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by kristiandupont
1224 days ago
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I remember playing Turrican 2 on the Amiga and being rather upset that it was just impossible to replicate on the PC which was what I considered "home" at the time. Then, at a demo party in Aars in Denmark, I was walking around and I spotted some guy who must have been developing this exact piece of software because I saw what was definitely Turrican 2 running on what certainly looked like a PC (they were quite easy to spot). At the time, I was pretty well aware of what you could do with the PC and VGA in assembly language (The Copper demo particularly occupied me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KeMtiYi808), and I knew that remaking this game would be close to impossible. I stared at his monitor from afar for a good 20 minutes but I didn't have the courage to approach this god-like developer (I must have been 14) so sadly, I never found out where his magical skills came from or whether or not he was a nice guy. |
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I think for a long time PC games had a rough problem; 'What is the 'lowest common denominator' that you can code your game to so that it reaches the largest audience possible in a semi-nascent industry?'
The 386 was introduced in 1985, the 486 in 1989, but it took a while for games to require a 386, let alone a 486.
On the flip-side, the Amiga benefited from a very good 'standard' video chipset and sound setup. There's a few 'interesting' PC releases that are hard to run nowadays because they were bundled with non-standard 3d hardware.
To say nothing of dealing with segmented arch of the 286[0]. Dos4G(/W) was a godsend for a lot of developers, I am sure. Same for Mode X.
Turrican 2 is indeed impressive for it's time from the videos I've seen. It took a while for PC's to catch up[1] and I would say Jazz Jackrabbit is the first DOS game that comes to mind that could best what I see in Turrican 2[2]. But that was 1994 (3ish years later) and needed a 486 to really sing with sound and all.
Factor 5 is a really talented set of devs. Nintendo folks know them for some of their N64 work, where they were able to push the limits of that system too.
[0] - I never learned segmented arch. Even back in 2003 or so when I took X86 Asm in college it was a footnote of "yeah we don't do that anymore for reasons".
[1] - Monster Bash, FWIW, is pretty smooth and fast (even though the art is limited by EGA) and runs on a 286. But even that was a 1993 release.
[2] Yes I know Doom came out in 1993 and changed my life. But it's still a different comparison to a fast-paced 2d platformer.