Crap games that shudda been good

[7-Zark-7]

I have to agree with Akira about ROTR. In a matter of speaking they did "tailor" the game to each format,(eg:A500, AGA & CD32 versions), with differing versions. Basically in the original preview interview in The One when it was a PC/Amiga game only,(& later on in a "Where are you?" featurette several months later after the Time Warner deal), they claimed it'd be a beat'emup with IK+ style fighter AI coupled with Ray-traced GFX to bring computer pixels & gameplay into the "next generation".

As Akira said, they promised a lot, but delivered nothing but hot air. It does happen, a classic example was a C64 game called Deadlock which was being made by the Cyberdyne guys behind Armalyte-all the preview shots looked superb but its designers & programmers, have never really regretted its non-completion. Despite its brilliant visuals & interesting looking features that might've looked like a Turrican-beating game, they were never happy with the gameplay/design-they felt it never had any & were happy it never progressed.

Conversions in the good old 8bit/16bit days only tended to work IMHO when quality development teams who knew their respective hardware backwards made it so-look at Factor 5 (& Manfred Trenz with his C64 & Amiga versions of Turrican), who often individually tailored games to multiple formats.

And Andy Braybrook's rewrites/conversions of his classic C64 games to the Amiga, are both examples.
Then look at cruddy conversions like some infamous U.S. Gold coin-op titles in comparison. eg: Strider, Black Tiger etc.

[Twistin'Ghost]

ALL commercially released Tetris games were shite. Thank goodness the PD crowd rose above all of that and we ended up with excellent clones of this wonderfully addictive game.

[woody57]

AS Akira quite rightly points out ROTR woz is and ever will be pants average overhyped future beer coaster fodder .
Some miggy mags looked only at the screen shots and opening anim. Game play in the the realms of early Ray Harryhausen epics with sprites moving with the grace of the original King Kong suffering from a bad hangover dipped in acme quick drying cement the whole piece of hype could be finished in under 25 minutes & left you with the feeling of " so what woz all the fuss about "

[Amiga1992]

Sowwy manic, but I still don't see the brilliant concept behind RotR.

[manicx]

Well, it's the first time that I hear people talking about a concept in a beat em up. A beat em up, is a beat em up and nothing more. It's not an adventure, not an arcade adventure, not a sports game etc. All you need, is fast action, great variation of character moves, uplifting music and let's admit it good graphics. The mistake was that a software team with no experience at all, developed a game on the PC without any knowledge of beat em ups, and with no imagination during the development. A beat em up doesn't need any paperwork to make it work, it's just a trial by error procedure when you built the game. If you don't like a movement, animation or speed is crap you fix these. Also, it seems to me that the gametesting was crap. Nothing to do with a concept though. It is a beat em up FFS!!!

[Amiga1992]

The "beat'em up" is a concept, no matter how simple! Now we agree in a point, an unexperienced team of fuckwits with no idea of what the "beat'em up concept" is, set off to make a game. The result? Poo. On a stick.

[7-Zark-7]

And how do you think the coin-op Streetfighter 2 was designed-over a few beers at the pub? Gameplay, graphics, music etc. is carefully designed-the difference is that in the good games you don't think about it, in the bad games you do,(ie: this is too hard/simple, lousy GFX, poor level layout, bad A.I. etc.).

Unfortunately too much emphasis on the latter nowadays.

In the case of ROTR, so much money was poured into development it was probably necessary to sell poop-on-a-stick to try & recoup costs no matter how crappy it was.

[Galahad/FLT]

Rainbow Islands was a 98% spot on conversion, with only the smooth scrolling missing. Bearing in mind though that Andrew Braybrook hadn't written many Amiga games at this point, he did a great job. Graftgold went to extremes to include every secret part.

Its interesting that people pick on Ghouls n Ghosts and then later commend Assassin as a good game, seeing as both were written by the same programmer. You can see through David Broadhursts games how he got more proficient. Imagine him doing a Ghouls n Ghosts conversion at the same time as Assassin, and I'm sure it would have been spot on.

At least though, he had the decency to get better. Teque software (they did Chase HQ 1 not ICE) got progressively better, but not hugely so.

Tiertex are my 'favourites'. I look back at the shit they programmed, and it makes me weep.

Why the fuck didn't US Gold get Terramarque, or Richard Aplin to do Streetfighter 2? They only reason SF2 didn't get roundly slagged off completely was because all of the reviewers were expecting it to be worse!

I think Elfmania came out a few months after, and of course all of the SNES owners were implying the Amiga simply couldn't do SF2 properly, then Elfmania turned up which was more technically advanced than SNES SF2.... except they forgot to make it playable!

Very few US Gold games are any good, and yes, most of them were simply Atari ST conversions. The graphics were written for the ST and simply converted to the Amiga. As the ST was shit in any graphics mode other than 16 colours, hence why most US Gold Amiga games were 16 colours.

Plenty of Tiertex games had graduated backdrops. Did they use the copper? No, they used 16 colour bitmaps?!?!?!

And how the hell were the games so fucking jerky?

I wrote a piss take demo a few years ago called Balloons Megademo (anyone still got it?). It was shit, really bad, and that was the whole point. It took EFFORT to make it shit though as the Amiga is a naturally powerful machine to start with. It doesn't take much effort to smooth scroll graphics, and I had to really try to make things jerky. It appears Tiertex were more skilled in this area than I!

I vote anything by Tiertex (and that includes fucking Strider.... loop at the Megadrive/Genesis version and weep!)

[Shatterhand]

I may be wrong, but I think Rainbow Islands was Andrew Braybrook's first amiga game ever. And it's not only missing the "smooth scroll", there are 3 secret worlds missing.

And if I remember correctly, Elfmania was released more than a year later of Street Fighter 2. Yet, ONE month after SF2 was published, Team 17 published Body Blows, which may not be great, but it shows the Amiga could have done a much better SF2.

Most people slag off Teque Software... they made some classics for 8 bits systems, and they also developed Brutal Sports Football, one of my fav games ever.

Oh, and btw, US gold games sucked in any machine.

[mtb]

Also New Zealand story could have been better ( only 16 colors on the screen, when the coin op - if i remember an 8 bit - was graphically better ), but fortunatly the gameplay is good.

The same thing for Bubble Bobble, ported from the st. But the gameplay is really really good too - the only crap version of this game i've found is the amstrad cpc. For example the Master System version is more similar to the coin op even for the gfx ( just received some roms for consoles and moreless 1100 for mame ).

Parasol stars? On the pcengine was far better. But saved for the gameplay.

[Dastardly]

When I started this thread I never expected Amiga greats like:

Rainbow Islands
NZ Story
Bubble Bobble
Batman The Movie

..to be catagorised among the crap examples of the Amiga games.


You people have obviously never played the REAL shockers.

[Shatterhand]

Can't understand too.. the name of the thread is "Crap games that shudda been good", and we see lots of games that aren't crap, but are just not 100% accurate to their coin-op counterparts.

The PC-Engine version of Rainbow Islands just have a few more graphic effects, nothing fantastic, and the sound in the amiga version is better. Both are identical in the gameplay department.

The New Zealand Story is a near 100% accurate conversion, if not really 100%.

I agree Bubble Bobble for Amiga could be better, but it's very far of being crap.

I'm serious on Batman the Movie

[Dastardly]

Originally posted by Burseg
I'm serious on Batman the Movie

Maybe as a standalone game its good to average but when judged alongside the usual film tie-ins of the time I think its a good one.
Until Lotus arrived the level 2 driving section was my fave Amiga racer! Not bad for a game that isnt solely dedicated to this genre.

...its certainly NOT crap

I think the modern game named "fellowship of the ring" is crap as well. there's nothing surprising about it, it's not a work of a genius but just another boring 3rd person view 3d game. My feelings are similar towards batman the movie. it's average if not crap. I didn't decide the name of the thread

[Antiriad]

There were far far worse movie tie-in games such as any of the Schwarzeneggar films. I recall Dracula being slated by AP at the time

[Galahad/FLT]

Rodland
What the fuck were The Sales Curve thinking?????

Better graphics than the coin-op, as colourful, spot on music, spot on smoothness... everything about the Amiga version of Rodland was either as good or better.

Jesus christ, what the fuck were they thinking? Tiertex get to make games that are 'special' (i.e. not even remotely like the coin op), and The Sales Curve make the effort.

Glad Tiertex are around to show em I say!

[mtb]

Originally posted by Shatterhand
Can't understand too.. the name of the thread is "Crap games that shudda been good", and we see lots of games that aren't crap, but are just not 100% accurate to their coin-op counterparts.

The PC-Engine version of Rainbow Islands just have a few more graphic effects, nothing fantastic, and the sound in the amiga version is better. Both are identical in the gameplay department.

The New Zealand Story is a near 100% accurate conversion, if not really 100%.

I agree Bubble Bobble for Amiga could be better, but it's very far of being crap.

excuse me i was thinking about good games that shudda been even better.
For example Ocean with Toki did a better conversion, but also New Zealand Story is very near to the coin op and the same for Parasol Stars, and together with Bubble Bobble and Rainbow Islands they are top games on the miggy.

[7-Zark-7]

Originally posted by Galahad/FLT
Rainbow Islands was a 98% spot on conversion, with only the smooth scrolling missing. Bearing in mind though that Andrew Braybrook hadn't written many Amiga games at this point, he did a great job. Graftgold went to extremes to include every secret part.

Its interesting that people pick on Ghouls n Ghosts and then later commend Assassin as a good game, seeing as both were written by the same programmer. You can see through David Broadhursts games how he got more proficient. Imagine him doing a Ghouls n Ghosts conversion at the same time as Assassin, and I'm sure it would have been spot on.

At least though, he had the decency to get better. Teque software (they did Chase HQ 1 not ICE) got progressively better, but not hugely so.

Tiertex are my 'favourites'. I look back at the shit they programmed, and it makes me weep.

Why the fuck didn't US Gold get Terramarque, or Richard Aplin to do Streetfighter 2? They only reason SF2 didn't get roundly slagged off completely was because all of the reviewers were expecting it to be worse!

I think Elfmania came out a few months after, and of course all of the SNES owners were implying the Amiga simply couldn't do SF2 properly, then Elfmania turned up which was more technically advanced than SNES SF2.... except they forgot to make it playable!

Very few US Gold games are any good, and yes, most of them were simply Atari ST conversions. The graphics were written for the ST and simply converted to the Amiga. As the ST was shit in any graphics mode other than 16 colours, hence why most US Gold Amiga games were 16 colours.

Plenty of Tiertex games had graduated backdrops. Did they use the copper? No, they used 16 colour bitmaps?!?!?!

And how the hell were the games so fucking jerky?


I vote anything by Tiertex (and that includes fucking Strider.... loop at the Megadrive/Genesis version and weep!)

Very well made points Galahad!
1) Yes, I did follow previews/interviews etc. & so knew about David Broadhurst's efforts, which surprised all the more so, I guess the difference between ST ports,(U.S. Gold), vs. dedicated Amiga game Assasin (Team 17).
Although his later effort Overdrive did cause controversy with the omission of simultanious 2 player mode, (albeit for technical reasons).

2) Tiertex/Teque. Definite examples of development teams who were ST orientated in programming/converting coin-ops. Galahad, maybe they managed scrolling jerk-itis by managing to make the first ST emulators for the Amiga without telling anyone!

Although there are things in hindsight that might've marginally improved games like Rainbow Islands,(slightly smoother scroll, & esp. the missing secret islands), bearing in mind programming deadlines & 1/2meg machine limits etc., it represented an excellent conversion & deserves its classic status.

Also bear in mind, although R.I. was Andrew Braybrook's first 16bit game, it wasn't 'til Fire & Ice which was his first game where the Amiga version was the "lead" development machine.
So it possible to argue maybe the code wasn't entirely optimised for the Amiga version. (I'm just speculating, apologies to Andy Braybrook if he ever reads this & I'm wrong! )
(Thats why his Paradroid 90 conversion featured vertical scrolling for example, because of the ST being the lead machine, with the amiga a conversion. Otherwise it would've retained the C64's multi-directional scrolling, though it was still a good translation).