English Amiga Board - View Single Post - Shadow of The Beast, what a pile of crud on the Atari ST.

slaapliedje · 09 October 2023, 22:37

I would have to go digging, but pretty sure there was an article that basically said the ST version of the game was gimped on purpose. They made it in a short period of time, only supported 512kb of ram, and just basically published it unfinished.
As far as the borders go? Pretty sure all of the computers back in the day supported some overscan. And demo makers have certainly acheived more than 16 colors per scan line on the ST... funny thing is, it had a mode very similar to HAM. For displaying the full 512 colors on screen.
I always tended to think they were pretty close system wise, each had their trade offs (like the ST was overall slightly faster on things that needed direct CPU). If games detected the blitter on newer machines, they definitely could compete better with the Amiga. Unfortunately the ST was cobbled together in a rush to try to beat Commodore to the stores. They designed it in less than a year, and didn't have the genius of Jay Miner on board! Ha, the more you look at the architecture of the Atari 8bit and the similar one in the Amiga, you can see the love that man put into his projects.
I just find it amusing still that most people who were fans of the c64 went to the Amiga, and most A8 fans went to the ST, even though the designers flipped teams.

09 October 2023, 22:37	#67
slaapliedje Registered User Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Utah, USA Posts: 516	I would have to go digging, but pretty sure there was an article that basically said the ST version of the game was gimped on purpose. They made it in a short period of time, only supported 512kb of ram, and just basically published it unfinished. As far as the borders go? Pretty sure all of the computers back in the day supported some overscan. And demo makers have certainly acheived more than 16 colors per scan line on the ST... funny thing is, it had a mode very similar to HAM. For displaying the full 512 colors on screen. I always tended to think they were pretty close system wise, each had their trade offs (like the ST was overall slightly faster on things that needed direct CPU). If games detected the blitter on newer machines, they definitely could compete better with the Amiga. Unfortunately the ST was cobbled together in a rush to try to beat Commodore to the stores. They designed it in less than a year, and didn't have the genius of Jay Miner on board! Ha, the more you look at the architecture of the Atari 8bit and the similar one in the Amiga, you can see the love that man put into his projects. I just find it amusing still that most people who were fans of the c64 went to the Amiga, and most A8 fans went to the ST, even though the designers flipped teams.