Why are platform games on the Amiga really mediocre?

[lordofchaos]

Apart from this guy, not many

[Mrs Beanbag]

Shadow of the Beast II,
Lionheart,
The Plague...

where is s2325 when you need him?

Also just watched this review of Gods for the Sega Genesis: [ Show youtube player ]
he is rather more rude than i would be but it does pretty well sum up what i always thought was wrong with it, and how it diverges from a console player's expectations of how a platform game should be. Maybe Gods isn't that hard by Amiga standards, but to be honest i think that says more about Amiga standards than it does about Gods.

[Predseda]

Gods has a terrible scrolling, but beside this all the other aspects are just superb. Discussion ended.

[Mrs Beanbag]

well maybe for another 5 years, anyway

[Tolismlf]

There are bad games, there are very bad games, then there are legendary bad games and then there is Gods for consoles. It is that bad.

I am not surprised they cut that game to pieces in any you tube video about console games.

Think about it. Put yourself in a console owner's shoes, you played and completed Super Metroid and the only game you had was.. Gods. You had bought it and you couldn't afford buying another one in a couple of months because they cost 60$.
Now think about that.

[john1979]

I'm sure it has been mentioned before in this thread but the puzzles in Gods were a bit hit and miss. Most of them required you to just randomly flick levers around until you were lucky enough to hit the right combination. I never saw much rhyme or reason to it. Due to the slow nature of the game the 25fps scrolling didn't bother me so much. I found low framerate to be more annoying in faster games like Ruff'n'Tumble.

Whether you prefer the harder more invested approach of Amiga games or the instant fun and playability of the console game is a matter of taste and nostalgia. Personally all my favourites are on the MD and SNES: Shinobi 3, Mega Man, Mario, Castlevania, Rocket Night Adventures. I just can't find stuff on the Amiga that gives me those kind of smiles.

I do blame piracy a little (or a lot), and the lack of a Japanese developer base for the lack of quality. Amiga had great coders that could squeeze so much out the hardware, but a lot of these guys weren't highly skilled in the level and character design department. The big name Jap platformers had large teams and many play testers behind them. Games would often be scrapped if they weren't upto scratch for playability and they would start all over again. You couldn't really afford to do that as an Amiga developer and publishers would often be giving them unfair time pressures. That's not to say the consoles didn't have their fair share of humdingers though, something Greg Sewarts current Generation 16 series is proving quite well.

[Lonewolf10]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

How come so many Amiga games feature as their hero a muscular man in his underpants?

Not a clue, but I'd be up for a game with women in their underwear!

Alicia Dragoon (Megadrive, game by Sega and Gainax) is the only example that comes to mind (avoiding the obvious Tomb Raider) for platformers.

[john1979]

Originally Posted by Lonewolf10

Alicia Dragoon (Megadrive, game by Sega and Gainax) is the only example that comes to mind

Brilliant Megadrive game with a lot of depth due to the Monsters with different weapons. Each level is designed for best use of 1 or 2 monsters. It only gets a bit crappy near the end as the last couple of bosses are very difficult.

[Mrs Beanbag]

Originally Posted by john1979

Due to the slow nature of the game the 25fps scrolling didn't bother me so much.

I think it's more like 17fps. The 60Hz Genesis version looks about twice as fast (which probably makes it harder).

Xenon II is also not 50fps but, controversially, i actually like that game. It doesn't necessarily make a game "bad" but i do still consider it a lack of polish, and it's part of "Bitmap Brothers Syndrome". I don't think Gods is "bad" as such, just that it goes by a different set of rules that the industry has moved away from in order to appeal to a wider and perhaps much less patient audience.

So i think that is the answer to the question of the title of this thread: Why are platform games on the Amiga really mediocre? Because the designers made the games that they wanted to make, based on what they enjoyed from their own personal gaming experience, rather than some refined formula that a marketing department had scientifically worked out to maximise sales. And that has its pros and cons.

[commodorejohn]

Originally Posted by Lonewolf10

Not a clue, but I'd be up for a game with women in their underwear!

Vixen on C64 and Amiga, a mostly terrible walk-n-slash where you have the ability to turn into a fox for no reason.

Jill of the Jungle on PC, a pretty decent puzzle-platformer with a surprisingly good FM soundtrack.

Inner Worlds on PC, a slightly nicer puzzle-platformer where you have the ability to turn into a wolf for no reason.

[s2325]

Entity http://hol.abime.net/2860/screenshot

[Muzkat]

Originally Posted by gimbal

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

Ah. I see.

Originally Posted by Predseda

Gods has a terrible scrolling, but beside this all the other aspects are just superb. Discussion ended.

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

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.

Never noticed anything wrong with the scrolling, to be honest. And I found the lack of ingame music contributed to the atmosphere and immersion, rather than detracted from it.

[Mrs Beanbag]

Originally Posted by Lonewolf10

Not a clue, but I'd be up for a game with women in their underwear!

Not quite underwear, but looks a bit chilly...
http://hol.abime.net/2838

Originally Posted by Muzkat

Never noticed anything wrong with the scrolling, to be honest. And I found the lack of ingame music contributed to the atmosphere and immersion, rather than detracted from it.

It was definitely not 50fps. But on the Amiga we got rather used to that.

Oh well, at least it wasn't Magic Pockets.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

Oh well, at least it wasn't Magic Pockets.

I recommend a round of Top Banana to get the scale of 'badness' on Amiga platform games

[Arne]

I've been wanting to do a SotB clone with "women in their underwear", but then again that's a theme for most of my stuff.

Speaking of naked men though: When I got my A500 the first game I loaded up was Red Heat. It's like a "bara" manga that's only about punching.

[Cpt. Hindsight]

I'm no big fan of the whole platformer genre, but I liked Gods for its graphic and audio style. The game's mechanics weren't that great and to come back to the OP's topic, most platformers on the Amiga weren't that great. Just have a closer look at Superfrog (or Zool or whatever was called the Mario/Sonic killer at that time) and which console games were available at that time.
The only game I might consider a real contender for the console platformers was Mr. Nutz. Unfortunately it was released too late in Amiga's life to have a lot of sales or effect, but that one (especially the Amiga version) was very polished.

[Mrs Beanbag]

all of this was actually the motivation for me to write Mr Beanbag in fact. Everyone was waiting for the Amiga's answer to Sonic, and Zool came out and it was supposed to be all that but i wasn't all that impressed to be honest. It seemed like plenty of people wanted console-style platform games on the Amiga but nobody really quite got what made them what they are.

The Mr Nutz engine, i gather, was intended to be the basis for a version of Sonic for the Amiga, but Sega wouldn't give them the gig.

This seems like a good video series:
[ Show youtube player ]

[Retro1234]

The more and more I play Mr Beanbag the more I like, infact I allways liked it a lot x

[Mrs Beanbag]

thanks, i'm glad you like it. it has its faults though, i learnt a lot by making it, especially by watching other people try to play it.

and i'm there like "nonono why are you doing that isn't it obvious what you have to do"

Apparently not. This is the sort of thing the designer has to take into account.

Check out this video, for instance: [ Show youtube player ]
At the end, the player assumes the level is not completable, in fact all you have to do is stand on the raft and up it goes...

[Nibbler]

Ohh Man, my favorite game off all time is on the lovley Amiga.

Turrican II ( best game i ever played - Turri 1 is also great )
BC Kid ( A Real Gem in my opinion )
Lionheart ( love this game !!! )
Ruff n tumble ( just awesome )
Arabian Nights ( so charming & Fun )
Kid Chaos ( hard as nails )

There are actually a LOT more, and most are pretty good.
Sure, you had no Super Mario, but i had a NES