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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Gaming => Topic started by: tokyoracer on March 06, 2006, 09:23:18 AM

Title: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: tokyoracer on March 06, 2006, 09:23:18 AM
Thought this would be an intresting topic...
my top 3 most annoying ones in order is...

3. Pinball Dreams (Ball seems to love always going between the flippers but when you get it right a truely awsome game)

2. Nebulus (Hope its the right spelling. Very fustrating when you get so close to the top of the tower then get spun to the bottom... or worse!)

1. Helter Skelter (No matter what you do the ball never seems to bounce right!) GRRRR!
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: PMC on March 06, 2006, 09:35:59 AM
Nebulus... I absolutely love that game.  If you think that the Amiga version is irritating (you've got to be 100% pixel perfect with your co-ordination) then the PC remake will drive you nuts.  I still can't complete the first tower on the PC!
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: TheSLASH! on March 06, 2006, 09:36:37 AM
1. Lemmings, after listening to the Oh No!, Let's Go! and the happy-music in 3 days at a copy-party. But i love the game anyway!  :-P

2. Xenon II, isn't this game impossible to complete? Beutifull gfx and sfx.

3. Rick dangerous, another game that I always wanted to make it to the end. I did play this game for to many hours with a friend when a was a kid.

...all these are games that i have hate-love to.  :pissed:
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: tokyoracer on March 06, 2006, 09:53:34 AM
i wonder why the neblus green pig caricture never caught on? hes quite a qute litttle fella. Mind you there was a corse on PGA tour that was very hard indeed.
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: motorollin on March 06, 2006, 09:54:24 AM
Both Rick Dangerous games were soul-destroyingly, joystick-crushingly, larynx destroyingly frustrating. The only thing that made up for this was the box cover pictures  :evilgrin:

Nebulus is also pretty frustrating, but has so much nostalgia attached to it for me that I keep coming back to it 12 years after I first played it.

--
moto
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: JLF65 on March 07, 2006, 04:52:34 AM
Blood Money, hands down. It's like, ready - START!

DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE!

Play again?

 :lol:  :lol:

Seriously, I had to use the cheat to go more than ten seconds on that game... on the EASY setting.
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Matt_H on March 07, 2006, 05:21:08 AM
Triango. narrator.device was very overused in this game. It got very irritating after a while.
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Ilwrath on March 07, 2006, 05:22:53 AM
Yeah, Psygnosis had some seriously difficult games.  Blood Money was frustrating.  So was "The Killing Game Show."  I never made it past about 4 or 5 levels, when apparently there were a good 100 or so.

Pinball Dreams I never found frustrating, though.  A really great pinball experience.  (Though I went through some SERIOUS frustrating times getting it to work right on my A1200!)

Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Matt_H on March 07, 2006, 05:25:08 AM
Oh, I forgot about HOI! I absolutely hated that game! Every time you were (easily) killed, spheres would shoot out from your character until the screen was filled, slowly and tediously. Ugh, and the music, the overuse of copper effects... blech!

;-)
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: mr_a500 on March 07, 2006, 06:19:01 AM
Shogun (text adventure) is extremely annoying. You have to type the exact right thing at the exact right time. The most points I ever got was 10. Later, I tried to finish with cheats. Even with the in-game hints, even with the "game cheat" text file, it is unbareably tedious. I gave up in disgust.

Dragon's Lair 2 is probably the most annoying game I still have on my harddrive and it's only there for nostalga reasons (the only reason I keep any annoying game). I can't even get past the first scene!

Another World - it's visually impressive, but totally sucks as a game. How many times do you have to die, just to figure it out?? I think my average was something like 76 deaths per scene for the first few scenes, then 350 after that.

Prince of Persia - same as Another World: die, start over, die, start over, die....

Fantastic Voyage - beautiful graphics but even with the 99 lives cheat, it's impossible to get past the first valve.
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: darksun9210 on March 07, 2006, 10:51:40 AM
Hmmm,
Hitchikers guide to the galaxy text adventure...
go to pub,
get salted peanuts,
eat salted peanuts,

the vogons have destoryed the earth. game over.

could never figure out how to teleport off the planet before it was destroyed. :lol:
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: motorollin on March 07, 2006, 11:07:44 AM
@darksun
Read the book  :-P

--
moto
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Legerdemain on March 07, 2006, 11:23:48 AM
Shadow of the Beast II.

Okay, so the game has loaded up. The long introduction has finally played through. You get to control you character and you go a bit to the left and there you see a monster which you try to kill. Howver, you GET killed instead. And something like 50 seconds of gameplay was what you were given. Then comes the extremely long game over sequence. You then wait forever to be able to start a new game. Then you realise you have to watch the long introduction again. You get so frustrated by all this waiting, that when the gameplay finally is handed over to you, you will not last more than a couple of minutes due to the frustration, of having to wait to play the game, and the horror, of maybe dying and having to wait forever to play the game again, disturbing your concentration.

What where they thinking? Really?
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Cymric on March 07, 2006, 12:21:11 PM
Hard Drivin' --- what a complete waste of a perfectly good christmas present that was.

Weird Dreams --- did anyone ever get past the rose bushes, i.e., the second screen to the right, IIRC?

The Surgeon --- did anyone ever manage to operate the patient succesfully without him waking up screaming?

Whirligig --- great mathematical concept, beautiful 3D-animations, but utterly ruined by the controls, the ridiculous 320x200 resolution when you absolutely needed 320x240 at the very least, and the fact that the game in itself was pointless. The solution was printed on the last page of the manual, and I doubt many got as far as the tenth (out of 36) punyverse.

Pinball Mania (I think) --- did someone ever manage to actually win the One Billion Dollar Gameshow? The trick shots were nigh impossible to achieve. (Slam Tilt is sooo much better; I still have it on my PC and get a kick out of every table it offers.)

Magic Pockets --- the guys at the Quality Assurance dept. of the Bitmap Bros were asleep when this was released. The levels were simply WAAYYY to big, and the baddies were mean and fast, with you throwing little tornados at a snail's pace. I cannot believe I wasted good money on this with Gods available. Damn you, Amiga Format!

Pioneer Plague --- great use of HAM mode, lots to do, but held back by the 320x200 resolution, weird scrolling, and the nagging feeling there was no way to actually win this game. I did manage to surpass the programmer's highest level, though.

E-motion --- bought it because of the 'Assembly Line' logo on it. Ugh. Never touched my Devpac again after that.

Jumping Jack Son --- the first puzzle level which allowed you to skip the first four regular levels is unsolvable.
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: god64 on March 07, 2006, 12:49:56 PM
for me it's fuzzball, no doubt about it.

it has about 50 levels or so, i never made it past level 8... and i tried sooooo many times.

but beeing 'most annoying' is only half of the truth, the other half is, that it is highly addictive.

if i play it, i shout, i scream, i beat up parts of my furniture, i bite into the joystick, but i cant stop starting over and over again for hours ;-)
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: foleyjo on March 07, 2006, 12:58:42 PM
Platoon. 1 of my fave games from the C64 yet on the Amiga the enemy seem to shoot before being on screen which means Im dead before I can decide if I need to duck or jump their bullets
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: wwonka on March 07, 2006, 01:02:30 PM
Well lets see I didn't have much luck with quite a few psygnosis games though I enjoyed them I'll leave them off the list but:
Nebulus - Just happy to hear I wasn't the only one that had issues with it.

ChaseHQ - Yeah driving games are apparently not my forte could never catch the first guy.
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: ricco32097 on March 07, 2006, 01:35:33 PM
TheSLASH!: As a kid I did make it to the end in Rick Dangerous. Was a huge fan of the game. In the second version, it tells you that there will be a no. three. I think I saw a demo of part III, but that was about it.
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: tokyoracer on March 07, 2006, 02:24:35 PM
wow, alot of annoyed gamers! i actually nearly wrecked my cd32 controller *gasp* need to calm down when i use helter skelter again. :-P
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Ohforf on March 07, 2006, 05:59:34 PM
Worst Game ever :
Prey - An alien Encounter (CD32) (http://www.classicgaming.com/amigareviews/prey.htm)
A tiny Part of the Game looks really good
but Prey is a bad Excuse of a Game.
The worst Part are the Fighting Sequences
someone didnt get the Graphics finished  :-?
I still regret buying it, some Demo Versions
offer more Gameplay and Fun than this.
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: tonyvdb on March 07, 2006, 10:19:06 PM
Lammatron, without a doupt was the worst Amiga game ever. The sounds were enough to drive you up the wall and then make you fall down the other side :-o
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: kd7ota on March 07, 2006, 11:05:25 PM
Another World (Out of This World in USA) is hard, but passable.  Brother beat it after just a few hours. :)

He also beat Shadow of the Beast 2 and got good. I still wonder how the heck he even did it because the game is next to impossible. :)

As far as an annoying game, its Motorola Invaders....LOL

Same music, and the falling sound is quite annoying.  :lol:  :-D
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: mr_a500 on March 08, 2006, 12:07:43 AM
Quote
Lammatron, without a doupt was the worst Amiga game ever. The sounds were enough to drive you up the wall and then make you fall down the other side


Llamatron sound effects are like a cross between an old science fiction movie, a barn full of rabid sheep and a cheap porno. It's not a bad game though - just a little strange.
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Tomas on March 08, 2006, 01:25:02 AM
I really love pinball dreams.
Pinball illusions was in my opinion overrated though and i love both fantasies and slam tilt as well.. The problem i noticed with Pinball Illusions is that the flippers are very unresponsive for some reason as it lags a bit when you press the shift/alt keys and this never happened with the other 3 pinball games i mentioned.
Anyone else noticed this issue?
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Hyperspeed on March 08, 2006, 02:59:20 AM
The best pinball game I've played is Sonic Spinball on Megadrive/Genesis.

Imagine the ball being able to walk and jump etc. It was gripping getting to the boss battles and having a sort of inertial control over Sonic (a bit like tilt in other games).

Most annoying Amiga game for me is Zeewolf. Whoever thought controlling a helicopter with a mouse was a good idea should be strangled. Nice effort with the 3D graphics, pity the horizon was about 10cm away. Desert Strike was better.

A joint award goes to all games that forced you to sacrifice sound-FX for a soundtrack. Or vice versa!

:-)
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Tomas on March 08, 2006, 03:15:35 AM
Quote
A joint award goes to all games that forced you to sacrifice sound-FX for a soundtrack. Or vice versa!

I think that was mostly due to the 4 channel audio limit on the classic Amiga. I dont see the problem as long as you have a choice.. For example i rather liked to listen to the mod tracks of games like lotus turbo, jaguar and similar.
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Hyperspeed on March 08, 2006, 04:14:00 AM
Yeah, but what about people who want the choice of BOTH!

:-D

Some games felt like you were walking around in the Antarctic (Dennis AGA) because there was no background music or ambient Sound FX.

And having music with no Sound FX takes a big chunk of the feeling of the game away.

Zool did this I remember, but Kid Chaos managed both (and faster scrolling!).

It was excusable on OCS/ECS but not on AGA machines!
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: irishmike on March 08, 2006, 04:16:57 AM
I was wondering if someone could point where ADFs of Lemmings and Nebulus would be found... sounds cool.

Mike

Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: irishmike on March 08, 2006, 04:35:05 AM
actually found Lemmings 1 and 2... now just looking for an ADF of Nebulus ;-)

Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: NyQuil on March 08, 2006, 07:29:27 AM
Superfrog! I love the game but the music drives me mad after a while.
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Legerdemain on March 08, 2006, 08:24:34 AM
Quote
Some games felt like you were walking around in the Antarctic (Dennis AGA) because there was no background music or ambient Sound FX.

It was excusable on OCS/ECS but not on AGA machines!


...I guess what you really mean to tell us is that you find it excusable on OLDER games, and not specifically on OCS/ECS games (because there is no difference in the soundchip whatsoever the OCS/ECS and AGA machines inbetween)?
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: PMC on March 08, 2006, 09:17:02 AM
Whirligig and Virus deserve honorable mention as being incredibly annoying, both by virtue of a fiddle mouse control system.  It's a shame really because both were quite groundbreaking in their graphics, just that the control method has yet to be perfected.

It's rather like playing a flight sim with an offset exterior view permanantly enabled, getting a clear shot at anything is next to impossible.
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: tokyoracer on March 08, 2006, 10:14:21 AM
i renember my uncle got to the final level on nebulus. So amazingly hard! cant be too slow or too fast. little room for sucsess. I thought the 1st one was annoying!  :crazy:
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: motorollin on March 08, 2006, 10:48:10 AM
I have never got past the second tower in Nebulus, in over a decade of playing the game on and off!

--
moto
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: fastrene on March 08, 2006, 12:27:50 PM
The Game Wings is a great one love to play it ...Boulderdash for the amiga also a classic and the shadow o/t beast.
You keep on playing these games and annoying because you keep on trying to get to the next level
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: odin on March 08, 2006, 12:29:44 PM
As far as controls go I would say Thalion's No Second Prize. Whoever thought of controlling a motorcycle with a mouse isn't smart or clever.
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: darksun9210 on March 08, 2006, 12:37:32 PM
yeah i was a bit dissapointed by no second prize too...

i remeber playing the game demo off a cover disk, it was fast, easy to control. very arcade pick up and play, really got into it - nearly falling off the chair leaning into corners... all great stuff...

then the game came out... what happened?!?
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Speelgoedmannetje on March 08, 2006, 12:42:12 PM
Quote

Cymric wrote:
Hard Drivin' --- what a complete waste of a perfectly good christmas present that was.
I got that one for the pc, and it was very good playable.
Since mice didn't came standard with PC's, the developers included keyboard control.
Though there was a device that made kind of a steering wheel in combination with the Amiga mouse (to get an analog effect). Maybe Hard Drivin' is very cool to play with that device :-)
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Speelgoedmannetje on March 08, 2006, 12:48:06 PM
Quote

mr_a500 wrote:

Prince of Persia - same as Another World: die, start over, die, start over, die....
Well, I just loved Prince of Persia. True, there were some very hard parts which had to be done over and over again, but there weren't many (and way not as many as Another World).
Prince of Persia is still my all-time fav game :-)
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: fastrene on March 08, 2006, 01:04:00 PM
Prince of Persia - same as Another World: die, start over, die, start over, die....


Hahahahahha and try agian................

Tried it .......and tried it
super game
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: TheSLASH! on March 08, 2006, 01:11:19 PM
Ricco: That's cool, that you made it too the end in Ricky... :) I did played this with a friend day and night, and there where no save option - as most of the games at the time, and you couldn't shoot at wrong time or jump from the wrong pixel, there where to little lives and bullets I think...

But I did waste to many days on It Came from the Desert too, and that's because we (I and my friend) din't figured out that we should go down under the south-west vulcano into the pit and kill the ant-queen.
I have even tried that now, after that I got that info, but din't make it.
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: TheSLASH! on March 08, 2006, 01:19:19 PM
Odin: I think it's a great idea to control a motorcycle with the mouse, the only "analog" device at the time (that most people have), but I remeber it to be hard to handle.
As with Super Hang-On from SEGA, this one was even harder to control than No Second Prize.
But there was smooth 3D graphics in No Second Prize.
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: PMC on March 08, 2006, 02:04:25 PM
Thankfully, Super Hang On had a joystick option.  Bloody difficult though!
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: mr_a500 on March 08, 2006, 03:55:43 PM
Quote
Most annoying Amiga game for me is Zeewolf. Whoever thought controlling a helicopter with a mouse was a good idea should be strangled.


What? Zeewolf is one of my top five games (Zeewolf 1 & 2). I have never used the mouse for controlling the helicopter - that would be way to tedious. Try it with the joystick.


Quote
As far as controls go I would say Thalion's No Second Prize. Whoever thought of controlling a motorcycle with a mouse isn't smart or clever.


That is the main reason I don't play this game much. I love the instant replay feature with multiple camera angles, but it's just way too hard taking corners when using the mouse. I wish this game had an option to use joystick.
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Legerdemain on March 08, 2006, 08:43:28 PM
Quote
I have never got past the second tower in Nebulus, in over a decade of playing the game on and off!


I usually start to play the game and play it many times in a row, learning how the towers work. I haven't completed the entire game, but I've managed quite a few of the towers. It is hard, but I wouldn't really go as far as saying it is one of the games one hardly can complete.

Games I really think have gone too far are Rygar on the NES, Mega Man VII on the SNES, R-Type Complete for the PC-Engine and the final boss in Phantasy Star II for the Genesis/MegaDrive. Man, what the heck where they thinking when they made the final bosses in those games?

In Rygar one has to replay WAY too much to reach the boss if one dies... and when the boss in itself is more or less impossible to beat, I just feel like throwing the controller into the TV-set.

In Mega Man VII one doesn't only have to play all of the eight regular robots first, and while 6 of them can be beaten while sleeping, two of them are just too frustrating and pure luck is what matters, it just seems TOO MUCH when finally reaching Dr. Wily... who, in turn, has attacks which are practically impossible to avoid and takes way too much damage, when oneself only can take 1 of his, 30 something, hitpoints each turn he attacks (and this is in his SECOND FORM, yes, he also has a first form to defeat). Ridicilous and makes the game seem completely worthless even though some of the earlier bits and pieces of the game have their moments.

In R-Type for the PC-Engine the final boss has two really huge rotating things which is attracted to ones ship and if touching them one is greeted with instant death. It took me like 50-60 snaps/reloads to manage the boss while running the game under emulation.

Phantasy Star II. Well. I got to the final boss without not that much trouble. Tried it and was smashed to pieces within seconds. Leveled up. Tried again. Was smashes to pieces within seconds. Kept on leveling up until it was way too time consuming to reach the next level (we're talking hours now) and still was smashes to pieces. Got fed up and used some action replay cheatcodes and maxed out all of my characters (they did reach their max levels), confirmed that I had all of the best weapons and magics and tried again. And, what do you know, I was smashed to pieces within seconds. So... once again, tried it under emulation, and realised that the final battle was based on pure luck. 90% of the time eveything went in the way of the boss, so by snap/reload I could go back before each of the attacks by the boss, making them eventually go in my favour... so, with way too much trouble and effort I finally got to see the ending sequences. I do not believe that there are many people out there in the entire world that have beaten this game without cheating.

In comparation Nebulus seems rather easy. Even though I haven't completed it, yet.
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Hyperspeed on March 09, 2006, 12:41:53 AM
Quote
by Hyperspeed:
Some games felt like you were walking around in the Antarctic (Dennis AGA) because there was no background music or ambient Sound FX.

It was excusable on OCS/ECS but not on AGA machines!


Quote
by Legerdemain
...I guess what you really mean to tell us is that you find it excusable on OLDER games, and not specifically on OCS/ECS games (because there is no difference in the soundchip whatsoever the OCS/ECS and AGA machines inbetween)?


Well yes, AGA games were supposed to be the remixed and updated varieties with all new 32-bit graphics. And hopefully they had worked out how 4-channels could be used effectively.

It does puzzle me why Paula was not upgraded significantly from the A600 to A1200.

What should make a difference on AGA machines is the extra memory and CPU speed which might have helped out the sound chip should a special routine have been made for extra channels (like AHI maybe).

Odd that the 1988 Megadrive/Genesis had 10 channel audio and it was a 16-Bit 68000 machine and the 1992 Amiga-1200 had 4 channels and it was a 32-Bit 68020 machine...

Anyway - Zeewolf... I think I did try it with a joypad and it was a lot easier to control. However the way your field of view was restricted to very close combat and the pyshcadelic Populous style landscape combined to give me an unpleasant opinion of the game. I'll try it again when I can get hold of it, it was very highly acclaimed in the magazines so it's worth a second chance!

;-)

The most difficult game I've ever played was Radiant Silvergun (a top down shoot 'em up on Sega Saturn). The end boss took 2 players about half an hour to kill with infinite lives! The screen was so full of bullets that evading them for just a few minutes would have required a direct linkup from my brain to the CPU.

:-D
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Tomas on March 09, 2006, 01:06:59 AM
Quote
Odd that the 1988 Megadrive/Genesis had 10 channel audio and it was a 16-Bit 68000 machine and the 1992 Amiga-1200 had 4 channels and it was a 32-Bit 68020 machine...

Blame the idiots at Commodore. They mostly just milked the Amiga for all it was worth. The a1200 was released nearly 10 years after a1000, but still it was mostly the same design in a smaller package with only the ram, gfx and cpu being slightly upgraded. The a1000 was way ahead of its time, but the amiga was lagging behind in many areas when the a1200 came out because of lack of hardware developement, which is probably what lead to its death anyways.

I really wonder where the Amiga would have been today if a decent company had owned it instead of the incompetent company called Commodore.
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Hyperspeed on March 09, 2006, 02:19:49 AM
I don't like Commodore bashing.

I've never seen The Deathbed Vigil video/DVD but a lot of Commodore's problems could have resulted from intense competition in an intolerant market.

They kept the Amiga alive until production of a games console variety (the CD32). This was 1985 - 1994 = 9yrs?

It seems to a lot of people that the Amiga didn't do well in America because it was perceived as somewhat nouveau in a market obsessed with doing 'business stuff'.

Escom and Gateway 2000 didn't do a better job and both of them went down the pan.

Commodore Business Machines had to survive for it's core business and it 'went down with it's ship' - the Amiga. (it could have ditched the Amiga well before finances pinched).

If you recall Gateway 2000 sold Amiga off a few years before biting the dust but Commodore & Amiga stayed synonymous until death do us part.

Another point to raise is the fact that Commodore was a PC manufacturer producing computers from parts from other companies. Unlike IBM I am not aware of it ever having developed weapons or, like Microsoft, engaged in immoral acts of infringement, competition suppresion or (in the case of Iraq 2003-2006) providing logistics for an illegal occupying force.

Seems decency, imagination and 'good' business don't get you anywhere in the US. And we all know the US is the world... Yeehaw!
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: irishmike on March 09, 2006, 02:26:39 AM
Found Nebulus and I will have to try and report back.

Looks like it may be loads of fun
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: minator on March 09, 2006, 02:36:35 AM
Quote
It does puzzle me why Paula was not upgraded significantly from the A600 to A1200.


The sound chip in the Amiga was the same from the A1000 right up to the Walker 11 years later.  They never changed it.

Unfortunately the replacement stuff they were working on in the early 90's (DSP / AAA) were never released.
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: minator on March 09, 2006, 02:40:49 AM
Quote
I've never seen The Deathbed Vigil video/DVD but a lot of Commodore's problems could have resulted from intense competition in an intolerant market.

They kept the Amiga alive until production of a games console variety (the CD32). This was 1985 - 1994 = 9yrs?


Their problems were caused by the upper management who didn't understand that you cannot stand still in the tech market.  They had better technology but never released it.  Instead they put all their money into cheapo PCs, many companies with unique products did this - and promptly died.

Apple were the one company which stayed different - and survived as a result.
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Tomas on March 09, 2006, 03:03:08 AM
Quote
They kept the Amiga alive until production of a games console variety (the CD32). This was 1985 - 1994 = 9yrs?

Depends on what you mean by keeping it alive.. I really did not see them doing any developement at all, other than shrinking the a1000 to smaller form factor for the a500, a600 and such.. When the a3000 came out, the gfx chip wasnt even aga and the sound chip was still the same with 8bit sound and 4 channels while the pc was finally starting to get 16bit soundcards. Then once a4000 came out, it was actually kinda a step backwards since they cut the costs by dropping the superiour scsi interface in favor of ide and the aga gfx was a nice upgrade, but came far too late in reality. The even more odd part is that it lacked a cdrom, which was already common in the pc world...

The only reason why the Amiga lasted as long as it did, was because it was so ahead of its time when commodore bought it.
Commodore did have some nice enginers, but that dosent help when the management sucks.

Quote
Escom and Gateway 2000 didn't do a better job and both of them went down the pan.

Escom didnt really have the kind of budget that Commodore orginally had.. Gateway 2000 on the other hand had the money but only bought the Amiga for the name.  :-(
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Hyperspeed on March 09, 2006, 03:03:38 AM
Quote
by minator:
Apple were the one company which stayed different - and survived as a result


Could that have anything to do with Microsoft/Bill Gates buying a wadload of shares in Apple so as to avoid anti-trust/anti-competition regulation?

This is why I believe the evolution of Apple into Intel CPUs, music players etc. is a fraud. Like the present Commodore owners, present Atari owners and the government of Afghanistan/Iraq.

;-) ;-)

It's like cloning your dead dog and continuing as if nothing ever happened.

To me, the almost fanatic choice between an Intel CPU and a Motorolla for example is a choice the customer would like to make in order for their desired style of computing to evolve. I'm not sure I even like the idea of an IBM PowerPC 603e/604!

If the customer has no choice and cannot steer the market through buying power, then the result is a monopoly. I think that is the mess we are in today.

Today's computer market is bland and festered. There'll either be an 80s style crash or some company is going to blow our socks off with something new (I suspect this will come from Japan or China).

Back on the subject of most annoying game, can we consider all the Amos PD games ever made as a contender?

:-D
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: mr_a500 on March 09, 2006, 03:58:14 AM
Whoa, this thread went off topic. Briefly: the death of Amiga and Commodore is 100% the fault of management. Commodore was heading towards death in 1991 as mentioned in the Deathbed Vigil, but the management incompetence was obvious even in 1989. Here are some quotes from a Canadian Amiga magazine I bought in 1989:

"There are very many people who are relying on the success of what may be Commodore's last chance at giving the Amiga the recognition it deserves. There are many software and hardware developers that have been disenchanted with the low sales they have been having, some have even stopped promoting and/or developing software for the Amiga. At the recent Siggraph graphics show in Boston there was quite a disturbing sight in the Byte-by-Byte booth (the makers of Sculpt-4D); they had several Mac II's at the front of their booth and one lone Amiga at the back with its name plate removed."

"From my point of view... CBM seems to have a split personality. It appears to have brilliant engineers, and a not-so-brilliant group of marketing personnel... Why is it that the marketing folks back at Commodore Headquarters in West Chester, Pennsylvania - who should be leading the pack when it comes to the business of developing and maintaining good relationships with dealers and software producers - why is it that these marketing 'experts' often seem to be looking the other way when someone out in the field is trying to get their attention?"

These quotes are from early 1989 remember, not 1993.

Quote
Back on the subject of most annoying game, can we consider all the Amos PD games ever made as a contender?


DawnVideoPoker and Babenoid were great AMOS games (written by Richard Fhager). Wonderland was pretty good too.
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Speelgoedmannetje on March 09, 2006, 12:08:55 PM
Quote

Hyperspeed wrote:
Odd that the 1988 Megadrive/Genesis had 10 channel audio and it was a 16-Bit 68000 machine and the 1992 Amiga-1200 had 4 channels and it was a 32-Bit 68020 machine...
Really? :-? I think my Amiga (500) has a much better sound than my megadrives (I got the original Megadrive - with mono-sound and the revised one with stereo sound)  
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: itix on March 09, 2006, 01:36:46 PM
@Hyperspeed

Vanilla A1200 was still too slow for software mixing and lack of fast ram crippled performance. After all AGA was quite poor and sometimes 'AGA enhanced' games were slower than OCS originals.

@mr_a500

CBM was always badly managed. They were in financial problems since 70s and it didnt get better in 80s. They were lucky to survive to the 90s.
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Tomas on March 09, 2006, 05:16:35 PM
Quote
CBM was always badly managed. They were in financial problems since 70s and it didnt get better in 80s. They were lucky to survive to the 90s.

Quite funny isnt it? considering that the c64 was the best selling machine and still they were in financial troubles.. I think that says something about the management in that company.
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Lando on March 09, 2006, 06:05:14 PM
Quote

Quote
Back on the subject of most annoying game, can we consider all the Amos PD games ever made as a contender?


DawnVideoPoker and Babenoid were great AMOS games (written by Richard Fhager). Wonderland was pretty good too.


I think Team 17's 'Worms' originally started off as an Amos game too.  And now coming soon to the Nintendo DS and PSP (announced release date is 17th March).

To the most annoying games I would add any SEUCK game - all play identically but with slightly different sprites.  All tedious and devoid of any gameplay.
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Hyperspeed on March 10, 2006, 02:54:10 AM
Lando: Worms and Super Skidmarks started as Blitz Basic 2 I think.

Speelgoedmannetje: I don't think the Megadrive ever came in a mono version as it had a stereo headphone jack! The Z80 inside handled audio, the sound chip was the power of the Master System!

:-)

I felt that Zool on A1200 was slower than the old ECS version, don't know why.

I think Flashback and Another World were quite annoying since you had to use trial and error instead of skill and reflexes. You would have to fail to achieve, which sends the wrong signal to kids!

;-)
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: B00tDisk on March 10, 2006, 03:57:05 AM
Quote

Hyperspeed wrote:

I felt that Zool on A1200 was slower than the old ECS version, don't know why.



Because AGA sucked?
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Hyperspeed on March 10, 2006, 05:55:33 AM
No, it didn't suck because Kid Chaos is like greased lightning...

Considering the era it was conceived and the fact I am using an AGA machine as my main computer is only testament to what a good bit of design it is.

Maybe it seemed a dissapointment because the original OCS/ECS chipsets were so good!

The same happened when people played Perfect Dark after Goldeneye on the N64. Nothing could really live up to the original experience.

It's possible people who went straight into A1200 without owning the others are less likely to moan...

:-D
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: tokyoracer on March 10, 2006, 10:20:43 AM
Quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Odd that the 1988 Megadrive/Genesis had 10 channel audio and it was a 16-Bit 68000 machine and the 1992 Amiga-1200 had 4 channels and it was a 32-Bit 68020 machine...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Blame the idiots at Commodore. They mostly just milked the Amiga for all it was worth. The a1200 was released nearly 10 years after a1000, but still it was mostly the same design in a smaller package with only the ram, gfx and cpu being slightly upgraded. The a1000 was way ahead of its time, but the amiga was lagging behind in many areas when the a1200 came out because of lack of hardware developement, which is probably what lead to its death anyways.

I really wonder where the Amiga would have been today if a decent company had owned it instead of the incompetent company called Commodore.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wow never knew that. But i have to say the 1200 is more user friendly. small and fun. can play just about every amiga game that exists.
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Tomas on March 10, 2006, 03:29:26 PM
Quote
Considering the era it was conceived and the fact I am using an AGA machine as my main computer is only testament to what a good bit of design it is.

Yeah, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the aga chipset and the a1200 was quite decent upgrade from the a500 in my opinion. My problem is that this upgrade came years to late and i think that has alot to do with amigas downfall.

The odd part like others mentioned is that they had infact developed upgraded chipsets and so on, but for some reason the management decided to not release them.
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: adonay on March 10, 2006, 03:37:28 PM
Blood Money !! to hard and fustrating
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: _ThEcRoW on March 10, 2006, 04:03:58 PM
Perfect Dark was highly superior to Goldeneye. By a bit, but far superior!!!
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Legerdemain on March 12, 2006, 01:24:41 PM
Quote
The most difficult game I've ever played was Radiant Silvergun (a top down shoot 'em up on Sega Saturn). The end boss took 2 players about half an hour to kill with infinite lives! The screen was so full of bullets that evading them for just a few minutes would have required a direct linkup from my brain to the CPU.


Now, this is simply not true...  Radiant Silvergun isn't an easy game, but a hard shooter it is absolutely not. I got it half a year ago for my Saturn and it took me about 10 hours to complete the game.

First of all, you can set the difficulty, and it makes HUGE difference if one play it on an easier level instead of the harder ones.

Secondly, the game is built in a way so that even the beginner shoot'em up players can beat the game if they just keep on trying. The game keeps track of the gameplay time, and the more you play the more credits you gain (if you have gained 10 credits from gameplay time these credits will always be available when playing the game from the beginning if using the save). Furthermore, you gain credits (max 2 credits per session, though, if you manage to defeat a boss with 100% destruction ratio). Also, your weapons gains levels and after reaching level 40+ on most of your weapons  the game becomes even easier to beat. High level on the weapons together with some gained credits will for sure make the game beatable even for the inexperienced shoot'em up player.

And, unlike games such as R-Type, where you die if being touched by a pixel of the shots or the enemies, only the center of the ship in Radiant Silvergun is what matters if being touched... thus making dodging bullets not such a big deal (compared to other shooters) even though the screen is filled with bullets at times.

Finally, two more things... the final boss can't take half an hour to beat, since it can't be beaten. You just have to evade its bullets for a certain amount of time (2 minutes, is it? Can't say for sure), until it self destructs.

If talking about the boss just before the final boss, the huge human-like figure running around on the ground, it took me about 7-8 minutes to beat it, in single player mode, with mid-levels on my weaponry. So, honestly, I can't possibly understand what you are talking about when claiming it to take half an hour to beat.

Maybe, just maybe, if one manages to reach the 'almost' final boss the first time playing the game, having only leveled up the weaponry during that very first session of gameplay, and having done it really bad I must add, it could possibly take as long as you claim, but if one has managed to get that far during the first gameplay session one would be so good at playing the game that beating the 'almost' final boss would be a breeze anyways.

EDIT: If you, and the one that you played with, played through the game with infinite lives and rushed through the game from beginning to end without leveling up your weaponry properly (or maybe even skipped directly to the final levels), well, then I can understand that there was some problems with the boss you were talking about. But the game wasn't designed to be played that way.
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Hyperspeed on March 12, 2006, 02:30:52 PM
Legerdemain: Have you had your breakfast yet? You seem in a bad mood...

:-D
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Legerdemain on March 12, 2006, 03:14:04 PM
Not in a bad mood, really... just a tad tired after reading loads of rather odd posts which seemed to lack constructiveness. This was the only one I bothered about replying to (since I really much love Radiant Silvergun and almost have played it to death by now), so there might have been some annoyed feelings embedded within the reply.

Oh well.

Anyways.
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Hyperspeed on March 12, 2006, 03:18:24 PM
Let us unite in appreciation of the Sega Saturn!

Here, have a pancake.
http://www.syberpunk.com/images/oolong/oolong.jpg

Oh well, I tried to make Oolong appear on the thread but I don't know how to imbed HTML...

:-D
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: tokyoracer on March 13, 2006, 09:20:48 AM
Link doesnt work! i Think that the saturn is a superb machine, just lacked the good ammount of games and stuff. The expansions are great too! but were going off topic here, annoying amiga games please ...
 :-D
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Chunder on March 13, 2006, 01:33:51 PM
No-one has mentioned Project X... tore out lots of hair over that one!

Football Glory (or Fussball Total as it was otherwise known) was pretty cool as a Sensi alternative with some nice tweaks... but it was very annoying when it crashed regularly.

Frontier, too - dodgy mechanics/autonavigation when the time-acceleration was on was frustrating, as was being rammed by some stupid pirate just as you're doing really well... and where you haven't saved recently!
(Or on a similar note, did anyone ever save their position upon being encountered by a pirate, only to get blown up instantly... every time the save position is loaded? How about when you saved over your last good save position? Whoops! Grr!)
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: tokyoracer on March 13, 2006, 02:22:43 PM
ive got the 2nd one of fonteer and project x which i havent managed to play yet. im suprised no1 has said anything about the helter skelter game...  :-?
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: PMC on March 13, 2006, 04:04:36 PM
Frontier was a great game - despite it's numerous bugs!  I didn't care for the combat AI much and the fact that enemy Geckos will attack your Panter Clipper one at a time instead of en masse.  I got bored with firing at them and just rammed them instead.

On the contrary, Elite had a much better combat AI and much more entertaining physics, but was much harder to get into IMHO.  

Another annoying game which sprang to mind just now was Turrican 3, not because it was difficult but because it wasn't as good as it's predecessors.  

Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: foleyjo on March 13, 2006, 04:57:30 PM
RISE OF THE ROBOTS

Up-Towards n fire and win

DOUBLE DRAGON

Why did they release this poor port of a good game. It looks like a bad PD game
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: PMC on March 13, 2006, 05:42:46 PM
I recently bought a copy of Namco's Arcade Classics for my PS2, expecting a right good retro gaming session.

However my hopes were dashed when I realised that most of the games held my attention for an extremely brief span...  And then I realised that coin-ops are deliberately made to be difficult to keep the 10pence pieces being fed in.

A successful coin-op conversion needed significant changes to the gameplay in order to make it more suitable to those playing it on their Amigas.  If you play something like "Operation Thunderbolt" on your Amiga, chances are it'll be much easier than the arcade version.
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: foleyjo on March 13, 2006, 05:47:04 PM
but in the case of Double Dragon why did they make the graphics so bad?? Take out 95% of the sound effects and make it the worst version of the game ever
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: McVenco on March 13, 2006, 07:02:53 PM
I pretty much liked most of the games I ever played. It just happened that I threw away games that didn't catch my attention after 2 tryouts  :lol:

But if I have to think of 1 game that sucked, it must be Brat. Frigging little feller yelling "You blew it, man!" everytime you screwed up a level again  :-)

Oh, and of course all soccer games, because I just hate that sport....


(Hey y'all, by the way. I'm new here :-) )
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Hyperspeed on March 14, 2006, 09:23:03 AM
PMC: Interesting that Elite had a spaceship called a 'Panter Clipper' because they're working on a space shuttle type plane to send cargo to the space station called a 'Clipper'...

:-o
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Legerdemain on March 14, 2006, 02:06:23 PM
Hm, I agree. I can't understand how Project X managed to stay away from this disucssion for so long.

Of all the shooters I've played I would say Project X is the the 2nd hardest of them all (R-Type Complete for the PC-Engine being the hardest so far). I think the developers of Project X forgot about one major thing... balancing the toughness of the game. I've played it rather much at times, and every now and then I get tempted to try it again... each time with more shoot'em up experience in my baggage... but each time I become utterly disappointed with the fact that the game is way too hard to be fun. Too bad there are relatively few good shooters for the Amiga. Apydia is one, and Z-Out another, but then what? Xenenon 2 must be one of the {bleep}tiest shooters for the Amiga, if taking how much praise it got in the press when released into consideration (of course there are worse shooters out there, but why was Xenenon 2 so praied? I don't get it). Jerky scrolling, sluggish controls, annoying and repetative music, extremely dull leveldesig... *ARGH*
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Morax on March 14, 2006, 05:34:06 PM
From all the games I played in my early teenage days, when I still had an A600HD, the most annoying games where:
- Shadow of the Beast 1 - very hard, and the diskloading was quite annoying, as was the long intro which you were obliged to look.

-Awesome, also Psygnosis, this one was easier than the above, only the landing scenes were annoying.

-Alien Breed - Tower Assault, one of the most non-linear games I've ever played: You could get very far with lots of lives, but when you come across a corridor and couldnt find the exit, all was lost :s


Later, when I began a bit with emulation, I tried to play Shadow of the Beast 2, compared to this, the first part is quite easy. SotB 2 is an almost impossible game to finish, EVEN with the cheat on (Ten pints), because you were very likely to get stuck, and then since you won't die, you'll have to reboot and watch the whole intro again, and again, and again...

So in my opinion, it's gonna be SotB 2 :p
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: PMC on March 14, 2006, 05:55:40 PM
Hmmm, some controversy creeping in...

Xenon II was looked awesome in the static screenshots and for the first ten seconds I thought "Wow, this is the game I'm going to ble playing non-stop for the next six months!"

However, I have to agree that yes, the scrolling was a little jerky (as was Xenon and Chaos Engine, both Bitmap Bros games also) and that the repetitive music did grate after a while.  The thing that bugged me most was that the game could be played entirely from memory.  After sixteen years since I first played it, I still know where each baddie sprite is going to appear.

Shadow of the Beast was another case in point.  The demo must have sold thousands of A500s thanks to it's beautiful graphics and stunning soundtrack. Underneath however was very little of substance, get close and you notice that all the sprites are limited to four colours and that foreground scrolling was a tad jerky.  It was a classic case of being seduced by the graphics and sound.

Coincidentally, both games were the catalyst that inspired me to save my pennies and pester my parents for an A500.  The less glamorous games of the time stood the test of time much better IMHO, as I still occasionally play Batman the Movie, Turrican and Battle Squadron.
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Legerdemain on March 14, 2006, 08:59:55 PM
@PMC

THANK YOU! You are one of the first I've heard agreeing with me on Xenon II, Shadow of the Beast and The Chaos Engine! *FEELS LIKE KISSING AND HUGGING YOU*

Anyways. Bitmap Brothers may have done some really good games, but I think that The Chaos Engine, for example, falls down from a perfect 5/5 to a 4/5 just because of the scrolling (and if the non-smooth scrolling wasn't enough the game also slows down rather hefty at times). SotB just seems to be the holy grail of Amiga games to many (along with Moonstone and some others), and often when I've pointed out that I find it prettier than good, I've been greeted with no kind of understanding of what I was talking about at all.
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: KThunder on March 14, 2006, 09:52:30 PM
ANY game that uses just one button and uses up to jump get my vote for most annoying game. unfortunatly there are many of them.
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: mr_a500 on March 14, 2006, 11:02:03 PM
Quote
ANY game that uses just one button and uses up to jump get my vote for most annoying game. unfortunatly there are many of them.


You must be from the "Nintendo generation", because every joystick I ever used had just one button. How else could one jump but by pushing up?

Gamepads make me sick. ;-)
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: KThunder on March 14, 2006, 11:46:49 PM
there are several joysticks for the amiga that had two buttons (actual two button sticks not a one button stick with two buttons)
i had a friend who swore by joystick and i liked gamepads, so we had contests with several different game systems, and games him with the stick me with the pad and i beat him every time. he tried a gamepad for a while and got better.
joystick are made for flight sims and the like. they are ok for for driving sims.
one of the worst was superfrog, because it was such a great game. cool graphics, music and sound but up to jump was terrible. plus when you got the little ball thingie and wings the button would do different things at different times, with the same button. i dont remeber if it had a two button setting. ill go check
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Morax on March 15, 2006, 12:14:43 AM
@KThunder: I have to agree with you, platform games and some shoot 'm ups are much easier to play with a gamepad (and somethimes even by keyboard), but some other games (like chaos engine, or alien breed) play as well with a joystick (imho).

@PMC: You're also right, Shadow of the Beast sucks really, but in my case, it was the first Amiga game ever I saw and played (also because I was used to ugly PC graphics, and 8-bit ZX Spectrum/Commodore 64/NES-graphics). So it has kind of a special place for me :p. I sometimes just play it (in cheat mode ofcourse) just to watch the nice graphics and listen to the awesome music score :) .
In my opinion, part 3 was the best of the SotB-series, it didn't offer anything new, but it was the most playable of them all :)

By the way I never noticed that the OCS/ECS version of Chaos Engine was jerky? Only noticed it often with the AGA and CD32 versions (and since not all AGA games are such jerky I'm beginning to wonder that it's more a PC-VGA-port than a real improved OCS-version, aside from the sound-track)
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Legerdemain on March 15, 2006, 12:18:35 AM
Quote
By the way I never noticed that the OCS/ECS version of Chaos Engine was jerky? Only noticed it often with the AGA and CD32 versions (and since not all AGA games are such jerky I'm beginning to wonder that it's more a PC-VGA-port than a real improved OCS-version, aside from the sound-track)


The OCS/ECS version is just as jerky. As far as I know there isn't one single Bitmap Brothers game with really smooth scrolling routines.
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Morax on March 15, 2006, 12:43:12 AM
Hmm I'm going to try the OCS/ECS version on my Amiga 1200 because I think the AGA-version is a lot more jerky. But maybe you're right, since it's been a long time since I played the OCS-version.
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Legerdemain on March 15, 2006, 04:33:59 PM
Oh, I have to add... the jerkyness, to me, is just that it doesn't have perfect 60Hz scroll, it feel like the game is running in 20 FPS or something (not slow, just not smooth), though, it might very well be that the OCS/ECS version doesn't suffer from the periodical slowdowns that the AGA version suffers from (when too much is happening at once).
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Hyperspeed on March 15, 2006, 07:15:23 PM
I was dissapointed that Chaos Engine's scrolling was so bad for A1200. It was a good game though, a bit like Cannon Fodder viewed from overhead but with full joystick control over the character!

I noticed Speedball 2 had jerky scrolling also, but Zool 2 AGA had the same trouble so I wonder if it's a problem with AGA?

Kid Chaos AGA is really smooth as are other 2D games. The Jaguar version of Zool 2 was smooth on 68000 so why not on 68EC020!?

If you don't like Xenon 2's scrolling there's a newer style version called XP8. Stardust-style rendered sprites!

(Oh, by the way - Stardust's tunnel stages have smooth scrolling!)
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Legerdemain on March 15, 2006, 07:21:51 PM
Quote
I noticed Speedball 2 had jerky scrolling also, but Zool 2 AGA had the same trouble so I wonder if it's a problem with AGA?


Hm, is it so? I can't recall I ever noticed any jerky scrolling in Zool 2 AGA when I ran it on my 030, but it was rather long ago, but when I plugged in my 060 it became unplayable. The same goes for when I try WHDLoadinstall the game, and I've tried all the different combinations of settings I can think of. It is just TOO jerky to be playable at all (especially considering how fast the game plays at times).
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Hyperspeed on March 15, 2006, 08:44:57 PM
Hmmm, maybe it's to do with the CPU then?

I think I tried Zool 2 AGA on '030 but it may well have been standard A1200 '020.

Syndicate behaved strangely even on the highly compatible Blizzard 1230-IV, everything seemed turbo-charged.

The demo of Elite went berserk on '030, I'm going to try it on '060 soon.

:-D

It's a shame TFX won't run on '060. The best it could make use of was '040 for some reason.

One thing I found very annoying with games (particularly Mortal Kombat 2) was that some came on 4 disks and required swapping between every round. Loading at 10k/s didn't help either!

;-)
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: KThunder on March 15, 2006, 10:24:13 PM
yeah floppy swapping was an annoying feature all right. some games didnt even seem to sort stuff so it was in order, insert disk 1 then 3 then 4 then 2 then 4 bah
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Hyperspeed on March 15, 2006, 11:22:05 PM
I bet if you bought yourself a few extra disk drives to get DF1: DF2: DF3: it would still say "Insert disk into DF0:"...

DOH!

:-D
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Morax on March 16, 2006, 12:27:40 AM
Quote

Legerdemain wrote:
Oh, I have to add... the jerkyness, to me, is just that it doesn't have perfect 60Hz scroll, it feel like the game is running in 20 FPS or something (not slow, just not smooth), though, it might very well be that the OCS/ECS version doesn't suffer from the periodical slowdowns that the AGA version suffers from (when too much is happening at once).


I just tested the OCS version, both in PAL and NTSC, when in PAL-mode everything seems to be the same speed, but when in NTSC-mode there are indeed some minor occasional slowdowns (but everything is faster overall). Or maybe I'm just seeing ghosts.

I might add that I live in Holland, and that's somewhere in Europe, and 8 years ago when I still played on my Amiga 600, I had my own small TV (Still have it, and I still can't afford a bigger one :p ), and the weird thing is that that thing can't display NTSC (like most can), so I never bothered using it. Only some years later when I only had an Amiga 2000, I somehow found out that the 1084S IS capable of displaying NTSC, and then found out that some games played faster (or in the case of SotB 2, at the speed it was probably ment). Never bothered to check on Chaos Engine though.
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Morax on March 16, 2006, 12:29:46 AM
Quote

KThunder wrote:
yeah floppy swapping was an annoying feature all right. some games didnt even seem to sort stuff so it was in order, insert disk 1 then 3 then 4 then 2 then 4 bah


And the most annoying thing about such games was that a lot of them weren't even harddisk installable :s grrrr...
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Hyperspeed on March 16, 2006, 08:56:50 PM
Someone has mentioned this before that when you use Screenmode Prefs or the Early Startup Menu to switch into NTSC mode on a PAL machine it is outputting 60Hz PAL and not 60Hz NTSC.

I'm not totally sure what the difference is as I've mainly used RGB (which is bypassing PAL/NTSC transmission).
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Legerdemain on March 17, 2006, 10:05:39 PM
Quote
Only some years later when I only had an Amiga 2000, I somehow found out that the 1084S IS capable of displaying NTSC, and then found out that some games played faster (or in the case of SotB 2, at the speed it was probably ment). Never bothered to check on Chaos Engine though.


Actually there's not much more than a handful of games on the Amiga originally designed for NTSC (I base this on actual NTSC releases, and those are not many). Thing is, for some reason many developers only used 320*200 of the 320*256 available pixels on the PAL screen. Many games will run in NTSC, but chances are they were never designed to do so. Brian the Lion, for example, runs way too fast when in NTSC, even though the entire game looks like it was designed for NTSC. Many games that looks like they are designed for NTSC even do have title and introduction screens in PAL.

Furthermore, in many cases, if running a game which looks like it was designed for NTSC but actually wasn't, in NTSC mode can make things behave really odd. Jerkyness in the scroll can appear, if the game uses long samples in their modules (if modules is used for the music) the music can sound really bad... and so on...

I have no clue as of why they did it this way, but when talking about games like Eye Of The Beholder and such, it was probably not more complicated than the fact they were ported from a system which used 320*200 as default resolution. Another theory can be that only using that part of the screen could speed things up...


Quote
Someone has mentioned this before that when you use Screenmode Prefs or the Early Startup Menu to switch into NTSC mode on a PAL machine it is outputting 60Hz PAL and not 60Hz NTSC.


PAL 60Hz is actually the best of those kind of modes available, as far as I know, because it really is 60Hz and not 59.98Hz which NTSC is. Furthermore, it handles colours way much better than "NTSC - Never The Same Colour". It probably is the way which you've heard... otherwise I would have had real trouble getting anything but an out-of-sync and black & white screen when running my A1200 in the, so called, 'NTSC' mode back in the days when I ran the computer without an RGB cable on a TV which didn't support NTSC.

But, then I must admit that I am curious as of how to get Amigas running on a TV in the US? Are there true NTSC-based Amigas out there? (Besides the A1000)?
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Hyperspeed on March 17, 2006, 10:47:42 PM
The Sega Dreamcast games usually allowed you to use 60Hz from the software's main menu, probably in response to half the Saturn users getting a 60Hz switch!

:-)

I think maybe all Amigas could be modded to switch between 50/60Hz PAL and 59.98Hz NTSC with a hardware dongle on the rear. This would be the best method for people in North America/Japan who wish to play PAL Amiga games.

That or getting a Philips/Commodore/Microvitec monitor. Although an LCD panel might be a good option to avoid the more flickery 50Hz PAL screenmodes... without needing to buy a less-than-perfect scandoubler/flickerfixer.
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: tonyvdb on March 17, 2006, 10:54:54 PM
"Are there true NTSC-based Amigas out there? (Besides the A1000)?"

All if not most of the Amigas sold in Canada and the USA were NTSC machines. If you wanted to play Pal games you had to force it to do so in the boot menu. (for example a Video Toaster that was made only for the NTSC Amigas will not even run on a pal machine) You have to remember that true Pal is 50 Hz not 60 and NTSC is 60 Hz you are thinking of the frames per seconds in NTSC its 29.97 Pal draws more lines on the screen but slower at 50 times per second then NTSC so whan you play a pal game on a true NTSC Amiga you usualy cut off a small portion of the screen on the bottum and it will run at a different speed because the refresh rate is faster (60 times per second but less lines to draw).
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Morax on March 18, 2006, 01:59:19 PM
Quote

Legerdemain wrote:

Actually there's not much more than a handful of games on the Amiga originally designed for NTSC (I base this on actual NTSC releases, and those are not many). Thing is, for some reason many developers only used 320*200 of the 320*256 available pixels on the PAL screen. Many games will run in NTSC, but chances are they were never designed to do so. Brian the Lion, for example, runs way too fast when in NTSC, even though the entire game looks like it was designed for NTSC. Many games that looks like they are designed for NTSC even do have title and introduction screens in PAL.

Furthermore, in many cases, if running a game which looks like it was designed for NTSC but actually wasn't, in NTSC mode can make things behave really odd. Jerkyness in the scroll can appear, if the game uses long samples in their modules (if modules is used for the music) the music can sound really bad... and so on...

I have no clue as of why they did it this way, but when talking about games like Eye Of The Beholder and such, it was probably not more complicated than the fact they were ported from a system which used 320*200 as default resolution. Another theory can be that only using that part of the screen could speed things up...


That's very odd... More logical would be when American-made games were programmed with NTSC in mind, and European with PAL, but I've seen a lot of European-made games (or even games in the German language) which don't use the bottom lines... Another (weird?) thing is that a lot of CD32 games does seem to have been made with the region in mind, and most of those PAL-games also use the lower 56 lines.
By the way is the Amiga the only computer which has those differences in resolution between PAL (320/640x256) and NTSC (320/640x200)? Because other machines and consoles  seem to have the same height in both the display modes...

And to add I indeed noticed that some games switched to NTSC to speed up things (in emulation though, but my PC is fast enough, so it could easy have been on a real Amiga), Those games seem to be jerkier in points when a lot of action goes on at the same time, then when played in PAL. Also the music and/or sound skipped a bit sometimes.
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: itix on March 18, 2006, 02:33:37 PM
@Morax

By using 320x200 instead of 320x256 you could make software faster. Less pixels simply meant less work for the blitter and CPU. Although it is not always significant it reduced design problems when games had to be usable for NTSC users too.

Some games (Settlers IIRC) could use an advantage of PAL machines and use all 256 lines but for example for games like Xenon II it is lot more complicated.

For NTSC jerkyness... it could be because there are less CPU cycles per frame and if the game was finetuned for PAL refresh it could skip every 2nd frame then. (I guess...)
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: KThunder on March 18, 2006, 03:43:53 PM
Quote

Morax wrote:
 (in emulation though, but my PC is fast enough, so it could easy have been on a real Amiga), Those games seem to be jerkier in points when a lot of action goes on at the same time, then when played in PAL. Also the music and/or sound skipped a bit sometimes.


dont base your feeling of how amiga games run on how well they are or arent emulated. i have played many many games on real amigas and many many games on emulation many of these the same games and i can tell you most of them arent exactly the same. timing, screen refresh and gameplay feel arent always perfectly translated in emulation.
timing really gets messed up between systems because so much of the amiga is based of the timings of the video system. pal if 50hz ntsc is 60hz so pal has more lines of res but slower speed. and it is more than just screen refresh that is affected by this.
i use fellow for games alot v3.6 thats the old dos version. it seems to do a really good job of syncronizing everything a bit better than even the newest versions of winuae. although screen smoothing is nice.
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Morax on March 18, 2006, 06:58:16 PM
@KThunder: You're right ofcourse, I know emulation isn't exactly the real thing (Happy I still have good two amiga's :-) )
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Legerdemain on March 19, 2006, 11:44:01 AM
Quote
You have to remember that true Pal is 50 Hz not 60 and NTSC is 60 Hz you are thinking of the frames per seconds in NTSC its 29.97 Pal draws more lines on the screen but slower at 50 times per second then NTSC so whan you play a pal game on a true NTSC Amiga you usualy cut off a small portion of the screen on the bottum and it will run at a different speed because the refresh rate is faster (60 times per second but less lines to draw).


I've read your post through a couple of times and I don't really see what you are trying to say, maybe it is because I'm missing the .'s defining the sentences? I'll try to break it down into pieces...

Yes, I know that 'true' PAL is 50 Hz and not 60 Hz. Yes, I know that PAL 50 Hz draws more lines on the screen but at a lower pace than NTSC. Yes, I do know that running a PAL game on an NTSC Amiga means cutting off a bit of the bottom of the screen. And, in my post I did never state otherwise, rather, I did state exactly the same as in your post.

That leaves us with the FPS. You say that the FPS in NTSC is 29.97? Odd. On my TV running the Amiga and/or other consoles in what often is refered to here as 'NTSC-resolution' (or, to be correct, PAL 60 Hz) means getting an FPS of 60.0. I am pretty confident that the FPS in the US on an NTSC television set isn't half of that. So, what am I not understanding here?
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: tokyoracer on March 21, 2006, 11:07:51 AM
Wow im glad i started this! turned out to be a big hit! I just renemberd a game that was quite frustrating but VERY awsome! *Crazy Cars III*
Title: Re: Most annoying Amiga game in the world.
Post by: Morax on March 21, 2006, 01:38:56 PM
I know Crazy Cars 3 as well, quite a bit frustrating indeed, especially the not-hd-installable-thingy...

I recently played the Crazy Cars in emu, the first two are real crap, but the 3rd is more like Lotus, which is a good thing :)