ST games that never made on Amiga...

[the wolf]

Don't know if someone have already noticed this, but I ever guessed why some conversions were made only for ST and never ported on Amiga.
Strange, because graphics capabilities of these two machines were, in a certain way, extremely similar. And usually, when a conversion was planning for one of these machines, someone else was working on the other!

Just some titles for example:
Super Sprint, International Karate, Gauntlet, Hatris, Karateka, Oids, Game Over 2, Enduro Racer, Xevious...

Not to mention other non-coversion titles...like "Where time stood still"...

What's the reason about this "racism"? And I'm talking about their first years, where these two machines were solded in all their splendor, and anyone spend the day (well, almost!) to prove his computer was better than the one of his friend/rival.

It should be great if someone can try to convert some of those titles on our machine... (a bit presumptuos, eh?)

However, talking about the conversion titles, could someone post a complete list of these "amiga missing games"?

[Codetapper]

Galahad started work on a Super Sprint conversion. I am unsure how far he got though.

[the wolf]

Originally posted by Codetapper
Galahad started work on a Super Sprint conversion. I am unsure how far he got though.

Yes. I guess now he had some better things to do...

[alexh]

I bet you find that the reason they never made it to the Amiga were economic ones.

• Licensing issues (another company had the rights to the Amiga version)
• Sales. Perhaps the ST sales sucked so they didnt want to pay for the conversion or the money to promote the conversion
• Memory, several ST programmers complained that what they could do with 512k on the ST, they needed 1Meg on the Amiga, at the time 512k upgrade cost a fortune.

just my opinion

Alex

[stainy]

Galahad mentioned that he would try and convert Oids too didn`t he ? this and the Super Sprint one was before his life changed etc.. so who knows whats going on with them now!

shame

[the wolf]

Originally posted by alexh
I bet you find that the reason they never made it to the Amiga were economic ones.

• Licensing issues (another company had the rights to the Amiga version)
• Sales. Perhaps the ST sales sucked so they didnt want to pay for the conversion or the money to promote the conversion
• Memory, several ST programmers complained that what they could do with 512k on the ST, they needed 1Meg on the Amiga, at the time 512k upgrade cost a fortune.

Well, maybe I'm wrong, but I know that several times games were released for both format in the same time! And regarding the memory, in those days, almost every game on amiga was running with only 512K! (we are talking about the end of 80s and first 90s)

[FromWithin]

Originally posted by the wolf
Well, maybe I'm wrong, but I know that several times games were released for both format in the same time! And regarding the memory, in those days, almost every game on amiga was running with only 512K! (we are talking about the end of 80s and first 90s)

The Dungeon Master programmers said that they couldn't fit an Amiga version into 512k. I never understood. Maybe it was just that the Amiga version would use samples for sound effects which take up more RAM, or maybe they were programming "properly" through the OS.

[DrBong]

Originally posted by the wolf
Don't know if someone have already noticed this, but I ever guessed why some conversions were made only for ST and never ported on Amiga.
Strange, because graphics capabilities of these two machines were, in a certain way, extremely similar. And usually, when a conversion was planning for one of these machines, someone else was working on the other!

Just some titles for example:
Super Sprint, International Karate, Gauntlet, Hatris, Karateka, Oids, Game Over 2, Enduro Racer, Xevious...

Not to mention other non-coversion titles...like "Where time stood still"...

What's the reason about this "racism"? And I'm talking about their first years, where these two machines were solded in all their splendor, and anyone spend the day (well, almost!) to prove his computer was better than the one of his friend/rival.

I think the reasons mostly boiled down to money and convenience. The Atari ST was a larger games market for most companies in the 1980s than the Amiga simply because the ST was a significantly cheaper computer to buy than the Amiga back then. This was probably evidenced by the fact that games on the ST were often at least 5 UKP cheaper than the Amiga ones, even for the same title.

If selling to a smaller market wasn't a factor, then development costs and convenience probably were. I imagine it was more economically viable for a game to be published on the Amiga if it could be conveniently ported across by the ST coders without having to spend too much time doing so. For the publishers, this meant that a separate Amiga team of coders didn't have to be paid, and there was less financial risk involved if actual sales fell significantly short of projected sales in the smaller Amiga market.

[the wolf]

Originally posted by DrBong
I think the reasons mostly boiled down to money and convenience. The Atari ST was a larger games market for most companies in the 1980s than the Amiga simply because the ST was a significantly cheaper computer to buy than the Amiga back then. This was probably evidenced by the fact that games on the ST were often at least 5 UKP cheaper than the Amiga ones, even for the same title.

If selling to a smaller market wasn't a factor, then development costs and convenience probably were. I imagine it was more economically viable for a game to be published on the Amiga if it could be conveniently ported across by the ST coders without having to spend too much time doing so. For the publishers, this meant that a separate Amiga team of coders didn't have to be paid, and there was less financial risk involved if actual sales fell significantly short of projected sales in the smaller Amiga market.

This was an interesting explanation, thanks.

BTW, I never noticed that there was already a thread listing some "unreleased" games...
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9629