Shadow of the Beast | Amiga & Mega Drive/Genesis | Comparison - Dual Longplay
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- Опубликовано: 8 сен 2024
- 1. Welcome 2:36
2. Home 3:34
3. Approaching the Castle 14:30
4. Castle 17:52
5. Jetpack 24:42
6. Necropolis 29:10
7. The Beast 31:02
Source Longplays:
AMIGA • Amiga Longplay Shadow ...
MD • Mega Drive Longplay [1...
I prefer recording my own gameplay for these comparison videos, but this is one of the only times I used videos by others. If a game is a bit too hard, and there are already good playthroughs showing pretty much everything that is to be seen, I don't see much of a point in recording new ones, at least when the gameplay is not the focus.
This was edited because I think the Mega Drive is a decent version, and the only port of the Amiga classic that captures some of its atmosphere.
Update:
There's an updated version of this video showing four versions (adding PC Engine and SNES), link: • Shadow of the Beast | ...
Comments:
I mostly enjoy just editing and reading the opinions of the people who take the time to comment than offering my own, but if I had to say something, I think the final stage music of the MD version is sublime.
Added 2016:
There's no question that the Amiga version is better, and the definitive one - the game was developed for Amiga and was more or less a showcase for its graphical and musical capabilities. The point of this video (and other similar videos) isn't "which is better" but instead how the different versions compare to each other - the details. Also, I think that videos showing two or more concurrent longplays is kind of fun (this is the prime reason for editing and uploading these things anyway!)
easy win for Amiga.2017 Amiga sounds are still incredible:)
this has my favourite Amiga music. I quite often will just listen to it, maybe in the bath or when I'm working on something. Wonderfully evocative
Psygnosis is the key :)
Turrican 2 Music is better
Apparently megadrive fanboys have no ears nor eyes. Yes the sega version has brighter colors but they aren't fitting the game's atmosphere that well. As a kid I was SCARED to play the amiga version. That damn music went to your bones and the dark eerie atmosphere... Goddamn great game and good memories.
+stynov83 It is funny how many fanboys that exist from that era, still. The Amiga is far better in all ways, colors, atmosphere, MUSIC, sound, and lots of "scary elements" missing in the Sega version. The Sega version has nothing superior, the music is especially horrible. Amiga was so far ahead of it's time, too bad Commodore made so many poor decisions, because if they would have kept evolving, I cannot even imagine what they could have come up with. They started the multiple-chip approach, how they were able to get so much horsepower for gaming.
+stynov83 yes, the Amiga had more realistic colors. Very wisely chosen colors in my opinion.
+Mark Kram maybe, but he was richer and he had Amiga :D
+stynov83 Are you sure MD fanboys said this? I don't understand why they would for the superior version is insanely and blatantly obvious, the Amiga version. Any MD owner would know this from day one for even all the SEGA magazines in those days said the same thing.
awww chicken chaser
This is very interesting. The Sega version looks very "arcadey" while the Amiga version has a more subtle "painterly" appearance.
You could say the amiga version is smoother and the mega drive version is sharper
Mega Drive has 512 color palette.
Atari ST has 512 color palette. ruclips.net/video/taOFZVLSUUo/видео.html
Amiga has 4096 color palette.
Mega Drive version is smoother when compared to Atari ST version.
The Amiga ver of Shadow of the Beast is actually the best made it! I love also the Pc Engine version, soundtrack epic and amazing gameplay!
The PC engine version looks like it might actually be the best playing version of the bunch, as in the most fun to actually play.
This was one of the few Amiga titles I ever purchased...it still sounds amazing. I have versions of this game on the Lynx, PC Engine and Genesis.
It cost me - as a 14 year old - $75 Australian dollars in 1989 !!!
Amiga wins!
Quinn The Quartz Fatality
Undoubtedly !
Amiga was so much ahead of its time, but fell victim to grave mismanagement
Amiga won this hands down. The Amiga sound is in a class of its own.
I played the Megadrive version the other day and the first thing that struck me was how poor the sound was. This vid let me demonstrate to a friend, thanks very much. Amiga had amazing sound.
There are two different versions of the Mega Drive port. I don't know which version is used here, but one of them is widely considered to be better sounding than the other. Quality wise, both are vastly inferior to the Amiga original, even though I kinda like that FM flavor..
I never liked music on the Megadrive in general.
I'm a fan of both systems and recognise the strengths and weaknesses of both. Shadow of the beast was designed for the amiga from the ground up and as such is by far the best version. It takes advantage of the copperlist colors and blitter chip for the parallax backgrounds and also the amiga's higher resolution compared to the megadrive not to mention the Paula sample based soundchip for David whitiker's AMAZING soundtrack. The megadrive on the other hand is far more capable at chucking sprites around the screen with fast, multi directional parallax scrolling. The FM soundchip, while lower in fidelity compared to the amiga had many more channels and was, in the right hands capable of some brilliant music. I don't think that sonic or streets of rage 2 could be anywhere near as good on the amiga.
correct analisys.
The Megadrive version was a really respectable conversion - in fact, it had better transition effects when moving in and out of teleporters than the Amiga original. Even though it simply could not compete graphically or aurally with the Miggy version and it was also a little more sparse when it came to the amount of enemies, Sega console owners didn't need to feel like they missed out when it came to Beast 1.
+Juganawt Gotta keep in mind there is a Japanese version for the Mega Drive that has improvements\changes for graphics and sound with more audio samples for music\fx and also finally an option screen where you can adjust health and hence difficulty.
Juganawt Especially if they also had an Amiga :)
Come off it. It was a fairly poor game gameplay-wise. The Graphics and Music on the Amiga were incredible for the time though, and the MD version lost all of that
Megadrive doesn't sound as bad as I'd thought, but the Amiga walks this.
+TheTurnipKing The sound of Megadrive synthlike sound chip goes very well with this kind of music.
I remembered it sounding a lot worse than this. But in retrospect I may have been thinking of Beast 2.
+TheTurnipKing There is a Japanese version of Altered Beast for Mega Drive that has some improvements\changes though, like more audio samples both for music and fx and changed graphics. It also fixes the issues the American Genesis version had making it too run too fast (making the game even more difficult) due to it being originally being designed for PAL Amigas at 50hz.
@@cakestalker no,the Japanese version of altered beast is the same as the western one. The Japanese version of shadow of the beast was optimised for NTSC though.
@@stephenhall2980 Yeah, I meant Shadow of the Beast lol. My brain just didn't work correctly when I wrote that.
Not surprised, the Genesis is a great console, but this game was using Amiga's strong points, such as the wide color palette (4096 colors to choose from) and great music. The Genesis only had a 512 colors palette, which is why it can't produce the same "dreamy" tones that the Amiga has. The sound chip is also very inferior.
Inferior in some ways (recreating a lot of sounds) but superior in many others (panning, sampling rate and bit depth, number of channels, the sounds you can produce with little memory - just a few parameters instead of a sample etc)
@@bangerbangerbro
You say MD had superior sampling rate and bit depth??
Amiga sampling rate was better than MD plus it had the huge advantage of memory.
MD had 1 8bit PCM channel at up to 22khz stereo (11khz each side) with 8kb of audio mem.
Amiga had 4 8bit PCM channels at up to 28khz mono or up to 56khz mono depending on screenmode. Plus with a soundchip exploit it could do 14bit.
Base model A500 had approximately 450kb of usable memory for audio.
FM Synthesis on MD had 5/6 stereo channels at 50khz (25khz each side) + 4 PSG channels (3 square 1 noise)
PCM channels are far more flexible than FM, it's much easier to make an Amiga sound similar to MD than the other way around.
Just love the Amiga version
As a rule I'm a bit suspicious of side-by-side comparisons like this, but in this case it's quite interesting because we're looking at an MD conversion of a game that was specifically designed around some of the strengths of the Amiga graphics hardware, whereas most arcade conversions (even if we set aside the fact that too many of them came via the less-capable ST) would have come from hardware similar to that of the MD (i.e. a strict tilemap/sprite setup) and hence been the other way round. It's certainly a very stark demonstration of the Amiga's larger overall palette (4,096 colours vs. 512) allowing for a greater subtlety in shading. The MD version's artwork is clearly derived almost directly from that of the Amiga, which indicates a rare occurrence of the conversion team being unable to play to the MD's strengths (the MD's sprite palette was larger and more flexible than the Amiga's hardware sprite architecture) due to the amount of effort and time required to redraw some of the graphics by hand - an issue usually suffered by Amiga gamers as so many publishers simply shovelled the ST graphics over wholesale. Very interesting comparison... :)
+turricaned As a general rule I think the original version of a game on the platform it was developed for is usually the superior one (unless ported to hardware far superior like later generation hardware of course, like 8-bit to 16-bit or even 16 to 32-bit machines etc.) There are exceptions of course, but often the original version a game developed for is superior, especially overall even though the ported hardware may equal or be better in some areas. (Games made for Mega Drive being superior over SNES ports, Saturn ports being better than PSX ports, but definitely also vice versa for both examples as well as others).
turricaned Could the Amiga display all those colours simultaneously, or did the programmers have to use clever tricks?
Original Amiga hardware (OCS & ECS) had a palette of 4096, hardware supported 32 colours (64 in extra half bright mode which required a bit of software trickery) and in HAM (Hold And Modify) mode it was possible to display an image using up to the 4096 palette (this was supported in the hardware not software tricks) The 8 Amiga hardware sprites (not to be confused with software sprites which have totally different rules) were only allowed to be up to 16 pixels wide, 3 colours plus transparent but are reusable per scanline. On top of this the Amiga also allowed for palette and resolution swaps without corruption on the horizontal line.
This game used a mix of reusing sprites and palette swaps. On screen 12 parallax levels and up to 128 colours have been counted doing screen grabs. But it is a mix of both software trickery and hardware flexibility that allows that. Not bad for a computer from back then :-)
You can have 16 colors sprites but then the sprite will take 2 channels... you can have 4 16 colors sprites at the same scanline.
Also you can change the pallete at each scanline using the copper and if you use this you can smartly use more than 32 colors on screen. (Jim Power and Pang are 2 games I remember that use this very smartly - Shadow of the Beast uses it too)
Also, while its true that the screen supports 32 colors, most of games run at 16 colors mode because its faster. The 32 color mode is kinda slow, you can't have a lot of stuff on screen using it and still keep everything running at one frame.
Also the Dual Playfield mode gives you 8 colors for each playfield, which means 16 colors overall (and many games use it for a lot of reasons, not just for parallax)...
In any case, using 16 colors mode still leaves you the other 16 colors to use with sprites.
@@daishi5571 I've always wondered how some Amiga games appeared to have more colours on screen than the Mega Drive. I'm no tech expert and all I knew was the Amiga - despite the much larger colour palette - could only display half the colours (32) of the Mega Drive.
I guess there are always hacks with a bit of clever programming. The Mega Drive could display more than the 64 - Toy Story probably being the most well known example, but developers very rarely did this.
lol, I remember that intro music on one of the lemmings stages for Amiga when i was a kid in the early 90's Clarke McGee
both lemmings and shadow of the beast by psygnosis
The Amiga version was the 1st made is the original game, all the other console versions are ports, of course the AMiga version is the best by far, specially the in game music
considering the restricted color pallete of megadrive, it managed to capture well the original game. A good port.
Very interesting! I was not aware that there was a japanese version with different graphics and speed. Does it have a different name?If so how is this version named? Or I can find it by using Shadow of the beast JAPAN version as a keyword?
found info and comparison screenshots:
The background story is as follows: When Shadow of the Beast was converted for the Mega Drive, an accident happened at the creation of the module for the NTSC-market: The guys responsible for the conversion of PAL to NTSC messed around in such a way that the whole game, including the sound, ran too fast by 16 %, which raised the difficulty level (you can correct the speed on an emulator). However, the problem does not occur if you play the game on a European Mega Drive console with 50 Hz refresh rate. The later programmed Japanese Mega Drive version featured the game with the right speed and improved sound and graphics as well.
@@Kerveros1904 I think a speed error when moving to 60Hz means that they didn't need around with it at all. If the game is timed to refresh rate, then using a higher one will speed it up as using a lower one will slow it down. To run at the right speed in 60 HZ they would need to program the game to run slower.
I had the mega drive version and loved it, and as much as it pains me to say it the amiga version looks and sounds better! plays better too, I always found the hit detection problematic, on the amiga it looks like every punch can hit an enemy with no delay. hard to explain if you haven't played the mega drive version
The hit detection is still kinda off on the Amiga. Not a very good game on any system, but a great tech demo for the Amiga.
@Qimodis yeah the game had great atmosphere and great variety of enemies. Maybe they could release on a cinsole stores with controls fixed one day, or a remaster. Probably nowhere near the audience to make it worth it though.
Such atmospheric soundtrack (Amiga)..
Amiga music is very cool.
And punching sound is powerful.
Really interesting video, I think I prefer the palette and pastel look of the Amiga version, it's interesting that a game created to prove home computers could provide a full arcade experience would then be converted to the Megadrive which probably hosted some of the best arcade ports of it's generation.
The wahsed out colors of the Amiga version suited the atmosphere in my opinion. Sound is not really debatable.
Beast amiga use and display 8 palettes of 16 colors spanned all over the screen. This does 128 colors at the same time on screen.
I analyzed various snapshots of the amiga version, and the color count comes nowhere near that number. It's about on par with the Mega Drive version.
you can't analyse that number. You need to crawl inside the game code where the copper change The palette of 16 colors (the whole!) in 8 different area of the screen, this makes a grand total of 128 colors on screen, when the Megadrive only push 64 colors.
It's the Beast specs given by the creators of the game.
Yes I can, and I did! If it's a x amount of colors on screen at once, it means a snapshot should contain all those colors. And at least on the various snapshots of different parts of the game I analyzed, the color count is nowhere near 128. Sorry bro.
you're wrong. Perfectly wrong. I have the code part under my eyes showing how the colors are fed to the copper chip. There are 8 palettes of 16 colors sent to the copper for palette change on screen.
Check here : codetapper.com/amiga/sprite-tricks/shadow-of-the-beast/ and stop coming up when i say that the code prooves what i say. This game has 8 differents palettes of 16 colors. This means 128 colors on screen.
Credit given where credit is due: that title screen has the highest color amount of all the snapshots I checked. But it still display "only" 96 colors (which is a good amount anyway).
Love the Amiga music.
The screen is splitted in 8 stripes 16 colors each = 128 colours thanks to the copper.
The entire soundtrack is amazing, but a little bit scary...
Can you imagine listening to this soundtrack while driving at night?
I used to go to bed while listening to the music for the amiga version, sure the game was creepy as heck to me when i was a kid but i loved it.
Amiga stay the best for ever .... this time once again !
both of these are better than all the other versions
In this game sound it's very imporatant to the immersion in the game atmosphear, and Amiga wins. Megadrive is a great machine but in this game sound is like master system...
Yes because it had basically the same sound chip as Master System
@@arthurdaly3497 Absolutely NO, Z80 + YM2612 (model 1) is NOT the same MS sound chip, just study before writing nonsense.
11:21 That was close!! Good job making it that far with one health point left!
I thought the Megadrive was capable of a better version. Then I remembered it's EA.
It's not EA.
Rnl Valen well they published it.
They weren't that bad back then. Trip Hawkins was some kind of epic dude afaik.
Amiga version is the original and truly legendary...
The unfortunate part of this comparison is how much better the megadrive player is at the game.
The Amiga wins....again. What a suprise.
The Amiga sucks....again. What a suprise.
ALKO The Genesis sucks..... again. What a surprise.
hogasproductions yet Turrican 1&2, The Chaos Engine, Shadow of the Beast 1&2, Gods, Prince of Persia, The Immortal, The Lost Vikings, Another World, Lemmings, and more games were superior on Amiga while a majority of them *S U C K E D* on Genesis, especially Prince of Persia and Another World.
Sony Sucks чувак, ты явно гуманитарий. Ничего не смыслишь в технических характеристиках, и визуальном исполнении видеоигр в принципе.
@CegoThe Sega MD came out in 1988 in Japan, so only three years newer than the 1985 tech of the Amiga 500 (most popular model), which mind you, was launched in 1987, lol. The MD, with it's inferior sound (I agree there) still shits on the A500 with it's game library. The SNES owns both the MD and A500 in regards to gaming and graphics! Bahaha
Megadrives strong spot was sprites! With games like thunderforce and alien soldier could show its teeth. As a newer machine than the amiga had some advantages in the section of gaming (well it's a console :-)
In this particular port MDs beast is great than others but not like the amiga.
Amiga has better sound, colors and atmosphere while md sounds like an early nokia ringtone. As for the gfx on the 1st stage, trees just don't look right because of tile based backgrounds.
And who the hell put a score counter in this game!?!?!?
***** Yes supreme commander.
***** Normally the genesis does have dull colors but here the genesis version looks way better. The Amiga looks washed out.
Mark S The genesis has noticeably more color variation.
Amiga is washed out. judging from your comments I think you just hate sega. Sorry the genesis version has more color variation. Look at the dungeon area the walls are all the same color on the amiga it has different colors on the genesis. Sorry I have read your sega bashing comments on tomb raider hard to take someone like that seriously. The genesis version has better definition, contrast and color it wins. I will say the blue sky in the background on level 1 has more shades of blue on the amiga buts that is it.
Read your comment you make no sense. Trolling and sega bashing. Oh yeah the saturn is more powerful than the ps1. Yeah your not a sega hater even though your bashing the saturn on the tomb raider comparison. Nice english grammer. There are parts were the genesis has more color variation.
Erh megadrive sounds, i'm glad my ears can't puke!
Amiga forever!
@ turricaned
What an amazing comment. I wish most of the youtube community would play ball like you! I applaud your view on this matter.
We need more folk like you!
Sure we worked together in London many moons ago, could prog it in straight C!
Paul from Probe!
A
M
I
G
A
Wins!! Sound and Graphik.
this is a good comparison between the miggy and megadrive,obviously the miggy version is superior because it plays to that machine's strengths,especially in the music department.but on the flipside can you imagine a theoretical comparison of an amiga version of sonic the hedgehog with the megadrive? the fast multi directional parallax scrolling and sprite handling of the megadrive would crush the amiga!
+Stephen Hall Take a look at Kid Chaos.
Take a look at Fire and Ice.
parallax scrolling in hardware and sprite and blitter objects are force points for Amiga :) a good game depends a lot on design and optimized programming for the specific platform.
Too bad that neither Kid Chaos nor Fire and Ice runs particularly well. Both of them seem to run worse than 30 frames/second, and I double checked that by using footage captured at a 50hz refresh rate. Fire and Ice has next to no parallax scrolling and godawful sound design for an Amiga game. I can only draw the conclusion that neither of them compare to even Sonic1, in which Green Hill Zone and Star Light Zone make excellent use of parallaxes and all the multi-directional scrolling action runs at a great frame-rate.
Banzeken well, check superfrog, runs faster than sonic ;), better game overall too
That gate in the foreground that keeps repeating. That was a huge immersion breaker for me. I just kept thinking - if you've got a short image that has to tile, why put something specific like a gate? Why not just some bricks or something. Gate... gate... gate... gate... WHY SO MANY GATES?! I think it just jumped out because everything else was so atmospheric.
It's not just the sound, but also the colours on the amiga version are so much better, it's not even funny! Especially on the exterior scenes, it's like an animated painting! At least, the mega drive version has some extra lines of vertical resolution to show.
The exterior scenes have better colors on the amiga, but I actually think the underground scenes have better colors on the Mega Drive.
Bring the Megadrive to the Amiga's home turf, and it will get DESTROYED. Honestly it's so terrible they shouldn't have bothered to even port it. But I'm glad they did because it is a statement that will last forever about how the Amiga can challenge and defeat the Megadrive with the right programmers and coding.
It’s more down to the right type of game that plays on its strengths
I need this again at 1080/60
I remember when I was about 9 years old and was following my big brother around to his friends house, his friend let me play Shadow of The Beast on his Amiga and I was blown away, this was about 1989?
I only had a Sega Master System II at home and when I found out a Shadow of the Beast port was coming out I begged for it for Christmas..
I remember it cost $100 way back then in Australia, put it this way, AAA new release games now in Australia are still around the $100 mark so that was crazy expensive but I got it... then I was pretty disappointed with how bad it looked and sounded compared to the Amiga version. Looking at the Mega Drive/ Genesis version it look much closer but ya just cant beat Amiga.. the remake/reimagined version is incredible too.
The EA intro on the Megadrive version felt so wrong when I saw it for the first time.
Although Amiga is an earlier hardware has far better technology. Colour palete: 4096; Sound: Sound 4 digital stereo channels. In this game Amiga uses 128 colours at the same time using many tricks the hardware allows, MD uses 64 colours. The soundFX and musics of Amiga are created woth digital samples, SG are generated by it's limited sound chip, so they are more sinthetic and cartoony; The colour palete of Amiga alows much more realistic images, while SG had to use more palettes, not for conviction, but because it's palette has a shorter range, giving a brighter but more irrealistic atmosphere.
+Ned Flanders 100% correct.
The Amiga can and did channel mixing on numerous games.
Your Amiga "facts" appear to be lacking...... seems a common theme.
There are 7 channel TFMX musics on Amiga! For example the Turrican serie, Apidya etc.
There is no comparison!Amiga version crush Genesis version.Congratulation Reflection the producer of the game ans Psygnosis the editor.
Sadly, this is a notoriously bad port. The Mega Drive was capable of so much more
Gonçalo Tordo The Mega Drive didn't have the Amiga colors, what Mega Drive platformers are better?
But it did have a faster processor, and unlike the Amiga, it could load all of the game's data at once whereas the Amiga required loadings and disk changes. At the top of my head Mega Turrican is graphically superior to Turrican 3 on the Amiga. Lion King is also better on the Mega Drive, so is Alien 3. These are just at the top of my head though.
***** Indeed, hindsight is always the best sight. The Amiga had its fair issues as did the MD. Sadly we can't go back and change time. At least the Amiga was compatible with Mega Drive controllers
The sound isn't.
***** Just not in this game then.
Should do a comparison to the Japanese Mega Drive version of Shadow of the Beast. It had some improvements in graphics and sound over the US\EU release.
Amiga forever😁
..and beyond that :D
The game live on the atmosphere and that makes the Sound ! Amiga had a much better Sound than the Sega System.
I particularly prefer the sound and the quality of the graphics from amiga than the mega drive.
People can bash the genesis version all they want, but it was a damn good port, staying faithful to the original and working with what it had to make a great game come to life for a larger audience. Kudos to sega for keeping everything but a negligable amount of extra colors in this game.
What a music!
Awesome game!!! 🙏
Amiga Ver is just amazing a lot more detail and sharpnes as well as better cut scene and intro photos,the megadrive is respectable as well but just has over saturated colours and contrast cranked up and is more pixely as well
Im sure they pushed 128 colors out of the Amiga.
I don't think so.
31leoceara but he's right. Due to a so called copper list they changed the palette multiple times on the screen. With this technique is is possible to get the maximum of 4096 colors on the screen.
The Genesis just can't compete with the colors and sound of the Amiga. Not to mention the reduced animation and increased repetition of assets in the port.
I love the Genny but I'm just facing facts here. Overall I didn't enjoy playing either version of the game, but the original was a mind blowing achievement for its time, visually.
Amiga for ever
Isn't shadow of the beast was made in 90s, what is jetpack rockets and guns are doing here? I mean it doesn't ruin the game I mean how did those things came
I prefer the Amiga version colors and music. But I also like the Genesis music.
Ok ok it's official game sound is king , the sound on the Amiga so good the sound on the mega drive is crap it ruins this awesome game even though the graphics on mega drive is slightly better and the colouring as well but overall an excellent game on Amiga for sure . Can't get enough of this tune !!
Why did they make the shadows so bright on mega drive and turn the colour up full? hide the pixels maybe?
+Craig Brainimpact Megadrive have a very (VERY) limited palette of colors... Amiga have the bitter coprocessor that helps the cpu to give some more things on screen and gives 64 color mode.
Genesis uses a limited 4 separate palettes that is the worst by far...
Amiga also has line draw accelerator for GUI.
music from amiga
and some of the harsh reds ands oranges from md would make an awesome remake
A great conversion on the genesis that truly respect the original.
also in the castle when you get the gun in the md version the sound fx is a simple fffthhhhh fart noise.in the amiga version it's a sample of the pulse riffle sound from aliens,how much more baddass is that?
It took a month to load but Amega was vastly better once it got going..
Both equally as good as each other ;) BUT i prefer the Amiga version if i'm honest!
There's not a whole lot of difference between the two, aside from the Amiga soundtrack sounding better. The japanese version of the Mega Drive/Genesis game looks more like the Amiga game, the main sprite has the same muted non-oversaturated color. But overall sure the Amiga game is better. It's not like the MD/Genesis could handle this though. It's just a flawed port of a game made for the Amiga. It however seems like a lot (or all) of the Amiga to MD/Genesis ports were done rather poorly. Speedball 2 (still great on the MD!, loved it as a kid), Wolfchild, Galahad, Gods, Cannon Fodder, Risky Woods and of course Xenon 2, which was a total disaster on the MD, are clearly better on the Amiga. Was it all EA's fault? I seem to recall they handled many of the Ami->Sega conversions. Or did they merely publish those games?
I still have the classic Megadrive version and I can play the Amiga port on the PS4 SotB game. The Amiga version is the best but the MD version was still good.
Each console has its pros and cons so shitting on old consoles makes no sense.
PS4 sotb? Didn't know about that.
@@bangerbangerbro yeah it's a remake of the first game. You can also unlock the original Amiga version.
@@dragonlord83 Right. I will check it out.
maybe i'm doing something wrong but i tried it in FS-UAE and GenesisPlus (so just emulations) and the difference didn't feel as striking as it does here. The megadrive/genesis version actually felt a little more fluent (higher fps?) but the amiga version just looked much less vibrant than it does in this video. still somewhat more colorful than the genesis version but the diference is less striking ... maybe i have FS-UAE setup wrong or something (i'm using the "stock" A1200 configuration)
Just guessing here but are you using a LCD screen instead of a CRT. If so that accounts for a lot of the look an feel also this game was designed for the PAL 50 FPS display.
Very nice idea :D
The amiga version is amazing... Except that it's completely unplayable...
ARGH. What did they do to the castle music on the Megadrive!?
I like the Fm Towns version to.
The C64 version is an amazing port, considering the limitations of the machine! Identical gameplay, and in some cases, a better soundtrack, IMO.
I grew up on the C64, and I prefer its analogue sound. The Amiga was too sample heavy for my liking. Not that some sampled music can sound good.
+Eric Ferrier I think The Pet Shop Boys would like a word with you...
Yello too I would imagine!
amiga sounds aswome but a bit too dark
If you play the Amiga game you don't say it's dark. You say it's atmospheric like the music!
Genesis music is way more eerie.
Pulse Rifle sounds from Aliens, in Amiga version? Someone noticed?
Im not sure if I really remember. But Amiga had better sounds those days. Can be im wrong. I played my games through a mono mesa boogie guitar amp😉
As an old ST owner, I really prefer the chippy sounds, and sometimes like to see the Amiga get beaten (haha) but on this occasion, I much prefer the Amiga version, and music crosses the boundary into music I actually like to listen to outside of a computer game
You don't actually prefer the chippy sounds do you? Your parent's wouldn't stump up for an Amiga and you've been bitter ever since.
holy shit the Amiga is just amazing.. the music and visuals are all fantastic... are these both 16 systems?
No they are 1 system each
@@arthurdaly3497 sorry i was meant o say both 16 bit systems
Exactly the SAME cpu (Motorola X68000), also MD is slightly quicker than Amiga.
@@slashrose3287 so MD is slightly quicker but the amiga is far better visually and music compared to the MD because it's got a better GPU and superior sound chip?
@@zeronokou first: "amiga is far better visually and music compared to the MD " it's your personal opinion, not the truth, especially with just 32 colours (max) onscreen in 99% games/application. Second: first console GPU is the NVidia one in OG Xbox, prior you just have video coprocessor (OCS for Amiga 500, VDP for MD)
amiga looks and sounds miles better
Color wise: amiga
Sound wise ( on some parts): megadrive
After all these years I still have no idea why you throw away that perfectly good - totally not a pulse rifle from aliens- gun and jetpack before the last level.
Does the Gun have the sound from the Alien Assault Rifle xD ?
The Amiga wins this one, mostly just for having more colours and overall much better sound and fx. Although, it does run in a window with pretty big borders. The rest looks pretty much the same. But, let's be honest, this game is hardly reflective of what the Genesis is actually capable of. I mean, I'd take the Genesis' top 50 games over the Amiga's top 50 games any day of the week.
Amiga!
Amiga wins
This game was a prime example of the limited palette on the Megadrive, it may have been 64 vs 32 colours onscreen, but it was a palette of 512 vs 4096 meaning the amiga could use smoother gradients compared to the Megadrive, which side by side makes the Megadrive look like it is grainy and has less colours on screen when it likely has more. The whole fact that they used those hideous trees to mask the sky gradient says it all. In terms of sound, this really not a strong point for the megadrive either as while it has more channels and is capable of vastly superior chip music (anyone that has heard music by the likes of yuzo Koshiro can attest to megadrive being able to hold its own against anything the competition offered, The Revenge of Shinobi soundtrack blew me away when I first heard it as one of my first Megadrive games), however the Amiga uses sample based music and effects that the Megadrive can't really match. This a type of game that the Amiga really shines in, though it does pale in comparison in the majority of multiplatform games. I can admit this, I loved my Amiga, and I still believe it was the last platform to show any really impressive leaps in what we expected out of games in gameplay, graphics and sound, but 9/10 it was behind the consoles as you would expect for much older hardware that wasn't aimed solely at gaming.
@DED DOA
The Amiga version of this game actually uses custom 8x16 colour palettes for above ground sections giving a kinda 128 colour mode thanks to the Copper chip, averages approximately 80 colours on screen at same time. When the title screen comes in with the game scrolling in the background there's upto 120 colours on screen. There's also EHB (extra half-brite) mode for Amiga producing a 64 colour mode, it is a little slow though. There are many games on Amiga that have much more than 32 colours on screen thanks to both EHB and Copper chip.
The Megadrive has 61 colours onscreen limit not 64, common mistake, MD uses 4x15 colour palettes + 1 base colour for transparency if used but rarely does the MD max out the onscreen colours, ofcourse there are exceptions that use more than the limit just not many.
Agree about the audio. Yeah Amiga suffers with some multiplat games thanks partly to the Atari ST but I usually find ports are generally inferior on all platforms, there are some exceptions.
@Benjamin Owuye Jagun
Late reply I know, DED DOA wasn't commenting about the MD in general regarding "in terms of sound, this (*game*) really was not a strong point for the megadrive"
Pretty sure he/she meant this game Shadow of the Beast judging by the rest of his/her statement regarding audio.
Although the MD can do pretty good samples, it really doesn't compete with the Amiga overall for sample playback.
MD has 1 native 8bit PCM channel at 22khz and 8kb of audio memory, the PSG can do samples too albiet very low quality and not natively of course.
Amiga has 4 native 8bit PCM channels, each with their own DMA channel at 28khz and far more memory, approx 450kb (after audio routines) for standard A500 to throw at it. If you happen to have an Amiga 500+ or later then it was capable of 56khz playback on a 31khz screen and even more memory (approx 950kb+) with the same soundchip. Amiga soundchip was also capable of 14bit playback too.
@@off1kwell the megadrive can also use a shadow mode similar to HB mode. And it can also change colors scanline wise. So same tricks can ge used there as well. So like the previous person said main thing is the palette that is 512 vS 4096 is resolution
@@litjellyfish
Oh yes I agree the colour palette can play a huge part especially for subtle colour differences (shades/gradients) which this game on Amiga uses heavily but also onscreen colours make a difference.
I was just pointing out difference and/or correcting/adding to the 64 v 32 colour comment, it's a common misconception of 64v32 made by many between Amiga and MD.
Ah yes I'm aware of MDs shadow/highlight mode and interrupting the scanline exploit but it's not that common for ingame graphics especially to push beyond the onscreen colour limit, mostly used for static screens or pre-rendered sequences, there are some exceptions. It chews up more CPU and DMA bandwidth, that's why hardly any MD games go beyond the 61 colour limit. MD games average ~45> colours, nothing wrong with that, the graphic artist is more important anyway, less can be more sometimes.
On OCS Amiga there are many games that go beyond the tech sheet (game colour wise) as it's "easy" to do, there's quite a few 60plus colour games, just depends if coders and graphic artists are "lazy" or had time contraints or lack of knowledge.
Amiga EHB is more efficient than MD Shadow/Highlight mode and Amiga scanline interrupts are CPU free as it's part of the hardware so it's not a "trick" but it does chew up DMA like everything else, as well as the extra code.
Without using any type of tricks, the Megadrive has more colours than Amiga in dual playfield mode. Amiga can only do 8+7 and 1 transparency (playfields) + 15 colours for joined sprites = 30 total colours, MD is max 61 at any one time. Single playfield mode Amiga is better.
@@off1k yeah and as you say about DMA. it’s not so much that the color copper changed eats up DMA but having 6 bitplanes on eats up a lot. And with what is left if you are going to also change colors do sprite stuff it really eats up DMA.
But yeah copper stuff if so much easier than similar on MD. so I think it’s also the main thing why it was used less ok MD + you did not really need it so much as you had plenty of colors compared to the 7 if you ran dual playfields.
Yeah for sure it’s more down to ser direction. And 45 is pretty spot on. Like when I did Megadrive graphics back in the days I usually used 6 color in a hue ramp and in most cases each color bank had 2 main hues = 12 colors and then 3 colors from the other hues to blend between the color banks so to speak. So if you removed those 3x4 duplicated colors you had 48 unique colors in total.
For me the biggest “issue” was really that it was so hard to have those more subtle hues in lighter intensity. Like sand. Either it felt to yellow or it was to grey.
I felt it worked well in harder metallic styles. Or more colorful a bit impressionistic style as I could “half step” and get more subtle intensity color ramps.
Say for grass instead of more pure green where each intensity was a step down of the RGB you had the grass a bit more yellow in the lighter parts and a bit more blue. Like it is in reality but also it’s a visual style. So I needed to only change one or two of the RGB values and it that it both felt more colorful and the intensity change was less giving it a more soft look. The game Ristar is a great example of this approach
Whichever was the best I am sure we can all agree punching a baddie in the toe till he died was a rather shit boss battle.
The amiga is going to sound and look better because it's a pc while the genesis is a console. An appropriate comparison would be the genesis version of shadow of the beast is to the snes version if there is one.
TheSnoopyclone compare it to Amiga CD32 which is a console...
*****
Stupid? why?
The Amiga must be compared with the computers of its time: Atari ST and PC, not consoles hit the market later in 88 or 90...
I'm not sure the commodore it was surpassed by genesis and snes. This game is an clear example. And there are more games that run on Amiga better than genesis/snes. In the sound capabilities I think there is no comparison...
I must say I had genesis and snes and I love both! but the Amiga was ahead of his time. It is a fact.
HELLLLLLL NO!! Yes maybe in the early and mid 1980's it was kinda weak.. except for the NEC PC-88/PC-98 and MSX2 computers that could easily do better or equal to it of the Famicom/NES!
***** What?! How so?? Cuz last time i'd checked there were quality pc games starting from the Commondore 64, Atari ST, PC-6001, PC-8801, PC-9801, Amiga 500, etc.. AND had the platformers and adventure games (not just text neither) but a few other types and a few puzzles here and there!
So again, where did you get the assumption that consoles were better than PC when it came to the games from? Nintendo?!
Gee.. I swear you history revisionists are gonna be the end of me and other non-Nintendo fans! Lolz
***** Sorry i got off the wrong foot, I usually get cared away like that most of the time without realizing.
But it's that i kinda hate when certain people get some information wrong especially other systems that are not Nintendo and goes around videos or forums, social media sites, etc.. and spews bullcrap info (though sometimes correct i'd admit) but to go out as far as to saying "NES iz superior and stronger than every man-machine creation has ever made" then that's where i cross the line and get a lil ticked.
And the fact they think they're correct cuz the AVGN said so (honestly I'm sick and tired of him now) and these people out there actually follows what he says or does and think it's the truth when it's mostly wrong (sometimes)but despite that i think most computers games back in the 80's or early 90's are MUCH better than that of the Nes & Snes IMHO.
I'm not trying to force anyone or everyone to play PC games unlike Nintendo fanboys and fans does but for those who wants to try something a little different out of the ordinary then i suggest likely recommend you to go ahead and give it a shot ;-)
For me the music on Sega sounded more crisp.
Really? The real instrument feel of the original is completely ruined and replaced with bleeps and bloops. It's a butchering
Does anyone remember having to constantly change from floppy disk 1 to floppy disk 2 and vice versa, listen to the horrible grate of the loading noise and die of boredom before you could punch monsters in the face? Exactly! Something to bear in mind when weighing up the merits of the two formats.
An esterna disk drive solved this problem
better Amiga!!!
you can make 1000 comparisons, have 1000 descriptions of the capabilities of each machine, the Amiga version of this game is the best of all. Just like Jim Power which was ported to other machines, none of your consoles did better .Even me for example for the game James Pond recognizes that the console versions are better. Quite simply because the programmers who ported the version are better. Psygnosis has released incomparable games. Even when they produced the games on consoles more late.
I thought the new Shadow of the Beast remake was pretty good. But like the original, the first level was the prettiest.
Amiga version has more colors, but Mega Drive despite its limitations, has graphics with better contrast