ye olde computer games that were wildly different on different platforms

this seemed to be a 'thing' in the 80s, particularly between spectrum and c64, and obvious between 16 and 8 bit. a friend named action biker and wizball as examples, and i always remember a game called 'saboteur' having screenshots of various versions on the back and being devastated when i realised my version (c64) was crappy 2d rubbishness against the cinematic wowfest that was the atari st or spectrum images. i was 8 yrs old and it stuck with me to this day.

what other games are there? and which version was best?!

apparently 'feud' was another, with the amstrad version trouncing the rest

Chucky Egg had famously different physics on different machines. BBC and Spectrum were the two key differences i think

Chuckie Egg even

http://www.retrogamesnow.co.uk/chuckie-egg-spectrum-vs-bbc-micro/

seem to recall having learned to beat Rainbow Islands on one version - possibly Spectrum again - i really struggled with bosses on other versions, but this wasn't necessarily a physics difference

it's such an interesting little quirk of gaming history, fascinating. at the time it didn't feel strange at all but looking back it's bizarre. not so much with the likes of chuckie egg and rainbow island where the game basically looks the same but performs a bit differently but actual *entirely different games* under the same name. happened a lot with film tie-ins i think (one of the robocops was a fucker for this, robocop 3? totally different game from amiga to c64) but i keep coming back to the 'saboteur' one as inexplicable - why not just give it an alternative name?

would love to read a lengthy article on all this. wracking my brains to try and think of more, seemed so common but can't recall any of the others

Thrust

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/59/Pac-man.png

http://gamehall.uol.com.br/galerias/_atari2600_pacman/pacman012fh.gif

actually, pretty much everything that was ported to the Atari 2600

Outrun on Speccy, c64, Amstrad, and Amiga:

http://openbytes.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/out-run1.jpg
http://www.lemon64.com/games/screenshots/full/o/outrun_05.gif
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_G8-NchROEFI/S_HTSLK5-4I/AAAAAAAAAD0/rlKgsGn-n18/s320/Out_Run_stage_1_(cpc).png
http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/317070-outrun-amiga-screenshot-stage-3s.png

http://openbytes.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/out-run1.jpg
http://www.lemon64.com/games/screenshots/full/o/outrun_05.gif
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_G8-NchROEFI/S_HTSLK5-4I/AAAAAAAAAD0/rlKgsGn-n18/s320/Out_Run_stage_1_(cpc).png
http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/317070-outrun-amiga-screenshot-stage-3s.png

And an interesting blog about the subject
http://frgcb.blogspot.co.uk/

Their Wizball entry
http://frgcb.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/wizball-ocean-1987.html

that frgcb blog is excellent, bringing back many many memories - not least of which the brilliance of FIST II

FIST II's music still occasionally haunts my dreams

http://static.gamesradar.com/images/mb/GamesRadar/us/Daily/2010/09-Sept/06/the%20top%207%20worst%20ports/street_fighter_II_spectrum--article_image.jpg
http://www.lemon64.com/games/screenshots/full/s/street_fighter_ii_08.gif

Street Fighter 2 had some hilariously wildly varying ports, although by that point it was kind of obvious that there were machines you could get the pure experience on and the duffer 80s machines were pointlessly struggling to keep up

this blog is reminding me just how shitty the spectrum graphics were, god knows why i wanted one. what's the deal with the non-coloured-in sprites? the fist 2 review claims "attribute clash phenomenon" - what is that, in layman's terms?

Most computers allow the colour of pixels to be set individually. The Spectrum only allows colours to be assigned to blocks of 8 x 8 pixels.

something to do with colours being in 8x8 blocks of pixels. nobody cared. good designers worked around it, and the Speccy still had the deepest, sweetest games of its era.

like what snoball said

(actually two colours per 8 x 8 block - one colour for the foreground and one colour for the background)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribute_clash

yeah coding the actual pixel and coding any colour were two seperate things.

you could plot a pixel on or off for the hires screen but you could only pick the foreground and backhround colour for the lores part.

as someone already said. good developers managed some clever tricks to get the best results

Since it gets mentioned on the attribute clash page, I played the hell out of this game on the Speccy and it's a case in point: http://www.mobygames.com/game/dan-dare-pilot-of-the-future/screenshots

http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/s/665334-dan-dare-pilot-of-the-future-zx-spectrum-screenshot-this-kind.jpg
ZX Spectrum: Dan Dare jumps and laser-blasts his way through four blue levels of futuristic military base before returning to his ship, which Digby is guarding. Lives mechanism: energy bar; losing all energy results in awaking at a preset point with a depleted timer.

http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/s/71754-dan-dare-pilot-of-the-future-commodore-64-screenshot-lookout.jpg
C64: Dan Dare fist-fights his way through an object-clicking adventure in grey caverns and underground lakes to rescue kidnapped Digby. Lives mechanism: single life, no energy bar, so fights are usually best avoided.

A lot of arcade conversions and film tie-ins ended up different on different platforms because one software house would buy the rights and give each platform to a programming team specific to that computer to work to the same deadline without seeing what the other teams were doing. I guess that's what happened here too even though both versions are credited to "Gang of Five" for Virgin Games. I'd assumed "Gang of Five" was the programming team but the actual programmers listed are different on worldofspectrum vs lemon64.

As I understand it, the Speccy really was a lovable mess of (sometimes ingeniously, sometimes shockingly) cut corners, engineering-wise...

I got totally conned by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which I'd played on my friends NES. Picked it up for my spectrum, and boy was it not the same. It looked similar enough but played like absolute junk. I remember using a Poke tape to complete it though...

It's one of the things I find really interesting about the old video game days - there would often be totally different teams(or even just one dude)/companies that worked on the different platforms of a single game. When you read articles on the development process back then it was nuts - particularly with arcade conversions. They'd often have a day with the actual arcade cabinet in which they'd play through it and take photos/notes as they went, then that's all the resources they would have for building a complete port. So obviously loads of the more subtle physics/movement/etc would be just down to how these guys vaguely remembered it from the one time they saw the real thing running.

that dan dare is a great example of the thread title.

(full disclosure: i was a c64 kid so always had a slight anti-spectrum leaning (despite wanting one so so much). i'm guessing there's already been an ilx thread on the virtues of spectrum vs c64 etc?)

craigg, can you recommend the best development process articles? in fact, would love to read a well-written book about the early-mid days of computer game making. know a few ex-game makers here in manchester and their stories of what it was like in the late 80s/early 90s are real wild west crazy shit

(xp)
yr first computer show them to me lulz

my first pc gaming rig was a 386 (maybe lower!) w/ about 256k of ram and maybe 30-40 mb hard drive..

craigg, can you recommend the best development process articles?

It's mostly from reading Retro Gamer Magazine - it's a common theme that pops up in interviews with dudes from back in the day, or articles about terrible/great ports.

Not an article/book, but there's a movie "From Bedrooms to Billions" coming out (soon, I think) about the British game industry that could be interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw-ZT8RzGyQ

wish i cd watch this here at work but it'll have to wait. anything with Jeff Minter in is gonna be watchable

wandering off-topic i suppose but c'mon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWmmMZlhcqU

not so olde but relevant anyway:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/de-making-halo-remaking-art-180949802/?no-ist

There was a good article in the Retro Gamer 30th Anniversary book for C64/Spectrum showing that some US games for the Commodore were different to the UK versions. Mostly arcade conversions programmed by different teams.

Noticeable one was Afterburner, the UK version had some horrible intrusive border display whereas the US version removed it but sacrificed on some of the terrain sprites but ultimately came out better.

I remember Ocean released two Nightbreed games, though I don't know if that counts. (I remember being surprised when I bought one thinking it was the other though). The spec/C64 game was side scrolling stuff, and the Amiga was a ridiculous mess of an 'action/adventure'. Were Ocean guilty of this a lot? I'm vaguely remembering something similar with T2 licenses...

Amiga. (Both action and adventure were available on Amiga, which muddies things somewhat. Part of a planned trilogy. So maybe this doesn't count)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5dIAf9TWhk

Spectrum

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Dn1Z_jvU5uE/TbxnW9VWZCI/AAAAAAAADTM/uWUttrth4RA/s1600/Night_Breed_ZX_04.png

Arcade

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMm4mt8JPjI

Multi-genre

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uKgE2ma84c

This bugged me too, because I wanted one and got the other, though for the life of me I can't remember which. Or why.

But again, this is within one platform, so sorry for posting if it's wildly off topic. I think it has something to do with the phenomenon though.

no that's totally on-topic. nightbreed certainly rings a bell for this, recall being stung by it too. v surprised about the us/uk differences, didn't know that was a thing too, jesus.

that bedrooms/billions doc looks great but i can't help thinking there's a superb book waiting to be written about all this. like a 'please kill me'/'superstar djs' kinda thing

mentioned above but this is the defining example of the thread title for me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6scnqwKufY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W73RG6d6B7Y

ridiculously different

Terminator 2 is kind of a different case, because there were a ton of games released around the time of the movie that had nothing to do with each other (or much to do with the movie, for that matter).

Despite being almost exactly the same game, the first Robotnick boss was about 10x harder to beat on the Sega Game Gear compared to the Master System version. IIRC a ball would bounce along and you'd have to jump out the way and kill Robotnick. On the Master System you could just jump over the ball but on the Game Gear it bounced at different heights, often disappearing offscreen which made it much much more difficult to predict.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KkldXkXlQag/TN0_Z9erhOI/AAAAAAAAAW8/H5magkF7wmU/s400/batman04.jpg
http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/square_small/1/11918/2323322-batman_the_movie_amiga__bat_anchor.png

that said, you only get ot the car in level 2. i don't know if i ever beat level 1 of that game (i played it on atari st so it looked about as good as the amiga version below, never played it on the spectrum)

that game was so good

one of the robocops was a fucker for this, robocop 3? totally different game from amiga to c64

yeah i've suddenly remembered this, the Amiga verzh was an interesting proto-FPS, possibly with different game types for different levels iirc, but the C64 was yr standard side-scrolling run and gun i think?

see NI's post just above

oops soz, got pics turned off

So were licenses a factor in this?

yeah robocop 3 was different types of game for each level - must have been a major ballache doing this back then. i remember being really impressed with it all, esp the weirdy FPS stuff