Better Outrun port for Amiga

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by Nekoniaow

The graphics clearly were redrawn and not converted which significantly lowers the quality and that has nothing to do with the year, that's just sloppy work

I would rather have thousands of Elite sloppy work than one Tiertex polished game!!!

[Nekoniaow]

Originally Posted by saimon69

I would rather have thousands of Elite sloppy work than one Tiertex polished game!!!

True, but even better would have been giving the excellent Paul Cuisset:
- original arcade graphics, so he could convert them masterfully for an artist to adapt
- enough time to polish the controls and game flow



I have zero doubt that Paul Cuisset would have made a fantastic game with proper means. His track record leaves no doubt that his skills are not too blame for the low quality of Space Harrier.

_Edit_: I was wrong to assume that Paul Cuisset was responsible for the Amiga version.
I just stumbled on this fantastic interview of Paul Cuisset where he talks about the fact that Elite was actually responsible for porting to the Amiga: https://blogdebruno.wordpress.com/20...-paul-cuisset/.
It's in French so here's a google translate link: https://translate.google.fr/translat...-text=&act=url

But indeed they did not have access to the arcade resources: they had to film them illegally in arcade centers!

[dlfrsilver]

Paul cuisset did the ST version, while Richard Frankish (GNG fame) did the amiga version.

[Flash951]

First time finishing the game. My own machine.

[s2325]

attack of the clones

[Dunny]

I loved Super Hang On - Played that to death on the Miggy, back in the day. Fantastic game, and so much more fun to play than the arcade version!

D.

[Nekoniaow]

Originally Posted by Dunny

I loved Super Hang On - Played that to death on the Miggy, back in the day. Fantastic game, and so much more fun to play than the arcade version!

D.

Now I am seriously puzzled and confused: too many people seem to to indifferent to the defects that irked me and my brain does not compute it.

Are there multiple versions of the game and only mine are slow, ugly and jerky?
Or do you guys don't mind choppy frame rate games with unpredictable opponents trajectories and imprecise controls?

I really have the feeling we are not talking about the same game.
I'll check tonight if my Amigas aren't actually clocked at 3MHz.

[Dunny]

Well, it was the first Amiga game I played after I upgraded from a Spectrum. Also, I played with the mouse. It was definitely smooth, no jerkiness and the enemy bikes move predictably from one side to the other depending on which way the corners bent...

Yeah, loved it.

D.

[Retro-Nerd]

Super Hang-on Amiga is indeed a mouse game. You can adjust the mouse sensivity to your needs. Clearly one of the best 1988 Amiga games.

[Flash951]

The first time I saw an Amiga up close. It was right at a local bookstore that was going to start with selling Commodore computers. They had a gay demo the C64 and the Amiga 500. On the A500 it was the game Super Hang-on, I was so impressed. The sound when loading, like real drums, the graphics, AWESOME. Deluxe Paint, Space Ace demo and Amiga juggler was other things demonstrated.

[Nekoniaow]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

Super Hang-on Amiga is indeed a mouse game. You can adjust the mouse sensivity to your needs. Clearly one of the best 1988 Amiga games.

Well, I might be willing to admit under duress that it was a good game compared to its competition on the Amiga during 1988-89 but I refuse to generalize that to the whole A500 lifetime.

Regarding the mouse you're absolutely right. I persisted to use the joystick for quite some time before seeing the light and switching for a mouse, only then was I finally able to finish it.

This said it is begging for a remake. I'm convinced Sega would be willing to re-issue a license if they were shown how ugly it looked.
(Don't do it, I'm on it!)

[jbenam]

Played Super Hang-on to death Excellent game, still holds up today, imho.
Obviously don't run it side-by-side with MAME though

And loved the music! Winning Run!

[StingRay]

Super Hang-On was one of the first Amiga games I played and I loved it. It's a great game IMHO!

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by Nekoniaow

Regarding Super Hang On I must disagree with hewitson, it's really bad.

The Amiga version is, yes. I was referring to the Megadrive version.

Originally Posted by Dunny

I loved Super Hang On - Played that to death on the Miggy, back in the day. Fantastic game, and so much more fun to play than the arcade version!

You can't be serious.

[Muzkat]

I loved Super Hang-On too. As far as I can recall, it was incredibly smooth and astonishingly fast.

[vulture]

Well, Lotus 3 can get pretty busy at times and there's no frame slow down compared to MD's outrun , at least. Full screen, bridges, gfx at both sides, a pretty detailed sky/horizon with many colors, 3-4 cars other than yours on the road and the odd crossing big truck. You can even set it to NTSC and it's getting faster. I see no reason miggy can't handle an outrun port the way MD can with some effort.

[Nekoniaow]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

The Amiga version is, yes. I was referring to the Megadrive version.

Ah! What a relief! Now it finally makes sense, thanks for clearing that out! I most likely misread you.

Still, there still seems to be quite a few who enjoyed it, which I can relate to if they played it when it got released but makes less sense of you compare it to the driving games which followed.

Don't ever play Super Hang On right after playing LotusIII guys, this would shatter your inner kitten!

[Nekoniaow]

Originally Posted by StingRay

Super Hang-On was one of the first Amiga games I played and I loved it. It's a great game IMHO!

I'm pretty sure it's coded in C though.

Note that I'm actually serious, its copper list uses only 4 biplanes so it should have plenty of DMA for blits and/or CPU, yet the frame rate doesn't go over 15 fps.
I didn't go much further than examining its copperlist but I would bet that it is slow because:
- it does everything using the CPU
- it redraws the whole area containing road and background every frame (instead of only redrawing the modified parts)
- the background parallax scrolling is a pure copy, doesn't use hardware scrolling
- it is all C code even for low level drawing routines

I may be wrong but it seems that you would need that combination to be this slow.
A good point though: at least they are using the copper for the alternate road strips.

[StingRay]

Originally Posted by Nekoniaow

I'm pretty sure it's coded in C though.

I am sorry to disappoint you but the game is 100% asm. And the code is actually quite nice specially considered the release date!

Originally Posted by Nekoniaow

I may be wrong

You are.

[Zoltar]

Originally Posted by Muzkat

I loved Super Hang-On too. As far as I can recall, it was incredibly smooth and astonishingly fast.

You owe it to yourself to revisit the game so you can experience the mediocre reality of what is an awful piece of software. Maybe in comparison to, say, the CPC464 version, it's pretty good, but in absolute terms, it's a mess.

As bad as Super Hang On is, Outrun and Space Harrier are both an order of magnitude worse. With Outrun being little more than a slideshow, with some crap music and Space Harrier being an utter abomination that should have never seen the light of day.

Originally Posted by Nekoniaow

But indeed they did not have access to the arcade resources: they had to film them illegally in arcade centers!

If that is true, then it's no surprise the conversion ended up being so bad. I have to wonder what the management at Elite thought things would actually turn out like under those circumstances. Space Harrier is one of my favourite coin-ops of all time. I played it to death in the arcade and I could do the whole game on one credit. So, given my intimate knowledge of the original, you can imagine my horror when presented with the home versions.

Although the Spectrum version was actually pretty amazing, for what it was.