Game Sack

[elmer]

Above average for sure.  What a failed console. 

I really don't think that you can consider it a "console".

It was just Commodore's desperate attempt to repackage the Amiga 1200, and then quickly sell a few in the hope of staving off bankruptcy.

They tried exactly the same thing with the Europe-only Commodore 64GS console.

The Amiga was amazing when it came out in 1985 ... but it was looking pretty underpowered as soon as the 4th-gen consoles came out.

The AGA upgrade in 1992's Amiga 1200 still left it lagging behind in almost every way.

[NightWolve]

Hey, so Joe did find a gem on that thing, that 1940-styled Capcom-looking shooter looks like it might be worth the trouble of actually pirating and finding an emulator for!

I do not know why, but jump/timed-in links do not work anymore with Game Sack links or maybe Youtube in general - it only takes you, at best, halfway into the video. I think the ads cause a conflict.

So the game I'm referring to is 31:38 into it and it's called "Banshee" - you'll have to scroll to that point yourself. Seems the timed links work if the value is less than half the length of the video though, at least, that's what I found... Weird.

But yeah, that vertical shooter looks interesting, though it's a shame they chose not to add kickin' background music tracks to the levels... The background story, like Joe says, is pretty absurdly ridiculous but in a somewhat good lulz-worthy way. "The Sytx Empire" - LMAO!

[Dicer]

Above average for sure.  What a failed console. 

I really don't think that you can consider it a "console".

It was just Commodore's desperate attempt to repackage the Amiga 1200, and then quickly sell a few in the hope of staving off bankruptcy.

They tried exactly the same thing with the Europe-only Commodore 64GS console.

The Amiga was amazing when it came out in 1985 ... but it was looking pretty underpowered as soon as the 4th-gen consoles came out.

The AGA upgrade in 1992's Amiga 1200 still left it lagging behind in almost every way.

If only AAA happened maybe they would have rebounded, but they got stupid and cheap.

[ccovell]

A good episode, guys.  My comments:

The 1st dirty secret is: Most (meaning >50%) Amiga games are pretty bad & derivative.  The many great games are absolutely stellar, but the average ones, pee-yew!  A lot of European coders were overly fixated on cloning Rainbow Islands / Sonic  "fruit" collecting paradigms or Gradius+Darius half-breeds, but missing out on the things that made those 4 games great.

The 2nd dirty secret is: the stock Motorola 68000 CPU found in the Genesis, Amiga, Atari ST, and Jaguar already IS 32-bits, so there isn't a quantum leap from '80s arcade/Genesis games to CD-32 games, which is what you're noticing.  All 680x0s up to the 68030 lacked a floating-point math coprocessor, meaning 3D games will suffer in speed on any system that uses these CPUs (a more important factor, I think.)  Higher-spec 680x0 processors added wider data lines (and multiplication widths) which is mainly a speed increase, not an architectural one.

If people look at external pins only, then the 68000 (Genesis) is 16-bit, and the 65c816 (SNES) 8-bit.  If people look at the internal registers (ie, what the programmer sees) then the Genesis is 32-bit, and the SNES 16-bit.  Unfortunately, we're in a weird world where both the Genesis and SNES were "called" 16-bit systems.

OK, about the video: You guys went on and on about the crappy CD32 pad, but you never mentioned the excellent Competition Pro pad, which you obviously had.

... and, "uninhindered"  ?  ;-D

[elmer]

The 1st dirty secret is: Most (meaning >50%) Amiga games are pretty bad & derivative.  The many great games are absolutely stellar, but the average ones, pee-yew!

Can you recommend any particularly good games?

I came across my Amiga 1200 in the garage this weekend and am looking for a reason to plug it in again. 

You never know ... perhaps Game Sack will run out of console stories someday, and Joe will start looking at home computer games!

[BigusSchmuck]

The 1st dirty secret is: Most (meaning >50%) Amiga games are pretty bad & derivative.  The many great games are absolutely stellar, but the average ones, pee-yew!

Can you recommend any particularly good games?

I came across my Amiga 1200 in the garage this weekend and am looking for a reason to plug it in again. 

You never know ... perhaps Game Sack will run out of console stories someday, and Joe will start looking at home computer games!

Turrican and Turrican 2. Yeah. Go play them now! And bump that music!

[ClodBuster]

I think I've heard AGA before, but what's AAA?

One or two years ago, I thought about getting an Amiga 1200 to relive some childhood memories. However, before I could do that, I tried Amiga Forever, which is a commercial Amiga emulator for PC. It is officially sanctioned by whoever is now holding the rights for the old Commodore hard- and software, thus it includes the OS and some games to start with.

Trying Amiga Forever made me realize that my enjoyment in Amiga games isn't as high as I anticipated.

[MrBroadway]

[edited on account of stupidity]

[elmer]

I think I've heard AGA before, but what's AAA?

"AAA" was the super-duper graphics chipset for the next-gen Amiga 1200 that Commodore promised ... and never delivered.

"AGA" was the relatively minor update that they actually ended up shipping.

"AGA" gave you 8-bitplanes instead of the original 6 ... so 1 256-color screen, or 1 64-color-layer plus 1 4-color layer (I think that you saw that mode in one of the shoot-em-ups), or various other combinations.

[Joe Redifer]

OK, about the video: You guys went on and on about the crappy CD32 pad, but you never mentioned the excellent Competition Pro pad, which you obviously had.

This episode wasn't about 3rd party peripherals, it was about the real deal. I don't think I would call it "excellent". Better than the stock pad? Obviously. But the Genesis 3-button form factor rip-off turned me off. Too bad real Genesis controllers like the 6-button can't be used with games that use more than a single button.

[NightWolve]

If people look at external pins only, then the 68000 (Genesis) is 16-bit, and the 65c816 (SNES) 8-bit.  If people look at the internal registers (ie, what the programmer sees) then the Genesis is 32-bit, and the SNES 16-bit.  Unfortunately, we're in a weird world where both the Genesis and SNES were "called" 16-bit systems.

That's an interesting point. So the Motorolla 68000 is technically a 32-bit CPU and you have 32-bit internal registers, but the way it was interfaced with the rest of the motherboard on a console like Sega Genesis, it effectively was limited down to 16-bit ? Yeah, I think I always thought it was 16-bit...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_68000

Just read that, I see, so what's referred to as the external data bus is 16-bit and it seems they're referring to it as a hybrid 16/32-bit CPU there. So really, yeah, Sega could've gone around and hyped the Genesis as a 32-bit machine I guess.

[ccovell]

Just read that, I see, so what's referred to as the external data bus is 16-bit and it seems they're referring to it as a hybrid 16/32-bit CPU there. So really, yeah, Sega could've gone around and hyped the Genesis as a 32-bit machine I guess.

And then Nintendo could have gone around and hyped the SNES as 8-bit, like... the... uh, TurboGrafx.

[technozombie]

Looking forward to weekly episodes. I just can't enough of Dave!

[crazydean]

Thanks for Game Sack, Joe. I've been a fan for a while now, and I have enjoyed every episode. Like a lot of people, the TG16 was completely unknown to me until a couple years ago. Without Game Sack, I probably wouldn't have bought one. Also, the closing skit this week was one of my favorites.

[DragonmasterDan]

Well we didn't have an NTSC console to test compatibility with. We did run across a couple games that were NTSC only... Zool and Flink. They would not run in PAL mode. You can boot the console into "NTSC" which is using the term VERY loosely. It runs at NTSC timing (59.94 fields per second) but it still send the color information out as PAL. As a result, the games ran in black and white for me. I was able to find and download a PAL copy of Zool so I could play and record it in color. Could not source a PAL version of Flink to download. All copies uploaded that I could find were NTSC.

I don't recall what model PVM you have, but they're generally excellent at displaying weird signals. Did you hook it up to your video capture card or into a monitor?