Games

[icycalm]

This might be a site worth checking out:

http://www.lemonamiga.com/

I just came across it and haven't had time to go through it yet, but I thought I'd throw it in here just so I wouldn't forget to check it out later.

I'll say this much for now: their top 25 games chart has a criminal lack of North & South, whilst including several ports, which obviously should not have been included.

EDIT:

The Lemon Amiga box scans are of higher quality than any other Amiga sites out there! Tons of hours have been spent on removing scratches, rotate, colour/contrast adjust and crop the images to ensure you top quality scans. The boxes have been scanned by our contributors in 300 DPI, exclusively for Lemon Amiga. You can list all of our box scans here! There are hundreds of box scans in our queue so stay tuned for more updates soon...

I like the sound of this!

[Recap]

Wow. A real-time "scanlines mode" button for the screenshots (though the question in the first place is why the hell did they bother to put non-scanlined upscaled screens)! The results are so-so, but still.

I got a bit scared of some writing style there, but seems to be a lovely place. The Amiga is very overrated as a games machine (as its games are), but deserves some mention once in a while. You made me lament ignoring North & South back in the day.

[Jedah]

North & South is at least in Amiga top 10.

UPDATE: I've just took a look at their Street Fighter II review. They think that Amiga's version was good! I remember that even back in early nineties it was abysmal compared to the SNES port. Actually the game has nothing to do with the arcade original. Example: Ryu & Ken's Dragon Punch was performed by charging down and up. A-B-Y-S-M-A-L. Now that I remember same goes for the PC version of World Warrior, where Ruy, Ken and Dhalsim had the the same Yoga fire projectile sprite. SNES was the only option to play the game properly* at home.

properly*: Smaller sprites, lower resolution, missing frames of animation compared to the arcade. The moves and combos were virtually the same though.

[Recap]

I like the sound of this!

Have you seen the Magazine Reviews section for e-v-e-r-y game!?

http://www.lemonamiga.com/?mainurl=http ... 3Fid%3D589


Japanese fans need to care as much as Westerners do about copyrights. At least for website imagery content.

[Macaw]

Hall of Light is a much more thorough resource for Amiga stuff: http://hol.abime.net/


In the past I recall Recap saying no Western made platformers (or action games in general? I forget) are of any worth. I strongly disagree with this, and I don't think the Amiga and the games on it are overrated at all, though perhaps I am not subjected to this as much considering I live in Australia and the Amiga never got off its feet here.

[Recap]

In the past I recall Recap saying no Western made platformers (or action games in general? I forget) are of any worth.

As a generalization, it works for me. I grew with a Spectrum, a CPC and an Amiga 500 with an RGB monitor, which I had very very early, when you only could find a couple of games for it. It was the era (which included the C64, too) that type of games got the biggest attention from Western developers, and I, more or less, got to play the best pieces since it was my favorite genre. And honestly, Japanese MSX and FC libraries put them to shame.

The A500 was, audiovisually, unbelievable. And that's what made us bite. But most pieces were actually flawed because of the mechanics aspects. The only things I remember really working were Ocean's superlative conversions of Rainbow Islands, Parasol Stars and New Zealand Story and those, for obvious reasons, don't count. You could save some other titles if you look at other action genres, such as Cinemaware's pieces, some Bitmap Brothers and whatnot, or perhaps some console stuff like Virgin's Aladdin, but Western developers in general (Euro ones, mostly, in this case) just didn't know how to get it right, in my opinion.

[Macaw]

Firstly, the MSX library is not good. Beyond the Konami exclusives and a couple of others, 90% of the stuff on it are cut down ports of PC-88 games. The pc88 was high res, and the MSX was low, so the games suffered a lot. Use the PC-88 library as the example, its fantastic.

Your comments on the A500 I agree with. Audiovisually its superb, and the fact so many of the developers at the time had such talented and hard working artists is immediately the biggest hook of amiga games, just amazing 2d graphics.

The mechanics aspect never bothered me (too much). Sure, when it came to action games there was certainly a big difference in the japanese style where everything is tight and satisfying, while the european style was generally a bit more unique and varied. Perhaps the biggest european design aspect that caught on in platformers is 'hold the button then press a direction to slash your sword'. I don't mind things like these though, especially if the game is a slow paced, more adventure oriented action game, rather than something trying to emulate a Japanese arcade game.

There isn't really anything more to say without starting to list certain amiga games I think are good examples and my thoughts on them. I would actually quite enjoy doing that and discussing the qualities of certain games with you recap, though I think it probably belongs in a different thread.

[Recap]

Firstly, the MSX library is not good. Beyond the Konami exclusives and a couple of others, 90% of the stuff on it are cut down ports of PC-88 games. The pc88 was high res, and the MSX was low, so the games suffered a lot. Use the PC-88 library as the example, its fantastic.

Well, for some reason I had in my mind just the systems which had a version for the West. Of course, I agree with the Konami titles being almost the only ones which are worth on the MSX thing. But darn; they're so many and so good that my point is still valid. Anyhow, don't fool yourself. The PC88 games (as well as most of the early PC98 catalog) were more fake hi-res than true hi-res. The action window was displayed with fake scanlines or other wonderful de-interlacing artifacts in order to double the displayed resolution there.

There isn't really anything more to say without starting to list certain amiga games I think are good examples and my thoughts on them. I would actually quite enjoy doing that and discussing the qualities of certain games with you recap, though I think it probably belongs in a different thread.

Whenever you want. Keep in mind that my memories are starting to vanish, though. Western computers and their games are the only ones I never cared again.

Maybe you missed related thread, by the way?