Shadow of the Beast. Hmm, interesting...

[SignOfZeta]

Fucking hell that is gross!

[Tatsujin]

It looks like the had not the smallest clue of how to put some nice grafx out the marty. So they probably digitized all the backgrounds and put some blurry filters over.

[Arkhan Asylum]

Yeah, but they're samples from a soundchip that came out in 1985.  That's the old'n days! 

Still, the sampled guitars needed to not happen, ever.

Hard to setup?  An A500, you plug it in and stick in a floppy.

I'm talking about setting up anything better .   A1200's require some dicking around to make it useful, anything past that is worse.   An a500 needs some work too if you want to play non-commercial disks or use WHDLoad.

Wings
Power Monger
Dune
Alien Breed
ProjectX
Gods
ChaosEngine
Another World
Cannon Fodder
Ambermoon
Worms
Beneath A Steel Sky
Ruff 'n' Tumble
Lionheart
Battle Squadron
A10 Tank Killer
Valhalla series
Nuclear War!!! Hell yes.

That's not even scratching the surface. 

of all those games, I think Ambermoon is the only one worth a damn, to me at least. 

That's two Amiga exclusives I like.   I always forget about Ambermoon.  I have Amberstar for PC.  That shit is sweet

[guyjin]

1. Why does the Atari ST version have no music? Sound effects only... wth?

Back in the day, when the ST and Amiga were popular, they were rivals. The ST was the weaker machine, so if you wanted to make a game for both, you kind of had to go with what the lowest common denominator (the ST) could do.  When Amiga games got ported to ST, features often had to be removed because it couldn't do many of the things the Amiga could.
It would seem that, in this case, the port was done with a hatchet.

[_Paul]

1. Why does the Atari ST version have no music? Sound effects only... wth?

Back in the day, when the ST and Amiga were popular, they were rivals. The ST was the weaker machine, so if you wanted to make a game for both, you kind of had to go with what the lowest common denominator (the ST) could do.  When Amiga games got ported to ST, features often had to be removed because it couldn't do many of the things the Amiga could.
It would seem that, in this case, the port was done with a hatchet.

The ST had the same sound chip as the 128K Spectrum, and even that had music in game. Seems like the ST was a very lazy port.

[Arkhan Asylum]

even the C64 one has music, and the c64 is a pussy compared to the Amiga!

[ParanoiaDragon]

One thing I deffinitly love about the PCE version of Shadow of the Beast over any version(not that I've played EVERY single one) is the castle level.  From what I recall, the other versions just have the same(nice looking) bg as a 2nd layer.  The Turbo version has a castle'ish bg that, to me, adds more atmosphere.  I know they did similar stuff in the 2nb underground levels, & that's cool, but the castle level for some reason to me really stands out.  Maybe it's cuz I tend to get a little lost in that level, & the PCE version looks more distinct in it's layout?

[_Paul]

Here's something interesting I noticed in Parodius.

Game screen
/parodius001.png

BG Layer
/parodius002.png

Sprite Layer
/parodius003.png

[geise]

I hated the whole rivalry bullshit with the ST and the Amiga.  The ST was a great machine and that SotB port was a shitty ass port by Eldrich the Cat.  The color choice was terrible.  The ST couldn't do as many onscreen colors as the amiga till the STe came out.  There was no excuse for there to be no music what so ever.  Some games on the ST are actually better than the amiga.  I owned both computers in the 80's and early 90's.  Both were great computers. 

Ark you said you were in the Amiga scene?  I thought you were 23?

[Arkhan Asylum]

Ark you said you were in the Amiga scene?  I thought you were 23?

I am 23.

I grew up with an Amiga 500.  my parents traded it for a 386.  Thank god for that.

At first I thought damn, what a mistake!  Commander Keen, etc. occurred.  I know longer thought it was a mistake.

I regret their choice occasionally, but then I remember what a pain the Amiga was.  revisiting that platform reminds me of the lameness.

I got into retrocomputing when I was like, 12.  I got a C64 for 5$ and was like MAN look at all these RPGs I missed!

I was actually going to program some games for it, but there were too many fuckfaces in that community so I peaced out and came here instead.  Their toolery brought you me! :3

[spenoza]

I was actually going to program some games for it, but there were too many fuckfaces in that community so I peaced out and came here instead.  Their toolery brought you me! :3

How much will we have to pay them to take you back?  ; )  I kid, of course. Atlantean looks fantastic and I don't want to give that back!

[Arkhan Asylum]

whats funny is, someone actually ported Berzerk after I left.  They did a arcade perfect port though.  No jazzy stuff like I was going to do.

I think T2KFreeker here did the art for the packaging actually?  Someone here did.

Fuck em.   Sucks to be them.  The one little group of dicks acted like I'd never get anywhere and I'm just some young loudmouth stomping in their turf.

They couldn't cope with my questioning them or calling them out on their stupidity.  Then, I made sure to show them Insanity when it released, and said "its not on the c64 because you guys are dicks." 

One of em has been MIA for awhile.  I'd like to think he left because I made him feel like trash.

[Tatsujin]

cool story bro

[Arkhan Asylum]

cool story bro

cslacker com/4952l.jpg

[ParanoiaDragon]

Here's something interesting I noticed in Parodius.

Game screen
/parodius001.png

BG Layer
/parodius002.png

Sprite Layer
/parodius003.png

??  Weird.  IIRC, that level(if not most the game) has zero parallax...looks like they were planning to do parallax maybe?

[CrackTiger]

??  Weird.  IIRC, that level(if not most the game) has zero parallax...looks like they were planning to do parallax maybe?

Might just be an attempt to save on the memory space of unique tiles.

[Tatsujin]

since that cherry tree starts to walk, they used a sprite below and a tile in the middle of it. may be it was to big for being one whole sprite? lol? \o/?

:edit: i just played until that point and hell there are sprite flickers in that tree. Someone should also check the half nacked lady painting in the background in stage 2. there were also a lot of flickers, even it's just a background. so i guess same there, half sprite half BG. but why?

btw. the cherry tree that walks is a full sprite.

[esteban]

The Amiga isn't generated audio.  It's samples.  That alone allows it to at least be somewhat comparable to a CD-Audio soundtrack.

As for chiptunes:

_{► /downloadables/sotb.mp3}

\o/

You have to do the entire soundtrack!

No, you really do.

Also, can you make this available as .hes file?

Mission IMPERATIVE.

[ccovell]

More hidden stuff in Beast CD:

offset 854808:

OH, LOOK.  SOME SPARE SPACE.  WE'LL JUST HAVE TO PUT IN A MESSAGE SINCE A CD WILL LAST FOREVER!
MIKE DAILLY   STEVE HAMMOND   RUSSELL KAY   WE ALL HATE TG16

[Mathius]

More hidden stuff in Beast CD:

offset 854808:

OH, LOOK.  SOME SPARE SPACE.  WE'LL JUST HAVE TO PUT IN A MESSAGE SINCE A CD WILL LAST FOREVER!
MIKE DAILLY   STEVE HAMMOND   RUSSELL KAY   WE ALL HATE TG16

Hopefully it is all in good humor.

[RegalSin]

How did you find that message?

At one point the Amiga was the European counter part to NEC. No dos bullcrap or crapple computer nonsense. The Apple beat the Amiga because of the size and extra lemoness. The SNES is considered to be a powered up Amiga. I even was into Amiga for awhile.

In America during the early 1990's a programmer, or a person into videogames would have tremendous ammount of disadain towards any system asides, the Commendore and Nintendo.

They probably thought the same thing, everybody is thinking now. They will never get notice, and no good could come of it. Probably the reason why we do not see no blimps ( yes I said blimps not blimp ) flying around in the background.

[Arkhan Asylum]

The Commendore 63 is a great machine.

[ccovell]

The Commendore 63 is a great machine.

Don't encourage the boy!

[Vecanti]

More hidden stuff in Beast CD:

offset 854808:

OH, LOOK.  SOME SPARE SPACE.  WE'LL JUST HAVE TO PUT IN A MESSAGE SINCE A CD WILL LAST FOREVER!
MIKE DAILLY   STEVE HAMMOND   RUSSELL KAY   WE ALL HATE TG16

Oh, I didn't realize the DMA guys did the port. 

Maybe we were close to a Walker port.

[ccovell]

They did!  Go here:  http://www.dmadesign.org

Multiple pages and sub-pages that also mention the PCE-CD

And definitely go here: http://dailly.blogspot.com/search?q=beast+tg16

More hidden things:



This is probably leftover data from an earlier version.  Probably some sprites are used for additional colours (palette unknown tho).  Possibly not accessible, but if any hackers wanna try...



This is loaded into the bottom of VRAM right before the parallax title screen/main game.  Obviously a large test sprite for debugging purposes.

This is the same fluffy tree as in Mike Dailly's early Beast ROM:

[Vecanti]

Thanks for those links Chris there was a ton of great reading from the old days.  Cool to see him still playing with PCE stuff too.  Anyone ever see any of the official devkit stuff?

[_Paul]

Hmm, Adventure Island castle breaking up at the beginning:

/adventureislandj001.png

[Arkhan Asylum]

ITS TURNING INTO MOON RUNES.

[ccovell]

Those are probably higher-priority sprites hidden behind the background to make a mask shape for the crumbling castle.