Most annoying Amiga game in the world.

[Legerdemain]

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?

[Legerdemain]

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)?

[Legerdemain]

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.

[Legerdemain]

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.

[Legerdemain]

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.

[Legerdemain]

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*

[Legerdemain]

@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.

[Legerdemain]

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.

[Legerdemain]

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).

[Legerdemain]

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).

[Legerdemain]

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...

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)?

[Legerdemain]

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?