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Geek Culture / Way ahead of their time

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Hobgoblin Lord
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Posted: 21st Dec 2006 00:56
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Man watching this video now you can see just how far ahead of the competition AMIGA was in 85. Heck apple IIc and TRS-80 III were all the rage at this same time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY27PC9FWT0

http://www.cafepress.com/blackarrowgames
Check out my great stuff here
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Cash Curtis II
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Location: Corpus Christi Texas
Posted: 21st Dec 2006 12:42 Edited at: 21st Dec 2006 12:43
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Wow, getting down like this was only possible in low resolution...



It amazes me how Amiga lost the computer wars. I'd have sure bought one if I'd seen that commercial in 1987. IBMs were expensive and lame compared to the Amiga. Marketing goes a long way I suppose.

That tape had to be hand delivered by a Commodore dealer.


Come see the WIP!

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HowDo
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Posted: 21st Dec 2006 12:46 Edited at: 21st Dec 2006 12:52
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And all worked with a 12mhz clock and you could surf the net with less than 3 megs.

[edit]

Plus you could do more than one thing at a time, like run two - four games, print while formating a drive while doing a dir list on a drive.

Dark Physics makes any hot drink go cold.
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indi
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Posted: 21st Dec 2006 12:53 Edited at: 21st Dec 2006 13:16
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I saw three spinning metal balls and a dinosaur walking past in a few amiga demos and I was hooked.

I was a 500 kid with the extra 512 under the chasis

Yes I admit I bought another floppy drive purely for Bardstale I II and III



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spooky
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Posted: 21st Dec 2006 13:11
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I went through 3 different Amigas in my youth and only got rid of my beloved A1200 a year or so ago. That was a sad day indeed.

Still, there are plenty of Amiga emulators around to play with.

Boo!
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Van B
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Posted: 21st Dec 2006 13:17
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7.15mhz clock - most of the impressive work on the amiga was down to the blitter.

I was an ST fan, so Amiga was always the enemy, the ST came first and was the first home computer to have a full colour bitmapped GUI, the Amiga was better at games, the ST was better at applications and was slightly faster (8mhz). I miss the ST, well I miss custom hardware as a whole but I remember PC's back then, and both the ST and Amiga made them look pathetic and ugly .

''Stick that in your text and scroll it!.''
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HowDo
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Posted: 21st Dec 2006 13:42
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Also there were only two updates the A500 to the A1200 in its life time, how many updates to get a PC to do the same?

Dark Physics makes any hot drink go cold.
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Seppuku Arts
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Posted: 21st Dec 2006 13:57
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We had an Amiga 500, I used to love playing with Monkey Island and Pushover, they were the greatest, not to mention Lemmings and Gremlins, I've been trying to see if Gremlins has turn up on any old games sites, but no success, its not fair it was legendary When we had ours, I remember asking my Dad if he could teach me AMOS, but obviously a 6/7 year old isn't capable of programming But then I suppose as I kid I wouldn't have had the patience, but I still drew my Monkey Island scenes in Delux paint, even getting a crude animation in it (Of Charlie Chaplin, based on one of the examples that came with it) good times.

Then my Dad chucked in on ebay last year, but we still have an Acorn Electron sitting in the hall, I remember when my Dad got that down to play with, on the start up console we decided to type messages to each other then run off and someone come back to read and reply for a bit of fun, then I spoiled it by calling my sister a b**ch, I got grounded as you would expect, and the Electron got locked up. I we have a few games still, like Elite and there was this motor cycle game I liked on it, fancy that, computer games on a tape, took ages to load .

"Cut down the gods if they stand in your way" - Yamamoto Tsunetomo
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Van B
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Posted: 21st Dec 2006 14:23
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Gremlins?

Can't remember a game of note about gremlins, there was Gremlins2, a platformer, and the original graphic adventure, but I'm thinking you might be talking about Goblins, which was a great point and click adventure game with little goblin dudes.

If so it's available on that emulated scumm system, in fact you can get it working on a DS - got Beneath a Steel Sky working, but what I really wanted to get working was the Gobliiins series, sam and max, and Simon the Sorcerer.

''Stick that in your text and scroll it!.''
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Seppuku Arts
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Posted: 21st Dec 2006 15:36
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Goblins, that must be it, I could swear it was called Gremlins

"Cut down the gods if they stand in your way" - Yamamoto Tsunetomo
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Oraculaca
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Posted: 21st Dec 2006 15:59
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I loved Cannonfodder and Sensi Soccer oh and Gods. Damn there were loads of great games.

No.Art.Here
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indi
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Posted: 21st Dec 2006 16:01
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speedball II brutal deluxe - where have those kind of games gone?

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Oraculaca
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Posted: 21st Dec 2006 16:05
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Stunt car racer over a null modem cable. The ultimate in multiplayer shenanigans

No.Art.Here
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Van B
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Posted: 21st Dec 2006 16:07
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Mobile phones, GBA, that sort of thing .

I'd happily buy the Bitmap Bros back catalogue all over again, easily the best 2D graphics of their era.

I spotted a very cool xmas gift for Sensi and cannonfodder fans, a 2 player Megadrive style controller set, plugs right into your TV, and comes with Sensible Soccer, Cannon Fodder, and the incredible MegaLoMania. I'm planning on ordering one later (payday yay!). A Bitmap Bros one, with Chaos Engine, Speedball2, and Xenon2 would be another vital purchase.

''Stick that in your text and scroll it!.''
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Oraculaca
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Posted: 21st Dec 2006 16:09
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I saw that in Toysrus the other day when we were shopping for the nephews stuff(honest) I hinted heavily but I doubt im getting it

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Raven
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Posted: 21st Dec 2006 16:30
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i used to love my A500+ w/1MB trapdoor expansion. until the disk drive died, unfortunately by that point amiga had gone bust and converting a PC disk drive always ended up with mixxed results until they stopped supporting the DF0 jumper settings.

eventually ended up getting the A520(or was it A580) HDD, and a Squirell Serial CD-ROM.. think it all still works but packed up at my moms.

had once since that system came out, loved them to bits.
shame we're never likely to see a new Amiga ever again, unless the company was bought out by someone who could and/or was more pro-active in getting the brand up and running again.

Amiga Anywhere is used in a limited capacity with a number of devices though, so it still lives if only in a limited way.

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Zappo
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Posted: 21st Dec 2006 17:51 Edited at: 21st Dec 2006 18:00
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Quote: "Also there were only two updates the A500 to the A1200 in its life time"

Not sure I understand this sentence but there were lots of Amiga models.
A1000 - The first Amiga. I have one of these and the inside of the case is signed by all of the chip designers. It had 256kb memory with an expansion to 512kb and a separate keyboard to the base unit.
A500 - The one that made it popular. I also have one of these along with the addon CD drive and various peripherals.
A1500/A2000 - Actually the same machine but they were marketted differently. The A1500 was usually bundled with games and the A2000 bundled with application software.
A3000 - A real beast with a 68030 processor. Great for 3D rendering.
A500+ - The updated A500 with 1mb of memory IIRC and Kickstart 2.0
CDTV - Looked like a HIFI CD player but with an Amiga under the hood. Expensive for its time and didn't sell well. No floppy drive and you had to buy a keyboard separately if you wanted one.
A600 - Great little machine but no keypad which made Deluxe Paint tricky to use. Came with or without an internal hard disk and had a PCMCIA slot. Kickstart 3 I think.
A1200 - Released at the same time as the A600 but with a numeric keypad and a 68020 CPU. Again, came with or without a hard disk and had a PCMCIA slot. Kickstart 3 I think.
A4000 - The most powerful of the mass produced Amiga's with a 68040 CPU. Superb machine.
CD32 - Their attempt at a games only console. No keyboard or floppy drive, just joypads and a CD drive built in. It was basically an A1200 under the hood but didn't sell too well.

These are all the ones I worked on (repaired or upgraded). I don't think I missed any out. Great days.
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Hobgoblin Lord
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Posted: 21st Dec 2006 19:25
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I think They would have won the comp wars if commodore ever thought that advertising was a good idea.

Didnt they use an Amiga for some of the effects on Babylon 5?

EA had been around awhile and put out alot of games but I think it was Dpaint that made them alot of the money they used to expand.

http://www.cafepress.com/blackarrowgames
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Zappo
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Posted: 21st Dec 2006 22:21
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Quote: "Didnt they use an Amiga for some of the effects on Babylon 5?"
Thats right. For the first few series they used Amiga's (A3000's I think) and Lightwave 3D.
Do you remember those Viruality arcade machines with the virtual reality headsets? The hardware in those was an A3000 too which could do 30,000 polygons at 20 fps. In fact there have been several arcade machine based around Amiga hardware. For example 'UpScope' was a submarine sim and had an A1000 motherboard inside. There was even a multi arcade machine with interchangable games based on the A500 hardware. It was a joint venture between Arcadia and Mastertronic (remember them?).
As you can guess, I am a bit of an Amiga fanboy
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Cash Curtis II
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Posted: 22nd Dec 2006 00:12 Edited at: 22nd Dec 2006 00:15
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This is the age of commercialism and marketing. If they'd done their jobs right, the world would be run by Amigas right now, and our games would be 100x more awesome than they are now. Those Amiga 500 3D demonstrations were incredible for 1987. Babylon 5 effects done on an Amiga says a lot too.

Hand delivering commercial tapes door to door. My God, who does that? I never, ever saw an Amiga commercial growing up, and I imagine no one else did either. I saw plenty of IBM and Mac commercials.


Come see the WIP!
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Virtual X
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Posted: 22nd Dec 2006 00:21
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AMIGA 500 *sigh* those were the days, haha, I had a 'BATMAN' Amiga 500 pack, sooooooo cool lol, I gave it away a couple of years ago, feel quite sad now because of this thread lol, AMIGA was definately a superb machine, MAGIC POCKETS!!!!! yeh!!!
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Jeku
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Posted: 22nd Dec 2006 00:40
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Hehe I preferred my Atari 1040 ST and Star Raiders, Techno Cop, and Oidz disks.

http://www.codercafe.com - My blog
Ben Stein's Christmas Thoughts
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Hobgoblin Lord
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Posted: 22nd Dec 2006 00:57
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Quote: "Hand delivering commercial tapes door to door. My God, who does that? I never, ever saw an Amiga commercial growing up, and I imagine no one else did either. I saw plenty of IBM and Mac commercials."


Commodore had a strong belief in word of mouth, and that was their advertising plan. You might see an ad in a magazine like Byte every now and then, but they thought they could thrive with no advertising, and they did for awhile. If you went back and listened to the music that came out of those machines at that time and compared it to PC's 5 years later they were still ahead of the curve.

http://www.cafepress.com/blackarrowgames
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Mr Tank
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Posted: 22nd Dec 2006 02:39
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Amigas were pretty great. A machine with a keyboard and a mouse that didn't crash every five minutes. Nice.
Zeewolf, Walker, GRAVITY FORCE 2. I think most of the games i plan on "paying homage to" via the medium of DBP are Amiga ones.


You'll be able to click on this someday.
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HowDo
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Posted: 22nd Dec 2006 05:22
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The machine may be dead but the software or operating environment is still going, means write code once the port to anything..

Dark Physics makes any hot drink go cold.
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Wiggett
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Posted: 22nd Dec 2006 08:57
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I work on emac's and power macs to edit videos at my office, and i would KILL to get something that ran as smooth as the amiga in that video.

Syndicate remastered: Corporate persuasion through urban violence.
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indi
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Posted: 22nd Dec 2006 09:24
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editing on a G5 here is very smooth.
Are you running a g4 at work mate>? do you run FCP4 or 5?

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Van B
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Posted: 22nd Dec 2006 09:39
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Ha Jeku, good to see we're not all amigans .

The ST was the best machine bar none , not even the amiga could knock it from it's mighty pedestal. Damn I miss my little green desktop.

''Stick that in your text and scroll it!.''
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