5 bitplanes ...

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by axilmar

Given that in September 1986 Outrun was released, and in 1985 Hang on and Space Harrier was released, the above is an understatement...

EDIT:

The arcade board of Black Tiger used ...two Z80 CPUs (According to this: http://www.thepixelpump.com/blacktiger/specs.php). Yeap, a game with two Z80 CPUs used 1024 colors on screen and was much better than what the Amiga was doing at the time!!!

Apples and Oranges for sure, one product aimed at business to consumer and the other direct to consumer. CPU's don't account for much when you have
programmable custom hardware able to do all of the leg work. Just look at the Amiga and ST, that extra £100 you paid went into the custom chips.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by axilmar

Given that in September 1986 Outrun was released, and in 1985 Hang on and Space Harrier was released, the above is an understatement...

And off topic. This thread is about an Amiga version of Black Tiger, not comparisons between other arcade games and barely related computer versions.

The arcade board of Black Tiger used ...two Z80 CPUs (According to this: http://www.thepixelpump.com/blacktiger/specs.php). Yeap, a game with two Z80 CPUs used 1024 colors on screen and was much better than what the Amiga was doing at the time!!!

The Apollo Guidance Computer had a 16 bit processor running at only 2MHz, with 4k of core memory running at a miserable 88kHz, yet it controlled the most realistic lunar lander game ever! And this in 1966. Was a trifle expensive though...

Performance of the Black Tiger arcade board is irrelevant to us. 1024 colors you say? If so it didn't use them intelligently. IMO the Amiga (ST) port in 16 colors looks better, so 32 colors would be more than enough.

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Performance of the Black Tiger arcade board is irrelevant to us. 1024 colors you say? If so it didn't use them intelligently. IMO the Amiga (ST) port in 16 colors looks better, so 32 colors would be more than enough.

1024 but - as far as i understood - in separate 16 color palette chunks for sprites background areas etc. not all at once; hence a "superpalette" of 16 colors should be able to cover most cases for background and enemies plus 15 colors for the player sprite in my opinion

[Photon]

The number 16 is interesting because graphics would have been drawn on a computer, and both PC and Asian system struggled to display a) more than 16 colors at a time and b) with RGB palette in 1987.

There was extremely likely also a lack of pixel artist software, and that's why arcade game gfx can sometimes look a bit wonky. It could also be lack of talent, of course. Only a few can pixel beautiful game gfx.

Crystal ball says something like a 16-color program or editor, and then conversion and tweaking the colors to the one-off hardware.