Atari thread.

I would have to go with the Lynx as the best system, the 2600 is the only other one I have played extensively besides the Jaguar and I would consider them about equally okay overall. I have sampled 5200 and 7200 games and nothing seems to be at the level of Master System games, they seem to be in between the 2600 and NES graphically, and I can't count on sound thanks to emulation.

Generally I try to avoid the Atari discussion, I started console gaming on the 2600 and generally disliked it. I own a Lynx and think it is cool but would rather play the games on a television. The Jaguar I am still investigating, but I am not expecting to find that one game that hooks me for a week that would make me love it.

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Originally Posted by Kamahl

Atari ST - I hate it because the Amiga suffered with tons of direct ports from the ST. Still better than IBM PCs of the time or the Macintosh.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co0pLnLktGk

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I'm going to ignore the overall topic here since I'll probably end up rambling too much, but on this one topic:

I don't think this complaint is fair at all. The Amiga didn't get crappier games because of the ST, it got MORE games because of the ST, and had the ST not existed, a huge number of those games may not have been released at all, or may possibly have been crappier conversions based on the 8-bit computer versions. (and may not have ever even gotten into that late-gen sweet-spot with better quality Amiga-specific games without the early-gen support boost by the ST)

That's, of course, barring any other management/marketing/pricing changed by Commodore earlier on. (a cheaper and/or better marketed Amiga early-on could have had a massive impact on things)

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Originally Posted by kool kitty89

The Amiga didn't get crappier games because of the ST, it got MORE games because of the ST, and had the ST not existed, a huge number of those games may not have been released at all, or may possibly have been crappier conversions based on the 8-bit computer versions. (and may not have ever even gotten into that late-gen sweet-spot with better quality Amiga-specific games without the early-gen support boost by the ST)

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Quality over quantity any day. If there was no ST the games would at the very least not limit themselves to 9bit RGB. We're talking straight 100% direct ports here. Those ports wouldn't be possible if the ST didn't exist, it would force developers to actually make Amiga versions of their games, not just an ST version and getting it to run on the Amiga.

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Originally Posted by Kamahl

Quality over quantity any day. If there was no ST the games would at the very least not limit themselves to 9bit RGB. We're talking straight 100% direct ports here. Those ports wouldn't be possible if the ST didn't exist, it would force developers to actually make Amiga versions of their games, not just an ST version and getting it to run on the Amiga.

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You might have seen equal (or worse) quality and much less quantity on top of that, more like what the Archimedes got. (albeit probably not quite that extreme -since the Amiga was released earlier and was not quite so expensive . . . even assuming price drops would have been much less without the competing ST)

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Originally Posted by Kamahl

The 7800 has an awesome centipede port.

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So does the 5200, with arcade perfect sound too. (unlike the A8 version -let alone 7800 ;))

The 5200 actually has a lot of good stuff for it, though only a few cases where games are actually better than the A8 counterparts (a few cases where the controller layout is superior and/or use of analog control is really useful), a bit more so from the early 80s perspective (A8 got more late-gen software support, obviously). Albeit, had they released good multi-button and/or analog controllers for the A8, and tweaked games a bit more (perhaps even with some enhanced re-releases), all of those advantages would be lost.

I could argue this much further, and broader (pros and cons -both from a retro gaming perspective and from a historical/business/market perspective . . . or to the point of whether the 5200 should have been cancelled after the fact -a separate issue from being released in the first place), but again, I'm going to try to avoid rambling into that sort of thing. ;)

Well it is true that the existence of the ST is the main reason behind the A500, which is the REAL Amiga, and without the A500 the Amiga would never have been as successful. Still, shitty ST ports. BOOOOO.

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Originally Posted by Kamahl

The biggest problem with the A8 seem to be sprites. Crownland has a ton of flickering :S. Any good info on why? Can the A8 do better than that?

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Originally Posted by ApolloBoy

It's mainly programmed for PAL A8s, when you play it on an NTSC system there's loads of flickering, almost to the point where it's unplayable.

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Yes, though aside from the NTSC-specific flicker problems, there are also some very real limitations of the A8's sprites compared to the C64.
C64 (in multi-color 160x200 mode) has 8 12x21 3 color (2bpp) hardware sprites vs 4 8-pixel wide 1-color (1-bit) players on the A8. Both can employ software multiplexing to allow more total sprites on-screen, but per-line bandwidth limits sprites to 8 and 4 per line respectively. The colors on the C64 are limited to 2 shared among all sprites and 1 unique per sprite vs 1 unique per A8 sprite. (there's also 4 missiles, sharing the same 4 colors, and these are simple 1 pixel sprites, so limited in practical use)

To do multi-color sprites, you can use raster effects for per-line palette swaps and/or either use tiles/bitmap objects or pair sprites to give 2-color objects. (you could use 3 or 4 sprites to get 3 or 4 colors too, but this is almost never done due to practical limitations of having so few sprites per line) You can also use sprite decals to enhance the color of tiles/bitmap objects.
I believe crownland takes the paired-player route to allow 2-colors per line. (used fairly often in MSX games too)

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Anyway, I have pretty much every Atari system save for the Jag and 16/32-bitters. The 2600 and A8 are some of my favorite systems and the 5200 and 7800 aren't slouches either. Personally I think the 5200 is a rather malinged system, as I can tell from the responses I've seen so far in this thread (!). The controllers are a little lackluster but the library is anything but, save for only a handful of stinkers. As for the Lynx, I just recently picked up a Lynx II again a few weeks ago. I've had two of them before, one was an original Lynx that suddenly died one day, and the other was a Lynx II that I sold almost two years ago and wound up regretting.

I've had a Jag before as well and there are some games I really like such as Tempest 2K and Cannon Fodder, but the library isn't quite compelling enough for me to get one again. The ST is fairly interesting but now that I have an Amiga it seems a bit redundant to have one IMO.

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I like the Jag enough to want one . . . but the overhead for collecting is pretty nasty these days and I don't want one all that much (it would be neat to have though) . . . I'd settle for emulation, but that's not a good option on the Jag either.

How do games like draconus have so many sprites onscreen on the A8?

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Originally Posted by Kamahl

Well it is true that the existence of the ST is the main reason behind the A500, which is the REAL Amiga, and without the A500 the Amiga would never have been as successful. Still, shitty ST ports. BOOOOO.

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If the ST had at least had hardware scrolling from day 1, you'd probably have a fair number of better ports right there (still all software sprites and worse color, but fewer games without smooth scrolling ;)) . . . albeit then the ST itself would probably have fared much better in the long run. (lack of hardware scrolling is its biggest single weakness -and one of the most CPU-intensive things to do in software . . . chunky pixels and/or DMA sound would have been nice too -among other things- but scrolling was the biggest issue by far -and among the technical aspects that probably wouldn't have significantly impacted cost or release date -had the engineers targeted that feature from the outset)

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Originally Posted by Kamahl

How do games like draconus have so many sprites onscreen on the A8?

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I'm not sure of all cases, but Draconus is FULL of what looks like software sprites (objects sharing the same colors as the playfield, implying use of software blitting onto the framebuffer).
It also seems like it's running at a lower resolution (160x96), so that would facilitate software blitting too (smaller framebuffer and fewer pixels to blit). There's quite a few European A8 games that opt to use lower res modes like that. (many also opt for relatively basic color palettes too, with 4 shades of 1 color and no use of DLIs to mix things up a bit more -ie "lazy")

The faster CPU in the A8 combined with the support for conventional (linear) bitmap framebuffer modes at a variety of resolutions makes it particularly friendly to use software rendering with. (compared to the C64 and some others)

I'm not having a great deal of success with this so far LOL

I would say that Titus the Fox is superior on ST, albeit the scrolling is much, much worse, with the Amiga version having proper scrolling, as opposed to the ST's burst scrolling. Outside of the scrolling though the Amiga game plays really fast (whilst the ST version feels to be about the speed you'd expect from a Japanese style platformer, the Amiga version is much faster, and you tend to run into enemies before you see them) leading to my opinion that the gameplay is better balanced on ST, and that the ST was the lead platform. The Amiga version also has horrific load times.

Xenon 1 seems to be more polished on ST, the speed is more consistant, and I also feel that the music may be superior, though both games are in dire need of more control options anyway (I still prefer both of them to Xenon II, spawn of the anti-christ that it is).

There's talk on forums that Midwinter, Dungeon Master, and Captain Blood were all superior on ST, but I'm not experienced enough with those games to corroborate.

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Personally I do feel some illogical preference for Atari ST versions of games which don't push Amiga, Turrican 1 and 2 for instance I prefer to play on either C64 or Atari ST, because every time I play them on Amiga I can't stop thinking "jesus this looks like crap, what a waste of resources" whilst when I play them on ST I think "wow look at the ST go!" even though that version is inferior.

I actually disliked Switchblade II immensely before I ended up getting given the ST version, for much the same reasons. As an Amiga game it was never anything but a big disappointment, whilst on ST it was kinda' cool, and looked pretty good, nothing special but entertaining. Playing it again however I think that it could actually be half arguable that its better on ST anyway (though it would be a fairly weak argument I think), I like that the player sprite is much larger, and zoomed in on ST, and a silly little annoyance which always bothered me was how ridiculously high the player's high jump was in the Amiga game, whilst on ST its much lower, I also suddenly realised today that the ST's poor scrolling actually helps the gameplay at some points too, as the burst scrolling always sets up your vision to show hazards ahead of you, whilst the Amiga game requires you to walk very close to enemies, and then retreat to a high vantage point afterwards to fire at them. On the other side the Amiga version has much better graphics (both in colour and background detail), and smooth scrolling (as opposed to burst again) ;)

Rodland is actually virtually identical in graphics and gameplay, the only difference is with the music, and both do a good job I think. Amiga versions music is probably better, but I guess its half subjective.

I checked the Dizzy games (at least the two which matter anyway) and they are both better on Amiga, Magicland Dizzy was close (virtually identical graphics and gameplay) but the music was better on Amiga, Prince of the Yolkfolk however was much better, with improvements to graphics as well as having better music.

Toki's was good on both, gameplay was essentially the same, but the Amiga version had improvements to graphics and added parallax (from what I played of it).

Shadow Dancer was pretty good on both, but the Amiga version is smoother, a bit more responsive in the gameplay department, and had better music.

Unlike Titus the Fox (by the same developers) Blues Brothers simply had much better scrolling and sound, with no impact to gameplay (in fact the smooth scrolling helped gameplay)

Anyway, Ive rattled on enough, I'll try to keep comparisons in mind when I play ST and Amiga games from now on.

Yeah, that extra processing power on the A8 probably allows for some nice software sprites.
Zybex is another game with tons of them.

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Originally Posted by Thenewguy

Personally I do feel some illogical preference for Atari ST versions of games which don't push Amiga, Turrican 1 and 2 for instance I prefer to play on either C64 or Atari ST, because every time I play them on Amiga I can't stop thinking "jesus this looks like crap, what a waste of resources" whilst when I play them on ST I think "wow look at the ST go!" even though that version is inferior.

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Yeah, knowing what the Amiga can do you always get a "Oh come on... couldn't you have at least put one of those shitty 1 colors backgrounds for parallax scrolling? Not even that?" felling when looking at a lot of ports. I mean, you have stuff like the volcano stage in lionheart that's just magnificent (better than a lot of stuff on the Genesis). Why couldn't more games look like that? What a waste.

If the Amiga had never existed the Atari ST userbase would'be been bigger, and more developers would jumped on board to support the system, and push it further.

If the Atari ST had never existed, the Amiga sales would've stayed virtually the same, as the system started out stupidly expensive and was not being sold at a mainstream friendly price until like 1989, its games would've quickly dried up, as there wasn't a large enough market to support game development on it alone, and the system would've died some point during the late 80s.

British developers didn't have the manpower, or resources to be supporting these ridiculous numbers of systems, the Atari ST and Amiga markets combined were a worthwhile prospect (of which the ST had by far the bigger userbase), and the fact that they only needed to program one version and then port it to Amiga cut down on development costs making the whole 16-bit thing a decent prospect for development.

For 1985 Amiga was a really stupid, over designed system with limited mass market prospects, Atari ST kept it on life support until Amiga prices dropped to the extent that the machine became a realistic sales model, after which the Atari ST's natural lifespan was coming to an end anyway, and the Amiga was able to be properly focussed on, and pushed.

Hm, the thread seems to have derailed already, or at least gone in a more technicial direction than one might expect based on the question. :daze:

That said, my personal choice for best Atari system would be the 7800. While it may have not received as much attention as it should have (for various reasons), it was quite capable for the time, although the sound does leave something to be desired. That alone isn't enough to make it the best though - the backwards compatability with the 2600 seals the deal for me. :cool:

Worst...while I initially thought 5200, I would likely give that designation to the Jaguar. I'm not really seeing much from the Jag which set it apart from the crowd, graphics, gameplay or otherwise (though it did receive a few good games). The Jag seemed to be an effort which was too little too late.

-Rob

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Originally Posted by Kamahl

Yeah, that extra processing power on the A8 probably allows for some nice software sprites.
Zybex is another game with tons of them.

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Also note that it's not really 1 MHz vs 1.79 MHz on the A8 vs C64, since both have DMA contention for video. I'm not sure of the C64's actual nominal CPU time available, but on the A8 (at normal video modes/resolutions) it limits the CPU to an effective ~1.2 MHz. (so machines like the BBC Micro and Plus/4 have much more CPU time than the A8 due to lack of contention -and faster clock rate too, in the micro's case -for the same reason, the Apple II has more CPU time than the C64, and not that much less than the A8 since it uses interleaved DMA to avoid CPU wait states -while still using a unified system bus, also rather like the CoCo/ST/Amiga/etc)

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Originally Posted by Thenewguy

If the Amiga had never existed the Atari ST userbase would'be been bigger, and more developers would jumped on board to support the system, and push it further.

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In some respects, perhaps, and in Europe it almost certainly would have fared better in the long run (and Atari may have even put more effort into competing with PC-style features/performance -at lower cost and greater efficiency- rather than targeting the Amiga's specs -which the STe more or less did, albeit rather poorly at that).

However, in the US, it probably wouldn't have done much better either way. The Amiga and ST were both already niche, and the biggest issue was the ST was marketing in addition to problematic distribution and retail relations. (and the massive -and increasing- competition from other platforms -especially PCs)
For the ST to have really been successful in the US, Atari not only would have had to make the product much more well-known by the masses, but also manage to establish perception of the ST being a very competitive and capable computer in general. (for business, word processing, general home computing, games, etc)

And by the time Atari had gotten healthy enough to really have more potential to push mass marketing in the US (around 1988), other things started falling apart, plus the competition had moved on and squeezed the market much tighter.

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If the Atari ST had never existed, the Amiga sales would've stayed virtually the same, as the system started out stupidly expensive and was not being sold at a mainstream friendly price until like 1989, its games would've quickly dried up, as there wasn't a large enough market to support game development on it alone, and the system would've died some point during the late 80s.

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Amiga sales probably would have fared a little better early on (since the Amiga was still much cheaper than anything close on the market, with very nice features on top of that -the Apple IIGS might have been a somewhat viable alternate in some respects, but it came a bit later and wasn't pushed as a mainstream product by Apple -though it was surprisingly reasonably priced for an apple product)

But later on, the lack of an ST could have had much further reaching consequences for the ST . . . CBM may never have aggressively targeted the low(er)-end market with the A500 had it not been for the ST, and without that, the Amiga never would have been nearly as successful (especially in Europe).
Plus, without the ST, the Amiga wouldn't have had the wealth of ST ports to bolster its library. (including non-game applications for that matter) Same case if the ST's architecture had been considerably different from the Amiga and made ports far less simple. (like the Archimedes vs Amiga vs ST)

Of course, this is all assuming that CBM had the same backwards management as they did historically. (had they aggressively pushed a lower-end Amiga model from day 1 -closer to the 520/260 ST- things certainly could have been different -and planning/managing/supporting the mid-range and high end better also could have been substantial, especially in the US -stagnation of the Amiga hardware was a huge issue, among other problems like marketing, market perception, expandability, etc -including facilitating open/flexible expansion more like PCs . . . or the Apple II ;))

And as to the historical perspective of the Amiga vs ST price points, mid 1988 was when things changed. In early '88 the 520 STFM had been 299 pounds and the Amiga 500 was 499, but supply shortages (especially tied to the DRAM shortage/crissis of '88) forced Atari to increase the price of the baseline STs to 399, and at close to the same time CBM dropped the price of the A500 to 399 as well, so (for the first time ever) the Amiga price-matched the ST. (this was mostly due to the shortage/supply issues with Atari vs CBM at that point -CBM had more clout to negotiate with manufacturers on top of having some in-house facilities and some luck of having contracted with some DRAM manufacturers which were less hard-hit by the shortage iirc -otherwise the ST may have dropped below 299 or at least stayed at that price when the Amiga dropped to 399)
On top of that, Atari had to sacrifice much of the US market just to hold on to as much of Europe as they did. (they made the sacrifice to suffer far heavier shortages in the US to keep supplies at least reasonable in Europe -and at a time when the ST was at its peak in both regions)

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For 1985 Amiga was a really stupid, over designed system with limited mass market prospects, Atari ST kept it on life support until Amiga prices dropped to the extent that the machine became a realistic sales model, after which the Atari ST's natural lifespan was coming to an end anyway, and the Amiga was able to be properly focussed on, and pushed.

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For Europe, perhaps, though that's more of a problem of marketing than hardware design. (a low-cost Amiga derivative in 1985 may not have been as cheap as the ST -at least at 512 kB RAM- but it certainly could have been much, much closer than it was historically)

However, from the US perspective, the Amiga 1000 would still have been close to the cheapest 16-bit computer on the market, and by far the most advanced. (aside from lack of open expansion -still much better than Mac, but not on par with PC ISA) The only thing cheaper probably would have been the Tandy 1000, and not much cheaper at that. (and much less powerful)
Albeit, software support and marketing would be the real deciding factors for the Amiga going beyond niche.

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Originally Posted by kool kitty89

Also note that it's not really 1 MHz vs 1.79 MHz on the A8 vs C64, since both have DMA contention for video. I'm not sure of the C64's actual nominal CPU time available, but on the A8 (at normal video modes/resolutions) it limits the CPU to an effective ~1.2 MHz. (so machines like the BBC Micro and Plus/4 have much more CPU time than the A8 due to lack of contention -and faster clock rate too, in the micro's case -for the same reason, the Apple II has more CPU time than the C64, and not that much less than the A8 since it uses interleaved DMA to avoid CPU wait states -while still using a unified system bus, also rather like the CoCo/ST/Amiga/etc)

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The A8 uses a line buffer for video modes that have more than one line per pixel, so that 160x96 mode has zero DMA contention on every other line. That's why games with software sprites or other CPU driven effects like to use that mode. Also, the C64 has more DMA contention because it has to fetch more data for those better graphics. 8 sprites 12 pixels wide with 3 colors takes six times as many cycles to fetch as the four players on the A8. Also, a minor correction to something you said earlier - the A8 can pair the four players into two players with 3 colors. You get one player color, the other player color, or the OR'd value of the two colors for the third color. It's not quite as good as three independent colors, but good enough for most games. You can also do priority tricks to get more colors without pairing players by overlapping with magnified versions of the missiles. There's a hack of Pacman over at AtariAge that does that to get the eye color in the ghosts.

Considering the C64 came out 3 years after the A8, you'd expect it to be better, which is why I was rather disappointed at the CPU speed and the floppy speed. Both were a major step BACKWARDS from the older A8.