Off with the rose-colored glasses! The hard look back at your Amiga childhood

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by Muzkat

Then again, the fact that the Amiga could still compete alongside the SNES and Megadrive well into the nineties just goes to prove how amazing the humble Miggy was.

Sounds like you've still got your glasses on

[Shatterhand]

AMiga had

Great strategy games: Mega-lo-Mania, Dune 2, K240, The Settlers, Civilization, Genesia, Utopia, Battle Isle

Strategic shooters like: Cannon Fodder, Syndicate (And let's add stuff here like Desert Strike, Jungle Strike, Zeewolf and Zeewolf 2)

Platformers: Ruff 'n' Tumble, Arabian Nights, Fire 'n' Ice, Quik the Thunder Rabbit, Mr. Nutz, Chuck Rock 2, Parasol Stars, Turrican trilogy, Yo! Joe!, Kid Chaos, Wiz 'n' Liz (This covers lots of different types of platform games)

Shoot'em ups: Apidya, Hybris, Z-Out, Battle Squadron, Mega Typhoon, Uridium 2, Banshee, Zyriax, SWIV

Puzzle games: Lemmings, Chip's Challenge, Benefactor, Bill's Tomato Game, Vital Light, X-It, PP Hammer

Point 'n' Click Adventures: Beneath a Steel Sky, Universe, both Monkey Island games, Legend of Kyrandia, Simon the Sorcerer, King's Quest 6

Racing games: Lotus trilogy, Indianapolis 500, Lamborghini American Challenge, Jaguar XJ 220, No Second Prize, F1GP, ATR, Nitro, Super Cars 1 & 2, Prime Mover, Vroom, F1, Carnage, Red Zone, Stunt Car Racer.. (Honestly, I don't think any 16 bits system can get close to touch the Amiga on that genre)

Violent sports: Brutal Sports Football, Speedball 1 & 2, Future Basketball

Sports Games: SWOS and Sensi, Kick Off, Goal!, European Champions!, Great Courts 2, Beach Volley, TV Sports Boxing, TV Sports Basketball, Super Tennis Champs, probably some boring Golf game I never cared about.

Scrolling Beat'em Ups: Golden Axe, Motorhead, Shadow Warriors, Double Dragon 2. (That's the genre the system is more lacking for sure, still it does have a few worth games)

Fighting games: IK+, Shadow Fighter, Fightin Spirit

Good arcade ports: Silkworm, Shadow Dancer, Pang, Toki, Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Super Street Fighter 2 (yeah), R-Type, R-Type 2, Rodland, Ninja Warriors, Super Off Road, Rainbow Islands, Arkanoid, Arkanoid 2, New Zealand Story, Indy Heat, Saint Dragon

Quirky original games: Wizkid, Jumping Jackson, Fire Force, Walker, Another World, Mad TV, Flashback....

I mean, look at all those games. ARE ALL OF THEM A PIECE OF SHIT ? Maybe other systems have better games, ok, but does this make all the games I listed bad? And I could keep going to to be quite honest, I am pretty sure I could name at least a hundred more Amiga games that are solid, good games even if exactly not classic ground-breaking earth-shattering ones.

And the Amiga *was* competing alongside the Mega-Drive and SNES. Maybe you could say "it lost" and I'll take it, but it did compete with them and still did it very fine even if couldn't beat them... and its amazing it did it so fine considering it wasn't a dedicated gaming machine with a much older hardware.

I agree the system could have more better games. I agree there are "average" games on lesser systems like the NES that would be killer apps on the Amiga. This has lots to do with the "Bedroom Coder" mindset and how the japanese devs at that point were just frigging 10 times ahead any european dev was.

I still think the Amiga is a very competent gaming machine and anyone who enjoys gaming from 80s and 90s will have a good time with it, if he knows where to look at.

[rare_j]

Back in the day, how long did console owners wait between new games? Months. Because they were so expensive. And they were shitty PAL conversions.

Amiga owners had something new to play with every month in the form of £5 magazine coverdisks packed with software and demos. And we had budget ranges and compilations. And we had the industry-standard creative tool Deluxe Paint packed right in the box!

So yeah, the best of the SNES and Megadrive are miles better, no competition at all, but we had some solid games and a lot of new stuff to play with.
I'm glad I had an Amiga back then.

[-Acid-]

Originally Posted by xubidoo

music/fx , same with most Amiga games, limitations of the hardware.

What you meant to say was limitations of the developers of some games as many games have both music and sfx.

[Cherno]

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

stuff

I agree with you, the games you listed (and many more) are all-around good pieces of software with decent graphics, sound and most importantly, gameplay. However, this thread is not about the notion that Amiga games are generally bad and worse than the software on other systems of the time. It's about those games that seemed great back then but seem less so in hinsight. I think the discussion has strayed into this direction a bit, but nopw the cat is out of the box, so what am I gonna do? I'm happy that a lot of users have participated so far.

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

Good arcade ports: Silkworm, Shadow Dancer, Pang, Toki, Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Super Street Fighter 2 (yeah), R-Type, R-Type 2, Rodland, Ninja Warriors, Super Off Road, Rainbow Islands, Arkanoid, Arkanoid 2, New Zealand Story, Indy Heat, Saint Dragon

You forget the excellent Ghosts 'N Goblins

...also Cabal and both these Space Harrier versions are decent:

1) Space Harrier
2) Space Harrier: Return To The Fantasy Zone

Finally, most of the Cinemaware games are epic and unique:

... Defender Of The Crown
... It Came From The Desert
... Lords Of The Rising Sun
... Rocket Ranger
... TV Sports: Basketball
... TV Sports: Football
... Wings

[Shatterhand]

Mate, I forgot a shitload of stuff for sure

. It's about those games that seemed great back then but seem less so in hinsight.

Games age. This isn't exclusive to the Amiga. I used to think Alien Breed was a better game than The Chaos Engine. Alien Breed aged horribly and I wonder how we managed to play that back at the day, The Chaos Engine is still amazingly playable.

I can't think of a game that aged worst than Goldeneye on the N64. It was AMAZING when I first played it. When I try it now, I am like "Holy shit we really didn't have anything better than this to play"

[Cherno]

Of course they age, but a game that was fun to play back then might be just as much fun to play today, aged graphics notwithstanding. Then there are these games like SOTB that are consiered by many to be crappy today while seemingly being amazing back then.

[Tigerskunk]

I think the point about the Amiga for me was, that it wasn't just a games console.
On action games, I liked my SNES that I bought in 1994 a lot more than I ever did the like the Amiga.
But there was this whole cosmos of text and graphics adventure games, simulators, scene demos, RPGs, gfx programs, weirdo stuff like Popoulus and Powermonger and Lemmings, plus trying to create your own stuff with it etc...

The Amiga is still my biggest computer love because of that.
It's only weird that it had this cool chipset, and action game coders (with a few exceptions like Sales Curve and Factor 5) back then were not able to make more out of it.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Steril707

It's only weird that it had this cool chipset, and action game coders (with a few exceptions like Sales Curve and Factor 5) back then were not able to make more out of it.

You can blame the Atari ST for that: it was launched before the Amiga 500 (it may even have been before the Amiga 1000!) and developers made that their primary development machine for 16-bit games, and the people were satisfied with the games on that system, as limited as it was. Then the Amiga comes along with the custom chips that can achieve superior things to the ST, but the severely limited development times and profits-first aspect of those existing companies excluded the time investment needed to learn how to use those chips, for the most part. I think it was those companies who started on the Amiga first (usually coming from the Demoscene) who made the most of the superior hardware, like Reflections and Team 17.

This is why I'm disappointed in Amiga games, as most (75%+) are just lazy ST ports.

[ruinashiro]

Originally Posted by Muzkat

I don't know anything about the x68000. Having said that, you can't go past the following Amiga gems:

Platformers: Turrican 1 and 2 are universally acknowledged as two of the finest platformers ever made. I would add Gods to that list, but I know that would be contentious.

Sports: SWOS, Kick Off, On the Ball and Speedball 2 are still regarded as some of the best sports games on any platform.

Racers: Stunt Car Racer and Lotus 2 are still thought of as some of the greatest racing games ever made.

Puzzle: Ever heard of a little known game called Lemmings?

Arcade conversions: Not the Amiga's strongest suite, but still some really good ones such as Toki, Pang and the R-Types. Heck, one magazine even thought the Amiga's conversion of Mortal Kombat was better than the SNES and Megadrive's.

Just to preface, I was an Amigan for 10 years with the machines, and am an Amigan still at heart though I don't use them any more. My point in what you quoted from me was simply that better games exist for other platforms in most if not all genres, which I stated in response to someone else saying, roughly paraphrasing, that the Amiga had the best games on any home computer in all genres.

Sports, Racers, and Puzzlers, I don't enjoy these games so I didn't comment. Of course, I give you Lemmings. But I am sure someone else could bring up 10 other games in those genres that were just as big on other platforms. Puzzle Bobble must rank around the top for puzzle games, no? It spawned almost 30 sequels on virtually every platform out there.

Yes, Turrican is a well-regarded platformer. But do you know how many well-regarded platformers there are? If I took a few hours to make a top-200 list of 80s/90s platformers, my guess is Turrican would land at about #70 to #130 based on general consensus.

Even in the shmups genre, the only Amiga game that many serious shooter fans take seriously is Apidya, and that would probably rank #480 on a top-500 list if we were including arcade games in the list.

"Arcade conversions: Not the Amiga's strongest suite"

Yep, you said it. There are some passable and fun conversions, true, but the majority are horrible. Yet every arcade conversion on the X68000 was perfect or near-perfect.

I can't think of a single Amiga arcade port for which there wouldn't exist a better port on another system.

To use your examples: The genesis version of Toki is arguably better, Pang is better on SNES and pc-engine, and R-Type is arcade perfect on x68000 and the pc-engine version is also generally considered better than the Amiga port. The Amiga R-Type port is strong, minus the music replacement, but it's #3 behind x68000 and pc-engine for ports at that time.

[ruinashiro]

Here are the hardcore shoot-em-up guys holding their annual top-25 shooters of all time voting contest, which actually shows the top 70 or so.

https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?t=44687

Not a single amiga game. Yet you will find people swearing to god that the amiga was the best shmup system out. AmigaHope said it right. "the Bedroom Coder culture" was responsible for the glossy but terrible shmup library on the amiga. Amiga doesn't even have a top-100 shooter. But through the rose-tinted glasses, I still love a few of them

[Pyromania]

Originally Posted by ruinashiro

Here are the hardcore shoot-em-up guys holding their annual top-25 shooters of all time voting contest, which actually shows the top 70 or so.

https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?t=44687

Not a single amiga game. Yet you will find people swearing to god that the amiga was the best shmup system out. AmigaHope said it right. "the Bedroom Coder culture" was responsible for the glossy but terrible shmup library on the amiga. Amiga doesn't even have a top-100 shooter. But through the rose-tinted glasses, I still love a few of them

Thanx for the list, I have not seen it before.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by ruinashiro

"Arcade conversions: Not the Amiga's strongest suite"

Yep, you said it. There are some passable and fun conversions, true, but the majority are horrible. Yet every arcade conversion on the X68000 was perfect or near-perfect.

Why bother with conversions at all when you can have MAME?

[ruinashiro]

Originally Posted by Foebane

Why bother with conversions at all when you can have MAME?

I'm talking about history, about the time of the amiga, and which system had the better conversions.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by ruinashiro

I'm talking about history, about the time of the amiga, and which system had the better conversions.

What I mean is that NO home computer system had the "better conversions" of arcade originals, as it varied so much, from what I've seen anyway. Only the original hardware (even if just in emulation) is really worth bothering with.

But back on-topic.

[donnie]

Out of those top 25 schmups 1 is made before 95. Rtype.

[Shatterhand]

And most if not all the shmups on that list are arcade games.. So, nah. This doesn't prove anything.

To use your examples: The genesis version of Toki is arguably better, Pang is better on SNES and pc-engine, and R-Type is arcade perfect on x68000 and the pc-engine version is also generally considered better than the Amiga port. The Amiga R-Type port is strong, minus the music replacement, but it's #3 behind x68000 and pc-engine for ports at that time.

Toki on the Mega-Drive isn't even a port. It's a completely new game which IMO is a lot inferior to the arcade one and, then, the Amiga one too.

Pang wasn't on SNES. It's sequel was, but not on Amiga. Can't compare.

X68000 hardware ran circles with the Amiga hardware and if someone managed to make an arcade port for the X68000 worse than an Amiga one, that programmer should be forbidden to ever code anything else again ever. THe X68000 is a LOT MORE POWERFUL than an Amiga, but like by a fuckload, it's ridiculous to try to compare games from those 2 machines.

Silkworm, Rodland, Ninja Warriors, R-Type 2, Ghosts 'n' Goblins, Arkanoid, Shadow Dancer, Final Blow (heh)... show me a contemporary home port of those games that are better than the Amiga, I can't think of one. I'll also stick with Toki and Pang because they are still the best home versions of those games as I said. Operation Thunderbolt supposedly is better on Amiga than on SNES, but since I haven't played it I can't tell. I havent played the mega-drive version of Volfied, but I can't see it being much s

Final Blow was a crap game on Arcade... as an Amiga game it is also crap, but it's an amazingly good port (of a crap game )... once in an Retro-computing fair we were comparing versions of games on X68000, FM-Towns and Amiga, and with Final Blow everyone was "What the fuck, how is the Amiga one better than the FM-Towns ?" since, again, the FM-Towns is obviously like 30 times more powerful than an A500.

[ruinashiro]

Originally Posted by Foebane

What I mean is that NO home computer system had the "better conversions" of arcade originals, as it varied so much, from what I've seen anyway. Only the original hardware (even if just in emulation) is really worth bothering with.

But back on-topic.

Most arcade ports on the X68000 (Japanese home computer) were perfect. It had hardware very similar to arcade machines at the times, so perfect ports were simple.

[ruinashiro]

Originally Posted by donnie

Out of those top 25 schmups 1 is made before 95. Rtype.

On any list, you're going to get a bias towards modern. But if you include the 70 or so total, there is an x68000 game, 2 NES games, and 2 genesis games.