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Any games done better on the ST than the Amiga?


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For that particular game you might want to just get a JAguar - same game and lower cost/hassle entry point.

 

Im sure there are a few gems out there which are better on the ST vs Amiga, but I would venture most games play about 95% the same with the Amiga getting some enhanced color/sound capabilities the ST couldnt match at the time.

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For me (at this time wchich I remember): StarDust, Pinball Obbsesion.

 

 

Both those games seriously rule.

 

To be totally honest though, they are STe and up...

 

They even work on my Falcon! :)

Whatever happened to the ST fans? I've heard very little about this platform in recent years. Are there any new titles for this system?

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Whatever happened to the ST fans? I've heard very little about this platform in recent years. Are there any new titles for this system?

 

Oh yeah, we still be here. :D

 

I think there is more individual support now, rather than direct commercial releases.

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For me (at this time wchich I remember): StarDust, Pinball Obbsesion.

 

 

Both those games seriously rule.

 

To be totally honest though, they are STe and up...

 

They even work on my Falcon! :)

 

it is a pity that StarDust is not harddrive instalable :(

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it is a pity that StarDust is not harddrive instalable :(

 

Ain't that the truth! I have wished that for many games...especially 3 and 4 disk sets.

 

I'd love to get Ultima 5 on HD. Dragons Lair would be so much more playable on HD.

(although it still might be near impossible!). :)

 

What ever happened to that thread about the software that was supposed to do HD emulation

or something like that? The one that was supposed to work like the Amiga version?

 

Did anybody ever try that? If so, did it work?

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it is a pity that StarDust is not harddrive instalable :(

 

Ain't that the truth! I have wished that for many games...especially 3 and 4 disk sets.

 

I'd love to get Ultima 5 on HD. Dragons Lair would be so much more playable on HD.

(although it still might be near impossible!). :)

 

What ever happened to that thread about the software that was supposed to do HD emulation

or something like that? The one that was supposed to work like the Amiga version?

 

Did anybody ever try that? If so, did it work?

 

You'll need to have a hackers mind to work out the ULS transfer of *any* game to a HD that originally used direct DMA loading. If you've ever hacked/cracked/filed a game then you've got the skills (if you can remember them) to hack any existing game to make it work with the ULS loader.

 

However, games that use standard files should easily go onto HD inside one folder - it all depends on what tricks they use to detect which disk is in the drive. I've got a link-filer routine sat on my website which strips out the A: and B: from any requested filename and re-directs it to one large link-file which (in theory) should work on your ST's h/drive.

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Speaking from the Jaguar community, Zero 5 is said to be better on the STe/Falcon than on the Jaguar.

 

The Jaguar shares other titles, like Brutal Sports Football, said to be better on the Amiga where it came from.

 

That said, still love the Jag!

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  • 4 weeks later...
I'm not a troll. I'm seriously interested if there were any games better on the St than Amiga.

 

Since quite a few people think the Jaguar version of Sensible Soccer stinks compared to the Amiga, I am thinking of purchasing an St or Amiga to play this on.

 

It's an old game, but Barbarian (psygnosis) looked Much better on the ST than on the Amiga, IMHO. I just got Barbarian working through WHDLoad on my miggy, and was disappointed....

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I'm not a troll. I'm seriously interested if there were any games better on the St than Amiga.

 

Since quite a few people think the Jaguar version of Sensible Soccer stinks compared to the Amiga, I am thinking of purchasing an St or Amiga to play this on.

 

It's an old game, but Barbarian (psygnosis) looked Much better on the ST than on the Amiga, IMHO. I just got Barbarian working through WHDLoad on my miggy, and was disappointed....

 

Never played that one, but I always loved its sequel, Barbarian II. Unfortunately, I've not been able to find a copy to buy. I can't remember what happened to the one I had... :(

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Most of the early games were ported from ST to AMIGA

and therefore, the AMIGA versions are almost the same,

with usually better sound only.

 

Most of these early games don't even use the AMIGA's

blitter or it's scrolling and sprites.

 

When it comes to 3D games, the ST runs at 8 Mhz,

the A500/2000 at 7.14. But the ST is not only faster,

its bitplane system is easier to handle, no huge

offsets like on the AMIGA and so much faster 3D

routines are possible on the ST. The better ones

(3D routines) are usually based on huge tables

stored in memory and the ST does have more

usable memory than the AMIGA in most cases.

 

There was one Winter Sports game, I think

The Games:Winter Edition which looked like

the C64 version on the AMIGA, but had great

graphics on the ST.

 

I heard that "Epic", a 3D space game is much

better on the ST. I only know the AMIGA version.

It's slooooow on an A500.

 

"Kaiser" is another game that's better on the

ST, because although better-looking, the

AMIGA version is slow, very slow.

 

I've read that the original Boulder Dash on

the AMIGA is very bad. Boulder Dash isn't

great on the ST either, but still playable.

 

I prefer the ST versions of German games

like "Wings of Death", "Lethal Excess" ,

"Chambers of Shaolin" and "Amberstar"

by Thalion. Even the chipsounds sound

better on the ST. Chiptunes aren't that

great on the AMIGA - especially

Mr. Hippel's stuff.

 

I also prefer the Bitmap Brothers games

on the ST. Xenon II was one of my

first games.

 

Most of the French games like

"Captain Blood", "Purple Saturn Day" or

"Kult" were developed for the ST first.

I prefer the ST versions, even the

sound is identical (100% digitized).

 

Games that where programmed for the

AMIGA first, are usually better on that

system. Most of the Psygnosis games

like "Beast" or "Blood Money". Or

the "Turrican" games.

 

LC

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I'd hardly call the ST bitplanes easier to handle than the Amiga's.

 

The ST has bitplanes mapped as: RR GG BB (3 double-bytes representing 16 pixels)

 

The Amiga maps each bitplane contiguously in it's own area of memory, so you only need to calculate an offset, which can be used to address each one.

 

Plus, you only need to enable as many as you need, so you can have 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 colour modes.

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Most of the early games were ported from ST to AMIGA

and therefore, the AMIGA versions are almost the same,

with usually better sound only.

 

Most of these early games don't even use the AMIGA's

blitter or it's scrolling and sprites.

 

When it comes to 3D games, the ST runs at 8 Mhz,

the A500/2000 at 7.14. But the ST is not only faster,

its bitplane system is easier to handle, no huge

offsets like on the AMIGA and so much faster 3D

routines are possible on the ST. The better ones

(3D routines) are usually based on huge tables

stored in memory and the ST does have more

usable memory than the AMIGA in most cases.

 

There was one Winter Sports game, I think

The Games:Winter Edition which looked like

the C64 version on the AMIGA, but had great

graphics on the ST.

 

I heard that "Epic", a 3D space game is much

better on the ST. I only know the AMIGA version.

It's slooooow on an A500.

 

"Kaiser" is another game that's better on the

ST, because although better-looking, the

AMIGA version is slow, very slow.

 

I've read that the original Boulder Dash on

the AMIGA is very bad. Boulder Dash isn't

great on the ST either, but still playable.

 

I prefer the ST versions of German games

like "Wings of Death", "Lethal Excess" ,

"Chambers of Shaolin" and "Amberstar"

by Thalion. Even the chipsounds sound

better on the ST. Chiptunes aren't that

great on the AMIGA - especially

Mr. Hippel's stuff.

 

I also prefer the Bitmap Brothers games

on the ST. Xenon II was one of my

first games.

 

Most of the French games like

"Captain Blood", "Purple Saturn Day" or

"Kult" were developed for the ST first.

I prefer the ST versions, even the

sound is identical (100% digitized).

 

Games that where programmed for the

AMIGA first, are usually better on that

system. Most of the Psygnosis games

like "Beast" or "Blood Money". Or

the "Turrican" games.

 

LC

Good resource! Can you recommend any ST Music programs that support MIDI to keyboard pianos? Thanks, Cal

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  • 1 month later...

Very much games are "better" on the ST because they are built on the ST first.

And, yes the ST has its advantages by the 8MHz clocked Motorola.... because the Chipset of the AMIGA wasn't used as it was given.

Remembering that the Blitter in the AMIGA Chipset is as flexible as the Blitter that managed the 3D projection for Wolf 3D on the PC...

The "real" Slowdown on the A500 was caused by the "Chipmem" . Similar to the A8 , the Chipset access to this range of Memory stops the CPU access to the memory. With a Memory expansion you got a range of fast access RAM. In this range, the Motorola can fully access the RAM ....

 

But games arent't written for "fastram" + "full blitter usage"... So there is a very small range of games that are "better" than the ST derivates, because stereo PAULA (TFMX) usage and up to 4096 colours were able from scratch and the standard Mode gave easily 32 colours.

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I'd hardly call the ST bitplanes easier to handle than the Amiga's.

 

The ST has bitplanes mapped as: RR GG BB (3 double-bytes representing 16 pixels)

 

The Amiga maps each bitplane contiguously in it's own area of memory, so you only need to calculate an offset, which can be used to address each one.

 

Plus, you only need to enable as many as you need, so you can have 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 colour modes.

 

The ST bitplane handling is somewhat "colour-cell" like. While on the Amiga a linear framebuffer exists.

 

Sometimes I ask myself what those Tramiel/Shivji Computers have, that people put the hell out of them....

 

Making the C64 a 4 channel Mod player and/or creating 512 colour modes with overscan and fast scrolling with a stock ST.... both aren't given by "default" ... ;)

Edited by emkay
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There are instances as mentioned when same games will be faster on the ST. These are mainly games like Starglider, which tend to render screens entirely in software, and the nature of which don't really benefit from a blitter.

 

But, if horizontal scrolling, especially more than 1/2 the screen is thrown into the equation, the ST sorely loses out.

 

The bottom line is that the ST was never intended as it was (ie - Atari intended having the Amiga chipset) and hastily developed without the features that it should have had, that were later to appear on the STe.

 

It's almost a crime that they didn't at least have horizontal scrolling and/or sprites in the first place. I think it would be fair to say that Atari's arcade games of the time had far superior graphics handling.

 

And, the original sound hardware IMO is somewhat inferior to POKEY - one saving grace was that the 68K is fast enough to do reasonable sampling without degrading performance too much.

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It's almost a crime that they didn't at least have horizontal scrolling and/or sprites in the first place. I think it would be fair to say that Atari's arcade games of the time had far superior graphics handling.

 

And, the original sound hardware IMO is somewhat inferior to POKEY...

 

Some of the ST limitations are indeed a hardware issue, such as better sound or hardware sprites. But others are mostly an oversight, probably because of the rush in the design.

 

Hardware scrolling, at least in word units, needs a ridiculous small amount of extra silicon. For example, to enable screen relocation on any word (as you can do in the STe) , and not just in a page boundary, requires not much more than 7 additional flip-flops.

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