Battle of the Ports

[Leon Retro]

I bought Amiga OutRun. On pirate. And I wanted my money back. The Speccy version looked more faithful to the arcade.

I payed ?19.99 for Chase HQ and was gutted. I expected a reasonable, if not good conversion. But it was terrible.

Right mixed bag, Amiga conversions.

Yeah, it was a huge bag of rubbish, but there were gems to be found amongst the junk. One of the most annoying aspects of Amiga gaming was knowing what the machine was capable of, then getting your hopes up for conversions, only to be let down.

I remember thinking the speech in RoboCop was cool, but it wasn't a good conversion. The sprites were just too small. Looking back now, I guess it was an ST port? At least I was happy with The New Zealand Story & Rainbow Islands.

[Jaz]

All the cutesy platformer games were decent on Amiga Rodland, Toki etc.

[Asura]

I'd say a lot of Amiga games(especially arcade ports) were disappointing. Lots of conversions weren't, for one reason or another, very professionally made, It's a shame, because there are examples of what the Amiga is capable of in the right hands.

If Battle of the Ports has proved anything, it's that the striving for better quality screenshots at the expense of most other things in-game isn't a new phenomenon; it's a verifiable trend.

For the vast majority of titles, if you were to ask a competent Amiga developer to strip back a title to its core elements, and remake it properly for the machine, you would always end up with something better - but it might not have looked enough like the original to sell well.

You can see this in (for example) the Body Blows series, when stacked against Street Fighter II on the Amiga. No-one would pretend that Body Blows is a better game, but it's a very playable version of a reasonable game as opposed to a crap conversion of a better one.

[JazzFunk]

The screenshot thing is true. I've harked on about Black Tiger a few posts back and in Amiga screenshots it looks pretty great...but iirc the frame rate was well choppy. SF2 looks semi-decent in Amiga screenshots...but upon playing the game...WTF?!!! What. The. Funk....?!!!

Body Blows though...uh god. Never liked it. Team 17 were really good at shiny and metallic textures though. Them and the Bitmap Bros.

[JazzFunk]

And lol at Roland Rat, Leon. Was just thinking about him the other day.

[Leon Retro]

All the cutesy platformer games were decent on Amiga Rodland, Toki etc.

Yeah, Rodland is really nice. The Amiga has some good ports of cutesy platformers. The original PC Kid/Bonk was ported as B.C. Kid and is top quality.

For the vast majority of titles, if you were to ask a competent Amiga developer to strip back a title to its core elements, and remake it properly for the machine, you would always end up with something better - but it might not have looked enough like the original to sell well.

Yeah, that would be a professional way of doing a port. I think that's how the mature, modern industry would do things, but the industry was young back then, so people often did things badly. Sometimes it wasn't their fault, as Japanese publishers often didn't help with the conversion process.

If you look at good arcade ports on consoles, it's obvious that the developers recognised the host machine's strengths and weaknesses and adapted the game accordingly. With the Amiga, it was often obvious that the developer either didn't recognise the Amiga's potential, or weren't copetent enough to take advantage of it. So many ports were sold on the name - rather than quality. It was very negative business.

Chase HQ, for example, looks terrible. Why is the car sprite tiny? There is no reason why the Amiga couldn't have run a reasonably authentic port.

I

You can see this in (for example) the Body Blows series, when stacked against Street Fighter II on the Amiga. No-one would pretend that Body Blows is a better game, but it's a very playable version of a reasonable game as opposed to a crap conversion of a better one.

I can appreciate what you mean. It's better to have a game designed for the host hardware that runs well, rather than an arcade port that runs poorly.

With Street Fighter 2, I think a top developer could have done a better job. It was just another case of a port not taking full advantage of the Amiga, or the developer not being clever enough to work around the weaknesses, and therefore letting people down. It's one reason why so many people turned to consoles.

And lol at Roland Rat, Leon. Was just thinking about him the other day.

Yeahhhhhh!

[Yakumo]

Time for another Battle of the Ports. Chuka Taisen / Cloud Master

[Jaz]

Haven't watch this yet but I think there is a version on Wii of all things??

[QualityChimp]

It's funny that I mentioned Cloud Master just the other day as a game that didn't follow shmup convention by not having a spaceship.

It's a fun game!

[SUMIRE]

Haven't watch this yet but I think there is a version on Wii of all things??

It is mentioned.

[Solar]

The devs who made this, must have worked on Insector X.

[Yakumo]

Haven't watch this yet but I think there is a version on Wii of all things??

The Wii is a sequel and not featured I this video. It's crap too as it looks like a low animated flash game plus ruined with stupid motion controls that can't be switched off. So unless you can keep the Wii remote 100% straight the game scrolls faster or slower and has nasty ripples in the background graphics due to the image tilting.

[samanosuke]

I can appreciate what you mean. It's better to have a game designed for the host hardware that runs well, rather than an arcade port that runs poorly.

Case in point: Super Street Fighter 2/Turbo for the Amiga. SSF2T looks like the arcade version in still screenshots but plays like arse, SSF2 looks like arse but actually plays like the arcade version.

[Leon Retro]

Case in point: Super Street Fighter 2/Turbo for the Amiga. SSF2T looks like the arcade version in still screenshots but plays like arse, SSF2 looks like arse but actually plays like the arcade version.

I haven't played those games on the Amiga, but it sounds like Turbo asks too much of the hardware and runs poorly, and SSF2 was developed with gameplay over graphics in mind. Putting graphics before frame rate is always the wrong option.

[nakamura]

I'm not really convinced that Body Blows plays well!