The Amiga uses dual playfield with only 8 colours for the background (blocks) and 7 colours for some sprites. 4 attached hardware sprites (15 colours + transparent) are combined to create Pacman himself. The Archimedes version uses a chunky 16 colour mode, which means each pixel displayed can be any colour among a choice of 16, and of course that includes the background blocks : that's twice the number of colours compared to the Amiga version. No surprise all in all the Archimedes version looks nicer, for sure. Read the details here : @t Also : On the Archie : bigger pacman main character and bigger ghosts too (ridiculously narrow on the Amiga because of the hardware sprites limitations) ; the small pills have a shadow (none on the Amiga) ; ghosts have correct clipping when they exit the playing area in the Archimedes version, when on the Amiga they entirely disappear, they are not clipped if they exit North, East or South. Anyway this game could be in 256 colours on the Archimedes, and still run at 50 fps with tunes on 4 channels + sound effects on the other 4 channels (yes, the Archie has 8 hardware channels, not 4). It is one of my projects : to see on the Archie a Pacmania game really using its power, and not an Amiga port. The Archie had too many non-or-too-slightly-enhanced ports from the inferior Amiga, exactly like the Amiga had too many non-or-too-slightly-enhanced ports from the inferior Atari ST.
Conversion of an Arcade game by Namco in 1987. The PCB was based on Namco System 1 hardware which actually used an 8-bit 6809 chip, but had incredible (for the time) custom graphics handling chips, 16 colour Sprites and 256 colour backgrounds and incredible Stereo sound produced by 3 different sound chips, one for Voice, Sound effects and FM Music.
Please read Mr Hollingworth's comments about the superior capabilities of the Acorn Archimedes : ua-cam.com/video/Rc5i6tA3dH0/v-deo.html 'Pacmania for Archimedes was regarded as one of the best conversions of that game to the home computer platforms. I'm not saying that because I converted it, though I did. I am saying that because it really was better than anything else at the time. We also added special enhancements which took advantage of the superior speed of the CPU - The software rendered sprites in Pacmania were bigger than those of the Amiga, because of limits on its hardware sprites, the screen was pixel scrolled in software, using the Arm's barrel shifter instructions, in far less than a television frame and was much bigger than the ST which only scrolled half the screen because that's all we could do with the far less powerful 68000, on a machine with no hardware scrolling or sprites.Did you know that our earliest games (including Pacmania and Terramex) were written using the onboard Arm assembler contained in the Acorn's BASIC interpreter ? There was NO other machine on which something like that was remotely possible. Only later did we use a custom in house Cross assembler specially written by myself. to make conversions easier.We who worked at Krisalis Software back then were very proud of the Acorn conversions we did, and still are.Shaun.
Bigger Pacman sprites (bottom left) for the Archimedes, wider ghosts, the pills have a shadow (missing in the Amiga version) and the ghosts exit the screen properly (with clipping) when on the Amiga they entirely disappear when leaving the screen going North or South. Shaun Hollingworth declared the best version was on the Archimedes, not on the Amiga. Listen to him and read the comment section in this video to understand why the Archimedes hardware is superior to the Amiga's. ua-cam.com/video/hU23fEL154k/v-deo.html
This takes me back to primary school in 1992
This was the first version of Pac-Mania I played. Good old memories
Thanks!! 👍
The Amiga uses dual playfield with only 8 colours for the background (blocks) and 7 colours for some sprites.
4 attached hardware sprites (15 colours + transparent) are combined to create Pacman himself.
The Archimedes version uses a chunky 16 colour mode, which means each pixel displayed can be any colour among a choice of 16, and of course that includes the background blocks : that's twice the number of colours compared to the Amiga version.
No surprise all in all the Archimedes version looks nicer, for sure.
Read the details here : @t
Also :
On the Archie : bigger pacman main character and bigger ghosts too (ridiculously narrow on the Amiga because of the hardware sprites limitations) ; the small pills have a shadow (none on the Amiga) ; ghosts have correct clipping when they exit the playing area in the Archimedes version, when on the Amiga they entirely disappear, they are not clipped if they exit North, East or South.
Anyway this game could be in 256 colours on the Archimedes, and still run at 50 fps with tunes on 4 channels + sound effects on the other 4 channels (yes, the Archie has 8 hardware channels, not 4).
It is one of my projects : to see on the Archie a Pacmania game really using its power, and not an Amiga port.
The Archie had too many non-or-too-slightly-enhanced ports from the inferior Amiga, exactly like the Amiga had too many non-or-too-slightly-enhanced ports from the inferior Atari ST.
Conversion of an Arcade game by Namco in 1987. The PCB was based on Namco System 1 hardware which actually used an 8-bit 6809 chip, but had incredible (for the time) custom graphics handling chips, 16 colour Sprites and 256 colour backgrounds and incredible Stereo sound produced by 3 different sound chips, one for Voice, Sound effects and FM Music.
Please read Mr Hollingworth's comments about the superior capabilities of the Acorn Archimedes :
ua-cam.com/video/Rc5i6tA3dH0/v-deo.html
'Pacmania for Archimedes was regarded as one of the best conversions of that game to the home computer platforms. I'm not saying that because I converted it, though I did. I am saying that because it really was better than anything else at the time. We also added special enhancements which took advantage of the superior speed of the CPU - The software rendered sprites in Pacmania were bigger than those of the Amiga, because of limits on its hardware sprites, the screen was pixel scrolled in software, using the Arm's barrel shifter instructions, in far less than a television frame and was much bigger than the ST which only scrolled half the screen because that's all we could do with the far less powerful 68000, on a machine with no hardware scrolling or sprites.Did you know that our earliest games (including Pacmania and Terramex) were written using the onboard Arm assembler contained in the Acorn's BASIC interpreter ? There was NO other machine on which something like that was remotely possible. Only later did we use a custom in house Cross assembler specially written by myself. to make conversions easier.We who worked at Krisalis Software back then were very proud of the Acorn conversions we did, and still are.Shaun.
Amiga port!
Ποιον emulator χρησιμοποιείς?
Bigger Pacman sprites (bottom left) for the Archimedes, wider ghosts, the pills have a shadow (missing in the Amiga version) and the ghosts exit the screen properly (with clipping) when on the Amiga they entirely disappear when leaving the screen going North or South.
Shaun Hollingworth declared the best version was on the Archimedes, not on the Amiga.
Listen to him and read the comment section in this video to understand why the Archimedes hardware is superior to the Amiga's.
ua-cam.com/video/hU23fEL154k/v-deo.html