What Software did you actually pay for ?

[Geordie-Jedi]

Hi there guys.

I was wondering what software did you actually pay for ?
This could be Games / Productivity / PD / Shareware / Whatever else /

1. What did you enjoy about the software ?
2. Did you think you got good value from it ?
3. What were the pro's / con's ?
4. Did you get any stinkers ?

Like most people, I was fairly young / teenager when I was using my Amiga
so did not have much disposable income at the time.

So most games that we (my brother and I) owned were "trial" versions
(AKA pirate versions).

However we did buy the odd original. We mainly got 1-2 games per year (for Birthdays and Christmas)
with the odd one bought by pocket money too.
So although there may be a few boxed games in my list, this was over many years of owning an Amiga.


Games:

LOV (Legend Of Valour): I loved role playing games, and was desperate to get
this game. However it was complex, and ran very slowly on our A600.
So my brother convinced me to swap it at the shop for Walker instead !
(Read: hassled me relentlessly until I broke and agreed).


Value for money: Yes-ish, I did enjoy playing it, I think I would have gotten a good bit
of mileage from it. Especially If I'd kept the game.



Walker: (See above)
Value for money: It was fun, if somewhat repetitive.


Frontier Elite 2: (Spend soooooo many hours playing this game BITD).
had the star map poster on my wall.

I had played and loved the original on Speccy and BBC micro.
So I HAD to own this for myself.

I started a brand new game recently (a couple of years ago), on my emulated
Amiga and ploughed another couple of hundred hours into it.

Vale for money: YES !!
I must have spent hundreds of hours playing ths game.


EOTB-2 (Eye Of The Beholder 2): Got the pirate copy, played it a great deal
but couldn't get too far into the game without the manual and the guides.
So saved up and went out and bought the original, as I enjoyed it that much.

Spent many more hours, engrossed in the game. But I couldn't complete it
as it was extremely hard. (I had no BBS or internet access BITD) so I was
reliant upon magazines to provide tips, help and guides.

Recently got the urge again, and have been playing the AGA remastered version
with the auto map feature (a total life saver) but still had to download -
Clue book, map book, and walkthrough's.

I've now completed about 85% of the game.
(I really need to go back and finish it properly).

Value for money: YES !
Totally worth the money back then, very good value (and a large amount of
replay value).


Worms (OCS): (shared with brother) - Absolutely loved this game.
Spent many hours, playing against my bro, and friends from school and college.

Value for money: Yes, definatley


Worms TDC: As the 1st game was incredible fun, and I wanted to see what extras
were available on my shiny new A1200
Again - I spent countless hours playing this myself. with friends, and making
custom levels too.

Trying to get back into making some new custom levels very recently.
However my art skills leave a lot to be desired !

Value for money: Yes - massively so.


Alien Breed 3D 2: I LOVED the original Alien Breed 1, on my CD-32, so again, I HAD to buy
the new version. It ran like a slideshow on my stock A1200, but I did enjoy it.
(It was hard though).

Value for money: Meh - I never managed to get more than a few levels into the
game. It never hooked me like the 1st game.

I'm sure there were a few more (got some budge releases too)
but it's late, and I cant quite remember them ATM.
I'll update this when I remember them.


Notable mentions:

When one of my best friends was getting rid of his Amiga stuff, he gave me a
few boxed games (Frontier Elite 2, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis)
Amongst others.


PD / Shareware:
I did buy some PD and shareware software from mail order BITD
However I can't remember what I bought (annoying as my memory is usually
excellent).

If I remember, I'll edit my post.


So what says you ?

[stx2199]

The last games I bought were onescapee and genetic species
both really worth the money yet are fantastic and exclusive Amiga games

[CCCP alert]

Hmmm I bought a few stinkers, OutRun etc, and that spurred me on to get loads of disk swapping contacts really early so never got ripped off from about 1988 onward.

The extra large 'owl' badge inside Deep Space from Psygnosis was nice, the packaging was high quality too, didn't think much of the game as a person who owned Star Raiders for the Atari 2600 a few years earlier!

I also liked the fact that inside the fold out box of Defender of the Crown (Mirrorsoft UK) it had a nice image of a bag of popcorn with the popcorn spilling out printed inside.

I think The Pawn was something I remember having a quality feel, the box+contents felt heavy, the manual and novella was nice quality for a game and it had a large map and some other stuff (dice etc). I had adventure games before on my C64 but I think Pawn was the first one I actually wanted to play even when I got 'stuck' etc as it had a great Eliza style parser.

The CD case style packaging for Marble Madness felt/looked a bit cheap. ditto F/A 18 interceptor and Skyfox also had the same sort of packaging, whereas on the C64 disk release Skyfox was something memorable and different by contrast, reminded me of a Flash Gordon comic.

Can't really think of any others off hand that had innovative packaging or freebies I liked. I thought the Shadow of the Beast t-shirt looked shit, so I wore it when I was working on my car lol

The B.Vallejo artwork on Sword of Sodan was very cool and the packaging was nice with those two impressive screenshots on the back too and the game was very user friendly as far as loading went because I had two external drives by the time I bought that and it would support the max of 4 drives if you had them but rarely had to change disks with 3 drives. It Came from the Desert with 2 external drives was also a pleasant disk swapping devoid gaming experience but I never bought the original to that so I don't remember the packaging.

[TCD]

I bought Leander which stopped working after about a week. Not blaming that experience on not buying more original games, but it surely didn't help.

[chip]

I buy nothing

Amiga is for me a totally free hobby

[Adropac2]

some of the bigger boxes I did and really just because of the sort of game it was which was normally simulation. Midwinter, Birds of Prey, Frontier, F16, Stunt Car. It was nice seeing them on the shelf when most of my other games by this point were in a disk box. Oh and the brilliant Kick Off 2

[CCCP alert]

Originally Posted by TCD

I bought Leander which stopped working after about a week. Not blaming that experience on not buying more original games, but it surely didn't help.

Shop should have replaced it for a working copy, in the UK they were obliged to do that.....just wouldn't refund purchased games like OutRun saying 'piracy' was the issue there rather than the crappyness of the game you were trying to return.

[RedskullDC]

1. SAS/C - Solid product.
2. Resource Disassembler - (Bought it direct from Glenn in QLD)
3. "Perfect" software suite - Writer, Calc, etc. Bought it for the business at the time (~1998).

Cheers,
Red

[robinsonb5]

I think DrawStudio was the best piece of software I ever bought on the Amiga. I got some really nice results with that and an Epson Stylus 600 printer, in combination with TurboPrint (which was also a well-worthwhile purchase.)

The worst "stinker" I ever bought wasn't on Amiga - it was ChaseHQ on the C64. After that I was extremly cautious about buying games.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

Shop should have replaced it for a working copy, in the UK they were obliged to do that.....just wouldn't refund purchased games like OutRun saying 'piracy' was the issue there rather than the crappyness of the game you were trying to return.

Here in Germany you had to send them back to the publisher/distributor. As a teenager I didn't really think about doing that (getting a 'backup' copy was a lot easier...).

[van_dammesque]

I remember F15 strike eagle ii, well worth it, great game and came with thick manuals and maps, typical Microprose.

Alien Breed 3d, great game!

Later on I bought Subwar 20250 or something and was asleep after 5 mins.
James Pond 3, massive Robocod fan and so was keen on playing this, what a let down!

[dirkies]

stuff I bought: Samplitude Pro, LZX, MasterISO, Octamed, some HP 4L Laserprinter tool and a few more I forgot the name of.

No stinkers, I all tried them before I bought them

No games though (except a few bundled games I got for free from a buddy who sold off his hardware), I preferred spending my hard earned cash on productivity software on my A4000.

[alexh]

I did buy some, even though software piracy in the UK (especially the NW and NE) where I lived was everywhere.

Dungeon Master + Chaos Strikes Back
Elite 1 & 2
Carrier Command
Shadow of the Beast 1, 2, 3
Amberstar
Lionheart
Dune
Gods
Chaos Engine 1 & 2
Worms Directors Cut
Alien Breed 3D II

Maybe 1 or 2 more I can't think of right now. Not a lot considering the many thousands of floppy disks I have with cracks.

Why did I buy them? All were available on the BBs of the time. I would have tried them before I bought. I bought them to support the developers. Encourage them to make more. Plus nice to own the real box of a game you love.

[kremiso]

just games here, some sold but a good bunch still locked in a chest
randomly

Kick Off (the first one) - played a lot back then, loud disk drive fart at the begin (iirc) of the loading included

F29 Retaliator - played until completition, liked a lot

Core Thunderhawk - same as F29

Combat Air Patrol - sold after a while, not great for the A500; probably better on the A1200

Elfmania - taken just for the hype, played just a bit

Simon the Sorcerer - completed and loved

X-Out - completed and loved, a bit of shame for the later levels

Blood Money - sadly abandoned due the difficulty

Dune (first one) - consumed and completed a couple of times

Rocket Ranger - played a lot but never completed with the original; completed around 2 years ago now with savestates

Mortal Kombat - not played much

Vigilante - played and completed a lot, dont ask why, pure crap now

Silkworm - loved

some others i cannot remember atm

[Daedalus]

I bought quite a few games, from memory :

- Cannon Fodder 1 & 2
- Civilization
- A-Train (& A-Train Construction Kit)
- Elite
- Dune 2
- Jimmy White's Snooker
- Sensible Soccer (can't remember which version)
- Christmas Lemmings '93 & '94
- Sim Life
- Sim Earth
- Roadkill
- Frontier
- Birds of Prey
- Descent: Freespace
- Payback
- Earth 2140 (+ Mission Pack)
- Worms DC
- Foundation Gold
- Roadkill
- Exodus: The Last War
- Railroad Tycoon
- Shogo: MAD

And more that I can't remember right now... And then a few from the "modern era" too.

I also bought Sim City 2000 and Settlers 2 for the Mac and played them via Shapeshifter.

And software-wise it was similar:
- Blitz Basic 2.1
- Dice C (Amiga Shopper edition)
- Art Effect
- Amiga Writer
- Directory Opus 5 Magellan
- Turboprint 7
- Personal Paint
- Amiga OS 3.5, 3.9, 3.1.4, 3.2
- MakeCD DAO
- NetConnect
- VHI Studio

(Some of those were bought second-hand back in the day). I didn't really pirate anything myself, though I did get my Amiga 2nd hand and it came with the obligatory shoebox full of copied games. Some of these (e.g. Lemmings) I played and as a result, didn't buy the original when I otherwise might have, though most of them were rubbish or uninteresting and were reused for blank disks.

Also, there were many games and applications that came free with magazines or the machines themselves, so that doesn't really count though they're not pirated either.

The only one that I regret buying was Subversion. That game was so awful I returned it to the shop and swapped it for something else.

[Dunny]

During the 80s - Xenon II and SEUCK. I was a poor teenager.
In '94 I had my first kid, and a reasonable wage at a manual labour job. I'd acquired a few freebies from working as a developer for an Amiga outfit previously (unpaid, "work experience" / ET role) but this was my first real paypacket.

The local market had a guy selling second hand Amiga games for a couple of quid each. I slurped up dozens of them, a couple every saturday morning. Pretty much stopped pirating after that, with a couple of notable exceptions for newer software.

[NorthWay]

ArgAsm (never got much use out of it)
Macro68
ReSource
Metacomco Pascal (meh)
SAS/C
CEd (modern)
4x Jeff Minter products
2(3? 4?)x (plus C= 64 versions too) of Magnetic Scrolls adventures.
Infocom pack + Zero
Pinball Fantasies/Illusions
Slamtilt
Escape From Singe's Castle
Dynablasters
A few more minor titles.
Several used titles after C= died.

A number of cd collections.
CGFX 4
2.04 upgrade pack.
3.9 (I can't find any trace of getting 3.5 though I thought I bought it?)

God-awful many magazines with covermount floppies and cds.