English Amiga Board - View Single Post - Outrun Port using Lotus engine? Possible?

bartread · 19 May 2019, 16:26

Not even a chance you could do an arcade perfect OutRun on a Amiga 500, even with all the RAM in the world and a hard disk drive.

The OutRun arcade machine had *two* 68000 processors both running faster than the single 68000 in the Amiga 500, not to mention two sound chips (one for synthesis/music, one for SFX/samples) and a separate Z80 CPU to control them, along with Sega's insanely-powerful-for-the-time super scaler chipset for the graphics. Yes, the Amiga had some custom hardware, but it was nowhere close to Sega's arcade board in terms of performance or capability.

Don't get me wrong, the Lotus games are fantastic, and my best mate and I played the first two to death as teenagers on my A500, but they're so stripped down compared to the OutRun arcade machine in terms of graphics and sound it's not even funny.

With that being said the US Gold conversion for the Amiga was *shockingly poor*: bad graphics, terrible framerate, awful controls, and the music was too slow and had incorrect rhythms in various places throughout. Just inexcusably bad for a machine of the A500's calibre.

Could they have done an arcade perfect conversion? No.

But they could have built a game that captured the essence of OutRun on the Amiga: the playability, the flowing sense of speed, the music and the atmosphere. Games like Lotus and Jaguar XJ220 prove that arcade racers on the Amiga could be great: it's just a shame that US Gold lazily churned out the chugging monstrosity we got.

I'm not sure the Lotus engine is the right engine to build the best version of OutRun possible on the Amiga, but I do believe it would be possible to build a *great* version of OutRun on the machine. It won't be arcade perfect, nor even close, but it could be a great game.

19 May 2019, 16:26	#42
bartread Registered User Join Date: Feb 2019 Location: Cambridge, UK Posts: 10	Not even a chance you could do an arcade perfect OutRun on a Amiga 500, even with all the RAM in the world and a hard disk drive. The OutRun arcade machine had two 68000 processors both running faster than the single 68000 in the Amiga 500, not to mention two sound chips (one for synthesis/music, one for SFX/samples) and a separate Z80 CPU to control them, along with Sega's insanely-powerful-for-the-time super scaler chipset for the graphics. Yes, the Amiga had some custom hardware, but it was nowhere close to Sega's arcade board in terms of performance or capability. Don't get me wrong, the Lotus games are fantastic, and my best mate and I played the first two to death as teenagers on my A500, but they're so stripped down compared to the OutRun arcade machine in terms of graphics and sound it's not even funny. With that being said the US Gold conversion for the Amiga was shockingly poor: bad graphics, terrible framerate, awful controls, and the music was too slow and had incorrect rhythms in various places throughout. Just inexcusably bad for a machine of the A500's calibre. Could they have done an arcade perfect conversion? No. But they could have built a game that captured the essence of OutRun on the Amiga: the playability, the flowing sense of speed, the music and the atmosphere. Games like Lotus and Jaguar XJ220 prove that arcade racers on the Amiga could be great: it's just a shame that US Gold lazily churned out the chugging monstrosity we got. I'm not sure the Lotus engine is the right engine to build the best version of OutRun possible on the Amiga, but I do believe it would be possible to build a great version of OutRun on the machine. It won't be arcade perfect, nor even close, but it could be a great game.