Introducing Amiga Gaming to new people

[Amiga1992]

Show them Amiga-exclusive games and not ports, because they will usually be shitty compared to more powerful hardware.
Nowadays when you can emulate everything, a person would find it very hard to understand why you would play a sub-par Amiga conversion. Back then we had no choice!

Games that come to mind:
Ruff & Tumble
Uridium 2
Turrican 2
Benefactor
Quik The Thunder Rabbit
Second Samurai
Mr. Nutz
Arabian Nights
Disposable Hero
Brian The Lion
Speris Legacy
Fright Night
Globdule
Deluxe Galaga
Alien Breed 2
Quak
Jimmy's Fantastic Journey
Marvin's Marvellous Adventure
Mega Typhoon
Apocalypse
Megaball
Paramax
ATR

[Aegis]

Some interesting (and predictable ) replies to the OP's question here but I do disagree with many of them. If you want to impress someone new to the Amiga you'd ideally want to show them (not necessarily in order):

1) something they haven't seen before (i.e. unique to the Amiga)
2) something with great graphics and sound
3) something that plays really well

Sadly that cuts a *lot* from the Amiga library - too many bad ST ports, too many games with nice graphics/sound but terrible gameplay (I'd never give someone Beast or Brian the Lion to play) and annoyingly, many great games with horrible graphics.

Everyone has their favourites of course (including me) but to look at the Amiga from an outsider's perspective you have to first remove the rose-tinted glasses

[s2325]

I think Brian the Lion need just longer claws range, I had this game as a kid and I can not see any other problem with gameplay.

[Aegis]

Originally Posted by s2325

I think Brian the Lion need just longer claws range, I had this game as a kid and I can not see any other problem with gameplay.

Claws was a problem, too much sluggishness/inertia on Brian's movement and a general lack of playtesting/finessing resulted in a game that can at best be described as 'sadistic' - it's no Super Mario, that's for sure.

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by Aegis

Everyone has their favourites of course (including me) but to look at the Amiga from an outsider's perspective you have to first remove the rose-tinted glasses

True that. I mean I fell in love with the machine through the Sega Master Mix compilation pack - Wonderboy, Thunder Blade, Turbo Outrun, Dynamite Dux, Crack Down. Not exactly the best games in the world - actually I want to call the Thunder Blade port one of the worst, but jebus at the time they were my entire life.

[Predseda]

Originally Posted by ReadOnlyCat

Why force them to use an input method which is less efficient?
If there is one thing about the Amiga I do not regret leaving behind it is the joysticks which force you to paralyze one hand just to (try to) hold the damn thing steady.

Turrican II, LotusII, Hybris, Battle Squadron, Speedball 2, Chaos Engine and many others both have great gameplay and graphics.

Okay, and now try to play Turrican II holding Dpad in both your hands and frequently use spacebar for extra weapons properly. Nothing beats a good joystick with GOOD suction cups for some games! (BTW - I am long term joypad user, but for few games I return to joystick)

[Aegis]

Originally Posted by gimbal

True that. I mean I fell in love with the machine through the Sega Master Mix compilation pack - Wonderboy, Thunder Blade, Turbo Outrun, Dynamite Dux, Crack Down. Not exactly the best games in the world - actually I want to call the Thunder Blade port one of the worst, but jebus at the time they were my entire life.

Hahaha! I spent days (weeks?) playing [ Show youtube player ] - the Spectrum - and I loved it (at the time) but I can't look at it now and say in all honesty that it was a good game - heck, even the C64 version was never really a *good* game but what did I know back then? (still remember it fondly though )

[Shatterhand]

Originally Posted by Predseda

Okay, and now try to play Turrican II holding Dpad in both your hands and frequently use spacebar for extra weapons properly. Nothing beats a good joystick with GOOD suction cups for some games! (BTW - I am long term joypad user, but for few games I return to joystick)

Keep one foot on the space bar. It works wonders

[grond]

A lot of the games I like(d) to play aren't that impressive today. Pirates!, Frontiers, Ambermoon, Monkey Island, Syndicate and Lionheart were games I considered both entertaining and well made. Monkey Island and Syndicate also existed for VGA PC and were probably better on those. Pirates! and Frontiers are perhaps not really games you would love at first sight and many people would find boring. This would leave Ambermoon and Lionheart, two original Amiga games. Ambermoon is technically less impressive outside the Amiga context, it's strongest points are story, length of gameplay and atmosphere. Not things people will appreciate when introduced to Amiga gaming. Lionheart is a game that looks mostly good and shows off what made Amiga impressive in its time, supersmooth scrolling and many colours on the screen. The game is also good enough to be entertaining at a first try unless you just don't like platformers which is why Lionheart would probably my choice for an introduction to Amiga gaming.

Generally for an introduction you should better choose entertaining games that are understood easily and still work well today such as Emerald Mines, Dynablaster a.s.o.

[s2325]

You can also show Brataccas and 7 Cities of Gold.

[Shatterhand]

Originally Posted by Akira

Show them Amiga-exclusive games and not ports, because they will usually be shitty compared to more powerful hardware.
Nowadays when you can emulate everything, a person would find it very hard to understand why you would play a sub-par Amiga conversion. Back then we had no choice!

Games that come to mind:
Ruff & Tumble
Uridium 2
Turrican 2
Benefactor
Quik The Thunder Rabbit
Second Samurai
Mr. Nutz
Arabian Nights
Disposable Hero
Brian The Lion
Speris Legacy
Fright Night
Globdule
Deluxe Galaga
Alien Breed 2
Quak
Jimmy's Fantastic Journey
Marvin's Marvellous Adventure
Mega Typhoon
Apocalypse
Megaball
Paramax
ATR

Paramax and Fright Night I had never even herad about before. I just checked both on youtube, I'll try them later on my own A600.

Fright Night looks really.. funny, not necessarily fun to play. I'll reserve judgment for after I play it . At first it look a bit like "The Munsters", which I played a lot on my MSX, though there's also an Amiga version.

Now Paramax got me really surprised, it looks really colorful and with a lot of Parallax.

All the other games, except Globdule, would already be on my list anyway

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by Aegis

Everyone has their favourites of course (including me) but to look at the Amiga from an outsider's perspective you have to first remove the rose-tinted glasses

I agree, but I fail to see how you fulfilled your own exercise
What would be YOUR list of games that comply with your rules? I wanna play them.

Originally Posted by Predseda

Okay, and now try to play Turrican II holding Dpad in both your hands and frequently use spacebar for extra weapons properly.

No need for shitty spacebars, if you have the correct game pad, you can use the second button.

[Daedalus]

It's true that the single-button joystick crippled so many games that could've been at least a little bit nicer to play. Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter sucked mightily because of this, as did many platformers. That and the relative lack of games that took full advantage of the power of the 020 and AGA chipset in the A1200.

I regularly have retro games nights, and the 3 games that all go down well are Worms: DC, SWOS and Dogfight. All great fun for parties, which is where people are very likely to have a lot of fun after a few beers.

[s2325]

Lode Runner clones should have 2 fire buttons support for digging left or right

[Aegis]

Originally Posted by Akira

I agree, but I fail to see how you fulfilled your own exercise
What would be YOUR list of games that comply with your rules? I wanna play them.

No, you're right - it's tough - really tough to come up with a playable, beautiful, unique game that really sells the Amiga - but that's because there weren't any devs making games just for the Amiga - development/testing time was cut short and few if any developers actually played to the strengths of the Amiga hardware. What we got for the most part was marginally prettier ST ports with better sound.

Which is why I suggested the Cinemaware stuff - I'm aware of their failings (the 'gameplay' is kinda shonky on all their titles) but they were made primarily for the Amiga, look and sound spectacular and whilst they do exist on other platforms, the definitive versions were always the Amiga ones.

But taste plays a factor too and that's subjective - there's some beloved Amiga games with graphics I can't stand - and as a consequence I've never seen them as representative of what the Amiga could do (I actually think the graphics on Beast are quite bad - the technical tricks on the other hand are impressive).

[Predseda]

Originally Posted by Akira

No need for shitty spacebars, if you have the correct game pad, you can use the second button.

With Turrican II? Tell me.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Predseda

With Turrican II? Tell me.

http://hol.abime.net/1535/manual

Have a look on page 6 (10 of 30)

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by Aegis

No, you're right - it's tough - really tough to come up with a playable, beautiful, unique game that really sells the Amiga - but that's because there weren't any devs making games just for the Amiga - development/testing time was cut short and few if any developers actually played to the strengths of the Amiga hardware. What we got for the most part was marginally prettier ST ports with better sound.

I agree it's super tough! and hard to see nowadays in perspective. Back then I thought the Amiga was the best thing ever, but nowadays I can see it really "isn't", and a lot of the market was plagued by "wannabe other platform's staple games", so it's hard to choose. I think my list has a few titles that do match your criteria, though!

I disagree we had mostly lame ST shovelware though, maybe in the early days of Amiga, but any time after 1990 this stopped happening. The ST pretty much died as the "main 16 bit platform" and Amiga had a bunch of original, made-for-Amiga games popping up. This lasted probably for two or three years, then it all went "let's try to do what consoles do" and we got a lot of ports and aforementioned wannabes.

Originally Posted by Predseda

With Turrican II? Tell me.

Tell you what? I just did. I had a Master System joypad and second button shot the laser beam thing, and when I pressed it with fire button it made that megablast thing. This doesn't work with a Megadrive pad.

[Shatterhand]

I would like to say I still find the Amiga to be a very , very fine gaming system. The amount of good games for it is very high, and covers nearly every populer genre of its time, with a fair amount of very original, unique games too.

[Aegis]

Originally Posted by Akira

I disagree we had mostly lame ST shovelware though, maybe in the early days of Amiga, but any time after 1990 this stopped happening. The ST pretty much died as the "main 16 bit platform" and Amiga had a bucnh of original, made-for-Amiga games popping up. This lasted probably for two or three years, then it all went "let's try to do what consoles do" and we got a lot of ports and aforementioned wannabes.

That was a very short window though - the Amiga peaked in 1991 (in Europe, it was already dead in the US) - the same year Sonic the Hedgehog was released, and the SNES was introduced to Europe in 1992. Doom appeared on the PC in 1993. Prior to that we'd already seen Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros. Castlevania and Mega Man released for the NES.

There's some great games on the Amiga - I still play many of them. But we never got a Sonic or a Mario or a Doom. Those games are revered as classics today because they're the real deal - graphics, sound, playability - all polished to a shine, nothing on the Amiga came close (well, Defender of the Crown, Rocket Ranger and It came from the Desert maybe )

It's a shame - if you asked me that same question for the SNES, Genesis, PC, heck - even the C64 and ZX Spectrum I'd immediately have a bunch of answers but for the Amiga I really struggle to come up with a single game that defines the qualities of the platform. Maybe it's still waiting to be written?