Like the way they done the hills in the arcade original. I agree though, the 90 degree turns are quite off putting. I think the mega-cd, 32x, could have done this justice back in the day. The Snes could have done the rotation but not the sprite-heavy graphics.
Very nice video. What I like in your channel aside from the funky retro vibes, the great comparisons and memories, is sometimes I discover arcade game that I have never seen back in the days like this one. I am impressed by the all the sprites making background, relief and cityscape very rich, even nicer than outrun.
@@RetroCore I didnt know pushing up to accelerate is horrible. You can push left/right while holding up,.Literally every c64 car game did this and no c64 user ever thought this is horrible. Did you have problems in top down 2d NES games moving your character diagonally ? if the answer is no, then it cant be horrible, its just your personal preference you picked up from NES games.
It's really interesting how this game attempts to emulate a 3D effect with its hills and scaling. Although it hasn't aged well it looks pretty charming and must have been a blast back in the day
Wow! I've been playing some DiRT4 and Project Cars 2 these days, with their hairpin curves, and I would never have guessed that, maybe, just maybe, without Cisco Heat things could have been different today.
I think I've noticed that there's no time limit on the Commodore 64 version. The developers probably thought: "Oh well since we've totally messed up this game let's make it easier on the player and give him unlimited time to complete the stage" :)
Two thing regarding controls on the home computer versions: First, these games could be played on keyboard, which (while not necessarily everyone's preference) is functional. The second is that the joysticks we used back then were different to modern controllers (typically flightsticks or arcade sticks), so steering while pushing up is much better than when trying to do it on a gamepad (though admittedly still not optimal). I started gaming on home computers back in the '80s and at that time I couldn't imagine ever playing games on a gamepad! 😆
Man, all these BoP episodes brutally refresh my memory of how it felt, to be an arcade regular with an Amiga at home. That naive happiness - every single time yet another arcade port was announced for the system - turning into a prelude to disappointment, as soon as it was shown on the magazines.
+Retro Core Absolutely, the Amiga had tons of great games - I loved stuff like Apidya, Project-X, Lionheart, Lotus II... - but I must confess that it always bothered me to see how badly most arcade ports ended up on the system, whereas Amiga-to-consoles conversions generally turned out pretty great, if not vastly superior (thinking about Chuck Rock, Turrican, Robocod, Mr. Nutz...). It sounds weird, but - as a kid - switching from the Amiga to the Mega Drive felt like a HUGE upgrade to me.
+Galdelico You must be blind then. The Mega Drive with its horrible colors was a downgrade to the Amiga! Speaking of Turrican. You are joking, right? Both, Turrican and Robocod, are vastly superior in the Amiga. Better graphic, better sound and in the case of Turrican 2 and 1, better controls. I don't know of a single native Amiga game, that would bei better in the Mega Drive.
I'm starting to think a more interesting way to do these is to talk around each port as what happens here with the transition from the Speccy to Amstrad.
+Christopher Sobieniak Interesting idea although then there would be many who would want to hear the game audio but could not due to me speaking. I remember when I started doing the voiceovers. It was pretty much 50/50 on who wanted them and who did not.
I discovered something very interesting. The music and sound effects (heard in this video) in the arcade original were always incorrect. Newer and Recent versions of MAME has the corrected/fixed music and sound effects which are far better than the incorrect ones.
I'm surprised this got a port at all. Do remember it from your last episode. Weird how they would mix a southern style police chase with San Francisco.
I've played the Amiga version when I was a kid, didn't get far, but the game itself was sooo cool to play. The arcade version with its large sprites must be the best and the rest of the ports are not even close.
Cisco Heat (and Big Run) was developed by Bitbox, which supposedly consisted of people who worked on Hang-On and Space Harrier. Cisco Heat and Bases Loaded were both announced for the Atari Jaguar.
+crv1985 They must have done the 16bit ports as the Amstrad and Spectrume were both by Moonstone. I would imagine that the Jag' versions would be more in line with the Amiga and ST than the arctual arcade.
That Amiga version seems quite nice actually, runs really well compared to the sluggish Chase HQ. Infact I'm going to checkout Chase HQ again on the amiga.
+Laurent Giroud He was probably mentioning SCI (or chase hq 2) that was developed also by ICE and was better than the original (CHASE HQ) on the amiga. The first was a real oportunity missed...
+João Ralha I would say all Ice games were opportunity missed. As Douglas Little mentioned in the interview I linked to in another comment, Ice was focused first and foremost on meeting the deadlines which meant cutting every possible corner to get there. Since they prided themselves on offering very tight development schedules this meant obviously cutting down on quality. I call this model of development "fear driven development model". Sadly, it is very much still in use today in the game industry.
My first game on the computer ever! :) MS-DOS version, can someone recommend this game for a remake on Kickstarter? Imagine it on the PC with today's graphics and 80's or 90's soundtrack. Outrun and Chase HQ were already remade and they look awesome, same thing needs to be done for this classic too.
A game where you race in a Nissan 300Z or a normal Police Cruiser. And you race your car to win the National Championship Police Car Steeplechase. That is a pretty cool concept. The game itself, aside from control that is a little stiff, isn't too bad. A little frustrating, though, as I never got past the 2nd stage.
The whole thing with one button joysticks for the European & American home computers gets even more bizarre when you consider that all of them supported two buttons out of the box (the C64's programmers reference guide, for instance, shows you how to use two buttons and it is not actually harder than using one). The Amiga (and probably Atari ST as well) even supports three button controllers as standard. Yet (almost) no one bothered to program the support for them. It's maddening!
I got a bit unsure here so I checked - while Commodore did release a 2 button C64 stick later (1990), they didn't put instructions for using 2 buttons in the programmers manual. That said, it was indeed very easy to implement (reading one or two values from memory, basically). No drivers or special stuff needed. The Amiga could, however, read three button sticks straight out of the box in 1985 - I checked the hardware reference guide and it's in there how to read each of the three buttons. Now, I do admit that reading button 2 and 3 is slightly counterintuitive, but it's definitely not rocket science either for any competent programmer. The real problem was no one made 2 or 3 button controlers. And even though the Sega Master System controlers worked out of the box, Commodore never mentioned this.
You are wrong. The ST will only support a two button joystick if it's connected in the mouse port but I don't know of any game where this was implemented. I think the main reason was that most joysticks were 2600 compatible so that meant only one button.
Didn't there were any ports of this game at all. I'm surprised how well the Atari ST version turned out. Graphically it's pretty impressive. I didn't think the sharp turns would be included at all.
+RyuHayabusa06 To be honest, the sharp turns are easier to do on the home ports :) It can be quite hard to judge the exit of the turn on the arcade version.
Honestly, when I saw the list of ports I was thinking they'd all be absolute garbage. Quite surprised. Usually when these companies try these ambitious ports of powerful arcade hardware it ends up being a complete disaster. They did a pretty impressive job considering everything.
@@RetroCore I think the PC speaker is overdue some love in the chiptune scene. You don't get much more raw/harsh than that. Seriously though. The PC speaker would make a good instrument used in an accompaniment. With software you can even make it sing if you want.
I think you are a wrong that the amiga version is a conversion of the ST one. It's the reverse. It's just that the ST coder is one of the best out there. Also, you are probably emulating an STE and this is one of the few games that makes use of the extra hardware. Interesting story, the ST games weren't supposed to be better than the Amiga versions. I guess Amiga users would be annoyed to pay a premium for a lesser port.
Nope... The st was the main one, but the coder was good and had good priorities - Gameplay 1st... As for STE emulation, its possible you're right... But very few games actually used STE features, only the 1mb only AFAIR...
+João Ralha Some quotes from the programmer: "I worked hard to get STE support into Cisco Heat at the time, and there was a bit of trouble over it. When i was finished with it, the STE version was faster than the Amiga one." also: "So I had my fun in the end doing blitter routs (etc) for STE and then trying to get us to ship with that, which led to some weird problems and questions around Amiga performance (which had always been using blitter etc.)." Since the ST doesn't have a blitter by default (some models have a socket for one) and in any case it's quite different to the amiga one, you can basically realize that the codebase is different for the two ports. Apparently the Amiga version was completed first as well.
+CFalcon030 I'm not surprised that the Amiga version is finished earlier, specially since STE specific features were added to the ST version. It doesn't mean that they didn't start on the main 68000 code - it just means that the Amiga version started before the end of the ST - which IMHO is a much better practise then waiting for on version to be finished or almost... To be quite frank I think both versions have their pros and cons - They were handled diferently at some point, but in the end they play similar... But at this point (and this is not a US Gold game) devs clearly recognized diferences between the machines. Althought it doesn't mean they handled them correctly - The western small teams and tight deadlines most of the times ruined arcade conversions and it went to be common practise until at least 1991.
+CFalcon030 Interesting quotes, it would have been nice of you to give a link to the entirety of Douglas Little's posts: www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=24456#p223581 This said, there is nothing in what he says which supports the idea that the STE in itself is faster than the Amiga, just that he had the chance to be able to put more effort into it. If the same amount of effort had been expanded on the Amiga version chances are that the two versions would have been similar since at best the STE runs at par with the Amiga. Also, you will note that he indicates that the Amiga version had to be faster by contract. This is explained by the fact that the Amiga was then outselling the ST by a large factor by that time so publishers wanted it to be the lead platform. However it is clear from Douglas post that the ST was still the lead but that they took care to make the Amiga version run faster than the ST (not STE) one. When you think about it that is a really shoddy way to handle ports: writing efficient code only when mandated by contract says a lot about Ice priorities. Read the whole of his posts on that thread and you will see that Ice development model was "rush it then ship it", their code is certainly not a good base to use for comparing machine performances. I am pretty sure that a modern coder would do much better than they did on the ST. Actually I am certain that if Douglas had written the whole code it would have been better on both machines. ;)
You are right about the link. I just forgot to post it. But your reading of it is different to mine. I read it as they stuck the game on their racing engine which although shared a lot of code, it was optimised for the Amiga.Also I didn't say the STE is faster than the Amiga, just that in this game the STE gives better performance. The other is an entirely different question.
I doubt it,knowing that the jaguar could handle out fast sprites in games like Súper Burnout & Val'd Isere Skiing & Snowboarding,they should lend the port to Virtual Xperience or Shen to do the work to have a more Smotheer & better controling version.
@@RetroCoreA lot of Jaguar conversions came from the PC. Worms, Total Carnage, the W. I. P. MK3 port etc, Atari would of gone for a developer who could churn out a port for the most minimal price, rather than sit down and emulate the arcade code on the system.
@@RetroCore There was an official press release by Atari claiming it was signed but Atari said this about Team 17 and they'd only received dev docs, not dev kits. This is the first magazine I know of to claim a sighting, but the same magazine who falsely put Swagman done for Jaguar CD, Tomb Raider for Jag CD and 3DO. They aren't the most credible source.
Even people from the UK (especially Kim Justice) have a negative reaction to the C64 version and Image works software strangely and ridiculous claims the most realistic racing game on C64! Which by the way Kimble Justice savagely reviewed the C64 version of Cisco Heat and says "Even worse than the C64 version of Chase HQ". You know even brits have a negative reaction to Tiertex and the C64 version of Cisco Heat.
Because I wanted to use the default audio. I also didn't show the game running in EGA or CGA modes. To be honest, when this game was released many would have not been using a sound card.
Several things I need to say about the game (and ports): 1) Not a bad game that Jaleco made 2) Your review of the C64 port is GENIUS. It's obviously a shitty port. XD 3) The fact that ICE Software had to use the same source code from the ST port just so they could port it on the Amiga is annoyingly overused. They should've at least tweaked the frame rate on the Amiga so it could play a little better, but nope. It's like they favored the ST even more. -_- 4) Did the ST's soundtrack really need sampled bass and snare drums? (At least they do sound clean) 5) The MS-DOS port sounds most satisfying to listen to with the Roland MT-32/CM-32. Sad that it doesn't do sound FX too much. Funny thing is that I always watched this episode of BotP every time I eat lunch in I was in High School. I don't know why but I did (Just wanted to say it for a while). Also you might want to trim the video if the main portion of the video is black.
I really love how the Amiga port was made by the guys who did Outrun. Those guys made ONE TERRIBLE arcade racing game port and then everyone was asking them TO DO MORE ARCADE RACING PORTS. What the hell. (And Yeah, US Gold got Probe to do the Port, then Probe got ICE to do it)
As for Cisco Heat and Bases Loaded by Jaleco on Jaguar : The president of Jaleco released a P. R statement about how Atari had entered the hardware market with the most advanced hardware, but slowly and Jaleco would bring to the Jaguar platform the software experience and expertise the hardware deserved, but that's a world apart from confirming work was underway on either platform or how the hardware would be utilized for either project. Cisco Heat was getting very long in the tooth at this stage. I'd played (awful) home conversions on the C64 and ST years before, it wasn't something i expected to hear announced for the Jaguar.
+Retro Core scanlines most definitely but also it seems that several things just do are not emulated well, like the sprite scaling. I was amazed by the graphics back in the day. It might also be just me haha.
BenLang77 This game does have some background graphic emulation issues but as far as the sprite scaling goes, it's pretty much as it was back in the day. A lot of these games do look a bit messy these days, especially ones by Taito and Jaleco.
I'd say the Atari ST and MS-DOS ports indeed run the finest compared to the arcade. On the 8bit side of things I pretty much avoided the game alltogether. Just was out of their league I reckon.
+Lord Alfajor It was a pretty popular game back in it's day. I guess to make this on a cartridge would have required some large memory for all the spirte sizes. It's hightly unlikely any console of the time could have scaled everything.
Since i watch this ep. of BoP i tried very hard to like the arcade port. I put the rom even on my phone. But....Shit...The control during the 90 degrees turns have to be very precise or you ram in something. I know that San Francisco is actually know for slopes and corners...but damn....it's freaking annoying! On the 3rd stage...man is HELL on earth with those corners. At least as a improvement over Big Run
bad arcade game, awfull conversions...? The main game in 16 bit was the st port which was later scaled down to inprove gameplay. The coder on the Amiga opted to maintain the original resolution and play with the blitter (which clearly he either failed or lacked the time)... I remember reading somewhere that mirrorsoft opted for ICE because of delivery in "reasonable" deadlines... Yep, get that fast out the door! But quite frankly it was a mess of a game to start off... Oh the 8 bit ports are really funny! Never had saw them before this video!...
Woah... geez that C64 port is bad... wow, maybe even the very worst Ive seen particularly in racing games. I see Zzap gave them 30% back in the day... why? It doesn't deserve more than 10% in my books, it looks unplayable.
No music in the arcade version? Wow, Jaleco is now a horrible video game developer for releasing such crappy games. We all know that they really could've done a lot better.
![กี่หมื่นฟ้า | Your Sky Series EP.1 [2/4]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/qJbQs_nhjD4/mqdefault.jpg)
![1990 [60fps] Cisco Heat ALL](/img/n.gif)
Like the way they done the hills in the arcade original. I agree though, the 90 degree turns are quite off putting.
I think the mega-cd, 32x, could have done this justice back in the day. The Snes could have done the rotation but not the sprite-heavy graphics.
Well, making it a bit less busy would work in the game's favor, methinks, so an SNES version might have been good. 🤣
@@jesuszamora6949 yea probably would have been better than all the computer ports
"Hey man, you just fucked up your Ferrari"
"It's not mine!"
Very nice video. What I like in your channel aside from the funky retro vibes, the great comparisons and memories, is sometimes I discover arcade game that I have never seen back in the days like this one. I am impressed by the all the sprites making background, relief and cityscape very rich, even nicer than outrun.
Glad you like the videos.
Mmmmmm. The drum samples in the ST version are CRISP, lemme tell ya.
Also, I couldn't stop laughing during your C64 review. Absolute amazing reaction
Hehe, that C64 is special.
@@RetroCore I didnt know pushing up to accelerate is horrible. You can push left/right while holding up,.Literally every c64 car game did this and no c64 user ever thought this is horrible. Did you have problems in top down 2d NES games moving your character diagonally ? if the answer is no, then it cant be horrible, its just your personal preference you picked up from NES games.
It's really interesting how this game attempts to emulate a 3D effect with its hills and scaling. Although it hasn't aged well it looks pretty charming and must have been a blast back in the day
I do like these old 3D games that used sprites to portray a 3D world. They have a charm to them that early polygon stuff does not.
Damn you!! The commodore 64 review made me spill my milk when you went postal on it, lmao.
Hahaha, glad you enjoyed the comments. It truly is a cluster f**k of a mess.
I love the arcade game, the hill effect is so good!
Wow! I've been playing some DiRT4 and Project Cars 2 these days, with their hairpin curves, and I would never have guessed that, maybe, just maybe, without Cisco Heat things could have been different today.
I love the way you reacted to the Commodore 64 version. XD
hehehe, yeah,. that is a really bad version. It makes me laugh.
Retro Core Y'know, the way the cars appears randomly in a sudden way makes it look like a Tiger Electronics LCD game in my opinion. XD
I think I've noticed that there's no time limit on the Commodore 64 version. The developers probably thought: "Oh well since we've totally messed up this game let's make it easier on the player and give him unlimited time to complete the stage" :)
Two thing regarding controls on the home computer versions: First, these games could be played on keyboard, which (while not necessarily everyone's preference) is functional. The second is that the joysticks we used back then were different to modern controllers (typically flightsticks or arcade sticks), so steering while pushing up is much better than when trying to do it on a gamepad (though admittedly still not optimal). I started gaming on home computers back in the '80s and at that time I couldn't imagine ever playing games on a gamepad! 😆
Never knew it had any port at all. I really likes the arcade !
+rbocalini I think many people thought that. I was also surprised by the amount of home ports it received.
I bet someone in Jaleco watched "Smokey and the Bandit 2" and came up with the idea for this game.
either that or the Blues Brothers hehe
Damn the 8-bits got the shitty end of the stick with this. The ST version looks really slick, but I doubt I'd play it over Lotus or Vroom.
Man, all these BoP episodes brutally refresh my memory of how it felt, to be an arcade regular with an Amiga at home. That naive happiness - every single time yet another arcade port was announced for the system - turning into a prelude to disappointment, as soon as it was shown on the magazines.
+Galdelico hahaha, I feel your pain! I did like playing some stuff on the Amig aback in the day though. 3D Stunt Car Racer and XenonII were two faves.
+Retro Core Absolutely, the Amiga had tons of great games - I loved stuff like Apidya, Project-X, Lionheart, Lotus II... - but I must confess that it always bothered me to see how badly most arcade ports ended up on the system, whereas Amiga-to-consoles conversions generally turned out pretty great, if not vastly superior (thinking about Chuck Rock, Turrican, Robocod, Mr. Nutz...). It sounds weird, but - as a kid - switching from the Amiga to the Mega Drive felt like a HUGE upgrade to me.
I'm not surprised. Arcade games truly are crap on the Amiga. Consoles are were you want to be for home arcade games or the Sharp X68000 :)
+Galdelico
You must be blind then. The Mega Drive with its horrible colors was a downgrade to the Amiga!
Speaking of Turrican. You are joking, right? Both, Turrican and Robocod, are vastly superior in the Amiga. Better graphic, better sound and in the case of Turrican 2 and 1, better controls.
I don't know of a single native Amiga game, that would bei better in the Mega Drive.
Turrican 4D "I don't know of a single native Amiga game, that would bei better in the Mega Drive."
Zool, Speedball 2, Lotus 3, James Pond 2, etc.
With a Fairlady Z as your car I think I'm going to have to try this one out.
I watched to the end!
Sorry dude. That video had a processing error.
Hahaa! No problem at all - great video, I remember playing the demo version of this on a 8086 back in 1991 I think :D
The graphics at 29.02 blew me away!
I'm starting to think a more interesting way to do these is to talk around each port as what happens here with the transition from the Speccy to Amstrad.
+Christopher Sobieniak Interesting idea although then there would be many who would want to hear the game audio but could not due to me speaking. I remember when I started doing the voiceovers. It was pretty much 50/50 on who wanted them and who did not.
Retro Core Yeah I guess.
I discovered something very interesting. The music and sound effects (heard in this video) in the arcade original were always incorrect. Newer and Recent versions of MAME has the corrected/fixed music and sound effects which are far better than the incorrect ones.
I never knew the sound effects were wrong. Now I'm interested in hearing the way it should have sounded.
I'm surprised this got a port at all. Do remember it from your last episode. Weird how they would mix a southern style police chase with San Francisco.
another great choice of game! really enjoy your review and comparisons!
+Grant H Lee thanks!
I've played the Amiga version when I was a kid, didn't get far, but the game itself was sooo cool to play. The arcade version with its large sprites must be the best and the rest of the ports are not even close.
Yeah, The arcade version is miles ahead of the home ports but I do think the Amiga and ST games are rather good in their own way.
that ST version is really good... especially the music.
It's not bad. Better than what I'd expect.
Cisco Heat (and Big Run) was developed by Bitbox, which supposedly consisted of people who worked on Hang-On and Space Harrier.
Cisco Heat and Bases Loaded were both announced for the Atari Jaguar.
+crv1985 They must have done the 16bit ports as the Amstrad and Spectrume were both by Moonstone.
I would imagine that the Jag' versions would be more in line with the Amiga and ST than the arctual arcade.
+Retro Core Sorry, I meant Bitbox did the arcade version.
Really? What other games did they make I wonder.
+Retro Core As far as I know, just Big Run and some slot/roulette machine thing called Big III (also from Jaleco).
+crv1985 I see. there are so many little companies out there making games for the larger ones that we just don't know about.
Idk if this is a TH-cam thing, but the video ends at 13:36, but it keeps going all the way until 35:46, for some weird, weird reason.
Wow, I think something went wrong with TH-cam.
That Amiga version seems quite nice actually, runs really well compared to the sluggish Chase HQ. Infact I'm going to checkout Chase HQ again on the amiga.
+LeShark75 No, don't do it!! Amiga Chase HQ is the devil.
+Retro Core I second this, no need to check Chase HQ Amiga, it is slow and unresponsive as hell. ;)
+Laurent Giroud He was probably mentioning SCI (or chase hq 2) that was developed also by ICE and was better than the original (CHASE HQ) on the amiga. The first was a real oportunity missed...
+João Ralha I would say all Ice games were opportunity missed.
As Douglas Little mentioned in the interview I linked to in another comment, Ice was focused first and foremost on meeting the deadlines which meant cutting every possible corner to get there. Since they prided themselves on offering very tight development schedules this meant obviously cutting down on quality.
I call this model of development "fear driven development model". Sadly, it is very much still in use today in the game industry.
My first game on the computer ever! :) MS-DOS version, can someone recommend this game for a remake on Kickstarter? Imagine it on the PC with today's graphics and 80's or 90's soundtrack. Outrun and Chase HQ were already remade and they look awesome, same thing needs to be done for this classic too.
This woulda been a great 32x game haha. I can dream.
A game where you race in a Nissan 300Z or a normal Police Cruiser. And you race your car to win the National Championship Police Car Steeplechase.
That is a pretty cool concept. The game itself, aside from control that is a little stiff, isn't too bad. A little frustrating, though, as I never got past the 2nd stage.
Sadly that was Jaleco all over. They had some great ideas but never quite got them right in most cases.
The whole thing with one button joysticks for the European & American home computers gets even more bizarre when you consider that all of them supported two buttons out of the box (the C64's programmers reference guide, for instance, shows you how to use two buttons and it is not actually harder than using one). The Amiga (and probably Atari ST as well) even supports three button controllers as standard.
Yet (almost) no one bothered to program the support for them. It's maddening!
Wow, just wow. It goes to show that the developers really had no idea if this is true.
I got a bit unsure here so I checked - while Commodore did release a 2 button C64 stick later (1990), they didn't put instructions for using 2 buttons in the programmers manual.
That said, it was indeed very easy to implement (reading one or two values from memory, basically). No drivers or special stuff needed.
The Amiga could, however, read three button sticks straight out of the box in 1985 - I checked the hardware reference guide and it's in there how to read each of the three buttons. Now, I do admit that reading button 2 and 3 is slightly counterintuitive, but it's definitely not rocket science either for any competent programmer.
The real problem was no one made 2 or 3 button controlers. And even though the Sega Master System controlers worked out of the box, Commodore never mentioned this.
You are wrong. The ST will only support a two button joystick if it's connected in the mouse port but I don't know of any game where this was implemented. I think the main reason was that most joysticks were 2600 compatible so that meant only one button.
I like the Amstrad for the home ports.
You should do a battle of the ports for Nemesis/Gradius. Keep up the good work!
I did that 3 years ago :D - th-cam.com/video/TyO3LIgkZoQ/w-d-xo.html
Your C64 review really convinced me how bad that port is without even playing it (and the gameplay video, of course). LOL
Images can say a million words 😁
As you rightly said, Speccy version is nothing like the arcade but was a decent enough game in it's own right.
I guess it is. Sometimes it's best to do your own thing rather than make a mess of something you are trying to imitate.
Didn't there were any ports of this game at all. I'm surprised how well the Atari ST version turned out. Graphically it's pretty impressive. I didn't think the sharp turns would be included at all.
+RyuHayabusa06 To be honest, the sharp turns are easier to do on the home ports :) It can be quite hard to judge the exit of the turn on the arcade version.
Honestly, when I saw the list of ports I was thinking they'd all be absolute garbage. Quite surprised. Usually when these companies try these ambitious ports of powerful arcade hardware it ends up being a complete disaster. They did a pretty impressive job considering everything.
RyuHayabusa06
I have to admit that I was also pleasently surprised by many of the ports.
why didnt you choose adlib for the dos emulation? i would have liked to hear some music :)
+MrDerOutsider I thought it would be nice to go raw with it.
@@RetroCore I think the PC speaker is overdue some love in the chiptune scene. You don't get much more raw/harsh than that. Seriously though. The PC speaker would make a good instrument used in an accompaniment. With software you can even make it sing if you want.
I agree with you, Adlib version is actually really nice.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned this, but there is 20min of dead air at the end of the video...
Actually about ten people have mentioned it through the comments plus my answer as to why it's there.
oh, oops, sorry
Kandi Gloss
No worries :)
I think you are a wrong that the amiga version is a conversion of the ST one. It's the reverse. It's just that the ST coder is one of the best out there. Also, you are probably emulating an STE and this is one of the few games that makes use of the extra hardware. Interesting story, the ST games weren't supposed to be better than the Amiga versions. I guess Amiga users would be annoyed to pay a premium for a lesser port.
Nope... The st was the main one, but the coder was good and had good priorities - Gameplay 1st...
As for STE emulation, its possible you're right... But very few games actually used STE features, only the 1mb only AFAIR...
+João Ralha Some quotes from the programmer: "I worked hard to get STE support into Cisco Heat at the time, and there was a bit of trouble over it. When i was finished with it, the STE version was faster than the Amiga one."
also:
"So I had my fun in the end doing blitter routs (etc) for STE and then trying to get us to ship with that, which led to some weird problems and questions around Amiga performance (which had always been using blitter etc.)."
Since the ST doesn't have a blitter by default (some models have a socket for one) and in any case it's quite different to the amiga one, you can basically realize that the codebase is different for the two ports. Apparently the Amiga version was completed first as well.
+CFalcon030 I'm not surprised that the Amiga version is finished earlier, specially since STE specific features were added to the ST version.
It doesn't mean that they didn't start on the main 68000 code - it just means that the Amiga version started before the end of the ST - which IMHO is a much better practise then waiting for on version to be finished or almost...
To be quite frank I think both versions have their pros and cons - They were handled diferently at some point, but in the end they play similar...
But at this point (and this is not a US Gold game) devs clearly recognized diferences between the machines.
Althought it doesn't mean they handled them correctly - The western small teams and tight deadlines most of the times ruined arcade conversions and it went to be common practise until at least 1991.
+CFalcon030 Interesting quotes, it would have been nice of you to give a link to the entirety of Douglas Little's posts: www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=24456#p223581
This said, there is nothing in what he says which supports the idea that the STE in itself is faster than the Amiga, just that he had the chance to be able to put more effort into it. If the same amount of effort had been expanded on the Amiga version chances are that the two versions would have been similar since at best the STE runs at par with the Amiga.
Also, you will note that he indicates that the Amiga version had to be faster by contract. This is explained by the fact that the Amiga was then outselling the ST by a large factor by that time so publishers wanted it to be the lead platform. However it is clear from Douglas post that the ST was still the lead but that they took care to make the Amiga version run faster than the ST (not STE) one.
When you think about it that is a really shoddy way to handle ports: writing efficient code only when mandated by contract says a lot about Ice priorities. Read the whole of his posts on that thread and you will see that Ice development model was "rush it then ship it", their code is certainly not a good base to use for comparing machine performances.
I am pretty sure that a modern coder would do much better than they did on the ST.
Actually I am certain that if Douglas had written the whole code it would have been better on both machines. ;)
You are right about the link. I just forgot to post it. But your reading of it is different to mine. I read it as they stuck the game on their racing engine which although shared a lot of code, it was optimised for the Amiga.Also I didn't say the STE is faster than the Amiga, just that in this game the STE gives better performance. The other is an entirely different question.
Funny to think that at one point there was going to be a Atari Jaguar version.
Really? I bet it would have been a port of the Amiga game :p
I doubt it,knowing that the jaguar could handle out fast sprites in games like Súper Burnout & Val'd Isere Skiing & Snowboarding,they should lend the port to Virtual Xperience or Shen to do the work to have a more Smotheer & better controling version.
KGRAMR true, the Jag could pull off a much better port but something tells me that they'd take the lazy option.
@@RetroCoreThe Tramiel's would of opted for the cheapest development team as well, cue more rubbish from Imagitec Design or Tiertex
@@RetroCoreA lot of Jaguar conversions came from the PC. Worms, Total Carnage, the W. I. P. MK3 port etc, Atari would of gone for a developer who could churn out a port for the most minimal price, rather than sit down and emulate the arcade code on the system.
Gamefan Magazine, September 1993 claimed there had been sightings of a Jaguar version of this
I've read that before somewhere but I really doubt it. If such a thing existed it was most likely a port of the ST game.
@@RetroCore There was an official press release by Atari claiming it was signed but Atari said this about Team 17 and they'd only received dev docs, not dev kits.
This is the first magazine I know of to claim a sighting, but the same magazine who falsely put Swagman done for Jaguar CD, Tomb Raider for Jag CD and 3DO.
They aren't the most credible source.
I just wanna know who thought the cops would have a race in traffic. 🤣
They are some fun cop's.
@@RetroCore Indeed. 🤣
Even people from the UK (especially Kim Justice) have a negative reaction to the C64 version and Image works software strangely and ridiculous claims the most realistic racing game on C64! Which by the way Kimble Justice savagely reviewed the C64 version of Cisco Heat and says "Even worse than the C64 version of Chase HQ". You know even brits have a negative reaction to Tiertex and the C64 version of Cisco Heat.
Good old 80s UK BS when it came to gaming.
If the DOS version supported better audio, why did you choose internal speaker audio?
Because I wanted to use the default audio. I also didn't show the game running in EGA or CGA modes. To be honest, when this game was released many would have not been using a sound card.
This game was released for PC in 1991. Anyone playing games on their PC would have had a sound card in 1991.
+Jim Leonard not me.
16 bit sound card was £200+ in 1991
I agree with Jim. Soundblaster or Adlib were very common when this game went out. 1991 was definately VGA + soundcard.
Several things I need to say about the game (and ports):
1) Not a bad game that Jaleco made
2) Your review of the C64 port is GENIUS. It's obviously a shitty port. XD
3) The fact that ICE Software had to use the same source code from the ST port just so they could port it on the Amiga is annoyingly overused. They should've at least tweaked the frame rate on the Amiga so it could play a little better, but nope. It's like they favored the ST even more. -_-
4) Did the ST's soundtrack really need sampled bass and snare drums? (At least they do sound clean)
5) The MS-DOS port sounds most satisfying to listen to with the Roland MT-32/CM-32. Sad that it doesn't do sound FX too much.
Funny thing is that I always watched this episode of BotP every time I eat lunch in I was in High School. I don't know why but I did (Just wanted to say it for a while). Also you might want to trim the video if the main portion of the video is black.
I'll see if I can trim it with the TH-cam creator tools.
Commodore 64's Cisco Heat looks so bad, it makes the Amstrad version a better home port and the ZX spectrum look good! XD
I really love how the Amiga port was made by the guys who did Outrun. Those guys made ONE TERRIBLE arcade racing game port and then everyone was asking them TO DO MORE ARCADE RACING PORTS. What the hell.
(And Yeah, US Gold got Probe to do the Port, then Probe got ICE to do it)
As for Cisco Heat and Bases Loaded by Jaleco on Jaguar :
The president of Jaleco released a P. R statement about how Atari had entered the hardware market with the most advanced hardware, but slowly and Jaleco would bring to the Jaguar platform the software experience and expertise the hardware deserved, but that's a world apart from confirming work was underway on either platform or how the hardware would be utilized for either project.
Cisco Heat was getting very long in the tooth at this stage.
I'd played (awful) home conversions on the C64 and ST years before, it wasn't something i expected to hear announced for the Jaguar.
Damn, that mame emulation looks so off from what I remember of the arcade cabinet. Definitely the crt monitor will smooth out most of the choppyness.
+BenLang77 Do you mean the blocky graphics? Yeah, some scan lines would make it look much nicer.
+Retro Core scanlines most definitely but also it seems that several things just do are not emulated well, like the sprite scaling. I was amazed by the graphics back in the day. It might also be just me haha.
BenLang77
This game does have some background graphic emulation issues but as far as the sprite scaling goes, it's pretty much as it was back in the day. A lot of these games do look a bit messy these days, especially ones by Taito and Jaleco.
fuck me the engine sound on the arcade is horrendous :/
+Harolds Stuff yep, it is pretty bad.
I'd say the Atari ST and MS-DOS ports indeed run the finest compared to the arcade. On the 8bit side of things I pretty much avoided the game alltogether. Just was out of their league I reckon.
+lactobacillusprime True. The 8bit ports are bugger all like the arcade game but I do kind of like the speccy version.
Retro Core I think the Speccy version is quite impressive with the way the road and hills roll by. Much more impressive than the other 8 bit ports.
Strange that there are no console versions, maybe because the arcade version didn't have much success?
+Lord Alfajor It was a pretty popular game back in it's day. I guess to make this on a cartridge would have required some large memory for all the spirte sizes. It's hightly unlikely any console of the time could have scaled everything.
The ST version is very good indeed even if it pales in comparison to the arcade and actually ran faster than the Amiga version if you had an STe.
Um no the 90 degree turns made the game more fun, because you need skill to win.
US Gold, man, everything they touched was automatically a piece of shite.
Since i watch this ep. of BoP i tried very hard to like the arcade port. I put the rom even on my phone. But....Shit...The control during the 90 degrees turns have to be very precise or you ram in something. I know that San Francisco is actually know for slopes and corners...but damn....it's freaking annoying! On the 3rd stage...man is HELL on earth with those corners. At least as a improvement over Big Run
It is a challenging game for sure.
Why the dead time?
+Andrew Segura It's just how the video was encoded. There was an error in the process. No problem though since it's at the end of the video.
Ok, just seemed weird, this is the first video of yours that I encounter that
Andrew Segura
There is one more that had this fault which was uploaded maybe about 8 months ago however I can't remember which video that was.
bad arcade game, awfull conversions...?
The main game in 16 bit was the st port which was later scaled down to inprove gameplay. The coder on the Amiga opted to maintain the original resolution and play with the blitter (which clearly he either failed or lacked the time)...
I remember reading somewhere that mirrorsoft opted for ICE because of delivery in "reasonable" deadlines... Yep, get that fast out the door!
But quite frankly it was a mess of a game to start off...
Oh the 8 bit ports are really funny! Never had saw them before this video!...
+João Ralha The 8bit ports were done by Moonshine Development although ICE did distribute the game to Image Works.
Woah... geez that C64 port is bad... wow, maybe even the very worst Ive seen particularly in racing games. I see Zzap gave them 30% back in the day... why? It doesn't deserve more than 10% in my books, it looks unplayable.
No music in the arcade version? Wow, Jaleco is now a horrible video game developer for releasing such crappy games. We all know that they really could've done a lot better.
You know the ports are gonna be complete shit when the game doesn't even seem that good to begin with
Is the arcade rendition emulated? I don't know, but I feel like something is wrong with it, maybe due to emulation
Yes, it was emulated. There maybe an issue with emulation. It's never easy to know 100%.
It's too bad most British programmers sucked back then. Why did people continue to buy trash games (which fueled the trash ports)?
Nothing else available? I sure didn't buy the crap. I was in to the Master System at this point in time.
@@RetroCore Yeah, a lot of Master System ports are actually impressive. C64 also seems to be decent compared to most Amiga / ST ports too.