Re: Games: Apple IIgs vs. Atari ST vs. Amiga

[heuser.marcus@freenet.de]

> Here's a question that I'm sure has come up before, but I've got to ask
> anyway.  When it came to games, which system had the best ports: The
> Apple IIgs, Atari ST, or Amiga?  I'm not talking about the largest
> number of games, or which system got the best variety of games, I'm
> talking about when it came to games that were ported to all three
> systems (and there were several), which system got the best port?  All
> three systems had similar graphical and sound capabilities (although
> the IIgs ran slower than the Amiga or ST), so they should have been
> able to pull off near identcal ports.
>
> I'm really curious as to what most people's experience has been.  To me
> it really doesn't matter since I have all three systems hooked up.  I
> tend to play the game on which ever system I'm 'taken with' at the
> time.  I do tend to favor the IIgs, but that's just because I'm a long
> time Apple user. :)

As to your question which system had the best ports: None.

Ports were - like Xerxes wrote - oriented at the lowest common
denominator - which was the Atari, hardware wise. It's only usable
color mode was 320x200x16 (with raster line interrupts up to 512
colors) and a cheap standard sound chip by GI.

Some titles had small enhancements like Dungeon Master (developed with
mono sound on the Atari, it had stereo sound on the Amiga and AFAIK on
the GS) or the Cinemaware-games that sported some colors more on the
Amiga.

But for the most part the Amiga was under-utilized so you could say its
got the worst ports...

I had no GS at the time but I know now that it is incredible slow
compared to the 68000-machines - IF(!) you don't code in assembly or
have an accelerator - which games didn't usually expect at the time.
Of course the GS has other qualities (like a realtime clock and slots
in each and every machine, unlike the competitors) but they are mostly
not game oriented.

The problem is, that the 16-bit-era was the start of the end of
assembly coding. The games were for the most part coded in C or even
higher level languages. And here the 68000-based machines had a
noticeably advantage, speed-wise.

After nearly three years with an Amiga I switched 1991 to PCs (because
of Ultima VI) and never really looked back. At least not until 15 years
later when I rediscovered how much fun one can have with an inferior
platform ;-)

A lot of people whine at the uniformity and non-creativity of modern
games - in my opinion they should go back to the roots and have a look
at the first half of the eighties.

There were so many new and exciting ideas, for example lots of
different role playing games, (graphical) adventures with scenarios
people never saw again in games, the invention of action-adventures and
also straight arcade ports.

The reason is that there were so many companies and so many systems out
there. This meant of course the x-th Pac Man or Space Invaders clone
but on the other hand many, many more ideas flooded the market. Most
game genres were invented at the time and still exist.

But over the years there has been an enormous consolidation resulting
in only one major system for PCs (Windows) and three game console
manufacturers (Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft - the latter trying to
unite game development for Xbox and PC) which actually decide which
games can be published on the systems. Sony, for example, blocked for
several years the development of RPGs with two-dimensional graphics for
the Playstation. They wanted to show off the 3D capabilities - but
restricted creativity as a by-product.

Maybe history will repeat itself but I really doubt it as game creation
gets more and more expensive and companies operate less and less on
risk.

bye
Marcus