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Gods IBM PC Version versus Amiga Version Bitmap Brothers 1991


GODS by the Bitmap Brothers



The Bitmap Brothers of the U.K. released Gods for Amiga and Atari ST in March of 1991. The IBM PC MS-DOS version of Gods was released in May of 1991. This is a comparison of the IBM PC and Amiga versions of Gods, which is a puzzle-platformer notable for its intelligent AI, crafty puzzles and array of items that include 10 weapons, 14 treasures and 20 potions and power-ups.

Gods was designed by Eric Matthews and Steve Tall and was programmed by Steve Tall. The splendid graphics of Gods were drawn by Mark Coleman, and its audio was composed by Nation 12 and re-orchestrated by Richard Joseph.

Gods Overview


In Gods the player assumes the role of a nameless hero -- possibly Hercules -- seeking the prize of immortality by undertaking the challenge offered by the gods of Mount Olympus, which is to conquer an unnamed city built by the gods. If successful the hero will claim his place among the gods, and live forever.

The ancient city consists of four stages that are approximately 4000x1000 pixels in size: urban, temple, labyrinth and underworld. Each stage is broken up into three sections packed with puzzles, traps, interactables, clues, secrets, treasures and monsters. A great guardian is to be slain at the end of each stage.
 
The hero can walk left and right, jump, crouch, climb up and down ladders, throw weapons, throw weapons while standing on ladders, and face the wall in order to enter doorways and interact with wall-mounted switches and such-like. The hero can also jump from and to ladders, which was not a common feature in 1991. The hero crouches to pick up and drop objects such as keys, which are held in a four-slot inventory that only appears when triggered.

The hero never attacks in melee, only from range. Ranged weapons include throwing daggers, shuriken, fireballs, axes, spears and bouncing bombs. Ranged weapons can be tailored to be thrown in three different arcs: standard, spread and focused. There are 10 different weapons.

The hero targets mythological monsters such as harpies, ogres and serpents. There are also mechanical enemies and humanoid enemies such as guards, gladiators and thieves. Gods bosses include centurion, minotaur and dragon guardians.

At intervals the hero can purchase items from a merchant via a separate buy/sell interface akin to that of Xenon 2 of 1989.

Gods employs precise movement for the hero. Every footstep can be measured and is accompanied by a footstep sound. Jumping and turning around are not immediate due to animation frames. However, this gives the character sprite weight and three-dimensionality.

Sound plays an important role in Gods; the Gods soundscape is a masterpiece that orchestrations would only diminish.

There are 14 treasure-collectables that are showered upon the hero when he manages to solve switch-and-lever puzzles. It is important to know that switches and levers are resettable. Some secrets in Gods are revealed based on player score, number of lives, number of hit points, what the player has collected, and time elapsed. Thus, Gods keeps track of variables and triggers events based on conditions, but it does not modify game-balance on-the-fly, dynamically: potentialities are preset by the programmer, aka set in stone.

Progression through the stages of Gods requires that players perform certain tasks in a specific order, but Gods reveals the most content to players that play quickly and efficiently.

Monsters aside, obstacles in Gods include moving platforms, trapdoors, shifting walls, rising spikes and projectiles fired from wall-mounted turrets. In addition, Gods features some destructible walls in that individual tiles that make up some walls can be destroyed.

Players also need to be careful not to fall from too great a height. The wind even whistles about the hero as he plummets down shafts in free-fall.

As it pertains to general design, technical design and audiovisuals, Gods is a god-tier computer game. The design, sound and graphics of Gods are so good that not even its ST origin -- not even the fact that Gods runs at less than half-frames -- can ruin the experience on offer.

Gods isn't meant to play fast and smooth. Each step, jump and attack is measureable with discrete audio accompaniment, which is what gives Gods its unique mechanical motion and methodical gameplay.

Gods Graphics Comparison


Each section has three images. The first image is Atari ST Gods, the second is Amiga Gods and the third is IBM PC Gods.

The IBM PC and ST versions only display the text; they do not scroll it like the Amiga version does, but that is a minor thing.




The vertical drawspace of ST/Amiga Gods is 30 pixels greater than that of IBM PC Gods. This is due to the always-on HUD of IBM PC Gods. Note also how Amiga Gods adds extra details, which IBM PC Gods adopts.




Note how the copper sky gradient in Amiga Gods is smoother than the raster effect of ST Gods. And note how IBM PC Gods lacks the sky gradient entirely.




In terms of audiovisuals Amiga Gods is the best Gods. But in terms of gameplay, ST and IBM Gods are equal to Amiga Gods.

Gods Technical


Gods displays in 320x200 resolution. Amiga Gods displays 32 on-screen colors whereas IBM PC Gods displays in 16-color VGA, not 256-color VGA. However, the reduction in on-screen colors only affects the sky gradients, as depicted above.

Neither version of Gods feature smooth screen-scrolling because Gods is based on the Atari ST version. Indeed, most Bitmaps Brothers games are ST-firsts. That said, Gods doesn't suffer that much from non-smooth scrolling because it is a slow-paced, thinking man's platformer; in fact, one of the best of its kind.

Via Sound Blaster or AdLib the IBM PC version of Gods features the "Into the Wonderful" title music of the ST and Amiga versions, but only the Sound Blaster rendition is comparable to the Amiga Paula rendition (the AdLib rendition sounds weak and has no digitized speech or "singing"). However, via Roland LAPC-1 the IBM PC version of Gods features seven unique tracks composed by John Foxx of Nation XII which actually play during the game as background music, whereas the Amiga Paula version is sound-only. That said, I would say that the background music decreases the game's meditative atmosphere. In addition, Amiga Paula outputs meatier sound effects.

The IBM PC version of Gods was distributed on 1x 3.5" 1.44 MB HD diskette or 1x 5.25" 1.2 MB HD floppy disk. The hard disk drive install size is 1 meg.

The Amiga version of Gods was distributed on 2x 3.5" 880kB diskettes, but it was not hard disk drive-installable. The original 16-color Atari ST version of Gods was distributed on 2x 3.5" 720kB diskettes, and it was also not installable to hard disk drive.

cf. Other games like this one:


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