Amiga games that don't suck

[zetastrike]

Hmm...are you a fan of Euro-style platformers - yer New Zealand Storys (ok it's Japanese but v. influential on said sub-genre), James Ponds and the like? Then yes, definitely. The thing with the Amiga is that it DOES have a lot of platformers, but it has very few great ones. Some of the most famous Amiga platformers like Zool and Zool 2 are frankly rubbish - for every James Pond you get 10 low-rent Sonic rip-offs or just plain shit games. There's certainly lots of stuff to check out on there though!

One button controls don't help. That's why I gave up on Amiga and ST emulation.

[Alianger]

I'll try to mention some new stuff:
International Karate+ - Very fun three-player fighting game with a great sense of style.
D/Generation - Challenging action adventure/overhead puzzler with a pretty good story and a nice, minimalistic visual style.
Gravity Force 1-2 – Gravitation on PS1 Yaroze. Try it for the dog fight mode.
Scorched Tanks - Worms-style game with some different mechanics and weapons.
Bubble Bobble – One of the better ports.
Dyna Blaster - Good port of the first Arcade Bomberman.
Rodland - Pretty good even if not exactly accurate arcade port of this Bubble Bobble-like platformer (NES version is very different).
Exile – Metroid-like game with pretty advanced physics and unique mechanics. Controls take some getting used to though and it's very challenging.
Space Hulk – Interesting Strategy/FPS blend. Also on PC (better music on Amiga but worse gfx and lower framerate).
Super Stardust – Asteroids-inspired game with nice visuals.
Super Cars II - Similar to Micro Machines. Good music.
Fury of the Furries - Neat platform/puzzle game with great music. Kinda slow paced though.
K240 - Sci-fi city builder/war sim. I never got into it back then but my cousin loved it.
Paradroid '90 - Update of the C64 game.
It Came From the Desert – Atmospheric retro sci-fi adventure game with so-so action sequences.
Rockstar Ate My Hamster - A satirical adventure game in which you manage a rock band. I remember liking it a lot back then, but haven't played it since.
-
Putty Squad - I think this was the sequel to Putty, unreleased until 2013. Looks pretty good.
Wizkid - A strange arcade/puzzle/adventure game which I haven't played but read good things about.
Wings of Fury - Again, read good things about it. Similar to choplifter I guess?
Silk Worm - Seems like a good arcade port.
R-Type II - -//-

Some additional comments on mentioned games:
Parasol Stars - PCE port is also very good so try either one.
Cannon Fodder – Best sfx/music, and slightly higher resolution. A bit slower paced than on PC but it keeps the same rate of fire, making it easier, which is a plus since the game is pretty brutal.
The Settlers – I think there's a higher res version on PC but it's still essential if you like RTS/SimCity games
Beneath a Steel Sky – PC ver. is better in several ways so play that one instead. Great P&C game though.

[midnightrider]

Challenging is putting it mildly for D/Generation(I'm very familiar with the DOS version for the record).

[Bottino]

It's a little off-topic, but i've always been curious about the name Amiga , since it's the portuguese and spanish word for "lady friend" and sounds very cool to me.

And i was surprised to see that this was actually deliberated:

The name Amiga was chosen because it is the Spanish word for (female) friend, and alphabetically it appears before Apple in lists of computer makers. Originally it was a project with Atari called Lorraine, so therefore the female was used instead of the male and general version Amigo.

Now Amigo would have been an awlful name IMO.

[The Coop]

I never really got to enjoy the whole library of the Amiga growing up. I had one friend who owned one, and he didn't own much for it. The rest of the games I played were done so via emulation years later. But, here are some I had fun with...

Cannon Fodder- A simple and fun concept with a touch of humor, nice graphics, and a memorable opening theme song.
Star Control- Another game with some humor thrown into the mix, backed with solid visuals and (brief) music. The outer space battles and mission objectives outside of the "Melee" mode make for a game that can be as quick or as mission-based as you want it to be. It's also a fun two player game, with plenty of different ships to choose from.
Shadow of the Beast- Yeah, everyone's busy bashing this game. But frankly, I don't care. I liked it. The visuals and music are great, and the trial-and-error gameplay gave it a "Oh, that's where I go" quality like some of the old point-and-click adventure games. It created AHHA! moments, allowing you to get a little further with each discovery. It's also not a long game, so it doesn't get drawn out. It's a challenging game that pushes you to learn what items are used where and when, without ever feeling hopelessly impossible.
Shadow of the Beast II- Ditto on the bashing, ditto on me not caring. Again, I enjoyed it. The music's not as good (but it's still good), and the visuals aren't as colorful, but the gameplay is very much the same. A solid followup, even if it doesn't have quite the visual and aural punch of the first game.
Shadow of the Beast III- It still has the feel of the first two games in its gameplay, but it's not quite as tough as the first two games thanks to being given more than a simple punch (that throwing star-like weapon is helpful as hell, as if having a lot more health). Graphics that re more colorful like the first game, and better music than the second one, make it a fun final entry in the series.
Another World- The classic game that many have played. Plenty of trial and error, but its visual style and cinematic traits make for a tough, but enjoyable experience. Its visual style may seem really basic these days, but don't let that keep you away.
The Chaos Engine- We all probably remember Soldier of Fortune on the Genesis, well, here's the game that we eventually got a port of. It's got a little puzzle solving, plenty of shooting action, and six different characters to play as. It's visually interesting and nicely done, with solid and catchy music as well. The two player ability, and how you can power up your characters, also helps make it a fun action game.
Turrican- Rough around the edges, but a challenging and fun run 'n gun action game. Some good music, solid graphics, and a lengthy game to boot.
Turrican II- The much better sequel. The gameplay, graphics, music... it's all been bumped up a few notches, and is a fantastic game to play.

[retro nick]

Anyone ever play the following games?:
Marvin's Marvellous Adventure. It looks great, despite lacking SFX. No one ever talks about it:


Traps 'n' Treasures was listed on an Amiga forum (Can't remember which one) as a hidden gem, any opinions?


Nicky Boom


Globdule


:EDIT: I would just use Winuae to try these myself, but I find the end user experience to be quite painful. Most emulators just work, but I have to futz with that one too much.

[Phantar]

Traps 'n' Treasures was listed on an Amiga forum (Can't remember which one) as a hidden gem, any opinions?
.

I've heard about it, though I never played it. The game was created by a swiss (then hobby-)programmer named Roman Werner and published by German Studio Starbyte (kinda interesting when you thing about it, there where only a few gaming studios in Germany, almost all of them had concentrated first on the C64 and then on the Amiga... and when those platforms vanished, most of them collapsed in the mid- to late nineties. There are a few remnants here and there... Factor 5 tried moving to the US, Blue Byte got swallowed up by Ubisoft... but the few that are around now where practically all formed after 2000. But I digress...)

The game was first announed in 1991, I think, but it didn't hit the market until 1993; by that time, I had already left my Amiga behind. It got pretty decent reviews though, all somewhere in the 70-80% range. It was the last game Starbyte published before they went insolvent, which may attribute to the fact that so few people outside of Germany ever heard of that game.

If you're interested, Here's a little behind-the-scenes-story about the development of the game, from very hopeful beginnings to a somewhat less-than-glorious end. Pretty intersting stuff.

:EDIT: I would just use Winuae to try these myself, but I find the end user experience to be quite painful. Most emulators just work, but I have to futz with that one too much.

Yeah, UAE is a bit of a pain, but it's by far the best Amiga emulator out there. The problem lies in the Kickstart Roms, which are more than "just" a BIOS, which other emulators need. The Kickstart also holds part of the operating system and is still protected by copyright. In the original hardware, that Kickstart was included in a rom-chip that was hardwired into the system (except for the very first A1000s, those had Kickstart 1.0 on 3.5'' disks). Kickstart was revised over time, and when it was, games had to scramble to stay compatible with the OS contained in the Amiga's ROM chip. What's more, the Amiga family is pretty huge (A500, A500+, A600, A1000, A1200, A2000, A3000, A4000, Amiga CD32, Amiga CDTV... there was even an obscure Arcade version called the Arcadia, if I'm not mistaken), and not every computer in the Amiga-series had (or was entirely compatible to) the same kind of Kickstart Rom. (Fun fact: Many people blame the lack of success of the A500+ and the A600 because many old games weren't compatible with their version of the Kickstart and therefor didn't work; for the A1200 they tried to assure that compatibility, which - to a degree - worked again). So this setup (combined with the fact that the contents of the Kickstart rom are basically still protected) makes it difficult to build a "one size fits all"-emulator.

So for each game, you must find out for which computer it was intended (mostly A500 or A1200), find out for which Kickstart version it was optimized (most of the time 1.2, 1.3 or 3.0) and maybe adjust for optional graphic chips (OCS, ECS, AGA) before you get it running. Painful, yes, but in the end, there are many games that are worth it. Also, If you look hard enough, there are libraries floating around the web that have the setup for almost every game you could wish for already in them, which you only need to load into WinUAE. That's the closest you can get to a "just working" UX.

[Tom M.]

I personally don't fancy Amiga games at all. I don't even have an emulator installed. From what I remember when I was trying out Amiga games, that Mega Phoenix was quite good. Generally the games felt like severely graphically downgraded Mega Drive conversions (mostly with sprite overflow and second layer issues) and lacked optimization. The lack of additional gamepad buttons and necessity of a mouse in many games that really would not need it also were contributed to my final decision to completely quit Amiga games. People like Chilly Willy will come here and tell you the theories about blitters and coppers and all that but realistically I did not see anything of that happening in real Amiga games so that I would change my view that Amiga simply did not measure up with Mega Drive's VDP. I also did not like the sound in games that was mostly built upon low resolution premade flat sounding ADPCM samples, rather than some creative realtime breathing dynamic synthesis found on the Mega Drive and all classic video gaming systems including coin ops.

As for European developers and ZX Spectrum, there were actually people like Jonathan Smith who knew what they were doing, they knew what a good arcade video game was about and managed to code smoothly scrolling top playable arcade games for the bitmap based 8-bit micro. In fact, ZX Spectrum and C64 was probably the best choice for anyone not willing to spend huge money on ever flickering NES and Master System limited library.

As for the PC and DOS Box being the replacement for the AMiga games - well if I figure out how to actually sync the games in that emulator to 60 Hz refresh, than maybe one day. Right now, they do not sync. It might be emulator related or it might be just a quiestion of PC programmers being ignorant to video gaming standards not even taking care of things like vsync. Just take that disaster called Commander Keen - why is it running at 40 fps when standard screen runs at 60 Hz? That's that "PC gaming" you know.

[bultje112]

sounds like you didn't play amiga. downgraded graphically from megadrive? really?!

[midnightrider]

Really, when I tried it, I noticed games with graphics that blew all 16-bit consoles out of the water(if we count NeoGeo as 24-bit).

[retro nick]

I've heard about it, though I never played it. The game was created by a swiss (then hobby-)programmer named Roman Werner and published by German Studio Starbyte (kinda interesting when you thing about it, there where only a few gaming studios in Germany, almost all of them had concentrated first on the C64 and then on the Amiga... and when those platforms vanished, most of them collapsed in the mid- to late nineties. There are a few remnants here and there... Factor 5 tried moving to the US, Blue Byte got swallowed up by Ubisoft... but the few that are around now where practically all formed after 2000. But I digress...)

The game was first announed in 1991, I think, but it didn't hit the market until 1993; by that time, I had already left my Amiga behind. It got pretty decent reviews though, all somewhere in the 70-80% range. It was the last game Starbyte published before they went insolvent, which may attribute to the fact that so few people outside of Germany ever heard of that game.

If you're interested, Here's a little behind-the-scenes-story about the development of the game, from very hopeful beginnings to a somewhat less-than-glorious end. Pretty intersting stuff.

I am about to leave for work, but I will read this later, it looks interesting.

Yeah, UAE is a bit of a pain, but it's by far the best Amiga emulator out there. The problem lies in the Kickstart Roms, which are more than "just" a BIOS, which other emulators need. The Kickstart also holds part of the operating system and is still protected by copyright. In the original hardware, that Kickstart was included in a rom-chip that was hardwired into the system (except for the very first A1000s, those had Kickstart 1.0 on 3.5'' disks). Kickstart was revised over time, and when it was, games had to scramble to stay compatible with the OS contained in the Amiga's ROM chip. What's more, the Amiga family is pretty huge (A500, A500+, A600, A1000, A1200, A2000, A3000, A4000, Amiga CD32, Amiga CDTV... there was even an obscure Arcade version called the Arcadia, if I'm not mistaken), and not every computer in the Amiga-series had (or was entirely compatible to) the same kind of Kickstart Rom. (Fun fact: Many people blame the lack of success of the A500+ and the A600 because many old games weren't compatible with their version of the Kickstart and therefor didn't work; for the A1200 they tried to assure that compatibility, which - to a degree - worked again). So this setup (combined with the fact that the contents of the Kickstart rom are basically still protected) makes it difficult to build a "one size fits all"-emulator.

So for each game, you must find out for which computer it was intended (mostly A500 or A1200), find out for which Kickstart version it was optimized (most of the time 1.2, 1.3 or 3.0) and maybe adjust for optional graphic chips (OCS, ECS, AGA) before you get it running. Painful, yes, but in the end, there are many games that are worth it. Also, If you look hard enough, there are libraries floating around the web that have the setup for almost every game you could wish for already in them, which you only need to load into WinUAE. That's the closest you can get to a "just working" UX.

Ok. I kind of knew all of this info in chunks, but was a bit unclear how it fit together. I may give it another shot soon.

[Gogogadget]

Does anyone know of a way on WinUAE to zoom games in? Get rid of those huge borders around some games.

[Alianger]

This guide might help:
http://freespace.virgin.net/machine....ip/winuae.html

[NeoZeedeater]

One button controls don't help. That's why I gave up on Amiga and ST emulation.

Some games support two buttons. And there's also CD32 stuff which sometimes added a jump button to platformers (like Quik the Thunder Rabbit).

[zetastrike]

Some games support two buttons. And there's also CD32 stuff which sometimes added a jump button to platformers (like Quik the Thunder Rabbit).

Does Turrican 2 support two buttons? I heard that it did, but I couldn't figure out how to enable it.