Afterburner fun fact, I had a mate who worked in the industry and I mentioned to him once about how terrible the Afterburner release was on the Amiga, he said the coding of the arcade port was sub contracted out to a German development team, 1 month before the finished code was due to be rolled out to the distributors a copy was requested by Activision to check it was all good to go, what they received was nothing short of diabolical, the German dev team had handed the coding out to another Dev team who had basically done nothing other than some basic coding on the scrolling. Much panic ensued and Activision had to put the coding with another development house and give them a 1 month deadline, hence the crap we got was just a rushed mess. Incidentally some keen coders in the murky waters of the pirating scene at the time rewrote and re-released their own bootleg version which was incredible and what Afterburner on the Amiga should have been.
I've heard that there are actually 2 different Afterburner AMIGA releases, one done by a USA based DEVs team for the North American market and and one European, but both ports are a real mess! :D LoL!
This is why I generally only played games on the Amiga that were developed specifically as Amiga games, from development groups that had a good track record or had good reviews in multiple magazines. The amount of rushed shovelware made for it was really sad.
Being a big Amiga fan like yourself it pains me to see such a pile of shite that's displayed here, like you stated in the vid, there was simply no excuse that these ports were so terrible. The Amiga was fully capable of reproducing most of the games here almost perfectly, in the hands of decent coders who actually cared about their product. I remember back in the day being so pissed off when I booted up some of these ports having waited on a favorite to be released and seeing this garbage. Great vid m8, nice to see anything Amiga releated, see ya patreons have gone up :)
As a testament to how bad they were, they released a Tweenies game for the Game Boy Color... the same year the show its based off released an episode where a character pretended to be Jimmy Savile!
My first real letdown, was Final Fight, played it for first time in arcade on summer 1997, found out it's also on Amiga. Nowadays, it isn't too bad, especially compared to what Tiertex or Domark did, but back then, it was my first real disappointment.
One of the small virtues of 8-bit gaming in Australia was that Zzap! 64 was way ahead of the game release dates so it was much easier to pick the wheat from the chaff. That doesn't mean my collection doesn't have its fair share of whiff though.
Although the Amiga had one of the best hardware specifications for gaming back in the 1980s and there were really many great Amiga titles, good arcade ports were not what the Amiga was famous for. It seems that some companies were not interested in supporting a competing system for their game consoles with good ports of their arcade titles. To be honest: Any arcade port to the Amiga that wasn't from US-Gold or Activision, had more than 16-color simultaneous, whose playfield filled the whole screen and not just a small area, that didn't turn out 1:1 like the Atari ST version (just slower), had a framerate of more than 10 and more than one scrolling level, and whose programmers had ever heard of the Amiga having e.g.: a blitter, copper, BOBs and sprites, was an absolute godsend... I actually know only a few good ports: e.g. Marble Madness, Arkanoid, New Zealand Story, Pang. But a few were at least decent: e.g. Pacmania, Super Hang On, Off Road, After Burner (not the Activision version!), Space Harrier, Rainbow Island, Bubble Bobble. Of the latter, however, there is now a 1:1 arcade version on the Amiga ("Tiny Bobble") as well as a 1:1 version from Gradius ("Tinyus").
Nice one! Somehow I totally missed out on Vigilante in the arcade and at home; I love Kung-Fu Master so how did I miss that it had a "spiritual" sequel?? Of course, I'll skip the Amiga version. Amazing how bad the frame rate is on most of these; I assume the programmers were basically programming the Atari ST and Amiga versions together and not making good use of the Amiga's blitter? Kind of like some C64 games that are just lazy ports of the Apple II version and use bitmaps instead of hardware sprites.
Yeah loads of these were dev'd on the Atari ST and ported straight over to the Amiga.. dont see the point really apart from laziness and wanting quick money from sales while the game was relevant ... but really the companies that did this damaged their reputation everytime they did it. I mean Go! US Gold and Domark actually did make some decent games but they will always be remembered for the bad ones
Amiga owners know the pain of C64 owners when they see a direct ST port. A direct ST port was pretty much the equivalent of seeing direct ZX Spectrum on the C64
No Bionic Commando? It's the only game I feel it's missing here. I think Pit Fighter was an impossible task to port with a 1 button controller. I actually think considering all home ports, the Amiga one is one of the best. If the controller had enough buttons, it would feel very close to the arcade one. Which, like you said, it wasn't that great to begin. And Fighting Soccer used analog controllers on the Arcade. Without just 8 digital directions, it's kinda hard to make the game work too... but again, it's more a case of the arcade game being kinda meh than a bad port.
Haha the part when you say "i know some of you would of had the misfortune to play some of these games" and am sitting here thinking i had all of them and played them at some point haha. Great video as always buddy so keep up the great work an roll on the next video. I'm off to go have nightmares for the next week lol.
I must be a very lucky guy. I haven‘t played ANY of these on Amiga. Some on C64, some in the arcades thou. But from the looks of it your judgement on STUN Runner might be a bit harsh. From the looks of it they did it in full 3D, as the original seems to be. But the Amiga can‘t do that very well. ALL of these early filled polygon games are pretty slow or have very very few polygons. This game could have been optimized better, but it wouldn‘t have helped much. They might have used sprites for the vehicle and other stuff and fake 3D the track, but then it would be a different game anyway. So I‘d say this conversion could only fail, no way around it, because the hardware isn‘t up to it.
I owned probably50% of these games on my Amiga. Publishers back then put all the effort into still screenshots for the back of the box and magazine articles. Not until I started playing them I realized how bad they were. I thought there was something wrong with my Amiga because of the chopiness and bad control.
The Out Run porting is absolutely hilarious for how obscene it is. Unfortunately Amiga and Arcade didn't get along, almost all conversions were by US Gold, one of the worst software houses ever. I would have added Strider, which compared to the Megadrive version, seemed to be programmed on a Vic 20...
Early US Gold were pretty good, when all they did was bring over US titles. However, when they started producing their own games...dear God...LOL Only game they did that I liked (at least that I can think of) was the C64 version of Turbo Outrun. OK, Dropzone, Solomon's Key and the first Gauntlet too. But they had to be one of the most inconsistent companies ever.
Bionic Commando should be on there too. It’s a lazy Atari ST port with fantastic music and okay graphics but horrid push scrolling (because smooth scrolling was difficult to do on Atari’s machine due to lack of hardware scrolling) that ruins the game. You’d get to the edge of the screen which would then scroll next screen on and you’d end up dying because it would be almost impossible to avoid some enemies. A really frustrating game to play. From US Gold, I believe. Yeah….
What, no Darius+? While maybe not quite as bad as some other entries on the list, why license a name, if you're going to make the game so different, it cannot be recognized anymore? (And yes, it's bad too) I would have also included LED Storm (which got almost perfect C64 port)
And I thought the C64 conversion of Rolling Thunder was bad. It was, but the Amiga version was even worse. Truthfully, I've never played a decent home conversion of that game. I'll give Domark credit for doing a decent job with Klax, Rampart, and Super Space Invaders (the Amiga port, not the C64 port), but they had to be one of the most hit or miss companies ever.
One of the only games that were exactly a 1 to 1 port to the amiga was "Arkanoid" an "Arkanoid II Revenge of DOH". It even sayd "insert coin" in the beginning.
I dont know what was more depressing -- Double Dragon on the 64 or Outrun on the Amiga. And Outrun is at 20th place?? Oh boy... I know some bad memories are about to be flooding back :D
@@oldstylegaming oh .. 1943 thats right... and Vigilante... like you, my very favourites were routinely done over... what was most crushing was that so many of the games looked the part, that just hurt even more! *lays down on coach for therapy* :D
man, arcade ports like these was really what instilled doubt for the capabilities of the Amiga hardware. such a shame, the amiga had a brilliant hardware architecture, that really suffered when converting sprite-heavy arcade games.
Well, it had to do with what programmers would get out of it (and how much time before Xmas they had!). Super Hang-on, Pacmania or Space Harrier were fantastic conversions! As for Out Run... Well, given games such as Lotus, it definitively had to do with US Gold not being arsed XD
Amiga could manage perfect arcade and console ports but people who were assigned to do the job were bunch of morons who shouldn't be allowed to make games. Look at some original Amiga games that worked on low-end A500 model with 1MB of RAM. When Amiga appeared back in 1985 it was like 10 years ahead of everything people could buy as a home machine. But somehow it was neglected by some companies making ports of popular games. Amiga's integrated chips were very advanced and hard to emulate for years, but not many games used their full potential. Just look at some well made games like Lionheart, Ruff n' Tumble or Darkmere. These games still look fantastic and can be reference for today's pixel artists. All of them worked on a basic, low-end A500 model from 1987. People who think that any game made between 1985 and 1994 had to be stripped down to work on Amiga know nothing about this amazing machine.
@@mattx5499 What's even worse is that a LARGE majority of arcade ports for the Amiga were nothing more than Atari ST ports that never took advantage of the Amiga at all.
@@Jac2Mac Exactly. Many of these games weren't even optimised for the platform, so they were choppy, controls were clunky. There were even ports from PC with this psychodelic CGA color palette.
@@mattx5499 Not only that, but a LARGE amount of arcade ports for the Amstrad CPC are nothing more than ZX Spectrum ports that don't take advantage of the Amstrad CPC at all as the ZX Spectrum was holding back the Amstrad CPC and to a lesser extent, the C64 AND the MSX.
_Double Dragon_ is a pile of crud on the Amiga. However, _Double Dragon 2_ on the Amiga certainly helped right several wrongs with that poor conversion of the original.
Jez San was mouthing off about how poor all Amiga and ST Arcade conversions had been, including Buggy Boy 🙄and how Argonaut's conversion of Afterburner was going to change all that, pretty much due to their custom sprite engine.. Then the game landed and dear god....
TIERTEX = Totally Incompetent Excrement Taken to Embarrassing eXtremes. Saying that, I actually sort of liked Thunderblade. I thought the graphics weren't too bad and it moved decently. Of course the controls made it unplayable. No matter what control options I selected, trying to move and shoot ALWAYS made my speed change, often stopping me and ensuring I'd get hit. Then there are games that could have been good, but missed the mark. Space Harrier - The enemy shots move too fast. The shots basically just teleport from the enemy in the distance to right on top of you. And how hard would it have been to sample the arcade sounds and speech? Alien Syndrome - I liked this one, but they left out two levels! Super Hang-On - I didn't mind the smaller graphics and it moves well, but what kills it for me is the way every single rider on the road tries to crash into you. Seriously, at any given moment, the others riders will be coming across the road toward you. Going around curves, they will zip toward the outer edge, hit you then zip back. At times on a straightaway, you can actually see them change direction or stop leaning as soon as you pass them, as if they realized that they could no longer hit you. Only the ST and Amiga versions do this. Robocop - The first level is pretty faithful to the arcade and some of the other levels seem to be based on the arcade, but they have lots of differences for no apparent reason. And why do all the home versions only use a few samples of Peter Weller's voice?
I had Dynasty Wars ... I only had it cos it came as part of a 10- game release which had Ghouls N Ghosts and UN Squadron. God Dynasty Wars took forever to play and good luck beating it if you tried with any other character but Shang Fei.
Outrun isn't the worst game but it's definitely the biggest letdown in the Amiga's history. When it first loads up there is a gorgeous title screen that looks like a screenshot of the arcade version's starting line. You just assume the game is going to start from there. You're ready to play what looks to be an exact, arcade-perfect game of Outrun. Then the loading stops, the real game starts and it feels like you've been punched in the gut.
It was honestly one of the worst things about owning An amiga back in the day. You never knew if the game you were getting was just a crappy port. Though, if it was by EA, us gold, or based on a movie.... likely a port
I avoided all of these apart from outrun & afterburner. A Pirate copy of outrun came with a second hand amiga. I thought my computer was faulty :) and initially wondered why the screen froze at the finish line. Afterburner looked cheap and without the thrill of high speed and scaled gfx, was boring as he'll. I played it twice and then wished I'd saved my money. As for the others in the list: magazine reviews plus my own doubts saved me my money. But most later came out on budget - the cheek of the software houses!
I had, played, occasionally beat, & enjoyed the Sega Genesis version of Alien Storm. What happened to the Amiga Version of it is Double Facepalm worthy... it has no right at all to even call itself part of the Alien Storm Canon...
There were a FEW awesome conversions though. Marble Madness was pretty close to arcade perfect on the Amiga...unlike the C64 port, which had awful music and was buggy as hell. and although not an official conversion, Deluxe Galaga was fucking awesome. R-Type and Rainbow Islands were pretty decent conversions too, although I'm not a massive fan of Rainbow Islands as a whole (Love Bubble Bobble, but not much of a fan of the sequel) but the conversion was still spot on. Silkworm was also pretty darn good.
So many Amiga arcade conversions were disappointing. Either they suffered from a SLOOOW frameframe, e.g. Outrun, or the sprites were too small, e.g. Ghouls'n'Ghost.The Sega Genesis conversions, on the other hand, were often miles better. Was the Amiga hardware really THAT inferior to the Sega Genesis or was it just bad programming? Both machines ran at 7 mhz and the Amiga had a 4096 color palette vs 512 on Genesis. Still the Amiga lost in most comparisons. Shadow of the Beast on the Amiga by Psygnosis was a stunner, though. Very large sprites that moved silky smooth. Maybe if Psygnosis had handled all arcade conversions, the Amiga wouldn't have looked so bad.
The Amiga had the same problem as the Saturn - you could get amazing results that blew away all expectations, but you had to be one of the best and most passionate to tap into that power. Unfortunately, when you're given an unrealistic deadline by a sadistic idiot? And you'll have to do it without the source code and original art assets? And your job may depend on delivering multiple versions? It's hard to keep that passion.
@@juststatedtheobvious9633 Yeah. I remember that many titles were developed first for Atari ST, then more or less straight ported to Amiga, which didn't provide optimal results of course.
Never had an Amiga but it seems like the developers got overly focused on making these games look like their 16-bit competitors but they paid zero attention to the most important element: gameplay (that’s where the c64 generally excelled). Oh and the sound was generally worse than it’s older brother , the c64.
Amiga could easily do arcade perfect stuff, but the software houses chosen for porting many of the games were bunch of clowns. Look at so many original Amiga games, how beautiful they were and how well they performed on a basic A500 model. Amiga was the most powerful machine people had at homes from mid 80's to early 90's.
to this day i'm annoyed that The Real Ghostbusters was never ported over to the SNES, Genesis had a great Ghostbusters game, but i would've sunk a lot of quarters into the Arcade Cabinet for sure.
Great list. However i think there is a big diference bettwen worst ports and most desapointing ports. Pit fighter is not such a bad port considering the limitations of the amiga. the worst problem is really the controls with one button . And then there are ports that had averything to be good considering the amiga tecnology. for instance pacland and indiana and temple of doom were ancient games that the amiga tecnology should have done a better port
The Amiga can handle 3 button controllers natively so the issue wasn't with the Amiga but with the devs who did not put the effort to use a configurable button scheme and forced the usage of a single button when many players (like myself) had at least a 2 button controller.
Double Dragon on the Amiga was absolute shite. I remember being so disappointed in it after waiting for the Amiga conversion. In a case of redemption, the same developers made Double Dragon II on the Amiga, which I also purchased and did an excellent conversion.
two different versions for the Amiga were produced, one for North American markets and another for Europe, the latter being an ST port, with better music. The North American version uses a full-screen display but runs slower.
Why did everyone cheap out so hard on outsourcing their ports in the '80s? Sure, Factor 5's R-Type and The Sales Curve's Silk Worm weren't arcade perfect by any means, but they were at least made referencing original code/assets and felt right. The effort was there.
Great vid brought back some memories of dissapointment but where was that god awful final fight it was unplayable and nothing that made me pump 10ps in it was present banging music sound punching kicking grabbing chucking in the amiga port you could jump and that was about it i had the miss fortune to buy it on the speccy first and think the amiga version must be better.... oh and dd as well both ported by the same guy who had no interest in either game chase hq...rtype...
Double Dragon on the c64 was the worst port I have ever played. Missing moves, totally awful, unfun, unfair ai and the moves you did have all acted the same. Terrible.
Rolling Thunder on Amiga is just sad as I'm certain arcade perfection is possible, Tiertex I hate you. :P Largely I just can't stand it when a basic 2D game is botched on Amiga, like Soldier of Light/1943/Side Arms doesn't contain sprite scaling or overly large sprites so how do you screw that up?
You could just re-label this video "The Worst ST Arcade Ports" and swap in a game for Super C. (It wasn't released on the ST as far as I know). No one who had an ST liked these either. ...ok Maybe 1943 is kind of cool.
Tiertex were terrible Amiga developers. When you have bosses paying staff EXACTLY the same for ST Ports as they would games built from the ground up, which took more time and resources, little wonder so many conversions turned out as they did.
The ones that could've been almost arcade perfect are the most disappointing. The Amiga isn't powerful enough to get anywhere close to the arcade version of Stun Runner but still should've been better than the crap that was released.
Most of US Gold arcade ports are good in graphics and sound but play slowly, so you can grab an Amiga emulator and set the emulation speed to, say, 150% and problems fixed
I was waiting for Powerdrift :) (great c64 version... and massive disappointment from the Amiga one made by ZZKJ, coder of the great super hang on conversion!)
I agree. The thing is too, is that the Amiga version was actually graphically closer to the original arcade, but it played like ass. The C64 version was far off the arcade in terms of looks, but the gameplay was amazing, I'd even go so far as to say I actually PREFER it to the arcade original, same for the C64 conversion of Buggy Boy.
@@ACanOfBakedBeans I loved Powerdrift on the c64! It was made by Chris Butler, one of my favourite ever c64 coder (I know many won't agree on that - especially for the Ghosts'n'Goblins conversion with the missing levels)
That first one out run and changing places shows just how lazy they were with this port by doing a simple sprite flip instead of drawing an actual sprite for a right turn. Where is Street Fighter II? that was an awful port.
Good god. A compilation of laziness from software companies who should have done better. I remember a school mate had ninja warriors on the Amiga and that was pretty good. Corporate profit before quality products 🤔
anything with us gold and programming by teirtex we knew that at best it would be a terrible port , they also butchered un squadron storm showed the amiga could do quality conversion like silk worm , St dragon , ninja warriors us gold just ruining most games they stuck there name on
The only thing US Gold ever did well was the sid intro soundtrack and graphic for turbo outrun on the C64. I remember going to the electronics shop back in the day and if it had the US Gold or Domark label on it I gave it a miss, however once or twice I got fooled by the screenshots. Shame on me. EA was another, that in the early days I thought produced some shite. But, to their credit they did get better. But in modern times they've just gotten greedy with micro transactions and pay to win.
Wow. Seems I was pretty lucky to missed all these turds... maybe I was just lucky to know the right kids to get decent cracked games in the playground though... I pity kids who grafted paper rounds for 3 quid a week to spend £20 on a game based on the box art and screen shots to get something as crappy as these... my money went on blank disks luckily... people don't condone piracy but the fraudsters releasing poo like this are way, way worse
i played outrun on amiga at my local library it was good, i played rolling thinder on my c64 it was as good as the arcade, never played rolling thunder 2
Lol, nah.dude.the amiga was awesome. There are plenty of good titles. But like many systems. Roughly 100 games 90 are shite Then last 10 are good Amd maybe 2 or 3 are gold
Games.that are good gfx and snd. Smooth scrolling etc Silkworm,swiv,battle sqaudron,super hang on, lotus 2,2,3 ,marble madness,hybris,gods,chaos engine,speed ball, shadow of the beast series, lion heart. These are all.half decen and there is plenty more Making good games is like movies a bit. Story, director, sfx, budget and time, amd acting of course. Budget ,time, and coding skill biggest factors. Most of the conversions where done with no assest or code or help from arcade company. Yeah there were a lot of shit coders who blew there own trumpet. But biggest issues was time and money. Most coders had it like slave labour. Managers and publishers nearly always getting the big dollars. If you look on any system, good coded games took time.. Rushes games and dual.release like atari st and amiga were.mostly complete crap. Money grabs. Both uses 68000 , so porting an st title to amiga was most often done. But st has basic hardware, and thats a another story. The Amiga is really a next gen Atari . And atari tried to get the amiga. But when it fell.through. atari rushed to make there own 16 system in a very very short time. Amiga took years to design and bring too market with a small.budget. Atari st was made in less than 6 months start to finish. could ramble forever. Long story short. Good things take time,money and talent. If its shit thing ,then its missing one of the 3 stated
Another bad conversion on the Amiga was Pac-Land. One of my all-time favourite arcade games that got butchered. The Commodore 64 port was also awful. The best port I ever saw for Pac-Land was on the Turbo Grafix.
Did you know that there was actually going to be a much better version of PacLand on the Amiga? the game was actually quite far into development but then got dropped, it was almost arcade perfect you can download it here www.gamesthatwerent.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Preview_PaclandV1.zip
@@oldstylegaming Just well done or something would have been the correct response. My bro tipped petrol over it & then shot it with an exploding arrow that he made. Then the neighbour started moaning about the smell of the plastic burning till I told him it's a commodore burning cause of all the crappy games & frustration. Then he said he's with me now & can fully understand why I beat it with the sledgehammer.
Thankfully in this day and age you can often find the original arcade versions sold on digital markets. To be fair though, some of these games weren't much better in the arcade.
Afterburner fun fact, I had a mate who worked in the industry and I mentioned to him once about how terrible the Afterburner release was on the Amiga, he said the coding of the arcade port was sub contracted out to a German development team, 1 month before the finished code was due to be rolled out to the distributors a copy was requested by Activision to check it was all good to go, what they received was nothing short of diabolical, the German dev team had handed the coding out to another Dev team who had basically done nothing other than some basic coding on the scrolling. Much panic ensued and Activision had to put the coding with another development house and give them a 1 month deadline, hence the crap we got was just a rushed mess. Incidentally some keen coders in the murky waters of the pirating scene at the time rewrote and re-released their own bootleg version which was incredible and what Afterburner on the Amiga should have been.
I've heard that there are actually 2 different Afterburner AMIGA releases, one done by a USA based DEVs team for the North American market and and one European, but both ports are a real mess! :D LoL!
This is why I generally only played games on the Amiga that were developed specifically as Amiga games, from development groups that had a good track record or had good reviews in multiple magazines. The amount of rushed shovelware made for it was really sad.
Being a big Amiga fan like yourself it pains me to see such a pile of shite that's displayed here, like you stated in the vid, there was simply no excuse that these ports were so terrible. The Amiga was fully capable of reproducing most of the games here almost perfectly, in the hands of decent coders who actually cared about their product. I remember back in the day being so pissed off when I booted up some of these ports having waited on a favorite to be released and seeing this garbage. Great vid m8, nice to see anything Amiga releated, see ya patreons have gone up :)
I had completely forgotten outrun on the amiga. It was sotraumatic. I need to call my therapist, now I need to find a therapist.
That outrun music certainly brings back some good memories🤔👍🏻😁
Splash wave rules (title of the track)
Tiertex was a name you could trust... for truly awful conversions.
As a testament to how bad they were, they released a Tweenies game for the Game Boy Color... the same year the show its based off released an episode where a character pretended to be Jimmy Savile!
And most of them were published by the equally trustworthy US Gold. LOL
Still remembering Strider... with no collisione during the slide motion!!!
My first real letdown, was Final Fight, played it for first time in arcade on summer 1997, found out it's also on Amiga. Nowadays, it isn't too bad, especially compared to what Tiertex or Domark did, but back then, it was my first real disappointment.
Great vid but no Double Dragon? Outrun for me was the very worst. Sad times as a kid.
DD just missed out...but then that shows just how bad these are
One of the small virtues of 8-bit gaming in Australia was that Zzap! 64 was way ahead of the game release dates so it was much easier to pick the wheat from the chaff. That doesn't mean my collection doesn't have its fair share of whiff though.
Although the Amiga had one of the best hardware specifications for gaming back in the 1980s and there were really many great Amiga titles, good arcade ports were not what the Amiga was famous for. It seems that some companies were not interested in supporting a competing system for their game consoles with good ports of their arcade titles. To be honest: Any arcade port to the Amiga that wasn't from US-Gold or Activision, had more than 16-color simultaneous, whose playfield filled the whole screen and not just a small area, that didn't turn out 1:1 like the Atari ST version (just slower), had a framerate of more than 10 and more than one scrolling level, and whose programmers had ever heard of the Amiga having e.g.: a blitter, copper, BOBs and sprites, was an absolute godsend... I actually know only a few good ports: e.g. Marble Madness, Arkanoid, New Zealand Story, Pang. But a few were at least decent: e.g. Pacmania, Super Hang On, Off Road, After Burner (not the Activision version!), Space Harrier, Rainbow Island, Bubble Bobble. Of the latter, however, there is now a 1:1 arcade version on the Amiga ("Tiny Bobble") as well as a 1:1 version from Gradius ("Tinyus").
Nice one! Somehow I totally missed out on Vigilante in the arcade and at home; I love Kung-Fu Master so how did I miss that it had a "spiritual" sequel?? Of course, I'll skip the Amiga version. Amazing how bad the frame rate is on most of these; I assume the programmers were basically programming the Atari ST and Amiga versions together and not making good use of the Amiga's blitter? Kind of like some C64 games that are just lazy ports of the Apple II version and use bitmaps instead of hardware sprites.
Yeah loads of these were dev'd on the Atari ST and ported straight over to the Amiga.. dont see the point really apart from laziness and wanting quick money from sales while the game was relevant ... but really the companies that did this damaged their reputation everytime they did it. I mean Go! US Gold and Domark actually did make some decent games but they will always be remembered for the bad ones
Amiga owners know the pain of C64 owners when they see a direct ST port. A direct ST port was pretty much the equivalent of seeing direct ZX Spectrum on the C64
No Bionic Commando? It's the only game I feel it's missing here.
I think Pit Fighter was an impossible task to port with a 1 button controller. I actually think considering all home ports, the Amiga one is one of the best. If the controller had enough buttons, it would feel very close to the arcade one. Which, like you said, it wasn't that great to begin.
And Fighting Soccer used analog controllers on the Arcade. Without just 8 digital directions, it's kinda hard to make the game work too... but again, it's more a case of the arcade game being kinda meh than a bad port.
Haha the part when you say "i know some of you would of had the misfortune to play some of these games" and am sitting here thinking i had all of them and played them at some point haha. Great video as always buddy so keep up the great work an roll on the next video. I'm off to go have nightmares for the next week lol.
I must be a very lucky guy. I haven‘t played ANY of these on Amiga. Some on C64, some in the arcades thou.
But from the looks of it your judgement on STUN Runner might be a bit harsh. From the looks of it they did it in full 3D, as the original seems to be. But the Amiga can‘t do that very well. ALL of these early filled polygon games are pretty slow or have very very few polygons. This game could have been optimized better, but it wouldn‘t have helped much. They might have used sprites for the vehicle and other stuff and fake 3D the track, but then it would be a different game anyway. So I‘d say this conversion could only fail, no way around it, because the hardware isn‘t up to it.
I owned probably50% of these games on my Amiga. Publishers back then put all the effort into still screenshots for the back of the box and magazine articles. Not until I started playing them I realized how bad they were. I thought there was something wrong with my Amiga because of the chopiness and bad control.
lol been there myself hahahaha
In Tiger Road on the Amiga when the character is standing still he looks like he's wearing some very poor TMNT cosplay, basically a tortoise shell.
One thing I remember about Eswat, is that I could edit the character sprites in Deluxe Paint. Other than that, ya, it sucked.
Another horrendous port was Streetfighter 2. I thought it was ace... until I played it on the SNES.
The Out Run porting is absolutely hilarious for how obscene it is. Unfortunately Amiga and Arcade didn't get along, almost all conversions were by US Gold, one of the worst software houses ever. I would have added Strider, which compared to the Megadrive version, seemed to be programmed on a Vic 20...
Early US Gold were pretty good, when all they did was bring over US titles. However, when they started producing their own games...dear God...LOL Only game they did that I liked (at least that I can think of) was the C64 version of Turbo Outrun. OK, Dropzone, Solomon's Key and the first Gauntlet too. But they had to be one of the most inconsistent companies ever.
@@ACanOfBakedBeans US Gold were only the publishers, it's the choice of developers and conditions US Gold put on them, that is to blame really.
Bionic Commando should be on there too. It’s a lazy Atari ST port with fantastic music and okay graphics but horrid push scrolling (because smooth scrolling was difficult to do on Atari’s machine due to lack of hardware scrolling) that ruins the game. You’d get to the edge of the screen which would then scroll next screen on and you’d end up dying because it would be almost impossible to avoid some enemies. A really frustrating game to play. From US Gold, I believe. Yeah….
I hate that scrolling... and that game on the amiga
And Atari ST ports are the scourge of all that is evil.
What, no Darius+?
While maybe not quite as bad as some other entries on the list, why license a name, if you're going to make the game so different, it cannot be recognized anymore? (And yes, it's bad too)
I would have also included LED Storm (which got almost perfect C64 port)
And I thought the C64 conversion of Rolling Thunder was bad. It was, but the Amiga version was even worse. Truthfully, I've never played a decent home conversion of that game. I'll give Domark credit for doing a decent job with Klax, Rampart, and Super Space Invaders (the Amiga port, not the C64 port), but they had to be one of the most hit or miss companies ever.
great review :) totally agree with you as far as complain are ! good graphics and music will never make a good game without a good gameplay...
One of the only games that were exactly a 1 to 1 port to the amiga was "Arkanoid" an "Arkanoid II Revenge of DOH".
It even sayd "insert coin" in the beginning.
I dont know what was more depressing -- Double Dragon on the 64 or Outrun on the Amiga. And Outrun is at 20th place?? Oh boy... I know some bad memories are about to be flooding back :D
check back in at the end and ill give you some counselling lol
@@oldstylegaming oh .. 1943 thats right... and Vigilante... like you, my very favourites were routinely done over... what was most crushing was that so many of the games looked the part, that just hurt even more! *lays down on coach for therapy* :D
lol
@@ncf1 1943, with the Hypnotic water tile pattern!
@@JoeSim8s i couldnt go to school a few times because of that! PTSD COMING ON!!
I always wanted an Amiga but never got one. At least I missed these duffers.
Sorry to hear that. Maybe you should have settled for an Atari ST instead.
man, arcade ports like these was really what instilled doubt for the capabilities of the Amiga hardware. such a shame, the amiga had a brilliant hardware architecture, that really suffered when converting sprite-heavy arcade games.
Well, it had to do with what programmers would get out of it (and how much time before Xmas they had!).
Super Hang-on, Pacmania or Space Harrier were fantastic conversions!
As for Out Run... Well, given games such as Lotus, it definitively had to do with US Gold not being arsed XD
Amiga could manage perfect arcade and console ports but people who were assigned to do the job were bunch of morons who shouldn't be allowed to make games. Look at some original Amiga games that worked on low-end A500 model with 1MB of RAM. When Amiga appeared back in 1985 it was like 10 years ahead of everything people could buy as a home machine. But somehow it was neglected by some companies making ports of popular games. Amiga's integrated chips were very advanced and hard to emulate for years, but not many games used their full potential. Just look at some well made games like Lionheart, Ruff n' Tumble or Darkmere. These games still look fantastic and can be reference for today's pixel artists. All of them worked on a basic, low-end A500 model from 1987. People who think that any game made between 1985 and 1994 had to be stripped down to work on Amiga know nothing about this amazing machine.
@@mattx5499 What's even worse is that a LARGE majority of arcade ports for the Amiga were nothing more than Atari ST ports that never took advantage of the Amiga at all.
@@Jac2Mac Exactly. Many of these games weren't even optimised for the platform, so they were choppy, controls were clunky. There were even ports from PC with this psychodelic CGA color palette.
@@mattx5499 Not only that, but a LARGE amount of arcade ports for the Amstrad CPC are nothing more than ZX Spectrum ports that don't take advantage of the Amstrad CPC at all as the ZX Spectrum was holding back the Amstrad CPC and to a lesser extent, the C64 AND the MSX.
_Double Dragon_ is a pile of crud on the Amiga. However, _Double Dragon 2_ on the Amiga certainly helped right several wrongs with that poor conversion of the original.
Jez San was mouthing off about how poor all Amiga and ST Arcade conversions had been, including Buggy Boy 🙄and how Argonaut's conversion of Afterburner was going to change all that, pretty much due to their custom sprite engine..
Then the game landed and dear god....
07:02
Man! Those white shirt guys faces!!!!
Those eyes!!!!
TIERTEX = Totally Incompetent Excrement Taken to Embarrassing eXtremes.
Saying that, I actually sort of liked Thunderblade. I thought the graphics weren't too bad and it moved decently. Of course the controls made it unplayable. No matter what control options I selected, trying to move and shoot ALWAYS made my speed change, often stopping me and ensuring I'd get hit.
Then there are games that could have been good, but missed the mark.
Space Harrier - The enemy shots move too fast. The shots basically just teleport from the enemy in the distance to right on top of you. And how hard would it have been to sample the arcade sounds and speech?
Alien Syndrome - I liked this one, but they left out two levels!
Super Hang-On - I didn't mind the smaller graphics and it moves well, but what kills it for me is the way every single rider on the road tries to crash into you. Seriously, at any given moment, the others riders will be coming across the road toward you. Going around curves, they will zip toward the outer edge, hit you then zip back. At times on a straightaway, you can actually see them change direction or stop leaning as soon as you pass them, as if they realized that they could no longer hit you. Only the ST and Amiga versions do this.
Robocop - The first level is pretty faithful to the arcade and some of the other levels seem to be based on the arcade, but they have lots of differences for no apparent reason. And why do all the home versions only use a few samples of Peter Weller's voice?
Worst games videos are so much fun
US Gold really were a bunch of cowboys. Especially with arcade ports.
I had Dynasty Wars ...
I only had it cos it came as part of a 10- game release which had Ghouls N Ghosts and UN Squadron. God Dynasty Wars took forever to play and good luck beating it if you tried with any other character but Shang Fei.
you forgot to mention with outrun, the ferrari is driven by peter griffin
Lol
And when turning around the corners, he turned trans. LOL
Ahh my goodness, tiger road, how I miss you!
Outrun isn't the worst game but it's definitely the biggest letdown in the Amiga's history. When it first loads up there is a gorgeous title screen that looks like a screenshot of the arcade version's starting line. You just assume the game is going to start from there. You're ready to play what looks to be an exact, arcade-perfect game of Outrun. Then the loading stops, the real game starts and it feels like you've been punched in the gut.
It was honestly one of the worst things about owning An amiga back in the day. You never knew if the game you were getting was just a crappy port. Though, if it was by EA, us gold, or based on a movie.... likely a port
I avoided all of these apart from outrun & afterburner.
A Pirate copy of outrun came with a second hand amiga. I thought my computer was faulty :) and initially wondered why the screen froze at the finish line.
Afterburner looked cheap and without the thrill of high speed and scaled gfx, was boring as he'll. I played it twice and then wished I'd saved my money.
As for the others in the list: magazine reviews plus my own doubts saved me my money. But most later came out on budget - the cheek of the software houses!
I had, played, occasionally beat, & enjoyed the Sega Genesis version of Alien Storm. What happened to the Amiga Version of it is Double Facepalm worthy... it has no right at all to even call itself part of the Alien Storm Canon...
Commenting before watching...must have been a challenge to narrow this one down. Amiga didn't do arcade well.
Yeah there were quite a few candidates
There were a FEW awesome conversions though. Marble Madness was pretty close to arcade perfect on the Amiga...unlike the C64 port, which had awful music and was buggy as hell.
and although not an official conversion, Deluxe Galaga was fucking awesome.
R-Type and Rainbow Islands were pretty decent conversions too, although I'm not a massive fan of Rainbow Islands as a whole (Love Bubble Bobble, but not much of a fan of the sequel) but the conversion was still spot on.
Silkworm was also pretty darn good.
So many Amiga arcade conversions were disappointing. Either they suffered from a SLOOOW frameframe, e.g. Outrun, or the sprites were too small, e.g. Ghouls'n'Ghost.The Sega Genesis conversions, on the other hand, were often miles better. Was the Amiga hardware really THAT inferior to the Sega Genesis or was it just bad programming? Both machines ran at 7 mhz and the Amiga had a 4096 color palette vs 512 on Genesis. Still the Amiga lost in most comparisons. Shadow of the Beast on the Amiga by Psygnosis was a stunner, though. Very large sprites that moved silky smooth. Maybe if Psygnosis had handled all arcade conversions, the Amiga wouldn't have looked so bad.
The Amiga had the same problem as the Saturn - you could get amazing results that blew away all expectations, but you had to be one of the best and most passionate to tap into that power. Unfortunately, when you're given an unrealistic deadline by a sadistic idiot? And you'll have to do it without the source code and original art assets?
And your job may depend on delivering multiple versions?
It's hard to keep that passion.
@@juststatedtheobvious9633 Yeah. I remember that many titles were developed first for Atari ST, then more or less straight ported to Amiga, which didn't provide optimal results of course.
Never had an Amiga but it seems like the developers got overly focused on making these games look like their 16-bit competitors but they paid zero attention to the most important element: gameplay (that’s where the c64 generally excelled). Oh and the sound was generally worse than it’s older brother , the c64.
Amiga could easily do arcade perfect stuff, but the software houses chosen for porting many of the games were bunch of clowns. Look at so many original Amiga games, how beautiful they were and how well they performed on a basic A500 model. Amiga was the most powerful machine people had at homes from mid 80's to early 90's.
@@mattx5499 interesting.... a huge missed opportunity for the company
Solider of Light = SoL = S*** outta Luck :)
Domark is now a part of Square Enix - explains a lot
I will give Domark credit for their conversion of Super Space Invaders though, that was a pretty damn good conversion on the Amiga
to this day i'm annoyed that The Real Ghostbusters was never ported over to the SNES, Genesis had a great Ghostbusters game, but i would've sunk a lot of quarters into the Arcade Cabinet for sure.
i liked the Ghostbusters arcade with the big bobble head characters ...cant remember what it was called...probs just Ghostbusters
You forgot Final Fight and Street Fighter 2
Strider - I am surprised that it didn't make the list. Comparing the Amiga to the mega drive version just shows how dreadful it was
The testing teams for these ports were probably hobos affected with alcohol withdrawal effects found in the sewers. 😆
Great list. However i think there is a big diference bettwen worst ports and most desapointing ports. Pit fighter is not such a bad port considering the limitations of the amiga. the worst problem is really the controls with one button . And then there are ports that had averything to be good considering the amiga tecnology. for instance pacland and indiana and temple of doom were ancient games that the amiga tecnology should have done a better port
The Amiga can handle 3 button controllers natively so the issue wasn't with the Amiga but with the devs who did not put the effort to use a configurable button scheme and forced the usage of a single button when many players (like myself) had at least a 2 button controller.
Double Dragon on the Amiga was absolute shite. I remember being so disappointed in it after waiting for the Amiga conversion. In a case of redemption, the same developers made Double Dragon II on the Amiga, which I also purchased and did an excellent conversion.
Pit-Fighter was my guilty pleasure so I can't hate on it too much, other than that it's a pretty good list.
US GOLD: the video.
The Amiga port of Final Fight was terrible. Surprised it didn’t make this list. Even the C64 port was better!
are there 2 versions of Afterburner on the Amiga? The one you posted isn't the game I had.
two different versions for the Amiga were produced, one for North American markets and another for Europe, the latter being an ST port, with better music. The North American version uses a full-screen display but runs slower.
@@thefurthestmanfromhome1148 I remember that u had to hold down fire to shoot missiles that sucked to u had to rely on using guns.
Why did everyone cheap out so hard on outsourcing their ports in the '80s? Sure, Factor 5's R-Type and The Sales Curve's Silk Worm weren't arcade perfect by any means, but they were at least made referencing original code/assets and felt right. The effort was there.
Great vid brought back some memories of dissapointment but where was that god awful final fight it was unplayable and nothing that made me pump 10ps in it was present banging music sound punching kicking grabbing chucking in the amiga port you could jump and that was about it i had the miss fortune to buy it on the speccy first and think the amiga version must be better.... oh and dd as well both ported by the same guy who had no interest in either game chase hq...rtype...
Double Dragon on the c64 was the worst port I have ever played. Missing moves, totally awful, unfun, unfair ai and the moves you did have all acted the same. Terrible.
Outrun amiga version.....that intro/loadin screen
Rolling Thunder on Amiga is just sad as I'm certain arcade perfection is possible, Tiertex I hate you. :P Largely I just can't stand it when a basic 2D game is botched on Amiga, like Soldier of Light/1943/Side Arms doesn't contain sprite scaling or overly large sprites so how do you screw that up?
Outrun should have been #1. The rest of the games, while bad, they are complete. Outrun was released as an incomplete mess.
You could just re-label this video "The Worst ST Arcade Ports" and swap in a game for Super C. (It wasn't released on the ST as far as I know). No one who had an ST liked these either. ...ok Maybe 1943 is kind of cool.
Tiertex were terrible Amiga developers. When you have bosses paying staff EXACTLY the same for ST Ports as they would games built from the ground up, which took more time and resources, little wonder so many conversions turned out as they did.
The ones that could've been almost arcade perfect are the most disappointing. The Amiga isn't powerful enough to get anywhere close to the arcade version of Stun Runner but still should've been better than the crap that was released.
Im very surprised at renegade.... id of thought amiga would of nailed this.
Most of US Gold arcade ports are good in graphics and sound but play slowly, so you can grab an Amiga emulator and set the emulation speed to, say, 150% and problems fixed
I was waiting for Powerdrift :) (great c64 version... and massive disappointment from the Amiga one made by ZZKJ, coder of the great super hang on conversion!)
I agree. The thing is too, is that the Amiga version was actually graphically closer to the original arcade, but it played like ass. The C64 version was far off the arcade in terms of looks, but the gameplay was amazing, I'd even go so far as to say I actually PREFER it to the arcade original, same for the C64 conversion of Buggy Boy.
@@ACanOfBakedBeans I loved Powerdrift on the c64! It was made by Chris Butler, one of my favourite ever c64 coder (I know many won't agree on that - especially for the Ghosts'n'Goblins conversion with the missing levels)
Renagade and target Renagade were amazing in the ZX.
Street Fighter - 'Slow and Unresponsible' 🤣😂🤣😂
That first one out run and changing places shows just how lazy they were with this port by doing a simple sprite flip instead of drawing an actual sprite for a right turn.
Where is Street Fighter II? that was an awful port.
Good god. A compilation of laziness from software companies who should have done better. I remember a school mate had ninja warriors on the Amiga and that was pretty good. Corporate profit before quality products 🤔
So basically they were ahead of the time
So many bad arcade conversion... A video with the best ones would be great!
Already on it mate :-)
@@oldstylegaming Robocop 3 terrible movie, great game.
Still waiting.... When you do release that video, please consider including Parasol Stars and Rodland.
I don't know which is worse, Pit Fighter on the Amiga or Pit Fighter on the SNES?
Pit- Fighter just in general i would say lol
On the Snes and by far
To me, the only passable homeport is the MegaDrive port
Cheers!
anything with us gold and programming by teirtex we knew that at best it would be a terrible port , they also butchered un squadron
storm showed the amiga could do quality conversion like silk worm , St dragon , ninja warriors
us gold just ruining most games they stuck there name on
Aw I thought your apology was sweet!
Spot on
The only thing US Gold ever did well was the sid intro soundtrack and graphic for turbo outrun on the C64.
I remember going to the electronics shop back in the day and if it had the US Gold or Domark label on it I gave it a miss, however once or twice I got fooled by the screenshots. Shame on me. EA was another, that in the early days I thought produced some shite. But, to their credit they did get better. But in modern times they've just gotten greedy with micro transactions and pay to win.
Some of their early stuff was good, but it was mostly imports from the US at that time anyway
Nah, US Gold put out good stuff.
Wow. Seems I was pretty lucky to missed all these turds... maybe I was just lucky to know the right kids to get decent cracked games in the playground though... I pity kids who grafted paper rounds for 3 quid a week to spend £20 on a game based on the box art and screen shots to get something as crappy as these... my money went on blank disks luckily... people don't condone piracy but the fraudsters releasing poo like this are way, way worse
Thanx for the vídeo,for me final fight is by far the worst amiga arcade Port ever made.
Original games on Amiga was superb. Ports not sooo much.
I was expecting Bionic Commando to be on this list as it was awfull (after playing the great c64 version)
By great C64 version I hope you mean the Go! version and not the god awful Capcom USA version. LOL
Mortal Kombat and Wonderboy were let downs for me.if Wonderboy wasnt released on the amiga it must have been a copy
MK was alright on the miggy i thought.
Double Dragon should have been there! 😀
Shinobi on the Amiga was terrible.
I remember Street Fighter on the Amiga it was absolute dog shit.
Super Street Fighter II
Shinobi
Ghouls'N'Ghosts
Space Harrier
Bionic Commando
Strider
Alien Storm wasn't that bad though
i played outrun on amiga at my local library it was good, i played rolling thinder on my c64 it was as good as the arcade, never played rolling thunder 2
.... outrun is good ?
@@oldstylegaming sorry i meant the arcade version lol the amiga version was sub par, i was only 14 at the time so yeah
Street fighter.....im sure you know of its amazing sequal (no not street fighter 2 lol)
Crikey - my eyes!!!
Crikey? Thats straight out of the beano that word lol
♥
The Amiga passed me by, and it looks like I did not miss much.
Lol, nah.dude.the amiga was awesome.
There are plenty of good titles.
But like many systems.
Roughly 100 games 90 are shite
Then last 10 are good
Amd maybe 2 or 3 are gold
Games.that are good gfx and snd.
Smooth scrolling etc
Silkworm,swiv,battle sqaudron,super hang on, lotus 2,2,3 ,marble madness,hybris,gods,chaos engine,speed ball, shadow of the beast series, lion heart.
These are all.half decen and there is plenty more
Making good games is like movies a bit.
Story, director, sfx, budget and time, amd acting of course.
Budget ,time, and coding skill biggest factors.
Most of the conversions where done with no assest or code or help from arcade company.
Yeah there were a lot of shit coders who blew there own trumpet.
But biggest issues was time and money. Most coders had it like slave labour.
Managers and publishers nearly always getting the big dollars.
If you look on any system, good coded games took time..
Rushes games and dual.release like atari st and amiga were.mostly complete crap.
Money grabs.
Both uses 68000 , so porting an st title to amiga was most often done.
But st has basic hardware, and thats a another story.
The Amiga is really a next gen Atari .
And atari tried to get the amiga.
But when it fell.through. atari rushed to make there own 16 system in a very very short time.
Amiga took years to design and bring too market with a small.budget.
Atari st was made in less than 6 months start to finish. could ramble forever.
Long story short.
Good things take time,money and talent.
If its shit thing ,then its missing one of the 3 stated
Go! Aka US Gold
Another bad conversion on the Amiga was Pac-Land. One of my all-time favourite arcade games that got butchered. The Commodore 64 port was also awful. The best port I ever saw for Pac-Land was on the Turbo Grafix.
Did you know that there was actually going to be a much better version of PacLand on the Amiga? the game was actually quite far into development but then got dropped, it was almost arcade perfect
you can download it here
www.gamesthatwerent.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Preview_PaclandV1.zip
The Atari Lynx version, is the only other home version worth bothering with.
@@oldstylegaming IN favor of yet another Atari ST port.
You forgot Power Drift !!!!
I didnt forget it... it just never made it in. It is in the video i did on worst amiga racing games
Terrible computer. I beat my one up with an hammer & lurched it down the end of the garden. Then my brother set it on fire
..... i dont know what to say to that
@@oldstylegaming Just well done or something would have been the correct response. My bro tipped petrol over it & then shot it with an exploding arrow that he made. Then the neighbour started moaning about the smell of the plastic burning till I told him it's a commodore burning cause of all the crappy games & frustration. Then he said he's with me now & can fully understand why I beat it with the sledgehammer.
Final fight and street fighter 2.... The graphics are just meh and the gameplay even worse!!!
What about Shinobi?? That port was atrocious
Criminal when the humble C64 pulled it off better on far more limited hardware
@@thefurthestmanfromhome1148 I had GG Shinobi on the Game Gear, was far better than the Amiga version
Thankfully in this day and age you can often find the original arcade versions sold on digital markets. To be fair though, some of these games weren't much better in the arcade.
US Gold trying to make it look good, really?
In their defense they actually did a decent job with their conversion of Super Space Invaders (the Amiga version, not the C64 one)
I think the ugliest game ever is Final Fight.....