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Amiga 500 vs. PC-DOS games video

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First post, by Sune Salminen

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Here's a very nice video with comparison of a handful of popular games for PC-DOS and the Amiga 500.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cETl8PhUy_E

As for sound and graphics, generally, the Amiga clearly had the upper hand at the time. That would soon change.

Reply 1 of 20, by WolverineDK

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Yup, but still there are old dos games, that sucked. Thanks to the shitty sound at the time when it came to music, Cannon Fodder is just of many I can think of. But Well, anyway I loved the Amiga 500 computer . And I do love some of the old dos games.

Reply 2 of 20, by abyss

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Except for barbarian these dos versions appear to be much better. I like pc speaker sounds. I have not played these games except for defender of a crown and most likely will never. I have never used an amiga or amiga os before and most likely won't. Dos is simply the best.

Reply 3 of 20, by ADDiCT

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The video is a bit unfair - the guy that made it picked some games that were Amiga originals, and were ported to the PC afterwards. Ports are very often inferior to the originals - this is still true today. An example would be Gods - the Bitmap Brothers were practically married to the Amiga, knowing every programming trick.

I remember the first game that made me want a PC was Wing Commander. I saw it on a _very_ expensive PC system, and it completely blew the Amiga version (which wasn't out at the time) away graphics-wise. On the other hand, it was hard to find a smooth-scrolling game on the PC. Where Amiga titles featured silky-smooth scrolling, the PC games would yerk around horribly. The Amiga is still a wonderful machine. WinUAE is very well developed, and it's a pleasure to play the classics. Hail WinUAE+WHDLoad! (;

EDIT: abyss again shows us his ignorance, and his one-track-mind. Well done! You don't know these games, but you know the Amiga versions are crappy, compared to the PC ports. Your deductive skills are stunning.

Reply 4 of 20, by Dominus

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he he, good video. Early PC games really sucked... back then I was still playing C64 games (though I remember playing Winter Games on a Schneider PC and it did indeed look that bad 😀). He could have at least tried to get a beheading in Barbarian 😀
Unfortunately I never played on an amiga and the only time I tried to use an Amiga emulator made me feel like the people wanting to use Dosbox or a C64 emulator and never having used the original machine... 😀

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Reply 5 of 20, by eL_PuSHeR

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Although the comparison is unfair, I liked the video.

Smart guy. He chose some pre-1991 games. Just before VGA+Adlib started to be mainstream.

Ah, I love Cinemaware titles. They were great on Amiga and good only on PC, mostly due to EGA+PC Speaker.

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Reply 6 of 20, by 5u3

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I agree, it would have been fairer if the games were selected from a longer timespan. Another thing is, that it is easily possible to detect the few colours and tinny speaker sound of the PC games as inferior, but the poor frame rate of vector graphics games on the amiga is not noticeable in the video (Stunt Car Racer).

When I was young and stuck with a CGA XT I always envied my friends who had an Amiga, but after I bought my 386 with VGA and Soundblaster the tide turned. The only thing I really thought unfair, was that many good Amiga titles were ported so poorly to the PC, and the few decent ports were rather boring games to begin with or came five years late.

Last edited by 5u3 on 2008-01-09, 01:17. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 7 of 20, by djp

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It seems to me that many of the people here are saying that some games are bad just because of the graphics and sound. Can that be possible in a forum full of DOS gamers?!

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Reply 8 of 20, by WolverineDK

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djp wrote:

It seems to me that many of the people here are saying that some games are bad just because of the graphics and sound. Can that be possible in a forum full of DOS gamers?!

Both yes and no. That is the short answer, a long answer is not what I can give right now. But as other people said, later on the Amiga to PC conversions became much better, such as Superfrog and Project X. But again sometimes the PC conversions really did suck major. Compared to the Amiga versions which was the dogs bollocks. Whether the gameplay and control was the same (on pc) . And I think quite a few of us, feels that remakes of the old games would be smashing whether it was a DOS remake, or a Windows remake of the old great classics. As long they had the sound and graphics from the Amiga versions. Since having an Amiga back then was in some ways a God send gift, because of tracker software and smashing great games. And a load of other cool stuff. Such as demos and what not, I think I could go on why , at least I love the Amiga so much.

Reply 9 of 20, by laffer35

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Yeah the Amiga was something else.

I don't think it was unfair to put many old games in the video though - actually it would seem more fair to me to use games rather close to the release of the Amiga. It's amazing how much better games were on the Amiga in the few years after it was released.

It might have been a little unfair to put in games where the PC ports were very bad such as Defender of the Crown and It Came from the Desert but these are games I really like so I felt like putting them in there.

Besides, it's not a serious video, I love both DOS and Amiga games as I stated at the end there 😀

EDIT -

abyss wrote:

Except for barbarian these dos versions appear to be much better. I like pc speaker sounds. I have not played these games except for defender of a crown and most likely will never. I have never used an amiga or amiga os before and most likely won't. Dos is simply the best.

That is ridiculous 😁 😁

Reply 10 of 20, by WolverineDK

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laffer35: what about making a part 2 ? with games that are on par with the amiga versions next ? Since that would be great too. Such as Project X Superfrog , Moonstone, and James Pond 2 (and others) and show the (sometimes) small differences between the PC version, and the Amiga versions. Since I enjoy good comparison videos. Thumps up by the way, and yes I knew you weren´t that serious but more like tongue in cheek.

Last edited by WolverineDK on 2008-01-09, 11:57. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 11 of 20, by dh4rm4

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Amiga's Launch Shooter - Insanity Fight was CRAP - despite being coded by hackers...

Reply 12 of 20, by Dominus

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It seems to me that many of the people here are saying that some games are bad just because of the graphics and sound. Can that be possible in a forum full of DOS gamers?!

Hey let us look at the pretty amiga games with envy 😀
I still enjoyed Wintergames on the PC but now seeing the Amiga graphics I do think it sucks 😀
At least Barbarian on C64 was in color (if my memory does not fail me).

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Reply 13 of 20, by WolverineDK

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Dominus wrote:

It seems to me that many of the people here are saying that some games are bad just because of the graphics and sound. Can that be possible in a forum full of DOS gamers?!

At least Barbarian on C64 was in color (if my memory does not fail me).

Nope your memory doesn´t fail you.

(Barbarian 1)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=14ORMf6SjTc

(Barbarian 2 two parts)

(part 1 of 2)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=E21I6bMR9wY

(Part 2 of 2)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=-cM9LEzW3o4

Reply 14 of 20, by eL_PuSHeR

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I remember when Elvira mistress of the dark came out: At last, the PC version was superior to Amiga one.

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Reply 15 of 20, by laffer35

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WolverineDK wrote:

laffer35: what about making a part 2 ? with games that are on par with the amiga versions next ? Since that would be great too. Such as Project X Superfrog , Moonstone, and James Pond 2 (and others) and show the (sometimes) small differences between the PC version, and the Amiga versions. Since I enjoy good comparison videos. Thumps up by the way, and yes I knew you weren´t that serious but more like tongue in cheek.

I might do that. However, I'll use Amiga 1200 games (AGA versions) for later games.

Reply 16 of 20, by Xian97

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I had an Amiga from the mid 80s to the early 90s. In the 80s the Amiga beat the PC hands down for gaming since it had stereo sound and 32 color graphics. Once the PC got VGA graphics and better sound it became the better platform for gaming. VGA gave you 256 colors vs 32 for the Amiga so you had a lot better palette to choose from. I don't think there were games in HAM mode on the Amiga which would give you 4096 colors.

If you fast forward a few years from the video you see the games nearly identical on both platforms. Eye of the Beholder was pretty much the same graphics and sounds on both systems. Lemmings was another. Then the Amiga started falling behind. Ultima VI in VGA was noticeably better looking that the 32 color Amiga version, and Wing Commander has already been mentioned in the thread earlier. Those were some of the last games that I remember being on both systems.

Reply 17 of 20, by laffer35

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Yup, that's pretty much it. The Amiga was very impressive for the time it was released and for a few years after.. it was an incredible machine back then. The PC did catch up eventually of course.

Reply 19 of 20, by WolverineDK

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laffer35 wrote:

Wonderful I must say, now you only need Superfrog , Moonstone and Project X . Maybe even more, but still I am looking forward to seeing a part 3. These comparison videos reminds me of a feature that was in the old Retrocore shows , where Yakumo compared Western (USA for the most part) versions to the japanese versions of the same game.