Turrican 30th birthday edition

[Predseda]

oh, thank you

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

What? Why are you trying to refute a wild idea with an even wilder one?

You clearly weren't around BBSes and involved in the pirate scene back then.

[-Acid-]

Originally Posted by Akira

Keep believing that lie, but also do not realize that piracy on consoles was just as bad, and today, it's even worse, due to it being so much EASIER (tech for dumping, distributing and re-using a dumped ROM image is very widely available, cheap and easy to use).

Compared to Amiga users there are many many times the amount of people collecting console cartridges. People will even pay decent money for reproductions.

Piracy might have been just as bad on consoles but then there was more than enough people buying the games to keep developers happy. I didn't see the snes or megadrive markets dwindle away a slow death due to no games being made for them the way the Amiga did. They kept going until they were replaced with the next gen of consoles.

I never knew any Amiga owner who actually bought original games and it's quite clear the people I knew were not the minority. Apparently games like Worms DC only sold 5000 copies... why is any dev going to continue to invest a year or more to make games for those returns? If there was money to be made on the Amiga then companies would have kept making games for it, why wouldn't they? Face facts, noone bought the games they just helped themselves to copies for free.

[roondar]

Originally Posted by -Acid-

I didn't see the snes or megadrive markets dwindle away a slow death due to no games being made for them the way the Amiga did. They kept going until they were replaced with the next gen of consoles.

The Amiga games market only died "a slow death" after 1993, which is eight years after the release of the Amiga. I'm pretty sure SNES games didn't do too well in the market in 1998.

I never knew any Amiga owner who actually bought original games and it's quite clear the people I knew were not the minority.

On the other hand, all the Amiga owners I knew did buy original games (including myself). Sure, they didn't buy all their games original, but they did tend to buy many more games than my console owning friends did (most of whom only had 3 to 4 games and occasionally rented a different game).

Apparently games like Worms DC only sold 5000 copies...

Worms DC was pretty much the last release on an already dead platform. As such, it's hardly a good example.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by Akira

You clearly weren't around BBSes and involved in the pirate scene back then.

I agree, we clearly live in parallel universes In mine, the fact that some people pirated console games is incomparable to the scale it was done on microcomputers and PCs.

That does not mean I agree with -Acid-'s remarks about piracy killing Amiga, etc, but that's another subject.

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by Sgt Jack V

I found a French forum post that recapped the whole thing. I ran it through Google Translate and put it in a Google Doc here:


https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing

I like that, it ends on a positive note opening the door for a Turrican 4.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by -Acid-

Face facts, noone bought the games they just helped themselves to copies for free.

I must be imagining the thousands of old Amiga games on eBay

Its the old case of thinking, ‘none of my mates bought original copies’, must mean no-one else bought original copies

[gimbal]

I like a derailment from time to time, but if it goes on for more 5 posts or more it starts to become awkward.

[wazza]

Originally Posted by roondar

The Amiga games market only died "a slow death" after 1993, which is eight years after the release of the Amiga.

...but only a year after the release of the last Amiga models.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by gimbal

I like a derailment from time to time, but if it goes on for more 5 posts or more it starts to become awkward.

Guilty as charged.

About Turrican 4, I'm not sure. There have been so many similar follow ups since the retro-craze kicked in, and most of them are totally forgettable (if not just downright awful). They'd have to really put some serious work (and soul) in to live up to the original's legacy.

There is this little known, but stunningly beautiful game called Megasphere, which is probably how I'd like Turrican to look if it was to materialise. Anything 3D, cartoony-Fortnite, or Unity Asset Store-level would be a big no-no.

[ Show youtube player ]

[roondar]

Originally Posted by wazza

...but only a year after the release of the last Amiga models.

... which sold so poorly they prove the Amiga as a system (and hence it's software market) was already dead at that point

Anyway, Gimbal is right - this is getting too far off topic. So, with that in mind: I'm not too hopeful about Turrican 4. It takes a lot of effort to make a reboot/remake of a retro game work. Usually, these games fail to be fun - often losing more than just their looks in the transition from old to new. The list of failed experiments here is so long...

However, never say never - it is possible to make it work. New Super Mario (and it's many follow-ups) show you can do it. But it requires a lot of TLC and keeping the spirit and feel of the original in tact. Which is hard to do. Perhaps they'll succeed. I'd gladly buy it if it ended up being good.

[Sgt Jack V]

I'd say a really good example of a new retro-styled entry in a franchise would be Sonic Mania. Maybe they could take a little inspiration from that in how it handled things.

[Amiga1992]

OK time to ignore the crazy, history-revisionist shit going on here.

But then, wait, these people pull a lazy money grab and you still think about the possibility they'll ever be bothered to make a new Turrican game?
There clearly is much space for a modern or retro-styled Turrican-like game, but these people are just into IP profiteering now, not game development. What was the last thing they ever did, and when?

[roondar]

Well, it could be Factor 5 did this to try and raise money. They did go bankrupt a few years back and making games isn't cheap, especially if you want to do it right. Not saying that excuses them, but it is a possibility.

Perhaps I'm just being too optimistic here, but I like to see at least the option of people having a motive other than just greed

[Sgt Jack V]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the reason why they didn't do jack shit since 2017 (aside from the Analogue deal) was because they were straight up broke, that's probably why most of them left for Epic too.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by -Acid-

Compared to Amiga users there are many many times the amount of people collecting console cartridges. People will even pay decent money for reproductions.

Piracy might have been just as bad on consoles but then there was more than enough people buying the games to keep developers happy. I didn't see the snes or megadrive markets dwindle away a slow death due to no games being made for them the way the Amiga did. They kept going until they were replaced with the next gen of consoles.

I never knew any Amiga owner who actually bought original games and it's quite clear the people I knew were not the minority. Apparently games like Worms DC only sold 5000 copies... why is any dev going to continue to invest a year or more to make games for those returns? If there was money to be made on the Amiga then companies would have kept making games for it, why wouldn't they? Face facts, noone bought the games they just helped themselves to copies for free.

Hi Acid, i have an interesting answer for you. the whole industry 99% of the time never spent more than 10 years on a specific hardware. This in order to free the teams, and also in order for them to spend time to form themselves on the new coming platforms.

Even if the Amiga did good sales at the end, it would have changed the deal.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by -Acid-

Compared to Amiga users there are many many times the amount of people collecting console cartridges. People will even pay decent money for reproductions.

Correct. But the scale is not the same. The Amiga was when the industry was in its teenage era; The SNES belongs to the industrial era of the video games, with shit tons millions of games sold. It's not comparable from any length.

Piracy might have been just as bad on consoles but then there was more than enough people buying the games to keep developers happy.

Yes and no. The Amiga had a problem that the console never faced :
the distribution of a game called X in the shops shelves. Keep in mind that the shops were only asking for the best selling games ; some games were extremely hard to find in shops, you had to crawl in many shops or even go mail order buying to get some.

And this, is perfectly true ! Consoles never had this, you could find the games in any shops, with no sweat !

Piracy was just an added problem to an existant problem.

I didn't see the snes or megadrive markets dwindle away a slow death due to no games being made for them the way the Amiga did. They kept going until they were replaced with the next gen of consoles.

Again, you compare the uncomparable. Amiga games were made by small companies, not big ones, or powerful ones. on the other side, consoles games were push by powerful manufacturers, Nintendo, and Sega.

I never knew any Amiga owner who actually bought original games and it's quite clear the people I knew were not the minority.

If what you said was just one inch true, the amiga market would have collapsed in 1987/8. Even back in the day i bought amiga originals, like many of our EAB friends. Copying disks was easy, but owning some jewel games was the deal ! I paid 410 francs my original french copy of Indy 4 FOA amiga,
it was a shit tons of money ! 63 euros if bought right now. So many amiga games sold lots and lots : Beast 80.000 copies, Cannon Fodder 13x.000 copies, Mortal Kombat 2 released in 1994, 120.000 copies, Lemmings Amiga, 500.000 copies, and there are others if you want !

Apparently games like Worms DC only sold 5000 copies... why is any dev going to continue to invest a year or more to make games for those returns? If there was money to be made on the Amiga then companies would have kept making games for it, why wouldn't they? Face facts, noone bought the games they just helped themselves to copies for free.

Honestly : Team 17 mostly manufactured 5.000 copies of the game, and that was it.

[Korodny]

Originally Posted by roondar

Well, it could be Factor 5 did this to try and raise money. They did go bankrupt a few years back and making games isn't cheap, especially if you want to do it right.

Factor 5 is no longer a real company, it's a German "Gesellschaft des bürgerlichen Rechts", which basically means a bunch of guys shaking hands and agreeing on calling themselves some cool name. A GbR can own things (like F5's IP) or sign contracts (like the Turrican 30th deal) but It's not considered an active, trading company by either the law or the fiscal authorities.

F5 is a hobby now. A hobby that might generate the 'shareholders' a bit of money by exploiting some old IP they acquired after THQ went down. But that kind of setup usually doesn't work for commercial game development.

And that's assuming that there actually is a market for a new Turrican - which is the only somewhat valuable IP they own. Turrican was big in Germany and maybe the UK, but is that enough to justify the risks of developing a brand new game after 30 years of neglecting the brand? Not to mention that while Turrican is awesome, it's not a genre-defining, classic success story like Lemmings, Elite, Worms or Doom.

[dreadnought]

There is a very big market for well-done, side scrolling, pixel art games. The Turrican IP could be just additional bonus.

What you say about F5 not beind a real codeshop, just an entity to do business deals makes perfect sense and what I suspected anyway. So they could either sell the IP to some real devs or franchise it or something.

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

So they could either sell the IP to some real devs or franchise it or something.

They won't do that, because they own it and it's theirs and nobody else can have it.