Castlevania NES vs Amiga | Utterly Pointless Comparisons | longplay | lets play

For best results view at 1080p60fps. Welcome to a scary edition of Utterly Pointless Comparisons where I show you the tragedy of Amiga Castlevania compared to the original NES version of the game. Try to keep your lunch down while suffering through the horror of the awful graphics, music and gameplay of the Amiga version, which could have been amazing, but instead is just terrifyingly bad.
Here's the upcoming homebrew version from Dante 3D Dev I spoke about in the video: danteretrodev.itch.io/akumajo...
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#castlevania #amiga #nes #konami #amiga500 #amiga1000 #amiga2000 #platformer #horror #scary #halloween #famicom #8bit #16bit #classicgaming #classicgames #retrogaming #retrogames #badports

[@Vishnu_Karthik]

The "devil" form of dracula looks like a giant naked mole rat with lipstick. Its so bad that its hilarious to imagine that form in a modern game or an animated show. Though, to be fair Dracula's final form also looks silly in the NES version, he looks like cookie monster from sesame street.

[@InglebardGaming]

Lots of things look weird in the Amiga version! And yeah, even on NES the monster drac form us pretty goofy.

[@pointblank0020]

This is crazy. It's almost Megaman DOS level. Really feel like you know your stuff, and your channel is a cut above the rest. You have a permanent subber in me

[@InglebardGaming]

Thanks, glad you liked it! And yeah, this Amiga version is really rough, which unfortunately was the case with a fair amount of Amiga ports. It's a shame considering the power of the hardware.

[@roberto1519]

The lack of quality control, what to do. We have to be thankful about the community efforts across all classic systems, it not only shows what could have been achieved in many systems, but also that we did care and noticed when games had quality and polish to them.

[@InglebardGaming]

Yeah, homebrew stuff today is leagues better than most of the professional stuff from back in the day. Some of it is because of better tools and engines, but a lot of it is just caring more and putting in more effort.

[@roberto1519]

One of the highlights that comes to mind is Pier Solar from 2010, there were prior releases for many consoles, but there's an extra polish and effort post the 2010s overall, I think. They brought an RPG which is shoulder to shoulder with the SNES, which was king of this genre and even against the Sega CD, in a cartridge. Yeah, what you said above added with the notion that many developers didn't even know what made games fun to begin with, they had not much to compare with and most of them were computer nerds. Fans today not only have access to nice tools, but we know better what made games great as well. By the way, I'm aware of your involvement with the upcoming (maybe?) Symphony of the Night, so you know all this much better than I do.

[@piccolo1976]

The poor Amiga did suffer from these terrible ports, was capable of so much more. Static screenshots on the back of the game cover were so misleading back then! Very disappointed with the out of tune rendition of Vampire Killer.

[@InglebardGaming]

Yeah, some stuff looked great in still screenshots on the back of the box or in magazines, but then when you finally saw it in motion you were like "WTF IS THIS???" Thankfully in this age of video we don't really have to worry about that anymore.

[@piccolo1976]

@@InglebardGaming I missed the beginning of this vid as I was trying to watch at work! The AGA version looks great, reminds me of the x68000 version in a way. I did laugh at your intro 😂

[@zanegandini5350]

The lack of quality control on a lot of Amiga games is just downright depressing. It wasn't quite as much of a powerhouse as the SNES or Genesis, but it was still more than capable of having quality 16-bit titles. Turrican, Jaguar XJ220, Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge, Jim Power, Wolfchild, and Shadow of the Beast were on par with what consoles could produce, so something as archaic as an NES game should have made a very easy transition. Hell, even when the games sucked on the Amiga, the music was usually the saving grace, but these tunes are awful. Even Castlevania on DOS is better!

[@InglebardGaming]

Yeah, there are plenty of good, impressive games on the hardware. For the most part, the development environments of the territories where it was most popular were terrible. I don't mean from a software perspective, I mean the commercial end of things... No source code, very tight schedules, lack of ability for people working on commercial projects and zero oversight from the licensing companies like Sega, Capcom, Konami and more. Very few developers were set up for success in those days. Despite the challenging environment, at least a few found a way to show what the machine could really do.

[@arcadianlhadattshirotsughW33Z]

Great video...Do you think the amiga version is better than that weird MS DOS version? The only nit pick id have is that i want you to piss on the amiga more because i have a (totally irrational, but hey, what ISNT nowadays) hatred for it after building it up in my young head from all the gaming magazine screenshots thinking it was the ultimate gaming machine, until i met someone who had one and played it's games... Have you played the weird Castlevania Harmony of Despair (HD on xbox360) ? thats probably the strangest Castlevania game ever, including sexy castlevania pachinko games.. oh well, you do good work and it is appreciated.. especially loved your Panzer Dragoon and Shining Force series..

[@InglebardGaming]

Thanks! I never played the DOS port, only saw video of it. It's more faithful to the NES original with the character design and colors, but is just as choppy as the Amiga version. I didn't start messing with IBM compatible PC gaming much until the era of Doom and Duke 3D. The Amiga has a lot of chaff, but it's best stuff was pretty amazing. Several Psygnosis games, the Turrican series (especially 2), the Lotus series (especially 1), and plenty of others were great. But yeah, there were LOTS of low effort, bad ports to the computer. I've never played Harmony of Despair, just watched other people play it. It's the only 2D Castlevania I've never played. Someday! Glad you liked the videos!

[@alfredocanas6802]

if they developers of the Amiga version could at least fix the choppiness the game could be at least somewhat decent, the Amiga struggled with smooth scrolling ?

[@InglebardGaming]

The hardware was perfectly capable. Look at stuff like Turrican 2, Shadow of the Beast, and plenty of others to see what it could really do. It was just not many developers utilized the hardware... either they didn't know how, didn't have the time budget for it, or just didn't want to. It's a real shame, because the best stuff on it is really good, but there are way more games like Castlevania here than Turrican 2, sadly.

[@atolm1]

I gasped at some of the redesigns, especially dracula, unreal!

[@InglebardGaming]

I warned you this video would show you unspeakable horrors, lol.

[@celebrategout1008]

Didn't even know it was on the Amiga. Interesting

[@InglebardGaming]

Yup! Sadly it is, lol. And now I'm sharing that misery with the world 😁

[@dantemendes8041]

Great video and thanks! Good thing that you put Castlevania AGA upfront to mark territory, otherwise the old one makes the Amiga look like some underpowered 8-bit computer (which probably is what many people under 35 think, lol)

[@InglebardGaming]

No problem, it looks great so far, been enjoying seeing the updates, including the perfectly timed one earlier today, lol. That sure worked out!

[@PatmanQC-Arcade-Documentaries]

Nice video

[@InglebardGaming]

Thanks, appreciate it!

[@menhirmike]

After the initial shock of the 4:30 zombies, I actually kinda warmed up a bit throughout your playthrough. Some of the background art is nice, and you can see that there is a salvageable game here if it wasn't so choppy and had better input lag. But this game also shows the IMHO biggest blunder of the Amiga of a games machine: Not standardizing on a 2+ button joystick. I know that the Genesis/Mega Drive gamepad (that made FIFA Soccer extremely playable on the Amiga!) wasn't available in 1985 (same year as the two-button Master System came out), but still, they could've looked at the Arcades and added at least a second fire button. Sure, four buttons (like the NES) would've been heaven, but even just a second button would've solved probably half of crappy Amiga games control schemes.

[@InglebardGaming]

I do have to say the gameplay is pretty atrocious in this one. Some of thr backgrounds are pretty nice and Simon looks good, but literally everything else should go, IMO! And yes, even other home computers like the Apple II and IBM compatibles of the day had joysticks with two buttons, long before the Amiga launched. They should have definitely picked up on the increasing number of button trajectory right from the start. Oh well.

[@weirddudehi]

Another one of those wonders that take full advantage of the Amiga hardware... I wonder how many people worked on the project? Two? three?

[@InglebardGaming]

I'm not sure, but it was ported by Novatrade... the same development house that would go on to make Ecco the Dolphin. Crazy, right?

[@iwanttocomplain]

This was Novotrade's first and only Amiga game. They did contract work for Konami. But Konami signed off on it so it's their fault, not Novotrade's. They will have been given a pretty tight budget as I would expect this game to be a PAL only release, the only place Amiga games were published, in a region that never played that game series. So it doesn't make sense to make a lavish production on the Amiga where it isn't likely to sell many copies. So Konami just gave it to Novotrade, because they are European and maybe assumed they would therefore know about Amiga development. But no Amiga games had lavish production values really. The install base was only like 5 million worldwide. Oh about the one button thing. Two buttons is tricky when you use one of those joysticks that you hold with your left hand, so only your thumb can actually reach a button to press.

[@deterlanglytone]

I think the Homebrew ZX Version of the game plays better than the Amiga version... or was the ZX homebrew the second game?

[@InglebardGaming]

The Spectrum homebrew is an original game, but took a lot on inspiration from Castlevania II.

[@PlasticCogLiquid]

Someone was working on a new Amiga version. It looks pretty good but the whip animation sucks. The whip anim is crucial to get right in a CV game ffs! (Errr, ok you mentioned it right off the bat..)

[@InglebardGaming]

Yup, I showed footage of it in the first segment 😁

[@PlasticCogLiquid]

@@InglebardGamingLOL, Tell me I'm not crazy man. The way the whip moves bugs the hell out of me. It should just go straight in front of him.

[@InglebardGaming]

@PlasticCogLiquid I'll have to look again, but it definitely didn't bother me. It's similar to Chronicles.

[@Fender178]

In my mind the Amiga version of Castlevania is way worse than the DOS version because the devs who did the Amiga version didn't really use the Amiga to it's fullest potential in terms of overall presentation in terms of some of the graphics (Zombies etc) and the music. The music for the DOS version via Adlib kicks the absolute crap out of the Amiga version despite the Amiga having a much better sound system than any of the DOS PCs at the time.

[@InglebardGaming]

It's just another low effort Amiga port in a sea of low effort Amiga ports. Dante3D's AGA homebrew port that's based on the x68k version shows what kind of stuff could have and should have been done.

[@joesaiditstrue]

Shouldnt the Amiga have been capable of doing bare minimum something along the lines of Bloodlines except with better color and sound? Really sad port.

[@InglebardGaming]

Well, it was definitely capable of better than this, lol. The original chipset had restrictive color limitations, especially when using a parallax field. The Amiga has a much larger palette than Genesis at 4,092, but can only show 32 (or about 16 with parallax) at any one time where the Genesis can show 64. The Genesis also has vastly superior sprite hardware. Most Amiga games use its blitter to create moving objects (bobs). So it wouldn't be able to exceed Bloodlines, but it could have done a reduced version of it. EDIT: typo corrections.

[@fazares]

i own the nes one..what a classic....amiga..classic western crap....do tmnt (NES vs. PC) next time

[@RagingRowen]

I think the Amiga version is based upon the already iffy DOS version coz it has a similar choppy nature to it and the sprite quality is similar, like they made the sprites based on what they looked like in the original game, rather then what they are supposed to be representing, like the Zombies being interpreted as tree trunk men tiptoeing around, and the Holy Water becoming a jar of piss, and I don't even know what the Axe Knights in Level 5 have become.

[@miketate3445]

If you can't do pixel art, why on earth would you go out of your way to create new pixel art?! The contrast is just awful, let alone the shapes!

[@InglebardGaming]

No idea, but it happened in western developed ports of arcade and console games all the time in the mid 80s to mid 90s. If you want to see crazy look at Darius on the Amiga!

[@pvanukoff]

Another crap money grab port. God, the Amiga was plagued with these.

[@ianfisch7289]

Seems like everything on these UK gaming PCs have terrible framerates.

[@InglebardGaming]

The Amiga was an American machine. It was created and developed here. It just sold better in the UK and found more of a niche there. There's some really good stuff for it that shows off what it's power was really like, but there IS an awful lot of chaff. EDIT: just corrected a typo.