Shit Game Time: Black Tiger, another U.S. Gold corker! (Bucket Please!)

[ZEUSDAZ]

Hi all, well here we go again with another U.S. Gold corker of an arcade conversion


On this edition I've been asked to play and shit-rate Black Tiger on the Amiga, the painful releases from this company full of turds never seems to stop


This is a paid request by youtuber "RayC" who wants me to banish this turd into the vault of shitness forever, enjoy



Black Tiger SGT Review: [ Show youtube player ]

[saimon69]

When this came out i took it a bit personal since was one of my favorites in the arcade and VERY feasible by Amiga standards; there is a coder, Chadderack, that is working on a remake and hope he can be able to reach a playable state - status of the work is here:

Black Tiger port (OCS/ECS) - EAB

[jotd]

maybe there are one or two US Gold conversions that aren't crap... But not that one. Unplayable 5 fps crap of a game.

[Superman]

It doesn't look too bad visually but that framerate is just horrible. Totally ruins the game and makes it unplayable.

[gimbal]

This is the true shit game. A game that looks quite cool and then makes you nauseous when it starts to move. 25fps okay but this... this is madness.

[kremiso]

like a 3d motion sickness, but on a 2d game

[Peanutuk]

I bought this on the C64 and didn't mind it too much. Never heard of it in the arcade at the time. Never played it on the Amiga, no desire to do so after watching that. It's like one of these:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoetrope

[DanScott]

Such a shame this game turned out to be a stuttery pile of unplayable low framerate crap... because the graphics are actually pretty well converted from the coin-op to a 16 colour Atari ST palette. It even looks like all the animation frames are there.

Not sure how many levels were on the Amiga, I don't think all 8 coin op levels were/are present.

[dlfrsilver]

All the levels are here dan. And yes it seems that all the animations frames are here.

The only shit point is the garbage graphics in 16 colors. This game requires either 32 colors very well remapped, or 64 colors or more to get justice.

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

All the levels are here dan. And yes it seems that all the animations frames are here.

The only shit point is the garbage graphics in 16 colors. This game requires either 32 colors very well remapped, or 64 colors or more to get justice.

16 separated colors for player sprite and 16 for enemies and background should be decent enough PLUS some copper magic - that or 32/EHB in Toki size window
Just to be sure: how many colors are in the Ghosts'n'Goblins port?

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by saimon69

16 separated colors for player sprite and 16 for enemies and background should be decent enough PLUS some copper magic - that or 32/EHB in Toki size window
Just to be sure: how many colors are in the Ghosts'n'Goblins port?

32 colors for Ghosts'n'goblins.

[DanScott]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

The only shit point is the garbage graphics in 16 colors.

I'd have to disagree with you here. The graphics are probably the most accurate to be found in any US Gold port, and the artist has done a great job with the palette, considering this had to be a port from Atari ST (that's the way the industry worked back then...)

Yes, It obviously would look better in 32 colours, but for what it is, it looks fantastic.... it's just a shame it's got such a low frame rate... even at 25fps it would have been an acceptable conversion at that time in history.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by DanScott

I'd have to disagree with you here. The graphics are probably the most accurate to be found in any US Gold port, and the artist has done a great job with the palette, considering this had to be a port from Atari ST (that's the way the industry worked back then...)

Yes, It obviously would look better in 32 colours, but for what it is, it looks fantastic.... it's just a shame it's got such a low frame rate... even at 25fps it would have been an acceptable conversion at that time in history.

Black Tiger is just awful to look at. 16 colors is horrible, even if i know that Teoman Irmak did a great job by looking on the graphics through the Arcade Board tile graphics option, he did pixel copy ! (it's written in the english magazines interview with Lilley and Irmak). I know too that U.S.Gold was 'let's do the ST first'.

This is an 8 bits game, and even when asked to Lilley "damn, why not doing the game in 32 colors on Amiga". He answered "we could have, we will look the next time to do so".

Black Tiger Amiga makes NO use of the chipset. Everything is done in software..... the only hard regs hit by the game is the Potgo (joystick) and the VBL reg.

this is why Chadderack initiative is more than welcome.

[JudasEZT]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

Black Tiger is just awful to look at. 16 colors is horrible, even if i know that Teoman Irmak did a great job by looking on the graphics through the Arcade Board tile graphics option, he did pixel copy ! (it's written in the english magazines interview with Lilley and Irmak). I know too that U.S.Gold was 'let's do the ST first'.

This is an 8 bits game, and even when asked to Lilley "damn, why not doing the game in 32 colors on Amiga". He answered "we could have, we will look the next time to do so".

Black Tiger Amiga makes NO use of the chipset. Everything is done in software..... the only hard regs hit by the game is the Potgo (joystick) and the VBL reg.

this is why Chadderack initiative is more than welcome.

Nah,.. graphics are good, and 16 colours palette is the recommendable to Amiga games and get a good frame rate and even use less diskspace and shorters loading times

[jotd]

16 colors for the backgrounds, BUT you can use attached sprites for a 15 color character, repeat with enemies and you can have 32 color game with 16 color playfield.

Or make characters 50Hz and background 25Hz... there are a lot of ways to get more colors in a 8 way scroller (when dynamic copper-controlled palette is just not an option).

Of course if you port the ST version to the amiga, you won't bother with that. The only ST ports that I can bear are Bitmap Brothers games. Because the ports are done properly (even if not using sprites and not upping palette).

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

Black Tiger is just awful to look at. 16 colors is horrible, even if i know that Teoman Irmak did a great job by looking on the graphics through the Arcade Board tile graphics option, he did pixel copy ! (it's written in the english magazines interview with Lilley and Irmak). I know too that U.S.Gold was 'let's do the ST first'.

I think it looks OK.

This is an 8 bits game,

Not sure what you mean by this. The 8 bit versions are much worse, especially the Amstrad CPC version which was ported directly from the ZX Spectrum. Same monochrome graphics, but slower because the Amstrad has 4 colors in that resolution. That's truly awful!

Unfortunately the C64 version also manages to be awful in a different way. Awful SID music, awful C64 colors, awful low resolution and the main character moves too fast!

Black Tiger Amiga makes NO use of the chipset. Everything is done in software..... the only hard regs hit by the game is the Potgo (joystick) and the VBL reg.

I suspected that was the case because the ST version is identical. A very lazy port. But hey, at least we got a game that was as good as the ST version.

[DanScott]

He means the coin op has an 8 bit processor (well 2 actually.. both Z80's, although one might be driving the 2 audio chips), but this is partly irrelevant when the coin op display hardware itself is fairly powerful.

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

This is an 8 bits game, and even when asked to Lilley "damn, why not doing the game in 32 colors on Amiga". He answered "we could have, we will look the next time to do so".

Well, i know me and you have BT as a strong favorite so i can see this being a sensitive topic; however i think that, if when we port the graphics we take out the player/weapons and give them its own 15 colors palette this means some pens will be freed, so the background and enemies will come out better from the optimization. Some pens might be left for background elements and changed at need. AND will be still virtually a 32 colors game,not maybe a 32 PALETTE colors game but there will be more on that on screen

A tricky problem however would be for those enemies that have different behavior or hits number (might have been used as boss previously) and are represented with another color palette set: the arcade have dynamic palette for those but Amiga does not, hence there might be a repetition of assets unless we differentiate them with some overlay bobs...

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by DanScott

He means the coin op has an 8 bit processor (well 2 actually.. both Z80's, although one might be driving the 2 audio chips), but this is partly irrelevant when the coin op display hardware itself is fairly powerful.

I remember Ghosts'n' Goblins had a similar configuration: same base hardware?

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by DanScott

I'd have to disagree with you here. The graphics are probably the most accurate to be found in any US Gold port, and the artist has done a great job with the palette, considering this had to be a port from Atari ST (that's the way the industry worked back then...)

+1. Graphics look amazing in stills.

The hideous framerate is the problem here.