Frontier Elite II intro: comparison of Amiga 500, Amiga 1200 and Vampire 600

[@jestronixhanderson9898]

Amazing thing is when you think of all those old amiga games , your brain fills in those missing frames so well. Till u see this :)

[@dallesamllhals9161]

C-R-T! YOU need more electrons fired at your pretty eyes!

[@plymouthbiker]

In a world of frames per second, I cannot believe I used to play this and do well at it with the terrible FPS on the Amiga 500. The latest generation don't know what it was like. Loading times were a few minutes if you had a disk drive. And let's not even go to how long it used to be take to load a old as spectrum game. Yet still today .... The older generation have patience when it comes to gaming because we had too.

[@Unethical.FandubsGames]

"Yet still today .... The older generation have patience when it comes to gaming because we had too." Maybe some had patience back then (I did but my dad not so much), but not all have retained that patience. A lot of people have forgotten what it was like to play games with casettes and carts and all the shit that they brought.

[@daishi5571]

It made the Combat more tactical and like retelling a story. "And in this slide you can see where I was starting to rotate to be able to get behind him, and in this slide, yer it's the same " lol. I was fortunate in that when this game came out, I had a 68030 so ran great.

[@pjaro77]

Unupgraded Amiga 500, 600 and 1200 have throttled speed due to the missing fastram. Chipram and its bus is very slow on Amigas - only 3.5Mhz 16bit (32 bit on 1200,4000).

[@Ulysses3473]

God when I was playing my amiga back in the day I didn't even know what frames per second was a thing 😳 just glad I had one. Cos most of my friends didn't.

[@electrictroy2010]

@daishi5571 I PLAYED the original Elite on a Commodore 64 (only 1 MHz). The polygons were see-thru. Also it didn’t skip frames like the A500/1200 did. The entire C64 game slowed to a crawl if lots of ships or objects were on screen .

[@Paul_Henshall]

looks lovely and smooth with the Vampire.

[@Monody512]

Oh wow. A version where the audio is actually synced to the video!

[@maestro-zq8gu]

This just makes me think of what could have been if Commodore was better managed and stayed competitive.

[@valenrn8657]

Motorola didn't replace the 68000 price segment with a competitive successor CPU, hence why all 68K platform vendors seeked alternative CPU ISA. Former 68K platform vendors are Apple e.g. Mac, replaced by PowerPC. Atari e.g. ST/TT/Falcon. Commodore e.g. Amiga, Hombre has PA-RISC. Sega e.g. Mega Drive/Genesis, 68000 was replaced by Hitachi SuperH-2 in Saturn. Sharp e.g. X68000, replace SuperH HP e.g. Unix 68K workstation, replaced by PA-RISC. Namco e.g. System 2. 1992 to 1995 was critical for X86 PC's existence which Intel successfully fought by keeping X86 gaming PC competitive i.e. Y1993, the release of Pentium 66Mhz driven down 486 prices. 68040 wasn't able to keep up. Y1994, the release of Pentium 100Mhz and release of 68060 50Mhz Y1995, the release of CISC-RISC hybrid Pentium Pro 200Mhz and Pentium 120 Mhz Y1996, the release of Pentium 200Mhz In 1995, Intel Pentium Pro single handily competed against MIPS64 R4000 +Windows NT-based Advanced Computing Environment (ACE) x86 PC replacement path. Despite Microsoft's support for the Advanced Computing Environment (ACE) direction, Intel blunted MIPS64's progress in replacing X86 with CISC-RISC hybrid Pentium Pro (P6). ACE MIPS64 R4000 +Windows NT workstation clones went against X86 (Wintel) PC clones, hence clone format wars. The lesson in 1995 was recycled by AMD's X86-64 which fought off IBM Power64 (PowerPC 970) and Intel Itanium IA-64. Pentium Pro (P6)'s legacy lives on with the latest Intel Coffeelake and TigerLake CPU families. Intel was an instrument player in X86's survival between the critical 1992 to 1995 time period. Mhz wars between AMD vs Intel fought off competitors from DEC Alpha and AIM PowerPC. 68K CPU family didn't have AMD like corporation to defend the 68K instruction set. My point, is don't blame Commodore when Motorola killed the 68K CPU family.

[@johntrevy1]

@@valenrn8657 And now it is ARM'S time to shine.

[@valenrn8657]

@@johntrevy1 I have preconfigured PiStorm/Pi 3a/Emu68/32 GB MicroSD incoming.

[@electrictroy2010]

@valenrn8657 READ the history of Commodore from 1987 onward. They made terrible decisions, like not upgrading the Amiga sound/graphics to beat PC advances. They never improved the sound which is pathetic. When AGA arrived 5 years too late, it was still not as good as PC Sound Blaster + addon graphics cards (see Wing Commander 3 as example of what Amiga could NOT do). Also in the 90s they invested in a game console that flopped. Commodore’s poor decisions caused them to runout of money & they could not pay the bills. That’s THEIR fault and not Motorola .

[@000Angus000]

Give that 1200 some fast ram! ;-)

[@dallesamllhals9161]

Do you even know HOW MUCH (Amiga)RAM was in: Summer 1993? I was BLOODY 13! Went for a Conner 120MB HDD instead = 6 weeks of strawberry-picking(0400-0900) = YUP! Well paid - we danish kids from Jutland were - in the 90s. 1994 was fine! ..in 1995 I went x86(486DX2 66Mhz with 4MB) and more RAM = Faster!?* ..I only needed 4 MB more(8MB = Full Throttle and Dark Forces) - Not a 16MB EDO-RAM module = 20MB = Stupid me! Another 6+ weeks of strawberry-picking(0400-0900)! *then again - learned about "FAST"x86 RAM a bit earlier - than others... ;-)

[@000Angus000]

@@dallesamllhals9161 I know. 🙂 Around '89 I bought a half meg upgrade for my A500 so I could play Dungeon Master. Ashcom was the cheapest, but it cost me £100.

[@herbert3177]

I wasn't even born yet when this game came out but even to me it looks impressive for 1993

[@dallesamllhals9161]

..do NOT look up: 'ELITE' then. Might be before ye' mum & dad :-O

[@ExtremeWreck]

Honestly this would've been impressive for the 3DO to handle, or the Sega 32X even.

[@ettit6283]

Wow! That A600 kicks ass!

[@EdgyNumber1]

Jeezus, that's incredible... makes me want to dig this game up again.. looks way more immersive on Vamp6. What does Crammonds F1GP look like on this?

[@d34dm34tretro]

Unfortunately F1GP has its frame rate capped with the base Amiga in mind. Apparently there is a patch to allow the cap to be raised, I'll have to track it down.

[@ultrapetey]

@@d34dm34tretro F1GP Editor allows you to remove that :) I remember doing that on my '030 33Mhz A1200 :D

[@si4632]

@@ultrapetey yeah even a 1200 with fast ram ran it well

[@acklord7145]

I played dos version........ I think it's underated. And TBH I like the music on dos a lot better, idk if it's just nostalgia speaking but I genuinely like it better.

[@dallesamllhals9161]

PC-Speaker > EVERYTHING! Well, okay! Much ♥

[@electrictroy2010]

I assume he had a Sound Blaster which really had great music

[@acklord7145]

@@electrictroy2010 Yeah I love how sound blaster sounds

[@wesleybcrowen]

MT-32 implementations just sounds lovely.

[@bobrandale4864]

Interesting comparison. Was the audio identical, or is this just audio from the Vampire 600?

[@Eratosthenes0815]

VERY good comparison. Having uploaded a video today that should show the performance of the Vampire I've seen your one. - I will show it the guy who asked me to demonstrate the performance of the Vampire... @the guy who asked for FAST RAM for the A1200: No! This will speed up the FPS of the A1200 (max.) by 1.5 - 2.0. => The Vampire lives in an other world... ;->

[@pjaro77]

Has the A1200 some Fastmem in this test ?

[@drloakes]

Run this comparison against the A500 with a PiStorm - wouldn't even be fair on the Vampire!

[@alex76gr]

Well made video.

[@earthsteward70]

Its basically like a 386 trying to compete with a pentium MMX XD

[@gienek70]

Or A500 with 386

[@kikoremacha5722]

Este juego en amiga era injugable, como casi todos los que eran 3d. Pocos se salvaban.

[@lordxanxi8348]

Funny like i have not so bad memories of playing it at the time on a bare Amiga 500 Plus. However, the video is not fair to compare the Vampire 600 to a bare A1200. Any 68020/68030 accelerator with FAST Ram also gives a smooth 3D similar to the V600. The plain A1200 has no FAST RAM.

[@lordxanxi8348]

Having seen again this video, i have booted the game from floppy on an plain 68000 amiga and on my A4000 68060 at the same time, and indeed, unlike my memories, the intro is alsmost a slide show on the unexpanded 68000 while it flies on the A4000. I don't see any real difference between the Vampire and my 68060 though. I would add that it is not that the intro shows smoother 3D on a fast amiga, but rather that it is displayed faster as we can see with the higher laser shot rate from the two smaller ships.

[@colinellett]

Not sure how you did this as Frontier is nowhere near as smooth on my Vampire 500 V2+ ??

[@d34dm34tretro]

I don't have a Vampire equipped A500 to compare it with, but aside from differences in FPGA version (and the chipram expansion my A600 has), I'd expect them to be identical. You should ask on the Vampire forum about the performance issue. It could be something as simple as upgrading the boards firmware.

[@colinellett]

@@d34dm34tretro are you using the floppy disk version or WHDLoad? I'm using the WDHLoad game from the Coffin install. Quite jerky graphics...

[@d34dm34tretro]

@@colinellett The A600 doesn't have WHDLoad installed, so it would have been running from the Gotek I have in place of the internal floppy.

[@MrSEA-ok2ll]

The dad thing is that it took decades for something to hit Amiga in order to run this game as it should...

[@danielsevo5311]

No, the game ran fine on for example Blizzard 1220. (28MHz 020 +4MB FastRam), and it ran reeally nice on 50Mhz 030 + FastRAM.. These options were available shortly after the A1200 was introduced.. Ofcourse by 1996/97 or so a lot of ppl (including me) Played this on the 060 which was more than enough to play at very high framerates..

[@soviet9922]

what version of elite II are you using ?, im playing the one from igame on apollo-os and don't run as smooth on my vamp2 a500+ ?.

[@dallesamllhals9161]

How about 2 x 880KB 3½ floppies?

[@Papai_Pai]

I believe I had this on the Amiga 500 because the intro was like that but the game itself was perfectly fine

[@trydowave]

its easy to critiise the A500 here as its the worst but my attention goes to how sucky the A1200 is, especially compared to certain Acorn machines that were being released around the same time. It really should of come with an 030.

[@MaurizioCasolari]

good :)

[@lurkerrekrul]

The Vampire 600 makes the game much faster and smoother, but it can't fix the MANY problems with this game. I fooled around with this on my A500 with Supra Turbo 28 accelerator, which made it smoother, but as smooth as the Vampire. Unfortunately, most of my sessions with it ended in crashes. Even when they didn't, I thought it was a really impressive tech demo, but a pretty poor game.

[@electrictroy2010]

The original Elite is definitely better

[@Leeki85]

Frontier really shows how bad Amiga 1200 was. Entry level PC with 386SX CPU from that era has at least twice FPS with texture mapping enabled. When you disable textures you have very smooth animation closer to Vampire 600 than to A1200. A1000 and 500 had awesome chipsets for their time. Amiga 1200 should have at least 8 channel PCM chip (like SNES) and some next-gen graphics chip with hundreds of hardware sprites with scaling and rotation. Amiga would survive If it could do DOOM graphics with smooth 30 fps. With everything it got it was just obsolete compared to new consoles and 486 PCs

[@magnusanemo]

Unfortunately you're right. Putting a weak 14 Mhz 68020 in a computer in 1992 was pretty doomed from the beginning. A 33-40 Mhz 68030 and some fast mem would probably had helped. Then Doom would run at least. The Atari Doom port BadMooD is pretty impressive though considering the hardware (16Mhz 68030 and 32 Mhz DSP).

[@daishi5571]

How would Doom run? it wasn't ported until after the source release. John Carmack claimed that Doom wouldn't run on an Amiga with anything less than an 68040 and then still couldn't run due to the graphic system differences and even if it did the Amiga base would be affected (basically no one would upgrade). Obviously he was wrong as it is playable on an Amiga with an 68030 (even an A500 with an 030 could play it, not perfect but neither was it perfect on a 386) JC made the claim in ignorance. He eluded that the system would require significant upgrades that ppl wouldn't do. However I believe that just like on the PC many ppl would have upgraded their system to be able to play this game (and by extension other games requiring more power than the base model Amiga) I personally heard many PC owners who bought Doom and either it wouldn't run or had issues running it so bought upgrades or new systems. While the base model A1200 wouldn't run Doom with a modest upgrade (030) it was more than capable. Of course the base model A4000 (030) could play this but would look great on the A4000 (040). I do agree that the A1200 as released was under-powered (I myself was disappointed after getting it home and comparing it to an upgraded A500 (68020 @ 16Mhz) but add some memory and the system was immediately faster (still not enough for 3D games) but once I got an 68030 & 50Mhz it was a beast.

[@JoeBetro]

Have you seen this wizardry? kzbin.info/www/bejne/gZbEf5Vrht-ii5I

[@alexanderwingeskog758]

@@daishi5571 I with you! Although non of my PC friends loved doom especially they did always upgrade when their games did not run "super" smooth. Memory, CPU, Motherboard and later graphics cards. I was really really happy with my 68030/882 with 4 MB fastmem on my A1200, the OS was smooth, the programs I ran was fast enough. Sure when rendering something 3D raytracing or fractal scenery you always wish it was a little bit faster but in true AmigaOS fashion you could always render in the background and still doing musictracker/sfx or programming/painting and so on... The funny thing is that about that time 1993'ish my PC friends still called my Amiga for "just a games computer", when that was the only thing they did on their PC's... just playing games and upgraded (or bought a totally new computer) for getting their games to run better...

[@valenrn8657]

A1200's 68020 CPU was gimped with the 32-bit chip ram being shared with IGP and audio. A1200's CPU doubles its performance with the 32-bit fast ram. PC 386SX (with the 16-bit bus) has discrete CPU memory and VGA's local video memory. I have IBM PS2 Model 55SX with 386SX 16 Mhz with 5MB RAM and IBM VGA MCA and it was slow i.e. it was inferior to my Amiga 3000 with 68030 at 25Mhz and 4MB fast ram.

[@dariobong8184]

I had amiga 1200 and it was decent. On 500 unplayable

[@MrSchlachtwerk]

A Amiga1200 naked vs Vampire use a A1200 with Blizzard1230IV with fastram, thats not real, no one have long used a naked A1200 ^^

[@valenrn8657]

32-bit fast ram card for A1200 is cheap.

[@Archimedes75009]

Wow, the 1200 is slower than an early Archie from 1987, and on the Archie it would be in 256 colours, and 320 x 256 Crappy C= hardware.

[@valenrn8657]

Where's Archie 1987's Lion Heart game?

[@Archimedes75009]

@@valenrn8657 Ugly graphics and colours, stamp size playing area : keep it.

[@dallesamllhals9161]

Naaah!

[@valenrn8657]

@@Archimedes75009 1987 Acorn Archimedes A310 wasn't competitive in 2D games. kzbin.info/www/bejne/qoO9col_oZKsfdk

[@valenrn8657]

Amiga OCS/ECS wasn't limited to 32 colors since the Copper can change 32 color registers as part of the raster effects.