Which games are enhanced by ECS / Kickstart 2 / 1Mb-2Mb Chip RAM?

[Megalomaniac]

When the A500+ launched, we all saw a lot of panic and fuss about how many games didn't work on it - Bubble Bobble not getting past the loading screen, Italy 1990’s screen display being garbled, SWIV giving a software failure immediately, Nebulus crashing at the end of loading, etc etc. Mostly due to Kickstart 2, but occasionally due to ECS, or the extra chip RAM, or the lack of fast RAM. Some were fixed on reissues (eg SWIV and Lotus), and ROM sharers for a cost, or ultimately Relokick for free, solved the issue for most games. Obviously the A600’s missing keypad added its own range of problems, many of them unsolvable to this day.

What about the other side though? Compared to an earlier A500, the plus had the much more powerful and versatile Workbench 2, the AREXX scripting language, the Enhanced Chip Set, 1 Meg of chip RAM, and the easy trapdoor upgrade to 2Mb. Most of us know that for serious use WB2 was a lot better, and the higher-res screen modes of ECS are probably part of that.

What about games though? Which games either fail to run on a 1.x OCS 512+512 A500 but work on a 'stock' plus or A600, or are enhanced by one or more of its extra features? LemonAmiga identifies Colonization, Alien Breed Tower Assault and Super Skidmarks as ECS games, so they presumably don't work on an ordinary A500 (though the first two seem to in WinUAE on an A500 config).

What about extra sound or improved graphics on any games? Did those people who returned their Plus in the original panic make a mistake, and miss out on advantages of the upgrades later? Assuming they hadn't moved on to a PC or A1200 by the time the games making use of the upgrades emerged, though. Did these improvements go relatively under-exploited because the A1200's bigger leap to AGA, 2Mb chip RAM for all and 020 was only a year later?

Sorry for the clunky title, I nearly wrote 'enhanced by the A500+/A600' but that's not specific enough as the upgrades were introduced gradually before then.

[Photon]

ECS: Mega Typhoon, and that's about it.

More RAM: Some games like Pinball Fantasies *required* 1MB total RAM, but with each requirement sales numbers grew less - although I'd say the 512/512 configuration was quite common even before this game was released.

Some games detected and were enhanced by more RAM of any type by requiring less disk loading and/or disk swaps. Some of these detected extra chipmem as well as slowmem. I don't know of any games that gave enhancements with 2MB RAM rather than 1MB, apart from this type, for disk loading buffers.

A500 versions of games can usually be run on A600 by adding some fast RAM. A kickstart switch (or swap) to 1.3 improved compatibility further. A3000 same but turn off caches. A1200 same but turn off caches and AGA enhancements.

It's also about when the games were released. From 1991 on you would expect a game to at least adapt to a chipmem-only machine, where earlier titles might not.

And there were always bad cracks, which might stop on the loader or the intro from not supporting what the original supported. Nowadays, the cracked versions constitute most of the preserved games, and you can try different versions to see which one works on "not A500 512/512".

[Mikidi]

Settlers could have bigger maps when there was more memory

[Megalomaniac]

Pinball Fantasies needs 1Mb of memory, but it doesn't care whether it's all chip RAM, or whether it's 512k chip + 512k fast, so it's not really what I'm asking about here - I'm concerned about where an A500Plus was better than an A500 with only standard upgrades.

Still, A500s came with a free A501 from about May 1991, so a good five months before the A500Plus launched in late 1991. At that time most American-developed games (mainly sims / strategy / adventure / RPG by then) needed 1Mb, but most European titles ran in 512k. Alien Breed was about the first that was 1Mb only (making use of the extra memory was a big deal for Team 17, try loading it with only 512k for proof....), but the tide started to turn in 1992, and I think most games from 1993 onwards were 1Mb minimum. How many cared whether it was all chip RAM though?

The Settlers is an interesting one, it probably has more different enhancements for different levels of hardware than any other Amiga game. So few Amiga games had as much love and care put into them as this. The bigger maps need more than 1Mb but don't care whether it's all chip, or only 512k chip and the rest fast, or whatever. It's music and sound effects that are affected by how much specifically chip RAM there is - the first config screen is from a 512k chip+1.8Mb fast A500 (something like the Baseboard upgrade board which works with 1.2 and 1.3 https://archive.org/details/AmigaFor.../n139/mode/1up), the second is from a 1Mb chip+1Mb fast system, the third from a 2Mb chip no fast A500+ config. Note the different results for music and sound effects.

[Photon]

Originally Posted by Mikidi

Settlers could have bigger maps when there was more memory

Yes, that's a nice one that I didn't think of. Other games where you build things or are creative could have support for more of any RAM.

[Amigajay]

There was another thread a little while ago quite similar, i did start to make a list, a few titles here:

ECS not OCS.

Bloodnet (1995)
Laser World (1994)
Rally Championships (1994)

Legion (1996) but requires 2mb

[sokolovic]

Some infamous fake AGA games maybe ?
Primal Rage, Dungeon Master 2 (this one needs also a 68020), Burnin'Rubber "AGA ? I don't know if they recquire full 2Mb chip ram of if they works with 512Kb +1,5Mb fast

Also isn't Rise of the Robots 1Mb chip and WB 2.0 only ?

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

Also isn't Rise of the Robots 1Mb chip and WB 2.0 only ?

Pretty sure it’s not, also advert lists A1500/2000 compability.

[Daedalus]

Isn't Jungle Strike in that category too? As in, it says AGA on the box but once it has 2MB of fast RAM it runs.

Also, A-Train needs 1.5MB of RAM available to enable the high resolution mode, and similarly, SimAnt requires 2MB of RAM to enable the high resolution mode. On 1MB machines, both can only be run in low resolution mode.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Isn't Jungle Strike in that category too? As in, it says AGA on the box but once it has 2MB of fast RAM it runs.

It's 'technically' an AGA game:

The only AGA feature of this version is the helicopter animation in the intro. The rest of the game works the same on any Amiga with anOCS/ECS chipset and 2MB of RAM.

[Aardvark]

Vengeance of Excalibur does have more elaborate intro on 1MB chip than with 512k+512k. I don't know whether there are other differences.

[Megalomaniac]

From testing the CSL crack, Burnin Rubber 'AGA' needs an 020 as well as 2Mb chip. It doesn't load anything if not all the 2Mb is chip RAM (even if you boot from disk 2) and with an 000 it gives a Software Failure after you've passed the main menu. Jungle Strike conversely doesn't load anything successfully with an 000 selected. Jungle Strike (Tension crack) doesn't load without AGA, even with 020 2Mb chip ECS KS2 - can someone check the original (or link to a thread where someone has?).

I think James Pond 3 might be another game that says A1200 but actually only needs 2Mb chip RAM (which I think automatically means ECS is needed)? Bloodnet's box says it needs Workbench 2. Rally Championship ECS (which has no box scan on HoL) sounds from LemonAmiga reviews to be a fumbled cut-down version of the already-only-mediocre AGA game, but HoL notes that it needs KS2, seemingly due to a bug rather than using any KS2 features....

It's quite striking that, while there were benefits to having an A500+ (especially if further upgraded) over an A500, a lot of games' packaging didn't make it obvious. On the one hand, Mega Typhoon's limited packaging seems to give no clue that it doesn't work on an A500 with less than 1Mb chip, whereas so many games falsely claim to be AGA when in reality ECS is fine if you have other A1200-equivalent features. I guess publishers didn't think Amiga owners were capable of understanding complex system requirements the way they thought that PC owners were? Maybe you could excuse it for action games aimed at a young audience, but not for weightier stuff with an older target audience, like Dungeon Master 2?

[kremiso]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

...the third from a 2Mb chip no fast A500+ config. Note the different results for music and sound effects.

your third picture reminded me of that 'unable to close workbench' issue when loading the game on that config

just changing the endcli in the disk with the 2.x one solve that and your performance will increase even a bit more