Well this is a bit of a shocker and one I didn't think I'd be writing up on Christmas Eve. As that legendary game character Sonic from the Sonic the Hedgehog, which appeared on multiple systems, has appeared as a pretty impressive tech demo by RetroRic for the Commodore Amiga. An almost complete level 1 of Mega Drive Sonic the Hedgehog, in both 32 colour and 16 colour versions requiring any Amiga with 2 MB chipram! To find out more read on :)
And here's the full details from RetroRic. "I had the idea of trying to bring Sonic to the Amiga earlier this year, but with the current projects I had in the pipeline, I decided to put it on the back burner and revisit it sometime in the future. With news of Reassembler's new Sonic project for the Amiga, I realised that there wasn't much point in keeping this project alive, as I'm sure his version of Sonic on the Amiga will be built from the ground up and will have dedicated code to try and squeeze Sonic onto the platform. I couldn't quite let it die though, I really wanted to see what was possible with the Scorpion Engine regarding Sonic, so I decided just to make a tech demo for my own creative curiosity."
Furthermore he goes on to say "Initially it was only meant to be a graphical demo and I was finished after about a week of beavering away. Then one thing led to another and before I knew it, the project had ballooned beyond a graphical demo to an almost complete level 1 of Mega Drive Sonic the Hedgehog, in both 32 colour and 16 colour versions."
Minimum Requirements
- Any Amiga with 2 MB chipram
- PAL 50hz @ 288x224
Credits
- Created by RetroRic Presents for educational purposes only. For “Amiga Sonic” Scorpion Engine Project Files and other exclusive benefits and updates visit: www.patreon.com/RetroRic79
Links :1) Source
well that's amazing , please allow me to share some of my thoughts as an amiga fun but i also love the mega drive/genesis.
ReplyDeleteSega mega drive is a very powerful 2D platform and is very well designed around its strong sprite engine. So all these years people say that AMIGA 500 could not run it. So this demo proves them so wrong.
First of all using ECS with only 1MB of ram nowadays because this is how it was used to be.. its not very clever. All new amiga 500 games should be 2MB.
its so unfair because when you use a console its like having more that 1MB all the time due to cartridge instant access.
As the demo proves even with 16 colors it still amazing and without further optimizations and its also in the scorpion engine which still develops.
The Amiga 500 already proved that it could run a game like sonic 1,2 just check Kid chaos (which is better technically than sonic 1) and Mr. Nutz.
Archiving similar results on the Amiga seems to be more difficult but it is what it is.
Many thanks to the developer for this amazing effort.
Lets see how reassemble version would be.
Best
As I've commented before, resorting to a 2MB Chip RAM Requirement on ECS is generally not a great idea if you want people to be able to play your game on vintage hardware. A 2MB total RAM requirement (with 1 MB of that being Chip) makes perfect sense these days.
DeleteMost A500’s can cheaply & easily be upgraded to 1 MB Chip (very simple board mod), same goes for Fast RAM. Unless you have an A500+ or A600, a 2MB Chip RAM upgrade will cost you a small fortune & that's if you can find one! Even with the Chip RAM requirement it’s nice to see more Sonic news & I can always give the demo a try on my A1200.
That was just the requirement to get a 1:1 replication of Sonic on the Amiga. The 16 colour version almost gets into 1.5chip, but I would have had to cut some stuff down to get it there and that wasn't really the main aim of the project.
DeleteAt least for the Amiga 600, upgrading to a 2 MB chip plus a little Fastram isn't that expensive.
Delete@RetroRic
DeleteIf 2MB Chip RAM is needed then it is what it is, which is pretty cool for Sonic fans with the RAM. Hopefully in the not too distant future there will be cheaper Chip RAM upgrades for A500’s & A2000’s not all that long after “The Buffee Project” accelerator part of the project is sorted. It’s been progressing well lately from what I gather, so many more people will be able to enjoy your port on their vintage systems eventually.
Kid Chaos is not more technically impressive than Sonic, not even close. To say such is to ignore all of the subtleties and cool things going on visually in Sonic.
DeleteDont agree but its ok, better parallax , better performance , more enemies on screen that are smooth and its not even a 2MB game.
DeleteThis is pretty amazing! It also shows what the Scorpion engine is, already, capable of, but also pretty much guarantees that Reassembler's project will be successful. Hope RetroRic will continue his talents on other Amiga projects (Revenge of Shinobi please 😁)
ReplyDeleteRevenge of Shinobi.... Black Tiger / Black Dragon!!!!!! PLEASE! :) or Gun Smoke!
DeleteI'm a little confused. Is this particular demo running on an OCS or AGA Amiga? Also: there's a 16-colour AND 32-colour version? I'm assuming this demo is the 16-colour version. Is there anywhere we can view the 32-colour version?
ReplyDeleteOn a separate note, this is a terrific testament to the power of the Scorpion engine - bravo!
There are two version: The Ecs with 16 colors and the second Aga 32 colors.
ReplyDeleteYeah there are specific AGA versions of the 32 colour demo as they use fetch mode and things like that to improve performance.
DeleteThanks for your response. Does anyone have a link to the 32-colour AGA version? Thanks!
Delete@Midwinter
ReplyDeleteThis game requires 2MB Chip RAM so is only for AGA & a minority of ECS Agnus equipped Amigas that have 2MB Chip RAM.
An Amiga with an OCS Agnus (or a machine that has the ECS 8372A 1MB Agnus like many A500’s but hasn’t had the very simple motherboard mod done) can only address 512Kb Chip RAM.
ECS can be 1 or 2MB Chip RAM depending on the machine (A500+ & A600 comes with a 2MB capable Agnus) or type of Agnus/upgrade.
Thanks for your explanation! Looking at this demo, I am astonished that it requires 2MB of chip RAM. I am not seeing it do anything that Kid Chaos doesn't do - and KC is designed for a basic OCS Amiga with 512K chip ram & 512K Fast RAM.
DeleteAs good as this Sonic demo is, there seems to be a very limited set of tiles and colours being used. Frankly, Kid Chaos looks visually more sophisticated to me.
The whole ECS OCS situation can be confusing (even some devs seem to not fully understand which isn't ideal!) so happy to clarify. Sonic & Kid Chaos obviously are visually similar to some degree but far from identical, so RetroRic can't just copy whatever cleaver technique Kid Chaos devs used.
DeleteUnderstood. And I realise that a large part of the disparity is that Sonic and Kid Chaos were designed for two very different sets of hardware. Trying to convert one to the other is not straightforward.
DeleteThis is a nice compromise, game requires an ECS/AGA 2 MB chip ram Amiga. But an OCS A500 version with 1 MB ram was meant with A500 1:1 version not being possible. And there are still many missing levels and missing features like game logic and background animations of water. These background animations can likely be easily done with color cycling, if there is just enough colors available. But yeah looks nice anyway, hopefully the game is fully implemented, its going to be a lot more work.
ReplyDeleteThis shows how awesome Scorpion Engine is. SE doesn't seem to get the credit it deserves, but the things you can achieve with this tool - without any programming knowledge - often comes close to what can be done by a skilled coder. Amazing.
ReplyDeleteI'm intrigued! Is it true you don't need any programming knowledge to use the Scorpion Engine?
DeleteYes, you don't need actual coding knowledge in Scorpion Engine. You do need some knowledge about the Amiga hardware as well as general game logic. Flair for graphics and audio certainly helps. You can learn a lot just by studying the included demo projects and playing around in the program. It's pretty user friendly.
ReplyDelete