Amiga Addict magazine - Snack Attack! - Issue 04 April 2021 by Simulant

BRITAIN'S BEST-SELLING (ACTIVE!) MAGAZINE FOR AMIGA USERS

ISSUE No. 4 APRIL 2021 £4.99 / $6.50 / €5.50

- Interviews - Readers' Letters - Demoscene - Hardware & Tutorials

SNACK ATTACK!

ALSO:

Amiga vs

Atari ST 4-Page Battle!

April 2021

PL U M S!

YOUR MONTHLY SOURCE OF AMIGA NEWS, INTERVIEWS & SOFTWARE FUN FOR 68K | PPC | OS4 | MORPHOS & MORE!

ul Sh tip a & lay dow A e M mig r M Fig ar a o ht cu Fo us er s D rm e G , C ys at am ivit on 's es as,

Amiga game licences with big brand treats!

AMIGA ADDICT

April 2021

MEET THE ADDICTS We give the acronym "AA" a whole new addictive meaning... Hungry anyone? You will be!

So, in a desperate bid for peace this issue, we've turned from our personal food fight, to instead research the major snack brand licences and product placement deals once found in many classic Amiga games (see Snack Attack!, page 22), and thankfully, we've finally found some common ground. Hoorah! See how the Amiga can even help keep the peace? I'm glad all the arguing is now over and the AA office is less like a squabbling school playground. I must admit, the occasional ruckus in the school playground could be quite fun as a kid... did any readers ever argue it out over which 16-bit home computer was the best? I'm certain you must have. I hold my hands up, I'm completely biased (we are an Amiga magazine after all) and I'm not ashamed of it! I think it could, at last, be time to re-open this debate, so let's try to be completely fair and honest as we compare the top two systems of the late 80s in Amiga 500 Vs. Atari ST on page 28. Find out who is the winner, as we throw down the gauntlet - I just hope we don't anger too many AA readers. Whatever the outcome, I don't think many of us will be rushing out to buy STs anytime soon? Right, let's put the unsavoury (pun intended) rivalry to one side. AA will always aim to try to aid both the Amiga, and wider computer enthusiast community as best we can, and a big part of this is our duty to promote the organisations who preserve the hardware and software we all love. Computer and video game museums are struggling in particular right now, without any admissions coming in. With this in mind, we are delighted to include an interview with Andy Spencer this issue. Andy is curator of The Retro Computer Museum in Leicester, and he shares the fascinating story of some vary rare Amiga hardware on display at the museum. He has also just released a new charity music album that includes many of our favourite Amiga game composers (see Just A CD-ROM drive..?, page 7). Please help spread the word and support this project, as the proceeds go towards ensuring that this invaluable museum survives. It's a nice mix of content this month, with more creative articles (see The Creative Revolution, page 18 and Audio Oddities, page 49), as well as a look at an unusual cyberpunk board game that includes artwork designed on an A1200 (see Civitas Nihilium, page 48). We wouldn't be Amiga Addict without a shedload of great gaming content also, so check out Holding Out For A Hero (page 12) and our The Best Laid Plans of Mice & Men special (page 40) - and that's just for starters. Without further ado, it's time to flick through! - Jonah Naylor (Editor) Your favourite 80s movie & why? "Aliens (as Alien was '79). The first three movies are brilliant - I've even visited Dawdon Beach in the North East of England to take photos. This was the Fiorina 161 filming location in Alien 3." What have you been playing? "I've been playing Liberation: Captive II very badly. It's a mix of dungeon crawler, RPG and FPS." Best hero movie tie-in game on the Amiga? "Alien Breed. Not official as Ripley isn't our hero, but it is based on Aliens. Incredible atmosphere, graphics and sound. Even Facehuggers feature!"

Jonah

(an AA prisoner) editor@amiga-addict.com

Your favourite 80s movie & why? "This one is easy as it's also my favourite ﬁlm fullstop! RoboCop, it was way ahead of its time and still holds up today." What have you been playing? "Slayers of High Toro, look out for my review next month!" Best hero movie tie-in game on the Amiga? "Initially I wanted to say RoboCop 3 (even though the ﬁlm itself was awful) but it's got to be the point-and-click adventure, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis."

Ravi

(accepts the chaos theory) ravi@amiga-addict.com

James

Your favourite 80s movie & why? "Raiders Of The Lost Ark - it is my fave ﬁlm hands down. It introduced all of our generation to the greatest action hero ever!" What have you been playing? "Batman The Movie - even now I play this and still love how varied it is. Plus it also has one of the few cheat codes I can still remember." Best hero movie tie-in game on the Amiga? "OK I'll go for Batman The Movie again here - as you get to use Batman's gadgets, as well as control the Batmobile and Batwing."

Paul

(what he does deﬁnes him) paul@amiga-addict.com

Your favourite 80s movie & why? "Great Scott! What a diﬃcult question! I had a hard time picking, but it has to be Back to the Future really, doesn't it?" What have you been playing? "I got a bit addicted to Extase after playing it for this month's issue, despite being bewildered to start with. Always cool to ﬁnd a hidden gem!" Best hero movie tie-in game on the Amiga? "Last Action Hero has to be the best game on the system. Hahaha, not really! It's Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, obviously..."

(aka RoboCops_Dad) james@amiga-addict.com

Your favourite 80s movie & why? "Shogun Assassin - which was unfortunately banned. It was essentially Mortal Kombat but narrated by a small child!" What have you been playing? "Syndicate - what an absolute classic. It’s my favourite Amiga game and was my ﬁrst real experience of free roam. I love creating huge citizen armies with a persuadatron." Best hero movie tie-in game on the Amiga? "Jurassic Park was an amazing title, stood on its own hind legs and had an FPS section!"

Ian

(don't call him chicken) ian@amiga-addict.com

Your favourite 80s movie & why? "Out of all of the amazing 80s timeless classics, blockbuster sci-ﬁ hits and stunning Spielberg ﬁlms of that decade to choose from - my favourite is anything starring Patrick Swayze!" What have you been playing? "I’ve been playing Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker and McDonald Land with my little lad." Best hero movie tie-in game on the Amiga? "I can't think of any games with Patrick Swayze (had the time of her life!) in... so instead I'll have to choose Aladdin - it is a very polished and fun Disney adaptation." hannah@amiga-addict.com

Hannah

April 2021

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Back in our February issue, you may remember that the team here at AA posed a question to one another - we asked which treats we preferred to eat whilst using our Amigas (we do need to get out more, I know!!). Now, although our musing about snacks may have started innocently enough, it soon escalated within AA Towers into a violent and nasty altercation. As a result, the oﬃce ended up a real mess. We had liquorice stains on Ian's shirt, sticky keyboards, strawberry laces wrapped around limbs they were obviously never intended to have contact with - and the worst part was the smell of pickled onions that James is still trying to Shake n' Vac out of the carpet... Will Ravi ever speak to Paul again after what he did to his [snip]...??

AMIGA ADDICT

April 2021

SNACK ATTACK!

ISSUE 4 - APRIL 2021

Editorial & Meet The Addicts............................3 Amiga News.........................................................6 Just A CD-ROM Drive?.......................................7 Keyboard Warriors & Back In The Day.............9 Across The Pond................................................32 AA Merchandise, Back Issues & Subscriptions..................................................50 What?! Amiga Pie!..............................................51 Demoscene.........................................................53

AMIGA FOCUS The Legacy of Commodore (Part 2)................8 Holding Out For A Hero...................................12 The Creative Revolution...................................18 Amiga 500 VS Atari ST......................................28 What Do You Use That Thing For?..................35 Audio Oddities...................................................49

CONTENTS

REGULARS

PAGE 22

Many classic Amiga ga mes had big brand snack licences and pro duct placements. We explore some of tho se tasty alliances!

AMIGA vs ATARI ST Let's battle it out against our ongoing 16-bit nemesis - an easy win surely? You may be surprised...

PAGE 28

Pintz And Amiga Interview..............................10 Marcus Dyson Interview...................................15 Snack Attack!......................................................22

EX-AF EDITOR MARC US DYSON AA's exclusive interview with ex-Editor of the world's biggest ever Amiga mag!

ONSCREEN

TESTBENCH StarShip Next Generation................................17 Civitas Nihilium..................................................48 Amiga Forever 9 Plus Review..........................52

PAGE 40

Gold Standard: Shadow Fighter......................36 Six Of The Best...................................................38 The Best Laid Plans of Mice & Men................40 (Two-Player) Lemmings....................................42 CD32 Corner: Banshee & Jacob Anderson Interview...........................44

PAGE 36

ON SCREEN

PAGE 15

AMIGA INSIGHT

Watch out! We have more fun and games than an episode of Beadle's About in this jam-packed issue!

? MAN OR MOUSE tiul m to e AA's guid se ou m a ig Am player ! es m ga

*Amigas were used, but not harmed, in the creation of this magazine.

WWW.AMIGA-ADDICT.COM • MAGAZINE@AMIGA-ADDICT.COM • TWITTER.COM/AMIGAMAGAZINE • Editor & Art Director Jonah Naylor • Deputy Editor & Researcher Ravi Abbott • Games Editor & Art Assistant James Walker • Community Editor, Staff Writer & Proof Reader Ian Griffiths • Features Editor & Staff Writer Paul Monaghan • Advertising Manager & Staff Writer Hannah Clark Amiga Addict is an independent publication. The publishing company - Simulant Systems Ltd - has no connection with Commodore, or any subsequent trademark/ branding rights holders such as Cloanto/Amiga Corporation. The views expressed in this magazine are those of the individual writers' opinions only, and are not the opinions held by Amiga Addict magazine publication or its publishers.

We take great care to ensure that what we publish is accurate, but cannot be liable for any mistakes or misprints. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without our explicit permission.

April 2021

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Email your news & press releases to magazine@amiga-addict.com

then?!") will be delighted to pick up the new playable demo of Project Horizon by Electric Black Sheep. This new title is due for release soon and is compatible with ECS or AGA Amigas. 2MB Chip-RAM and a hard drive are required. Download it now from: www.amiga-addict.com/PH

Passion Play The love for Amiga print magazines seems to be growing. Amiga fans in Italy (or speakers of Italian!) will be happy to hear the new magazine Passione Amiga is out now. We wish them all the very best. The Bitmap Brothers: Odyssey A beautiful 12" vinyl record has been released featuring The Bitmap Brothers' greatest game music tracks, with sleeve artwork illustrated by Dan Malone: www.amiga-addict.com/bitmapvinyl

New Motherboards For The A1000 We love the A1000 here at AA. It isn't just an Amiga - it is the Amiga. A batch of "A1100" replacement motherboards designed by Carlos 'Estrayk' Del Alamo (in collaboration with Edu Arana), are now available for pre-order. Featuring 68020, 2MB Chip RAM, 64MB Fast RAM, ﬂicker ﬁx, ScanDoubler and all sorts of other extra features - these are a perfect replacement for your original board if it is damaged. Declare your interest at: www.amiga-addict.com/A1100 Amiga's 35th Birthday Bash Cancelled The organisers of Flashback 20/20 (René, Marcel & Marvin) recently stated: "Today, the time has come to announce that we see no other choice than to cancel our event. Although there is 'light at the end of the tunnel' by way of the vaccines being administered worldwide, we are still a long way from being able to organise an event such as ours." Let's hope Amiga events can take place soon... Benchy... Viewstl is a STL 3D model viewer that has been ported to Amiga OS4 by Sinan Gurkan. So next time you're 3D-printing a mini A500 Raspberry Pi enclosure (or another Benchy!), this could be very useful: www.amiga-addict.com/viewstl On The Horizon Fans of Commando, Alien Breed and The Chaos Engine (Ed. - "So every Amiga user

AMIGA ADDICT

Nippon Safes Inc. Is Freed The point-and-click graphical Amiga adventure by Dynabyte, Nippon Safes Inc., has recently been released under a freeware licence, thanks to the efforts of Damiano Gerli. The game works with ScummVM and the Amiga version is also now available from their website: www.scummvm.org/games/ Amiga FPS Enhancements Citadel is a great first person shooter that was published by Black Legend in 1995. It is always pleasing to hear of existing releases being upgraded, and that is exactly what is happening here, with new speed enhancements and other bug fixes addressed by the game's original authors. News on the re-release can be followed in Polish, via this thread: www.amiga-addict.com/citadel

8-Bit Assembly A port of the popular WLA DX crossassembler tools set has arrived on the Amiga. Ported from Linux/Windows by

Ville Helin and others in the community WLA DX supports z80, z80-gb, 6502, 6510 and many other 8-bit architectures. Time for a demake of Cannon Fodder anybody? AROS One Distro Updated The latest release of AROS One x86 ABIv0 v1.5 is packed with features and ready for download. AROS One oﬀers a Workbench-like OS experience on x86 hardware and even supports VMware or VirtualBox installations. See more at: www.amiga-addict.com/aros

New Amiga brand trademark The conflict over who owns the Amiga brand is now resolved at last. Hyperion have withdrawn their claim and cleared the path for Amiga Corporation, who have recently filed a new US trademark for full rights to the Amiga name. Could this open up the long-term possibility of new officially licensed Amiga computers? Amigas Using Coffee Shop Wi-Fi? We all got very excited back in 2017 when Hans de Ruiter previewed his demo video of the prototype Amiga laptop he had been working on. Unfortunately the project was put on hiatus, but work to continue development has now resumed. Hans aims to create a laptop kit called the Portia - this will allow users to build a custom laptop in a similar way to how desktop PCs are put together. A mini-ITX motherboard would be installed in the case that will include a battery, screen, keyboard, touchpad and driver boards etc. The Amiga A1222/Tabor motherboard will be fully supported, which allows AmigaOS 4.x to run natively. Readers can follow the project here: www.amiga-addict.com/laptop (Ed. - "AA Deputy Editor Ravi Abbott has also been working on a DIY Amiga laptop which AA plans to cover soon. Ravi's project has a different approach and uses an original Amiga 68K motherboard.")

A Bitmap Legacy We've already mentioned the amazing artist Dan Malone (as well as the Bitmap Brothers' gaming influence) in other news items this month. Let's make it a Bitmap hat-trick! Dan Malone was one of the key artists working at The Bitmap Brothers in their heyday, helping define the studio's now instantly recognisable visual style. Dan is currently offering his impressive artwork for sale, with bespoke commissions also welcome. You can view his range, or contact him at: www.danmalone-art.com

April 2021

Just A CD-ROM drive..? - Hannah tracks down Andy Spencer to spin-up the story on a rare piece of Amiga kit it all up, and it took us months to sort it all out! We believe that the only reason this prototype was in the UK was because it was being photographed for UK magazines – it then never made it back to the US.” Andy feels that the prototype was a great idea, yet he also considers the possible setbacks it may have suﬀered if it had become available commercially. “It would have been popular with Amiga users. However the CD32 itself didn’t quite get the software it deserved – it mainly got Amiga ports, most of which were good games, but could have been SO MUCH better... bigger even! Unfortunately the only reason it wasn’t released is that Commodore in the US went bankrupt.”

Clearing out his attic 13 years ago, Andy couldn’t believe the amount of retro systems he had collected. “I wondered if anyone else would be interested too,” he recalls. A friend helped him to set up a website and the rest, as they say, is history. Over the last 13 years, donations of hardware and software have poured in, with the museum now exceeding 40,000 software items alone. “[The museum] has a lot of Amiga hardware featuring most of the machines, and a lot of peripherals, including genlocks and samplers. With these, along with our vast software library, we like to think we have something pretty special to show people.” The icing on the cake for Amiga addicts, however, has to be the Amiga CD1200 prototype. “It is certainly the most expensive purchase by the museum and deﬁnitely the most valuable,” Andy laughs. The Amiga CD1200 would have given Amiga 1200 owners full Amiga CD32 compatibility, and Andy believes he owns one of only nine prototype models ever made. “From what we know, there was a trapdoor expansion (which we unfortunately don’t have) that contained extra hardware,” Andy explains, “including a new and improved Akiko chip – one of the components on the

More Amiga titles than you can shake a stick at...

CD32 that was never really used. The part we have at the museum we think is ‘just’ a CD-ROM drive. We will at some point be doing a very careful disassembly video, but even if it is ‘just’ a CD-ROM drive – the case is unique and will be very much looked after at the Retro Computer Museum.” So how did a museum in Leicester come to own such a rare piece of technology? “The Amiga CD1200 prototype came into our collection via a dry but VERY dusty barn!” Andy remembers with a smile. The owners of the barn contacted Andy, who later visited with his wife Linda. With a large volume of retro computers in the barn, Andy oﬀered the owners an amount of money for the entire contents. “It took three large cars to pick

The museum has a vast collection of inferior computers, but many Amigas too!

Amiga users can see this gem of a device at The Retro Computer Museum in Leicester when it reopens. The museum was only able to open for a handful of weeks during 2020 and remains closed at time of writing due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and has suﬀered ﬁnancial hardship as a result. Andy implores the Amiga community to come and visit when it is safe to do so. “Hopefully at some point this year we can re-open. In the short term though we do have a Just Giving fundraiser, and we have also just launched a charity album featuring some of our musician friends from all around the world!” For more information on the new Blank Canvas charity music album visit: www.blankcanvascharity.uk (Ed. - "Thanks Hannah. We hope AA readers can show support and purchase the album, or donate via the museum website: www.retrocomputermuseum.co.uk")

With only nine units ever made - a scarce & precious Amiga artefact.

April 2021

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In 1987, Andy Spencer, chairman and founder of The Retro Computer Museum, attended the School of Print in Leicester. “My friend Dave raved about his new Amiga, and took me to a shop in Leicester to show it oﬀ.” Andy fondly recalls his sister Sharon signing the credit agreement that enabled him to buy his own Amiga the following Saturday, a moment that would begin his love aﬀair with the computer.

The Legacy of Commodore (Part 2)

AMIGA FOCUS

- Ravi reﬂects on what the euro PC giant Escom achieved whilst owning Amiga We can’t talk about Commodore UK’s legacy without covering Escom. In the ﬁrst part of this article (AA Issue 3), I explored Commodore UK’s plans to take over Amiga. I looked at what we knew of their intentions based on the information out there, compiled from interviews with David Pleasance and Colin Proudfoot at the time. Commodore UK were unable to enter the bidding during the 1995 buyout, and Escom became the successful bidders, winning control of Amiga. Escom at the time were expanding at a mindblowing pace. Being an early high street computer retailer, they already had a big presence in Germany, and they were buying up other high street companies, like Rumbelows, a UK TV and radio retailer. By the time of the Commodore purchase, Escom had over 300 stores worldwide. They seemed to be buying up anything they could get their hands on. Amiga still had value to big companies like Escom, Dell and Panasonic, but this was mainly due to the patents and brand names. The right-click and drop down menu patents (as well as others) were very useful for companies like these to have under their belt. From initial reports, this was the sole reason they entered the buyout process. After the deal went through and it hit the mainstream news and Amiga press, Escom suddenly got hammered by phone calls and letters from Amiga fans wondering what they would do with their beloved system. Petro Tyschtschenko had helped secure the deal with Escom and had a long-term business relationship with CEO Manfred Schmitt. For many years, he had sold Commodore C64 packs to the retailer from his position within Commodore

Inﬁnitiv 1200 & Inﬁnitiv 1200 II (Prototype).

AMIGA ADDICT

Germany. He also helped secure the deal with hardware partner New Star Electronics. Escom must have realised that with this huge demand, they could probably make some extra money restarting the production of Amiga, so they found old machines and components and repackaged them in the “Amiga Magic Pack”, as well as making a new version of the A4000T. Amiga International was created with Petro Tyschtschenko as president. They licensed products, such as the Escom’s VR i-Glasses. They experimented making the Amiga Walker and took on many other projects. But, you may be asking, what does this have to do with Commodore UK? Amiga International had plans for its own logo design. They had designed a new A4000T case, but that got dropped - it seemed they were not very sure of the direction to take Amiga in. Trying to rebrand, they started designing logo concepts, only to realise they were copies of the Adidas and Church of Scientology logos! This was a prime example of the under conﬁdence and inconsistent approach endemic in the company. Eventually, Amiga International settled on the AMIGA name in capital letters in the Bondi font. Commodore UK had envisioned that with new beige cases and towers coming in the future, the Amiga would be indistinguishable from modern PCs. Before the buyout process, they said “We wanted to put a logo on machines stating that it was ‘Powered By Amiga’”. Suddenly, we started seeing this logo appearing on Escom products and stickers at Amiga shows and events. I might have missed something here, but it does seem that this idea did not come from Escom or Amiga International’s design

Original MicroniK Inﬁnitiv advertisement.

April 2021

department. Escom then started a “Powered by Amiga” initiative, licensing the name and logo for companies to use, such as MicroniK. MicroniK Computer Service had, for many years, worked within Germany with Manfred Kotulla as their founder. They created devices such as Kickstart ROM switches, memory expansions and, eventually, busboards. They had high standards and were regarded as a company with top quality products. Many users wanted to towerise their Amigas, and as early as 1993, MicroniK created a conversion kit called “The Big-Tower Amiga 4000”. This would then lead onto mini-tower conversion kits in 1994 for the A500, A600 and A1200. Other companies were producing tower conversion kits too, and as this became a very popular way of expanding your Amiga, a big market evolved. When Escom bought Amiga, the relationship with MicroniK grew and they branched out to the international market. Manfred Kotulla decided to improve his design and create a patented modular tower kit which could be upgradable for the A1200. As we saw in Part 1, as part of their plans to evolve the Amiga range, Commodore UK also talked about a “modular upgradable tower kit starting off the Amiga Infinity range”. MicroniK’s new modular tower was called the Infinitiv Tower! It was truly a piece of art and a stunning system, plastered in the “Powered by Amiga” licensed branding from Escom. I would like to think that Commodore UK’s loose plans helped lead to MicroniK creating this amazing tower. They made no secret of their plans in the press at the time and it was great to have a company take this on board. Some people may think these ideas were stolen, but they were hardly secrets at the time. Although who really knows what went on behind the scenes? I prefer to say these ideas were inspired by Commodore UK’s plans, and it's why we are still talking about them in the Amiga scene today. In the next instalment, we will be looking at the lovely MicroniK Infinitiv Tower in detail. For more information on this time period, Escom’s branding mistakes and plans, check out my Amiga history video on YouTube: www.amiga-addict.com/ amigahistory. Also take a look at the history of MicroniK by Trevor Dickinson from Amiga Future on Obligement: www.amiga-addict.com/micronik

Send your reader comments & letters via email or Discord: magazine@amiga-addict.com www.amiga-addict.com/discord

Keyboard Warriors (Basically just send anything in - we'll probably print it!)

Thanks for your letter Philip - fear not we will be ticking oﬀ your suggestions from our list! Amiga Tech Tree is a useful resource in Issue 2, and we have already covered the Unamiga in Issue 3. AA will feature other Amiga-compatibles and emulation options soon. The Vampire is on our list, but to start you oﬀ, James has kindly done a review on the latest Amiga Forever release from Cloanto in this very issue (see page 52). You're welcome!!

Time ﬂies... where did all those years go? (Ed. - "Well, we do summarise them terribly and miss out all the important bits!") 1988 was a colourful year here in Britain - perhaps a bit barmy... On the surface, things were great - a state visit from Ronald Reagan, unemployment at its lowest level since the late 70s and house prices on the up - we must of been feeling fairly happy-go-lucky right?

BACK iN THE DAY '8 8

Think again! 1988 saw tempers run high. Stunning highlights include gay rights activists invading a live BBC Six O'Clock News broadcast, Northern Irish loyalist Ian Paisley heckling The Pope during an address to the European Parliament, and Edwina "Eggwina" Curry scaring the nation by falsely stating that most of Britain's eggs contained salmonella bacteria! We even had 130 English football fans being arrested for vandalism and ﬁghting in West Germany. A spokesperson explained the violence at least, stating that "No one knows why the ﬁghting began"...?!

Amiga News

Software & Games

At The Box Oﬃce

News & Pop Culture

1988 sees the launch of new Canadian magazine Amiga Transactor, which focusses mainly on programming. The US army also adapts four Amiga 2000 computers for use in the M1A2 Abrams main battle tank. The Amiga is considered to be future-proof and reliable enough for military installation. They are used to interface with the tank's central simulation environment system to produce visuals for the display panels.

The Amiga as a gaming platform is now being taking seriously! The emphasis stays with simulation and adventure, but more variation and further arcade ports appear. IK+, Elite, Carrier Command, Starglider 2, Ultima IV, F/A-18 Interceptor, Red Storm Rising, TV Sports Football, Battle Chess, Dungeon Master and Bubble Bobble are all released. 1988 spoils us with MovieSetter, Photon Paint 2.0, Digiview 3.0 and Music-X.

Rain Man starring Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman sells the most box office tickets. A groundbreaking film, even if it does portray the character of Raymond (a high-level autistic) insensitively. Action fans have Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Die Hard, Rambo III and Twins - the latter of course includes Arnie's classic "I'll be back" one-liner! Let's not forget Coming to America and the first Naked Gun film... crazy fun!

A government report states that 50,000 people in Britain may be HIV positive. Pan Am Flight 103 explodes over Lockerbie, Scotland killing 270 people. In happier news, Jaguar launch the new Jaguar XJ220 sports car (Amiga fans may know it well)! We also receive some kickass music releases including Metallica's ...And Justice for All, N.W.A.'s Straight Outta Compton and Phil Collins' soundtrack hits from Buster.

April 2021

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Vampire? A Mythical Bloodsucker..? I was very much into my Amiga 500 back in the day, but I haven't in any shape or form stayed close to what has happened with the Amiga since the 90s. I'm dimly aware that there is something now called the Vampire and I got one of those Armigas a few years ago. Beyond that, I have no idea what a Vampire is, or how it is diﬀerent from an Minimig... or even what a Minimig is! How about an article for people like me that explains how to get back into playing games and using software on Amigas without having to get our old Amigas out of the loft (assuming they even still work)? For example, the article could explain what the current hardware choices are and how they are diﬀerent from each other. - Philip Young (via Email)

When I was young I went straight from 8-bit BBCs Sta r and C64s onto PCs! Friends had Ataris and Amigas, Letter I sometimes got to play with them at their houses. Studying electronics, one of the first things I was taught was the 555 timer (a chip that can be used for a bunch of timing and rough signal generation purposes). Roll on to August 2020. I had left my job as a software engineer and felt ready for a new hobby. Due to the fates aligning, I managed to acquire a few Amiga 500 models that needed restoration. Working on my first Amiga, I discovered that the power-on reset circuit used a 555 timer to fire a short time after the machine is powered on. I was incredibly surprised by the simplicity of this. The designers could have integrated this functionality into the custom chips, or used other methods. Instead they used an off-the-shelf way that people are taught in school. This got me more interested in the Amiga and I got sucked further into the community. Six months on and I've repaired several machines now. I'm also currently designing new PCBs for a UK retro supplier. Along the way, the community has been incredibly welcoming, and I've made some good friends. There's something unique about Amiga, it is ingrained into the core of its design. It is something I haven't felt for any other hardware. The soul of the people who designed it can be felt with every part of the machine. Amiga brings a whole community of software engineers, hardware tinkerers and gamers together. Everyone I've encountered along my journey has been extremely passionate about many different aspects of the Amiga. It is incredibly easy to become an Amiga addict! Whilst some already see me as an expert - I am still learning - and your magazine definitely helps with this. Thank you for producing it. - Andrew Hutchings (via Email)

AMIGA INSIGHT

The Pintz And Amiga streaming rig. We're guessing a woman's touch was involved when setting this up?

The Amiga was huge in Europe, so why are so many popular Amiga streamers in the US? What with AmigaBill and the Amigos rocking the house from the Big Apple and West By God Virginia respectively, you’d be forgiven for thinking there’d be no room left for more Amiga streaming in the US of A. Up steps Texas - there’s always room for a Texan or two! Jack and Taylor are here with their ﬂeet of Amiga tech to drink beer and play games the way they were meant to be played. We got on the line to the Lone Star State to ask the Pintz and Amiga boys a bit about themselves and how their streaming lives started... Who are Pintz and Amiga? Jack: We are a father and son team myself, Jack Calk AKA AmigaDAD... Taylor: ...and me, Taylor Calk AKA Tater, from Pﬂugerville, Texas. So you two go all the way back then..? Right back to the maternity ward!

AMIGA ADDICT

Jack: Yes [laughs], Taylor was born on 13th December 1991. Taylor: [laughing]…exactly….best friends from day one! How did you start out with the Amiga? Jack: Back in about 1994, I was looking to buy a computer to organise my out of control comic book collection. I asked around friends and people I knew, and a friend knew a friend that was selling a computer for $100. I got in touch with him and he brought an Amiga 1000 to my house, set it all up and showed me how to use it. Even made me an AmigaBASIC program to keep track of all my comic books! Then, a year later, I got an Amiga 3000, then an Amiga 2000 and the rest is history. Taylor grew up around me using Amigas, and he got to use them sometimes too. Taylor: I grew up with my dad always having computers around. When I was younger, I didn’t understand the diﬀerence, but I knew the Amiga name

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and that it was diﬀerent from a PC. Once I got older and knew the diﬀerence, I still didn’t pursue the platform. It wasn’t until moving to Austin, and then my parents following, that I brought up the Amiga one day randomly to my dad. Turned out he still had an A3000 in the closet, and since then I’ve been hooked. How did you have the idea to stream Amiga games? Jack: Well, in 2018, Taylor dug out my last remaining Amiga 3000 that I had buried years back, and asked what it would take to get it up and running. “Not much,” I told him - so we started working on it, got it going and were soon playing some games with WHDLoad, having a few beers, playing on a 65-inch TV. I took out my phone to take a few pictures and video, and decided to go live on Facebook - livestreaming it, and people started to watch. After a few times streaming with a cell phone and Facebook, we decided to get a webcam

short period of time, I thought I would legit die from laughter. So yes, some of, if not the funniest moments have been during the Star Trek specials. We've noticed you sometimes like to include footage from out on the road, such as visiting the supermarket while buying beer! Any favourite beers you prefer to drink while playing on Amiga? Jack: Shiner Bock from Shiner, Texas. Taylor: Fat Tire from New Belgium Brewing Co., Ft. Collins, Colorado.

and do it on YouTube, and it took oﬀ from there. Now we are on Twitch and things couldn’t be happier! Taylor: Dad’s right - it wasn’t until I asked about the Amiga (not knowing one was still in the closet) that the interest was sparked. As far as I remember, everything just happened and just rolled at such an incredible pace, that now that’s all I think about most days! What is the funniest thing that has happened live on the show? Jack: OMG… there are so many! I think the best two that I can think of were when we were doing the Star Trek 25th Anniversary Amiga game on one of our point-and-click nights with our guest Grant Grissom. We do all of the voice overs for all the characters of the game since the Amiga version does not have voices in the games, we have to improvise. Well after several beers, Kirk is Foghorn Leghorn, Spock is Mickey Mouse, and Sulu is Hank Hill. You get the idea! Grant does great voice overs and I have a few myself... Oh myyyyyyy… Taylor: LMFAO!!! YES, I do remember the day Dad speaks of and I remember gasping and being barely able to breathe during the stream! Heck, I think for a

What's your favourite thing about streaming Amiga games? Jack: Discovering all of the games that I didn’t know about back in the day. Taylor: The complete randomness and unexpected nature of a live show. The fact of not knowing what will happen minute to minute. Why is it important that the Amiga continues to live on? Jack: That’s easy! It’s the computer that won’t die - the users keep it alive. The passion to show others when computing was fun! Taylor: Agreed!! Vampires, Warps, Indivisions, ZZ9000s and others are the reason. The fact that there are people willing to spend thousands or tens of thousands to develop new hardware and peripherals for a machine that dates

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Do you have any particular games you feel work best with a live audience watching? Any where they help or participate in the chat? Jack & Taylor: Hands down the most interactive aspect is when we do tournaments with the AmigaLive app. That is when the audience/fans have the most control and the most participation. They can vote on what game is played, they can choose to be a participant and the winner gets spanner points. What's your favourite recently released Amiga game? Jack & Taylor: Tough call… a lot of good games have come out in recent years… RESHOOT R is a solid one, Bridge Strike, Black Dawn Rebirth, Tiny Little Slug, and many others. The Amiga game scene has been making so many leaps and bounds that it seems like every other day there is a new game, port, or remake. It is awesome and hard to keep up with! When you're not streaming, do you participate in other Amiga activities? Jack: Yes, we are members of the Central Texas Commodore User Group in Round Rock, Texas. Taylor: Like Dad said, we are members of CTUG. However, given COVID-19, we have not met in person for several months, but we have done some online meetings that have, to some degree, kept us all connected. We'd like to thank Jack & Taylor for sharing their stories. You can watch their live stream Pintz and Amiga at: www.twitch.tv/pintzandamiga Or connect with them via: www.facebook.com/groups/ pintzandamiga/ www.patreon.com/pintzandamiga www.discord.gg/DDS2ymPcjv

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AMIGA INSIGHT

Jack & Taylor get hands-on with their tools!

Do you have more "out on location" streams planned? Jack: Yes we do - after all of the COVID19 thing has settled down and we can get back to somewhat normal, we will get back to the Central Texas Commodore User Group in Round Rock, Texas and livestream from there. We plan to get to the UK for a stream in Norwich too. Taylor: I agree - the pandemic has limited our ability to do “on location” streams. However, doing the random beer run or food videos that we post to social media will continue.

back to 1985 is proof enough.

Holding Out For A Hero - AA Paul needs a hero. In fact, he needs a hero 'til the end of the night!

AMIGA FOCUS

When Bonnie Tyler asked "Where have all the good men gone and where are all the gods?" - she should've taken a look at the Amiga. The games library was full of much loved characters, and more importantly for Bonnie... heroes! Just as in film, games have a protagonist who is often on a quest and has to get from point A to point B. Obviously, it is never that straightforward - there are many challenges to face, and depending on the genre of the game, these challenges vary. Whilst the likes of Zool and Superfrog face off with jellies and wasps, Guybrush Threepwood faces pirates, and how to use a rubber chicken (with a pulley in the middle, no less) to get to another island. Two veteran Amiga heroes are James Pond and Turrican - both of them starring in three separate adventures taking on the forces of evil. James Pond, however, knows how to take a break and took part in the local Aquatic Games (although I think I would rather take my chances against the evil Dr.Maybe instead!) The Amiga has an amazing library of games, so choosing a handful to discuss for this article wasn't an easy choice. Each genre has several great examples of a hero on a quest - either to save the land, to destroy an evil overlord, or that age-old story... to rescue a princess. With so many examples to choose from, I have decided to discuss a few personal favourites from a mixture of genres. Take note, however - I'm staying clear of TV and film tie-ins in this article (we’ll cover these in a future issue), so there'll be no Batman, Darkman and erm… Captain Planet.

The team at AA tend to waste more ammo than John Rambo while playing Ruﬀ 'n' Tumble in the oﬃce!

time I experienced the fabled SCUMM engine. For someone who was mainly used to arcade conversions, and the likes of Dizzy, my mind was blown by how much you could do with Zak. A full story was set out before you, and your decisions (when correct) moved the story forward YOU were the hero! You told Zak to "pick up goldﬁsh bowl", then later to "use goldﬁsh bowl". Zak dutifully put the bowl on his head... as a helmet?!!! Sure, why not? Now I can go to Mars! Sorry, dear reader. I haven't lost my mind. I'm just thinking back to some great times.

story and "beefs up the character" so to speak. To briefly mention a couple of other games in the genre - Loom, Simon The Sorcerer and Discworld (not Amiga I know) - all have you controlling a "misfit" that comes good. Some of these had sequels which helped add layers to our hero, just as films do.

You had the most control over the hero here than in any other genre. Sure, the game setting was often diﬀerent pirates, mysterious mansions, aliens taking over the world... but the controls and logic behind the games stayed largely the same. These were like interactive movies, and gave us so many iconic moments in gaming that I still remember to this day.

You play as Guybrush Threepwood, a young pirate wannabe. Several challenges lie ahead for Guybrush in his personal quest for piracy, but his destiny is changed when his path crosses with ghost pirate LeChuck. It is up to you to complete challenges and puzzles to learn the skills needed to defeat LeChuck, and to rescue your crush Elaine Marley, the Governor, who is due to marry the ghost pirate against her will. The storytelling in the entire series has often been highly praised, although only the ﬁrst two games were ever made into Amiga titles. The whole plot for this game could easily be a ﬁlm!

So moving onto another favourite genre of mine, the scrolling beat 'em up - or "walk right and have a ﬁght" as some of my friends call it! In the 80s and 90s, this genre was huge, with so many arcade conversions released for home computers and consoles. There’s not much to say about this genre. You almost always play as a character who is out for revenge against a gang who has kidnapped someone close to you. Games such as Double Dragon, Vigilante and Final Fight (yep, I know how bad the Amiga version is!) have you walking and punching through several locations until you rescue the girl (more often than not). The genre was right for the time though action stars such as Arnie and Stallone were so popular. These games gave you that action movie ﬁx, that feeling of actually being these big stars, cracking skulls and cleaning up the streets! It's easy to see how the likes of Mike Haggar and Billy Lee can be viewed as heroes, especially as they went on to star in several sequels over the years.

Zak McKracken And The Alien Mindbenders has always been a personal favourite game of mine. This was the ﬁrst pointand-click game I played, and the ﬁrst

So is Guybrush a hero? Well sure he is! He rescues the "damsel in distress"... just in a clumsy way and, some may say, by accident. Maybe this trait helps tell the

Before we get to one of the most popular genres - the platformer - I want to look at run 'n' gun games. This is a genre I'm not personally a fan of,

To start oﬀ, I'm going to be looking at some of the best storytelling you could get in gaming from the late 80s onwards - the point-and-click adventure.

AMIGA ADDICT

Despite the Amiga having several fantastic games in the genre - Flight Of The Amazon Queen, Maniac Mansion - the one that is always seen as legendary is The Secret Of Monkey Island.

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however it has given us a few great games for the Amiga, including the Turrican series.

It isn't just Turrican that deserves a "hero's welcome", if you will. Amiga exclusive Ruff 'N' Tumble was released fairly late into the machine's heyday, but like Turrican II, it's highly recommended. Taking a page from Alice In Wonderland, the main character Ruff Rogers takes a trip down a rabbit hole, chasing his marbles into another world. However, there's no white rabbit and Queen Of Hearts here. Instead we have an alien planet, a ton of robots and the evil Dr. Destiny. As the hero of the story, it's up to you to save the planet! Just like in the Turrican series, there are some fantastic weapons to use. Although the graphics for Ruff are more colourful and wouldn't look out of place in a cutesy platformer, everything about this game feels right and while I'm not great at it, I would highly recommend a playthrough if you haven't already. Both the run 'n' gun and scrolling beat 'em up genres have some shared traits. There will often be nonstop waves of enemies where the action doesn't let up. The main character will often be a strong individual who looks like they can handle themselves, fitting into the action movie stereotype. Taking a look at Midnight Resistance, Fireforce and Contra (the artwork being the example here), these games once again have the "Arnie" or "Stallone" type characters, although this time armed to the teeth with guns -

Now I want to take a look at the platformer genre. The amount of times people have had the "Amiga mascot" conversation! Yes, there is no Mario or Sonic, but there are several fantastic platformers (and some awful ones) - all starring a mixture of heroes saving lands, and rescuing "the girl". At the very start of this feature, I mentioned Zool and Superfrog. These are two of the most popular Amiga games of any genre and highly thought of. Sure, Zool was on many other systems, but I have always seen it as an Amiga game, as the other versions get lost in a sea of console platformers. Superfrog, though, has to be seen as one of the greatest heroes... well, a superhero this time! Up until the last decade, the game was only for Commodore systems, so it was a delight to have such a strong exclusive. The game has such a simple take on the Frog Prince fairytale - a prince who has been turned into a frog, yet must still ﬁnd a way to rescue the princess in his new form. It’s not easy being green! Product placement was something that had previously been used in Amiga games, Zool and Pushover coming immediately to mind (see our main feature on page 22 for a more in-depth look!). It was the energy drink Lucozade which featured in Superfrog. This time however, the product played a major part of the story by giving the lead character super powers! Sadly being more of a Ribena drinking teenager, I am unable to conﬁrm if this happened to you in real life... As mentioned previously, there were also a glut of other platformers that were released on Amiga. Back in the 90s, this was my favourite genre, so I played as many as I could. To give a few other honourable mentions - I have to give credit to

the Chuck Rock games. Also appearing on consoles, Chuck Rock was on a quest to rescue his wife who was kidnapped by the evil Gary Gritter (you can guess who this was based on back then!). After all these years, I still struggle to work out the obsession with "caveman platformers" as a sub-genre. Luckily though, games such as Prehistorik and Joe & Mac were great fun to play. Finally in our step through the hero parade, I just want to add a few words about my favourite platform game on Amiga, Harlequin (Ed. - "See Gold Standard in Issue 03 for more on this standout Amiga release"). Following the "save the land" archetype, this game made such an impression on me in 1992, and had such a unique lead character. Every level was so different, with puzzles to solve to unlock other parts of the game. Also the music of Barry Leitch is so memorable and even now I love hearing it whenever I play the game. So there we have it, a mixture of heroes from different game genres. Each of them have varied skill sets to help them in their quest, from knives and guns to a can of root beer. Just for fun I wondered - if there was an "Amiga Avengers" type group, who would I select from each genre to build my team of champions? Guybrush would make it for sure, with his wisecracking remarks and comedy element, Mike Haggar from Final Fight for brute strength, Turrican for just having the best arsenal of guns I have seen in a game. And finally, Superfrog after all every respectable team needs a super-powered creature of some sort! Obviously there are a lot of Amiga heroes I haven't mentioned in this article, but feel free to let us know on social media (or via our letters page) who would make your team...

HEROES! < Guybrush Threepwood

< Mike Haggar

Superfrog > ^ Turrican

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AMIGA FOCUS

Turrican II is always one of the ﬁrst games that gets mentioned whenever you start to compile a list of best games for the system. Sure, the series also featured on many other computers, as well as consoles, but to me the Amiga always felt like its true home. Playing as Turrican, the game announces its intentions for the battle ahead straight away - what feels like a nonstop barrage of enemies, coupled with an amazing soundtrack and some serious weaponry to help you blast through the levels.

we've all seen Commando and the big closing shoot out!

AMIGA ADDICT

April 2021

Marcus Dyson interview - By Paul Monaghan

Hi Marcus, thanks for agreeing to speak to Amiga Addict. Can we start with your earliest Amiga memories? I used to collect records, and I would buy a lot of records… we’re talking four to eight albums a week, that sort of thing. However, I found myself buying duplicates of records I already owned, and I soon realised that I needed some way of cataloguing them. This would have been 1988. I had studied computer studies at O and A Level, and I’d previously owned a ZX80, a VIC-20 and a C64. I figured that I’d buy a computer and write a basic database program to store my record collection. I went out into the market looking for an affordable computer. I narrowed it down to an ST or an Amiga pretty quickly, and bought a copy of ST Amiga Format... then the real research began. Since making a database was my first priority, there was no obvious choice. Both could do what I needed. Perhaps my previous VIC-20 and C64 ownership meant I had some Commodore brand loyalty? In the end, I bought an A500 with a pack of about 20 games, one of which was Wizball. I’d owned consoles before, but was pretty much an arcade gamer by this point... and the idea of having a machine at home that could manage my record collection and play games was very appealing. Also having a built-in disk drive - well that was something I was not used to. You started on Amiga Format with Issue 9 in 1990 as part of the art team? I started as art assistant, and that job basically involved laying out pages the art editor didn’t want to do. It’s a pretty junior position, and fairly hard work. However, it’s a foot on the ladder. This was in the very early days of desktop publishing, so page layout involved casting off and paste up... and scalpels, there were lots of scalpels. And spray mount. At the time Future was expanding rapidly, so after a few issues, Angela Neal left to launch some new magazine and I was made art editor. I think Bob Wade

supported that move. Once I was art editor, life was much better. Apart from still laying out pages, one was also involved in cover designs, issue concepts and photoshoots. It was less a production line job, and more creatively fulfilling. When you joined AF it had been less than a year since ST Amiga Format split into two magazines. How were those early days? Was the ST seen as a rival? There was no real animosity between the magazines. The ST Amiga Format team was split between the two mags and we were in neighbouring offices, and most of the guys had no real holy war-type machine allegiances. I was probably one of the few Amiga die-hards on the mag. But the ST was seen as a serious rival its lower price point and strength in MIDI made it an impressive machine. Because the 520ST had launched before the Amiga 500, it had first-mover advantage. At the time ST Amiga Format split, it was almost neck and neck, but the Amiga’s clever graphical architecture made it a better machine for gaming… and that was a powerful factor in decision making when many people came to choose what machine to buy. So it pretty quickly became clear that the Amiga was winning that race. In 1993, you became editor of AF following on from Bob Wade and Damien Noonan. How did this happen? I learned everything from Bob and Damien. I was a street punk college dropout, and I went to Future because I could fly a computer and had design experience. However, I had no idea how to edit a magazine, and no aspirations to do so. At school, I had been STEM every step of the way - I’d considered English as pointless a subject as history. But I had always loved reading, and done so voraciously. Damien Noonan loved to say “What larks” whenever madness ensued in the AF offices, and that was pretty often. One time, I went straight into “from yonder window breaks” after he

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said it. Bob and Damien both sort of pricked up their ears - they were thinking “Ooh, the loud northern crayon-wielder can quote Shakespeare.” They knew I was an Amiga owner, and computer literate, so pretty soon afterwards they started offering me writing gigs. From that point on, I became more involved in the magazine, but it still came as a huge surprise when I was offered the editorship. Damien suggested me to Greg Ingham (publisher) who supported the idea... I was hesitant at first, but once I did it, I quickly began to love the job. Your time as editor covered quite a varied time for Commodore's fortunes. There were several commercial models on the market. There was also the CD32 to cover and news for the A1200 CD-ROM began to pick up pace around this time. How did you view the scene? It was an incredibly dynamic time. The release of the AGA Amigas, the A4000 and the A1200 was incredibly exciting, as was the release of the CD32. But Commodore seemed to be missing opportunities. The A4000 price was phenomenally high, and who was it aimed at? It should have been aimed at the 3D, video editing and special effects market. It should have shipped with a Video Toaster. Commodore should have had a separate professional division. They had a real window of opportunity there, and they missed it. For a while, the Amiga was the number one games format; there was a lot to cover, which is one of the reasons the magazine kept growing in size. We did our best to cover everything we could, but from 1991 to me leaving in 1994 there was always more than we could manage. At one point AF was the best selling games magazine for Future. What do you think made AF so special? The balance between gaming and

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AMIGA INSIGHT

The Amiga had many magazines that covered all aspects of the machine during the 90s. Amiga Format was one of Future Publishing's biggest titles at the time and ran for nearly 11 years, only ending in 2000. Paul had some time with ex-AF Editor Marcus Dyson, who shared some memories of his time on the magazine and more.

AMIGA INSIGHT

productivity, and (I’d like to think) the quality of the content. We tried really hard to produce a quality magazine. We tried to make it good value, and attractive. But you should never underestimate the importance of the cover disk.

Not many magazines got their own show...

We also tried hard to stay connected to the community. When I joined Future in 1990, most of the magazines had “reader call day”, a day put aside when readers could have their calls put through to the magazine, and chat about anything they wanted - technical problems, games hints, the weather. Slowly most of the magazines backed off, reducing to reader call afternoon, or even getting rid of them altogether. But I insisted we kept ours going, and I am convinced it contributed to reader loyalty. With CU Amiga, Amiga Action, Amiga Power and several others fighting for readership - was it hard to keep AF top? Our biggest rivalry was with Amiga Power. It was rough and tumble, they were our brother and we loved them. But they were our younger brother - before they came along, we got all the attention from the software girlies and PR people. We were used to fighting for cover demos with CU Amiga, but now we were fighting with the magazine next door to us. So once they arrived, our feathers were ruffled a little bit. But I loved Matt Bielby - I shared a house with him for a while and he was really one of my favourite people. I also had a lot of respect for Stuart Campbell, a really funny writer, completely committed to his beliefs, and great taste in music, which has always been important to me. But somehow an animosity developed between he and I that I never intended, and was truly sorry about. I think it came to a head when Team 17 threatened to sue him, and he thought I was behind that. But I actually had nothing to do with it. I’m much more a pistols at dawn than a writs-and-court kind of guy.

AF was known for the amazing cover disks.

AMIGA ADDICT

I never really took Amiga User International seriously. And Amiga Action was seen as Amiga Power’s problem. But CU Amiga... that was my problem. We used to hate CU Amiga in a grudgingly respectful way. I really liked their editor

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Dan Slingsby, and I had enough respect for Nick Veitch to try to poach him (and thankfully succeed), and he was an exemplary technical editor, and later editor. CU were second to us in numbers, they produced a good magazine… but I think that’s also testimony to the fact that a games/productivity combination was the way to go for Amiga mags. In the 90s, cover disks were a major selling point of magazines. AF always had a great mixture of games demos and software. Several issues came with two disks and at times even three! How was it trying to get content for the disks, knowing it could really shift copies of the magazine? Did companies reach out to you? It was a real combination. For sure, as the mag with the biggest circulation, we had an advantage. Publishers did reach out to us. Advertising were involved, and there was some horse trading, of course. Chris Anderson was extremely principled - Future magazines would not advertise any sex or piracy related PD titles for instance. And at this time there was no “scores for demos” or “scores for advertising” deals, though sadly those did come later. But we also hunted down the titles we wanted, especially after the ELSPA full-games “ban”, when we started to put full productivity titles on the cover disk. Superstar publisher Greg had input. Then the task of putting it all together and making it boot up and run fell to the technical editor. During your time on AF, did you get to visit any of the games events such as Future Entertainment Show? Well, before there was FES, there was Amiga Format Live. Yes, our magazine had its own show! It was pretty successful… and I remember hosting a few of the “meet the team” panels, which were great fun. It was kind of like reader call day, live. FES was an attempt to bring the rest of Future’s games mags on board. And I was pretty central to the planning of the FES. I designed the logo, "wrote the feme tune, played the feme tune", and did a lot of the promotional material. So yes, bet your life I was there! In fact, I think I was gunged by Mr Blobby too!

STARSHIP

These are the voyages of the starship Amiga. Its mission to boldly go… oh damn who broke the warp engines! That's how it goes right?

GENERATION

Amiga Next Generation gaming does not usually get much of a look in. Often titles are ports and we don't see many native releases. Usually NG gaming is ignored by the classic crowd too and regarded as too modern to be worth their time. But looking at it realistically, some of the titles are great fun and they can be retro in their own right! Now there’s nothing kids love more than blowing people up with a variety of weapons in an FPS, and there is a huge

Emmerdale meets Aliens!

I went to World of Amiga in Australia and in New York too. The Australian show was amazing, hosted in Darling Harbour, and it was there that I met Mark Sibley and Simon Armstrong of Acid Software. The New York show was much more downbeat… and it was at that show that I started to get a feel that Commodore was letting their opportunities slip through their ﬁngers. In mid 1994, you left AF to join Team 17, who were a massive supporter of the Amiga and CD32. What was your role there? Any key memories? That was a fabulous time. I started as a junior producer, overseeing the porting of some of my favourite Amiga titles to PC. I did some Alien Breed 2 level design. I was involved with the production of the Alien Breed: Tower Assault 3D intro

It's great to replay a lot of these titles you would have played on the PC years ago. Aliens Versus Predator is great to see running on an Amiga-like system. Return to Castle Wolfenstein runs like a dream and is a real classic. Duke Nukem 3D, Doom and Quake have countless ports, and maybe it's due to lockdown, but the past two years have seen tons of new ports happen. The stunning Shadow Warrior and Rise of the Triad are brand new for 2021! The most popular FPS title for showing off systems is now the over-two-decadesold Quake III Arena. It has ports for Amiga OS4, MorphOS and classic PPC. If you want to breathe some extra life into this title however, I suggest you install some sequence, famously described as “the cast of Emmerdale does Aliens”(Ed. - "For overseas AA readers, Emmerdale is a British soap opera series about the lives of a rural northern village farming community!"). But John Allardice and Cris Blyth threw that thing together with no real experience, and on a shoestring budget. Then, because Martyn Brown had his hands full with other titles, I was initially producer for Worms. Andy Davidson had sent the demo to us, and we popped it in the machine and we just could not stop playing. We called him, and left a message with his mum, and he did not call back for three days. We spent the whole three days in thinly-veiled panic, thinking, “What if he never calls back? What if he sent it to Psygnosis too, and they called back while he was at home?” But he did call back, and in the first meeting, he told me that he had submitted the game to the Amiga Format “write a game” competition, and I had to tell him that meant Future Publishing owned the rights to the game. So then there were another few days of heightened concern, until I contacted Greg, who wrote a letter signing over the rights to us. Later, I developed the first Team 17 website, and it got 11,000 hits on the first weekend. This was before it was submitted to any search engines... just from Team 17 fans, newly signed up to

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Guns blazing in Shadow Warrior.

mods! Bigfoot from the MorphOS team has a selection of compatible mods supporting multiplayer games and bots. I recommend having a play about and seeing what you can do with the Quake III engine and which mods you can get working (www.amiga-addict.com/ quakemods). You can even fire up Quake Rally to turn your FPS into a racing game! The children running the planet seem to be happy with this gaming selection, but it's not enough to tempt Wesley down from his pedestal! I will try to win them over with bad jokes, but I have a feeling we might be stuck here for a while... “How many ears does Mr. Spock have? Three. A left ear, a right and a final front ear.” Demon, thinking “I wonder if Team 17 has a website”, and trying www.team17.com. After that, Team 17 developed the UK’s first multi-store Internet mall OneStore - and I headed up that division. Finally, what are some of your favourite Amiga games of all-time? Probably no surprises here. Rainbow Islands, Pang, James Pond: RoboCod, Pinball Fantasies, Skidmarks, Lemmings, Worms, Alien Breed. A big thank you to Marcus for his time!

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TESTBENCH

We have landed on a mysterious planet, ruled by children. They have already tied up Worf, eaten all the sweets on the starship and turned Wesley Crusher into their king. I need to keep them entertained while I try to win back control of the Enterprise. So I have taken Data's decapitated head, plugged in some gamepads and turned it into an Amiga NG gaming rig...

variety on Amiga NG systems. Classic shooters were supported under the original PPC platform, even so far as legendary titles like Shogo: Mobile Armor Division, Hexen and Quake. Since then, a lot has been added to the mix. I can only talk from a MorphOS perspective, but a lot of these are cross-compatible with other NG systems, usually with just a single person porting them.

AMIGA FOCUS

The Creative Revolution - An artistic journey into the world of Amiga

by Gareth Qually

I owe my career to the Amiga. The Amiga and the amazing applications that were on it. My name is Gareth Lance Qually, and I am a motion graphics designer.

spend many more hours on it than I did on the Amiga. I remember visiting a freelance 3D Studio user - his PC workstation was powerful for sure, and I even remember him having some form of 16 or 24-bit display card to view frames of his renders. I also looked at the Mac platform, which did have a couple of powerful 3D apps in StrataVision 3D and Electric Image Animation System, along with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. Clearly the Mac was the platform of choice for desktop publishing - it had a set of tools that worked eﬃciently and Apple fostered that part of its business well. So well in fact, that many people today still see the Mac as the 'designer's choice'. We won’t start talking about that misguided notion here however...

I say that as it is not merely a career, but rather an obsession. My wife jokes how she comes a distant second to my Amiga and my love of computer-based animation. I can’t say she is entirely wrong... I was aware of computer graphics from a young age. It definitely intrigued me. We had a Commodore 64 at the time (the early to mid 80s), and the graphic capabilities of the machine clearly amazed me. There was a time in early high school, when I was around 14, where I wrote a school report on advanced computer graphics. I had pictures of Evans & Sutherland flight simulators, some examples from the movies and possibly even some artistic experiments. I distinctly remember looking at those flight simulator images and thinking how real they were. I have a memory, as clear as day, of when I saw the title sequence for Alien for the first time. We were at my uncle’s house, having just come in from swimming or playing, and the adults decided to watch that epic space horror film. I was absolutely mesmerised. How could someone make one short word take so long to reveal? So simple and so

powerful. It was following that experience that I started recording title sequences of films on VHS, and watching them over and over. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but looking back, I can now see how that led to me heading into a career that would ultimately fulfil my soul. I came to the Amiga quite late, in 1991. I knew about it, of course, but we had moved from the Commodore 64 to the Atari ST, despite protests to my dad. I never used that machine or many others at that time, what with studies, late teen socialising, and the sunny locale of Cape Town. Computers did not feature much in my life, other than for gaming and college reports etc. It was whilst taking a gap year and working at a ski resort in Lake Tahoe that I remembered the world of computer graphics again. Computer-based animation had featured in a few films in the 80s, and I remember reading articles about those that really intrigued me when I was younger. Films like The Last Starfighter, Tron, the Pixar shorts and countless demos from the research community all sparked my imagination. Looking to see if I could do something in that vein, the Amiga immediately popped up as probably the best way to get into the world of computer graphics. If I wanted to do the same thing on another platform, I would have had to

The powerful software bundled with Gareth's Amiga 500+ that would serve to shape his future career.

AMIGA ADDICT

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Both of these options paled in comparison to the Amiga. It allowed me to buy much more for much less. It was only when I started to use the software I had, that I realised how much more powerful the system and the software ecosystem was. My favourite thing to do would be to set up some form of 3D test in the evening, hit render, and let it run overnight. Then I’d check what I’d got in the morning, and hit render again as I went to college for the day. The magazines of the day gave a lot of coverage of the 3D animation scene, not only of the Amiga, but the larger community too. So we would be told of new technologies being announced at SIGGRAPH (an international computer graphics conference), and then would discover that technology a few years later, added to the 2D or 3D app of our choice. Anyway, this has been a long-winded way for me to explain how I got my first Amiga. I managed to save enough money from working at the ski resort to buy my first Amiga when I headed back to Cape Town to continue my studies. It was an Amiga 500+, with a GVP Impact A500 HD8+ Series II 40MB hard drive and 8MB of RAM, and Deluxe Paint and Imagine 1.0. My first love.

What did the Amiga do for us?

He looked at a system that could do basic pixel-based animation and titles, and lay the graphics down to tape with a genlock and a recording card. The Apple Macintosh managed to do this for $11,039 even though it did not have any titling software. Our friend, the PC (PS/2 in this case), dropped that price down to $8,538. The Amiga, however, managed this for $3,846.90 with an A2000 system, or $2,446.90 with an A500 system. The results were stunning, and what made it even more shocking was the lack of choice of software on the other systems. On the DOS side of things, there was one major player - Autodesk

The Mac had a few applications going for it. The obvious Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator packages along with Aldus PageMaker come to mind. On the 3D side of things, as noted previously, there was StrataVision 3D and Electric Image Animation System. We were positively spoilt for choice on the Amiga. Just paging through past issues of Amiga World, the stream of adverts and reviews for software, genlocks, time-based correctors, digitisers, 24-bit frame buﬀers, upgrades and all other manner of other goodies never stopped. More on this later. From a technical point of view, the Amiga interfaced with video very easily. Out of the box, you could already output a good PAL or NTSC video signal, but pair it with a genlock and time-based corrector and it could do all sorts of tricks previously

reserved for highend video equipment costing thousands - and even tens of thousands - of pounds. The hardware was made to push pixels around the screen quite easily. That it was a whole new architecture that was not reliant on previous generations for compatibility made a world of diﬀerence. Basically, it spoke video. The third party market really got on board and started producing all sorts of products to enhance what we had in the Amiga. To be honest, it was the third party market that kept the Amiga alive and well for so long. Looking at music and audio, the Amiga shone there as well. It may not have had MIDI ports built in, but it had serious capabilities with sampling, again rivalling tools that cost factors more. And although those MIDI ports were missing, it did not take long for tons of plugin boards and external solutions to arrive. If we have to name one singular product that helped cement the Amiga as a serious video production tool though, it has to be the Newtek Video Toaster. Essentially an NTSC-only product, it too was an incredible piece of engineering that allowed someone to have a studio at the fraction of the cost, and with very little compromise. Even if it didn’t reach PAL shores, it set the tone for the industry, and if I look back to my early

LEFT & MIDDLE: Amiga artwork examples. RIGHT: Digital Sound Studio by Great Valley Products, 8-bit stereo sound sampler allowing up to 32 samples in memory.

LEFT: ASDG's Art Department Professional had powerful image conversion options. RIGHT: Amiga fonts, font creation tools & clipart were readily available.

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AMIGA ADDICT

AMIGA FOCUS

We all know the Amiga shone so very brightly, and changed the world of desktop video, computer-based design and animation. I would argue it singlehandedly ushered in the desktop video revolution. It did this through price and power - the price allowed us to buy these amazingly powerful machines in the ﬁrst place, and the power allowed us to start creating things that were not only close to what we were seeing on the television and the silver screen, but equal or even sometimes better than them. Looking back to the 1990 Amiga World Video & Animation Special, Doug Barney looked into the price component with some detail.

with 3D Studio and Animator Pro. The former, a very capable piece of 3D software, has origins which can, interestingly, be traced to the Atari ST; while the latter was a 2D animation program by Jim Kent, whose origins again date back to Cyber Paint on the ST (Ed. - "See our Amiga Vs. Atari showdown on page 28, for further interesting comparisons between the Amiga and its closest rival"). 3D Studio is still around today as 3ds Max on Windows and is a major industry player.

COMMU NI ARTICL TY E SUBMI SSION

AMIGA FOCUS

days in the industry, I remember an Amiga 2000 with a genlock and Scala MM200 running titles in a production studio well into the early 2000s. Why was the Amiga such a great platform then? Technically, it was far ahead of the competition in the mid to late 80s, and that momentum allowed it to live on deep into the 90s as a viable tool of the trade. We already celebrate the people who brought this marvel to us. But it’s important to recognise the programmers and designers of all the wonderful third party hardware and software that made it a playground worth running around in. Without the power and diversity of the ecosystem that existed around the Amiga, we would be talking about a very diﬀerent history. Lastly, though, there’s us - all the people who formed the community, who saw an opportunity to make something something new, something exciting, something worth using, talking about and sharing for over 35 years. That was what made the platform great. So what exactly could the Amiga do? As I mentioned earlier, we were spoilt for choice when it came to design and animation applications on the Amiga. From a set of household names that started in the 80s, to the latter years of innovation and diversiﬁcation, we were served with a wealth of options to bring our ideas to life.

Illustrator? Pah! We'll take Professional Draw. The Amiga is also well-known for its video eﬀects tools.

world, and was especially useful for game developers to produce art assets, long after the software was abandoned. Not far from this world of pixel editing heaven was 2D animation. Again we can immediately talk about the de facto standard here being Deluxe Paint. But you didn’t have to stay with DPaint if you didn’t want to. There was Disney Animation Studio, The Hanna-Barbera Animation Workshop, Aegis Animator, Deluxe Video and Take 2 among others. Although I never used them, there were a few 2D vector based apps too: Professional Draw, Art Expressions, Aegis Draw Plus, ProVector and DrawStudio. We even had the beginnings of the compositing and photo manipulation world, with packages like Art Department Professional, Image Master RT, Image FX, and Morph Plus. In addition, there were multimedia and authoring apps in Scala and Amiga Vision.

low cost. A generation of artists were exposed to this technology, technology that a few years previously was only available to very high-end film studios and education institutions. If you look at the list above you will instantly recognise some names as they are still around and having a huge impact. Cinema 4D is the dominant platform for motion graphics for example, Lightwave is still big in the television and film industry, and of course there is Blender which is shaking up the animation world with its open source offering. The wonderful thing is that so much of the software is available as free downloads from the developers or publishers as abandonware. Failing that, a few FTPs and websites will have the most of the remaining software library, thanks again to a passionate and active community. Where do we go from here?

There were many areas that it excelled in. Starting with the pixel-based art packages... I mean there are almost too many to mention. Literally oﬀ the top of my head, we have Graphicraft, Deluxe Paint I to IV, Brilliance, TV Paint, DigiPaint, Photon Paint, Personal Paint, Image FX and Opal Paint. I am sure some of you are screaming at me about some packages I have forgotten here, and I most likely have. There were that many. Without a doubt, the king of them all was Deluxe Paint, not because it was the best (that will be hotly debated on any Amiga forum, not just English Amiga Board!). It helped deﬁne the product category and lived long past the death of Amiga. It was used in studios around the

There were accessible computer-based editing and broadcast studio systems too, with hardware like the Broadcaster 32, Personal Animation Recorder, and, of course, the inimitable Video Toaster. Lastly we have the 3D apps. It's in this area that I believe the Amiga and this software had the biggest and longest impact on the television, ﬁlm and games industries. There were just so many software options to choose from. We had: Sculpt 3D, Turbo Silver, Aladdin 4D, Sculpt-Animate 4D, Caligari, Cinema 4D, Imagine, Lightwave, Real 3D, Vista Pro, Martin Hash's Animation:Apprentice and Traces (the precursor to Blender). There was nothing else out there for other platforms with such breadth, depth and

Impressive 3D virtual landscapes can be created in Vista Pro. RIGHT: Amiga-generated 3D Newton's cradle.

AMIGA ADDICT

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What can we do with the Amiga creatively today? Or more specifically, what can we do with this software now that we have more than a couple of decades experience under the belt (ouch!!). There is no doubt that it is a brilliant platform to use today for learning, exploring and having fun. The results it can produce can be as relevant today as they ever were decades ago. And I think we might find uses and meaning that we did not see all those years ago. So how about we take a deep dive into the world of design and animation on the Amiga? We can take a look at software applications we used before and ones that are completely new to us. Maybe plug in that old hardware device for another run and make it do something it was not designed for. We can explore specific techniques across different programs and see how we can integrate the old with the new. So come with me for some creative adventures in the old country. (Ed. -"Gareth will be back soon in a future issue, with more creative insights!")

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AMIGA ADDICT

AMIGA INSIGHT

Snacking is a huge part of computer culture - whether it be the hackers and crackers necking Jolt Cola to stay up to the late hours, or kids at home munching a 10p mix while they wait for their next game to load. The idea of dipping into something less-than-healthy with one hand, while the other rests on a keyboard or controller is integral to the gaming scene, and most of us developed and cultivated this habit in our formative years. Buying budget titles would often leave you with some extra money for some fizzy pop (now I sound old!) and as many treats as possible, or else we’d raid the parents’ cupboards without mercy. But what to choose? In the UK, we have always had a huge selection of sweets (candy to our American cousins) and other snack foods, and their unusual flavours, frequently high sugar content and E numbers would often leave us in a spin, leaving parents to struggle to bring us back down to earth. The world of snacking may have changed, with a lot of improvements in ingredients and removal of things like artificial colourings, but many of the brands we enjoyed in the 80s and 90s still remain today. That is down, in part, to the strength of the advertising, much of which is still clear in the minds of the adults those children have grown up to become, and is still influencing our purchasing choices 30 years later. The 90s were a golden era for snack foods. Kids’ disposable income was steadily increasing. Every Saturday morning saw TV channels battling to grab the attention of the little rotters, even more so than the rest of the week. Marketing towards children grew in aggression and impact, with nearly every brand having an iconic personality to push their product, in the same way as advertising for more traditional products. But, being the 90s, these figureheads were riding the radical wave of the ‘attitude era’. With a huge supply of characters to choose from, slipping them into videogames and wider culture was an all too logical step. The Amiga was very popular amongst kids at the time, and many kids’ TV shows reviewed games for the system and even featured phone-in games that ran on Commodore’s platform behind the scenes. Other systems like the Mega Drive started to feature in-game advertising (IGA), but a few took it even further. These titles - known as “advergames” - were games based solely around advertising. McDonald’s helped start this trend, jumping into video game advertising early with games like McDonald Land. Other games put their advertising a little less front and centre, but it was still hard to miss.

AMIGA ADDICT

SNACK Things got a bit spicy in 1993, when the legendary GamesMaster television series, broadcast on Channel 4, signed a sponsorship deal with McDonald’s during its third series. This led host Dominik Diamond to leave the show, as he didn’t agree with some of the restaurant’s corporate policies at the time. He was replaced by Dexter Fletcher of Press Gang and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels fame for a season. While nowadays this could seem laughable, at the time, sponsoring a video game show aimed at kids was a very controversial move. People were shocked at Dominik’s move, but most could see his moral standpoint. Television was all about the ratings and the numbers in the analogue days. Figures were predicted using a select group of viewers that represented a cross-section of the country, which allowed advertisers to know how many people they would be hitting, and therefore how effective campaigns would be. The way advertising was integrated into Amiga games was very different. I assume a flat fee would be paid to the publisher, based on previous sales of similar titles and future predictions. This would have been a lot less accurate, as predicting which titles would be a real hit with kids, and how sales would perform was affected by many factors. Was the game good enough? What was the copy protection like? And what other titles were coming out at the time? Product placement It’s likely a lot of these deals would result in the publishers getting a flat fee of a couple of grand from the advertiser in question. Developers were then told to integrate the advertising into their title, which was often a game that was already in production, and frequently late in that production cycle. Imagine putting your heart and soul into something for years, and suddenly, one day, the theme being changed and having to adapt it to fit with the demands of the advertiser! Getting a big name on board could be a boon for a game though, even past the initial cash outlay. Being associated with a huge brand could really get your game some extra cool points, and there were few larger brands than the big names in food and snacks. Get it wrong, however, and the change of direction and goals of a

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title could really harm the quality of the ﬁnished product. Let’s face it - there was a lot of advertising in Amiga titles, so it’s time to discuss the big names in snack food promotion. We realise our international readers might not know these brands and hence won’t have

ATTACK! The Amiga had an established list of impressive platformers at this point,with games like James Pond, Ghosts ‘n Goblins and Shadow of the Beast, many of which went on to have acclaimed sequels. While these games never reached the popularity of the console headliners of the time, a lot of these titles did eventually get ported over, with some achieving a substantial following.

any memories associated with them unlike their British counterparts. Never fear - the Amiga Addicts are here, and they’re all snacked up and ready to get to the bottom of the bag, as we take this look at Amiga snack food branded titles... Does Zool suck? In 1991, Sega released Sonic The Hedgehog for the Mega Drive. Sonic took the world by storm. Platformers were huge at the

Once Sega had dropped Sonic on the public, however, the whole platforming scene really ramped up on Amiga. Development houses started to design new titles and rework old ones to become Sonic killers. Many Amiga companies wanted to emulate the success with their own fast furry mascot and set their teams and sights on doing just that. The Adventures of Quik & Silva featured Sonic sprites as early as 1991, although this was more of a parody than a statement of intent, given it was a platform shooter and featured sprites from a lot of other games too. Moving into 1992, platformers really took a huge leap on the Amiga with some of the best titles

What Paul thinks... Chupa Chups lollipops Luckily for me, for this article, I was allocated a lolly that I am happy enough to eat! The likes of Quavers with their cheesy flavour does nothing for me, so I really dodged that bullet! I've not had Chupa Chups lollies for years, usually preferring the superior sugar-heavy Double Lolly. Whenever I think of Chupa Chups though, I think of two things - Zool is the first of course, but I am also strongly reminded of anytime I walked into a chemist, as there always seemed to be a jar of them on the counter! You also had those "Whistle Lollies" around that time too - a lolly in the shape of a whistle you could, well... whistle with? But anyway, back to these lollies. There doesn't seem to have been any massive evolution with Chupa Chups since the 90s... I mean, how can you change a lolly? They have added sugar-free versions, sure, but I can barely taste the difference. I bought a few flavours Cola (yuk), Strawberry & Cream (yum), and Vanilla & Chocolate (yum). So two out of three ain't bad, as a certain song once claimed. These were 38p each to buy too, so a lot more than their 10p price when I was a kid! Sucking on a lolly is an easy snack whilst gaming as you still have your hands free for the important stuff. I never really see any adults though out and about sucking lollies, so maybe it’s seen as a child's sweet? Nah, it can't be! Kojak the TV detective always had a lolly and he was pretty cool...

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hitting the system around that time. Sonic clones started hitting the market too the likes of Tearaway Thomas and Titus The Fox were fun games for sure, but realistically they were not in the same league as the Blue Blur. Then up stepped Zool, from renowned publisher Gremlin. Gremlin made no bones about their intentions to claim the

Zool doesn't hang about if lollipops are involved!

Amiga mascot crown, as they emulated Sonic by producing a ‘cool’ 90s character full of attitude. So how come he ended up sucking on lollipops? Zool was never originally intended to emulate Sonic. Sonic was released to the public halfway through the game’s development cycle - the whole Zool/Sonic war was devised by the marketing team, not the developers, who were busy building an “Nth Dimension” full of instruments, electronics, CD-ROMS, sweets and other everyday objects. The opening world was based on sweet delights, with chocolate bars sticking out the ground, aggressive jellies, Liquorice Allsorts lining the skies and what looked like Smarties embedded in a giant cake forming the ground. The pickups were often sweets too - the goal of the game being the popular “collect everything” style of gameplay - this was ideal when designing a variety of collectible items. The British TV series GamesMaster was key to linking the direction Zool would take with advertising. Gremlin had created a custom version of the Zool prototype to be played on national TV in hopes of growing its reputation for release. They customised it by showing GamesMaster logos in the background while it was being previewed on the show - GamesMaster loved this and started hyping Zool, pushing it to compete with Sonic. Using the momentum of this

AMIGA ADDICT

AMIGA INSIGHT

time, and the quality of this pretty unique game meant Sonic Mania soon gripped the world (long before the game of the same name would). As a Sega exclusive, it really cemented them as a console powerhouse, and the Mega Drive’s reputation as a cutting edge console was assured. Sonic was edgy, cool and very diﬀerent to our old plumber friend Mario, and Nintendo had to step up their game of course. But the home computers were desperate to compete with the Blue Annoyance too.

- By Ravi Abbott

AMIGA INSIGHT

appearance, Gremlin rode the marketing wave, leading to Zool being a massively hyped game by the time of release. Sponsorship was arranged for the ﬁnal version with Chupa Chups, a Spanish company that was relatively unheard-of in wider Europe. Chupa Chups seemed to be pioneers in advertising and were always innovating - even their logo was designed by surrealist Salvador Dali. Zool was seen as cool and edgy, and a good ﬁt for the lollipop when compared to their previous campaigns. In the 1980s for example, they started an anti-smoking campaign with edgy taglines like "Smoke Chupa Chups" and "Stop smoking, start sucking”, designing the packaging to look like cigarette packs. Anti-smoking campaigns often used lollipops as cigarette alternatives and Chupa Chups capitalised on this.

I'm getting a sugar rush just looking at this...

The integration of advertising was a lot more blatant than the earlier GamesMaster logos. The game started with a big Chupa Chups logo splash screen: “In association with Chupa Chups, The World's Best Selling Lollipops”. Levels had lollipops in the background as well as big Chupa Chups logos plastered everywhere. With the intro level being a sweet and cake world, this led to some gaming critics labelling Zool - Ninja of the Nth Dimension as one giant garish advert. This perpetuated through the community - Zool was a difficult game, so many gamers only ever saw the advertisingcovered first world. As Zool’s popularity grew, it was ported to consoles such as the SNES and Mega Drive, some of the releases even including free lollipops! The advertising was removed from the NTSC SNES version, meaning only European SNES users got to experience the Chupa Chups flavour. The association with Chupa Chups continued with Zool 2, but seemed noticeably toned down from the original title. Was Curly Colin a complete Pushover? Zool was the most wellknown Amiga

AMIGA ADDICT

What Ian thinks... Quavers First thing’s first - a small admission. I was never really a Quavers guy when I was a kid. I was always more inclined towards KP’s potatoey toruses of joy, Hula Hoops - specifically the crimson-clad “Original” variety. If I wanted something cheesy, I would often just coat my fingers and face in orange crisp-dust as I shovelled handful after handful of cheesy Wotsits into my maw. Of course, most children will eat basically anything that’s put in front of them, including crisps, and I was no exception. My mom would often put a bag of Smith’s Quavers in my hand, and I would wolf them down with cheesy abandon. And by 1993, as a 12-year-old Amiga owner, I was happy to have a packet at the side of my A600. Not least because Pushover came with my Amiga, and Quavers mascot Colin Curly was emblazoned on the front of the bundle! Quavers are not generally at the forefront of people’s minds these days. Even the adverts have become kind of generic, whereas back in the 80s and 90s, we had Colin Curly twisting up a storm every time he ate a Quaver. Voiced by British comedian Lenny Henry, a local lad I have a lot of respect for - how could I not like Quavers when Colin Curly grew up 5 miles from my house?! So how are they? Well they’re certainly cheesy, and the deep fried potato gives it a light aerated texture, a bit like a less dense prawn cracker. At 16g a packet, there’s not much to them (a family sized pack would be nice!), but given they are fried, they have a decent amount of fat in them. And yet, a multipack arrives every time I get a grocery delivery. Hey, they’re mostly air, so you can get away with eating a ton. Right?

Don't smile - your Quavers are down an anthill!

advergame in the eyes of the public, but Pushover truly was ram-packed with advertising. Developers Red Rat Software worked alongside Commodore and Ocean to come up with some huge campaigns and tie-ins. Released in 1992, Pushover was heavily marketed and did not require a brand new hero, instead choosing to reuse existing characters from the Quavers brand. Today, Quavers are owned by Walkers Crisps, but they were originally created by the Smith’s Snackfood Company, a food manufacturer known for their knockout British flavours (Scampi Fries anyone?). Colin Curly was a Smith’s-created animated dog in a yellow suit, who appeared on TV sets around the nation in the late 80s with his signature wacky style, driven home by voice acting from comedian Lenny Henry. Henry personified wacky, after many years of working on kids’ TV show Tiswas alongside Chris Tarrant, as well his standup and selftitled sketch show. Colin Curly’s design must have been influenced by the look of ska and blues music at the time, with huge hits in popular culture like The Blues Brothers movie and the band Madness, the original Nutty Boys. The gimmick was that Colin’s whole body would contort and twist as soon as he ate a

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A copy of Pushover in its natural habitat.

Quaver, with adverts featuring the tagline, frequently shouted by the hyperactive dog, “Watch out! They taste curly!”. Surprisingly, Colin was quite the hit with the ladies in the adverts, and could often be seen winning their aﬀections with a tempting Quaver. Pushover was an ideal way for Smith’s to get their mascot involved in computer games. In Pushover, the plot revolved around Colin losing his packets of Quavers down a giant ant hill. He then enlists the help of a friendly

memorable intro by Jon Palmer. I asked Bill if Smith’s had any requirements for the animations and what his brief was. He said: “As far as the animations go, I was given free rein to do what I wanted. The only brief I got was to produce the Quavers in an amusing way.” All the animations were high quality - at this time many Amiga games had animated introductions and mid-game sequences, so it was becoming expected by gamers and became common in platformers especially.

This game is really innovative and involves arranging giant dominoes with diﬀerent special powers in the correct order, so one push from G.I. Ant will cause them all to hit each other and topple before the time is up. It’s a nice combination of puzzle and platformer and an original concept for a game. With only one solution per screen, experimentation is encouraged before making your ﬁnal attempt, but you still get an action element as the unfortunate ant sprints around the level putting everything in place. This unique gameplay led to Amiga magazines rating Pushover highly at the time. The game had Quavers-themed animation sequences every few levels, animated by Bill Harbison of Ocean, and an initial

One Step Beyond followed Pushover a year later. Taking its name from ska band Madness’ huge hit of the same name, it highlighted Colin’s ska roots and connection with the Nutty Boys. While this title did not go down as well with the press as Pushover, it was still a decent puzzler in a similar vein. This time, Colin was the main character, the intro showing him playing Pushover on his Amiga one night, when he suddenly gets “curliﬁed” and digitised into the computer, Tron style. The animations of Colin trapped in his Amiga are fantastic, and as high quality and humorous as the Pushover intros and animations. Another puzzle platformer, this time Colin is standing on retractable platforms having to pick the correct path to complete the level. The advertising was ramped up in this title, with levels being named as “Quaver Zones”, and Quavers packets actually featuring in every level as the entrance and exit platforms. It unfortunately led to a bit more of a gimmicky feel than the ﬁrst game. James Pond - no bottom feeder!

Above image courtesy of Jason Liebig.

Colin Curly and G.I. Ant also feature on the front of “The Wild, The Weird and the Wicked” Amiga bundle for the A600,

What James thinks... Liquorice Allsorts, Penguins The main product advertised in RoboCod is the humble Penguin biscuit. It’s made up of two rectangular chocolate biscuits sandwiching chocolate cream and then covered in a layer of chocolate, holding up the claim that it’s one of the chocolatiest biscuits in the world. It was the inspiration for, and therefore is very similar to, the Australian “Tim Tam” and has been a common sight in the supermarket aisles and lunchboxes for decades. It’s probably mostly known by 80s kids for the TV adverts and the slogan “P...P...P...Pick up a penguin”. The biscuits themselves are fine, but I have never been a massive fan... if I discovered Mum had put one of these in my lunchbox while my friends were enjoying their Club biscuits (or even a fancy Gold bar), I was always a bit disappointed. The wrapper for each biscuit features a (terrible) joke though, which did help a bit. Taste-wise, it’s basically a bourbon biscuit with chocolate around it, so it’s very sweet! The other real-world food making an appearance in RoboCod is Liquorice Allsorts. I have not eaten these for years and years - pretty much the only time I used to eat them was on long car journeys as a kid, or when visiting an elderly relative. My parents always seemed to have a bag in the glove box of our Austin 7 (I’m not as old as that makes me sound, but my parents didn’t own a modern car, much to my embarrassment at the time!). Eating one today gives me instant flashbacks to travel sickness, unfortunately. The overriding texture of pretty much all of the different sweets in the bag I would describe as dry and rubbery. I used to put the dry texture down to the fact I was eating them out of a bag that had probably been open for the best part of a year in the car, but on revisiting them, I can confirm that texture is present and correct even in a freshly opened bag! They’re not that bad though once you get used to it, and they did grow on me as I ate more (except the chocolate and liquorice sandwich ones. They should not exist!). This is probably controversial... but I think my favourites are the aniseed jelly sweets with all the bobbles on. The sweets had an outing on childhood TV, which stuck in my mind ever since - in the form of the villainous robotic executioner “Kandyman” from Doctor Who. A character who is, for legal reasons, not Bertie Bassett (but is certainly very similar!).

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James Pond was an Amiga-made hero. The whole game was created by one man, Chris Sorrell, in the days when a single programmer could create a hit, instead of the teams of 200+ we get nowadays! It felt very indie - before indie really existed - but it became a worldwide hit. In the early days of mascots, Pond was one the iconic characters that made a real impact on the gaming world and became widely recognised by gamers on multiple formats. The puns really helped grab people's attention - ‘RoboCod’ and ‘Underwater Agent’ added that British humour to the title that makes it so distinctive. The ﬁrst game - James Pond: Underwater Agent - featured no advertising and was focussed around the underwater world, rather than anything on the surface. The second title in the series was very diﬀerent. James Pond 2: Codename RoboCod (or just RoboCod to his friends) was released in 1991 by Millennium (and Ocean on the SNES, which is 100% more appropriate!) and developed by Vectordean. James Pond’s arch enemy, Dr Maybe, has retreated to the North Pole and taken over Santa’s Workshop, and it’s up to James to free the workers, elves and, of course, penguins. For this title, the main sponsor was the British chocolate biscuit, Penguin, from huge UK snack food

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soldier ant named “G.I. Ant” to help get his cheesy crisps back.

Imagine opening a pack of Quavers and realising you had won an Amiga 600! Well Smith’s, Ocean and Commodore teamed up to make this dream happen. Over 200 Amiga 600s and 10,000 copies of Pushover were up for grabs. Not only that, but if you collected 30 promotional packs, you could get “Colin’s Discount Pack”, allowing you to claim £30 oﬀ an Amiga 600 or £20 oﬀ Ocean games in stores!

with Pushover included as a pack-in title. This kind of promotion was huge, and I don't think it has ever been matched by any other sponsorship deal in Amigaland.

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manufacturer McVitie’s. On the Amiga and Mega Drive versions, you are greeted with an intro of James emerging from underwater, cutting through the ice

It takes Allsorts to make platform game...

while the biscuity penguins skate around him in joy. For the Mega Drive version, the intro stops there, while in the Amiga version, the advertising continues with the penguins freezing in a position as chocolate bars slowly drop into view, proclaiming them to be “One of the Chocolatiest Biscuits in the world”. Later levels in the game were constructed with Penguin bars and had a very strong Zool-type advertising level design. The game was mainly themed around toys, sweets and other goodies, so Penguin was a good ﬁt to the aesthetic of the pre-existing game when the advertising was added. The same approach was taken on the Commodore 64, which tends to lead me to think this was a deal with all Commodore releases. Chris Sorrell talked to everythingamiga.com about the additional inclusion of Bertie Bassetts stating - “The Bertie Bassett thing was a bit of a ﬁasco. In the original game, we didn’t give nearly enough thought to how big companies might be protective of their signature characters. There was no agreement at all, and I think I recall that Bassetts made threatening noises in Millennium’s direction. Either way, he was out for all versions after the Mega Drive and Amiga originals, and we all started to be a bit more careful with our references! Replacing him with the gingerbread guy wasn’t my call, but he wasn’t a bad substitute. I wasn’t aware that BB came back for subsequent versions! (Mostly because I had nothing to do with those, and after loading up a PlayStation disc, I decided after playing

You'd stutter "Pick up a penguin" in that ice too...

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for a couple of minutes that I’d already seen more than I cared to)." Super frog, super drunk? In the world of Amiga platformers, Superfrog was a stand out title. It played well, although the in-game advertising seemed a bit like a last minute change. The game intro shows a witch turning a prince into a frog and stealing the princess in a classic fairy tale style (many games like Dizzy took their inspiration from fairy tales at the time). Now he’s just a useless frog sat by the “River O’ Despair”, until he ﬁnds a ﬂoating bottle and necks it to become SUPERFROG! The advertising integration in this game has an interesting history. Storyboards found in Allister Brimble’s loft (the musician for this and many other classic games) show the drink he consumes was

tying it in with the slogan “Drink Lucozade to keep your energy maintained” in the intro (referring to both the customer and Superfrog himself). Cans of Lucozade can also be seen in the fruit machine bonus sections.

What Hannah thinks...McDonald’s I’ll always recall the day I was given a “Golden Arches” balloon by Ronald McDonald. It was while attending a typical McDonald’s kids’ party, along with a ball pool and Happy Meals of course. I wonder if any of you AA readers were ever approached at seven-yearsold by a smiling curly-haired clown wearing stripy tights? He half-scared me to death, and I’ve always had clown nightmares since. I’m sure Ronald McDonald could give Batman’s Joker a run for his money in the creepy stakes! I’m ashamed to admit that I had never played McDonald Land until this month’s issue. It was a nice surprise when loading it up from an old Amiga Format coverdisk. The gameplay is great and is lots of fun for the younger audience. My son particularly loved the upsidedown level switch dynamic, but most of all he would enjoy frustrating me by repeatedly running into the ‘rewind arrows’ on purpose, which would zap us right back to the start of the level. Yes, very funny! Playing McDonald Land reminded me just how much of a treat McDonald’s really was as a child. Maybe Ronald wasn’t so bad? Closure is a wonderful thing - I may ﬁnally be able to sleep peacefully... Big Mac... I mean Big Amiga! As mentioned earlier, McDonald’s sponsored GamesMaster - they were really pushing game-based advertising and getting the attention of a younger audience in the 90s, and were probably the earliest company involved in advergames. McDonald Land as a concept started life as TV commercials running The best fuel for amphibian superheroes.

originally intended to be Newcastle Brown Ale! Now I don't know about you, but maybe having an alcoholic drink in a game appealing to kids would have been a bit of a bad move... You can actually see the original intro animation, created by the fabulous Eric Schwartz, shows a brown bottle ﬂoating down the river until it quickly switches to an image of him holding an orange bottle of Lucozade. Lucozade was a pickup item in the game that enabled Superfrog to maintain his super-energy. Making a pickup ﬁt the game so well and also be an advert at the same time worked brilliantly, as well as

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from the 70s to the 90s. Kids’ birthday parties at McDonald’s were a huge thing when I was young, and PlayPlaces were also seen in outlets around the world, with the characters populating them used as characters in the game. Stretching back to 1988, M.C. Kids was

Above image courtesy of Jason Liebig.

released for the NES, before being ported to the Amiga in 1992 as McDonald Land with reworked graphics and sound. The game was packed with all things Maccie D’s - you collect golden arches, Ronald was present in the game’s HUD

and the story revolved around two kids called Mick and Mack. This game was a total advertising fest, aimed at a younger gaming audience, it used lots of bright colours and cute graphics. The Amiga version suﬀered from bad controls, but the music was pretty decent!

What Jonah thinks... 7UP Cool Spot on the Amiga was a firm favourite of mine as a kid. And didn't it make 7UP fizzy pop look so damn cool? I wanted to be that cool kid, really I did. Unfortunately, when supermarket shopping with my parents, we'd often end up arguing over Virgin Cola, Rola Cola or Panda Cola instead! Between my parents’ scrutinizing of the one pence variations in fizzy drink prices, and my sister's nagging for Tab Clear, I'd be lucky if I could even end up with Sprite, let alone 7UP! I didn't know why, but just knew that I needed to "Obey my thirst"... The TV advertising mascot was the chilled-out Fido Dido cartoon character - I even remember rappers, trendy early 90s clothing and other cool 7UP merchandise leaving a lasting impression on my younger self. Playing Cool Spot just reinforced my desire to decant a cold one and join the hip kids. Cool Spot (the titular protagonist) had such an amenable Jamaican-influenced personality. He was so laid back, he seemed to be unphased by anything - even the enemies! Cool Spot could pull-off wearing his shades well too, what a dude! The opening rock music and guitar riffs also got me pumped for some 7UP fizzy, while Cool Spot surfed an empty green pop bottle and then fired carbonated bubbles as his weapon during the game. It was at this point I'd have a swig on my Rola Cola again... at least I could pretend I was cool.

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Did Cool Spot miss the point? Out of all the advergames in this article, the Amiga ports of the games based on Cool Spot are the weirdest. Cool Spot was the mascot for 7UP, but he was not the only mascot. Fido Dido was aimed at the European markets only, and this mascot split created a weird set of circumstances. The titles Spot: The Computer Game and Cool Spot were both blatant mascot-based titles made in order to drive sales. With Fido Dido being the mascot for Europe, 7UP even created an unreleased title for the Mega Drive called, unsurprisingly, Fido Dido. It never saw the light of day, but apparently pirated versions have been ﬂoating around for some years. Who knows, maybe they were aiming for a European release of this title on the Amiga? Spot: The Computer Game and Cool Spot subsequently had to remove all reference to 7UP in their Amiga release.

I think Spot is too light to surf a bottle like that?

So players knew they were playing a mascot game based on 7UP, but all branding was missing! Spot: The Computer Game was a very simple title released in 1990 - essentially a small version of the Chinese board game Go. Cool Spot was a fantastic title on other systems, but the Amiga port was lacking with inferior graphics and sound. It played quite slowly and noticeably the huge 7UP bottle he rode in the intro had the label missing. Focusing more on it being a Virgin title, collecting the letters in the game did not spell out “UNCOLA” (a 7UP slogan at the time), but instead spelt the name of the publisher “VIRGIN”. The Amiga version of Cool Spot can't quite live up to the Mega Drive game, which is a lot of fun. Despite this, Cool Spot has bags of character, even on the Amiga, showing that average games can still have great mascots that make us smile.

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What Ravi thinks... Lucozade & Newcastle Brown ale Lucozade is something I have always associated with illness - not the taste, but whenever I would get injured as a child, Grandma would shout “Go and get some Lucozade from the corner shop!”. This may seem crazy if you're reading this outside of the UK, but this ﬁzzy treat was regarded as a medical drink initially, being born in Newcastle as Glucozade and sold by British pharmaceutical company Beechams. Pharmacists would stock Lucozade and Ribena; it was even given out in hospitals and was still very much a medical drink until the 1990s. Newcastle Brown Ale also surprisingly comes from Tyneside, and it's often seen as a working class drink. It’s a bitter though, and to be honest I am a lager man. The only alcoholic drink featured in this article, it was hugely popular in the 1970s and 1980s. Often known as “Dog”, i.e. “I have to see a man about a dog”, it is also referred to by some as simply “Brown”. You can mix Lucozade and Newcastle Brown Ale to form the ultimate Geordie drink “Newkie Brown” - a mix of bitter and sugar. I know a lot of Newcastle Brown Ale fans (James from AA for example) and it still seems to be popular today. I think I will stick to Lucozade when I have scraped my knee though...

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- by Andrew Siddall The Commodore Amiga vs the Atari ST. Who can forget the endless playground arguments about which machine was better? You might have thought that the debate was settled years ago, with the Amiga sales ﬁgures speaking for themselves, but the argument still rages to this day. But before we go into that, let’s go back into the late 1980s and the birth of the two machines that kicked oﬀ the 16-bit microcomputer wars: the Amiga 500 and the Atari ST.

and scanner interfaces, amongst other things. The 520ST was followed in 1986 by the 1040STF, which incorporated a ﬂoppy drive and 1MB of RAM. The 520STM, incorporating a TV modulator was also released that year, and was shortly followed by the 520STFM which featured a self-contained power supply, ﬂoppy drive and TV modulator, retailing for £299. The MIDI ports and the comparatively low cost of the machine were a strong selling point with both gamers and more serious users. The MIDI ports in particular

The Atari ST

chip, similar to that found in the Amiga, was also added to help move graphics around and give smoother scrolling. Unfortunately, with the majority of the ST user base being owners of the older machines, the software houses had little incentive to support the new machine (Ed. - "Where have we heard that before!"). Only a handful of STE speciﬁc titles were produced. As a result, the STE was not the success that Atari hoped it would be, and the ST range was ﬁnally discontinued in 1993.

The Commodore Amiga 500

The Amiga 500 started life as a low cost

The Atari ST was the brainchild of Jack Tramiel. There is a whole story about Tramiel and Commodore not covered here, but it’s worth reading and easily found with a quick Google. Following Tramiel’s departure from Commodore and his subsequent acquisition of the Atari consumer division in 1984, the original Atari ST was released in 1985 under his supervision. This ST came with no internal floppy drive, no TV modulator and an external power supply. It had the now legendary 68000 processor running at 8 MHz, 512kb of RAM and ran the TOS/ GEM operating system. In order to beat the Commodore Amiga to market, some compromises were made. These are covered later. The chipset of the Atari ST was a mix of custom chips and off the shelf units (the sound chip being an off the shelf compromise, as the planned custom sound chip, AMY, would not be ready in time for release).

My childhood Amiga 500 that I still use today.

made the Atari ST popular with musicians, with famous fans including B.B.King, Genesis and Fatboy Slim, who used his Atari ST at the centre of his audio setup as late as 2012! In 1989, Atari released the STE in an eﬀort to enhance the machine’s speciﬁcations to match the Amiga 500. The colour palette was enhanced to 4096 colours and the sound updated to a new stereo digital sound processor. A blitter

alternative to the big box Amiga 1000. It was announced at the January 1987 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), and released in May that year with a £499 UK price tag, although that price would be cut to £399 by October 1989. Under the direction of sales/marketing manager David Pleasance, the Batman Pack idea was born in 1989, following negotiations with Ocean Software, who had just purchased the rights for a reported $1 million to create a game based on Tim Burton’s 1989 ﬁlm Batman,

As seen above, the ST (STFM shown) comes with ports aplenty, from left to right, Modem, Printer, Hard Disk, Floppy Disk, TV out, Monitor, Power switch and kettle style power connector.

On the left hand side were the famous MIDI ports and a cartridge slot used for sound samplers

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The ﬁrst 520ST with a MIDI setup. (Image courtesy of @ctrl-alt-rees.)

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36 Image courtesy of Chris Winter.

starring Michael Keaton.

The Batman Pack was a huge success. It sold over 186,000 units in the following year, spawning the bundle packs used to sell

In comparison to Atari’s TOS, the Amiga shipped with its own desktop, the brazen blue Workbench 1.2, which would be upgraded to v1.3 in later years. Together with the iconic picture of the hand inserting a Workbench disk on the boot screen, this blue and yellow aesthetic would form a key part of

Amiga’s identity in those early years.

Like the Atari ST, the Amiga 500 was built around the Motorola 68000 processor. However, unlike the ST, the Amiga was built from the ground up using a full custom chip setup, which was designed to outperform anything else on the market at the time. It included custom graphics and sound chips with memory speciﬁcally allocated for their use - the so-called ‘Chip’ RAM - with the base Amiga shipping with 512KB as standard. So many owners upgraded their machines with an

The 500 had the familiar ‘wedge’ shape that the Atari and many other micros of the time sported, but the Amiga team had also given thought to upgrades by including the trapdoor expansion slot, as well as a Zorro slot on the side, which allowed for further expansion using hard drives/memory units and so on. These ports allowed expandability without any technical skills and prompted manufacturers to produce a wealth of third party peripherals, in addition to Commodore’s own oﬀerings. The adverts

Processor Graphics Sound

MIDI controller Memory

Ports on the Amiga from left to right included 2 DE9 joystick ports, stereo RCA output, external ﬂoppy drive, serial port, parallel port, power input from the external brick, RGB out and a mono composite output. The additional A520 TV modulator was required to use a household TV if no SCART was available. The Amiga was a huge success with gamers in the home market and gained some traction in the business user world too. It was followed by the Amiga 500+ in 1991 which featured an updated custom chipset, 1MB RAM as standard and Workbench 2.0. The Amiga 500 series would be discontinued in 1992, and the A600 and AGA-based Amiga 1200 would replace it for the home market. So which machine was better?

most Amiga 500s going forward. These included the Cartoon Classics pack, Screen Gems and Flights of Fantasy.

THE WEIGH-IN

of Amiga Format had me drooling at the sadly unaﬀordable - at least to me expansions of the time!

My battle scarred 520STFM.

The Amiga undoubtedly won as a gaming machine with its superior specs, playground popularity and sales. Yet the Atari ST I think won on the serious side, being used for music and DTP work. It was also still popular in many homes for gaming due to its lower price. For me, the owner of ﬁrst an ST, then an Amiga 500 in my childhood, the A500 will always hold my most cherished childhood memories. However, l will always have a soft spot for the Atari ST as my introduction to the 16-bit world. Ultimately, these days, I don’t think it is a case of which is better. It is the memories these two great machines provoke - and the computers and consoles that built on their legacy - that reminds us just how signiﬁcant these machines were in their time.

Amiga 500/Plus

Atari ST/F/M/FM/STE

68000 @ 7.16Mhz

68000 @ 8Mhz

Denise ST Shifter 320*240 (32 colours from palette of 4096) 320*200 (16 colours from palette of 512) to to 640*512 laced (16 colours) 640*400 (monochrome) Oﬀ the shelf Yamaha chip, known as the ‘AY’ Paula (8-bit 4 channel stereo) chip. 3 channels of mono sound. MC6850P ACIA chip. N/A 512KB - 1MB

512KB – 1MB

Floppy drive controller

Gary

Sales

Estimated 4-6m

WD-1772-PH ‘Western Digital Floppy Disk Controller’ Estimated 2-3m

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additional 512KB of RAM in the underside trapdoor expansion however, that it became commonplace for games to require the full 1MB setup to run! The Amiga also included a blitter chip which enabled smoother scrolling of graphics.

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- by Ben Unwin As Amiga owners in the 80s and 90s, many of us took pride in the fact that our machines were the apex predator of the 16-bit micros, particularly when compared to the Atari ST. Having owned an ST before upgrading to an Amiga, I can vouch for the secret feelings of inadequacy and self-loathing when comparing my games to those of my inﬁnitely cooler Amiga-owning chums... However, there are always exceptions to the rule and the ST had a couple of advantages over the Amiga that gave it the edge in certain titles. As covered in Andrew’s excellent Amiga vs ST piece (see page 28), the ST was ﬁrst to market, and also sported a slightly faster iteration of the Motorola 68000 than in the A500 (12% faster in fact). This meant that in the early years, the ST was the lead machine for cross-platform releases as the nippier CPU gave it a permanent advantage in computation-heavy games.

negotiate... made all the more difficult by the undulation of the terrain, which can reduce your visibility - and therefore reaction time - to almost nothing. This was (and still is) a fine looking game, with excellent use of colour and a very convincing 3D faux sprite-scaling effect. At the time of its release, it was very impressive and a great example of 16-bit gaming, and the inferior 8-bit ports only served to further emphasise this. In the case of the 16-bit versions, the ST original runs a little faster, resulting in slightly smoother and more responsive gameplay. And in a game this tough, that is a crucial difference.. StarRay An update to the Defender formula, StarRay adds some welcome depth and variety, with different enemies and environments to conquer. It’s solid fun, adding just enough to freshen the experience without losing sight of the fundamentals.

Back in the day, the very suggestion of acknowledging superiority in ST software would have had us spitting out our SodaStream in disgust. However, after 30 years it’s time to set our prejudices aside and recognise the handful of games that gave ST owners an opportunity to brag... Eliminator Eliminator was the brainchild of John M. Phillips, who also happens to be the creator of Nebulus - another game that nearly made this list. Using an into-thescreen perspective, it’s a challenging mix of shoot ’em up, racer and obstacle course.

John M. Phillips loves innovating his playﬁelds!

You’re tasked with negotiating a checkerboard sci-fi roadway, littered with enemies to shoot and hazards to avoid. It takes inspiration from various games of the time, with Space Harrier perhaps being the most obvious influence. It’s also brutally difficult, with unrelenting enemy patterns and narrow gaps to

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A stunning update on the classic Defender.

It’s also something of a technical showcase on the ST, with some lovely parallax effects on display. Without the benefit of hardware scrolling, the ST generally struggled to achieve smooth scrolling (my eyes are still bleeding from the ST port of Final Fight). However, in this case, it handles things admirably, with a wonderful sense of depth achieved through multi-layered backgrounds. The Amiga version is smoother, but it certainly doesn’t embarrass the ST port in this respect. Moreover, the ST version has more graphical depth in some levels. An example is the added background star field layer on level one, which is absent on the Amiga version, and makes it look flat in comparison. There is also a strong argument that the art design is more appealing on the ST version, since the Amiga port was developed by a different team and uses graphics that are generally

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cruder by comparison. As if this wasn’t enough, the ST version has the benefit of simultaneous in-game music and sound effects. The Amiga is limited to (admittedly superior) sound effects only. Overall, the ST version feels like the more polished, complete version of the game and has stood the test of time very well. Formula One Grand Prix Ah.... the memories. For many years, this game sat at the top of my all-time favourite games list. The simulation of real F1 driving was second to none and it’s rightly recognised as a pioneering title in the racing genre. I originally owned it for my ST and devoted hundreds of hours to it, imagining myself as the tache-tastic Nigel Mansell as I obliterated the field in my Williams FW14.

However, when I ﬁnally got my hands on the Amiga version - I was a little disappointed. I immediately noticed that it ran slower than my beloved ST copy, and couldn’t escape the fact that I was having less fun than before. This was a game that pushed both the ST and Amiga to (and some would say beyond) their limits, and it’s fair to say it creaked a bit on both machines, particularly on the more complicated circuits. Sure, the cars on the ST version sounded like trapped wasps and some of the between-race bitmaps looked like the artist had vomited colours onto the monitor, but that little extra CPU grunt crucially helped propel the game forward at a more convincing pace and resulted in a more satisfying experience than the plodding Amiga version.

The late Murray Walker would be proud...

Star Wars Another masterpiece. Back in the mid80s, this was one of two arcade games

36 Cover me, Porkins!

Home conversions were a bit of a mixed bag, from the truly terrible Atari C64 port (not to be confused with the superior Domark eﬀort), to the excellent Speccy version (also by Domark). The 16bit versions were at the better end of the spectrum (no pun intended), with graphics that did a good job of emulating the vectors of the original, while mouse input provided an extra degree of precision to the controls.

While it would be easy to assume that the ST would be given preferential treatment due to being a conversion of an Atari game to an Atari computer, the truth is that the arcade and home computer divisions of Atari were under separate ownership by this time, and there was no synergy between the two companies. Instead, both 16-bit conversions were handled by Jürgen Friedrich and published by the aforementioned Domark. Nonetheless, ST fans can still take comfort in the fact that the force is indeed stronger in their version. The AY chip does a great job of replicating the arcade sound eﬀects and it runs very smoothly, holding up very well even today. Meanwhile, Jürgen seemingly couldn’t resist injecting a generic laser sample into the Amiga version that sounds nothing like an X-Wing and becomes irritating in less time than it takes for Darth Vader to sever a limb. It also, once again, runs a smidge slower than the ST version, although the diﬀerence is less pronounced than in F1GP. Overall though, for the more satisfying conversion of this arcade

classic, the ST is the place to be. Defender of the Crown This is likely to be a contentious one, but before you cancel your subscription to Amiga Addict in disgust, hear me out... We all know that Defender of the Crown was a groundbreaking title that played a huge role in cementing the Amiga’s reputation as a seriously capable gaming powerhouse. However, fewer people are aware that it was rushed to market in an unfinished state. Under pressure to release the game and start recouping the significant development costs, the game was launched before all of the planned features could be implemented. Of course, it’s still a serviceable game, but even reviewers at the time identified the gameplay as the weak link, and it’s largely the audio-visual qualities for which it’s so fondly remembered. The ST version, on the other hand, was converted some time later. As such, it benefited from the additional development time, providing a more fleshed out experience with more strategic options being available in many of the scenarios. Expectedly, the graphics and sound take a noticeable hit, with half the on-screen colours and much weaker sound. For some, this is reason enough to dismiss the ST version, but for those in the know, the ST version is the richer, more engaging experience overall. Don’t believe me? Ask Cinemaware themselves, who are on record as saying the ST version is the best of the lot!

Looks worse, sounds worse but plays better.

Honourable Mentions The Addams Family is regarded by some as the best platformer on the Amiga, being a very console-like experience in an otherwise Euro-centric back catalogue. So what in the name of David Pleasance is it doing here? Well, the Amiga version has a very odd quirk in that the background graphics layer is completely missing, whereas the ST version retains

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this. Admittedly, the ST version has an awkward push-scroll routine instead of the Amiga’s blitter-assisted butterysmooth scrolling, but the Amiga version undoubtedly looks unfinished in comparison. Is the ST version actually better? Probably not, but this is a rare instance where the ST version has substantially more graphical detail than the Amiga, so it's worthy of a mention. The Secret of Monkey Island is another game whose appearance here will have some readers furiously threatening to run me through with their rusty cutlasses. It was the Amiga version that I played back in the day and I loved every minute of it. So what gives? Have I been drinking too much grog? Thing is, the Amiga version’s graphics are a colourreduced conversion of the PC’s VGA visuals, while the ST version utilises a more-or-less direct conversion of the 16colour EGA graphics. It’s a matter of opinion, but the ST version arguably looks cleaner as a result, with an effective use of dithering that was a trademark of LucasArts’ talented artists. Also, there are moments (for example the Scumm Bar) where the Amiga slows to a crawl, while the ST version maintains a more consistent pace throughout. Again, not a clear win by any means, but a solid alternative to the Amiga version. HeroQuest being here is pure nostalgia, since it was the very first game I saw running on my ST. Even more unexpected is the fact that it’s the music that earns it a mention. Composed by none other than Barry Leitch, it’s a wonderful soundtrack on both systems. However, for me personally, it has a more haunting quality on the ST, not to mention an additional and brilliant - track on the main menu that is completely absent from the Amiga version. I will be the first to admit this is the most subjective game on the list, but ST owners are so starved of good quality music that I simply had to include it. So there we have it, a selection of ST games that give their Amiga counterparts a serious run for their money. Will it convince you to bin your Miggy in favour of Tramiel’s 16-bit wedge? Probably not, but hopefully it’s opened your eyes - and possibly your mind - to the capabilities of the Atari’s much-maligned underdog. If you're interested in which Amiga games beat the ST, that's easy - take a look at every other game not listed here!

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that I fell in love with. The other was Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which is less fondly remembered (although there are few pleasures in gaming more satisfying than whipping the bejesus out of the Thuggee guards).

Across The Pond www.youtube.com/10minuteamigaretrocast www.10marc.com

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by Doug Compton Many of us grew up on a steady diet of Amiga magazines drooling over the advertisements and reviews of our favourite products we could never afford. In Europe, there was a steady stream of magazines all about the Amiga, and many of you enjoyed them into the early 2000s. What you may not know is that here across the pond in America, we had quite a few Amiga magazines too, many of them very professionally published. I would like to highlight several of the popular American magazines, as they presented a different point of view of the Amiga than you may be used to. One of the first American magazines was Amazing Computing. This magazine came out at the very beginning of the Amiga's lifetime in 1985 and was published by PiM Publications of Fall Rivers, Massachusetts. Publication continued until 1999. This was a very hardware and software review heavy magazine, with very light gaming content, although games were present in every issue. By far the most popular column was the "Roomers" column from "The Bandito". This collection of monthly rumours was amazingly accurate at times, with the author seeming to have an uncanny knowledge of not only what was happening at Commodore, but with dozens and dozens of software and hardware manufacturers. I go back even today just to read the "Roomers" column and am amazed at what I find. The absolute coolest thing about this is that "The Bandito" has never been revealed, even after all these years. Some mysteries are best left unsolved. Amazing Computing also published a yearly compilation of software and hardware vendors, user groups, BBSs and much more. This was a veritable who's-who of the Amiga community, and the hundreds of pages showed just how popular the Amiga actually was. The next American magazine was my favourite. Amiga World was published by IDG Communications from 1985 until 1995. This gorgeous and professionally designed magazine was famous for its incredible tutorials, reviews and interviews with Amiga luminaries. Many of the writers were with the magazine for years, and it felt as if they had become trusted friends. I would love getting my Amiga World magazine every single month and read it from cover to cover. They were very heavy into covering creative software, such as all the graphics and video programs for the Amiga, and would often go in depth with the technology explaining how things like bitplanes work on the Amiga and how HAM mode functioned. Their hardware reviews were second to none, covering the good and bad aspects of new hardware that was being released monthly. You could tell that this was written by people with a true passion for the Amiga. I had nearly the full collection of Amiga World magazines from 1986 until 1995, missing only a few early ones. Unfortunately, in 2015, I had a roof leak in a shed where I stored my magazines, and hundreds were destroyed beyond saving, including about 85% of my Amiga World collection. I don't think I have truly recovered from that. .INFO started as .info-64, a Commodore 64-centric magazine published on actual Commodore 8-bit machines. By the mid 80s, the name changed to .INFO and it became an Amiga-

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The Amiga's motherland had a great range of diverse magazines.

centric magazine. This was a heavily user-focused magazine and less business-focused. You could always find cool projects and programming tips between the covers, and even as the magazine grew to over 50,000 subscribers, it always kept its "homegrown" feel and charm. Some true Amiga legends such as Harv Laser, Jim Butterfield and Dave Haynie often wrote for .INFO magazine. Ahoy!'s AmigaUser was an Amiga-centric magazine from the late 80s and was a spinoff from the quite popular 8-bit-centric Ahoy! magazine. While not as popular as some others, it carved a niche with its great programming tutorials. Ahoy! also had some great cover disks included with a subscription with lots of great public domain and demo software. Commodore Magazine was quite popular in the United States, too. Of course it also had a fair amount of 8-bit content, but in later years much of it was Amiga-centric. This magazine was of course published by Commodore herself for many years, so it may have been a bit biased. That certainly does not change the quality of the writing and the overall excellent appearance of the magazine. There was a very active "Letter to the Editor" section where people would ask questions, and often the Commodore staff members themselves would be involved in answering them. I would have to say that Commodore Magazine was the most game-centric of all the American magazines; advertisements and reviews for games filling the pages of every issue. This magazine was an inspiration for my very own Amiga Art Contest, as the magazine would often host a yearly C64 and Amiga art competition. Shameless plug: check out www.amigaartwork.com for more information. ANTIC was an Atari 8-bit and then ST magazine, named after the ANTIC chip in the Atari. In later years, they spun off a magazine called ANTIC Amiga/Plus which was all about our favourite machine. This was a unique magazine as it also included several disks of really great Public Domain software and utilities. Even though we all knew their hearts belonged to the ST, Amiga/Plus was a great magazine with really great content. This magazine came late in 1989, and only lasted a few years, but we enjoyed it while it was here. Later in the Amiga's lifetime in the United States, the machines

became very video-centric, with the ubiquitous Video Toaster from NewTek attracting much attention. Entire cottage industries sprung up providing enhancements, hardware and information on the Toaster, and that included several magazines such as Video Toaster User and many others filled our newstands from 1991 through 1995. While it was exciting to see Amiga magazines still in print, many of these were niche, and regular home users did not subscribe. Our magazines in the United States were certainly different than the UK and other European magazines, often leaving the gaming reviews to a few back pages, while the rest was filled with software reviews, tutorials and interviews. This seemed to work for us for sure, as most of our magazines shared a somewhat similar approach. They were of course filled with advertisements from the game companies, though! I don't recall there ever being a shortage of that. These magazines were easily available, too. Many of them were on the newstands at the drug stores, and of course many bookstores carried the Amiga mags, too. I don't recall any problem finding magazines I did not subscribe to at my local stores. In conclusion, we never lacked information or resources for feeding our Amiga hobby over here in America, even up to and beyond the closure of Commodore. I love reading the old magazines even to this day, and I continue to collect the old ones when I get a chance. Do yourself a favour and look up a few of them on archive.org and see what you missed out on back in the day. Thanks for taking a minute with me today, but until next time, this is Doug from 10 Minute Amiga Retro Cast, signing out.

April 2021

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"What do you use that thing for?" - Dan Wood explains the joy of using an Amiga in 2021

Retro gaming has become mainstream in the last few years - my Nintendo Switch gets NES and SNES games automatically downloaded to it each month with my online subscription, and the recent trend of mini consoles has put systems like the C64, SNES and PS1 back on shop shelves alongside the latest platforms. Even walking into Primark, you're greeted by shelves full of t-shirts and hoodies with classic games and company logos all over them - it's not uncommon to see teenagers walking around wearing Atari t-shirts despite the games being older than their parents. In fact, our podcast The Retro Hour has recently seen a surge of 18-24-year-old listeners, and it's awesome that they are interested in the history of gaming. Retro computing, on the other hand, doesn't appear to have had the same universal acceptance. While people might enjoy a quick blast of Pac-Man, trying to sell the idea of surfing an HTML 1.0 website with an old version of Netscape, or writing a document using a 25-year-old word processor, is a bit more of a challenge. It is something I ponder, as I write this column using Wordworth 7 on my Amiga 4000... why am I using a 1998 word processor on a 1992 computer rather than using something like Google Docs? I use Google Docs, Friend Office and Microsoft 365 for all of my work during the week, and they do a great job - but there is something nice about switching off my work PCs and Macs at the weekend and enjoying using my Amiga. In fact, I've made it a bit of a ritual that I will exclusively use my Amigas as much as possible on Saturdays (aided by a Chromecast on a TV nearby to watch YouTube or Twitch). My A4000 is specced out to lengths I could only dream of as a kid, and it is testament to the Amiga's designers and the community that still exists today that I can use it to get anything approaching

AMIGA FOCUS

I was having a conversation with a colleague recently about retro gaming... he was on-board when we were talking about Sega Mega Drives, N64s and playing retro games, but when the conversation switched to my Amiga 4000 with graphics cards, USB ports, RAM expansions and network cards, he got a bit lost. "What do you use that thing for?" he asked with a puzzled look on his face...

Dan has an impressive collection of computers - he uses classic 68K alongside next gen Amigas.

work done, almost 30 years after the system was made. When the A4000 was released in the summer of 1992, I owned an A500 Plus with 2MB RAM and an external floppy drive. I used to read magazine reviews of the A4000 in awe, and drool over the adverts, thinking I will never be able to afford such a machine. Finally owning my childhood dream setup is certainly part of the appeal of using it today, but it goes beyond that. Using the Amiga takes me back to a simpler time, when the most "work" I did on a computer was my school homework, but the other 90% of the time I used the machine for fun and learning. Using the Amiga today is still fun, even if it’s just the amazement of "it's crazy I can actually do this on an Amiga!" when listening to Internet radio using AmigaAmp via my Prisma Megamix card, and surfing Aminet or forums using IBrowse. This machine was designed when the web was just an experiment on Tim Berners-Lee's server at CERN, yet I have my Google Drive mounted on my Workbench, I've just written a forum post on EAB and downloaded some files from Aminet, whilst listening to a podcast via Amipodder. Right now, I'm writing this as a bunch of files are downloaded from FTP using AmiTradeCenter in the background, as I get ready to play some Amiga games (after I've saved this article, and emailed it to the Amiga Addict staffers using SimpleMail).

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I've even (sort of) enjoyed compiling my tax return for the last few years using my Amiga - it's a very dull thing to do at the best of times, but writing up my expenses on my CDTV with Transwrite brought a bit of novelty to the process. I actually got it done in less time than I would have using my modern PC or Mac as there were less distractions. Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin made the headlines in recent years when he revealed he uses an old DOS PC with WordStar 4.0 to write his mammoth novels, as he can just focus on the task in hand. If I were writing this article on my PC with Google Docs, I would have no doubt responded to a bunch of Facebook messages and tweets that would have come in during the last hour, which would have inevitably led to me get so distracted with other things, that I would put oﬀ writing this article until tomorrow. The lack of constant diversion is certainly a bonus when using retro computers, but the escapism from the frantic speed and pace of modern life is also something I cherish when using my Amigas. But the real answer to this column's title - and the question posed by my work colleague - is that using the Amiga for these tasks, either by design or novelty, is just "It’s fun!" Dan Wood co-hosts The Retro Hour podcast (www.theretrohour.com) and creates retro computing YouTube videos.

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Matthew Smith, producer of Amiga Power: The Album With Attitude, continues his series of articles highlighting the best Amiga games ever in different genres. This month: singing the praises of the format’s finest fighting game.

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Game Shadow Fighter

Released 1995

Authors NAPS Team: Domenico Barba (programming); Fabio Capone (graphics); Fabio Cicciarello (music); Pete Cook (production)

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that beat ‘em ups on the Amiga are, by and large, a bit cack. Indeed, the genre is culpable for some of the most atrocious software crimes ever committed on the format. The likes of Dangerous Streets, Last Action Hero, Rise Of The Robots and the CD32 version of Super Street Fighter II Turbo are not merely bad - they’re staggeringly, appallingly inept to the extent that even now, decades after the fact, it remains almost impossible to believe that they were genuinely sold in shops for actual human money. There are no truly essential Amiga biffing games of the walking-along-andhitting-people variety (à la Final Fight), but those fell out of vogue in the early 90s anyway, almost entirely due to the global phenomenon that was Street Fighter II. Suddenly, one-on-one tournament brawlers were everywhere, and there were several such games released on the Amiga which managed to not be comprehensively disastrous. The great majority of them were lacking in some crucial respect, though. Curiously, the various faults afflicting Amiga fighting games are neatly illustrated by the three SFII ports that made their way to the machine. US Gold’s 1993 conversion of the original coin-op is rather shabby in general, with muddy graphics, tinny sound, jerky movement and limited moves. The same company’s 1995 port of Super SFII plays surprisingly well (especially if you have a six-button joypad and a hard drive), but falls down badly in the presentation department;

and the aforementioned CD32 port of Super SFII Turbo, this time from Gametek, has precisely the opposite problem in that it looks and sounds sensational, but plays like a steamrollered gerbil. For the longest time, it seemed that running a one-on-one fighter that matched the SFII arcade experience – marrying glorious graphics and striking sound with compelling, deep gameplay – was a task that the Amiga simply couldn’t handle. And then Shadow Fighter turned up and proved that it jolly well could! Power Launch Brilliantly programmed and meticulously designed, Shadow Fighter is a textbook example of how to make a game properly. Its creators took note of the things that made the best beat ‘em ups work, and then set about cramming all those things into an SFII-alike specifically tailored to the Amiga’s capabilities, throwing in a bunch of nifty new innovations as they went. The result is a game that glisters with quality at every turn, from the moody intro sequence to the final battle with the eponymous scary scarry bloke – and it’s all the more impressive when you consider that this was the first game ever produced by NAPS Team (who, delightfully, are still going strong to this day). Flash Panther Graphically, Shadow Fighter is something of a marvel, even on the humble old A500. The fighters (18 in total, including Pupazz

Publisher Gremlin

and the titular baldy baddie) are rendered in a fine characterful style, with big, impressively animated sprites leaping about the screen like nobody’s business. But even more remarkable are the backgrounds. Every stage (there are 14 based on different geographical locations, plus a 15th set in the sinister Shadow Cathedral) features multiple levels of parallax scrolling, including snazzy SNES Mode 7-style 3D effects on the floors, along with animated scenery and more colours on display than are supposed to be possible, thanks to some ingenious technical jiggery-pokery. Even the options and between-level screens look great, with imposing portraits of the fighters and some attractive rendered 3D effects. Fabio Cicciarello’s soundtrack is equally superb, with heaps of suitably energetic tunes to accompany the bone-crunching action, and the atmosphere is further enhanced by an abundance of powerfully punchy sound effects, which give an allimportant sense of weight and solidity to the fighters and the blows they inflict. The exuberant vocal samples are entertaining too - pleasingly, each character has their own distinctive voice. Electric Speed Of course, swish presentation counts for nothing without the gameplay to back it up (cue embarrassed shuffling of feet from Elfmania and the Body Blows series), but Shadow Fighter delivers here too... in spades. The action is relentlessly fast and furious, without a hint of jerkiness or slowdown at any point, and the control scheme – carefully designed

It’s A Puppet Undoubtedly the best original idea in Shadow Fighter is the special training mode, where players can pick a character and practice their moves against a seemingly harmless tailor’s dummy. I say “seemingly” because it swiftly becomes apparent that the eternally-grinning mannequin – who goes by the name of Pupazz – is in fact surprisingly dangerous!

It is Pupazz. See his smile. He lives in your wardrobe.

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He has the ability to launch several bizarre attacks of his own to catch out the unwary (such as ﬁring a circular saw out of his torso, or spitting bowling balls at your face), it really teaches the value of blocking. He can also manifest a medieval knight’s costume out of nowhere (complete with shield) to deﬂect your attacks, and no matter how many times you knock him down, he always springs straight back up again, smiling blankly. Truly, Pupazz is the Spooky Punchbag of Champions.

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Three Flavours Kerblammo There are three versions of Shadow Fighter, all subtly different... but equally wizardly. The standard OCS edition was the first to be released in early 1995, and was swiftly followed by an AGA version (pictured on these pages) which plays all but identically to its predecessor, but is even more colourful. The AGA game was then ported to the CD32 a few months later, where it acquired a brill CD soundtrack courtesy of Fabio Cicciarello, who created brand new studio arrangements of all his tunes from the floppy disc editions.

to cater for one-button controllers, which is what most Amiga owners had at the time – is fantastic, allowing you to unleash a huge array of moves precisely and intuitively. Blocking is similarly straightforward, and there’s even a special ‘Training Battle’ mode to help you master the full move set of your chosen character, which is heaps of fun in its own right (see the It’s A Puppet boxout).

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Incidentally, while no-one’s looking, I can let you into a secret: you can play as Pupazz or Shadow in the CD32 game by going to the options screen and tapping the blue, yellow and green controller buttons in a certain order. The button sequences are (snip! – Ed) Well, this is going to end badly.

The AI is downright cunning, which makes the one-player mode satisfyingly challenging and just as much fun to play as the two-player mode. The outlandish special attacks help to give the rogues gallery of fighters even more personality - witness the high-velocity shocky-zap skills of Electra, for example; the alarmingly giant fireballs hurled by the tiny Toshio; Slamdunk’s magic basketballs; or the T1000-esque melty morphing antics of Khrome. Most crucially of all, the NAPS guys clearly went to great lengths to ensure that the characters aren’t all evenly-matched - each combatant has his or her (or its) own unique strengths and weaknesses, so you have to constantly modify your tactics based on who you’re fighting and who you’re playing as. Toshio, for instance, is considerably shorter than his fellow warriors, and many standard attacks end up flying harmlessly over his head, which can be an advantage or a disadvantage depending on whether you’re fighting in his shoes or trying to wallop him. Similarly, Okura’s massive samurai sword gives him a lot of extra reach, making him particularly dangerous at a distance, while Fakir can conjure up mystical attacks which do tons of damage, but leave him immobile for a vital second or two. Genie Hurricane It’s this sort of painstaking attention to detail that makes Shadow Fighter magical in itself. Neat touches abound, from the points bonuses that can be awarded during fights (for landing the first attack or dizzying your opponent) to the way loading pauses are masked with “versus” screens detailing the characters’ moves and backstories. The usual footfalls and body impacts change on the waterlogged Brazil stage (so you get splashes instead of thuds and thumps), and the brutal ‘Blood Mode’ leaves spots of the red stuff all over the floor whenever a strike lands successfully.

Ooh, look out.

Steady on now.

You can tailor just about every aspect of the game to your liking - the options screen lets you choose between Easy, Normal and Hard difficulty settings, change the time limit per round to 30, 60 or 90 seconds (or disable the timer altogether), turn the music off or replace it with environmental sound effects (very clever) and decide whether or not characters get stunned after a particularly savage combination of blows. There are even secret codes that let you play as Pupazz or the Shadow Fighter himself, and the AGA version is hard drive installable, eliminating disk accessing. What more could you possibly want, eh? Shadow Fighter is a magnificent game in absolutely every way, and a testament to the creative talents of its makers. It also demonstrates irrefutably that an arcade-perfect Amiga port of Street Fighter II was perfectly possible all along. Makes you wonder what the blinkety heck US Gold and Gametek were playing at, really.

April 2021

Ouch, me ligaments.

AMIGA ADDICT

Six of the Best - Paul Driscoll (Retro Gaming Discussion Show) Each month, we’ll be catching up with a notable ﬁgure in the world of Amiga and retro gaming, and asking them to whittle down their list of favourite games to a shortlist of just six. This month, we’re talking to Paul Driscoll AKA The Drisk, from the mega-popular Retro Gaming Discussion Show podcast.

What is it about the Amiga that puts it above the other systems, for you?

the player able to gain points when driving under banners or over flags. Collect all the flags in order of colour, and then you receive a score multiplier for any subsequent flags collected for a short period of time. The game has five different locations to race in, named offroad or one of each of the compass directions, giving you plenty of choice of differing locales to ride around. It may be missing the other cars of the arcade original, but I actually prefer that, as it removes the unfairness of the arcade game, allowing it to just be you versus the track. There are so many neat touches in this title - doing jumps, collecting the time gates, booting the football for extra points - all of which result in making this game as addictive as hell, and one that, after all this time, I still never tire of playing.

What I love about the Amiga is not just the personal nostalgia. It was a wonderful time when the gaming world moved on to a new horizon of technical possibilities after the 8-bit heyday, but we’d still not reached today’s commercial world of gaming.

Pang Another wonderful arcade conversion by Ocean’s French development team, creating this wonderful killer bubble popping adventure known as Pang (or Buster Bros. to our US

Hi Paul, can you tell us a bit about your history with the Amiga?

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by Stufm

Hi! I own and love most retro game systems, but my true love has always been my Amiga, which I have cherished since my teenage years and never let go of.

Before the industry got too corporate? Exactly, it was a place where decisions were yet to be made by the suits, and a time when the common practice of oversized teams sucking the genius and imagination out of a single person or a small three-person team had yet to emerge. Awesome. OK, let’s get on to the list… Speedball 2 OK, for my first choice, I have gone with the amazing future sport sequel of Speedball 2. Set in the year 2100, it is a game of violence and quick passing, as you hurl the metal ball from player to player, punching the opponents down, to ricochet it off the side wall and into the goal, to the crowds deafening roar as a lone vendor calls out for anyone to buy “ICE CREAM”. There is much that is jaw-droppingly amazing with this game, from the sumptuous metallic art style of Dan Malone, who seemingly creates such a wonderful chunky 3D feel to everything. Or the stunning Nation-12 music for the game, lovingly brought onto the Amiga by Richard Joseph. All that is secondary though, for the real star of Speedball 2 is the amazing gameplay. You see, this time the arena is massively expanded and redesigned from the first game’s iteration. Now there are multiple ways to score, stars along the side, or the loop the loop multiplier, bounce domes, warp gates and electro-bounce devices, allowing a dizzying array of ways to win the game, as you take the team Brutal Deluxe to the top of the league. In fact, watch two really good players and they will be going for everything but the goal initially, each trying to build the multiplier for the easy win. There is a wonderful sense of progression here as well. You’re able to pick up cash to enhance your team with a dizzying array of upgrades, making the players tougher and quicker so as not to end up one of those poor saps stretchered away by the robo-doc. All in all, this is pure gaming perfection that is as good today as it was 30 years ago. Buggy Boy I adore this home port of the relatively obscure arcade game by Tatsumi. You control a buggy and must negotiate the increasingly difficult obstacle laden tracks, going against the clock to reach the finish line. What elevates this game even more is the fact there is a whole score mechanism to it all, with

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April 2021

It's the year 2105 - yet sports players still like to engage in ﬁsticuﬀs!

A forerunner to Mario Kart, the Amiga port of Buggy Boy is lots of fun.

On my daughter's next birthday I think I'll just go with the cake...

Woody's World is often overlooked - an underrated Amiga platformer.

Even the high tech futuristic interface was mindblowing in Syndicate.

Check out AA Issue 2 for more on the history of Lemmings!

Woody’s World I have chosen this game as not enough people talk about it, and I genuinely feel it is one of the best platform games on the Amiga. You play an elf wizard called Woody, who sets off to find a magic crystal for the King. Returning the crystal will stop the Kingdom being overthrown and allow Woody to finally attend the Elf Olympics. What we have here is a gorgeous game, moulded on Mario 3. There are 60 big sprawling levels to beat, set across multiple distinct islands, each with their own wonderfully catchy tunes to hum along to as you make your way through the game. There is a boatload of cool features here, and loads of secret areas to discover while you snaffle up all the coins. In addition, our hero can raise himself to prince and king by finding a sceptre or crown hidden in some of the levels. This not only gives him a cool new set of threads to wear, but also improves his ability to jump and gives him stronger attacks. All in all, this is a real gaming gem, and whilst most reviewers of the day complained of it being derivative, I say when something is this much fun, does it really matter? Syndicate Back in 1993, Bullfrog were at the top of their game, and for me personally this title was their pinnacle. Set in a Blade Runner-styled world, it is a place where the multinational corporations run things and have become crime syndicates, each looking to do literal hostile takeovers of other corporate cities, in their quest to control the world. What we have here is an isometric strategy shooter, where you control your cyber-enhanced agents in real time to take out the enemy, kidnap a scientist or a variety of other tasks. There are so many wonderful facets to this game; from the destructive original BFG that takes out a whole street - the Gauss Gun - or the flamethrower which has you gleefully watching as your flaming enemies run about screaming. My particular favourite was the Persuadertron, a hacking device that turns the civilians around you into mindless drones, to follow you and act as a human shield as you take on all the enemy agents. As a kid, I was mesmerised by this living, breathing city that had been created, seeing the ordinary people go about their day, as well as cool futuristic cars you could get in and drive. All this was controlled perfectly with the mouse, allowing you to target and take out the enemies, or split your team into any configuration, giving a real tactical element to proceedings. This is definitely a game I never ever tire of.

Lemmings What can you say about this amazing puzzle game about green haired rodents with a penchant for killing themselves that has not already been said? In the game, you select these walking critters, assigning them skills such as building bridges, climbing and digging, to help them make their way to the exit door. Given these gormless suicidal furry creatures want to pop themselves off this mortal coil at the first opportunity, this is no easy task. Therefore, you must have quick click reflexes and a strategic plan to successfully guide them to the exit door. Save enough and you get to proceed to the next level. Make a mistake, however, and you can vindictively nuke them all, watching them count down and seeing them all explode to the cries of “Oh No!”, ready to reattempt with a new batch of lemmings. I cannot express the happy times I have enjoyed with this game, playing into the early hours of the morning with the catchy chip tunes blaring through my Amiga speakers. We all need more Amiga Lemmings and exploding rodents in our lives! Thanks Paul! Don’t forget to check out the RGDS podcast and community at: www.retrogamingdailyshow.libsyn.com

April 2021

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cousins and Pomping World in Japan). This, for me, is arcade perfection, with you playing one or two hapless adventurers as they travel across the world in 50 levels and destroy the poisoned bubbles with only a harpoon gun. The idea of the game is to blast the bubbles without letting them touch you. With each shot, the bubbles split into smaller bubbles and eventually, when small enough, are destroyed completely. Alongside the amazingly catchy bouncy music and addictive gameplay, this has it all, as you work out the best strategy to defeat each level. The game here is pretty much arcade perfect, with only the other annoying enemy creatures of the arcade game missing. But trust me that is no great loss, and I actually prefer the game without them to the arcade original. To aid you in each level, there are destructible blocks that will release power-ups, giving you things like double harpoon, ﬁxed harpoon, shields and dynamite. But I warn you, as a twoplayer game you can really fall out with the other person, as if either of you gets hit, you need to both start the whole damn level again! The rage you feel when the other player messes up that last solitary ﬂippin’ bubble for the umpteenth time cannot be underestimated, and as a kid me and a mate fell out over this game for two whole weeks because he kept blimin’ dying… you have been warned.

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The Best Laid Plans of Mice & Men

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- by Ian Griffiths You don’t have to be a 30-year Amiga veteran to be able to name some of the unique features the platform boasted from the custom chip set, to the amazing sound and impressive multitasking. It’s a machine with a lot to love about it. One of the awesome features that often gets overlooked is its ability to support two mice independently, via the twin DE9 ports built into each and every model. Most 16-bit systems at the time would only support one mouse - the Atari ST, for example, would allow you to plug a joystick into the mouse port for twoplayer games, but there was no option to plug a mouse into the second joystick port. Even the PCs of the time, while offering some ability to use multiple pointing devices, would often require two different mouse interfaces (PS/2 and serial), and fiddling around with DOS drivers to get it working. The Amiga, meanwhile, was as plug-and-play as it comes - get your mate round with his mouse, plug in and away you go! “But Ian,” I hear you say, “what do I need two mice for anyway? It’s not like I can juggle two paintbrushes in Deluxe Paint!” Ah, my sweet summer child. Games, my friend. Multiplayer games! There are plenty of games on the Amiga that either require you to use your rodent-inspired pointing device, or are best played using one. And out of those, there are just a few that support two mice simultaneously. Unfortunately, not a vast number of Amiga games really

took advantage of this feature, but while network play was in its infancy, and null modem support was decidedly niche, duo mouse setups were an excellent way to deliver a fine multiplayer experience without compromising gameplay. There are two types of game we’ll be covering here - those that insist on a second mouse to enjoy multiplayer, and those that offer other control methods, but are best served by that second mouse. But let’s deal with the big hitters first... Lemmings/Oh No! More Lemmings Most people are familiar with Psygnosis’ particular brand of puzzle gaming, as players strive to prevent the hapless green-haired rodents from coming to a sticky end. But have you ever had cause to click on the second button on the main menu? Plug a second mouse into your Amiga, and Lemmings now allows you to partake in some vertical splitscreen gameplay, as you and a friend attempt to guide their lemmings into the exit by fair means or foul. Whilst two-player mode is not exclusive to the Amiga, it’s the only version that puts players on a level playing field, with both using a mouse to command their careless crowd of creatures. The Atari version hands the second player the short straw in the form of the less competitive joystick, while the DOS and Windows ports scrapped the mode altogether.

as-nails expansion Oh No! More Lemmings, the beauty of the two-player mode is that it entirely changes the aims and goals of the game. Where once your objective was simply to get your little guys to the exit, you’re now simultaneously plotting the best way to troll your opponent’s carefully laid plans, and in such a way that you channel their lemmings into your exit too, for extra bonus points. It’s the most devious multiplayer game I know of on the Amiga, and more than a few friendships have been strained after a player found a hole in their previously carefully constructed bridge, that they could have sworn was not there moments before. For a more detailed look at this aspect of the veteran puzzler, take a look at Andrew’s review that follows this article on page 42. The Settlers Volker Wertich’s seminal strategy classic The Settlers is where two-player mouse gaming reached its peak for me personally. Plugging in two mice before booting into that familiar animated intro allows friends to either join forces against the nefarious AI, or take up arms

With 20 specially prepared levels in the base game and a further 10 in the hard-

No screenpeeking Lemmings creator Mike Dailly tells us how the two-player mode came about in the ﬁrst place... “While creating Lemmings, we were all fans of multiplayer Amiga games that used null modem cables - Stunt Car Racer and Populous - that we played in two separate rooms, with a long cable between them. We really enjoyed playing and not being able to see the other player’s screen, as it stopped any temptation to cheat by looking at what they were doing. Because of this, Dave wanted to do a two player Lemmings game that did the same, using a null modem cable. He got me to try and create a little driver for one. I spent a little time writing it, so that we could connect two Amigas up using one of these cables. I gave Dave the "receiver" end and I "transmitted" from my Amiga, controlling the mouse on his. However, after some consideration, Dave thought the chance that gamers would take their Amigas and TVs (which weren't exactly small in those days) to their friends was pretty limiting, and would make this game mode for a select few only. So, he took the decision to use a split-screen mechanic instead and used two mice for control. This allowed far more gamers to enjoy the game, and interestingly, because of the nature of the game, you never really noticed what the other gamer was doing anyway, so it actually worked out really well. It's been a shame this mode has never really been recreated, especially with the internet and proper remote play.”

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Some of my fondest memories of the Amiga revolve around being slouched around a mate’s Amiga for hours at a time, whistling the amazing theme tune and guzzling pint after pint of Coca Cola as our empires grew and our tiny citizens went about their business. Settlers multiplayer is an almost zen experience and a wonderful way to spend an afternoon. Or evening. Or day.

Getting started with multiplayer games on mouse So you’ve decided to destroy your friendship with a bit of multiplayer Lemmings? Well there are a few options for you. Please note: I am not including any recommendations for couples therapy in this list... Original hardware Obviously the easiest option is to grab any original Amiga, plug mice into both of the joystick ports, switch it on and away you go. It really is that simple. Online Probably the second easiest way to get involved is using that marvel of modern emulation, AmigaLive. Simply download the client from www.amigalive.com, create a game and have your buddy connect, and suddenly you’re playing a multiplayer Settlers game over the internet. Ain’t modern technology great? Local emulation If you still want to be able to punch your friend in the arm/face when they plunge your marble to oblivion in Marble Madness, but don’t have an Amiga - don’t despair. The power of WinUAE has you covered! Plug two USB mice into your PC, load up the latest version of WinUAE from www.winuae.net, head to the “Game ports” settings and make sure you conﬁgure both ports away from the default ‘Windows mouse’. On my system, I was able to select two “HID-compliant mouse” options to match my mice. This may work on other platforms too - send us a letter if you’re successful!

Controlling the four member party in single-player is tricky, so having two mouse users makes handling the squad a whole bunch easier!

PM's plumbing is hard enough on your own!

Pipe Mania Pipe Mania (or Pipe Dream to our friends across the Atlantic) is one of those classic game concepts which is so well defined that it has been cloned a hundred times since. Not many of the ports have a twoplayer mode though - you play a co-op/ competitive game where you fight to place pipes before the other player can snatch your points. Using the mouse makes your reactions quicker - I pity the second player on ST who had to use a joystick! Marble Madness The earliest game in our pantheon; 1988 classic Marble Madness shows that developers were taking advantage of this Amiga feature even in the early years of the system. Two-player mode has you racing your marbles down each course, just like the main game... but as with Lemmings, there’s room for a family-sized portion of trolling, as you smack your marble into your opponent and watch as they careen off the edge to their doom! Hired Guns DMA Design seem to have a two-player mouse pedigree, as their sci-fi RPG Hired Guns supports it too. Allowing for up to four players in total (with a multitude of control options), mouse is probably the most intuitive for this dungeon crawler.

Crack I have to admit, with a name like Crack, I did not expect a Breakout clone with a caveman motif! But here we are. It’s a pretty competent little brick breaker too - it is missing the normal powerups, but it has some nice looking dinosaur pixel art and even comes with a level editor. The two-player modes spawn two bats to protect the edge of the screen either cooperatively or competitively. Starball While we’re on the subject of bat-andball games, there’s also this Pong clone to consider. It’s not quite your basic clone either, with irregular walls and ﬂoating enemies making it hard to predict the ball’s trajectory. Unfortunately, this is one of those competitive games that kicks one player out and replaces them with AI as soon as one human player wins (booo!), so it might have limited appeal. T2: The Arcade Game With the mouse being the domain of the FPS in modern PC gaming, it’s almost

No fate but what we make.

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surprising we got this far into the article before we found a shooter of some kind. As the name suggests, this is a port of the on-rails light-gun arcade game of the same name, and two mice mean you both control a crosshair as you gun down the T-800s on Judgement Day. Come with me if you want to live? Operation Thunderbolt The sequel to Operation Wolf was basically designed as a two-player game in the arcade, and trying to play it alone on Amiga is a somewhat thankless task. So it’s perfect to chuck a mouse to a friend and gun down as many enemies as you can - but don’t think it’s suddenly going to get easy! This is a challenging game whatever you do. Extase This is a trippy puzzle game which supports two mice, and I have become mildly addicted to it since ﬁrst trying it out for this article. Basically, repair a circuit by clearing the lines and replacing fuses in a circuit to charge an android before your opponent does. But then play whack-a-mole with the viruses that are released as you do. Sound strange? Probably best to work out this weirdness for yourselves!

My brain hurt initially, but Extase is great!

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against each other in a free-for-all. Largely the game remains unchanged build up your settlement from scratch, perfect your supply lines, accumulate resources and troops, and expand your territory until someone else is in the way. In two-player mode, however, the screen gets split vertically - just like Lemmings with each player eﬀectively getting a smaller version of the single-player viewport, but with all the same controls and mechanics (even down to the notiﬁcations and reminder system!).

(Two-Player) Lemmings - Multiplayer merriment from Andrew Siddall

• Developer: DMA Design • Publisher: Psygnosis • Amiga platforms: OCS / CDTV / CD32 • Release year: 1991

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levels available range from easy to insanely hard, and there are often many ways to complete them. Gameplay is accompanied by a range of catchy tunes, ranging from the “Can-Can” to “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round The Mountain”, as well as a few original tunes besides. The animation is top notch, and considering the lemmings themselves are only 8x10 pixels in size, the expressiveness conveyed via the movement of such a limited number of pixels is nothing short of amazing.

Lemmings Level 1.

Ah Lemmings. Who can forget Lemmings? A game full of suicidal little critters with an apparent death wish. Catchy little tunes ringing in one ear, while the scream of dying lemms fills the other. The box even comes with a disclaimer that the game creators are not responsible for “Loss of hair, loss of sanity, loss of sleep”, which is a good thing because I was afflicted by all three when playing this game! Contrary to popular belief, in real life, lemmings are not suicidal. In actual fact, they can swim - a skill the game creators conveniently left out. All you can do, however, is watch helplessly as your lemmings plunge to a watery grave, wailing as they go. Lemmings also do not (voluntarily at least) walk off cliffs, although weirdly, back in the 17th century, a belief once spread that lemmings would explode if they got really angry. Did this rumour inspire DMA Design to give us the exploding time bomb lemming option? For those who don’t know what Lemmings is (and if you owned an Amiga, you surely did), it’s a puzzle game where your job is to guide a number of small green-haired blue-shirted lemmings from the entrance of the level to the exit. Between these points are a number of obstacles, including water traps, lava pits, gaps to bridge and walls to bash through. Some levels also include a booby trap or two, such as one that hoists a captured lemming up by the foot before brutally throwing it to the ground. You are provided eight skills to dish out to the lemmings, including climber, basher, bridge maker, digger and blocker, to name but a few. And who can forget the “bomber” skill, where the unfortunate lemming in question lets out a cry of “Oh no!” before going pop! The number of lemmings you can assign these skills to is limited, so if you run out of bridge makers to get over a gap for example, it’s time to nuke those lemmings, restart the level and try again! The

Level 2, this is where Lemmings start to mingle & chaos ensues!

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Lemmings was conceived and written by Dundee-based DMA Design and published by Psygnosis in 1991(Ed. - "See our AA feature on DMA in issue 2"). It was followed by a number of sequels, expansion packs (including the Christmas classic Holiday Lemmings in which the lemmings appear in Santa suits) and remakes in subsequent years. Ported to many systems, it remains a popular choice amongst retro gamers today and is generally viewed as a classic of the era. Around 20 million copies are estimated to have been sold worldwide. It is a tribute to the makers that even now, it’s a game few people haven’t heard of. So why did my sanity, hair and sleep suffer as a result of this game? Well, it wasn’t because of the single player option which I’m not going to cover here. There have been many reviews of that for you to find in magazines past and internet sites present. This review is on the two-player version, which is responsible for one of the closest friendships of my teenage years. A quick bit of scene setting. Picture two teenage boys, sat in front of an Amiga 500. A 14” CRT screen connected via a fuzzy RF input. Both boys staring intently at the vertically split screen. The player on the left controlling the blue-jacketed green-haired lemmings; the player on the right controlling his green-jacketed blue-haired lemmings. The cheerful sound of the “Can-Can” piping out of the speakers. 20 levels, two hours. Hundreds dead. Screams and profanity fill the air (and not just those of the lemmings) as one of us realises the horror unleashed on his lemmings by the other player. Two-player Lemmings is, in my view, the best way to play this game. Whilst I owned an original copy that came with my Amiga 500, by far and away the better way to play the twoplayer version was the cracked copy, which enabled you to switch on infinite numbers of each skill. No more running out of bridgers or bashers. Just hours of utter, unashamed, homework-ruining genocidal carnage. What is two-player Lemmings? It’s a split-screen version of the original game, where two players each get 40 lemmings

A little trick: if you mine next to a blocker, you can dig through steel!

that results in no lemmings being saved at all!

Tips and Tricks 1. In the earlier levels, don’t waste too many lemmings on saboteur duties - save as many as you can to build up the numbers on subsequent levels. A number advantage can make all the diﬀerence early on.

2. Mine through solid steel. If another player blocks you on top of a steel area, it is possible to mine just next to them to dig beneath and create a route past. You can also dig under blockers to “free” them, which can be critical to winning a level.

4. If you are losing overall later in the round, it can be better to let one of your lemmings go into your opponent’s exit, then devote the remainder of your time to killing all of his or her lemmings (since the game tournament will end if at least one lemming isn’t saved). This sacrifices a level win, but gets the lemming numbers on a more even keel for the next level, removing your opponent’s advantage. under their control - coloured as mentioned above - and the lemmings enter the level either through the same or separate entrances. It’s the players responsibility to guide their lemmings safely to their assigned separate exits, which can be identified by a waving coloured flag. The player with the most lemmings saved at the end of the level, wins. Furthermore, the lemmings saved at the end are added to the base 40 - up to a maximum of 80 each - on the next level. This means that it is possible for 160 Lemmings to be running around on the same level at once. The poor old Amiga 500 does start to struggle at this point, but an Amiga 1200 handles it with ease. This all sounds pretty simple right? Just save more lemmings than your opponent. How hard can it be? Well, with a wily merciless evil friend, it’s very difficult indeed! While each player cannot control the other players lemmings, they can use their lemmings to set traps for their counterparts, or direct them elsewhere. Digging holes to drop them in the drink, bashing through walls to send them off the edge of a cliff - the options are almost unlimited. Your opponent can also “steal” your lemmings by guiding them into their exit. And as lemmings of either colour are added to the base 40 this means a number advantage can rapidly be gained as you progress, which hampers your opponent’s ability to win on future levels. The game starts off moderately tamely. Lemmings enter the first level from a common entrance, and each player must build a bridge over the gap... off their

lemmings go to their respective exits. However, with some distance to go, it’s easy for each player to send saboteurs to dig holes and kill the other’s lemmings, grabbing an early lead in the tournament. Later levels require co-operation to guide the lemmings to the exits, and it really is up to each player how much they trust the other not kill to their lemmings enroute. Sadly, the temptation to wipe out a few of the other player’s lemmings on the way can prove an irresistible urge

My favourite level is number three. By this point, between myself and my friend, we had normally amassed 80 Lemmings each and with a huge amount of solid scenery to bridge, dig and mine through, not to mention up to 160 lemmings swarming everywhere, this level generally took the longest to complete! Two-player Lemmings is a rare example of a game mode that adds an entirely new dimension to a game. This isn’t just “single player Lemmings plus”. It’s basically a completely different game, and vastly different to any other multiplayer contingent offered on the platform. It’s a shame a lot of people never had the chance to try it, as this game mode really highlights the genius that DMA Design brought to the Amiga. Don't despair... it is never too late! Grab a friend, grab a copy and start turning the air blue (and green!).

Level 3 is deceptive. The options for lemming-based genocide are endless with so much scenery!

GRAPHICS 90%

GRAB FACTOR 95%

Even with the limited palette of the A500, the levels are colourful and the animation of the lemmings is smooth and convincing. Low resolution really shows up on today’s modern panels unfortunately.

My friend and I played a full two-player round of 20 levels nearly every day after school for 6 years. And we still play it together today if we can. Enough said.

SOUND 85% Tunes are nicely created and catchy, but don’t fully utilise the hardware in my view. Fun to listen to however, and your attention is usually elsewhere! Stereo separation is a little grating these days.

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PLAYABILITY 90% Fiendishly addictive and lots of fun with easily mastered controls. Some levels are extremely frustrating though, which can occasionally spoil things.

90%

VERDICT

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3. On levels where lemmings enter from a common entrance, the lemmings actually land on slightly diﬀerent positions. There’s only a pixel in it, but if you can mine in precisely the right place, you can send your opponent’s lemmings straight to their doom and there is nothing they can do about it - while yours safely catch the edge of the hole. This can be extremely frustrating (for them!).

There are some interesting little tricks available to the practiced/obsessed player. From mining through solid steel, to digging in just the right place under the level entrance to allow your lemmings to survive while the other player cannot save theirs. There are lots of fun tactics to explore and new methods and routes to try, as you attempt to win the level. A nice trick is to gather the other player’s lemmings in a small tight bunch, then dig away beneath them, consigning them to their doom. Level two is a particularly good place to do this!

32 M ad C sK O ris R te N ns en E R

Banshee

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Developer........Core Design Publisher..............Core Design Year........................................1994 Music...........................Martin Iveson Programming................Søren Hannibal Graphics & Design..........Jacob Andersen

In our series of wonderful CD32 games to check out, we have arrived at a beautiful shoot 'em up - a games genre that most early arcade goers will be very familiar with. One could argue that the shoot 'em up starts all the way back in 1962, when Steve Russell and some friends developed Spacewar! for the PDP-1 minicomputer. But for most of us, the earliest memory of playing a shoot 'em up will be the hugely popular Space Invaders by Taito, released in arcades in 1978. Another hugely popular shoot 'em up, Capcom's vertically-scrolling masterpiece 1942, was released in the arcades in 1984 and, like Space Invaders, ported to a plethora of home computers and consoles. 1942 is the main inspiration for the beautiful game we will be taking a look at today: Banshee for the CD32, developed and published by Core Design in 1994. Banshee was developed by two Danish boys, formerly of the demo scene group Anarchy - Søren Hannibal and Jacob Andersen. The story of Banshee is simple - and perhaps a bit on the odd side. The evil Styx empire has invaded Earth, but not Earth as we know it - more of a steampunk Earth without colour TVs and such, and deﬁnitely without microwave ovens. For some reason, microwave ovens play a big role in this story. Our protagonist, Sven Svardensvart, builds a plane called the Banshee and sets out to single handedly defeat the Styx invaders and save Earth. He’s also seeking revenge on them, as they apparently killed his father for refusing to invent the aforementioned microwave ovens. Very weird indeed! But who cares, this is a shoot 'em up, so to hell with the story let's go blow stuﬀ up!

Banshee is a full-on arcade shooter.

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What the developers and designers of Banshee lacked in the storytelling department, they definitely made up for in coding and graphics skills. This game is one of the smoothest things I have ever played on my CD32. The graphics are exquisite, the controls perfect, the attention to detail impressive, and the sheer number of moving objects onscreen at the same time is simply amazing. To top it off, all of this is seemingly done without losing a single frame. Impressive! This is just the kind of experience you want when playing a shoot 'em up. The player controls the aforementioned Banshee, and in true shmup fashion, it is your job to blast everything in front of you to smithereens. In the first few minutes, you do find yourself reminded of 1942 (especially because your secondary attack is doing a loop), but the game soon shows that it is much more than just a clone. There is a nice powerup system in play - you can pick up power-ups for your shots, speed powerups, shield repairs (like health packs), extra lives, and so on and so forth. If you practice and manage to stay alive for some time, you’ll quickly become a mean, lean killing machine; shooting straight ahead as well as at 45 degree angles, sending out homing missiles, and generally laying waste to everything in your way. Staying alive is not as difficult as comparable shoot 'em ups of the day, because this is not a one-shot-kill game your Banshee can take a bit of a beating before it finally explodes. So keep on the lookout for those shield repair powerups, and you will be fine. It’s also important to know that the power-ups can be shot, which will make them switch between different upgrades. They don't cycle between all the different powerups, but do try to shoot them if you need something other than what you see in front of you. All in all, there are 15 different powerups, and different parts of the game will

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reward you if you pick up the right one at the right time. For example, in the last part of the second stage, the power-up that adds a sideways shot becomes really helpful because you are frequently encountering enemies that are unexpectedly on your flank. But as with all good shmups, experimenting with the power-ups is part of the fun, so I won't spoil it further. But do have a look at the manual before starting this game! There is one more power-up I will mention here though: the build-up one, which looks like some bricks. As far as I can tell, this power-up doesn't alter your powers in any significant way, but it is still very important - if you do manage to get a full build-up (which you can see in the HUD at the side of the screen), you won’t lose your firepower when you die. Anyone who loves shoot 'em ups should appreciate this - there’s nothing more annoying than being all powered up, shooting stuff left and right, only to be bombed back to the stone age all of a sudden, and having no chance against the incoming enemy hordes. This is not a problem in Banshee... if you play your cards right. Let's talk about the graphics. The attention to graphical detail is absolutely breathtaking. You have little men running around screaming as you blast them, cranes that you can shoot to make them fall on top of soldiers, polar bears running around in the Arctic level, mothers with baby carriages scuttling for cover in the city areas; you see soldiers running around inside the buildings before they come out to shoot at you and I could go on. The most amazing thing is that many of these wonderful graphical touches are only used a handful of times, so there always seems to be something new to look at and be amazed by. The only thing this game is missing is a proper soundtrack - that would have made it perfect. Don't get me wrong, the sound design in this game is A-OK, but a little music in the stages would have been great. It can get a bit quiet. Banshee is a true beauty of a game, so I do hope you give it a go. It works fine playing it with a gamepad, but if you are playing this on emulation, I'd suggest plugging in an arcade stick, as that just gives it that extra bit of manoeuvrability when avoiding the many bullets.

Critical Reception

Amiga Dream.............92% CU Amiga...................90% Amiga Power.............90% Amiga Format............90% Amiga Action.............88% Amiga CD32 Gamer...88%

Bosses can be a tad bigger than your plane... but there's no turning back!

Jacob Anderson Interview - The man behind Banshee's design concept & pixel art chats with Mads Kristensen We are so lucky that Jacob Andersen, designer and graphics artist on Banshee, has agreed to answer a few questions about the development of this great game. Jacob has worked in the video game industry for many years, starting with graphics for the 16-bit versions of Cover Girl Strip Poker (which I promise that I have never played, far too much, on my Amiga, honest to god Mom!), through to both design and graphics for Hitman: Codename 47, all the way to being an artist on Hitman: Blood Money. Jacob has had a long career working on a lot of huge titles, but today we will be focusing on Banshee for the Amiga CD32 and A1200. So Jacob, before we get into Banshee, tell our readers a little about yourself. When did your interest in video games start, and how did you get started in the industry? I guess it started when the father of one of my friends bought a C64. I had to wait a year or so to get one for myself though. After a few months of frantically playing everything I could get my hands on, I started to look into how to create games myself, and then I discovered machine code. That discovery led to contact with other guys who, apart from selling cracked games, also created demos. That was my way into the demo scene, and after a year or two I 'upgraded' to the Amiga and joined an Amiga demo group. I guess the demo scene was my way into the games business. Banshee was Core Design release. How did that happen - how did two Danes end up working for Core? Well, it's a bit of an odd story. Søren and I were making Amiga demos together at the time - we had both recently ﬁnished school and so were both 'between

educations'. I was supposed to start an engineering course in a few months, and we thought it would be a fun idea to send some of the stuff we had been working on to a few game studios (oddly called software houses at the time). Half a year earlier, I had been working briefly on a 1942-style shooter game with another demo programmer for the A500. The project wasn't really going anywhere, so I sent the graphics I had done to Søren and he quickly put together a game demo. This was the demo we sent out. At the time, we were both in a demo group called Anarchy, and a few of the guys in the group worked at Core Design. I guess they kinda told the boss that we were cool (or something). It resulted in an invite to come to Derby in England for a talk, and after being there at this amazing studio, we decided to defer school for at least a year to go work there. A few months earlier my mother had told me that she thought it was time for me to find a place of my own to live. She was thinking that I would probably find a small room in the town, she wasn't expecting me to move to a different country! How long did it take to produce Banshee - and do you have any funny stories regarding its development that you would like to share with our readers? As I recall, it took about nine months, but it was probably closer to a year. Søren and I were work-maniacs at the time. Two guys in a new country and nothing much to do other than work on the game - so we put in A LOT of extra hours, especially on the weekends. But we loved it. Just being able to work on a game was amazing. The pixel art in Banshee is second to none - with breathtaking attention to

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detail. Which tools did you use in your daily work to create this masterpiece? I mainly used Brilliance, but I also did some 3D renderings. Before we started at Core Design, I had been creating some renderings in Turbo Silver and Imagine, but the holy grail at the time was, of course, Silicon Graphics. And lo and behold, a few months after we arrived in Derby, the company bought five Silicon Graphics machines running Wavefront. Obviously a lot of my weekends were spent in the new 3D room experimenting with these beasts. But Wavefront was a very complicated program - the UI was very limited, and many of the advanced features required scripting, so none of the other artists really used them. They were soon just collecting dust. I asked the boss if I could move one of the machines to my desk, now that it seemed that nobody was using them... he said 'PLEASE DO!'. He was sad that such an expensive investment was not being used. This was heaven for me and I really tried to use Wavefront as much as I could for Banshee, even though it was a bit ridiculous at times. I did use it to render 'perspective drafts' for a number of the tanks and moving enemies that I imported to the Amiga and re-drew in Brilliance. The loading image was also rendered in Wavefront. It was supposed to be used for the box artwork too, but we couldn't find a print shop anywhere in the Midlands that could convert an RGB file to CMYK. Out of desperation, Core Design ended up hiring a local airbrush artist to copy the image from a screen and then scan it for print. The graphical style of Banshee is

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Jacob's artwork is colourful & detailed - capturing a steampunk aesthetic.

somewhat gritty steampunk, but mixed in with that are a lot of witty little details, like the mothers with baby carriages, polar bears, etc. Was there a conscious decision to make the game humorous as well as serious graphically?

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It was not a definite decision, but rather just what we thought was fun at the time. Games (and especially the demo scene) were becoming really serious. I guess we just did the opposite. The demos we did at the time were also really bizarre. The graphical style was just a continuation of the style I was doing at the moment with a rough shading style, sharp lines and highlights. Initially the game was a clone of 1942, but that obviously puts a lot of constraints on the artwork, whereas the steampunk theme was great because it allowed us to create a lot of different things, from WW2-style planes to spaceships. I remember it was really hard to find any meaningful reference for the art, so I did a lot of just walking around in Derby, looking at buildings and details to get inspiration.

The in-game story art builds on the concept drawings.

What is up with all the microwaves? [laughs] That's the invention of Guy Miller, a writer that worked for Core Design writing background stories for all their games. He did suggest a lot of really wacky stuff for the story. Was the CD32 a target platform from the beginning of development, or was it added later on? The demo that we based the game on was for Amiga 500, but Core wanted to create games for the new CD32, thinking it would become all the rage. So we switched pretty much right away. Was there any difference working on a game for the CD32, as opposed to working on the regular Amiga computers? Well, the AGA graphics made a huge difference. I mean, I was used to having 8 or 16 colours for most work, and here was a palette of 256. Because I was so used to creating optimized palettes, we ended up only using 64 (32 for the UI and 32 for the game graphics) and using the last 2 bit-planes for effects like rain and fog (and the cool polygon lasers in the last level! Søren was really proud of those!). The CD32 also had a CDROM, but it was not in any way utilized. Was there ever a sequel planned for Banshee? There was a bit of talk about it, but Søren and I left to join a bunch of other demo guys in America after finishing up the game, so it didn't happen. I have thought about a sequel several times over the years, but I have no clue who actually owns the rights today. Maybe an idea for a Kickstarter? The original sketches of "The Heroic Engineer" character...

With the beneﬁt of perfect hindsight, what, if anything, would you change in Banshee if you were to work on it today? As much as I loved working with the AGA graphics, I think it would have been smart to make an A500 version too. The game sold well, but there weren't enough A1200s to make it a good business. Also, today I would have the internet at my disposal for inspiration and reference, which would enable me to create a lot more artwork. Is there anything I haven’t asked you that I really should have? What is your favourite Amiga game? Probably a tie between Cannon Fodder and Mega Lo Mania. Did you abandon the Amiga when you started working on console games? No, I did some of the graphics for the Sega Saturn games I worked on an A4000. Do you still own an Amiga? No, unfortunately. I'm considering buying one again just for the nostalgia. Thank you so much for taking the time to answer our questions. Banshee is a stone cold classic, and I hope our readers will feel like giving it a go after reading this.

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April 2021

...and "Evil Bastard" - with a name like that he's bound to be bad!

April 2021

AMIGA ADDICT

Civitas Nihilium

TESTBENCH

- Ravi plays the board game made with the Amiga's help

LEFT: Beautiful box cover art. MIDDLE: Witness playing cards, with in-depth character background detail. RIGHT: James Bradley's Amiga and game design setup.

The Amiga has always been known as a creative machine, but projects like this really show its power. James Bradley, the creator of Civitas Nihilium, has a real passion for creative Amiga computing, and he has demonstrated this by putting together a stunning board game experience using the platform. This is no amateur piece of work - James himself works at the world-famous Pinewood Studios, and has a love of storytelling, atmosphere and immersion which has served him well on this project. Civitas is described on its website as a “deck-building, dice rolling, solo player tabletop game set within a cyberpunk universe”. It’s a unique project focussed on solo play, with deep gameplay and an immersive atmosphere provided by its extensive use of pixel art and an accompanying chip music/vaporwave soundtrack that is built to be listened to alongside the game as you play. Having that passion and love for Amiga, James decided to use a combination of traditional Amiga programs and more modern PC packages when creating Civitas. The immersive soundtrack was amazingly put together in Music-X, before a Datel Electronics Pro Sampler Studio (an 8-bit parallel port sampler), was used to blast the audio into FL Studio, doing a cross-cable record from his TV to PC. This enabled him to add additional vocals and to enhance the soundtrack, whilst still retaining that essential Amiga sound. The graphics were all created in DPaint from the very start, and done by hand. They were later transferred into Photoshop, enlarging via nearest neighbour for a clean and crisp image. Creating all the characters, collectibles,

cards and box art - whilst keeping them diverse and engaging - was a big task. If you are into sci-ﬁ and dystopian visions of the world, this game’s cyberpunk setting should really get you hooked in. Playing this type of game was a completely new experience for me, and it took me a while to get used to the language. It requires a focus and discipline to play a solo game that you might not be familiar with if you usually play with others. If you cheat, you're only cheating yourself! The game is set in what is “oﬃcially” a crime free world, with you playing a detective trying to maintain the illusion of order, to maintain the appeal of the city to the public and newcomers. Like all the classic cop movies, he's only a few crimes from retirement and the last cases are always the worst! Everything about this game appealed to me (especially in lockdown), and in fact it seems to have a big following in the boardgaming community. Everybody who I have shown this game to has been truly stunned when they hear it’s Amigamade. Kickstarted in 2019, the game sold out and demand was high for versions online. James decided to reprint the game and also released an expansion to the Citivas Universe - The Mysteries of Profundum, a PC text-based adventure in January of 2021. The game packaging is very high quality, and full of goodies. Adorned with pixel art, it looks like something a modern indie game studio would produce, rather than just one man! It's designed for a 15+ audience with a price tag of £69.99 (which may seem hefty, but in the modern board game world and with the

quality of the contents, it's pretty reasonable). It should take 60 to 80 mins to play and has high replay value with each experience being different. The gaming components included are: • Immersive playalong soundtrack based on 8-bit chip music, cyberpunk-inspired industrial/vaporwave tunes with professional voiceovers • Double-sided fold-out paper game mat • Full colour instructions booklet • Civitas Nihilum map • 60 playing chips • 18x translucent dice, 2x 10-sided dice • Witness, location and upgrade cards The game allows you to play at different levels, and the randomness gives it a great replayability factor, once you have got your head around the gameplay. I found the video guides on YouTube really helped, but still scored quite low simply because I am not a hardcore board gamer. The soundtrack helped massively to create the atmosphere and was a genius move - it really helped me focus when playing and get wrapped up in the title. Time will fly without you knowing it. Playing the game has the exact same feeling as reading a great book, but with added interaction and immersion in the Civitas world. I have not cracked open the The Mysteries of Profundum expansion, but by all accounts, it is a fantastic addition to the Civitas Universe. Making a board game in its own right using Amiga is a fantastic and original idea. Making that board game one that gamers really love and take to heart is a miracle, and James should be very proud of this title. I think a multiplayer board game made on Amiga should be his next move. If you are interested in getting both games, you can declare interest and get added to the waiting list on the game’s website: www.thecivitasuniverse.com/contact/

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April 2021

NITY COMMU LE ARTIC ION SS SUBMI

Audio Oddities - vol. 1 by Paulee Alex Bow

- Let's not rest on our musical laurels

As a musician - heck, even as a human being - my tastes have always verged the quirky, that which is hidden from plain sight. When I bought an A500+ back in 2016, after years away from Amiga, I initially thought that I could use it for a little MIDI sequencing, or to add some crunchy percussion samples to my music. Little did I know that my research would take me down many bizarre and exciting musical alleyways... Software Synths I would imagine that most electronic musicians are familiar with the term "softsynth", but for the uninitiated, softsynths are computer programs that create synthetic tones and utilise no special hardware, just a basic sound card. Some are designed to create purely digital sounds using long-established computer music paradigms, like FM or additive synthesis, yet others seek to emulate real-world synthesizers, like the Moog Minimoog or Roland Jupiter 8. Softsynths have gotten pretty impressive sounding over the years. But did you know that the Amiga was doing this in 1987? What's more - it sounds really good, and unique too! In addition to standard synthesizer building blocks like an amplifier (to shape the volume of a sound - its rise and fall) and a low-pass filter (which can muffle or brighten a sound over time), Aegis Sonix 2.0 features a unique oscillator section. Instead of being limited to standard waveforms like saw, square and triangle, you can simply take the mouse pointer and draw in whatever waveform you'd like! The resolution is 128 points, or harmonics; plenty to explore. This drawing feature is also available on Sonix's LFO (low frequency oscillator), which can itself modulate a variety of other building blocks. Some seriously wild sounds can be made if you attack all of the settings at once! However, if you back off the LFO a little and engage another feature - Sonix's mild and swirling phase distortion - you

will get some beautiful and atmospheric pad sounds. Sonix can be controlled via a MIDI keyboard with the use of a suitable interface. The next softsynth, sadly, isn't MIDI compatible and it isn't really "just" a synth. Sonic Arranger includes a trackerlike pattern sequencer, but features an instrument editor with a wealth of achingly beautiful tones.

Aegis Sonix, good all-round MIDI softsynth.

Lowengard "HARM", unhinged!

Sonic Arranger, an achingly beautiful softsynth.

The secret sauce, Paula's channel modulation!

It all starts with a drawable waveform (in this case, 32 points) plus editing controls that allow you to add some vibrato (pitch wobble) or tremolo (volume wobble) to sounds for some variety. Some very interesting eﬀects are included: Free Negator, Alien Voice, Metamorph, Wave Alias and FM Drum to name a few. Now turn up the portamento control a little (a slide from note to note... think

April 2021

theremin) and play a few slow notes on the Amiga's keyboard. A wonderful stereo sound will burst forth. We are just scratching the surface of Amiga softsynths here, and there’s more to see, but for now - let’s leave this world behind us. Real-time Effects With a sampler cartridge like A.M.A.S., DSS8+ or Technosound Turbo, you can take advantage of another phenomenon - real-time effects on the Amiga. Instead of applying an effect to a sample, the user can play or sing into the Amiga and the program will instantly add an effect to your sound and spit it back out of the audio ports. Why would anyone want to do this? Well, in stark contrast with "ye olde days" of hobbyist recording - where everything was grungy, noisy and lo-fi; where we had to strive (or spend!) to achieve decent clarity - today's studio equipment and digital audio workstations can sound a little too perfect, a little clean and sterile. TREG (The Realtime Effects Generator) is a simple program that offers a choice of effects - chorus, distortion, echo, pitch shifting and reverb. The effects are all a little noisy and naïve sounding, but that could be just the sprinkling of magic a song needs!TREG gets a little hairy, but if you truly want to disturb your listeners, try HARM by Lowengard, a combination of glitchy pitch shifting and trippy visuals. Dalek Attack! One astounding discovery was that of Paula's secret channel modulation. Each channel can amplitude modulate (AM) or frequency modulate (FM) its neighbour. Although the FM feature is somewhat unstable, my experiments with AM have been fruitful. Similar to the ring modulation used to create Dalek voices, using AM on two channels playing soft pad sounds results in a seriously metallic dystopian vibe, perfect for soundtrack work. Making it work wasn't easy though! Only one person has ever used it in an Amiga demo (Vesa Halttunen, in the demo Poing (Amiga 30 Years), check it out!) and only one Kickstart 1.2dependent tracker supports the feature. Lucky for me, some kind souls at English Amiga Board taught me a little assembly language and I created an executable that turns AM or FM on. It’s a little buggy, but it makes me feel like a mad scientist! Isn’t that what electronic music is really all about? Stay tuned for more Audio Oddities!

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We all love the Amiga's musicality. It was one of the machine's unique selling points back in 1985, and even today, swarms of people buy original hardware to experience its aural delights. Whether it's sampling sounds at a gloriously lo-ﬁ 8-bit 28kHz (or lower!), sequencing MIDI sound modules via Bars & Pipes, stringing together loops in OctaMED or even just 'dying on purpose' in 'Beast II... we all think that we know the Amiga sound pretty well. But do we?

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April 2021

What?! Amiga Pie? - Simon Butler discovered DPaint whilst sat shivering above a carpet shop..?

While rummaging through the dusty halls of my aging brain in order to come up with something for this article, I discovered something rather odd. I had tentatively decided to write something related to my days with Deluxe Paint, and I knew in my heart of hearts that I came to this sterling piece of software quite a while after entering the strange world of game development. However, upon checking my first commercial product against the release of DPaint, I was astounded, to say the least, to see that our pixelated paths crossed in 1987. Like I say, memory is a trickster. I don’t remember my first encounter with 16-bit pixels, or how I felt, but I would imagine there was a mixture of trepidation and excitement. How could you not feel somewhat nervous standing on the high board, looking down at the seemingly endless depths of a whole new world of colour? I do know, with a reasonable amount of certainty, that my first project for the Amiga would have been Army Moves, which in itself was a peculiar project. I was once again freelance, and while I don’t know who contacted who, I remember working with Mr Mark Dawson/Wilding, yet another member of the Liverpool development scene, which was so vibrant at the time. I also remember quite vividly, that for reasons probably explained at the time - but now irrelevant and discarded - we were working in the cold and dusty storeroom above a carpet shop. Not the strangest place I have ever worked, but it’s a contender.

DPaint II shipped with a second ﬂoppy disk full of sample artwork.

So there we were, shivering but beavering away, with me trying to get my head around this magnificent new beast that was Deluxe Paint. I can’t remember why we had so many limitations on what finally made it onto the screen, but I have recently viewed my appalling attempts, and can only apologise for such woeful pixels. The gameplay was not within my bailiwick, so I can walk away guiltless in that regard. Now I would never go as far as to say I am a total technophobe; I can just about get my head around the vagaries of the world of mobile phones. But when it came to learning new software, my preferred mode would be to have someone infinitely wiser than I - which meant just about everyone and their cat - sit me down and demonstrate what button does what. Sadly, at that juncture there was no one to hand. I wasn’t being paid to sit and read manuals, and the clock, as was normal in those days, was ticking at a phenomenal rate. So one had to press keys and click frantically with one’s mouse and hope for the best. This is not some long-winded attempt to excuse my risible pixels at that point in my career, but merely an explanation of the events as best as I can recall. With Army Moves done and dusted, I almost certainly moved on to other projects which would, in the fullness of time, lead me back to the hallowed halls of Ocean for my second and most eventful term. In the process of putting this rambling missive together, I have watched more than a few videos demonstrating the talents of others infinitely more creative than me, as they show off their skills with Deluxe Paint. In doing so, a strange hunger has taken hold of me, and for some inexplicable reason, I feel oddly drawn back to DPaint. I find myself attempting to get all my ducks in a row, in order to free up some time to try my hand at this amazing instrument of creativity again. Now whether I go totally old-school and acquire an Amiga in order to do so is yet to be decided, but the more I see of this fascinating piece of software, the more it haunts me. I am certain our paths will once again cross, and fairly soon at that. I know full well that the pixelated tapestry of my career would almost certainly have been infinitely shorter had we never met, and I look forward to revisiting an old and very special friend.

Simon Butler

Working on Army Moves was the ﬁrst time Simon used Dpaint.

April 2021

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REGULARS

Memory is an inconstant rascal. Sometimes, you can remember conversations from 30 years ago word for word, and other times you struggle to recall what you had for breakfast.

Amiga Forever 9 Plus

TESTBENCH

• Prices from £7.25 - £36.25 (depending on edition) • Available from www.amigaforever.com - How does it fare? AA James takes a look... • Publisher: Cloanto The majority of our readers will already be set up with their chosen solution for enjoying all the delights the Amiga has to offer. But maybe you are a born-again Amigan after being away from the platform for a long time? Maybe after waiting for the latest 20GB patch for CoD to download, only to find out that once again - it adds nothing more than a load of £12 dress-up costumes for your pretend soldier, you thought “Sod this, I’m going back to my Amiga!”. You have some options. You might be able to go up into the loft and retrieve your childhood treasure or, if you’re feeling flush, you could check eBay and get yourself a nicely refurbished machine. In addition to a real hardware solution, or as a much cheaper alternative, you might be looking for a very quick and simple way to get emulation up and running on your PC without too much fiddling about. If the latter is the case, then Amiga Forever is potentially for you. Many of our readers will be aware of AF it has been around since 1997 after all! I must admit I had never used it before, having mostly used a combination of real hardware and WinUAE directly. I got myself a copy of Amiga Forever 9 Plus, available as a download from the Amiga Forever website, to check out how much easier (if at all) it is than just setting up WinUAE manually. The most obvious area where AF simplifies matters for a new user is the fact you don’t have to dump the Kickstart ROM from your original Amiga; you don’t have to find your Workbench 1.3 disks (or hunt them down on the web). All that comes as part of the AF package. The Plus edition includes an even larger selection of operating systems and ROMs too. So first impressions are good as an out-of-the-box solution, having been so used to WinUAE in the past. It’s worth noting that while AF is a complete package, it’s still WinUAE doing all the hard work in the background. All the configuration and heartache of setup

The user is guided nicely through setup.

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Initial graphical glitches prior to adjustment.

is done for you however - no wasted hours watching YouTube videos! It took a very small amount of adjusting, but I was up and running, navigating my way around in no time. The interface organises things well and keeps it simple (whilst allowing you to get more technical and mess with settings if you want). I had also read on the website that AF didn't support .ZIP files, which would have been a pain, but I was glad to find that when I tried to use one anyway from the “Play file…” menu selection, it worked fine for me! So far, so good. I would however, not recommend running on the default settings. On my PC at least, it benefited greatly with a bit of fiddling in the menus. By default, the standard full screen mode stretches out the image, which is not ideal, but it's simple enough to change under emulation options and have it correctly scale and preserve the aspect ratio. There are additional options for scan lines and even a nice CRT phosphor option which looks pretty good. Far more of a problem than the screen settings however - on “Standard” compatibility mode, many games ran at an inconsistent rate and with graphical glitches. Fortunately, setting it to “Best (slowest)” fixed these issues on the selection of games I tested, so that comes with my recommendation. Another slight mark against the package was that my PS4 controller didn’t work with it at all. Plugging in an Xbox One controller proved immediately more successful, but that was still an irritation. My last annoyance with the default settings is that to bring up the AF menu in game, you need to hold ESC for a second. That’s fine, but that key is often used by games as the “immediately quit the game” button, so be sure to not release the key until the menu is actually on screen or you may see GAME OVER instead!

April 2021

The luscious CRT Phosphor ﬁlter.

The games listed in AF are all in the proprietary, compressed RP9 file format. When you load a new game from a .ZIP or .ADF file, it automatically creates an RP9 file for you to store the games settings and also (if you chose to add them) screenshots, your personal rating and other bits of metadata. On paper, I wasn’t a fan of this idea, but actually it works nicely and allows you to do some useful things like having all the additional disks for the game loaded into the different virtual floppy drives and specific per game settings ready to go for the next time you launch them. You can also use the built-in RP9 tool box to bulk import your .ADF, .HDF (but not .ZIP sadly) files into the interface. Amiga Forever is an all-in-one, easy-touse solution for emulating any number of Amiga computers and operating systems, although it does need some tweaking to get the best results out-of-the-box. If you’ve already got a nice UAE setup that you’re happy with, it’s not going to give you much extra, but for anyone looking for a quick way to get up and running, or for anyone not confident to get into the nitty gritty, it is a highly recommended, reasonably priced package worth checking out.

THE GOOD Comes packaged with everything you need to get up and running. The RP9 ﬁle system works well for storing individual game settings and metadata. Very easy to use.

THE BAD Some default settings need changing to get a good experience. It's not expensive but it's not a free solution like straight UAE. The new "Arcade View" mode in version 9 needs work...

VERDICT

80%

Demoscene - Matt Wilsher (of Retro Asylum podcast) celebrates the long history of demo evolution. Demos pride themselves not only on technical ability, but also aesthetics. There is only so far a coder can go with graphical eﬀects and generated sounds - talented artists and musicians are needed, just like every good games development team.

I’ve had you away doing homework in the past, and one of those demos was Hardwired by Cronics & The Silents. While it may not be the very first demo to have a storyboarded design paradigm (complaints of my hazy 90s memory on a postcard…!), it certainly was one of the first to do it properly, and with such polish that it’s gone down in the history books. For good reason too - it’s such a sublime piece of demo prowess that it stood as a shining light for those to follow, for groups to compete with and ultimately push the demoscene on to greater heights. Suddenly it was no longer just about a good effect, a great piece of pixel art and a tune. Now these elements needed to come together cohesively into - effectively - a piece of art. An early form of multimedia presentation. For me this was the sweet spot of demos. High production values, beautiful art, stunning music timed to the effects and coded with skill. It’s what made receiving jiffy bags through the letterbox so damn exciting! What would this week’s best demos be? Had I got anything through with art from my favourite graphics artist - which was Facet for a long time - and

REGULARS

Having ﬂirted with the musical side myself during the 90s demoscene - along with the aforementioned swapping - the evolution of how music was used in demos is clear to see. This is also completely true of graphics in demos as well. Once upon a time, a demo (or the earlier incarnation, an “intro”) was a far simpler piece of coding, with some functional graphics and a tune slapped over the top. That may be a little harsh, but the early days were much more simplistic aesthetically as well as technically. As the scene began to mature and advance from intros, more fully featured demos began to be developed and the roles of artists and musicians increased. Demands were placed on them for a particular transitional art piece, for music to ﬂow in time with the graphics or vice versa. Then the coder would stitch it together to make the masterpiece. Once again, I’m simplifying the nature of demo development here, but it’s clear to see how aesthetics play a huge role in the feel of a demo.

Demos have moved from simple eﬀects, through to digitised images and 3D rendered animations.

what music was I about to get goosebumps to? More importantly, what new Protracker module could I rip, get the samples for and then learn the techniques of my heroes from, in this weird underground subculture! No shame here, it’s what we all did. Learn from the best. The Amiga was already well known for its still-screen graphics capabilities, which really allowed great pixel artists to go wild and use all their talent to create masterpieces. As I’ve been alluding to all the way through this series of articles, to be in a top demo group you had to be very good at your chosen art form. What we’d seen in games up to this point graphically was being surpassed by demoscene artists. Freed of the restrictions imposed in game development, mainly file size limits, artists could go to town. However on top of that, there was an extra layer of talent honed for the explicit purpose of demo production. It’s a completely different skillset. Of course, this was the same (if not more so) for musicians, especially around file size. In game development, a musician would be lucky to get 40KB for a title tune. In demos, anything between 200KB to 400KB could easily be given up for music. This allowed musicians to create richer, deeper tunes, but also they were not being tied down to a genre of game, and this meant they could indulge much more. The typical Amiga demo soundtrack changed from using the early ST-xx sample disks to the musician sampling directly from synthesisers or sample CDs - which were becoming popular in the music production world in the early 90s - because they had so much disk space to work with. Now there’s an argument to say that games developers, with the limits imposed upon them, were more talented as they used less resources. That’s very

April March2021 2021

valid, but with demos, we’re also talking about some of the most talented individuals to grace the platform. It's no surprise that Martyn Brown cherry-picked demosceners for the creation of Team 17. An article for a future feature might look at demosceners that often struggled to create classic games in terms of gameplay, often form leading over function. Not always the case, of course, and the games development world is still full of ex-demosceners proving that their talent was, and still is, exceptional. Different demo groups had different ways of executing an aesthetic look and feel in a demo. From the glossy serious style of the likes of The Silents or The Black Lotus, to the minimalistic, trendy and forward-thinking design of a Lemon demo such as Groovy, with so many stylistic shades in-between. What I was always proud of (and tried to bore my mates with details about) was dancing in a rave in the early and mid 90s, and seeing an Amiga demo playing out on the TV screens! This was before Sony got in there with the PlayStation, and started infiltrating raves with PlayStation tents to baffle the average pie-eyed raver with Wipeout and its on-trend design ethic from The Designers Republic - which in no small way could have been a nod to those earlier demos. So bringing this penultimate article to a close, it’s only fair that I send you away with a huge list of demos that chart the progression of the humble gfx artist and musician along with design evolution. Here goes…. Kefrens’ Megademo series Copper Master - Angels Megademo - The Silents 3D Demo 1 & 2 - Anarchy The Desert Dream - Kefrens Nexus 7 - Andromeda Love - Fairlight & Virtual Dreams Crazy Sexy Cool - Essence Fad - Sonik Clique Eon - The Black Lotus

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NEXT MONTH

PRESENTS

'UFO & X-COM' The development & stories behind a critically acclaimed game series Also your chance to win an original UFO box artwork print by artist Danny Flynn!

Issue 5 - On sale late April 2021 • Super Cars 2 • Slayers of High Toro • Gold Standard: Alien Breed 3D • OctaMED with Teijo Kinnunen • Icaros Desktop with Paolo Besser • Amiga magazine coverdisks special • Across The Pond • Creative Revolution part 2 • Terrible Fire accelerators • South West Amiga Group • As well as our regular columns including gaming articles, CD32 Corner, Demoscene, Simon Butler, Back In The Day '89, Amiga News, Keyboard Warriors & Six of the Best!

PLUS ! 54

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April 2021

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April 2021