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

[Lostdragon]

20 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:

 

 

It's been a long, long time since I played ST SOTB II.. 

 

I seem to remember attempts to beef up the gameplay over the original, with more emphasis on interaction and puzzle solving, better enemy A. I? 

 

But the game seemed stodgy and loading times broke up the feeling of progression somewhat? 

 

 

Could of course be wrong on all the above points.. 

[leech]

On 10/8/2022 at 6:50 PM, ColecoGamer said:

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.

I discovered at a friend's place, that the Amiga version of Defender of the Crown will let you just move the mouse into the corner to win every joust competition.

 

Granted the ST version of Populous 2 had the F9 key to just keep generating mana.

[+DarkLord]

On 10/9/2022 at 8:46 AM, Lostdragon said:

It's been a long, long time since I played ST SOTB II.. 

 

I seem to remember attempts to beef up the gameplay over the original, with more emphasis on interaction and puzzle solving, better enemy A. I? 

 

But the game seemed stodgy and loading times broke up the feeling of progression somewhat? 

 

 

Could of course be wrong on all the above points.. 

 

Yes, those were the attempts and I think they succeeded, overall.

 

Assuming you mean "stodgy" in the traditional sense (boring, uninteresting),

I didn't get that impression, and I don't remember any problems with the

loading times, although all loading times from floppy seemed to take quite

some time to me.

 

All of this is probably subjective.  

 

[oky2000]

I don't know why people keep insisting Shadow of the Beast 1 had lacking gameplay, you never hear PC-Engine owners saying Rastan Saga port was lacking in gameplay. It's a bit of a confusion that has turned into this myth that there is some problem with the gameplay.

 

Shadow of the Beast 1 was nothing more than an exercise to produce a superior version of something like the Rastan Saga series of arcade games using the Amiga hardware, and it is 100% successful as there is not one single Amiga 1200/4000 game that comes close to the sound/graphics of the above ground level of Beast 1 and the controls are 50fps arcade quality. It's like expecting Lotus Challenge to have puzzle solving or RPG elements added!

 

If the same sort of talent that went into ST Wrath of the Demon handled the ST port of Beast 1................

 

Shadow of the Beast 2 on Amiga looks horrible and the music is inferior, I wipe my arse with such a downgrade of a sequel. 

[Lostdragon]

15 hours ago, oky2000 said:

I don't know why people keep insisting Shadow of the Beast 1 had lacking gameplay, you never hear PC-Engine owners saying Rastan Saga port was lacking in gameplay. It's a bit of a confusion that has turned into this myth that there is some problem with the gameplay.

 

Shadow of the Beast 1 was nothing more than an exercise to produce a superior version of something like the Rastan Saga series of arcade games using the Amiga hardware, and it is 100% successful as there is not one single Amiga 1200/4000 game that comes close to the sound/graphics of the above ground level of Beast 1 and the controls are 50fps arcade quality. It's like expecting Lotus Challenge to have puzzle solving or RPG elements added!

 

If the same sort of talent that went into ST Wrath of the Demon handled the ST port of Beast 1................

 

Shadow of the Beast 2 on Amiga looks horrible and the music is inferior, I wipe my arse with such a downgrade of a sequel. 

 

 

Martin Edmondson, the leader of the Reflections team behind SOTB, has never been shy about the priorities when creating Shadow of the Beast:

 

 

For me, it was about the technical challenge of getting something working that was far beyond the theoretical limits of the machine. It wasn’t a story originally. It was a technical demonstration of what the machine could do — I suppose sort of a “look how clever we are” type of thing. So, yeah… less interested in the subtleties of game design and game process, more “let’s see if we can do what these big expensive arcade machines are doing on our small home computer.”

 

 

[oky2000]

On 10/14/2022 at 10:01 AM, Lostdragon said:

 

 

Martin Edmondson, the leader of the Reflections team behind SOTB, has never been shy about the priorities when creating Shadow of the Beast:

 

 

For me, it was about the technical challenge of getting something working that was far beyond the theoretical limits of the machine. It wasn’t a story originally. It was a technical demonstration of what the machine could do — I suppose sort of a “look how clever we are” type of thing. So, yeah… less interested in the subtleties of game design and game process, more “let’s see if we can do what these big expensive arcade machines are doing on our small home computer.”

 

 

Martin specifically mentions wanting to do something on the Amiga as good as, if not better than, [68000 based] arcade games he had seen in Bedrooms to Billions documentary I think, on a video interview anyway. Shadow of the Beast is pure Rastan Saga at the most basic level done with the same sort of ambition as Namco had when developing Ridge Racer IV on PS1 using the infamous 'Playstation Analyzer" to make sure they used just about everything crammed into the Amiga 1000 chipset. Clearly they had seen that game, or its sequel, in the arcades as the similarity is too close to be a coincidence.

 

Story is meaningless in arcade games, we all skipped past the text of Golden Axe/Chase HQ and got stuck into the game. Story is for games like Monkey Island or Another World etc, for arcade games we just want Japanese console quality coders/artists on the job to make a zero frame drop arcade game and they sure came through  Either way Amiga Format reviewers giving £27.99 Deluxe Scrabble 87% vs 65% for £34.99 Shadow of the Beast 1 in the same issue pretty much sums up how clueless games reviewers were back then. Almost all console games getting 9/10 etc were insanely difficult, like Super Star Wars on the SNES, Beast 1 is no different really. 

 

There are probably less than 20 arcade/console quality Amiga games. Always amazes me when fanboys wax lyrical about how much better the Amiga was, I had both machines and trust me most Amiga games were the same crap with different music/sound effects. Loads of 16 colour Amiga games are out there, like Batman, NZ Story, Xenon/Xenon II etc etc. Fair enough if people don't want to/can't play games like Beast 1 but the attitude towards that game by reviewers was disgusting. 

 

I remember reading the preview of the Japanese Sega Megadrive in ACE magazine whilst walking home through Trafalgar Square and thinking 'well that's the Amiga shafted now' lol the PC Engine games library was already embarrassing the machine constantly 

[Lostdragon]

1 hour ago, oky2000 said:

Martin specifically mentions wanting to do something on the Amiga as good as, if not better than, [68000 based] arcade games he had seen in Bedrooms to Billions documentary I think, on a video interview anyway. Shadow of the Beast is pure Rastan Saga at the most basic level done with the same sort of ambition as Namco had when developing Ridge Racer IV on PS1 using the infamous 'Playstation Analyzer" to make sure they used just about everything crammed into the Amiga 1000 chipset. Clearly they had seen that game, or its sequel, in the arcades as the similarity is too close to be a coincidence.

 

Story is meaningless in arcade games, we all skipped past the text of Golden Axe/Chase HQ and got stuck into the game. Story is for games like Monkey Island or Another World etc, for arcade games we just want Japanese console quality coders/artists on the job to make a zero frame drop arcade game and they sure came through  Either way Amiga Format reviewers giving £27.99 Deluxe Scrabble 87% vs 65% for £34.99 Shadow of the Beast 1 in the same issue pretty much sums up how clueless games reviewers were back then. Almost all console games getting 9/10 etc were insanely difficult, like Super Star Wars on the SNES, Beast 1 is no different really. 

 

There are probably less than 20 arcade/console quality Amiga games. Always amazes me when fanboys wax lyrical about how much better the Amiga was, I had both machines and trust me most Amiga games were the same crap with different music/sound effects. Loads of 16 colour Amiga games are out there, like Batman, NZ Story, Xenon/Xenon II etc etc. Fair enough if people don't want to/can't play games like Beast 1 but the attitude towards that game by reviewers was disgusting. 

 

I remember reading the preview of the Japanese Sega Megadrive in ACE magazine whilst walking home through Trafalgar Square and thinking 'well that's the Amiga shafted now' lol the PC Engine games library was already embarrassing the machine constantly 

Yet to view the Bedrooms to Billions documentary, only ever seen Martin interviewed in the press and online. 

 

 

I hated UK Press initially claiming Arcade Perfect conversions of titles on the Amiga and later the Sega MD, games were always cut down to fit within confines of the hardware, storage mediums etc. 

[Megalomaniac]

It wasn't the difficulty that put people off Amiga Shadow of the Beast once the excitement of the graphics wore off, it was the repetitive and simplistic nature of the gameplay (and maybe the loading delays, to a lesser extent). In truth, the most visually impressive games on a system aren't usually also its best games. I'd rather buy something like New Zealand Story (Amiga or ST) with fairly simple graphics but decent lasting gameplay, than Shadow of the Beast for a big box, a t-shirt and a limited game.

[masteries]

All the games in the proposed list are very good games, or also excellent games in their ST version.

 

The unique one I can't talk about is Knights of the sky