When you first bought an Amiga, what games were you looking to play?

[TCD]

Originally Posted by gimbal

It had a save feature though, CTRL+S when you see scrolling text, CTRL+L when you see the king. But yeah. Didn't know about that at the time because for some reason backup copies don't come with a manual...

This. Now I know that of course. I guess you could call that an effective 'you won't finish the game without the manual' protection

[Lilura]

Originally Posted by Dastardly

I ended up looking forward most to the games of The Bitmap Brothers.

Yes, even though they were mostly ST ports, the Amiga versions of Bitmap games were often better, if only slightly. The star on the Speedball 2 playfield, the meatier sound and music, and so on.

I have fond memories of most Bitmap games. And I admitted to playing Xenon 2 to death back in the day even as I criticized its shortcomings only recently.

I would say that Gods was their best game; that game was magic.

[dirkies]

One interesting omission of this thread question for those early adopters is perhaps: when you got your Amiga in 86-88, how long did it take until you booted up the JUGGLER demo (and was blown away by it) ?

[Megalomaniac]

While they're not to my tastes at all, it's not hard to see why games like Shadow of the Beast and Wrath of the Demon would dazzle someone with an 8-bit (or indeed an ST) and attract people into buying an Amiga, regardless of their gameplay merits. Although most early Bitmaps games did get 8-bit versions, they have a layer of innovation to them. Speedball is pretty much a whole new genre, with inventions like the bribing, and Xenon II has digitised music, huge enemies and a very advanced shop/weaponry system. Gods was never feasible for smaller machines though - it sees them take the ambition level even higher with the adaptive AI and carefully-integrated puzzles. Plus the Bitmaps' image made them rock-star developers, and they had a house style in terms of artistic vision and colour scheme that helped with brand loyalty, even if the games varied in genres.

I'm one of these people for whom non-interactive demos never hold much appeal - show me the effects being used in a game and I'll be impressed. Still, The Juggler was a killer app in its own way - only Amiga made it possible, dare I say it.

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

While they're not to my tastes at all, it's not hard to see why games like Shadow of the Beast and Wrath of the Demon would dazzle someone with an 8-bit (or indeed an ST) and attract people into buying an Amiga, regardless of their gameplay merits.

Gotta also bear in mind that some stellar examples aside, 8bit games were terrible in the main. Nobody had a clue as to how controls should work, movement, rudimentary physics etc - all of that was being worked out by the game devs of the day.

SOTB, having come from a Spectrum where most of the games ran at 17fps and below, was bloody great fun to play, as was Xenon II.

(Speedball was a different kettle of fish entirely though, and superb despite the sequel).

[Lilura]

Originally Posted by Dunny

Gotta also bear in mind that some stellar examples aside, 8bit games were terrible in the main. Nobody had a clue as to how controls should work, movement, rudimentary physics etc - all of that was being worked out by the game devs of the day.

Mmm... you say 8 bit games were terrible in the main... well, if that is true could that not be applied to 16-bit and 32-bit games as well -- and perhaps more plausibly?

But as computer gamers are we not and were we not looking for diamonds in the rough?

As for "nobody having a clue" (in reference to 8-bit coders and designers), I would like to think you are just exagerrating a little bit, but I would venture to state that 8-bit games of certain genre commonly employed features that later became rare, such as seamless transition, verticality and tile-rigged area design; the latter of which facilitates precise movement and positioning, which is very important to some gamers.

In those cases, "interpolation" isn't necessary. And often just gets in the road of raw gameplay, tactics and strategy.

The simplicity of 8-bit graphics also often facilitated precise movement and positioning, because there is very little in the way of color gradients that conceal edges (e.g., in the case of a "walk-mesh": where one can and cannot move to).

I think many gamers want to see edges and lines so that they can move and position their Avatar more accurately.

SOTB, having come from a Spectrum where most of the games ran at 17fps and below, was bloody great fun to play, as was Xenon II.

Yet I don't think the most ardent and nostalgic fan of Beast would argue that its controls and movement are all that good, even for the time. Unless by movement you were talking about 13 layers of 50 FPS parallax.

(Speedball was a different kettle of fish entirely though, and superb despite the sequel).

But the same is not true for Xenon of 1988, which was really no better than C64 shooters, but arguably better than Xenon 2.

[gimbal]

Terrible didn't exist for me back then, there were no standards and I had no reference. Rather than call games terrible, I'd rather just say that there were games that I did not find fun to play. But even those generally had some kind of cool idea in them because it was all experimental, which added to the fun. Take a game like Voodoo Nightmare as an example. Practically unplayable, even with a trainer. But it did have a day/night cycle and a hub world, two firsts for me when I started to play it. It boggled the mind what an actual fun game with a day/night cycle could look like.

[CCCP alert]

I think Sword of Sodan was the first real "wow!" Amiga game for me as a frequenter of arcades back then. Oddly though the Apple II GS demo of the unreleased game was almost as good, but the II GS is something I have never seen/used in real life even to this day, never even knew about that machine in 1988.

Unless Battle Squadron came first, in which case that would be the first "wow!" Amiga game for me.

[donnie]

Amiga really came to its own in 89/90

In 1989 you had pretty good software:

battle squadron
bloodwych
future wars
it came from the dessert
north and south
populous
rainbow islands
rick dangerous
shadow of the beast
silk worm
sim city
stunt car racer
twin world

I had an atari st in the 80s. In hind sight i would much rather have had an c64 with a disc drive during those years. Way better games, often way better versions .

Atari st was really a budget amiga with little to no good features of its own. So many games are worse on atari st than on c64 and amiga. So many games just ran like crap. I did not fully understand this back then, but now its easy to see why i never really played certain games. Horrible scrolling, push scroll, jerkyness, just awful.

I sold my atari st and much later bought an amiga in like 92-93. Then i think i wanted to play games like chaos engine, turrican 2.

[Megalomaniac]

Video games were still quite a new concept in the early 1980s, all the 8-bit systems (computer and console) had some big limitations (what worked on a Spectrum often didn't work on an Amstrad and didn't push the C64's limits, and vice versa), and most early 8-bit computer games were made by one teenager in his bedroom in a few months as a hobby. Even later on when you had industrial-scale multi-format developments from in-house teams, how many man-years went into the average computer game compared to albums or films? I expect most arcade games had more developers than all five or six home versions combined - Rainbow Islands does (9 for the arcade machine, 7 in total across Amiga/ST/C64/Spectrum/Amstrad) and that's a rare case where all the home versions of that are well-regarded.

The irony is, most of donnie's list are on the ST and (sound aside) almost indistinguishable from the Amiga versions - only Battle Squadron and It Came From the Desert weren't on the ST, and only Shadow of the Beast where the Amiga version is significantly better. You probably could write a 13-game list of "Amiga games from the 80s that would make ST owners jealous", but it wouldn't look like that list of some of what you consider to be the best Amiga games up to that time.

Beast is also the only one on that list where the C64 version could be argued to beat the ST one - partly because the Amiga version is designed to exploit the Amiga's limits with no thought for portability, and partly because the ST version is an underwhelming effort compared to something like ST Wrath of the Demon. Even in 1990, most great Amiga games are on the ST and generally pretty close in quality, 1991 was where the gap really widened in terms of the Amiga getting more games than the ST, usually released first, and almost always better. Disk-only C64 games had pretty much died out by 1989, and for adventure / RPG / strategy / sims the ST largely trounced the C64 by 1989. I guess perception is a big part of how you feel sometimes. I suspect if we asked this question on an ST forum we'd get similar answers, but with different levels of satisfaction depending on whether people wanted 'serious' games or 'action' ones.

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by Lilura

But as computer gamers are we not and were we not looking for diamonds in the rough?

No? We were kids who would play anything, not collectors and connoisseurs. Take Explorer on the Spectrum for example. Just an amazing game, I spent literal years playing that, and pretty much nobody but me likes it.

As for "nobody having a clue"

I'm beginning to think you don't. Back then there were no standards for controls or even gameplay. The devs of the time - being largely kids in bedrooms (or 16 year olds working for Ocean) were indeed working it out as they went. Hell, the default control set for some of the greatest Spectrum games of all time were literally QWERT for L/R/U/D/Fire.

The simplicity of 8-bit graphics also often facilitated precise movement and positioning

Hence Jet Set Willy was a better platformer than any Mario game.

Yet I don't think the most ardent and nostalgic fan of Beast would argue that its controls and movement are all that good, even for the time. Unless by movement you were talking about 13 layers of 50 FPS parallax.

And yet I (and my mates) played the hell out of it and loved it for months. It wasn't just good for its time, it was amazing for its time. We spent many weekends bashing away at that and lotus esprit. It was just a brilliant game.

But the same is not true for Xenon of 1988, which was really no better than C64 shooters, but arguably better than Xenon 2.

I'm beginning to see a pattern here.

I bought Xenon 2 as one of my first ever game purchases for my Amiga. And it was sublime. I'd played the hell out of the AF3 demo and was eager for more. And oh boy did it deliver.

A little short, and a bit easy to complete but that didn't stop me from going back time and again. Yes, it was - in my opinion, no matter what your opinion is, bloody excellent fun.

[TCD]

I'd say that up to 1990 owning a 8-bit system or a ST was still a very valid option if you didn't care too much about graphics (or sound). From 1991 onward not owning a 16-bit system meant you'd miss out on some 'classics'. It is really quite interesting how many of the highest rated and regarded games on the Amiga were released between 1991 and 1993.

[Lilura]

Originally Posted by Dunny

No? We were kids who would play anything, not collectors and connoisseurs. Take Explorer on the Spectrum for example. Just an amazing game, I spent literal years playing that, and pretty much nobody but me likes it.

Back in the day I was scouring magazines looking for good games. So yes, I was pretty discerning. I didn't want to waste my pocket money on garbage.

I'm beginning to think you don't.

Where do these hostile comments come from? No one is attacking you. No one is even attacking your taste in or memories of games.

You were just exagerrating, plain and simple. And trimming my comment in order to remove context so that you can express an unkind sentiment in a vacuum...

You said 8-bit games were "terrible" in the main. And I wondered if that statement (if it were to be admitted as truth) couldn't also be applied to 16- and 32-bit games as well, with perhaps more plausibility.

And then you said that "No one had a clue (how to design and code in the 8-bit era)". And when I gave examples that questioned the validity of your assertion, you said that "You're beginning to think I don't (have a clue)."

Again, why the hostility?

Back then there were no standards for controls or even gameplay.

Yes, there were. I enumerated a few and you ignored them. The problem with your claims is that they are absolute.

But even if you qualified with "As a rule," or "Generally speaking", your statements could be picked apart as well. Why? Because the 8-bit era was in many cases rather refined, rather refined indeed. I can cite some long lists that would supply strong evidence of that refinement as well.

Hence Jet Set Willy was a better platformer than any Mario game.

And why do you think I would not agree? I hate consoles and console games. And computer games that are dumbed down for the console crowd. Aside from this sentence that is about to end you will never see me talking about console games and consoles on EAB unless it is this sentiment repeated.

Jet Set Willy is one of my fave games. And supports the point I was making: that relative simplicity went a long way in making 8-bit games great in terms of movement, positioning and controls in general.

And yet I (and my mates) played the hell out of it and loved it for months. It wasn't just good for its time, it was amazing for its time. We spent many weekends bashing away at that and lotus esprit. It was just a brilliant game.

I wasn't writing Beast off. I was just saying that it wasn't exceptional in terms of gameplay, even for its time.

I'm beginning to see a pattern here.

And what pattern is that? All I said was that Xenon of 1988 is not as good as about 20 C64 shooters that preceeded it stretching back to 1985, yet is arguably better than Xenon 2 of 1989.

I bought Xenon 2 as one of my first ever game purchases for my Amiga. And it was sublime.

Xenon 2 was ahead of the pack in some ways but behind the pack in more important ways. In this very thread I admitted to playing Xenon 2 to death back in the day, but I also acknowledge that it could have been much better. Certainly, I would not call it "sublime".

In my estimation, for a shooter to be considered king-tier it must 1) actually BE a great shooter with great controls and gameplay 2) have smooth scrolling (unless it is fixed-screen) 3) have smooth sprite-shifting 4) have accurate collision detection. It is also a good idea not to have a screen that jitters when a ship gets stuck on scenery (Xenon 2).

A little short, and a bit easy to complete but that didn't stop me from going back time and again. Yes, it was - in my opinion, no matter what your opinion is, bloody excellent fun.

So was Xenon of 1988 (which you conspicously omitted while at the same time not omitting Speedball when mentioning SB2) -- almost like it doesn't count.

In terms of raw gameplay and technical merit, Hybris of 1988 blew Xenon away. And Battle Squadron, Datastorm and Silkworm of 1989 blew Xenon 2 away. Splended pixel art, a solid soundtrack, Super Nashwan and "a shop" don't a great shooter make.

Reminder of C64 shooters that predate Xenon 2 (again, these are only the exceptional shooters of 1985-88):

Paradroid 1985
Crazy Comets 1985
Gyruss 1986
Iridis Alpha 1986
Sanxion 1986
Uridium 1986
Alleykat 1986
Terra Cresta 1986
Delta 1987
Hunter's Moon 1987
Gradius 1987
Light Force 1987
Bulldog 1987
Slap Fight 1987
Mega-Apocalypse 1987
Hades Nebula 1987
Task 3 1987
Salamander 1988
IO: Into Oblivion 1988
Armalyte 1988
Zamzara 1988

Let's have a look at the Amiga shooters up to an including 1989 (includes shooters that range from great to abysmal):

Plutos 1987
Typhoon 1987
Insanity Fight 1987
Garrison 1987
Goldrunner 1987
Starglider 1987
Virus 1988
Pursuit to Earth 1988
Flying Shark 1988
StarRay 1988
Eliminator 1988
Starglider 2 1988
Sidewinder 1988
Thunder Blade 1988
Xenon 1988
Hybris 1988
Menace 1988
Xenon 2 1989
Battle Squadron 1989
Datastorm 1989
Silkworm 1989
Sidewinder 2 1989
Blood Money 1989
Darius 1989
R-Type 1989
Goldrunner 2 1989
Cabal 1989
Space Harrier 1989
Smash TV 1989
Forgotten Worlds 1989
Super Gridrunner 1989
Afterburner 1989
Commando 1989

So you might be able to see that, even without citing C64 shooters of 1989 (such as Retrograde), the C64 shooter catalogue of 85-88 still outstrips the Amiga one of 87-89; if, that is, one subscribes to the above-enumerated criteria given by me, which I believe to be reasonable as a starting-point.

I will just add this as an aside in order to hint at how C64 shooters continued to be strong post-1989:

C64 Katakis of 1990 blew Amiga Katakis of 1990 away, just as C64 Armalyte of 1988 blew Amiga Armalyte of 1991 away.

And since it is arguable that the C64 was never dethroned by the Amiga in the shoot 'em up genre, I think it might be reasonable to contend that 8-bit designers and coders probably DID have a clue, maybe even a lot more than a just a clue, about what they were doing. Certainly, it would be regarded as an exaggeration to say that "none or no one did."

[Dunny]

I didn't play Xenon so I didn't really have an opinion on it. I played SB2 once but found it dull as dishwater compared to the original.

[coder76]

I got my A500 in 1989, had the C64 3 years before that. I didn't have any expectations of particular games on the Amiga. I just knew it was the future, the games looked great in magazines compared to C64 games.

The first games i played on the A500: P.O.W., Firepower, Virus, Faery Tale Adventure, Ikari Warriors, Interceptor, Elite, Bard's Tale II, Carrier Command, Starglider 2, Menace, Hybris, and Xenon. They all looked and sounded a lot better than similar C64 games. I know that some games were slow, like Xenon, but at that point when you had just moved from C64 to Amiga, the better graphics and sounds mattered most, and you didn't notice so much flaws in gameplay.

At that point in time, in 1989, my main complaint was that Amiga didn't have as many CRPGs as the C64 had, no Ultima V, or Bard's Tale III, which both came later, but were bad ports.

There were also a few good shooters on the C64 that Amiga never got, like Salamander and Delta, but generally most scrolling shooters were not so good on the C64. The Amiga games got technically better with time, as people learned to code the custom chips better.

[Lilura]

Originally Posted by donnie

Atari st was really a budget amiga with little to no good features of its own. So many games are worse on atari st than on c64 and amiga. So many games just ran like crap. I did not fully understand this back then, but now its easy to see why i never really played certain games. Horrible scrolling, push scroll, jerkyness, just awful.

A horrible computer game machine, to be sure. It didn't deserve Xevious or FTL's Oids or Dungeon Master of 1987, but it did deserve MIDI Maze, Cubase and Notator.

It is disappointing to note that ST Xevious was better than C64 Xevious (both of 1987). But that was just a case of bad porting to the C64. I mean, even the Apple 2 version of 1984 was relatively more impressive than the C64 version.

From memory, the coder of Xevious on Apple 2 was the same that coded Oids.

Xevious C64 is a rare case of a classic and big-name shooter being bad on the C64. As a rule, the C64 had great shooter coinop conversions; often better than 16-bit counterparts in terms of gameplay and graphical clarity. But then, in terms of gameplay and graphical clarity even some coinop conversions on the Speccy outshone the 16-bit ones.

[Megalomaniac]

I think the average standard of 8-bit games probably wasn't great, but we only remember the great ones. Using C64 shooters 85-88 as an example (and this is a genre the C64 was very naturally suited to, with such fast scrolling and impressive music) you could also list bad ones like Traxxion, Comet Game, Jail Break, Guerrilla War, Laser Tag, Sky Twice, Amazon Warrior etc. The point about bad keyboard control setups on a lot of early Spectrum games is a valid one, especially significant as the multiple joystick interface protocols meant that not all games would be compatible with yours. Still, if you didn't know that a game was considered bad, or that something else in the same genre was a lot better, you probably did enjoy it - especially if you paid pocket money for it. And there must have been games you bought after seeing a 90% review but not a 60% review elsewhere.

Still, by late 1984 the Spectrum alone had already seen Manic Miner, Jet Set Willy, Lords of Midnight, Ant Attack, Knight Lore, Atic Atac, Jetpac, Deathchase, Zzoom, Valhalla, Alchemist, Skool Daze, 3D Starstrike, TLL, Trashman, Fighter Pilot - great fun, and largely highly original, well-crafted, characterful and balanced. Numerous genres, in some cases inventing new ones. Probably little effort put into physics in most cases, but did it matter? All unlicensed original products - I've ignored arcade conversions and clones as well as games ported from other systems. Mostly colourful with little clash, surprisingly. Mostly one or two developers, often bedroom-coded without an assigned publisher until well into development. And that's just British created games within 2 1/2 years of the life of one relatively cheap system. So it's hardly accurate to suggest that nobody had a clue.

By the time I had an Amiga, Shadow of the Beast and Xenon II were both quite old games, not sure if I actually played either of them during my original Amiga years. That said, I don't think either are particularly good games. Not sure if I would have been taken in by them at the time, but I can understand why people were.

Beast's audiovisuals stand up really well next to later games, and I can see how the sheer atmosphere and aesthetic would captivate, especially if you were new to the Amiga. The gameplay does nothing for me though - it's not really the controls or difficulty level, which a lot of people complain about, its the complete lack of variety, strategy or imagination, and the unfairness of the random spikes from identical-looking ground that you struggle to learn, and the ludicrous loading delays. Frankly it makes Defender look like Civilization. I'd rather put the time into learning something like Rick Dangerous, where at least each trap holds a new surprise.

Xenon II is hype over quality for me, despite a few good features I mentioned earlier - it's far too slow, the backtracking and walls to get stuck in are terrible ideas, visuals are quite dull and murky, and even the music isn't their work. Agreed that Hybris is a far better game - but then, Hybris was by a small American Amiga-only company, hence why it struggled to be as big as a Robert Maxwell backed game by rock star developers.

[Lilura]

Imagine being so ignorant as to imply that number of total man-hours put into a game as well as the size of a game's development team dictates or is even indicative of an 8-bit game's level of genre-refinement, degree of quality or the ability of 8-bit coders to push an 8-bit computer game machine's chipset capacities.

Two things to consider:

-- Many 8-bit games were designed and coded by one programmer that knew exactly what he was doing: innovative as well as demonstrative of technical mastery in tapping custom chips and specific MPUs.

When you know exactly what you are doing and work alone, you can cut a dev-cycle right down.

Numberous examples could be cited.

-- "Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth." 8-bit games spun out by bigger development teams often suffered from unfocused design, inconsistent quality and slower dev-cycles due to "management and paper-shuffling" as well as the general hazards that stem from needing to communicate and coordinate with others.

***

In certain genre the "limitations" of 8-bit computer-game machines often facilitated innovation under the aspect of "one cannot innovate unless one is forced to innovate". The pedigree of both isometric and flip-screen games on the ZX Spectrum stand as prime examples; so much so that it could be argued that such game-types on the Speccy stand as high-points of refinement and professionalism on an absolute, not just relative level.

By 1984.

Moreover, such games were incalculably influential and financially successful.

[Megalomaniac]

Of course, one teenager in his bedroom produced fantastic results many times, inspiration and experimentation with no corporate types telling you that won't work. Despite that, there are definite benefits in having expanded and specialised teams in some cases. When I eat a bowl of cereal, I'm enjoying the skills of several people - the guy who baked the corn probably has no idea how to maintain the oven that does the baking, or milk the cow, or craft the bowl I poured it into, or design the distribution truck that got it to the shop, or the shoes I was wearing to walk home with the finished product.

Great artists won't always be great at coding or design - or they may know how to design a shooter but not a platformer. Maximising SID and VIC took different skills to squeezing the most of of the Z80 or indeed 6502, or minimising colour clash. Add the frequent complaint of a lot of European games at that time "it needed more independent playtesting". It still stands to reason that we remember the great games much more than the bad ones (which were sometimes by the same people as the good ones).

Sticking to C64 shooters for examples - did 'too many cooks spoil the broth' when five people made the arcade Terra Cresta, or four people the arcade Gyruss, or ten people Life Force / Salamander? When guys like Maniacs of Noise, Rob Hubbard and Martin Galway specialised in music - or indeed specialist Producers and Title Screen guys? When Green / Shrigley / Lloyd et al worked together at Gremlin for so many games? Or due to Andy Braybook and Steve Turner's split of work, where the C64 code was Andy's but the Spectrum code (turning Paradroid into the isometric Quazatron on the Spectrum, for example) and the C64 music was usually Steve's?

Even for much earlier Spectrum games, specialisation was starting. Chris and Tim Stamper shared the design for Ultimate, but Chris coded (often with John Lathbury, who's been airbrushed from history somewhat) and Tim did the graphics (often with Carole). Alchemist's wonderful graphics and titlescreen music weren't by Ian Weatherburn. John Gibson coded Zzoom but didn't design it. Graphics for Skool Daze weren't by David S. Reidy. And so on.

Agreed about the Spectrum's limitations producing so much innovation in many ways. Isometric 3D was a perfect exploitation of the machine's strengths (clear graphics in a high resolution for the day, a fast processor for the number-crunching necessary for 3D) and minimising its limitations (poor colour handling and often naff sound). Arguably the average standard of Spectrum games dropped once there was more demand for conversions from the arcade and from other systems, which couldn't be designed around the system (though titles like Rainbow Islands, R-Type and Chase HQ show what could still be done for pure action games, with the right compromises). Certainly, if I was stuck on a desert island with nothing but 50 Spectrum games and 50 C64 games, the Spectrum games would be earlier releases on average.