The rather surprising thing, I think, is that most of the techniques they are using were known on the C64 at the time when CGA was popular. They weren't perfected yet, but they were already in use - but no one took them seriously on the PC:
Cycle counting was incompatible with the variety of hardware; CRTC games did not work on all monitors.. Almost no one even looked there. I remember being very proud getting 16 colors on the CGA's 320x200x4-color mode back in '87, only to see that it didn't work on my friend's shining new EGA.
The PC's architecture was initially a curse. A graphics board that could not run popular software had very limited value and software that does not run on anything better than a CGA (specially since EGA could do better game graphics than CGA) was seen as buggy. In the end, the VGA-equipped PCs ate Amiga's lunch.
The rather surprising thing, I think, is that most of the techniques they are using were known on the C64 at the time when CGA was popular. They weren't perfected yet, but they were already in use - but no one took them seriously on the PC:
Cycle counting was incompatible with the variety of hardware; CRTC games did not work on all monitors.. Almost no one even looked there. I remember being very proud getting 16 colors on the CGA's 320x200x4-color mode back in '87, only to see that it didn't work on my friend's shining new EGA.
In other words, I'm getting old .....