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lysacetoday at 10:58 AM4 repliesview on HN

I missed out on the Amiga (introduced in 1985) at the time, being an early PC adopter. Went from CGA (1981) directly to VGA (1987).

In terms of colors the most popular VGA modes (320x200 or 320x240, 256 color palette, 18 bit color depth) are superior to the most popular Amiga graphics modes (320×200 or 320x256, 32 color palette, 12 bit color depth).

But somehow Amiga graphics is still often nicer.


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gxdtoday at 11:45 AM

It's because of the artists. The Amiga was a much more affordable art-making machine, so many artists made graphics ON the Amiga FOR the Amiga. There were even some good-looking VGA games that under utilized the PC's capabilities because they were essentially converted Amiga games.

Now for the shameless plug... My game's protagonist is an Amiga fan and the Amiga has a little cameo in it: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3040110/Outsider/

ZFHtoday at 1:14 PM

15khz 320x200 with proper CRT scanlines (like in arcade games and home consoles and computers on a standard TV) is immensely more pleasing to the eye than the same resolution displayed on a PC monitor.

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reaperducertoday at 12:22 PM

You're comparing 1987 VGA to 1985 Amiga? Not a realistic comparison.

Technology advanced much more rapidly in those days. Similar to how hard drive capacity seemed to double every six months for a while, or how there's a new bleeding edge AI model every three months today.

Also, VGA had 256 colors. The Amiga had 4,096 simultaneously.

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ekianjotoday at 12:07 PM

Amiga happened way before VGA was mainstream.

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