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From: tesst4@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Tobish E Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc,comp.sys.mac.misc,comp.sys.mac.games,comp.sys.amiga.games
Subject: Re: Mac and Amiga (Games--Macintosh vs A500)
Message-ID: <98707@unix.cis.pitt.edu>
Date: 4 Mar 91 01:24:58 GMT
References: <27253@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> <1991Mar3.223546.12173@rice.edu>
Reply-To: tesst4@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Tobish E Smith)
Organization: University of Pittsburgh, CIS
Lines: 39

Wow.  Bet you're going to get a lot of replies on this one!  Anyway, my
roommate had an Amiga 2000 w/ 40 meg HD and I have a Mac II (8 meg RAM,
100 meg HD).  My personal feelings after using his extensively is that
the Amgia just doesn't _feel_ right.  I don't know how to quantify this.
Hardware-wise, I thought, "Wow, maybe I made a mistake," since the Amiga
cost so much less.  But then I used the thing.  A feeling of amateurishness
pervaded the entire system: the keyboard, the mouse, the operating system,
the speed of the hard drive.  After using it, I realized _why_ the Mac costs
so much more.  I would have killed for this machine when I was in high school,
being a way-cool hacker dude on my Apple ][.  Indeed, this seems like a 
prime use for Amigas, based on the plethora of swollen-ego, flashy-graphics
pirates' intros to crcked games ("KRACKED BY THE MUTILATOR!!!!!" in zillions
of colors flashing on the screen while some rockin' tune blasts out of the
speakers).  And now, I suppose, I'm finally getting to the point of the
posting, namely, should you get one for games use?  Guess it depends on what
you want to play.  The upside of the Amiga, of course, is its ability to do
wondrous games.  The downsides are 1. the infuriatingly slow disk drives,
and 2. the copy protection on _everything_.  It's not bad enough that Steve's
hard drive seemed scarcely faster than my floppies.  We couldn't even 
install most games on the hard drive due to the copy-protection!  Battle
Squadron, a great game, took minutes to start a new game after you died.
Got you pretty grumpy real quick.  If you want to play adventures or RPGs
(Drakken is wonderful!), and you can live with the miserable i/o speed,
sure, get an Amiga.  If, however, you're more interested in exploiting 
its abilities to control many sprites and do great arcade games, go for
a Genesis, TG-16, or hell, even a Neo Geo instead.  The loading of the games
is instantaneous, the controllers are better, and it's cheaper (except for
the NeoGeo  ;-)  ).  In conclusion, I don't want to be too critical of the
Amiga itself.  The hardware inside is very nice.  However, almost all aspects
of the user interface (hardware and software), coupled with the slow drives,
really turned me off on the machine for now.  If these things improve (and
if the _standard_ screen resolution ever evolves beyond 320X200) I think the
Amiga will be a great machine.  Oh yeah.  The users should start being 
tres bitchy like Mac users about copy protection.  The amount of CP in the
Amiga world is staggering.  

Tob
tesst4@unix.cis.pitt.edu