Why Obliterator was so slow?
 

Was it because was programmed in C with one of those old unoptimized compilers? Was because was programmed badly? All of the above?

I always wondered if it was due to the games' control (mouse click on icon menu).
To leave the "gamer" time to click on the correct action.
Even if I finished it BitD, I never really enjoyed the controls.
Barbarian (also from Psygnosis) had the same control and "slowness".
Obliterator :
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nG80rfxGTuo
Barbarian:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=I5b33nTn2v8

As a side note "Gold of the Aztecs" has the same kind of "movement slowness" but I never understood it has it was joystick controlled.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oyH1T7E50C8

My guess is that they didn't really know how to code efficiently back then.

I mean, this was probably a direct port from the ST, and those were very early games. Like 1987/88 ish.

IIRC they were using some kind of games tools to develop those games and I suppose that Atari ST was the basis of it. I don’t recall the name of the tech they were using. I read about it years ago in a French mag.

Obliterator seems to use the same sound effects as Thundercats. Similar framerate too.

At the time of release I was told Obliterator was programmed system friendly, using Amiga libs etc.

It was a straight port with DAC routine amendments to some very poor Atari ST game engine?

(poor for the ST I mean)*

Obli definitely need a recode with joystick only controls, assets (audiovisuals) are nice but the rest... -_-

It's a flip screen game and the graphics aren't exactly Shadow of the Beast quality, and nor is the music come to think of it. Not sure why it isn't coded like Baal really.

It already supports joystick, I don't see how removing mouse support would improve it.

Then a publisher saying "do this for the least amount of budget possible" is also on the table.

Given that it's the same coder as Barbarian I don't think that was a major problem.

A RECODE FROM SCRATCH would definitely do though

Nice one, reminds me of Caverns of Khafka for C64. Had also this slowlyness :laughing but with better music

OK, it wasn't my favorite game back in the day, but knowing it couldn't have been THAT bad, I just tried it again...
...
Man, that is slow... I mean... Wow...
I remembered not liking the controls, but I didn't remember it being that painfully slow...

Too bad because I did/do really like the art style and music...
Could have been a nice Alien Syndrome + for the Amiga, but.. er..
Yeah, this is pretty bad...
And this is coming from someone who doesn't hate the gameplay of SoTB... ;-)

Yes, exactly what i mean :)

I wonder if the developers were using NTSC machines for development (I guess NTSC Atari STs may have been available before the first PAL models?). Gameplay speed should be 20% faster in NTSC, so a bit less awful than on PAL machines.

I played both Barbarian and Obliterator on NTSC Amiga and they were still painfully slow.

The music is still one of the best Amiga game music tracks around imo.

David Whitaker did some crazy nice stuff for the early Amiga, like Xenon, Menace and Obliterator.

I heard he used a lot of C64 SID samples in his Amiga tracks, that's why they probably sound so good compared to the usual el cheapo ST-01 sample library shit back then.