Why are platform games on the Amiga really mediocre?

[Gzegzolka]

I think I could write my two cents here too.
I like GODS, sure it's BitmapBrotherhood game and it's hard, but stop thinking about it like a platform game where You can easy rush from left side to righ in few seconds jumping over every obstacle, it's more maze game where aproch is bit slower and there's some puzzle to solve. It also have lot of secrets that incerase replay value in my opinion. It's great game, bit hard.
As for Arabian Nights, yes it's underated. There are some diversion in what You are doing in each level, but what is more important - there is plot in levels, You solve puzzles to get items that are useful for You, there are also those speech bubles - something rare for amiga platform games. Level progression is more logic than in Oscar or Trolls.
It is not that every Amiga platform game is crap and every one on SNES is brillant ground breaking title. I would say that Amiga just have higher ratio of crap games to good ones, that's all. Maybe it's also related to staff that makes games, like how many people work on it and if there is someone to manage it as a project and keep it on good quality level, responisble for game-play-mechanics desing.
Super Methane Bross (just one exapme, but there are more games too) is perfect example of game on same level of quality gameplay desing as SNES/arcade games.

[Amigajay]

Whilst a few may look pretty dated now, don't forget a lot of Amiga platform games were rated at the time, also proof of point that a lot got ported to consoles due to popularity and reviews, yes not all are on the scale of Metroid etc but who cares when a fun game is a fun game, which what the Amiga was all about.
Anyhow here's a few Amiga platform games that got ported to consoles (sorry if this has been posted before, hadn't read all 28 pages!)

Bubba N Stick, Bubble & Squeak, Chuck Rock, Fire And Ice, Flashback, James Pond 2, Jim Power, Leander, Putty, Risky Woods, First Samurai, Second Samurai, Soccer Kid, SOTB 1, 2, Turrican 2 (series continued on console), Zool 1,2.

Then of course great exclusives like Arabian Nights, Lionheart, Kid Chaos, Odyssey, Ruff N Tumble, Traps N Treasures.

And others like Aladdin, Superfrog and Flink.

So imo the Amiga had some great platform games, certainly not mediocre at all.

[nobody]

We love Amiga but lets face the truth. If you take out Flashback, Arabian Nights, James Pond 2, Lionheart most platform games play like public domain on the Amiga.
Now why would anyone drop the system for consoles if the Amiga had so many great platform games and the known fact that you could buy copied games in the streets? It would be insane.
Truth is that those games paled compared to the magnificence of Super Metroid or Super Mario World, Contra 3, Megaman X, Castlevania plus many others that no need to add.
And Gods yes is an average game, never seen it in a list of best games for consoles even though it existed on SNES/Megadrive. Now why is that? Let me tell you. Controls sucks, the guy you control can't jump after a newspaper even though he is a god, to pick up an item you have to be Billy Mitchell himself, plus this Greek-like god that you control is much, much slower that the enemies which makes the gameplay based mostly on luck rather than skills.

[Gzegzolka]

Amigajay - some of those games were developed at the same time for Amiga and consoles.

Nobody - still there are some crap games on conosoles too, take only good ones away and You will have Angry Video Games Nerd situation here.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by nobody

We love Amiga but lets face the truth. If you take out Flashback, Arabian Nights, James Pond 2, Lionheart most platform games play like public domain on the Amiga.
Now why would anyone drop the system for consoles if the Amiga had so many great platform games and the known fact that you could buy copied games in the streets? It would be insane.
Truth is that those games paled compared to the magnificence of Super Metroid or Super Mario World, Contra 3, Megaman X, Castlevania plus many others that no need to add.
And Gods yes is an average game, never seen it in a list of best games for consoles even though it existed on SNES/Megadrive. Now why is that? Let me tell you. Controls sucks, the guy you control can't jump after a newspaper even though he is a god, to pick up an item you have to be Billy Mitchell himself, plus this Greek-like god that you control is much, much slower that the enemies which makes the gameplay based mostly on luck rather than skills.

I think that's crap tbh, they don't play like PD at all, trouble with console gamers today is if a character doesn't jump like Mario then its a shit game, not at all, platform games can be what they like, same for fighting games, if its not SF2 its crap...yawn, a fun game is a fun game end of, the gameplay mechanics can be what they like.
Yes you can list the best 5 snes games, but among those are 50 average platform games that make the Amiga games shine, the Megadrive and SNES died amongst a plethora of dodgy platform bubsy the bobcat games.

But i say it again, the way the character jumps doesn't define how fun and good a platform game is.

Originally Posted by Gzegzolka

Amigajay - some of those games were developed at the same time for Amiga and consoles.

Which ones? Bubba N Stix was in parallel, the others the Amiga was lead platform or was released first.

[dlfrsilver]

Amigajay, i understand what nobody tries to say. Most amiga games have mechanics/game logic done in a smaller time, so it's way less "developed" and "advanced" than what you can find on a console game, where designers have spent the right amount of time to work it out.

Yes Gods playability is really "rough", the guy is not answering to control quickly but slowly....

[TCD]

Originally Posted by nobody

And Gods yes is an average game, never seen it in a list of best games for consoles even though it existed on SNES/Megadrive. Now why is that? Let me tell you. Controls sucks, the guy you control can't jump after a newspaper even though he is a god, to pick up an item you have to be Billy Mitchell himself, plus this Greek-like god that you control is much, much slower that the enemies which makes the gameplay based mostly on luck rather than skills.

First of all you should read the story at the start of the game. Second of all if you think that Gods gameplay is based on luck you might have played a different game than most of us. You can compare Gods to Super Mario World, but that would be missing the point of the game. It's like comparing Chaos Engine to Smash TV...

[nobody]

Originally Posted by Boo Boo

If you think your attempts at editing other peoples graphics or crappy backbone games are better than gods - youve lost your mind.

You would have thought that I wouldnt take the bait by now.

O and gods is easy except last world maybe some of you did have a bad crack like I did at first.

Does this means that anyone that makes a backbone game shouldn't have an opinion or accept whatever your opinion might be about the quality of something?

[Retro-Nerd]

This pointless discussion continues, with black and white arguments and generalized phrases?

[nobody]

I don't know about generalized but lot's of trolling for sure

[lordofchaos]

Games that played, sounded, and looked like GODS was the reason I preferred the Amiga at the time. There's a lot of rose tinted glasses crap going on here, after playing loads of snes/mega drive games over the years I`m starting to wonder what all the fuss was about.. In retrospect I think hype was to blame for a lot of the bigotry.

There's no way gods was just an average game, it had a very positive buzz on it's release from press, and much talked about at school with friends.. and here we are still talking about it 20+ years later.

At the very least it's iconic, not average.

[hansel75]

When comparing Amiga platformers to Snes etc, you have to take into account that most Amiga games were made by only a few guys most of the time, for small companies with low budgets.
Nintendo and co. would of had much larger teams and budgets, plus they had to make very good games for there console to sell well and succeed, they relied on this otherwise no one would of bought there consoles.

The Amiga didn't have to rely on games to succeed, and it certainly didn't have to rely on platform games to make it a viable longterm seller.
Nintendo crafted a console pretty much to play platform games and they perfected there skills at making them, but in a lot of other genres the consoles like the Snes simply sucked where is the Amiga covered all genres fairly well.

In saying that, there are a lot of crap Snes platformers out there(Waynes World), and only a handful of true classics.
And in the end the Snes was simply swamped with generic platform games, which although they mostly played ok, they just felt the same as the last 20 other platform games that came out before it.

The same could be said for the Megadrive as what i have said about the Snes.
If all you want to play is platform mario clones then go play a console, for the rest of the genres the Amiga was unbeatable in a lot of ways.
Plus as many have pointed out on here, the Amiga did have a decent share of good platform games, and i also agree with others here that not every platform game has to be a mario clone.

[Retro-Nerd]

While the most Amiga and console classics mentioned here are good games, i could find flaws in any of them. If i would take a close look. So what? They are good in terms of playability.

For one polished platformer you will find 10 crappy games on Amiga or consoles, already mentioned. And yes, the money and development time is another valid point that the consoles had a few more polished games (a few, not tons).

[lordofchaos]

Originally Posted by hansel75

In saying that, there are a lot of crap Snes platformers out there(Waynes World), and only a handful of true classics.
And in the end the Snes was simply swamped with generic platform games, which although they mostly played ok, they just felt the same as the last 20 other platform games that came out before it.

Maybe "franchise fatigue" played a part in this too, Capcom being the biggest offender, mega man series springs to mind, then there's Sega with Sonic.. Fantastic games with tight controls and great music but then replicated over and over..Not that the Amiga didn't do this, sensible soccer?..Although in sensible's case this seemed more a necessity to stay in business?

If I can think of a modern day comparison it would be "Call Of Duty", sucks up so much money that developers end up making clones killing innovation. You need the eccentrics to make games, stop things getting stale even if they don't sell by the bucket load.

[dlfrsilver]

yes Retro. Japanese devs spent a lot of time polishing the game logic, while Euro devs were all running after a short deadline.

It's evident that when work is polished, it's obviously better than when it's rushed

But it's true that crap games can be found on all platforms

[commodorejohn]

Originally Posted by hansel75

In saying that, there are a lot of crap Snes platformers out there(Waynes World), and only a handful of true classics.
And in the end the Snes was simply swamped with generic platform games, which although they mostly played ok, they just felt the same as the last 20 other platform games that came out before it.

I do agree with the basic premise that the platformer formula generally got more polish on the SNES than it did on the Amiga, but this bears a lot of repeating. People remember the all-time classics of SNES platformers (Mario, Mega Man, Metroid,) but there were tons and tons of other platformers ranging from middling to absolutely wretched that have simply faded into history and been forgotten everywhere but a few sites like Hardcore Gaming 101. (Of course, there were also a few diamonds in the rough like Magical Pop'n, but you know the saying about 90% of everything being crap...)

[Lonewolf10]

Instead of discussing (arguing? ) what makes a great Amiga platformer, why don't you guys (and gals) get off your butt's and create a new one!

Originally Posted by commodorejohn

but there were tons and tons of other platformers ranging from middling to absolutely wretched that have simply faded into history and been forgotten

That will happen regardless of genre. It's the nature of gaming.

One of my favourite all-time platformers is Chuckie Egg

[Mrs Beanbag]

i think platform games in general did end up getting polished so much they all started to resemble one single Platonic ideal platform game. It also coincided with the rise of the character-mascot mentioned earlier, and it ended up with the only difference between games being which cute/cool animal do you get to play as. I think they realised the charisma of the character on the box is what sold a game, even if it doesn't keep you wanting to play it. Yet it seems to produce a weird sort of loyalty - look at all the Sonic fan art on the web.

Err i mean don't look at all the Sonic fan art on the web. Really, just don't.

[Predseda]

You mean that mascot on the shelf, Amy?

[Mrs Beanbag]

hey i watched the longplay and i didn't even notice that, that's how charismatic he is i guess!

I hope i never have to look at Mr Beanbag fan art.