Anyone remember...

[LaundroMat]

Base Jumpers?

Now this was an original and highly addictive game. I remember playing this with friends all afternoons and evenings, even with a pirate copy that crashed after a certain level!

"Ah, ok, after this level it'll crash"
"Ok."
*crash*
*reboot*
"w00t!"
"Here we go again!"

Aaah... Anyone happen to have a non-defective copy?

PS - There was something particular about this game. I associate its creators with bad games, but I don't know why anymore.. Also, wasn't it written in Blitz or even AMOS?

I remember getting hold of base jumpers just after I had discovered a PD game called Parachute Joust where you had to wrestle someone for the only parachute leaving your opponent to plunge to their death(s).

I like base jumpers, very addictive. I used to play my CD32 demo of it constantly.

[Amiga1992]

I remember spending many hours with the demo version that came in The One, trying to make words with the bonus letters. At the end, among teh game I found some file which contained all the combinations possible, and spoiled my investigation ;/ I have the file somewhere, I think it was a plain text file...

[Tim Janssen]

I am getting very curious about Base Jumpers. Is it a cross between Scrabble and a Parachute game or what?
What does the game look like and when was it released?

[CodyJarrett]

Base Jumpers was released in 1995 by Grandslam, having been programmed by Rasputin, creators of Jetstrike and Clockwiser.

You have to ascend a building inside, in a platformer-style level and then when you reach the top, you jump off. The last one to release the parachute wins. It's a great game!


Removed screenshot

[Tim Janssen]

Once again this is a proof that I am totally unaware of jewels that have appeared on Amiga since 1995. The game looks like a platform game to me.
I hope it is also a 2-player game. Just imagine playing it with a friend: who will be the last to release the parachute? No Quake-multiplayer-deathmatch can beat such a tense.

[CodyJarrett]

It was definitely two player and may have been more.

Here is a short bit of history about the years 1995 onwards. It was a time of Doom clones, Vulcan games, excuses-for-games released just before a company left the Amiga, the sad closure of Amiga Power...


1995 was the last year for any decent number of Amiga releases. It saw the battle of the Doom clones: Alien Breed 3D 1 (great), Behind The Iron Gate (okay), Citadel (good), Death Mask (not really Doom, but marketed as one), Fears (rubbish), Gloom (great).

As well as Alien Breed 3D and Gloom, other classics of the year are Blood Net: A Cyberpunk Gothic AGA, Colonization, Guardian, Roadkill, Sensible World Of Soccer 95/96, Shadow Fighter, Super Skidmarks, Super Tennis Champs, Worms and Zeewolf 2: Wild Justice.

The following games were all good: Base Jumpers, COALA, Exile AGA, F1 World Championship Edition, Flight Of The Amazon Queen, Odyssey, Statix, Timekeepers, Virocop, Virtual Karting and X-It

As for average or mediocre: ATR, Dungeon Master 2, Hillsea Lido, King Pin: Arcade Sports Bowling, Mortal Kombat 2, Primal Rage, Roketz AGA, Sensible Golf, Skeleton Krew, Valhalla 2: Before The War and Watchtower AGA

Plain rubbish: Ants, Pinball Mania AGA, Pinkie, Super Street Fighter 2: The New Challengers, Tower Of Souls, Vital Light and Whizz

And some others...


1996 had more SWOS in the European Championship Edition and 96/97 and some good games like Capital Punishment, Legends and Slamtilt.

Other good games were Bograts, The Chaos Engine 2, Gloom Deluxe, Mikro Mortal Tennis and XTreme Racing.

There were some average or mediocre games like Alien Breed 3D 2, Breathless, Burnout, Jet Pilot, Speris Legacy, Tin Toy Adventure, Valhalla 3 and XP8

Bad: City Cars, Kang Fu, Kick Off 96, Star Crusader, Tommy Gun


By 1997, there were still a couple of Doom clones - Nemac IV and Testament. TFX finally got a release on a CU Amiga CD. Uropa 2, Tiny Troops and Final Odyssey were pretty good. Castle Kingdoms, Kargon, Street Racer and Master Axe were okay. The Strangers was just bad.


1998 picked up a bit, with Genetic Species, Gunbee F-99, OnEscapee, Shadow Of The Third Moon, Ultra Violent Worlds, Worms: The Director's Cut and Virtual Karting 2. Blitz Bombers came out as freeware. Forest Dump Forever!! was shit.


For 1999 onwards, I need to check some Amiga Formats and Amiga Actives!

[Amiga1992]

Either I am confusing things, or some of those games you mention, were released in 1994? Guardian, ATR and Skeleton Krew to name a few.

I also had this strange relation with Base Jumpers and Acid Software, dunno why! I knew perfectly it was done by Rasputin... Weird...

Anyway, yes, it was multiplayer. 4 could be part of it. And the jumping section was awesome. One of the players, chosen randomly, had pants instead of a parachute. I think it was randon, or it was one who opened teh chute too soon. A sample said 'own the pants!' bwahahaha

[CodyJarrett]

Guardian CD32 was late 1994 and Guardian A1200 was early 1995, so you are right, it is really a 1994 game.

Skeleton Krew were both early 1995...

[Tim Janssen]

Thanks for your update. I am glad I still recognise many games. The 'latest' games I have for my Amiga 500 are Shadow Fighter, Mortal Kombat 2, Death Mask and ATR. I copied all these games from a friend of mine at the end of 1994.

By the way: back in 1996 I bought a Dutch Amiga magazine. It had a preview of a shoot'em up called ATrophy. It had very, very weird graphics. It was planned for an autumn release at a budget price. Do you know this game and what happened to it?
Also, back in 1994 CU Amiga run a monthly diary of a CD32 game called Space Academy. This isometric viewed game began to look very nice. Has this game been ever been published?

[CodyJarrett]

Neither of them were released...

[Tim Janssen]

Hmm, it appears that many 'promised' games actually never appeared on Amiga. For some time now I am thinking of a website covering games that got a preview in magazines but never saw the light of the day.

Here is a list of games that got a preview but I have never seen since on Amiga:
Frak! (Update of ancient BBC Micro game by ??, 1991)
Universal Monsters (Isometric game by Ocean, 1993)
Impulse (Shmup looking similar to Disposable Hero by Prestige, 1992)
Shenandoah (A shmup by Black Legend, 1993)
Novastorm (Sequel to Microcosm by Psygnosis, 1994)
RamRod (Isometric game by Kevin Bulmer, 1991)
Cyberspace (Doom/Hunter type of game by Cybersystems, 1993)
Shockwave Assault (FPS by Electronic Arts, 1990)
Tyger, Tyger (Platformgame by Firebird, 1988)
Inferno (Space flightsim by Ocean, 1994)
Chucky's World (Platformgame by ??, 1991)
Space Checkers (Isometric puzzler by ??, 1994)
Orc (Platformgame by Silmarils, 1993)

[Mangar]

A website is a great idea. Some have done it for the c64 and it has either made the game turn up or the actual programmers to say yeah its unfinished but here is what I have thats playable.. Unfortunately, being the amiga and all I dont think we'll have that kind of luck.

I was creaming my pants over Inferno, it looked so great. Every CD32 magazine delighted in showcasing the Inferno scrolling demo on its CDs. They had new screenshots almost every issue and it looked like being a brilliant game.

Although, saying that, I thought Epic was going to be a fantastic and it was possibly THE biggest dissapointment of my Amiga life. Myself and my brother saved up for ages to buy Epic, boy were we pissed off when it arrived.

Inferno was being penned as the sequel to Epic and they said they had learned from all their mistakes. I for one was looking forward to it.

[Amiga1992]

The site you refer to, Mangar, is Games That Weren't. One brilliant website, if you ask me. Would be awesome if the same can be done with the Amiga

Tim: Universal Monsters WAS released.

[Tim Janssen]

I am astonished. I have seen many previews and adverts for Universal Monsters but never read a review of it. Is it any good? I know it is programmed by Simon Butler who did some great arcade conversions of Commando, Ninja Spirit and Powerdrifton the C64.

[Twistin'Ghost]

This is true, Akira. Universal Monsters was indeed released, but I too have read in some magazine(s) that the game was never released. No idea where they get their info from...I think even AP claimed it to be unreleased. I have seen used copies of the game for sale on ebay. It sure didn't lived up to the Ocean hype, though (which is typical for Ocean games, really...)

Somewhere here I have a huge list of unreleased games on the Amiga, as well. I am working on a web site with some friends and we plan on allocating an area that will detail the lost Amiga classics that never saw their way to release. It will be very thorough, but I remain fairly cyncial about these games materializing. But surely SOMETHING will surface!

[Mangar]

You can bet on that..

[Twistin'Ghost]

Tim, the only review I could find for "Universal Monsters" was from The One March 1993:

The One said...
Publisher: Play Byte
Developer: In-house
£25.99 Out Now
Keyboard/joystick/joypad
Memory: 512k | Disks: 2
During the long-forgotten glory days of the 8-bit Spectrums, Ocean had a fine reputation for producing some of the best isometric 3D arcade adventures that £7.95 could buy - Batman and Head Over Heels equalled, if not surpassed, the achievements set by Ultimate's Filmation series, and so it was with no small degree of anticipation that I approached this, Ocean's second stab at the genre after the superb Head Over Heels conversion. It's fair to say, however, that they don't make 'em like they used to. Universal Monsters can't hold a candle to the likes of Head Over Heels, but that said it's a darn sight better than most isometric-3D adventures available for the Amiga. But having said THAT, there isn't really much competition around. The only notable efforts of recent years are Voodoo Nightmare, Treasure Trap and Cadaver, and none of those managed to capture the classic spirit of the old 8-bit pioneers. What is it that makes an isometric adventure so hard to get right? If I knew that I'd be a rich man, but what I can say is that, while Universal Monsters doesn't quite hit the nail on the head, it delivers a fairly good wallop. It's big, tricky and packed with the kind of puzzles and traps that adventurous types lap up. If there's a complaint to make it's that the arcade side of things is a bit too challenging (i.e. bloody hard) for my taste, and some of this stems from the rather distorted sense of perspective portrayed in the graphics. It's meant to be a 3D game, but some of the perspective is very odd indeed, bearing a resemblance at times to those impossible structure paintings by Escher. It makes judging leaps into the unknown very hard indeed. Perhaps a little more graphical simplicity, rather than the over-detailed visuals on display here, wouldn't have gone amiss. It's a niggle, but only a minor one and one that shouldn't detract from your enjoyment of the game in the long term. To all Head Over Heels and arcade adventure fans it comes strongly recommended, even though the rest of us mere mortals should be wary of biting off more than we can chew with this one.

A1200
Universal Monsters works fine on the A1200 but note that a 256-colour enhanced version is in the pipeline. More on that when it happens in Updates.
Graphics 80%
Sound 79%
Playability 82%
Lastability 85%
OVERALL 84%

[Tim Janssen]

Hi Twistin' Ghost,

Thanks for the first ever review I have read about Universal Monsters. Despite it is not an 'in-depth' review I think I will like this game. I always had a soft spot for 3D isometric games (I.e. Last Ninja & Spindizzy Worlds).

I think the reason why Universal Monsters never got a wide coverage was Ocean holding back the game because it looked too 'old-school'. Releasing a 3D isometric game in 1993 was somewhat of an curiosity. Especially if you consider Doom was being released on PC the very same year. Oh well, it is just a wild guess.