have a fondness for it. I quite enjoyed the story, although I can't remember any of it at all. 

[monkfromhavana]

When I lived in Japan I bought one of the handheld Neo GEOs. Mainly due to looking at them longingly in the backs of games magazines (along with PC Engines) at how pricey and exotic they were.

Fuck all games for it (even in Japan), and 85% of the games that were available seemed to be gambling simulators. Think i just binned it when I left.

[peanutbutter]

When I lived in Japan I bought one of the handheld Neo GEOs. Mainly due to looking at them longingly in the backs of games magazines (along with PC Engines) at how pricey and exotic they were.

Fuck all games for it (even in Japan), and 85% of the games that were available seemed to be gambling simulators. Think i just binned it when I left.

The Pocket Color came out like a decade after the PC Engine, no?

[Huxleys Babkins]

When I lived in Japan I bought one of the handheld Neo GEOs. Mainly due to looking at them longingly in the backs of games magazines (along with PC Engines) at how pricey and exotic they were.

Fuck all games for it (even in Japan), and 85% of the games that were available seemed to be gambling simulators. Think i just binned it when I left.

This is a dreadful opinion and you should be ashamed for having it.

[Jim Bob]

It also had an inappropriate end credits song (musically a slight hint of The Manic Street Preachers to me, although I might be just getting that because it's called 'Love Us'):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1ep2aYBPac

No, no.  It's not just the title.  That song is extremely similar to The Manic Street Preachers (and as you say, wildly inappropriate for a Broken Sword game).

[druss]

Atari Jaguar :(.

I remember being devastated that there was no Cyber Demon in Doom. I'd heard all my mates going on about this wrecking machine with rocket launcher as an arm and kept thinking "next level, surely" but it never showed up. No Spider Mastermind either.

Piece of shit console.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

How did that happen? Even the SNES version had the boss monsters in it.

[I.D. Smith]

This just helps confirm my decision in not spending my life savings on a Jaguar, mainly for Doom, and instead holding out and getting a Playstation instead was fully justified. (although the PS version of Doom never had the Archvile, but I wasn't as fussed about that as I would've been had the Cyberdemon been missing)

[samadriel]

Well, the Archvile was a Doom 2 enemy... Did the Playstation Doom have other sequel baddies?

[I.D. Smith]

Well, the Archvile was a Doom 2 enemy... Did the Playstation Doom have other sequel baddies?

Yeah! PS Doom was like a mish mash of Doom 1 and Doom 2. As far as I recall, it followed the same levels generally, so it was like playing Doom 1 and then Doom 2 after it (with some slight variations on levels along the way), but it would also mix the demons up a bit, depending on the difficulty - so, for example, on a higher difficulty you'd get a Doom 2 Pain Elemental on level 1 of Doom

[peanutbutter]

How did that happen? Even the SNES version had the boss monsters in it.

Isn't the Jaguar version the one that basically all the console versions after it were based from?

I'm pretty sure it's held in way higher regard than the other ones of that era.

[madhair60]

It is, and it's a great version. Just sadly missing content.

[Jim Bob]

It is, and it's a great version. Just sadly missing content.

The fact that it has no music is a pretty fucking major omission though.

[madhair60]

Just hum it.

[buzby]

It seems obvious with hind sight but considering how well Amiga graphics stood up to PC until the mid 90s, the architecture was absolutely terrible for 3D.

So much so that games with vector graphics like flight sims always ran slightly faster on the Atari ST  despite  it's extremely basic graphics hardware, as the ST's 68K CPU ran at a slightly faster clock frequency (8MHz vs 7.09MHz on PAL machines). The Amiga's graphics hardware was optimised for 2D graphics operations and sprites, so it was  no help when it came to doing the raw maths needed for vector graphics in the time before hardware acceleration existed.

Were there any aftermarket accelerator cards?

At that point, 3D graphics accelerator hardware were purely the domain of SGI workstations and Sega and Namco arcade machines. The Atari Falcon's audio processing DSP could also be used to speed up 2D and 3D graphics processing, 

Phase 5 made the Cybervision and BlizzardVision graphics accelerators for the 'big box' desktop Amigas (as mentioned by fflip), in 1996 and 1998 respectively, but they were more aimed at specialist £D applications like CAD and real-time CG rendering. By the time they had come out ,the Playstation and Saturn were well established and the first generation of 3D accelerators for the PC were available, so the Amiga's days as a gaming platform were pretty much over.

[Dewt]

The coolest graphics-related hardware for the Amiga in my opinion was the thing that would convert the planar display into a chunky one, so the machine was more suitable for Doom-style 3D. I don't think anybody ever really bought one and I doubt any games except for the one packaged with the card were developed for it, but it was such a cool concept, and makes sense really - if something else can interpret the graphics memory then it doesn't matter what the layout is.

No substitute for accelerated polies, but it would have been interesting if the Amiga could have been relevant when the software-rendered, raycast era of gaming hit.

I know the CD32 had a sort-of planar-to-chunky coprocessor but it's not quite the same thing.

I can't even find the name of this add-on now... buzby?
Edit: Maybe it was http://aminet.net/package/docs/misc/AgaEXTENDER

[buzby]

I know the CD32 had a sort-of planar-to-chunky coprocessor but it's not quite the same thing.

The Akiko chip, I think? It was a multi-purpose device that implemented all the glue logic, timers, game ports, serial port and CD controller, but it also had a simple logic-based chunky-to-planar conversion function built into it too.

I can't even find the name of this add-on now... buzby?
Edit: Maybe it was http://aminet.net/package/docs/misc/AgaEXTENDER

The AGAExtender was an external device that plugged into the 15-pin RGB port and did the conversion in a similar way to the Akikio did ,but meant it could be used on any Amiga (though at the price of reduced graphics bandwidth). However, it seems that by 1999 no hardware existed, so I'm not sure if it ever came to fruition (the library software was written by the software guy who came up with the concept, but I'm not sure if he ever found anyone to get the hardware developed).

[Dewt]

Unfortunately all I have is a memory of reading a magazine from when I was far too young to know what planar/chunky actually meant. I'm going to assume that what I read was speculative coverage of the AgaEXTENDER. Although I do think I saw pictures of it and it was a hands-on review... and I think it came with a demo game.

Maybe if I get bored I'll ask around at Lemon Amiga. Presumably the people who would remember are no longer active on usenet (although comp.sys.sinclair is still active...)

[Dewt]

http://www.amigareport.com/ar406/mail.html

[The AGAExtender is not the only device of this type in existence.  There
are at least two other AGA RGB attachments that provide chunky displays.
-Jason]

The plot thickens (the plot of a book nobody is interested in)

[Dewt]

Found it. As soon as I saw the name I knew that was it.

http://wiki.icomp.de/wiki/Graffiti

I love this video showing what it looked like if you didn't do the conversion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfBOmXOKnKU

[Kryton]

What was your favourite game for the CD32, if any? 

(please say Beneath a Steel Sky, because that game is boss)

Diggers without a doubt.
Frontier Elite II
Bubba and Stix

(I mean these were all Amiga games anyway, but whatever).

[fflip]

I love this video showing what it looked like if you didn't do the conversion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfBOmXOKnKU

Ha, I know it's technically different (analogue vs digital!), but that's like composite artifact colour in its frog-prince level of transformation. Hard to say which graphic mode counts as the more '~~aesthetic~~' nowadays. If that glitched-up version of Doom had somehow been the only one available to me before I had a PC, you know I would have eagerly played it through and all.

Apologies if the following is slightly off-topic, but if you want to see and feel slightly jealous of the warmth radiating from a group of people who for a time experienced a rare, retrospectively perfect work environment, watch this lovely video full of the original Amiga team talking about the very early days. (I keep losing this video and having to search hard for it again for some reason.)