Is it possible to play every Amiga game releases? A project to do just that!

[gimbal]

Yeah Hero Quest is a love/hate for me. I love the board game to video game conversion, quite good. But it is just so RNG based. That works for board games, but in video games I kind of want my reaction time or smarts (or lack thereof) to determine if I win or lose. So it was never more than a 15 minute pass time for me on a rainy day. It became better when I was playing it with my brother though.

But given how much repetition there is in the game... surely there was space left on the disc for some more music and/or animations for spells? Especially the latter would have made a world of difference. Now its just a text box. "Yeah, you zapped 2, the enemy defended 1. You win." Gee. I'm so happy game.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by gimbal

That works for board games

Hmm, I might have flip the odd game board or two when I was younger if the dices didn't fall in my favor

[Weasel Fierce]

Originally Posted by gimbal

Yeah Hero Quest is a love/hate for me. I love the board game to video game conversion, quite good. But it is just so RNG based. That works for board games, but in video games I kind of want my reaction time or smarts (or lack thereof) to determine if I win or lose. So it was never more than a 15 minute pass time for me on a rainy day. It became better when I was playing it with my brother though.

But given how much repetition there is in the game... surely there was space left on the disc for some more music and/or animations for spells? Especially the latter would have made a world of difference. Now its just a text box. "Yeah, you zapped 2, the enemy defended 1. You win." Gee. I'm so happy game.

Yeah, it is too random to really be much of a strategy game. It is definitely a case where without the tactile feel of little plastic orcs and sitting around a table where you can make up stuff, the experience is a lot less.

[Weasel Fierce]

Originally Posted by TCD

Hmm, I might have flip the odd game board or two when I was younger if the dices didn't fall in my favor

Playing warhammer 40k with a friend one late late night, after a particularly unlucky failed roll he picked up his space marine hero miniature and launched it out the window.

We looked at each other for a minute, then dutifully wandered out into his parents front yard to locate said space marine from the rose bushes in the dark at 2 in the morning.

[Anubis]

Originally Posted by gimbal

Yeah Hero Quest is a love/hate for me. I love the board game to video game conversion, quite good. But it is just so RNG based. That works for board games, but in video games I kind of want my reaction time or smarts (or lack thereof) to determine if I win or lose. So it was never more than a 15 minute pass time for me on a rainy day. It became better when I was playing it with my brother though.

But given how much repetition there is in the game... surely there was space left on the disc for some more music and/or animations for spells? Especially the latter would have made a world of difference. Now its just a text box. "Yeah, you zapped 2, the enemy defended 1. You win." Gee. I'm so happy game.

Wasn't this the case with all RPG games, repetition throughout the game, with hope that story will keep you goin'.

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by Anubis

Wasn't this the case with all RPG games, repetition throughout the game, with hope that story will keep you goin'.

Heck no. One word: Puzzles. The average RPG made you think. Usually quite hard, too. Or you had to solve a gnarly time based problem.

That is what made Grimrock such a legendary duo. Not because it was a square based dungeon crawler but because they cranked the RPG puzzles up to the max.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Weasel Fierce

Playing warhammer 40k with a friend one late late night, after a particularly unlucky failed roll he picked up his space marine hero miniature and launched it out the window.

We looked at each other for a minute, then dutifully wandered out into his parents front yard to locate said space marine from the rose bushes in the dark at 2 in the morning.

I was a DM for various pen & paper RPGs and the times I had to cheat my own dice rolls to not kill a player character was concerning. It still happened though and I was wise enough to play without my painted minatures

[Weasel Fierce]

I am taking a few moments today to update the intro post and redo the blog a bit.
I also have an idea for a way to gamify the progression a bit as well as make it a bit more interactive.

Last night was spent mostly playing Fears of all things so I am just going to snipe off the top of the stack today.

Secret of Monkey Island
Its hard to discuss the Amiga without discussing this game. The writing is fun, the puzzles are silly but can be done by humans and the story is great. This is one of only two adventure games I have ever completed without using a guide.
5/5

Wolfenstein 3D
There have been other ports of this but the recent one on aminet (Novacoder I think?) runs absolutely awesome on an 030 and I was able to finally complete the game. I will say, the last episodes are by and large hot garbage: Sprawling mazes with nothing of interest, interchangeable corridors and every room has half a battalion of nazis waiting.
If you never beat this one, I recommend doing so but stick to the first three episodes (which made up the original game).
4/5

[jotd]

Secret of Monkey Island => VGA / SCUMM version has 256 colors and is much better. But amiga versions of Lucas games are fair.

Wolf 3D => I think it's Buzil (mispelled name of that talented Hungarian fellow probably) port that I'm playing. Excellent on a 060 too. Never played that game on a PC but I enjoy it on the miggy for some reason. Maybe because it's an amiga?

[Weasel Fierce]

Originally Posted by jotd

Secret of Monkey Island => VGA / SCUMM version has 256 colors and is much better. But amiga versions of Lucas games are fair.

Wolf 3D => I think it's Buzil (mispelled name of that talented Hungarian fellow probably) port that I'm playing. Excellent on a 060 too. Never played that game on a PC but I enjoy it on the miggy for some reason. Maybe because it's an amiga?

I definitely enjoyed it more on the miggy than when Ive done it on PC, so that's probably a factor

[Weasel Fierce]

Centerfold Squares
First play. We hit our first "adult" game. Grainy hooters would have been considerably more exciting in 1988 though the images used are pretty tasteful.

The actual gameplay, once I had consulted a manual, is pretty fun if a bit shallow. Its basically a tile placement game where you color the opposing tiles by placing new tiles on both sides. Im not sure this would hold anyones attention without the promise of digitized bazookas.
2/5

Xenon 2
Replay. This always felt like it was made more to impress than to play great. The visuals are cool though the much-vaunted music gets old pretty fast but I just never felt that into the game. Everything crawls along and the enemies, while well animated, often look like nonsense. One to pull out once in a while.
3/5

[Weasel Fierce]

Also for fun, I am going to track "completion" rates as I go.
This is based more around having experienced the whole game rather than challenge specifically. I was never that good at video games and that hasn't improved with time

Im going to use a simple points system here:
Watching a longplay of the game, 1 point
(no skipping around!)

Completing the game with a walkthrough or using cheats/trainers, 2 points

Completing the game on your own, 3 points.

(using a guide for games that still require skill such as an RPG counts as 3 points, adventure games where a guide essentially solves the game counts as 2 points).
(You CAN count completions from back in the day, they don't have to be recent)

Some games don't really have ways to complete them, so they can't be ranked.

If you want to play along, look at the list of games in the first post and tally up your score. I am currently at 49 points (counting only games already marked off for this challenge)

Completed legit:
Alien breed 2 AGA
Assassin
Balance of Power (won a game on the complete difficulty mode)
Battle Isle (all missions beaten)
Champions of krynn
Civilization (first three difficulties)
Dune
Dune 2 (Harkonnen only)
Pool of Radiance (multiple times)
Shanghai (won a game)
Transplant (wrapped around to level 1. Multiple times)
Turrican 3 (multiple times)
Warlords (the challenge in the manual where you start with the Sirians and beat every enemy on max difficulty)
Wolfenstein 3D (third difficulty, all episodes)

Completed with a guide:
Secret of Monkey Island

Completed with cheats or trainers:
Alien Breed 3D, Cabal

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Weasel Fierce

Im going to use a simple points system here:
Watching a longplay of the game, 1 point
(no skipping around!)

Just for earning points I'd go for speedrunning with cheats then

[kremiso]

Originally Posted by Weasel Fierce

Xenon 2
Replay. This always felt like it was made more to impress than to play great. The visuals are cool though the much-vaunted music gets old pretty fast but I just never felt that into the game. Everything crawls along and the enemies, while well animated, often look like nonsense. One to pull out once in a while.
3/5

aged a bit badly
sadly locked on 512KB, so too much loadings ingame played on original hardware and disks

loading first level (half), loading shop, loading first level (second part), loading shop, loading second level (part one) etc.

not a great thing
the cdtv version is the one to play also today, or ok the whdload one

[Weasel Fierce]

Originally Posted by kremiso

aged a bit badly
sadly locked on 512KB, so too much loadings ingame played on original hardware and disks

loading first level (half), loading shop, loading first level (second part), loading shop, loading second level (part one) etc.

not a great thing
the cdtv version is the one to play also today, or ok the whdload one

yeah, it is much less painful today. The first version I ever played was actually on DOS with a PC with no working sound, which was a bizarre experience.

[Megalomaniac]

I guess ST ports (though with better music) that made no use of additional memory were still acceptable in 1989. The popularity of Xenon 2 still confuses me, Hybris and Battle Squadron both wipe the floor with it, and something like Plutos is much more fun to play even if its technically very basic.

[Weasel Fierce]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

I guess ST ports (though with better music) that made no use of additional memory were still acceptable in 1989. The popularity of Xenon 2 still confuses me, Hybris and Battle Squadron both wipe the floor with it, and something like Plutos is much more fun to play even if its technically very basic.

I suspect hobbies like retro computing and retro gaming has a lot of folks who primarily like the tinker for a few minutes and a smaller group of people who like to actually use (or play) the stuff.
Thats not throwing shade, whatever makes people happy but it does go a way to explaining

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

The popularity of Xenon 2 still confuses me, Hybris and Battle Squadron both wipe the floor with it, and something like Plutos is much more fun to play even if its technically very basic.

I suppose it's the Bitmap Brothers plus the intro music. Got me for quite a while too.

[Anubis]

Originally Posted by gimbal

Heck no. One word: Puzzles. The average RPG made you think. Usually quite hard, too. Or you had to solve a gnarly time based problem.

That is what made Grimrock such a legendary duo. Not because it was a square based dungeon crawler but because they cranked the RPG puzzles up to the max.

Apparently we did not play the same RPG games back in the 90s. Most of the ones I played, it was fight after fight with very little bit else (story). Getting enough healing items was essential to finish the game.

Sure, new RPG are great, but aren't we talking about old(er) games here?!

[Weasel Fierce]

Originally Posted by Anubis

Apparently we did not play the same RPG games back in the 90s. Most of the ones I played, it was fight after fight with very little bit else (story). Getting enough healing items was essential to finish the game.

Sure, new RPG are great, but aren't we talking about old(er) games here?!

I think it depends. The Gold Box and Bards Tale series were mostly tactical combat, Eye of the beholder was pretty heavy in puzzles for the time (though they were pretty simple of course).
Ultima has a lot to do outside of combat, though Im not sure Id call it puzzles. Its more exploration and figuring out the order to do things (and what the things are to be done)