Gods: IBM PC/Amiga Version Comparison
The Bitmap Brothers released Gods for IBM PC MS-DOS and Amiga in 1991. This is a comparison of the IBM PC and Amiga versions of Gods, which is a puzzle-platform game. Gods is notable for its intelligent AI, crafty puzzles and array of items that include 15 different weapons 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 Richard Joseph and Nation 12.
Gods runs in 320x200 resolution. On the Amiga, Gods displays 32 on-screen colors whereas the IBM PC version displays in 16-color VGA, not 256-color VGA. However, the reduction in on-screen colors only affects the sky gradients (see below).
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 install size is 1 meg.
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, which I'd rather call ST-worsts. That said, Gods doesn't suffer that much from jerky scrolling because it is a slow-paced, thinking man's platformer; in fact, one of the best of its kind.
The IBM PC version only displays the text; it does not scroll it like the Amiga version does, but that is a minor thing.
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