I had a floppy drive for snes & megadrive in '93, could be '93 (it's been so long), cost me an arm & a leg too back then

sega had a pc too in japan,but I can't seem to remember it's name. twas a hybrid between a pc & a megadrive
well, i guess nothing beats the PCE when it comes to being ahead of its time

There was one in the UK too, the MegaPC from Amstrad.

PCEngine GT?
Now THAT'S ahead of it's time

yes,PCEngine, I loved that machine; you could upgrade it's firmware, the first console ever to use cdrom, 8 bit console that could run 16 bit graphics,it had every arcadegame in the book,etc...

I still play PCE every now & then

I think either the 3do or the amiga "wins" the first online play on a console thumbing through the new Edge special.

Its quite a good buy btw, for £8 its got extracts from all the early issues ~1994. Lots on hardware that came and went, lots of early gaming advancements, etc.

The Amiga's not a console

btw spud, it's only natural that sega had the inferior machine (technically speaking) each time, as the others simply waited for sega to bring out something new first

megadrive > snes (almost a year later)
game gear >game boy ( ok game gear came out later but then again, first handheld to have color, althoug the atari Lynx could've been first, they appeared around the same time here so...)
saturn > ps1 (altough I must admit in this case it was sega's own fault for pushing the release to be first over the ps)
dreamcast > ps2, the lot (almost a year later)

I can't believe there's someone insane enough to be discussing the virtues of sega hardware like the game gear and saturn, let alone in a thread about nintendo's latest console Sega aren't a big player any more, and haven't been since the megadrive over 10 years ago. Sorry, i really am... the dreamcast was quite a good console setup even if it wasn't overly significant and a huge flop. All the others consoles kinda sucked though The game gear was a joke, the saturn was a bigger joke, the megadrive was okay and all, but it wasn't a snes... and master system was out in a time when all consoles were called "nintendos"

I like the idea of games only companies being in the games market since i don't necessarily think large international corporations have anything overly good to contribute. Yet sega was always a bit of a second rate, i honestly can't think of a sega game i rate very highly at all

I don't think it was ever surprising to see them in this lame duck mode, they never had the software. Never imagined them to go atari and i don't think they will for a long time. They may even jump out with a new piece of hardware but that would finish them off I'd imagine.

@amiga, was more of a console because its purpose was gaming and entertainment, not personal computing. It only turned that way to increase sales. It was 4/5s console, 1/5 pc. All i used mine for was gaming.

Can you not remember the company slogan from the adverts about it being the "ultimate gaming machine"? Console!

I think even my atari 800xl box has that printed on top, I'll check it

The amiga was a computer first and foremost, it's only in the UK where it was treated solely as a games machine.

The 1000, 1500, 3000's were computers first and foremost, only the "toy" amigas (the 500,600 and 1200) weren't

You mean PCs rather than computers right? That's not what the US ad campaign claimed either




Here's the problem, it wasn't first, it was secondary. The reality of amiga's history is it evolved from a console into a more general (albeit shitty in this respect) machine, not the other way round.

They were consoles if you look at them retrospectively, if they were PCs then they were f*cking jokes because all you could do was play games on them. The general purpose usage was tacked on. Under the same logic the PS2/3 and Xbox aren't consoles, they are dvd players. Its kind of taking away from the fact that they weren't designed to do that, it later gained that ability. okay you could play games and use a few applications to mix wanky music and install some lousy bits of software (in comparison to real PCs like IBM compatibles), but they were meant for cornering the gaming market.

Commadore 64, Amigas and spectrums were all consoles, depite tacked on utilities I'd have to say. This is why they were always frequent mentions in gaming magazines, this is why they are always thought of in their games playing capacity and that's why they are dead now that other consoles replaced them. They were just a lot better than out-and-out home video consoles if you prefered PC like gaming (like me). It was a different route down the console path. I'd still say the history of gaming is: a) PC / IBM Compatible b) Consoles i) NES, Master System, etc. ii) Amiga, Commadore, etc. c) Arcade

I never bought into that its a pc line then or now, based on the fact we have retrospect now. Look at the software line up for the most damning evidence.

I had a 1000 myself, which crapped out It was a gaming machine, my IBM compatible was a PC. Of course it eventually got its operating system into a usable state and everything so you could do slightly more, but its usage beyond the hardcore community didn't extend far from its core purpose of gaming.

Seem to be a long way off nintendo wii at this point. Maybe we can bring it back and say that amiga isn't a console only if you follow the logic and say wii isn't a gamecube with a new controller. Both would be untrue

All this has sparked me to visit wikipedia and look at the good old days:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga




That's kind of a yeh-but-no-but-yeah as to whether its a pc. So that's no good.

For me its fails miserably to qualify to be a PC. It has neither the applications, abilities nor design to be a general purpose computer. It was sold and designed for its gaming aspects. They extended it in this direction but it was hardly applicable, beyond the extremist d0c like fanbase... but they think amiga is still alive today


So i can see why you'd think that, but I don't think its very true until much, much later for amiga.

oh and i realise i'm going to get gang raped by amiga fans for that...

I wonder if we'll see commadore and amiga games on the virtual console or on xbox live btw? I heard that commadore 64 games are a possibility for the nintendo thingy.

/me feels like apu in that episode where he's telling homer what constitutes a sprinkle

"A jolly rancher is not a spinkle!"

where's d0c when you need him??

lol, well i can see why people say its not a console, honestly... i just think its BS. I never once did/would have used that thing for anything other than gaming. But then i had a real pc, so maybe its simply because i didn't have to make do with a pseudo-console for my computing needs? My computing needs were very basic back then too, since i was only ickle, which is even omre damning!

I'm very glad i did have a proper pc way back when though

they actually still make amiga/c64/speccy 48k games today, so yes, I think you're in for some major assraping spud

yeah just like they actively make snes games, there was a new one last year iirc

yeah, & some of those games are far better drawn than the teams back in the days could do it

That sure doesn't look like your typical console

I'm an Amiga fan boy and never considered the Amiga as a games machine, it was a computer.
I spent alot of time "mixing wanky music" (the brilliant Octamed) and drawing (DeluxePaint) amoung other non game utilites/appz/programs.

But after reading your posts spud, I would have to agree that 95% of my amiga usage was on some wicked games (Moonstone).
So I would agree the Amiga was a games machine primarily.

Out of interest Spud, how do you rate the Amiga, in it's day.... are you a fan boy?

"typical console", no, it looks like an atari/commadore strand console. A nintendo virtual boy sure as hell wasn't a pc, nor was the gameboy, or a butt load of other quirky setups. Its all functionality though that qualifies what is a pc and what is a console imo.It didn't have anywhere near enough functionality outside of gaming for so long.

I used my amiga all the time for gaming, i mean all the time. Had shit loads of games. Amigas were cool.


but I had an IBM compatible which was a pc. The amiga was a gaming toy next to that. Just plain console territory, it just didn't compare

Wii-piracy.... arrr!

i just spotted some good news here:


I already use the action replay method on the gamecube, so its good news.

No mention of pirate gamecube discs, but if the action replay method works then that means you can load GCOS surely? and if GCOS works it will support pirate gamecube games I'd hope, and probably wii games shortly if it does indeed load. Good news is that the method is extremely cheap. All you need is an official memory card and a copy of aciton replay.

that's fast