English Amiga Board - View Single Post - Why are platform games on the Amiga really mediocre?

john1979 · 16 January 2015, 23:23

I'm sure it has been mentioned before in this thread but the puzzles in Gods were a bit hit and miss. Most of them required you to just randomly flick levers around until you were lucky enough to hit the right combination. I never saw much rhyme or reason to it. Due to the slow nature of the game the 25fps scrolling didn't bother me so much. I found low framerate to be more annoying in faster games like Ruff'n'Tumble.

Whether you prefer the harder more invested approach of Amiga games or the instant fun and playability of the console game is a matter of taste and nostalgia. Personally all my favourites are on the MD and SNES: Shinobi 3, Mega Man, Mario, Castlevania, Rocket Night Adventures. I just can't find stuff on the Amiga that gives me those kind of smiles.

I do blame piracy a little (or a lot), and the lack of a Japanese developer base for the lack of quality. Amiga had great coders that could squeeze so much out the hardware, but a lot of these guys weren't highly skilled in the level and character design department. The big name Jap platformers had large teams and many play testers behind them. Games would often be scrapped if they weren't upto scratch for playability and they would start all over again. You couldn't really afford to do that as an Amiga developer and publishers would often be giving them unfair time pressures. That's not to say the consoles didn't have their fair share of humdingers though, something Greg Sewarts current Generation 16 series is proving quite well.

16 January 2015, 23:23	#606
john1979 Registered User Join Date: Jun 2012 Location: UK Age: 44 Posts: 748	I'm sure it has been mentioned before in this thread but the puzzles in Gods were a bit hit and miss. Most of them required you to just randomly flick levers around until you were lucky enough to hit the right combination. I never saw much rhyme or reason to it. Due to the slow nature of the game the 25fps scrolling didn't bother me so much. I found low framerate to be more annoying in faster games like Ruff'n'Tumble. Whether you prefer the harder more invested approach of Amiga games or the instant fun and playability of the console game is a matter of taste and nostalgia. Personally all my favourites are on the MD and SNES: Shinobi 3, Mega Man, Mario, Castlevania, Rocket Night Adventures. I just can't find stuff on the Amiga that gives me those kind of smiles. I do blame piracy a little (or a lot), and the lack of a Japanese developer base for the lack of quality. Amiga had great coders that could squeeze so much out the hardware, but a lot of these guys weren't highly skilled in the level and character design department. The big name Jap platformers had large teams and many play testers behind them. Games would often be scrapped if they weren't upto scratch for playability and they would start all over again. You couldn't really afford to do that as an Amiga developer and publishers would often be giving them unfair time pressures. That's not to say the consoles didn't have their fair share of humdingers though, something Greg Sewarts current Generation 16 series is proving quite well. Last edited by john1979; 16 January 2015 at 23:34.