Amiga 500 V Atari ST - Shadow Of The Beast

Please use 720p for optimal playback. A simple comparison video of the classic 16-Bit game Shadow Of The Beast running on Both the Amiga 500 and the Atari ST. If you like what I do and wish to support me then please visit me on:

[paulolameiras]

Amiga 500 was ahead of its time. Fantastic system.

[ravengaming]

Back then it was "glorious Amiga master race".

[Music-tgis]

They should have titled the Atari ST version: "Shadow of the Amiga"

[CarozQH]

They could have done a much better Job with the ST version here. Turrican 1 and 2 on the ST had fluent multi-directional scrolling, this on the other hand...

[karlfairbourne]

Lol at the ST version, I remember playing this on my Amiga 500, that music is hard to forget.

[eightieschild]

As a child growing up in the 80s, I was thankfully there to appreciate the Amiga version of SOTB. Yes, it took a while to load, and the game play was impossible for me at the time, but that's what I loved about it. I used to sit for hours listening to the music on a loop, and that in itself gave me enjoyment (I have never since played a game with music that good). This was one of the first games that blew my balls off regarding the graphics and the music. This my friends was a game of artistic merit. The music still gives me goosebumps to this day.

I used to take the box and manual with me to read when I needed a poo, and that's what makes it so special. The box and manual was worth more than most games today. The effort they placed into the box art and manual can't be realised today. Even the smell of the manual was unique. As for the comparison between the Amiga and ST? Well personally I never knew anyone with an ST, so I was unaware of how advanced the Amiga was compared to the ST in this department. The ST had a nice following, but the Amiga wins on this comparison. Don't hate the ST, without the ST and general competition, the Amiga would have become lazy like Microsoft :)

But if you weren't around to play this game when it was originally released, then you really don't have a valid opinion. I have so many great memories from this game, and it's all related to the graphics and the music. It's the same with The Settlers, flight sims, Lemmings, Deluxe Paint polished products.

Today's world is a soulless fart box.

[TemalCageman]

Atari and Amiga were 16-bit systems.The main difference bewtween the two was that Amiga had custom chips for both graphics and sound (not that much different to modern 32 and 64 bit computers of today).

What made Atari popular among music producers and studios was the built in MIDI controller and a software called Cubase (a software I use today on modern PCs).

What made the Amiga popular was the graphics and a combination of software/hardware found with the Video Toaster (video editing in realtime, LightWave 3D). LightWave 3D is a software I use today as well.

Both of these platforms do deserve respect though, since without any of these machines we wouldn't be where we are today with computers.

All this said, the Amiga was a better games machine, out of the box, back then.

[Jurgh]

Can you believe it? Amiga 7 mhz clock speed and video as fluid as water flowing. The music still holds up to this date, 30 years on.

[sluggotg]

The Programmers may have been able to make a better ST version, but you still have to remember.. The Amiga had a palette of 4096 colors, 32 displayable normally, 64 in extrahalfbrite mode (very very handy) or 4096 in HAM or Sliced HAM High rez mode. The Atari St was still at 16 color from a palette of 512 end of story. The Amiga had hardware Graphics acceleration the ST had NONE. The MONO sound on the ST Sucked compared to the Amiga's 4 channel stereo sound. But wait the ST Fans always brag about the MIDI interface.... Yes folks I loved that and only had to pay $50 bucks to by a MIDI interface for any Amiga. The St was Very, Very cheap for the High End Performance it offered. But It was not a Fully Pre-emptive, Multitasking Operating System with Hardware Graphics Acceleration, 4 channel stereo sound, Ports to add a totally different CPU/Memory/SCSI interface and 4096 colors displayable on one screen... What did the original ST offer? A Killer machine at a very low price... but only 16 colors out of 512, Single tasking OS, Mono Sound, Only 720K per 3.5 floppy, (vs the Amiga's 880 per floppy), A CHEAPER PRICE and a MIDI INTERFACE. All said and done, I will take the Amiga, and ... my alternate an ST.
Sluggo

[Juganawt]

Man, seeing comparisons like this makes me glad I grew up on the Amiga side. That really is a horrible version the poor Atari users had - No parallax scrolling, what looks lke 15-20 frames per second, and washed out colours. At least the music stands up well.

[fastfred]

Amiga Forever.  Lots of copper vertical splitting going on here on the Amiga to create those nice parallax scrolling effects and colour gradients, along with dual-playfield and overscan + use of sprites + rich colour palette, something the Atari ST just could not muster in a million years.  I Remember going into Microbyte in Leeds in '89 about 4 months after leaving school with the £400 I saved up from working.  A large crowd was converging around this game and it blew everyones' mind ( from the 8-bits ), the ST was just sitting in the corner, running a load of rubbish.  The Amiga changed my life forever ( programming at the low level, and still do today ).

[alexsmyth]

Really loved that music, brought it all back..

[NeilVanceNeilVance]

I had the ST back then simply for the midi sequencing side and I always knew it was shitty for games. The Amiga was the winner for gaming hands down! (whatever hands down means)

[Alisa]

I wish the Atari ST would have the BLITTER-Chip from the beginning. Things would be different!

[Gigadenza]

Yep, one of the most depressing experiences of my childhood was seeing this game on two of my best friend's computers, the first, like me, owned a 520 ST (complete with a soldered 1 meg upgrade), the second, an Amiga 500. I'd already seen the Amiga version and was considering purchasing a copy myself....but after witnessing his Atari jerk and stutter through those parallax backgrounds at about half the speed and smoothness, and in funerial silence save for the woefully inferior sound effects, I decided to save my paper round money for a more worthy cause! I didn't even tell him how vastly better the Amiga port was since I knew it would depress him even more than I, having already waited for months and so eagerly for the game's release. But every time I visited my "Amiga" friend and saw yet another game I had on my ST rendered in such manifestly superior quality I wanted to give his computer a massive elbow drop! Thank heavens thee were a few titles where the ST turned the tables....and features such as its MIDI capabilities arguably gave it a longer life...albeit in a non-gaming context!

[SD]

Atari version: "MY EARS...MAKE IT STOP!!!1"

[laffer]

It's funny what nostalgia can do, I actually still enjoy all three Beast games so much that I got boxed copies of them on eBay, quite a while ago now.
I played them so much that eventually I could semi-consistently finish them without cheating, but I'm not sure I could do that now... not without some practice first to refresh my memory anyway (especially with Beast 1, I find that is the one requiring the most memorization).

[snkneo-geo]

I had Amiga with the Batman pack in December 89 loved it.

[GuruMediator]

Thank you, yeah I must admit I was quite surprised, in my rose tinted memory the Atari version didn't seem to bad. And people quibble about the differences on current gen systems lol.

[jtno]

I think the biggest problem is that most of the best games were designed specifically around the Amiga, not the Atari ST. The Amiga had a huge advantage in owners and always had dibs on getting games developed for it. The Atari ST owners had to settle for a lot of ports. Then again, I could be wrong.