Games that actually used the Amiga hardware

[Photon]

I'd say for OCS in order of awesomeness (just off the top of my head)
Mega Typhoon (actually requires ECS, to fit some HUGE buffers, supposedly.)
Snow Bros
Turrican series
Star Ray
X/Z-out
Shadow of the Beast series

The 3D poly department was a bit dire, perhaps because it was easier to write cross-platform versions, but some prime examples are
Virus
Frontier
Whirlwind Snooker
Resolution 101


Now, most of these games above were selected for code speed, but f.ex. SoTB looked cool more from the parallax, number of colors, big objects, etc. There are other things that make games "not look ancient" or be impressive/arcady these days, regardless of how much pressure was put on the CPU

The Pinball series, for example, still good looking and a finely tuned game experience. Amnios has some cracking graphics as well as the Bitmap Bros games and some excellent games from Graftgold, some of these will play less well or look slightly less impressive today due to the framerate. Lotus series still look quite okay to my eye also

There's also the sound to think about. Pinball series had very well produced sound effects, and many many games had better music than any other platform for years.

I'm trying to think of some games with really immersive sound effects and maybe context sensitive 'event' music, but maybe you can help add some more games on this note.

[Reynolds]

Lotus Turbo Challenge II. Definitely the best arcade racing on Amiga.

[Dan Locke]

Originally Posted by Reynolds

Lotus Turbo Challenge II. Definitely the best arcade racing on Amiga.

Perhaps, but it doesn't really fit this thread. It looks no different from the ST version, apart from a copper gradient in the sky.

[tomcat666]

Originally Posted by Dan Locke

Perhaps, but it doesn't really fit this thread. It looks no different from the ST version, apart from a copper gradient in the sky.

And apart from the actual frame refresh rate which is on the ST at least half of what the amiga version has.

[extralife]

to add to photons list of games with immersive sound effects, I have to say I remember "Hired Guns" as being one of those games.
and maybe if I was to shout "icecream!!" i'm pretty sure most people remember speedball 2 instantly
allso I remember silkworm and swiv as having some insanely loud explosions, which offcoz makes it even more awesome to blow shit up
and IK+ with a really cool and fitting adrenaline pumping sound track, that still gets my blood pumping when i take a few rounds of fist fighting, the old school way

[lost_lemming]

I'd say nebulus

[Photon]

Originally Posted by mombasajoe

I am not really sure what this thread is about:

A) Games like Red Baron (only fun on 060). Reason: not optimized code
B) Games like Fighting Spirit (really amazing for an A500)
C) Both?

I guess in the liberal sense, games that use whatever hardware you run it on, fully.

Then again, if it doesn't run decently on anything below a 68060, it probably didn't use the hardware fully on the platform it was released for.

For most games this platform is either OCS with 512k or 1024k memory, or stock A1200. A few games like Doom-alikes may be written with other setups as minimum platform.

So I guess, "games that use whatever hardware they were designed for, fully".

One could argue that all games coded in c or a high-level language be excluded; indeed if 80-90% of the CPU cycles are wasted on fluff code, you couldn't really say you're using the CPU and memory part of the hardware fully.


Some games did detect things like extra colors or extra memory and adapt themselves, like Pinball Fantasies. I don't really think that's what he means, it should be more like "games that were impressively implemented on the A500 or A1200".

Or "Tight code, design, sound without sacrificing features like on-screen colors or frame stutter (cos the hardware was hard to make something really nice in full framerate)".

Or something like that. It's a question in search of a definition, I'd say

[Dan Locke]

Originally Posted by tomcat666

And apart from the actual frame refresh rate which is on the ST at least half of what the amiga version has.

Yeah, but that's more to do with the Amiga's hardware-accelerated sprites than with anything else. And you really can't say that a game "actually used the Amiga hardware" simply for taking advantage of one of the machine's most basic features - even garbage like Quasar uses hardware sprites.

I always thought that this thread was about games that pushed the Amiga to the limit in terms of on-screen colors, scrolling speed, sprite count and size, visual effects, framerate or detail in polygonal graphics, etc. 8-channel or 14-bit sound would be a good example as well.

[Falcon Flight]

He's just responding to this inaccurate remark of yours:

"It looks no different from the ST version, apart from a copper gradient in the sky."

Having played the ST version for a few months before the Amiga one, back in the day, and _not_ relying on a mere screen shot like some here, I can tell you Amiga Lotus sports a lot more over ST Lotus than a mere copper gradient. :-)

[Dan Locke]

Originally Posted by Falcon Flight

Having played the ST version for a few months before the Amiga one, back in the day, and _not_ relying on a mere screen shot like some here, I can tell you Amiga Lotus sports a lot more over ST Lotus than a mere copper gradient. :-)

I've played both versions (emulated), and I don't see any difference besides the framerate, the copper gradients, and some track detail. Which says more about the ST's weak graphics than it does about the Amiga programmers' use of the Amiga hardware.

[turrican3]

did you forget kidchaos ?

[tomcat666]

Originally Posted by Dan Locke

Yeah, but that's more to do with the Amiga's hardware-accelerated sprites than with anything else. And you really can't say that a game "actually used the Amiga hardware" simply for taking advantage of one of the machine's most basic features - even garbage like Quasar uses hardware sprites.

WHAT "hardware accelerated sprites" does lotus use? I think the only thing that sprites would be usefull in this game is the Status display, but otherwise it is all bitmaps all the time (not sure the main car is made of sprites, but I guess it is not). It is the Amiga Hardware that makes displaying of the road so fast since you don't really need to copy stuff around with the processor you can just change the pointers and achieve the effect. If that is not using the Amiga Hardware then I don't know what is

[Dan Locke]

Originally Posted by tomcat666

WHAT "hardware accelerated sprites" does lotus use? I think the only thing that sprites would be usefull in this game is the Status display, but otherwise it is all bitmaps all the time (not sure the main car is made of sprites, but I guess it is not).

Thanks for clearing that up.

Originally Posted by tomcat666

It is the Amiga Hardware that makes displaying of the road so fast since you don't really need to copy stuff around with the processor you can just change the pointers and achieve the effect. If that is not using the Amiga Hardware then I don't know what is

But that's exactly what I'm getting at. Regardless of whether you're using hardware sprites or changing pointers or whatever, it's a very basic capability of the machine - it runs better on the Amiga by virtue of running on the Amiga at all.

[mcbpete]

Originally Posted by mk1

Well, all I can say is the back of the box lists the following:
- The first game ever to make full use of ray-tracing on Amiga
- The fastest 3D sections EVER on the Amiga

So, genereally I would consider that as a game that pushed the Amiga forward technically even if the techniques used weren't the most advanced.

Both of which are a bit of a cheat though -

1. Yes the objects were ray traced on the developers machine but then those ray traced images were just converted into normal sprites.

2. The 3d tunnel section is famously faked with a combinations of moving screens around that were larger than the display, parallax scrolling and sprites of different sizes.

Don't get me wrong though, good game all the same and the first time I saw the '3d' section when I was a kid it made me look like this -

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Dan Locke

But that's exactly what I'm getting at. Regardless of whether you're using hardware sprites or changing pointers or whatever, it's a very basic capability of the machine - it runs better on the Amiga by virtue of running on the Amiga at all.

Er... nope. If you would just use the same code on both the Amiga and the ST, the Amiga version would be the same speed or even a bit slower. There are a lot of 1:1 ST to Amiga conversions that make this 'mistake'.