PC games that made the Amiga look like Shit

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

This game was developed starting in 1993, and released in 1994. I watched a 'longplay' video and it's amazing!

You should try playing it.
It not only looks spectacular, it plays spectacular.
One of the best Amiga exclusive platformer, if not the best, for sure.
I always say: "Even arcade machines with much powerful hardware, would be proud with title like Ruff 'n' Tumble".

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

No fancy parallax scrolling that taxes the machine and distracts the player, just nice muted backgrounds that provide atmosphere without competing against the foreground.

Yup.
Screw the overrated parallax. Back in the day, as a kid watching arcade games, I haven't even noticed it.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

not trying to do too much its all silky smooth with no annoying slow downs.

Well, there is a slowdown when you activate power up to destroy everything on the screen, but it's not annoying (I actually enjoy it), and it lasts only for about 1 second.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Having AGA or VGA graphics wouldn't make much difference

Yup, conversion to more colors with Ruff 'n' Tumble probably wouldn't result in much better look. The palette is so nice, and so well drawn, that it already looks like it's using much more colors then actually is.

[Korban]

Ruff 'n Tumble is a good game, but its hardly silky smooth.
It's only 25 fps to begin with, but it also drops frames and has regular slowdown.

Its a bit of a shame it doesn't run better. The lack of fluidity and/or consistency hold it in the realm of good. If it was smoother and more consistently paced it'd be an absolute classic.

[Luca underdog]

Originally Posted by Arne

Yeah, it's neat when ports just go and do their own thing and become exclusive, like Rygar on the NES. Archimedes Elite? Sadly the Amiga rarely got to shine and show off, due to the nature and budget of ports... and like I've said earlier, making assets back then was a lot harder than it is now.

Ruff 'n' Tumble did pull of some nice 32 colour action. 320x217 (less considering the separate top stat screen).
https://www.mobygames.com/game/14517...s/amiga/86221/

correct...
i love the robin levy graphic, if you watch on his work he never lost a shot

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

But it started out well with EA's superlative Marble Madness A1000 port. Marble Madness and Defender of the Crown was a powerful combination for the desire to own an Amiga before the A500.

one of the commodore amiga problem was the commodore

[Arne]

Hmm? Isn't Adventure, Novel, Strategy and (2D) Sim games an area where the Amiga still had a chance to shine? Pretty, slow updating games controlled by mouse and keyboard. I think platform and fighting games is where it fell behind consoles a lot due to the lack of layered tile systems, individual palettes and a good joypad. Additionally, while many early PC 3D games have aged poorly I remember them being novel and interesting at the time, and a big incentive to jump ship. I don't remember seeing any PC platforming games then and wasn't even aware of Jill of the Jungle, Commander Keen, etc. I probably had Amiga-branded blinkers on.

I've said it elsewhere, but I think software > hardware. Pokémon took like 6 years to make. It still managed to pump a lot of vitality into the elderly Gameboy. A real "Killer App". It really did require a lot of development time too, so it's not really a game you could've seen on the NES (though there are modern ports), or the 1991 GB. The original is a half megabyte game so ROM size alone was a bit prohibitive. There were design philosophy prerequisites too. You'd need a time machine to make it happen earlier.

There were a few PC games which the Amiga probably could have handled but the incentives weren't there to do anything. Master of Orion, Star Control II?

Then there's the whole Japanese PC scene. PC-88 & PC-98 games had excellent and "exotic" Japanese hirez pixel art. The Amiga could've handled some of the games but the prevalent cartoon style here was... something like the Jetset Willy cover. On the top of my head... the pseudo-manga games we got was Apidia, Leander, Shadowlands/worlds, Turrican, though these were pretty light on scene/character art. In the sexy game department we had to make do with the HAM Strip Poker games.

JRPGs might have worked really well on the Amiga too since they're slow but with pretty encounter/monster images. I don't think the DOS PC got much of those either. It was more console territory.

Aside from games, Workbench & work software kinda started to fall behind. I moved onto DTP on the mac in the mid 90s and System 7 was so nice looking with the Susan Kare aesthetics. The Amiga had this weird tall pixel dither thing going on with a mishmash of palette distorted icons or missing icons. WB is still very usable though... and meanwhile modern OSes seem to get less usable ~ haha ~

For reference: best selling games of 1993 according to Wikipedia:

• Street Fighter II
• Mortal Combat
• Starfox (SNES)
• Aladdin
• DBZ... Fighting game (SNES)
• Secret of Mana (SNES - ARPG)
• Super Mario All-Stars (SNES)
• Romancing SaGa 2 (SNES - RPG)
• Super Mario Kart (SNES)

In Japan they also had a SNES/SFC remake of DQ1&2 which sold well.
Overseas Sonic did well, and Lemmings was still going strong. Soccer, NBA, Super Bowl and Golf was a thing. People wanted Jurassic Park stuff. Link's Awakening came out.

In the US on PC, these apparently games sold well: 7th guest, SW Rebel Assault, King's Quest VI, Return to Zork, Dracula Unleached, and Just Grandma & Me. The latter is a game for younger kids. I guess as an older person it's easy to forget about these titles.

Here's the top Youtube comment on Just Grandma & Me (1.4M view video). Dated 10 years ago:
Hearing this makes me cry. So many memories. It automatically takes me back from fifteen years ago.

So... still being played in 1999? Certain games are a little more evergreen.

[CCCP alert]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

Yrp real-time and very slow

I think there was an accelerator for the CDTV lol so there are options but then it's still only a 150kb/s drive, I think by the time the Lucas Arts CD-ROM stuff was coming out quad speed was minimum requirement. Maybe a proper port with stuff like Clarissa SSA format would help with data rate but ultimately the CDTVs bespoke single speed drive is going to limit that machine.

[CCCP alert]

I think in the late 80s for ultimate action style PC gaming it was the FM Towns that was king, it got some really lovely games. It's only a 386/16 I think but it had great video and audio cards. Shadow of the Beast on FM Towns is awesome but then so is the bespoke ISA card in the machine, assuming that's how they did it. It did run a version of DOS and I think I've seen a version of Windows running on it.

I would have been really happy to have an FM Towns, a lot happier than with my 486 of 1992

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

I think there was an accelerator for the CDTV lol so there are options but then it's still only a 150kb/s drive, I think by the time the Lucas Arts CD-ROM stuff was coming out quad speed was minimum requirement. Maybe a proper port with stuff like Clarissa SSA format would help with data rate but ultimately the CDTVs bespoke single speed drive is going to limit that machine.

Rebel Assault only required a single speed drive, whilst the sequel in 1995 only still required a double speed, a quad speed requirement would have been pretty high anytime before 1996.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Arne

Hmm? Isn't Adventure, Novel, Strategy and (2D) Sim games an area where the Amiga still had a chance to shine? Pretty, slow updating games controlled by mouse and keyboard.

And when that chance was taken it certainly did.

The Settlers was an awesome game. Only problem was it came out in 1993.

Dune II was another excellent strategy game, also released in 1993. I haven't played the PC version so I can't say how it compares, and don't feel any need to. One thing that really impressed me was how it is fully multitasking. Yes, it was possible to produce good system friendly games on the Amiga!

OTOH Sim City 2000 crawls even on an A1200 with 50MHz 030 and 32MB RAM. A travesty! But that's what you get from lazy ports.

I don't remember seeing any PC platforming games then and wasn't even aware of Jill of the Jungle, Commander Keen, etc. I probably had Amiga-branded blinkers on.

It's OK, you weren't missing anything.

[Megalomaniac]

As well as being beautifully intricately designed as a game, The Settlers is a classic case of designing a game around the Amiga - levels which are small enough that both they and the game code fit into 1Mb, with bigger levels available (as 'friendly' games rather than part of the main mission structure) if you have a hard drive to store them on. Add the bonus of music and extra sound available with more memory, and the use of EHB for the subtle colouring, The later PC version added a 640x480 graphics mode, but almost no Amigas could have supported that at a decent speed anyway.

Amiga Sim City 2000 needing an A1200, 4Mb and a hard drive is understandable as its similar to the PC version's minimum specs (whereas Dune II only needs a 286, hard drive and base memory (a phrase which still brings terror to me)) but the fact that the Mac version apparently runs faster when emulated on a high-end Amiga is not excusable.

[CCCP alert]

Originally Posted by Amigajay

Rebel Assault only required a single speed drive, whilst the sequel in 1995 only still required a double speed, a quad speed requirement would have been pretty high anytime before 1996.

I was thinking for Sam n Max and Day of the Tentacle etc but I could be wrong, my memory of PC gaming is vague for 20th century, it was my friend who didn't have anything other than a PC from 1991 to 1997 I knew him, not even a PS1 etc. I think the one I got for my PC in 93 was a double speed non IDE thing and the one installed in the 1995 off the shelf PC was a quad drive. Can't be sure but Novastorm ran on my 486, maybe the recommended speed was quad and dual speed minimum.

Would be nice to run some test conversions of Sam n Max graphic data as anim files streamed on an actual CDTV to see how it gets on. I don't know how Lucas Arts did it but if the backgrounds are static maybe a few anim brushes over static background for a CDTV bespoke port could have worked. I am not sure but I think C64 Defender of the Crown was hard coded, definitely the Amstrad CPC port so if a company wanted to do it freelance/licensed port it would probably do it like that. Don't have the tools to even guess the success rate of the CDTV doing it with a single speed drive.

Is there a A1200/CD32 2mb version of SCUMVM to test out things like Sam and Max etc?

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

I was thinking for Sam n Max and Day of the Tentacle etc but I could be wrong, my memory of PC gaming is vague for 20th century, it was my friend who didn't have anything other than a PC from 1991 to 1997 I knew him, not even a PS1 etc. I think the one I got for my PC in 93 was a double speed non IDE thing and the one installed in the 1995 off the shelf PC was a quad drive. Can't be sure but Novastorm ran on my 486, maybe the recommended speed was quad and dual speed minimum.

Would be nice to run some test conversions of Sam n Max graphic data as anim files streamed on an actual CDTV to see how it gets on. I don't know how Lucas Arts did it but if the backgrounds are static maybe a few anim brushes over static background for a CDTV bespoke port could have worked. I am not sure but I think C64 Defender of the Crown was hard coded, definitely the Amstrad CPC port so if a company wanted to do it freelance/licensed port it would probably do it like that. Don't have the tools to even guess the success rate of the CDTV doing it with a single speed drive.

Is there a A1200/CD32 2mb version of SCUMVM to test out things like Sam and Max etc?

Still both (S&M & DOTT) only double speed, they are still floppy disk games at heart, bar the speech on the CD versions, nothing too taxing in them.

Novastorm for certain without checking is double speed, the 3DO/PSX versions obviously were, and the cut-down Mega CD version worked on its single speed drive.

[CCCP alert]

Yeah, I am pretty certain it was a double speed mitsumi with a bespoke ISA interface card I got, it was not long after I got my 486 and before I got a sound card as I had to choose which to get first and I opted for the CD as I wanted to get some CDs packed with high resolution images like the official Boris Valejo CD.

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by Korban

Ruff 'n Tumble is a good game, but its hardly silky smooth.
It's only 25 fps to begin with, but it also drops frames and has regular slowdown.

Well, that might be from a technical point of view.

From my personal gameplay experience, and I've played it a lot, and also many other platformers, that game is very smooth, and with one of the best gameplay feel and mechanics amongst platformers.
I only encounter slowdown (for just one second) when I trigger that thingy that destroys everything on the screen.

And I am not of a sort of people that are unsensitive on low fps.
Gods for example.. great game.. but I just couldn't enjoy it because of low fps.

[NovaCoder]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

I was thinking for Sam n Max and Day of the Tentacle etc but I could be wrong, my memory of PC gaming is vague for 20th century, it was my friend who didn't have anything other than a PC from 1991 to 1997 I knew him, not even a PS1 etc. I think the one I got for my PC in 93 was a double speed non IDE thing and the one installed in the 1995 off the shelf PC was a quad drive. Can't be sure but Novastorm ran on my 486, maybe the recommended speed was quad and dual speed minimum.

Would be nice to run some test conversions of Sam n Max graphic data as anim files streamed on an actual CDTV to see how it gets on. I don't know how Lucas Arts did it but if the backgrounds are static maybe a few anim brushes over static background for a CDTV bespoke port could have worked. I am not sure but I think C64 Defender of the Crown was hard coded, definitely the Amstrad CPC port so if a company wanted to do it freelance/licensed port it would probably do it like that. Don't have the tools to even guess the success rate of the CDTV doing it with a single speed drive.

Is there a A1200/CD32 2mb version of SCUMVM to test out things like Sam and Max etc?

Yes a 14Mhz AGA machine can run Day of Tentacle/Sam & Max.

[ Show youtube player ]

[CCCP alert]

That looks really cool seeing it run on the A1200.

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

Gods for example.. great game.. but I just couldn't enjoy it because of low fps.

The weird part is that I can ONLY play Gods in the 25fps format. If I play the PC remaster version (with original graphics of course), it just feels wrong. Too fast, too floaty. The lower framerate makes movement feel like it has weight.