If possible: which Coin-op wanted on Amiga?

[Shatterhand]

I honestly feel it doesn't need AGA, it just needs people coding it properly for the Amiga and not porting it from the Atari ST.

Of course, an AGA version could be very close to be pixel-perfect;

Another game I would love have seen on Amiga was Power Spikes. It's even perfect for the 1-button amiga controllers, since the arcade game only uses one button too. It's the best volleyball game ever and I think it would be really simple to port it.

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

I honestly feel it doesn't need AGA, it just needs people coding it properly for the Amiga and not porting it from the Atari ST.

Amiga version was not ported from ST.

[Shatterhand]

No, the Amiga version is faster and smoother.

But it wasn't made with a lot of compromises so it would be easier to port it to the Atari ST later? That's what it seems to be and, IMO, it's basically the same thing in the end.

[idrougge]

The ST and Amiga versions were made by different teams in different countries. The limitations in the Amiga versions are rather due to the immaturity of the developers.

[Shatterhand]

Ok then, so I was wrong all the time

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by idrougge

The ST and Amiga versions were made by different teams in different countries. The limitations in the Amiga versions are rather due to the immaturity of the developers.

Was any of the source code shared between the teams? Even though the arcade version had only the name on the title screen, the Amiga and ST share a pixel perfect new screen, something was shared somewhere!

[idrougge]

The sprites are totally different, so obviously the in-game assets and code aren't shared.

[alexh]

The ST version got fan overhaul previewed at STNICCC2k15 this weekend.

http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=28039

[PortuguesePilot]

instead of wasting time stating impossible conversion, i'll take the Amiga real hardware into account and state only the games that i think were "properly convertible" in the hands of some talented programmers:

"Tumble Pop" (by Data East)
"Insector-X" (by Taito)
"Out Zone" (by Toaplan)
"Pinball Action" (by Tehkan)
"Spalsh!" (by Gaelco)

etc., etc., etc..

[s2325]

I think Pinball Action should be released before Pinball Dreams, only few single screen Amiga pinball games were good.

[Frog]

Originally Posted by alexh

The ST version got fan overhaul previewed at STNICCC2k15 this weekend.

http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=28039

The Jaguar version looks cool but it think they should have improved the speed, it look like it's in 25 fps.

[BarryB]

Originally Posted by Frog

Terra Cresta was really great. Hybris is heavily inspired by this game i think

So Terra Cresta shouldn't be a problem then

[Shatterhand]

I just think every capcom game should be redone. I don't think one single capcom game got a decent port on the Amiga. Which is damn shame, since Capcom really developed some neat arcade games. And not a single one was properly done on Amiga, except maybe for Ghosts 'n' Goblins (and even this one has its trouble, but it's a good job) .I haven't played Led Storm or Forgotten World on Amiga, but I doubt they are any better, I believe I've played all of them and they are all shitty. Not just "this is meh but playable", they are all deep shit. Even some that should had been simple like 1943 or Bionic Commando are insanely bad.

Edit: I now remember Amiga Commando, which I played recently and it's a very good conversion too, very near to be 1:1 perfect.

[ReadOnlyCat]

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

I just think every capcom game should be redone. I don't think one single capcom game got a decent port on the Amiga. Which is damn shame, since Capcom really developed some neat arcade games. And not a single one was properly done on Amiga, except maybe for Ghosts 'n' Goblins (and even this one has its trouble, but it's a good job) .I haven't played Led Storm or Forgotten World on Amiga, but I doubt they are any better, I believe I've played all of them and they are all shitty. Not just "this is meh but playable", they are all deep shit. Even some that should had been simple like 1943 or Bionic Commando are insanely bad.

Edit: I now remember Amiga Commando, which I played recently and it's a very good conversion too, very near to be 1:1 perfect.

I think about every arcade game port/conversion should be redone.

Alas, Capcom never handled any Amiga conversion like they did sometimes for other consoles. Most of the time this got handled by US Gold with infamous results and even when it was not US Gold, most often than not the results were not exactly fantastic either.

The Amiga had quasi zero presence in Japan so it makes sense that the developers delegated the conversions to westerners, which allowed US Gold to produce torrents of crap for years. This sad history certainly needs a rewrite.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by ReadOnlyCat

The Amiga had quasi zero presence in Japan so it makes sense that the developers delegated the conversions to westerners, which allowed US Gold to produce torrents of crap for years. This sad history certainly needs a rewrite.

Well Capcom wouldn't have even bothered with 8 and 16bit computer ports had it wasn't companies like US Gold, Elite etc flying over and doing the deals first hand, but sadly this was a result of the 8bit computer era, just pay money for the license and sod the game, the name will sell enough copies alone, buy the time consoles came out it was no longer acceptable to get away with that.

[dlfrsilver]

oh another thing, japanese coders seemed to use a nasty developement system called In-Circuit emulator (I.C.E.) from Iwasaki Giken, both for 68000 and Z80 platforms.

It allowed tremendous speed for coding, and also immediate on screen bug verification.

Toki Arcade was coded with this system. This was also the case for the Neogeo games.

the 68000 ICE system costed 150.000 dollars back in the day.

[AnimaInCorpore]

Originally Posted by Amigajay

I don't know if your being serious or not!? The Amiga has zero chance of being able to handle the sprite capabilities of a Neo-Geo, even 2D powerhouses the Sega Saturn and to lesser degree the Playstation couldn't reproduce them without add-on carts and then still had more slowdowns than the originals.

Well, the Neo Geo has no hardware background layers and so those are made out of sprites as well. So the real character sprite count goes down by a good margin just by using two background layers like for having parallax effects. However, it's still quite a powerful sprite machine especially considering the scaling capabilities.

[DDNI]

+1 for Karnov. Loved that game.

[AnimaInCorpore]

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

I just think every capcom game should be redone. I don't think one single capcom game got a decent port on the Amiga.

To be honest there's not much room for improvements. The arcade and console hardware is so different from the Amiga hardware that you have to make a lot of compromises. Those compromises are in fact the problem why you think that the current arcade ports are nothing more than "Atari ST shovelware".

Compared to the Atari ST versions the use of hardware scrolling, having Blitter support and displaying some more colours doesn't help getting arcade perfect versions and it never will. In fact, only the early Z80 based arcade games are good porting candidates but almost nothing after that.

[ReadOnlyCat]

Originally Posted by AnimaInCorpore

To be honest there's not much room for improvements. The arcade and console hardware is so different from the Amiga hardware that you have to make a lot of compromises. Those compromises are in fact the problem why you think that the current arcade ports are nothing more than "Atari ST shovelware".

Compared to the Atari ST versions the use of hardware scrolling, having Blitter support and displaying some more colours doesn't help getting arcade perfect versions and it never will. In fact, only the early Z80 based arcade games are good porting candidates but almost nothing after that.

I think this is veeeeeery incorrect.

Oftentimes these ports are not bad because of unfaithful graphics and sounds (*) but because of atrocious gameplay, buggy controls and crippling frame rate and often too they run slower than the ST version (in the early days, because all CPU, before the license drones learned that they could replace their copy_bob function with a blitter based one).

A good conversion need not to have perfect visuals and sounds, simply faithful gameplay and that was almost always missed because the publisher did not give a damn about anything else than milking the license for the lowest possible cost.

Finally, there is ample room for visual improvement in the vast majority of cases even for games where the arcade hardware vastly overpowered the Amiga. Apart from its background parallax layers (the top ones, not the bottom ones which are easy to do on the Amiga), Street Fighter II is an easy target for the Amiga. These characters are big but not enough to waste a 50 FPS frame on in 5 bitplanes.

(*) oftentimes the visuals and sounds were also ugly though, which didn't need to be and certainly did not help.