03 July 2024, 09:02 | #81 | |
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03 July 2024, 13:03 | #82 | |
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Did they have those magazines in the Netherlands? I think I just randomly bought Amiga Action, Amiga Power, Amiga Format and perhaps some others whenever I could blag one, bearing in mind I was about 9 when that magazine came out. Whenever we would go in WHSmith or some other newsagent I'd be straight over to the Amiga magazines. Last edited by Mick; 03 July 2024 at 13:12. |
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03 July 2024, 18:51 | #83 |
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I didn't find it, I recognized it Pretty unforgettable bit of overselling a game that is. Besides the ludicrous 96/97% score of course.
I think most of them went overseas, but eventually a coverdisk was dropped from it to save on costs. In the small town I lived I had access to Amiga Action and Amiga Power and eventually when Amiga Action and Amiga Power disappeared somewhere in 94, CU Amiga came in their place. I'm sure in the larger chains there would have been a larger selection available but I was too young to have a need to set foot in them. |
03 July 2024, 23:01 | #84 |
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Marble Madness and Shadow of the Beast are iconic Amiga games, early demonstrations of the machine's power outstripping any other available system then, killer apps even. Both are at their best on the Amiga (at least as home games, MM's arcade machine is perhaps better). But iconic characters? One's a ball and the other's nameless and relatively characterless (and the sprites are the only vaguely weak audiovisual point of SotB). Those games didn't need memorable main characters to be appealing to people.
Likewise, quite apart from Zool's issues as a game, the character himself was utterly dull and uninteresting. It didn't help that they didn't seem to know whether he was an ant or an aiien. Even the console versions, with gameplay improvements and an animated intro, sank without trace against Sonic or Mario or Donkey Kong or Kirby or even Bubsy. Kids attracted to console-style platformers could have been much more taken with characters like Titus (despite him being a replacement character), or Superfrog, or Putty, or Tearaway Thomas, maybe even the guy in Prehistorik - quite apart from them probably all being better games. I sadly suspect that the Amiga magzines reviewed the game they WANTED to be paying, not the game they were playing. |
04 July 2024, 04:57 | #85 |
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[QUOTE=Megalomaniac;1693286]Marble Madness and Shadow of the Beast are iconic Amiga games, early demonstrations of the machine's power outstripping any other available system then, killer apps even. Both are at their best on the Amiga (at least as home games, MM's arcade machine is perhaps better). But iconic characters? One's a ball and the other's nameless and relatively characterless (and the sprites are the only vaguely weak audiovisual point of SotB). Those games didn't need memorable main characters to be appealing to people.
To be fair Mario in NES Super Mario game sprites didn't have any more sophistication in the game/interaction with players. I chose the Marble Madness marble as the Amiga Boing Ball was a recognisable simple symbol of Amiga but yes not much personality to it lol. |
04 July 2024, 05:56 | #86 |
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Not every memorable character has to be a cute'n cuddly mascot in the vein of Sonic or Kirby. One of the great thing about Amiga games was that they were often more mature than console fare. The Beast perfectly epitomises that trend, what with its alien-ish design, surrounded by an air of danger and mystery. I'm not a big fan of SotB as a game, but there's no denying it's an Amiga milestone which features an iconic character.
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05 July 2024, 14:54 | #87 | |
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05 July 2024, 19:08 | #88 |
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To be honest the two paragraphs in my last post were meant as two separate comments.
A 'dark' brooding character can indeed be memorable on the Amiga, though I don't think the character you play in SOTB is one - Alestes in Agony perhaps, maybe even the Walker despite it being mechanical? Most of the great mature brooding Amiga games (Wings, Moonstone, Another World) don't have especially memorable main characters somehow. Conrad Hart in Flashback perhaps? Separately from this, I don't think the Zool character succeeded in the aim to be cute and consoleseque as well as several others (console and to an extent Amiga), and I don't think it would have been a console-beater even if the gameplay had been amazing |
05 July 2024, 19:50 | #89 |
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Zool was on consoles. It didn't exactly become a massive franchise despite that fact.
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05 July 2024, 19:56 | #90 |
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It wasn't for a lack of trying though
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08 July 2024, 22:02 | #91 |
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Anything that runs on a 1985 A1000, was first on Amiga and looks as good as PCE/MD/SNES game is a good candidate for me, YMMV
Soccer Kid is more innovative than SNES Mario and he has that cool Sport Billy vibe |
08 July 2024, 23:26 | #92 |
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Soccer Kid isn't a bad call, not only is it technically stunning but I'm not sure it would have originated on a console, it's got a certain type of imagination and quirkiness that you don't really get from console game (plus most console games were Japanese or American, and 'our football' wasn't that big there back then; it feels like the gameplay wouldn't be as challenging with an NFL ball?). Is it down to the Kid himself though? Partly but not entirely for me. Indeed, you can change his kit colour, which feels like allowing and expecting the player to tailor his own character.
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09 July 2024, 00:31 | #93 | |
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And I agree with Dreadnought. Alien/Predator/RoboCop were huge franchises selling games. Cutesy was mostly a Japanese thing that the "West" mimicked hoping for sales, but there were 1000 Japanese cutesy games that failed both sales and mascots/statues/action figures. |
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10 July 2024, 11:42 | #94 |
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Man, still a hard thread. I just keep circling back to iconic games, not iconic characters. Beast is one of them. It is an iconic game, but the character itself... forgettable. He even looks completely different in each entry in the franchise.
The Owl from Agony does have an ace in the hole. More people will remember it from the amazing box art than there are people who know the actual game itself because it was stolen for another game which was memorable for all the wrong reasons |
10 July 2024, 12:04 | #95 |
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Rolling Ronny is maybe not iconic, but for me he's an Amiga character.
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10 July 2024, 17:43 | #96 |
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As is Infinity from the Valhalla franchise, but I'd not really put that guy next to a logo to sell the product It was kind of cool that you got to play the bad guy becoming the bad guy in Valhalla 2, at that point not many games would have had that particular quirk.
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10 July 2024, 18:35 | #97 |
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James Pond in his robocod version.
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11 July 2024, 10:04 | #98 |
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tbh I had never heard of Amy the Squirrel yet I read she became the unofficial mascot of the Amiga community
https://en.wikifur.com/wiki/Amy_the_Squirrel |
11 July 2024, 10:10 | #99 |
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She is not a game character though
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11 July 2024, 10:35 | #100 |
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"Wikifur"...
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