Atari ST vs. Amiga

FastRobPlus · January 26, 2010

I've not looked at it with the ST. I know it has different TOS versions and configs, but I'm not sure how that affects game compatibility. I was given a 520STf, and that's when I found out that some STs didn't support composite/TV out (not an STfm). That was pretty frustrating. It's just sitting in a closet. Yeah, I could get a cable and hook it up to my VGA monitor, but that's hires only, and not most of the games... Oh well..

desiv

Wow. More drivel and false information from bored Amiga fanboys. I guess I should not be surprised now.

First of all, if you want to run every ST game out there, you get TOS 1.0. If you have a later version of TOS, you can use SELTOS.PRG to load up a TOS 1.0 image file. You can also go the hardware route and get a TOS switcher so that you can have multiple versions of TOS in your machine at a flick of a switch. There are hacks of this on the net.

So... is he a fanboy because he admits he does not know of any compatibility issues? Or is he a fanboy because he got an ST that lacked composite video out?

Oh! Oh! I know! He's an Amiga fanboy because he's so incredibly pro Amiga and so insanely anti-ST that the very act of him touching a 520ST altered history itself and removed the RF output from the first few years of ST computers!

Or is it more mundane than that? Is he simply an Amiga fanboy because in your mind you really, really need him to be one?

atarian63 · January 26, 2010

I think the real reason that the Amiga eventually won the race with the ST is that rabid Amiga owners carried on talking up their machine till most ST owners committed suicide and the rest fell into comas!

Nope the real reason the Amiga eventually was more successful than the ST was for two reasons....

1. The time delay between launch of the orignal ST chipset and the STE chipset meant it was mostly ignored by the big mainstream software companies producing Atari games...so the games were always going to be inferior even if you bought an STE because the extra hardware was rarely the target machine for the game code.

2. The price of the Amiga fell year on year, as did the number of games which weren't just simple ST ports, with companies starting to at least attempt to use the features of the Amiga chipset (although most arcade ports were complete crap compared to original games from smaller publishers with less money to blow on coin-op licences)

So in essence Atari software didn't really improve as much as it should have as companies failed to write STE specific games (which in turn led to a lack of people bothering to purchase the STE over the STFM obviously....repeat...rinse...cycle), whereas on the Amiga front the games generally improved whilst the cost of the hardware dropped.

I bought both anyway, and neither really for games. I was interested in computer graphics and animation and these were the natural choices (IIGS was too rare in the EU, Mac was black and white, PC I had no interest in for technical reasons as well as lack of design elegance). I got the STM in early 86 and the Amiga around xmas 86. The loose rom chips were a real pain in the ass though!

The biggest reason in the US market was that Atari shifted nearly all production to the europeon market. ST/STE Was just no available in a steady supply. Up to that point ST had been outselling Amiga. A500 was introduced to the US market at the same apx this happened so that was the switch.

atarian63 · January 26, 2010

I've not looked at it with the ST. I know it has different TOS versions and configs, but I'm not sure how that affects game compatibility. I was given a 520STf, and that's when I found out that some STs didn't support composite/TV out (not an STfm). That was pretty frustrating. It's just sitting in a closet. Yeah, I could get a cable and hook it up to my VGA monitor, but that's hires only, and not most of the games... Oh well..

desiv

Wow. More drivel and false information from bored Amiga fanboys. I guess I should not be surprised now.

First of all, if you want to run every ST game out there, you get TOS 1.0. If you have a later version of TOS, you can use SELTOS.PRG to load up a TOS 1.0 image file. You can also go the hardware route and get a TOS switcher so that you can have multiple versions of TOS in your machine at a flick of a switch. There are hacks of this on the net.

So... is he a fanboy because he admits he does not know of any compatibility issues? Or is he a fanboy because he got an ST that lacked composite video out?

Oh! Oh! I know! He's an Amiga fanboy because he's so incredibly pro Amiga and so insanely anti-ST that the very act of him touching a 520ST altered history itself and removed the RF output from the first few years of ST computers!

Or is it more mundane than that? Is he simply an Amiga fanboy because in your mind you really, really need him to be one?

no RF for the 1st few years... Doh! who is the amiga fanboy now.. Really misleading.

oky2000 · January 26, 2010

It would be funny if it wasn't so tragic that today I can ONLY have Apple or MS Windows machines....the two worst choices of the 80s and 90s!! Bit like saying you can have an Edsel or a Pinto...what a choice LOL

What about Linux?

You'd still be running it on a platform evloved from IBM's 1981 standard, but it would have nothing to do with MS Windows. (andbesides, Macs now use that same architecture, can run PC OSs natively, and you can even get OSX to run on a PC -very carefully )

I think the ST was the right machine at the time, however it was not revolutionary really. Graphical GUI had been done before, colours/resolution were good but not a quantum leap in technology, sound was awful, CPU had been used by other companies for about 18 months already etc. It was the natural evolution of a home computer like the Amstrad/Schneider CPC in Europe and with the STM/STFM it was a good choice of home computer. However in contrast the Amiga delivered photo-realistic images at full PAL/NTSC vertical resolution, a desktop pre-emptive multi-tasking GUI and OS package, a sound system that could play back Fairlight samples, the best genlockable and chroma key solution ever made....etc. This is why when a respected journalist like Guy Kewney from Personal Computer World magazine said quite clearly there has never been a machine so superior to all others that the only decision you have to make is if you can afford it not whether you should own one....as oppossed to the opinions and un uncorroberated 'facts' of some old fanboy who ran some fleabit operation selling Atari kit in the 80s which means FA compared to such knowledgeable and respected industry people working for probably the worlds most professional and unbiased magazine dedicated to computers of all types from home to PCs.
Yeah, but as superior as it was, it didn't push into the broad mass market in the US (management/marketing was definitely a factor, and then again the ST had a comperably small market share as well -with both being far more mainstream in UK/Europe). But compared tot he leading contemporary standard computers, IBM/compatibles and Apple's Macintosh, the ST was definitely damn good and very affordable. (the best PC contemporary probably being Tandy's 1000 line -aimed at affordability, better color capabilities than lower end PCs, and much better sound than a PC speaker -roughly comperable to the ST probably a little weaker, plus designed to work via RF or composite video in addition to RGB -and I'd mention PC Jr, but it didn't persist for nearly as long)

To be honest probably the only Atari machine I will never bother to purchase is Jaguar, whatever the technical abilities may be implied by demon coders, that for me is one machine that has no software I personally wish to run EVER. At least there was a handful of good games or applications on all other Atari machines and ditto for all Commodore machines (and just about every manufacturer who has at least some machines I like in their product range...how else would I end up with 100+ computers and consoles! ha ha)

There are a few good/unique games on the Jaguar, soem of which ended up being ported, but some of those degraded in translation. (T2000, Rayman -arguably, etc) Doom on the Jag has better lighting/shading than any other console port (and way better than DOS), only modern sourse ports beat it in that respect. (and most other console ports use the same modified level/map set -PSX Ultimate doom adds later expansions though -original PSX doom does not)
I'd say BattleSphere alone merits the purchase of the system, but it's so rare/expensive that kills it for any but the most dedicated collectors and Jaguar fans. (if that game could be gotten for a reasonable price it might give me real insentive to get one for the prices they now go for -at prices 3-4 years ago, I'd probably be all over it) Phase Zero is simply amazing, a horrible shame it was never finished/released. (also too bad other developers at the time didn't push for such rendering methods -the Jaguar blitter is great for voxels -and the results are simply stunning)

Linux is just something us geeks use to obliterate the software that comes free on your new Windows PC Like you say the hardware is all the same too, which is another 'problem'.

I always compare 80s computers to 80s cars, because just like 80s GM/Ford cars eventually they would improve in time to the current situation where unlike in the 80s in the EU where Ford cars were a complete joke today there really isn't a bad Ford car at all...they're pretty damned good and of a high quality in all aspects really. Same with computers, 80s Mercedes and BMWs were superior (and cost a fair amount more) and yet both those companies survive to this day...and they STILL go against the industry standard of front wheel drive and insist on rear wheel drive which results in a premium cost. Despite never being mass market producers they both survived...however our non-standard non X86 platform computers are now dead an buried. Problem is today a PC is good enough just like a Ford is good enough, and any exotic hardware sold for running Amiga OS4 is never going to sell when you can buy a PC + 20" monitor for about 400 quid these days. Had Mercedes and BMW gone bankrupt in 1994 and attempted to come back in 2008 on a small scale with a tiny budget they would be in big trouble and doomed to failure too.

BattleSphere is OK but at that sort of price I can buy a PS3 AND a 360 and a couple of stunning games for each for the cost of that game and a Jag+CD....mild improvements to so-so games like Rayman really didn't interest me then, or now for that matter. I'll wait for a half decent usable emulator to be produced and play with it. Not a big fan of Minter's Jag stuff (plus I didn't want to support that dubious pro-bestiality weirdo's purchases of yet more animals he may or may not abuse!) anyway to me Tempest looks like an Amiga game, nothing special at all graphically and gameplay wise just a remake of Tempest. It's not the Jag's fault, UK programmers weren't the best at that time, the hardware was firmly 2.5D (ie better than any 2D console/computer....not really powerful enough to do decent textured 3D games which is where Saturn and Playstation changed the face of gaming forever) so it was stuck between two camps and the cost of the Jaguar CD module (or the toilet styling) really didn't help.

JamesD · January 26, 2010

OK, so it wasn't all that problematic. (was there any such issues with the x86 family?)

The memory protection system changed completely between the 80286 and the 80386. That's most of the reason why Windows doesn't run on the 286. Then there are also memory addressing differences as you migrate from 8088 up. That's why some DOS programs need special configurations to run and some may not run at all though that is rare.

The 68K supported 32 bits (address and data) in the entire line even if the address buss didn't extend outside the chip. The 8088/8086/80286 only supported 16 bit registers but the 386 and up support 32 bit.

Most old user stuff can run on the new chips but new stuff can't run on the old with intel.

Motorola has no such issue if you avoid the math coprocessor and any supervisor related instructions.

The 80286 had higher clock speeds than the 68020

You mean 80386, right?

Actually no. I believe there were some 40MHz 286s released. Not sure if they were that speed from the factory or overclocked.

They seemed to have been OK with the 68000 in that respect (a good number of licenced producers like Hitachi and Signetics), that changed with the 020 though. (which also had implications on the cost/price competitiveness against intel chips -possibly part of the reason it took so long for the Amiga and ST to have 32-bit CPUs standard)

But 68020 boards for the A2000 were available in 1986. Sure the machine wasn't totally 32 bit, but since programs needing speed usually ran from FASTRAM, all but video related stuff resided in the 68020/68030 board's memory.

Really, the 500/2000 should have had ec020 versions before 1990 if the chip was available. At the very least 16MHz 68000s.

I think the 2000 should have had a 16MHz 68000 to begin with for that matter. (it would have run at just over 14 MHz)

JamesD · January 26, 2010

As for the i80286, the closest Moto equivalent is actually the MC68012, as it had the protection ability present in the MC68010 and added VM support. The 68020 was comparable to the i80386DX. The MC68RC030 at 40 and 50MHz respectively encroached on i80486SX performance levels at the lower end, and the MC60LC040 matched the 486SX and SX2 CPUs. And the 68RC040 was the equal of the 486DX. Now the MC68EC020 is an interesting animal, as it has the full 32-bit data bus, but a 24-bit address bus, it's usually considered comparable to the i80386SX, even though unlike the 386SX is has a full 32-bit data bus.

Well... I thought the 68k chips were a little faster but it's been so long I really couldn't be sure.

I don't see the ec020 as being comparable to the 386sx since it runs as fast as the regular 020.

Edited January 26, 2010 by JamesD

oky2000 · January 26, 2010

Personally, the main interest I have in the ST line is they offer a glimpse at a "route not taken". When the IBM PC was on the drawing board, the MC68000 was considered as a choice for CPU, though the (in my opinion cripple-beyond-all-hope) i8088

Not to get into the whole "CPU wars" thing (which gets even worse with 8-bit MCUs in the mix), but wasn't one problem with the 68k architecture soem compatibility issues between the original 68000 and 68010/020 and later (beyond the issue of software using the upper addressing byte for things not intended -not a problem on the 68EC020 anyway)? Plus, wasn't the 80286 at an advantage over an equally clocked 68000 (or 68010 even), in terms of speed/power? (not programming ease/effeciency)

I know you get into tons of other issues comparing the later contemporaries as well (020/030 vs 386, 040 vs 486, 060 vs 586(Pentium)) And of curse, motorola's shift in effort towards RISC designs and Apple's shift to PPC probably had soem impacts on that. (but the massive PC market driving Intel. AMD, Cyrix, etc to develop more advanced x86 compatible CPUs played the bigest part)

Actually, the incompatibility issue was mostly 1 instruction which was privileged on 68010 and up but not on the 68000.

The ROM Kernel Manuals specifically warned against using it and to use a ROM call instead but many game writers ignored or never bought the manuals. It mostly impacted games from Europe. There was a program that would patch the instruction and it worked on most of the unprotected software.

There was also a compatibility issue with some games that didn't wait for the blitter to complete before trying to start a new one. The code would work fine on an unexpanded 68K machine where the blitter and CPU shared the same buss, but just adding FASTRAM to a system could break that code since the CPU wouldn't automatically wait anymore. You could patch the program to load into CHIPRAM and that usually fixed it but copy protection could prevent that as well.

The problem wasn't the Amiga, it was developers.

As for the cpus...

The 80286 had higher clock speeds than the 68020 but at the same clock speed I thought they were similar with Motorola having a slight advantage in code efficiency. Other than clock speed I think the intel/Moto chips were pretty comparable speed wise up to the 486. At that point the larger internal + external cache and much higher clock speeds really created a gap in performance.

Ultimately, I think Motorola's internal culture prevented them from keeping up.

The same thing happened a few years later with cell phones. Motorola went from being the leader to last place.

Motorola had even shot themselves in the foot years earlier with 8 bit CPUs. The 6800 team wanted to build a new chip, management said no and the engineers left to build the 6500/6502. Can you imagine where Motorola would have been in the 8 bit market if those engineers hadn't left to build the 6502? Now there is a good starter for a what if topic!

FWIW, at one point a dual 68030 board was developed for the Amiga 3000 but management killed it... along with the 3000+ with the built in DSP chip. CBM management wanted the next C64 and they were too blind to see that CPU speed was driving the market. If a multi-cpu + dsp system had been introduced I think Amiga could have kept up for a while, but the OS needed an overhaul to add protected/virtual memory and the shift to 3D/GPUs would have required another big change.

Two real points to do with the old 286/386 vs 020/030 debate.

The x86 based chips were less efficient however they were cheaper due to the fact that prices dropped so quickly on x86 CPUs after 6-12 months. A 28mhz 030 board didn't really halve in price in 12 months though like a 386 40mhz + motherboard bundle.

PC VGA graphics for games like Doom and Wing Commander are about 4-7 times faster by design (chunky pixel/planar pixel) and this gives an artificial impression of the complete machine being superior on a mhz per mhz basis.

I think the fastest Intel 80286 was 16mhz no? And that has a Mips rating of 2.4ish. Theoretically a 14mhz 80286 would give you 2.1 Mips...a 68020 @ 14mhz gives you 2.66 Mips (with the necessary FAST RAM for the 020 to achieve full speed, not just 2mb CHIP RAM) so the 020 is about 25% faster per mhz than a 286. The 030 and 020 don't give significantly different Mips speeds mhz per mhz. I know a 16mhz 386 is about 5-5.5 Mips though, so a significant improvement on the 286. However a Falcon/Apple 16mhz 68030 machine manages only 3.84 Mips so clearly not as good as the 386 cpu mhz per mhz. With 486 vs 040 it gets worse. Pentium vs PPC though is much more favourable to Motorola. I think from memory the 060 is clock doubled cpu though....or maybe that was the 603E PPC can't remember.

Taking a standard 4.77mhz 8086 Mips rating gives you a theoretical 7mhz 8086 Mips of 0.48. 7mhz 68000 max in an Amiga is 0.71 Mips. So again the Motorola is faster than the equivalent Intel machine for mid to late 80s (ie time of the A1000/A500/A2000 launches) but still the 68000 is about 50% faster mhz per mhz than an 8086 machine. Now you see why the A1000 was an awesome machine better in every way, and the .30 Mips advantage an 8mhz 286 would have over a 7mhz Amiga 1000 was totally obliterated by the chipset's copper/blitter/DMA compared to any EGA/CGA graphics card on a PC. By 386 times things are very difficult for Atari and Commodore.

This of course ignores memory access speeds of the ST/Amiga vs 8086 PCs, and of course price comparisons ie 8mhz 286+287 FPU equiped PC in 1986 was possible to buy....for about £3000 though compared to about £300 for a 16mhz 68000 accelerator for the ST + approx £700 for a 520STM+2 Drives+SM124!! This is why most people in the EU wouldn't touch a PC as a home machine, whether it was 8086 or 80286 levels of performance the ST/Amiga were always 300% cheaper or more.

I think (not sure) the Amiga A4000 was the first stock desktop machine to have max of 128mb of 32bit RAM (140mb technically) compared to 32 or 64mb max on 486 PCs using Intel chipsets on motherboards (4x16).

+wood_jl · January 26, 2010

As has been alluded to by others previously in the thread, the lack of U.S. support *really* hurt the ST in later days, amongst other things. The original 520ST $799 monochrome/$999 color was a price/performance breakthrough. The 1040ST was another, with the first under-$1000 (by a dollar) computer with a MEG of RAM. But that's pretty much where the breakthroughs seem to have stopped. The Megas weren't any screaming deal.

Undoubtedly, the Amiga was tremendously-better supported.

I lived in Anchorage, AK at the time. The lone Atari dealer had a hell of a time getting any computers to sell, after a time. I believe they mail-ordered units from large sellers in the magazines (like Lyco) since they couldn't get many from Atari - or whatever the "normal" distribution was. The mail-order was not only getting them, but getting them so much cheaper than him that he was buying them mail-order for about what they cost him anyway. I could be wrong about some specifics here, but I do remember there not being many STs available.

When I left (for PC in 1989) I was just tired of waiting on Atari. The Mega ST was too-similar to what I had. The Mega STe was much, much later. I'd been hearing about the TT for a long time, and it was coming out at $3000 (!!!) which is hardly the value of the 520/1040ST. The Atari dealer went bust; couldn't get product to sell.

Granted, this is just anecdotal "evidence," but:

I knew plenty of people who had 520/1040ST, and it was great for while. But, I knew nobody who had, and in fact have never even seen: Mega ST, STe, Mega STe, TT, Falcon.

I knew plenty of people who had Amiga 1000, 500, 2000. I knew of a person or 2 with Amiga 1200 and 3000. I never knew anybody with Amiga 4000.

By the later machines of both, most people I knew had bailed to PC. However, Commodore was just able to get more new machines out the door, and on U.S. sales floors. That has to count for something in measuring success.

Shortly after I got my first PC, I installed CD-ROM and finally realized that technology that Atari had been teasing with since 1985, but I never saw.

kool kitty89 · January 26, 2010

no RF for the 1st few years... Doh! who is the amiga fanboy now.. Really misleading.

Didn't the late model amigas drop RF output entirely? (keeping composite I think, unlike the early STs which were RGB/mono only)

Tempest looks like an Amiga game, nothing special at all graphically and gameplay wise just a remake of Tempest. It's not the Jag's fault, UK programmers weren't the best at that time, the hardware was firmly 2.5D (ie better than any 2D console/computer....not really powerful enough to do decent textured 3D games which is where Saturn and Playstation changed the face of gaming forever) so it was stuck between two camps and the cost of the Jaguar CD module (or the toilet styling) really didn't help.

I notice the pixel blasts and smoothe shading in Tempest, that wouldn't be possible on a standard Amiga. (even AGA) Supposedly the game mechanics are a bit better for the Jaguar version as well. But yeah, the price is a bit much, and again, if it were cheap like a few years ago (besided the super rare/limited releases) I might have gone for it, if it weren't for the reasonable cost, I wouldn't have gotten into collecting Sega stuff recently. (Genesis/CD/32x -don't own a 32x, Kega Fusion is great too -and a big part of what got me interested, but it's neat to own the real thing, especially at the reasonable prices much can be had at -and relative commonality at thrift stores and such, and active homebrew scene too)

The 80286 had higher clock speeds than the 68020

You mean 80386, right?

Actually no. I believe there were some 40MHz 286s released. Not sure if they were that speed from the factory or overclocked.

Huh, i thought Intel 286s topped at 12.5 or 16 Mhz, with 20 and 25 Mhz versions produced by 3rd parties. (with Intel 386s topping at 33 MHz rated and AMD's going to 40 MHz)

Really, the 500/2000 should have had ec020 versions before 1990 if the chip was available. At the very least 16MHz 68000s.
I think the 2000 should have had a 16MHz 68000 to begin with for that matter. (it would have run at just over 14 MHz)

Same for the ST, or MEGAs at least (16 MHz standard), and again, forgoing the BLiTTER on the MEGA and STe in favor of CPU grunt may have been a better idea. (the MEGA could have one as soon as it was released too, not delayed like the BLiTTER) More focus could be put on the sound and shifter improvements as well -introducing the DMA sound and shifter-II on the MEGA line would have been good(or perhaps sticking to 320x200 res for 256 color mode -offering a 8-bit chunky pixel mode might be good, perhaps an arrangement similar to VGA using chained bitplanes for the 8-bpp mode), later adding the enhancements to the low-end models.

PC VGA graphics for games like Doom and Wing Commander are about 4-7 times faster by design (chunky pixel/planar pixel) and this gives an artificial impression of the complete machine being superior on a mhz per mhz basis.

The Amiga port of WC doesn't take advantage of the blitter either, does it? (I mean, the scaling should be a lot smoother than it is -the Sega CD conversion shows that well using its graphics ASIC albeit no planar bitmaps to worry about MD uses 4-bit chunky pixels and the ASIC can convert bitmaps to the native cell/tile display so that's not an issue either)

However a Falcon/Apple 16mhz 68030 machine manages only 3.84 Mips so clearly not as good as the 386 cpu mhz per mhz. With 486 vs 040 it gets worse. Pentium vs PPC though is much more favourable to Motorola.

The Falcon (and some late 680x0 MACs) was limited to a 16-bit data bus, so it's not going to be doing its best. (more like a 386sx) Plus, what are the cache configurations like in such comparisons? (386s lacked on-chip caches entirely right?)

Taking a standard 4.77mhz 8086 Mips rating gives you a theoretical 7mhz 8086 Mips of 0.48. 7mhz 68000 max in an Amiga is 0.71 Mips. So again the Motorola is faster than the equivalent Intel machine for mid to late 80s (ie time of the A1000/A500/A2000 launches) but still the 68000 is about 50% faster mhz per mhz than an 8086 machine. Now you see why the A1000 was an awesome machine better in every way, and the .30 Mips advantage an 8mhz 286 would have over a 7mhz Amiga 1000 was totally obliterated by the chipset's copper/blitter/DMA compared to any EGA/CGA graphics card on a PC. By 386 times things are very difficult for Atari and Commodore.

Would Tandy's 1000 line be the best example of affordable PC compatitibles in the mid-80s?

JamesD · January 26, 2010

Ok, if we are going to talk benchmarks....

http://performance.netlib.org/performance/html/dhrystone.data.col0.html

:ponder: I *thought* there were some 40Mhz 80286 chips but as we discuss this more I realize it was only 20MHz.

<edit>

More benchmarks. One thing here... it has 6502, Z80 and 6809 machines listed.

http://www.anonymous-insider.net/advocacy/research/1986/1014.html

Edited January 26, 2010 by JamesD

JamesD · January 26, 2010

Ok, if we are going to talk benchmarks....

http://performance.netlib.org/performance/html/dhrystone.data.col0.html

BTW, I had a faster 2000 accelerator than was listed in the benchmarks.

Their testing fell kinda short as far as Amigas go.

More benchmarks. One thing here... it has 6502, Z80 and 6809 machines listed.
http://www.anonymous-insider.net/advocacy/research/1986/1014.html

DHRYSTONE 1.1 BENCHMARK SUMMARY

Wed Oct 15 00:35:22 EDT 1986

SORTED BY PERFORMANCE

MANUF MODEL PROC CLOCK NOREG REG OS,COMPILER,NOTES

----- ----- ---- ----- ----- --- -----------------

Apple IIe 65C02 1.02 37 37 DOS 3.3,Aztec CII v1.05i ,

Home Brew Z80 4.00 53 53 CPM-80 ,Hisoft C++ ,

Home Brew Z80 2.50 91 91 CPM-80 2.2,Aztec CII 1.05g ,

Cromemco Z2 Z80 4.00 127 127 Cromix 11.26,ccc ,

...

SSB Chieftan 6809 2.00 210 249 OS/9 Level II 1.2,Microware ,

The 6809 kicks butt! About twice as fast as a Z80 at half the MHZ. I guess that translates to 4 times as fast at the same MHz.

The 6502 suffers because of it's poor support for C compilers. CC65 would probably do better but then cross compilers for the other CPUs would do better as well.

But that's off topic.

oky2000 · January 26, 2010

no RF for the 1st few years... Doh! who is the amiga fanboy now.. Really misleading.

Didn't the late model amigas drop RF output entirely? (keeping composite I think, unlike the early STs which were RGB/mono only)

Tempest looks like an Amiga game, nothing special at all graphically and gameplay wise just a remake of Tempest. It's not the Jag's fault, UK programmers weren't the best at that time, the hardware was firmly 2.5D (ie better than any 2D console/computer....not really powerful enough to do decent textured 3D games which is where Saturn and Playstation changed the face of gaming forever) so it was stuck between two camps and the cost of the Jaguar CD module (or the toilet styling) really didn't help.

I notice the pixel blasts and smoothe shading in Tempest, that wouldn't be possible on a standard Amiga. (even AGA) Supposedly the game mechanics are a bit better for the Jaguar version as well. But yeah, the price is a bit much, and again, if it were cheap like a few years ago (besided the super rare/limited releases) I might have gone for it, if it weren't for the reasonable cost, I wouldn't have gotten into collecting Sega stuff recently. (Genesis/CD/32x -don't own a 32x, Kega Fusion is great too -and a big part of what got me interested, but it's neat to own the real thing, especially at the reasonable prices much can be had at -and relative commonality at thrift stores and such, and active homebrew scene too)

The 80286 had higher clock speeds than the 68020

You mean 80386, right?

Actually no. I believe there were some 40MHz 286s released. Not sure if they were that speed from the factory or overclocked.

Huh, i thought Intel 286s topped at 12.5 or 16 Mhz, with 20 and 25 Mhz versions produced by 3rd parties. (with Intel 386s topping at 33 MHz rated and AMD's going to 40 MHz)

Really, the 500/2000 should have had ec020 versions before 1990 if the chip was available. At the very least 16MHz 68000s.
I think the 2000 should have had a 16MHz 68000 to begin with for that matter. (it would have run at just over 14 MHz)

Same for the ST, or MEGAs at least (16 MHz standard), and again, forgoing the BLiTTER on the MEGA and STe in favor of CPU grunt may have been a better idea. (the MEGA could have one as soon as it was released too, not delayed like the BLiTTER) More focus could be put on the sound and shifter improvements as well -introducing the DMA sound and shifter-II on the MEGA line would have been good(or perhaps sticking to 320x200 res for 256 color mode -offering a 8-bit chunky pixel mode might be good, perhaps an arrangement similar to VGA using chained bitplanes for the 8-bpp mode), later adding the enhancements to the low-end models.

PC VGA graphics for games like Doom and Wing Commander are about 4-7 times faster by design (chunky pixel/planar pixel) and this gives an artificial impression of the complete machine being superior on a mhz per mhz basis.
The Amiga port of WC doesn't take advantage of the blitter either, does it? (I mean, the scaling should be a lot smoother than it is -the Sega CD conversion shows that well using its graphics ASIC albeit no planar bitmaps to worry about MD uses 4-bit chunky pixels and the ASIC can convert bitmaps to the native cell/tile display so that's not an issue either)

However a Falcon/Apple 16mhz 68030 machine manages only 3.84 Mips so clearly not as good as the 386 cpu mhz per mhz. With 486 vs 040 it gets worse. Pentium vs PPC though is much more favourable to Motorola.
The Falcon (and some late 680x0 MACs) was limited to a 16-bit data bus, so it's not going to be doing its best. (more like a 386sx) Plus, what are the cache configurations like in such comparisons? (386s lacked on-chip caches entirely right?)

Taking a standard 4.77mhz 8086 Mips rating gives you a theoretical 7mhz 8086 Mips of 0.48. 7mhz 68000 max in an Amiga is 0.71 Mips. So again the Motorola is faster than the equivalent Intel machine for mid to late 80s (ie time of the A1000/A500/A2000 launches) but still the 68000 is about 50% faster mhz per mhz than an 8086 machine. Now you see why the A1000 was an awesome machine better in every way, and the .30 Mips advantage an 8mhz 286 would have over a 7mhz Amiga 1000 was totally obliterated by the chipset's copper/blitter/DMA compared to any EGA/CGA graphics card on a PC. By 386 times things are very difficult for Atari and Commodore.
Would Tandy's 1000 line be the best example of affordable PC compatitibles in the mid-80s?

We didn't really have Tandy/Radio Shack as a major force where I lived (UK) at all, not during the TRS-80 days or PC days. I do remember Tandy where the first company to try and sort out PC for home use with Windows V2 and DOS in ROM for instant boot up times. Think it was an 8086 machine and in black....was reviewed in Personal Computer World of course, and at the time compared to the ST and Amiga as it was obviously gunning for the same slice of pie but they didn't like it at all and called it the worst of both worlds (ie having Windows on ROM chips being diff to upgrade and Windows being inferior to GEM or Workbench both aesthetically and technically)

PS My comment about Tempest 2000 being an Amiga game wasn't literal more like the fact it was just a jazzed up version of some crusty old arcade game and it certainly didn't look 32bit let alone 64bit and if it was produced for the Amiga in an identical fashion I wouldn't have paid more than 5 bucks for it. Compare that sorry state of affairs to what Team17 did with their Asteriods remake given an Amiga A1200.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJk0A8cx33A

Actually Super Stardust is a wonderful example of the breakpoint between PC VGA vs Amiga AGA. To play this game as smoothly as on a stock 14mhz 68EC020 Amiga 1200 required a Pentium 120mhz for joystick use or 100mhz for keyboard use (don't ask me why you need 20mhz CPU power to have smooth gameplay via a joystick though!!).

For the power of the machine T2k is a very very simple game, with a basic [for the Jag] game engine and hardly changed gameplay or visual style. Llamasoft games were always a bit iffy (wiffy?), usually inferior carbon copies of famous arcade games with badly drawn graphics in the later years...and on the ST/Amiga bugger all worth investigating. I'll admit it is better than Defender 2000... LOL that's just an embarrassing game full stop.

Cyprian · January 26, 2010

I think (not sure) the Amiga A4000 was the first stock desktop machine to have max of 128mb of 32bit RAM (140mb technically) compared to 32 or 64mb max on 486 PCs using Intel chipsets on motherboards (4x16).

TT was the first - it was released two years earlier than A400. You can put there 256 MB 32Bit Ram

kool kitty89 · January 26, 2010

I *thought* there were some 40Mhz 80286 chips but as we discuss this more I realize it was only 20MHz.

3rd parties had up to 25 MHz too. (cpuworld lists a Harris 286 rated for 25 MHz, I don't know if AMD had 25 MHz versions)

We didn't really have Tandy/Radio Shack as a major force where I lived (UK) at all, not during the TRS-80 days or PC days. I do remember Tandy where the first company to try and sort out PC for home use with Windows V2 and DOS in ROM for instant boot up times. Think it was an 8086 machine and in black....was reviewed in Personal Computer World of course, and at the time compared to the ST and Amiga as it was obviously gunning for the same slice of pie but they didn't like it at all and called it the worst of both worlds (ie having Windows on ROM chips being diff to upgrade and Windows being inferior to GEM or Workbench both aesthetically and technically)

Was the Dragon32 the only notable one present? (granted that wasn't even unter the Tandy/RS label)

PS My comment about Tempest 2000 being an Amiga game wasn't literal more like the fact it was just a jazzed up version of some crusty old arcade game and it certainly didn't look 32bit let alone 64bit and if it was produced for the Amiga in an identical fashion I wouldn't have paid more than 5 bucks for it. Compare that sorry state of affairs to what Team17 did with their Asteriods remake given an Amiga A1200.....

The whole "32 or 64-bit looking" this is total BS, you can't really judge by that alone, I mean look at all the games running on 32-bit PCs. (besides, if you go by CPU, the Dreamcast, Xbox, and GC/Wii are all 32-bit systems). You could have a really powerful system with dedicated busses and advanced graphics hardware with a realtively weak CPU and still have a powerful system. (like if the PlayStation used a 16 MHz 68000, game engines would have suffered -and any software rendering would go down the tubes, but it would still "look" "32-bit" and push textured mapped polygons just the same -GTE and GPU should be just as effective) I mean, does Jazz Jackrabbit look "32 bit?" (you could barely play that on a 386 system at the lowest settings)

Actually Super Stardust is a wonderful example of the breakpoint between PC VGA vs Amiga AGA. To play this game as smoothly as on a stock 14mhz 68EC020 Amiga 1200 required a Pentium 120mhz for joystick use or 100mhz for keyboard use (don't ask me why you need 20mhz CPU power to have smooth gameplay via a joystick though!!).

I think that's due to the analog jiystick polling having to be done in software, there's 4 analog pot inputs and 4 digital (button) inputs on the gameport (designed to allow 2x 2-button 2-axis joysticks), some more advanced joysticks/gamepads were all digital, using the 4 digital inputs to stream data. (those required drivers though, but also facilitated daisy chaining, I'm not sure if the original Gravis gamepad did that, but later onse certainly did) The PC gameport is kind of poorly designed in hindsight (going with Atari's VCS configuration might have been better), I still wish it had continued to be supported though, mainly as there aren't newer USB equivelents to the best gamport pads (or if there are, they're rare, like the Xterminator -mainly due to Gravis being gone) Edited January 26, 2010 by kool kitty89

atarian63 · January 26, 2010

no RF for the 1st few years... Doh! who is the amiga fanboy now.. Really misleading.

Didn't the late model amigas drop RF output entirely? (keeping composite I think, unlike the early STs which were RGB/mono only)

Tempest looks like an Amiga game, nothing special at all graphically and gameplay wise just a remake of Tempest. It's not the Jag's fault, UK programmers weren't the best at that time, the hardware was firmly 2.5D (ie better than any 2D console/computer....not really powerful enough to do decent textured 3D games which is where Saturn and Playstation changed the face of gaming forever) so it was stuck between two camps and the cost of the Jaguar CD module (or the toilet styling) really didn't help.

I notice the pixel blasts and smoothe shading in Tempest, that wouldn't be possible on a standard Amiga. (even AGA) Supposedly the game mechanics are a bit better for the Jaguar version as well. But yeah, the price is a bit much, and again, if it were cheap like a few years ago (besided the super rare/limited releases) I might have gone for it, if it weren't for the reasonable cost, I wouldn't have gotten into collecting Sega stuff recently. (Genesis/CD/32x -don't own a 32x, Kega Fusion is great too -and a big part of what got me interested, but it's neat to own the real thing, especially at the reasonable prices much can be had at -and relative commonality at thrift stores and such, and active homebrew scene too)

The 80286 had higher clock speeds than the 68020

You mean 80386, right?

Actually no. I believe there were some 40MHz 286s released. Not sure if they were that speed from the factory or overclocked.

Huh, i thought Intel 286s topped at 12.5 or 16 Mhz, with 20 and 25 Mhz versions produced by 3rd parties. (with Intel 386s topping at 33 MHz rated and AMD's going to 40 MHz)

Really, the 500/2000 should have had ec020 versions before 1990 if the chip was available. At the very least 16MHz 68000s.
I think the 2000 should have had a 16MHz 68000 to begin with for that matter. (it would have run at just over 14 MHz)

Same for the ST, or MEGAs at least (16 MHz standard), and again, forgoing the BLiTTER on the MEGA and STe in favor of CPU grunt may have been a better idea. (the MEGA could have one as soon as it was released too, not delayed like the BLiTTER) More focus could be put on the sound and shifter improvements as well -introducing the DMA sound and shifter-II on the MEGA line would have been good(or perhaps sticking to 320x200 res for 256 color mode -offering a 8-bit chunky pixel mode might be good, perhaps an arrangement similar to VGA using chained bitplanes for the 8-bpp mode), later adding the enhancements to the low-end models.

PC VGA graphics for games like Doom and Wing Commander are about 4-7 times faster by design (chunky pixel/planar pixel) and this gives an artificial impression of the complete machine being superior on a mhz per mhz basis.
The Amiga port of WC doesn't take advantage of the blitter either, does it? (I mean, the scaling should be a lot smoother than it is -the Sega CD conversion shows that well using its graphics ASIC albeit no planar bitmaps to worry about MD uses 4-bit chunky pixels and the ASIC can convert bitmaps to the native cell/tile display so that's not an issue either)

However a Falcon/Apple 16mhz 68030 machine manages only 3.84 Mips so clearly not as good as the 386 cpu mhz per mhz. With 486 vs 040 it gets worse. Pentium vs PPC though is much more favourable to Motorola.
The Falcon (and some late 680x0 MACs) was limited to a 16-bit data bus, so it's not going to be doing its best. (more like a 386sx) Plus, what are the cache configurations like in such comparisons? (386s lacked on-chip caches entirely right?)

Taking a standard 4.77mhz 8086 Mips rating gives you a theoretical 7mhz 8086 Mips of 0.48. 7mhz 68000 max in an Amiga is 0.71 Mips. So again the Motorola is faster than the equivalent Intel machine for mid to late 80s (ie time of the A1000/A500/A2000 launches) but still the 68000 is about 50% faster mhz per mhz than an 8086 machine. Now you see why the A1000 was an awesome machine better in every way, and the .30 Mips advantage an 8mhz 286 would have over a 7mhz Amiga 1000 was totally obliterated by the chipset's copper/blitter/DMA compared to any EGA/CGA graphics card on a PC. By 386 times things are very difficult for Atari and Commodore.
Would Tandy's 1000 line be the best example of affordable PC compatitibles in the mid-80s?

We didn't really have Tandy/Radio Shack as a major force where I lived (UK) at all, not during the TRS-80 days or PC days. I do remember Tandy where the first company to try and sort out PC for home use with Windows V2 and DOS in ROM for instant boot up times. Think it was an 8086 machine and in black....was reviewed in Personal Computer World of course, and at the time compared to the ST and Amiga as it was obviously gunning for the same slice of pie but they didn't like it at all and called it the worst of both worlds (ie having Windows on ROM chips being diff to upgrade and Windows being inferior to GEM or Workbench both aesthetically and technically)

PS My comment about Tempest 2000 being an Amiga game wasn't literal more like the fact it was just a jazzed up version of some crusty old arcade game and it certainly didn't look 32bit let alone 64bit and if it was produced for the Amiga in an identical fashion I wouldn't have paid more than 5 bucks for it. Compare that sorry state of affairs to what Team17 did with their Asteriods remake given an Amiga A1200.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJk0A8cx33A

Actually Super Stardust is a wonderful example of the breakpoint between PC VGA vs Amiga AGA. To play this game as smoothly as on a stock 14mhz 68EC020 Amiga 1200 required a Pentium 120mhz for joystick use or 100mhz for keyboard use (don't ask me why you need 20mhz CPU power to have smooth gameplay via a joystick though!!).

For the power of the machine T2k is a very very simple game, with a basic [for the Jag] game engine and hardly changed gameplay or visual style. Llamasoft games were always a bit iffy (wiffy?), usually inferior carbon copies of famous arcade games with badly drawn graphics in the later years...and on the ST/Amiga bugger all worth investigating. I'll admit it is better than Defender 2000... LOL that's just an embarrassing game full stop.

Wow llamasoft games were always great! Was a big fan. T2k was a super game based on one of the most popular arcade games of all time, nothing crusty there at all.

The amiga demo is ok and I do like shooters but it's nothing special, I see better ones on 68k Sega Genesis even on TG16 really.

+poobah · January 27, 2010

Not to get into the whole "CPU wars" thing (which gets even worse with 8-bit MCUs in the mix), but wasn't one problem with the 68k architecture soem compatibility issues between the original 68000 and 68010/020 and later (beyond the issue of software using the upper addressing byte for things not intended -not a problem on the 68EC020 anyway)? Plus, wasn't the 80286 at an advantage over an equally clocked 68000 (or 68010 even), in terms of speed/power? (not programming ease/effeciency)

Repeat after me.... Flat... memory... model...

Segments are evil.

Let me just fire up my compiler, ok, now which of the 6 memory models shall I use... Argggh!

68K >> x86

oky2000 · January 27, 2010

PS My comment about Tempest 2000 being an Amiga game wasn't literal more like the fact it was just a jazzed up version of some crusty old arcade game and it certainly didn't look 32bit let alone 64bit and if it was produced for the Amiga in an identical fashion I wouldn't have paid more than 5 bucks for it. Compare that sorry state of affairs to what Team17 did with their Asteriods remake given an Amiga A1200.....

The whole "32 or 64-bit looking" this is total BS, you can't really judge by that alone, I mean look at all the games running on 32-bit PCs. (besides, if you go by CPU, the Dreamcast, Xbox, and GC/Wii are all 32-bit systems). You could have a really powerful system with dedicated busses and advanced graphics hardware with a realtively weak CPU and still have a powerful system. (like if the PlayStation used a 16 MHz 68000, game engines would have suffered -and any software rendering would go down the tubes, but it would still "look" "32-bit" and push textured mapped polygons just the same -GTE and GPU should be just as effective) I mean, does Jazz Jackrabbit look "32 bit?" (you could barely play that on a 386 system at the lowest settings)

When I say 32/64bit it's not important, people really knew the Megadrive or SNES was not up to the task of proper 3D, the Jag was a step ahead of DSP and SuperFX equipped Sega/Nintendo cartridges...compare World Tour Racing on the Jaguar to Virtua Racing on 32X let alone Megadrive/Genesis. Sadly most games graphically didn't really look amazing enough in 3D on the Jag...give me the inferior colour/resolution/shading of Starfox on SNES to the clipped, zero draw distance, unimaginative crap of Cybermorph...a clear case of rubbish programming!

The point is whether a system is 32bit or 64bit or whatever, people really knew that generally speaking the SNES/Genesis were 16bit era machines and this was from a time of Amiga/ST/80s arcade games design and accordingly were a world apart from the full on world of 3D texture mapped polygons.

Tempest 2000 is a boring, basic looking game running on hardware capable of doing sort of 50% Sega Saturn performance (judging from the frame rates of World Tour Racing and the complexity of the scenery/objects) and yet we have some hairy animal abusers pile of crap with some dinky little line graphics and a few defender style pixel explosions....AND YOU WONDER WHY NOBODY BOUGHT THE JAG? ha ha

The fact is Tempest 2000 is just a retro remake, and not very inspired or particularly playable, of all the games that showed promise on the Jag to hint at its power this is not such a game and you could easily do a passable remake of Tempest with a bit of glitz on a 486 PC/Amiga AGA or Falcon. Hell doing some limited calculations you could do Resident Evil on an 030 AGA Amiga

Gameplay is important, but graphics in shop displays are what sell the machines (hence all the fantastic artwork and demos for ST and Amiga machines being on loop in shop windows in the 80s to show their increased sophistication)...which is why the Saturn trailed behind the Playstation until the year Virtua Fighter 2, Sega Rally and Virtua Cop came out in the same holiday season....coincidence? I think not...before that you had the pathetic Saturn Virtua Racing/Virtua Fighter 1...not a good sign.

The Jag never had the equivalent of Saturn's VF2/Sega Rally etc to revitalise the potential purchasers....people keep quoting some simple plinky plonk shit reamake of a game for Jag as being one of the best...but really you would do the machine a huge favour NOT mentioning either the products of that sick weirdo or that basic looking game. To be quite honest putting World Tour Racing on Jag next to F1 for Nintendo64 side by side shows you just what IS possible with some technical skill and open minded attitude to what can be implemented.

(N64 F1 racing is pretty pants...the wheels look like hexagons FFS and the frame rate depends on the weather lol)

+wood_jl · January 27, 2010

The whole "32 or 64-bit looking" this is total BS, you can't really judge by that alone, I mean look at all the games running on 32-bit PCs. (besides, if you go by CPU, the Dreamcast, Xbox, and GC/Wii are all 32-bit systems). You could have a really powerful system with dedicated busses and advanced graphics hardware with a realtively weak CPU and still have a powerful system. (like if the PlayStation used a 16 MHz 68000, game engines would have suffered -and any software rendering would go down the tubes, but it would still "look" "32-bit" and push textured mapped polygons just the same -GTE and GPU should be just as effective) I mean, does Jazz Jackrabbit look "32 bit?" (you could barely play that on a 386 system at the lowest settings)

It's not total BS - it's somewhat BS. Of course there's no absolute relation to "number of bits" and graphical prowess. The advertising dept got ahold of "bits" with the Sega Genesis. The "bitness" of games was always a reference to game consoles, not PCs for which the reference would be meaningless. However, most Master System, NES, and even 7800 games have a similar level of detail and are perceived as representative of the 8-bit generation. Most Super Nintendo and Genesis games are somewhat similar in graphical complexity, and are perceived representative of the 16-bit. Likewise for the Playstation and Saturn for "32-bit generation." The point is that most Jaguar games - on the system that touted "it's number of bits" like nothing since the original Genesis - don't appear any more graphically complex than the SNES/Genesis and many appear considerably inferior, say nothing of a PS/Saturn comparison; the games failed to impress.

oky2000 · January 27, 2010

no RF for the 1st few years... Doh! who is the amiga fanboy now.. Really misleading.

Didn't the late model amigas drop RF output entirely? (keeping composite I think, unlike the early STs which were RGB/mono only)

Tempest looks like an Amiga game, nothing special at all graphically and gameplay wise just a remake of Tempest. It's not the Jag's fault, UK programmers weren't the best at that time, the hardware was firmly 2.5D (ie better than any 2D console/computer....not really powerful enough to do decent textured 3D games which is where Saturn and Playstation changed the face of gaming forever) so it was stuck between two camps and the cost of the Jaguar CD module (or the toilet styling) really didn't help.

I notice the pixel blasts and smoothe shading in Tempest, that wouldn't be possible on a standard Amiga. (even AGA) Supposedly the game mechanics are a bit better for the Jaguar version as well. But yeah, the price is a bit much, and again, if it were cheap like a few years ago (besided the super rare/limited releases) I might have gone for it, if it weren't for the reasonable cost, I wouldn't have gotten into collecting Sega stuff recently. (Genesis/CD/32x -don't own a 32x, Kega Fusion is great too -and a big part of what got me interested, but it's neat to own the real thing, especially at the reasonable prices much can be had at -and relative commonality at thrift stores and such, and active homebrew scene too)

The 80286 had higher clock speeds than the 68020

You mean 80386, right?

Actually no. I believe there were some 40MHz 286s released. Not sure if they were that speed from the factory or overclocked.

Huh, i thought Intel 286s topped at 12.5 or 16 Mhz, with 20 and 25 Mhz versions produced by 3rd parties. (with Intel 386s topping at 33 MHz rated and AMD's going to 40 MHz)

Really, the 500/2000 should have had ec020 versions before 1990 if the chip was available. At the very least 16MHz 68000s.
I think the 2000 should have had a 16MHz 68000 to begin with for that matter. (it would have run at just over 14 MHz)

Same for the ST, or MEGAs at least (16 MHz standard), and again, forgoing the BLiTTER on the MEGA and STe in favor of CPU grunt may have been a better idea. (the MEGA could have one as soon as it was released too, not delayed like the BLiTTER) More focus could be put on the sound and shifter improvements as well -introducing the DMA sound and shifter-II on the MEGA line would have been good(or perhaps sticking to 320x200 res for 256 color mode -offering a 8-bit chunky pixel mode might be good, perhaps an arrangement similar to VGA using chained bitplanes for the 8-bpp mode), later adding the enhancements to the low-end models.

PC VGA graphics for games like Doom and Wing Commander are about 4-7 times faster by design (chunky pixel/planar pixel) and this gives an artificial impression of the complete machine being superior on a mhz per mhz basis.
The Amiga port of WC doesn't take advantage of the blitter either, does it? (I mean, the scaling should be a lot smoother than it is -the Sega CD conversion shows that well using its graphics ASIC albeit no planar bitmaps to worry about MD uses 4-bit chunky pixels and the ASIC can convert bitmaps to the native cell/tile display so that's not an issue either)

However a Falcon/Apple 16mhz 68030 machine manages only 3.84 Mips so clearly not as good as the 386 cpu mhz per mhz. With 486 vs 040 it gets worse. Pentium vs PPC though is much more favourable to Motorola.
The Falcon (and some late 680x0 MACs) was limited to a 16-bit data bus, so it's not going to be doing its best. (more like a 386sx) Plus, what are the cache configurations like in such comparisons? (386s lacked on-chip caches entirely right?)

Taking a standard 4.77mhz 8086 Mips rating gives you a theoretical 7mhz 8086 Mips of 0.48. 7mhz 68000 max in an Amiga is 0.71 Mips. So again the Motorola is faster than the equivalent Intel machine for mid to late 80s (ie time of the A1000/A500/A2000 launches) but still the 68000 is about 50% faster mhz per mhz than an 8086 machine. Now you see why the A1000 was an awesome machine better in every way, and the .30 Mips advantage an 8mhz 286 would have over a 7mhz Amiga 1000 was totally obliterated by the chipset's copper/blitter/DMA compared to any EGA/CGA graphics card on a PC. By 386 times things are very difficult for Atari and Commodore.
Would Tandy's 1000 line be the best example of affordable PC compatitibles in the mid-80s?

We didn't really have Tandy/Radio Shack as a major force where I lived (UK) at all, not during the TRS-80 days or PC days. I do remember Tandy where the first company to try and sort out PC for home use with Windows V2 and DOS in ROM for instant boot up times. Think it was an 8086 machine and in black....was reviewed in Personal Computer World of course, and at the time compared to the ST and Amiga as it was obviously gunning for the same slice of pie but they didn't like it at all and called it the worst of both worlds (ie having Windows on ROM chips being diff to upgrade and Windows being inferior to GEM or Workbench both aesthetically and technically)

PS My comment about Tempest 2000 being an Amiga game wasn't literal more like the fact it was just a jazzed up version of some crusty old arcade game and it certainly didn't look 32bit let alone 64bit and if it was produced for the Amiga in an identical fashion I wouldn't have paid more than 5 bucks for it. Compare that sorry state of affairs to what Team17 did with their Asteriods remake given an Amiga A1200.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJk0A8cx33A

Actually Super Stardust is a wonderful example of the breakpoint between PC VGA vs Amiga AGA. To play this game as smoothly as on a stock 14mhz 68EC020 Amiga 1200 required a Pentium 120mhz for joystick use or 100mhz for keyboard use (don't ask me why you need 20mhz CPU power to have smooth gameplay via a joystick though!!).

For the power of the machine T2k is a very very simple game, with a basic [for the Jag] game engine and hardly changed gameplay or visual style. Llamasoft games were always a bit iffy (wiffy?), usually inferior carbon copies of famous arcade games with badly drawn graphics in the later years...and on the ST/Amiga bugger all worth investigating. I'll admit it is better than Defender 2000... LOL that's just an embarrassing game full stop.

Wow llamasoft games were always great! Was a big fan. T2k was a super game based on one of the most popular arcade games of all time, nothing crusty there at all.

The amiga demo is ok and I do like shooters but it's nothing special, I see better ones on 68k Sega Genesis even on TG16 really.

Hello!!! Do you not see a massive difference in the sophistication of the graphics compared to Asteroids monochrome vector original? Do you not notice the awesome music and sound effects? Do you not know that it has power up weapons? Do you not know that there are 2 other game styles merged into the whole game two to link the 6 asteroids screens per level. Sorry but Super Stardust is the BEST Asteroids remake of all time, it is more playable and more complete than even the half finished 'Asteroids levels only' PSN downloadable PS3 games Super Stardust HD.

And you are comparing it with what.....

What is Tempest 2000? It's some basic looking very simple game, hardly looking different to some obscure original arcade game from way back (certainly Tempest has been played less than anything made by Konami or Capcom as far as arcades go) and nor is it mentioned in the same breath as Pacman, Asteroids, Donkey Kong and Galaxian. Please....some weirdo breathed over some colour vector graphic game he likes for a small fee and you think it is genius? ha ha well he tried the same thing with Space Giraffe and it sold about 30 copies on Xbox Live for 360 (to his low-brow fans at the pathetic badly moderated llamasoft forum I bet) but it disappeared without a trace, and review scores from people worth listening to ranged from 2/10 to about 5/10 if they were being generous...and that is taking into account the game was like 6 bucks ha ha. 2/10 for 6 bucks...how embarassing...the only reason he still bothers to write games is because he is broke and probably mentally deranged now.

And before you say 'gameplay' there are unexpanded VIC-20/Atari VCS games that have more variety, better gameplay and more interesting graphics So you have an expensive game, with average gameplay at best, uninspired graphical update to an old and all but forgotten arcade game compared to the real remembered games like Pacman and DK etc. Whooopeee this animal lover (in the illegal sense of the word I would add) is your 'hero' lol please. I would rather play Star Raiders on VCS than listen to that cheesy dime store soundtracked rubbish called T2k.

There were some interesting games on the Jag, this is not one of them. There are some truly incredible retro remakes of early 80s arcade games (like Super Stardust) but Tempest 2000 (or the even worse Tempest 3000 on the Nuon) is not in either category of conversation

desiv · January 27, 2010

Have to admit I'm split on this one.

Super Stardust is a great game...

But I also think Tempest 2000 is a title that justifies the system. I don't have one, but I've played it. And I've almost bought a Jag just for Tempest 2000. I believe it's that good.

They are both pretty incredible games...

desiv

atarian63 · January 27, 2010

:roll:

no RF for the 1st few years... Doh! who is the amiga fanboy now.. Really misleading.

Didn't the late model amigas drop RF output entirely? (keeping composite I think, unlike the early STs which were RGB/mono only)

Tempest looks like an Amiga game, nothing special at all graphically and gameplay wise just a remake of Tempest. It's not the Jag's fault, UK programmers weren't the best at that time, the hardware was firmly 2.5D (ie better than any 2D console/computer....not really powerful enough to do decent textured 3D games which is where Saturn and Playstation changed the face of gaming forever) so it was stuck between two camps and the cost of the Jaguar CD module (or the toilet styling) really didn't help.

I notice the pixel blasts and smoothe shading in Tempest, that wouldn't be possible on a standard Amiga. (even AGA) Supposedly the game mechanics are a bit better for the Jaguar version as well. But yeah, the price is a bit much, and again, if it were cheap like a few years ago (besided the super rare/limited releases) I might have gone for it, if it weren't for the reasonable cost, I wouldn't have gotten into collecting Sega stuff recently. (Genesis/CD/32x -don't own a 32x, Kega Fusion is great too -and a big part of what got me interested, but it's neat to own the real thing, especially at the reasonable prices much can be had at -and relative commonality at thrift stores and such, and active homebrew scene too)

The 80286 had higher clock speeds than the 68020

You mean 80386, right?

Actually no. I believe there were some 40MHz 286s released. Not sure if they were that speed from the factory or overclocked.

Huh, i thought Intel 286s topped at 12.5 or 16 Mhz, with 20 and 25 Mhz versions produced by 3rd parties. (with Intel 386s topping at 33 MHz rated and AMD's going to 40 MHz)

Really, the 500/2000 should have had ec020 versions before 1990 if the chip was available. At the very least 16MHz 68000s.
I think the 2000 should have had a 16MHz 68000 to begin with for that matter. (it would have run at just over 14 MHz)

Same for the ST, or MEGAs at least (16 MHz standard), and again, forgoing the BLiTTER on the MEGA and STe in favor of CPU grunt may have been a better idea. (the MEGA could have one as soon as it was released too, not delayed like the BLiTTER) More focus could be put on the sound and shifter improvements as well -introducing the DMA sound and shifter-II on the MEGA line would have been good(or perhaps sticking to 320x200 res for 256 color mode -offering a 8-bit chunky pixel mode might be good, perhaps an arrangement similar to VGA using chained bitplanes for the 8-bpp mode), later adding the enhancements to the low-end models.

PC VGA graphics for games like Doom and Wing Commander are about 4-7 times faster by design (chunky pixel/planar pixel) and this gives an artificial impression of the complete machine being superior on a mhz per mhz basis.
The Amiga port of WC doesn't take advantage of the blitter either, does it? (I mean, the scaling should be a lot smoother than it is -the Sega CD conversion shows that well using its graphics ASIC albeit no planar bitmaps to worry about MD uses 4-bit chunky pixels and the ASIC can convert bitmaps to the native cell/tile display so that's not an issue either)

However a Falcon/Apple 16mhz 68030 machine manages only 3.84 Mips so clearly not as good as the 386 cpu mhz per mhz. With 486 vs 040 it gets worse. Pentium vs PPC though is much more favourable to Motorola.
The Falcon (and some late 680x0 MACs) was limited to a 16-bit data bus, so it's not going to be doing its best. (more like a 386sx) Plus, what are the cache configurations like in such comparisons? (386s lacked on-chip caches entirely right?)

Taking a standard 4.77mhz 8086 Mips rating gives you a theoretical 7mhz 8086 Mips of 0.48. 7mhz 68000 max in an Amiga is 0.71 Mips. So again the Motorola is faster than the equivalent Intel machine for mid to late 80s (ie time of the A1000/A500/A2000 launches) but still the 68000 is about 50% faster mhz per mhz than an 8086 machine. Now you see why the A1000 was an awesome machine better in every way, and the .30 Mips advantage an 8mhz 286 would have over a 7mhz Amiga 1000 was totally obliterated by the chipset's copper/blitter/DMA compared to any EGA/CGA graphics card on a PC. By 386 times things are very difficult for Atari and Commodore.
Would Tandy's 1000 line be the best example of affordable PC compatitibles in the mid-80s?

We didn't really have Tandy/Radio Shack as a major force where I lived (UK) at all, not during the TRS-80 days or PC days. I do remember Tandy where the first company to try and sort out PC for home use with Windows V2 and DOS in ROM for instant boot up times. Think it was an 8086 machine and in black....was reviewed in Personal Computer World of course, and at the time compared to the ST and Amiga as it was obviously gunning for the same slice of pie but they didn't like it at all and called it the worst of both worlds (ie having Windows on ROM chips being diff to upgrade and Windows being inferior to GEM or Workbench both aesthetically and technically)

PS My comment about Tempest 2000 being an Amiga game wasn't literal more like the fact it was just a jazzed up version of some crusty old arcade game and it certainly didn't look 32bit let alone 64bit and if it was produced for the Amiga in an identical fashion I wouldn't have paid more than 5 bucks for it. Compare that sorry state of affairs to what Team17 did with their Asteriods remake given an Amiga A1200.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJk0A8cx33A

Actually Super Stardust is a wonderful example of the breakpoint between PC VGA vs Amiga AGA. To play this game as smoothly as on a stock 14mhz 68EC020 Amiga 1200 required a Pentium 120mhz for joystick use or 100mhz for keyboard use (don't ask me why you need 20mhz CPU power to have smooth gameplay via a joystick though!!).

For the power of the machine T2k is a very very simple game, with a basic [for the Jag] game engine and hardly changed gameplay or visual style. Llamasoft games were always a bit iffy (wiffy?), usually inferior carbon copies of famous arcade games with badly drawn graphics in the later years...and on the ST/Amiga bugger all worth investigating. I'll admit it is better than Defender 2000... LOL that's just an embarrassing game full stop.

Wow llamasoft games were always great! Was a big fan. T2k was a super game based on one of the most popular arcade games of all time, nothing crusty there at all.

The amiga demo is ok and I do like shooters but it's nothing special, I see better ones on 68k Sega Genesis even on TG16 really.

Hello!!! Do you not see a massive difference in the sophistication of the graphics compared to Asteroids monochrome vector original? Do you not notice the awesome music and sound effects? Do you not know that it has power up weapons? Do you not know that there are 2 other game styles merged into the whole game two to link the 6 asteroids screens per level. Sorry but Super Stardust is the BEST Asteroids remake of all time, it is more playable and more complete than even the half finished 'Asteroids levels only' PSN downloadable PS3 games Super Stardust HD.

And you are comparing it with what.....

What is Tempest 2000? It's some basic looking very simple game, hardly looking different to some obscure original arcade game from way back (certainly Tempest has been played less than anything made by Konami or Capcom as far as arcades go) and nor is it mentioned in the same breath as Pacman, Asteroids, Donkey Kong and Galaxian. Please....some weirdo breathed over some colour vector graphic game he likes for a small fee and you think it is genius? ha ha well he tried the same thing with Space Giraffe and it sold about 30 copies on Xbox Live for 360 (to his low-brow fans at the pathetic badly moderated llamasoft forum I bet) but it disappeared without a trace, and review scores from people worth listening to ranged from 2/10 to about 5/10 if they were being generous...and that is taking into account the game was like 6 bucks ha ha. 2/10 for 6 bucks...how embarassing...the only reason he still bothers to write games is because he is broke and probably mentally deranged now.

And before you say 'gameplay' there are unexpanded VIC-20/Atari VCS games that have more variety, better gameplay and more interesting graphics So you have an expensive game, with average gameplay at best, uninspired graphical update to an old and all but forgotten arcade game compared to the real remembered games like Pacman and DK etc. Whooopeee this animal lover (in the illegal sense of the word I would add) is your 'hero' lol please. I would rather play Star Raiders on VCS than listen to that cheesy dime store soundtracked rubbish called T2k.

There were some interesting games on the Jag, this is not one of them. There are some truly incredible retro remakes of early 80s arcade games (like Super Stardust) but Tempest 2000 (or the even worse Tempest 3000 on the Nuon) is not in either category of conversation

Hello.. it is average at best and it seems a bit slow,nothing special there,shooters on other platforms that look better barely Genesis quality.

You really are NOT an arcade person as is obvious. And comparing a 79 arcade in your example is just silly though I think a vector monitor looks sooo much better than a plain ol rastser display. The ps3 comparison is not even close.

T2k is one of the finest arcade updates that was made available, try t3k on the nuon. maximum color!Both are excellent examples, not accounting for yourtaste I guess :roll:

Tempest forgotten?what planet do you live on? Have you even bothered to look at polling here and other places like RGVAC?

I would rather play ET on 2600 than that old ameoba garbage.

It made a decent console (and should have been as that was what it was designed to be by Atari) up until Genesis/Snes.

kool kitty89 · January 27, 2010

Repeat after me.... Flat... memory... model...

Segments are evil.

Let me just fire up my compiler, ok, now which of the 6 memory models shall I use... Argggh!

68K >> x86

Yeah, that's kind of whay I meade the comment about excepting ease/comvenience of programming. (the 65816 was kind of a pain in that respect as well, wasn't it?)

But how would the 68k architecture have evolved had it been expanded beyond 32-bit addressing?

When I say 32/64bit it's not important, people really knew the Megadrive or SNES was not up to the task of proper 3D, the Jag was a step ahead of DSP and SuperFX equipped Sega/Nintendo cartridges...compare World Tour Racing on the Jaguar to Virtua Racing on 32X let alone Megadrive/Genesis. Sadly most games graphically didn't really look amazing enough in 3D on the Jag...give me the inferior colour/resolution/shading of Starfox on SNES to the clipped, zero draw distance, unimaginative crap of Cybermorph...a clear case of rubbish programming!

Cybermorph is a bit rushed (and no help from the difficulties of working with the Jaguar in the state Atari released it with the corespondignly poor tools), Battlemorph is far superior, but still the draw distance is even worse on Star Fox, the gameplay style just lends itsself better. (it also have better control of detail gradients) A rail shooter would have lent itsself much better for that type of thing, though the unreleased Star Fox 2 breaks away from this too. (but actually has kind of a Star Raiders like component with the strategy based overworld map layyout -which various other games had used as well Space Spartan, Star Voyager etc, plus a bit of the StarGlider type gameplay -and art design -not surprising)

Cybermorph would have looked amazing with Voxel terrain though. (as would battlemorph)

Also Virtua Racing Deluxe looks damn good, sounds pretty good as well, plus it adds extras to the arcade original. The Saturn port isn't so great though (then again, it was ported by a 3rd party). Also note it runs in 15-bit RGB mode like most PSX games.(hence the clipping to fit into the 128 kB framebuffer of the 32x)

THis may be from personal preference, but Cybermorph (and to a lesser extend battlemorph from what I've seen) aren't of some of the broadest genres, I'd have definitely prefered a proper space shooter or rail shooter myself. (the Jag did get soem of that later though, but not when it needed it most -so as amazing as it apparently is, BS is out) A port of X-Wing would have been awesome. (or even something simpler like Shadow Squadron on 32x -one of the few others to use 15-bit color albiet clipping more evenly both vertically and horizontally to be almost full screen -barely noticable due to overscan of most NTSC sets)

The point is whether a system is 32bit or 64bit or whatever, people really knew that generally speaking the SNES/Genesis were 16bit era machines and this was from a time of Amiga/ST/80s arcade games design and accordingly were a world apart from the full on world of 3D texture mapped polygons.

WHen Flare started developing the Jaguar chipset they made the assumption that smoothe shading would be the more prominent effect used in 3D, with texture mappign getting less emphesis, probably a bit of a shift towards the end, but given the design they clearly pushed gouraud shading. (the blitter does have reasonable texture mapping ability though -and Doom combines the 2 nicely, with soem great smoothe lighting gradients)

Tempest 2000 is a boring, basic looking game running on hardware capable of doing sort of 50% Sega Saturn performance (judging from the frame rates of World Tour Racing and the complexity of the scenery/objects)

Tempest is a fun, simple arcade style game, and T2K takes it to th next level, and what line graphics are you talking about, everything is filled (except in classic mode).

The Jag never had the equivalent of Saturn's VF2/Sega Rally etc to revitalise the potential purchasers....people keep quoting some simple plinky plonk shit reamake of a game for Jag as being one of the best...but really you would do the machine a huge favour NOT mentioning either the products of that sick weirdo or that basic looking game. To be quite honest putting World Tour Racing on Jag next to F1 for Nintendo64 side by side shows you just what IS possible with some technical skill and open minded attitude to what can be implemented.

Atari Corp management seems to have crippled the machine, rusing it out with bugs, forcing the 68k into it (when it really doesn't work well, limiting Jerry to 1/2 width, hogging the shared bus, etc -an EC020 would have really helped in such a cacheless single bus design), then there's the pittance of development tools which didn't help either, then the marketting, and limited overall budget (ellivated by winning the Sega lawsuit in mid 1994), it was jsut a mess overall. There were a decent number of developers interested initially, but most moved on due to the poor support provided to address the problems combined with the low market share and attractive competition. (PSX was the polar opposite, very freindly development environmnet, cheap/high capacity CD media, and a compnay with deep pockets clearly pouring a ton into marketing -and price dumping more or less)

Again, I have no idea how Jack would have hendeled things in terms of games (he probably whould have pushed the computer line a bit longer though), same for Michael Katz in terms of marketing. (both stepped down around the same time I think, Katz moved on to Sega in 89 and Jack went into retirement a bit earlier I think)

The whole "32 or 64-bit looking" this is total BS, you can't really judge by that alone, I mean look at all the games running on 32-bit PCs. (besides, if you go by CPU, the Dreamcast, Xbox, and GC/Wii are all 32-bit systems). You could have a really powerful system with dedicated busses and advanced graphics hardware with a realtively weak CPU and still have a powerful system. (like if the PlayStation used a 16 MHz 68000, game engines would have suffered -and any software rendering would go down the tubes, but it would still "look" "32-bit" and push textured mapped polygons just the same -GTE and GPU should be just as effective) I mean, does Jazz Jackrabbit look "32 bit?" (you could barely play that on a 386 system at the lowest settings)

It's not total BS - it's somewhat BS. Of course there's no absolute relation to "number of bits" and graphical prowess. The advertising dept got ahold of "bits" with the Sega Genesis. The "bitness" of games was always a reference to game consoles, not PCs for which the reference would be meaningless. However, most Master System, NES, and even 7800 games have a similar level of detail and are perceived as representative of the 8-bit generation. Most Super Nintendo and Genesis games are somewhat similar in graphical complexity, and are perceived representative of the 16-bit. Likewise for the Playstation and Saturn for "32-bit generation." The point is that most Jaguar games - on the system that touted "it's number of bits" like nothing since the original Genesis - don't appear any more graphically complex than the SNES/Genesis and many appear considerably inferior, say nothing of a PS/Saturn comparison; the games failed to impress.

Yes it is, look at the 8-bit consoles, would you say the VCS, Colecovision, 5200, SG-1000 (Japan), Famicom/NES, 7800, Master System, and PC Engine/TG 16 are all in the same generation? (all 8-bit CPUs, and all either Z80 or 650x -albeit enhanced in the PCE's case and quite fast)

Plus bring the N64 into that, compare the Saturn, N64, and PSX, they all reasonably apear to be of the same generation (the 5th generation), the N64 doesn't have anything really huge over the Playstation, there's filtering (which some despise -and I don't but still think is overused) plus the framerate and draw distance are sometimes worse on N64 versions compared to PSX (and sometimes Saturn) counterparts, the perspective corrected texturesand AA were good (still some twitching at times), the Z-buffer was nice too. (some games even seem to drop to the Z-buffer representation for far distance -like in Episode 1 Racer)

Then Again, Nintendo crippled the system by limiting support for the programmable RSP microcode. (not initially supporting it, then providing limited tools to some developers, but still not freely offereing the "turbo 3D" microcode they already had -lower accuracy polygons with far higher poly rates)

And look at the 3DO, it does have soem stuff that looks somewhat comperable to PSX or Saturn stuff (albeit so does the Jag), but often looks fairly weak as well. (in fact, it might have done better with just a 68000 as the CPU had the GPU not had to fight over work RAM as it does -then again, Doom would probably look even worse as the hardware is emphesized for 3D point calculation -a coprocessor rather like the GTE plus the GPU with gouraud shading affine mapping and quadrilateral rasterization -not triangles unfortunately)

kool kitty89 · January 27, 2010

Hello!!! Do you not see a massive difference in the sophistication of the graphics compared to Asteroids monochrome vector original? Do you not notice the awesome music and sound effects? Do you not know that it has power up weapons? Do you not know that there are 2 other game styles merged into the whole game two to link the 6 asteroids screens per level. Sorry but Super Stardust is the BEST Asteroids remake of all time, it is more playable and more complete than even the half finished 'Asteroids levels only' PSN downloadable PS3 games Super Stardust HD.

Hmm, as far as asteroids remakes go, have you ever tried DarXide?

What is Tempest 2000? It's some basic looking very simple game, hardly looking different to some obscure original arcade game from way back (certainly Tempest has been played less than anything made by Konami or Capcom as far as arcades go) and nor is it mentioned in the same breath as Pacman, Asteroids, Donkey Kong and Galaxian. Please....some weirdo breathed over some colour vector graphic game he likes for a small fee and you think it is genius? ha ha well he tried the same thing with Space Giraffe and it sold about 30 copies on Xbox Live for 360 (to his low-brow fans at the pathetic badly moderated llamasoft forum I bet) but it disappeared without a trace, and review scores from people worth listening to ranged from 2/10 to about 5/10 if they were being generous...and that is taking into account the game was like 6 bucks ha ha. 2/10 for 6 bucks...how embarassing...the only reason he still bothers to write games is because he is broke and probably mentally deranged now.

Huh, is it really obscure, are you going by personal experience or do you have knoledge of the American Arcades as well? I'd gotten the impression that Tempest was one of Atari's big arcade hits, not the biggest, but enought to get mentioned in the same breath as Asteroids, Battlezone, Missile Command, and Centipede. (and in fact included among those in the 1993 Microsoft Arcade pack -which was my first exposure to the game -any of those games for that matter) Then the Star Wars vector games of course.

And before you say 'gameplay' there are unexpanded VIC-20/Atari VCS games that have more variety, better gameplay and more interesting graphics So you have an expensive game, with average gameplay at best, uninspired graphical update to an old and all but forgotten arcade game compared to the real remembered games like Pacman and DK etc. Whooopeee this animal lover (in the illegal sense of the word I would add) is your 'hero' lol please. I would rather play Star Raiders on VCS than listen to that cheesy dime store soundtracked rubbish called T2k.

Now you're just trolling, that's completely subjective and inflamitory... I persoanlly find the original tempest quite fun (I prefer D-pad to mouse too, analog joystic probably above that, then paddle of course)

T2K has interestingly upgraded graphics, some cool music (albeit I seem to recall it being in amiga mod format -as soem other games were as well), just a fun upgrade overall. (probably comperable to Robotron 64, and better than Spzce invders for N64/PSX/PC -though the 2-players is always nice to have -and definitely WAY better than the abomination that is robotron X)

I do like Tempest a bit more than Asteroids in general though. (of the ones I listed, probably BattleZone, Tempest, Missile Command, Asteroids, then Centipede -Star Wars might be ahead of them all though -with proper analog control)

T2K is a really fun pick up and play kind of game, rather addictive too, but that's just me... (and I've onyl played it in Project Tempest, not on real hardware -and my preious 1.4 GHz Athlon XP machine could barely handel it with sound )

atarian1 · January 27, 2010

What is Tempest 2000? It's some basic looking very simple game, hardly looking different to some obscure original arcade game from way back (certainly Tempest has been played less than anything made by Konami or Capcom as far as arcades go) and nor is it mentioned in the same breath as Pacman, Asteroids, Donkey Kong and Galaxian. Please....some weirdo breathed over some colour vector graphic game he likes for a small fee and you think it is genius? ha ha well he tried the same thing with Space Giraffe and it sold about 30 copies on Xbox Live for 360 (to his low-brow fans at the pathetic badly moderated llamasoft forum I bet) but it disappeared without a trace, and review scores from people worth listening to ranged from 2/10 to about 5/10 if they were being generous...and that is taking into account the game was like 6 bucks ha ha. 2/10 for 6 bucks...how embarassing...the only reason he still bothers to write games is because he is broke and probably mentally deranged now.

And before you say 'gameplay' there are unexpanded VIC-20/Atari VCS games that have more variety, better gameplay and more interesting graphics So you have an expensive game, with average gameplay at best, uninspired graphical update to an old and all but forgotten arcade game compared to the real remembered games like Pacman and DK etc. Whooopeee this animal lover (in the illegal sense of the word I would add) is your 'hero' lol please. I would rather play Star Raiders on VCS than listen to that cheesy dime store soundtracked rubbish called T2k.

There were some interesting games on the Jag, this is not one of them. There are some truly incredible retro remakes of early 80s arcade games (like Super Stardust) but Tempest 2000 (or the even worse Tempest 3000 on the Nuon) is not in either category of conversation

The above reminds me of people hating T2K because it didn't have texture mapping. :sad: FYI, it doesn't need texture mapping. The gourand shading effect is MUCH better.

I don't know where you were, but I remember people were amazed at T2K when I was "demonstrating" (ie playing it! ) on the Jag kiosks at the many retailers who had them. T2K the same as a Capcom/Konami game? HAHAHA! :lol: You have GOT to be kidding me! How many more run/jump/shoot platform games can we take from those companies? They just produced more shovelware with different graphics and sound. Compared to the other games available at the time, T2K was VERY unique and different. It did have elements of other popular games at the time (power-ups, bonuses, etc) but that's were the similarities end. The excellent updated graphics, frantic fast-paced action and a raving techno soundtrack really set this game apart from other games at the time.

That's why many people were attracted to it. Obviously, you weren't, but you're in the minority here... :roll:

atarian1 · January 27, 2010

As has been alluded to by others previously in the thread, the lack of U.S. support *really* hurt the ST in later days, amongst other things. The original 520ST $799 monochrome/$999 color was a price/performance breakthrough. The 1040ST was another, with the first under-$1000 (by a dollar) computer with a MEG of RAM. But that's pretty much where the breakthroughs seem to have stopped. The Megas weren't any screaming deal.

What? :thumbsdown: Where could you get a 4MB machine in Fall 1987 for under $2500? Nowhere! It was a great deal for those who needed the extra memory such as desktop publishing and music applications.

Atari ST vs. Amiga

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