Play It By Year - a new Amiga game collection

[dreadnought]

I have a thing for chrono-gaming and have been putting together related collections for my own use for some time now. They're mostly meant for real hardware and/or FPGA boards, since on PCs you can just use Gamebases (though some of their dates are off). I've been working on a big Apple II project recently and needed a break, so finally tackling Amiga seemed like a relaxing idea. It's an admittedly rather niche-use collection, but perhaps somebody else will find it useful too, so here it is:

eab/Turran's FTP: /Uploads/dreadnought/PlayItByYear
archive.org: https://archive.org/details/amiga-pl...ear-collection

This release (v0.1) covers years 1985-1989 and is based on HOL's data and contains files from TOSEC, WHDL, Gamebase & eab's ftp. Future releases will add more years. There's a detailed description on archive.org's page.

Any comments, suggestions, and bug reports are most welcome.

EDIT: v0.2a is up now, fixing some stuff and adding a few MIAs.

EDIT: v0.3 is up, adding year 1991

[zodiac]

Thanks for all your effort!

[rygar]

Nice project. You can use this game list for your collection. It's bigger than HOL
https://obligement-free-fr.translate..._x_tr_sch=http

[dreadnought]

Thanks guys.

Damn, I forgot about this list Maybe for the better, as it's less user friendly than HOL and there is a lot of hard-to-find stuff. Althought my completist OCD flares up now upon seeing it. Maybe will put it on to-do list after first finishing the HOL-based one...

[jbenam]

Very nice - I will follow this with interest.

Chronological order is very important to understand the evolution of a specific system

[icyone]

amazing project

[dreadnought]

Have uploaded a new version to archive.org, same link as before. It adds year 1990, is reorganized a bit and a few dodgy files from the previous one were fixed. There's also a ready made container hdf with all the WHDLoads you can mount as a secondary HDD (it's not bootable).

[Seiya]

thank you. i have updated my collection with your files

[dreadnought]

Cool, if you (or anybody else) sees some not working adfs or WHDLs please let me know, I have tested only a small fraction of them.

[Bren McGuire]

this is a great idea and i thank you for your work, but may I have a suggestion? do not mix whdl and adf games. in most cases, whdl games have issues that the original disks dont.

i hope you would consider this, and also that you keep going, since i would love to play past 1990

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by Bren McGuire

do not mix whdl and adf games. in most cases, whdl games have issues that the original disks dont.

I'm not sure it's the "most" cases, but there are certainly some problematic WHDLs out there. If you know which ones, you can mention them or point me to some sources and I will include adfs for them (I already did for several games such as Starflight).

[Bren McGuire]

the issue is that a lot of people have problems with games bombing out mid-game. properly testing means having access to all hardware configs and testing all games with a FULL playthrough.

if this was just adf it could happily run in a gotek setup and i also think it would be much better for something like an fpga computer.

[dreadnought]

At the moment I'm trying to minimize the amount of work going into this project, because I have also other things going on. Maybe that's something that can be added in the future, once everything is done, but for now I'd be just too much. And adfs can be problematic too, there's no guarantee every version will work fine...

For now, if you hit a snag with WHDL, you can just look for a solution (tooltips, etc) and if there isn't any, just source the adfs yourself.

[Seiya]

me too i tried some adf games and it works. WHD maybe i will try later

[DDNI]

Originally Posted by rygar

Nice project. You can use this game list for your collection. It's bigger than HOL
https://obligement-free-fr.translate..._x_tr_sch=http

Anyone got an excel version of this list?

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by DDNI

Anyone got an excel version of this list?

I seem to recall that the author would send you one on request. There's a thread dedicated to this list here on eab somewhere.

[dreadnought]

A slightly updated new version (0.2a) has been just uploaded. This release mainly fixes the hdf, where some games didn't work due to Windows curse, and also adds some games recovered from the MIA list.

Thanks to wizard1 & Crashdisk for the adfs, and to all the folks advising on hdf troubles.

[Girolamo85]

nice! very accurate, cheers

[dreadnought]

I have just uploaded v0.3. It adds year 1991. Possibly peak Amiga year? So many amazing games released....

[TCD]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

It adds year 1991. Possibly peak Amiga year?

I'd say so too. Just before the PC took off and just after the 8-bits toned down. The sweet spot. Turrican 2 came out that year. Gods, Cruise for a Corpse, Mega Lo Mania, Populous 2, Warlords and Wrath of the Demon too. I'd say 1990/91 are the Amiga years in terms of which platform games were meant to be played on.