Posted Thu Feb 02, 2017 3:48 am
Excellent response. Full of the thing I love most when discussing retro things; memories. In a way some of us are just as bad as many back in the day on usenet or a BBS; we're just as bad as many on Lemon and EAB... In terms of our strong opinions that are sure to turn a hell of a lot of people off...
The nature of a message board really... It becomes like family... and since for the longest time it was just Intric8 and myself here, I not only got in the habit of assuming it's just me and him going back/forth; I started to look at him as family a bit... He's my friend on facebook, I get to see his wonderful son sit beside him on the Amiga; bringing me back to when I was the kid looking on at my sadly departed father doing the same
Intric8 has the connections... Or his pulse on how to get things out there... He has gotten both his articles and my own to be viewed in the 20 thousand plus range... Amazing... But so rarely does it feel like 20 thousand viewed an article when it's just him or me replying. In a way it's sad, in another it makes you smile.
I will always respond to anything of Intric8's in very much a family at the dinner table way. He brings up this editor I used... Well the first response is to slam your fists down and say oh, what a piece of crap that its! - But it's said knowing that the two us respect each other enough to know I read every last word he wrote and my response; long or short; is spoken from experience.
And before anyone said anything I came back, much like you would after a few minutes at the dinner table, and went a little deeper on it. Of course; as much as I can't stand Lemon/EAB.... The elitist Amiga users... At first glance I can recognize I'm just as bad as them... You have no idea how many Amiga users in Europe not only hate me but think I'm a flag waving arrogant prick American.... Just because I was the only one standing up on camera and saying that this heavy European tainted Amiga perspective is getting a lot of history wrong; and is in fact showing a truck load of games incorrectly in video and screenshot form based on a default PAL emulation and a whole bunch of people who either don't realize America made games for the Amgia, don't care... Or in the case of many on EAB/Lemon - Know, don't care, fight to protect the false history by doing everything and anything to say I'm full of it.
I am a certain way... Partly because it's who I am, partly for effect... I got the LemonAmiga YouTube to start showing NTSC games at the right speed and aspect ratio... Got him to make his own, much nicer explanation of it all... But for him to even get to that point? He said he sat there and watched Jim Sachs almost tear up over it, didn't phase him... It was not until my video... The anger he felt at me... Wanting to prove me wrong.... But accepting the facts... Sometimes you gotta be an ass... Indeed the owner of this great forum found inspiration in my videos...
Other times... You can't even help it... hahhaha.... I notice it and I sometimes feel bad about it... That for others looking in; they may feel I'm just as bad in a place where the mission is to be welcoming... Then I remember I have the 2nd most posts here... Not because I'm an elite forum member but because I'm the only one that cares; along with the owner. I remember I'm talking to a good friend... I remember him commenting on a video of mine about his not yet fully up to par startup forum with almost no content and 2 members... And I remember immediately clicking the link to check it out, liking it, signing up, responding to his comment on my video.... Responding to his posts on the forum... Deciding on my own I would like to write a companion review that's different from my videos, for just about all of my videos... My content has slowed down dramatically because of this... A lot of the time I sit around shaking my head... Makes no sense... Nobody is signing up here because of what I write, nobody watching the videos cares about what I write, and nobody that cares about what I write cares about the videos... It's a pain in my ass... But I can't imaging not doing it now.... Not just links to my videos, not summaries of my videos... Completely separate in-depth writings... You get something unique from the writings or the videos. The kind of stuff that EAB/Lemon and many others would probably LOVE to have on their site... Where I might get a much bigger response in terms of views and actual replies... Thought about copy/pasting my writings to any and every forum... Decided a simply copy/paste was more effort than I'd like to waste on them.
Several videos point to this very site.... Even I got inspired by Intric8 with my Word Perfect review... A review where I felt a lot of things Intric8 did not feel... But that was the well written article designed to respect his stance... Mainly that he loved it.... and that I... Liked it more than I thought I would... But it upsets me how they didn't take advantage of the Amiga...
Perhaps like many on Lemon/EAB will bitch about terrible ST ports, companies not caring about the Amiga... Dismissing all NTSC games for the same reason, companies not caring about Europe... Dismissing true artists because they used the default circle tool in Deluxe Paint... Acting like they know better than people who sold millions of product on that machine... I just say Dan Silva (creator of DPaint) was more of a programmer than an artist, designed the circle mathematically... Can you draw a perfect circle? Is the Earth a perfect circle? Please point to the million amazing artistic circles in that game.... How about we look at everything else? How about instead of this boys club of only Europeans knew how special the Amiga was, we understand plenty of American's did too, but the market was older... We all loved the Amiga.... How about you play what you think are piss poor ST ports in NTSC mode at their correct speed? Maybe when it's moving faster you'll be able to appreciate all the little touches here and there, the 32 colors opposed to 16, even a better set of just 16 colors - Are you now able to not utterly dismiss some of the greatest games ever made simply because they didn't spend tons of money and many months completely redoing what was already a great game just for your machine? Lost Dutchman Mine... They say it came out for DOS first... VGA... Ummm... That's some ugly VGA... ST of course... At first glance it kind of looks like the Amiga got another ST port.. Look closer.... Graphics are indeed better than the ST, better than VGA DOS... Sounds? Not much but oh yeah... Hell, they even worked with Workbench and let you pause the game - closing to workbench - and go back, start a 2nd game... These people made something special for the Amiga... But nobody cares about Lost Dutchman Mine.... Because? It's boring? Long? Not pretty enough compared to DOS/ST?
I care,,, Nearly cried myself in my review for it... How many fantastic games are shoved aside because it's a crap ST port... THese people have never even played these games... Never cared enough to try to beat them... Can't be bothered to read the extensive manuals... But they sure do love Zool.... James Pond... Whatever mearly okay platformer that is but a port of a cheap; less than 1 pound tape game on the C64... But hey; it's the Amiga! And they sure did make it look and sound amazing compared to the C64! So that's what makes a good game? Not Uninvited; which could take you months to figure out? Because it's not that special compared to the AppleII GS or ST? Got great sounds, but so do the others... But look at that, the interface is based on Workbench, making it the best in my eyes... later on... when I did give the ST and Apple II a fine look, not a straight graphical port either... They cared.... Lucas Arts cared.... Even Sierra.... oh and I hate Sierra in regards to the Amiga... One of the first companies to offer hard drive installation programs for the Amiga. In their own very odd way; the laziest of the lazy cared more than most give them credit for. Play them in NTSC on a hard drive? You realize that the people porting them were doing the same, because there were slowly PCs running those games at the time...
Watch Hoyle Card Games on my YouTube and you'll find me swearing up a storm at Sierra... But then saying' A good game is a good game, and this is a good game... But why couldn't you go away from the default EGA to just give them a peach skin tone, not red?
I am no American flag waver.... Just always had a love for history... and online it gets so revivsed so much from people.... Who obviously are better than me in some way, with many thousands, hundreds of thousands of views telling the history of the Amiga... To not bother with NTSC Amigas... Shows mostly NTSC Amiga games incorrectly in PAL mode.... Is an American saying he never heard of the Amiga... Because I'm sure you heard all about the C64 when your parents blindly purchased you an expensive PC they knew nothing about which you used to play shareware games for most of your life.... But the countless millions the C64 sold in America also means nothing; You can't state how bad your experiences were with NTSC machines... Do you; by chance; only care about "the top 50 C64/Amiga" videos you see on YouTube from that European perspective? Do you know many of the Gold Box games were first designed in America on the C64.... Not DOS... Big games.... Costly games... Games that bragged about selling "200,000" copies.... But hey, times that by 40-60 bucks... It's 1994 and a brand new Amiga word processor is spelling a certain culturally different word "color" instead of "colour". Could this perhaps mean the Amiga was not dead in America back in 1988?
And it's not just the Amiga with me.... People show DOS games in the wrong aspect ratio, they show NES games wrong... Everyone thinks Mario2 was a transitivity of history even though we all loved it back then... and I can't imagine many would prefer the 1st to the 2nd if they could only play one... Online people... They're passionate.... Most of them... So am I... I can only hope some might attempt to see through the passion shown occasionally in anger, or pokes I make at others, at companies... even entire websites... That somewhere along the line if they can be bothered to read what I admit might be too much to ask others to read - Perhaps somewhere in there they'll find that little spark, that something I happen to care about they they also care about, but nobody else seems to.... An entire video dedicated to the sound the Amiga floppy drive makes when it gets a read/write error.... Made because I felt alone; that nobody else seemed to feel the terror I felt... That's the video that got Lemon to subscribe to me.... Something he remembered but nobody seemed to care...
I feel I do care... I will apologize to anyone new if I may come off as an ass sometimes..... But please try to understand that's my own topic, or a reply to Intric8, a friend... The topic you came to the defense of Intric8 over in regards to Atari sales numbers? I read it before anyone said anything... I in fact felt for the guy with some of what he was saying; but of course also felt he was an asshole approaching it that way.... He created a brand new account simply to bitch at the creator of the site and say he's a moron... Perhaps that would have been a fine time for me to jump up and attack... But I sometimes I want to do something and then I find Intric8's response is this amazing middle ground, letting it go over his shoulders, welcoming people aboard... And so I find my best response is to say nothing in those situations. See where it goes... Perhaps that person is not the ass I think he is... Perhaps Intric8 will somehow convince him to stay here and write... Which is what I'd love... Because while it's nice you're here once in awhile ZippyZap; I can fully state it's still a lonely forum populated primarily by the owner and myself. Can't picture you having responded to any of my topics, nor having many detailed responses to Intric8's....
Not saying I'm a better forum member than you; I just wish others might be aware of where I'm coming from when I write such a blanket and simple sentence like that was a piece of junk.... That while I don't comment on everything, I'm the only reliable reply this place has. That I'm writing with the idea that it's just me and Intric8... the more I see you, the more I understand what you're into, the more I'll try to keep your perspective in mind.... But I may still be guilty of blurting out such comments now and then... It's a forum, Intric8 is doing his best to garner attention... Sometimes I roll my eyes.... But he's not doing it to make a boat load of money... Undoubtedly losing money... Made the game section... I believe an idea I planted in his head to combat the incorrect screenshots from HOL and Moby... everywhere...
I'm sure he sometimes rolls his eyes at me.... We're different, but the same.... Like many, he threw himself at the 1200... Ate it up... I know I've taken shots at him here and there over what I think was far too little, far too late... Something that may be technically better than my machine, but by no means is it "impressive"... Not to me... Because the PCs of the era blew it away.... The 1000, the 2000, the 500.... Those were by all definitions impressive. I take pot shots not to hate on the 1200, but much like the Europe/America thing; for others who dismiss the others to have love for them... Not to delegate it as a backup unit... A museum piece, boxed in the closest.... I show my Workbench, which looks better than most with as 1200.... Not to say I'm the greatest power user alive! - But to note that it is possible to be a power user with Workbench 1.3 - That there are so many Fred Fish disks with free applications doing almost anything a 1200 can do... I make a guide on getting the 500 online... Not because I hate the 1200, but because I hate that people with the 1200 call their guides getting the "Amiga" online, a blanket and untrue statement.... Because to them being impressive is simply grabbing one of the last Amiga models, something that certainly played some role in bringing them down.... Because you can put a flash hard drive in it... Or use a universally panned (at the time) card reader on it... Or play a couple handfulls of games that I can play on DOS looking and sounding pretty much the same.
But the 1200... You can put WHDLoad on it! A far too complicated beast of a program that, even with utilizing the Amiga hardware still feels like emulation to me... Or... You can save some money not buying the best model, get the 500 and a GVP hard drive, install the many games that can be installed and have fun with some floppies - because floppies are awesome!
- I'd have fun with a 1200, no doubt... But Intric8 is having fun with a 2000, something I'm positive he did not feel was possible a few months ago. We are all different, I am impressed with the rigs some build... I may even hate on Power PC Amiga's as not being real Amiga's, but the shit some people put in those things... Yeah... But the only people that ever care about the hardware side of things seem to have a 1200... The people reviewing the games? Emulating a 500.... Some emulate the PowerPCs.... I brought back to life my Amiga 500... I added on a hard drive and 8 mbs of ram, delved into Workbench.... Delved into the games... All I can say is.... Love... I got... AmigaLove....
On YouTube I call the main series Gaming Memories and Review.... Because not enough people throw in their personal memories.... Not that every bit of my stuff is filled with it, but what's there is.... different from anyone else... Believe it or not, not looking at you as a regular; your response to my comment.... when I had another comment right after that... I was looking at you much like you looked at the new guy in the Atari sales topic. Someone coming here to crap on a regular... I know you've been here before, so maybe someone thinking they're defending Intric8... Or someone that I might bow my head in respect over in regards to living and experiencing the real deal; but he's not responding as if he believes I also lived and breathed the real deal... When I most certainly did.
Perhaps a few more of those memories from myself may have helped.... MicroEmemcs.... Load: dh0:s/startup-sequence ..... DAHHHHH!!!!! - I love the shell much more than most... I use oh so often to unzip files I sent over from the PC... To copy adfs directly on the machine SOOOOOO much faster than dealing with Amiga Explorer or transdisk.... To use my degrader program to switch PAL/NTSC modes, turn off the external floppy that does not feature a manual off button... To try out new things from Fred Fish.... I've read the entire AmigaDOS 1.3 manual cover to cover so many times the book is falling apart... - But the shell, technically more impressive than DOS or not, is not "impressive". Not over the older DOS... Not that much over the computers running Basic...and I've also read C64 Basic cover to cover and written programs on it. It's text, you type commands into it... .To this very day you can get the most out of many Windows programs by opening up the command line; but impressive it's not. The Amiga, with Workbench in the mid 80's... Features that are still not in Windows like dragging down the screen showing multiple resolutions at the same time... That's impressive... The sampled sounds and music are impressive.... 16-32-64-HAM graphics from 4096 colors destroying the C64/DOS/Atari/NES/Genesis... And yeah, people will slap the Amiga and say you could have bought some half a million dollar computer with millions of colors in 1985.... Ummm...No, that's not impressive to me.... The affordable Amiga being so much better in the 80's is impressive to me... The OCS/ECS games in the VGA era making a 1985 computer stand toe to toe with a 1992PC with VGA graphics.... Sometimes still looking better.... Almost always sounding better.... Wing Commander running on an Amiga500 with 16 very dithered but awesome colors.... Better looking than EGA mode.... And much more impressive than the carbon copy from DOS CD32 version...
There's a difference between superior and impressive. And there I go bad mouthing a computer a hell of a lot of Power Users adore... But if you look deep at the reasons... It's not because I hate the 1200; nor is it because I'm jealous.... It's simply that I love the 500 at the very least as much as anyone else loves the 1200... Can't they take it out for a spin now and then? Can't LGR, DOS game hoarder galore, do another Amiga video when 4 years ago he made me believe he cared? Can one person please follow my getting the Amiga online guide using ANY Amiga they wish.... I don't care if you have a RaspberryPi or something better.... Just so I can know if my guide will indeed work on ALL Amiga's, not just the 500.... Can someone with a 500 or 2000 be bothered to care enough to try it? It should be free! - All I know is I wrote every last bit of that thing myself, through research collected by me, no help.... Because when other people talk about the Amiga, turns out they are often times not discussing the same Amiga...and it kind of sucks.... Because you can't even get a homebrew game in 2017 to come out, with graphics the C64 or VIC-20 could handle, and have it run on a 6800! Because the people making the games don't give a crap about "The Amiga" - just their Amiga.
So I fight fire with fire sometimes... Some people may feel I'm just as bad... That this site is not better than EAB.... I hope not.... and I once said to Intric8 that I think the thing that makes us different is the fact that we even stop to think about it... To wonder if we're just as bad.... Just as mean.... Just as full of ourselves... Where they don't.... Where even after one of the top Lemon members; the one with the Lemon YouTube says I had it right.... They've been showing the games wrong... They've been unfairly hating on games because of playing them in PAL mode... Most of those people were bitching at me and responding in ways that made it so obvious they didn't watch one second of what I said... And even after a main and well looked up to figure says oh wow, this is a revelation for me... Not a single one of those people were welcoming to me... I tried to make friends with them, point out that hey, I write some detailed articles you might like here... None of those people could ever be bothered to write a post recommending people try out a rare American Amiga perspective, showing NTSC games correctly.... Where none of them bother to make one simple reply to one of the top guys posting about his PAL/NTSC videos... Because if they act like it didn't happen, maybe they can continue to feel special... Because somehow Europe and America loving the Amiga does not make people feel special...
I read what Intric8 writes, what anyone here writes. At first glance, it is a form with people that know each other, apologizes for sounding like an ass, but it was my honest first reaction. All I can say is at other forums they would have left it at that. I followed it up and thanked Intric8 for the comment... Because I can write all I want here; if I'm always at odds with the creator, regardless of our past, it's not a good feeling to think others think what you write is crap... It's not a good feeling for me writing detailed things and getting no response here, little response in the video... So you balance being a friend, yourself, nice, making points... And then there's this.... Will you read this ZippyZapp? - Believe me I understand if you don't, I get it... It's okay... I won't look at you any less... But if I found out you did make it through, because you cared for some reason, I would indeed smile in amazement at the respect given... But in the end I don't care; because I didn't write this for you; I wrote it for my friend Eric, to hopefully let him know again how much I love this place, so he may again tolerate my rash spontaneous first impression posts. I gotta speak from the heart... No scripting videos, and believe it or not, no scripting the writing. Just whatever flows from the heart.
Might be good, might be bad, hopefully more good than bad, always genuine. Zippy, I respect that you care more about ED than I do, I understand and believe you used it back in the day. And that to this very day you'd rather open that up nice and quick and not deal with more complicated and bloaty dedicated word processors... I even grant the recommendation for new Amiga users to use it, though that's very hard for me to understand. Try it I'd say, but when I ponder it deeply it feels like a curiosity....and I'd hate for anyone to think that was the best or only way to edit their startup sequence and get turned off the Amiga... But hey, if your love for it is powerful enough that you feel new users might enjoy it more than something else? I'll grant that your love is probably stronger than my hate. Not everyone agrees on everything, and I'm the last person to say everyone even needs to get along.... This place has a "friend/foe" option, so I think Intric8 is on board with that! But I just wrote this incredibly long piece so if you happened to read it, well, you might better understand my mindset with the original comment, indeed take note of the 2nd comment, and understand how your response may have appeared to be the more hostile to some, not mine... But you followed up with those memories.... And I love the memories.... Got many myself. And I shall say that in the event I continue to see your comments on this forum, good or bad, on mine or not, should I start to assume you'll be here like I've been here, you may very well find a comment such as my original short and punchy one for Intric8 may have never been said.... Because I know there's another regular who's very old school with his shell/CLI commands.... Oh I'd still give my recommendation, that's for sure... But as much as many may think I only care about myself; you may find I start to care about you, too... To me though, you're still not regular... Not blaming you, not pressuring you, not saying I mean more, just trying to help you understand that for both good and for bad, I'm talking to Eric over some turkey dinner.