Amiga Arcade Ports The Good The Bad and the Fugly Ghosts, Ghouls, and Bionic Commando
Вставка
- Опубліковано 21 лис 2022
- For best results view at 1080p60fps. What's this? Another episode of Amiga Ports: The Good, the Bad, and the Fugly! Some Capcom classics get put under the microscope this time around:
The Good: Ghosts'n Goblins
The Bad: Ghouls'n Ghosts
The Fugly: Bionic Commando
Be prepared to be shocked and saddened by what you witness here today. When you're done being shocked and saddened, how about you help spread the word about the channel in all the social places out there? I'd appreciate it!
If you want to support my work you can do so on Patreon and Ko-Fi.
Patreon: / inglebardgaming
Ko-Fi: www.ko-fo.com/Inglebard
If you liked this video check out some of my others:
Every Data East Game on the Genesis: • Every Data East Game O...
Ghouls'n Ghosts Arcade vs SuperGrafx: • Ghouls N Ghosts Arcade...
Mega Man II NES vs Genesis: • Mega Man 2 NES vs Gene...
Complete Trash - Golden Axe PCE CD: • Golden Axe PC Engine C...
#Capcom #Amiga #arcade #16bit #homecomputer #microcomputer #ghostsngoblins #ghoulsnghosts #bioniccommando #goodbadfugly - Ігри
The Amiga is new to me, basically from 5 years ago or so and it's mostly due to emulation availability, as a kid, my brothers and I were into consoles only. Yes, it's sad to see so many bad quality ports, knowing what we know today, the machine was capable of so much more, that era also suffers from having so many different computer brands, such as the Atari, MSX, PC-9X, IBM and more, which meant even more poor ports from a weaker system to a more capable one, such as the Amiga itself.
Two other things that really hurt the Amiga for me are, like you mention in this video, lack of buttons and games which will only allow sound effects or music, there are some impressive games, some still exclusive to this machine, it's easy to see how it was wasted in this regard.
But being mostly a Master System, Mega Drive/SNES, Saturn/PS1 guy, it's hard to think you missed anything, but this is again, due to how gaming in these computers was handled.
The Amiga is a great, but also infuriating, platform, lol. There was plenty of power in the thing for a 16-bit system released in 1985, it was way ahead of the curve in graphical and sound capabilities when it came out.
The problem is SO many of the games made for it don't take advantage of the hardware at all. Worse still, so many are ports from platforms with inferior capabilities as you referenced in your comment, particularly the the Atari ST.
The top tier games on the system are fantastic. The problem is there should have been way more of them. Turrican II can stand proudly shoulder to shoulder with most console releases of its era, for example. But man, so many of those arcade ports are just flat out terrible.
@@InglebardGaming As the Amiga was primarily a Computer aimed to educate and bring that young generation to the future of computing, it's not that big of a deal, but yeah, it was mostly under utilized. We can only imagine if it was exclusively a console, though, it would have made a great impact in Europe.
As for me, though, I'm much happier with a Master System, yes, because the Mega Drive would be overkill in comparison.
Pit Fighter ports are fascinating
Yeah, several of them took wildly different approaches!
@@InglebardGaming Only one good port among 'em.
@MarginalSC well, that's the point of the video series 😁 One good, one bad, one fugly!
@InglebardGaming One button, two button...
Bionic Commando and Ghouls n Ghosts look like colorized ZX spectrum games, which is most likely what happened. A few Uk developers used a development environment that was able to output several very crude ports of a game in a fairly quick time.
They were both in the dreaded category of Atari ST ports. At least they mostly used visual assets developed for that version. It's too bad a more competent developer hadn't worked on either game. It would have been interesting to see how Elite could have done with Ghouls.
Great video!!
Thanks!
I always watch your Ghouls N Ghosts videos (or Daimakaimura, as I call it). It's one of the best arcade games ever made, imo. I play the arcade game regularly in Mame. The Sharp X68000 version is brilliant too. I have that running with Reshade scanlines with MAME. I have a few original CPS1 boards but not this one. I didn't really appreciate the game until fairly recently. I'm going to look into Mister to see if the CPS1 core is better than emulation.
It's definitely one of my all-time favorites. Easily the best game in the series, IMO. It's too bad the western computer versions are so rough, but at least most of the console versions are great.
If you like this game that much, I'm sure once you have the real board at hand, it will be pure bliss for you.
@@roberto1519
The arcade board used to cost about $100. Now, it's close to $600. I'm not going to get into buying $500+ arcade boards again.
Fantastic video as usual...i played the Gng port and yes it's very good...the rest...bleargh
Yup, on the Amiga Ghouls stinks and Bionic Commando is pretty rough except for that music.
Great roundup as always. Amiga arcade ports were generally very rushed and consequently terrible.
The only point I’d disagree with concerns music not being important in the 80s. The C64 was known for having fantastic music in its games (the C64 Bionic Commando soundtrack is arguably better than the Amiga’s for instance) but is often overlooked these days and practically scrubbed from history in favour of the NES despite that console having inferior sound hardware.
Going back to the Amiga and it’s music though, I think the problem stems from the fact that about 99% of Amiga arcade ports were lifted from the Atari ST with minimal changes, and because the audio hardware on both machines was so different (the ST’s generic AY vs the Amiga’s sample-based approach), I think most Amiga devs just decided not to bother on the Amiga as it would mean redoing the music from scratch which would take too long. Either way, it speaks to how cynical and lazy these ports often were.
Thanks!
Here's the thing about music on western computers in those days. It was important to some people, but many developers and publishers didn't care. That's why there are so many arcade ports that don't have any music at all, which I always found inexcusable.
Look at Double Dragon and Shinobi on C64, Double Dragon, Final Fight, Thunderblade, Ninja Warriors or E Swat on the Amiga. There sadly MANY examples where the music was just cut entirely.
It was more of an issue for western devs and publishers. They didn't really wake up to it's importance until the mid 90s, I'd say. For Japanese developers and publishers, they were on top of that much sooner.
as an aside yeah GNGR is super tough! but highly recommended for any classic GNG fan. I never had an amiga of my own, so have to live vicariously through youtube, haha. but wow... amiga ghouls and ghosts looks like ass, holy shit! I had heard at some point nintendo wanted the companies to make their arcade conversions more distinct on NES, which I assume is why stuff like bionic commando and rygar turned out so vastly different (and in BC's case, definitely for the better)
GNGR is pretty good, but was way too hard IMO. It seemed way too slow at first, but I got used to the speed at least. But hooboy dis that game infuriate me at times, lol.
Having Amigas when they were new was pretty interesting. At first there was hardly any software or games for them and a lot of what was out barely looked better than 8-bit stuff.
Once software development picked up, so much of it was just bad or lazy, but every now and then there was a gem that blew other systems out of the water. When you saw one of those rare amazing titles, you knew the computer had a lot of power under the hood and it was great. Then you had to stop and think, "wait a minute, why don't most of the other games look, sound or play like this?"
What's the music in the beginning when you talk?
The second level song from the Amiga version of Bionic Commando. I put any song I use on the ending screen if you ever want to find out what one of them is.
@@InglebardGaming Thank you! That's good to know if I like any other music in your videos. Also, the video was great!
Thanks, glad you liked it! Sorry about the delayed response, UA-cam never bothered alerting me about this comment.
Agree with you on Ghouls n Ghosts when you say it may well be one of the best action platformers. Definitely one of my favourite games, but the Amiga version just doesn't count, a total travesty of a port which was rightly ridiculed at the time by anyone who actually tried to play it. I have no idea how Capcom ruined the Switch release as well, it's just frustrating to play through in comparison to the intricate level design and beautifully balanced difficulty curve of the original.
Yeah, I love Ghouls'n Ghosts, one of the true greats! The Amiga port was one of those all-too common major let downs, just bad in every way... even though it got a lot of really good reviews... which was just laughable.
GNGR on Switch... I like it, and see what they were going for and did finish it, but I agree it was way too hard. They should have toned it down a bit. It's got some pretty cool stuff in it despite being so tough, at least.
@@InglebardGaming
I never liked the PSP game either. I think the series lost it's way getting too intricate and far too difficult. Having so many suits and options. It's like more is better. If you go down that road, you end up breaking the game engine. I have the new game on PC but I'm not a fan. I would have much preferred a CPS1 port of the SNES game with all the issues fixed. Of course, there was zero chance of that happening. Are people still around who could do work of that quality? Everything is about the new audience.
Guess that you already know that, but after seen some of your Amiga videos, I would like to remind that LOTS of Amiga ports were just direct recompilation of AtariST ports. So it explains the lack of music (yamaha soundchip on ST), the lack of colors (16 from 512 on ST), the choppy frame rate (no chipset on ST), etc.
Knowing that is knowing how far Amiga has suffered from the existence of the AtariST which is responsible (and of course many games distributor/studios) of those pieces of junk.
Yes, I've mentioned that many times.
And its just not because of the ST soundchip, a good amount of ST ports also had no music.
16 colours was often chosen by Amiga developers becasue the game ran faster that way. The Amiga's planar screen mode was clunky and slow, and so reducing the DMA load resulted in a smoother game. It wasn't always becasue it was an ST port. Anything with a smooth hardware scroll was most likely developed for the Amiga first.
The sound on the Amiga is often a relative lack of sound channels and relative lack of RAM for samples on the early a500. The Amiga only has four channels for sound, and the sound effects would often cut into the music. Many developers just chose to offer a choice of music or sound effects. The YM synth in the ST was a touch weak compared to the sound on the Amiga, but had the advantage of not requiring any PCM data for instrument data. The 1000 and early a500 also had a chip RAM limit,
Worse still, in many 16 bit ports the developers often didn't have a lot of access to source code or tile data unless they could pull it out of the Jamma board themselves, or record someone playing it and work from there.
On the whole it's remarkable how close they sometimes get, especially when you consider that many of these things were also being reused for 8-bit versions, too. (the 8-bit ports are probably the basis for the visual look and push scrolling in Bionic Commando. Spectrum: ua-cam.com/video/4o5rhqcYrXw/v-deo.html C64: ua-cam.com/video/u2SKjwQELh8/v-deo.html )
Ghouls N Ghosts looks...eww, I can't even put it in words. I think it would've turned out much better if it was released on the Amiga 1200/4000
Nah. It was from developers that would have screwed it up no matter what hardware it was on. It could have been better, including on the 500/1000/2000 but that would have required a better team with time to work on it and allowed to optimize it for the Amiga hardware. It couldn't have been "perfect" but they could have done a nice job with it.
What the fu** ar you saying about Ghouls and ghosts? and what? you don't like Tim Follin music on it? ok. bye
I only hope that someday you can recover from the awful gaping wounds of someone disagreeing with you. OK, bye.
@ardGaming that is NOT "disagreeing" , what you said is sacrilege... obviously you haven't lived when the AMIGA was THE computer to go and Tim Follin a demigod.
Lots of ignorant comments by non PAL users' here. Typical American bias against the Amiga. I bet most of them boot these games up in 60hz mode and wonder why the scrolling is weird. Is Silkworm a good arcade conversion? Rainbow Islands or Snow Bros? How about something like Lionheart, Overkill or Stardust? how do they compare to Genesis or SNES games? Learn before showing your ignorance.
Don't sure that he is really blaming the Amiga. And sorry but lunching these games on 60hz tv don't change anything in term of scrolling cause American Amigas were NTSC switched (an option available on the most of Amigas) and sync to the 60hz, with just a 20% boost of frame rate on some games.
I'm 48 years old and I used to be demomaker on Amiga when I was 17 / 21... knowing this hardware a little bit.
@@krisrikourt575 Well then perhaps you can tell me how i can play Turrican 2 at 60hz without the music playing too fast and the game being near unplayable due to the speed boost? Or maybe just slum it out and play it at 50hz on a 60hz display with all the jerkiness that would bring?