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Comment by rusk | Hacker News Reader

I ran across an interesting factoid a while back where a line was drawn between the Amiga CD32 and PS2 - that somehow Sony picked up where Commodore left off but I’ve been unable to find a reference since and I’m certain at this stage I’ve got the names and dates mixed up ... anyone heard anything like this?

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I suppose you might argue that the amiga paved the way for the architecture of the PS2 - the copper chip ran a rudimentary display list, the blitter hardware accelerated graphics operations. But I wouldn't say there is a direct relationship... wait you're not talking about the CDTV, are you?

Maybe it was blitter etc

Nope not CDTV, CD32 was a later project and really quite good but C= couldn’t sustain it. The story I think I heard was that the similarity in the controllers was some sort of homage. Maybe it was PS1 rather than PS2 ... thinking about the timeline that all lines up, and Sony would have been looking for a jumping in point rather than starting from scratch after being burnt by Nintendo.

>CD32 was a later project and really quite good

CD32 was a repackaged Amiga 1200. It was the worst fifth generation game system. It featured such gems as Wing Commander running at 1 frame per second.

It was a fine machine, and though it was weaker than its competitors it was ahead of the curve. You say “repackaged Amiga 1200” like that’s a bad thing. The Amiga was the premium home personal computer of the early 90s and only ever died out because of mismanagement at Commodore.

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