The Amiga CD32 - It promised so much and yet fizzled and died - why?

[@docpadds2]

The really unfortunate thing watching these videos is that i had the 5th prototype of the CD32 (I was an Amiga dev) . No case, all on a wooden base, with the boards and CD drive on wood posts. Alas was stolen in a break in many years ago in London :(

[@xenorac]

I wonder if they even knew what it was that they had :(

[@005AGIMA]

That's a very odd thing for a burgler to grab. Someone knew what it was. No way they'd randomly grab (junk). They are opportunists and will always go for things they can easily flip. Sad to say, I'd suspect someone who knew you was involved in some way.

[@Daz5Daz]

@@005AGIMA depends on who was doing the burglary. The one time I was burgled they stole a bag of my dirty underwear along with the usual stuff like the TV.

[@blackterminal]

Why would they steal it? They wouldn't know it was worth anything?

[@klausstock8020]

​@@005AGIMA Drug addicts, who badly need their next fix, will just smash-and-grab. I used to live in a neighborhood where such incidents happend sort of regularly. I'd often find dumped loot (stolen but then considered worthless) around the nearby parking lot. Once day I even found an Apple MessagePad 130 (aka Apple Newton)! Pretty expensive at that time. I already owned a Newton at that time, same model even. Heck, even with the same software loaded onto it, and...ah, feck, it was mine, stolen less than 10 minutes ago.

[@davidt-rex2062]

The boot screen and loading animation is one of the best.

[@rwestvang]

The CD32 actually had additional graphics capabilities to the A1200, in that it had the chunky-to-planar hardware converter. This way it could do PC type "3D" (Doom graphics) pixels even though it still did bitplanes at heart.

[@stairmand]

Yep, but nothing bothered to use it. All it really received was existing A1200 games on a CD. Instead of the CD32 I could buy an A1200 and just copy my mates disks for free & it also lacked any 3D hardware. Commodore should have instead just released a CD-ROM upgrade for the A1200.

[@Gekneveld]

I didn't know this. Was there any game at all that used this?

[@Eddies_Bra-att-ha-grejer]

Most of the games that received ports were for the OCS or ECS chipset, making them look very outdated when the console came out. Also, oftentimes they didn't bother even adding support for multiple buttons, using a single button was bad enough when the Amiga 500 came out.

[@captaincorleone7088]

The Amiga always had support for two buttons but many programmers were unawares of this and you had to find specific controllers that possessed this functionality.

[@kelvin1316]

Also showing Alien Breed there, how is it any different to playing on my A1200? They could have at least added some CD music/BG sound tracks to add some more atmosphere.

[@Eddies_Bra-att-ha-grejer]

@@captaincorleone7088 Commodore should have introduced the 7-button controller already with the Amiga 500 and bundled one with every machine, and included the schematic to encourage copying.

[@AmigaWolf]

@@kelvin1316 The Amiga CD32 version of Alien Breed: Tower Assault has FMV and CD Music, and i know because i own that game.

[@TheTurnipKing]

@@AmigaWolf The problem is that FMV and CD Music wasn't really the draw that publishers seemed to think it was. If I could have the same game on floppy for a fraction of the price, well fuck the FMV and voice acting. ( kzbin.info/www/bejne/iZqZamBqnM6AmdU ) CD32 had the misfortune to be a CD platform at the time before anyone had actually figured out a real use for the capacity of CD, the 1200 hardware could equal or better anything the Megadrive/MegaCD could offer, but it couldn't really do anything new. And the market found what it didn't know it had been waiting for in the PS1 and actual 3D gameplay.

[@005AGIMA]

Really enjoyed this video. I recently acquired a CD32 and actually, plugged into a TV in the front room, it begins to make sense as a system.

[@Ziplock9000]

What else would you do with it? It's not a computer.

[@EpicLebaneseNerd]

a friend of mine asked me to clean the attic of a store he just bought, i went, started taking out the trash from the attic and guess what i found ? a brand new, still sealed AMIGA CD32 CIB with everything, even had like 10 games and a magzine (must be part of a promotion), the cd loading bay still had the plastic on it....shame, the box was covered with some mold so i threw it away and took it all, my friend said it is fine...took it home, it worked, found out it has no copy protection , basically downloaded the whole amiga library on 1 cdrom and had the time of my life that summer. real shame, it is an amazing piece of tech, i can bet i would have loved it if i had it back then, i still have it, just sad about the box, but it was pretty basic white box.

[@dbmandrake]

These were also officially sold in New Zealand. At the time I had an Amiga 1000 and remember well there were quite a lot of CD32's on sale in retail stores for a few months, maybe 6 months up until Commodore went bust, then they all disappeared over night with the last few heavily discounted. I didn't get a chance to try one at the time and didn't have the money to buy one. A few years later while working at a computer store we traded one in from a customer, which I then borrowed over a long weekend to take home, played the few games it had with it and then brought it back to the store for it to go out on sale. It was kind of cool to finally try one out but by then they were obsolete and I didn't feel any need to buy this one with the very limited set of games it had - I already had a Pentium running Quake by then and still had my Amiga 1000 in the background as well. A year or so later we traded in an Amiga 1200 with a 350MB hard drive and scores of game disks, I snapped that up and kept that for about 5 years and that gave me the retro Amiga fix that I was looking for that the CD32 with its small selection of software never would have. I then sold the A1200 while it was still worth something, something which I sorely regret nearly 20 years later... I kept my A1000 right up until 2009 but had to give it away (in fully working condition) when I moved to the opposite side of the world - I regret getting rid of that too! It was a very early one which didn't even have Extra Half Bright mode, which I think made it quite rare...

[@blackterminal]

I think we all end up regretting selling certain things.

[@Retro-Fez]

I loved my cd32 back in 93 and got a another one a couple of years ago and still love it a very underestimated console that never got a fair shot ❤️

[@Ziplock9000]

" very underestimated console". No it's was not. It was very limited and was already superseded when it came out. It's technical specs were several years behind.

[@RetroGamesRediscovered]

Great video, I always wanted a CD32 "back in the day" but happily had an A570 for my Amiga 500. Zool looks absolutely beautiful on CD32.

[@darthv72]

Before getting a CD32, I had a A1200 and Zappo CD drive to play CD32 titles as well as the CD magazine demos discs from the time. the Zappo was a PCMCIA card based interface that slotted into the side of the A1200 and used a serial pass through connector for power. What was cool was that when i did get the CD32, I had long since gotten rid of my A1200 but somehow managed to keep the CDROM drive and selection of demo discs. All of which worked on the CD32 with a few that had issue due to lack of a keyboard. But adding a mouse to the player 2 port on a CD32 worked just fine.

[@tahustvedt]

If only the Amiga line was allowed to be developed with the same passion as it was started with. History would have been different.

[@amcadam26]

If commodore had just added 512k of fast RAM, it would've made a huge difference. I had an A1200 and adding fast RAM made it much faster, just having chipram effectively halves the speed of the 020 CPU.

[@jo555444]

You are so right. I go for 2MB but even 512k would have been something!

[@Ziplock9000]

There were several technical factors beyond that. By then the AGA chipset was old and behind the times with modes and colour depth. The way the screen memory worked was totally out of touch with gaming beyond 2D. The CPU was also getting on

[@danyoutube7491]

@@Ziplock9000 It was never going to be a 3D powerhouse, but it wouldn't have been bad if it had just been a good 2D machine. CD could add a lot of quality and content that wasn't possible in disk based games, and if the CD32 had been like having a souped up A500 with more colourful graphics and as much Graphics, music and SFX that developers wanted to put it, then it could have been considered a success. Simon the Sorceror can be considered a decent example of this; a nice adventure game that had extensive speech like the PC version, and something that normal Amiga games just didn't have. The 68020 was old, yes, but unless you are going to go up to a 50MHz '030 there isn't really a meaningful improvement you could make, and that would have been too expensive (and perhaps a bit hot for the case). What they needed was to add Fast RAM which, as amcadam said, massively boosted the speed performance (important for any 3D game; Breed 3D, Gloom and to a lesser extent even Guardian were apparently sluggish). For a system that wasn't aiming to do any impressive 3D games, an '020 with a bit of Fast RAM would be fine, even at 14 MHz. Reputedly the machine was selling rather well, faster than Commodore could supply it due to their financial problems, so despite its inadequate specs it could have established a reasonably strong user base which may have persuaded some big software houses to bother making good games for it (had Commodore not gone under).

[@aleksazunjic9672]

There were multiple problems. First, it was just a console (dumbed down machine) , and Amiga community did not like that. Amiga was all about the freedom at affordable price. Second, it was simply not powerful enough to compete with PC . In 1993 Doom came out, also X-Wing, and these two games pushed gaming market into 3D hype. Amiga could not compete with that , not just because it lacked speed, but also lacked hard-drive .

[@fattomandeibu]

My friend had one, and the issue is that all the games he had were just A500 games with a CD soundtrack and maybe an FMV or otherwise extended intro/ending sequence. Most of them didn't even make use of the AGA chipset.

[@Commander_Applejack]

And even games that did use the AGA chipset tended to be OCS games with 256 colours and nothing else.

[@plechaim]

According to David Pleasance the original release date was supposed to be spring 1994 to allow developers more time with the dev machines and more time for exclusive titles but the decision was made to rush it out and as such not enough time for any more features besides A1200 games with cd audio and some cut scenes chucked in.

[@danyoutube7491]

I remember reading that back in the day. Developers were pissed off with Commodore because it meant they were under pressure to rush a game out the door, and so perhaps some of the early titles might have been more worthy of being called CD32 versions. I think some of the games were even worse than being A1200 games with cosmetic additions; ECS ports, and not always with proper control adaptation to the joypad.

[@aleksazunjic9672]

Well, in 1994 things would be even worse. Doom came out, X-wing also, and suddenly 3D was all the rage. Amiga CD32 was simply not powerful enough for that , even Atari Falcon was somewhat lackluster .

[@TransCanadaPhil]

When this came out I only remember seeing it once in the stores here in Winnipeg, Canada. I specifically remember they had it setup to play at a local computer software store called “Adventure Software” that used to be located on Hargrave Street in downtown Winnipeg. That was the only place I ever saw them for sale back in the day.

[@SumeaBizarro]

I think one thing CD32 works as a historical reminder of was how between stages gaming technology was with CD's. Most systems and games relied on ROM, Floppy or RAM access of the game data and floppy is bit rare in gaming systems. CD when it came out was not fast enough to replace ROM access speeds, it can access data insequentally but would not be blazing fast about that for long time. Generally FMV and CD-Audio were the most defining features of Sega-CD, CDi, 3DO, etc., because it honestly seemed that there was no better ideas to utilize the CD. Nobody was trying to actually develop Sonic CD to have 400 stages or whatever else like that, scopes were still limited for sake of delivering a ready product in schedule, and especially in Japan lack of purpose with CD pairings like with Sega CD made people really sceptical about CD-ROM's future in gaming. When PlayStation 1 was coming out it being CD based was one of the bigger red flags for developers which actually makes N64 make more sense with their choice in retrospect. Sony bet big that their developers would come and evolve with the platform, times and CD Format and there was several examples where that bet had failed before. Sony were lucky things were going well for their good hardware design and talented developers being on board with their system to finally carve a true well deserved space for CD (and other such media) in gaming. It is not entirely all that and all that bad, but largely late 16bit era CD gaming was filled with games that would work the same on cartridge lacking just a FMV's or CDAudio tracks. It really was that rediculous because albeit painting FMV focus as negative, PS1's biggest games like Final Fantasy 7-9 were published on multiple CD's only because of FMV's, as otherwise PS1 Final Fantasy titles would fit on one CD, so it is not like these gimmicks disappeared but found more solid ground to exist on before going eventually the way of the dodo from innovations Kojima was ahead of for sure.

[@pjcnet]

The Amiga was way ahead of it's time in the 1980s and was brilliant for 2D games along with it's 4 channel digital sound, but was never designed for 3D rendering games from the mid 1990s and beyond that Commodore couldn't possibly have allowed for back then, even the Amiga 1200s hardware was still 2D based, it's amazing however that despite Commodore being gone for decades that variants of the Amiga are still used today, it will never be forgotten.

[@bigd5090]

I remember seeing one in the window of an independent computer shop in Redditch in 1993! Simon the Sorcerer Talkie Version was a system seller. It was awesome seeing the CD spinning through the window on the lid too! The CD32 epitomised the Amiga itself! Originally designed as a games machine but perfectly capable of becoming a full home computer! That was lucky for Hi-Toro/Amiga Corp. post the US Video Game Crash when they had to flip strategy and release it as a multi-media computer to find a new market! Also, it was lucky for me when stocks of A1200s dried up in 1994/95! The CD32 with SX-1 was the CD1200/Escom 'Walker' all-in machine that never was!

[@DrGreenThumbNZL]

Yep i saw one in a display at shop , it was so expensive and the Snes had way better gfx and games, still Amiga 500 was very popular here before

[@xenorac]

I saw one back in Darlington's Cornmill Centre back then!

[@AmigaWolf]

@@DrGreenThumbNZL Sorry the Snes had not way better gfx and games, the Amiga CD32 had some killer games that looked also fantastic, like: Alfred Chicken (CD Music) Alien Breed: Tower Assault (FMV and CD Music) Alien Breed 3D Benefactor (CD Music) Banshee Beneath a Steel Sky (Every character talks, is not on the floppy's) Bubba 'n' Stix (FMV and CD Music) Cannon Fodder Chuck Rock II: Son of Chuck (FMV and CD Music) Disposable Hero (CD Music) Fire & Ice (CD Music) Flink (Came only to the Amiga CD32 not on floppy's and CD Music) Front Elite II Gloom Gunship 2000 Heimdall 2 (CD Music) James Pond 2 (FMV and CD Music) Jetstrike (CD Music) Jungle Strike (Came only to the Amiga CD32 not on floppy's and CD Music) Kid Chaos (CD Music) Libration (FMV and CD Music and extra) Little Divil (Came only to the Amiga CD32 not on floppy's and also had FMV and CD Music and more) Microcosm (Came only to the Amiga CD32 not on floppy's and FMV and CD Music) Oscar (CD Music) Pinball Fantasies Pinball Illusions Skeleton Krew (CD Music) Simon the Sorcerer (Every character talks and CD Music) Superfrog Super Stardust (FMV and CD Music) Syndicate Supper Skidmark The Chaos Engine (CD Music) The Labyrinth of Time (CD Music) Trolls (CD Music) Universe (CD Music) Wing Commander Worms (FMV and CD Music) Zool (FMV and CD Music) Zool 2 (FMV and CD Music) And more great games, as you can see many games had CD Music an 10+ had FMV, such a pity you mostly only let us see some shitty games, and not all the great games there were for the Amiga CD32, and there were many. But most came out to late, in 1994 and later, and then the Amiga CD32 was already dead.

[@DrGreenThumbNZL]

@@AmigaWolf They are all basically Amiga 500 games , i grew up with Amiga , it has some real gems indeed , but comon now , it was worse then the 3do , Which had the best gfx on consoles around the time with Road Rash

[@AmigaWolf]

@@DrGreenThumbNZL No they are not basically all Amiga 500 games, most of them in the list if not all were AGA games, and looked 10 times better then the OCS or ECS games. I have a Amiga 500 and Amiga 500+ and Amiga 2000 and Amiga CD32, and many games on the Amiga 1200 and CD32 looked way better.

[@TheRetroShack]

Apologies if there are sound issues in this episode ! Also - the games on show: Flink Alien Breed Simon The Sorcerer Zool

[@miikasuominen3845]

Did you check the audio capacitors polarity? Or you might be having audio issues also 😁 There were some with the capacitors wrong way. Mine were the right way, though...

[@cdl0]

According to my ears and Stats for Nerds, the sound levels are perfect. In fact, before seeing your comment, I was going to comment on this being one of the few channels that actually manages to get this right!

[@UnrealVideoDuke]

CD's were more sequential than tapes that were linear

[@dazzathedazza]

You do indeed have a board where the through hole caps by the power switch have been installed the wrong way around, and look to be bulging as a result. Also, it really is worth getting the whole board re-capped on these as they are incredibly prone to leaking. The ones in mine were absolutely shot. I couldn't even get a stable picture on mine until they were replaced.

[@ErnoSallinen]

Isn't it Flink, not Frink?

[@V3ntilator]

The entire stock of CD32 were sold out in Norway, Germany and some other countries up to year 1998 or so. I made the first ever homebrew multi game disc for CD32, then others copied me. The CD32 community i started became great worldwide from year 2000-2005 with lots of CD32 sites popping up, IRC filled with CD32 owners worldwide etc. I still own 2 x CD32 consoles + The best expansion. "Elsat Promodule". In fact one of my CD32's is brand new.

[@uberdude2555]

I agree love my Elsat Pro module, what makes it king of CD32 expansions is that the FMV expansion also accepts newer expansions like TF330 030 card which I have been using in mine for a few years now. In recent weeks a user on Amibay has confirmed his TF360 card works with his Elsat Pro module, this not only gives you an 060 but the missing A1200 clockport. :)

[@V3ntilator]

@@uberdude2555 Cool. :) The only "CPU" upgrade i have in mine is a 40.Mhz FPU as Promodule came with a empty slot for FPU. Besides that i added 4.MB or was it 8.MB Fast RAM, Quantum 850.MB 3.5" HDD with Eric Schwartz Workbench. Here is a 250.MB Scala MM demo i made 100% on CD32 console in 1996. kzbin.info/www/bejne/qJuqd3uInZ5oopo

[@Distinctly.Average]

While the A1200 external cd32 didn’t make it to market, I had one. A shop in St Albans purchased a lot of dev stock when commodore went belly up. I purchased the cd unit from them. So wish I still had it.

[@AmigaWolf]

I had the SX32 Pro, i also wish i still had it, same for my Blizzard PPC / 603e Plus and BlizzardVision PPC, i was stupid enough to sell it years ago.

[@Distinctly.Average]

@@AmigaWolf Yeah,,often a shame when we look back. In my case I was burgled and a lot of stuff went missing.

[@AmigaWolf]

@@Distinctly.Average Wow, yeah that is bad, getting sick of people who steal other people's there stuff. Yeah i miss does goed old times, most of my time i was a teenager when i had Amiga Computers.

[@darkjapan]

There was a pc shop in St Albans? What was it called?

[@Distinctly.Average]

@@darkjapan I cannot remember the name. They had all sorts of odd stuff though and I used to visit quite a bit. I was very young and had to cycle there. It was opposite where Specsavers is now. It was a great time to be in computing as you could really be involved in something new and exciting.

[@lancashirered]

Great to see the old girl back in action, sorry it got so dirty. Was in the loft for around 5 years.

[@TheRetroShack]

She’s doing ok and I have bold plans for part two :) :) Thanks John!

[@lancashirered]

@@TheRetroShack Yeah looks great, enjoy :)

[@AmigaWolf]

@@TheRetroShack I really want to see part 2, and with some great games.

[@allanfulton7569]

I remember wanting a cd32 real bad as a kid

[@Ziplock9000]

A1200 was better

[@MrThairacer]

❤ i adore all videos on my beloved CD32 , it was a good attempt to save Commodore, so much hope when i bought day one n 1993 , sold 6 months later and buy again in 2016 with terriblefire addon amazing 🤩. thanks mate !

[@danyoutube7491]

It was a decent concept and really could have been both enough to save them and a good advert for the bonuses CD games could bring, but it was underpowered and due to Commodore's calamitous financial situation it came too late. It was apparently selling well though, so if Commodore had found a way to stay solvent the CD32 might have been in enough homes to get some really good games developed for it. Had it come out a couple of years earlier (perfectly feasible if Commodore had been better managed given what is now publicly known about what was going on behind the scenes) and with even 1mb of Fast RAM to let the CPU show its modest worth and plenty of time for developers to do their best, I think it could have been a a big hit, specialising in 2D games with more colours, frames of animation and sound content than developers had been able to attempt before, and with that bit of Fast RAM Gloom and Breed 3D, though paling in comparison to the PC titles of the ilk in resolution, could have been done justice. In the event, there were only a few of these (Simon the Sorceror, Darkseed being two examples of the speech benefit) because the Amiga was already losing favour with some developers by 1993 and then Commodore went under. I can think of few impressive & exclusive CD32 titles though; Flink, Labyrinth of Time (apparently also on CDTV; both used HAM graphics, the CD32 using the improved AGA HAM) and the enhanced version of Wing Commander perhaps.

[@jo555444]

In my opinion, the main mistake with both A1200 and CD32 was the lack of Fast memory. Of course, 2 MB of extra Fast memory would have made the machines considerable more expansive. But the possibilities for better games would have been tremendous. The CPU is accessing Fast memory so much faster, especially with 8 bit plane graphics, lots of sprites and sound when most of the DMA channels are occupied in Chip memory and the CPU is idling a lot waiting for access. AND the game levels could have been much better: more colors, more details, larger map etc.

[@uberdude2555]

Yea it was almost certainly a consideration due to cost, even in early design phase of the A1200 they only intended to include 1MB Chip RAM as the stock configuration, the clockport expansion header located inside the A1200 is actually only a repurposed afterthought, it's original purpose was to add the additional 1MB chip, presumably as an optional extra at the time of purchase. They fortunately tweaked the spec before release and included 2MB as standard, a good thing too otherwise the A1200 would have been even more limited than it already was. I think what they could have done however was to design their own 2MB/4MB expansion cards for the A1200 trapdoor expansion and included these at cost when you purchased a new machine as an optional extra. You can see by 1993 they were at least toying with this idea, Commodore engineers had made an early prototype 030 expansion card for the CD32 and called the CD/Game 030 card which can be viewed online at the Big book of Amiga Hardware website.

[@Foebane72]

13:40 I'm sorry, but I was never a fan of Amiga 2D games, especially the platformers or top-downs shown here, so when I was blown away by Doom on a friend's PC, I just HAD to throw in the towel to the PC! I should also point out that the only reason I stayed with the Amiga up to that point was the Demoscene, which occupied my every waking moment. The Amiga Demoscene is still going to this day, and I've been hugely impressed by what's happened from 1993 to 2022!

[@johnebbs3819]

Your video is exactly the right length. Well done.

[@dr_jaymz]

Timing really is everything. In the tech world as well as anywhere.

[@jensdroessler3575]

The CD32 didn't fail. The Amiga as a whole failed, and the CD32 died with it. And the Amiga itself didn't even have to fail, it was the Commodore management's inability to understand the market that led to the demise.

[@6581punk]

True. The A600 was a sign of the company failing. It was supposed to be called the A300 and be a cost reduced Amiga to replace the C64 sales. It came out as the A600, the A500 got replaced and the A600 was woefully lacking in any form of expandability compared to the A500. They just destroyed their own sales with that thing.

[@smurphoid]

@@6581punk The A600 was a cost reduction exercise yet it ended up costing more to manufacture than the A500 Plus it was replacing - something only Commodore could do. To be fair, this was because Commodore Germany insisted on it being able to take a hard drive and have a PCMCIA slot that Commodore somehow thought would be the next big thing in universal connectors.

[@fischX]

@@6581punk had an A600 it was by far the best Amiga despite its bad rep. The form factor was convenient and with built in turbo and harddrive the closest thing to an Amiga laptop.

[@another3997]

@@fischX You're entitled to your opinion, but claiming the A600 was "by far the best Amiga" isn't likely to resonate with the vast majority of Amiga owners. It was nicely proportioned, but with no easy way to upgrade the CPU, limited RAM, ECS chipset, slow IDE interface, generally limited upgradability, and then costing more than it's predecessor, it's fate was sealed even before the A1200 came out.

[@another3997]

The CD32 failed in the markets where it was released. Yes, it had a very brief moment of initial popularity, but software houses weren't tripping over each other trying to produce exclusive CD32 games, even before CBM failed. It was a bodged design, an A1200 but without the expandability needed to make it useful. Only 2Mb of RAM and a 14Mhz '020? People saw it for what it was, and bought A1200s and a CD ROM drive instead.

[@Colin_Ames]

Great video, as always. I love these history lessons.

[@TheRetroShack]

Glad you like them!

[@jamesaitchison9478]

Amiga CD-32, 3DO, Philips CDi, the market was oversaturated with CD based Consoles that were either too expensive, poorly advertised, or didn't have the software to back up the Console. Thank goodness for the Playstation. Sony got it right first time.

[@daishi5571]

Is the 68000 processor 32-bit?? No and why, because despite having a CPU based around 32-bit internals it used a 16-bit data bus. For the same reason the 80386SX is also not a 32-bit processor. It did have a 32-bit internal but 16-bit external data bus. FM Townes Marty was not a 32-bit system as it used a 80386SX.

[@deadpankev6929]

Any suggestions for a CD32 repairer. Mine stopped loading games and I wouldn't feel confident trying a fix myself.

[@paulgibson1700]

Some lazy commentators claim that the CD32 killed Commodore, so thanks for avoiding that common misconception. Commodore were indeed already in big trouble, the CD32 was their last throw of the dice but short-sightedness and terrible mismanagement had already put the company on the brink. The CD32 would have had to be a phenomenal success in the regions it was allowed to release in to keep the company going long enough to allow the next chipset to get a chance, whether that be AAA (it got cancelled around the same time) or the Hombre chipset. I don't consider that the CD32 failed, not in the markets it was released in but the Amiga brand was failing as a whole due to Commodore failing and that left the CD32 dead in the water. Where it had a chance it was only a moderate success but this was due to wounded Amiga brand causing many developers to only support the CD32 with lazy ports but you can't blame the devs when you look at the world in 1993/4. As you pointed out the world was becoming obsessed with Doom and while this was happening Commodore were marketing the CD32 with Microcosm, a not-very-impressive FMV game with poor gameplay and bundling the CD32 with a mediocre platformer like Oscar and a slow puzzler in Diggers. They weren't bad games but neither were they system-sellers. As an A500-owning teenager I bought right into the CD32 hype and I tried to support it as much as I could. It did promise me a new CD-player, it promised me an AGA machine with a multi-button controller at a time where single-button was becoming a major thorn for massive-hype games like SF2. It promised that I might be able to make it a Video-CD player in the future and maybe expand the CD32 with other peripherals. It delivered a machine that I was very excited for but hypothetical expandability was behind a very expensive price tag and the pathetically small 1KB non-volatile memory for the save games was a massive barrier. Any complicated games usually required more than 50% of the 1KB memory meaning you had to make tough decisions all the time. The promised library looked good but delivered the poor ports. Had I been an A1200 owner I might not have been swayed but it was a big upgrade from my A500 so I asked for, and got a CD32 and I loved it for a very long time until it became clear I needed a PC, both for my studies and to bring me into the modern gaming world. No one should ever blame the CD32 for being a failure that brought down Commodore. They way they ran their own company in the late 80s and early 90s already did the damage. The CD32 was hampered, the Amiga brand was already damaged, Commodore's last hurrah could not save them.

[@primus711]

It was my upgrade option from a500 it took a year of xmas and bday presents to get the sx-1 8mb ram 500mb hdd keyboard and disk drive It was great at that time people in these comments are distorting reality and blurring history its sad i mean aga could have been better with original plans and hombre but for the 1st 32bit console ffs it was better than anything else with expansions capabilities

[@solonsaturngaming3727]

It did come out here in Canada and what i remember of it is my Uncle who still has it just dusting up in is attic it was ngl Sitty, and we went back to the SNES and TurboGrafx-16 lol but it was very short lived here also as my uncle said he got it for 75% off as the game store just wanted to rid of their stock.

[@skRapKlan]

Thanks for the great video! But I was thinking, when you show game footage at around 14:00 , why not have the game titles on screen with the footage..? I would love to check out some of these! I'm particularly interested in the top-down shooter game!

[@TheRetroShack]

Check the pinned comment at the top of the comments and all the titles are in there. Enjoy!

[@skRapKlan]

@@TheRetroShack But.. there is no pinned comment at the top!

[@TheRetroShack]

@@skRapKlanThere is now :) I forgot to pin it :) :)

[@andrewlittleboy8532]

Definitely needs a full recap, I can see the two audio caps which are blown which are usually the wrong way around. Also the surface mount caps usually leak everywhere and destroy the board.

[@AmigaWolf]

Yeah that's why i have replaced all the Caps, and yeah my Amiga CD32 had the audio caps also the wrong way.

[@johanolofsson8558]

Back when the cd32 came out i had an Amiga 500, my best friend had an Amiga 600 and some people we knew had Amiga 1200s. We didn't understand why we should buy a cd32. If you had any Amiga model from the 500 and up it really didn't make sense to buy a cd32.

[@Umski]

Same here, I had an A600, others I knew had the A500 or A1200 - far more versatile (disk copying aside - ahem!) anyone that wanted a console had a Megadrive or SNES and paid £££ for every game...

[@johanolofsson8558]

@@Umski Yeah. Why buy a console that has the same games with the same graphics as the computer you're using. It wasn't an upgrade or any different (cd-rom bullshit aside) so it didn't make sense at all. I think the cd32 had like 3 exclusive games, every other game was a port from the 1200 or the 500/600 with no enhancements (well maybe music enhancements).

[@simonwest6981]

Great Video! I have one of these myself as at the time there were no A1200s in production, so I bought one and got a SX32 to convert it into a A1200. The CD32 was generally underpowered. The AGA chipset was never a huge improvement over the original chipset, indeed the programmers had to work hard to get SNES quality 2D games out of it. The Akkio chipset helped, but the CPU was too slow and the other big issue was a lack of fast ram. Commodore should have done what other companies did and got a percentage from licensing the games, this way they could have charged less on the console and beefed up the specification. That being said the 68k processors at the time from 68030s and above were expensive, a RISC CPU would have been a cheaper option, while giving better performance at a lower clock rate. However the least they could have done at the time was to add 1 megabyte of fast ram, which more or less doubled the speed of the machine and add a Motorola DSP like in the Atari Falcon, which is really good at doing 3D calculations and would have made doom ports (and more 32-bit looking games) possible.

[@AmigaWolf]

Yeah it should have had a 68030 and 8MB fast RAM, and it should come out at least 6 months earlier. I have a Amiga CD32 with a TF330 64MB and 128MB RAM, and it is a great machine.

[@SonySupporter]

@@AmigaWolf No one is going to put more than 3MB ram in a console in 1993. N64 has 4MB ram.

[@AmigaWolf]

@@SonySupporter Do not forget that there were also extra chips (CPU) and (RAM) in some of the console cartridges, if they had games that needed extra power and more, they put it in the cartridges, and that could never be done with a CD. So yeah, if they were smart they would put 4 or 8MB RAM in it, but the CEO of the company (Commodore) hated everything Commodore were standing for, i almost know 100% he (Mehdi Ali) was put there to destroy Commodore and so Amiga.

[@SonySupporter]

@@AmigaWolf No one is going to put 8MB ram in a console in 1993. N64 which came out in 1996 has 4MB ram. Only some games had extra chips. Atari Jaguar and 3DO smoked the CD32. Even FM Towns Marty is stronger than CD32, it has close to 32bit quality 2D games.

[@AmigaWolf]

@@SonySupporter And many SNES games had extra enhanced chips in them, like: Rockman X2 Mega Man X3 Rockman X3 Soukou Kihei Votoms: The Battling Road Bike Daisuki! Hashiriya Kon - Rider's Spirits Final Stretch Lock On Super Air Diver Michael Andretti's Indy Car Challenge Pilotwings Shutokō Battle '94: Keichii Tsuchiya Drift King Shutokō Battle 2: Drift King Keichii Tsuchiya & Masaaki Bandoh Suzuka 8 Hours Super Air Diver 2 Super Bases Loaded 2 Super 3D Baseball Korean League Super F1 Circus Gaiden Battle Racers Super Mario Kart Ace o Nerae! 3D Tennis Ballz 3D Dungeon Master SD Gundam GX Top Gear 3000 The Planet's Champ Metal Combat: Falcon's Revenge Asahi Shinbun Rensai: Katou Ichi-Ni-San Shougi: Shingiryuu Daisenryaku Expert WWII: War in Europe Derby Jockey 2 Dragon Ball Z: Hyper Dimension Habu Meijin no Omoshiro Shōgi Hayashi Kaihou Kudan no Igo Oodou Itoi Shigesato no Bass Tsuri No. 1 J.League '96 Dream Stadium Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius Jumpin' Derby Kakinoki Shogi Kirby Super Star Hoshi No Kirby Super Deluxe Kirby's Fun Pak Kirby's Dream Land 3 Hoshi no Kirby 3 Marvelous: Mouhitotsu no Takarajima Masters New: Haruka Naru Augusta 3 Mini 4WD Shining Scorpion Let's & Go!! Pebble Beach no Hotou: New Tournament Edition Pachi-Slot Monogatari - PAL Kougyou Special PGA European Tour PGA Tour 96 Power Rangers Zeo: Battle Racers Pro Kishi Jinsei Simulation: Shōgi no Hanamichi Saikousoku Shikou Shougi Mahjong SD F-1 Grand Prix SD Gundam G NEXT Shin Shogi Club Shogi Saikyou Shogi Saikyou 2 Super Bomberman Panic Bomber World Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars Super Mario RPG JP Super Robot Taisen Gaiden: Masō Kishin - The Lord Of Elemental Super Shougi 3: Kitaihei Taikyoku Igo: Idaten Takemiya Masaki Kudan no Igo Taishou Star Ocean Street Fighter Alpha 2 Street Fighter Zero 2 Daikaijuu Monogatari II Far East of Eden Zero (Tengai Makyou Zero) Momotaro Dentetsu Happy Super Power League 4 F1 ROC II: Race of Champions Exhaust Heat II Hayazashi Nidan Morita Shogi Hayazashi Nidan Morita Shogi 2 Star Fox Starwing Stunt Race Wild Trax Vortex Dirt Racer Dirt Trax FX Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island Super Mario: Yossy Island Doom Winter Gold So yeah MANY games on the SNES had extra enhanced chips in them, The Amiga CD32 did it all without it, and still had great games. And the Atari Jaguar had much more extra, it had CPU's, a 68000 CPU and 2 custom RISC processors, one Tom" Chip, 26.59 MHz GPU, and a "Jerry" Chip 26.59 MHz CPU, and the cartridge also had extra RAM in them, the cartridges has up to 6 MB RAM extra, same for the 3DO, so that is not a comparison, If they put a 68030 CPU in the Amiga CD32 with extra fast RAM, he would also be a LOT fast, and i know i have a 68030 50MHz Turbo card with 64/128MB fast RAM for my Amiga CD32.

[@jensschroder8214]

In addition, during the bankruptcy proceedings, Commodore's production facility in the Philippines was broken into. Not only were many CD32s destroyed, but the burglars were particularly interested in the shape of the case. As the successor to Commodore, Escom was only able to sell A1200s and no longer CD32s. It was speculated what value the case shapes could have had for common burglars if someone didn't want to prevent the CD32 from being sold on.

[@primus711]

Many cd32s were put into character generators and kiosks

[@Mnnvint]

With that and the patent troll action, you got to wonder if there wasn't some foul play involved.

[@primus711]

Cd32 was great for me here in America when i upgraded from a500 as it was a a1200 with built-in cdrom then i added sx-1 8mb ram and 500mb hard drive disk drive etc also how i got into linux back then

[@NewsRedial]

I wonder how many CD32's would have sold in the USA if it wasn't for that stupid injunction.

[@doalwa]

Great video, loved the intro music. Did I spot some LINN drum samples in there? 🤘

[@auroraparadox5235]

Well done video. I always enjoy learning about old and forgotten hardware. Consider me subscribed for future videos.

[@jameslovell8682]

I bought the CD 32 just as soon as it arrived in Rumbelows, and it was revolutionary at the time. It was the first time that I ever saw a picture come off a CD! I don't actually know what this video is about as it just takes the guy waaaay too long to get to the point and life's too short.

[@berner]

My favourite Amiga games were Barbarian and whatever that top down game was where you drive a tank. Aztec was also a strong contender. I don't know if BC Tire or Impossible Mission ("Stay a while, stay forever!") were Amiga games but I do remember them fondly for around the time they came out.

[@primus711]

That was c64 c128

[@mikewest6569]

The basic problem with Atari and Commodore was they were trying to sell 1984 technology in 1994. They released the same machine over and over and over again in different wrappings. Improvements were minor, while PC improvements were major. You can only fool the public so long. Neither company had the money or R&D capabilities to compete properly.

[@Zentauri77]

Back then I had a A1200 with 68030 in a tower case, and I used to buy CD32 games. Darkseed, Impossible Mission 2025, Bubba n Stix, Banshee, Heimdall 2 etc. All great games. Sometimes I wonder what Commodore should have done. An easy way to upgrade Mem on a A1200 would have been great (PS2 72pin socket on board) instead of expensive memory expansion cards, or an HD disk drive for all AA (AGA) Amigas. And the CD32 should have had at least 0,5 Mem fastram. Would have appr. doubled the performance for some games. Anyhow, nice video.

[@primus711]

A1200 had ide and there were 1200hd that came with hdd Remember these were cost reduced versions of the desktop designs and since c= owned their own fab they were able to make such tech cheaper

[@claimhsolais3466]

People had already saw the much better made and presented Japanese and USA based games, and a rare few European studios could ever complete on par with them. Since Amiga couldn't allure any existing international studios, nor could create their own, as well as presenting any reasonably likeable IPs, their end was preordained.

[@strunapl6103]

7:10 did you recap?

[@TheRetroShack]

Patience my young padawan :) There’s more to come for this :)

[@retrotechtive]

8:51 - one of those large caps looks like it's bulging, implying this machine hasn't been recapped? Also, the SMD caps in the CD32 absolutely leak, mine were already doing that when I got the machine, so I'd definitely do that as soon as possible. Don't want to lose it to the hunger of capacitor goo!

[@primus711]

Many were put on backwards

[@5mf1nc]

Not one, both are bulged and leaked!

[@5mf1nc]

@@primus711 and even have reverse markings on the PCB (so if u install by following that, the caps are still reversed, will leak really soon)

[@primus711]

@@5mf1nc yeah they really arent necessary and it can run without them just filter caps

[@retrotronics1845]

CD32=£299 and Cinemaware had gone bankrupt to make a 50mb version of It Came from the Desert (no cardboard acting like the messed up PC Engine CD-ROM release that bankrupt them! just more more more and bigger map with more places to see). SNES+Starfox=£149.99 Megadrive+SF2 CE=£139.99 = £289.98. I wonder why it failed considering the CD32 can't even do Street Fighter 2 Champion Edition like a Megadrive on maximum speed setting....ooops.

[@bt3779]

the cdtv should have been released as a console (at around $199-$249) in say 89 or 90 the latest. That IMO was really the only window they had to grab the console market. CD32 was just too little, too late, even though it did have some buzz in the European market.

[@marshall9c]

Fm towns marty only had a 16bit bus so not true 32bit. CD 32 for the win

[@stephenwhite506]

In Commodore's hayday (under Jack Tramiel) they had complete vertical integration. When Jack left, they didn't invest enough into keeping MOS up to date with semiconductor manufacturing. Thus, during the Amiga years their NMOS process could not create chips large enough for Amiga to stay ahead (I think ECS Angus was the biggest NMOS chip they produced). They failed to cross over into CMOS fast enough. This meant that in the 90's they had to outsource large CMOS chips to 3rd parties. This cost them more time and money. Hence, they lost their edge. CD32s are quite expensive today. You can get almost 3 Sega Saturns for one CD32. A CD32 with a TF330 makes it an awesome machine. I would love to develop a game for it (I just need some pixel artists). With 64MB of fast RAM this makes a huge difference. The code would run faster coming out of fast RAM. You could put all background tile graphics in fast RAM and draw it into chip RAM with the CPU as it will be faster than using the blitter. Sounds could also be stored in fast RAM and mixed by the faster CPU. This way you can have more than 4 sound channels. With 64MB of fast RAM divided between background graphics and sounds means you can have very large levels with a wider variety of sound effects. This means that almost the entire amount of the remaining 2MB of chip RAM can be used for blitter objects and sprites. This will enable aminations to be more detailed and smoother,

[@primus711]

That wasn't the issue them sourcing out made them pioneers and what most do today even intel commodores down fall was marketing then the biggest was management and medhi killing the company for his own gains this is all documented and Davie haynie himself as told this story many times its on youtube He killed all r&d stopped many projects including hombre which would have killed all 3d chipsets at the time being 64bit with massive tech And fyi we had 68030 expansion for it back then sx32 I had the sx-1 back then with 8mb and 500mb hdd

[@AmigaWolf]

Yeah i have one with a TF330, i wish you had your own and could make some great games now.

[@NathanJayMusic]

I worked for one of the official UK Commodore distributors (ZCL crew!), when the retailers recieved their stock they were all unhappy about the build quality, especially the volume slider. The two games it came with were underwhelming and already out on the A1200 (I think). There were a lot of returns due to faulty stock and many retailers decied to not stock it and wait for the PlayStation to launch

[@dbmandrake]

Yeah, when I borrowed one for a few days in the late 90's (which was a trade in at a store I worked at) I also noticed the very poor build quality. It felt very cheap and plasticky, which can't have helped sales. The A1200 I had a couple of years later was a much more solid device that I wish I still had...

[@AmigaWolf]

​@@dbmandrake Sorry it did not have bad build quality, i have had 3 Amiga CD32 in my house and all of them still worked, and is still of good quality, and everyone i speak about it say the same, only the two audio caps was the problem, and volume slider is also not a problem, if you spray some WD-40 contactspray in it.

[@uberdude2555]

@@AmigaWolf I've owned over 20+ CD32's since I got my first one in Christmas 93 and also never had real issues with the sliders, or build quality for that matter, yeah the plastic quality used on the CD32 isn't the best, which doesn't mean it's not robust, just unfortunately they are too easily scratched. I know some people especially like to complain about broken lids, this is just a myth, they only break if you really abuse them like anything else. If you take good care of a CD32 they can look almost like new, in my experience on the other-hand A1200's don't age nearly as well, even if you look after them or not due to discolouration which can range from moderate to horrendously bad.

[@AmigaWolf]

@@uberdude2555 Yeah, the Amiga 1200 had more moving parts, because of the keyboard, everything vibrates shakes when you hit the keys, so yeah i could understand, i with they only put minimum a 68030 and 8MB RAM in the Amiga CD32 when they soled it, but no it came with a only 2MB Chip RAM and 68020, and it came out way to late, in September 1993, maybe if it came out in the beginning of 1993 and also in the USA, it would have been a hit, but we will never know.

[@matthewnewell4517]

I had the SX-1 and 4MB of RAM and a FMV Cartridge. I could see the writing was on the wall though. While the Amiga was running at speeds around 30MHz there were Pentiums running at 120MHz.

[@V3ntilator]

Intel and Motorola can't be compared 1:1 since the architecture is totally different.

[@matthewnewell4517]

@@V3ntilator Intel was constantly advancing Motorola wasn't. Where are they with chip design now?

[@blackterminal]

What happened to the stock that was going to the U SA?

[@dans.8198]

Bad timing and circumstances? Not at all. The problem was just trying to sell the same old Amiga hardware, without the ability to run the ubiquitous game library from floppy disks. It’s like selling a car that can only turn left. And game companies had no interest to “take advantage” of the extra 0.x percent of market share.

[@SAM-ru4vx]

How does this compare to: Mega drive CD Cdi 3do Pc engine / turbographx CD Jaguar cd

[@retroarchives8379]

A better question would have been: "did it possibly have any chance to succeed?"

[@Ziplock9000]

Nope, too little too late. It was already dated technically when it launched.

[@garethbeaton8414]

Wher can I get roms from I cart find a site at all

[@herberttlbd]

They weren't sold in the US but they sent out demo units to US dealers and the consensus was that it wouldn't go anywhere. The CDTV was an A500 with a CD drive that didn't sell so it didn't take much to figure out that an A1200 with a CD drive would suffer a similar fate.

[@daishi5571]

Why show Gloom as an example when Doom does run on the Amiga? It requires about the same CPU power as a PC (you can get a good experience out of a 68030 @50 MHz)

[@dustinhipskind7665]

The title of this video had me thinking that this machine let out the magic smoke during the filming...

[@BAZFANSHOTHITSClassicTunes]

was it possible to upgrade to a 030 040 060 cpu?.

[@SuperHungryhorace]

I'm still waiting for Ocean to release TFX for the CD32 😁 I had a CD32 for a short while. But when the games on my old SNES that it was supposed to replace were better, I slowly realized that CD may be the future, but the CD32 wasnt. The CD32 was like everything else from Commodore post A500, to little, to late. And then, as if the SNES didnt make it look helpless enough, the Playstation arrived.

[@RichardBrooklyn]

TFX did get "released" as a coverdisk. Amiga Format magazine (I think). Needed an upgraded machine though. Little chance for the CD32 to run it without it being significantly downgraded, sadly.

[@techkev140]

Video summed Amiga CD32 up quite nicely, what a mess Commodore was at the end. Look forward to future CD32 things. I recall a number of former Commodore employees saying after the demise, that they simply could not produce enough of them. The Amiga CD32 suffered from Commodore running low on cash and having to pay up front for parts. Money up front and parts, chicken and egg, meant few or no parts. Then the American lawsuit according to former UK boss David Pleasance, halted USA sales while the case was underway. Seriously surprised they managed to virtually sell all of them, but locked out of US market after launch and unable to make enough pretty much killed off any chance of survival.

[@300bhpton]

Would be interesting to hear more about the court case and the details, all sounds a bit dodge! Was something going on there???

[@19822andy]

I didn't even know it existed until a couple of years after it's failure. Commodore were mostly destroyed by the time it released if I'm not mistaken.

[@RyanSeven1111]

I was one of the many Brit kids massively disappointed by the system, but especially the games, that were no better than anything I already had on the A500. Microcosm, Rise of the Robots and just about every other game was awful; Parachute Joust - a shareware title on a demo disk was just about the best game.

[@teekay_1]

As a long-time Amiga fan, the strength of the Amiga (the custom chips) were also it's weakness in that it was so tied into the overall architecture that it would have taken a huge amount of money to modernize the Amiga, money that Commodore didn't. Strategically the issue was that Commodore was set up in the VIC-20, Commodore 64 mindset that when new technology emerges, you build a whole new computer. But the world had moved on to care about computers an evolving platform that would allow them to continue to operate with no issue on new hardware. It was a great ride while it lasted, but even then, the Amiga 4000 came out two years too late. The Amiga 3000 was largely a distraction from the real problems of the platform.

[@TheNewFlesh]

What's the game at 14:00?

[@dreamyrhodes]

Wait there was a patent on XOR? How can there be a patent on a logical operation that's probably as old as logic circuits themself?

[@andrewdunbar828]

Gloom only came out 12-18 months after Doom and from what I remember was clunky and slow and only ran in a tiny window. I had an '040 A4000 at the time but after seeing both Doom and Linux for the first time on the say day on a 486, I knew it was time to get a PC, unthinkable before then. So I would say Gloom is not the modern day proving the Amiga could do it. It came out 27 years ago and didn't prove much. Perhaps you're confusing it with the new A500 Doom-like game on the KK/Altair KZbin channel. That is seriously impressive, but still no Doom: kzbin.info/www/bejne/i3aXn4KPmJWFoaM&ab_channel=KK%2FAltair

[@kelvin1316]

I played doom on my 486SX25 and it could barely play it. The window had to be quite small or it had to run in double pixel mode (or whatever it was called) lol

[@andrewdunbar828]

@@kelvin1316 I don't remember exactly what I bought. It was definitely a DX but it was just a generic beige box from a local Chinese family computer shop. I would've asked around what I'd need since Doom was the main reason I bought it.

[@kelvin1316]

@@andrewdunbar828 mine was a Packard Bell lol we had it before Doom was a thing. Back when it was still laughbly meant to be for the whole family to use (I had my A1200 in my room) so was in the dining room, but I was pretty much the only person to use it in the house haha

[@leelangley3705]

I have a cd32 with “Microprose property - Dev” sticks on the top and bottom. It’s always made me more emotionally attached to it

[@AmigaWolf]

Yeah i love my Amiga CD32, great game console with the TF330, and in the distant future the TF360, that one has a 68060 on it, everyone's dream CPU back then in 1994.

[@jacko101]

Still got my CD32 in the loft along with a SX32 box that plugs in the back. Maybe it's worth something!

[@captaincorleone7088]

I saw one of these in a bric-a-brac sale many years back and briefly looked at it as a historical curiosity. The CD32 contributed to Commodore's downfall and epitomised their consistently poor choices. It didn't even have RGB out as standard: which my PAL SNES provides as default! Chasing the console market was insane when they already had in the Amiga computer a product that could play games. The R&D time and money invested in this should've been used to update the computer range - which by that stage was being overtaken by the PC.

[@IkarusKommt]

Probably because Commodore didn't upgrade their video adapter ever since 1985. By that time, PlayStation had proper 16-bit color and PC games used VESA modes like 640x480+. And the best color resolution Amigas could crap out was 320x240x256, a tad more than a VGA from 1987.

[@BlobB-kn9ww]

And every game was made for Amiga 600 no matter what Commadore brought out.

[@CoolDudeClem]

I think one reason it failed was the same reason the Amstrad GX400 flopped, most of the games were just re-releases of existing Amiga games with little to no enchancements.

[@tonygallagher6989]

Commodore were also spreading themselves too thin. There had been so many Amiga models that buyers were confused. Adding a console into the mix just added to the confusion. Those in the know remembered the 64GS being a flop, so that removed most of the expected core market. The chipset had been through a few revisions too. We now know that they had even more projects in development.

[@sebastiaanvanwater]

I was in Canada back in 1993 and i never saw an Amiva CD 32 in a store.

[@jinxterx]

Are you going to re-cap it?

[@TheRetroShack]

Yep :)

[@NoelHarrisonfan]

Ooberman! Nice obscure choice. Great band!

[@waynenewark5363]

What is the name of that first game?

[@TheRetroShack]

That’ll be the excellent ‘Flink’ :)

[@ryanc9]

Just as a suggestion, for future videos it would be a nice touch to put the names of the games on the screen if you aren’t going to say what they are. I was interested to know the names of all three there at the end.

[@Foebane72]

I don't know what John Carmack of id Software meant in the final part of his quote here, but I did hear that Jay Miner, the Father of the Amiga, lamented NOT having a chunky mode. I personally think that if AGA had a true chunky mode, then it could've done far better than it did, but it seems that the Commodore engineers in the 1990s were simply updating the stock Amiga specification from 16-bit to 32-bit, and not thinking about new ways of doing things.

[@joesshows6793]

Always wanted to play this system! You think that stock of consoles is still there????

[@loganjorgensen]

Great look back on the CD revolution, people are forgetting the the wonder of optical storage drives. ;) Could they make the A1200 into a game console yes, did they make it into a real game console no. :\ Special shoutout to the controller where they flipped the shape upside down to 99.9% of every gamepad ever made lol. Shame they didn't do a deal with the Competition Pro company and just use those instead. :| I do like the console design though as I think they found an aesthetic that was very much Commodore but didn't look like a PC. Nice S-Video inclusion, PS1 didn't ship with that. ;) Annoying the CD lid can be a problem sometimes, would think Commodore and Atari with their JagCD could manage to not do that heh. My biggest beef with the system is the software however as it wasn't actually ported in many examples since you have things like some keyboard use, no on screen prompts or mention of the gamepad in games, no expanded button usage over the one-button default, PC technical aspects too incongruous to game console operation, and no game save medium like the Mega CD had. Oh Commodore, I think you could see how game consoles were done elsewhere? :P

[@FeralChocobo]

When it first arrived, the Amiga was stunning and far ahead of the IBM PCs of the time. The problem is that Commodore was on the skids even before it launched the Amiga and had absolutely no idea where to take it or how to. By 1990 they were so backed into a corner they were repackaging ageing hardware (64GS) and hoping and praying for a miracle that would happen. They really needed to push out something phenomenal but they just didn't have the resources to pull it off - If we had gotten the AAA Chipset instead of the AGA would it have changed anything ... with how far they were in the hole probably not but the more interesting thought would be what would have happened if Jack didn't bail the Amiga team out and the hardware went to Atari

[@jameslewis2635]

The CD32 which (when you look at the spec sheet) seems to be nothing more than an Amiga 1200 in a different box with a CD drive slapped on top. With Commodore having long since dismissed the team that designed the original Amiga, the graphics chipset (AGA) was already of limited capability for the time. One of the biggest weaknesses of the AGA chipset was the total lack of 3D acceleration and this machine launched right at the cusp of when 3D games were starting to come into the mainstream with titles like Doom and Quake starting to appear on the market. What really dragged Commodore down was the management team who made many obscure decisions like sacking the R&D staff from a company that sold technology products and continuing to invest in their loss making PC compatible line while they already had their own (relatively) successful home computer family on the market.

[@primus711]

It was 1993 lack of 3d lol are you serious Doom required a very expensive computer to be playable then and quake? That was many years later You people seem to forget how expensive everything was back then what you are asking for would have made the 3do look cheap and that is why it died many couldnt afford such a thing It took billions from many tech companies back then to make tech cheap enough for consoles like ps1 n64 etc to come about that could run a lower res version of quake vs a many 1000s pc that could We are talking about pentium level stuff which in 93 was no such things especially before when this was being developed

[@d2factotum]

If they'd added a chunky (e.g. not planar) mode to the AGA chipset then that would have helped a lot. Don't forget that 3D acceleration on consoles wasn't really much of a thing before the Playstation made it a standard feature in 1995, so they could have had a couple of years of selling console games on CD32 before Sony ate their lunch.

[@primus711]

@@d2factotum look up hombre commodore would have killed anything and everyone Commodore was killed from the inside by medhi for his own personal gain Dave haynie 1 of the engineers has vids on youtube explaining how far commodore was from everyone till management killed it all

[@turbinegraphics16]

And considering the gap from c64 to amiga was only about 4 years. Still even a fast 486 seemed pretty crappy compared to the ps1 or saturn. I don't necessarily think its would be good if commodore was forced to focus on polygons full of warping textures to replace the timeless 2d art to stay competitive.

[@primus711]

@@turbinegraphics16 people dont understand that in that small time frame prices went considerably down for all silicon in 92 93 when cd32 was being developed and sold 3d was out of the question for a games console and many systems were still designed for 2d even the saturn pcfx fm towns marty etc And most 3d chips were just cpus then too people want to about talk obsolete today back then it was even worse each 6 months was a killer just look how much a 32x or sega svp cost and that was after the cd32 and those were just add-ons the 3do was after and ridiculous in cost so was a 2d arcade system like neogeo Even today its hard to make money on hardware why evga just quit nvidia And everyone sells for a loss in the beginning till they can make cost reduced versions Ps5 is what on its 3rd revision already

[@corty1980]

I purchased a CD32 new back in the day and ended up selling it not long after Commodore went bust. This has to be my number one tech regret, seeing what the prices these fetch today I wish I had kept mine. I was on the same path and was going to sell my Amiga 2000, though luckily I changed my mind and still have it to this day. If it wasn't for marketing or lack of it and the pathetic management commodore had, the Amiga may have been with us for longer. Commodore definatly had great engineers, so it wasn't engineering that caused commodore to go bust.

[@Nightykk]

Rarely is (the engineers' fault), in these cases.

[@bradallen8909]

Paula has much higher than 28khz audio playback. It's limited by the horizontal video refresh rate. Using a 31khz VGA ScreenMode, up to 56khz can be achieved.

[@primus711]

Yep and 16 bit is possible

[@mervynstent1578]

@@primus711 I thought 14 Bit

[@primus711]

@@mervynstent1578 technically it can do 16bit dont believe everything you read or hear just like the nonsense comments here Ask actually devs even biggun the apollo vampire team will tell you this

[@bradallen8909]

@@primus711 The maximum Paula can do is 14 bit. If the Vampire is able to output 16 bit, then it's not using Paula for that.

[@primus711]

@@bradallen8909not correct and this has been discussed Argue with gunnar on his apollo forums

[@christianjadot4459]

Looking back retrospectively, the should have given both the A1200 and the CD32 a 28 mhz 020 with 1 mb of fast and 1 mb of chip. Granted, this would not have saved it from the 3d onslaught, but it would have given it a bit more horse power for those Doom clones.

[@LegitMan335]

I want to own one someday, but it’s so pricy and elusive . I want to get at least one piece of it, like a controller or one game. That’s all.

[@B3tanTyronne]

There are many things I love about my cd32 however the main one is bugger all copy protection, so all you need do is burn a cd with the game iso, pop it in and Bobs your uncle.

[@primus711]

Lol nobody had cd burners in 93 that was not a issue And when they were out many years later they were ridiculously expensive And on top of that it would take days to download over dialup and then you would need to pray you were not disconnected I seriously doubt you were old enough back then if you dont know this

[@properjob2311]

I ditched the Amiga once I played Doom on PC. Network play at work was just awesome.

[@6581punk]

It only really failed because Commodore went bust. People wanted to buy the CD32 but Commodore was no longer working on credit with suppliers and didn't have the money to get the stock across from the warehouse. That's not to say that it would have lasted very long of course.

[@primus711]

I was lucky to be in Columbus ohio with compuquick media center who got them through Canada so i had my ntsc cd32 then the next year got the sx-1 keyboard disk drive then later 8mb ram and 500mb hdd those were my xmas and bday lists lol Was my only upgrade path from my a500 as a kid

[@IslandAmazing]

as an A1200 owning older teen at the time, me an my friends just saw it as a crippled amiga. We would gladly have had a an A1200_CDrom... but who wanted an expensive amiga that didnt come with keyboard and mouse and floppy drive to play existing games. But even us gamers also loved making music tracks in Octomed, deluxe paint etc... it was a cutdown (and expensive) Real amiga... It seemed to be the latest version of a computer company trying to score a fast one on existing technology. The stupid CPC464 console thing Amstrad did.... Heck even Acorn with the Electron (I know, not a games console) not quite being a BBC B...

[@mr.y.mysterious.video1]

as an amiga owner at the time and also the owner of a snes and megadrive i'd say it failed because it was born bad. it was a home computer in disguise as a console with none of the advantages - claimed to be an advanced 32 bit console but had sprite handling abilities significantly worse than the snes and megadrive, i used to read amiga format at the time and each month they would cheerlead for it, claiming it would have abilities comparable to the soon to be released playstation. one month there was a sad letter from an owner bemoaning that they had rushed out on launch day to buy one only to discover that the store had no actual software to go with it. you wouldn't stick a keyboard on a megadrive and claim it's a home computer.....

[@primus711]

What? Lol you people are confused big time no Playstation being talked about back then this was released in 1993 Aga was better than genesis and snes and it did have advantages thing had 2mb of ram and expansion to turn it into a full computer with mpeg decoders etc The so called Playstation at this time was the snes cd addon

[@mr.y.mysterious.video1]

@@primus711 kind of pointless to argue now about the merits of various consoles but saying one console is better than another because it can become a computer kind of proves my point. a cursory glance of the tech specs of the cd32 and various consoles will explicitly state which has the best sprite handling abilities - which is what a console of the time needed. pretty sure i didn't halloucinate david pleasance's comments about rivals either.....

[@primus711]

@@mr.y.mysterious.video1 ffs you are completely wrong i know the hardware try doing research instead of talking nonsense And fyi amiga uses bobs and are vastly superior to gen or snes sprites Then add its sprites its no contest Maybe you should research the copper and blitter

[@deanolium]

@@primus711 BOBs are purely a software technique though. Yes, the Blitter chip allowed relatively fast transfers of data, but it was still limited and had several design flaws which meant that the Amiga fell behind.

[@primus711]

@@deanolium bobs are not software bobs= a blitter object 100% hardware they are only limited by dma Amiga didn't fall behind and it was 1 company making everything pc compatibles and consoles had many parts that many companies spent tons on and even on that front they didn't have the edge commodore was killed by medhi I swear you people type nonsense before doing due diligence And not 1 is a coder Then act like you are a pro on the subject insulting people's intelligence smh Mental illness is rampant Want some help watch davie haynie vids on youtube he will tell you not only was commodore a pioneer but years ahead in the competition ceos etc are the killing of any company and thats what killed them he stopped all r&d and every project This is not new news and was shown buy his own video when commodore went bust decades ago Even them commodore support was so strong many 3rd parties made hardware still today im 1 Which me and dennis boon made the fastest g3 g4 accelerators proof is all on youtube As a matter of fact i have the fastest a 7457 running well over 1ghz almost 2ghz Which in reality is just a copro to the 68060

[@deemster4249]

Nightlong: Union City Conspiracy is one of the best point & click adventures ever made, with a great cyberpunk mood. Besides PC, it was only released for the CD32. Which makes this system an automatic win

[@uberdude2555]

I wish it was but Nightlong was never released for the CD32, it required an Amiga with RTG card, an 030 CPU minimum, and 16MB of Fast Ram. I have played Nightlong on the CD32, but mine has a Vampire V2 accelerator hacked on.