Monkey Business: First Commercial Amiga Game - It Exists! BELIEVE IT or NOT!!!

[DrBong]

Originally Posted by Amigajay

You are correct sir im wasting my time finding evidence of the first Amiga games when your just posting pointless long threads moaning about others and being rude and obnoxious, ill leave you to it.

Don't delude yourself into thinking that you've been trying to help anyone but yourself here, or that you've been utterly polite and well-mannered about it. You've been rude and abrupt before without good reason to peeps in other threads. Don't let the door hit you on the arse on the way out please. Thank you.

My sincerest apologies to everyone else for going off-topic.....please resume normal viewing and have a think about any questions that might be interesting to ask game coders about the early Amiga 1000 days of software development in 1985.

[Don_Adan]

Originally Posted by DrBong

There are a few more posts than what's above where you say that EA *must* have released the first ever commercial game for the Amiga, but I'm sure people get the idea and, frankly, I'm more interested in getting to the truth of the matter (and ruling out EA's first games and other false contenders is part of that process). It is also understandable why you and others think that it can't be anyone else but EA - they hyped up the Amiga and themselves to the max. back in 1985! - but sometimes the most obvious answer is too convenient and turns out to be a stinky red herring.

Unfortunately, obvious and convenient/lazy truths often result in good-quality research not being performed to determine a definitive answer for an important or interesting question. If not a definitive answer, at least one that gets closest to the truth based on the evidence that one has at their disposal at a given point in time.

What is not understandable Don_Adan is your trolling toward those in this thread who have patiently tried to explain to you why and how things were different in the U.S. software market. Saying something over and over doesn't make it true, you know, and doesn't magically persuade people like a jedi mind trick!

Anyway, after much deep-diving into the U.S. mags peeps......I've finally managed to find again something that I read many months ago in the March '86 issue of Computer Gaming World. From what I can gather, CGW was a giant of American gaming mags in the 1980s/90s and they did cover Amiga games with keen interest in the early years. AFAIK, they were the only ones who took the time to explain the reason why EA was late to market with their much-hyped games for the Amiga.

Based on CGW's detailed explanation, it seems fairly clear that EA did not release *any* software (games or otherwise) for the Amiga before the release of Workbench 1.1 in December 1985. Even then, EA apparently chose to release DPaint first before any of their games (One on One, Seven Cities of Gold, Archon) in December 1985.

CGW also write that Hacker, Mindshadow and Borrowed Time from Activision were the first games to make it to market and quickly sold out to starving A1000 users (initial shipments of the games sold out at computer stores??). Anyway, I'm sure there will still be the usual doubters here regardless. There's always at least one or two, but that's life!

'The first games to make it to market were from Activision: Hacker, Mindshadow, and Borrowed Time. These games had just recently been released for other computer systems, and now with enhanced graphics were released for the Amiga. All three are graphic adventures. New Amiga owners, anxious for any software to play with on their machines, bought out initial shipments. Users were pleased with what they saw and heard. But where were the games from EA (Electronic Arts) that had been advertised so much even before the Amiga was available?
.
.
.

An Infocom adventure is always fun, but on the Amiga it is a real pleasure. But where were the EA games?

The answer came soon. The earlier games released were able to use the initial operating system release (1.0). With release 1.1 right around the corner, EA had been using 1.1 for the final design of its production release. This meant the EA titles could not be released until the users had 1.1. The corner ended up being a LONG block away for it was nearly a month from talk of the release of 1.1 to its actual release. Even then EA sent their initial titles to the dealers and many were sold before the users received the official Commodore 1.1 upgrade package.

The first Electronic Arts software release was not a game, but Deluxe Paint, a super sophisticated painting, drawing, coloring and electronic sticker
book.' [see scan below for the full news article by CGW].

EDIT: @fatbob_gb You found it too - well done!

You readed this already?
"I purchased the first Amiga sold in Virginia -- Oct. 1985. The dealer had one game on hand - EA's Software Golden Oldies, and I bought it. I ordered a few games early, and the first one to arrive was Hacker (or was it Hacker II?) by Activision. The second was Midshadow from Interplay. Then came Wishbringer from Infocom. That was pretty close to super early release sequence."
This info perfect fits to info from Computer Gaming World. Hacker was second game, Mindshadow was third game, Wishbringer has 4th place. FIRST Amiga game was from EA.
Unfortunelly known version of Software Golden Oldies is from 1986 year. I cant explain if exist other game version. Or it was other EA title, or he remember something wrong, but if only one game was available to purchase then is almost impossible to be wrong. You can ask him, this info is from amiga.org. He is amiga.org user. Anyway first Amiga commercial game is Hacker or EA game, not Monkey Business. And seems that 2 or 3 EA games was sold in Dec 1985.

[Don_Adan]

One thing is very funny.
Monkey Business game was available in Dec 1985 but cant be sold because no adverts or shipping to shops. But was released for you.
2 or 3 EA games was available before Dec 1985, but was not sold because EA wait for Workbench 1.1 for release DPaint.
BTW. Workbench 1.1 can be important only for Deluxe Paint. First EA Amiga games was NDOS, I hope you know this good.

[desiv]

Originally Posted by Don_Adan

Monkey Business game was available in Dec 1985 but cant be sold because no adverts or shipping to shops. .

Why does no advertising (and you mean no advertising that you have found) mean they couldn't sell it?
And how do you know they didn't send it to any shops?

[Don_Adan]

Originally Posted by desiv

Why does no advertising (and you mean no advertising that you have found) mean they couldn't sell it?
And how do you know they didn't send it to any shops?

Check/read posts 61 and 64. I dont know if this game was sold in shops too. But if you checked Amiga World magazine you can find many adverts for Amiga games, even unavailable (?) in 1986 year, like Sargon III. No advert/review/info = no game, can be logical for USA, but Im not USA expert. I readed some Amiga World magazines and this is very interesting to read especially software/hardware infos/adverts. For me logical is buying game in the shop, but after info from DrBong selling game via mail order only can be Ok for me too, even if it looks more like shareware game, than commercial game. And A1000 owner mentioned before, ordered Amiga games too, then solding games via mail order was USA standard too. Anyway in 1985 year, no internet, then no net adverts, no electronic release for games, only boxed release, I think. Of course in theory game can be adverted in TV, radio or BBS too, not only in magazines. But this is hard to check, only computer magazines are easy enough to check.

[desiv]

Originally Posted by Don_Adan

I dont know if this game was sold in shops too.

So, you admit that you don't know if this game was sold in shops.

Originally Posted by Don_Adan

But if you checked Amiga World magazine you can find many adverts for Amiga games, even unavailable (?) in 1986 year, like Sargon III. No advert/review/info = no game, can be logical for USA, but Im not USA expert.

Nope, that is wrong. Especially back then.
A lot of small game developers would sell directly to shops. No ads, word of mouth only.

Originally Posted by Don_Adan

And A1000 owner mentioned before, ordered Amiga games too, then solding games via mail order was USA standard too. Anyway in 1985 year, no internet, then no net adverts, no electronic release for games, only boxed release, I think. Of course in theory game can be adverted in TV, radio or BBS too, not only in magazines. But this is hard to check, only computer magazines are easy enough to check.

Yep, mail order was pretty standard back then.
And smaller companies selling directly to local computer shops and the game spreading by word of mouth was not uncommon.
Yes, there were very few electronic releases back then, although the shareware market was starting to kick in.
A lot of BBS word of mouth, including FIDOnet, which could spread information across the country (and beyond).
Now, I want to re-iterate. I am not convinced that Monkey Business was the first game available (if there was only one; might be there were several available at the same time).
Especially because "The Other Valley Software" was such a small company, it makes it more likely that they could have released their game very quickly. They already had it made (at least for the Mac version, and I would think the ST version was out before the Amiga version??). And they wouldn't even technically need their own Amiga DEV kit. If they knew someone at another company who had a DEV kit, they could have used that for a quick port. While there was a lot of competition, there was also a lot of friendship among the coders in the area.
So, could I see a small company with a "quick to port" app jumping on this, and possibly getting out their app to the stores they usually sell to pretty quickly.
There are mentions of Monkey Business being available in AmigaWorld issues (in 86), but no ads in previous Amigaworld issues. So even if you think it was only available in 86, it was still sold without ads in Amigaworld. Lack of ads means nothing.

Do I think it was the first game? Maybe. Maybe not. Since the AmigaWorld games editor said he thought it probably was, I am leaning towards believing him until other evidence comes forward.
I'd personally rather it be Seven Cities of Gold, because I own that game. ;-)

[jotd]

@DonAdan first EA games were OS-compliant trackloading games (One on One, Archon, Skyfox, etc...) so ROM version is important (but not the workbench as it is not loaded)

Proof is that Archon doesn't work on kickstart 1.3, only 1.2.

And (maybe off-topic, tell me I'll edit it out), in most EA games of this era (including Marble Madness) there a lousy boot program/protection loader which fails on 512K ROM because of 0x00F8xxxx addresses in the zero page (wrongly read by the program BTW) instead of 0x00FCxxxx which miraculously doesn't make the game crash). I think if they wanted to do that on purpose they may not have succeeded...

Derek Noombourg was the first one to release a patch for Marble Madness crack, that I could apply to all other EA games of 1985/1986.

[Don_Adan]

Originally Posted by jotd

@DonAdan first EA games were OS-compliant trackloading games (One on One, Archon, Skyfox, etc...) so ROM version is important (but not the workbench as it is not loaded)

Proof is that Archon doesn't work on kickstart 1.3, only 1.2.

And (maybe off-topic, tell me I'll edit it out), in most EA games of this era (including Marble Madness) there a lousy boot program/protection loader which fails on 512K ROM because of 0x00F8xxxx addresses in the zero page (wrongly read by the program BTW) instead of 0x00FCxxxx which miraculously doesn't make the game crash). I think if they wanted to do that on purpose they may not have succeeded...

Derek Noombourg was the first one to release a patch for Marble Madness crack, that I could apply to all other EA games of 1985/1986.

I run all EA games on kick 1.3, when I ripped music from these games. The biggest problem was for 7 Cities of Gold, it needs real fix for 2 accesses to kickstart routine. For other EA games I fixed (Action Replay) cracks only. And I dont remember what I changed, but it was easy enough.

[desiv]

Originally Posted by Don_Adan

I run all EA games on kick 1.3,.

A lot of the early EA games don't run with Kickstart 1.3.
I know, I own a bunch of them. ;-)

[DamienD]

Yup, like:

... Archon: The Light And The Dark
... Archon II: Adept
... Arcticfox
... One On One (Electronic Arts)
... etc.

[TjLaZer]

Check this page out! (translate to English if need be)

http://tv-games.ru/wiki/Persons/RonFortier.html

[dlfrsilver]

this :

Monkey Business for Atari ST, and probably the Amiga, is a clone of Donkey Kong, and Nintendo did not forgive such things.

The game was announced in the middle of 1986, and there is information that in the middle of 1987 it cost $ 24.95.

However, apart from the freely distributed version of ROM, only one disk with the game was found, sales, if there were, then quickly ended, the game is one of the most unknown for its platforms.

[desiv]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

.

Interesting, although I am pretty sure the game was selling, at least on the Macintosh in 1985, based on what we have seen from the ads. The article isn't very specific.
So I'm not sure how accurate that information is...
I suppose it is possible that they sent a copy to AmigaWorld to review in 1985, but didn't get around to releasing it until mid 1986, but that would be strange for a small software company. (Expected for a larger shop tho. ;-)
Was someone going to see about finding/asking Ron himself?
I don't know that what he says would be decisive (I know what I would remember about what I was doing 30 years ago shouldn't be used as evidence), but it would be interesting to hear... ;-)

[Dunny]

He would have the last word, literally. If he remembers... But yeah, if this is that important then he should be contacted.

[StingRay]

Originally Posted by jotd

Proof is that Archon doesn't work on kickstart 1.3, only 1.2.

This is caused by the protection code which uses certain hardcoded interrupt vectors as decryption keys if memory serves me right. Once the encryption layer is removed a lot of compatibility problems disappear.

[desiv]

Originally Posted by StingRay

This is caused by the protection code which uses certain hardcoded interrupt vectors as decryption keys if memory serves me right. Once the encryption layer is removed a lot of compatibility problems disappear.

Good info.
Still shows that those games were released before 1.3 was generally available.

It does raise an interesting question about EA tho. (And other companies whose games require 1.2 or so)
Why didn't they (I haven't heard they did) release updated/fixed versions of their games for 1.3?
I suppose since 1.3 was released in 1987 (form what I can tell), they figured no one was interested in those games anymore, but you would think existing customers would have grumbled a bit...

I mean, Kick 1.2 was 1986, so that is less than a year. Possibly months, and I could see copies of some of those games still being on shelves when 1.3 was still released.

Kick switching wasn't common back then. And kickstart degrading wasn't "official" and I'm not sure when it started (relokick, the first I remember, was to kick BACK to 1.3 from 2 or 3, right?).

Not great customer service IMHO.. ;-)
(sidetrack rant over..)

[jotd]

Archon also calls wrongly the ROM, trying to FreeSprite a sprite with index > 16. works in kick 1.2, not in kick 1.3

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by desiv

I suppose since 1.3 was released in 1987

1988. There are quite a lot of 1.2 A500s out there.

[idrougge]

If I may chime in, while this whole Monkey Business business is interesting, the fact that not a single original copy has surfaced in 33 years, and not a single advert for the Amiga version, its status as "first commercial Amiga game" is dubious to say the least. It certainly can't have been commercial in the same sense of the word as Arcticfox or Seven Cities of Gold.

All indications we have that it was even first in any way is one person's recollections, which is a valid source in itself if that source is deemed trustworthy, but until a magazine review, advert or receipt with a 1985 date is found, it would be unscientific to call it a first.

[TjLaZer]

Clearly it was not offered like a Electronic Arts release. It was a small software company and offered like a budget release. Listed in some magazines in a very small advertisement. Not a full page ad like EA and the likes did.