Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Gaming => Topic started by: djos on October 15, 2012, 01:07:04 AM
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Hi All, this topic isnt supposed to be a beat-up on any particular platform, more of a general discussion on differences between virtually identical games on Amiga and PC.
The main reason I thought i'd start this is I was having issues with Space Quest III (an all time fav of mine) on my Miggy under WHDLoad and couldnt solve the problem (http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=66205).
I ended up getting cheesed off and reverting to DosBox on my Winblows 7 PC and was surprised at some of the differences between the same game on the two platforms:
- Sound is much better on Amiga, more musical and "less" fake sounding (including sound FX) despite PC ver supporting Adlib/SoundBlaster
- Colour palette is less gaudy on Amiga (still EGA PC GFX tho) - really noticeable on Robot head inside Junk freighter
- After blowing up shield beam on Ortega the Miggy shakes the screen to simulate the earth tremours (PC doesnt)
Considering this game was developed for the PC these little differences surprised me so Im curious to hear what others have found when playing their fav classic games on the two platforms? :)
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Back in the day I would always read gaming magazines and they always said,"if you got a PC, get that version of the game. If you got a Mac, then you'll be happier, but if you are lucky enough to own an Amiga, GET THAT VERSION!!!"
PC games didn't really begin to pick up until the early 90's with VGA and 16-Bit sound cards. Until then Amiga was always the way to go. So ya, with Space Quest 3 on back, you'll want to play on your Amiga, then with 4 and 5 you'll want to run ScummVM or DosBOX, though I highly suggest going with ScummVM which has also been ported to every Amiga based OS out there.
As for Space Quest 4, you'll notice that the PC version has dialog all through out the game which the Amiga lacked because it had not jumped onto the CD-ROM bandwagon yet. The same goes for many of the early 90's PC ports. They had CD-ROM so they got the definitive versions of the game.
If you are a space quest fan you have to check out some of the fan made titles out there, especially Space Quest 4.5. :)
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Leisure Suit Larry 3's music was great on the Amiga. Though there were two versions on the Amiga, one had some more generic sounding instruments, then it switched later for some actual instruments.
Though if you compare, the Roland MT-32 just blew anything the Amiga had for Sierra Games's musics. Good one I like to listen to is King's Quest 4.
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Back in the day I would always read gaming magazines and they always said,"if you got a PC, get that version of the game. If you got a Mac, then you'll be happier, but if you are lucky enough to own an Amiga, GET THAT VERSION!!!"
PC games didn't really begin to pick up until the early 90's with VGA and 16-Bit sound cards. Until then Amiga was always the way to go. So ya, with Space Quest 3 on back, you'll want to play on your Amiga, then with 4 and 5 you'll want to run ScummVM or DosBOX, though I highly suggest going with ScummVM which has also been ported to every Amiga based OS out there.
As for Space Quest 4, you'll notice that the PC version has dialog all through out the game which the Amiga lacked because it had not jumped onto the CD-ROM bandwagon yet. The same goes for many of the early 90's PC ports. They had CD-ROM so they got the definitive versions of the game.
yeah that makes sense. :)
If you are a space quest fan you have to check out some of the fan made titles out there, especially Space Quest 4.5. :)
lol, never heard of it and i'm a massive SQ fan! *wanders off to have a look for it*
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Leisure Suit Larry 3's music was great on the Amiga. Though there were two versions on the Amiga, one had some more generic sounding instruments, then it switched later for some actual instruments.
Though if you compare, the Roland MT-32 just blew anything the Amiga had for Sierra Games's musics. Good one I like to listen to is King's Quest 4.
Yeah if you could afford a LAPC-I (MT32 on an ISA card) then you where a god, the music was incredible even now!
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As for Space Quest 4, you'll notice that the PC version has dialog all through out the game which the Amiga lacked because it had not jumped onto the CD-ROM bandwagon yet. The same goes for many of the early 90's PC ports. They had CD-ROM so they got the definitive versions of the game.
Btw, I remember buying one of the early 2x speed CD-Rom + Soundblaster kits from Creative Labs for my .... Commodore 386sx25 Slimline PC (http://www.richardlagendijk.nl/cip/computer/item/pc386sx25/en) (ironically was my first Commodore and first PC I bought myself) :D
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Though if you compare, the Roland MT-32 just blew anything the Amiga had for Sierra Games's musics. Good one I like to listen to is King's Quest 4.
Yeah, I've gotta try some games with my MT-32, now that I've got a MIDI interface for my Amiga...
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Yeah, I've gotta try some games with my MT-32, now that I've got a MIDI interface for my Amiga...
Im amazed at how well MT-32 values have help up, they can go for over $300 on fleabay!
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Sound is much better on Amiga, more musical and "less" fake sounding (including sound FX) despite PC ver supporting Adlib/SoundBlaster
For the most part Amiga had the better sound, but not if you had deep pockets.
A lot of those adventure games support the Roland MT32 which when combined but the SandBlaster really had great sound. I could not afford one back in the day, but my friend hard one and I had envy :)
LSL3
http://queststudios.com/2010/digital/lsl3cd/track13.ogg
Silpheed.
http://queststudios.com/2010/digital/Silpheed/SILPH_Track01.ogg
Police quest3 (JanHammer) title:
http://queststudios.com/2010/digital/pq3digital/Track01.ogg
Police quest 2 title.
http://queststudios.com/2010/digital/pq2digital/Track01.ogg
Secret Monkey Island.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3dB0qEcG20
I picked up a MT32 off ebay a few years ago... Its neat with Dosbox. Many even support MT32 on Amiga. A lot of ther whdload versions of the games were missing the MT32 driver and I was able to get a few of them working by taking the driver of the ADF versions.
I'm hoping one day ScummVM AGA will support MT32 :)
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Im amazed at how well MT-32 values have help up, they can go for over $300 on fleabay!
I must of bought mine at the right time... I paid $35 for it.... there were ones going for $100 for the "Buy Now" price.
I think some revisions might be worth more.... I don't know much about mine, other than I had to track down some large mono plug to RCA adapters which I overpaid for....
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Sound is much better on Amiga, more musical and "less" fake sounding (including sound FX) despite PC ver supporting Adlib/SoundBlaster
For the most part Amiga had the better sound, but not if you had deep pockets.
A lot of those adventure games support the Roland MT32 which when combined but the SandBlaster really had great sound. I could not afford one back in the day, but my friend hard one and I had envy :)
LSL3
http://queststudios.com/2010/digital/lsl3cd/track13.ogg
Silpheed.
http://queststudios.com/2010/digital/Silpheed/SILPH_Track01.ogg
Police quest3 (JanHammer) title:
http://queststudios.com/2010/digital/pq3digital/Track01.ogg
Police quest 2 title.
http://queststudios.com/2010/digital/pq2digital/Track01.ogg
Secret Monkey Island.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3dB0qEcG20
I picked up a MT32 off ebay a few years ago... Its neat with Dosbox. Many even support MT32 on Amiga. A lot of ther whdload versions of the games were missing the MT32 driver and I was able to get a few of them working by taking the driver of the ADF versions.
I'm hoping one day ScummVM AGA will support MT32 :)
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I'm hoping one day ScummVM AGA will support MT32 :)
Yep maybe one day I'll find the time to have a look at adding it BUT someone would have to lend me the necessary hardware before I even attempt this.
BTW using the new DosBox MIDI emulator with v1.4.1 of ScummVM it now sounds pretty good on my 1260 at 14bit stereo 22050Hz. I'll do a new video one of these days to show people how good it sounds.
ScummVM sound (http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/User_Manual/Appendix:_Music_and_sound)
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Hmmm, might have to find a midi interface for my pc and amiga and keep an eye out for a cheap MT-32!
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This should keep you salivating for a few hours. :)
Space Quest 0
http://wiw.org/~jess/replicated.html
Space Quest: The Lost Chapter (2.5)
http://frostbytei.com/space/about.html
Space Quest 2 remake (plus more)
http://www.infamous-adventures.com/home/index.php?page=games
Space Quest IV.5
http://spacequestiv5.pytalhost.at/page394.html
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This should keep you salivating for a few hours. :)
Space Quest 0
http://wiw.org/~jess/replicated.html
Space Quest: The Lost Chapter (2.5)
http://frostbytei.com/space/about.html
Space Quest 2 remake (plus more)
http://www.infamous-adventures.com/home/index.php?page=games
Space Quest IV.5
http://spacequestiv5.pytalhost.at/page394.html
Nice one, thanks! :cool:
EDIT: Damn the art for the SQ2 remake is really stunning!!
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Hmmm, might have to find a midi interface for my pc and amiga and keep an eye out for a cheap MT-32!
Keep an eye out; mine was ~$50 with shipping, and worth every penny. Gets the kind of sweet, warm filtered tones you find on a vintage analog synth, plus quality PCM samples where they're useful...beautiful.
Now I just need to start playing around with making my own patches...wish there were better software for this than Roland's ancient Win3.1 patch-librarian software...
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I have gone and beat the entire King's Quest 4 game and encoded all musics in 320KBPS MP3. Someone else did upload all the musics from the Roland, but they were I believe 160 or 192. I'm not saying there will be quality issues, just wanted to encode it in the best possible sound. :) Though WAV would of been nice lol. Havent uploaded all the MP3s yet. I was going to do the same for Amazon Queen.
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I have gone and beat the entire King's Quest 4 game and encoded all musics in 320KBPS MP3. Someone else did upload all the musics from the Roland, but they were I believe 160 or 192. I'm not saying there will be quality issues, just wanted to encode it in the best possible sound. :) Though WAV would of been nice lol. Havent uploaded all the MP3s yet. I was going to do the same for Amazon Queen.
Nice, links please! :)
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Nice, links please! :)
I believe the site is sierrachest.com
Go to the Music Player, and then choose the game. You can right click and save either mp3 or ogg. The mp3s were 192KBPS.
I haven't uploaded my versions yet. Still put away in a folder on my HDD. Only song I didn't capture without the sound clipping was the bad ending when you eat the fruit and lose. Might need to change out some titling as well.
Sometime I will upload it all somewhere. :)
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As for Space Quest 4, you'll notice that the PC version has dialog all through out the game which the Amiga lacked because it had not jumped onto the CD-ROM bandwagon yet. The same goes for many of the early 90's PC ports. They had CD-ROM so they got the definitive versions of the game.
Fired this up last night under dosbox, sound is quite quite good for soundblaster - prolly due to cramming digital samples onto the CD rather than Adlib "instruments".
must load up the miggy very to see if they took advantage of the miggy's bigger colour palette.
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I believe the site is sierrachest.com
Go to the Music Player, and then choose the game. You can right click and save either mp3 or ogg. The mp3s were 192KBPS.
I haven't uploaded my versions yet. Still put away in a folder on my HDD. Only song I didn't capture without the sound clipping was the bad ending when you eat the fruit and lose. Might need to change out some titling as well.
Sometime I will upload it all somewhere. :)
I might just do that!
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This reminds me of the time I was able to fire up my Atari ST and connect it to my MIDI keyboard to output the sound from King's Quest (I think it was the first one, though I'm not 100% sure on that.) It was fantastic!
slaapliedje
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This reminds me of the time I was able to fire up my Atari ST and connect it to my MIDI keyboard to output the sound from King's Quest (I think it was the first one, though I'm not 100% sure on that.) It was fantastic!
Heh...I tried this on my Win95 box, back in the day...it had an Ensoniq board with sort-of-halfway Sound Blaster compatibility, and for some reason it could run music that went through the emulated Sound Blaster MIDI drivers out over the MIDI port - but the game's music used CMF (custom FM patches) so the instruments were all wrong :roflmao:
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If you are a space quest fan you have to check out some of the fan made titles out there, especially Space Quest 4.5. :)
The only thing I dislike about some Sierra games is that you die far too often, something that takes away alot of the enjoyment. I never played Space quest I back in the day, but a few years ago got the remake which looked "fantastic" SQ4 style, but I suffered soo many deaths I stopped playing. It just isn't in the spirit of Point&Click adventure gaming to learn to avoid traps/enemies/monsters/? individually after multiple deaths.
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but unlike many other styles of games you can save as often as you like and I will always save whenever I've collected something or completed a challenging task.
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The only thing I dislike about some Sierra games is that you die far too often, something that takes away alot of the enjoyment. I never played Space quest I back in the day, but a few years ago got the remake which looked "fantastic" SQ4 style, but I suffered soo many deaths I stopped playing. It just isn't in the spirit of Point&Click adventure gaming to learn to avoid traps/enemies/monsters/? individually after multiple deaths.
Totally agree with that. They were still fun though.
I would always buy used games from this guy who ran a BBS, and I had bought several Sierra games from him. It was great, free hint line if I needed it...
One day he called me and told me that he was done with Monkey Island I and that I should buy it because its not like the Sierra games where you get stuck at 95% because failed to do something at 30% and can't go back. He praised Monkey Island for not being linear and for the fact that you can't die...
I think one sierra game had a "Spreadsheet" mode to make it look like you were working, but if you want into it you were locked out of the game...
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I think one sierra game had a "Spreadsheet" mode to make it look like you were working, but if you want into it you were locked out of the game...
Both Larry I & Police Quest I had it, but didn`t even look like Analyze! (was a Lotus123 like CGA screen). You could return to the game anytime.
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but unlike many other styles of games you can save as often as you like and I will always save whenever I've collected something or completed a challenging task.
This requires that you save every x seconds and/or before locations of previously failed reactions on "surprises". I don't consider saving a natural part of P&C adventure gameplay. SIERRA should at some point have learned from Lucasfilms, but they failed.
Totally agree with that. They were still fun though.
I would always buy used games from this guy who ran a BBS, and I had bought several Sierra games from him. It was great, free hint line if I needed it...
One day he called me and told me that he was done with Monkey Island I and that I should buy it because its not like the Sierra games where you get stuck at 95% because failed to do something at 30% and can't go back. He praised Monkey Island for not being linear and for the fact that you can't die...
Yes, the only series I really was interested in was Space Quest and Leisure Suit Larry. But if the death locations/situations were either absent or (for the fun/humor aspect) included but limited to approximately 3 or so, then I would have played the other series as well. My friend really liked the Kings Quest series, but I had lives to save...
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This requires that you save every x seconds and/or before locations of previously failed reactions on "surprises". I don't consider saving a natural part of P&C adventure gameplay. SIERRA should at some point have learned from Lucasfilms,
A massive exaggeration!
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You know, it wasn't the copious and frequent death in Sierra titles I minded - it was the utter off-the-wall moon logic that they often functioned on. You have to make sure to eat the mutton, not the pie, because a dozen screens later you're going to need the pie to kill the yeti? HOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT!? Let the cat catch the rat and a full quarter of the game later you're a dead man because the rat won't save you? The list goes on and on and on...the bizarre part is that, for all it revels in comedy deaths, the Space Quest games (at least the ones I've played) are some of the lesser offenders.
Was Roberta Williams brought up in Cloud Cuckoo Land, or something?
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Lol, half the fun was getting stuck and asking your mates how they got past something and they'd go "oh you need to use x from y" which you'd totally missed!
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One day he called me and told me that he was done with Monkey Island I and that I should buy it because its not like the Sierra games where you get stuck at 95% because failed to do something at 30% and can't go back. He praised Monkey Island for not being linear and for the fact that you can't die...
You actually can die in Monkey Island I.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muT3b02pRnQ
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A massive exaggeration!
You fight like a cow!
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@Einstein
Sierra games weren't point and click until Kings Quest V (or maybe one of the Mother Goose games?). Most PCs didn't have mice. Figuring out what to type was half the fun--especially if you didn't know what a uvula was.
Trev
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And not mention having to remember that the Yanks can't spell. Eg Vaporizer instead of Vaporiser (sq3). :D
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Played me some Flight of the Amazon Queen yesturday on my MOS machine. So glad you can't die. :)
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@Einstein
Sierra games weren't point and click until Kings Quest V (or maybe one of the Mother Goose games?). Most PCs didn't have mice. Figuring out what to type was half the fun--especially if you didn't know what a uvula was.
Trev
The actual input method is really irrelevant imo. As for figuring out what to type; it didn't take long before I discovered THE solution: "look" :)
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Played me some Flight of the Amazon Queen yesturday on my MOS machine. So glad you can't die. :)
Im not a huge fan of "pulp" stuff, but that's a really fun adventure