Silkworm vs Swiv (Amiga) - Which is the best shooter?
Hi everyone and welcome to the January 2017 edition of the Which Is Best?
Last month I placed Final Fight (arcade) and Streets Of Rage 2 (megadrive) against each other and after a mega battle with the votes I can announce SOR2 nailed the victory with 48 votes with Final Fight claiming just 26.
To kick off the new year and new series of the "Which Is Best?", I'm gonna be a cruel bugger and test your loyalties, I'm placing two of my favourite Amiga shooters side by side, Silkworm and It's unnoficial sequel Swiv,...which do you think is the better shooter?!, only your votes will determine that,...happy voting! :-D
Zeus
Last month I placed Final Fight (arcade) and Streets Of Rage 2 (megadrive) against each other and after a mega battle with the votes I can announce SOR2 nailed the victory with 48 votes with Final Fight claiming just 26.
To kick off the new year and new series of the "Which Is Best?", I'm gonna be a cruel bugger and test your loyalties, I'm placing two of my favourite Amiga shooters side by side, Silkworm and It's unnoficial sequel Swiv,...which do you think is the better shooter?!, only your votes will determine that,...happy voting! :-D
Zeus
Comments
The Spectrum version of Silkworm is excellent and very underrated imho.
one of the few games I liked on amiga.. I got rid of mine as I found most of the games were poor ST ports or just "nice gfx" for the review mags.
will say random access / sales curve , were a decent multi format dev team.. rodland is a fav on both 64 and amiga.
they did get some right crap games to convert though.
Neither games showcased what the Amiga was all about; the likes of Cannon Fodder, Syndicate, Lemmings, Speedball II, Knights of the Sky, USM and the very first Championship Manager are what it's all about
So typical Amiga games then? :))
*waits for the flames of wrath from everybody :))
The sounds effects in Silk Worm (same as SWIV) were better than the arcade version IMO.
SWIV was a bit of a pain to play as the Jeep though. It did have that smart constant-loading feature that meant there was no loading between levels. Pretty amazing at the time.
Superfrog v Zool next?
SWIV was a great programming achievement though, really clever programming. Awesome sound effects too.
Speed vs Shine.
...and yet both failing to even try and compete with Mario, or Sonic...Or any other platformer that may have been out then and had a slight bit of recognition.
Neither were very good in my opinion. I never rated Sonic, I thought it was all style over substance. Zool and Superfrog were essentially inferior versions of Sonic, but when the source material wasn't 'all that' it was never going to work. Sonic was okay on a console I suppose, but I like games with more than just fast scrolling.
The Amiga was a machine for the likes of Cannon Fodder, Flashback, Syndicate, Sensible Soccer, Robocop 3, First Samurai, Speedball (1&2) etc etc - games with depth and playability.
I agree. You couldn't even go fast in Sonic (it's main selling point) because of the level design. I did like the Master System port which was nothing like the MD game at all.
Said it before and I'll say it again MS Sonic was one of those few occasions of 8-bit trumps 16-bit.
As for Sonic being OK for a console Sonic 1 and 2 were great "at the time", but far too easy. Pretty much everything after that was a bit boring really. The 3D Sonic's are arse...
Some of those Miggy games are alright, but Robocop 3 and First Samurai? Depth and playability? Where? they're about as generic as the rest of those wonderful Miggy platformers.
Plus Flashback was every bit as good on the consoles if not better to play due to having more than 1 action button.
...and...I hate the Speedball games regardless of system, although I will say even though they're sh*t games the Amiga versions were better than the versions that came out on other systems.
The Amiga was a machine for Utilities, a handful of really good games, and a billion awful generic graphic heavy borefests, and shovelware.
[Karingal enters stage left, a large hammer in hand] "Oi! Whats this all about then, eh?"too long[karingal in the form of a hammer] "You tit!"still too longkaringal permabans dm_boozefreek
That's why I'm super glad I got my Miggy for free, and all the games that came with it :))
If I'd paid actual money for everything I got I'd have liked the machine even less than I already do :))
I guess if I'd spent money on Brian the Lion or Shadow of the Beast I might not have been quite so happy!
Robocop 3 was pretty ground-breaking at the time. Fully explorable 3D environments, driving a car, atmospheric music... the influence for the 3D genre (Doom etc) cannot be underestimated. First Samurai I thought was a superb game. The great sound effects and music, the use of items, it was bloody tough but rewarding. One of the best platformers I reckon - for a generic platform game look at the likes of Wolfchild,
There were many fantastic games on the Miggy: I can't see how people can't rate the likes of Speedball II. Honestly, everyone I know that ever played it loved it. I think it's still playable today (but I was awesome at it! :-) )
How about the likes of Midwinter? Or Whirlwind Snooker? Or the excellent shooter Apidya?
I loved the early football manager games such as Championship Manager, Premier League Manager and USM.
The first Lemmings game on the Amiga was also excellent (and far better than the humble Speccy's version I'm afraid) - and better than it was on any console of the era.
Desert Strike, I played it on the Miggy and on SNES. The Miggy version was hands down far, far better,
To say the Amiga had 'a billion awful generic graphic heavy borefests' is just not accurate. In fact it's silly. :D
.On a side note I just checked out that Brian the Lion Rebelstar mentioned....Oh my! What an utter pile of absolute steaming turd! I'd have been traumatised if I'd paid actual money for that game. Although when I saw the Psygnosis logo pop up at the beginning I should've known it would be crap without even having to have a look at it.
Sad thing is it came out on the CD32 as well, which means at some point they'd have probably tried to charge about £30-£40 for it....Ouch!
Bullfrog, Bitmap Brothers, Team 17 and Ocean generally put out good stuff on 16-Bits.
Never saw the joy behind the hype of the Bitmap Bothers either Xenon 2 was total crap, a bit like Wipeout on the Playstation, an average game sold on the power of the soundtrack rather than anything else, it didn't even look that good for the time either (play's like a Speccy game that's using 8x8 scrolling :)) ). Everybody knows I can't stand Speedball. Magic Pockets I use to like when I was younger, but it's cringey playing it now, hasn't aged well at all. But I'll give them the Chaos Engine, that game is bloody great, it's a Gauntlet clone at heart, but a one that does it right.
Team 17 for me nah....Alien Breed and that's about it, everything else they did does nothing for me, but the sad thing is I can't stand the Body Blows games....But I actually quite like Full Contact....I know it makes no sense at all :))
As for Ocean...Well just as hit and miss on the 16-bits as they were on the 8-bits, some OK games, and some absolute crap, as usual shining through more on original products than licenses. Problem with these games in general though until you got into the 90's they were exactly the same games as the other platforms, just with nicer graphics, no polish at all except to the visuals. Once you got into the mid-90's what was left of Ocean were pretty much showing how thoroughly stuck in the mid-80's they were when it came to games. Same old crappy licenses cobbled together for a quick sale vs same old bunch of mini-games cobbled together for a quick sale, although both those traits were often one in the same....and Oh how people just kept on buying them as well :))
Syndicate is one of the best games ever imho. Bullfrog made some great games before Peter Moleyneux started believing his own hype! Theme Park, Syndicate, Populous 1&2. I never got into Powermonger though.
I agree with Boozy on Xenon though, it was a very, very average shooter. Couldn't hold a candle to Hybris or Battle Squadron.
I can't believe anyone doesn't like Speedball II though, I still play it from time to time - I can still beat the f*cker too!
;;)
Also, anyone have any love for Yo Joe! ? - I thought it was a cool platformer.
There are some odd people in the world. Some people prefer Sensi to Kick Off 2. Now that is crazy ;)
Whenever I see an Amiga-related thread I just know that boozy will have waded in. He rarely disappoints :)) He's right in some ways that there were a lot of style-over-substance generic platformers on the miggy, but there were loads of great games too.
Oh, and I know it's too late to vote, but SWIV for me. The explosion effects were very meaty :)
Ha ha! Rise of The Robots. What a game! The only version I ever played was on the Mega-Drive. What a massive, steaming pile of sewage it was. Hilariously terrible.