Amiga Powerdrift takes advantage of faster hardware

[fishy_fiz]

After reading through some old Amiga magazines I come across an interview with ZZKJ in regards to his conversion of powerdrift. Personally I got a bit of enjoyment out of the Amiga version back in the day, but certain tracks were much more playable than others due to some being a bit too sluggish and disorientating. The interview revealed a few things I was unaware of prior to reading it. For example, while the game is "sprite" based it's actually a 3d environment and tracks, etc. are calculated mathematically. It seems it was written from the start to take advantage of faster hardware.
After learning this I couldnt help but to try it out only to be pleasantly surprised at how much better it plays on my '040 based a1200 than it does on a stock a500/a600.

Not really rivetting stuff, but being that I was fond of the game I thought Id share this discovery with y'all.
For now though Im going back to have another game  

[fishy_fiz]

Id hazzard a guess the video shows it running on a stock a500 (possibly a1200). It appears to be running something akin to how I remember it from when it was new. Its definately smoother on a machine with a little extra grunt. The "problem" then however is that the road graphics (the actual roads hemselves, not the side objects) can be a little offputting. Theyre actually made up of patterns, the closer the graphics get the bigger the area tiled with the pattern becomes. When things are smooth this is a lot more noticable and can be a little offputting.

Still though, like it or not it is refreshing to see an older sprite based game taking advantage of faster hardware.

[fishy_fiz]

@LaserBack
Yeah, c64 version was great. And I agree, Chris Butler is a legend.
 
Im a bit of a ZZKJ fan as well, but there's no denying that he targetted the lower common denominator (ST) as Digiman said.