Quote:
Originally Posted by eXeler0
Could someone with the right know how explain how the Mega Drive version can both look and play better than the Amiga version? (Apart from the obvious poor coding on the Amiga version).
The Mega Drive has about the same CPU power, the secondary Z80 cpu was mostly used for sound. But most importantly, the megadrive only has 64k (72?) RAM and 64k video ram. Im sure loading off the cart can work around some of the ram limitations but still.. 64k video memory is not a lot.
|
As Vulture mentioned, the MegaDrive can display a lot more sprites than the Amiga and these are much better than the Amiga's puny ones (320 pixels of 16 color sprites per scanline just to give you an idea).
You can probably display more pixels with MegaDrive sprites than you can with the blitter in pure copy mode (and there is generally little point in using pure copy mode for games since masking often requires two channels).
Also you get 64 colors per scanline in dual playfield by default which means the road and roadside objects can be drawn completely independently.
Unless games are specifically tailored to the Amiga's strong points it is really hard for a non accelerated Amiga to reach MegaDrive quality.
Now, clearly that does not mean that MD games are always better since developer quality is a multiplying factor which sometimes can be quite low.
But look up "Alien Soldier" or "Gunstar Heroes" or "Contra Hard Corps", these would be really tough to port on an A500 without important compromises.