Was the Atari ST to blame for badly ported games?

[TCD]

Just some more games sales figures from Germany (ASM 5/1990):


Out of the top 30 these are the games available per system:
Amiga: 28
ST: 24
PC: 16
C64: 13

[Megalomaniac]

I'd love to see similar data for the UK around that time, but it Came From the Desert reaching number 3 in the all-format list with only Amiga sales is the most telling proof that the Amiga was on well top in Germany by then. Still, Oil Imperium is at number 6 without making the Amiga top 10 (compare that to Larry 3 being the top PC seller but only 20th overall), so it seems like ST and C64 were still ahead of PC at that time.

Surprised that the Amiga outsold the ST that heavily in the UK in 1988 - it was clearly the more powerful of the two, but it was still underexploited (it still was well into 1989, indeed) and the ST came with all those games by the time they cost the same as well. I'd imagine the ST sold more games in the UK in 1988 (despite the bundled software), but the Amiga did in 1989 and beyond. Maybe UK companies were a bit slow to react to this change?

[TCD]

Originally Posted by TCD

Funnily enough Lucasfilm/LucasArts was more than happy that their games sold (relatively) well in Europe because in the US they had a hard time to cut into Sierra's market share.

Just watching a Lucasfilm Games Post-Mortem and at around 53:48 they talk about the relevance of the European market for the company: [ Show youtube player ]

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

This [talking specifically about the UK] may well be true (does anyone have sales figures for STs and Amigas in 1988?) but the sheer head start the ST had in terms of being £500 when a £1300 A1000 was the only Amiga means that there were a lot more STs out there than Amigas until much later than 1988.

Unfortunately, this is not true. the turnover happened mid june 1988. From there, the Amiga took the lead.

The Best ST year was 1987.

ST Format outsold Amiga Format for their first 6 months before Amiga Format took over, for example. Even if leading with the ST version cost 10% of Amiga sales due to it usually resulting in an inferior Amiga game (and I doubt that it's that much), the extra expense of doing two separate developments, or the lost sales from releasing the ST version later, will have outweighed that in 1989, maybe 1990 too. TCD's Germany sales chart from 1989 quoted earlier suggests that Amiga owners weren't boycotting ST ported games as some would claim - North and South outsold Shadow of the Beast (designed from scratch as an Amiga showcase, with a game built around it, not the other way around) in that month on the Amiga alone, before you consider lost ST sales of Beast, in a country where the Amiga was well on top by then. In the UK, the initial financial loss of leading with the Amiga was even more drastic.

Re-read what i wrote above about Pang case. Infogrames games never sold well.

This is why Infogrames left very quickly the ST and the Amiga. These days, North And South is a very rare game, for which prices are very high.
This is normal, they never sold BIG back in the day.
Shadow of the Beast sold 80.000 copies on Amiga. N&S is simply not even reaching half of that number.

To copy in a quote from a resurrected thread elsewhere:
I've shortened the list slightly, he's missed a few that I'd include (Rainbow Islands for example), and I'd say most of the later ones would have been done as Amiga-only developments without the ST still being strong, but I think the point still holds. None of those are ruined by being developed around an ST codebase primarily, and only a few would be significantly better if done as pure Amiga games using the code knowledge and tools of the time (let alone the Christmas deadlines and limited access to coin-op resources of the time)

If Andrew Braybrook was redoing RI on Amiga from the start, it would be better than the correct result he had when he converted the game from the ST version.

Simply because he got much better on Amiga coding with year.

And maybe we would have the 3 missing islands for fuck sakes ! When i think that we could not have that because Ocean refuse Graftgold to get a 3rd disk for the Atari ST version, GRRR

[Megalomaniac]

I highly doubt that there were more Amigas than STs in use in the UK by mid-1988. Late 1988, maybe. More were probably selling each month (supposedly twice as many Amigas sold as STs in 1988 in total), but I doubt the ST's headstart was erased that quickly, given that the total amount in use in late 1988 was so similar. Do you have a source for this?

Rainbow Islands was finished before Ocean got involved with publishing it (it was intended for Firebird before the Telecomsoft collapse, and its release was delayed as a result), so I doubt the missing hidden islands are down to Ocean.

If you read my comment again about North and South versus Shadow of the Beast, I said that N&S outsold Beast in that month in Germany, not necessarily overall worldwide - my point was that, even in Amiga-dominated Germany, Amiga games that were ST ports still sold well (even before you counted their ST sales, which were still greater than on the PC at least)

[TCD]

All 8 and 16 bit home computers were quite 'regional' when it comes to installation base. Here in Germany for example the C64 was the dominant 8-bit machine in the late 80s with the CPC being second (thanks to Schneider producing them here) and the Spectrum being not very relevant. The UK market was very different and such was the French.

That also applies to games sales. Certain genres were more successful in certain countries. That might also explain why the adoption of 16 bit machines happened at different times in different countries (plus the economical factors of course). So it's not really possible to take the situation from one country and apply it to another one even within Europe.

[Howardphilips]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

I highly doubt that there were more Amigas than STs in use in the UK by mid-1988. Late 1988, maybe. More were probably selling each month (supposedly twice as many Amigas sold as STs in 1988 in total), but I doubt the ST's headstart was erased that quickly, given that the total amount in use in late 1988 was so similar. Do you have a source for this?

Rainbow Islands was finished before Ocean got involved with publishing it (it was intended for Firebird before the Telecomsoft collapse, and its release was delayed as a result), so I doubt the missing hidden islands are down to Ocean.

If you read my comment again about North and South versus Shadow of the Beast, I said that N&S outsold Beast in that month in Germany, not necessarily overall worldwide - my point was that, even in Amiga-dominated Germany, Amiga games that were ST ports still sold well (even before you counted their ST sales, which were still greater than on the PC at least)

If you want to know why the 3 hidden islands are missing in Rainbow Islands' conversion, it's explained here:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/andrew-braybrook-39616336
In summary: deadline approaching and they were not told by Taito nor given hints that these islands were there, until they found out themselves. Also, the level of coding needed for these islands was higher because featuring bigger sprites (and colours?) than other levels.

[Megalomaniac]

First thing to say is that I love Rainbow Islands as it is, despite being an ST port - vertical scrolling isn't an issue on that hardware, and the 16 colour limit isn't noticeable, everything's nice and bright and jolly to fit how it should feel, I can't see anything that should have been a different 17th colour on any level.

Still, it would've been nice to have the secret islands, for the small percentage of players who'd find them. Maybe Taito take the biggest blame for not providing all the info about the secret islands (not an untypical situation, especially when the same company made console versions that it self-published). The ST (and its market influence) may have some blame on this though, with some doubts as to whether the ST could have implemented them as impressively as it did the main 7 islands , and the reality that Graftgold would not have specially redone those levels for the Amiga if the ST-friendly implementation was poor.

For possibly the first time ever, Ocean aren't responsible for (in this case, very minor, and not severely impacting the game) issues with one of their coin-op conversions....

[AnimaInCorpore]

The answer to this topic "question" is simple: more than 30 years later and not having any alternative to most of the "lazy ST ports" there's only one conclusion: blame the ones who promised a better "Amiga world" without any competition.

The question is rather: why do you have an obsession to blame a different system? Just think about the slogan "only Amiga makes it possible". It seems that you have to questioning that before blaming anything else, right!?

[Thorham]

The only thing to blame for shit games, including shit ports, is people.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Thorham

The only thing to blame for shit games, including shit ports, is people.

Yep. Most of the time those in suits

[gimbal]

The gamers themselves deserve a large chunk of the blame too. So much time and energy wasted on being unhappy with what they didn't get.

[Asman]

I think that we need to improve "lazy ST ports" instead of blaming. Talk is always cheap

Any suggestion ?

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

First thing to say is that I love Rainbow Islands as it is, despite being an ST port - vertical scrolling isn't an issue on that hardware, and the 16 colour limit isn't noticeable, everything's nice and bright and jolly to fit how it should feel, I can't see anything that should have been a different 17th colour on any level.

For sure. Honetly, this game could have been done with 32 colors and 1mb of ram.

Still, it would've been nice to have the secret islands, for the small percentage of players who'd find them. Maybe Taito take the biggest blame for not providing all the info about the secret islands (not an untypical situation, especially when the same company made console versions that it self-published).

I know the story behind the lack of the 3 last islands. Ocean refused to allow a 3rd floppy disk for the Atari ST version, so in the end the ST and Amiga version were cut. The story was told by Graftgold in the biggest magazine for french game computing called "Joystick".

The ST (and its market influence) may have some blame on this though, with some doubts as to whether the ST could have implemented them as impressively as it did the main 7 islands , and the reality that Graftgold would not have specially redone those levels for the Amiga if the ST-friendly implementation was poor.

Read me above.

For possibly the first time ever, Ocean aren't responsible for (in this case, very minor, and not severely impacting the game) issues with one of their coin-op conversions....

They were. "A third disk is too expensive, so it's a no go".....

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by TCD

Yep. Most of the time those in suits

I'd say honestly that quite a number of devs were pro-ST. Just look the rants in the bootblocks regarding piracy on ST, and on the fact that the Amiga will be the leading machine.....

[Megalomaniac]

As for Rainbow Islands, remember that the game was intended for release by Firebird in late 1989, before their collapse saw the game held up before Ocean could negotiate to release it instead. Rainbow Islands was always going to be a straight port from the ST, as discussed in one of the mags several months before its completion. Note that several UK mags reviewed it in late 1989 with Firebird marked as the publisher. Graftgold had moved on to coding Simulcra and Super Off-Road by then. I doubt that Graftgold are being truthful if they were blaming Ocean for the missing hidden islands.

[Megalomaniac]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

I'd say honestly that quite a number of devs were pro-ST. Just look the rants in the bootblocks regarding piracy on ST, and on the fact that the Amiga will be the leading machine.....

Most were probably loyal to the machine they had first. Programmers who started on the Spectrum or C64 when they were new will have felt ready for something new before late 1987 when the A500 launched, programmers on (say) BBC, Dragon or 8-bit Atari will have seen those machines fade from the mainstream before late 1987, and it was getting harder for new teams to establish themselves on the C64 or Spectrum by 1987, so developers will have seen an advantage in skipping that generation and establishing themselves on the new hardware instead. Since the ST was affordable for 18 months to 2 years before the Amiga was, for most of those developers, that machine will have been the ST. I'd've been the same.

[Howardphilips]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

As for Rainbow Islands, remember that the game was intended for release by Firebird in late 1989, before their collapse saw the game held up before Ocean could negotiate to release it instead. Rainbow Islands was always going to be a straight port from the ST, as discussed in one of the mags several months before its completion. Note that several UK mags reviewed it in late 1989 with Firebird marked as the publisher. Graftgold had moved on to coding Simulcra and Super Off-Road by then. I doubt that Graftgold are being truthful if they were blaming Ocean for the missing hidden islands.

Exactly, and French games magazines of the time were not known for their reliability or their professionalism (except Tilt).

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Howardphilips

Exactly, and French games magazines of the time were not known for their reliability or their professionalism (except Tilt).

Not only French magazines

[CCCP alert]

Julian Rignall, a games reviewer who was one of the best, put it perfectly in bedrooms to billions. Most reviews were done by people who had no clue about machines running the games technically, any sort of arcade gaming experience, or any kind of expertise in playing them and might as well have been reviewing a dot matrix printer or a mouse.

ZZAP!64 in the era after Rignall and Penn had left was useless. Turbo OutRun on the Amiga should have been given 0% end of discussion, and before you blame the ST that version is also a 0% game if you look at things like Batman or Lotus II on the ST. Any idiot was hired to review games, all it did was force people to pirate. There are only so many piss poor games bought with your wages you could stomach.