Amiga Games - History

History

From the Amiga's introduction in late 1985, through to the early 1990s, Amiga games were developed in parallel with the Atari ST as both machines utilized the Motorola 68000 CPU. The Atari ST was, by default the industry's primary focus for 16-bit games development because it initially had a larger user base than the Amiga. Additionally, developers found it easier to develop for, and it was easier to port from ST to Amiga than the other way. This was due in part to the ST's minimalist hardware design, which consisted of the 68000 CPU which controlled a bitmapped framebuffer chip called Shifter. The ST's graphics hardware was similar to previous computers, such as the Apple II or ZX Spectrum, which made the transition to 16-bit easier. In contrast, the Amiga uses 2 chips to form its graphics hardware, making it a more complex architecture than previous generation of computers. This made programming the Amiga a harder task in comparison to the conventional design of the ST.

A major proportion of games developed from 1985 to 1988 were written specifically for ST, then converted to the Amiga. As a result, many Amiga games of this period were, in most cases, identical to the ST version. These games were usually called "straight ports" and did not utilize Amiga specific features, such as the blitter and hardware sprites (useful for animations), copper (useful for raster effects) and superior color capabilities (the Amiga has larger color palette and can display more colors at the same time). Additionally, games that did not make use of the Amiga's hardware often ran slower on the Amiga because the ST's CPU was clocked slightly higher at 8 MHz versus the Amiga's 7.09 MHz. This went against the Amiga's design philosophy of using hardware acceleration to reduce the load on the CPU. The only major difference in these games were apparent in audio effects and in-game music. The Amiga used digitally sampled audio for realistic sound and music, while ST used a Programmable Sound Generator, which were used in older 8-bit computers.

The ST continued to be the dominant machine until the introduction of the Amiga 500 in early 1987. The Amiga 500 allowed the Amiga platform to compete with the ST on price, and with increased sales the gaming industry (mostly in Europe) gradually shifted its focus to the Amiga. By 1988, an increasing number of games were developed specifically for the Amiga. Games of this period began to show the Amiga's power, as programmers became more familiar with its architecture.

Games developed on the Amiga often had to be scaled back for the ST, due to the limitations of its graphics hardware, as such these games would often have fewer colors and less detailed background graphics which gave the Amiga a distinct advantage in head to head comparisons with the ST, reversing the previous trend. At this point in time, the Atari ST began its decline in the 16-bit games market. Atari responded by releasing the Atari STE in 1989, an "enhanced" version of the ST to match the specification of the Amiga 500 by adding a blitter, more colors and DMA driven digital audio. Unfortunately for the STE, the Amiga had already captured the market, and developers were reluctant to write software for the STE, preferring to stick with the larger established ST userbase.

Meanwhile, Commodore boosted sales of the Amiga in the UK by bundling A500s with a games package, the first being the "Batman Pack" in 1989. The Batman package was conceived by the Managing Director of Commodore UK, David Pleasance. Most bundles consisted of popular games of the time or games with some television or film licence. These packs helped the Amiga become the most popular 16-bit games computer in the UK.

At its zenith in the early 1990s, the Amiga continued to be the platform of choice of many games development companies. At that time many games were released first on the Amiga, before being converted to other formats.