Great memories!! Christmas morning 1987. First present i opened was Defender of the Crown on disk for the C64 - i had wanted it for ages and had stared at the screen shots like a pavlog dog!!. Before i opened anything ese i rushed up stairs to play it. I had asked for an Amiga for christmas that year so it was obvious I wasn't getting it, if i was getting a C64 game- i was too young to understand the cost!. Little did i know that my Dad had worked extra overtime to buy the Amiga as he knew i wanted it and my next present was just that!. Best christmas ever. For that reason the C64 version of DOTC will always be my favorite, as it reminds me of that christmas. Great Video as always SG!
"Christmas morning 1986. First present i opened was Defender of the Crown on disk for the C64 " I hope you kept that rare copy as the game was released in late 1987 on the C64.
Then there was Dungeon Master, which we ST owners got first. The Amiga version didn't come out until much later and it didn't even work on a normal Amiga 500, it needed extra memory, which I don't think many people had at the time. As far as I know, the gameplay of the two versions wasn't any different, but it was just much easier for ST owners to get the game in the first place.
The Amiga version had some enhancements, like the item palette remaining the same when dragging objects around the window, and some extra sounds for monsters. Most significantly, the Amiga version had stereo audio placement, meaning you could detect where monsters were coming from with headphones on. I've played both versions to completion, but I personally just slightly prefer the Amiga version out of the box (even though at the time I had to enviously wait a year - and get a RAM expansion - to play it!) Also some very minor bits of the map were different from what I recall, nothing really significant though.
@@inphanta Starglider 2 ran both faster (only slightly) and had better sound effects on the Amiga, maybe you were thinking of the original which was faster than the Amiga. I even checked multi format magazines to make sure my memory wasn't failing, they all agreed the sound effects were the biggest deal for the Amiga.
I used to love that game and remember killing mummies by throwing Sonja's bra at them. It always annoyed me that Eye if the beholder never came out for the ST.
Had an ST, my friend had an Amiga. The reason I went for the ST was support (or expected support). Being an Atari I thought that the ST would have buckets of games as Atari were famous for their consoles and arcade machines. Gotta be honest, I got that one wrong.
You can thank Warner CEO Steve Ross for that. He broke up Atari Inc so the remnants of Atari Consumer went to Jack Tramiel, the AtariTel video phone division went to Mitsubishi, and the arcade division later known as “Atari Games” - and “Tengen” in the consumer market - went to Namco. And before he did that, Amiga sold themselves to Commodore instead of being taken over by Atari Inc. Amiga also defrauded Atari Inc by paying off Atari’s $500K loan to them - with money from Commodore - while falsely telling them they couldn’t get the Amiga Lorraine chipset to work.
You are wrong about Kick Off 2. It does have the stripy grass on the Amiga. The type of grass you get on the Amiga is determined by the pitch type. I suspect the ST version was due to only have a single sided floppy on the base machines may have limited the pitch graphics. Try playing Kick Off 2 again and selecting the plastic pitch type and viola - stripes. You need to do your research mate. Also, Kick Off 2 is a far more sophisticated game than Sensi Soccer. The fact it has 'Soccer' in the title says it all really. Anyway, Kick Off 2 on the Amiga was better and is why it is used for the Kick Off 2 tournaments and not the ST version.
@@alfonsobonzo3782 you took that comment way too seriously but soccer is generally a term not much liked amongst English football fans. Anyway, why did they have to call Sensible anything? They didn’t call Cannon Fodder Sensible Fodder.
What a complete load of garbage. The only time the ST beat the Amiga is when the programmers are on drugs, or the user doing the review for youtube is on drugs. Which is the case here? Both
Thanks for the great video! I’d like to suggest that in future comparison videos you put the two comparing platform videos in equal sizes. As I whatch in mobile phone, the Atari ST video looked too small in comparison with the amiga video, as a consequence of the “monitor frames”, dificulting the comparison. Great content anyway!
When it was Amiga vs ST at school the ST kids always used to play the ‘it’s better for music as it’s got a built-in MIDI port’ card! Even though nobody ever used it!
@@P5BDeluxeWiFi It was the combination of the midi ports and the Atari ST's sturdiness that it became the favourite for live performing artists. But it had a faster CPU than the Amiga (500/600 anyway) so it was faster in some games an programs where you don't need the special Amiga chips. And for its time the legendary Digital Research did a very good job with is simple basic OS enviroment and GEM. (One less diskette to load in at boot... it must have been a major advantage for musicians)
You can guarantee that 99% of the time, people who make the “Yeah, but it has MIDI” argument don’t even know what MIDI is or that it’s application was never used in games anyway.
I’m in a somewhat unique position as I never owned either an Amiga or ST (I stuck with the C64 then moved to the Megadrive some years later). That said, I played the ST a lot as many friends at school had them but I always wanted an Amiga myself (Amiga owners were rare at my school for some reason). My perception of the ST was that it was a poor man’s Amiga but in hindsight, it was a decent enough machine in its own right (even if it clearly wasn’t as good). As a C64 owner who was used to the SID I always found it laughable that the 16-bit ST has worse audio but was later impressed by some ST demo tunes that made good use of the AY, even approaching SID-like sounds in a very crunchy sort of way. Ironically, I like this style more than a lot of Amiga music.
The Amiga 500 is far more complex hardware than the very basic Atari ST. This complexity meant that programmers had to really learn the architecture to truly take advantage of how powerful it is. A game on the ST should never better the Amiga version. For this to happen, the programmer didn't use the Amiga hardware properly. Lots of pre-1990 Amiga games were lazy ST ports, or simply didn't fully utilise the Amiga hardware.
The ST had a faster CPU. Jay Miner (logically) figured that coders would offload the vast majority of things to the custom graphics and sound chips. The problem is, that the 3d games of the time needed that CPU speed, which is why the majority of the games in this video are ones that are 3d. The math of those polygons were helped by that .9mhz advantage.
And that “superior” Amiga chipset was a massive bottleneck that slowed the machine to a crawl for more modern games (3D and otherwise) later. The Amiga collapsed very suddenly because its hardware couldn’t handle chunky graphics, while its ST competitor (the Falcon) had no such limitations. It’s actually shocking how little the Amiga evolved over nine years… no laptop versions, and AGA was a minuscule improvement over the prior chipset that just added a few extra bitplanes but couldn’t handle modern graphics.
@BrianRMiller60302 The Falcon could have been an amazing computer... if it hadn't started as an ST upgrade and still had a 16bit bus. I honestly think Atari should have just ditched game consoles after the 7800, or have released an STe based one to compete with the Genesis, instead of funding R&D for the Panther and Jaguar. Then maybe they could have had the funds to get the Falcon 040 out that would have been a much better platform to compete at the time. Unfortunately, throughout the history of the entire ST line, the upgrades were a pain and janky. The Amiga was designed with some upgrades in mind.
@BrianRMiller60302 I have added a hard drive to both. The Atari ST had a proprietary interface for Hard drives. The Amiga has many upgrades that would add a standard interface. So in that regard, they were about the same. But early memory upgrades o. The ST generally required some janky stuff to be done. The A500 had two different expansion bays that were easy to get to.
Microprose F1 was a bit smoother on the ST. The 68k processor ran a bit faster on the ST and the Amiga couldn't use its custom chip when it wasn't sprites in the game.
Had an ST, STE and Falcon so have to say i was an atari fan but i did love the amiga for its music and graphics but there was something about the ST i always loved it was like the Spectrum for the 16 bit era not as powerful as other computers but was plucky. When i was younger i did hate the AY sound chip and when i moved onto the STE i wished games would use it more powerful soundchip but now looking back the AY chip could produce some great music with the right talent behind it. For me the 8bit and 16bit eras where great and had some of the best games that pushed the computers to their limits not now where games are just copy and paste jobs that do not push the computer just in the graphics.
Also remember that Sierra-Online games on the ST allowed you to play the music through the MIDI port to any synth keyboard attached to the system, providing sound that Amiga users could only drool over. ( I had a Roland D-50 at the time.)
We ST owners got screwed out of superior audio from the STart due to Atari Corp first not being able to get Atari Inc’s AMY sound chip to work inside the ST followed by Yamaha refusing to sell the YM2151 for inclusion in the ST.
Your comparison shows the some of the Atari games using less of the screen, so is smaller than the Amiga. Maybe that's how they made the games run faster.
not the case - they were at the same 320x200 resolution. Many games are pixel-for-pixel ports (eg. Stunt Car Racer). The reason some games run faster on the Atari ST is that it has an 8MHz clock speed vs. 7.16MHz on the Amiga. When a game is not using the Amiga's custom hardware, the Atari ST is always about 12% faster because of this (both have the same 68000 processor).
Okay, major respect given for not choosing 3d games down the entire list, and calling it a day. I may be a clueless Yank who never saw either of these computers outside of an emulator, but everybody knows "better on ST" is usually code for "faster 68000", which makes things a bit awkward when the 1200 enters the room.
The Amiga 1200 entered pretty late in the game, and unfortunately few games really took advantage of the new capabilities. But Commodore actually introduced faster CPU and RAM with the Amiga 2000's CPU slot - introduced at the same time as the Amiga 500. When I got my Amiga 2000, I got it with a 28Mhz 68030. At the time, that was a bit faster than high end workstations (for example, NeXT workstations had a 25Mhz 68030 and they cost thousands of dollars more). Sadly, games rarely took advantage of the higher CPU speed. And from a programming perspective, I can understand. There's an annoying dilemma when it comes to the blitter. On the one hand, the blitter is faster than a low speed CPU. On the other hand, the blitter is slower than a high speed CPU. But the code is very different whether you want to use one or the other.
Great video! As a kid I went the PC way around 92 but absolutely loved the Amiga! There is just something indescribable about an atmosphere of some of the games and it will never be the same on any other system. That being said I grew up with Atari 800XE and I will always have great affection for Atari products. Today, I own both systems and I find myself playing certain games (like Wings of Death ) on Atari rather than the A500. Anyway, awesome list and I agree with your picks! Well done mate!
A bit surprised that Wings of Death was better (never heard of it, actually) - the Atari ST was so awful at scrolling! Maybe vertical scrolling was ok? Nice video. I will have to try a few of these ST games, although none of them except Wings of Death looks particularly interesting. (To me at least) I suspect Defender of the Crown had added features since it came after the Amiga version (where it originated) + the CDTV version I play has all those features.
Amiga has fancy chips but the CPU is slightly slower than ST. If devs don’t bother to use the Amiga chips and lean on the CPU, then they will end up with slower games: hence the dreaded “ST port.” Really seems like more of the library than not. Even most of the Bitmap Brothers games fall into this category.
Yeah, vertical scrolling was quite a bit easier to pull of on the ST as I recall it, so easier to do horizontal shooters :) (BTW the games Wings of Death, Lethal Xcess and No second prize were all made by German company Thalion that primarily made their games on the ST as I recall it, so it makes sense the ST version has some more polish and better supported technically) Definitely recommend giving Wings of Death and Lethal Xcess a try if you like old shooters! Not perfect by any stretch but quite entertaining. (Lethal Xcess was a bit too hard for my taste though, and as I recall the framerate tended to be lower than WoD) Punishing but interesting weapon power up system...
One line vertical on the Atari ST just ment copying your data 160 bytes up or down (Most good games used two screens : one to build up a screen and the other to show meanwhile. After the screen was build up it was just a matter telling the videochip on ST a new screen adress to start displaying from. That adress needed to be on a multiple of 256. 8 x 160 = 1280 = 5 x 256. So you could scroll 8 lines very fast vertically by just wait on a Vsync and then change the visible screen with by 1280 up or down. I've done this in GFA Basic also because that had a VSYNC command to wait till te screen was drawn. The horizontal scrolling is far more difficult because of the bitplanes and more cpu cycles needed to rotate and carry the bits in 160 byte/80 words/40 longwords per line. A lot of games did the trade off by keep graphics in multiple positions in memory but that limits off course the amount of graphic you can use. Another just about to manage horizontal scrolling was using only half of the bytes by using only 2 planes instead of 4. Thereby limiting the colors to 4. And the most visible one was off course to make the screen a lot smaller by for instance a cockpit with instruments visible on screen an dedicating only part of the screen to the real gameplay
Wings of death was incorrectly converted on Amiga. the title screen instead of being converted to HAM 4096 colors, they used copperlists but in a dodgy way (failed on the colors palette), the intro digisound is buggy in the Amiga version, the replay doesn't happen correctly, and ingame, the palettes were incorrectly converted (too dark, the famous ST palette bug).
I knew people who worked in the industry. It was an open secret that many Amiga games were lazy ST ports, even to the point of having the same source code for both versions (just change an equate at the top for which version you wanted to build. Why pay for 2 sets of developers and resources, when you could get 2x the profits from essentially one version. The main exceptions were halo games like Shadow of the Beast, or the mentioned Battle Squadron.
The only games that should have been better on the Atari ST were pure processor intensive games, mainly 3D rendering since the Atari ST had a slightly faster processor clock speed. Apart from that the Amiga had powerful custom chips and it's 4 channel digital sound blew the Atari to bits, but of course we had many lazy ports that played at that slightly slower clock speed with all the custom chips that should have offloaded the processor just sitting idle. Sometimes they didn't even bother making a better soundtrack on the Amiga port.
Most converted arcade games in the 80's should perform better on the Atari ST since Atari Company developed hardware for most arcade game machines. From around 1990 developers started to optimize for the more advanced Amiga platform and also release games for Amiga only (for example Sensible soccer).
Amigans got lucky. Had Atari Corp got the AMY sound chip working in the ST, it would’ve had 8 channel audio from the start that would’ve stomped the Amiga’s PAULA sampler into the ground. The double whammy was when they couldn’t get it to work, they approached Yamaha to sell them the YM2151 - also superior to PAULA - but Yamaha refused since they were bundling it inside their own MIDI computer. The irony was that the ST crushed Yamaha’s MIDI computer outside of Japan. Well, that and Yamaha had no problem selling the YM2151 to the separate Atari Games Corp for use in their arcade games.
@@TheJeremyHolloway The Atari ST would have been an amazing amateur musicians choice even out of the box. It was already used even by many professional composers thanks to it's built in MIDI port, but sadly out of the box even the Commodore 64 had a better sound. Some programmers still got of lot out of the very mediocre Yamaha YM2149F by using samples and processing time, but it was a great shame it didn't have better.
really enjoyed this video mate, the ST definetly seems to handle the vector gfx a bit smoother, with SCR i would still probably play the amiga version just due to nostanlia but the ST version looks class!
It's that 1 Mhz more and the fast Line-A calls on the Atari ST that give it more raw power if on the Amiga the supporting chips weren't usefull for the task. Mostly 3D games made use of this.
@@erikkarsies4851 the Amiga is faster for 3D. Look Dread, 32 colors, 1mb of ram, a higher frame rate. The ST version is optimised but slower, lower frame rate, 16 colors and 2mb of ram. In fact, 3D games from the commercial era were faster on ST, because coders used the same source on the Amiga. Things could not work like that.
I just noticed that most of the Atari ST screens you show here show that the Atari plays the games inside a black box unlike the Amiga which takes up the full screen.
For the most part of the two machines' life span, the Amiga was definitely the better gaming platform except towards the end, with the proliferation of 3D games that were often better on the ST (not only it had a slightly faster CPU, but its infamous interleaved bitplanes turned out to be less of a PITA than the Amiga's separate bitplanes for CPU rendered vector graphics). What is interesting though is that I found at least two early games that sounded better on the ST than on the Amiga: Mirrorsoft's release of Tetris, and Rick Dangerous. Later ST series (was it the STF?) added PCM stereo sound, but it was rarely used in games.
Funny thing about Mirrorsoft’s version of Tetris on the Atari ST. Ed Logg of the separate Atari Games Corp - the arcade company - loved it so much that he demoed it to his managers and convinced them to get the license to make the arcade version which later became the infamous [and superior] Tengen Tetris version that caused the massive legal battle between Nintendo and Atari Games/Tengen.
The Amiga and the ST both had an motorola 68000 CPU, the Atari's was clocked at 8+ mhz while, the amiga ran at 7.14mhz. Which is why I tthink it can handle the 3D games a bit smoother since it has about 10% faster CPU. Some others are just bad ST to Amiga Ports where they don't take advantage of the Blitter.
@@peterknutsen3070 the question is rather why the Amiga was clocked slower since 8Mhz is the rated speed for the MC68000 and it turns out that Commodore did this to save money, by using a single clock crystal for both the CPU and the Video circuitry they save the cost of one crystal but had to limit it to the frequency of the Video output, hence why NTSC Amigas and PAL Amigas run at different CPU speeds also.
@@Henrik_Holst you are close to truth but not quite get it all up. On both computers video has to be synchronised to analog output. Did you notice larger border and smaller pixels on Atari st monitors? That was the cost of sticking to 8mhz. Amiga designera did not want that and slowed the cpu a bit to make smaller black borders. Also notice maximum overscan resolution in Amiga is 352 while on st 416!!!
@@AA-vf3eu video have to be syncronised on both systems but the Atari ST runs the CPU and the Video circuitry using two different speeds while the A500 out of the factory runs both synced to the Video hence the unnecessary low CPU frequency, the Amiga does not have to do this which every single cpu extension board shows (they all have their own clock crystal) but Commodore wanted to save every single penny they could.
Loved my old STFM back in the day (too poor to buy an Amiga). I think Dungeon master is basically exactly the same isn't it? Maybe do a video of when the games were equal next :)
I did chuckle......your "Sensible Soccer" comment might as well have been "Smug Soccer" 🤣 Interesting video and great work as ever. I never played much on ST back in the day. I remember playing Thunderblade on it and being so disappointed I just gave the system a miss for ages (I know....how shallow !!!! It was a youth thing).
I'm confused by the Sensible Soccer comment as I played it on the ST. We got Unsensible Soccer as well, which if I'm remembering correctly was enhanced for the STE (higher resolution, hardware scrolling, better sound, etc.).
Interesting list m8, tbh the differences in some of em looked a tad negligible to me, maybe I'd have to play the ST versions to get the 'feel' of em? I noticed the play area on all the ST games was smaller than Amiga, was that how the games were displayed or is it just the video snaps used? The ST CPU ran slightly faster that the Amiga so that would maybe explain the faster speed in 3D games?
On a PAL Amiga, games often ran in 320×256, but on a PAL Atari ST the screen resolution was fixed to the same as NTSC: 320×200. And yes, the Atari ST also had a 1/7 faster CPU. (8.0 vs 7.15 MHz)
@@FindecanorNotGmail If I remember correctly because the Atari ST 68K didn't need to take much hardware in consideration some custom instructions were left which handled some basic OS stuff very efficiently. They were called Line-A calls and could turn for instance of the mouse pointer off. "The original Macintosh used Line A to expose its graphics primitives to application code, and the Atari ST does the same, from pixel drawing through polygons through software sprites and flood fills." I'm might be mistaken but what I remember hearing was that Amiga uses those interrupts differently .
As someone who didn't grow up with these 16-bit computers, I was more attracted to the ST 1040 than the Amiga 500. Funny enough, the price even today and the fact that you don't need diskettes to boot up the computer made the ST a more appealing machine to me. Also helps that the diskettes can be formated in a way that your PC can actually read. I'm also that weirdo who wants to use obselete hardware for certain tasks just for the hell of it. In case of practicality, I just found the ST to be the better "workhorse" than the Amiga
@@FordForTheWin the Amiga OS is a mature OS, the ST one is obsolete. Next, you don't wait for the icons to be drawn, this doesn't exist in Amiga, all the icons appear at once.
@@dlfrsilver Only for the overpriced and an obselete platform that is the PowerPC. The only way to run the Amiga forks on the old Commodores are with PowerPC cards. They're not exactly cheap or modern either. Sorry, the Amiga is obselete and has been for decades.
Great video we have to let the st fans have a few games so they dont feel to bad lol. Jokes aside I'm the same got a st a few years ago and it's not as bad as I was told if I had one as a kid I whuld of been very happy with it
Play Defender of The Crown 2. Same game that fixed all the things missing from the first version. The best verson by far. Only on Amiga. Several of these games also runs much better on an Amiga with an accelerator.
I remember owning an Atari ST as a young teen along with a bunch of other friends at school. One lad had an Amiga and we absolutely ripped him about it. Then one day we went to his house and he fired up Shadow of the Beast......By Christmas that year we all had Amigas and the ST was long forgotten. We had an unspoken arrangement never to discuss this embarrassment again.
And then you discovered that the Amiga 600 is slower in 3D games and quickly bought a 1200 ? ;D Really... Shadow of the Beast never rocked my boat... that kind of kid games wasn't my thing... Frontier Elite though :) (BTW most Amiga fans will you show that game on the Amiga 1200 of course) But changing to an Amiga 500 or 600 from an Atari 1040STfm ... what a waste of money!
@@paulstevens9409 it depends what you want to do. Beast interest lies in the world devised by Roger Dean. This is the repaly value of the game. Otherwise, there were lots of game like that on the ST and way way worse than Beast.
Ive got loads on at the minute mate, just started new project at work, took over my sons football team, my oldest son is now working for me so needs a lot of mentoring and ive got a 16 year old daughter who has been doing her exams... im getting on top of it now though lol
The real reason that this games run bad on Amiga is that they were first made for Atari and then ported (poorly) on Amiga. And this was almost universal practice, so I hated Atari for this... If the all abilities of Amiga was used to the full, it would always kick Atari's ass.
Cry us a river. And if those games would’ve been enhanced for the STe then it would’ve been a complete draw. Or better yet, enhanced for the Falcon030 which would’ve curb-stomped your Amiga versions.
STe versus A500 was fairly even, though the STe still being limited to 16 colours per scanline probably keeps the Amiga ahead, even ignoring how few games made use of the STe's extra features. It needed to be out in 1988 at the latest if it wasn't going to surpass the Amiga in any area though, especially as it was beset by compatibility issues on launch (though many of them soon fixed)
This pained me to watch as i would agree with most of these and am no fan of the ST. Had 2 mates who had an ST and we use to rib them a lot back in the day but they stuck with it tbf. As always buddy this was a great watch and hey am not super later seeing the video for once haha. Keep up the great work an will catch you in the next one, take it easy.
I find it sad that when we discuss these two 16-bit powerhouses, we only talk about games. They were sold, after all, as powerful alternatives to Macs nd PCs. The Amiga had a major graphics and chip-sound advantage over the ST. But I bought my STe for three applications in particular. 'Calamus', Steinberg-Jones 'Twelve', and 'Spectre GCR' (hardware as much as software on the latter). Twelve taught me music sequencing, Calamus taught me desktop publishing, and Spectre GCR allowed me to run Mac software, taking what I learned in Calamus, and supplementing that knowledge with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, which I was able to turn into a career as a graphic designer for a retail chain that lasted me decades. Admitedlly though, the Amiga would have given me a prettier version of Shadow of the Beast.
@@dlfrsilver But the ST had onboard MIDI support, making the main reasons for emulating a Mac unncessary. The era's notation software from folks like Stenberg-Jones had native Atari versions available. Also a monochrome monitor was quite nice for working with the versions of Adobe illustrator available at the time (The other reason for emulating a Mac. Finally, the ST had Calamus. The Amiga had nothing like it. 35 years later and we're still having Atari vs Commodore conversations ?? Must mean they were both pretty awesome. But really, the Amiga's strength was gaming.
@@PeBoVision midi was for very few users the main reason to have an Atari St or an ste. But the grand part of the st users were families and kids at the time. Regarding calamus, the amiga had pagestream. Regarding monitors, 2 monitors were needed on st. Monochromic sm124 were locked to black and white. For color, an sc1224, a sc1425 or an sc1435 was required. The amiga needed 1 screen with multisync. The proportion of amiga sold for pro use was much higher than the st sold for the same use.
In 92 when it was time for me to upgrade to 16bit, I had a choice, buy Amiga 500 or Atari ST, I choose Amiga for only for it's bigger library of games, the other choice wouldn't of been a bad choice either.
Before watching, I'll just quickly say Dungeon Master - simply because the Atari ST got it first, and we had to wait what felt like forever to get an Amiga port.
@@DaveVelociraptor Music in DM Amiga with only 1mb of RAM. with 512k you will have nothing. The original ST version runs with 512kb, the Amiga version needs 1mb (it's written on the game box). Thanks for this useless comment.
I am curious why the Amiga clips are covering the full monitor screen, yet the Atari are not. I owned both machines and never played a game on the Ste that wasn't full screen.
Maybe your mind is playing tricks on you, ive just fired up Stunt Car Racer, and RVF Honda on my original hardware 1040STE and apart from the intro screens the gameplay is definitely bordered mate
Reading through all these angry Amiga fan comments made my day. Great video OSG. If there's one thing Amiga fans can't stand it's the idea of someone enjoying using an Atari ST.
you can enjoy some games on ST, there's no problem about that. I own most ST machines (ST/STE/Falcon030), and clearly the Amiga tops them. better games, more numerous, etc....
I'd also like to add Speedball 2 to the list. Sure the Amiga version had superior graphics and sound but when it came to gameplay the ST version was superior. Faster, more responsive and also allowed for flashier gameplay due to a trick that was only present on the ST version. The ST version allowed u to curve the ball through the tunnel. This in turn lit up all the wall panels.
@@dlfrsilver wrong. The trick was only possible on the Atari ST version. Maybe it was a bug, who knows. The gameplay was also faster on the ST version. I owned an Atari and an Amiga at that time so I can speak with authority on the matter.
@@GoogleAccount-vn8mu So do I. The bitmap brothers did not changed a thing in the source code inbetween. The Amiga version is 100% carbon copy of the ST version, exactly like their other games. Speedball II is an ST original, ported on Amiga.
@@dlfrsilver you are wrong but it’s not that deep. I can tell you for a fact that it is not possible to perform that trick on the Amiga version. Fire up your Amiga and try it.
same. kick off 2 demanded more skill tbh - except for the cheap lob of course! the follow up game from Dino Dini called "Goal" was rubbish though I thought. somehow the magic was gone.
@@huzcer Didn’t Goal need the discs changed too to play? Didn’t help the flow either. Always seemed it was caught trying to Kick off and Sensi. European Champions was a great back up to Kick off 2 and SWOS. Sensible was for when I was playing random guests but Kick Off 2 was against friends and family who also had Amigas.
@@benmalone7408 can't remember on Goal - actually bought it and only played it a few times as it was rubbish even though it was the same programmer. .Had some epic Kick Off 2 leagues with mates back in the day. Also do you know that people are still holding a kick off 2 world cup even now 30 years later? search "Kick Off 2 World Cup" the oldest game in esports!
@@huzcer - Goal was alright on the PC. If you played on very easy difficulties it felt like Sensible Soccer, but on higher difficulties / speeds it felt pretty close to Kick Off 2 on the ST (which is still my favourite).
I remember reading issues of C&VG and when the same game was reviewed on both systems, they always seemed to get the same score more or less. I thought the games were always nearly the same. I stand corrected.
I’m guessing the ST does “link” games better than the Amiga because the ST has actual Motorola ACIA chips inside it instead of the shoddy Commodore CIA chips. Had Amiga ended up in Atari’s hands to begin with - whether the OG Atari Inc or Tramiel’s successor Atari Corp - the Atari Amiga, cough, the Atari Mickey console and the Atari 1800XL computer, wouldn’t have had crummy Commodore CIA hobbling them. As for 3D, well, the ST’s 8MHz 68000 helps give it an edge. It would be interesting to see those games be modded for FPU support on both platforms to see how much a 68881 or 68882 would improve matters. Although the homebrew coder who was porting Quake over to the Atari Falcon said the 68882 was inferior to the Falcon’s on-board Motorola 56K DSP in terms of co-processing 3D duties.
Je ne suis pas d'accord 1 l'amiga fait tourner ses jeux en 32 couleurs/l'atari St ne dépasse jamais les 16 2 les jeux sur Amiga sont en full-screen avec une def supérieur (320/256) Sur Atari st (320/200 voir 240) pas plus et (jamais en full-screen) 3 la qualité sonore est bien supérieur sur Amiga stéréo 4 voies simultanée Alors que sur Atari st le chip Yamaha ne dépasse pas le stéréo 3 voies non permanents. Ayant travaillé sur les deux machines, l'architecture de l'amiga était bien plus récentes et plus avancé que celle de l'atari St.
Nice list, I would not have thought of several of them like Kick Off 2, but I like your approach (staying away from CPU intensive games). On that regard, another game you have not covered here that looks way worse and on a smaller window but plays way better on the ST is PacMania.
did the ST have a better procesor than the Amiga? in general terms it seems all these games run smoother on the Atari, is that justbecause of programming or because of hardware?
Since porting probably weren't possible back then, i read sometime that a few developers had different teams making the games from scratch for each system. This is why the quality varies on same game on same hardware between systems as the teams didn't have same skills.
I have to agree on music part on Wings of Death and Lethal Xcess. It simply sounds more appropriate (not better in a "sound quality" way, just more fitting) on ST
I had both machines and absolutely loved them both. The great menu disks on the Atari ST were my staple diet on the ST - bought from flea markets. The Amiga on the other hand had way fewer such menu disks however the games were just more technically proficient. I was a big fan of LucasArts games in those days and I remember the fact they weren't releasing Indy Jones and the Fate of Atlantis or Monkey Island 2 on the ST was the straw that broke the back. It had to be Amiga after that.
The ST may have lacked the Amiga's custom chip support for things like hardware sprites and scrolling, but that slightly fsster CPU did come in handy for certain types of games and graphics, as your video demonstrates.
It's more a story of which ram is used. The chip ram is notoriously slow for 3D. If you patch the program to run in Fast Ram, you need to add up a speed limiter otherwise it runs too fast !
@@dlfrsilverand then let’s patch the ST games to support the Blitter, the STe’s enhanced graphics & sound, and Alt RAM too. Or go for the full tilt boogie of the Falcon030 with its 68030, VGA graphics, Motorola 56K DSP, and an optional 68882 FPU.
The ST had a slightly faster CPU, so any games that didn't benefit from the Amiga's (2D only) co-processors generally had better frame rates on the ST.
I agree with defender of the crown it had more depth on the st you could purchase more units in comparison with the amiga version I missed it when I moved to the amiga
Szkoda, że nie słychać tu dźwięku z Amigi dla porównania, a tylko jakieś zgrzyty i piski z ST. Szczerze współczuję ówczesnym posiadaczom, którzy zmuszeni byli się tym katować. U mnie po minucie poszłoby to za okno. Nie wiem jak tu w ogóle rozprawiać i na siłę udowadniać lepszą grywalność zaprezentowanych gier, o której cały czas napomyka Autor. Bo przecież na nią składa się nie tylko płynność animacji, grafika, ale zwłaszcza dźwięk! No chyba, że zatkał sobie uszy podczas nagrywania filmu.😊 Prawda jest taka, że nawet 8bitowe Atari ma czterokanałowy, niebo lepszy dźwięk.
I’ll have to try those out! Luckily I have a MiSTer now, so let’s see how both get on! And let’s try Dungeon Master too, as I believe it was created on the ST too ..
Main reason for multiplatform 3d games is that they used cpu only vector routines which could be used on both st and Amiga saving development costs. If Amiga version would use proper blitter 3d routines it could make all those slow games very smooth.
I don't know if its because my Amiga is NTSC, but the samples loop in the wrong places, or just suddenly play for no reason on Captain Blood. I suspect instead of sample size they had timers, which the faster NTSC clock messed everything up.
Sorry, but in NO WAY is the music of Wings of Death and especially of Lethal Xcess on the Atari ST better than on the amiga! Both versions are made by Jochen Hippel, who did a marvelous job on both systems. But the instrumentation on the amiga is much more varied and adds a lot more atmosphere to the whole experience.
Stunt Car Racer on the Amiga was frame locked to update every 5th frame. I suspect the ST was not, hence occasionally it would update the screen earlier to appear that it's faster. If you play the turbo mode versions of Stunt Car Racer on Amiga with the limitation removed you can see it could have run faster on the Amiga, but occasionally might have taken all 5 frames to update the display. The sound is far better on the Amiga version though.
3D on the ST was it's strong point on the base systems. 8MHz on the ST Vs ~7.1 MHz on the Amiga. While that doesn't sound a lot it equaled 1-3 FPS in 3D which again doesn't sound a lot but when you consider many games only had FPS up to around 20 any extra FPS was a bonus. Defender of the Crown was developed on the Amiga and released first on it and as said it was released rushed (incomplete) however Defender of the Crown two (which was really just Defender of the Crown complete/redux) was the full experience. Wings of Death/Leathal Xcess was by Thalion who were known for being ST fans so I'm unsure of how impartial they were doing the Amiga version. Either way Wings of Death/Leathal Xcess were still decent on the Amiga. No second prize is covered by the first part of my comment. Robocop 3 (a game better than the movie) is covered by the first part of my comment. But Amiga had more colour, better cut scenes and way better in game music and sound. Stunt Car Racer is covered by the first part of my comment. But sound is way better on the Amiga.
Stunt Car Racer Amiga had a frame stopper/skipper (a brake!) each 5 frames, it made the Amiga version slower. Codetapper explained that the turbo version (a hack) got the frame skipper removed. The result is that the frame rate is much better and the game faster than the ST version.
Most of the games presented in this video were converted in a very partial way, i would say incorrectly converted (buggy palettes, buggy intro sound, for WOD amiga for example).
Did the Atari ST always have these smaller gameplay screens? You said a lot that the ST was running the 3d stuff smoother, well sure if it has a smaller window, it will definitely be smoother. I think the smaller game screen size would annoy more, than having fulling screen slightly slower.
The ST had nearly a MHz on the Amiga. Doesn't sound like much, but for maths processing in 3d games, all else being equal this would result in the difference between 21 and 25 FPS which is pretty perceptible. If programmers took advantage of the custom chips to offload sound and graphics, then the difference was night and day, much like integrated graphics vs a GPU in today's terms. Far more than enough to compensate for a slightly downclocked CPU. This is where the "lazy ST ports" came from, it was easy to write something on an ST that would almost run unmodified on an Amiga (albeit 15% slower if it was CPU bound). Putting the work in would result in more colours, better sound and more time for the 68000 to do other things.
Wait a sec! People who knew about kick off 2 loved it! A great footy game and hard to master. Sensible came out ~2 years later so there was a period where KO2 ruled
Had both machines the Amiga blew the ST out of the water for everything. The ST offered nothing poor User Interface limited resolutions Limited colors chip sound was ok
I had atari 1040stfm , then I bought amiga 500 with 1 mb upgrade to copy protected atari st protected games, ahh the good old days of the public library, ported games never used the special chips , and all 50 hz games were bordered
Were both machines running the same video frame rate? Back in the '90s a friend in high school had an NTSC Amiga 500 and games ran very differently on it compared to my PAL one.
The Atari ST kicked the Amigas ass quite often... just not in the way meant here. VERY often developers would develop for the lowest common denominator (The ST), and then just shovel it over, rather than taking advantage of all of the Amiga's capabilities..
Sometimes the Amiga customn chips weren't usefull enough for the specific task of a game also. (3D Games for instance) And some flexibillity for the CPU was sacrificied because of the more capable hardware needing to access the bus often too.
@@erikkarsies4851 they were. The fat agnus chip could do line drawing and fills aka 3d vector graphics faster than the ST cpu but to make porting easier on Amiga they would rarely use it.
We're the ones in the Mirror Universe. In the Original Timeline, Jack Tramiel wasn't ousted from Commodore, and Atari held onto Amiga. Jack still makes the Commodore ST out of spite, though, after losing his bid to steal Amiga away from Atari.
We mostly had Amiga's 500 between friends... But there was one guy with Atari 520ST, and I liked playing games ofc. But what I really loved was the AmigaOS.. And it was just sooo much better then TOS... But again... Games... I only remember one game that (probably was an Atari original and ported to the Amiga that was different, not much but it sort of felt better on the Atari and it was not bad on the Amiga at all... but "felt" better on the Atari even though I knew it could have been better on the Amiga and that was Xenon 2). And you never actually know how/why... It could have been an Amiga game with a good programmer, but the ported Atari version was made by an awesome programmer. And it could have been a awesome Atari programmer and then got ported to Amiga (by the same programmer :-) that just did a "lazy" port... I don't know... I just know that the Atari version did feel better somehow... (could also been that I was impressed by just this title on the Atari because it was an impressive "Atari" game... and on the Amiga it was just another game... can't remember exactly... Otherwise the same game on the Amiga was either the exact same almost (Atari port) or less colors, worse sound mostly as I remember. Some 3D games was maybe a bit faster on the Atari (as you mentioned) but I guess it was because of portability... Lots of game studios needed both markets but mostly only one "source"... and using Amiga specific hardware was a "no no" I guess... And not because that was "hard"... I mean come on... do "draw line function (x,y,x,y,c) and then just "if Atari" do use "CPU" and on Amiga use "Blitter" would have been pretty easy... Or this was actually done, but not knowing how the Amiga/Blitter and so on worked... that function had to be timed to the rest of the program and a lot of NOP's had to be inserted to get it to sync :-) and then you could say "yes we did use the Amiga hardware to drawlines" (but we had to make it as slow as the CPU linedraw to make the "interrupts" work with the rest of the game...) I don't know really... It would have been fun to get it from someone who actually worked at a bigger studio that did "same" games for Amiga and Atari to actually know how and why... Porting source from Atari to Amiga would always make the Atari faster because of the faster clocked Atari 68k... so all raw 68k calculations was faster on Atari... But I think it is more to this actually... and that is the games can not be too different... if so they would sell computers in the end and not keep the market separate (which meant selling more games)... I would probably done the same if I had a gaming idea and wanted to sell as many copies as possible... least effort most money back. Don't know who to settle this either... But maybe Arcade ports... they had more processing, more colors and (maybe sometimes more memory) and then check what the Amiga got and what the Atari got and then compare... But I can not remember a arcade port actually that I was happy about on the Amiga at all.. Maybe Mortal Kombat... it was not that far off the arcade original... Ahwell... it's fun argument still though! :-) Atari vs Amiga haha!
I've managed to null modem link ST with Amiga for Stunt Car Racer (great game) and Lotus Challenge but I cannot link RVF Honda at all... there is no option to link on the screen. Can you advise?
I think there is 2 versions of rvf honda.... dont quote me on that... but im sure i discovered this when i was planning a video on cross platform games.
Thanks for this info. I suspected that may be the case. There certainly wasn't anything visible on the front end menu for selection of serial link. By the way, I wish Microprose had made M1 Tank Platoon linkable... I can just imagine the epic battles with that one!
