Which action games show the ST in its best light?

[hwrd]

On 9/19/2022 at 1:06 PM, Megalomaniac said:

If we're brutally honest, the ST was less suited to pure action games than the Amiga.

 

I would say horizontal scrollers perhaps.

Otherwise, I will be brutally honest, and disagree with the generalization.

🙂

[masteries]

Do not forget the game GODS,

 

Really depends on the development team behind the game, and the available development time; there are excellent action games for plain ST, and annoying action games.

 

As well, bad performance games for both 16 bits computers, such OutRun and Final Fight.

 

 

[Zogging Hell]

1 hour ago, masteries said:

As well, bad performance games for both 16 bits computers, such OutRun and Final Fight.

 

That scrolling in Final Fight completely ruins it, there are a few others that have that jerky 16 pixel scrolling that is a massive detriment, TMNT The Arcade Game springs to mind. I'd rather they done just had flip screen tbh, although preferably neither.

[Megalomaniac]

Development time and developer skill may be factors, but then Shadow of the Beast was released a year after the Amiga version (though I doubt they spent a whole year painstakingly working on it) and the borderline-unplayable ST version of Robocod was by Steve Bak (RIP), who did some good stuff before that. Amiga OutRun is quite a rare case in that it was a hopeless big-name conversion despite being developed entirely separately from the ST version (it is slightly less crap on the Amiga, but any of the Lotuses trounce it on either system. It's sad that OutRun got good reviews at the time on both systems, though I guess there was nothing really good to compare it to). Looks like Final Fight was pretty much a simultaneous multi-format release for 8-bit and 16-bit computers, so I assume that little special effort was put into the Amiga version.

Edited October 11, 2022 by Megalomaniac

[MrTrust]

Wow, even in a thread like this, Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters remains obscure.

 

Good game, and since it's never been ported to any modern system so far as I know, the ST is as good a place as any to play it other then the arcade.

[JamesWD]

Oids and Blood Money

[Lostdragon]

On 10/11/2022 at 10:03 AM, Megalomaniac said:

Development time and developer skill may be factors, but then Shadow of the Beast was released a year after the Amiga version (though I doubt they spent a whole year painstakingly working on it) and the borderline-unplayable ST version of Robocod was by Steve Bak (RIP), who did some good stuff before that. Amiga OutRun is quite a rare case in that it was a hopeless big-name conversion despite being developed entirely separately from the ST version (it is slightly less crap on the Amiga, but any of the Lotuses trounce it on either system. It's sad that OutRun got good reviews at the time on both systems, though I guess there was nothing really good to compare it to). Looks like Final Fight was pretty much a simultaneous multi-format release for 8-bit and 16-bit computers, so I assume that little special effort was put into the Amiga version.

The issues facing conversions of both Final Fight and Outrun on the ST and Amiga, go beyond just the obvious hardware limitations, your talking:

 

 

 

Small teams (OutRun was: Ian Morrison
Alan Grier (as Freddy) and   David Whittaker).

 

 

Commercial deadlines (US Gold wanted Final Fight done in 4-6 months).

 

 

The majority of publisher budget gone on advertising (US Gold refused to hire musicians to compose music for Final Fight apparently).

 

And people on the teams not being fans of the subject material (Aplin didn't like Final Fight). 

 

 

 

 

 

With Robocod, i remember Chris Sorrell really tearing into the ST and Amiga hardware at times didn't sound like he enjoyed working with either platform. that much and was glad to hand the ST conversion to Steve Bak (RIP). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 12, 2022 by Lostdragon

[oky2000]

Leander is a very impressive scrolling game on the ST, real 'how did they do that' moment when you check out the game for the first time on the ST. Possibly one of the best arcade style games on the system.

 

Time Bandits (Microdeal) was an early ST game (1986) I liked, the scrolling isn't too bad and the graphics no more tiny than Gauntlet II (which with a 4 player adaptor is pretty cool on the ST too).

[Christos]

Captain Dynamo, looks, plays and sounds great.

Chronicles of Omega, while not a good game by any stress of the imagination, scrolls and plays smoothly enough.

Jim Power, just don't put it against the Amiga, it really loses a lot in the graphics department, but I believe it plays extremely similar.

Metro Cross, runs at 50/60fps most of the time.

Navy Moves/Arctic moves, look great and are kind of smooth.

Spellfire the Sorceror, though it plays in a box, it's cool with nice parallax.

Ghost Battle, great graphics, smooth scrolling though the action is kind of slow.

Stormlord, good scrolling, beautiful graphics. Not my kind of game.

Flying shark, is really well made.

Lethal Xcess, nothing more to say really.

Fernandez must die, is a good commando clone. Runs well enough.

P47, though some people might have an objection about the scrolling, it's a really great game.

Critical Mass, it's a non commercial game that is one of my personal favourites. It features smooth parallax scrolling and it's quite different from most ST games. Kind of repetitive though.

Frantick, another non commercial game. This is like a 2d Tempest. I love it.

 

Just a small list for now. Maybe I'll get back to it.

[Lostdragon]

15 hours ago, Christos said:

 

Chronicles of Omega, while not a good game by any stress of the imagination, scrolls and plays smoothly enough.

 

Originally intend for the Atari 7800 under name Chronicles Of Cute, betrays it's 8-Bit Origins a little too much for my tastes. 

 

 

15 hours ago, Christos said:

 

Ghost Battle, great graphics, smooth scrolling though the action is kind of slow.

 

Development team trying to do their take on Ghosts N Goblins, technically fine, though as you say, game itself too slow paced 

 

 

15 hours ago, Christos said:

 

Fernandez must die, is a good commando clone. Runs well enough.

 

One of Tony Crowther's more obscure titles, great to see it mentioned. 

 

 

 

[oky2000]

Ghosts n Goblins on the ST was absolutely fine though, really couldn't have asked for any better, ditto with Commando. Great graphics, great scrolling, not too horrible audio and great arcade game designs that beat all westerner's attempt to rip them off 

 

The way I look at it, at one point the 520STFM went down to about £280 via mail order (early 1988?) before it had to go back up to £399.99 RRP due to some DRAM supply problems (the same one that forced Amstrad to can its pathetic Amiga 500/ST Amstrad PC200 rival based on a CGA + beeper sound 8086 CPU that looked like it was designed using planks of wood to mimic the BBC Micro look lol)

 

I can't actually remember if the £299.99 RRP 520STFM price drop happened before or simultaneously with the A500 £499.99 to £399.99 price drop. Have to do a bit more digging.

[Megalomaniac]

I think the price increase coincided with the launch of the Power Pack with all those games included (and a switch to the internal drive being double-sided) which meant that, although I think you could get an A500 for the same price as a 520STFM, the ST still worked out cheaper (and at that time the ST had far more games and other software, and virtually no Amiga games before 1989 made use of its hardware, they were usually identical on both systems) so it still would have been a brave call to choose an Amiga over an ST.

[Chinese Cake]

On 9/19/2022 at 12:06 PM, Megalomaniac said:

If we're brutally honest, the ST was less suited to pure action games than the Amiga. When you look through lists of the most fabled Amiga action games, the ST version is normally noticeably inferior in terms of sound, scrolling and overall 'feel', if there was one. Lists of the best ST games seem to be dominated either by games with no 'action' such as Monkey Island, Dungeon Master and Civilization, or pure 3D games where the ST's slightly faster processor outweighed those issues, such as Stunt Car Racer or Frontier. Which games would people suggest to counter this perception?

 

I find excluding 3D actions games to be odd, because that was the future more prominent and advanced (Dynamix), less commodity developers (team 17) were aiming for.

 

In 2D action games, the ST wouldn't compete eve if it added better support for sprites because AMIGA was build for 2D action games from the start with custom hardware supporting it. There are some 2D action games better on the ST, but most from what I know are pseudo 3D (other than  exclusives like Dungeon master etc.) and I don't think that's a coincidence. 

 

 

 

Edited October 24, 2022 by Chinese Cake

[Megalomaniac]

3D didn't take over from 2D as the main way of presenting action games for a decade after the ST launched - the Megadrive had a faster processor than the ST (potentially ideal for 3D) but was still dominated by 2D games. For perspective, the ST's release date was roughly halfway between the VCS and the Playstation. So, 2D performance was the bigger deal for a 'generation four' system. The ST played a big part in advancing early 3D with games like Starglider and Midwinter, but nobody tried 3D platformers in that era. And the less said about the attempts at 3D football games on the 16-bits the better.

[Zogging Hell]

3 hours ago, Megalomaniac said:

3D didn't take over from 2D as the main way of presenting action games for a decade after the ST launched - the Megadrive had a faster processor than the ST (potentially ideal for 3D) but was still dominated by 2D games. For perspective, the ST's release date was roughly halfway between the VCS and the Playstation. So, 2D performance was the bigger deal for a 'generation four' system. The ST played a big part in advancing early 3D with games like Starglider and Midwinter, but nobody tried 3D platformers in that era. And the less said about the attempts at 3D football games on the 16-bits the better.

I think actually the Megadrive's CPU runs at a slower clock than the STs (yep it is 7.61 to the STs 8mhz - not sure if that is changed with NTSC/ PAL timings), although the other gubbins in the Megadrive can help a bit with some of the presentation, and you don't have the drain of the soundchip if you try and do fancy stuff. I could have sworn there was a relatively unknown title that was a 3D platformer of sorts (obviously no Super Mario 3D), but I can't remember the name or much about it so might be mistaken.

I quite enjoyed 'I play 3D soccer' at the time (even if it was only the pitch in 3D), it was not much worse than all the other awful 2D soccer titles on the ST for sure!

[Megalomaniac]

I should have said 'more processing power than the ST', but I think the point still stands. The Megadrive usually outperformed the Amiga for platformers that were on both (compare Cool Spot, Global Gladiators, and Robocod to an extent), anyway.

[zzip]

4 hours ago, Megalomaniac said:

3D didn't take over from 2D as the main way of presenting action games for a decade after the ST launched - the Megadrive had a faster processor than the ST (potentially ideal for 3D) but was still dominated by 2D games. For perspective, the ST's release date was roughly halfway between the VCS and the Playstation. So, 2D performance was the bigger deal for a 'generation four' system. The ST played a big part in advancing early 3D with games like Starglider and Midwinter, but nobody tried 3D platformers in that era. And the less said about the attempts at 3D football games on the 16-bits the better.

Yeah in the ST days, 3D games were more a curiosity than anything.   I enjoyed Star Glider II quite a bit, but at the same time, I didn't expect or even want all games to be like that.

 

In fact, one thing I resented in the PC era was when they took a perfectly good 2D/Isometric game franchise and released the next entry in 3D just because..    The game usually looked worse (blobby 3D objects not rendered in high detail) or performed badly (you'd have to do a pricey 3D hardware upgrade to play games that used to run fine).   This happened to Rollercoaster Tycoon 3,  Sims 2, the LucasArts adventure games (specifically Grim Fandango and Monkey Island 4)

[Lostdragon]

22 hours ago, Zogging Hell said:

I think actually the Megadrive's CPU runs at a slower clock than the STs (yep it is 7.61 to the STs 8mhz - not sure if that is changed with NTSC/ PAL timings), although the other gubbins in the Megadrive can help a bit with some of the presentation, and you don't have the drain of the soundchip if you try and do fancy stuff. I could have sworn there was a relatively unknown title that was a 3D platformer of sorts (obviously no Super Mario 3D), but I can't remember the name or much about it so might be mistaken.

I quite enjoyed 'I play 3D soccer' at the time (even if it was only the pitch in 3D), it was not much worse than all the other awful 2D soccer titles on the ST for sure!

Coders used the Z80 in MD to help with 3D titles like F-22, Blockout and LHX Attack Chopper, think it was also used in 2D Mega Turrican.. 

 

It was an ability Sega didn't like devs using as it was rumoured they were considering releasing a cheaper MD without the Z80 present and so certain games wouldn't work. 

 

 

Would you be thinking of Alpha Waves as the ST 3D Platformer? 

 

 

 

Edited October 26, 2022 by Lostdragon

[Zogging Hell]

1 hour ago, Lostdragon said:

Coders used the Z80 in MD to help with 3D titles like F-22, Blockout and LHX Attack Chopper, think it was also used in 2D Mega Turrican.. 

 

It was an ability Sega didn't like devs using as it was rumoured they were considering releasing a cheaper MD without the Z80 present and so certain games wouldn't work. 

 

 

Would you be thinking of Alpha Waves as the ST 3D Platformer? 

 

 

 

Yep that is the blighter knew it was a simple affair, you have the memory of a elephant sir! Yep totally with you on the Z80, it does give the Megadrive a slight edge if used concurrently, although I imagine in practise it is very slight edge

[Lostdragon]

12 minutes ago, Zogging Hell said:

Yep that is the blighter knew it was a simple affair, you have the memory of a elephant sir! Yep totally with you on the Z80, it does give the Megadrive a slight edge if used concurrently, although I imagine in practise it is very slight edge

😂 Your far too kind.

 

Glad to hear i picked the right title. 

 

Had a brief chat with a MD coder who used the Z80 on 3D titles a few years back, we didn't go into much detail, more a confirmation he did use it to assist. 

 

Would of liked to of seen interviews with team behind conversions of things like Corporation (Cybercop) to see how they got the best results from the MD hardware. 

[oky2000]

On 10/11/2022 at 2:24 AM, hwrd said:

 

I would say horizontal scrollers perhaps.

Otherwise, I will be brutally honest, and disagree with the generalization.

🙂

Depends what kind of games we are talking about. If your interest lied in the unique 16bit games that used filled polygons then the 12.5% faster CPU of the ST was more than capable of taking up the slack with software sample playback, as F1 or Star Wars arcade by Domark perfectly proves. Ditto for other games that were really only possible once the 16 bit home computers appeared, like Dungeon Master which also uses software samples. 

 

For bitmap based arcade games there is no fairer comparison than Lotus II, it was developed with respect for the consumer and the hardware for both platforms. That is your difference for non horizontal scrolling game. The framerate difference is nowhere near what you would expect looking at a spec sheet. The only real difference was the YM2149 sound usually, Batman the Movie being a classic example. 

 

The rest of it comes down to which exclusives you really had to have I would say. The actual reality is most of the time both machines got a crap deal as far as complex 16bit arcade conversions go.

[oky2000]

On 10/25/2022 at 5:24 PM, Megalomaniac said:

I should have said 'more processing power than the ST', but I think the point still stands. The Megadrive usually outperformed the Amiga for platformers that were on both (compare Cool Spot, Global Gladiators, and Robocod to an extent), anyway.

Turrican III is the only one I can think of where both MD+Amiga versions were coded with talent off the top of my head but even so the Amiga dual playfield parallax hardware at 15 colours total falls way short of the 61 colour quad parallax the Megadrive handles without breaking a sweat. Lotus II is better on Amiga than Megadrive but I have no idea how talented the Megadrive coder was, it could be an unfair comparison. 

 

It's also extremely difficult to write bad code for powerful sprite based systems but very easy to write inefficient blitter routines to mimic said sprite hardware.