Magic Pockets, Archimedes A3010 vs Amiga 1200

This is Magic Pockets on a stock Archimedes A3010 and an Amiga 1200 with a 50MHz 68030 accelerator. Which did it better? You decide.
To make this test fair, both were captured using scart to the same OSSC. Audio levels haven't been altered so the Archimedes is quieter.
Whichever text is white is the current audio playing

[@a1exh]

Magic pockets predates A1200 and so runs the same on Amiga 500 with a 7MHz 68000 and OCS

[@linuxjedivideo]

I find it suffers from more performance hits on the A500. But I wanted to compare machines from roughly the same year. Magic Pockets also pre-dates the A3010, it would have been designed to run on the A3000 which is 8MHz (the A3010 is 12MHz).

[@scyphe]

Using Bitmap Brothers games to compare Amiga with other systems isn't really a good idea since Bitmap Brothers coded all their 16-bit games on the lowest common denominator, the Atari ST. Their ports ignored the hardware that made Amiga games look so smooth and fast (hardware scrolling, blitter etc.) which led to games looking virtually identical to the ST version and sometimes even a tiny bit slower since the game was rendered by only the CPU since the Atari ST 68000 ran at 8 Mhz while it ran at 7.14 Mhz on the Amiga.

[@linuxjedivideo]

This is exactly why I wanted to do this test. All things being equal these should have been identical.
When I eventually get time I want to compare Lemmings. The Archimedes port has some changes.

[@jaycee1980]

The Archie version seems to be smoother, but the Amiga original is designed for a stock ECS machine. The frame rate is probably limited by the blitter, and the Archie is probably using the CPU to do all the work

[@HatStand1000]

Which is which? Is the Archimedes video the one to the left of the Archimedes text or below it?

[@linuxjedivideo]

Left of the text

[@arthurdaly3497]

Bitmap brothers games didn't really use any of the Amiga custom hardware, apart from sound. They were made for the Atari ST and ported. The scrolling is poor on all of their games. Archimedes was far superior for 3D games though, better even than a SNES with a super FX chip

[@linuxjedivideo]

Yep, this is partly why I did this test, as at a code level apart from CPU architecture changes it should be extremely similar. These two machines were released pretty much at the same time (give or take a few weeks). Quite frankly I think the ARM handles the game a little smoother despite the A1200 having a faster CPU due to the accelerator.

[@RetroAlly]

I see no significant difference!
- but if you compared the A3010 against the Amiga's main competitor....

[@linuxjedivideo]

Unfortunately my STe needs some work before it is bootable.

[@a1exh]

@@linuxjedivideo Falcon030 surely? Like-4-like?

[@linuxjedivideo]

@@a1exh unfortunately I don't have a Falcon. The one that was in my workshop has had the required work done to it and gone back to its owner.

[@RetroAlly]

@@linuxjedivideo I've got an STE, I might see if I can grab a copy of the game from somewhere and do STE vs A1200 comparison

[@jaycee1980]

@@linuxjedivideo Needs some work ? I've got a hammer you could borrow ;)

[@matthewhaverly3108]

Amiga 1200 is smoother with better sound here.. and tbh.. is better at 2d platform games period

[@elmariachi5133]

After being a bit of a fanboy back then, all these years later I have come to realize, that most Bitmap Brothers games actually suck xD This slow paced, stuttery, static and stiff gameplay with choppy controls. There where obviously terrible games like Gods, where you could only jump for a fixed given distance, which was terrible already years before. But also most of the other games are kind of lame. I think only Speedball 2 was good - and Xenon 2 would have been good, if it wouldn't have had these extreme slowdows.

[@linuxjedivideo]

They were all coded to the lowest common denomination for easy porting. Which made them a bit clunky. I have another video which showed that due to the tight loop memory copy they do with sprites, using a 68010 with Xenon II is much smoother than a 68000.

[@elmariachi5133]

@@linuxjedivideoInteresting find. As the 68010 is always said to deliver no significant improvement. I actually have an 68010 laying around and planned to put into my A600 using an adapter socket (which I bought for maybe a tiny bit better performance and especially being able to use a quit-key in WHDLoad. I think this adpater would also overclockd to 14MHz IIRC), but could not get around to do so, yet. Looking forward do one day see Xenon II as it should have been :)

[@linuxjedivideo]

@@elmariachi5133 for the most things, the improvement is minimal. There is a tight loop optimisation that is about 50% faster, but it is only in very specific circumstances. Luckily the Bitmap Brothers games hit that state often.