Battle of the Ports

[Leon Retro]

No no no no! The Mega Drive does not have a joke of a sound chip. .

Yeah, it's not a joke. The sound chip demands a skilled musician who's using the right sound engine, so produces great things in the right hands. There are plenty of games that show off how nice the chip can sound. When it comes to well-known MD games with great music, I think the Sonic games have top quality music - and Castle of Illusion has really haunting tunes.

And as you say, Western(maybe just American?) devs used(why???) a very dodgy sound engine that made music sound like a nightmare.

C'Mon that's not really fair . The MD port was done by like a team of 10 or more In-House staff with full access to the Arcade code, the Arcade team (in those days of SEGA the Arcade staff were on the same floor as the consumer staff) and the best tools SEGA could provide the console team with , unlike the Amiga port done by a handful of staff playing the Arcade in the office (if they were lucky) no access to the Arcade team and could dream on with getting access to the source code.

No, TA, I'm just talking about colours on the screen. Alien Storm looks horrible on the Amiga because of the very limited colours that just don't deliver the arcade look; whereas the Mega Drive version of Alien Storm is clearly displaying far more colours and looks much closer to the coin-op.

It's simple really - take the arcade graphics and downscale the colours to 32 or 64 and see which looks better. Amiga arcade ports were never going to look really authentic because of the 32 colours on screen. So when people saw the Mega Drive and thought the arcade ports looked more authentic, part of that was down to the 64(or thereabouts) colours on the screen.

But, of course, there is more to a port than just colours, but I've focused on that just to illustrate an important difference between the Amiga 500 and the Mega Drive. I won't dispute that the skill of the developer also plays a major part in any arcade port to any system.

[Team Andromeda]

Yeah, it's not a joke.

It was a joke to have just one channel for sample sound and any skilled musician and sound programmers can work wonders in making the most limited sound system sound decent some times. I can list can number of MD tunes I like some really good ones, nothing on the MD comes close the classic Tunes like the ones found in Axelay, Star Fox, F-Zero, Contra III, Super T-Type never mind Super Metroid (which puts most games made today to shame for sound and atmosphere). Christ the lack sound sample channels meant the likes of Speed Ball II, Xexon II sounded better on the Amiga.

No, TA, I'm just talking about colours on the screen. Alien Storm looks horrible on the Amiga because of the very limited colours that just don't deliver the arcade look; whereas the Mega Drive version of Alien Storm is clearly displaying far more colours and looks much closer to the coin-op.

Tba the game looks so crap because it made by Tiertx - Even MD games made by them looked utter pants. Just Play Strider II, Super Kick Off, Olympic Gold Barcelona on the MD.

[Baseley09]

Some people like myself dont get on with every soundtrack sounding like a synthesised symphony on the SFC, sure there are great soundtracks (Mario World, Zelda, Valis IV) but I prefer the crunch zang of the Megadrive any day.

[CMcK]

The often used GEMS sound engine for the Megadrive wasn't great but in the right hands the YM2612 produces lovely clear sound with good bass sounds. Typical Sega though they didn't bother to wire the sound chip up properly to the Z80 and made it harder to use the sample channel.
FM+PSG was proabably used in the MD to save cart space versus sample based audio. When the MD was at the planning stages games came on 1 or 2 Mbit carts. And arcade developers had plenty of experience of FM soundchips.
For some good examples of the MD strutting its audio stuff listen to the likes of Vapour Trail, Thunderforce IV, Streets of Rage series, Mega Turrican and look on Soundcloud for the Project Y sampler.

The sample based sound hardware in the SFC requires a lot more cart space and has nasty filtering to hide the low quality samples used. That was proabably fine for a console hooked up to a tinny TV speaker but connect your SFC to a hi-fi and you'll wonder why you never noticed everything is so muffled.

[Team Andromeda]

For some good examples of the MD strutting its audio stuff listen to the likes of Vapour Trail, Thunderforce IV, Streets of Rage series, Mega Turrican and look on Soundcloud for the Project Y sampler.

Vapiour trail does sound awesome as does any game by Yuzo at the time, but still think the best sounding Snes games sounded better (if that makes any sense) .

That was proabably fine for a console hooked up to a tinny TV speaker but connect your SFC to a hi-fi and you'll wonder why you never noticed everything is so muffled.

The Snes sounded so good it made me want to set it up to my then Hi-FI and granted so did the Mega CD (Core and Spencer nielsen music scores were utterly fantasic) . You've got a point on the samples, but back then I really wasn't used to accustom to high quality samples for home gaming . Nothing on the MD really could beat these sort of tunes

[Protocol Penguin]

Amiga resolution: 320x200[NTSC] or 320x256[Pal]

Capcom CPS-1: 384x224

Mega Drive: 320x224

This shows that the Amiga has the same sort of resolution as other 16-bit hardware of the time. It also has hardware scrolling, which was vitally important for 2D games. The only bad point of the Amiga is in its standard, most efficient graphics mode, it only displays 32 colours. So half the colours a Mega Drive delivers - and far fewer than Capcom's CPS-1.

There are plenty of original games that show off the Amiga hardware and prove that arcade ports were often badly made. Shadow of the Beast was made to show off the hardware and it does that in spectacular fashion, despite the gameplay being quite weak. A 2D action game called Lionheart released in 1992, really pushed the A500 tech.

If you look at Amiga arcade ports such as The New Zealand Story & Rainbow Islands, they show that the Amiga could handle arcade games of the day. Golden Axe is quite impressive on the Amiga, but I think it could have been even better. It's just a sad fact that development standards tended to be pretty low back then, so with not many skilled graphics artists and programmers, a lot of Amiga games, especially arcade ports, were quite poor.

The Amiga just couldn't hack it with full-screen, smooth 50 or 60Hz gameplay. I was an Amiga owner in the old days, but it became rapidly obvious that the Mega Drive, Super NES and PC Engine utterly outclassed it as a machine capable of throwing sprites around at a good pace without huge borders on the screen. Even the 'good' arcade conversions on the Amiga have small gameplay windows, aren't too great in terms of decent frame rates, and so on. I find it utterly puzzling how many ex- (current?) Amiga owners are so unrealistic about the limitations of the format and make wild claims about the accuracy of the arcade conversions available for the computer.

[nakamura]

SFC audio is just like the MD, a **** developer makes it sound ****. A great one makes it sound amazing.

[Team Andromeda]

SFC audio is just like the MD, a **** developer makes it sound ****. A great one makes it sound amazing.

Not always .. Hardware limitations will play their part too . Since some many here are saying that Capcom, Konami were the best developers in the 16 bit days . Answer me this nak...which version of SF II do you think sounds the best the MD or the Snes version, which version of Castlevania sounds the best.. The MD or the Snes version , which version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Tournament Fighters sounds the best .. The MD or Snes version ?

[nakamura]

Different topic that though.

[SUMIRE]

I think the best music on these 16bit consoles was on the Megadrive. Nothing tops Thunderforce 2&3 and The Revenge of Shinobi.

[Team Andromeda]

Different topic that though.

Fair enough

[Yakumo]

Time for a new game!

[Mayhem]

Considering there were only seven conversions, I was a bit surprised to see how long the video was... what happened after the 13:32 point?

I'm glad you didn't hold back with the C64 version, because it IS one of the worst conversions ever for the system

[Yakumo]

Considering there were only seven conversions, I was a bit surprised to see how long the video was... what happened after the 13:32 point?

I'm glad you didn't hold back with the C64 version, because it IS one of the worst conversions ever for the system

There was an error with the encoding clock so the software went and added an extra 20 odd minutes to the video. I didn't notice until I'd uploaded the video.

[Team Andromeda]

Oh dear poor old C64 lol :P