Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Amiga Gaming Retrospective
Jeremy Reimer on ArsTechnica:
"The Amiga was born a game machine, but it entered a world where the video game industry was well-established and changing rapidly. Long gone were the days where a lone coder would stay up all night in his basement for six weeks and bang out a hit for the Atari 2600. Even the younger and smaller computer game industry had moved far beyond Roberta Williams putting floppy disks into ziplock bags and answering phone calls from players in her kitchen. The success of the Commodore 64 (and on the other side of the pond, the Sinclair Spectrum) meant that more money was available for computer game development, and it was a good thing too, as the more powerful 16-bit machines were starting to seriously test the limits of a one-man development team. For the first time, specialized careers were starting to emerge in game development. The Amiga's rich, 4096-color palette demanded people who were skilled artistically to create the sprites and backgrounds. The four-channel sampled sound chip cried out for musicians to make it sing. The larger size and complexity of the games required that someone other than the programmers be asked to test the games before they were released."
[read on]
"The Amiga was born a game machine, but it entered a world where the video game industry was well-established and changing rapidly. Long gone were the days where a lone coder would stay up all night in his basement for six weeks and bang out a hit for the Atari 2600. Even the younger and smaller computer game industry had moved far beyond Roberta Williams putting floppy disks into ziplock bags and answering phone calls from players in her kitchen. The success of the Commodore 64 (and on the other side of the pond, the Sinclair Spectrum) meant that more money was available for computer game development, and it was a good thing too, as the more powerful 16-bit machines were starting to seriously test the limits of a one-man development team. For the first time, specialized careers were starting to emerge in game development. The Amiga's rich, 4096-color palette demanded people who were skilled artistically to create the sprites and backgrounds. The four-channel sampled sound chip cried out for musicians to make it sing. The larger size and complexity of the games required that someone other than the programmers be asked to test the games before they were released."
[read on]
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