Commando: A Home Port Comparison
https://a.lemmy.world/lemmy.world/post/3994305
#Gaming #RetroGaming #SpeccyVsTheWorld #Commando #ZXSpectrum #Amstrad #C64
#speccyvstheworld — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #speccyvstheworld, aggregated by home.social.
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Vigilante: A Home Port Comparison
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I played a lot of Rastan Saga so you don't have to:
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#GreenBeret is a hard game to love because Green Beret is a hard game to play! It got ports though, so comparisons must be made.
A simple game: run to the right, murder fools with your knife and healthy fear of communism.
#Amstrad is worst of all. Your guy looks like Robin Hood and it's hard as balls. #Spectrum is better. Crisp graphics, but hard as balls. The #C64 port looks great and plays well but has some obscene hit boxes. Also balls hard.
Narrow C64 win!
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To celebrate #Furrtek's beta release of the #TMNT arcade game core for #MiSTerFPGA, I thought I'd compare the 8-bit micro ports. For science!
The original arcade is famous for being the game that made you wish you had enough friends to play it properly. It was also big, bold, colourful and sounded amazing... so it should be fine on our ageing 8-bit pals, right?
Luckily, they're all pretty good. But which port is the true "party dude"? #Cowabunga!
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To mark #Wrestlemania and the forthcoming arrest of a #WWE Hall-of-Famer, I thought I'd take a look at the only WWF game to make it to the 8-bit micros: WWF Wrestlemania.
It's a late game, from 1991, from a time when the UK was just getting used to the idea that wrestling wasn't just a Saturday lunchtime thing, performed by larger gentlemen called Giant Haystacks or Big Daddy...
So how did such a big event thing compress down into our under-powered pals?
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What #videogame jumps into your mind when you think of #CouchMultiplayer?
Halo? Goldeneye? Overcooked?
For me, couch multiplayer gaming will always be #CaliforniaGames. It was a game that my friends and I played endlessly back in 1989. Couldn't get enough of it... To this day, it remains one of my favourite #Sega #MasterSystem games.
It also got a tonne of ports... but were are any of them any good?
Join the hack and find out, my dude...
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I'd love to hear the conversation that took place sometime in the early 90s about converting #Lemmings to the #Spectrum
"Sir, we've got this great idea for a Spectrum port!"
"Go on..."
"It's colourful, mouse-driven, with pixel-level graphic detail and many, many moving characters."
"Ummm..."Anyway, somehow someone thought it would be possible and it happened. It happened to all the 8-bits.
But did it end up as a floater or was it led over the edge to die?
Let's go!
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Is #ShadowOfTheBeast on the Amiga a game or a tech demo?
I think it's both! But it was way better at one of those than it was at the other...
It also found its way from the more-than-capable #Amiga to the less-capable 8-bit machines, during a time when the direction of ports was reversing.
Previously, 8-bit games got jazzed up and pushed out on the 16-bits; later, 16-bit marvels got their wings clipped and were squeezed into the older machines...
So, how did they do?
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Buggy Boy (Speed Buggy in the US) always felt like a game that deserved to be remembered more fondly. Sadly, it always seems to fall through the cracks between the likes of Outrun, Power Drift and Chase HQ.
This is a shame, because it is a fun little racer that received some mostly decent 8-bit ports on the #Amstrad, #C64 and #Spectrum.
But which one was the Buggy-est Boy of all? Step this way...
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In the UK, we have a peculiar turn of phrase: "to make a good fist of" something. It means to put up a good show, to make the best of what you have, a solid attempt.
And if you ever need to demonstrate to a non-English speaker what this means, you can show them the 8-bit micro ports of #GoldenAxe
Neither the #Amstrad, #C64 or #Spectrum should be capable of running this game well. Yet, somehow, they all make a really good fist of it.
But which fist is best?
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In the world of 8-bit comparison science, the #Amstrad often gets short shrift, and rightly so. Being the least-popular of the 8-bit brothers, the Amstrad was cursed with too many lazy ports and half-arsed conversions.
But it wasn't the Amstrad's fault... A victim of emotionless capitalism, the Amstrad was capable of so much more than shoddy #Spectrum ports.
Like, for example, #Renegade.
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Remember #Karnov? The 80s coin-op about a portly, topless Russian guy that you're not entirely convinced you didn't dream up when you were "figuring yourself out"? Well, it was real, and it had 8-bit ports.
All are plucky attempts that capture the arcade well. All have limitations, but all feel like Karnov.
#Amstrad is garish and slow, #Spectrum is surprisingly fast and colourful!
And, for some reason #C64 looks like a #Spectrum port! Block scroll and all!
A Speccy win!
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If you've played #Outrun, you know that it's fast, bright, cool... but if you only ever saw the 8-bit ports, you'd have a very different impression.
They're not great. The #Amstrad is a mess: slow, ugly, with bad sound. #C64 is better: fast and smooth, but is so drab! And then the #Spectrum... okay, it's slow. Real slow. And it looks... Speccy. But there's something there. Something "Outrun".
In fact, setting the system to 7Mhz, it actually feels Outrun! Does that count?
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#Turrican is a difficult beast to love. It feels more like a tech demo than a game. It's fiddly, imprecise, too much happening on screen. And the limited controls make it difficult to access better weaponry.
All of ports suffer, so it really comes down to aesthetics. The #Spectrum and #Amstrad ports clearly share DNA. They're clunky and slow. The Speccy looks like something has gone wrong.
The #Amiga port is pretty and builds on the #C64 original, which is drab but smooth.
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#StuntCarRacer was the first #Amiga game I ever saw in person. It made me feel sick - sick because of the wild jumps and drops, and sick because I didn't own an Amiga. So I was jumping for joy when the lesser 8-bits got ports...
And, honestly, it's an 80's miracle they run so well.
The #Amstrad port is a little slow, but colourful. The #Spectrum is gaudy yellow, and runs a little better. But it's the #C64 version that shines, feeling remarkably close to the Amiga original.
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Coin-op #Gauntlet mixed predatory micro-transactions with handy life-tips ("Don't shoot food"), but is mostly remembered for its hefty 4-player cabinet.
The home ports lose 2 of the 4 players (and the coin guzzling) but keep most everything else except the speech samples.
They're all good and reproduce the coin-op faithfully, albeit with fewer enemies. The #Amstrad and #Spectrum slightly edge out the #C64, but there's not much in it.
Let's say Amstrad win, for colour alone.
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Amidst the misery of the 8-bit wars, #BruceLee was something of a welcome ceasefire. Like a game of football in no-man's-land on Christmas Day, it was a friendly reminder that we're all cool really. Even #Amstrad.
Bruce Lee is a great game, whether on #C64, #Spectrum or even #Atari. It had fluid controls, charming looks, quirky enemies and a kind of proto-metroidvania gameplay loop.
It was the game everyone completed - not because it was too easy, but because it was cool.
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Do you remember the first game you ever paid money for? Mine was Ghosts and Goblins on the #Spectrum... saved up my money, got lured in by the #C64 screenshots on the box... and I was deeply disappointed. Carried that £7.99 of regret with me for years.
Looking back, it's not bad (unlike the #Amstrad version). It's just rock hard and a little bit indistinct.
The true hero though is the C64 version. It moves and plays well, and has some awesome spooky-ass music.
C64 win!
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By the late 80s, home arcade ports fell into two categories: ports that try to retain as much as possible of the arcade, but fall foul of hardware limitations; and ports that take inspiration from the original, but are basically new games.
The #Amstrad and #Spectrum ports of #BlackTiger are the former - clunky, monochrome, but clearly Black Tiger. While the #C64 is the latter - smooth with tiny sprites and different mechanics.
A narrow Spectrum win, based on moxy alone.
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Some folks claim that the NES version of Marble Madness is the best home port. I can't possibly comment on that, as my remit is purely the 8-bit micros.
And on those, I can safely say that the #C64 wins. It is the only port that actually attempts to convert the coin-op. It's not bad either. Not great, not terrible.
The #Spectrum and #Amstrad, on the other hand, got something else. Something slow, painful and annoying. With a construction kit...
Play #Spindizzy instead.
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Long story short, none of the 8-bit micros got a decent Double Dragon port. They're all flawed in their own ways, and all suffer from only having a single joystick button.
The #Amstrad version is incredibly slow... slower than you can possibly imagine. The #C64 version is smoother and faster, but really janky and doesn't feel very #DoubleDragon. The #Spectrum version is quite slow, feels a bit like the arcade, but looks gross.
So nobody wins here. But wait, there's more...
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The 8-bit ports of Altered Beast were destined to fail. Coming too late, doomed in comparison to both the Master System and the Megadrive version, and based on a mediocre arcade game. It could only end badly.
And they are broadly terrible.
The #Amstrad is piss poor: slow, gaudy, looks like sick. #C64 is drab and feels off.
The #Spectrum kinda looks like something went wrong! Everything is everywhere! But it plays okay, I suppose.
Winner? No-one wins, it's Altered Beast.
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By far the best port of #Shinobi is on the Sega Master System, because it replaces the brutal one-hit-kills with a forgiving energy system.
By contrast, the 8-bit micros stick with the one-hit regime, and all suffer for it. The #Amstrad version is okay - chunky, colourful, choppy. The #C64 is smooth but drab, and has no music...
The #Spectrum is the worst of the bunch. Insanely hard, invisible bullets, leaps of faith. Back to ninja school for the Spectrum! Sob.
C64 win!
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In case you've never played it, Rastan is a game about a man being endlessly harangued by impatient bats.
All of the 8-bit ports capture this bat-harassment well, almost too well, in fact, as all of them seem more than willing to launch countless flocks of them at you.
The #Amstrad version is slow as balls, but looks okay. The #C64 is smooth but also pretty slow. The #Spectrum is cyan and magenta, but plays really well. Good music for the C64 and Speccy.
Narrow Speccy win?
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#RType is the greatest game ever made, right? Right? No? Then get off my land, you pervert. It just is.
The 8-bit ports of the game were mixed: the #Amstrad got a terrible, slow, drab port; #C64 got a fun shooter that felt loosely based on the source.
But it's the #Spectrum port that really shines. More colourful than it had right to be, fast, faithful, fun. It was a weird kind of miracle: so accurate you could use your arcade learnings to do well.
A clear #Speccy win!
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The weird thing about old arcade ports is how different the individual versions could be. It wasn't like today where the Xbox and PS versions are basically identical but for the button prompts.
Back in the 80s, the big 8-bit systems sometimes got completely different games!
Like Dragon Ninja... in this case, the #Amstrad is a terrible, colourful mess. The #Speccy is okay-ish. Only the #C64 seems to bear any resemblance to the source.
A Commodore win here!
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Not to belabour the point, but the #Spectrum knocked out some cracking arcade ports...
This is Rainbow Islands... From a distance, if you squint hard enough, the normally-chromatically-challenged Speccy version is just as colourful as the other ports. It also plays wonderfully, matching the excellent C64 version and easily beating the sluggish Amstrad version!
Call this one a draw, if you like, but for sheer chutzpah alone, the Spectrum clinches the tie-breaker.
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Feels frivolous to be still engaging in 35 year old arguments... but some ancient defensiveness surfaced while watching a #JeffGerstman retro stream.
He was playing Speccy Pit Fighter and snickering about how amazing it was that anyone ever enjoyed it.
But Pit Fighter on the Spectrum was NEVER good. Nobody enjoyed it, even at the time... YS gave it 30%! It was a death rattle!
There are games that hold up though, like Chase HQ... Look at it! So crisp!
Play those games Jeff!