Enhanced Chip Set (ECS) Games

[malko]

Originally Posted by DamienD

Ke??? Who's being a kid? [...]

No offence DamienD & Mrz. Not a criticism at all. Don't take this word in the 1st degree. Only humour.

[SquawkBox]

If you're interested in games requiring 1MB chip (ECS or not), it would be possible to refine DamienD's list by reffering at Amiga Format reviews along with Hall Of Light footnotes. Most of the time, Amiga Format conveniently highlights in a box whether the game requires 1MB or not through a little drawing of a chip (same when said game is HD installable).

[AmigaHope]

Originally Posted by SquawkBox

If you're interested in games requiring 1MB chip (ECS or not), it would be possible to refine DamienD's list by reffering at Amiga Format reviews along with Hall Of Light footnotes. Most of the time, Amiga Format conveniently highlights in a box whether the game requires 1MB or not through a little drawing of a chip (same when said game is HD installable).

Those don't require 1M chip though, they require 1M total. 512k chip and 512k of any type (slow, fast, or chip).

[SquawkBox]

So all of the following titles require 1MB total ? Then why is it considered a better deal to have 1MB chip instead of 512k chip + 512k other mem ? Sorry for the extra research answering my questions might take !

• Bubble & Squeak
• D-Generation
• Elfmania
• Enemy - Tempest Of Violence
• Eye Of the Beholder II - The Legend Of Darkmoon
• Gunship 2000
• Immortal, The
• Jungle Strike
• Kick Off II - The Final Whistle
• Legend Of Kyrandia, The - Book One
• Lollypop
• Patrician, The
• Second Samurai
• Simon the Sorcerer
• Skidmarks
• Zaxxon (Bignonia's)

[gimbal]

The short version: it's not a given that it's a better deal.

The long version:

https://retrocomputing.stackexchange...ga-chip-memory

[SquawkBox]

Turbo Trax requires 1MB chip solid, doesn't it ? At least, there's this single game that owners of A500 equipped with 512k + 512k cannot play (very similar to Overdrive, so no biggie I guess) . Some dude also mentions Dracula requiring 1MB chip, but couldn't find any evidence of this.

[gimbal]

According to Lemon Amiga this is indeed the case. Glad I never got that game then, that would have been a major disappointment. If I look on any of the box shots and the manual then there is no mention of system requirements.

[SquawkBox]

According to R-N, it simply needs 2.04+ ks. That would make more sense. Check 4th post of this thread. So to make things clear, there might not be any single "Amiga 500" game that would require 1MB chip. The benefits of this might be down to productivity tools, screenmodes etc. after all.

If you're interested in that sort of things, there's this member who made a list in 2007 bearing 15 "ECS" games allegedly not working on A500, check it here :
https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=28830
Probably the vast majority of which require 2.04+ ks, work from A500 if you go for a better cracked version (got me wondering if it's not down to some mega trainers that try too much to alter each and every attribute of the game) etc. What an Old Fool (that's his nick actually) !

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by SquawkBox

• D-Generation
• Eye Of the Beholder II - The Legend Of Darkmoon
• Jungle Strike
• Legend Of Kyrandia, The - Book One
• Simon the Sorcerer

I definitely played these on A500+512k. Possibly also Gunship, Kick Off 2 and Skidmarks.

[SquawkBox]

Lemonamiga members offering mini reviews / comments are a nice bunch but don't always get things right. For example, someone there made the assumption that Off Shore Warrior would not run from a machine bearing higher than 1.2 KS (probably, the [ks 1.2] mention in TOSEC, attached to some ADF's is somehow misleading). Well, the game should be playable on any A500 (as sluggishly as you can figure it out, but still). It loads and plays fine from my Amiga 500 fitted with 1.3 KS rom.

[SquawkBox]

Originally Posted by SquawkBox

According to R-N, it simply needs 2.04+ ks.

Speaking of which, last evening I played 2.4 version of Deluxe Galaga

CRC32 : 96B14D0C

from my Gotek and no issue occurred. DamienD has 2.6C version in his collection, maybe that's the one requiring 2.04+ KS. Not sure about enhancements I am missing compared to 2.6C, but 2.4 version loads and plays fine, furthermore only requires 1 disk image, that's a plus for me. Don't want to turn this thread into a Gotek support one, but I noticed a few workarounds for fiddly games such as Double Dragon II, Archon etc. Fortunately, there is a little known IPF'ied ECS version of Double Dragon II out there (nice, eh !)

CRC32 : 1AC95EC7

and Archon (from IPF) might be playable, provided the space bar is smashed at title screen (already tried both compilations bearing Archon I / Archon II / One on One to no avail).


On the other hand, I've thrown in the towel concerning Leader Board & Leader Board Tournament Disk (seems a bit primitive, so no biggie).

[StingRay]

Originally Posted by SquawkBox

On the other hand, I've thrown in the towel concerning Leader Board & Leader Board Tournament Disk (seems a bit primitive, so no biggie).

Feel free to try my version:

http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=...9&postcount=15

[SquawkBox]

Success! Your version of Leader Board works with my 6a revision 1MB chip equipped A500, both the regular game and its expansion data disk. Very nice, keep up the good work! Same with first opus of Archon, no need to softkick ks v1.2 (assuming that term applies to A500's too). Simply hit the space bar several times when the FreeFall logo appears, the checkerboard then is displayed and you can start a game against CPU or Human (or against... Cyborg ? What is that ?) right away.

Turbo Trax (1995) (Arcane) won't load with less than 1MB memory. Conversely, that top down racer doesn't require 2.04+ ks.

Concerning Gravity Force, no need for IPF. I could manage to enter my nick in high score after Game Over screen and a couple of enemies destroyed, which wasn't the case with the cracked version. For that purpose, I used the 1.1 freeware version.


@DamienD
I know you're not aiming specifically at A500 / Gotek users when building your collection, but unless you really fancy trainers IMHO you should consider replacing that Vision Factory version of Gravity Force with the version I just tried (or with the IPF). Don't quote me on that, but I think the guru error after typing one's nick in high score has something to do with the 1.0 version of the game requiring 1.2 KS.

[jotd]

Sensible World of Soccer has 2 executables on the first disk. One is designed for 512k chip and the other for 1MB chip

Enhancements must be in the sfx.

DamienD I think 1MB chip is rarely required

Operation Stealth is quoted in your example, but let's check Whdload version

http://whdload.de/games/OperationStealth.html

Yes, 512k chip and 700k fast. Actually adding fastmem allows to run it.

Most non-AGA games only require 512k chip. Some tend to fail with only 512k fast because of, say, second drive. And yes, old whdload slaves were lazy and didn't use expansion memory, and very old slaves couldn't use it either since whdload didn't support it, so 1Meg games were just 1Meg chip games. Trying to kill that legacy ATM.

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by SquawkBox

@DamienD
I know you're not aiming specifically at A500 / Gotek users when building your collection, but unless you really fancy trainers IMHO you should consider replacing that Vision Factory version of Gravity Force with the version I just tried (or with the IPF). Don't quote me on that, but I think the guru error after typing one's nick in high score has something to do with the 1.0 version of the game requiring 1.2 KS.

I'm not aiming at all at real A500 or Gotek users; why would I?

Originally Posted by jotd

DamienD I think 1MB chip is rarely required

Yes it rare I guess; from memory out of the 2400 or so OCS / ECS games in my collection about 130 required 1MB Chip RAM.

[SquawkBox]

Originally Posted by DamienD

I'm not aiming at all at real A500 or Gotek users; why would I?

Short answer : That specific version of Gravity Force is buggy, be it on WinUAE or on an actual Amiga unless you switch ks to 1.2 version, and even then Toni (well, some internal check he implemented) will alert you that the disk should be in extended ADF format to save that piece of data (the player nick from the high score table).


Long answer (not too long, it's a promise ) :The corresponding configuration file from your collection mentions 1.3 ks, but it's pretty obvious VF version is buggy should anything else than 1.2 ks is used. Try to enter your nick in single player mode after the game has ended (at least one enemy ship must be destroyed beforehand), the game gurus right after hitting the Enter key. There is no such disadvantage in using v1.1 (the freeware version if that's what TOSEC means by attaching [FW] to it). The downside is there is no fancy cracktro nor trainer with that version.

[jotd]

Damien I'm not going to check all your list but there are a lot of titles that only require 512k chip + 512k fast

Titus The Fox, Operation Stealth, Great Courts 2 come to mind

Anyway, on WinUAE, setting 1MB chip doesn't hurt and sometimes games use that extra chip for more sounds, so it's not a requirement, but it doesn't cost a lot either.

I'll assume that since you want to use 2 or more drives that you enabled them in your configurations (why bothering with disk switching on WinUAE when game runs with AmigaDOS): that eats too much memory on a standard 512/512 configuration on non-OSkiller games, which explains why too many of your configurations require 1MB.

Anyway, I'm not trying to be the one who's right. But this 1MB chip thing surprises me a lot.

[SquawkBox]

Originally Posted by jotd

Sensible World of Soccer has 2 executables on the first disk. One is designed for 512k chip and the other for 1MB chip

This is an interesting case me thinks.
The Quartex version of SWOS '95-'96 bears a cracktro that requires 2.04+ ks to load. Concerning the game itself, I am afraid it (just tried with both IPF's converted to v3 HFE) won't load with a mere 0.5MB of chip memory. Here is the error message I get :

Be it the Quartex or the IPF version, loading halts with the above mentioned error message (another case of convenience of language, when in fact the devs really meant 0.5+0.5MB fast or 1MB of chip required ?). I am not saying that the other executable you're evoking is never triggered, just that it's not triggered with that version of the game (CRC of Disk 1 : F4AF023D) on my machine. FYI, it's not the European Championship version or anything similar, just plain SWOS '95-'96 on 2 disks.

[Solo Kazuki]

Sorry, but I don't understand this looping around 0,5MB Chip, when You can 1MB Chip on OCS.

So is there any game which is working on ECS and doesn't working on OCS with same amount of memory? I don't know if any (!) game exist so i'm curious myself.

[SquawkBox]

I can only think of Double Dragon II "ECS version" (it's in TOSEC, as an IPF). This said, the reason Binary Design offered an ECS version was not to take advantage of the ECS chipset, but to fix a bug that would prevent the original release to load properly on ECS chipset equipped miggys. So not "any game", rather a reissue the scene never bothered with, incidentally... Hence the welcome initiative according to which the SPS team had it preserved.