Krankor: I only ever had the DOS version of Subwar 2050. I have to be honest and say I never knew about an Amiga version (even though I had one). Surely the Amiga version would have struggled with the 3d environment - remember Frontier Elite on Amiga... it was a slideshow as far as FPS was concerned! I'm old, so go easy on me ;)
haha :) ..It kind of depends. Most of the games that released on both dos and Amiga were always completely done in software on the pc version, and usually would need to run on smaller framebuffer setups. While the Amiga version could use some of the fairly fast (and longer) instructions for smoother scrolling, better colours, better precision for the pixels, etc., etc. A 4Mhz processor doesn't give you a very good starting point when porting the other way, though.. So if you base some animation function off a short instruction that has to run several times before each frame, then you get something like the Prince of Persia amiga version, with weird framerate.
But holy crap the Another World version on the Amiga, or Flashback, Lemmings, Offroad Racer, Stunt Car Racer, Pinball Fantasies, and so on -- these were ridiculously much better on the Amiga. And the ported versions are still horrible, and can never approach that. Sound board as well on the Amiga is, of course, legendary.. Still is, imo.
And until we got Soundblaster and stuff like iMuse on PC games, good grief DOS games in general were trash. You're looking down your nose right now, but find a copy of X-Wing, and run with Ad-lib sounds, and prepare to have your childhood memories crushed and transformed into a terrible lies :p
But yes, 3d type games that ran in software generally have issues on an a500, that weren't a problem in dos while running on the blisteringly fast 386/33Mhz boards, etc.
Still, when considering which version to ship for use on a more modern computer when it is those games -- well, you are already talking about using an emulator or a virtual engine of some sort. So it's not a completely idiotic thought to perhaps break some new ground and publish a game with an attached emulator. Capcom did that with Final Fight, for example, using an emulator and a licensed GGPO source as backend for the netcode/multiplayer over the net.
Problem is of course that most of these emulators are extremely illegal. And if they're not, then the source is gpl, and we will look severely down on anyone releasing a game without also releasing it's source, and distributing it for free in the same way, if it builds on an original release. I know that if Gog.com starts creating some sort of Sony type ps1/ps2 emulator package, and sell one game per package, etc., I'm going to scream.
But for some of these games, it's a bit like the problem with using cracks on games where the master copies no longer exist, with the developer and license holder's approval. Nothing really stopping anyone from taking a game, selling that game in a format that an emulator can run, and then only licensing that "rom" or floppy disk image for distribution. Only reason Sony doesn't do that with their emulator distributions is because they're complete idiots who stare a gift-horse down in the mouth until it bites their heads off. They're utterly paranoid about how this stuff works, and hold on to the idea of "releases" having to be separate disks, separate packages with one game, etc. And anything else is piracy and hacking Mecca.
Anyway. And for some of these emulators - it'd be a breeze to actually launch the game with more features than the original had, such as online co-op, etc. The GGPO folks will very likely throw themselves at a project like that.
It won't make sense for all releases, though, like some of the 3d games or multiports. While other games had to be redone to actually look better than the Amiga version again, like Another World. And there are some fantastic Amiga gems that still.. you know.. they're still playable and really, really good games. And recognized gems. I wrote a Moonstone review a while back - one of my most read reviews ever. A short while later, Eurogamer ran a feature on Moonstone - and that was another very popular article. So I would have put a project like that in the pile of "neat things" if I were gog.com.
