Underrated Amiga Game: Ruffian

[lionagony]

I've been playing a lot of Ruffian lately https://amiga.abime.net/games/view/ruffian and it is really impressive. It's super fast, smooth and responsive and the gameplay is fun and original. It does get very hard rather quickly with the time limits but there are passwords and lots of cheats if you need them. It's also exceptionally long as an Amiga game with 17 levels that would take over 3 hours to complete from start to finish. It's a shame it looks like Ruffian was developed by 1994 but not published until 1996 so didn't get the attention it deserved. It's also criminal that Amiga Power only gave it 10%, that's insane. Having played every Amiga platformer I would put it up as one of the best and if you're into that genre I highly recommend you give it a chance if you haven't.

As an aside does anyone know how the parallax effect is done in Ruffian? If you look here at 3:37 [ Show youtube player ] it almost seems like it's only a 1 bitplane background kind of like the game Agony, it even has birds flying like in that game. The foreground trees though are not really independently scrolling but the copper sky can be seen through parts of the background and that moves independently. Also the foreground appears to have a lot more than 7 colours, would love to know if someone could explain how it works.

Are there other Amiga games you think are underrated? I would add Jimmy's Fantastic Journey which is another great platformer and Mega Typhoon which is one of the Amiga's best shooters.

[eXeler0]

It's not a bad platformer actually, but the delay before it was released was not a good move... when it was finally released, ppl were playing Wipeout on their PS1s and Quake on their PCs. ;-)

[Megalomaniac]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

It's not a bad platformer actually, but the delay before it was released was not a good move... when it was finally released, ppl were playing Wipeout on their PS1s and Quake on their PCs. ;-)

Not played Ruffian, but this is definitely true of Jimmy's and Mega Typhoon, which are both great, but very much 4th generation styles which the 3rd generation systems could do quite well, at a time when people wanted 5th generation styles. If only they'd been made 2-3 years earlier.... I don't think either of those two were officially released in the UK, which probably adds to their obscurity on English-language boards.

[kriz]

Thanks for the reminder, i think i never played it

[lionagony]

>>It's not a bad platformer actually, but the delay before it was released was not a good move... when it was finally released, ppl were playing Wipeout on their PS1s and Quake on their PCs. ;-)

True, although for retrogaming fans in 2023 I think it really holds up well and is quite enjoyable. The "using your spit like the ball in Breakout" technique in the later levels is rather inspired and I also like the pseudo 3D effects of the head movement and the high jump.

[lionagony]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Not played Ruffian, but this is definitely true of Jimmy's and Mega Typhoon, which are both great, but very much 4th generation styles which the 3rd generation systems could do quite well, at a time when people wanted 5th generation styles. If only they'd been made 2-3 years earlier.... I don't think either of those two were officially released in the UK, which probably adds to their obscurity on English-language boards.

Yes, although I was looking at the Wikipedia of 1994-1999 in video games and it put some things into context for me. Donkey Kong Country actually came out just a few weeks before the Playstation in Japan. DKC ended up being the 3rd best selling SNES game of all time and that was a platform game in late 1994. Then DKC 2 released in late 1995 was the 6th best selling SNES game of all time and DKC 3 released in late 1996 was the 11th best selling SNES game of all time! That was a year after Jimmy's Fantastic Journey came out. Now obviously Jimmy and Ruffian weren't pre-rendered which was the new hook of DKC (interestingly done first in Stardust on the Amiga a year before in 1993) but something like Lion King and Mickey Mania were more traditional platformers and were top sellers in 1995.

Also the SNES outsold the Playstation worldwide in 1995, in 1996 the Playstation was first with 6.6 million but the SNES and Genesis combined for over 3 million in sales in 1996 too. 1997 was really the breakout year for the Playstation with 17 million sold worldwide, the SNES 2 million and the Genesis falling behind with 500,000. All that to say that I don't think the demise of 16 bit was as quick as it might seem now in retrospect. Just like the 8 bits lingered on into the 90's the 16 bits took awhile to disappear. It took until 1999 for sales of 16 bits to go under 1 million worldwide.

[jotd]

It looks like single playfield with copper effects on sky color.

There is no parallax at all unless I'm mistaken (the sky color doesn't count), the trees in the background just use 1 color, whereas the trees in the foreground use several. It could be 4 bitplanes + sprites or 5 bitplanes, not sure.

[Megalomaniac]

As well as being visually stunning and well-designed, the Donkey Kong Country games featured a familiar, child-friendly character, while Mickey and Lion King were cartoon character licenses. Games aimed at children (and sports games, interestingly) are always the last thing to stop selling as a generation of consoles dies out. Ruffian doesn't seem to have that 'hook' for younger players, especially if the difficulty increases more sharply than a typical console game?

The Playstation didn't launch outside Japan until September 1995, remember, so it's no wonder the SNES outsold it globally that year. It just feels like people who owned a SNES/Megadrive/(A500 level, at least) Amiga for any length of time were looking in that direction.

[lionagony]

Originally Posted by jotd

It looks like single playfield with copper effects on sky color.

There is no parallax at all unless I'm mistaken (the sky color doesn't count), the trees in the background just use 1 color, whereas the trees in the foreground use several. It could be 4 bitplanes + sprites or 5 bitplanes, not sure.

Thanks for the response. The part that confused me is that say at exactly 5:50 here [ Show youtube player ] the hole in the forest let's the sky shine through but when he jumps the copper sky turns a different colour blue through the hole, so is that just using transparency? Also how would the birds be animated in the background, would it just actually be animated in the foreground but use the grey colour of the background? So the background is just technically the blue copper gradient and the grey "background" trees and birds are actually made as part of the foreground? But in the end since it's single playfield there really is no actual background at all. Am I closer to right or closer to confused? As a non coder all the Amiga's graphical techniques really fascinate me.

[lionagony]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

As well as being visually stunning and well-designed, the Donkey Kong Country games featured a familiar, child-friendly character, while Mickey and Lion King were cartoon character licenses. Games aimed at children (and sports games, interestingly) are always the last thing to stop selling as a generation of consoles dies out. Ruffian doesn't seem to have that 'hook' for younger players, especially if the difficulty increases more sharply than a typical console game?

The Playstation didn't launch outside Japan until September 1995, remember, so it's no wonder the SNES outsold it globally that year. It just feels like people who owned a SNES/Megadrive/(A500 level, at least) Amiga for any length of time were looking in that direction.

You are definitely right about all that. I wasn't trying to directly compare Ruffian to DKC just wanted to share what I learned the other day with that little Wikipedia rabbit hole and how it kind of surprised me that the death of 16 bits and platformers and 2D games in general was a little more gradual than I remembered. In fact in another thread I discovered that the PS1 has 115 2D games that I enjoyed and will go back to which is more than I had guessed since I never had a Playstation and figured it was mostly 3D which it actually was here in North America.

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by lionagony

Thanks for the response. The part that confused me is that say at exactly 5:50 here [ Show youtube player ] the hole in the forest let's the sky shine through but when he jumps the copper sky turns a different colour blue through the hole, so is that just using transparency? Also how would the birds be animated in the background, would it just actually be animated in the foreground but use the grey colour of the background? So the background is just technically the blue copper gradient and the grey "background" trees and birds are actually made as part of the foreground? But in the end since it's single playfield there really is no actual background at all. Am I closer to right or closer to confused? As a non coder all the Amiga's graphical techniques really fascinate me.

You got just one playfield with a transparency color. The background is made with a copper gradient. Same as Zool or Global Gladiators. So no parallaxe there.

[lionagony]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

You got just one playfield with a transparency color. The background is made with a copper gradient. Same as Zool or Global Gladiators. So no parallaxe there.

You're right that Global Gladiators and Zool use transparency, what I think was confusing me is that Ruffian also has the animation of the birds in the background and the 1 bitplane looking trees throughout. If you look here from further in the game at 45:32 [ Show youtube player ] there are a few white stars in the sky (would those be done by the copper?) and that really gives the illusion that there is parallax. There are a lot of nice visual touches in Ruffian. There is also a lot on screen at times and no hint of slowdown, it's a very fast engine. For example look here at 19:47 [ Show youtube player ] I find that speed very impressive.