Atari & Amiga @ 30 - The Bear and Badger

The Daddy

One of the worst ports I can remember on Amiga was Street Fighter II. I still played it loads but it was terrible.

I loved my A1200. Even had a 1gig HDD installed, which a mate of mine filled with pirated games and Aminet discs of stuff (including soft porn covers for the Klondike card game!). I even had an external cd drive that was a huge waste of a joint Xmas pressies for me and my sister. The worst game of all those I had for cd32 was Bump N Burn. The machine basically helped me survive the lack of 16-bit console and saw me through until we got a decent PC and I'd saved enough for an N64.

Bump n burn everybody:

http://youtu.be/rCqdJFZMhag

IanHamlett

Just watched a couple of youtube vids of the batmen. The Amiga one has the Konami logo and some of the same shit in the background but it's a different game. The SNES one flicks between two different level styles. One is just a Final Fight rip and the other is flat 2D where your move set is different and unavoidable damage is the rule. It's terrible.

stellavista

The Amiga one had that Batmobile level where you had to batarang (yes, it's a verb) around corners, right? I think that is one of those games I liked at the time that I look back on now and think "that was a total crock of shit, what was I thinking" and lose all respect for my gamer self.

IanHamlett

I remember quite a fuss being made about a non driving game having driving levels that weren't shit and that 90 degree turn was quite an achievement judging by the almost total lack of it in all other driving games bar Ciscco "shitshow" Heat.

IanHamlett

Skip to 2 mns in and you can see a 90 degree turn onto their rendition of Lombard Street.
lombard%20street.jpeg

Matt_82

The only Ocean game that immediately springs to mind for me is Robocop. I remember every level had a wall that you had to punch repeatedly maybe 10-20 times before it would break apart and let you through. You literally just stood there and punched it. It took so many punches that I had the game for years and couldn't get past the first level because I was assuming it was faulty. Hilariously, my mum discovered the way through. After that I played the game loads.

I also got a CD32. I was an 11 year old Amiga fanboy who read all the Amiga mags and none of them had the balls to admit that the CD32 wasn't very good and was fucked when Sony and Sega showed up. By the time I bought one they were selling them with almost the entire game library bundled in. I'm amazed looking up Wikipedia right now that it was released in September and discontinued in April and only sold 100,000 units. At the time it seemed like the most important console release in the world.

We gave it away to my uncle. He's a crazy hoarder so I'm sure he still has it. I'll nab it back one day and get a few hours out of it.

Blue Swirl

Atari advert:

Source.

THE SIZE OF THE BOXES THE SOFTWARE CAME IN. O_o

IanHamlett

Matt_82 wrote:

The only Ocean game that immediately springs to mind for me is Robocop.

The first RoboCop was just a port of the Data East arcade game. The second one was much better iirc but probable still shit by today's standards.

djchump

I'm sat next to the guy that did the sprites on C64 Robocop and MD Batman Returns.

IanHamlett

It's not the guy with the 1Go YouTube channel is it?

IanHamlett

No, he did the projectiles on the Amiga Batman Returns. My mistake.

JonB

djchump wrote:

I'm sat next to the guy that did the sprites on C64 Robocop and MD Batman Returns.

Ask him if it's true that the C64 version of Robocop had a bug or impossible to beat section that meant you couldn't get past the second level. I seem to remember reading that somewhere at the time.

djchump

I'll ask him tomorrow ;-)

I do know that Codies shipped DS Bubble Bobble Revolution with a 100% progress-stopping bug in level 30 (of 100) - I was a QA drone there a few years before and the guy that got put on lead QA for that project was a lazy fucker back then, so odds on he just never bothered to play that far into the game.

davyK

IanHamlett wrote:

davyK wrote:

Was on the cusp of giving up games entirely - 'twas Nintendo consoles that brought me back.

Seems like you might be a barometer for the industry. What are you doing next?

In a bit of a lull actually at present. This gen isn't setting the world alight is it?

IanHamlett

During crunch time for The Getaway on PS2, a few playtester lads from Sony Liverpool (old Psygnosis) were shipped down there for a few days of intensive testing. The two lads I heard about had to check the collision detection on foot for the entire map. A few shifts of just running into every fucking wall in a freeroamer.

IanHamlett

davyK wrote:

IanHamlett wrote:

davyK wrote:

Was on the cusp of giving up games entirely - 'twas Nintendo consoles that brought me back.

Seems like you might be a barometer for the industry. What are you doing next?

In a bit of a lull actually at present. This gen isn't setting the world alight is it?

It's strange cos on paper it looks good, console sales wise, but I'm not feeling it. Baybe it's the lack of anything really new. The last few generations brought 3D, online, and playing bowling with your gran.

djchump

IanHamlett wrote:

During crunch time for The Getaway on PS2, a few playtester lads from Sony Liverpool (old Psygnosis) were shipped down there for a few days of intensive testing. The two lads I heard about had to check the collision detection on foot for the entire map. A few shifts of just running into every fucking wall in a freeroamer. ...

Been there, done that. Race Driver 2 collision bounds checking, collision and cover transition checks on Reservoir Dogs etc etc - always amazed me that there wasn't automated mesh-hole checks in 3DS max or maya, but then again they paid us peanuts so it was probably cheaper to have 2 QA chumps do checks rather than have dev team staff do the checking themselves.

davyK

IanHamlett wrote:

davyK wrote:

IanHamlett wrote:

davyK wrote:

Was on the cusp of giving up games entirely - 'twas Nintendo consoles that brought me back.

Seems like you might be a barometer for the industry. What are you doing next?

In a bit of a lull actually at present. This gen isn't setting the world alight is it?

It's strange cos on paper it looks good, console sales wise, but I'm not feeling it. Baybe it's the lack of anything really new. The last few generations brought 3D, online, and playing bowling with your gran.

Yeah. Gaming is in actual fact pretty excellent now. 'tis a plateau of sorts just.

Diluted Dante

I'm definitely feeling this gen is not as exciting as what has come before. What's the key new feature? Forced installs?

IanHamlett

This kinda thing worries me about the future of games. We've reached the point where gameworlds can be as big as we want, graphics have virtually plateaued, interconnected persistent worlds are common, we've still got a VR and countless unknown innovations to go but they seem to be coming slower.

What happens when it all plateaus? Will people still care when there's been no major change for 20 years?

Scout

Diluted Dante wrote:

I'm definitely feeling this gen is not as exciting as what has come before. What's the key new feature? Forced installs?

Just the other day the "share button" was voted as the defining feature of this current gen. Something I have yet to feel any desire to do myself.

IanHamlett

A totally optional non-gaming feature.

Diluted Dante

In fairness, I have enjoyed streaming my Destiny efforts recently, but yeah, if that's the best we can muster...

retroking1981

IanHamlett wrote:

This kinda thing worries me about the future of games. We've reached the point where gameworlds can be as big as we want, graphics have virtually plateaued, interconnected persistent worlds are common, we've still got a VR and countless unknown innovations to go but they seem to be coming slower.

What happens when it all plateaus? Will people still care when there's been no major change for 20 years?

There's always the younger generations coming through, gaming will be fine.

It won't truly plateau from a sales perspective until the generation who were around for the Oddesey and VCS etc start dying from old age.

IanHamlett

I remember the end of the PS2/GC/XBox gen. I had all the machines and there were hundreds of top notch games that I hadn't played. I was drawn in by the shiny new machines but I was also pushed away by more of the same shit.

I just wonder sometimes if the wow factor is needed and what we'll do once it's gone.

retroking1981

I know what you mean, I was on the cusp of giving up in the PS2 gen.

It was the Wii that sucked me back in, somewhat ironic as I don't hold motion controls in the highest regard and the PS3 became my go to system.

But the Wii made me smile playing games like I hadn't done since Super Mario 64, in that respect I agree with you, this gens looking pretty boring.

djchump

IMHO, gaming's better than it's ever been, if simply for the fact that all the old games still work (as long as you've still to the system for it, or an emulator).
If you like the old stuff, you can always go back to it. I even think that all the remasters are a *good* thing, showing a maturation of the medium, same way as remastered albums etc.

JonB

The best thing that's happened to games in recent years has been the cheap downloadable stuff on XBLA, PSN and so on. These are mostly 2D games based on technology that's already plateaued. They focus far more on design and content, and I think will age well. So in a way I think the next hardware innovation is just another excuse to make another version of franchise x now with added y support. Reaching a stage where there's nothing to hide behind but the game itself seems a good thing therefore.

Escape

Scout wrote:

You jotted down the corresponding numbers before fighting your way back to the front to hand over your order.

Hollywood Poker Pro?

I had this:

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