Just wanted to add something RELEVANT to this thread...

I was just in EB with my housemate this morning, and he picked up a couple of games. The guy at the counter asked if he wanted to preorder Halo3 - and he said "NO - I don't want it". I was pretty shocked.

Asked him about it later, and he didn't like the beta at all - and it put him off Halo completely.

Go figure...

MikeB said: @ sienr Showing a game at naitive res. avoids the problem of pixelation, of course blurry mag scans help mask this. 480x640 isn't Lion Heart's native resolution, PAL resolutions were used for most games including LionHeart. goes to show the Amigas limited color pallette LionHeart for the Amiga 500 often had thousands of different colours on screen at once. The Snes could show max 256 colors at a time. The Amiga 1200, released the same year as the Snes had a pallette of 16.7 million colors of which due to the copper chip 262144 colors coud be displayed simultaneously.

Boy, how quickly do threads derail here at VGChartz!

The topic is about Microsoft and Halo 3 but I scroll down and see a debate on the technical merits of the Amiga's color palette!

Anyways, if that's the general direction, who am I to dissent?

OFF-TOPIC:

It's funny how Mac users talk trash about Windows crashing all the time; former Amiga users must be busting a gut right about now since that sucker simply didn't understand the meaning of the word "crash".

The Amiga was, for its time, light-years ahead of the competition, and bar none the most powerful video post-processing machine. Its 3D capabilities made it a staple of many animation houses, and its audio capabilities were unsurpassed. Hell, the Amiga was so advanced it used a 32-bit OS! Truly the machine to beat back in the day. Even today, years after the last Amiga was sold, it enjoys limited use in video pre- and post-production as well as for GIS/GPS/geological/topological surveys.

But that was then, this is now. The hardware did not evolve, PCs caught up and passed it, and the rest is history.

RIP.

@ sieanr

Amiga games looked great in PAL resolution, NTSC resolution games however sometimes resulted in small black borders above and below the screen. Note that TV sets at the time handled the graphics displaying differently, most Amiga games were optimised to look good on PAL TVs, that's why scanlines options were added to Console, Arcade and Amiga emulators to but better represent the original experience.



Not the PAL Snes, you are talking about the Japanese NTSC Super Famicom.



I think the Amiga 500 has more games than the Snes, with regard to the games being better or not depends on personal taste.

Some example Amiga 500 games (more diversity):

It Came From The Desert:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=KTWd_eyAmgQ

Super Cars 2
http://youtube.com/watch?v=iWzlO7HkF3w

North and South
http://youtube.com/watch?v=CHcoemBuUZ0

Superfrog
http://youtube.com/watch?v=5hrLz3O5om8

Alien Breed
http://youtube.com/watch?v=lo5kDLveUjs

Gobliins 2

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Iy4PBkbd0aE 

MikeB said: @ sieanr Ok. That scalling is really what makes it look worse than Dynamite Headdy, or Donkey Kong Country, or Sonic 3... No way the Amiga wasn't better than those systems! And its not running at PAl, aka 560 either. Amiga games looked great in PAL resolution, NTSC resolution games however sometimes resulted in small black borders above and below the screen. Note that TV sets at the time handled the graphics displaying differently, most Amiga games were optimised to look good on PAL TVs, that's why scanlines options were added to Console, Arcade and Amiga emulators to but better represent the original experience. Oh, and too bad the Amiga 1200 came out 2 years after the SNES Not the PAL Snes, you are talking about the Japanese NTSC Super Famicom. But like I said before, all these specs didn't help the Amiga gain more, and better games. I think the Amiga 500 has more games than the Snes, with regard to the games being better or not depends on personal taste. Some example Amiga 500 games (more diversity): It Came From The Desert: http://youtube.com/watch?v=KTWd_eyAmgQ Super Cars 2 http://youtube.com/watch?v=iWzlO7HkF3w North and South http://youtube.com/watch?v=CHcoemBuUZ0 Superfrog http://youtube.com/watch?v=5hrLz3O5om8 Alien Breed http://youtube.com/watch?v=lo5kDLveUjs Gobliins 2 http://youtube.com/watch?v=Iy4PBkbd0aE

 You have a list of amiga games? I'm actually curious. Wikipedia doesn't have a page for them. BTW, cheap-a** homebrew games shouldn't count, since you are evidently referring to polished, professional products.

cgnobody said: Ign realease this photo of the Halo 3 packaging recently which reveals that Microsofts 'flagship' game, Halo 3, has content that exceeds the 9GB DVD format of their console. http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/795/795238p1.html even though this means that we'll be gettign our moneys worth for that $60+, microsoft may have to re-explain their possition on NOT need a larger storage media like Blu-Ray to ensure the release of their future games. rockstar has also mentioned difficulty while trying to compress their upcomming game, GTAIV, on to ONE 9GB DVD. It appears that microsoft spoke too soon that game developers have no need for a 25+ GB storage media. I think MS owes the developers and us, the consummers, an explaination as to what thier possition is now. Your thoughts?

 

My thoughts? That you're a tool and a closet ps3 fanboy that was owned by some incorrect pictures. 

Most of the arguments for DVD drives versus high def opticals could be used for CD drives versus DVD drives. Heck, they could be used for CD drives versus high def opticals today. Why in the world did anyone ever move from CD's?

JSF said: Most of the arguments for DVD drives versus high def opticals could be used for CD drives versus DVD drives. Heck, they could be used for CD drives versus high def opticals today. Why in the world did anyone ever move from CD's?

No, the comparisons don't fit for a few reasons.

- CDs didn't play movies. DVDs rode in on the back of a dying VHS format.

- CDs are too small for multimedia, the real boon of the late 20th century in computing. As video became prevalent, CDs were just inadequate.

- DVD was a single format and consumers were waiting for a strong replacement to VHS. DVD also DID NOT require 80% of the population to buy a new television set. This cannot be emphasized enough. People are having to spend $2k+ to swap out their home theatre to adopt one of two COMPETING formats.

- While we will see something replace DVD down the road, consumers are not going to be ready to adopt something en masse until 2011 or so. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD have a long way to go.

Compare it to this: How would the PS1 have done if they adopted DVD technology, launched late because of it, and jacked the price to $500 or $600?

Consumers just aren't ready for this technology yet. DVD didn't really get going for three years and even then, the cost of admission was only 1/10th of the cost of Blu-Ray or HD-DVD once you factor in the necessary components you need to utilize the formats.

CD's played VCD's, which were huge in Asia but didn't quite catch on in the States.  CD's obviously could 
hold and still hold music. Why are you bringing up multimedia anyway when it seems like you guys just want to talk storage when defending DVD?

CD drives were in the Dreamcast, which was also a part of the previous generation of consoles. If the Dreamcast was capable of PS2-type games with a CD drive, why didn't we stick with CD?

What do you guys have installed on your computers? CD drives or DVD drives?  If you have DVD, why did you move from CD?

BTW, I also want to mention that DVD drives were still expensive and had low market penetration at the time 
of the PS2's debut.  There was a format battle over DVD: DVD-R versus DVD+R.  The PS2, when it first came 
out, had a DVD-R drive, I believe.  DVD-R is still considered by many today to be the better format on which to 
burn game backups because it supposedly keeps data together better so that the drive doesn't have to 
skip around the disc as much. 

JSF said: CD's played VCD's, which were huge in Asia but didn't quite catch on in the States. Why are you bringing up multimedia anyway when it seems like you guys just want to talk storage when defending DVD? CD drives were in the Dreamcast, which was also a part of the previous generation of consoles. If the Dreamcast was capable of PS2-type games with a CD drive, why didn't we stick with CD? What do you guys have installed on your computers? CD drives or DVD drives?  If you have DVD, why did you move from CD? BTW, I also want to mention that DVD drives were still expensive and had low market penetration at the time  of the PS2's debut.  There was a format battle over DVD: DVD-R versus DVD+R.  The PS2, when it first came  out, had a DVD-R drive, I believe.  DVD-R is still considered by many today to be the better format on which to  burn game backups because it supposedly keeps data together better so that the drive doesn't have to  skip around the disc as much.Â

- VCDs were not very capable. The movie industry needed something more.

- The Dreamcast did not use a CD drive.

- Of course most of us have DVD drives. I don't see your point. The computer industry was probably the last to catch onto the DVD format and that's because most people didn't really have a need for it. Once the drives were dirt cheap, there was no reason to stick with CD.

- DVD was well on its way to market domination when the PS2 released. Players were down around $150 and they were selling by the boatload.

- The PS2 neither has a DVD-R or a DVD+R drive. Those are recordable formats. The PS2 uses a DVD-ROM drive so that "format war" had absolutely nothing to do with actually playing discs, just burning them. That's a huge difference in the eyes of consumers.

Oh, and if you don't believe me about DVD players... Around 8.5m DVD players were sold in the year 2000 and almost 13m were sold in 2001. The PS2 wasn't using cutting edge tech when it released; many consumers were already snatching up DVD players by that time. It was a much different situation than the PS3, Blu-Ray, and HD-DVD.

http://www.swivel.com/data_sets/spreadsheet/1004201