H-scroll Amiga shmups that came closest to 1985 Gradius arcade?

[ImmortalA1000]

I put Gradius as the acid test as it's the first 'awesome' 68000 based Shmup to hit the arcades in 1985 and it is a superlative Konami development.

Necronom is a game I had forgotten about and due to issues with my Gotek I can't play it on real hardware but it's not bad looking at YT longplay vids. No miraculous coding but it does make use of the Amiga well and it is influenced by all sorts of games including Nemesis/Gradius. Also has some really awesome funky tracks to blast away to and includes music + SFX (the tunes are in Oktalyser format so I presume there is over 4 channel sound in the game engine which is praise worthy alone).

[Jobbo]

https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=88028

This came quite close I would say.

[jotd]

In terms of closeness I don't think it's beatable no.

[ImmortalA1000]

Originally Posted by Jobbo

https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=88028

This came quite close I would say.

Nostalgia + Memories = back in the day

[ImmortalA1000]

Originally Posted by jotd

In terms of closeness I don't think it's beatable no.

Tinyus is a dream conversion for A500 class Amigas so technically it's not an issue, it's a compromise and artistic issue I would say. Salamander has parallax on level 1 which is tough to do in 15 colour dual playfield mode artistically but Gradius is mostly parallax starfields behind the backgrounds so you might as well use sprites for the starfield and do the rest as an efficient 32 colour + copperlist engine which is within the realms of 80s/90s game dev tools and knowledge.

It's just really a thread looking for remotely arcade quality, including gameplay, Amiga H-scroll shmups for people who did play stuff like Gradius all Summer of 1986 I guess.

There was another game that sort of reminds me of the C64 game Scorpius, can't remember the name but it was aquatic themed and that one did have parallax scrolling too, possibly with you controlling a submarine. It's not Fantastic Voyage btw.

[gimbal]

I don't exactly know what the criteria are here. When does a horizontal smup qualify as "close to Gradius Arcade" ?

[DanScott]

Originally Posted by gimbal

When does a horizontal smup qualify as "close to Gradius Arcade" ?

Obviously, a near perfect port isn't close enough

Necronom looks dreadful, almost PD quality graphics right there...

[TCD]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

There was another game that sort of reminds me of the C64 game Scorpius, can't remember the name but it was aquatic themed and that one did have parallax scrolling too, possibly with you controlling a submarine. It's not Fantastic Voyage btw.

Don't think it has parallax, but is it X-Out?

[jotd]

I don't see where this thread is going but you can try R-Type

[lionagony]

>It's just really a thread looking for remotely arcade quality, including >gameplay, Amiga H-scroll shmups for people who did play stuff like Gradius all >Summer of 1986 I guess.

After playing Mega Typhoon (vertical) last night for the first time and being blown away by it I was reading an old EAB thread on it and they mentioned Blastar as one of the Amiga's best technical achievements with shmups. It doesn't start off horizontal but it has some very impressive horizontal levels later on. Here's the longplay [ Show youtube player ]

I also really like Carcharodon and some lesser known ones that have good points are Lethal Zone, Starush, Saint Dragon and Suburban Commando.

[Master484]

Lethal Zone is indeed one of the best examples of dual playfield use in a shmup.

[ Show youtube player ]

Only 7+8 colors, but looks great, runs at 50 FPS, and feels very console/arcade like thanks to the parallax.

Necronom also uses dual playfield and runs at 50 FPS. But instead of having two scrolling layers, it uses the back playfield for the level, and the front playfield for moving objects. This can increase drawing speed because you don't have to repair the background every frame.

[Megalomaniac]

You're going to need to be more specific. Do Apidya, Project-X, Blood Money and Disposable Hero fall short of 'arcade quality' and if so in what ways? What are the 'compromise and artistic issues' with Tinyus (which I haven't played)?

[sokolovic]

And what is the limit of "back in the days" ? Why does the fact that Tinyus being made recently disqualifies it a a decent Gradius on the Amiga ? Making a game running on a 1985 hardware isn't enough "nostalgia+ memories " ?

[jotd]

Z-Out

[ImmortalA1000]

Originally Posted by gimbal

I don't exactly know what the criteria are here. When does a horizontal smup qualify as "close to Gradius Arcade" ?

Well ideally it's a thread for shmup fans of the mid-late 80s arcade that have played Gradius, at least in MAME. If you've not played things like Gradius or Vulcan Venture they it's not really going to make much sense.

I know some h-scroll games but not all, not by a long shot. Necronom appears to be made by fans of Gradius, and a few others of that early 68000 based arcade era. It's unlikely anybody from my generation is not going to have played Gradius/Nemesis in the arcade if they like shooters, and if they're here I assume many had an OCS Amiga too.

[ImmortalA1000]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

And what is the limit of "back in the days" ? Why does the fact that Tinyus being made recently disqualifies it a a decent Gradius on the Amiga ? Making a game running on a 1985 hardware isn't enough "nostalgia+ memories " ?

Because I am talking about commercial games in the past when Amiga was a commercially viable format which h-scroll shmups did people play on their A500 that they thought were of 'Gradius quality' I am not talking about 'Can the Amiga do a decent conversion of Gradius" ..... etc etc.

I suppose R-Type is an easy answer, but somebody else designed that game and Rainbow Arts had to copy it.

[ImmortalA1000]

Originally Posted by Master484

Lethal Zone is indeed one of the best examples of dual playfield use in a shmup.

[ Show youtube player ]

Only 7+8 colors, but looks great, runs at 50 FPS, and feels very console/arcade like thanks to the parallax.

Necronom also uses dual playfield and runs at 50 FPS. But instead of having two scrolling layers, it uses the back playfield for the level, and the front playfield for moving objects. This can increase drawing speed because you don't have to repair the background every frame.

That game looks interesting.

I never knew Necronom was dual playfield, interesting way to maximise chipset bandwidth efficiency without the hassle blind blits on a 5 bitplane screen creates.

Hopefully my Gotek troubles will be sorted soon enough and I can actually check out some games on my A1000 with a Zipstik, looking at YT vids on a modern HD display isn't the best way to pick these things. Because I had all the usual 16bit consoles (no NeoGeo) I didn't really buy Amiga shmups so it's not really an area I know about, plus all the pirate disk collections that came bundled with various machines are not really the sort of games I would play so Agony is one of the few I have that work (graphics are too big for the play area IMO and I nearly longplayed it on my second go with no cheats).

[ImmortalA1000]

The game like C64 Scorpius I was thinking of is called Nucleus, handily it's easy to list just H-scroll shmups on lemon, but the graphics seem large for the play area.

Probably try them all if I had a WHDload system set up. Really need to get a CF adaptor for my 2mb A600.

[gimbal]

I am going to predict that by the time this thread hits around page 3, people will start listing just any horizontal shoot em ups that pop into their heads

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

Because I am talking about commercial games in the past when Amiga was a commercially viable format which h-scroll shmups did people play on their A500 that they thought were of 'Gradius quality' I am not talking about 'Can the Amiga do a decent conversion of Gradius" ..... etc etc.

Well that's wasn't very clear by reading your OP.