Project X 2

[ST Dragon]

I remember reading in an AMIGA Mag back in 1993-4 that ProjectX-2 was being developed by Team17 to be released for AGA chipset AMIGAs.
Finally it was released on the PSX, but was it true that it was originally supposed to be on the AMIGA?
Any screen shots?

[Amiga1992]

Nothing was done on the Amiga. It just couldn't handle it. All development was done on the PSX.

Name of the game is X2 by the way, not Project X 2.

[ST Dragon]

Yes I have the game.
It's got the best 2D hand-drawn graphics for a horizontal shmup imho.

The gameplay is quite faithfully to the cheapness of its predecessor by the way...

[Fenrir]

I knew it was only on PSX... the AGA version should be something to be seen indeed. Too bad it had crappy slowdowns on PSX and the renders were terribly render-style (I hate renderized stuff).
I enjoyed far more the first. Almost Dragon-Lairesque in its difficulty and patters, but really enjoyable.

[ST Dragon]

Don't remember any slowdowns in the PSX version.

[ST Dragon]

Originally Posted by Fenrir

I knew it was only on PSX... the AGA version should be something to be seen indeed. Too bad it had crappy slowdowns on PSX and the renders were terribly render-style (I hate renderized stuff).
I enjoyed far more the first. Almost Dragon-Lairesque in its difficulty and patters, but really enjoyable.

Actually PSIKYO's Strikers 1945 shmup series is one of the best examples of pre-rendered animated sprites seen on any system. Awesome & addictive shooters too.

Especially the 2nd game's train mech Boss:
@5:41
[ Show youtube player ]

[gimbal]

You only took like 8 years to formulate that second response, its still on time

[ST Dragon]

Originally Posted by gimbal

You only took like 8 years to formulate that second response, its still on time

Well like they say, its better late that never!

But no, actually I just read a few days ago that the Japanese version of X-2 by Capcom, was greatly enhanced in the gameplay department making it a much better game, compared to the European unbalanced release.

http://www.illusionware.it/commodore/project-x.htm

Years later, a sequel called X2 showed up on Playstation. It matched the amazing graphics (of course optimized for PS) but it also brought back that same unbalanced gameplay. The problem was eventually addressed a year later when X2 was localized for the japanese market, as capcom reprogrammed the gameplay to create a true masterpiece.

[hattig]

Originally Posted by Akira

Nothing was done on the Amiga. It just couldn't handle it. All development was done on the PSX.

Name of the game is X2 by the way, not Project X 2.

Gotta say, that the Amiga really couldn't compete with the technical ability of the PlayStation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlaySta...specifications

Even if an "A1400" had been released in 1995, to get 30MIPS + 66MFLOPS would have required more than a 50MHz '030 + '882.

[Zoltar]

Originally Posted by hattig

Even if an "A1400" had been released in 1995, to get 30MIPS + 66MFLOPS would have required more than a 50MHz '030 + '882.

I have to wonder exactly how much of that performance was being used in running X2. I'd take a guess and say, not that much. To my mind, it isn't too far removed from the original Amiga game, in terms of approach.

I think an A1200 with some Fast RAM could do a pretty decent version of it. However, it'd be a disk swapping nightmare of unheard of proportions if run from floppy. I imagine it'd come on about 38 disks

I wasn't aware of the Capcom version, though. I still have my Playstation disc and when I fire it up same things always bug me about the game. I'll have to seek that version out!



SJ

[Thorham]

If the second game is as bad as the first, then we're not missing anything. Same goes for crap like Agony. Yuk If you want a good horizontal shmup play Apidya, or Progear on MAME.

[ST Dragon]

Originally Posted by Thorham

If the second game is as bad as the first, then we're not missing anything. Same goes for crap like Agony. Yuk If you want a good horizontal shmup play Apidya, or Progear on MAME.

Agony wasn't a bad game actually. It was far easier and enjoyable than Project X and at least you could progress way further than Level 2 on your 1st try.
It also featured simultaneously in-level music & sfx, unlike so many other AMIGA games out there. As sound mixing was never the AMIGA's strong point.

As for Apidya that was indeed a work of art.
The most arcade oriented shmup released on any AMIGA ever. I still don't know how they managed to pull-off that 2nd level huge sprite pike-fish Boss. The custom-chips must have been stressed to their limits!

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by ST Dragon

Agony wasn't a bad game actually. It was far easier and enjoyable than Project X and at least you could progress way further than Level 2 on your 1st try.

Certainly easier, but still very dull game play. Just like Project X: Wave after wave of total dullness. There's just nothing going on in those games at all. Apidya is game play wise in a completely different league than those games. None of Project X's inertia crap, meaning you have solid control and none of Agony's lack of action, meaning you actually need dodging skills to get anywhere.

It's a shame really. Project X could've been great, but they only focused on presentation, sadly (Agony was always chanceless ).

[ST Dragon]

Originally Posted by Thorham

Certainly easier, but still very dull game play. Just like Project X: Wave after wave of total dullness. There's just nothing going on in those games at all. Apidya is game play wise in a completely different league than those games. None of Project X's inertia crap, meaning you have solid control and none of Agony's lack of action, meaning you actually need dodging skills to get anywhere.

It's a shame really. Project X could've been great, but they only focused on presentation, sadly (Agony was always chanceless ).

Basically it was that inertia feature that killed Project X (actually No other shooter apart from Fly Harder and Sub-Terrania on the MD have inertia), the lack of in-level music and the fact that you never faced 2 different types of enemies at once, as each wave was comprised of only one type, so very poor variation what so ever.

I still disagree with Agony, the enemies did not attack in waves like Project X, by in variational patterns and you always saw many different types of enemies per screen unlike PX and it featured a kick-ass sound track!

[khph_re]

Originally Posted by hattig

Gotta say, that the Amiga really couldn't compete with the technical ability of the PlayStation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlaySta...specifications

Even if an "A1400" had been released in 1995, to get 30MIPS + 66MFLOPS would have required more than a 50MHz '030 + '882.

true for 3d and flops, but these are risc instructions, some of them would need to be combined to equal 1 68x instruction. and it's a mips processor.

it could handle about 8000 polys on screen, but they had to be quite small, so floors would be lots of polys, where the n64 or pc would you use 1 big poly. and sometimes you'd tesselate on the fly near the camera, to avoid triangles disapearing. these are the problems i remember from when i worked on it.