Atari ST vs Amiga

'Awesome' not being the operative word! ;)
I just remembered some games even gave you a cardboard or plastic wheel chart and you had to align the outer wheel with a certain number or letter on the inner wheel and then enter the character. Mmm, cutting edge. :D
 
Nanobot said:
'Awesome' not being the operative word! ;)
I just remembered some games even gave you a cardboard or plastic wheel chart and you had to align the outer wheel with a certain number or letter on the inner wheel and then enter the character. Mmm, cutting edge. :D
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Haha, maybe ingenious is a better word ? :p
I think that Zool was one that had a spin wheel for it, I may be wrong, though. i can remember doing it for atleast one, perhaps more than that, game(s).
 
knowledge123 said:
the games you could get for it~ *_* they were awesome, true masterpieces of design and, indeed, compromise, because you had to be careful what you put on the floppies as they were only 1.44mb in size, so there was none of this wasted space you young 'uns have these days.
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Not 1.44mb
Double sided double density - 880kb only. :D

You could get a DSHD Drive retrofitted - that took it up to 1.76mb - but the games were still only 880kb disks.
 
Flibster said:
Not 1.44mb
Double sided double density - 880kb only. :D

You could get a DSHD Drive retrofitted - that took it up to 1.76mb - but the games were still only 880kb disks.
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Ahh, i didn't know that! :o :eek: i'm thinking of 'conventional' floppies. Even more impressive, especially when you consider the space even a small bit of music takes up these days.
 
Atari discovered a fault in its graphics chip once in production. Originally the ST was able to display 4,096 colours, the same as the Amiga. However, the work-a-round for the fault meant the ST could only display 512, and had to have a border that occupied 30% of screen real estate, whereas the Amiga could go full screen. Oh, and the Amiga could genlock as well, so it was used to display titles whilst display the background video (something that you needed equipment costing 100 times more at the time)

The Atari ST had the exact same soundchip in it as the Amstrad CPC, 3 channel, one left, one right, one dual.

The Amiga had its own dedicated soundchip (Paula), that could play 8-bit samples. And was an amazing chip at the time, if anyone remembers noise-tracker, sound-tracker, you may be aware that it was possible to do early dance/house music on an Amiga. The sound on the Amiga was light years away from anything before it, and it was a good 4-5 years after the amiga that the PC got anything resembling the quality of this soundchip.

Whilst the Amiga was indeed not multi-core, it did have co-processors. These co-processors freed up the CPU (just as the graphics cards/sound cards in the modern PC do today), handling audio, video, animation and encoding. So even though the Amiga CPU (Motorola 6800) was indeed slower than the Atari ST, it totally annihilated it when it came to gaming.

The Amiga had multi-tasking. Whereas the ST did not.

The CPU (68000) The Sound (Paula) and The Graphics Chip (Denise) all had to go through Agnus, which provided DMA to all the other chips. (See the modern PC design here, light years ahead of its time). Agnus had the ability to give the Amiga hardware sprites (Via the Blitter, a sub component of Agnus), that also freed up the CPU.

Given the above, it is as clear as day that the Amiga totally thrashed the ST. I know, I had both. And I loved my Amiga....

:)
 
lololololol i remember these legendary debates long long long ago lol,i had both of thses machines...the atari was the better machine at first with a larger base of games,but as soon as games companies stopped "porting there games to the amiga" and take full advantage of the stereo sound and custom chips it soon became apparent that the amiga was the machine to design for....most games made specifically for the amiga trounced the Atari ST version especially in animation and sound department....off the top off my head i think the man that designed the amiga was jay miner,he worked at atari also with the likes of sam and jack tramiel(warner group),i think he got ****** off and went and designed a computer that was an "Atari killer" which he succeded to do....there were other big players like RJ mical who had a big influence on the amiga too....at the end of the day it dont matter how powefull your system is,its all about how good the games look and play and the amiga came out tops.....if ever there was a legendary machine in my eyes then they both are...i loved my Atari and my Amiga all those years ago...obviously selling one to buy the other....i must have spent 1000s of pounds on all those original games...never again!
Truly Great times of "originality":)

P.S. Even though the amiga could display 4096 colours on screen at once,it did not mean you could do it in games,you could only do it in HAM mode "hold and modify"(Still images) which was great if you used titles like "Deluxe paint" but as for gaming the amiga could display 32 colours on screen at once where the Atari ST could only display 16 colours on screen at once while gaming...

As for the so called Amiga beating Atari STE with the so called blitter chip...well it did not make a difference,the technology was there but the support wasnt...the amiga was king of the 16 bit era,even those stupid consoles like the megadrive a snes was not a patch on the amiga,thses consoles were aimed at the casual gamer...that is why i looked to japan and bought a Neo geo,a TRUE hardcore gamers choice :-)
 
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Anyone remember ST bash?? The Amiga was better than the Atari ST. The only reason anyone got the ST for christmas was because it was £299 in mums catalogue whereas the Amiga 500 was £399.
 
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Just a pity Commodore mucked it all up by taking too long to launch a true replacement to the A500 and when they did muddy the water by replacing it with two machines.

If they could have launched the A1200 a year earlier rather than the A600 and also forgotten the CD32 then they may have been still in the market. Instead by the time A1200 has got cheap enough the hype for the PS1 was too strong. Also by launching the CD32 it confused the gamers. Previously you could persuade your parents to buy you an Amiga so you could do your home work on it and then spend all your time playing Sensible Soccer, Syndicate etc but your parents were less likely to buy a pure games machine. In the end neither got a big enough market to succeed
 
Anyone remember those Amiga games which had thousands of colours onscreen at once by tricking the hardware into HAM mode or something. I think Agony, Lionheart, Unreal & several others did some amazing technical tricks. Then the Demo scene as well contained some incredible stuff like Odyssey (5 disc demo).

Some guys still support it to this day by writing hard drive installation scripts which require you to own the original floppy disk so you can virtually eliminate loading times.
 
Still got my amiga A500 :D along with a shoebox full of games, including cannon fodder, turrikan, rainbow something or rather, new zealend story, aliens, syndicate.......um......and loads loads more :D
 
mrbios said:
Thats the one :D
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Haha! I don't think I ever got too far in it *tries to remember* I kept dying somewhere, and I never did get past it.
I've just remembered 'the Quavers game', that brings back fond memories. :D

Walkers has since bought the Quavers brand and Colin Curly is no longer used as a mascot
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Silly fools :( When did this happen ? :confused:
 
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This thread got me thinking about my first ever computer which was an atari ste. I missed it so much i just went and bought one of that auction site for £15 for a bit of nostalgia!
 
I was given an Atari STFM from my sisters ex-bloke, along with an external floppy drive and a shed-load of boring-but-probably-expensive desktop publishing and gfx editing software that I never touched - I dont think he realised that I wanted it for games \o/. I even had the monochrome hi-res monitor although I seem to remember only one game I had that supported it - a flight sim called 'Jet' that ran so slowly in high-res you could literally count the frames, hardly surprise really as the monitor wasnt designed with gaming in mind. Anyway, still got the ST somewhere, although it hasnt been turned on in about 15 years. Always wanted an Amiga though :(
 
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say no more ... :D
 
Amiga A500 owner.

Bought it from Dixons for £399 in 1988 and got a free copy of Wizball thrown in.
Paid another £150 for the 512KB RAM & Battery upgrade, so I could play Dragons Lair.

Those were the days, showing everyone how amazing Rocket Ranger was.

The ST was a good machine and thanks to its built in Midi interface, it was popular amongst musicians, but it couldn't compete as a games machine with the Amiga, once programmers got to grips with it.
 
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