The Amiga's Best Genre?
 

Consoles past and present seem to eventually gain a reputation for excellence in a particular genre. What in your opinion was the Amiga's?

Im not talking about quantity, but the area in which it had the highest ratio of classic titles.

I think that one of the Amiga's strengths was its variety of games that represented many different genres.

For example, there were PC type point and click adventures (Monkey Island 1&2), original genres (Populous, Dune 2), cutesy platformers (Rod Land and Qwak), fun racing games (Micro Machines, Nitro, Lotus), deep strategy games (Civilization), hardcore RPGs (Ultima VI), shmups (R-Type 1&2), highly polished shoot-'em-ups (Stardust, Banshee), Wolf 3D & Doom clones (Gloom, Alien Breed 3D), arcade beat-'em-ups (Shadow Fighter), 8-bit beat-'em-ups (IK+), highly complicated simulations (Tornado, Shuttle), puzzle games (Gem'X), footy games (Kick Off 2, Sensi Soccer), virtual world games (Damocles, Hunter)...

In addition to all of this there are loads of multi-genre titles e.g. Turrican, Moonstone etc. and a highly inventive shareware/freeware industry.

Thats it, youre banned from answering in my threads! ;)

Project X, Apidya, Agony and Carcharodon (?) proved that the best genre is shoot-em-up :D :nuts

I was going to say that the Amiga's best Genre had to be Arcade conversions (if conversion is the right word). Most Arcade machines of that time were 680x0 based with planar gfx and migrating to Amiga was an easy step to make.

That said most Amiga classics are Amiga (and ST) only....

Hmm... Not too sure :)

I can't say what's the best genre of the Amiga

but the worst one is the progressive beat'em up

I can't remember one single game in this genre that could be called REAL good.

I think arcade/platform games are the best for amiga....

six-pixel heroes
 

Are games with lots of charming little sprites also a genre? Then the Amiga will be most remembered for these type of games: Lemmings, Walker, Cannon Fodder and Sensi Soccer.

Whenever I see a new game appearing featuring many small characters or sprites I find them very Amiga-esque.

I think Id say platformers are both the most common and have the best examples of quality.

Although a quick looky over at Lemon shows that the most popular (so far) genre being graphic adventures.

Blues Brothers, Turrican, Ruff 'n Tumble, Shadow Dancer, Another World/Flashback, Prince of Persia, Wolfchild, Switchblade 2, etc. were all heaps better than any other conversions, if they even existed.

I would say that platformers and combined platform/shooters were the Amiga's extreme strongpoint, but other genres applied as well. Anything other than 3d I would say, although Thunderhawk and Armour Geddon were both nicely done.

Easy. Platform is the answser.;)

True.. with the exception of GoldenAxe and DoubleDragon2,.. its a pity that there isnt any good original beat´m up like these on Amiga.

2D games. When developers were focusing in developing 2D games, they were doing excellent work. Great platforms, great adventures, great shoot em ups, great sports games... Lots and lots of fun.

Cody has a point, although I would argue that the best Amiga games are in a genre of their own regardless of whether they are a platformer, flight simulator etc. They are 'classic Amiga' games that share that certain Amiga magic.

However during the final stages of the Classic Amiga's life god awful football and cricket sims seemed to be all that was on offer for Amiga gamers. This was born from the trend of releasing sequels and 'updates' that began to kill the creative influences that produce those classic genre defining (or genre busting) titles. To some extent this is effecting today's releases in a similar way, why take the risk of releasing original titles?

The Amiga was too versetile to excell at one genre, but on the other hand, it had a genre all of its own.

An interesting topic :)

The OCS Amiga had great 2D, pseudo 3D and 3D driving games before other systems had half decent ones imo. Of course excluding the inferior AtariST versions.

And as for progressive beat em ups... I had many that I liked, I can't think of another system at the time of the OCS Amiga that had better ones until the megadrive came along, but still Golden Axe is better on the Amiga than it is on the megadrive imo, even with less buttons it managed to have an extra move.

Platformers. Is there any question?
At a point in the Amiga's life you could lift a doormat and a new Amiga platformer would come out. Obviously there were piles of shit but maybe if only because of the sheer volume of platform game production, soem great games have come out that pushed their console rivals into shame.

You will see the greatest technical advancements in Amiga games appear in platform games and nothing else.

It was everybody's focus!

So to me the Amiga was a platformer's machine. Just as the Genesis/Megadrive was a shmups console.

I still wouldn't say "best genre" but more like "what genre do you identify with the Amiga" or some such shit. Still, being the most popular genre developed in it, it makes for the greatest advancemenets to be done, so one could argument it's the "best" genre.

action games, wich are also eye of the beholders and captives for instance: all those games that were so sound and solid more than on pc and are more peculiar than the platform or shot'em up wich you could find on other machines. moreover i'm stretching the sense of action: amiga was an action machine, where the gameplay was solid and immediate

Oh, I had forgotten Golden Axe

it was a good port indeed.

I wouldn't classify Megadrive as a shemups console. Megardive was the favourite console for coin op conversions. It had everything, platforms, beat em ups, shoot em ups etc. And don't forget that Sega had Sonic as a mascot, a character appearing in platform games. If you want to speak about the absolute console for shoot em ups, then this is the Saturn.

I think the amiga is known for the platform/arcade type games of the period because it was built well for that type and there was alot to choose from.

Some of the Games Cody mentioned (Dune 2, Monkey Island, etc) were released on the PC first or had better graphics on the PC (256 color instead of 32 for example).

So while the Amiga had quite a few genres of games, it excelled mostly in platform games and did good or passable in others.