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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ZFH 3 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

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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gxd 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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/

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reaperducer an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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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fredoralive 41 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Only using the party trick HAM mode though. 32 (plus 32 for the half-bright bit plane) is the mode that most software uses.

Of course in 1987 a Macintosh II with a fully expanded "Toby" framebuffer could not only do 256 colours, it could do it in 640x480 mode where as a PS/2's VGA could only do 16 colours at that resolution. And an Amiga could only do flickervision at that res.

Of course with technology improving all the time, not having a updated chipset circa 1987 that at least had a progressive scan 640x480(ish) is one of those things that really killed the chances of Amiga as a serious computer. They only got that circa 1990, and "Super VGA" was already just about becoming a thing in the PC world (and Microsoft had kinda got round to making a version of Windows that didn't suck by then). I'm not sure if the mythical Ranger had a progressive mode, but it's it does show how Commodore inability to keep the custom chips updated in a timely mannner slowly sunk the system...

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32 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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lysace 44 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

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

That's the highly special hold-and-modify mode (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hold-And-Modify). I tried pretty hard to word my comment fairly, remembering the sometimes legendary tenacity of Amiga fans. (Which nowadays includes yours truly.)

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vidarh 12 minutes ago | parent [-]

Or using the copper. Plenty of Amiga games played palette tricks despite not using HAM.

	▲	lysace 10 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Sort of fair but also very specialized.

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ekianjo an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Amiga happened way before VGA was mainstream.

	▲	lysace 33 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Amigas reached hobbyists in large numbers way earlier, yeah.