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[cormack12]

From new member L lionagony here: https://www.neogaf.com/threads/neo-...ll-post-on-your-behalf.1456224/post-268163297

In 2023 I've been bitten huge by the emulation bug and have spent many hours trying the commercial catalogues of the three major platforms of the era, the Amiga, the Sega Genesis and the Super Nintendo (roughly 3000, 1000 and 1750 games respectively). I did this from the perspective of an action fan who mainly likes pick up and go action games that are fun and I also prioritize great graphics. I love 2D pixel art and took a huge break from gaming after things veered into 3D. Having grown up owning an A500 and an A1200 but not a machine from Sega or Nintendo I was more familiar with the Amiga library but still had a lot of games to discover for the first time from each.

I've now tried at least a few minutes of every commercial game (I'm sure I've missed some) from the 3 main systems. My objective is to put all my favourite games into a list and then revisit them all and play them more extensively which I have already done with quite a few. Since everything was done with emulation it was an even playing field because all loading times are now the same and any button inputs etc. can be configured in any way you like. I made a post on Reddit about my Amiga list which was then 310 games and has now been revised to 312.

I then went through the Sega Genesis/Sega CD/Sega 32X catalogue and put up my list of 190 favourite games that has now been revised to 197 https://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=1620501&postcount=46 I've just finished the SNES list which is at the bottom of this post and it is for 201 games.

So the final tally of "come back to games" is Amiga 312, Sega 197 and SNES 201. On the Sega list there were 56 that were also on the Amiga list and the SNES had 37 that were also on the Amiga list and quite a few that were also on the Sega list. So I tried to be as unbiased as possible when doing the lists and thought I'd write down my random thoughts if anyone is interested.

-The Amiga wins for me not just in sheer number of games but also in variety and that's keeping in mind I'm not really interested in strategy or RPG or simulation games etc. My Amiga list is just more eclectic even though they are mostly all action oriented. The SNES catalogue had the second most variety and the Genesis had the least being heavily skewed to sports games, shmups, beat em ups and platform games. So ranking in terms of variety it's 1)Amiga 2)SNES 3)Genesis

-I'd say in terms of overall performance the Amiga 500 and Genesis are roughly equivalent. The copper, blitter and extended palette give the Amiga some advantages and the sprites and tile system give the Sega Genesis some. The CD32 I'd say is roughly equivalent to a SNES without Mode 7 but with a CD drive. Each system definitely has a distinctive "look" to their games and I definitely prefer the Amiga look. I think the Amiga game Agony is the most beautiful of the entire 16 bit era. I know that is subjective but I saw nothing that topped it, it is like playing a moving art piece. I found the Amiga games would more often go for a more sophisticated, realistic art style. Also I would characterize more Amiga games as depicting a fantasy type world instead of a pastel anime kind of world on the SNES or a more gritty comic book look on the Sega Genesis. Obviously there are many exceptions to this rule but the general aesthetic of each system is definitely its own.

-The detail in Amiga graphics is also a differentiator, something like Banshee has such exquisite detail, also games like Slam Tilt or Disposable Hero. I think the bitmap vs tile system and the resolution helps the Amiga in this regard, the attention to detail in the graphics was something I definitely noticed

-Although graphically I found Amiga games most beautiful and stunning like Agony, Lionheart, Elfmania, Super Stardust etc. I was impressed with the Disney games that originated on the consoles like Pinocchio, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Lion King, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck etc.

-The more extensive sprite systems of the SNES and Genesis did give advantages in some games like Contra III, Contra Hard Corps and Gunstar Heroes. However, there was no shmup on any system that rivalled the sheer intensity of Mega Typhoon on the Amiga 500 and seeing that game in action made me think the Amiga was also capable of those kind of sprite based games if the Mega Typhoon coding techniques had been discovered earlier

-While playing the SNES games that were also on the Genesis I wondered if SNES owners back in the day were kind of annoyed at developers for playing to the lowest common denominator by catering to the Genesis like what happened in the 1980's where the Amiga had to suffer with all the Atari ST ports. I noticed a lot of low color screens on the SNES that is able to do 256 colors that I imagined might have been done in 64 or less for the Genesis and then just never improved when ported

-Mode 7 was used a lot more than I imagined. There were many different types of SNES games that implemented the mode in various ways. I thought Contra III might have been my favourite game on the SNES and those overhead levels were very unique and entertaining. I think Mode 7 went beyond a gimmick on the SNES and was a good differentiator and was probably a factor in pushing the gaming industry towards 3D.

-The term "console quality" I think is really a misnomer and probably just a clever marketing trick because there were a lot of bad playing and looking games on both consoles. I think Nintendo's quality control was a notch above Sega's but popping in a random console game does not mean you are going to automatically see something polished like Contra III or Vectorman it could just as easily be Awesome Possum, Home Alone 2 or Hardball III. I also witnessed many instances of flickering and slowdown on both the SNES and the Genesis.

-I love platfrom games and when going over the lists I was saddened to see how few were made specifially for AGA Amigas. There were a lot of spruced up OCS/ECS games but commercially besides Marvin's Marvelous Adventure and Tin Toy Adventure there was little else in the mid 90's. Donkey Kong Country 3 was probably the most impressive platform game I saw on the SNES and it would have been wonderful to see more attempts on the A1200/CD32

-The Overall winner for me is definitely the Amiga, it was my first love and maybe it's my bias but its games just have that je ne sais quoi. Action games are supposed to be the bread and butter of the consoles but I found over 100 more action games to play on the Amiga. I also discovered a lot of good games on the consoles but I'm pretty sure I'll spend the most time going back to games on my Amiga list over the other two. If I had to choose only one console to have it would definitely be the SNES. Again it had more variety and the graphics were better so any game that was shared by the SNES and the Genesis I will return to the SNES version with only a few exceptions. Since the Amiga list and Genesis list shared a lot more games if you were to have a limited budget or limited time the combination of the Amiga and the SNES would probably be your best bet.

I'm now going to go through the entire catalogue of the Turbo Grafx 16/PC Engine but I'm not sure how many people would be interested in that list. Then I plan to do all the 2D games of the PS1. So here is my list of favourite SNES games again from the perspective of an action fan who also prioritizes great graphics (games also on the Amiga list marked with a *)

Adv.of Batman & Robin, *Adv. of Kid Kleets, Adv. Yogi Bear

Aero Fighters, Aero the Acrobat 2, Aladdin

American Tail, *Arkanoid, Asterix

Asterix and Obelix, Axelay, Batman Forever

Battle Raiden, Beauty & the Beast, Bio Metal

Blazeon, Bonkers, Bugs Bunny

Cannon Fodder, Capcom's Soccer Shootout, Castlevania Dracula X

*Championship Soccer 94, *Chuck Rock, Clay Fighter 2

Contra III, *Cool Spot, CutThroat Island

Cybernator, D-Force, Darius Twin

Daze Before Christmas, Demon's Crest, *Dennis

*Desert Strike, Donkey Kong Country, Donkey Kong Country 2

Donkey Kong Country 3, Do Re Mi Fantasy, Dragon Bruce Lee Story

Earth Defense Force, Earthworm Jim, Earthworm Jim 2

F1 Grand Prix, Fifa 97, Final Fight

*First Samurai, *Flashback, Flintstones

Flintstones Treasure of Sierra, Frantic Flea, Front Mission:Gun Hazard

F-Zero, Ganbare! Daiku, Ganbare Goemon 2

*Gods, Go Go Ackman, Great Battle IV

Great Circus Mystery, Gunforce, Gundam Wing

Hagane, Hameln no Violin Hiki, *Humans

Imperium, Incantation, Indiana Jones

Iron Commando, *James Pond 3, Jelly Boy

Jikkyon Parodius, *Jim Power, Joe and Mac

Joe and Mac 2, Judge Dredd, Jungle Book

*Jungle Strike, Jurassic Park, Jurassic Park 2

Ken Griffey Winning Run, King of Demons, Kirby's Dreamland 3

*Lamborghini American Challenge, Legend, Legend of Zelda

*Lemmings, *Lemmings 2, Lester the Unlikely

*Lethal Weapon, *Lion King, *Lost Vikings

Lost Vikings 2, Lucky Luke, Lupin Sansei

Magical Quest Mickey, Marchen Adventures Cotton, Maui Mallard

Mech Warrior 3050, Mega Man X2, Mega Man X3

Melford Stories, Metal Warriors, Mickey Mania

Mickey No Tokyo, Mickey to Donald, *Micro Machines

Micro Machines 2, Mohawk & Headphone Jack, Mr Nutz, Mr Tuff

*Ms Pacman, NBA Hang Time, NBA Live 98

Newman Haas Indy Car, Nightmare Busters, NHL 98

*Nigel Mansell's Racing, Ninja Warriors, *Oscar

*Out of This World, Pagemaster, Parodius Da

PGA Tour Golf, Phalanx, Phantom 2040

Pilot Wings, Pink Goes to Hollywood, Pinocchio

Pirates of Dark Water, Plok, Pocky and Rocky

Pocky and Rocky 2, Porky Pig, Prehistorik Man

Prince of Persia 2, *Pushover, *Putty Squad

R-Type III, Raiden Trad, Realm

Relief Pitcher, Rendering Ranger R2, Rockman and Forte

Rocky Rodent, Run Saber, Scrambled Valkyrie

Sky Blazer, Smurfs, Smurfs Travel the World

Socks the Cat, *Soldiers of Fortune, Space Megaforce

Sparkster, Speedy Gonzales, Spider-Man

Spider-Man Venom, Spirou, Spriggan Powered

Star Fox, Street Fighter 2, *Street Racer

Strike Gunner, Super Adventure Island, *Super Alfred Chicken

Super Back to the Future 2, Super Bonk, *Super Buster Bros

Super Castlevania, Super Genjin 2, Super Ghouls and Ghosts

*Super James Pond, Super Mario All Stars, Super Mario Kart

Super Mario World, Super Metroid, *Super Morph

Super Nova, Super R-Type, Super Star Wars

Super Star Wars Empire, Super Star Wars Jedi, *Super SWIV

Super Turrican, Super Turrican 2, Sutte Hakkan

TMNT IV, Thunder Spirits, Time Slip

Tinhead, Tiny Toons Adventure, Todd McFarlane's Spawn

Toy Story, Umihara Kawase, UN Squadron

Urban Strike, *Whizz, *Wolfchild

Wolverine, *Worms, X-Kaliber

Yoshi's Island, Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel

 

[mopspear]

My friend just gave me his old PC and I installed Batocera on it so I'll definitely use this information for what to play.

 

[lostinblue]

TLDR: So you really like the Amiga.

 

[nkarafo]

Since this is a comparison thread i'll just drop some of my takes.

Graphically, the Amiga 500 is behind the later SNES/Ganesis games. That's mostly because of it's obsolete floppy format. When games reached 3+ MBs, floppies couldn't keep up, unless you wanted a disc swap and loading screen every 10 seconds. Cart Roms could handle many more animation frames and graphical details with no loading. Sprite/parallax scrolling wise, the Amiga is also not as capable as the 16bit consoles.

It's also unfair to compare AGA games (like Banshee) to 16bit consoles since the Amiga 1200 was a later gen system and it was competing with stuff like the Atari Jaguar, 3DO and the 32X.

Lastly, it's also unfair to judge Amiga's capabilities using it's on paper specs. On paper, the Amiga looks like a more powerful system but that's cheating. That's because the on-paper specs only take into account each single aspect individually. For instance, on paper, the Amiga can do 4k colors. That's true but only in specific situations like in still screens where nothing moves. Certainly not when you have scrolling, parallax and lots of sprites. Because then, you get more like 32 colors, which is worse than the Genesis. The 16bit console specs cite are the real numbers regardless the situation. If the specs say the Genesis can do 64 colors, it means it can do them while it also uses the maximum sprites and parallax layers while scrolling at 60fps.

Basically, both the Genesis or SNES don't have to "balance" the performance between it's technical aspects and reduce one to maximize the other, which is what the Amiga does.

 

[Hollowpoint5557]

Looked at the list and didn't see Super Metroid which made it invalid. Sorry you wasted your time.

 

[CanYouFlyBobby?]

you didnt play Quackshot? its my favorite 16-bit era game.

 

[Dr.Morris79]

The Amiga wins for me

It always won.

 

[Evil Calvin]

What are your favorite Genesis games?

 

[lionagony]

Graphically, the Amiga 500 is behind the later SNES/Ganesis games.

I don't think so, at least with the Genesis. Graphically I think Elfmania is better looking than SF2 on the SNES and definitely the Genesis. I think Agony and Lionheart are graphically better than any Genesis game. Then you have Kid Chaos (better backgrounds than Sonic), Mr Nutz (has pseudo Mode 7 bosses that the unrealeased Genesis version didn't have) Super Stardust and Slamtilt are arguably better looking than any SNES title. Donkey Kong Country 3 and Rendering Ranger are very impressive for SNES though in my opinion.

Sprite/parallax scrolling wise, the Amiga is also not as capable as the 16bit consoles.

Sprite wise true but not parallax. The Amiga had dual playfield from the start, admittedly one change in 1985 that would have made a big difference was to make the 7 colour foreground 8 colour background limit be split differently like 12-3 or something as that would have allowed nicer looking dual playfield screens with little effort. However, if developers were to put in the extra effort with copper lists you could get amazing results like Shadow of the Beast, Lionheart, Agony (3 playfields like SNES), Jim Power which were all in dual playfield but managed way more than 64 colours. Also when it comes to line scrolling the Amiga was just as smooth or smoother look at Elfmania or T-Racer for example

It's also unfair to compare AGA games (like Banshee) to 16bit consoles since the Amiga 1200 was a later gen system and it was competing with stuff like the Atari Jaguar, 3DO and the 32X.

All the games I mentioned above were OCS/ECS. The A1200 came out at least a year or more (Oct 92) before all of those you listed. Admittedly if Commodore would have kept the orginal team intact like they should have they could have leapfrogged the competition in 1992 or before but AGA was probably just equivalent with late 1990 SNES for gaming except for things like quarter pixel scrolling, more memory and higher resolutions where it surpassed it.

Lastly, it's also unfair to judge Amiga's capabilities using it's on paper specs.

But I was doing the opposite of that by actually playing and judging the games.

For instance, on paper, the Amiga can do 4k colors. That's true but only in specific situations like in still screens where nothing moves.

Have you seen the demo for the new game Hamulet? It uses HAM mode with 4096 colors and works on OCS and scrolls, it looks amazing.

 

[lionagony]

What are your favorite Genesis games?

They were in this link above https://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=1620501&postcount=46 Since then I added Dangerous Seed, Master of Weapon, Eliminate Down, Gley Lancer, Verytex, Pulseman and Panorama Cotton that I'd missed.

 

[lionagony]

Looked at the list and didn't see Super Metroid which made it invalid. Sorry you wasted your time.

It's on there.

 

[lionagony]

you didnt play Quackshot? its my favorite 16-bit era game.

I did but I just didn't take to it. I know a lot of people love it so it's subjective. It did make my list for watching a Youtube longplay of, which I did for some games that didn't quite make the main list but I wanted to see the rest of.

 

[kvltus lvlzvs]

From new member L lionagony here: https://www.neogaf.com/threads/neo-...ll-post-on-your-behalf.1456224/post-268163297

In 2023 I've been bitten huge by the emulation bug and have spent many hours trying the commercial catalogues of the three major platforms of the era, the Amiga, the Sega Genesis and the Super Nintendo (roughly 3000, 1000 and 1750 games respectively). I did this from the perspective of an action fan who mainly likes pick up and go action games that are fun and I also prioritize great graphics. I love 2D pixel art and took a huge break from gaming after things veered into 3D. Having grown up owning an A500 and an A1200 but not a machine from Sega or Nintendo I was more familiar with the Amiga library but still had a lot of games to discover for the first time from each.

I've now tried at least a few minutes of every commercial game (I'm sure I've missed some) from the 3 main systems. My objective is to put all my favourite games into a list and then revisit them all and play them more extensively which I have already done with quite a few. Since everything was done with emulation it was an even playing field because all loading times are now the same and any button inputs etc. can be configured in any way you like. I made a post on Reddit about my Amiga list which was then 310 games and has now been revised to 312.

I then went through the Sega Genesis/Sega CD/Sega 32X catalogue and put up my list of 190 favourite games that has now been revised to 197 https://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=1620501&postcount=46 I've just finished the SNES list which is at the bottom of this post and it is for 201 games.

So the final tally of "come back to games" is Amiga 312, Sega 197 and SNES 201. On the Sega list there were 56 that were also on the Amiga list and the SNES had 37 that were also on the Amiga list and quite a few that were also on the Sega list. So I tried to be as unbiased as possible when doing the lists and thought I'd write down my random thoughts if anyone is interested.

-The Amiga wins for me not just in sheer number of games but also in variety and that's keeping in mind I'm not really interested in strategy or RPG or simulation games etc. My Amiga list is just more eclectic even though they are mostly all action oriented. The SNES catalogue had the second most variety and the Genesis had the least being heavily skewed to sports games, shmups, beat em ups and platform games. So ranking in terms of variety it's 1)Amiga 2)SNES 3)Genesis

-I'd say in terms of overall performance the Amiga 500 and Genesis are roughly equivalent. The copper, blitter and extended palette give the Amiga some advantages and the sprites and tile system give the Sega Genesis some. The CD32 I'd say is roughly equivalent to a SNES without Mode 7 but with a CD drive. Each system definitely has a distinctive "look" to their games and I definitely prefer the Amiga look. I think the Amiga game Agony is the most beautiful of the entire 16 bit era. I know that is subjective but I saw nothing that topped it, it is like playing a moving art piece. I found the Amiga games would more often go for a more sophisticated, realistic art style. Also I would characterize more Amiga games as depicting a fantasy type world instead of a pastel anime kind of world on the SNES or a more gritty comic book look on the Sega Genesis. Obviously there are many exceptions to this rule but the general aesthetic of each system is definitely its own.

-The detail in Amiga graphics is also a differentiator, something like Banshee has such exquisite detail, also games like Slam Tilt or Disposable Hero. I think the bitmap vs tile system and the resolution helps the Amiga in this regard, the attention to detail in the graphics was something I definitely noticed

-Although graphically I found Amiga games most beautiful and stunning like Agony, Lionheart, Elfmania, Super Stardust etc. I was impressed with the Disney games that originated on the consoles like Pinocchio, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Lion King, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck etc.

-The more extensive sprite systems of the SNES and Genesis did give advantages in some games like Contra III, Contra Hard Corps and Gunstar Heroes. However, there was no shmup on any system that rivalled the sheer intensity of Mega Typhoon on the Amiga 500 and seeing that game in action made me think the Amiga was also capable of those kind of sprite based games if the Mega Typhoon coding techniques had been discovered earlier

-While playing the SNES games that were also on the Genesis I wondered if SNES owners back in the day were kind of annoyed at developers for playing to the lowest common denominator by catering to the Genesis like what happened in the 1980's where the Amiga had to suffer with all the Atari ST ports. I noticed a lot of low color screens on the SNES that is able to do 256 colors that I imagined might have been done in 64 or less for the Genesis and then just never improved when ported

-Mode 7 was used a lot more than I imagined. There were many different types of SNES games that implemented the mode in various ways. I thought Contra III might have been my favourite game on the SNES and those overhead levels were very unique and entertaining. I think Mode 7 went beyond a gimmick on the SNES and was a good differentiator and was probably a factor in pushing the gaming industry towards 3D.

-The term "console quality" I think is really a misnomer and probably just a clever marketing trick because there were a lot of bad playing and looking games on both consoles. I think Nintendo's quality control was a notch above Sega's but popping in a random console game does not mean you are going to automatically see something polished like Contra III or Vectorman it could just as easily be Awesome Possum, Home Alone 2 or Hardball III. I also witnessed many instances of flickering and slowdown on both the SNES and the Genesis.

-I love platfrom games and when going over the lists I was saddened to see how few were made specifially for AGA Amigas. There were a lot of spruced up OCS/ECS games but commercially besides Marvin's Marvelous Adventure and Tin Toy Adventure there was little else in the mid 90's. Donkey Kong Country 3 was probably the most impressive platform game I saw on the SNES and it would have been wonderful to see more attempts on the A1200/CD32

-The Overall winner for me is definitely the Amiga, it was my first love and maybe it's my bias but its games just have that je ne sais quoi. Action games are supposed to be the bread and butter of the consoles but I found over 100 more action games to play on the Amiga. I also discovered a lot of good games on the consoles but I'm pretty sure I'll spend the most time going back to games on my Amiga list over the other two. If I had to choose only one console to have it would definitely be the SNES. Again it had more variety and the graphics were better so any game that was shared by the SNES and the Genesis I will return to the SNES version with only a few exceptions. Since the Amiga list and Genesis list shared a lot more games if you were to have a limited budget or limited time the combination of the Amiga and the SNES would probably be your best bet.

I'm now going to go through the entire catalogue of the Turbo Grafx 16/PC Engine but I'm not sure how many people would be interested in that list. Then I plan to do all the 2D games of the PS1. So here is my list of favourite SNES games again from the perspective of an action fan who also prioritizes great graphics (games also on the Amiga list marked with a *)

Adv.of Batman & Robin, *Adv. of Kid Kleets, Adv. Yogi Bear

Aero Fighters, Aero the Acrobat 2, Aladdin

American Tail, *Arkanoid, Asterix

Asterix and Obelix, Axelay, Batman Forever

Battle Raiden, Beauty & the Beast, Bio Metal

Blazeon, Bonkers, Bugs Bunny

Cannon Fodder, Capcom's Soccer Shootout, Castlevania Dracula X

*Championship Soccer 94, *Chuck Rock, Clay Fighter 2

Contra III, *Cool Spot, CutThroat Island

Cybernator, D-Force, Darius Twin

Daze Before Christmas, Demon's Crest, *Dennis

*Desert Strike, Donkey Kong Country, Donkey Kong Country 2

Donkey Kong Country 3, Do Re Mi Fantasy, Dragon Bruce Lee Story

Earth Defense Force, Earthworm Jim, Earthworm Jim 2

F1 Grand Prix, Fifa 97, Final Fight

*First Samurai, *Flashback, Flintstones

Flintstones Treasure of Sierra, Frantic Flea, Front Mission:Gun Hazard

F-Zero, Ganbare! Daiku, Ganbare Goemon 2

*Gods, Go Go Ackman, Great Battle IV

Great Circus Mystery, Gunforce, Gundam Wing

Hagane, Hameln no Violin Hiki, *Humans

Imperium, Incantation, Indiana Jones

Iron Commando, *James Pond 3, Jelly Boy

Jikkyon Parodius, *Jim Power, Joe and Mac

Joe and Mac 2, Judge Dredd, Jungle Book

*Jungle Strike, Jurassic Park, Jurassic Park 2

Ken Griffey Winning Run, King of Demons, Kirby's Dreamland 3

*Lamborghini American Challenge, Legend, Legend of Zelda

*Lemmings, *Lemmings 2, Lester the Unlikely

*Lethal Weapon, *Lion King, *Lost Vikings

Lost Vikings 2, Lucky Luke, Lupin Sansei

Magical Quest Mickey, Marchen Adventures Cotton, Maui Mallard

Mech Warrior 3050, Mega Man X2, Mega Man X3

Melford Stories, Metal Warriors, Mickey Mania

Mickey No Tokyo, Mickey to Donald, *Micro Machines

Micro Machines 2, Mohawk & Headphone Jack, Mr Nutz, Mr Tuff

*Ms Pacman, NBA Hang Time, NBA Live 98

Newman Haas Indy Car, Nightmare Busters, NHL 98

*Nigel Mansell's Racing, Ninja Warriors, *Oscar

*Out of This World, Pagemaster, Parodius Da

PGA Tour Golf, Phalanx, Phantom 2040

Pilot Wings, Pink Goes to Hollywood, Pinocchio

Pirates of Dark Water, Plok, Pocky and Rocky

Pocky and Rocky 2, Porky Pig, Prehistorik Man

Prince of Persia 2, *Pushover, *Putty Squad

R-Type III, Raiden Trad, Realm

Relief Pitcher, Rendering Ranger R2, Rockman and Forte

Rocky Rodent, Run Saber, Scrambled Valkyrie

Sky Blazer, Smurfs, Smurfs Travel the World

Socks the Cat, *Soldiers of Fortune, Space Megaforce

Sparkster, Speedy Gonzales, Spider-Man

Spider-Man Venom, Spirou, Spriggan Powered

Star Fox, Street Fighter 2, *Street Racer

Strike Gunner, Super Adventure Island, *Super Alfred Chicken

Super Back to the Future 2, Super Bonk, *Super Buster Bros

Super Castlevania, Super Genjin 2, Super Ghouls and Ghosts

*Super James Pond, Super Mario All Stars, Super Mario Kart

Super Mario World, Super Metroid, *Super Morph

Super Nova, Super R-Type, Super Star Wars

Super Star Wars Empire, Super Star Wars Jedi, *Super SWIV

Super Turrican, Super Turrican 2, Sutte Hakkan

TMNT IV, Thunder Spirits, Time Slip

Tinhead, Tiny Toons Adventure, Todd McFarlane's Spawn

Toy Story, Umihara Kawase, UN Squadron

Urban Strike, *Whizz, *Wolfchild

Wolverine, *Worms, X-Kaliber

Yoshi's Island, Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel

absolutely blessed thread

 

[RAIDEN1]

If you were an Amiga owner in 1993/1994 you knew the game was up with either woeful ports of Streetfighter 2.....or Doom just not being considered at all for ANY commodore machine and you would look while the likes of the SNES got both.....Looking back the CD32 was an absolute Joke of a machine....might have been the first 32 bit machine out there but they were gunning for the wrong-enemy ie the Sega CD, which was a 16-bit based platform not going for the 32 bit territory....and arguably some Sega CD games you could only dream of getting on the CD32....Lastly it was a good job the Sharp X68000 didn't release in the West....had it of done in 1987....the Commodore Amiga side would have had more to sweat about rather than a poor Atari ST as "competiton"....

 

[Wildebeest]

Amiga was like the precursor to PlayStation. A lot of PlayStation developers earned their stripes there.

 

[calistan]

Loved the Amiga at the time, but very few of those games stand up today. The single-button joystick was a crippling limitation, and it was riddled with shitty Atari ST ports.

 

[nkarafo]

I don't think so, at least with the Genesis. Graphically I think Elfmania is better looking than SF2 on the SNES and definitely the Genesis. I think Agony and Lionheart are graphically better than any Genesis game. Then you have Kid Chaos (better backgrounds than Sonic), Mr Nutz (has pseudo Mode 7 bosses that the unrealeased Genesis version didn't have) Super Stardust and Slamtilt are arguably better looking than any SNES title. Donkey Kong Country 3 and Rendering Ranger are very impressive for SNES though in my opinion

I would say games like Adventures of Batman & Robin, Thunderforce IV, Flink, Mickey Mania, Sonic 3D Blast, Toy Story, Vectorman and Earthworm Jim 2 beat everything i have ever seen the Amiga do.

Agony looks nice but the enemy sprites lack animations and have dull colors. Lionheart looks like a simpler version of Flink. Again, it's nice but very empty, with very few sprites on screen at any moment, unlike Flink. Super Stardust is a nice example of pre-rendered sprites on the Amiga but still, not as impressive as stuff like Toy Story and the DKC games.

 

[lionagony]

If you were an Amiga owner in 1993/1994 you knew the game was up with either woeful ports of Streetfighter 2.....or Doom just not being considered at all for ANY commodore machine and you would look while the likes of the SNES got both

Some of my favourite Amiga games were in 1994 and beyond. Yes the SF2 Amiga port was bad. As an aside an interesting video was put out a few years ago where some coders showed a one level demo of SF2 for the A1200 that in many ways surpasses the arcade. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=sf2+aga+arcade Doom and the like yes the Amiga was never designed well for 3D so if you liked 3D games then there were better platforms, I'm a 2D guy though. Genetic Species was a very impressive later Amiga FPS title The CD32 had many great games, just CTRL-F'ing my list there's 49 where it's specified, that's more than the whole 32X catalogue and the CD32 was also only sold for 8 months before Commodore went under.

...Lastly it was a good job the Sharp X68000 didn't release in the West....had it of done in 1987....the Commodore Amiga side would have had more to sweat about rather than a poor Atari ST as "competiton"....

It's interesting that the X68000 was all about VRAM and the Amiga's inventor Jay Miner had a VRAM based chipset ready to go around the release of the Sharp but Commodore nixed the idea which would admittedly have been very expensive like the X68000 was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Ranger_Chipset

 

[jufonuk]

How does street fighter play on the Amiga ?

Chaos engine and some of the old bit map bros/team 17 games looked great on the Amiga

 

[nkarafo]

Some of my favourite Amiga games were in 1994 and beyond. Yes the SF2 Amiga port was bad. As an aside an interesting video was put out a few years ago where some coders showed a one level demo of SF2 for the A1200 that in many ways surpasses the arcade. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=sf2+aga+arcade

I'm completely at loss here. In what way is this port better than the arcade?

Genetic Species was a very impressive later Amiga FPS title The CD32 had many great games, just CTRL-F'ing my list there's 49 where it's specified, that's more than the whole 32X catalogue and the CD32 was also only sold for 8 months before Commodore went under.

What specs does this game need to look and run like it does on this video? Surely not a stock 1200 or CD32 i imagine?

Btw, this game is inferior to any DOOM port since it doesn't even have a nearly as complex game engine (it only does orthogonal rooms) and it looks more like a more advanced Wolfenstein 3D. It also has a very short draw distance on top of that.

If you were an Amiga owner in 1993/1994 you knew the game was up with either woeful ports of Streetfighter 2.....or Doom just not being considered at all for ANY commodore machine and you would look while the likes of the SNES got both.....Looking back the CD32 was an absolute Joke of a machine...

The 68020 was a pretty weak 32bit CPU.

 

[lionagony]

I would say games like Adventures of Batman & Robin, Thunderforce IV, Flink, Mickey Mania, Sonic 3D Blast, Toy Story, Vectorman and Earthworm Jim 2 beat everything i have ever seen the Amiga do.

Those are good games with good graphics that are all on my list but I guess we'll just disagree about which ones look better. The parallax on Lionheart I don't think was ever bested, I prefer the look of it over Henk's other work Flink but think that is also a great game. You can find small faults with Agony but overall with the bombastic music and the detailed background animations nothing outdoes it for me. Level 4 with the swinging bridge and the beautiful sky magenta airspace is just the epitome of pixel art in my mind.

 

[cireza]

While playing the SNES games that were also on the Genesis I wondered if SNES owners back in the day were kind of annoyed at developers for playing to the lowest common denominator by catering to the Genesis

You got that reversed. It was actually SEGA fans who were annoyed of 256x224 ports from the SNES.

The CD32 I'd say is roughly equivalent to a SNES without Mode 7 but with a CD drive.

SEGA-CD can do all Mode 7 effects and more (are you sure you played them ?), and the CD drive adds a lot. Having extensively played all these old consoles, I don't see how SEGA-CD can be summarized as a SNES without Mode 7 at all... Unless I missed the SNES version of Batman & Robin on the SEGA-CD, which feels like it was taken straight of the 32 bits era. Same for Lunar 2 by the way. And the sound-design on this add-on was stellar in quite a few instances.

Also, consoles strengths were obviously seen as more important for a lot of players. Preferring Amiga is great, I think it was an awesome system with a lot of personality. But there were several weaknesses as well.

 

[lionagony]

I'm completely at loss here. In what way is this port better than the arcade?

I'm talking about the demo in the Youtube video not the US Gold port just to clarify. The coder in the pinned comment of the video lays out the differences between his A1200 version and the arcade saying "This version compared to the arcade ------------------------------------------------------------ + 7 extra parallax layers + Better gradients and more background colors + More movement (2nd boat in the background.) + Real instruments instead of FM Synthesizer - Lower horizontal resolution (75%... nothing we can do about that since there's no compatible resolution, CPS uses a very uncommon resolution and 60fps gameplay is a must) - Less character color variety (same amount of colors, no loss in quality, but the two characters need to share a single palette)"

What specs does this game need to look and run like it does on this video? Surely not a stock 1200 or CD32 i imagine?

Min specs from HOL are https://hol.abime.net/2716
- AGA Amiga
- 68020 CPU
- 2MB chipram + 8MB fastram
- 2xCDROM drive
- HD

I'm not saying it's better/worse than Doom, like I say 3D games aren't my forte but just wanted to mention it since it's a well respected later Amiga game that doesn't get mentioned enough that I enjoyed.

 

[nkarafo]

I'm talking about the demo in the Youtube video not the US Gold port just to clarify. The coder in the pinned comment of the video lays out the differences between his A1200 version and the arcade saying "This version compared to the arcade ------------------------------------------------------------ + 7 extra parallax layers + Better gradients and more background colors + More movement (2nd boat in the background.) + Real instruments instead of FM Synthesizer - Lower horizontal resolution (75%... nothing we can do about that since there's no compatible resolution, CPS uses a very uncommon resolution and 60fps gameplay is a must) - Less character color variety (same amount of colors, no loss in quality, but the two characters need to share a single palette)"

I saw the "impossible port" SF video some time ago. The coder tries to reach parity with the arcade, let alone surpass it. All the assets are still down scaled. Are you talking about a different video maybe?

Min specs from HOL are https://hol.abime.net/2716
- AGA Amiga
- 68020 CPU
- 2MB chipram + 8MB fastram
- 2xCDROM drive
- HD

I'm not saying it's better/worse than Doom, like I say 3D games aren't my forte but just wanted to mention it since it's a well respected later Amiga game that doesn't get mentioned enough that I enjoyed.

Those are the minimum requirements for the game to work. Not the ones needed to run and look like in the Video. I have played every single Amiga FPS using those specs (Fears, Breathless, Gloom, etc,) and they all run at, like, 4 fps and much lower resolution and window size. You need at least a 68030 class CPU to start seeing smooth frame rates and more like a 68060 to reach the quality of what you see in the video.

 

[Fuz]

The Overall winner for me is definitely the Amiga

 

[lionagony]

You got that reversed. It was actually SEGA fans who were annoyed of 256x224 ports from the SNES.

Interesting. Yeah I have seen people complain about the cropping of the SNES.

SEGA-CD can do all Mode 7 effects and more (are you sure you played them ?), and the CD drive adds a lot.

I think you misread my comment I was saying the Amiga CD32 was roughly equivalent to an SNES but with a CD drive and without Mode 7.

 

[StereoVsn]

I am more into Genesis/SNES but have a soft spot for PC-Engine/TurboGrafx-16. Never messed around with Amiga, kind of went into PC Gaming right off the bat on that side of things.

 

[lionagony]

How does street fighter play on the Amiga ?

SF2 was bad on the Amiga. The consensus for best Amiga fighting games seems to be Shadow Fighter and Fightin Spirit.

 

[lionagony]

I saw the "impossible port" SF video some time ago. The coder tries to reach parity with the arcade, let alone surpass it. All the assets are still down scaled. Are you talking about a different video maybe?

No that's the pinned comment by the graphician of that Youtube video. It does have more parallax, more colours etc. He talks about 4 improvements over the arcade and 2 compromises so depending on what you prioritize it could be better.

Those are the minimum requirements for the game to work. Not the ones needed to run and look like in the Video. I have played every single Amiga FPS using those specs (Fears, Breathless, Gloom, etc,) and they all run at, like, 4 fps and much lower resolution and window size. You need at least a 68030 class CPU to start seeing smooth frame rates and more like a 68060 to reach the quality of what you see in the video.

Yeah when I played it I think I had 68030 or 040 set in WinUAE, not sure what that particular video is using but I saw the same smoothness. Gloom Deluxe also played well like that. But again to get the best out of Doom etc. you needed to upgrade from 386's etc. and the SNES version was highly compromised and again the Amiga wasn't the best for 3D, expanded Amigas had a few good options though and those are relevant for 2023 emulation.

 

[BlackTron]

Ancient platform-warring aside, this is a hugely, no, STAGGERINGLY informational post.

 

[RAIDEN1]

SF2 was bad on the Amiga. The consensus for best Amiga fighting games seems to be Shadow Fighter and Fightin Spirit.

Things only got worse with the port of Super Street fighter 2 to even the CD32/A1200 when you think these machines would have been able to do a decent enough port but no...

 

[tommolb]

The A1200 was woeful, being crippled by the 020 and floppy drive. Commodore should have gone for an 030 processor, 2MB of Fast RAM (alongside the 2MB chip), CD-ROM drive, the Akiko chip and improved the sound. The machine might have stood a chance then, but all that would have pushed up the price.

The Amiga lost it's appeal once you had the PC with its 256 colour Monkey Island 2, while the Amiga was stuck with 32 colours and disk swapping hell with something like a dozen floppy disks. A piss poor Streat Fighter port showed it couldn't match the SNES or Megadrive (due to the limitations of floppy disks), while an inability to run Doom style games at an acceptable pace on unexpanded hardware killed off the machine once and for all (caused by weak CPU and the lack of a chunky graphics mode).

I say all of the above as an Amiga fan.

My exposure to SNES & Megadrive has only come later via emulation, but those machines' cart medium enabled them to achieve what the Amiga couldn't (but had the potential to achieve). Where the Amiga owned those machines was in the sound department.

 

[tommolb]

Things only got worse with the port of Super Street fighter 2 to even the CD32/A1200 when you think these machines would have been able to do a decent enough port but no...

Caused by the limitations of the floppy disk format and the fact the CD32 market wasn't big enough to invest any time making a proper port that made use of the medium .

 

[Davevil]

 

[calistan]

My exposure to SNES & Megadrive has only come later via emulation, but those machines' cart medium enabled them to achieve what the Amiga couldn't (but had the potential to achieve). Where the Amiga owned those machines was in the sound department.

Not so sure about that. There was some great hacker music on Amiga, and I loved playing with things like Noisetracker, but only having four sound channels was primitive. You couldn't have much of a music track running during gameplay, and the game effects would override parts of the music. See, e.g., Xenon 2.

It was especially obvious because of that weird Amiga thing of having two channels devoted to the left and two to the right. If you wanted to pan an effect across the speakers you needed an empty channel to fade it into. Stereo, but not as we know it.

 

[Beer Baelly]

OP's ringtone

 

[Hollowpoint5557]

It's on there.

Yeah I read it too fast.

 

[S0ULZB0URNE]

Sorry had to stop reading when you said you chose Amiga.

 

[Ivan]

Amiga games were almost always at lower frame rate than SNES/Mega drive. There were some 50hz amiga games, but low frame rate was the norm.

 

[Ivan]

Amiga was like the precursor to PlayStation. A lot of PlayStation developers earned their stripes there.

I always felt the same, Psygnosis and Gremlin did their part for sure, but I didn't know anything about developers back then and PS1 still felt like a natural successor to the Amiga in Europe... Doesn't make sense when you say it, I know.

Maybe those were the years when PC still hasn't become huge here and PS1 was cheap enough for most people. But somehow type of games the Amiga had felt closer to PS1 than PC of the same time (to me as a kid).

Edit: sorry for double

 

[8BiTw0LF]

Amiga were the indie machine and the true bad boy in gaming back then - although Genesis/Mega Drive really wanted that title.

Nintendo and Sega had the best arcade conversions, but missed out on the whole homebrew scene.

Amiga only focused on western developers and single-handedly established itself as the go-to machine for developers in Europe.

Point&Click adventure games were nowhere to be seen on Nintendo and Sega - Amiga shined in that genre.

Nintendo and Sega had better quality games - but not the amount of diverse games as the Amiga had - not even close.

 

[lionagony]

Amiga were the indie machine and the true bad boy in gaming back then - although Genesis/Mega Drive really wanted that title.

I like that characterization. The Amiga had such a revolutionary spirit around it, especially since a ragtag group of guys made a machine in 1985 that was at least 5 years ahead in gaming and 10 years ahead as an operating system. It was even moreso that way here in Canada where it never reached the commercial heights of Europe. It was like an underground secret, a hidden portal to the future. The fact that today there is 312 games for me to play on it (and growing since games are still regularly released) is nothing short of amazing.

 

[nkarafo]

Caused by the limitations of the floppy disk format and the fact the CD32 market wasn't big enough to invest any time making a proper port that made use of the medium .

Early CD based consoles were not good for animation-intensive 2D games either. Their measly 2 MB or RAM was not big enough to store all the information and the slow CD was not good enough to feed it fast enough either. Even the much more powerful machines like the PS1 and Saturn had the same issue, though the Saturn somewhat improved things with it's expanding RAM options. I mean, the Neo-Geo CD needed a whooping (for the time) 7 MB or RAM to be able to fit the same amount of ready to use data the AES ROM version could easily provide with no loading.

There's no way the CD32 would be able to handle the more modern fighting games without huge compromises. Maybe it could handle a CPS1 game like SF2 but that's it. Anything more intensive than that would need hardware expansions. Unless you want 2 second pauses every few seconds during the fights, to stream the animation frames from the slow CD in real time...

Cartridges was the way. No need for a lot of RAM or loading, you just use the data straight from the ultra fast ROMs. That's the main reason consoles were better than home computers IMO. As the ROMs got bigger the graphics got better and the animations more plentiful. That, and the better gamepads with plenty of buttons.

 

[Gambit2483]

I would take Super Metroid and Chrono Trigger over every single Amiga game in existence combined.

 

[diffusionx]

I really don't like that "Euro" look that so many Amiga games had. Like, I can take a look at a screenshot of a game released in that era and just know it was European and for Amiga.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

cormack12 I appreciate your effort but isn't the comparison kind of skewed? The Amiga was well outside of the price range of SNES and Genesis. It'd be like comparing those systems to the Neo-Geo. We can do it in hindsight sure but at the time the systems were commercially relevant, Amiga skewed to vastly different audiences than SNES or Genesis.

I'd say the Amiga was the microcomputer equivalent to the PC scene we'd see mature in the '90s. In fact a lot of Amiga devs moved over to DOS/Windows PC development once the Amiga (and by extension microcomputer) market died off in Europe by the mid '90s. Well, DOS/Windows and PlayStation, as well.

Personally I don't have a lot of experience with the Amiga's library; know it was a massive deal in the mid/late '80s and early '90s, and was incredibly advanced for its time. A lot of European devs who'd become well-known on console with 5th-gen systems cut their teeth working on Amiga games, too. But I know from the onset there are going to be plenty of SNES and Genesis exclusives I love which aren't on the Amiga, so I probably would never put it ahead of either system.

Just personally, of course. Although I would probably look at it more compared to other microcomputers of the era like the X68000 or PC-88 & PC-98.

 

[cireza]

Early CD based consoles were not good for animation-intensive 2D games either. Their measly 2 MB or RAM was not big enough to store all the information and the slow CD was not good enough to feed it fast enough either. Even the much more powerful machines like the PS1 and Saturn had the same issue, though the Saturn somewhat improved things with it's expanding RAM options. I mean, the Neo-Geo CD needed a whooping (for the time) 7 MB or RAM to be able to fit the same amount of ready to use data the AES ROM version could easily provide with no loading.

There's no way the CD32 would be able to handle the more modern fighting games without huge compromises. Maybe it could handle a CPS1 game like SF2 but that's it. Anything more intensive than that would need hardware expansions. Unless you want 2 second pauses every few seconds during the fights, to stream the animation frames from the slow CD in real time...

Cartridges was the way. No need for a lot of RAM or loading, you just use the data straight from the ultra fast ROMs. That's the main reason consoles were better than home computers IMO. As the ROMs got bigger the graphics got better and the animations more plentiful. That, and the better gamepads with plenty of buttons.

CDs were not appropriate for games that required streaming, which ultimately were arcade ports. However for other games, such as RPGs, they offered a massive upgrade to content and quality. As usual, you got advantages and disadvantages, and not one format was better in every way.

I think you misread my comment I was saying the Amiga CD32 was roughly equivalent to an SNES but with a CD drive and without Mode 7.

It came right after moving to Sega Genesis in your text, thus the confusion. I thought you were talking about Sega-CD + 32X and took a shortcut in the name.

 

[CGNoire]

For action games the higher res and faster framerate of the genesis pushed it way over the snes for me.

The increased horizontal resolution. alone made sidescrollers way funner and easier to play.

 

[Hudo]

You haven't lived until you filled a hole

... in Neo Turf Masters for the SNK Neo Geo AES.

 

[Fredrik]

The Amiga is my favorite as well. Still have an A1200 on the desk always plugged in to the main screen through video output mod.