Any love (or indeed, any hate) for these games?

[Megalomaniac]

I'll explain the list later, but I wanted some opinions on these games:

 

Silkworm

SWIV (they kinda go together)

Pang

Dynablaster

D/Generation

First Samurai

Paradroid 90

Knights of the Sky

Leander

[leech]

Leander and Silkworm were awesome.   I haven't played the others (and Leander I played on the Amiga, is there an ST version?  The Genesis version was named Galahad for some reason.  I also recently discovered the team behind that are the same geniuses that do the Lego games.

[ColecoGamer]

D/Generation is fun and very unique; I enjoy playing it very much. It’s a shame the port of this game to the new Atari VCS, has a game breaking bug that prevents the player from winning.

[hwrd]

I really liked Pang on the ST. (the first version  played).

I saw it as a Space Invaders variant.

 

Tried the Colecovision version yesterday, impressive!

I would not have thought it was possible;

it's fairly flicker free!

[bluemonday]

Always loved Pang. It deserved to be bigger than it was.

[Zogging Hell]

They are all pretty good, pretty much all B grade or above IMO (although can't say on Paradroid 90, it is the only one I haven't played), and SWIV is nice looking in a brown kind of way, but for some reason left me cold (Grade C?), the sound is particularly..er.. lacklustre, and it is better enjoyed on the Amiga for that reason alone. Leander is one of the few Psygnosis games I actually like, one where they actually remembered to put a game in there

[Megalomaniac]

They're all games which seem more popular on the Amiga than the ST, either in terms of reviews back-in-the-day or modern-day polls. I was wondering if people thought they suffered on the ST. To me First Samurai somehow loses a little without the speech, although SWIV's missing music doesn't bother me greatly. I've just wasted an hour playing Pang through Hatari, so that definitely loses nothing.

[+DarkLord]

I doubt know anything about these games on the Amiga, so no suffering here. 

 

I do like Leander, Knights of the Sky and D/Generation. Good games, IMHO.

 

[MrMaddog]

On 10/2/2022 at 5:43 AM, Megalomaniac said:

They're all games which seem more popular on the Amiga than the ST, either in terms of reviews back-in-the-day or modern-day polls. I was wondering if people thought they suffered on the ST. To me First Samurai somehow loses a little without the speech, although SWIV's missing music doesn't bother me greatly. I've just wasted an hour playing Pang through Hatari, so that definitely loses nothing.

 

Well back then, people usually had only one type of computer because they were expensive.  It's very rare for someone to have both an ST and Amiga so how would anyone know what they're missing?  (Aside from magazine reviews & schoolboy arguements)

 

Now we have YouTube and emulation, people can compare between the two platforms.  Yes any Amiga game is always better than the ST version but then again why not play arcade games on MAME instead?

 

Point is if you already love playing a game on a certain system, who cares what some retrogaming snob on YT says?

 

 

[+DarkLord]

On 10/4/2022 at 10:38 AM, MrMaddog said:

 

Now we have YouTube and emulation, people can compare between the two platforms.  Yes any Amiga game is always better than the ST version but then again why not play arcade games on MAME instead?

 

Point is if you already love playing a game on a certain system, who cares what some retrogaming snob on YT says?

 

 

 

Totally disagree with "Yes any Amiga game is always better than the ST version"

 

Absolutely NOT correct.

 

As far as preferences go, there are people such as myself that will never be satisfied

by anything but the real hardware. Sure, there are others that think emulation is GOD

for games playing and they are entitled to their opinions - but they are not mine and

I'm not alone...

 

G'day.  

 

[Megalomaniac]

(Off-topic, but)

In an ideal world I'd prefer real hardware and original disks / carts / tapes, but on a practical level emulation lets you have dozens of machines at your fingertips, and we haven't all got the money or space for everything we'd like. Plus you can switch configuration to resolve compatibility issues in an instant, and you only need one joystick across every machine, plus you get quicker loading and savestates. I do have a physical collection, but probably do 80% of my playing on emulation.

 

As for the original question, I think I've been misunderstood slightly. My intended question was whether the games I listed are considered to be good ST games, as it superficially seemed that they're more adored on the Amiga, which is suprising as (if we're honest) there are more good games on the Amiga than the ST. And it seems that most of them are.

Edited October 6, 2022 by Megalomaniac

[Zogging Hell]

2 hours ago, Megalomaniac said:

As for the original question, I think I've been misunderstood slightly. My intended question was whether the games I listed are considered to be good ST games, as it superficially seemed that they're more adored on the Amiga, which is suprising as (if we're honest) there are more good games on the Amiga than the ST. And it seems that most of them are.

I think, as you kind of suggest, your probably just seeing it from an Amiga fan perspective regarding particular games adoration levels Pretty much all the good games on the Amiga are also good games on the ST and are held in similar esteem for the most part.. and multi-format magazine reviews from the time would generally support that. The only reason the Amiga really can claim to have more 'good games' is due to the couple of extra years of extra commercial life it had over the ST more than anything (with Commodore's continued resurrection of the Amiga in various forms); as in their prime pretty much all games came out on both.  Good games on one format are generally good games on the other, not least due to the fact quite a lot of those will have been programmed on the ST and the Amiga would have got the so called 'lazy ports' with some reworked sound and a dabble of extra colours.. although this is only generally noted by Youtube commentators when the game is terrible A few of the games you listed are fairly late in the ST's lifespan as a games machine (anything post 1990/1), so probably that would explain any difference in perceived esteem I would guess.

[Megalomaniac]

Good points there ZoggingHell. Even most games which originated on the Amiga and were later ported to the ST only really lack (usually) superficial elements like speech, which you only miss if you know that it exists elsewhere. Unless a game required horizontal scrolling, converting it from Amiga to ST wasn't a hugely difficult job in most cases. The ST's commercial 'golden years' started about 12-18 months before the Amiga's and ended 2-3 years earlier, so an ST game released in 1991 will have been seen by less people than one released in 1988, whereas the opposite is true on the Amiga, which probably explains some of the differences in acclaim. 

Edited October 6, 2022 by Megalomaniac

[oky2000]

I had both (520STM+SF354 start of Summer 1986) and an Amiga 1000 I bought used around the time the A500 came out.

 

Most of my ST gaming experience comes from the 1986-1988 years as that's really how long it took before there were well programmed Amiga games regularly released some time in 1989 so there isn't that much overlap really.

 

Leander really impresses me on the ST though, the scrolling is almost magical. To be honest I didn't care much for SWIV or Silkworm on either, I got these machines to play Nemesis and Salamander one day at home but that never happened. I did have R-Type for my ST as an original and thought that was OK at the time (I got a copy for the Amiga much much later so never really compared it and hardly played it in the arcade that hosted Nemesis/Salamander cabs at the same time anyway).

 

Batman the Movie is probably one of the best ST games in my opinion, just turn off the idiotic glitched Pong console type ST music and you're good to go on the ST version. The 8 way scrolling and the 3D flying/driving sections are great plus you get nice cut scene images unique to the ST release. 

 

 

 

[oky2000]

On 10/2/2022 at 10:43 AM, Megalomaniac said:

They're all games which seem more popular on the Amiga than the ST, either in terms of reviews back-in-the-day or modern-day polls. I was wondering if people thought they suffered on the ST. To me First Samurai somehow loses a little without the speech, although SWIV's missing music doesn't bother me greatly. I've just wasted an hour playing Pang through Hatari, so that definitely loses nothing.

Hmmm think I know what you mean here about multiformat magazines reviewing ST/Amiga games together. Given that an FM Towns quality conversion of Chase HQ is possible on the Amiga that version should get a much lower score than the ST version of Pang IMO unless it is 100% identical to the arcade. Pang isn't though as it only uses a 320x200 screen mode and considering it's a UK developer and a PAL release it is not even displaying a full screen image on a PAL machine so I wipe my arse with rubbish like that on Amiga personally. The ST can only do 320x200 so it's fine. Multiformat reviews rarely consider these things.

 

Reviewers had no understanding of what the host hardware was ever capable of 99% of the time so my games magazine buying stopped between my active C64 and PC Engine/Megadrive years to be honest. You should only ever review a game based on the accuracy of a conversion (if it is a conversion) along with the host machine's A/V technical abilities if you ask me, you can't mark down an ST game for having worse sound than Amiga because few people owned both machines and you should only compare ST visuals/audio to other ST games not the Amiga release.....especially if we are talking when Amiga 500 was £499.99 and 520STFM was £299.99 circa 1988 before first DRAM worldwide problem  The whole 16bit home computer as a games machine was a complete mess, that's how I remember it, underwhelming conversions, lack of respect for customers, idiotic reviewers.......the Japanese consumers must have been very smug with their superior reviewers and superior developers. There is no technical reason why Amiga Chase HQ wasn't almost identical to the FM Towns port.

[Lostdragon]

On 9/29/2022 at 4:58 PM, leech said:

Leander and Silkworm were awesome.   I haven't played the others (and Leander I played on the Amiga, is there an ST version?  The Genesis version was named Galahad for some reason.  I also recently discovered the team behind that are the same geniuses that do the Lego games.

E. A wanted the name changed to Galahad and the game to loose some of it's more Japanese styled art,they wanted a more 'King Arthur' style feel to it. 

 

So your characters hair colour is now different and an Orc creature has been changed into a Dragon. 

 

 

Always found the game very visually pleasing, but very plodding and repetitive to actually play. 

 

The Genesis version is faster, but it still wasn't a title that grabbed me. 

 

The ST version is very well done for the hardware, but the weakest of the 3 available versions, sound in particular. 

[Zogging Hell]

2 hours ago, Lostdragon said:

Always found the game very visually pleasing, but very plodding and repetitive to actually play.

Pysgnosis in a nutshell IMO... at least before their Playstation days, although Leander is probably their best effort on the 16bit IMO. I also liked Baal, and Blood Money seems to be generally favoured on the ST (not my favourite), but everything else looked pretty but sported some of the most lacklustre gameplay to put it mildly! (Shadow of the Beast on the ST being the exception... that stank in all respects)

[Megalomaniac]

With Leander / Gahalad, I guess Psygnosis wanted a Japanese style game in order to stand out when most ST/Amiga competition was European or American in style, and EA wanted a European theme in order to stand out when most of the Megadrive competition was Japanese in style. We should call it Kid Chameleon, if there wasn't already a game called that....

 

At least in those days they gave different scores for games on different machines. I've never understood how a game released for both PS4 and XBox One (for example) was always given an identical score, when they were never going to be identical - even more so between generations, as backlash to the Cyberpunk 2077 reviews showed. Off-topic, but The One for ST Games even used a lot of the same content as their Amiga magazine, which is probably why their reissue review of TV Sports Football referred to features which were cut from the ST version, and their news section said Eye of the Beholder would be out any day on the ST, when it was never started. What a rag....

[Lostdragon]

3 hours ago, Megalomaniac said:

With Leander / Gahalad, I guess Psygnosis wanted a Japanese style game in order to stand out when most ST/Amiga competition was European or American in style, and EA wanted a European theme in order to stand out when most of the Megadrive competition was Japanese in style. We should call it Kid Chameleon, if there wasn't already a game called that....

 

At least in those days they gave different scores for games on different machines. I've never understood how a game released for both PS4 and XBox One (for example) was always given an identical score, when they were never going to be identical - even more so between generations, as backlash to the Cyberpunk 2077 reviews showed. Off-topic, but The One for ST Games even used a lot of the same content as their Amiga magazine, which is probably why their reissue review of TV Sports Football referred to features which were cut from the ST version, and their news section said Eye of the Beholder would be out any day on the ST, when it was never started. What a rag....

As someone who dabbled into looking into Lost ST games on behalf of GTW for a while.. 

 

The bloody UK Games press was notorious for simply assuming an ST version would follow shortly behind the Amiga version of a game, with 'only minor differences in graphics and sound'. 

 

 

Saw that claim far too often and when you actually looked into why nothing was ever seen of it, you'd find it had been canned at the proposal stage, as there simply wasn't going to be a viable ST games market, by it's expected release date. 

[+DarkLord]

6 hours ago, Zogging Hell said:

Pysgnosis in a nutshell IMO... at least before their Playstation days, although Leander is probably their best effort on the 16bit IMO. I also liked Baal, and Blood Money seems to be generally favoured on the ST (not my favourite), but everything else looked pretty but sported some of the most lacklustre gameplay to put it mildly! (Shadow of the Beast on the ST being the exception... that stank in all respects)

 

I know the gameplay was badly, sadly, lacking but I actually like SOTB I and II on the ST.

 

At the time it came out, it was beautiful, IMHO. Sure, could have been a lot better (as the

1 meg/demo stuff showed) but there was something about it that drew me in.

 

I've noticed a trend about how critical we tend to be towards games from "back in the day".

 

I think caution is needed when this is done. As an example, look at some of the reviews for

SOTB from then:

 

 

[Zogging Hell]

3 hours ago, DarkLord said:

 

I know the gameplay was badly, sadly, lacking but I actually like SOTB I and II on the ST.

 

At the time it came out, it was beautiful, IMHO. Sure, could have been a lot better (as the

1 meg/demo stuff showed) but there was something about it that drew me in.

 

I've noticed a trend about how critical we tend to be towards games from "back in the day".

 

I think caution is needed when this is done. As an example, look at some of the reviews for

SOTB from then:

 

The second one is a nice looking game I'll give you, and a more enjoyable experience overall I'm probably a bit biased as I just don't like their games much. I would agree with you though as when I did a mini review for the first game on my (now temporarily defunct due to domain name 'thieves') website back in the late 90s, I actually said I thought the graphics were pretty nice, but now I completely disagree with myself.. so would by the power of the wayback machine have to concur entirely with your point! Although there is nothing wrong with changing your mind

[oky2000]

Shadow of the Beast is an interesting one, you are going against one of the finest game developments the Amiga ever saw at any time vs a very half arsed back port to the ST. Wrath of the Demon on the ST shows it could have been much better on the ST and from that point of view any negative reviews should reflect that. Reviews have to take into account the capabilities of the host hardware and to most technical people it was clear Psygnosis had set some very low standards for the ST port released.

 

3 days wages down the toilet is not funny, how would the developers like it if I sold them a car with the mileage clocked back 100,000 miles but charged them maximum price? You got short changed, the magazines are supposed to protect you from that. 

[ColecoGamer]

On 10/5/2022 at 12:17 PM, DarkLord said:

 

Totally disagree with "Yes any Amiga game is always better than the ST version"

 

Absolutely NOT correct.

 

As far as preferences go, there are people such as myself that will never be satisfied

by anything but the real hardware. Sure, there are others that think emulation is GOD

for games playing and they are entitled to their opinions - but they are not mine and

I'm not alone...

 

G'day.  

 

Exactly! May I point out Cinemaware’s Defender of the Crown. The Amiga version was rushed to market, thus a lot of the gameplay elements went missing.
 

Enter the Atari ST version - it includes everything - the ability to use greek fire and disease pods during the castle siege scene; life bars are present during the raiding scene (plus the ability to parry attacks); jousting is more balanced; and the CPU’s AI is dramatically enhanced, to mention just a few.

 

The ST version is clearly the definitive version here. The same can also be said about Sinbad The Throne of the Falcon. I could go on, but it seems unnecessary. As someone who grew up with both an ST and the Amiga 500, I am aware of the , ‘ST version is inferior’ mindset. 
 

Once I played the ST version of DoTC, I realized the Amiga version really was what most people called it - a pretty graphic demo with wafer thin gameplay.

 

Edit: I also agree on owning the real hardware. Emulation robs you of that ‘feel’ behind using the real thing. The sound of the disk drives; the clicking sound the keyboard makes; the real RGB monitor. You have to own the hardware in question to understand.

Edited October 9, 2022 by ColecoGamer

[Megalomaniac]

Wrath of the Demon came out six months after ST Shadow of the Beast, so reviewers didn't have that to compare it to. Maybe there was a fear of admitting that the standard ST probably couldn't do what Amiga SOTB did? Maybe they thought that saying "it doesn't look or sound as good as before, but it doesn't' matter, the gameplay was rubbish anyway" would have sounded childish? Other bad ports of successful Amiga games tended to get an easy ride from ST reviewers, witness Cannon Fodder or Robocod for a start.

[Lostdragon]

12 hours ago, oky2000 said:

Shadow of the Beast is an interesting one, you are going against one of the finest game developments the Amiga ever saw at any time vs a very half arsed back port to the ST. Wrath of the Demon on the ST shows it could have been much better on the ST and from that point of view any negative reviews should reflect that. Reviews have to take into account the capabilities of the host hardware and to most technical people it was clear Psygnosis had set some very low standards for the ST port released.

 

3 days wages down the toilet is not funny, how would the developers like it if I sold them a car with the mileage clocked back 100,000 miles but charged them maximum price? You got short changed, the magazines are supposed to protect you from that. 

Tell me about it. 

 

I was on the YTS scheme, £35 a week at the time i purchased The Terminator on day one on the Sega MD, after glowing reviews from UK press, game cost me over £40.

 

 

Brought it home, completed it on my second attempt. 

 

Absolutely gutted, money i could ill-afford blown on a technically impressive, but completely lacking, piece of entertainment. 

 

 

The magazines were supposed to be guiding my purchases, but what did they care? 

 

They got the games for free, were taken on lavish PR events, free drinks etc.