/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.7921051]

How come it didn't take off in America?

[Anonymous No.7921064]

>>7921051
Because Americans got Apple&Nintendo-pilled

[Anonymous No.7921067]

If you had to give a specific reason, it was the general incompetence of Commodore USA and their tendency to piss off retailers and software devs. This made everyone less welcoming to support the Amiga.

[Anonymous No.7921081]

>>7921051
>How come it didn't take off in America?

I want to say that the Amiga had poor distribution in North America. I also want to say that Jack Tramiel may have had a hand in that, given that he was at Atari and was trying to make the Atari a bigger brand name than Commodore when it came to home computers. But for whatever reason, the Amiga had a worse distribution chain than the previous Commodore 64 did. Amiga's were hard to find during the 90's here in Canada. But, I could find Atari ST machines and software on store shelves.

[Anonymous No.7921090]

>>7921081
ST production was largely shifted to Europe after 1988.

[Anonymous No.7921149]

>>7921090
>ST production was largely shifted to Europe after 1988.

Atari ST's were popular here in Canada, though. More than the Amiga. Not sure about the US.

[Anonymous No.7921160]

Support for application software was garbage. It didn't get much but one shitty port of WordPerfect and a shitty port of MS Works.

[Anonymous No.7921223]

Because it wasn’t a good work/productivity machine.

[Anonymous No.7921226]

>>7921223
>>7921160
In Europe you could find all the Amiga application software you'd ever need. It was purely an American issue with not supporting it properly.

[Anonymous No.7921254]

>>7921226
The software industry in the US was already firmly set up around the IBM compatible standard by the late 80s, there was simply no motivation or desire to produce stuff for a comparative niche platform on top of Commodore's fuckery as a company generally pissing everyone off.

[Anonymous No.7921264]

Americans bought the computers they were using at work, and the Amiga was never an office machine.

[Anonymous No.7921364]

It did take off but for video production, video toaster was really popular.

Games were all too euro jank for americans, you needed something as good as Mario, Sonic or Tetris for the system to take off.

[Anonymous No.7921379]

>>7921364
>Games were all too euro jank for americans, you needed something as good as Mario, Sonic or Tetris for the system to take off.
We had American games. It was the usual war sim and RPG stuff.

[Anonymous No.7921389]

>>7921051
Americans are stupid and ignorant consumer cattle so they had no need for computers until ebay was invented

[Anonymous No.7921405]

LucasArts, Microprose, and EA supported the Amiga plenty.

[Anonymous No.7921407]

Because Jack Tramiel is a rotten cocksucker.

[Anonymous No.7921427]

>>7921407
He was gone by the time the Amiga happened.

[Anonymous No.7921429]

>>7921223
I remember they were very good machines to subtitle anime with. It had inexpensive genlocks. Back then it was cool to have the video toaster.

[Anonymous No.7921435]

>>7921389
Do you realize how stupid this post is?

Nothing worse than millenials talking about shit they know nothing about, that's the majority of 4chan now.

[Anonymous No.7921446]

>>7921405
They did but the European market was a large part of it. Even though they were American developers, it was well understood that Europe was going to make up most of their Amiga sales rather than North America.

[Anonymous No.7921519]

>>7921427
See
>>7921081
Jack Tramiel was a filthy jew with a grudge

[Anonymous No.7921780]

I assume Commodore's shit tech support was an issue.

[Anonymous No.7921826]

>>7921149
In the French speaking part by any chance? I ask because the ST was also more popular in France than the Amiga. Maybe there's something that appeals to frogs and their colonists.

[Anonymous No.7921897]

Two questions

1. How much did it cost?
2. What else could you buy with that same money?

[Anonymous No.7921902]

>>7921364
Popular to the point that people called the entire PC a "video toaster" instead of Amiga.

[Anonymous No.7921912]

>>7921427
Even then, he was pretty much synonymous with why people hated Commodore/Atari.

[Anonymous No.7921926]

>>7921912
He was known to cheat retailers and software devs by refusing to pay them and then saying they should sue him if they want to get paid.

[Anonymous No.7922000]

>>7921379
This. Who needs Jet Set Willy when you've got Pool Of Radiance?

[Anonymous No.7922009]

>>7922000
>Jet Set Willy
>Amiga
Doit.

[Anonymous No.7922670]

>>7921051
Because by the time europoors could afford an Amiga they were becoming obsolete

[Anonymous No.7922868]

>>7922670
Amiga's greatest popularity was in Europe and you really need to take a break from 4chan. People spamming "europoor" is not actual reality.

[Anonymous No.7923003]

>>7922868
Understand you're an ESL europoor but if you're too retarded or underage to into reading comprehension you really need to leave

[Anonymous No.7923778]

>>7923003
The reason why Commodore targeted Europe so much was because they would pay up to almost double the price for their computers. This led to all kinds of shenanigans like American retailers secretly selling their USA stock to Europe as grey imports, and in the long run undermined American success of their products.

[Anonymous No.7924060]

>>7923778
it was more to do with the fact that Jack Tramiel had been born in Poland and always had a soft spot for Europe

[Anonymous No.7924081]

>>7922868
He is right inasmuch as Amiga was far cheaper than IBM PC-compatibles. USA was filled with Patrick Bateman office drone types who had a "PC for work, Nintendo for play" mentality.

[Anonymous No.7924091]

>>7924081
in Germany the Atari ST was the big office computer, in fact nobody had them as a home machine or used them to play games

[Anonymous No.7924247]

>>7921051

[Anonymous No.7924250]

>>7921051
Furries hadn't really got a foothold in the USA back then.

[Anonymous No.7924421]

>>7924060
No it bloody wasn't. They were specifically targetting Europe early on because greater demand and disgusting mark ups made them more money.
By the time of the Amiga, Tramiel had previously burnt so many bridges with retailers in the USA and coupled with their inability to market their machines properly there screwed their chances in that market.

[Anonymous No.7924454]

>>7924247
Kinda ironic if you consider that the Amiga was a white man's computer while the personal computer industry is entirely Jewish. Amiga didn't stand a chance.

[Anonymous No.7924563]

didn't Tramiel almost bankrupt Sierra so Ken Williams wouldn't develop games for Commodore machines out of spite and shifted their efforts completely to PCs?

[Anonymous No.7924574]

>>7924563
I think that was more because Sierra had shifted their efforts to the AGI engine which needed 128k of memory so it wasn't suited for a C64. Note that they did port many of their games to the Amiga although not very good ports, but ports nonetheless.

[Anonymous No.7924584]

The Amiga didn't get as much American support as it did in Europe, but what games it did get tended to be the usual slow paced war sims and RPGs not the wacky Zniggy demoscene platformers you saw in Europe.

[Anonymous No.7924585]

>>7924250
>mid 80s
>Furries hadn't really got a foothold in the USA back then.
"Funny animals enthusiasts" were a thing since like late 70s. Get educated.

[Anonymous No.7924589]

>>7924584
Surely the Euros made games that were far more ambitious than Zniggy-tier shit, right?

[Anonymous No.7924598]

>>7924584
that aside how come Americans seemed to be unable to do arcade-style games and just made Ultima-type shit?

[Anonymous No.7924606]

>>7924589
yes.bmp

[Anonymous No.7924634]

>>7924585
But they weren't yiffing in convention centers here back then.

[Anonymous No.7924676]

>>7924634
Irrelevant.
Also you don't really know.

[Anonymous No.7924907]

>>7921051
I never saw it for sale at a store. You wanted to buy an IBM or Apple, it was easy. But I had no idea who was selling the Amiga. I don't know the reason for this.
And then the other thing was, your school probably had a bunch of Apple IIs that you used for typing lessons and Oregon Trail. If your parents had white-collar jobs, they probably used an IBM (or IBM-compatible) at work.

[Anonymous No.7924929]

>>7924907
my dad saw one for sale at K-B Toys. It was like cool bouncing ball demo. what else does it do? no one knows.

[Anonymous No.7924947]

>>7924634
They absolutely were.

[Anonymous No.7925151]

>>7921407
indeed

[Anonymous No.7925262]

Because the c64 was too popular. Why do you want an amiga, we already have a commodore.

[Anonymous No.7925269]

>>7925262
yet there is also point of how C64 remained commercially relevant for longer in Europe than it did the US. most developers had dropped 8-bit systems for PCs by 89-90 while they were still going in Europe for another 3 or so years

[Anonymous No.7925919]

>>7924589
The most sophisticated and ambitious games on the C64 and Amiga were always European because Americans simply didn't spend enough time making games for those platforms.

[Anonymous No.7925938]

>>7922868
Cry harder. Cope harder. My dumb little europoor. The Amiga only started to take off in eurostan once they made a cheap poorfag version, and only really took off once they'd dropped the price. By then PCs had graphics and sound rivaling or superior to it and could do stuff other than playing games. Amigas were great for a few years when they were relatively powerful computers that had some decent games that were easy to pirate. Sucks you missed that and are assmad about it and parroting cope.

[Anonymous No.7926268]

>>7925919
>The most sophisticated and ambitious games on the C64 and Amiga were always European because Americans simply didn't spend enough time making games for those platforms.
The typical European game was cranked out assembly line style in 2-3 months, American devs took a lot more time. Maniac Mansion was an entire year of work.

[Anonymous No.7926328]

>>7926268
I meant as in they rarely targetted those platforms past 1986 (1990 in the Amiga's case) or so. They were also too enamoured with board games to make something as out there as The Sentinel or Captain Blood..

[Anonymous No.7926472]

>>7926328
>I meant as in they rarely targetted those platforms past 1986
C64 and Apple II were actively supported to around 1990.

[Anonymous No.7926501]

>>7924598
>>7926328
The video game crash is why. We just kind of forgot how to make arcade games, it was a skill that had to be slowly relearned.

[Anonymous No.7926558]

>>7926328
Captain Blood is an impressive game, it was quite complex on the Amiga and it's all the more impressive they managed to fit it onto the C64.

[Anonymous No.7926894]

>>7926501
omg so cringe.
You will immediately cease and not continue to access the site if you are under the age of 18.

[Anonymous No.7927339]

>>7921051
>American company makes a decent computer that fails sales-wise on home turf...
HOW?

[Anonymous No.7927350]

It’s only recently that Americans have come around to liking Britbong crap.

[Anonymous No.7927524]

>>7924634
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymFjgpcapx8

[Anonymous No.7927574]

It was hugely successful... for video production. Video Toaster was a massive hit.

That said, home computers in general didn't take off in the US until the mid-90s. They were too expensive, seen as nerd machines for people like engineers and doctors and not something for a working class family, and Americans were too spoiled by high quality Japanese games that dominated the market to downgrade to eurojank. It took until DOOM for normal working class consumers to take the PC seriously as a potential gaming machine, and it took The Sims for it to truly become a "necessary in every house" level hit over here.

[Anonymous No.7927580]

>>7921223
my dad had the 500 as his old work computer. he rediscovered it a few years ago and threw it out because the capacitors were broken i think

[Anonymous No.7927582]

>>7924598
Because we could afford to have actual arcades.

[Anonymous No.7927771]

>>7926268
LucasArts were something else

[Anonymous No.7928428]

>>7922009
There was an absolutely disgusting remake of Jet Set Willy II for Amiga where they replaced flip screen layout with slow scrolling with a really zoomed in camera.

[Anonymous No.7928434]

>>7924598
In the US computer audience consisted generally of tech savvy adults who were interested in slower but more immersive experiences. The market answered to their demand. In Europe computers were essencially consoles with a keyboard and targeted general audience including children. This lead to sweatshop budget game market flooded with cheap thrills. There were immersive Euro games but those were slightly more obscure.

[Anonymous No.7928458]

>>7927574
Ask parent for a computer in the early 90's and response is what do you need a computer for, its just a hard sell. The usual trick was to say its for homework.
Late 90's and you could get 486's for literally free, I got a complete pentium 60 system for something like $60 in 1997.

[Anonymous No.7928519]

>>7921051
> what is the video toaster?
you fat and bloated american pedophiles will continue to be a global embarrassment for all of eternity.

[Anonymous No.7928607]

>>7928519

[Anonymous No.7929085]

>>7921826
>In the French speaking part by any chance? I ask because the ST was also more popular in France than the Amiga. Maybe there's something that appeals to frogs and their colonists.

No I am not from Quebec. I am from British Columbia. Though I hear the ST was big in Quebec as well. For me personally, I knew like 3 or 4 different people with ST's. I didnn't know anyone with an Amiga. Though Amiga's were sold in Canada. The Commodore 64 was quite popular in Canada, I knew more people with a C64 than I did the Master System. Though Atari 800 had its fans. NES dominated the videogame market in Canada. Tandy's were also not uncommon. My first PC was a Tandy CoCo 3.

[Anonymous No.7929090]

>>7928519
>> what is the video toaster?

[Anonymous No.7929094]

>>7928434
There were lots of arcade games on computers in the early 80s, it's mostly post-video game crash when this disappeared.

[Anonymous No.7929101]

>>7921051
Consoles systems and games within economical reach and didn't have their speed fucked with. Hence, we didn't need cheap home computers with huge load times and often poor approximations of arcade/console games. Home computers were mostly for business/rich people, weird enthusiasts, and schools. They didn't really turn heads til CD-ROM drives and Doom were known. Shit you just couldn't do on consoles, and then the internet age.

[Anonymous No.7929102]

>>7929094
True. Before the crash American computer manufactures would really push the concept of a home computer as a universal device for the whole family, hence the heavy push of all varieties of games, mostly on cartridges to make them easier to use. This concept died down by the mid '80s and the market sobered up a little. Since the NES swooped in the market was effectively segregated in America into general audience console games and "sophisticated" audience computer games. It took the idea of a computer as a multimedia machine in the 90s to marry them back together.

[Anonymous No.7929103]

>>7929102
>Since the NES swooped in the market was effectively segregated in America into general audience console games and "sophisticated" audience computer games
The move of computer games away from arcade stuff was already happening before the NES was a thing in America.

[Anonymous No.7929110]

>>7929103
I agree, but rejuvenation of the console industry solidified that shift.

[Anonymous No.7929112]

still some stuff, there were late 80s arcade ports done by American developers for example Quicksilver did a couple shitty ports of Data East and SNK games and Novalogic did Bubble Bobble for the PC.

[Anonymous No.7929118]

>>7929112
Generally, C64 arcade ports were made in the UK and converted to disk/NTSC for the North American market. Occasionally they came from a US developer. More often they'd do Apple II or DOS ports of a game in the US as Europeans weren't familiar with those machines. I'm absolute certain that Marble Madness was the only Amiga arcade port developed in the US.

[Anonymous No.7929124]

lal go check out the American "port" of Ikari Warriors against the PAL port

[Anonymous No.7929126]

>>7929124
No port of it is particularly great. Hell, even the arcade game isn't exactly a classic if you ask me, but it stands way above any port and can only be ported so well due to its controls.

[Anonymous No.7929127]

>>7929124
Yes that was done by Quicksilver and they were shit. They were an Apple II-centered outfit and their C64 ports were poor. Although Ikari Warriors wasn't even the worst conversion they ever did, that would be Kid Niki on the C64.

[Anonymous No.7929129]

The NES Ikari Warrors sucks too because it was made by Micronics.

[Anonymous No.7929139]

>>7929094
>>7929102
Sierra for example made a lot of arcade games in the early 80s, by '84 they'd mostly dropped those to focus on the AGI adventure games although they still revisited the idea with Thexder and the updated version of Oil's Well.

[Anonymous No.7929183]

>>7929090
>when you're so europoor you need to look up burger shit, and then embarrass yourself.

[Anonymous No.7929249]

>>7921160
FinalWriter
WordWorth

[Anonymous No.7929343]

The Amiga was not the best at tile and sprite-based games due to its bitmap graphics; it was more suited for typical computer games where you needed a mouse and keyboard.

[Anonymous No.7929375]

>>7929183
>>when you're so europoor
Not from Europe.

>>7929183
>you need to look up burger shit,
I loved Wayne's World when I was 12. And Dana Carvey is wearing a Video Toaster shirt in the movie. The character Garth was meant to be really geek-y.

[Anonymous No.7929396]

>>7929375
>Dana Carvey

Also, Dana Carvey is the brother of Brad Carvey. Brad Carvey was the developer on Video Toaster.

[Anonymous No.7929472]

>>7927580
So recap it. Doit.

[Anonymous No.7929580]

>>7929472
>So recap it. Doit.

Do it yourself, or find a local electronics shop (or someone else) to do it? I don't see recapping an old-dead microcomputer as being a problem for any competent electrician.

[Anonymous No.7929584]

>>7929580
>recapping capacitors on an old-dead microcomputer

...is what I meant to say.

[Anonymous No.7929589]

>>7927339
Made by a literal Jew for starters

[Anonymous No.7929710]

>>7924598
slow Ultima-type shit is part of the reason why they had to make Doom so fast.