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[Castef]

This. Aside from Turrican 1/2, there really aren't any truly great games that weren't both available AND better somewhere else.

That's a great exaggeration, i'd say.

There are plenty of games which are truly "great" and not available "somewhere else", even without going into a list war.

Also, the fact that the games are available somewhere else do not detract from the overall huge library of good games on the machine.

 

[EdwardTivrusky]

I used to regularly carry my Amiga AND my TV a few miles up and down a very steep hill to play Stunt Car Racer this way at a mate's house around 1990.
Thinking about it this probably explains why I've had a fucked back ever since.
Worth it, though..!

Null Modem games, that takes me back. We used to have mad sessions of Falcon, Stunt Car Racer and Armour-geddon. Good times, even if i had an Atari STe not an Amiga

 

[keraj37]

God bless the Amiga. Easily my favourite games machine of all time.

I find amiga my best machine I ever had to. Maybe cause I was very young and the jump in quality from 8bits was so great that shocked me and everyone.

My best game ever I played on amiga: Civilization 1.

 

[SiegfriedFM]

Stunt Car Racer was even playable cross-platform via nullmodem...

 

[Clear]

Well, i wouldn't say "any" aside from Turrican.

It's true that back then very few western developers knew how to properly design action games or shmups, but there were still a few for both categories.
I would say though, the games that better stood the test of time and better define the Amiga were in other genres.

Btw, I also never liked Gods. Actually I never really got the love for Bitmap Bros (ok Speedball 2 was amazing, Chaos Engine was ok, but that's it) and Team 17, besides the lovely pixel art in their games.

It has to be factored in that most Amiga games were built with a one button joystick in mind as the primary controller. That's a big deal from a design perspective especially if you consider that even if additional inputs were configured to the keyboard, its just not comparable in terms of user friendliness/accessibility.

To a very large degree these systems descended from the line begun by the Atari VCS and continued by the 8-bit Atari home computers; systems where although the hardware improved over time, the controllers barely evolved.

This is why so many classics of the Amiga Era are mouse-driven; its difficult to design gameplay much past the bar set by 8-bit home computers like the C64 when its using the same limited interfaces.

Its also perhaps worth considering that a lot of the best software on Amiga were creative tools like Dpaint and soundtracker; things that were instrumental in game development but not games themselves. Same deal with the whole demo-scene aspect; these are Amiga "jewels" that had massive impact down the line on game development way beyond the boundaries of the machine itself.

 

[wazoo]

without the amiga, less creativity and developers. another world started on amiga as flashback. starglider was an unknown 3d game made by unknown devs that end up doing starfox ob snes a few years laters. without the amiga, no driver on ps1, no total war on pc, it was really the garden of euro devs.

even sony would not have been sony without buying psygnosis to create its euro studios.

 

[Mask]

Ooh, didn't notice this thread before! I grabbed an Amiga 1200 from eBay sometime halfway through last year and set it up on my keyboard desk so I can play amiga games on my monitor, I never actually had one as a kid as my family focused on consoles mostly, but I've always been curious! Grabbed an accelerator too, not super powerful, but enough to play most games from compact flash, at least the ones I grabbed from eBay on floppy that don't work properly

 

[munster]

Stunt Car Racer was even playable cross-platform via nullmodem...

So was Populus.

starglider was an unknown 3d game made by unknown devs

Starglider was quite well known in the UK, as it appeared on the Saturday morning kids show 'Get Fresh', where two kids play off against each other, in a specially created 3 minute game for the high score to win prizes.

 

[gelf]

I still prefer the Amiga versions over PC for many games of it's era.

 

[keraj37]

I grabbed an Amiga 1200 from eBay sometime halfway through last year and set it up on my keyboard desk so I can play amiga games on my monitor

I can check it easily on ebay, but what prices are now for 1200?

 

[mrklaw]

Anyone else remember null modem gaming on the Amiga? My friend and I co-op'ed or competed on the following early proto-LAN games:

Lotus Turbo Challenge
Armour-Geddon
Fighter Duel

good times!

Built a 20ft (ish) null modem cable to run from my 2nd floor room at university, out the front window and into the ground floor room of another student so we could play Stunt Car Racer multiplayer - as much as I love that game (and I really do - it made my stomach churn going over the bumps) - it wasn't a very good single player game. But multiplayer was bloody amazing.

 

[GeordieMark]

I never got the love for GODS; I played it for 4 hours the other week, on real hardware and on emulation, and it still plays like shit.. It looks good, I'll give you that but the platforming is atrocious.

To be fair, you've probably got a point there. I haven't played it for a good few years now, and I recall it being a tough game, but then most games were pretty hard back then. I still have fond memories of it from my childhood. I seem to remember Amiga Format loved it at the time and gave it a gold.

Anyone else here who was a regular Amiga Format reader? I reluctantly disposed of a great big pile of old issues a while ago under threat of a bollocking off the missus as we needed the cupboard space.

 

[Mask]

I can check it easily on ebay, but what prices are now for 1200?

I think it was about £120? I think I got a decent price at least, probably put a little more into that for a decent accelerator and stuff though.

 

[T8SC]

I loved the Amiga 500.

Turrican II has the greatest soundtrack of any game ever made.

So many great games when I think back:

Turrican I, II, III
Cannon Fodder
Lemmings
Shadow Of The Beast I, II, III
Apidya
Zeewolf
Gods
Flashback
Supercars II
R-Type
F117 Stealth Fighter
Speedball II: Brutal Deluxe
Desert Strike
Lotus Turbo Challenge II
SWIV
The Great Giana Sisters
Fire & Ice
Another World
F15 Strike Eagle II
Sim City
Zool
Rainbow Islands
Alien Breed
The Chaos Engine
Dogs Of War



Good memories.

 

[Outrun]

I used to regularly carry my Amiga AND my TV a few miles up and down a very steep hill to play Stunt Car Racer this way at a mate's house around 1990.

Thinking about it this probably explains why I've had a fucked back ever since.

Worth it, though..!

Jeff Crammond had a great Formula One game on Amiga right?

 

[GeordieMark]

Jeff Crammond had a great Formula One game on Amiga right?

He did! There was a really good 3D Indy 500 game too.

 

[hooijdonk17]

To be fair, you've probably got a point there. I haven't played it for a good few years now, and I recall it being a tough game, but then most games were pretty hard back then. I still have fond memories of it from my childhood. I seem to remember Amiga Format loved it at the time and gave it a gold.

Anyone else here who was a regular Amiga Format reader? I reluctantly disposed of a great big pile of old issues a while ago under threat of a bollocking off the missus as we needed the cupboard space.

I was a subscriber. It was amazing that you could get a full boxed game gift for a yearly subscription back in the days, I have a few games I got through their sub service still.

I too ended up losing my mags in a move and I rue it to this day. It was a quality magazine.

I find amiga my best machine I ever had to. Maybe cause I was very young and the jump in quality from 8bits was so great that shocked me and everyone.

My best game ever I played on amiga: Civilization 1.

Which version of Civilization did you play on the Amiga? Was it a hard disk install? It ran like SHIT from floppies; it was one of the reason most Strategy crowd where I live upgraded to PCs IIRC. Even 286s ran Civ better than the Amiga. I remember getting my DX33 in 94 and being amazed at how fast Civilization was on it..

 

[Elandyll]

I know Turrican (as well as Giana Sisters or Rick Dangerous) often get the nod for great platforming on Amiga, but do people remember Zool, or Fire& Ice?

Might be just nostalgia speaking, but I remember these being great and looking fantastic.

 

[BradleyUK]

I had an Amiga 600 with about 30 games. But sold it when I was a teenager and u wish.I hadn't.

I miss this console!

 

[Jimnymebob]

I love the Amiga, but sadly don't have any games for it anymore. Most of the games we had were either copies or loose floppy disks that you could buy from either Cash Converter or Cash Generator for like 10p each, but we did have quite a few complete in box.

I remember having:
Monkey Island 1 and 2
Zool
Cruise for a Corpse
Project X
Elvira Mistress of the Dark
KGB

I'm sure we had some others, but they're the main ones I can then remember.

I still have two Amigas, a 1200 and a 600, plus the huge ass power supply boxes for them, but I don't have any wires to connect them to the TV. Still, I'd love to try some of the games again, because there are so many good games on that that never got ported to anything else, or only had inferior ports.

We also had a load of Amiga Power and Amiga Format magazines too. The only thing we kept were these two cheat books with a black cover and a dinosaur on the front; one was like A-J and the other K-Z or something.

 

[TechnicPuppet]

The Amiga defined my childhood. Got it when I was maybe 10, all my friends had one and we played it every night.

We used to go to one friends house on the way home from school, setup a game of champ manager, go home to our own houses for dinner and to get changed and by the time we all got back sometimes the game was even ready to start.

I also remember Deluxe paint, I used to create little very simple animations, like a race track and I would move a little circle round it, I still have never seen a program since that could do the same thing, I should maybe look for that.

Also need to give a shout out to Civilization, loved it so much and still do.

 

[Praetorpwj]

Did anyone mention Starglider 2? I loved Starglider 2. When I stumbled across SPACE WHALES for the first time it was just beautiful.

 

[wazoo]

So was Populus.



Starglider was quite well known in the UK, as it appeared on the Saturday morning kids show 'Get Fresh', where two kids play off against each other, in a specially created 3 minute game for the high score to win prizes.

Just a question of perspective. It probably sold a close to zero % of Starfox sales.

 

[FunkyMonk]

Does anyone remember the isometric Robin Hood game? I loved that one so much, collecting the merry men and fighting back was so much fun. It had a morality system where the people saw you as a hero or a villain depending on your actions and there was even a little dragon you could help

I had so much fun with that game it nearly rivals the original UFO: Enemy Unknown for fond memories.

 

[runnin_blue]

Does anyone remember the isometric Robin Hood game? I loved that one so much, collecting the merry men and fighting back was so much fun. It had a morality system where the people saw you as a hero or a villain depending on your actions and there was even a little dragon you could help

I had so much fun with that game it nearly rivals the original UFO: Enemy Unknown for fond memories.

Oh wow, I never saw this game before. It looks very interesting, I'll have to check it out. Thanks.

 

[Elandyll]

Does anyone remember the isometric Robin Hood game? I loved that one so much, collecting the merry men and fighting back was so much fun. It had a morality system where the people saw you as a hero or a villain depending on your actions and there was even a little dragon you could help

I had so much fun with that game it nearly rivals the original UFO: Enemy Unknown for fond memories.

Don't remember that one, but it reminds me a bit of one of my favorite games of all time: The Faery Tale Adventure.

Man, that forest maze to find the witch's castle was a b*tch.

 

[Jimnymebob]

Oh wow, I never saw this game before. It looks very interesting, I'll have to check it out. Thanks.

There was another Robin Hood game which I used to like (the isometric one was too confusing for me).
It was a Sierra Quest series type thing, (it may have actually been by Sierra, I can't remember now). It was a point and click adventure, but you could also do archery things, I think like how Last Crusade had the boxing fights.

 

[hooijdonk17]

There was another Robin Hood game which I used to like (the isometric one was too confusing for me).
It was a Sierra Quest series type thing, (it may have actually been by Sierra, I can't remember now). It was a point and click adventure, but you could also do archery things, I think like how Last Crusade had the boxing fights.

Conquest of the Longbow

 

[Castef]

Did anyone mention Starglider 2? I loved Starglider 2. When I stumbled across SPACE WHALES for the first time it was just beautiful.

Here I am!

 

[Castef]

Oh wow, I never saw this game before. It looks very interesting, I'll have to check it out. Thanks.

It was impressive. Along with Midwinter and Hunter that was one of the first true free-roaming, open ended games around.

You could unravel the story in lots of different ways and the game was filled with small secrets. I've spent something like 50 hours on it.

It also had a roman empire sequel, even though I did not like it at the same way.

 

[Mascot]

I had a disc for my

Spoiler

chipped

OG Xbox that had just about every Amiga game on it, with smoother framerates and the added bonus of being able to save games at any point in the action. Man, I wish I'd kept that...

 

[Galdelico]

I know Turrican (as well as Giana Sisters or Rick Dangerous) often get the nod for great platforming on Amiga, but do people remember Zool, or Fire& Ice?

Might be just nostalgia speaking, but I remember these being great and looking fantastic.

Can't tell for Zool (never owned it), but Fire & Ice was legit good. Along with Rodland and Robocod, I never miss the chance to mention how much I loved it, in Amiga-related discussions/conversations.

 

[keraj37]

Which version of Civilization did you play on the Amiga? Was it a hard disk install? It ran like SHIT from floppies; it was one of the reason most Strategy crowd where I live upgraded to PCs IIRC. Even 286s ran Civ better than the Amiga. I remember getting my DX33 in 94 and being amazed at how fast Civilization was on it..

I had 4 floppies for my amiga 500 (not AGA version), and yes it was hard to swing them every time you enter civilipedia or anything else - but I still loved it. If I remember well, one floppy was only for saves.

 

[Mascot]

I had 4 floppies for my amiga 500 (not AGA version), and yes it was hard to swing them every time you enter civilipedia or anything else - but I still loved it. If I remember well, one floppy was only for saves.

Beneath A Steel Sky was on 15 floppies, from memory. I think it was this game that convinced me to buy an internal HDD for my Amiga, and the one I bought was ever-so-slightly too big so the case so it never screwed back together properly and always had this odd bulge. Worked OK though. Cost a fortune, mind.

 

[eso76]

Can't tell for Zool (never owned it), but Fire & Ice was legit good. Along with Rodland and Robocod, I never miss the chance to mention how much I loved it, in Amiga-related discussions/conversations.

Zool was never that good, tbh

Amiga had proper Sonic clones like Mr Nutz and Kid Chaos, though.
Loved Robocod and Soccer Kid, also

I had a disc for my

Spoiler

chipped

OG Xbox that had just about every Amiga game on it, with smoother framerates and the added bonus of being able to save games at any point in the action. Man, I wish I'd kept that...

IIRC..uhm..it was 3 dvd

 

[FunkyMonk]

Oh wow, I never saw this game before. It looks very interesting, I'll have to check it out. Thanks.

No worries, it's one of the games I remember fairly clearly as I lost so many hours to it though i only completed it a handful of times.

Don't remember that one, but it reminds me a bit of one of my favorite games of all time: The Faery Tale Adventure.

Man, that forest maze to find the witch's castle was a b*tch.

Oooh I never saw that one.

I still remember getting an Amiga 500+ for one Christmas. My dad and older brother set it up for me and then spent 3 hours making sure it worked, by playing through Alien Breed, the entire bloody game. Then when they finally let me have a go it broke. I was in tears but the shop we'd bought it from exchanged it for a 600 on the 27th after my dad vociferously complained about it ruining his sons Christmas. of course he said it was broken out of the box. /endrambling.

 

[Sjefen]

Oh wow, I never saw this game before. It looks very interesting, I'll have to check it out. Thanks.

This reminds me of Megalomania, you started in the stone age and evolved to the age of future with lasers and space ships. Epic game

 

[FunkyMonk]

This reminds me of Megalomania, you started in the stone age and evolved to the age of future with lasers and space ships. Epic game

Mega-lo-mania :-D Another game I adored though much of it went over my young head at first. Though never to the degree that Captain Blood did!


Though Robin hood was much more of an open world sandbox kind of game where you got kicked out of the castle and had to gather enough support to take it back.

I assume you guys remember Simon the Sorcerer, I loved that one.

 

[wazoo]

I love the Amiga, but sadly don't have any games for it anymore. Most of the games we had were either copies or loose floppy disks that you could buy from either Cash Converter or Cash Generator for like 10p each, but we did have quite a few complete in box.

Reto gaming on PC by emulation (see fs uae) is quite trivial. Game are patched in whdload format which avoid any protection problems. The only grey zone is obtaining the kickstart roms which you should have as an AMIGA owner.

 

[Jimnymebob]

Conquest of the Longbow

That's the one.

Reto gaming on PC by emulation (see fs uae) is quite trivial. Game are patched in whdload format which avoid any protection problems. The only grey zone is obtaining the kickstart roms which you should have as an AMIGA owner.

Right. Was the Kickstart thing the floppy disk (it had the Amiga tick, and said Workbench and Kickstart on them?) If so, there's chances I don't have those anymore because as I said, I got rid of everything aside from the Amigas themselves and the joystick.

If it was, can you still obtain kickstart legally, or am I out of luck?

Sorry for the probably dumb questions: I was only young when I used to play on the Amiga, aside from Deluxe Paint all I used it for was as a games console, and I've not touched one in over 15 years at least, so my memory is kinda foggy.

 

[petran79]

Reto gaming on PC by emulation (see fs uae) is quite trivial. Game are patched in whdload format which avoid any protection problems. The only grey zone is obtaining the kickstart roms which you should have as an AMIGA owner.

There are exceptions and it was one of my favorite games back then...

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=60083

 

[keraj37]

Reto gaming on PC by emulation (see fs uae) is quite trivial. Game are patched in whdload format which avoid any protection problems. The only grey zone is obtaining the kickstart roms which you should have as an AMIGA owner.

If it was, can you still obtain kickstart legally, or am I out of luck?

If anyone doesn't know that site yet: thegamearchives.

Also obtaining kickstart ROMs is also very easy and cheap - I have mine from mobile release.

 

[Belker]

So was Populus.



Starglider was quite well known in the UK, as it appeared on the Saturday morning kids show 'Get Fresh', where two kids play off against each other, in a specially created 3 minute game for the high score to win prizes.

To this day, Starglider is the only game I can think of that has both its name and the name of its developer in the opening music.

"Staaaaarrrr-gliiiiiider...... By Raaaainbiiirdddd'

 

[Lord Error]

What's the difference betwen the Vampire II card and the ACA500Plus (other than the obvious that Vampire is for A600 and ACA is for A500)?

I've seen some very good reviews of Vampire II, like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S3B8a8N83k
It's basically an FPGA Motorola processor running at 100MHz

http://www.kipper2k.com/accel600.html

I'm kinda content with the state of the Amiga emulation right now to be buying something like this, but it's still very cool seeing Amiga absolutely fly with this thing.

 

[Lord Error]

Turrican II has the greatest soundtrack of any game ever made.

It's fantastic. I have an MP3 where someone just took the original track and copied the left/right channels with a minimal delay added, to make it a more proper stereo. Nothing more, no remixing, new samples or anything, but it sounds *unbelievably* good. No idea where I got it from anymore, I just remember the description of what it is, from whoever originally made it. I uploaded it here. More people need to hear this:

http://www.filedropper.com/chrishuelsbeck-turrican2-thefinalfight

 

[keraj37]

It's fantastic. I have an MP3 where someone just took the original track and copied the left/right channels with a minimal delay added, to make it a more proper stereo. Nothing more, no remixing, new samples or anything, but it sounds *unbelievably* good. No idea where I got it from anymore, I just remember the description of what it is, from whoever originally made it. I uploaded it here. More people need to hear this:

http://www.filedropper.com/chrishuelsbeck-turrican2-thefinalfight

Many thanks for the audio file. Listening now - and love it!

 

[runnin_blue]

Right. Was the Kickstart thing the floppy disk (it had the Amiga tick, and said Workbench and Kickstart on them?) If so, there's chances I don't have those anymore because as I said, I got rid of everything aside from the Amigas themselves and the joystick.

If it was, can you still obtain kickstart legally, or am I out of luck?

Sorry for the probably dumb questions: I was only young when I used to play on the Amiga, aside from Deluxe Paint all I used it for was as a games console, and I've not touched one in over 15 years at least, so my memory is kinda foggy.

Sorry, I don't know details, but I remember seeing about a year or two ago that you could purchase the kickstart roms legally from somewhere (IP owners maybe?).

 

[hooijdonk17]

What's the difference betwen the Vampire II card and the ACA500Plus (other than the obvious that Vampire is for A600 and ACA is for A500)?

I've seen some very good reviews of Vampire II, like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S3B8a8N83k
It's basically an FPGA Motorola processor running at 100MHz

http://www.kipper2k.com/accel600.html

I'm kinda content with the state of the Amiga emulation right now to be buying something like this, but it's still very cool seeing Amiga absolutely fly with this thing.

They do absolutely different things. Vampire has 128MB RAM and an FPGA that can run as a 133MHz 68EC040 which makes your Amiga basically the fastest Amiga there is, but I would argue that emulating hardware on an FPGA is still emulation even if the software will never know it. Regardless, FPGA has its plusses as it's a programmable core and free expansions like AGA are coming to Vampire soon. It also has things like HDMI out, MicroSD. However, it's not very user friendly, needs to be installed within the case onto the mainboard and takes a bit of tinkering to get to work as well as not being very newbie friendly and knowing your way around the computer, as well as how to obtain kickstarts, workbench etc. It's a great board but it has something like a 3 month waiting list and at 250-300 EUR costs a lot more than the ACA500plıs. Here's the data sheet.

ACA500Plus makes your Amiga that was in the closet for the last 10 years actually very, very usable. It has 8MB RAM, an 68EC000 chip clocked at 14MHz but can OC to 42MHz without issues making it as fast as an A1200 by default and 3x as fast as an A1200 without a sweat, as well as bringing with it bells and whistles like free Workbench 3.1, Kickstart 1.2/1.3/3.1, Action Replay III, two compact flash card readers that emulate SCSI drives. It's plug and play on the Zorro port so it takes knowing nothing to use. It's also fairly affordable at 129 EUR. You can read the features here.

A fair alternative to the ACA500Plus is the HC508 which you may also want to look into.

 

[hooijdonk17]

That's the one.



Right. Was the Kickstart thing the floppy disk (it had the Amiga tick, and said Workbench and Kickstart on them?) If so, there's chances I don't have those anymore because as I said, I got rid of everything aside from the Amigas themselves and the joystick.

If it was, can you still obtain kickstart legally, or am I out of luck?

Sorry for the probably dumb questions: I was only young when I used to play on the Amiga, aside from Deluxe Paint all I used it for was as a games console, and I've not touched one in over 15 years at least, so my memory is kinda foggy.

You're in luck.

https://www.amigaforever.com/shop/

Value pack has Kickstart 1.3 and Workbench 1.3 for EUR 9.95, Plus has All Kickstart and Workbench versions for EUR 29.95. I think it's a fair price.

 

[Chris Metal]

The Official

"RoseTinted" Thread

Dedicated to the personal computer (massive in the UK) that was used for many hours of great gaming.

So lets look back at this great machine that gave use games like:

Sensible Soccer, Cannon Fodder, Cool Spot, Zool, Moonstone, James Pond, The Chaos Engine, Worms, Shadow of the Beast, Fade to Black, Flashback, Alien Breed, Synicate, Monkey Island and the list goes on

Had every single one of those games plus a lot more... Great days.