Why the PCE? Why Not the Genesis or Snes???

[Mathius]

Very well said Esteban! I have actually written a few gaming publications discussing the fall of variation among the same games across different platforms. It's truly a bygone era.

[Joe Redifer]

This philosophy applies to music as well as games. Variety is the spice of life, as they say. Especially now, from our vantage point as lovers of video game stuff.

But if composers completely change the soundtrack with 100% different music that was in the arcade, then the same argument can be applied for the graphics, level design, gameplay, etc.  Hell, it could be Ghouls 'n Ghosts in name only but in fact we're driving a race car shooting aliens to a techno beat.  When it comes to arcade translations, they need to stick to the arcade, pure and simple.  There should not be a completely detached and irrelevant substituted soundtrack.  Arrangement is one thing.  Obliteration is quite another.  The fact is, people like Tim Follin were more interested in making original compositions to say "Hey look at meeeee!" than they were in retaining the original feeling of the arcade.

[Bonknuts]

If you plugged in a Mega Drive / Master System pad to an Amiga, some games used the second button. (Few, but some)


 
Turrican II and PC Kid FTW.

 You mean BC-Kid. And it's a second rate Bonks Adventure game. I recently played through it on the Amiga.The game plays more like Bonk 2 in Bonk 1 maps. The spin attack is faster akin to bonk 1 than Bonk 2, but it has none of the effected attack ability of Bonk 1. So it's useless for an attack method.

[Mathius]

This philosophy applies to music as well as games. Variety is the spice of life, as they say. Especially now, from our vantage point as lovers of video game stuff.

But if composers completely change the soundtrack with 100% different music that was in the arcade, then the same argument can be applied for the graphics, level design, gameplay, etc.  Hell, it could be Ghouls 'n Ghosts in name only but in fact we're driving a race car shooting aliens to a techno beat.  When it comes to arcade translations, they need to stick to the arcade, pure and simple.  There should not be a completely detached and irrelevant substituted soundtrack.  Arrangement is one thing.  Obliteration is quite another.  The fact is, people like Matt Furnace were more interested in making original compositions to say "Hey look at meeeee!" than they were in retaining the original feeling of the arcade.

Some of the greatest games of all time started out in the arcades, but when moving to the lesser powered consoles they flowered into something greater. Ninja Gaiden, Bionic Commando, and Punch Out!! come to mind. Of course, I am sure there are some non-NES games that fall into that category. I think.

But, on the flip side some things that aren't broken should remain unchanged. G 'n G really didn't need an ambient soundtrack, although I can see where they were trying to go with it. G 'n G is all about pulse pounding gonna die any second now action. Not quite survival horror.

I really do admire Tim Follin for the work he has done on other projects though. Silver Surfer has some of the best chip tunes I have ever heard in my life! He took the "boops" and "beeps" of the Spectrum and injected Bionic Commando with a simply fantastic score far removed from the arcade original's. Some of his more experimental stuff may not have worked out so well, but I can't fault the guy. He's only human.

[spenoza]

If there's one thing I think we can all agree upon, the NES's inability to produce arcade accurate ports forced some developers to work hard and, in the process, create better games. In addition to Mathius's list I should add Double Dragon 3. I really wish the PCE had seen more improved ports in the same vein.

[Arkhan]

If you plugged in a Mega Drive / Master System pad to an Amiga, some games used the second button. (Few, but some)


 
Turrican II and PC Kid FTW.

 You mean BC-Kid. And it's a second rate Bonks Adventure game. I recently played through it on the Amiga.The game plays more like Bonk 2 in Bonk 1 maps. The spin attack is faster akin to bonk 1 than Bonk 2, but it has none of the effected attack ability of Bonk 1. So it's useless for an attack method.

dont forget, the music for it is annoying and awful compared to the PCE.  Its like, european caveman music.  and they used some weird color choices that makes the whole game look kind of dim.   The Amiga has more colors and yet they somehow managed to make the game less vibrant.   Good job, idiots.

[Tatsujin]

lol, did anyone ever came across an arky not ranting about anything? Extremely rare case in my book.

I hope he's not such a grumpy person in RL.

[sunteam_paul]

lol, did anyone ever came across an arky not ranting about anything? Extremely rare case in my book.

I hope he's not such a grumpy person in RL.

He's just very passionate about things! Without that passion we might not have Aetherbyte and the universal amount of obey would be lower than it is now.

[Bonknuts]

If you plugged in a Mega Drive / Master System pad to an Amiga, some games used the second button. (Few, but some)


 
Turrican II and PC Kid FTW.

 You mean BC-Kid. And it's a second rate Bonks Adventure game. I recently played through it on the Amiga.The game plays more like Bonk 2 in Bonk 1 maps. The spin attack is faster akin to bonk 1 than Bonk 2, but it has none of the effected attack ability of Bonk 1. So it's useless for an attack method.

dont forget, the music for it is annoying and awful compared to the PCE.  Its like, european caveman music.  and they used some weird color choices that makes the whole game look kind of dim.   The Amiga has more colors and yet they somehow managed to make the game less vibrant.   Good job, idiots.

 Yeah, the music is a lot like the Chuck Rock series. Probably why they changed it (to make it seem more familiar to that series). After playing through the game, it's.... OK. That is, if you never played the original. Otherwise it can't compare to the original musics. I could only get the game to run in PAL mode (A600), but it does support 2 button. The colors are actually reduced from the original, which is kind of interesting because the original never looked like it was pushing a lot of colors (missing different colored enemies, none of them turn stone color when frozen by advance bonk ground attack, some different colored background blocks, etc). But they added 'copper' graphics to make up for it Some of the softer palette choices did look nice. Also, quite a but of the sprites are from Bonk 2 which is weird. Maybe Bonk 2 had too much colors for the base model Amiga to handle (half-brite mode eats a lot of cpu memory bandwidth for old models like the A500/1000 that don't have fastram) and so they decided to go with the first bank. It's not a bad game, but it's not refined as the original. You can still milk enemies for points in the Amiga version, you just can't do it via the spin attack.

[soop]

As for the Amiga, I've had a bunch of Amigas over the years.  The exclusives aren't worth a damn and the rest of the stuff is better elsewhere.  Too many games are up to jump, one button centric disasters because of stupidity.  Some games support multi button, but the majority... nope.  You are atari-joysticking that crap.

and I stress the term crap. 

When you've got a PCE+CD and a Sega Genesis + CD, what the hell do you need an Amiga for besides a doorstop?

Really don't understand the Amiga hate.  It's spiritually the closest machine to the PCE IMO.  Conversions of PC Kid, Bomberman, Rainbow Islands, Parasol stars, NewZealand story etc, that are all closer to the PCE than anything else, and in some cases better.

Compared to their console counterparts, most Amiga games were rubbish. But I loved the machine to bits because you really had the ability to create on it - DPaint, Amos, MED etc...all brilliant bits of software. And the PD scene allowed you to really share your work for the first time. That's what made it a winner for me.

I agree, I think my life would be very different if it wasn't for the Amiga.  It enabled me to start coding, producing graphics, etc etc all off my own back.  But while I'd agree that most games were rubbish, I'd argue that it has as many good games as all the other systems at the time, just by virtue of volume and time.  Plus it originated some classic titles such as Worms, Lemmings, Turrican, Cannon Fodder, Sensible Soccer etc.

Personally, I could list 100's of games worth playing on the Amiga, but the truth is, while I have a special place in my heart for both the Amiga and the PCE, I'm not going to go out of my way to hate any particular system on principle.  If I like a system, I'll try and get it, and my favorite games for it, if I don't, I won't bother.

And if a game is better on, say the Megadrive than the PCE, I won't stick with the PCE one because it's my favorite system, I'll shop around.

So while I agree that each system has it's pros and cons, I have no particular need to attack one because I dislike it (Jaguar and CDI for me).  Someone else does, and their reasons are likely perfectly valid.

[SaturdayMorningRobots]

Really don't understand the Amiga hate.  

I love the Amiga, As a computer. To this day I still use Caligari Truespace which got started on Amiga as Caligari, As well as Mirage which IMO is a spiritual descendant of Deluxe paint 4. Amiga basiically created the 3D special effects industry for Television, and Lightwave's continued wide spread use is a testament to the Amiga's lasting influence.

As a gaming machine... ah well it sure beat the hell out of an IBM PC of the same era.

[nat]

I dig the Amiga as a computer as well, but I prefer the Apple IIGS.

[esteban]

I dig the Amiga as a computer as well, but I prefer the Apple IIGS.

I played about a million hours of Pirates! and Dungeon Master for IIGS, for starters...

This philosophy applies to music as well as games. Variety is the spice of life, as they say. Especially now, from our vantage point as lovers of video game stuff.

But if composers completely change the soundtrack with 100% different music that was in the arcade, then the same argument can be applied for the graphics, level design, gameplay, etc.  Hell, it could be Ghouls 'n Ghosts in name only but in fact we're driving a race car shooting aliens to a techno beat.  When it comes to arcade translations, they need to stick to the arcade, pure and simple.  There should not be a completely detached and irrelevant substituted soundtrack.  Arrangement is one thing.  Obliteration is quite another.  The fact is, people like Tim Follin were more interested in making original compositions to say "Hey look at meeeee!" than they were in retaining the original feeling of the arcade.

I respectfully disagree with you. A straight arcade port was not necessarily the wisest strategy, especially considering the hardware capabilities at the time.

But, for the sake of argument, let's assume a "pure" arcade port was feasible... I still appreciate when alterations/modifications/variations/etc. are made when a game is ported. These alterations, however subtle or egregious,  for better or for worse, provide a rich, interesting range of fruit to be sampled.

Sure, some of the fruit is rotten. But you can't truly appreciate the sweet flesh without some rotten crud.

Yes, I want some variety. I don't want to hear 99.44% identical songs.

Word up.

[Joe Redifer]

If you want some variety, you wouldn't buy the same game for a bunch of different platforms.  I always find it interesting to see how each system handles an arcade translation, but when they don't even bother and just change it completely, that tells me that they couldn't handle it.  Why don't they chang the stage graphics to be outer-space as well?  After all you want some variety!

[nat]

A perfect example of this is Super R-Type on the SNES. It seems like they went in with the intention of doing a straight port of R-Type 2, but because of the SNES limitations (slowdown issues, etc) they ended up completely changing a couple of the levels. What you ended up with was a loose port of R-Type 2 with 2 of the later levels completely changed and a new (superfluous) level tacked on the beginning of the game.