Amiga arcade conversions

[Retro1234]

I am interested in giving it ago now. And I wonder what the last great Atari Arcade game was?

I know Minuous said they were two separate companies but mean no relationship? But I guess not.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

I know Minuous said they were two separate companies but mean no relationship? But I guess not.

After another year of struggles, underwhelming games, and historic losses, Warner decided to sell Atari in 1984. Not finding a single buyer to take over the entire company, Atari was split into several divisions, with the Consumer Division sold off to Jack Tramiel, founder of Commodore computers, who established the Atari Corporation. The rest of the company was rebranded Atari Games Inc. and would eventually shut down in 2003.

https://atari.com/pages/history

[CCCP alert]

@OP

NZ Story is a 16 colour game, how can you call it great lol you must have been a filthy pirate

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

@OP

NZ Story is a 16 colour game, how can you call it great lol you must have been a filthy pirate

Talking about that, it would be good to make a 128 or 256 colors version of TNZS for A1200.

[Jope]

It would be super cool to have an arcade perfect conversion of TNZS. Preferably with the tnzsjo levels :-)

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by Jope

It would be super cool to have an arcade perfect conversion of TNZS. Preferably with the tnzsjo levels :-)

See, I played TNZS first on an Amiga. Didn't pick up the Arcade version until much later via MAME and so was very disappointed that the levels were different until I discovered the variations

And hell yes an arcade-perfect AGA version would rock indeed. Not that the Amiga version was bad - I loved it to bits.

[jotd]

is the original code 68000?

[str0m]

Z80 according to this

https://www.system16.com/hardware.ph...&gid=1583#1583

[Megalomaniac]

New Zealand Story was still a really enjoyable conversion for the time. I'm not sure how much better it would look in 32 colours, let alone how much that would improve the game. Nice big screen area too, unlike a fair few ST ports of the time. Most other Amiga games in 1989 only used 16 colours, and the majority were ST ports at heart. I can't think of any better-looking platform games that had been released at that point. Gameplay-wise it may not be a perfect conversion, but it captures the main level layouts and features really well. Does Kiwi's Tale actually look that much better, despite being AGA and sacrificing the viewing area in order to make the graphics bigger?

[CCCP alert]

16 to 32 colours per scanline is a massive difference for an artist converting arcade source graphics in general, not sure how many colours the arcade was but the intro 'zoo' background looks pants for 32 colour Amiga. played fine etc but considering it cost £5 more I expected Amiga graphics on Amiga game

Nintendo SNES games didn't have Sega graphics on dual format releases and their games cost the same. Why would anybody be happy with ST graphics for 25% higher cost.

32-64 colour difference is less crucial, 64-128 is trivial, 128-256 colours would barely be noticeable except on RGB input to monitor/TVs with a talented artist on the job.

[jotd]

problem with 32 color graphics is the slow speed of all blitter operations. Most 32 color games use sprites for main character & status bars (& possibly some enemies), but a 16-color playfield.

[Megalomaniac]

Fair point about Amiga NZS being £5 more than the ST version, you did see that with a lot of early games, I guess the 'justification' was probably that the sound had to be redone from scratch, whereas in most cases the ST version would use identical sound to the Amstrad and 128K Spectrum versions? SNES and Megadrive games didn't always cost the same though, Street Fighter II the obvious one even if the versions weren't identical. Of course, the flip side was that Amiga games were usually cheaper than the same game on Megadrive or SNES, or even the 8-bit Master System or NES.

And, as jotd has just added while I was typing this, 16 colours will produce better performance than 32 colours, all other things equal. There was always a trade-off.

[lmimmfn]

Gary Bracy from Ocean said recently they charged extra for C64 games because they could, I presume the same model was in place for the Amiga?

[CCCP alert]

Originally Posted by lmimmfn

Gary Bracy from Ocean said recently they charged extra for C64 games because they could, I presume the same model was in place for the Amiga?

There were few Spectrum port jobs on the 64, neither source code, graphics or music and usually unique loading music/screen for turbo loader and it was only £1. For a long time the Amiga got ST C source and ST 16 colour graphics with sfx/music being the only difference and £5 more. Gauntlet 2 is one of the worst cases as the game looks/sounds/runs the same on both on 1mb machines AND the graphics are inferior to Gauntlet 1 on the ST (smaller and less colourful level maps) lol hence all the piracy, served them right.

[Jope]

The arcade vs Amiga TNZS differences are more than the amount of colours. The arcade has many little details that are omitted including more warps, different enemy/balloon behaviour, heaven levels, and so on.