Golden Axe conversion

[saimon69]

A different example of color choices, let see two games one from japan and one from europe

Japan - Soldier Blade PC Engine


Japanese shooters tended to have more colors albeit with what i define elegant tones




Europe - Battle Squadron (and by the way one with the most japanese style color scheme around)


else european shooters tended to have this kind of colors:





and when ports were made, colors were westernized - again; sometime due to porting to ST

[roondar]

Thanks for the images, that shows exactly what I mean. The European version uses a different 'tone' of graphics than the Arcade and this indeed seems to not be related to 512 vs 4096 palette.

Case in point: the Mega Drive version feels closer to the Arcade version than the Amiga version to me, even though it has a smaller palette. Obviously it's not perfect by any stretch, but this has strengthened my view that the Amiga version could have had colours closer to the Arcade's tone.

[lordofchaos]

I`m not sure I buy into this "it's been westernised" thing, probably a much simpler/boring explanation.. I imagine various people got hold of the graphics, and things like design briefs along with continuity were so much more trivial back in 1990..

The world wasn't connected like it is today, with far less feedback flowing back and forth.. Also basic mistakes can happen during conversion process that get overlooked due to time restraints. Maybe they just didn't care about the colours, more about what looks good to the eye and getting the job done asap.

I just can't picture the developer saying, "ok, we have the license for this golden axe game, lets change up the palette and tone so it's more inline with our western audience."

More like, "Oh crap, we have 6 months to get this done?!. Panic!!"

[Galahad/FLT]

Personally I think its simply the Atari ST factor. It has less colours to play with, without Timer-B tricks (similar to Amigas copper), its only displaying 16 colours.

The palette simply can't afford to be as varied with one bright colour being used for one element on the screen when its likely its the only element onscreen that uses that colour, so for practicality sakes, they change the colours to something that can be easily shared with something else.

The Amiga version ends up being virtually the same, because the programmer has worked out all his palette swaps for when the level changes, and doesn't want the ballache of having to do something massively different for the Amiga version.

And it goes back to the US Gold method of doing things (I know its not US Gold but the methodology is the same), that if it looks good enough on ST, then its good enough on Amiga.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by roondar

Thanks for the images, that shows exactly what I mean. The European version uses a different 'tone' of graphics than the Arcade and this indeed seems to not be related to 512 vs 4096 palette.

Case in point: the Mega Drive version feels closer to the Arcade version than the Amiga version to me, even though it has a smaller palette. Obviously it's not perfect by any stretch, but this has strengthened my view that the Amiga version could have had colours closer to the Arcade's tone.

Some people do say the Megadrive version is closer to the arcade.

But i don't see how : they had to rework the whole game because the megadrive version had a limited sized cartridge.

In this respect, even with the ST colors, the Amiga version is the closest to the coin-op.

[roondar]

I was merely referring to the use of colour in the game, nothing else

[Retro1234]

Richard Costello said they had to trace the graphics so excellent job really.

[roondar]

Explains a lot really, that can't have been easy to do well!

[sandruzzo]

I feel that somenthing is not there, with Amiga after seen ST version

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

Richard Costello said they had to trace the graphics so excellent job really.

ahhh, so they have disassembled the coin-op program, got the tiles metadatas and assembled the graphics!

Hence the game so faithfull to the coin-op !

[sandruzzo]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

ahhh, so they have disassembled the coin-op program, got the tiles metadatas and assembled the graphics!

Hence the game so faithfull to the coin-op !

You're the Man...

[saimon69]

They did not recapture palette data, though;
Westernization - as i mean, however, is more related to what colors and tones WE feel to use in certain areas or for certain objects/ environments, that is less strong (less red/yellow) in the japanese version rather than in the european one. And i can see a lot of those choices in european ports; that might be a side effect of limited ST palette has to be seen, though...

[TjLaZer]

Just spent a little time trying out some different ports of Golden Axe for PC, Atari ST, Amiga, C64. I think the VGA version looks nice, maybe an AGA port can be done?

[sandruzzo]

Like i Said, I feel that Amiga version could had been better

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by TjLaZer

Just spent a little time trying out some different ports of Golden Axe for PC, Atari ST, Amiga, C64. I think the VGA version looks nice, maybe an AGA port can be done?

yes an AGA port can be done.

[viddi]

I really think the Amiga version is the best looking 16 bit home port.

[sandruzzo]

It seems 16 colors amiga version

[Predseda]

No, it is 32.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

the amiga version is ported from the coin-op.

The devs state its a hybrid of the Arcade and Megadrive games.

https://ia600604.us.archive.org/view...ACE3900030.jpg

[roondar]

That's interesting info. The amount of blits they mention does seem a bit suspect though... That many blits would take up most of a frame or even more just to set up, let alone actually do the blits. Sometimes I'd love to see some of the source code and hear the actual ideas behind the choices made and if they considered other options.

Still, I'll take what I can get - thanks for the link