Amiga, Commodore and creativity

[piydek]

There's quite a few games that came late in Amiga 1200 history (all on the original hardware, of course) and I've played and finished these, but they weren't really popular or well-known, which I've always thought is a shame:

There's this game, that's strongly inspired by "Another world", which is a true classic, called "On Escapee" (with two "e"). This game came out on CD and you had to have CD-rom for your amiga to play it. It worked perfectly on stock A1200. Here's a video: On escapee

Another GREAT game on CD for A1200 was this: Wasted dreams. Also inspired by Another world/Flashback, with a bit stronger adventure element. Very nice game indeed. Finished it as well.

I don't know how many people here played these, but they were very nice.


And some of the A1200 games that showed well how good Amiga was at 2D:

Super stardust

Wendetta

 

[markec]

Laser Squad is one of my favorite games from C64, I probably spend more time on it than any other game ever. In my opinion this is still one of the best squad based tactical games ever made. Some guy made java version of it here http://www.lasersquad.org/

 

[Tails]

Another major fail in Commodore's business was Amiga 500+ and Amiga 600. Those two models made no sense at all. I still feel disappointed about the whole story because it wasn't even funny how superior Amiga 500 was to its time PCs. Amiga 1200 was a really good step forward, although one might argue that it came a tiny little bit too late. And the blizzard expansion cards (especially the ones with 68040 and 68060 processors) were expensive as fuck and only needed for a few applications, so they never became a standard.

Amiga 600 was good for what it was. Easy to transport and had guts to make music in Protracker. I remember how my brothers buddy was taking his Amiga 600 with hard drive & disk and work in Protracker. Otherwise, Amiga 1200 wasn't really a good one, since it really lack of real power, without expansions. They could really add those few extra MB of memory, or at least upgrade the processor to 030 model. Still it was my most favourite model, you could even put a HDD inside.

Another funny story is that quite some time after Doom and Doom2 came out, some guys made the direct port of those two games for the Amiga and they worked playable on Amiga 1200 with 68020 expansion card (28MHz version of 68020 and extra 4mb of ram).

You must have really lightened version of Workbench to run ADOOM on 020, even with extra 4 mb ram and even in that case, game wouldn't work smoothly. 030 was real minimum to have no glitches. Heretic/Hexen had slight problems on 030, thought it could be the fault of shitty port. AB 3D II didn't fail only because it required better guts, the game itself was really disappointing, especially comparing to previous one.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Laser Squad is one of my favorite games from C64, I probably spend more time on it than any other game ever. In my opinion this is still one of the best squad based tactical games ever made. Some guy made java version of it here http://www.lasersquad.org/

I love Laser Squad too :D . A PC spiritual successor with C64 sound and graphics would be awesome. Too bad that the Java version is based on the ZX Spectrum one and has crappy sound that tends to stop working anyway.

 

[Mortmal]

Another GREAT game on CD for A1200 was this: Wasted dreams. Also inspired by Another world/Flashback, with a bit stronger adventure element. Very nice game indeed. Finished it as well.

I

And some of the A1200 games that showed well how good Amiga was at 2D:

Super stardust

Wendetta

Awesome another world clone, i am watching the video atm. Never heard of it before nor played, i abandonned the amiga for a 386 with wing commander , ultima underworld etc... what really killed it was the lack of hardrives at reasonable prices and no more developper support.
An A1200 released earlier with an good hardrive instead of the a500+ a600 and CD32 could definitively have saved them.

 

[piydek]

Yes, Wasted dreams was very fun to play, I remember i enjoyed it very much. Had to google its name to mention it here, I couldn't remember the name. I remember it had one annoying sequence of some underground tunnels, sewers or something where you had to switch some levers or something like that and keep track of it. But other than that, I remember it very fondly.

I agree about the hard-drives, although i know that I could afford (my parents) hard drive and it wasn't such a big problem. But i couldn't even dream of something like Blizzard 68040 expansion card - that was ultra expensive. And that's the kind of stuff Amiga users were supposed to buy to get the software going further as well. Regarding developers - i think they stopped producing Amiga software very very late, there was a long period of time when it was clear that it's all over, but so many great companies continued producing software. Not to mention independent, "underground" and so on scenes.

Regardless of what Tails said - which is true - i stand by my statement about A500+ and A600. They may have been "good for what they were" , but their development, production, marketing etc. certainly cost money and time - something Commodore couldn't waste at that time. They should have come out with A1200 and 4000 as soon as possible and pushed those models. They should have put A1200 in separate case as well - i remember that i had to get a stronger power supply when i put 68020 expansion card, HDD and CD-ROM on my A1200...i've had three separate boxes on the table, cables going everywhere - it was a bit of DIY. And everything i used was actually very standard equipment.

 

[made]

On Escapee, Wasted dreams

Sweet, I had totally forgotten about those two games. I remember playing the demos from some CD mag but never the full versions.

And there was another one in the same period. A 2D/3D genre mix where you control some robot and go on various assignments. Know what I'm talking about perchance?

 

[piydek]

Yeah, those games never were popular. They came at the point where the community itself was already pretty much dead. I finished both games in full versions and they were good. On escapee was MAYBE on par with Another world, but not as good as Flashback. Wasted dreams was really cool. They both had a bit of an air of amateurism around them, but I didn't mind that.

I haven't played or seen the game about the robot you mention...i really can't remember I've encountered anything like what you mention.

 

[made]

Found it: Uropa2

And also Napalm - a C&C clone that I thought never came out. The screenshots looked amazing at the time.

 

[Tails]

Napalm is a very mixed bag if goes as RTS. It has very insane difficulty which was pretty annoying of some player units dumb AI (which I suppose was made a bit on purpose since AI nicely could exploit it) and questionable mission design which sometimes really didn't make real sense. Still one of the best C&C clones for Amiga.

Anyway regarding Amiga game developing, Vulcan Software (they did great games, must play for all Amiga gamers) developed games on Amiga until 1999, clickBOOM did a bit longer. Later on there was few ports of games like Earth 2140, Shogo (2002 I think) and even native releases like RTS Exodus: The Last War. It's the last game I played on Amiga.

 

[Flatlander]

Just a few weeks ago I was in this retro game event with my daughter, she just loved the Amiga RoboCod and some of the C64 games (Ghostbusters especially since it was just on our Curriculum of Correct Culture. (which is currently in hold, thanks to the kindergarden. I can't see why a six year old couldn't handle Fight Club but whatever...)

Damn, that Robocod looked awesome with native Amy and decent monitor.

 

[spekkio]

You mean James Pond 2? Damn, Amiga platformers were teh best...

 

[Flatlander]

Yep. James Bond 2. It was just so beatiful. I wish I had my A1200 still working and in one piece but whatever.

It never looks that good with emulators...

Edit: It was the AGA version. Yummy.

 

[piydek]

Yes, Amiga platformers were the best. It really annoys me how bad all the conversions and emulations are. You just have to have an Amiga setup for the real thing.

I especially enjoyed this later one:

Some of the legends - Chuck rock, Chuck rock 2: son of Chuck, Superfrog... James Pond was great too. I liked a little less known platformer called "Soccer kid", that had some interesting gameplay in it due to having to handle the ball.

I liked how most of those games were quite difficult and actually most of them did require some thought - at their level, of course.

 

[Mortmal]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0VkEv47iw0
Now what a wonderful platformer, i remmber platformers on the amiga not getting as good reviews as the geneis pc-engine or nes/ super nintendo gams, but looking at turrican i think they were definitvely as good, this one is worth metroid.
Also this one shadow of the best had one of the best music ive heard in a video game:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qipWqOwkceg
Actually thats why i had an amiga an not an atari ST, really have to name it once in the amiga and creativity thread, dont tell me video games arent art after playing this.

 

[piydek]

Yeah, if i remember correctly Psygnosis used to make some arty stuff in general. Turrican is great. Have you played this: Ruff n' tumble? i liked that game.

 

[Mortmal]

Yeah, if i remember correctly Psygnosis used to make some arty stuff in general. Turrican is great. Have you played this: Ruff n' tumble? i liked that game.

Ah no sadly i havent got it, it was much more hard to get videogames by then and even not removing them from ivnentories was not widely available.
Now my old self remember another fantastic platformer.. flood!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVUgHuAaVLM
I have not seen similar gampelay ever and the ending was so.. see for yourself..
A classic must play it.

 

[MisterStone]

Another awesome game I remember is Axe of Rage (Barbarian II). For some reason everyone else thinks it is shit, but basically it was Deathsword (Barbarian I) with many different enemies. I also thought the skeleton guy was funny. Sadly I never did get to finish the game because my crackzored disks got damaged or something.

 

[MisterStone]

Oh, and also some Koei ports such as Bandit Kings of Ancient China and Ghengis Khan. Those were p. cool strategy games.

 

[WhiteMagicRaven]

How to play Raven Software Black Crypt

So, sorry if it whenever mentioned.
But how to run/emulate Black Crypt.
Cannot play this game. Can't start it/run.?

 

[Luzur]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaWM3eVWwb8

demo time!

 

[Mortmal]

Re: How to play Raven Software Black Crypt

So, sorry if it whenever mentioned.
But how to run/emulate Black Crypt.
Cannot play this game. Can't start it/run.?

I am using winUAE on default A500 configuration(remmber to add the rom they are not includedby default) , 3 disks on .adf format, i dont encounter a problem at all , if you cant start it at all its probably a copy problem. I own the original game , but downloaded the disks since the original disks are sadly not readable anymore.
Also could be the first time you are doing amiga emulation ?

 

[Luzur]

Re: How to play Raven Software Black Crypt

So, sorry if it whenever mentioned.
But how to run/emulate Black Crypt.
Cannot play this game. Can't start it/run.?

I am using winUAE on default A500 configuration(remmber to add the rom they are not includedby default) , 3 disks on .adf format, i dont encounter a problem at all , if you cant start it at all its probably a copy problem. I own the original game , but downloaded the disks since the original disks are sadly not readable anymore.
Also could be the first time you are doing amiga emulation ?

try downloading it from somewhere else, i know of a bad ADF circulating of that game and many others.

the bad one i had had a intro from some unknown cracking team, so go with the known ones.

 

[Luzur]

got hold of Alien Breed, Frak 64 and Hunchback II yesterday at a carsale.

 

[piydek]

got hold of Alien Breed, Frak 64 and Hunchback II yesterday at a carsale.

Wow. :drool: . Especially Alien Breed, that was one of my favourite games back in the day...along with "The horror continues" and "Tower assault". Finished them all except tower assault.

Are the floppies fully functional, without read-errors? Do you have some photos of the boxes?