Amiga=Atari

[Neb6]

As many of you know, the lead designer of the Amiga (1985) was also the lead designer of the Atari 8-bit computers (1979).

Here's some more information about the beginnings of the Amiga in 1983 and the relationship between Atari and the Amiga:

http://www.atarimuseum.com/articles/mickey.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_8-bit_family#Computer_models

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga

As you examine the two architectures, note the numerous similarities, including:
- custom ICs with multiple tasks per chip (including handling ports and drives)
- support for simultaneous display of multiple screen resolutions and palettes
- expanded color palettes through the use of hues derived from core color set
- 'plug-n-play' capabilities
- sprite support
- playfield and scrolling features
- Display list graphics approach
- DMA block diagrams

[Serious]

I believe they both were able to display more colors than any of their contemporaries.

If I recall correctly:

Atari 400/800 had 256 colors. (Most other computers had 16 colors or less.)

Amiga (in HAM mode) had 4096. I'm not sure how many the Mac or ST could display at that time, but my impression was they were less.

[Neb6]

I believe they both were able to display more colors than any of their contemporaries.

If I recall correctly:

Atari 400/800 had 256 colors. (Most other computers had 16 colors or less.)

Amiga (in HAM mode) had 4096. I'm not sure how many the Mac or ST could display at that time, but my impression was they were less.

At that time, the Mac (1984) was monochrome only at a resolution of 512x342. No hardware acceleration on the graphics. The audio was 8-bit, mono.

As for the ST (1985), it was 16 out of 512 colors, and also included a non-interlaced monochrome 640x480 productivity mode. Audio was provided by a Yamaha synth chip.
Although not designed to play audio samples, it was possible to get it to play one sample at a time.
There was no Blitter (graphics hardware accelerator) in the original ST.

The Amiga (1985) was 32 out of 4096 colors (HAM mode was really only good for still images/paint apps).
There's also a mode that allows for 32 colors + 32 more colors at half the value of the first 32. So that's effectively 64 colors useable in games.
Apparently the first batch of Amiga 1000 machines don't support this 64-color mode. That was corrected soon after.
Support for 8 sprites, plus additional objects handled by the Amiga's 16-bit Blitter.
Unfortunately, the original Amiga's 640x400 mode was interlaced and tended to flicker. There were hardware fixes for this. Overscan and PAL resolutions were a bit higher.
The audio on these was a 4-channel PCM chip (i.e. 8-bit sample playback: stereo).

The Atari STe (1989) was 16 out of 4096 colors, and incudes an 8MHz, 16-bit Blitter.
Audio on the STe was a combination of 2-channels of 8-bit digital sampled audio playback and programmable sound generator.

It looks like the Atari 800 was originally using a 128-color palette in 1979 and then was upgraded to a 256-color palette two years later.
The official 16-color mode is listed as having a resolution of 80x192 (although someone may have found a way to exceed this by now).
Upping the resolution drops the on-screen color limit down (e.g. to 320x192).
And, of course, the Atari 8-bit series includes hardware for speeding up its graphics performance (along with hardware sprites).
Audio is 8-bit, 4 oscillators + noise, mono.

Then there are the various graphics tricks to allow for even more in-game colors on the Atari 8-bit machines, the Amiga, ST, and STe.

[Neb6]

The book, "Atari Inc. : Business is fun" has a good section about the two lead designers of the Atari 800 who went on to become the lead designers of the Amiga (Joe Decuir and Jay Miner).

http://ataribook.com/book/

e.g.) Pages 386 and 467