Amiga Longplay [369] Jim Power - Mutant Planet

[Diego85Nap]

GREAT MUSIC ! ;)

[marsiozo]

cool!!! forgot I even played this game back then...great game, such colourful graphics, so playable...

[thezodiak666]

i want to warp back to 1989 again!!!

[BagoZonde]

I love to playing all levels of this game just for music, I have been finished it maybe 10 times because it's a really nice arcade game, great gameplay and music of course it's so PURE and UNIQUE!

[SonicTheCat]

are you really good at Jim Power or is this tool assisted?

[cubex55]

@SonicTheCat

SaveStates

[UpperPaleolithicMan]

Damn, Hulsbeck, you never, NEVER disappoint! :D

[nikoshurricane]

amiga was is will always be THE BEST video game console!!!the will never be as good games as jim power, moonstone, yo joe and golden axe.and so many more....

[melosebrainuhoh]

So... apparently they blew so much money on hiring seasoned professional musicians to write the score that they had to get the janitor's mentally handicapped son to make the actual game.

[Solosap]

I wish someone could remix the intro to the game. That music is so incredible.

[gigabites2]

@Solosap As it turns out, there is a recording of an orchestral arrangement floating about somewhere. I believe it's in the vidya intarweb playlist. I'll link directly to the file, but well.. youtube.

[MrHate1337]

Hmmm... I was playing this game when i was 8 years young, and kinda enjoyed it, thats sad when im looking at this game and thinking that only good thing here is music :[

[hydefus]

impressive

[thezodiak666]

long live the past!

[1shoryuken]

Chris "Moutherfucking" Hülsbeck.

Even if the stage 1 music is a copy of "A Searing Struggle" from Ys III, he made that track even more badass.

[kurije]

@1shoryuken

Hardly a copy. There's a tribute, yes, but shortly after the song goes in a completely different direction.

[thedragonb0y]

Good freaking god what happened to game music these days.

Jesus what could be more badass than this?! Thumbs up if you feel as if badass has been corrupted over time just to see how many people agree and I'm not just a stick in the mud.

[fiddlebender88]

@thedragonb0y I hear you. Game music doesn't seem to be as important anymore as it was then. Back then game music was like 50% of the experience.

[Andrew20a09]

Level music reminds me "If tomorrow comes" OST

[Notir072]

The game is great !

Chris Hülsbeck is a genius !!!

[ALXD1974]

i remember listening to the intro song for long long time...

[frigginjoe]

is this the AGA version? Maybe the lower res and compression is smoother the colors. Looks awesome either way, and definitely one of the Amiga's real showpieces. SFX and Music together, Parallax scrolling not even found in the PC Engine version. Very cool.

[Maasaa2000]

Chris Hülsbeck hat es einfach DRAUF.Was soll oder kann man noch mehr dazu sagen :)

[querpmuerp]

Looks super cool, even in 2010!

[Sve567]

the girl in the ending looked very retarded xD

[CoffeeSquid]

Sure Jim, just kill everything.

[telbee]

@CoffeeSquid haha.... that's what I was thinking too.... :)

[batonbartek]

Damn! It was really fuckin' amazing game on A500!

[Petr0vich13]

porcorosso81

@BaronCalisto:

it is so nostalgic to see all this discussion about copper-blitter tricks so i felt me back in time over 15 years ago... thx a lot ... it was a great time of fight for one more cycle - great =)

[jimraynor3]

times when 5-6 people could create a MASTERPIECE from nothing

[walter0bz]

give me turrican over this!

IMO thte amiga was best used without paralax, it reduces its object handling too much.

[e3ovuziotica]

You're right, I have fond memories of this just because of the music! (and colors are also c00l =)

[Asacledhae]

This was one of the best games i've ever played, and one of the games i still miss at times.. Especially it's music..

[porcorosso81]

@BaronCalisto

Part 4

Nevertheless, you also made mistakes. The fact that dual playfield mode on OCS is 3 bitplanes for each layer, and not 4, as you mentioned, triggered my confidence that you do not know what you are talking about. Plus, the moment someone mentions "I am a very big name, therefore I am right" is usually the indication of being a serious troll.

I know the chipset in-and out, down to the exact timing of all DMA channels. I have underestimated you, but dont underestimate me.

[blade004]

@porcorosso81 The fact that you are German proves this for me! Some of the greatest hardware and software for the Amiga came from Germany and you guys are absolutely incredible intellectually as well as in discipline! If only Australians (where i am from) were more like you guys ;)

[porcorosso81]

@blade004

I know this is meant as a compliment from you, but I personally do not believe in any kind of intellectual superiority of any nation over the other. We are all human individuals with our own personal preferences, strengths and struggles. After all, we are talking about a French game, with a German music composer running on an American hardware architecture. I would urge people to stop judging peoply by their nationalities. Please note that this is not meant as an offense to you.

[blade004]

@porcorosso81 You've made me look like a complete and utter fool and i wish to thank you for that because in all essence you are right and i should not have made a statement as bold as i did. I guess we all have something to learn so thanks again for putting me in my place and waking me up somewhat especially are the way you worded the different nationalities that were in involved in the Amiga scene. After all, Directory Opus for the Amiga was made by an Australian ;) I forgot that one.

[ALXD1974]

music its what brought me here...!

[paladin146]

You must imagine, that on clasic TV this game looked absolutely unbeliably, much better than this video!

[PopMusicKiller]

After hearing lots of his music now, I'd love to see Chris Huelsbeck get back into game music.

[brunetka]

I love it !!!

[hankillo1]

The amiga is amazing.

A PC would need a pentium cpu to move all those scrolls ,and even so, it couldnt be so smooth

[PabloDarioLi]

@hankillo1 This video was recorded in a PC emulating the Amiga 500 hardware, thanks to today PC CPU power we can enjoy the old Amiga hardware!

[hankillo1]

@PabloDarioLi JAJAJAAJA.............YES, and you had to wait more than twenty years to emulate the Amiga 500 and even so, the scrolls do not go so smooth .its funny ,dont you think so?

[porcorosso81]

This game is a technical masterpiece. It has 3 real, overlapping parallax scrolling layers, which is possible because the programmers discovered an ingenious trick how to create the third layer with the copper and sprites. That way, the game has more scrolling layers than any Mega Drive game and is almost as colourful as any SNES game. I am still amazed that the games runs at a constant 50fps, because the graphics eat up almost ALL DMA time.

[BaronCalisto]

@porcorosso81 Not so. Shadow of the Beast had 13 layers of parallax scrolling on Amiga, but the record goes to Lionheart on Amiga as that scrolled each horizontal line of pixels to represent the background, something like 40+ parallax layers.

Elfmania on Amiga also did a similar technique to scroll the floor, doing a every horizontal line as separately parallax scrolled.

[porcorosso81]

@BaronCalisto

Are you some kind of wanna-be know-it-all? Jim Power has three REAL OVERLAPPING LAYERS! Shadow of the Beast splits the screen vertically into different areas with different HORIZONTAL SCROLLING SPEEDS. These "13 layers" DO NOT OVERLAP.

In Jim Power, two four colour hardware sprites are repositioned every 16 pixels by the copper to create a THIRD LAYER. That is the last static layer with the sunset and hills.

If you dont believe me, fire up WinUAE and disassemble the copperlist.

[BaronCalisto]

@porcorosso81 Don't lecture me fella, i'm hardly a 'wanna be' anything! I go under a rather more recognisable name on the Amiga than this one!

Jim Power is a Dual Playfield game, theres nothing technically remarkable about that at all for the Amiga. The sprite backdrop is also nothing new or remarkable either.

I can assure you that both Beast and Lionheart are using a hell of a lot more cpu and co-processor cycles to achieve their output than Jim Power is.

[porcorosso81]

@BaronCalisto

Obviously, you are not as knowledgeable as you want to believe.

Name me one game earlier than Jim Power which used the full-screen sprite backdrop technique.

The horizontal sprite displacement by the Copper eats up almost all DMA cycles during visible display. In Dual Playfield mode, Bitplane DMA leaves 2 cycles per 16 Pixels open. In those 2 cycles, the copper repositions the X positions of the two sprites to create a repeating pattern.

[porcorosso81]

Those cycles are NOT available to either the CPU or the Blitter, since Copper and Bitplane DMA have higher priotity. Furthermore, in horizonmtal blank. the Copper defines new colours of the 2 sprites for EACH new line. That's why the backdrop is so colourful, despite being only 4 colours. More cycles stolen.

This is way more DMA intensive and complex than occasionally updating the scrolling registers and colours, like Shadow of the Beast and Lionheart do.

[porcorosso81]

@porcorosso81

So if you are saying "the technique of Jim Power is nothing special, I have a bib name in the Amiga community", then I laugh in your face, because you have just proven that, at most, you have a very basic understanding of how the hardware works.

[BaronCalisto]

@porcorosso81 It isn't special, and laugh as much as you like fella, you aske me to provide one example... and I did.

Chuckle away fella!

[porcorosso81]

@BaronCalisto

Yeah, and it was an epic failure, now changing my attitude to: you know HARDLY ANYTHING about the Amiga hardware.

[BaronCalisto]

@porcorosso81 The fact Jim Power is dual playfield goes a great deal to helping the game, as now restoration of the rear scrolling playfield is necessary, its only having to blit to the 4 bitplanes of the front playfield.

[porcorosso81]

@BaronCalisto

You are a bit dense, aren't you? Jim Power uses DUAL PLAYFIELD PLUS a fullscreen SPRITE LAYER, making it THREE OVERLAPPING layers! In full 50fps! I am saying this THE WHOLE TIME, yet you still don't get it.

You know what hardware sprites are? A copperlist? It seems you do not. Grab an AMIGA HARDWARE REFERENCE MANUAL and start learning before posting inane discussions with me here.

[BaronCalisto]

@porcorosso81 R-Type 2 for one uses a full screen sprite backdrop on the first level, and thats the worst example I can give you, and that was a full year before Jim Power, and written by the pretty much one of the worst development teams other than Tiertex.

[porcorosso81]

@BaronCalisto

Nope, the background of R-Type 2 is a bitmap. It does NOT use hardware sprites, which is the reason why the scrolling sucks, since the CPU/Blitter has to redraw the background.

Fail.

[BaronCalisto]

@porcorosso81 I suggest you go look again fella, because I know for a FACT it does use hardware sprites for the background. Start the first level, and when your ship approaches the first part of the Bydo Empire base (i.e. where its no longer just a starfield anymore), that backdrop is ALL hardware sprites.

So it would appear I DO know what i'm talking about, I HAVE proved another game used a hardware sprite backdrop in fullscreen.

Fail? Go check for yourself, and be man enough to apologise

[porcorosso81]

@BaronCalisto

Well, It's not often that someone proves me wrong, but I guess you did. This jerky, highly mediocre conversion of R-Type II indeed uses hardware sprites as the scrolling background.

You are right on the issue that there was an earlier game which used hardware sprites as a background layer, and I apologize for calling you dense. I made the mistake to acknowledge that 1% of youtube posters do know their stuff, despite making mistakes in other places. (continued in part 2)

[porcorosso81]

@BaronCalisto

Part 2

Nevertheless, I strongly disagree with you that Jim Power is nothing special for the following reasons:

- Jim Power uses 3 overlapping scrolling layers (2 dual playfield, 1 sprite). All other games you mentioned are "just" using the dual playfield mode.

- Jim Power puts way more burden on the chipset DMA, because the dual playfield mode (6 bitplanes) and the sprite repositioning eats up ALL DMA TIME during active display.

[porcorosso81]

@BaronCalisto

Part 3

- Jim Power goes to a great length to hide the fact that the background uses 4 colour sprites. The 4 colours are changed on a per-scanline base.

- In addition to the 3 real hardware layers, Jim Power also reuses the playfield and sprites, changing priorities to create more "layers", and transparent status displays.

In conclusion: my point stands that this game is the most sophisticated OCS game. No other game uses so many tricks and tight timing to create its display.

[Itint08]

longest intro ever

[cubex55]

Its about the muuuusic ;)

[nicholasthetaylor]

@cubex55 Its about the Music, graphics and slick programming. The animation is weird and the gameplay is unrefined. This game must have been rushed. It has so much going for it, but fails miserably in really important areas

[EdMan6623]

@Itint08 Longest intro ever? You clearly haven't seen the intro to Turrican II

[carlomazza]

le musiche sono stupende..come il gico!!

[omarm1644]

so much memories

[chojnak]

Well, even in 2009 im still thinking the best games were in 90s, 1992-1999 :)

And Amiga is true "cult machine" of ever.

[zerocoat2000]

The music in the first "area" of this game is dangerously, almost suspiciously similar to the music from the fire area in Ys 3. Which came out in 1989.

[FroggStudios]

You are so right! is plagiarism! which game came first? answer this question and you'll find who the thief is!

[billamu]

I never thought of this game as mediocre, but I do concede that Huelsbeck's music along with its graphics do go a long way to making this game better than its gameplay.

[utubernumber]

why isnt guardians castle or time castle in this version

[t1cTacJ0e]

lori400 said: "SNES games are just as good as any amiga games"

true.

but there was always something missing with the SNES games/gaming scene, that only the Amiga gaming scene had....the monsterous global fiercely loyal fan base, that only SNES fans could only imagine and dream about experierencing.

true you had SF2 (the best beat up em ever...as far as im concerned that game NEVER existed on the Amiga - ever lol :-)

as i said, there was this magical feeling within the amiga gaming community

[t1cTacJ0e]

that no other gaming platform at the time really had.

yes yes yes , SEGA loyalists will jump into the fray and cause a stir here, but look - we saw it in your eyes just like we saw it in the eyes of your nintendo counterparts that deep deep....deep down you just WISHED your machine was secretely named 'amiga something' LOL :p

^_^

truth never lays hidden. the eyes never lied, i remember them days chumps ^_^

also we had loads of corny porn on the amiga too LOL

[t1cTacJ0e]

for such a small muscular man, he sure does have a huge head that Jim Power...

[t1cTacJ0e]

the best music (by far) of this game starts at 14:23...anybody who disagree's is insane and i'm willing to wager on the producrers behind this game agreeing with me that this track is the coolest, but please cubex55 - tell me, what do u think ?

[Shintai123]

Yeah, Chris the game music god Huelsbeck mother fuckers!

[utubernumber]

whats wrong with samantha? she looks like she saw a ghost

[utubernumber]

why isnt the guardians castle and time tower are not in this version

[FroggStudios]

These videos were recorded from a real Amiga? or using an emulator in a PC?

[bazfanv2]

I was an st owner before upgrading to the amiga 1200, so this version doesnt mean as much to me as st but its still a lot better than the st anyway no doubts there. I sound this game rediculously hard on st and amiga. A good show peice of what each computer can do.

[bighairydel]

great game, could you post a better quality video and sound version??

thanks

[cubex55]

Check our website you find a HQ version there :)

[utubernumber]

play the game!

[wikiwakiwu]

quik and silva styles!

[thegreatsamurai82]

is this version easier than the SNES?

[benzaie]

rah I still prefer the ATARI ST version...for pure nostalgia factor :)

[genocyde83]

amen to that. It sounds and plays better to me too.

[moskitokemado]

you two must be deaf and blind

[genocyde83]

Hey to each his own. I agree with Ben cause I prefer the old school sound of the ST since it gives me that retro feeling I love. Plus it was the first version I ever played. You should check Benzaie's videos, he did a review of the ST version. Its really good.

[porcorosso81]

I still can never ever understand why someone would prefer the Atari ST sound. The Atari ST has one of the weakest sound chips ever built, which is easily outperformed by many 8 bit systems, including C64, Game Boy and NES. I mean, it's just square waves! No variety in sound shapes, nothing. It's almost as "old skool" as the horrible PC speaker... BLECH!

[VincentGreece]

@porcorosso81

It was the MIDI built in and many musicians prefered it in Greece. Amiga is better.

Amiga was used in TV stations.

Amiga rulez

[porcorosso81]

@VincentGreece

MIDI is just a serial protocol intended for controlling music instruments. It has nothing to do with the sound playback capabilities of the actual hardware.

Most Atari ST fanboys delude themselves into thinking that the square waves of the Atari ST sound hardware are sounding better than real samples. On the other hand, they start to drool once a game uses a four channel, 4 Bit digi playback routine for the title screen.

[frigginjoe]

@porcorosso81 Yeah if you had an Atari ST only, and got a respectable conversion, great. But I see no reason other than nostalgia for preferring that version. From what I recall the game was ported ok with a lot of graphical compromises.

[Sheepy007]

@porcorosso81 A more advanced sound does not necessarily mean better sound

[BLEAHGames124365]

@porcorosso81 I think the main thing that people like about the atari ST version is that something THAT crappy just played a great soundtrack such as this without messing it up too bad. It could have been like the Amstrad version that had NO music whatsoever.

[sybnios]

@porcorosso81 Thats rubbish talk!!! You talk like the new age "gamers" that believe the most technicaly advanced processor or graphics chip will deliver better games! Its about the feeling dude. The tunes Atari ST has given us are beyond awesomeness. And being inferior from other sound chips makes it even MORE awesome. Fine examples: Mad Max, Lethal Xcess, Wings of Death, Stormlord... The magic produced cannot be compared even with the legendary Amiga. Both different, both awesome!

[Leifonuss]

At least both versions have the nerd version of Jimmy ;)

[Christophe38isere]

Amiga POWAAAAAAAA!!!  ;)

[Iori400]

i love the third level!! the halloween theme and the soundtrack to it :D

[LiquidFilter]

I find jim look's cooler and less boxy on the Amiga version, i also prefer the sound effects and the graphix seem's more solid, less glichy maybe...

[aenima242]

music sounds like nine inch nails!

[BurtWilson1]

Well, Elvis was in the army for a short time.

[retronostalgic]

I don't like the limited nature of this game, just left to right and no up or down scrolling.

[Iori400]

then get the fucking snes version then..

[retronostalgic]

lori400 - No way! I always disliked the snes and it's expensive games. I'm a loyal Amiga fan and always will be...

[Iori400]

Hey SNES games are just as good as any amiga game >:(

[retronostalgic]

True, but given a choice i would always choose amiga first. But that's me i suppose...

[Iori400]

i see

[oliverrr78]

hülsbeck 4ever!

[hahahoho2006]

beautiful game, hard though, drove me nuts as a kid! >:(

[rockprince72]

what kind of lost dimension is this?.

i have this game and it dosent look like this.

is this a japanese versin?

[shubibinman]

Yeah its a different game alltogether... I guess the lost dimension was sort of a sequel?

Anyway, the TurboGrafx/PC Engine version is the same as this.

[Dai101]

It isn't a secuel either, the SNES game have the same levels and music and bosses, the only difference is that are in a different order and also have those 2 top view levels (ala SuperC and Contra 3) and a new enemy that is very similar to Fliying Shelfish.

[LordDraco3]

Awsome. I loved the SNES "Lost Dimension in 3D" Jim Power, this looks almost exactly the same, and sounds almost identical...but looks much easier (Flying Shellfish died so fast!)

Think you could do a run like this with the SNES version? =P

[TheDrunkenCelt]

Fuck Yeah, Jim Power is bad ass. Id like to see him team up with Duke Nukem

[Iori400]

nah.. Power would kick nukems ass anyday..

[gtrinityjr]

I'm in love wit the music of this game, I love the game and music, I have the Snes music of this game

[sraaju]

Didn't you recognise the style. Its Chris Hulsbeck, also known for the absolutely brilliant Turrican intro music. Love the game too.

[exportiertes]

I only like the Theme. And 'bout Hülsbeck: As long he is shipping in 8Bit waters its alright. But his CDs didn't sound any good.

[cyrilfuckdust]

Another Amiga classic, me and my mates used to love getting stoned and playing this one.

[andersdenkend]

Incredible soundtrack to a nice action game. Unfortunately the graphics were a tad too colorful and / or distracting. But it still rocks.

[BlackSephir]

This remastered soundtrack sounds interesting- anyone knows where I can find samples of it?