Why are platform games on the Amiga really mediocre?

[Mrs Beanbag]

Originally Posted by Arne

Couldn't make multidirectional scrolling go fast enough anyways.

you want fast multidirectional scrolling i can sort you out

[Shatterhand]

I would believe most Amiga developers actually had experience with the 8 bits machine , isn't that true?

I still think Bitmap Brothers had no idea of what makes a good game, and when they made it right, it was pure luck. There are only 2 games from them which I think are really good: Speedball 2 and The Chaos Engine. Everything else goes from average (Xenon 1, Gods) to really dreadful (Xenon 2). But all their games look good and they had excellent relationships with the magazines, which is enough to make a game hyped (regarding the stuff with magazines, that's the only explanation I have for the mediocre Project-X getting a lot more of praise than the GODFULLY AWESOME Apidya)

And the fact they have produced at least 3 remakes of Speedball 2, and all of them sucked badly is a sign for me that they had no idea of what made Speedball 2 so good.

[Shatterhand]

Originally Posted by CodyJarrett

In case you want a reminder of the highest and lowest rated platformers, you can check out the Amiga Lore page:

http://www.abime.net/games/genre/platform

Ok, how the hell "Titus the Fox" is in top 15 games, and stuff like The Great Giana Sisters, Alfred Chicken, Brian the Lion, McDonald's Land, The Lion King and Wonder Dog are on the list of worst platform games?

What the hell?

But then of course you look at the shoot'em up section, and see Swiv and Xenon 2 above Z-Out, Uridium 2, Silkworm, R-Type ... and Apidya below all of this. And Project-X SE being the top ranked real shoot'em up.. while not surprising, it's depressing as hell.

[Tolismlf]

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

I would believe most Amiga developers actually had experience with the 8 bits machine , isn't that true?

I still think Bitmap Brothers had no idea of what makes a good game, and when they made it right, it was pure luck. There are only 2 games from them which I think are really good: Speedball 2 and The Chaos Engine. Everything else goes from average (Xenon 1, Gods) to really dreadful (Xenon 2). But all their games look good and they had excellent relationships with the magazines, which is enough to make a game hyped (regarding the stuff with magazines, that's the only explanation I have for the mediocre Project-X getting a lot more of praise than the GODFULLY AWESOME Apidya)

And the fact they have produced at least 3 remakes of Speedball 2, and all of them sucked badly is a sign for me that they had no idea of what made Speedball 2 so good.

All their stuff with Mark Coleman is overrated junk.
They were lucky in their career to have an amazing artist like Dan Malone on board to draw stuff for them, and magazines of the time pretty much hyped about everything about them and gave favorable reviews of average games like Xenon 2. Oh yes magazines favored some games and buried others, believe it or not, for their reasons.
Some of their games though was excellent like Speedball 2, i think they worked really hard on this and Chaos Engine.

[Gzegzolka]

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

Ok, how the hell "Titus the Fox" is in top 15 games, and stuff like The Great Giana Sisters, Alfred Chicken, Brian the Lion, McDonald's Land, The Lion King and Wonder Dog are on the list of worst platform games?

What the hell?

But then of course you look at the shoot'em up section, and see Swiv and Xenon 2 above Z-Out, Uridium 2, Silkworm, R-Type ... and Apidya below all of this. And Project-X SE being the top ranked real shoot'em up.. while not surprising, it's depressing as hell.

I think some people just play games that was top rated back then, and they vote for them, You know they might not try other ones. It's like - "I'm old guy, when I was kid I have Amiga, let's download emulator and play old good games, let's see what was the most popular games back than?".

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

Everything else goes from average (Xenon 1, Gods)

Gods is awesome

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

(regarding the stuff with magazines, that's the only explanation I have for the mediocre Project-X getting a lot more of praise than the GODFULLY AWESOME Apidya)

Yeah, that's quite baffling. Same for Agony. How crappy games like those two got better ratings than Apidya is a total mystery.

[gimbal]

Okay I read that as "godawful Apidya" - I was ready to throw a burning pitchfork there.

I can see why people rate it lower, its a game with effing insects, moles and fish and not all kinds of cool spaceships, nuclear missiles, space stations and aliens. Note: I find it a beautiful game. And that music... Its also one of the few horizontal scrollers that I rate as "fair" - it still beats your ass but if you keep at it you can beat it right back, and dying in later stages is not as dire (sometimes I still did a rage quit even before the term was invented).

As for Agony - its a bitch, but its still a Psygnosis bitch. I don't like games such as Obitus and Agony for their gameplay, but they still sweep me away to another universe.

Yay thread derailed Only took five years.

[lordofchaos]

Originally Posted by gimbal

As for Agony - its a bitch, but its still a Psygnosis bitch.

This should have been a disclaimer on all psygnosis game boxes


I like Apidya too. Smooth, well defined gfx, playable and above average music. People might flame me for saying this but, I hate the fact that death results in loss or power-ups in Shoot 'Em ups. These games are already hard enough without the added kick in the face of having your weapons stripped, I much prefer the route disposable heroes took with the energy bar and keeping weapons after death. They still managed to make a challenging and playable game using this rule set, makes me wonder why so few games followed this design.

It's for these reasons I rarely ever go back to playing Project X, even though it's such an iconic Amiga game loaded with nostalgia. I think a lot of this punishment vs reward ratio applies to platform games too, with Amiga games offering a slightly less forgiving experience than what you'd find on console.

[Jgames]

Gods is awesome. The only game in the universe I keep replaying every 6 months or so.
Just finished it last week again

[Gordon]

I have never seen a game cause a love/hate debate like Gods!

[Muzkat]

I finished the cracked version. I don't recall finding it impossibly difficult, just very challenging, requiring multiple play throughs consisting of lots of trial and error and memorisation of objects / secrets / boss and puzzle sequences.

It was a momentous day when I finally completed it. I still regard Gods as not only the best platformer on the Amiga, but the finest game on the Amiga, hands down. "Into the wonderful" says it all.

[s2325]

Some trainer version have all weapons active if someone need easier game. Some were glitchy if used on wrong level.

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by Muzkat

I finished the cracked version.

Then you did not play "the" cracked version as that one crashes in world 2.

[s2325]

Game is infinite loop if time in trainer menu is set as infite at end of first world.

[Dastardly]

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

I still think Bitmap Brothers had no idea of what makes a good game, and when they made it right, it was pure luck. There are only 2 games from them which I think are really good: Speedball 2 and The Chaos Engine. Everything else goes from average (Xenon 1, Gods) to really dreadful (Xenon 2). But all their games look good and they had excellent relationships with the magazines, which is enough to make a game hyped (regarding the stuff with magazines, that's the only explanation I have for the mediocre Project-X getting a lot more of praise than the GODFULLY AWESOME Apidya)

And the fact they have produced at least 3 remakes of Speedball 2, and all of them sucked badly is a sign for me that they had no idea of what made Speedball 2 so good.

To say that when they got it right was pure luck is patently ridiculous. Taking one of your examples, The Chaos Engine, not only does that game have excellent graphics, but it also has an excellent soundtrack, brilliant multi layered level design with loads of replay value and even RPG elements for a variety of playable character types, to name just some of its qualities. If you think those things were the result of pure "luck" then you clearly don't know what you're talking about.

Speedball 2, again is the result of a skilled team at the top of their game producing a quality, carefully considered product. The reason that the remakes have never recaptured what made the original so great is because the original team are no longer together.

[Predseda]

slightly off-topic: Dastardly, is there still anyone who takes care in gods-country? The site now is full of rubish in its guestbook.

[Dastardly]

Gods Country/The Chaos Regime hasn't been touched for a long time as far as I know. It's nice it's still there, but yes, it has gotten a bit "messy".

[Mrs Beanbag]

i don't want to be hard on Gods, it's not a bad game, obviously that's highly subjective, it just feels to me like more the work of highly competent amateurs than seasoned professionals. Which i guess is how the Amiga coding community worked, Nintendo et al were big companies where they could afford to train their staff into the esoteric rules of games design, but here people were working it all out for themselves. But as a result the good Amiga games have a degree of character that the slick console presentations lack; there's something kind of homely about it. And in the Big Business world, innovation eventually becomes too much of a risk and everything ends up led by marketing departments.

there was a lot of real potential there, it's a shame about certain rough edges like not smooth scrolling, lack of music &c, but i guess some people can see through that.

now i think about it, i'd like to make a game like Gods some day, with the benefit of 25 years of hindsight.

[lordofchaos]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

now i think about it, i'd like to make a game like Gods some day, with the benefit of 25 years of hindsight.

Now that would be cool 50fps scrolling with a possibility of parallax? Oh and if you ever need a sound guy just holla, would love to be part of another Amiga gaming venture

[Mrs Beanbag]

also i remembered, for ages i thought it was saying "Into the Waterfall"!

also i watched the end of the longplay last night to see how it ended, was entertained to discover it reverts to one of the oldest obsolete tropes in the computer game book... which is that it starts again, only harder. As if anyone would want to play it through again a second time. I'd need to take a week off after all that.

we could call a new incarnation "Gilgamesh" though, because in the Babylonian epic our hero has the same quest for immortality. We could roughly follow the same plot as well. Now that's edutainment!

another thing that occurred to me is how often in older games, before the charismatic character became standard, was that the hero didn't even have an identity: because the hero is YOU. So there was the expectation of immersion, back when graphics capabilities weren't good enough to render a recognisable character, we were expected to use our imaginations to put ourselves in the place of the little coloured blobs. In Gods the hero is never named by the introductory text, he is simply "our hero", and we never see his face. Are we invited to imagine ourselves in his place?

Which made me wonder. How come so many Amiga games feature as their hero a muscular man in his underpants?