Battle of the Ports - Chuck Rock II Son of Chuck (チャックロックⅡ) Show
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Last week we took a look at Chuck Rock. A game many disliked. This week we have the sequel, Son of Chuck. A game many people seem to like. Let's check it out.
Time Code
00:21 - Amiga
02:26 - Mega Drive
04:35 - Mega CD
06:35 - Master System
08:52 - Game Gear
10:57 - Amiga CD32
12:40 - All versions side by side
Enjoy! - Hry
I recall being very impressed with the lava stage on the Sega CD version.
I like the colors more on the Mega Drive version but the background sprites on the Amiga versions are great too. Shame there wasn’t a version that blended the two.
The Mega Drive version was the base version here, not the Amiga one. This was confirmed by Dan Scott (AKA Dan of Anarchy) who coded the Amiga port. Mega Drive version begun first and Amiga version work begun later as a port from the Mega-Drive version.
The Amiga version has a couple of levels more because actually is *missing* at least one level from the Mega-Drive version... I don't remember which ones exactly, but I remember he saying a level from the original MD version being too complicated to do it on the Amiga, so they cut it completely and added new level on the Amiga version as a compensation.
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The Amiga version has some really nice tricks (like the foreground on the first world done by multiplexing hardware sprites), at that point people were already pushing the hardware to its limits. One thing interesting to notice is that while the Amiga has more colors to choose from when comparing to the Mega Drive (4096 vs 512), when using the Dual Playfield mode (i.e having two layers of backgrounds for a parallax effect) you can only have 8 colors for the foreground and 8 colors for the background. While on this mode hardware sprites have their own 16 colors separated from the background/foreground colors, the Amiga has VERY limited hardware sprite support - just four 16 colors sprites or eight 4 color sprites , and while you can "redraw" the sprites on different scanlines using the Copper, this uses some DMA time and many programmers never used this feature (Chuck Rock 2 does it though, to draw the score at the top of screen and the lives/health meters at bottom, while the main character is also done with hardware sprites). With so few hardware sprites, enemies are actually drawn as "background". One thing both Chuck Rock 1 and 2 do is to draw some enemies as "background" and some as "Foreground", so you have more colors to choose from when drawing them (While also giving the game a bigger feeling of "depth" when enemies are drawn behind foreground).
There are some tricks to get extra colors using the Copper, but they are very limited and most of the time were relegated to having more colors on the back layers of the parallax scrolling (check Lionheart and Jim Power for good examples of this).
All this info just to say this: I am *insanely* impressed with what some artists achieved on Amiga having to draw stuff using such a LOW AMOUNT of color. It's amazing how some games had just 8 colors to use on the foreground tiles and those colors had to be shared with enemies, power up icons etc and yet so many games still looked gorgeous.
I just checked a longplay video of the Mega Drive version.
The level missing on the Amiga version is the "Lava Tree" level. It's around the 21:10 time mark on the video I saw, if someone want to check it out.
Looking at the effect done on that level, its easy to see why it was cut on the Amiga version. There's no way you could achieve that rotating effect with such a big, scrolling object on screen without hampering the smooth framerate the game has all along.
I'd say that it's thanx to the st and amiga hardwares that european developers became masters of pixel art :)
@@rafaellima83 What I don't understand is, if the Mega Drive version was the lead development and the Amiga version the port, then why the Amiga version has an intro and the Mega Drive version doesn't? Was that intro developed specifically for the Amiga port, or was already developed for the Mega Drive version but they had to cut it out due to memory constraints, but could include it in the Amiga version? It's similar to what happened with the Amiga and Mega Drive versions of the first Chuck Rock, the Amiga version has an intro, the Mega Drive version on the other hand doesn't it, but in this case it could be understood by the fact that the Amiga version was the lead development and they had to cut it out for the Mega Drive version due to the memory constraints. In this situation with the sequel, with the development roles reversed, it's even more puzzling. What's a shame is that the Mega CD version didn't got back the Amiga intro, they totally replaced it with the cartoon. At least, the Mega CD version did have the Amiga intro, even with a little bit of censorship.
@@WeskerSega Good point.
Wild guessing here (and I could ask Dan Scott if you want to)
Core Design games on Amiga at some point begun have great intros. It became a trademark for Core Design games. When I would get a new Core Design game I'd *expect* a cool intro, that was "their thing".
And it's clear Dan Scott had some freedom to what he was doing with the Amiga Chuck Rock 2 port. He also coded Premiere and worked in Heimdall, two Core Design Amiga games that had very good intros.
He probably had space left on the disk, so just thought "Why Not?", so they probably made it for the Amiga version. And it was probably important to keep that Core Design trademark on Amiga games :)
And, I mean, Chuck Rock had a great intro on Amiga. Even if CR2 has one of the weakest intro on this "Core Design Trademark" thing, I think people would find weird if there wasn't anything.
@@rafaellima83 Please ask him if you have the chance to, this way we could have a better reasoning of what happened there.
Also, you may know that during the whole game, there's a sort of slapstick character which is a bloated fat guy, who always get the worst of disgraces against the enemies/bosses that Chuck Jr has to face. Well, this guy seems to have more frame animations in the Amiga version that he has on the Mega Drive version, or even the Mega CD version, which is even more surprisingly. For example, in his first appearance, when he is squished by the first boss, you may have noticed that he comes in, then stops and looks at the screen, and goes back. On the Mega Drive/Mega CD versions, he simply comes in walking until he's squished. Plus, in the Amiga version, after the ending and credits, there's a small scene of the bloated fat guy being squished by a gigantic THE END. I suppose those were touches by him too, but I tend to feel that the Mega Drive cartridge memory constraints are also related to that, even though it would be puzzling then why these aren't in the Mega CD version then.
Also, can you ask him how mas the music composing process of the game done? The Mega Drive version, which we understand is the original development, list Martin Iveson as "Original Music", while the "Music Conversions" are done by Krisalis Software, that is, Matt Furniss, who also did the Mega Drive music of the first Chuck Rock. The Amiga version, on the other hand, lists "Music and sound FX" as Martin Iveson. One would understand that the Amiga was the lead development there, Martin Iveson composed and programmed the tracks on the Amiga, and then Matt Furniss converted those for the Mega Drive. But that's a strange take when you consider tha the original development was the Mega Drive and not the Amiga. I suppose we can say that Martin Iveson lacked programming skills on the Mega Drive but he had them on the Amiga, so in this case the music was actually developed in the Amiga first, but we would need confirmation on that regard. Notice that all Core Design games for the Mega Drive had the music department done by Krisalis Software/Matt Furniss (I even have the doubt if it was him who composed from scratch the new music tracks of the Mega Drive version of Chuck Rock, since the Amiga version only had the intro theme, or someone at Core gave Matt those compositions and the converted them to the Mega Drive, same as he apparently did with Chuck Rock II) until Nathan McCree started to do the music part of the subsequent Core Design Mega Drive games. I believe Chuck Rock II was the last one that was handled by Krisalis Software/Matt Furniss, and Astérix and the Great Rescue the first one handled by Nathan McCree.
I was not a fan of the first Chuck Rock game but I liked this very much! It is closer to console games as European developers were starting to be more console focused at that point (and I believe Chuck Rock II was made with console ports in mind from the beginning). You're right, the Amiga versions colour palette is a bit dull and that's because on an older Amiga (like the A500) you can pick only 8 colours per layer when hardware dual playfield is used (in other words parallax scrolling affects colours count). Most developers would add more colour with liberal usage of copper effects (the almost ubiquitous Amiga gradients) and / or hardware sprites, whose colour palette is separated from the playfield's. As older Amigas have only 8 fairly small hardware sprites, most games use the so called "blitter objects" in place of sprites as they can be bigger and more numerous, but they are limited to the playground palette and can affect the frame rate of the game. See the Amiga is a unique machine in many ways, completely different from mainstream consoles and that's why it is often at a disvantage in multi-platform games while the best looking Amiga games are the ones made with the machine specs in mind.
Goddamn it. I wrote pretty much the same thing you said on a comment a few minutes ago and now I see someone had already said it :D
You can redraw sprites on different scanlines also using the copper (and from you amiga hardware knowledge I am pretty sure you also know that :D )
Chuck Rock 2 does that by using six 4 color sprites for the score at the top. Then it uses the copper to redraw the sprites as two 16 colors sprites for Chuck JR (using 4 sprite channels) plus two 4 sprites colors for his club, and then finally redraw them again at the bottom using two 16 colors sprites for Chuck Jr's head, one 4 colors sprite for the number of lives and one 4 color sprite for the baby bottle health. It's probably also using the copper to change the palette color for the sprites between scanlines, as its clear the colors used at the top are not the same used below.
I believe it only uses 6 sprites instead of all 8 to save DMA time. I know from experience with 8 sprites you can't have full screen AND smooth scrolling, so using less sprites will save some time to draw more stuff on screen/have a larger resolution. Also that's probably why the Amiga verion has just 6 digits for score while the MD one has 8 :)
And that's also why on boss battles the score is not shown on the Amiga version, since Chuck Jr can move at the top of the screen on those levels, it would be impossible to draw both the score and the main sprite at the top of the screen at the same time. Also, of course, the score would obstruct the view when the player moved at that section of the screen, and that's why the MD version moves the score to the bottom of the screen - something the Amiga couldn't do because there wouldn't be enough sprites to draw the score, lives and health counter.
I love the cd32 version. Thanks for another awesome video!
The Amiga version feels different as it ran on the Wonderdog engine, all other ports used the Chuck Rock 1 engine.
Are you sure about that? I thought Wonder Dog Amiga ran on the Chuck Rock 2 engine, and Chuck Rock 2 Mega-CD ran on the Wonder Dog engine. There's a PortsCenter episode all about it from a few years ago. Regardless of which ever way it came about, this game looks a lot like Wonder Dog. Personally, I think Wonder Dog is better, but for a Core platformer in the early 90s, it's not that bad.
And Wonder Dog is a crap game 😉 I have it for the Mega CD.
@@RetroCore Even stranger... The Amiga port of Wonderdog uses the Chuck Rock 1 engine!
@@Larry no no no!
Wonder Dog runs on Chuck Rock 2 engine on the Amiga. Chuck Rock 2 runs on the Wonder Dog on the Mega-Drive :)
Dan Scott was the main coder of the Chuck Rock 2 amiga port, and he says he coded Chuck Rock 2 on Amiga from scratch, using the Mega Drive version as a base. Then when later they decided to port Wonderdog to Amiga too, he used the engine he had written for CR2 to do that port.
The Sega CD version of Wonder Dog came first, and its engine was used to make Chuck Rock 2 on the Mega Drive.
Both games were made for the Sega machines first and both use the same engine on each system (There's an engine on Amiga and another one on the MD).
But on Amiga Chuck Rock 2 came first, and on the Mega Drive/Sega CD Wonder Dog came first. :)
BTW I'd like to add that I really don't have any favourite channels on CZcams (I think I am too old to use those stuff properly :D), but the only 2 channels I truly follow and watch are yours and this one :)
Retro Core One of the few things I disagree with you on. I really enjoyed Wonder Dog on the Sega CD. Good variety of levels with lots of color and high resolution graphics for the Genesis. Was blown away at the time. I would say that Wonder Dog represents some of the most vibrant visuals ever seen on the Genesis/Mega Drive, regardless of gameplay.
I am in the MD/Genesis camp when it comes to sound. I think the arrangements there are incredible. I'll also say that it helps to listen with headphones; they were doing some really cool effects.
The Mega Drive can sound very good in the right hands.
I think The GG/SMS Version is the best way to play this game, not only does it control on par with the genesis version, but it has new level lay outs, that are more forgiving, yet challenging enough, unlike the genesis Version, were a lot of the levels have cheap deaths in them, there are playtesters in this version! Unlike the genesis version and it shows, and the Graphics are amazing for the GG/SMS, Overall, this is my favorite port of the game
From retro-sanctuary (on the Amiga ver.):
"On the other hand though the Mega Drive's "The Lava Tree" stage is not featured in this version, and this was quite an impressive stage, with a tree rotating back and forth whilst sinking into lava.
The two other major changes here are to the Ostrich Stage (part 2 of "Butterfly Grove"), and the Moose stage ("Meet Morgan Moose"). The Ostrich section in the Mega Drive version kind of felt like a bonus stage, it was fast, full of candy, and had very few hazards and enemies, here its more like a normal level and you have to be more careful on it. The Moose stage on Mega Drive had you careening down a mountain on a run-away moose, here the stage has been replaced with a different level that has you riding around on the goat again, and its a more traditional platforming stage.
In the Mega Drive game the "Spooky Cave" stage has a limited field of vision (you can only see a small circle in around you), whilst in this version you can see the whole screen fine, and they've added a proper background in.
Lastly, the two tree stages are busier, and more interesting in this version than they were in the Mega Drive game, here there's a lot more going on, with spiders swinging on webs, and hands throwing rocks at you from holes in the wall.
Outside of the main points, enemies tend to take more hits to kill on this version, and the huge birds have an attack where they try to poo on you (they sit and do nothing in the Sega versions), whilst some of the bosses have simpler attack patterns (Ozric the Octopus, and Sergei the Sea Slug in particular), and you have to face enemies to hit them (in the Mega Drive game you could exploit the fact that you can get multiple hits by facing away from the enemy)."
I have detailed comparisons between the MD, MCD and SMS version on my site too: google "chuck rock minirevver"
I appreciate what you're doing but you should play each game for a bit longer man :)
Well, that's pretty reasonable transition of BOTP episodes. Going from covering Chuck Rock to Son of Chuck with no detours! And this is actually pretty fucking fun, and my favorite version is the Genesis, cuz I love the music renditions, specially stage 1. Still, the Amiga computers have all the levels, so I'm actually conflicted
It's a tough call. For most stages it's got to be the Amiga but for looks it has to be the Mega CD closely followed by the MD.
Amiga version doesn't have the Lava Tree level .
@@rafaellima83 interesting. An exclusive level in the MD release?
I've to also say:
This game was indeed pretty good.
Core Design made some really good games back at the day, and I still think all their Tomb Raider games were better than what Crystal Dynamics gave us. Yes, Angel of Darkness was a huge mess and if you read about how development of that game went, it's amazing they actually managed to finish a product at all, but I still think it was a bad step at the right direction and I do believe a next TR game done by Core Design would have been great.
And not only they gave us Tomb Raider (which I am a big fan even though I don't like the new games as much), but their games on 16 bits system (Most of the time made first for the Amiga) were usually very very good. It's really a shame they aren't around anymore. Rick Dangerous 1 & 2, Wolfchild, Corporation, Premiere, both Heimdall games, Jaguar XJ 220, Thunderhawk and even the less inspired stuff like Torvak the Warrior, Warzone and Frenetic were usually very well made games that were above the average we used to see on Amiga.
Heck, I even liked Cyberpunks which was obviously a filler release for Core Design, but I remeber giving it some time and find it to be surprisingly enjoyable.
And they also strongly supported the Sega CD which I always found curious. I am not sure about that, but I wouldn't be surprised if Core Design was the third-party company that had more releases for the Sega CD system. I believe all their cartridge-based Mega Drive games got Sega CD released and some remained as exclusive CD games on tye Sega System (Like Jaguar XJ 220 and Wonder Dog. Wonder Dog is rather funny because on Amiga it was released on a single 880kb floppy Disk, which is like less than 1/700 of a CD , hehe :D - Also coded by Dan Scott like Chuck Rock 2 :D )
"I believe all their cartridge-based Mega Drive games got Sega CD released". Not at all. In fact, out of their nine games for the Mega Drive, only four were also released for the Mega CD: the two Chuck Rock games, Hook and Wolfchild. Bubba 'N Stix, Coporation, Skeleton Krew and the two Astérix games weren't, despite having plans of doing a Mega CD version for at least Bubba 'N Stix (I don't think there were for the other titles). By the way, what can you say about the two Astérix games by Core Design? Astérix and the Great Rescue (Mega Drive, Master System, Game Gear) and Astérix and the Power of Gods (Mega Drive). Normally people bash those, especially when compared to the two Japanese Astérix games, Astérix (Master System) and Astérix and the Secret Mission (Master System, Game Gear), that Sega developed before setting the agreement they did with Core Design.
Rafael Lima They seemed to have a love for Sega and wanted their consoles to succeed, especially the Mega/Sega CD. Their titles really pushed the technical boundaries of Sega’s CD console. Titles like Soul Star, Thunderstrike and Battle Corps are examples. If I remember correctly, Tomb Raider was originally intended to be a Saturn exclusive, before things started going to crap for the console. Core Design was one of my favorite developers of the 16-bit generation.
The “waah” crying noise takes me back. Have not played or seen this since back in the 90s. I like the Mega CD / Mega Drive versions shown here.
I like to call the master system (and Game Gear) versions Son Of Chuck: Sunburnt Edition. Also throughout the video I had to resist my urge to say “that’s one Cool Baby”.
You're right, Mark, I bought this game in 1992 and I was really happy. What a lovable game. All we wanted as Amiga players: colorful graphics, 50fps smooth scrolling, parallax scrolling, lot of levels, wonderful gameplay and level design and marvelous, astonishing, unbelievable musics composed by the magician, Martin Iveson. Can you imagine that some of the musics doesn't exceed 30kb? Man, trust me, you have to know very well how to create samples and use your tracker to do that. Amiga on its state of the art.
As a musician on computers and consoles I will always militate to give music the place it deserves in video games. Yes you got more parallax and effects on MD, and yes it's more colorful as you can use more colors for sprites. But the sound is very limited on MD so I generally prefers very good musics on Amiga even if there are some flaws compared to MD. And to be honest, sometimes I think that graphician were pushed to use as many colors as possible without real need, just because of the overbidding in the market. Even if I like the MD version, I think Amiga version is a bit more readable because graphician had to make good use of less colors, developping graduations more than flashy contrasts. I have the same feeling on Chaos Engine, a game in which Dan Malone clearly created the GFX with a 16 color constraint and it gave this particular touch in its graphics. On A1200/CD32, MD, SNES and PC, colors are numerous and flashy, nice in their own kind but the magic is lost.
Everybody seems to trust that CD32 was a failure because games were usually A500 floppy disk conversions. That's sad, of course, because CD32 was capable to do more or less the same as MD and maybe better than Mega-CD regarding the CD-ROM use as it was basically a computer. But the truth is that if CD32 was a failure, it was because Commodore launched it far too late, a symbolic gesture to try to retrieve some more money but everybody in the industry known well that the old company was at a point of bankruptcy. So if publishers like Core Design were sufficiently involved in gaming on Amiga to make some efforts to convert some of their games on CD32, they didn't want to make too much as they knew it wouldn't be very profitable. Other publishers like Team 17, Ocean or Gremlin done exactly the same.
Nevertheless, Chuck Rock 2 is a wonderful game on near every system, so just make your choice to help Chuck Jr save his daddy and repeat after me: OUGA BOUGA!
Amazing audio in Mega CD version, as is espected. The Master System version impressed me too!
Thank you Mark for another great video!
You're welcome, José
I love Chuck Rock 2!
It's a decent sequel to a great game and it keeps most of the foundations of the original
I knew this would be the next video, I really need to pick this back up and the first game, such classic's and from Europe, good old core design.
The Sega Genesis one is my favorite.
Once again, the same problem the first Chuck Rock had. The Mega CD version is the best one, yet the soundtrack is subpar and either the Mega Drive or this time the Amiga, had much better tracks. Hence, once again, having a copy of the Mega CD version with the music tracks of the Mega Drive or Amiga version (for the first game, the Mega Drive verison only) is the best option to follow.
Looks like Amiga and Sega hardware were the only ways to play this one. Of course those two brands were super popular in Core's neck of the woods.
That they were.
@@RetroCore I blame Commodore themselves for the Amiga not being popular in it's home turf. Tramiel ruined everything he touched.
The way i understand it on the Amiga, dual playfield mode lets you have 8 colours for one layer and 8 colours for the other. Which explains the lack of colour. But sprites add 15 more colours and the blitter can change the pallete anywhere on screen. So if you include the background gradient into the colour count the Amiga version could have easily surpassed 100 colours technically.
That gradient certainly helps.
I just noticed that the boss music in this game is taken straight from R-Type.
The first version I played was the Master System one. Dind't cared for the game at first but when I continued playing I realized it was a pretty good platformer. I recently got the Genesis version and it was even better. Plays really damn good, great graphics, is colorful (but not as much as the first one) and the music arrangements by Matt Furniss are stellar.
Haven't heard of amiga till youtube, it's not popular here. But by watching videos on amiga, i noticed that most of it's game have a color scheme consist more violet, and most of the elements are shiny, like the backgrounds are shiny, the trees are shiny, leaves, costumes and vehicles are shiny. I notice this too in some of sega games, turned out they were Amiga ports.
Yep, that was the artistic style of many Amiga games.
@@RetroCore i kind of think since amiga is an 80s powerful device compared to the famicom and atari, the 80s airbrushed shiny look is a favoured aesthetic but knowing that Son of Chuck Rock is a 90s game it may be an amiga looks they maintain or those are the graphical strength of an amiga hardware. It render very well with violet and much gradations showing the power of the console.
I'd say objective best to worst order goes like this:
1° Mega-CD
2° Mega Drive
3° CD32
4° Amiga
5° Master System
6° Game Gear
BUT, given how lazy the CD32 version is (seriously, a copy-paste of the Amiga version, once again?! Even the sound FX seem like this meaning not in stereo but hard-panned instead and we're supposed to be on a next gen, 32-bit console... -_-), I'd say that my personal order of "intrinsic qualities/respective achievements/coolness" and, therefore, overall satisfaction goes like this:
1° Mega-CD
2° Mega Drive
3° Amiga
4° Master System
5° Game Gear
6° CD32
Quite impressed with the Sega 8-bit versions. Never seen those before and they fared better than with the first Chuck Rock game.
And I think that the Mega-CD port *is* a worthy port since, compared to its Mega Drive basis, it adds a full animated intro with voice acting + CD music (and I personally love the Mega-CD soundtrack!) + some PCM sound FX + some improved visual FX and I'm sure that there are other things...
Cool video anyway. Would be perfect if the next game is BC Racers!
psyance_ql The Sega CD version also added scaling and rotating sprites on some of the levels.
@@socalboogie1099 yup, that's what I meant by "some improved visual FX" although I didn't see those myself yet :) (but I bought the Mega-CD version a week ago and I can't wait to play it! Already love the animated intro and some of the music)
You know, having talked with Dan Scott who coded the Amiga version, he clearly has a *lot* of love for this game. This with Premiere are the games he always seems to be proud to talk about.
And to be quite honest, it's a very good piece of software for the hardware it's running. It's colorful, smooth, has cool parallax, HUD on screen, big bosses moving around.... It's all very neaty for an OCS Amiga.
It seems kinda unfair to compare it negatively with the mega drive game, since the MD has a much more proper hardware to do this kind of game.
@@rafaellima83 I see what you mean and I should have been more precise as my 2nd ranking is still about the intrinsic qualities when comparing the different versions but also, as I clumsily only insisted on, about the respective achievements but had it been solely about respective achievements then all versions minus CD32 would have been tied, maybe even Amiga and Master System would have been 1st.
The Amiga version is indeed a great achievement. Cool that you had such talk with the coder and nice to hear how he feels about it.
And the Master System version is also impressive although I'd need to dig it more and preferrably on real hardware as emulation doesn't make the audio as "full" as it actually is (same problem with MSX 1-2, Atari ST or Mega Drive emulation)
@Diskun the SNES limited and flawed resolution would have ruined it as it happens with most multiplats (chuck rock, gods, zool, etc.). as for the music, it's subjective but IMO it often sound worse on SNES than amiga/mega drive (and I don't even talk about mega-CD). so not sure if it was worth bothering!
Great Amiga title. Very addictive.
Excellent as always Mark, I blew £40 on this as it was by core design and bought pretty much all mega cd games they brought out, I actually quite enjoyed this with it nice effects and fairly slick game play. I'm not too keen on the first game though.
Yeah, the first game isn't the best but then again it was designed as a computer game, not a console game.
It was indeed, I didn't have a Amiga when it came out but a friend did. I remember him putting it on for me but I just wanted to play Turrican 2 tbh. If you're taking requests I would love a battle of the ports for Starglider 1&2 please, you have plenty of great versions to cover.
The best version is the Mega CD version, which is kind of a no brainer, however, it seems to have serious competition with the Mega Drive and Master System port as well, as they're both almost as good as the Mega CD version. Amiga CD32 is pretty much only better than the Amiga version because of the FMV, but that's it. It's a shame how much Amiga CD32 ports didn't even bother to change the original that much. Game Gear version is yet another clear example of a handheld port that suffers due to low resolution, thus making it the worst version.
Nice video! I don't know why, but compared to your other episodes, I ended up liking this one more than some others!
The length of the side by side part also made me believe there was going to be another outtake showing.
Maybe because I kept the gameplay footage of each format to about 2 minutes each?
There are various other level design diffs on MD, also between MD and MCD. Prefer MD overall
NOt sure if it has been mentioned, but the CD32 version did indeed feature CD sound. :)
I thought it would but I couldn't get it to play.
You were right, this one looks like a much better game than Chuck Rock. I guess I have to check them out by some time !
Great video, And Chuck Rock 2 Son of Chuck sure is an improvement over the first game, my favorite port is the Mega CD version. What's your favorite port?
Probably the MEGA CD version but I'm not really a big fan of the game.
@@RetroCore Ok thanks for sharing.
Yeah the Amiga varies in color count from 16, to 32, 64, and 128 colors which is tricky and performance based I read, like 64 colors on an A500 was usually a high mark but 32 on average like here. Kind of like both in audio myself, nicely color enhanced mostly in more unique color hues and softer gradient contrast overall for Sega. Always liked those clean pixel art cartoons on MCD, a lot more attractive than FMV.
Much more attractive on SMS in the sequel, real backgrounds instead of just solid black, overall good game for the platform. :D Usually isn't as playable on GG but hard to find the development time to redraw everything smaller, only version in NA though. Kind of a late release on ACD32 that could have been beefier since it's an A1200 at heart.
Mega CD's version is my favorite one. Both this & the MD cart have good parallax & the lava tree level before the nest bird boss.
More could've been done with the Amiga CD32. It's nice to see the MCD intro added, but the game itself looks no different than the 32-color ECS version. With the CD32's AGA chipset, they should've upgraded the color palette to at least match the MD version.
Lazy port for the CD32.
@@RetroCore It's always sad to see a good system misused. CD32 is surely one of the most frustrating example. So many direct ports from A500 to CD32, be sure it's even more frustrating for any Amiga lover that saw arrive in 1993 a console system based on the new A1200. We were expecting so much, games like Dune CD, Megarace or Inferno (Epic 2) were presented and awaited. But nothing of those wonders arrived. In place, we had to bear each month the arrival of ECS games written on CDs, even when MD or 256 colour PC versions existed, letting us think that it would be so simple to offer enhanced versions of games. At least Chuck Rock 2 offers redbook musics and the Mega-CD introduction. But CD32 version of games like Syndicate just made us want to die. We got a console system capable to offer the same version as on PC DOS with CD background musics and 256 colours but NO, just the 4 floppy discs (3,3Mb) installed on the CD. No, publishers didn't really want to make games on CD32, for sure.
The Mega Drive version was developed first and then it was ported to the Amiga by a small team, I think Dan from Anarchy was the main coder
Yes, just commented that. I had a converstion with Dan a couple of years ago about that, the Amiga version was a port from the Mega-Drive one and while he had full access to Mega-Drive assets, source code and even the team coding that version, the Amiga version was based on the Mega-Drive one and he was porting it from there. The Mega Drive one was the base version. If I recall correctly, the Amiga version begun being coded while the Mega Drive one was still in development and date of release of both weren't far apart, but Mega Drive version was the original one indeed.
@@rafaellima83 It seems the Amiga version was released before the Mega Drive version somehow, so this seems to be an identical situation to what happened with Flashback and Mega Turrican/Turrican 3.
@@WeskerSega MdD and Amiga have so much in common. After spending several years stupidly converting games from the Atari ST to the Amiga, it was obviously tempting for European publishers to start doing the same thing between the MD and the Amiga, although this obviously required more of work.
Not to be confused with son of chucky, which is part of a horror film series
or of course, bonk's adventure ...damn that is a big head...
The CD32 version lacking a save game option and password system, did highlight the lack of levels for a CD game
Really? Man, that's a big issue.
@@RetroCore Yes, there is no password system on Amiga and CD32, clearly. It was oldschool. Hopefully, the game was not really hard.
Weird graphics but I luv the game
Baby Jo mixed with Prehistorik :) CD32 had same music as Mega CD, wonder why MD/CD had removed stages?
It didn't.
The Amiga version was coded later and the programmer considered one of its levels to be rather difficulty to do it properly on the Amiga as it was on the Mega-Drive, so it was cut completely from the Amiga version. As a compensation, a couple of new levels were added to the Amiga version.
@@rafaellima83 Oh, ok, thank you.
@@metalcoola It's the "Lava Tree" level that's missing in the Amiga version.
There Are Exclusive Levels On The Mega CD Version, If You Play It On Hard.
Never knew that.
Don't mess with Chucks son that's for sure Mark. 8^)
Anthony..
Yeah, they'll bash you for sure.
I could be useful to state if it's Amiga OCS or Amiga AGA ;)
OCS. There was not an AGA version of Chuck Rock 2... while the CD32 version has an added intro which I bet its using AGA features, the main game is still the same old OCS one with no extra parallax/colors/sprites or whatever the AGA chipset could have done extra :)
BC Racers next to complete the trilogy ? Think there were only 3 or 4 versions.
Ooh, you read my mind. From what I know there are the following. Amiga CD32, Mega CD, Mega CD +32X and 3DO. There may be more so I'd better check first.
@@RetroCore I don't think there's actually a Mega CD32X version but at least there is a standalone 32X version (cartridge)
"Squeal" typo in the description.
By the way , the game looks kinda like Bonk series knockoff
Oops, need to fix that.
Didnt like this one when i was little, thought it wasnt as fun as the first game.
Sega CD for the win🏆
Strange, I have no problem with cd32 emulation for that game, no audio issues at all. While first Chuck is definitely the best to play on Mega CD, here it is not that simple. Amiga lacks scaling, some background special effects and level on tree consumed by fire, but levels actually have more static objects like wooden cars or rock houses, for example when You swinging on rope You see there's dinosaur on platform above. I would say that Mega CD is better version just by little margin.
The mega cd version seems soulless to me,the genesis version sounds the best and actually looks the best too especially seing as its quite impressive with its uses of scaling and rotation as well,also the genesis version has louder and better sound effects.
The sms version is also nice
I personally dont like the look of the amiga versions
The sega cd one should have been more like the gen version .. i dont think its the same at all
Well, this was developed on the Amiga and was best on the Amiga, potentially the Amiga CD 32 if the music was indeed higher quality. The Mega CD and Mega Drive versions are pretty close, missing stages aside. They seem to have better graphics and sound, at least, and I really love the Mega Drive's chiptunes. The Master System version looks like a very impressive effort, and I kind of like the PSG music. That puts the Game Gear version at dead last, and it's unfortunate that they made it this bad. The stages look far worse than the Master System, which is odd considering that the Game Gear could display more colors than the Master System. Hell, it had a larger color palette than even the Sega Genesis! But it was completely unused here, and it makes the game look dark and incomplete compared to the Master System version.
the mega drive was the lead platform for this game. the amiga version is port and actually lacks some levels due to technical constraints so they added some other levels here and there to compensate this. also the amiga version has smaller screen estate, worse graphics, hard-panned sound... and the CD32 version is just the amiga version but with the mega-cd intro and soundtrack (even the sound FX seem to be from the amiga version meaning hard-panned). so the mega drive original version is better than the amiga and cd32 ports and the mega-cd version is an upgrade over the mega drive original and is the best overall version
@ben owen I didn't listen to the mega drive soundtrack of chuck rock 2 yet so I can't tell but you made me curious now as Matt usually did great stuff on mega drive. and yeah, that animated intro is excellent!
05:45 "same experience"...yeah right. Maybe if you're deaf.
Why is the game's name also written in Japanese?
Because the art is from the Japanese Mega Drive box. It's far more appealing than the western art.
@@RetroCore I see, thanks to answer. Love your videos.
Many small graphical glitches on the MegaCD?!
I like to compare this game with Bonks Adventure/ PC Genjin, like, which is the better sidescrolling platformer starring a cave child
I actually prefer the original to this sequel. Maybe it's simply because I've put a lot more time into the first one.
I know I saying this at previous chuck video but thanks god I never buy this game, I know many of you will say this game is better than the first one, but to me this just generic platformers game while back then many company try to make so many of its and its not like i miss something great or something like that right ? and I cannot count how many platformers game I play back then but only few survive and still great like Mario, Metroid and Shantae for example, btw can Castlevania count as survive one ? coz Konami pretty much kill it and give us cheap compilation which still great but not enough at least for me as fan of castlevania game.
Compared to Japanese platformer of the time this is pretty bad but as far as western platformer games of the time are concerned, this isn't too bad. Back in the day I didn't play it though. There were far too many better platform games out there.
@@RetroCore ikr also i want mention who the heck design this character, the first one is wacky ugly while these wacky creepy specially that baby face at the bottom its really creepy for baby face at least for me.