Worst Amiga Ports - Page 4

lordofchaos · 18 December 2015, 18:52

Legend of Robin Hood, The: Conquests of the Longbow by Sierra. Ball achingly slow, even when running on a 68030. I like the art and the theme but it's just unplayable.

http://hol.abime.net/3083

Fiery Phoenix · 18 December 2015, 21:14

Paperboy on the Amiga was disappointing - it looked ok-ish, but not exactly like the arcade - it felt different somehow.

Plus disappointing how they didn't get the speech samples in

eXeler0 · 18 December 2015, 22:09

As a huge fan of Arcade Shinobi I was of course hugely disappointed with the port. Starts right away with a pathetic imitation of the start screen, crapy music, color palette like a Speccy game, Atari ST - esque scrolling, annoying ommisions of end of level bad guys and appropriate animations of them being eliminated...
In fairness, I hated most ports except PC Engine ;-) but even that one is missing significant parts.. and for the zillionth time oh Sega, why wasnt there a Mega drive port..

fryguy · 18 December 2015, 22:26

Sim City 2000, it was dead slow.

I believe someone (the coder?) said that there was some patches for it though, which made it run faster.

Retro-Nerd · 18 December 2015, 22:35

Somebody is indeed working on a Mega Drive Shinobi port.

http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthr...hinobi-MD-port

ReadOnlyCat · 18 December 2015, 23:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by saimon69

[...]
Wish there was an Amiga Arcade Conversions Remake project so that finally those bad sores would be cured

Meow!

Amigajay · 18 December 2015, 23:38

Was reading though the US Gold book by Chris Wilkins, sad to say but alot of computer conversions were made by one or two people and completed with a strict time limit normally 3-6 months, compared to a big team and a year or so for a console release, these were part of the 8-bit era of just get the license and that will sell the game, it did slowly improve as the years went on but some of the ST ports to the Amiga were ported over in a week by one person and not even tested sometimes! Best to remember the Amiga for its original games and play the arcade versions on mame!

eXeler0 · 19 December 2015, 00:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

Somebody is indeed working on a Mega Drive Shinobi port.

http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthr...hinobi-MD-port

Wow, already looks better than most other ports.

eXeler0 · 19 December 2015, 00:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amigajay

Was reading though the US Gold book by Chris Wilkins, sad to say but alot of computer conversions were made by one or two people and completed with a strict time limit normally 3-6 months, compared to a big team and a year or so for a console release, these were part of the 8-bit era of just get the license and that will sell the game, it did slowly improve as the years went on but some of the ST ports to the Amiga were ported over in a week by one person and not even tested sometimes! Best to remember the Amiga for its original games and play the arcade versions on mame!

You're probably right... And it's worth remembering that exchange of game assets was reeeally difficult back then. Compared to how easy it is to exchange assets these days between PS4 and XboxOne, back then it was next to impossible.

ReadOnlyCat · 19 December 2015, 02:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amigajay

Was reading though the US Gold book by Chris Wilkins, sad to say but alot of computer conversions were made by one or two people and completed with a strict time limit normally 3-6 months, compared to a big team and a year or so for a console release, these were part of the 8-bit era of just get the license and that will sell the game, it did slowly improve as the years went on but some of the ST ports to the Amiga were ported over in a week by one person and not even tested sometimes! Best to remember the Amiga for its original games and play the arcade versions on mame!

I would rather buy an arcade PCB than use MAME but to each his own.

Do you have the references of that book about US Gold? It is the first time I read about it and I have to say I am quite surprised someone took the pain to document their crimes. I would love to read it.

eXeler0 · 19 December 2015, 15:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by ReadOnlyCat

I would rather buy an arcade PCB than use MAME but to each his own.

Is your house very large with a lot of empty space? ;-)

ReadOnlyCat · 19 December 2015, 16:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by eXeler0

Is your house very large with a lot of empty space? ;-)

I wish it were but it is not, which is why I wrote "PCB" instead of "cabinet".

volvo_0ne · 19 December 2015, 22:02

Alien Syndrome....

After the C64 version, with it's catchy music & wierd scrolling, I thought the Amiga version was a real letdown.

Come to think of it......................

I thought the same about Hawkeye too.

ReadOnlyCat · 20 December 2015, 14:24

Vollldo mentioned "all conversions by US Gold" which is mostly true to the exception of Golden Axe which was not fantastic but was reasonably good. I bought it at that time and remember beating in under one hour with my cousin.

In general I think it would be fair to say that most arcade conversions were bad games (most, not all!). There is a handful of exceptions but even these are far from being as good as they could have.

lordofchaos · 20 December 2015, 14:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by volvo_0ne

Alien Syndrome....

After the C64 version, with it's catchy music & wierd scrolling, I thought the Amiga version was a real letdown.

Come to think of it......................

I thought the same about Hawkeye too.

Yeah thought the same about Hawkeye, the iconic c64 classics never really got the conversions they deserved. Wizball was another huge let down.. I know it took awhile for developers to get the most out of the Amiga, perhaps the reason why the early c64 ports suffered

Shatterhand · 21 December 2015, 17:14

Power Drift couldn't get a 1:1 port even on the Sega Saturn (it ran at a lower framerate). The only system that managed to have a 1:1 port of Power Drift was the Dreamcast.

I spent a lot of coins on the arcade Power Drift when I was a child, it was really amazing and fun for the time.

s2325 · 21 December 2015, 17:42

I think Drivin' Force http://hol.abime.net/435 is slightly better than Power Drift [ Show youtube player ]

ReadOnlyCat · 27 December 2015, 07:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by s2325

I think Drivin' Force http://hol.abime.net/435 is slightly better than Power Drift [ Show youtube player ]

I bought Drivin' Force some time ago and although the game effectively runs at a smooth fast pace (50 FPS), I find the gameplay to be really poor, the road curves are unnatural and hard to predict and the graphics are terribly repetitive.

With some additional effort it could have been a good game but it is essentially a technical proof of concept as it is.

It certainly would have been a good technical basis for a Power Drift port (and a texture mapped road engine in general) but as it is I would have been very disappointed with it if I had bought it back in the day.

s2325 · 24 December 2016, 12:47

Gamesack uploaded new video piss poor ports, maybe they should release second part with ST and Amiga

[ Show youtube player ]

Shatterhand · 24 December 2016, 15:43

There are a few good ports produced by US Gold.

Bonanza Bros suffers from 1 button controller, other than that it is a pretty good port IMO. It cries for 2 button support patch on WHDLoad... with it, it would be even better than the Mega-Drive one in a few aspects.

Shadow Dancer is also pretty good.

And then you've got the really "how the hell this happened?" example... Mercs. It's US Gold produced, developed by Tiertex, and it doesn't completely suck... it's actually very playable and not bad at all. Amiga could do better? Surely it could, but the fact that's a Tiertex game and it doesn't completely blows is really surprising. It was coded by Anthony Ball (who also made Globdule), and it was the only game he made for Tiertex, so maybe this says something.

What really annoys me about Amiga ports is how many times the C64 game is actually a lot better than the Amiga one. Of course I only found about this recently with emulation and internet, since C64s were basically absent here in Brazil, but I would be really pissed if I had friends with C64s and better versions of my games.

For what I consider the worst ports on Amiga ever....

Castlevania: This could had been actually better than the original. The C64 got a very fair version, but the Amiga one has horrible graphics, the music is awful and played in a different order, the framerate is piss-poor and the game plays like shit. I think all Konami games were really shitty on Amiga (Novotrade ported most of them, though DSI made TMNT and Super C), but Castlevania takes the cake on "how to completely mess up a good game". Thank God Konami cancelled Ajax, Metal Gear and The Simpsons ports, as I am pretty sure they would also suck badly

Bionic Commando - This is completely unplayable, and I am surprised anyone ever endured this enough to beat the 1st level. I could even deal with the crap scroll if other aspects of the game were good, but everything here is done as badly as possible. Again, another game that could had been easily done on amiga. Cut the parallax (which is not on every level anyway), reduce colors and you could have a pretty faithful port on other aspects. The arcade game is even kinda slow, and except by those big robots on level 3, it doesn't even clutter the screen with lots of enemies or big enemies at all. And , again, the C64 got a better game.

There are more, but I'll keep with those 2 for now... I don't think anyone had mentioned Bionic Commando so far, which really surprises me.

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18 December 2015, 18:52	#61
lordofchaos TinkerTailorContentMaker Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Bedfordshire Age: 45 Posts: 1,205	Legend of Robin Hood, The: Conquests of the Longbow by Sierra. Ball achingly slow, even when running on a 68030. I like the art and the theme but it's just unplayable. http://hol.abime.net/3083

18 December 2015, 21:14	#62
Fiery Phoenix Registered User Join Date: Jul 2012 Location: Bury, Lancs Age: 47 Posts: 662	Paperboy on the Amiga was disappointing - it looked ok-ish, but not exactly like the arcade - it felt different somehow. Plus disappointing how they didn't get the speech samples in

18 December 2015, 22:09	#63
eXeler0 Registered User Join Date: Feb 2015 Location: Sweden Age: 50 Posts: 2,946	As a huge fan of Arcade Shinobi I was of course hugely disappointed with the port. Starts right away with a pathetic imitation of the start screen, crapy music, color palette like a Speccy game, Atari ST - esque scrolling, annoying ommisions of end of level bad guys and appropriate animations of them being eliminated... In fairness, I hated most ports except PC Engine ;-) but even that one is missing significant parts.. and for the zillionth time oh Sega, why wasnt there a Mega drive port..

18 December 2015, 22:26	#64
fryguy Registered User Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: Skarabörg, Sweden Age: 44 Posts: 1,019	Sim City 2000, it was dead slow. I believe someone (the coder?) said that there was some patches for it though, which made it run faster.

18 December 2015, 22:35	#65
Retro-Nerd Missile Command Champion Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: Germany Age: 52 Posts: 12,436	Somebody is indeed working on a Mega Drive Shinobi port. http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthr...hinobi-MD-port

18 December 2015, 23:38	#67
Amigajay Registered User Join Date: Jan 2010 Location: > Posts: 2,881	Was reading though the US Gold book by Chris Wilkins, sad to say but alot of computer conversions were made by one or two people and completed with a strict time limit normally 3-6 months, compared to a big team and a year or so for a console release, these were part of the 8-bit era of just get the license and that will sell the game, it did slowly improve as the years went on but some of the ST ports to the Amiga were ported over in a week by one person and not even tested sometimes! Best to remember the Amiga for its original games and play the arcade versions on mame!

19 December 2015, 22:02	#73
volvo_0ne Registered User Join Date: Mar 2015 Location: Sheffield UK Posts: 360	Alien Syndrome.... After the C64 version, with it's catchy music & wierd scrolling, I thought the Amiga version was a real letdown. Come to think of it...................... I thought the same about Hawkeye too.

20 December 2015, 14:24	#74
ReadOnlyCat Code Kitten Join Date: Aug 2015 Location: Montreal/Canadia Age: 52 Posts: 1,178	Vollldo mentioned "all conversions by US Gold" which is mostly true to the exception of Golden Axe which was not fantastic but was reasonably good. I bought it at that time and remember beating in under one hour with my cousin. In general I think it would be fair to say that most arcade conversions were bad games (most, not all!). There is a handful of exceptions but even these are far from being as good as they could have.

21 December 2015, 17:14	#76
Shatterhand Warhasneverbeensomuchfun Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Rio de Janeiro / Brazil Age: 41 Posts: 3,450	Power Drift couldn't get a 1:1 port even on the Sega Saturn (it ran at a lower framerate). The only system that managed to have a 1:1 port of Power Drift was the Dreamcast. I spent a lot of coins on the arcade Power Drift when I was a child, it was really amazing and fun for the time.

21 December 2015, 17:42	#77
s2325 Zone Friend Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: Gargore Age: 43 Posts: 17,789	I think Drivin' Force http://hol.abime.net/435 is slightly better than Power Drift [ Show youtube player ]

24 December 2016, 12:47	#79
s2325 Zone Friend Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: Gargore Age: 43 Posts: 17,789	Gamesack uploaded new video piss poor ports, maybe they should release second part with ST and Amiga [ Show youtube player ]

24 December 2016, 15:43	#80
Shatterhand Warhasneverbeensomuchfun Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Rio de Janeiro / Brazil Age: 41 Posts: 3,450	There are a few good ports produced by US Gold. Bonanza Bros suffers from 1 button controller, other than that it is a pretty good port IMO. It cries for 2 button support patch on WHDLoad... with it, it would be even better than the Mega-Drive one in a few aspects. Shadow Dancer is also pretty good. And then you've got the really "how the hell this happened?" example... Mercs. It's US Gold produced, developed by Tiertex, and it doesn't completely suck... it's actually very playable and not bad at all. Amiga could do better? Surely it could, but the fact that's a Tiertex game and it doesn't completely blows is really surprising. It was coded by Anthony Ball (who also made Globdule), and it was the only game he made for Tiertex, so maybe this says something. What really annoys me about Amiga ports is how many times the C64 game is actually a lot better than the Amiga one. Of course I only found about this recently with emulation and internet, since C64s were basically absent here in Brazil, but I would be really pissed if I had friends with C64s and better versions of my games. For what I consider the worst ports on Amiga ever.... Castlevania: This could had been actually better than the original. The C64 got a very fair version, but the Amiga one has horrible graphics, the music is awful and played in a different order, the framerate is piss-poor and the game plays like shit. I think all Konami games were really shitty on Amiga (Novotrade ported most of them, though DSI made TMNT and Super C), but Castlevania takes the cake on "how to completely mess up a good game". Thank God Konami cancelled Ajax, Metal Gear and The Simpsons ports, as I am pretty sure they would also suck badly Bionic Commando - This is completely unplayable, and I am surprised anyone ever endured this enough to beat the 1st level. I could even deal with the crap scroll if other aspects of the game were good, but everything here is done as badly as possible. Again, another game that could had been easily done on amiga. Cut the parallax (which is not on every level anyway), reduce colors and you could have a pretty faithful port on other aspects. The arcade game is even kinda slow, and except by those big robots on level 3, it doesn't even clutter the screen with lots of enemies or big enemies at all. And , again, the C64 got a better game. There are more, but I'll keep with those 2 for now... I don't think anyone had mentioned Bionic Commando so far, which really surprises me.

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