Xref: utzoo rec.games.video:2597 comp.sys.amiga:32947 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!lll-winken!uunet!mcvax!ukc!tcdcs!vax1!rwallace From: rwallace@vax1.tcd.ie Newsgroups: rec.games.video,comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Amiga vs Sega Message-ID: <40513@vax1.tcd.ie> Date: 28 Apr 89 18:09:56 GMT References: <2075@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> <1690@wpi.wpi.edu> <11454@s.ms.uky.edu> <39867@vax1.tcd.ie> <11555@s.ms.uky.edu> Organization: Computer Laboratory, Trinity College Dublin Lines: 37 In article <11555@s.ms.uky.edu>, sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) writes: > In article <39867@vax1.tcd.ie> rwallace@vax1.tcd.ie writes: >>In article <11454@s.ms.uky.edu>, sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) writes: >>> I seriously doubt it. Sega has some really nice scaling blitter chips in >>> the arcade machines. It's why they can have all kinds of stuff rushing at >>> you at high speeds. > >>Nonsense. The Amiga is easily capable of doing arcade-perfect Outrun. > > Sigh. I wish people would actually read my stuff before they reply. > > The Sega coin-ops are like an Amiga cubed. They have far better > hardware than the Amiga does. The scaling blitters are what make the > blowaway high speed 3D graphics possible. Yes, the Amiga can store > bitmaps and yes it can blit them to the screen really fast, but nowhere > near as fast as the Sega hardware can. The Amiga doesn't even have the > bus bandwidth to keep up with the Sega games, much less the hardware! A Sega arcade machine pushed to its limits could probably outperform an Amiga pushed to its limits (even without the copper and sprites), though of course if you had a 68020 running in 32-bit RAM at the same time as the blitter was working it would be a different story ... this would still cost less than a Sega. My point is that both systems are capable of far more than they've ever been used for. It's like back on the Commodore 64 ... there was an article in a magazine that claimed a game called Beach-Head proved that "the aging 64 has now been pushed to its absolute limits" (Commodore User, can't remember the issue). Now there are games on the 64 that blow away anything dreamed of in those days. The Amiga has already done games (Roadwars, Interceptor, Space Harrier) that compare well with the arcade Out Run, and the machine is a lot younger and has a lot less of its potential tapped than the 64 was when that statement was made about it. And the Amiga has the advantage because thousands of programmers have access to the machine for many years so the pool of programming talent is far greater. "To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem" Russell Wallace, Trinity College, Dublin rwallace@vax1.tcd.ie