If I'm not mistaken, Vogons was started by DosBox contributors. So it was historically focused on DOS gaming.

These systems were not so popular, but Amiga games in many ways were better as well as some on mac.

I think when it comes to vintage hardware, there is a mentality that sees anything "different" as more attractive. Hence, while Macs and Amiga were less popular than contemporary PCs, I feel like they are way more popular with collectors and retrogamers. At least it feels that way whenever you come to Reddit, YouTube or Twitter. Hell, even PowerPC Macs seem to be more interesting to a lot of people than a 486.

So, to me, Vogons is one of the few places where people don't consider beige 486 or Pentium machines "boring". And maybe that's why other platforms don't get too much attention here — both Amiga and vintage Apple machines have a much larger community in other places.

Hope that makes sense to you 😀

Because it would end up on debates of which Turrican / Escape Velocity was best 😀

http://www.amiga.org
http://www.amibay.com

There are already strong communities for these platforms. Also: PC and Amiga / Atari were in different demographics and eras.

I personally take no interest whatsoever in platforms other than PC.

jheronimus wrote:

If I'm not mistaken, Vogons was started by DosBox contributors. So it was historically focused on DOS gaming. […]
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If I'm not mistaken, Vogons was started by DosBox contributors. So it was historically focused on DOS gaming.

These systems were not so popular, but Amiga games in many ways were better as well as some on mac.

I think when it comes to vintage hardware, there is a mentality that sees anything "different" as more attractive. Hence, while Macs and Amiga were less popular than contemporary PCs, I feel like they are way more popular with collectors and retrogamers. At least it feels that way whenever you come to Reddit, YouTube or Twitter. Hell, even PowerPC Macs seem to be more interesting to a lot of people than a 486.

So, to me, Vogons is one of the few places where people don't consider beige 486 or Pentium machines "boring". And maybe that's why other platforms don't get too much attention here — both Amiga and vintage Apple machines have a much larger community in other places.

Hope that makes sense to you 😀

PeterLI wrote:

http://www.amiga.org http://www.amibay.com […]
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http://www.amiga.org
http://www.amibay.com

There are already strong communities for these platforms. Also: PC and Amiga / Atari were in different demographics and eras.

I personally take no interest whatsoever in platforms other than PC.

^^This basically sums up the more important stuff right there.

If I want to talk about my Amiga, there's tons of places for me to go to.
But when it comes to PC hardware, many of the other places aren't really interested.

For the reasons mentioned (but not excluding any other reasons) I'm glad that over here it's kinda reversed. And it's not forbidden or some hidden swearword either.

VOGONS is an old pc sanctuary, let's keep it that way 😀

Amiga guys would just go "PC suxx" anyway 😉

There are a limited number of options when it comes to variations on the Amiga and Mac platforms. The PC is infinitely customisable so there's a he'll of a lot more to talk about.

Scali wrote:

Amiga guys would just go "PC suxx" anyway 😉

And they would be right too, but then you and reenigne and trixster and others went on and made 8088MPH....

Wise words, guys. Many moons ago, I also found my way to vogons thanks to DOSBox.
It was one of the few places where people actually helped each others to repair and set-up machines that where otherwhere considered scrap or worthless stuff.
Saying that, I'm still astonished how polite and open minded people on vogons are. As silly as it may sound, but that's not a matter of course in forums.

ScoutPilot19 wrote:

I wonder, why on this site there's little attention to old macs on no at all to amiga games ?

I'm not sure, but I think that's because there are already many fan sites for those.
Nothing against diversity, though, at times I'd also like to see other platforms beeing discussed, like say Sharp MZ series or PC-98.

Perhaps the little attention is also caused because these systems are better documented and well emulated.
Other factors may also apply. In Europe the Macintosh wasn't as popular as the PC was (was quite expensive there).

The Amiga on the other hand was quite popular, but not so much as a desktop computer.
Yes, the A500 was quite popular among gamers/coders, but is nowadays viewed more like a games console.

The "full-featured" Amigas, like A1000 or A1500/A2000, were more expensive and marketed towards professional users.
They were used in TV broadcasting, animation and music, I think (also for CAD or automation).

Also, PC parts are actually still widely available, so there's an interest to re-built boxes to play games from a certain generation.

ScoutPilot19 wrote:

These systems were not so popular, but Amiga games in many ways were better as well as some on mac.

Generally speaking, that's right. But it really depends on the genres also. The IBM PC was quite good in simulations and adventures.

For examples, early adventures (plain text) played well on the IBM PC. Image quality was very crisp on the monochrome display,
as the font provided by MDA/Hercules was quite hi-res for it's day (9x14, 80x25).

Same for simulations. MS Flight Simulator was quite sophisticated for it's time and played well on the average business graphics @720x348 (Hercules).
You couldn't pull of something like that on a stock C64 or Atari 800. Other positive examples were games with a high depth of complexity, like SimCity and chess games.

Later games from the VGA era even somtimes surpassed the Amiga/Atari in graphics.
Adventure titles like Wonderland or Frederik Pohl's Gateway offered 800x600 resolution and orchestral music (MT-32).

Late DOS games like ST:TNG - A Finay Unity even topped that and offered 1024x768 and higher resolutions.
And other games, like Toonstruck or The Hohlenwelt Saga supported at least 640x400 in 256 colours.

Anyway, I'm not saying that the PC is superior. Just different, as it used to have various screen modes and different music.

Scrolling intensive games (shmups, action) were often better on Amiga, while Mac versions of older games from the 80s or early 90s had higher
resolutions and more realistic sound, since the original Macintosh had a default resolution of 512x342 and built-in audio support (PCM, not just a beeper).

In contrast, early VGA games on PC ran at 320x200 in 256 colours. Mac games started out on a higher level and later even adopted the 640x480 resolution and +256 colours.
There's also another notable difference: Unlike the PC (with DOS), the Macintosh had a more complex OS that could do dithering (QuickDraw API, perhaps also re-sizing ?).

So adding a more detailed graphics/more colours to a Mac game wasn't considered a waste as it was on the PC (many early VGA cards had 8bit RAMDACs and 256KB).
With the arrival of Windows games (esp. f. Win95) both platforms offered equally good visuals. Music was still a bit different, though.

Sorry for the long post, I hope I haven't bored you. 😅
I'm really fascinated by all these non-PC platforms. My point simply was that the PC was quite capable for certain things.

Between 1987 and 1992. The majority of all gamers in Denmark, would not even touch a PC. (even consoles suffered here)
In USA, nobody really used the Amiga for anything else than productivity, mission-critical, music and art production.
Even NASA used them for launch of the space shuttle.

Narrow focus is good. There's a lot of complex low level hardware stuff discussed here which will make no sense to Mac or Amiga fans. How to play games is not the same as how to get games to play.

Depends on if we are talking about WHD loader, non-Autoconf supported hardware, getting PCMCIA-SCSI controllers to work, getting 4gb drives to work without the controller supporting more than 512mb or any other amiga related stuff like recapping and tempering with kickroms. Homemade scandoublers are discussed too, on various amiga sites. Yeah....

On the other hand. Nearly 90% of all Amiga discussions is just about "Were to get that game" as you described it.
(Hrrr'mmm.... Piracy of abandonware)

I wasn't saying Amiga fans are dumb, just that the two architectures are so different it will be hard to justify covering both on the same forum.

eta: also my second point wasn't about software piracy, but about the focus of this forum, which isn't gameplay strategy, cheat codes, maps, etc., but getting old games to run on old hardware (real or emulated)

Just to add on, I'm a big fan of just about every non-PC "retro computer architecture". But Vogons, because of it's original emphasis on DOSbox, is, by its nature, a site about PC-based gaming. There are plenty of other sites out there that concentrate on Mac, Amiga, Atari, etc. And I'm on most of them! But Vogons is where I come for PC based retro gaming.

The community's really about PC games, from getting them to work on new systems, to emulation and retro hardware. There are only two areas and about 200 topics that aren't directly related to those things, besides Milliways. 😀

Amiga is very retro cool, but it predates me by a bit. They're sure not lacking in presence elsewhere.

keropi wrote:

VOGONS is an old pc sanctuary, let's keep it that way 😀

^^This

Jo22 wrote:

Wise words, guys. Many moons ago, I also found my way to vogons thanks to DOSBox.
It was one of the few places where people actually helped each others to repair and set-up machines that where otherwhere considered scrap or worthless stuff.

This is why I ended up here also. And apparently people found eachother here and decided to stick around for a bit. 😜

Saying that, I'm still astonished how polite and open minded people on vogons are. As silly as it may sound, but that's not a matter of course in forums.

Likewise.

ScoutPilot19 wrote:

I wonder, why on this site there's little attention to old macs on no at all to amiga games ?

I'm not sure, but I think that's because there are already many fan sites for those.

I think so as well.

Perhaps the little attention is also caused because these systems are better documented and well emulated.
Other factors may also apply. In Europe the Macintosh wasn't as popular as the PC was (was quite expensive there).

I think part of the story may be that PCs are, in a way, more suitable for people who like to try out lots of different things and like to fiddle around for a bit, or build or fix stuff. Both hardware and software PC architecture is a lot more flexible with way more different components and options to chose from 😀

I suppose Amigas are most interesting for people who want to tinker with software development, where PCs are most interesting for people who want to tinker with hardware configurations.

I guess for Mac and Amiga/Atari are other forums that focus on these machines with specialists. That's what Vogons is for old DOS stuff (hardware+software).
Many contributors here have also different platforms available. You can still discuss other platforms here but response might be limited.

Now, to end leileilols debate: While technically Turrican II is most impressive on C64 the best version is of course on DOS with VGA/GUS. I have heard rumors that the Amiga version is merely a protoype for the DOS version limited by the capabilities of the machine...

I'm actually working on a gaming rig for mac games, waiting on a few parts to hit ebay. It is NOT as easy as dos. parts ahrd hard to come by, and anything with an apple logo tends to be 10x as expensive because of stupid people.

Also, the first Escape Velocity was the best.