Originally posted by Brad
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It was simply because the Amiga was an open platform, so a coder or a small team could put a game together and then find a publisher that was willing to publish it. There were plenty of publishers who did business with a 'shovelware' sort of mentality.
The UK games biz back in the 80s and early-90s had a largely amateurish vibe about it, which meant you got all sorts of wild and wacky games, but many games failed when it came to playability. The art of game design wasn't really recognised in the UK and across Europe, so a lot of games felt quite dull for one reason or another.
Japanese developers and publishers clearly had more respect for and understanding of gameplay. The best Japanese games had well crafted level design and features such as 'continues' and difficulty settings. Of course, there are plenty of bad Japanese games but on the whole, Japan had a knack of delivering really fun, playable games.
Of course, the UK and Europe did deliver some top quality games for the Amiga. It's just a sad fact they are few and far between. A lot of Amiga games seem promising at first, but then you soon realise how bad the actual gameplay is.
Once lots of the smaller UK developers/publishers shut down -- and the bigger developers/publishers started working closely with Japanese publishers, standards were definitely raised.
I think the rise of consoles in the UK & Europe led to a better understanding and appreciation for game design and how to make games feel really fun. After that -- you had Western developers and publishers go from strength to strength and begin to deliver lots of games that were popular on the world stage. I'd say that Western gaming owes a lot to Japan when it comes to learning how to craft well designed, fun games.
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