Incline Gaming on the Amiga article series

[Morpheus Kitami]

It's basically just there if you can't figure out how to set up WinUAE on your own.

I figured that. But it's nice for an emulator to 'just work'. Microcomputer emulation often wants to do the full OS and have realistic loading times. While we a player I just want to run the games I want and be done with it.

You don't need to install AmigaOS to get the full range of most pre-1994 Amiga games. It's just a matter of getting the right roms. In fact, I can't actually think of a microcomputer that requires you to do the full OS. Late Amiga and Acorn 32-bit lines, but those are weird. (Mac, I guess, but does that really count as a microcomputer?) Loading times usually have a speed up option.
Now, of course, some games are janky this way. I remember Sleeping Gods Lie having a game-breaking bug early on in Amiga versions I played. And Amiga games, while they usually have fast loading time, multi-floppy games, like say, Bloodnet, are not fast to play. WHDownload is difficult to get running if you aren't on Windows, but something tells me the people who want stuff to just work aren't playing this crap on Linux. But that all is the crap outliers, most games work fine.

 

[Bester]

After 2 days of fighting WinUAE (I still haven't finished with it), needed to relax. Installed the Amiga Gamebase. It's like ExoDos, but for Amiga. A ton of games with screenshots, OST, instructions, hints/tips/cheats/walkthroughs, manuals. Very cool.
The weird thing is that I didn't understand what it was until I stumbled on a video about it. All mentions of it on various sites just don't explain it.
It looks like it can launch games through WinUAE, though the process of disk swapping through this thing is a mystery to me.

 

[Rincewind]

It looks like it can launch games through WinUAE, though the process of disk swapping through this thing is a mystery to me.

1. Insert up to 9 disks into the diskswapper section in the UI.
2. Swap disks 1 to 9 with End + 1-9
3. You can save this then as a config.

Other useful shortcuts:

End + F1-F4 - open select floppy image dialog for drive 1 to 4
End + Shift + F1-F4 (or maybe Ctrl, can't remember) - Eject floppy from drive 1 to 4

Many games can use multiple drives. E.g. Perihelion all 4 drives. How do you figure that out? Read the manual, experiment, and read the forums. Some use all available mem to load all of the floppies contents, then essentially run from RAM after that (Lemmings). Some do such preloading right away at startup (Street Rod, Dungeon Master)

Very early games that use the OS can load slowly. Later games, however, that kill the OS as the very first thing and implement their async "multi-tasked" trackloaders load from floppies very quickly, and loading is seamlessly intertwined with the game.

Try North & South from Infogrames with floppy sounds on. The intro appears about a second after inserting the floppy, and there's continuous movement and sound as the game keeps loading. It's a work of art how they seamlessly made the loading process non-boring. Midwinter is a bit similar; the intro screen appears just after a split second.

WinUAE is as simple or complex as you want it to be. It can emulate *every Amiga model* with *every possible extension* under the sun. That results in a somewhat complex GUI.

But, as I said, the simple use case simple.

 

[Rincewind]

You don't need to install AmigaOS to get the full range of most pre-1994 Amiga games.

Except if you install them to HDD. Most big American RPGs and adventures run from HDD on an A500. Same for most European adventures and RPGs. Basically most games from Westwood, LucasArts, Sierra, SSI, Delphine, some from Silmarils, etc.

I played Monkey Island 2 from 12 floppies back in the day. I don't recommend doing that.

And Amiga games, while they usually have fast loading time, multi-floppy games, like say, Bloodnet, are not fast to play.

BloodNet has an official installer, you can play it from HDD without going near WHDLoad. WHDLoad for games that have official HD installers is rather pointless in an emulated setup.

Anyway, my Amiga game collection will fix all that and give people the best authentic way to play prestigious Amiga games with no WHDLoad on A500/A2000-like setups. Working together with Toni now to iron out some WinUAE bugs. Creating game packs gives emulators a good workout!

 

[Jack Of Owls]

I have a 4K g-sync/VRR display (2160p) that I sit about 10' from. I want to take full advantage of that. Have lately been playing old games that are maximized/optimized to their fullest potential using modern source ports (ie Quake, Thief, etc). Really want to play some Amiga games so I think I'll check these guides out on how to do it in the Age of OLED and not ragequit because everything's been cropped from top to bottom or I'm playing PAL aspect ratios in NTSC or vice versa (I don't mind 4:3 letterboxing though; certainly prefer that to having everything hideously stretched to fit widescreen displays with all the fat headed distortion that comes with that).

 

[Rincewind]

I have a 4K g-sync/VRR display (2160p) that I sit about 10' from. I want to take full advantage of that. Have lately been playing old games that are maximized/optimized to their fullest potential using modern source ports (ie Quake, Thief, etc). Really want to play some Amiga games so I think I'll check these guides out on how to do it in the Age of OLED and not ragequit because everything's been cropped from top to bottom or I'm playing PAL aspect ratios in NTSC or vice versa

You can do so with my setup by using larger scaling ratios so the image fills the screen (4x, 5x, etc.) You won't see the slot mask emulation from that far, but that's not a problem; you wouldn't see that on a real CRT either when viewed from a distance.

I'll update the article in a few weeks so you might want to hold off on that. I'm gonna fix a few problems, add interlacing support, improve the gamma, make the images a little bit sharper, and the whole setup will be generally simplified.

(I don't mind 4:3 letterboxing though; certainly prefer that to having everything hideously stretched to fit widescreen displays with all the fat headed distortion that comes with that).

Stretching to widescreen is for unrefined barbarians. Then doing so via bilinear interpolation is only adding insult to injury. There are plenty of such guys on YouTube, and educating them is a losing battle and an exercise in frustration. I gave up a while ago.

 

[Azdul]

BloodNet has an official installer, you can play it from HDD without going near WHDLoad. WHDLoad for games that have official HD installers is rather pointless in an emulated setup.

Anyway, my Amiga game collection will fix all that and give people the best authentic way to play prestigious Amiga games with no WHDLoad on A500/A2000-like setups. Working together with Toni now to iron out some WinUAE bugs. Creating game packs gives emulators a good workout!

I'll definitely try your game pack.

However - in my opinion WHDLoad is not a bad solution.

For someone who had never used Amiga and seen Workbench for the first time - patching games to use AGA graphics without using WHDLoad was a pain in the ass. The same goes for custom sound samples - because SWOS is objectively better with Szpakowski as the commentator. Or adapting the games to joysticks with more than 1 button - like CD-32.

Before WHDLoad - I've seen Amigas with physical switch to select between 3 different Kickstarts.

Nowadays I can download Amiga Vision pack from archive.org - and have unified working setup with hundreds of games and demos ready to go on real Amiga hardware (68020+) / MiST / MiSTer / PC - on either classic CRT or modern displays - in few minutes.

 

[Rincewind]

However - in my opinion WHDLoad is not a bad solution.

It's a solution to a problem. Perfect solution? No, rather imperfect. But if you want to run those OCS games on an AGA Amiga, it's the only solution. If all you have is a single A1200, it's either WHDLoad or no game for you. WHDLoad being good or bad is not even a question as it's your only option.

No disagreements about that, it's simple fact.

My way is not to even go there: I want to run OCS games and demos on OCS Amigas, plain and simple. And when you're in the realm of pure emulation, using a WHDLoad conversion of say Monkey Island, a game that can be cleanly installed onto a HD-equipped A500 using the installer util on disk 1, is rather silly if you ask me. That's emulating an A1200 which runs WHDLoad to emulate an A500!

You don't need 3 Kickstarts, pretty much all games will run on 1.3 apart from some ancient ones that really need 1.2. But if you're going for an ultimate A500 that can run even the oldest games and old scene prods in particular, yeah, a Kick 1.2/1.3 switcher is a good idea.

I guess the "status quo" has been for a long time to use an A1200 expanded to the hilt so it looks like the poor thing is on life support. Well, if all you have is an A1200 you have to use WHDLoad, out of sheer necessity, or let go of 99% of the Amiga catalogue Not exactly a good option, I'll give you that. But there's a resurgence of using plain old A500s, either stock or with period-correct expansions, such as GVP side expansions, or new toys like the ACA500 and ACA500plus boards. I very much approve of this trend.

AGA is cool for a few scene demos and literally a handful of games (like less than 10). But what are you gonna use your AGA Amiga for today other than those few games and demoscene stuff? An ECS/OCS box is 100x more useful and arguably a lot more "classic". The whole AGA line was a disappointment to me and many others. Too little and too late, that sums it up. Then on the MiSTer or when using emulation on the PC, you can emulate any Amiga, so why even do it the roundabout way by using WHDLoad. I put the quality of WHDLoad conversions on the same level as general fan-made content: some are good, some are bad, quality varies wildly, many of them introduce a lot of bugs and problems not present in the originals. Even conversions that work, some people don't care as the game is running *somehow*, then other people like me are annoyed by the little details that often get screwed up (e.g., extra flashing, mouse speed is off, many little details like that...)

I'm an ECS/OCS guy, just like this prestigious dude:
http://coppershade.org/articles/Demos/Classics/Guide_to_Running_Classic_Demos/

With my pack I hope I am going to challenge this status quo. I'm not the only one, of course, DamienD has his own pack he's been working on for more than a decade now that uses mostly floppy games on an A500 setup. But then he likes cracked versions with scene intros and stuff, while I'm going for pristine originals.

To be clear: my goal is to preserve the *original experience* to the limits allowed by current day emulation. Nothing less! Running games in an emulated WHDLoad setup on an emulated A1200 using essentially fan-made patches and cracks simply doesn't cut it and is incompatible with that goal.

 

[Azdul]

Then on the MiSTer or when using emulation on the PC, you can emulate any Amiga, so why even do it the roundabout way by using WHDLoad.

FPGA allows you to configure machine in minute details.

8-bit and 16-bit home computers never truly died - but software released later on targets upgraded models. Enough to say that upgrade of Amiga 500 to 1 MB was not so optional from 1988 onwards. At the same time early classics may not work correctly on newer configurations.

Knowing release date of particular software - you can predict what hardware configuration will work best. It's all good fun when you know everything about the machine - like that Abu Simbel - Profanation expects Issue 1 Spectrum keyboard - or that:

Guru ending with address $0000ffff or lower: try changing kickstart, up or down but usually to 1.2.
Guru ending with address $00080000 - $001fffff: enable fastmem.
Guru ending with address $00200000 or higher: try disabling fastmem

WHDLoad is like training wheels for beginners .

 

[Rincewind]

Knowing release date of particular software - you can predict what hardware configuration will work best. It's all good fun when you know everything about the machine

WHDLoad is like training wheels for beginners .

Oh yeah, I think it's great to have all sorts of options for people at different skill levels and/or different levels of interests in a platform.

I guess I'm just a *little* frustrated when I hear it being parroted everywhere to "just use WHDLoad". But, as you're saying, there's WHDLoad, and then — — — a large gulf, and suddenly we're approaching expert territory.

So I guess instead of just bitching, I'm attempting to plug that hole. Then it's my turn receive the criticism, I guess

 

[Bester]

Except if you install them to HDD. Most big American RPGs and adventures run from HDD on an A500.

I see there's two options in WinUAE to create a HDD - use a directory in the Windows filesystem as a hard drive, or create a disk image (with a bunch of parameters unknowable to mere mortals). Is using the former method okay?

 

[Rincewind]

Except if you install them to HDD. Most big American RPGs and adventures run from HDD on an A500.

I see there's two options in WinUAE to create a HDD - use a directory in the Windows filesystem as a hard drive, or create a disk image (with a bunch of parameters unknowable to mere mortals). Is using the former method okay?

Yeah, using a directory HDD is fine and works well in 99% of scenarios. I'd venture to say it works perfectly in gaming scenarios.

You can find lots of tutorials how to use HDF files, etc. Just don't. You won't gain anything.

Savestates are quite usable and very reliable with HDD games when using directory hard drives. They are a lot more fragile with real HDFs. The Amiga filesystems aren't robust like modern filesystems such as NTFS.

Another tip for new players: the OS writes to the HDD with an 1-2 second delay in most cases (probably caching; it tries to wait to accumulate write operations and bundle them up). When you write anything to disk, always wait two seconds before you reset or turn off the emulator. E.g. saving a file then immediately pressing reset or quitting the emulator is a recipe for potentially losing your data. This is how it is on real hardware too; people learned to wait a few seconds after writes. With directory HDD the worst case is the new data is not saved, with HDFs potential data corruption and/or data loss.

To be fair, FAT and the old Mac filesystems are no better. We had to wait for NTFS to get a really robust and safe FS.

Turn on "native on-screen display" in the misc options tab. That will display the HDD and floppy activity LEDs and other useful info in fullscreen in the corner. Enable floppy sounds too, but set the volume to 10%. It's useful feedback and yeah, authentic

 

[Jack Of Owls]

(I don't mind 4:3 letterboxing though; certainly prefer that to having everything hideously stretched to fit widescreen displays with all the fat headed distortion that comes with that).

Stretching to widescreen is for unrefined barbarians. Then doing so via bilinear interpolation is only adding insult to injury. There are plenty of such guys on YouTube, and educating them is a losing battle and an exercise in frustration. I gave up a while ago.

I remember years ago visiting my sister and her husband who had a massive Mitsubishi widescreen projection TV that weighed as much as a small asteroid, I think, that took up about a third of their entire living room. They had it set to stretch everything that was 4:3 to 16:9 or whatever. They were watching Leave it To Beaver and Beaver's head was as wide as his mother June's ass. "Plebs!" was all I could think. "They don't know better." I shook my head sadly.

"Ward, you were hard on the beaver last night."

 

[Rincewind]

I remember years ago visiting my sister and her husband who had a massive Mitsubishi widescreen projection TV that weighed as much as a small asteroid, I think, that took up about a third of their entire living room. They had it set to stretch everything that was 4:3 to 16:9 or whatever. They were watching Leave it To Beaver and Beaver's head was as wide as his mother June's ass. "Plebs!" was all I could think. "They don't know better." I shook my head sadly.

"I paid good money for that shit, I want to see ALL of 'em pixels IN ACTION!"

When people start blabbering about being annoyed by the "unused area" on their monitors when using integer scaling and/or proper 4:3 aspect ratios... I know it's time to move on and imagine I'm in my happy place.

 

[Bester]

I finally finished setting everything up. My last question: is beam raced vsync really that expensive?

With the full shader pipeline, I get 70 fps at 1080p. But at 4k, I get only 30 fps. Turning off beam raced vsync gives me 144+ fps, this is as much as my monitor can do.

I tried lowering the number of slices, but even with 1 slice I get sub-60 fps, around 50-60, it's not stable.
Without CRT shaders I pull 55-65 fps at 4k with 4 slices, but it won't do without them.

How much of an input lag difference are we talking about 4 slices of beam racing vs standard vsync?

P.S.
Observation. When you create a directory (makedir), it doesn't have an icon, so it's just not displayed! You need to manually copy the .info file from another folder and rename it. Wow.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

you create new directories in in workbench and not through cli.

quick guide on installing on hd: copy everything in the same directory. if that doesn't work, usually it was a matter of copying stuff from "c", "libs" and similar directories into dh0's. if that doesn't work, go into icon properties of the main executable and add the line "assign [name of the floppy you copied from, its real name, not a generic "df0:"] [where you copied the stuff]". if that doesn't work, add that command line to "dh0:s/startup-sequence" file instead. anywhere in the file, it doesn't make a difference. if that doesn't work, there were more complex attempts, the equivalent of working with isos, but not everything was meant to be ran from hd.

while we're here: play starglider 2.

 

[Rincewind]

Or just use Directory Opus or FileMaster, those tools will help with file manipulations and create the directory icons for you. Looks like I'll need to continue the article series with info on all these... otherwise I'm gonna write it in forum posts

I use 2x horizontal and 3x vertical oversampling with the shaders currently, and a beamslice of 4. I get stable 60 FPS on my RTX 3060 with this setup at 1080p. But at 4k in your case, you're dealing with a 4-fold increase of pixel data. For what it's worth, I was not able to use beamslicing with the shaders on my previous GTX 750 Ti card.

I recommend 2x/3x oversampling for the best looking result. You can use 1x/3x too, you'll lose a TINY bit of horizontal clarity only. But 3x vertical is a must.

In all action games, the difference between regular vsync and a beamslice of 4 is already huge. Even a slice of 1 is supposed to be better than regular vsync, but I did not quite understand Toni's explanation

Try Arkanoid and Pinball Dreams with regular vsync and beamsliced, and you'll immediately notice the huge difference. These games are unplayable with regular vsync for me. Slice of 4 feels already like real hardware! In theory, vsync is 20ms latency for PAL, slice of 4 is 5ms or better. That's very much real hardwareish already. It's a huge game changer (pun intended).

Having said that, in 95% of all adventures, RPGs, and strategy games, even vsync off is acceptable. The biggest difference you'll notice in these games with mostly static screens is a smoother mouse cursor (which can matter, of course, and again, feels like hardware, but it's hardly essential as in some action games).

 

[Bester]

With 1 slice, I get 50-60 fps.
With 2 slices, I get 60-70 fps. That it performs better at 2 slices is weird, but okay.

A caveat though: I get a black line on the screen. It moves around depending on the number of slices. A faulty implementation?

 

[Rincewind]

A caveat though: I get a black line on the screen. It moves around depending on the number of slices. A faulty implementation?

No, there should be no black line. It can be fiddly to get it to work. I've been able to use 4 successfully. But for some reason, yesterday 4 was causing tearing when I played Pinball Dreams... 2 and 3 was fine, though :shrug:

I know Windows 10 updates have regressed it a few times before, and it can be dependent on drivers too, etc.

This thread might help (Toni Wilen is the WinUAE dev guy, most info in this thread is coming from him):
https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=88777&page=8

Relevant comment:

Most modern NVIDIA/AMD GPUs in the last 5 years are powerful enough to just do a full shader re-render 4 times a refresh cycle. Even 4-frameslice is still one-quarter refresh cycle latency (75% lag reduction). Sub-frame rendering via real time beam racing + shader enabled = still beautifully viable with full shader re-renders. Pinball has never been this much fun in an emulator before today!

That's a comment from 2018, so we're talking about GPUs from 2013 onwards. Of course, with CRT shaders the requirements can be quite a bit higher.

So maybe there's something wrong with it and/or it could be made more stable. But all the bullshit background services, virus scanners, all that shit in the background, USB devices, etc. can all throw the timing off on Windows from time to time. I might complain to Toni about it later, but I think I've exhausted my bug report quota with him in the past two weeks...

 

[Bester]

I'm writing an article (in Russian) on NES/Genesis emulation, and I've made two lists of worthwhile games to go along with the instructions. [1] and [2]

I've also thrown in instructions for WinUAE into the article, since I've just learned using it. Home computers before 1992 have completely passed us by in the ex-Soviet republics. It's a complete terra incognita. Trying to compile a list of Amiga games now. I haven't personally played anything on the Amiga yet, so I'm finding it a bit difficult to find games that are a) highly rated, and b) blow DOS out of the water.

For instance, take Lemmings or Populous 1/2. Sure, DOS looks a bit worse, but it's just a few minor misgivings, unless I'm missing something. It looks like it's not an "absolutely need an Amiga" type situation, at least not for most people. Another example, "Shadow of the Beast" looks gorgeous, but has a low rating? Why? Not sure what to make of that. Sim City looks kinda interesting on Dos, albeit differently.

I know Rincewind has compiled a list of worthwhile games by year, a huge effort. It's a bit overwhelming and I feel (perhaps mistakenly) that most Amiga recommended titles in that list are probably just marginally better than on other platforms.

I'll continue the research, but though that maybe someone here could namedrop a few titles off the top of their head that are both highly rated and absolutely require an Amiga to play.

tagging Zed Duke of Banville as well obviously

So far I've only got Blood Money, Lords of the Rising Sun, It Came from the Desert, Uridium 2, Apidya, Sid Meier's Pirates.

 

[Rincewind]

For instance, take Lemmings or Populous 1/2. Sure, DOS looks a bit worse, but it's just a few minor misgivings, unless I'm missing something. It looks like it's not an "absolutely need an Amiga" type situation, at least not for most people.

The actual gameplay part is quite faithfully ported, yeah, and I don't have much problems with it on DOS. But in DOSBox the game is *very* fast on the default 3000 cycles. Bringing it down to around 1200-1500 is more authentic compared to the Amiga original.

Most of what you lose is the superior intro, the superior Amiga music done by nobody else than Rob Hubbard (the C64 SID composer legend).

Another example, "Shadow of the Beast" looks gorgeous, but has a low rating? Why? Not sure what to make of that.

It looks gorgeous, but it's a "demo game". Gameplay is just shit. It was the no.1 game to show off to your unfortunate friends stuck on some XT/286 with a Hercules/CGA/EGA adapter (along with HAM images of nude girls ). So it gets low ratings *as a game*.

Sim City looks kinda interesting on Dos, albeit differently.

Probably the Amiga version is the best for the classic game.

I know @Rincewind has compiled a list of worthwhile games by year, a huge effort. It's a bit overwhelming and I feel (perhaps mistakenly) that most Amiga recommended titles in that list are probably just marginally better than on other platforms.

I've updated the list since then, and most pre 1990s games are recommended to play on the Amiga now. I won't bother to update the list on the codex because a) I think I lost my scripts that generates the HTML from the CSV file, b) there's not much general interest. Too many younglings here

I'll continue the research, but though that maybe someone here could namedrop a few titles off the top of their head that are both highly rated and absolutely require an Amiga to play.

I think by asking the question this way you've kind of already answered it for yourself: no, in *absolute terms* you don't *need* to play an Amiga original when a DOS port exists with 80-100% the same gameplay, 50-100% the same graphics, and 0-20% the same sound.

But look at my reply; that's your answer. If they ported the gameplay itself over mostly okay, then yeah, if you're only into "pure gameplay" and they did not make the graphics look ten times worse, it doesn't matter for you.

If you're into the audio side of things, that's the biggest difference. I prefer Eye of the Beholder I on the Amiga with 32-colours *and* sampled sounds than the PC original with 256-colour but crappy AdLib SFX.

Many (most?) DOS ports of Amiga games have inferior music, although the graphics might be identical pixel by pixel.

But you're right, it's a connoisseur thing. You either need to have nostalgia for the Amiga, having owned one (in which case you'll most likely steer clear of the DOS ports), or you need to develop a taste for it. Then if you have nostalgia for a Hercules equipped XT with PC speaker audio... well, please accept my sincere condolences, but hey, there's no arguing with personal experience and nostalgia

My upcoming port comparison article will contain examples.

So far I've only got Blood Money, Lords of the Rising Sun, It Came from the Desert, but I just started basically.

Cinemaware games are a bit shit on DOS. The EGA graphics are very skillfully done, but the Amiga originals are way better. Again, pay special attention to the music and sound.

If you look at the pre-1990 era, I'd turn it around: I don't see why anyone would *prefer* the inferior DOS port of a game (or DOS original).

Examples that are clearly superior on the Amiga:

- Neuromancer (EGA only on DOS, the original music is gone)
- Archipelagos (the stellar, quirky music of David Whittaker, the 8-bit legend, is missing from the DOS port)
- Rick Dangerous (CGA & PC speaker only on DOS; looks like dogshit)
- BloodNet (AGA) (it's an interesting one for a mid-90s game; the music in the Amiga port is completely different, and IMO superior)
- Borrowed Time (CGA only, crap sound)
- Tass Times in Tonetown (CGA only, crap sound)
- Cannon Fodder (they mutilated the intro & music on DOS)
- Early Gold Box games (better gfx & sound on the Amiga)
- Pirates! (best port is the Amiga)
- Deja Vu II: Lost in Las Vegas!! (CGA only, crap sound)
- Deja Vu: A Nightmare Comes True!! (CGA only, crap sound)
- Driller (EGA only, crap sound)
- Castle Master (EGA & PC speaker only; the Amiga music is a classic)
- Total Eclipse (EGA & PC speaker only, different mechanics)
- Elite (Amiga is the best 16-bit port; the Archimedes port is arguably a different game altogether)
- Legend of Faerghail (EGA graphics only; mutilated intro — the stellar intro music, one of my favourites that sets the mood so nicely, is gone)
- All original Magnetic Scrolls adventures (Fish!, Jinxter, Corruption, etc. — auto-converted dithered DOS graphics is inferior)
- North & South (EGA only, PC speaker sound)
- Starflight (Amiga version has superior graphics & improved gameplay)
- Transarctica (mid-90s game; Amiga has superior music; DOS port is AdLib only)
- Ishar series (Amiga music is superior; DOS is AdLib only, and a different score)
- Elvira (Amiga music is totally different and IMO superior)

TL;DR, the more you go back into the '80s, the difference will be night and day (CGA/EGA graphics and no or PC speaker sound vs 16/32/64-colour 12-bit RGB graphics and 8-bit sampled sound).

Then if you're a connoisseur, the differences will matter to you right until the end of the Amiga's commercial lifespan.

It's like you can listen to music on a $5 headphone or a $1000 one. Sure, the main melody is the same, you hear the lyrics on both, the drums are there, etc. In that sense, I'd generally agree with you that most people who don't care about details will be fine with the DOS ports, but only for the '90s games. For most of the '80s stuff, the difference hits you on the forehead with a brick—only people who watch 4:3 content stretched to widescreen on their TVs would not care about that

 

[Nutmeg]

When it comes to the same game on multiple systems, more interesting than graphics and sound (unless ofc. they are completely ug), IMO, are gameplay and interface or control differences.

 

[Rincewind]

When it comes to the same game on multiple systems, more interesting than graphics and sound, IMO, are gameplay differences.

To me gameplay, graphics and music is 33/33/33%*. I seriously can't enjoy DOS and Amiga games without shaders these days. Just a hard NOPE.

640x480 with 2x integer scaling on 1080p looks servicable, although far from great.

Some people care less about the "aural" differences. But even the same C64 game in front of the PC in VICE versus on my real C64 hooked up to a 90s TV in the next room is a big difference for me. I enjoy playing the exact same game on the real hardware and a TV a lot more.

* The 1% is the floppy sound emulation

 

[I eat frozen vegetables]

For the guy who has to play Dynamite Dux, you might want to play through the entire game twice.

 

[Bester]

Figured out how to navigate all that data from Rincewind's lists. Just had to add a MobyGames rating to each title and that gives you a list of games to try first. Useful for newcomers like myself who otherwise can't make heads or tails of all those titles.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qF5Ire-1T-FbG1a78hotiaLADcRPGY84fEF1y7e-8O8/

Amiga RPGs:

Amiga Adventures:

Amiga Tactics: