Mega Drive questions

[mikele]

Good point LoneWolf, Street Racer is a example of MD's superiority. While it ran on already outdated, plain vanilla MD, it required 2 MB of RAM, at least 020 CPU and AGA on Amiga's side.

Apart from technical differences I'd attribute better quality of some MD's games to massive budgets and more skilled dev teams, especially when it came to Sega's flagship products, written by their teams. Even if Amiga was given that missing feature of MD's larger objects handling, we would never see games like Sonic, Streets of Rage 2, Robocop vs Terminator, Gunstar Heroes. As someone properly indicated Sega invested some million dollars in development of the "killer games" that were intended to push selling of Mega Drive/Genesis units.

[Leo42]

Lots of technically-impressive Amiga games are more technical demos than games. Elfmania was surely nice, but gameplay really sucks, same goes for Beast,.. Even Superfrog is borring compared with titles such as Mario on the SNES. Seeing how every SF2 conversion sucks, I always wondered: is it possible to have a correct SF2 conversion for the Amiga (that would include floor perspective, parallax scrolls, background animation, every music + sfx, and original gameplay (provided you have a CD32 pad for example, of course)) ?

[s2325]

It's possible, PC Engine with worse hardware have excellent version of SF2.

[lordofchaos]

Amiga FTW, Love the mega drive too but when an Amiga games shines, it really shines! Besides it`s the limitations of the Amiga that bring the best out of it`s coders and artists, they have to push that extra bit harder to get the same results. Blood sweat and tears, love it

There is no real fun or challenge in doing something if its too easy and that was the Amiga`s life story, let`s stay with the same hardware and hope that the developers can keep on pushing.. we all know what happened next. I mean can you believe that in 1992 and onwards Commodore were still using 4 channel stereo sound without panning! I digress..

[Leo42]

Originally Posted by s2325

It's possible, PC Engine with worse hardware have excellent version of SF2.

Is the PC Engine's hardware worse ? I'm not sure... 64 hardware sprites, 16 color palettes for the sprites, same for hardware,...

[s2325]

I think games like Ruff'n'Tumble, Lionheart, Brian the Lion, Stardust are not possible on that console, I never saw something similar.

[lordofchaos]

Originally Posted by s2325

I think games like Ruff'n'Tumble, Lionheart, Brian the Lion, Stardust are not possible on that console, I never saw something similar.

Considering all those games run from a stock A500 it`s incredible

[mikele]

there's one cute game on MegaDrive which has that Amiga feeling. It's Flink, which on Amiga platform was released for CD32 only. Another evidence that MD could handle games that were not possible on A500.

Besides I'd risk statement that MD+MegaCD could crunch quite a data - take a look at smooth scaling and rotation in AH3 Thunderstrike (Thunderhawk in Europe), Jaguar XJ 220 or Batman Return's driving/flying levels, which make CD32's performance look pale. Go compare Thunderstrike with Gunship 2000

[Retro-Nerd]

Originally Posted by s2325

I think games like Ruff'n'Tumble, Lionheart, Brian the Lion, Stardust are not possible on that console, I never saw something similar.

It is possible, but probably not from Hu-Card. And an Ram expansion via Arcade Card boosts the technical capabilites, e.g. look at Sapphire or the SNK Beat'em Up conversions.

[Lonewolf10]

Originally Posted by switchblade

Far from it. I owned and played the hell out of my Mega Drive when I was young, but even so, I barely know anything about the hardware. I Wikipedia'd most of that info.

Ahh

Originally Posted by switchblade

Ehh... don't take my word for it (because I sure as hell wouldn't know), but I'm guessing that game uses a scanline-based renderer to display the graphics in faux 3D. They probably used that same technique that was used before in the first two Test Drive games, and Grand Prix Circuit for Amiga and DOS. Maybe all 3 Lotus games also used that trick to render their faux 3D graphics? Again, I wouldn't really know.

Not sure about that. I have Lotus Turbo Challenge (and other MD racers) and Street Racer used a technique that I haven't seen in any other racing game (on any format).

Originally Posted by Cammy

I think it's the same as the parallax floors in Street Fighter II (on the Mega Drive). Unlike the roads in Lotus, there are no hills in the Mega Drive and Amiga versions of Street Racer, so the image only needs to be moved horizontally a scanline at a time, but never moved up or down or stretched out. The only difference is the road texture is animated, which I guess is done with a looping, pre-rendered animation.

That seems more like it. The road textures were definately repetitive from what I remember (haven't played it in about 10 years).

Originally Posted by switchblade

From what I've seen of the Mega Drive, only one game was ever produced on that system to use a custom chip inside the cartridge. That was Virtua Racing with that SVP chip. Unfortunately, putting special chips inside cartridges only increases the cost and complexity of the cart.

Only one game used the SVP chip (to my knowledge), but there *may* have been other enhancer chips used in MD cartridges (32X / Sega 32 aside), as Codemasters released games in J-carts (the game cartridges had an extra 2 controller ports built in to it) and Sega's Sonic & Knuckles had the ability to plug in other game carts into the top of it (it was designed for Sonic 1 to 3, but other games could be plugged in and had the same effect as if Sonic 1 was plugged in).


Regards,
Lonewolf10

[Vectra]

Originally Posted by switchblade

From what I've seen of the Mega Drive, only one game was ever produced on that system to use a custom chip inside the cartridge. That was Virtua Racing with that SVP chip. Unfortunately, putting special chips inside cartridges only increases the cost and complexity of the cart.

Last time I checked, Virtua Racing for Mega Drive was being sold for USD $100 (probably around £60-65 when released in 1994); the most expensive Mega Drive game ever sold.

I also think Virtua Racing was the only game that used the SVP chip, I always wondered in the case of the Megadrive if it would handle Microprose's Grand Prix as well as the Amiga does. I think the Amiga did a very good job of handling that title the first time I played it.

[Adropac2]

I liked both my A500 and my time playing MD at the time for different reasons. MD did arcade stuff effortlessly with games such as Gunstar Heroes clearly showing this. Amiga had some still gorgeous games though that had their own charm. It was when Amiga games tried to be like console games that they suffered more in their comparison- and they were usually inferior to play anyway

The games i really like however on Amiga are normally things you just wont get on a MD like NSP or Virus and F18 Interceptor. It wasn't obviously as powerful grunt wise for throwing loads of stuff around but Amiga games could still be bloody impressive and even better on the eye

[mikele]

Originally Posted by Adropac2

I liked both my A500 and my time playing MD at the time for different reasons. MD did arcade stuff effortlessly with games such as Gunstar Heroes clearly showing this. Amiga had some still gorgeous games though that had their own charm. It was when Amiga games tried to be like console games that they suffered more in their comparison- and they were usually inferior to play anyway

true! Had A600 and MD+MCD at the same time too. I would never dump any of them in favour for second one, together they made a complete gaming experience. While MD excelled in arcade games, Amiga delievered solid fun with strategy/RPG/adventure titles like Cannon Fodder, Syndicate, Monkey Island, Elvira and such. It would be boring to own MD only.

[lordofchaos]

Yep No lucas adventures on the Mega Drive Could not live without Monkey Island

[khph_re]

Originally Posted by mikele

there's one cute game on MegaDrive which has that Amiga feeling. It's Flink, which on Amiga platform was released for CD32 only. Another evidence that MD could handle games that were not possible on A500.

Besides I'd risk statement that MD+MegaCD could crunch quite a data - take a look at smooth scaling and rotation in AH3 Thunderstrike (Thunderhawk in Europe), Jaguar XJ 220 or Batman Return's driving/flying levels, which make CD32's performance look pale. Go compare Thunderstrike with Gunship 2000

Flink was restricted to CD/cartridge due to data constrains, not chipset inability. The A500 would manage a version of flink if it had a CD drive, or lots of HDD space to store it on. A CDTV could probably do it.

Once you add the megaCD to the equation you are also adding a extra 12.5mhz 68k, 512k of ram, and a new graphics processor...so not a megadrive at all anymore.

[_ThEcRoW]

If i remember correctly, Jay Miner envisioned the Amiga as a killer videogame oriented machine...at it was until the arrive of 16bit consoles.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Simple: Amigas are general purpose machines and don't have a chipset that specializes in games. Console chipsets are almost always optimized for gaming purposes.

[khph_re]

Originally Posted by _ThEcRoW

If i remember correctly, Jay Miner envisioned the Amiga as a killer videogame oriented machine...at it was until the arrive of 16bit consoles.

It still was after their release, as well as tackling game types on those platforms, it also tackled a host of other game genre's they didn't have.

I loved playing midwinter, star glider II, carrier command, X-com, legends of valour, monkey island etc, all of which my console friends missed out on.

While it may not of been able to throw as many sprites about, it was better for 3D and more tactical gameplay.

[fishyfish]

Ive noticed some people saying the megadrive was better "cos on amiga it needed blahblah ram".
Those using that "logic" might want to rethink that stance seeing how *every single* megadrive effectively gives the machine "x" amount of additional ram. 8/16/32mbit games are pretty common. Id love to see some amiga games that assume an extra 1MB/2MB/4MB to work with.

[Adropac2]

I don't see this mentioned much but atmosphere is such a huge part of why we enjoy these machines and i'd argue that Amiga had the best of all machines here. Most Amiga games were crisp, lovely and vibrant as opposed to what can only be described as gloomy MD visuals. There was something on each of the systems to be envious about if you didn't own one, but the consoles were where you went if you wanted to play the best of arcade style games. I sold several Snes and Megadrives though but not once ever even had a thought of selling my Amiga- in truth maybe because games cost me 50p a disk

It's a shame though i think for some people that missed out on other machines. Oblivious to what they're missing out on means it's not any bother of course, but oh how they would kick themselves

[Adropac2]

Originally Posted by fishyfish

Ive noticed some people saying the megadrive was better "cos on amiga it needed blahblah ram".
Those using that "logic" might want to rethink that stance seeing how *every single* megadrive effectively gives the machine "x" amount of additional ram. 8/16/32mbit games are pretty common. Id love to see some amiga games that assume an extra 1MB/2MB/4MB to work with.

Isn't that just storage though what you refer to, being that's what the cartridge is for. It still has to load it in and out of a probably small internal ram. And while i know more actual memory in certain situations can allow for performace increase, would it honestly help Amiga if the chip memory gained some here- 1mb was quite generous as it was i think