Spectrum Computing

what are some examples of a game ending up Worse during a port to another system

C64 to Amiga

Spectrum to C64

Nes To Sega Master Sytem

Arcade port to Home conversion (Atari etc)

C64 to Amiga - Wizball

Spectrum to C64 - quite a lot. Especially when they were lazy and instead of rewriting the game did som quasi emulation of Spectrum.

Check Karnov or Chase HQ. Looks like Spectrum but is so much slower. C64 users hated these conversion.


Arcade to home conversion??? Do you mean when it got worse when converted from arcade to home computer? Actually I would say 100% of cases , at least in graphics, music, animation. Or did you mean something else?

Mr. Heli looks crap on the Speccy because the graphics were designed in lo-res colour for the Amstrad and not touched up for the Spectrum. Similarly it looks crap on the Amstrad as both versions were limited to the size of 2/3 of the Speccy screen.

Apparently Tetris was supposedly best on the ZX Spectrum, with the 16-bit machines of the day doing badly. Not because of technical limitations (obviously!) but because of the daft idea to have shimmering background graphics which became distracting. (Disclaimer: Never touched the Atari ST or Amiga versions, so no idea if this summary is true.)

I think Feud comes out best on the ZX Spectrum, it certainly feels like the lead version. The C64 conversion was seriously wrong, with the programmer just taking short cuts and so you get a game that rarely makes any sense. The Amiga take on it is absolutely lamentable - the screenshots look great, but the animation is awful, plus very little happens in the game at all. It's incredibly dull, may as well be called Walk Round The Countryside Simulator.

Mr. Heli looks crap on the Speccy because the graphics were designed in lo-res colour

You should check my mod of Mr Heli then I retouched all the graphics.

[media]https://youtu.be/eaDsjJV-ntE[/media]

Actually it's a good game with smooth gameplay and good difficulty.

PeteProdge wrote: ↑Fri May 25, 2018 12:43 pm The Amiga take on it is absolutely lamentable - the screenshots look great

Not even sure about that, horrid PC graphics IMO.

Ralf wrote: ↑Fri May 25, 2018 12:44 pmYou should check my mod of Mr Heli then I retouched all the graphics.

Now that looks really good.

Ralf wrote: ↑Fri May 25, 2018 12:44 pm

Mr. Heli looks crap on the Speccy because the graphics were designed in lo-res colour

You should check my mod of Mr Heli then I retouched all the graphics.

[media]https://youtu.be/eaDsjJV-ntE[/media]

Actually it's a good game with smooth gameplay and good difficulty.

out of curiosity, why is the screen yellow throughout? can't the spectrum allow a wider pallete like in Exolon? (which btw, glitches on zxspin. the lives turn infinite for some reason)

C64 to Spectrum: One on One
Arcade to Spectrum: Kung Fu Master

out of curiosity, why is the screen yellow throughout? can't the spectrum allow a wider pallete like in Exolon? (which btw, glitches on zxspin. the lives turn infinite for some reason)

You should definitely do some reading on Spectrum display limitations and "colour clash"

Ralf wrote: ↑Fri May 25, 2018 10:36 pm

out of curiosity, why is the screen yellow throughout? can't the spectrum allow a wider pallete like in Exolon? (which btw, glitches on zxspin. the lives turn infinite for some reason)

You should definitely do some reading on Spectrum display limitations and "colour clash"

Colour is not proper. anyway, i'll do that

you did a nice job. are you going to release the source code?

PeteProdge wrote: ↑Fri May 25, 2018 12:43 pm Apparently Tetris was supposedly best on the ZX Spectrum, with the 16-bit machines of the day doing badly. Not because of technical limitations (obviously!) but because of the daft idea to have shimmering background graphics which became distracting

Agree. I always disable the backgrounds, but later I discovered Frantisek Fuka's Tetris 2, the best Tetris for the system IMO (https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 96&id=5213)

Arcade to Spectrum (and almost any other system) Double Dragon
Arcade to C64: Space Harrier

Now, I always like to draw a line between ports and conversions. For me a port is something that tries to recreate the original as much as possible, reuse assets, etc. A conversion tries to deconstruct the original, and adapt the concept to the system, taking into account the limitations.

An example of port could be Golden Axe for the Spectrum: Graphics are converted without any retouching, and the intention for retain some color ended up producing almost too fast blocky movements.
An example of conversion could be Arkanoid: no distracting backgrounds and an interesting movement mechanic that tries to compensate the lack of trackball.

so, what could be an example of a spectrum port turning out worse on the c64 or a c64 port turning out worse on the amiga?

Jet Set Willy. The C64 version is just embarrassingly crap.