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Oh wow - the Amiga is 25! AMIGA APPRECIATION THREAD
- Thread starter Gary Whitta
- Start date
JRW
Member
Ahhh memories .. Found some Youtube videos of a few games I used to play on my Amiga 500:
Sinbad and the Throne of the Falcon
King of Chicago
Defender of the Crown
Datastorm
Sinbad and the Throne of the Falcon
King of Chicago
Defender of the Crown
Datastorm
miserabile visu
Banned
Trunchisholm said:
I agree. Third is pretty good. A nice combination of platforming and puzzleling. Imho much better than the predecessors. It is really underrated.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WSe1v77dXY&feature=related
VoteForPedro
Member
Jesus I'm getting old.
I remember buying the Amiga 500 after I had a Spectrum ZX and the upgrade was just amazing! Also, I think I bought a chipboard for it that went underneath the keyboard, I don't remember much about it only that after I put it in Lotus Challenge Had menu music, anyon know what I'm talking about here? I think it was supposed to give it some extra memory of some kind?
Also, Some standout games form my childhood:
Rick Dangerous
Chao Engine
SWIV
Shufflepuck Cafe
Nort & South
And how about Street Fighter II on 7 floppies :lol
I remember buying the Amiga 500 after I had a Spectrum ZX and the upgrade was just amazing! Also, I think I bought a chipboard for it that went underneath the keyboard, I don't remember much about it only that after I put it in Lotus Challenge Had menu music, anyon know what I'm talking about here? I think it was supposed to give it some extra memory of some kind?
Also, Some standout games form my childhood:
Rick Dangerous
Chao Engine
SWIV
Shufflepuck Cafe
Nort & South
And how about Street Fighter II on 7 floppies :lol
Psychotext
Member
I used to play Shufflepuck all the time with my friends. Got real competitive.
North and South was superb too.
North and South was superb too.
BruceWayneIII
Member
VoteForPedro said:
*high five*
I started with (gaming and coding) the ZX Spectrum, C64, Amiga 500, Acorn Archimedes and also did coding on my friend's Amstrad CPC 464 and his Spectravideo 318.
Although the Archimedes was a really interesting piece of hardware, it never really captured me the same way as the C64 and especially the Amiga 500. I still remember the shock and awe when I did a small assembly piece, trying to play some sound through the chipset. I ran the program, music started playing and I was back in the assembler tool - ready to continue my coding. The surprise was that the sound was still playing in the background! That was my first experience in true hardwarebased multitasking
Same kind of surprise when I followed my dad's advice on skipping BASIC on the C64 and go straight to assembly. The speed difference had my jaws on the floor...VoteForPedro said:
Are you sure about that? I think it was more like 2-4. Mortal Kombat II was on 4 for sure, so I don't see why Street Fighter would be so big. I'd remember if it was 7 floppies.
EDIT: Oh, you mean Super Street Fighter II for AGA. Yeah, I was too much of a peasant to get a 1200.
There was a version of SSFII for ECS Amigas, on 4 floppies I think. I liked it a lot, even though it looked worse than the regular Street Fighter II.
VoteForPedro
Member
Radogol said:
You might be right because I never owned a 1200 as well. It was a long time ago so I may be exxagerating a bit, I just remember thinking "well this is stupid I have to change discs for every damn match that only last for about 2 minutes?". Ah those were the days!
Maybe it was Final fight I was thinking of? I remember a capcom game with a lot of discs LOL
VoteForPedro said:
Retro Gamer tells me that SSFII for 500s came on 5 floppies, while the 1200 version was on 7. 5 is still a lot, right?
The worst disk swapping experience for me was Police Quest III. The port was slow as hell and totally unoptimized. Pretty much every single location was on a different disk.
Monty Mole
Member
I used to love these demos.Lord Error said:
Perfect way for graphics artists, coders and MOD musicians to jointly show of their mad skillz!
This topic brings back good memories I still own 2 Amiga 500's myself. I used to have the Commodore 1084s monitor too, but that one stopped working all of a sudden
I have the Arcade Stick with 2 buttons:
I still own 2 Amiga 500's myself. I used to have the Commodore 1084s monitor too, but that one stopped working all of a sudden CaseyTappy said:I used them all but nothing , and I mean nothing beats the good old plain Suzo Arcade stick , the Competition pro buttons where terrible :
I still have two of them !
I have the Arcade Stick with 2 buttons:
After all these pages and no one has mentioned:
Blood Money by Psygnosis. One of the best shooters i ever played and the music was belting!!! loved it..
Katakis. A shooter (R-Type clone) that didnt really get enough appreciation.
The Great Giana Sisters.
Kick off
Rainbow Islands (How good did this look at the time?)
As far as Demos.. Anyone remember the DOC demo? A ring of 10 balls that transformed into demons. What made this special was it moved more sprites than the Amiga could handle somehow. Then after watching it for something like 15 minutes it gave you control of the balls/demons. Loved it!
Blood Money by Psygnosis. One of the best shooters i ever played and the music was belting!!! loved it..
Katakis. A shooter (R-Type clone) that didnt really get enough appreciation.
The Great Giana Sisters.
Kick off
Rainbow Islands (How good did this look at the time?)
As far as Demos.. Anyone remember the DOC demo? A ring of 10 balls that transformed into demons. What made this special was it moved more sprites than the Amiga could handle somehow. Then after watching it for something like 15 minutes it gave you control of the balls/demons. Loved it!
Spectral Glider
Member
VoteForPedro said:
If I recall correctly, that upgraded the 500 from 512K to 1meg of RAM. I remember my friend got one, slapped it in, and when we started up Nuclear War we were amazed to see the opening cinema that was an homage to Dr. Strangelove with the cowboy riding the warhead down to the ground. Followed by a nuclear explosion animation. Good times.
By the way, the Konix stick, known as the Epyx 500XJ in the states, was the bomb. When that came out, I refused to use anything else for my C-64. However, I did manage to break one, one of the tiny black plastic housing pieces on the case broke. In turn, the microswitch mechanism couldn't be held in place properly. This was around the time the C-64 was on it's last legs, so it was tough finding a replacement. But I got one at a shop that specialized in Amiga products.
VoteForPedro
Member
Spectral Glider said:
I wonder what were the effects of having said chip in other games, I have to read up on it.
Alos I just remebered another classic! Any of you played this?
One of the first puzzle games I really got into!
Damn, I wish I still had my Amiga, this thread is giving me a massive nostalgia rush
.nolookjones
Member
toff74 said:
+1 on all your choices...all amazing games...think katakis was pretty rare cause ive never heard anyone mention it
Strummerjones
Member
SmokyDave said:
Yeah, I only had the budget re-release of the C64, but the typo was STILL in that version. The actual sentence was something like "a giant space shit has appeared in Hyde Park".
I loved the Rick Dangerous games as a kid, probably as they had a charming visual style and pretty good graphics for their time. Looking back them now though, they're up their with Shadow of the Beast in the design awfulness stakes. Both games are built around joyless trial and error, as you're forced to die again and again until you work out the correct sequence of jumps or button presses or whatever despite usually being given no clues at all what to do.
The best example is at the start of Rick Dangerous 2. The first few screens help you along nicely enough, and even have little arrows that appear to show you what buttons to press. Then you get to a switch with a help arrow on that if you press, kills you. It doesn't do anything helpful or is part of some clever puzzle, it's just there to punish you for doing what you're told to. This kind of "HAW-HAW you died for no reason!" philisophy sadly permeates both games.
Psychotext
Member
It's amazing, I'd forgotten just how many of my favourite games were on the Amiga.
Strummerjones
Member
toff74 said:
Two interesting games.. Rainbow Arts/Factor 5 really were the kings of plagiarism.
Katakis started off as a recoloured unofficial port of R-Type, until legal action meant they retooled the game to be different. They were also asked to work on the official ports for Ocean as a result of how impressive their work was, however.
Great Giana Sisters is a largely exacting but poor rip off of Super Mario Bros, which people oddly defend because they couldn't personally play Super Mario Bros back in the day. Now anyone can with five minutes and access to Google can, there's zero reason to play Gianas ever again. The original was removed from shelves a week after it was released after Nintendo took out an injunction against it.
Then you've got Turrican 2, which features almost pixel perfect rip offs of two levels from Kaneko's Air Buster. Turrican 1 inexplicably features the main theme from Transformers the Movie on its title screen, for God know's reason why.
I loved their games back in the day (and most still stand up now), but geez guys, come up with your own ideas for a change!
BrainZEROX
Member
Hyphen
Member
My avatar speaks for itself regarding my favourite Amiga game...
The more popular ones have been mentioned already. But here are a few more from my collection that I don't think have been stated as yet (or apologies if they already have, and I've missed)...
Apidya - Awesome 2d shoot 'em up. And I was amazing at it. Yes, I was. Music was also incredible, thanks to the immortal Chris Huelsbeck.
Assassin - I liked to see this as the Amiga's answer to Strider. It wasn't exactly the same. But it's all I had after the official Strider port, which was poor.
Back to the Future: Part II - This was the first game I actually played when I became the proud owner of my Amiga 500 (it came with it). Good times!
The Champ - I don't remember too many boxing games on the Amiga. But my brother told me this was a good one when he bought it for me. And it was indeed quite good.
Championship Manager '93 - This is where football management first started for me, until it evolved into Football Manager.
Crazy Cars III - Had tons of fun with this. Select stage, bet money, outrun cops, finish first, repeat. Repetitive but fun.
Emlyn Hughes International Soccer - I don't hear many people talk about this game. It always gets lost amongst Kick-Off and Sensible Soccer. Nevertheless, I loved it.
First Samurai - "Haaaaaaallelujah" Crazy side-scrolling samurai action. I found it pretty hard, but always went back for more. Loved the train level.
Second Samurai - "Haaaaaaallelujah" part 2, times 2.
Formula One Grand Prix - Spent way too much time playing this game. Always opted for full laps, so it took hours just to complete one race. Epic racing against my brother.
Goal! - Once Kick Off was done, this was supposed to take over. It didn't quite take with everyone, but I enjoyed it.
HeroQuest - As a fan of the fantasy genre, I wanting to like this game more than I did. Maybe the dice rolling got on my nevres. I don't actually remember much about this game, I just... remember it.
IK+ Everyone remembers this, surely. Do I need to explain it? 'course not!
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis - 11 friggin' disks. Frustrating disk swaps, but it was Indiana Jones, so I put up with it.
Jimmy White's Whirlwind Snooker - The only snooker game that was needed? I think so.
Leander - Ah, now this was my type of game. Didn't get very far with it, but along with Lionheart (which I completed multiple times), it made me less jealous of Snes and Mega Drive owners.
The Manager - My brother wanted me to get this because Championship Manager didn't have a proper match view. This did, but it wasn't as good as CM, but it was a decent alternative.
Nitro - Was like a cheaper version of Supercars II. Not as fun, but like The Manager was to Championship Manager, it was a decent alternative.
Panza Kickboxing - I was always in awe of the animation in this game. But I didn't like how I had to select certain moves before matches, sacrificing others. But, oh well.
Shadowlands - This needs to be in there just for the title screen music. As for the game itself, it was my first foray into the world of Amiga RPGs. I only remember there being 2 environments (forest and dungeon) though.
Switchblade II - My favourite genre, but although good, this game didn't have the magic of Lionheart or Leander. Still, it was fun while it lasted, although a little hard.
Walker - Never played anything like this before. Made a change from the usual things that I was playing. Plus, you get to shoot tiny little soldiers. Good stuff.
Wolfchild - This game isn't actually good - The attacks are extremely limited, the enemies aren't particularly original, but there's something about it that I liked.
World Class Leaderboard - I never spent much time with this game. It was mainly played (and bet on) by my brothers during their gaming sessions with their friends. But it always fascinated me.
I'm also ashamed to say I remember
. But that was my evil twin.
The more popular ones have been mentioned already. But here are a few more from my collection that I don't think have been stated as yet (or apologies if they already have, and I've missed)...
Apidya - Awesome 2d shoot 'em up. And I was amazing at it. Yes, I was. Music was also incredible, thanks to the immortal Chris Huelsbeck.
Assassin - I liked to see this as the Amiga's answer to Strider. It wasn't exactly the same. But it's all I had after the official Strider port, which was poor.
Back to the Future: Part II - This was the first game I actually played when I became the proud owner of my Amiga 500 (it came with it). Good times!
The Champ - I don't remember too many boxing games on the Amiga. But my brother told me this was a good one when he bought it for me. And it was indeed quite good.
Championship Manager '93 - This is where football management first started for me, until it evolved into Football Manager.
Crazy Cars III - Had tons of fun with this. Select stage, bet money, outrun cops, finish first, repeat. Repetitive but fun.
Emlyn Hughes International Soccer - I don't hear many people talk about this game. It always gets lost amongst Kick-Off and Sensible Soccer. Nevertheless, I loved it.
First Samurai - "Haaaaaaallelujah" Crazy side-scrolling samurai action. I found it pretty hard, but always went back for more. Loved the train level.
Second Samurai - "Haaaaaaallelujah" part 2, times 2.
Formula One Grand Prix - Spent way too much time playing this game. Always opted for full laps, so it took hours just to complete one race. Epic racing against my brother.
Goal! - Once Kick Off was done, this was supposed to take over. It didn't quite take with everyone, but I enjoyed it.
HeroQuest - As a fan of the fantasy genre, I wanting to like this game more than I did. Maybe the dice rolling got on my nevres. I don't actually remember much about this game, I just... remember it.
IK+ Everyone remembers this, surely. Do I need to explain it? 'course not!
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis - 11 friggin' disks. Frustrating disk swaps, but it was Indiana Jones, so I put up with it.
Jimmy White's Whirlwind Snooker - The only snooker game that was needed? I think so.
Leander - Ah, now this was my type of game. Didn't get very far with it, but along with Lionheart (which I completed multiple times), it made me less jealous of Snes and Mega Drive owners.
The Manager - My brother wanted me to get this because Championship Manager didn't have a proper match view. This did, but it wasn't as good as CM, but it was a decent alternative.
Nitro - Was like a cheaper version of Supercars II. Not as fun, but like The Manager was to Championship Manager, it was a decent alternative.
Panza Kickboxing - I was always in awe of the animation in this game. But I didn't like how I had to select certain moves before matches, sacrificing others. But, oh well.
Shadowlands - This needs to be in there just for the title screen music. As for the game itself, it was my first foray into the world of Amiga RPGs. I only remember there being 2 environments (forest and dungeon) though.
Switchblade II - My favourite genre, but although good, this game didn't have the magic of Lionheart or Leander. Still, it was fun while it lasted, although a little hard.
Walker - Never played anything like this before. Made a change from the usual things that I was playing. Plus, you get to shoot tiny little soldiers. Good stuff.
Wolfchild - This game isn't actually good - The attacks are extremely limited, the enemies aren't particularly original, but there's something about it that I liked.
World Class Leaderboard - I never spent much time with this game. It was mainly played (and bet on) by my brothers during their gaming sessions with their friends. But it always fascinated me.
I'm also ashamed to say I remember
X-Copy
Amiga... I have so much fond memories for this machine. There's hasn't been anything like it since then. Saw my first Amiga when someone demonstrated some games at school (amongst others, Defender of the crown) and i just had to have one. My dad bought an A1000 for us. I remember buying a copy of Deluxe video with the crazy professor demonstration video (with some paper airplane). Also remember a demo disk with a slideshow from games (Marble Madness, some pinball construction kit thingie). Then you had those amazing graphics by Jim Sachs (Defender of the crown, ports of call,...). Played tons of games but Amiga was more than games. You could paint stuff in DPaint or write music in soundtracker. Or try coding in assembler (at one point, the company behind Populous had an assembler tutorial in Amiga Format, iirc)...
I still have my A1000 (in working condition), a couple of A500's (not in working condition) and 2 A1200's (a spare one and one expanded with a 68060).
Looking back, i feel kind of sad that i hadn't more (or any) money to buy games. On the other hand, i fell in love with cracktro's and never lost my interest in the demoscene since then. I still actively follow the amiga demoscene even now (yes, it still exists).
One aspect that i haven't read much about is the magazines. My mum used to go into town each saturday and always went past the book shop to buy the latest issues of CU Amiga, Amiga Format and others. I used to spent ages reading these mags and drooling at all those great games. I still have all my magazines in the attic. I don't think i will ever get rid of them.
May you rest in peace, Amiga.
I still have my A1000 (in working condition), a couple of A500's (not in working condition) and 2 A1200's (a spare one and one expanded with a 68060).
Looking back, i feel kind of sad that i hadn't more (or any) money to buy games. On the other hand, i fell in love with cracktro's and never lost my interest in the demoscene since then. I still actively follow the amiga demoscene even now (yes, it still exists).
One aspect that i haven't read much about is the magazines. My mum used to go into town each saturday and always went past the book shop to buy the latest issues of CU Amiga, Amiga Format and others. I used to spent ages reading these mags and drooling at all those great games. I still have all my magazines in the attic. I don't think i will ever get rid of them.
May you rest in peace, Amiga.
lastplayed
Member
What was the game where you controlled an Apache from an isometric view? Desert Strike?
That was so awesome, I wish we had more modern games like that.
That was so awesome, I wish we had more modern games like that.
Rick Dangerous
Member
Gary Whitta said:
can only support that
I have played (and finished) both Turrican II and Aero Blaster, the games came out merely months apart. You'll have to show some evidence here because I don't remember the flying stages in T2 to be really that inspired by AB, more like a wink to Katakis (especially since the first one has a "Katasis lives" banner.Strummerjones said:
Diablohead
Member
Push Over, awesome game that I never got to play :lol I still remember when it was new and advertised too.
One day I will... one day...
One day I will... one day...
VoteForPedro
Member
Sorry if I turn this into a bit of an Image dump but this thread got me reminiscing and looking for old games that I've long since forgotten. Some of my faves I'd like t share with you guys.
Blues Brothers
New Zealand Story
Rainbow Islands
Toki
Pang!
Battle Squadron
I loved these games so much, plus everything by the Bitmap Brothers was ace!
Edit: Rainbow Islands image was way too big
Blues Brothers
New Zealand Story
Rainbow Islands
Toki
Pang!
Battle Squadron
I loved these games so much, plus everything by the Bitmap Brothers was ace!
Edit: Rainbow Islands image was way too big
Spectral Glider
Member
wouwie said:
That reminds me, I loved the mags back in my C-64 days: Ahoy!, Compute's Gazette, RUN, Commodore Magazine and Commodore Power/Play, Family Computing, Info....I loved them all.
Philthy
Member
toff74 said:
Best thing about Blood Money was the intro. That song is still catchy today. WHERE IS THE MONEY? CH-CHING! I found a cheat for unlimited lives and played through the entire game. There is NO WAY anyone could have beaten that game. No way in hell.
My favorite shooter on the Amiga was Project X. It was about as close to a top of the line arcade shooter as you could get.
How about multiplayer Falcon over 2400 baud modems? Dog fights at 5fps was so much fun back then.
VoteForPedro
Member
I keep seeing all these screenshots of the Amiga 500 with a monitor, I'm pretty sure I had mine directly connected to my TV with a (RF?) cable. I'm not crazy am I?
Also as far as controllers go I rocked one of these babies:
It was utter shit :lol
Some years laters I realized I could hook up a MegaDrive pad to the Amiga so I started using that.
Also as far as controllers go I rocked one of these babies:
It was utter shit :lol
Some years laters I realized I could hook up a MegaDrive pad to the Amiga so I started using that.
VoteForPedro
Member
Philthy said:
I distinctly remember playing in colour! :lol
ScHlAuChi
Member
Philthy
Member
VoteForPedro said:
Yeah, you had one of these then.
My first week of owning my A500 was playing games in B&W. I got it to do artwork with Deluxe Paint III, and I couldn't use it because I didn't have color. Dad finally caved for the adapter and I was in heaven. Sculpt 3DXL was purchased shortly after, with a delay, so they sent me Animate 4D in consolation, which was useless unless you bought Sculpt 4D which was like $500. My dad complained and they sent me the game 'Ports of Call' which was one of the worst games ever.
Sculpt 3DXL eventually came, and I did the best renderings of a plate and wine glass that anyones ever seen. It only took 4 days to render a simple 640x400 image.
I also wrote my own BBS software in GFA BASIC that ran off two floppy drives. I downloaded PC door games that had source code and ported them all to my BBS. I had paying subscribers and everything. I could always tell when someone signed onto the BBS because the floppy disks would spin. It was next to my bed, so I'd be woken up around 3am when some night owl dialed in.
Next I wrote the MUD, Lair, which had a built in editor and everything. You didn't need a BBS to run it, one person could just run it stand alone on their machine and someone could dial in and log in and play. It supported multiple modems. I didn't have any, so I mostly logged in locally and played while someone else was playing. It was pretty awesome. I had so much motivation when I was 16.
I really REALLY miss those days.
Lord Error
Insane For Sony
SOTB2 would turn into a nice game when you used an infinite energy cheat. You could still die, or get stuck very easily, but it would turn more into a thinking game than a game of extreme action based difficulty.Widge said:
Title screen music was simply amazing, and as a fun fact, I think the mod file for it was just around 50KB!
Game Over screen music too - such amazing guitar samples.
Intro animation was something unheard of at the time. I seriously couldn't believe the small home computer in front of me was capable of playing back something like that. As a coincidence, while first starting the game, it was kind of stormy night outside as well, which only helped make the whole experience that much better
Only years later I've seen that the (pirated, sigh...) version of SOTB2 i played had a cut down intro, with a large part missing. The whole thing (that shows transformation into the flying monster) was that much more impressive:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKxYBPxweRw
This is the best quality video I could find, but it has crappy comments from the editor - so if they bother you, just shrink the browser window down to cut them off
Video also shows nice title screen and starting scene musicAs a fun bonus, here's the intro animation from the FM towns version of SOTB2. It shows what happens shortly after the Amiga game intro ends:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWTCA-Io1xk
Another fun bonus - most people who played pirated copy of SOTB3 had it on two disks, never knowing that the full game had a third disk - with an intro animation! (Nowhere near as good as the SOTB2 intro though)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WSe1v77dXY
ScHlAuChi
Member
Lord Error said:This is the best quality video I could find, but it has crappy comments from the editor - so if they bother you, just shrink the browser window down to cut them off
Or you could just watch Laffer´s video without comments:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KC4vOWtYn1g