The Amiga line of 16 bit computers was actually hugely popular in UK and Europe, as popular as the Megadrive and SNES. In fact I sold my Megadrive for an A600 in the day. Great video btw, Commodore really could have been a big player if they were ran properly, their tech was often ahead of the curve.
Also as someone else has posted being basically an Amiga1200 with no keyboard and CD drive this console had many many developers on side and also a potentially huge startup games library sitting there for conversion, shame it went to soon😔
That's true. Many people here in Germany had an Amiga Computer. Also the C64 was very famous here. In my schooltime when the SNES and Mega Drive were famous the kids also shared floppy discs with Commodore 64 games in break time.
While you imagine the CD 32 being the third person in the console wars, I'll keep thinking about how the turbografx 16 could have been a success if it was released in America around the same time of its Japanese release and not 2 years later.
In Poland this was the S**T! The thing is that due to the whole iron curtain business there were practically no consoles here, so we missed the Atari and the NES (however we got a certain superb famiclone), and gaming on computers was huge, especially C64, Speccy and Atari XL/XE. But the queen of them all was the Amiga. The Amiga was the wet dream of everyone who had any interest in computers. And then this thing came out, and me in my cousin were drooling so hard over the ads in magazines, but unfortunately we couldn't afford one, and then of course commodore got themselves out of business and everyone switched to Windows PCs. But if I had the money, I would SO have gotten one of those... ah, good times...
I remember seeing this in the shops in the uk and wanting one. We had no idea of the troubles of Commodore USA at the time. Over here Amiga was king over snes and megadrive/genysis i couldnt believe when they went bust and ended up with a 3do from my parents. Now i retro bought an a1200 because of the great memorys of the a500 i had back in the day.
When I was living in Maple Ridge, BC around 1993 I actually did see a CD32. In a bank. It was being used to run some kind of multimedia presentation that was looping on the TVs in there. Regrettably I was still a kid at the time so I can't really remember what the presentation was about. And that was the only time I ever saw one. Or should I say, I saw the CD32 *logo*, every time the video reached the end, before it looped back to the beginning. What a mysterious console.
Saying it just "did okay" in the UK is a bit rude. It was the best selling CD system by miles, the only thing that limited it's success was they never had enough to meet demand. Shops would get a delivery of like, five units. And they'd be gone by next day.
@@maniacsatwork he was correct though. Think most americans know commodore was a big seller since the c64 did so well in the states. The amiga wasnt a smash over there but its pretty common knowledge even to americans that it was a top seller everywhere else.
Loved this console... I had a paragon SX1 module for it, where you attached a keyboard, mouse AND floppy disk drive to it, so it could fully function as an Amiga 1200. Defining games which were designed for the console were Microcosm and Liberation. From what I remember, both were ported to the A1200 but they were originally designed for the CD32. Good times with those two!
One of my friends back in the 90's had one in the USA. From what I have gathered, the units sold in Canada were mostly sold out to Americans. He got his from a Canadian Commodore reseller, this may be why you rarely see them in Canada itself. Also, many of the games released for it were of course Amiga 1200 games, but many also added CD audio tracks, usually just the regular tracker music recorded on CDA. StarDust on the CD32 is a must get! If only for the sound track, that you can easily rip to MP3.
I remember when this came out in the UK, the launch made the news as they used celebrities to introduce it at a party ( in London I think). Chris Evans ( not Captain America Evans sadly lol) the TV presenter was part of it all. It was heavily marketed as the first 32 bit console ( lack of the internet meant we didn't really know better). We really thought this was going to be successful but most of the games were already available on the extremely popular Amiga computer line for less money. My friend had one day of release and bought it around my house which is I think the only time I played one, I remember the D pad on the controller wasn't great. Playing games on it kind of felt like the Amiga line hadn't moved on and Amiga fans were not going to give up there computers or games library to convert over and nintendo & Sega owners were loyal to those brands, I still see the odd CD32 from time to time. I had an Amiga CDTV ( it was basically a Amiga 500 with a CD drive that went under your TV, a bit like the CD-I & 3DO concept but could be upgraded with a mouse, disk drive & keyboard to a more computer style if wanted ) and that played most of the Amiga games I want too.... not sure if you covered that machine but I will check out your channels video list 🙂. Cheers for another great video !
I remember I bought an Amiga in 1989 then sold it for a good price then bought a slimmer version in 92. New Zealand story I remember well and Sensible Soccer. Thanks for the effort you put into these videos, they really bring back so many memories.
I remember seeing an Amiga cd32 in a local game shop back then here in Ukraine. It looked very futuristic, way ahead of the nes clone Dendy that I have had.
+AdamKoralik I'm 100% positive I've seen these in the US. Back in the early 90's they were being sold at a Costco in Michigan and I asked my mom to get me one... I crap you not. I had a C64, loved it, and wanted one of these sooo bad.
The amiga cd32 is a fascinating system alot of the great game developers from the UK started their early careers with the amiga and the games were playable on the cd32. Such a shame commodore ran out of money and couldn't keep the system going.
I still enjoy playing on my CD32 from time to time. I use it much more than my CDTV. Some CD32 games I recommend: Chaos Engine, Alien Breed: Tower Assault, Worms, Cannon Fodder, Lotus Trilogy, Superfrog, Beneath a Steel Sky.
I had an Amiga CD32 as a kid, when Commodore went bust, it became nigh on impossible to find games for it though. You had to search through the bargain bins of video game shops to find any. Then my mate got a PS1 and it just made the CD32 look terrible. The console and all the games ended up going in the bin, in the end. One game you must try, is Liberation II: Captive, probably the best game released on the CD32. Would like to make a few points though: As far as I'm aware, the reason no one has heard of it in Canada or seen one, is because even though Commodore planned to sell it there, the whole US inventory was kept in a warehouse up until they went bust. Commodore was in a huge financial mess even before the CD32 and the lawsuit. There's a rumour, that hundreds of CD32s, for the American market, still sit abandoned in this warehouse somewhere. The CD32 was the companies last rushed attempt to turn a profit, as you said in the video, it was basically just an Amiga 1200 in a different case. The reason Commordore and Amiga were having so much trouble is because they failed to improve their hardware enough. Back in the mid 80s, when the first Amiga 1000 was released and the cheaper 500, nothing in the computing world could compare to its graphical performance. It really was an amazing piece of kit . In a world where everyone thought computers were only capable of green text with a black screen, or only a handful of colours, Amiga come along, and show off a computer which is capable of processing a red and white ball, moving around the screen. Not only that, but the 1000 and 500 came with an operating system. You didn't have to memorize countless lines of code, or exe. paths to load anything. You either clicked on a icon, like you do in windows now, or you put a floppy in before starting the machine and it did everyone else for you. But Amiga basically kept the same graphics processor throughout its history and by the 90s the rest of the world had caught up, and a few years after that, the Amiga's graphical capabilities was obsolete. Everyone had moved on from Amiga and were buying PCs or buying consoles for the fraction of the price, which had better, brighter, graphics.
...I'm a 70's baby, so I basically played through every generation. I owned and learned how to program on a Commodore 128. There was a time where my dream was to work for Commodore since I'm from Pennsylvania. I never could afford an Amiga computer, but had several friends in college that had one and it gave me an opportunity to play a system that I always wanted to own. Thanks for reviewing this rare gaming system you really brought back a lot of memories...
6:19 I recently managed to get my hands on one that came up in an auction house here in Canada. The barcode sticker on the bottom is labeled CN which (I assume) indicates that it was made for the canadian market. I've seen ones labeled US, UK, GR, etc for different countries so it was cool to find one here that was actually sold here originally!
When I was a kid and this console came out, I remember playing Diggers in a store on a display model and really wanting this console, my 11 year old self wanted it so bad. Funny on the disc read light, did Playstation not just being that back for the PS5 Disc model ?
@@AdamKoralik You mention the disc read light in this video, to show the drive is being used. The pS5 disc version has a read light on it as well as the power light. Or am I totally wrong ?
I fell in love with the aesthetics of this console when I first saw it in one of the video game museum articles. Although I could have swore I saw a lighter colored one. It's very "Back to the Future".
I remember playing one of these in Dixons (defunct electronics store in the UK) and I loved the the Controller! It was expensive in comparison to Sega and Nintendo and Amiga fans were happy with their 500s using a Megadrive controller.
I got one of these on release day in the UK. Games to look out for: Frontier Elite, Gloom, Pirates and Labyrinth of Time. Oh, and you forgot to mention the FMV VCD expansion port on the back?
I heard somewhere that if you plug in an Amiga mouse into the CD32's controller port and hold down both buttons during the console's startup, it will give you the option to select NTSC or PAL regardless of which region the unit is from. I can't remember where I heard this but if it's true then you can save some cash and not have to mod the console, unless you really want RGB.
+Michael Wolfe This is correct as the Boot ROM was just an updated Amiga 1200 ROM with additional code to add CD (this system could be upgraded to a full computer system if you wanted) the problem though is the system would still initially boot in to PAL (as default) upon power up so the the screen to select PAL/NTSC would be a flickering mess. Also the RF modulator still wouldn't work so composite or svideo only.
Cool vid!!! I remember reading about this console In the early 90s, I thought it was gonna be a success because of the hardware based on the Amiga computer and the Commodore brand was popular back then, heck I even started coding and gaming on a C64. Ahh the good ol' days.
The main problem of the Amiga 32 was that it was marketed as a next Gen console when its technolgy was not really. IT was a 32 Bit system but not on the hardware level of a 3do or a Jaguar. Let alone the Play Station or Saturn Had it come out two years earlier IT could have made some noise and challenged the SNES and Megadrive in Europe. Amiga was insanely popular here in Europe in the late 80s early 90s. But in 1993 the CD32 was too little to late. Releasing it in 1991,or as a true next Gen console in 1993, and things might have turned out differently.
the units that came into the US from Canada are NTSC. The store that i bought my A1200 from also carried the CD32 and that store was located in Sacramento California. it took me years to find one but i obtained a NA NTSC unit last year. you can actually change the video output from PAL to NTSC by way of an Amiga mouse plugged into port 2. since most (not all) CD32 games are PAL I have to do the PAL mode on my unit to get it to play them properly. but it also helps that i still kept my Commodore 1084s monitor. But the unit does work on my regular composite Sanyo TV and i even have some demo discs that used to be included with the CD32 magazines back then. i will have to look into the RGB mod as my 1084s is also an RGB monitor that i use for snes, jaguar and genesis. it's small (13") but produces a really nice picture.
Bought CD32 at Wonder Computers in Ottawa at release time I had the mpeg decoder Microcosm, Zool and a couple of others it was very cool at the time wish I still had it. So I remember it in Canada also seem to remember using fred fish cd,s for shareware games.
I remember as a youngster (maybe about 7-8) playing on one of these on zool 2 and just couldn't work out why it was so so much more expensive than megadrive and looked absolutely the same on cross platform games. I don't know anybody who had one at the time of launch or even now. Amiga was huge in UK but this in my area (Bolton Manchester) it wasn't any major stores.
When I heard of this console, I thought Sega and Commodore paired up to make a genesis,sega cd, and 32x combo system. Like the Sega CDX or the JVC X'EYE. Think about it, CD32 and Sega CD 32X. They sound pretty similar.
I had one of these when they came out in 1993 . I remember Zool , the Alien Breed games, Sensible Soccer, James Pond , D-Generation, Beneath a Steel Sky , Bubba and Styx ,Cannon Fodder , Gunship 2000 ,Simon the Sorcerer,Heimdell 2 , Lemmings (oh no) , various pinball games ,Simon the Sorcerer,The Lost Vikings , Soccer Kid, Subwar 2050 and UFO Enemy Unknown all being a lot of fun . I still used it every now and then even (mostly to play the pinball games) after getting a ps1 in 1995 but eventually ended up giving it away in 1999 to a friend of mine who was living in this grotty little bedsit without a penny to his name when I last saw him in 2012 he still had it and by that time he was married and his kids were using it . Must have been a hardy little machine to last that long .
nice video review my only suggestion will be can you show us some gameplay footage of this rare system and other upcoming reviews of yours and keep up the great work!
Eh, I wanted to focus more on the story of the console's history. Not so much its actual game playing capabilities. I'll probably do that another time.
I thought I knew my gaming history, but I swear I just heard of 3 consoles for the first time in watching a few of your videos today. Amiga CD32, Sega CD Model 1, and Sega Wondermega
There were actually games made for the CD32 and some have remained exclusives. However, most of them were later ported to the Amiga 1200 instead of them just languishing on the CD32. Its kind of like the PSVita, how many game on it that were originally exclusives are now ported to the PS4?
Love your format and how you explain the history of less common hardware. A down to earth discussion of awesome hardware. Keep 'em coming! Only suggestion is to put some cloth or sound absorbing things on your walls. There seems to be a slight reverb / echo in the room that you record in, so your voice isn't as crisp/clear as it could be.
Thanks. Yeah, I get that complaint a lot. There's a reason it's the "quick shoot series." My film school teachers would cry if they knew I did it this way.
I guess I could overlook the reverb if you would consider reviewing something awesome like.... oh i don't know... A Sega TeraDrive? j/k you have a great thing going here, it is a delight hearing fresh and modern takes on classic consoles and console history.
I had an Amiga 500 as a kid that was passed down to me from my older brother so I love the Amiga and I think Amiga was popular in the UK. I never had an Amiga CD32 but I will defo get one eventually.
i had one :) Problem is yeah, no "flagship" game. they coulda used the Akito chip to make a 3d exclusive out the get go. little late but i suggest 3 games for it, roadkill, alienbreed tower assault and super stardust :)
I know I’m ungodly late but I’ve been interested in shipping a console or two across the pond to get professionally modded for a while now, Could I just email Raymond and ask about logistics and if it’s something he’d consider doing?
@@DeathTheKidFTW998 I know a guy in Indiana that upgraded this exact CD32. See if this is what you want, his contact information is in the description. th-cam.com/video/Y9NCe0_MMuE/w-d-xo.html
I just ordered a CD32, but It only comes with the European power supply. Does anyone have a suggestion for power supply I can use in the US? Or should I get a converter?
One game I loved on the Amiga CD32 was called liberation. It was a First Person Futuristic RPG/Shooter a little like Deus Ex. Spent hours in that. Shame the U.S. Didn't have a this console as it could have been a hit given that Amiga in Europe was huge at the time
As an amiga lover from the uk and an amiga 500 owner. The a1200 was behind the times when it came out. The 1200 and cd32 both had the "puala" soundchip from 1985!!! and the graphics where not much further ahead of the old amigas. You got remember when the playstation came out it had a very impressive port of ridge racer with it's 3d graphics with textures and wow factor.
i was a big Amiga fan but although I was aware of the CD32 I never saw one till a few years ago when a friend pulled one out of his dads attic and gave me it. Its great for playing discs full of Amiga 500 games but I dont tend to use it for much more than that. Has a nice CD player in it I noticed.
Well, CD32 versions of Amiga games was usually extended by additional audio played directly from audio tracks, there were also additional intros thanks to CD capacity. So bad it had no chance in US.
I wonder I never heard anything about this console until today. Too sad the console had no chance. The C64, C128 and the Amiga Cumputer were super famous here in Germany. It means this brand had a big name here already.
I have (both PETs need repair) CBM PET 2001, 8032, C64 w/ 1702 monitor, tape drive & 3 Floppy drives (can’t remember models at the moment) All PAL Amigas 500, 600 & a towered A1200.
Cool vid, The CD32 represents a sad story, you see, Commodore didn't had to try actually to be the 'third big console manufacturer' what you keep saying. The Amiga line of computers (with the Amiga 500 especially) was *THE* gaming platform in Europe in the 80's and 90's, beating the SNES big time (due to the sloppy success of the NES) and was head to head with the Megadrive. I unfortunately can't find it right now but there is a research done around 1992-1995, the graph showed what platform kids had and Amiga was #1 with 25% with Megadrive having 15% and various other platforms such as PC, Atari and Nintendo taking only some procent. I remember that the SNES was at 8th place. Commodore was full with very passionate engineers (that is coming from the engineers themselves) and they worked like mad to simply have the best machines and the best OS. But in around the start of the 90's Commodore got a new president named Mehdi Ali, and this guy is a crook. Mehdi gave himself a unreasonable salary and deliberately 'bleed' the company so that he in the end could run off with the remaining money while others had to sell Commodore ip's to repay various dept's. The engineers couldn't do anything about it as it was technically legal was Mehdi was doing, while constantly working on the next generation Amiga they had to quickly pump out machines with legacy technology such as the Amiga 600 and the *CD32* to keep the company afloat. Design was ready for a machine that had similar 3D capability's to the original Playstation but with faster architecture and processing power well exceeding the N64. You can google 'Hombré chipset' or 'Amiga CD64' to read more about that. This is probably the original intended 'CD32' had things gone well, this chipset could have been used to upgrade the CD32 via the port on the back on a later date, to compete against the later consoles. Some notes, The AUX port on the CD32 is just a keyboard port, you can hook up a Amiga 3000 and 4000 keyboard on it, you would use one of the joystick ports for a mouse. The 'load light' is a standard Amiga thing, it is actually a general disc access light, so it is also used for other medium such as a hard drive or floppy drive should there be one attached. Zool 1 isn't on the Jaguar, and don't get Zool 2 on the jag ! :) the CD32 blows it away with much better graphics, animation, controls (jump isn't also mapped to up on the d-pad) , more levels and redbook audio for music and there are some demo's of other great CD32 games on the disc. Zool 2 is really a massive game on the CD32 as it originally was planned to be bundled with it, since the released of the original Zool on Amiga it was always 'tooted' (if that is the right word) as a Sonic beater and since then Commodore have used Zool a couple times as a posterboy on 'low end' Amiga's (never as a company mascot, would not been very professonal for a Computer\workstation manufacturer, would it ?). The dead line wasn't reached however and thus Zool 2 was later bundled with the Amiga 1200 (the ' A1200 Computer combat' bundel). One last thing, the UK is in Europe >:( , if you want reference Europe without the UK you would have to say 'Mainland Europe', the CD32 was also successful in Mainland Europe due to the Commodore name. I have a authentic Dutch CD32 I brought in a retro gaming store some years ago, I also had the opportunity to buy one from a Amiga dealer. (the Amiga isn't dead, new Amiga's are being made with the AmigaOne name)
janmansde3dede The word you were looking for was "touted," but I knew what you meant so it's all good. That's really interesting, I was unaware that Commodore had such a presence in Europe. Maybe I'm not well versed with gaming outside of North America , but it was definitely interesting to read all of that. It's a shame this system couldn't run its course here in the states, I would have loved seeing what kind of impact it would have had on the hardware market.
I got a PlayStation (original) and i just wanted to know what were your favorite games because i have a small library and i wanted to expand with great games.
i have a very small library so far but from what I've heard get castlevania symphony of the night! also get the 3 crash banicoot games and spyro games also maybe worth getting some rpg's. i really want Zenogears but it only came out in japan and the US and i don't how to make my ps1 (or ps2) to be region free
Beside the obvious titles like "boblowes" mentioned, there are some lesser know titles that are crazy fun like 1Xtreme, Jurassic Park: The Lost World, Road Rash and many more.
I seen one for sale in Canada recently. Not sure if it was the NA model but it had a nice case and a few games. Asking $200, I will ask the guy more about it next time I'm there. Pretty sure he still has it.
I had an A1200 very late its in life and the only place I saw the CD32 was in the Amiga magazine. Nobody in my circle of friends had one. Id love one now just for Chaos Engine :-)
Adam, this recap was honestly really good! Please do more if you can! EDIT: And you're friends with the ToyRatt? Dude that's awesome that place has all my PS2 needs.
Cool Video, as a kid (im 29 now & from the UK) my older brother owned the Amiga 1200 but never the CD32. The Amiga 1200 was an excellent gaming device (I know it's not a gaming console yet I always saw it as one) it had some of the best games, played it with my brothers religiously until I got the Nintendo 64 in 1996. Adam, if you never played the Amiga 1200 / 600/ 500, you should try one day maybe as it had some amazing games for it time, Canon Fodder, Mega Lo Mania, Lemmings, Secret of Monkey Island, Speedball 2, Lotus turbo Challenge 2 just to name a few, great days!
Neat video, but I don't agree with the assessment that the CD32 could've been the "next big thing". By '93-'94, what people were looking for in games was 3d texture-mapped polys. The Amiga wasn't really suited to pushing them, even though the CD32 has a chip called Akiko for (among other things) chunky-to-planar graphics on the fly conversion. Furthermore, the Amiga memory architecture has two separate "lands", Chip RAM and Fast RAM. Chip RAM is used by the custom video and audio chips for display buffer and so on. Fast RAM is used by the CPU for other tasks. In the absence of Fast RAM, the CPU will use Chip RAM, however, this slows things down tremendously. The Amiga 1200 out of the box had no Fast RAM nor did the CD32. With the addition of even a single megabyte of onboard Fast RAM the CD32 would've been 60% faster, and might have done better. Wing Commander was released for the CD32 and performance was abysmal, as was Alien Breed 3d (a DOOM-like FPS). Commodore was kneecapped by a corporate raider management that came on board to wring every dime out of the company, then leave it for dead, which they did. They cut development budgets in the 80s and early 90s for both Amiga computer OSes and hardware development. Instead of having dedicated 3d hardware in all their systems by 1991, the developers were hamstrung by management only interested in looting the company, and the lackluster AGA chipset was released at a time when it was already being outperformed by off-the-shelf chipsets from S3 and Trident. Commodore International kept going for a few more years, switching hands, becoming Amiga Technologies before sinking beneath the waves for good. But, in that time, the CD32 was more than a little supported: various companies released expansions that actually turned the CD32 into a full-function computer. You could get a 68030 processor that runs at 50mhz and supports more RAM, has a hard-drive connector, and other functions, as well as supporting an external floppy drive. There's homebrew hardware companies now that make expansions like that again, although economics of scale makes them kind of expensive... A bit more history and then I'll quit rambling: The '1200 finally DID see a (very limited) release in the US, where it occasionally wound up as the guts of Infokiosks, and in one case was used at an international language school in New York as a primary interactive teaching computer. Part of what held the CD32 (and the Amiga 1200) up from release wasn't just the XOR Patent issue, but rather was Commodore's poor financials: Hewlett Packard fabbed a lot of custom chips for Commodore, and Commodore didn't have the money to pay them. So a lot of completed Amiga 1200s and CD32s sat in factory warehouses in the Philippines, some of them for years and years after the death of Commodore. Occasionally you'll see NOS CD32s show up on eBay, particularly from China, (where the CD32 also got tucked into gambling kiosks); just keep your eyes peeled and you might be able to pick up a "brand new" unit in a box, sealed, with all the goodies (and NTSC!)
Yes I know, but it is one of the few games that you only can play on Amiga CD32. Yes it also work on the CDTV (A500 OCS/ECS), but I think you get more colors when playing on the Amiga CD32 (1200 AGA).
I must have really good luck on eBay. Actually managed to pick up a Canadian NTSC CD32 a few years back. The S-video looked really sharp on my CRT. Around the same time, I also managed to pick up a (working!) Atari Jaguar CD.
I'm in Canada in a island off east coast called Newfoundland... My cousins had one I didn't know tf it was and could are less but ha he had one and the. The 64 version...I wonder what ever happens to it
the Amiga 1200 stayed around for a good long time in the UK, long enough to see the potential of the AGA chipset pushed to its absolute limit (which was around the very basic doom/wolfinstein level of game, the hardware was never really designed for 3d games and didn't perform well with them at all, although it's funny that there are hardware expansions for the 1200 that turn it into quite the performer with much higher clocked 68000 series CPUs and much more RAM and that really helped with ports of games like DOOM, but obviously giving the system an boost from 14 to 50mhz and 2 to 16MB of RAM is kind of cheating! It might be something you'd be interested in adding to your collection as the Amiga 1200 is still somewhat of a cult machine to this day just like the commodore 64.
My biggest regret in life is selling all my old consoles as a kid. I had an Amiga CD32, Amiga 1200, Action Max, ZX Spectrum, various Game Boys and Game Gears, and many, many more. I remember playing the CD32 fondly. Cannon Fodder, Rise of the Robots and The Chaos Engine were in constant rotation.
Love your channel Adam!! I know this is an old post, but I checked out gameplay of some games, and D/Generation looks like an AMAZING GAME! It's too bad we never got a release here! :( anyway, keep up the great work! I look forward to more videos daily!!
The ironic thing for me is I could never find a boxed CD32 in the UK and ended up buying one from Canada :D
hey i watch your vids.
poopboy123456
Thanks dude :) Hopefully you like them too!
"You don't have to be named Nintendo to make a buck in the industry"
Tiger electronics proved that for us.
Homer sams HA, that is so...so true.
The Amiga line of 16 bit computers was actually hugely popular in UK and Europe, as popular as the Megadrive and SNES. In fact I sold my Megadrive for an A600 in the day. Great video btw, Commodore really could have been a big player if they were ran properly, their tech was often ahead of the curve.
Also as someone else has posted being basically an Amiga1200 with no keyboard and CD drive this console had many many developers on side and also a potentially huge startup games library sitting there for conversion, shame it went to soon😔
Thanks for watching!
That's true. Many people here in Germany had an Amiga Computer. Also the C64 was very famous here. In my schooltime when the SNES and Mega Drive were famous the kids also shared floppy discs with Commodore 64 games in break time.
“It looks exactly how the 80’s would’ve depicted the future” 😂
While you imagine the CD 32 being the third person in the console wars, I'll keep thinking about how the turbografx 16 could have been a success if it was released in America around the same time of its Japanese release and not 2 years later.
In Poland this was the S**T! The thing is that due to the whole iron curtain business there were practically no consoles here, so we missed the Atari and the NES (however we got a certain superb famiclone), and gaming on computers was huge, especially C64, Speccy and Atari XL/XE. But the queen of them all was the Amiga. The Amiga was the wet dream of everyone who had any interest in computers. And then this thing came out, and me in my cousin were drooling so hard over the ads in magazines, but unfortunately we couldn't afford one, and then of course commodore got themselves out of business and everyone switched to Windows PCs. But if I had the money, I would SO have gotten one of those... ah, good times...
+matzieq funny cuz pc gaming is still really popular in that part of Europe. thats what i hear anyway lol
True :) powiedziałeś jak jest, niczym mariusz max kolonko
I remember seeing this in the shops in the uk and wanting one. We had no idea of the troubles of Commodore USA at the time. Over here Amiga was king over snes and megadrive/genysis i couldnt believe when they went bust and ended up with a 3do from my parents. Now i retro bought an a1200 because of the great memorys of the a500 i had back in the day.
I guess I'm lucky that I had one of these as a kid. We live in the UK and my dad love amiga PC's, so did I. Great console.
When I was living in Maple Ridge, BC around 1993 I actually did see a CD32. In a bank. It was being used to run some kind of multimedia presentation that was looping on the TVs in there. Regrettably I was still a kid at the time so I can't really remember what the presentation was about. And that was the only time I ever saw one.
Or should I say, I saw the CD32 *logo*, every time the video reached the end, before it looped back to the beginning. What a mysterious console.
As a new CD32 owner I enjoyed hearing your thoughts on the system. Neat that the NTSC conversion is nice and simple
Thanks for watching!
Saying it just "did okay" in the UK is a bit rude. It was the best selling CD system by miles, the only thing that limited it's success was they never had enough to meet demand. Shops would get a delivery of like, five units. And they'd be gone by next day.
Adam and Americans in general are clueless when it comes to Commodore's success in the UK, Europe and Australia.
THe Mega CD sold well in the UK.
@@maniacsatwork and Brits are clueless about the video game crash and that the nes saved the industry at the time
Exactly... so it did ok. Just because it was popular doesnt mean it did as well as it could.
@@maniacsatwork he was correct though. Think most americans know commodore was a big seller since the c64 did so well in the states. The amiga wasnt a smash over there but its pretty common knowledge even to americans that it was a top seller everywhere else.
Recently found your Chanel and been binge watching it! Love the history’s for each console and company thanks so much dude
Gamester81 has an NTSC Amiga CD32. Of course he does.
Plus Gamester81 talked about the Easter egg in the system. You can change the video signal from PAL to NTSC using the Amiga Mouse.
As a Amiga user I’ve wanted a CD32 for years
Boy I'm addicted to these generation recap series Adam good stuff brother I learned a shitload of stuff. Thanks for this.
Loved this console... I had a paragon SX1 module for it, where you attached a keyboard, mouse AND floppy disk drive to it, so it could fully function as an Amiga 1200.
Defining games which were designed for the console were Microcosm and Liberation. From what I remember, both were ported to the A1200 but they were originally designed for the CD32. Good times with those two!
One of my friends back in the 90's had one in the USA. From what I have gathered, the units sold in Canada were mostly sold out to Americans. He got his from a Canadian Commodore reseller, this may be why you rarely see them in Canada itself. Also, many of the games released for it were of course Amiga 1200 games, but many also added CD audio tracks, usually just the regular tracker music recorded on CDA. StarDust on the CD32 is a must get! If only for the sound track, that you can easily rip to MP3.
I remember when this came out in the UK, the launch made the news as they used celebrities to introduce it at a party ( in London I think). Chris Evans ( not Captain America Evans sadly lol) the TV presenter was part of it all. It was heavily marketed as the first 32 bit console ( lack of the internet meant we didn't really know better). We really thought this was going to be successful but most of the games were already available on the extremely popular Amiga computer line for less money.
My friend had one day of release and bought it around my house which is I think the only time I played one, I remember the D pad on the controller wasn't great.
Playing games on it kind of felt like the Amiga line hadn't moved on and Amiga fans were not going to give up there computers or games library to convert over and nintendo & Sega owners were loyal to those brands, I still see the odd CD32 from time to time.
I had an Amiga CDTV ( it was basically a Amiga 500 with a CD drive that went under your TV, a bit like the CD-I & 3DO concept but could be upgraded with a mouse, disk drive & keyboard to a more computer style if wanted ) and that played most of the Amiga games I want too.... not sure if you covered that machine but I will check out your channels video list 🙂. Cheers for another great video !
I remember I bought an Amiga in 1989 then sold it for a good price then bought a slimmer version in 92. New Zealand story I remember well and Sensible Soccer. Thanks for the effort you put into these videos, they really bring back so many memories.
I remember seeing an Amiga cd32 in a local game shop back then here in Ukraine. It looked very futuristic, way ahead of the nes clone Dendy that I have had.
I used to have a cd32 unit that was used in a kiosk in a museum it was pretty cool.
KB Quinnell That's kind of splitting hairs about a console that didn't manage to last a year dude.
+AdamKoralik I'm 100% positive I've seen these in the US. Back in the early 90's they were being sold at a Costco in Michigan and I asked my mom to get me one... I crap you not. I had a C64, loved it, and wanted one of these sooo bad.
+banjodawgsofjupiter Michigan borders Canada, possible some one imported them. But they were never given a national distribution.
That must be it... I know costco is in Canada as well. Distribution mishap? Whateves... Really digging the vids. Great work!
+banjodawgsofjupiter Thanks!
+AdamKoralik i saw one in a thrift shop in gurnee ya know 2 hours from chicago
The amiga cd32 is a fascinating system alot of the great game developers from the UK started their early careers with the amiga and the games were playable on the cd32. Such a shame commodore ran out of money and couldn't keep the system going.
I still enjoy playing on my CD32 from time to time. I use it much more than my CDTV.
Some CD32 games I recommend: Chaos Engine, Alien Breed: Tower Assault, Worms, Cannon Fodder, Lotus Trilogy, Superfrog, Beneath a Steel Sky.
I had an Amiga CD32 as a kid, when Commodore went bust, it became nigh on impossible to find games for it though. You had to search through the bargain bins of video game shops to find any. Then my mate got a PS1 and it just made the CD32 look terrible. The console and all the games ended up going in the bin, in the end.
One game you must try, is Liberation II: Captive, probably the best game released on the CD32.
Would like to make a few points though:
As far as I'm aware, the reason no one has heard of it in Canada or seen one, is because even though Commodore planned to sell it there, the whole US inventory was kept in a warehouse up until they went bust. Commodore was in a huge financial mess even before the CD32 and the lawsuit. There's a rumour, that hundreds of CD32s, for the American market, still sit abandoned in this warehouse somewhere.
The CD32 was the companies last rushed attempt to turn a profit, as you said in the video, it was basically just an Amiga 1200 in a different case.
The reason Commordore and Amiga were having so much trouble is because they failed to improve their hardware enough. Back in the mid 80s, when the first Amiga 1000 was released and the cheaper 500, nothing in the computing world could compare to its graphical performance. It really was an amazing piece of kit . In a world where everyone thought computers were only capable of green text with a black screen, or only a handful of colours, Amiga come along, and show off a computer which is capable of processing a red and white ball, moving around the screen. Not only that, but the 1000 and 500 came with an operating system. You didn't have to memorize countless lines of code, or exe. paths to load anything. You either clicked on a icon, like you do in windows now, or you put a floppy in before starting the machine and it did everyone else for you.
But Amiga basically kept the same graphics processor throughout its history and by the 90s the rest of the world had caught up, and a few years after that, the Amiga's graphical capabilities was obsolete. Everyone had moved on from Amiga and were buying PCs or buying consoles for the fraction of the price, which had better, brighter, graphics.
I knew a micro play here in Cambridge Ontario Canada that had a CD 32 on display. They also had a virtual boy and it was pretty cool to see
MN12bird was the first gaming channel I subscribed to when I made my account in 2008
Me too.
...I'm a 70's baby, so I basically played through every generation. I owned and learned how to program on a Commodore 128. There was a time where my dream was to work for Commodore since I'm from Pennsylvania. I never could afford an Amiga computer, but had several friends in college that had one and it gave me an opportunity to play a system that I always wanted to own. Thanks for reviewing this rare gaming system you really brought back a lot of memories...
I'm confused I just bought one and I am wondering if you can use a Mega Drive Controller on it?
You can not
6:19 I recently managed to get my hands on one that came up in an auction house here in Canada. The barcode sticker on the bottom is labeled CN which (I assume) indicates that it was made for the canadian market. I've seen ones labeled US, UK, GR, etc for different countries so it was cool to find one here that was actually sold here originally!
When I was a kid and this console came out, I remember playing Diggers in a store on a display model and really wanting this console, my 11 year old self wanted it so bad.
Funny on the disc read light, did Playstation not just being that back for the PS5 Disc model ?
What...?
@@AdamKoralik You mention the disc read light in this video, to show the drive is being used.
The pS5 disc version has a read light on it as well as the power light. Or am I totally wrong ?
I fell in love with the aesthetics of this console when I first saw it in one of the video game museum articles. Although I could have swore I saw a lighter colored one. It's very "Back to the Future".
YES! That's a great way to put it. I think that's what I was laboring to say in the middle there. Well put.
Another great video. These series have been my favourite videos on TH-cam
Thanks!
Cool stuff Adam! I never knew much about this console so thanks for the history lesson!
Thanks for watching!
I remember playing one of these in Dixons (defunct electronics store in the UK) and I loved the the Controller! It was expensive in comparison to Sega and Nintendo and Amiga fans were happy with their 500s using a Megadrive controller.
I love these recaps Adam. It's fun hearing the history of consoles both familiar and unfamiliar to me. Keep up the good work buddy!
Thanks for watching!
I got one of these on release day in the UK. Games to look out for: Frontier Elite, Gloom, Pirates and Labyrinth of Time. Oh, and you forgot to mention the FMV VCD expansion port on the back?
I had an Amiga 500 and it was great. It was my gaming machine for a lot of time.
I heard somewhere that if you plug in an Amiga mouse into the CD32's controller port and hold down both buttons during the console's startup, it will give you the option to select NTSC or PAL regardless of which region the unit is from. I can't remember where I heard this but if it's true then you can save some cash and not have to mod the console, unless you really want RGB.
+Michael Wolfe This is correct as the Boot ROM was just an updated Amiga 1200 ROM with additional code to add CD (this system could be upgraded to a full computer system if you wanted) the problem though is the system would still initially boot in to PAL (as default) upon power up so the the screen to select PAL/NTSC would be a flickering mess. Also the RF modulator still wouldn't work so composite or svideo only.
+Manos B Thanks for watching! Also, enable replies bud.
so the 32's that sold to Canada did they have some kind of built-in mod to work there?
They're set to NTSC if that's what you mean.
Cool vid!!! I remember reading about this console In the early 90s, I thought it was gonna be a success because of the hardware based on the Amiga computer and the Commodore brand was popular back then, heck I even started coding and gaming on a C64.
Ahh the good ol' days.
The main problem of the Amiga 32 was that it was marketed as a next Gen console when its technolgy was not really. IT was a 32 Bit system but not on the hardware level of a 3do or a Jaguar. Let alone the Play Station or Saturn Had it come out two years earlier IT could have made some noise and challenged the SNES and Megadrive in Europe. Amiga was insanely popular here in Europe in the late 80s early 90s. But in 1993 the CD32 was too little to late. Releasing it in 1991,or as a true next Gen console in 1993, and things might have turned out differently.
the units that came into the US from Canada are NTSC. The store that i bought my A1200 from also carried the CD32 and that store was located in Sacramento California. it took me years to find one but i obtained a NA NTSC unit last year.
you can actually change the video output from PAL to NTSC by way of an Amiga mouse plugged into port 2. since most (not all) CD32 games are PAL I have to do the PAL mode on my unit to get it to play them properly. but it also helps that i still kept my Commodore 1084s monitor.
But the unit does work on my regular composite Sanyo TV and i even have some demo discs that used to be included with the CD32 magazines back then. i will have to look into the RGB mod as my 1084s is also an RGB monitor that i use for snes, jaguar and genesis. it's small (13") but produces a really nice picture.
Bought CD32 at Wonder Computers in Ottawa at release time I had the mpeg decoder Microcosm, Zool and a couple of others it was very cool at the time wish I still had it. So I remember it in Canada also seem to remember using fred fish cd,s for shareware games.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Zool was also on the Atari Jaguar.
I live in Norway and my dad has one of these. It's the only console I've seen in person that is not a PlayStation or a Nintendo.
I remember as a youngster (maybe about 7-8) playing on one of these on zool 2 and just couldn't work out why it was so so much more expensive than megadrive and looked absolutely the same on cross platform games. I don't know anybody who had one at the time of launch or even now. Amiga was huge in UK but this in my area (Bolton Manchester) it wasn't any major stores.
This console came out here in Brazil? I never saw it or even heard of it until the beginning of the recap...
When I heard of this console, I thought Sega and Commodore paired up to make a genesis,sega cd, and 32x combo system. Like the Sega CDX or the JVC X'EYE. Think about it, CD32 and Sega CD 32X. They sound pretty similar.
I remember finding one of these consoles in Buenos Aires Argentina in middle 90s.
Great video, man! I'm really loving these Generation Recap videos. Keep up the good work!
Thanks!
I had one of these when they came out in 1993 . I remember Zool , the Alien Breed games, Sensible Soccer, James Pond , D-Generation, Beneath a Steel Sky , Bubba and Styx ,Cannon Fodder , Gunship 2000 ,Simon the Sorcerer,Heimdell 2 , Lemmings (oh no) , various pinball games ,Simon the Sorcerer,The Lost Vikings , Soccer Kid, Subwar 2050 and UFO Enemy Unknown all being a lot of fun . I still used it every now and then even (mostly to play the pinball games) after getting a ps1 in 1995 but eventually ended up giving it away in 1999 to a friend of mine who was living in this grotty little bedsit without a penny to his name when I last saw him in 2012 he still had it and by that time he was married and his kids were using it . Must have been a hardy little machine to last that long .
My uncle had one here in Iceland, i loved playing it.
nice video review my only suggestion will be can you show us some gameplay footage of this rare system and other upcoming reviews of yours and keep up the great work!
Eh, I wanted to focus more on the story of the console's history. Not so much its actual game playing capabilities. I'll probably do that another time.
I thought I knew my gaming history, but I swear I just heard of 3 consoles for the first time in watching a few of your videos today.
Amiga CD32, Sega CD Model 1, and Sega Wondermega
Glad I could teach you something. :D
There were actually games made for the CD32 and some have remained exclusives. However, most of them were later ported to the Amiga 1200 instead of them just languishing on the CD32. Its kind of like the PSVita, how many game on it that were originally exclusives are now ported to the PS4?
Cool review. I do enjoy these generation reviews
Thanks for watching!
Love your format and how you explain the history of less common hardware. A down to earth discussion of awesome hardware. Keep 'em coming! Only suggestion is to put some cloth or sound absorbing things on your walls. There seems to be a slight reverb / echo in the room that you record in, so your voice isn't as crisp/clear as it could be.
Thanks. Yeah, I get that complaint a lot. There's a reason it's the "quick shoot series." My film school teachers would cry if they knew I did it this way.
I guess I could overlook the reverb if you would consider reviewing something awesome like.... oh i don't know... A Sega TeraDrive? j/k you have a great thing going here, it is a delight hearing fresh and modern takes on classic consoles and console history.
mb7756 Thanks. If I had one, I would. I did show one once, briefly. Check out my Super Tomato Tour video.
AdamKoralik Oh! Very cool, didn't know about that, will do! :)
The Analogic FDD floppy added true RGB through a DB15 2Row to VGA adapter.
my brother had the cd32...man I loved that controller!! it fascinated me totally
OMG just jumped on ebay and the game collection for this machine is amazing, some of my favourite titles as a kid are there
I had an Amiga 500 as a kid that was passed down to me from my older brother so I love the Amiga and I think Amiga was popular in the UK. I never had an Amiga CD32 but I will defo get one eventually.
I have a amiga but I am struggling trying to get it to work I'm trying a power converter and idk there's not any set up videos on here
i had one :) Problem is yeah, no "flagship" game. they coulda used the Akito chip to make a 3d exclusive out the get go. little late but i suggest 3 games for it, roadkill, alienbreed tower assault and super stardust :)
I know I’m ungodly late but I’ve been interested in shipping a console or two across the pond to get professionally modded for a while now, Could I just email Raymond and ask about logistics and if it’s something he’d consider doing?
He kind of retired to be honest. Where are you?
@@AdamKoralik The States, I have a little soldering experience but not enough to trust myself doing any type of mod
@@DeathTheKidFTW998 I know a guy in Indiana that upgraded this exact CD32. See if this is what you want, his contact information is in the description.
th-cam.com/video/Y9NCe0_MMuE/w-d-xo.html
@@AdamKoralik Thanks man! Been a subscriber and fan of the channel for ages, Keep up the good work :)
I just ordered a CD32, but It only comes with the European power supply. Does anyone have a suggestion for power supply I can use in the US? Or should I get a converter?
You will need a step down converter.
Thanks for the reply. Is that what you use to power your cd32? Could you point me in the right direction to buy something like that? Thanks!
www.amazon.com/Goldsource-STU-500-Voltage-Converter-Transformer/dp/B0022QOSDK/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1476629854&sr=8-7&keywords=step+down+converter
Sweet! Thanks a lot, man!
One game I loved on the Amiga CD32 was called liberation. It was a First Person Futuristic RPG/Shooter a little like Deus Ex. Spent hours in that. Shame the U.S. Didn't have a this console as it could have been a hit given that Amiga in Europe was huge at the time
As an amiga lover from the uk and an amiga 500 owner. The a1200 was behind the times when it came out. The 1200 and cd32 both had the "puala" soundchip from 1985!!! and the graphics where not much further ahead of the old amigas.
You got remember when the playstation came out it had a very impressive port of ridge racer with it's 3d graphics with textures and wow factor.
Would like to see the system in action. Do you have a vid of it?
I do not, but I could probably do that down the road.
i was a big Amiga fan but although I was aware of the CD32 I never saw one till a few years ago when a friend pulled one out of his dads attic and gave me it. Its great for playing discs full of Amiga 500 games but I dont tend to use it for much more than that. Has a nice CD player in it I noticed.
Well, CD32 versions of Amiga games was usually extended by additional audio played directly from audio tracks, there were also additional intros thanks to CD capacity. So bad it had no chance in US.
I wonder I never heard anything about this console until today. Too sad the console had no chance. The C64, C128 and the Amiga Cumputer were super famous here in Germany. It means this brand had a big name here already.
I have (both PETs need repair) CBM PET 2001, 8032, C64 w/ 1702 monitor, tape drive & 3 Floppy drives (can’t remember models at the moment) All PAL Amigas 500, 600 & a towered A1200.
Also Adam could you do a video about the wondermega?
+Shrek is Love Shrek is Life Thanks. Zool 2 was on the Jaguar, not sure about Zool 1.
Cool vid,
The CD32 represents a sad story, you see, Commodore didn't had to try actually to be the 'third big console manufacturer' what you keep saying.
The Amiga line of computers (with the Amiga 500 especially) was *THE* gaming platform in Europe in the 80's and 90's, beating the SNES big time (due to the sloppy success of the NES) and was head to head with the Megadrive. I unfortunately can't find it right now but there is a research done around 1992-1995, the graph showed what platform kids had and Amiga was #1 with 25% with Megadrive having 15% and various other platforms such as PC, Atari and Nintendo taking only some procent. I remember that the SNES was at 8th place.
Commodore was full with very passionate engineers (that is coming from the engineers themselves) and they worked like mad to simply have the best machines and the best OS.
But in around the start of the 90's Commodore got a new president named Mehdi Ali, and this guy is a crook.
Mehdi gave himself a unreasonable salary and deliberately 'bleed' the company so that he in the end could run off with the remaining money while others had to sell Commodore ip's to repay various dept's.
The engineers couldn't do anything about it as it was technically legal was Mehdi was doing, while constantly working on the next generation Amiga they had to quickly pump out machines with legacy technology such as the Amiga 600 and the *CD32* to keep the company afloat. Design was ready for a machine that had similar 3D capability's to the original Playstation but with faster architecture and processing power well exceeding the N64. You can google 'Hombré chipset' or 'Amiga CD64' to read more about that. This is probably the original intended 'CD32' had things gone well, this chipset could have been used to upgrade the CD32 via the port on the back on a later date, to compete against the later consoles.
Some notes,
The AUX port on the CD32 is just a keyboard port, you can hook up a Amiga 3000 and 4000 keyboard on it, you would use one of the joystick ports for a mouse.
The 'load light' is a standard Amiga thing, it is actually a general disc access light, so it is also used for other medium such as a hard drive or floppy drive should there be one attached.
Zool 1 isn't on the Jaguar, and don't get Zool 2 on the jag ! :) the CD32 blows it away with much better graphics, animation, controls (jump isn't also mapped to up on the d-pad) , more levels and redbook audio for music and there are some demo's of other great CD32 games on the disc. Zool 2 is really a massive game on the CD32 as it originally was planned to be bundled with it, since the released of the original Zool on Amiga it was always 'tooted' (if that is the right word) as a Sonic beater and since then Commodore have used Zool a couple times as a posterboy on 'low end' Amiga's (never as a company mascot, would not been very professonal for a Computer\workstation manufacturer, would it ?). The dead line wasn't reached however and thus Zool 2 was later bundled with the Amiga 1200 (the ' A1200 Computer combat' bundel).
One last thing, the UK is in Europe >:( , if you want reference Europe without the UK you would have to say 'Mainland Europe', the CD32 was also successful in Mainland Europe due to the Commodore name. I have a authentic Dutch CD32 I brought in a retro gaming store some years ago, I also had the opportunity to buy one from a Amiga dealer. (the Amiga isn't dead, new Amiga's are being made with the AmigaOne name)
janmansde3dede The word you were looking for was "touted," but I knew what you meant so it's all good. That's really interesting, I was unaware that Commodore had such a presence in Europe. Maybe I'm not well versed with gaming outside of North America , but it was definitely interesting to read all of that. It's a shame this system couldn't run its course here in the states, I would have loved seeing what kind of impact it would have had on the hardware market.
I got a PlayStation (original) and i just wanted to know what were your favorite games because i have a small library and i wanted to expand with great games.
i have a very small library so far but from what I've heard get castlevania symphony of the night! also get the 3 crash banicoot games and spyro games also maybe worth getting some rpg's. i really want Zenogears but it only came out in japan and the US and i don't how to make my ps1 (or ps2) to be region free
Alright Cool Thanks! I'll Get Looking!
Crash team racing and Crash bash are good crash bandicoot games, Driver 2, Toy story 2 were also really fun games
Beside the obvious titles like "boblowes" mentioned, there are some lesser know titles that are crazy fun like 1Xtreme, Jurassic Park: The Lost World, Road Rash and many more.
I seen one for sale in Canada recently. Not sure if it was the NA model but it had a nice case and a few games. Asking $200, I will ask the guy more about it next time I'm there. Pretty sure he still has it.
Hey Adam You Should do a Video of the Video Game Console's Pandora Box 4S
Are you going to be doing a video on the FM Towns Marty? Once (if ever) you acquire one.
If I get one, sure.
I had an A1200 very late its in life and the only place I saw the CD32 was in the Amiga magazine. Nobody in my circle of friends had one. Id love one now just for Chaos Engine :-)
Adam, this recap was honestly really good! Please do more if you can!
EDIT: And you're friends with the ToyRatt? Dude that's awesome that place has all my PS2 needs.
Thanks, there will be more.
Yep, he's my buddy. I've done a bunch of videos at the store and he mentions my channel all the time in his videos.
Cool Video, as a kid (im 29 now & from the UK) my older brother owned the Amiga 1200 but never the CD32. The Amiga 1200 was an excellent gaming device (I know it's not a gaming console yet I always saw it as one) it had some of the best games, played it with my brothers religiously until I got the Nintendo 64 in 1996. Adam, if you never played the Amiga 1200 / 600/ 500, you should try one day maybe as it had some amazing games for it time, Canon Fodder, Mega Lo Mania, Lemmings, Secret of Monkey Island, Speedball 2, Lotus turbo Challenge 2 just to name a few, great days!
I'll have to settle for the CD32, I can only get so much stuff.
Neat video, but I don't agree with the assessment that the CD32 could've been the "next big thing". By '93-'94, what people were looking for in games was 3d texture-mapped polys. The Amiga wasn't really suited to pushing them, even though the CD32 has a chip called Akiko for (among other things) chunky-to-planar graphics on the fly conversion. Furthermore, the Amiga memory architecture has two separate "lands", Chip RAM and Fast RAM. Chip RAM is used by the custom video and audio chips for display buffer and so on. Fast RAM is used by the CPU for other tasks. In the absence of Fast RAM, the CPU will use Chip RAM, however, this slows things down tremendously. The Amiga 1200 out of the box had no Fast RAM nor did the CD32. With the addition of even a single megabyte of onboard Fast RAM the CD32 would've been 60% faster, and might have done better. Wing Commander was released for the CD32 and performance was abysmal, as was Alien Breed 3d (a DOOM-like FPS).
Commodore was kneecapped by a corporate raider management that came on board to wring every dime out of the company, then leave it for dead, which they did. They cut development budgets in the 80s and early 90s for both Amiga computer OSes and hardware development. Instead of having dedicated 3d hardware in all their systems by 1991, the developers were hamstrung by management only interested in looting the company, and the lackluster AGA chipset was released at a time when it was already being outperformed by off-the-shelf chipsets from S3 and Trident.
Commodore International kept going for a few more years, switching hands, becoming Amiga Technologies before sinking beneath the waves for good. But, in that time, the CD32 was more than a little supported: various companies released expansions that actually turned the CD32 into a full-function computer. You could get a 68030 processor that runs at 50mhz and supports more RAM, has a hard-drive connector, and other functions, as well as supporting an external floppy drive. There's homebrew hardware companies now that make expansions like that again, although economics of scale makes them kind of expensive...
A bit more history and then I'll quit rambling: The '1200 finally DID see a (very limited) release in the US, where it occasionally wound up as the guts of Infokiosks, and in one case was used at an international language school in New York as a primary interactive teaching computer. Part of what held the CD32 (and the Amiga 1200) up from release wasn't just the XOR Patent issue, but rather was Commodore's poor financials: Hewlett Packard fabbed a lot of custom chips for Commodore, and Commodore didn't have the money to pay them. So a lot of completed Amiga 1200s and CD32s sat in factory warehouses in the Philippines, some of them for years and years after the death of Commodore. Occasionally you'll see NOS CD32s show up on eBay, particularly from China, (where the CD32 also got tucked into gambling kiosks); just keep your eyes peeled and you might be able to pick up a "brand new" unit in a box, sealed, with all the goodies (and NTSC!)
What about Defender of the Crown 2?
Only for the CDTV and Amiga CD32.
I do not own it.
Yes I know, but it is one of the few games that you only can play on Amiga CD32. Yes it also work on the CDTV (A500 OCS/ECS), but I think you get more colors when playing on the Amiga CD32 (1200 AGA).
Besides the price, are there any distinct differences between the PAL and NTSC models? Great info, love obscure consoles like this.
I must have really good luck on eBay. Actually managed to pick up a Canadian NTSC CD32 a few years back. The S-video looked really sharp on my CRT. Around the same time, I also managed to pick up a (working!) Atari Jaguar CD.
Congratulations!
word up for the MN12Bird plug!!! One of my staple channels in the YGC from some years back!
I'm in Canada and we have a CIB unit at the store I work at.
I'm in Canada in a island off east coast called Newfoundland... My cousins had one I didn't know tf it was and could are less but ha he had one and the. The 64 version...I wonder what ever happens to it
A family friend had this! The controller really was unique. They actually had a lot of quirky systems including this and a CD-i.
I wish I had a CD-i.
AdamKoralik
Me too for nostalgias sake. Hotel Mario was actually pretty good. There was a casino game on it too which wasn't too shabby.
***** Seriously?
***** You're on Facebook then? Send me a message! Also, thank you dude, that's really cool of you.
the Amiga 1200 stayed around for a good long time in the UK, long enough to see the potential of the AGA chipset pushed to its absolute limit (which was around the very basic doom/wolfinstein level of game, the hardware was never really designed for 3d games and didn't perform well with them at all, although it's funny that there are hardware expansions for the 1200 that turn it into quite the performer with much higher clocked 68000 series CPUs and much more RAM and that really helped with ports of games like DOOM, but obviously giving the system an boost from 14 to 50mhz and 2 to 16MB of RAM is kind of cheating! It might be something you'd be interested in adding to your collection as the Amiga 1200 is still somewhat of a cult machine to this day just like the commodore 64.
My biggest regret in life is selling all my old consoles as a kid. I had an Amiga CD32, Amiga 1200, Action Max, ZX Spectrum, various Game Boys and Game Gears, and many, many more.
I remember playing the CD32 fondly. Cannon Fodder, Rise of the Robots and The Chaos Engine were in constant rotation.
Computer shops in the US would import them from Canada and sell them in the US. Me and a friend both bought one right at launch
I remember seeing buzz articles and even a pre-ad for this in mags and then silence.
Love your channel Adam!! I know this is an old post, but I checked out gameplay of some games, and D/Generation looks like an AMAZING GAME! It's too bad we never got a release here! :( anyway, keep up the great work! I look forward to more videos daily!!
trevorbozeman Thanks!
Pinball Fantasies was one of my first PC CDROM games! EPIC!
I have not the original controller for my CD32(two Honey bee for the moment), too hard to find it.
I always wondered if Comodore Amiga would have made a good console. Lets find out.
I have a brand new one in the box from Canada the problem is the games are in pal format also have two fm towns Marty.