CU Amiga #44 – October 1993

Pretty cool cover this month for Star Trek: 25th Anniversary. Still considered one of the best games from the franchise, provided you like a point and click adventure of course. Tucked away towards the bottom there is also that beautiful artwork with the toucan and flamingo by Jim Sachs. More on that later.

A subject that keeps coming up in this issue is the CD32 console, which is has just hit the shelves. There’s some hype for it, such as an article covering the London Transport Museums use of 109 CD32s to present audio visual and interactive displays; a big part of their modernising of exhibits. Yet there is also plenty of comments along the lines of it being ‘make or break’ for Commodore. I can imagine there has been a lot of speculation in preceding months about their financial woes. We all know how this eventually panned out. And if you really don’t know, well, it was the last product that Commodore ever made. One often cited reason for the failure is the lack of new games, which crops up numerous times here as well.

This issue also has a lot of discussions about 3D graphics. With developers talking about that being one area where the CD32 will need to show off it’s prowess as more and more 3D games are coming to market with increasingly sophisticated graphics. In a brief rundown of the 3D art programs available for Amiga the top three choices were Real 3D v2 (95%), Imagine v2 (86%), and Real 3D v1.4 (85%).

Other exciting news includes the imminent arrival of ‘ultra fast modems’. Popular modem manufacturers Hayes Microcomputer Products announced new high speed data and fax modems with V.Fast Class modulation for 28.8kbit/s data transmission. As CU Amiga puts it, ‘In ordinary language, that means that they are going to make some bloody fast modems!’

Now what would you like to do with that bandwidth?

CU has you covered with a piece on Bulletin Boards (BBS). This is not something I was able to explore myself, so it’s always fascinating to hear stories about people’s experiences. Here’s one such tale on youtube about meeting the owner of a pirate BBS; check the comments to see the owner respond to the vid (spoiler: he got busted).

Before the days of forums as we know them, BBSs were more limited in their scope due to the need for additional phone lines to host concurrent users. You generally needed to apply for access to the board via the System Operator, often by giving details including your phone number. A lot of BBSs would be run on a server at the SysOps home, which could mean a very personal experience. Once validated you could browse their archives, send messages to other users, download and upload files. CU Amiga mentions the sharing of public domain software but it’s not surprising that one of the major markets was piracy.

It’s interesting to note that file sharing back then also implemented a ratio system where for instance, for every five things you download you are expected to upload at least one thing. A system that has continued today in the torrent scene and sharing forums.

I’ve no idea what the boards shown here are. CU visited one called Lightfinger’s Place and I can see some random names like The Darkside, Quantum and Stealth. While some people were only just discovering BBSs in 1993, they were rapidly approaching their peak usage. The World Wide Web standard had been released in 1991 and significant websites were appearing with more regularity. Late 1993 was when the IMDB launched on the web.

Enough with the tech and social, let’s look at some games. Starting with two squad based first person action RPGs.

Space Hulk is based on the Games Workshop’s board game of the same name and can be seen as a follow up to the fun but RNG heavy Space Crusade computer game in 1992. Set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe of space marines and genestealers.

My overriding memory of Space Hulk is walking down a dark corridor and seeing my team of marines be slashed to death, one by one, while I try to work out what direction I’m looking or walking. I gave up and no doubt put on The Settlers or Chaos Engine. But I really should have persevered as this is a very atmospheric and tense game which rewards progression.

It’s a real time tactical shooter with loads of missions, earning XP points for surviving marines. You control five characters at once, moving them individually. With an overwatch function that allows them to automatically defend themselves (albeit with less accuracy than direct control). You also get map screen views for planning movement.

In addition to the ambitious and challenging gameplay, a comment in the manual points to some nifty tricks being used for the graphics. It reads, ‘when it came to the Hulk interiors the only limitations were technical. The idea of ray-tracing the Hulks came up quite early on in the project. Initially, Electronic Arts weren’t too keen on the idea and Nick was far from convinced that it would work. We stuck with it and worked out a system for getting the rendered frames into the game that meant the computers did most of the work. The difference it made was fantastic; a new set of walls could be in the game in 12 hours instead of two weeks!’

Funnily enough my overriding memory of Hired Guns is much like that of Space Hulk. They are similar games after all and I was equally inept and impatient with games in this genre.

In Hired Guns you control a group of four mercenaries in the year 2712. Dropped on a distant planet with a mission to destroy all the psychotic mutated lifeforms that appeared from a terraforming project gone wrong. The world is in real 3D with enemies roaming freely. You can control your mercs individually or as a group and there are multiplayer options.

I’m not familiar enough with this genre to say if these games were landmarks in any way but to my mind they are both attempting to push the genre to it’s full potential. Regardless of how good you are at it, wandering about in Hired Guns is fun. The interface is fairly intuitive with lots of stats and equipment. You can push blocks to reveal secret areas and explore underwater – but will drown if not careful. The campaign is long and detailed too.

It comes from DMA Design, at the time famed for Lemmings and Walker. Who went on to start the Grand Theft Auto franchise and became Rockstar North.

When talking about pixel art creation on the Amiga the name that always comes up is Deluxe Paint, but a strong contender which many consider to be superior appeared in 1993 called Brilliance. Taking us back to that great piece of pixel art by Jim Sachs, made in Brilliance and used for the box art.

Brilliance is a 24-bit image editor able to run in HAM8 mode, upping the palette to 384 colours. Despite being fast, easy to use, and having some advanced animation functions using key frame tweening, it never got the same recognition as Deluxe Paint. Possibly because of it’s later arrival (Brilliance 2 followed in 1994). Maybe more so because of a hefty price tag of £195 – that’s about £400 in todays money. Not as much of an issue now, so one for the enthusiasts to try. You can see it in action here.

On a related note here’s a picture from the CU Amiga readers art gallery. Not quite up to Sachs’ standard but it’s nice to see the different stages of the their work. Lots of patience involved to make these.

In contrast to Hired Guns the next two games come from developers that for whatever reason didn’t go on to make many more. The team members seem to have headed off into other career paths despite making good quality and fun games. They don’t even have big back catalogues. Perhaps a sign that this industry has always been a competitive battle field.

The first is Yo! Joe! A very excitable game. And maybe it should be. I get excited by platformers that give you more than the minimum standard of jump and shoot. Here you can jump, duck, crawl, hang on edges to climb up, slide and swim. You get a mix of melee weapons to use too. The levels are colourful and full of details, plus a decent soundtrack with nice long tunes. It really is strange that the dev team didn’t release more.

The game only went out on Amiga and DOS despite plans for Atari and MegaDrive versions that were never finished. CU Amiga’s 69% review score feels quite stingy and was at the lower end of the range it received from the magazines. Amiga Power giving it 91%, which is more reflective of the fun it can be, even if many find it on the easy side. Nothing wrong with that once in a while though.

The other game is Disposable Hero. A futuristic shmup with a touch of obligatory guts monsters. The most striking part about the game is the gorgeous graphics. Next you’re hit with a pumping soundtrack. Then most importantly it’s smooth and polished gameplay. Instead of the usual floating upgrades systems in Amiga shooters, Disposable Hero has an in-game store that you duck into mid-level. There you can upgrade your ship and mount weapons and shielding based on it’s power capacity.

There are multiple difficulty levels to choose from but you will quickly discover that this is a tough game to beat on the default setting. There may only be 5 levels but they are filled with enemies that take a lot of hits. It should appeal to 16 bit shmup fans and due to being an Amiga exclusive has most likely been overlooked by many. However, it is apparently now available on Antstream.

CU Amiga has given out a wide range of scores in this issue, which is encouraging. Disposable Hero got a respectable 79%. The top rating went to Hired Guns with 91%. On the opposite end, budget release Fist Fighter walked away with an embarrassing 20%.

A few adverts caught my eye for various reasons, so I’ve thrown together a slideshow. The big trend in anime can be seen (referred to at the time as manga). There was an odd pairing of American Gladiators with Batman Returns and the word Baad in big letters between them, that just feels off. Sim Life is an unusual game that I’d like to re-visit one day. Blastar is simply saying ‘buy me’. Pen Pal is giving me the itch to create a fanzine.

Why not finish on this little gem in the classifieds. Your gateway to success with the ladies in the form of Androstenone Pheromone! Yup. The power to attract girls in a bottle. Use it wisely and send your monies now.