Amiga Appreciation Thread

[matt0]

3 hours ago, moora said:

Have you tried the keyboard ribbon cable? The connection to the mother board can get worn out and you end up with some keys not working. It's a simple fix, you just cut the ribbon a little bit!

 

First thing I did before swapping the membrane. Not tried it on the new membrane though so I'll give it a try. It's the same keys not working with each one though which isn't a good sign.

[NEG]

I've by no means any interest in the Amiga but this dropped in my feed, 50+ mins long, his SEGA ones were great, figure you'll appreciate:

 

 

[Lorfarius]

Merry blooming christmas

[gone fishin]

Been playing The Chaos Engine on the CD32. First, get the full CD version and don't use the compilation disc ones. They're either the Amiga 500 floppy version or have the wrong CD Audio.

 

Its definitely the best version of the game, although the extra colours mean it might lose some of its distinctive graphical identity from the Bitmap Brothers (i.e. Lots of grey!) The game itself seems a little bit slower and less hectic than most Gauntlet style games. You can easily outrun bullets and not very many enemies appear on screen. But it's still very challenging and overall good fun. Even better in two player.

 

Definitely one of the better games on the CD32 and it's surprisingly affordable. There's also a nice animated intro featuring a young Jim Rosenthal voiceover.

 

 

 

[gone fishin]

Another quick CD32 "review", this time it's Shadow Fighter by Gremlin Graphics.

 

I actually own this one and I thought it was a brilliant game back in the 90s. At first glance, it looks like your typical early 90s one-on-one fighter - Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat and graphically looks like it's influenced by the SNK fighters. But playing it again, at first you think "this is nowhere near as good as Street Fighter II - in fact, this is a load of crap" and a lot of that comes down to the one button setup. Yes, even though the game is using a CD32 controller, it only uses one button and that's for attack. No other button is used! 

 

But playing it a bit more you realise that Shadow Fighter isn't your typical early 90s one-on-one fighter, in fact it's an update to your typical 80s one-on-one fighter. Think Way of the Exploding Fist, Barbarian, Kung Fu, International Karate. All those games you loved that required one button and usually required a more skilled approach at fighting. Less of the mashing buttons, more of the timed killer roundhouse. Most of those games didn't use energy bars but required you to get hits which gave you a half point or a full point. 2 points usually won the round.

 

That's why Shadow Fighter is deceiving. It looks like a 90s one-on-one fighter. It's got energy bars and timer at the top. It's got special moves. It's got graphical cliches like someone wearing a baseball cap back to front. But it plays like someone updated Way of The Exploding Fist.

 

Why choose the CD32 version? It doesn't use any of the extra controller buttons, but it does have really nice CD audio. The floppy version came on four disks, so there's none of that annoying disk swapping in the CD32 version. And it loads up pretty fast too.

 

So to summarise, I've not played Shadow Fighter in over 15 years but once I got past the fact it's not the Amiga version of Street Fighter II, it's a really enjoyable game and the CD32 version has some nice enhancements over the standard Amiga version. Download it and enjoy!

 

 

 

[whizzo]

Was Swos ever released on cd32? Is it easy enough to get a version running on one?

[Lorfarius]

Nope and there isn't enough to space to save games. You can play it via a compilation CD.

[gone fishin]

Yeah, as Lorfarius says there is a Sensible Soccer anthology compilation which includes every version of Sensible Soccer and SWOS.

 

Plus Sensible Soccer International Edition received an official CD32 release, which you can save.

 

And there's a great Football Fever compilation with Wembley International Soccer (the pseudo sequel to Emlyn Hughes International Soccer), Graftgold's Empire Soccer 94 and a load of others including Football Glory. A game I'd never heard of, but it's written by Cryo Team and is very, very similar to Sensible Soccer but with Kick Off type control mixed in.

 

 

[gone fishin]

I've been plowing through CD-Rs, in a good way mind you - I've only had a couple of duff burns!

 

The only thing I'd say about the compilation CDs is that some of the games originally used CD Audio and if they're on a compilation with other games also needing CD Audio, then it's likely that the Audio will be wrong. For example, Chaos Engine originally uses CD Audio for the intro and menu music - however it uses bird song for during the levels (strange, but effective). On the compilation CD you start getting Banshee's music during the level, which is a bit strange.

 

The larger compilations are the biggest offenders, for example several games on the Team 17 compilation use CD Audio and as a result they all end up with Alien Breed 3D's CD Audio. Makes it a bit strange playing Arcade Pool and all of a sudden this atmospheric music starts playing! And Super Stardust is just wrong without it's 90 techno music playing!

 

Annoyingly, not all games use CD Audio - even when from the same publisher - so something like The Speris Legacy on the Team 17 collection is fine as it doesn't use any CD Audio. 

 

So what should you burn? The guy who makes the compilations has put together this handy list of what extras game with each game - including CD Audio. Check that and if it's got CD audio there's a chance that the game won't have the right audio.

 

http://theamigacd32.blogspot.co.uk

 

Also been playing the Run n Gun collection and I surprisingly I never played Lethal Weapon until now. And it's pretty good - although it's bloody hard. It's really got an air of Ocean's 8 bit games about it - in a good way.

 

 

[gone fishin]

So another quick "review" from me.. this time it's Benefactor from Psygnosis. A game that I never played until now!

 

This is an interesting one, first thing is that it's written by Digital Illusions who were famous in the Amiga days for the brilliant Pinball Fantasies and Pinball Illusions games. These days, they're known as DICE and are behind the Battlefront games, so they're still going strong.

 

Benefactor was originally released in 1994 and I remember at the time it had quite a lot of press preview coverage, mainly down to it being Digital Illusion's first game outside of Pinball. It's quite hard to describe the gameplay and is very much of the time. Essentially it's a single screen platformer and you could almost describe it as a mix of Prince of Persia (or maybe even Flashback) and Lemmings. There is a random story behind it (something to do with rainbows or something) and you're playing Ben E. Factor with the job of rescuing locked up aliens in each level. Each level has a number of puzzles you need to solve in order to free the aliens - getting keys, using switches, avoiding baddies etc. Like I said, it's very much of its time and Benefactor is the sort of game that you don't really see these days which makes it more fun when playing it as it's not really been superseded by better games of a similar style (like you could say with general platformers).

 

Gameplay wise it can be very frustrating. Although not quite pixel perfect, jumps and actions need to be precise. The puzzles can also be frustrating and you can often make the completely wrong decision and it messes up the level completely. In turn, that frustration can make it quite addictive to play. You might want to throw down your CD32 controller in anger, but you will still go back for "one more go" (and you're not likely to throw down your controller, seeing as how expensive they are these days!).

 

Graphics are quite underwhelming - the sprites are small (which is part of the charm) but it doesn't feel like it's pushing the CD32 at all. in fact, I don't know if there's any extra graphics over the standard A500 version (at least the Chaos Engine and Speedball 2 did add more colours). Thankfully it's full screen - a common problem of Amiga games was them using smaller screen space (I'm not sure why that was). But this does use the full screen which is nice - especially as the sprites are very small. 

 

Music is an interesting one. It's got full CD Audio which is great - however as with most CD32 games that use CD Audio, the music is now a lot more dated than the original Amiga version. But then that seems to be a common thing where most CD32 audio sounds like early 90s techno or dance music (Bubba n Stix is a particularly bad offender!) However, the music itself is quite catchy and jaunty, the main theme will be going in your head after you turn it off.

 

There's no save feature, however there is a password system to allow you to continue after you've switched your CD32 off.

 

If you're a fan of Prince of Persia/Flashback style platformers or if you're a sucker for games that require a bit of thinking out of the box (with absolutely zero hints) then I'd put Benefactor on the "must have" CD32 games list. I guess that's why it got quite mixed reviews at the time - either you'll love it or hate it. It's also available on the Psygnosis compilation but it doesn't have the CD Audio, so I'd recommend actually downloading the ISO and burning that. So for the cost of 20p, give it a try!

 

(skip to about the 4 minute mark on this video, as it's got the random intro crawl which takes up 3+ minutes!)

 

 

 

[gone fishin]

I'm having a blast going through CD32 games - both the official releases and the compilations, although sometimes the compilations can be a bit overwhelming (like the Psygnosis one!)

 

So another review from me. This time it's Litil Divil from Gremlin Graphics, released in 1993.

 

Like Benefactor, I'd never played this until now. However, unlike Benefactor, Litil Divil was a game I read a huge amount about at the original time of release, but somehow couldn't get a copy of it. And so far Litil Divil has been the most disappointing game I've played on the CD32. I had high hopes... but I guess Amiga Power were right when they reviewed it at 22% (all the other magazines raved about it, CD32 Gamer gave it 90+%).

 

Time hasn't been kind to Litil Divil. You can see what they were trying to do in really exploiting the storage capacity of the CD format (at the time they said it would take the equivalent of 30 floppy disks). It's a bit hard to describe, the best I can think of is it's a bit like Software Project's 8-bit versions of Dragon's Lair and Escape From Singe's Castle or maybe like the TV program Knightmare. 

 

Basically, you control the said Divil in a maze and enter a number of rooms. Each room is essentially it's own minigame, where you control Divil and try to accomplish something (that's what made me think of Knightmare). 

 

The problem is, you have absolutely no idea what you're supposed to be doing. The first room you enter contains a giant spider, spouting out dozens of tiny spiders that attack you. You can then stamp on them or eat them - but you're not told what you're supposed to do. Get bitten too many times and you die. Another room contains stepping stones that you have to time the jumps onto - except again you have no idea what you're doing. Get to the last stone and there's no obvious next steps. Oh, and the controls are terrible - really slow response.

 

Graphics look pretty good, but they haven't aged very well. A lot of frames have been dropped making the animation quite jerky, although I'm sure at the time it did look amazing.

 

So in summary, a real disappointment. I'm sure it would have been more fun if you were playing it 20 years ago, but now there's no real enjoyment to be had. I'll probably go back to it at some point and give it another go (after reading a few guides and walkthroughs), but it's quite hard to recommend - even at the cost of a blank disc!

 

(I believe you can still get this on steam and good old games)

 

 

Might have a bit more of a go on Kid Chaos next, which is surprisingly better than people make out!

[gone fishin]

I thought I should make this thread a little bit more like the Jaguar one by sticking what looks like an absolute stinker in here. 

 

I say what looks like, because I haven't actually burned this off to try it out.... 

 

The Town with No Name for the CDTV (which is compatible with the CD32).

 

 

I know this was released at a time when the medium of CDs and extra storage was new, but Jesus Christ this looks fucking awful. And hilarious. Plumbers Don't Wear Ties looks significantly better than this turd (which looks like it was drawn with Deluxe Paint 2).

 

Some hilarious moments

 

The "Oirish" card dealer at 7 mins (think it might be played by Michael Fassbender)

 

Bobcat Goldthwaite reprises Zed from Police Academy 2 at 11mins 30secs

 

22 mins for complete comic mistiming that's so bad it's funny and then bizarrely Mick Jagger turns up in the Wild West.

 

I'm surprised that this hasn't received more coverage seeing as how terrible it is, maybe it's testament to how niche the CDTV was. Plumbers Don't Wear Ties seems to get a lot more coverage and it doesn't look half as bad as this!

 

Was there a Jaguar CD version of this?

 

 

[gone fishin]

Ok, let's try and elevate this thread above the Jaguar one by having something decent...

 

This time let's look at Impossible Mission 2025: The Special Edition by Microprose released in 1994.

 

 

i didn't know what to expect going into this. At the time IM 2025 got above average reviews, however it's the second sequel to the C64 classic Impossible Mission, released 10 years previously (one of my all time favourite games).

 

You'll be glad to hear that time has been (mostly) really kind to this and again it's the kind of platformer that you don't really see much of these days. Gameplay is slightly different to the original, in that it's been updated making it feel more fresh than just another update/rehash (Impossibile Mission 2 was pretty bland, in that it was just basically a bigger version of the first game with more garish colours. 

 

In in the original you had a number of rooms connected via a series of lifts and each single screen room contained a number of objects that had to be scanned in order to find all the pieces of a code. The room also contained a number of robots which had to be avoided by jumping over (there were no guns) or sending to sleep using a doze object. 

 

IM 2025 updates this structure, but instead it consists of "levels" - which is essentially a giant, multiple-scrolling room. The goal is to scan objects and collect 8 parts of a circuit that unlocks the main lift, taking you up to the next level (rinse and repeat). It's almost like Miner 2049er or Manic Miner mixed with Impossible Mission. Now gameplay can be very, very frustrating with what feels like many random ways of you being killed. However, the game is pretty addictive and you'll keep on coming back for more. This is a tough game though, even on easy I'm struggling but the addictive qualities do keep on bringing you back.

 

Graphics are good, although it does suffer from the "washed out industrial look" of many Amiga games of the early 90s (you could say a Bitmap Brothers style), but there's nice parallax scrolling making it easier to pick out foreground objects (which can be tough as the bombs dropped by some of the robots are pretty small). There's CGI sections throughout the game, although they are pretty laughable now, but at the time they would have seemed cutting edge!

 

IM 2025 uses CD audio, which is a nice touch (it does have speech but it's nowhere near as memorable as the original!) and also has a password save system meaning you don't have to start from the beginning.

 

it also comes with the original Impossible Mission as a bonus, which would have been a great bonus back then but you can easily play the C64 through emulation these days. Still, it's nice to get as a freebie!

 

If you like Impossible Mission or more challenging single screen platformers, then I'd definitely recommend this. But be prepared to swear. A lot.

 

I also believe that this was never released on any other console, making it a CD32 exclusive for consoles, plus the added CD audio and fast loading times in my opinion would make it better over the standard Amiga versions.

[gone fishin]

Head up - Sensible World of Soccer 16/17 has been released on the CD32... 

 

http://unofficial-cd32-ports.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/swos-16-17-cd32sx32.html

 

Unfortunately you still can't save, but it's good fun playing SWOS with updated teams.

 

And Heart of The Alien has been converted over and bundled with Another World/Out of This World

 

http://unofficial-cd32-ports.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/heart-of-alien-cd32sx32.html

[gone fishin]

Tried having a bit of a SWOS tournament when my nephews were over (they're 11 and 8). Unfortunately it's pretty buggy and froze a couple of times.

 

The other problem is that every button, except for red, does additional features like instant replay, match stats etc. Try telling kids that have been brought up on FIFA that there is literally one button that does everything. No, they still press the shoulder button expecting to sprint (or something) and it just does a replay instead!

 

I'll try the original CD32 version which only supports one button on the pad as some of the bugs seem to be from pressing an additional button (e.g. Match stats) and you can't escape it.

 

Still, it's fun setting up a DIY league with the latest teams for Real Madrid, Man Utd, Aberdeen and Dundee Utd! ;-)

[super_quincy]

Finally got round to getting a Gotek, very easy to set up. Very pleasantly surprised by it.

 

I used it to capture stuff for my latest video

 

 

Part 2 coming on Sunday 

[super_quincy]

Bloggo takes a look at some MORE Capcom games on the Commodore Amiga and compares them to the Arcade versions
 Part 2 of 2 
Arcade games are emulated and Amiga games captured from an A500

https://youtu.be/vvJjxYoeBPc

 

 

[gone fishin]

So I downloaded the original CD32 version of Sensible World of Soccer 16/17 and it's much more stable.

 

It only supports one button (so you can't do match stats etc) but importantly it doesn't crash! You still can't save a campaign but it's great fun for having a little tournament.

[roberthazelby]

On 15/02/2017 at 21:17, super_quincy said:

Finally got round to getting a Gotek, very easy to set up. Very pleasantly surprised by it.

 

I used it to capture stuff for my latest video

1

 

Excellent stuff. I always remember being so disappointed with US Gold's arcade conversions. My mates and I knew never to buy these on the Amiga as they were guaranteed to be complete crap. Your video has brought all those memories flooding back.

 

I think Amiga Power were spot-on in giving US Gold's arcade output such low review scores. They didn't deserve anything better.

[super_quincy]

I've been trawling .adf sites for games recently, however I'm finding a lot of files that don't appear to work on my gotek. I've rooted out AGA versions  as I've got a 1mb A500 but still finding quite a few that don't want to work. Are these bad dumps or is it a compatibly issue with gotek?

[roberthazelby]

A few more thoughts on the games covered in part one...

I was really impressed with how good the graphics were on the Amiga version of Black Tiger. Very close to the arcade original. That frame rate, though. Awful. Why?! There's no reason why it should be that bad.

Talking of frame rates; how on earth did UN Squadron get released in that state? Watching you play it, it looked unplayable. Objects were pretty much teleporting around the screen!

Ghouls n Ghosts is an odd one. The music is some of the finest ever heard on the Amiga. The game on the other hand is pretty poor. I remember loving the Spectrum version. It made great use of the machine. The Amiga version just screams ST port.

I think 1941 (was it that one?) was the absolute worst title in part 1. Absolutely dire! It made me laugh when you mentioned the sea. As soon as you'd loaded the game up I couldn't believe how crap that looked.

I'm really looking forward to getting stuck into part 2.

Great stuff!

[super_quincy]

Thanks for the feedback @roberthazelby , much appreciated!

[roberthazelby]

I've been trawling .adf sites for games recently, however I'm finding a lot of files that don't appear to work on my gotek. I've rooted out AGA versions  as I've got a 1mb A500 but still finding quite a few that don't want to work. Are these bad dumps or is it a compatibly issue with gotek?

What titles? I've got a Gotek hooked up to my A500 and haven't experienced issues.

[super_quincy]

Flood and R-type so far. Guru errors after the title screen on both 

[Lorfarius]

2 hours ago, super_quincy said:

I've been trawling .adf sites for games recently, however I'm finding a lot of files that don't appear to work on my gotek. I've rooted out AGA versions  as I've got a 1mb A500 but still finding quite a few that don't want to work. Are these bad dumps or is it a compatibly issue with gotek?

 

Try Emuparadise I never had a problem with any of their roms.

[super_quincy]

5 hours ago, Lorfarius said:

 

Try Emuparadise I never had a problem with any of their roms.

That's exactly where I'm getting them, maybe my Amiga is on the way out....

[roberthazelby]

All being well I should be picking up a pile of working and non-working Amiga systems tomorrow afternoon.  The owner is giving them away for free.

 

Since the other members and I have re-started the South West Amiga Group we've had a number of donations from people offloading their Amiga kit for free. We promise the donors that we'll get the kit back up and running and in use once again. We also promise to not sell the kit on for profit.

 

I've been told that at least one of the A500s is fully working. That already has a home to go to. I need to test out the rest of the kit. My A500 has stopped displaying an image from the monitor port. I'm hoping to rule out the PSU being at fault by trying the computer out on another known working unit.

 

I'll post photos once I return. 

[Anne Summers]

If you happen across an A600 with HD installed, a floppy emulator and kickstart switcher to start it in 1.3 mode, I would be very interested. 

[Sureshot]

Watched Viva Amiga yesterday, and while I did enjoy the retrospective I didn't enjoy it as much as From Bedrooms to Billions. Too many design intern graphics and hardly any mention of games, despite many of the interviewees mentioning the machine was designed as an entertainment/gaming device. Not enough meat in general for me.

[super_quincy]

So at the weekend I got an A600 to replace the 500 (more compact and everything)

installed the Gotek and this happens on first boot...

Not a massive issue as it disappears upon soft reset, more of an annoyance though as it didn't do this on the A500

 

Also due to the incompatibility issues with the 600 and old 500 games, @roberthazelby sorted me out with a relokick 1.41 adf which does this

 

which might mean that this relokick only works with 1200/4000 machines.

so any other ways that you can get the 600 to boot like an A500 or in 1.3 mode?

 

failing that I might have to go back to the a500