which was, from a technical POV, the best amiga game?

[Marcuz]

bitmaps of super stardust: yep i believe that goes under technical prowess and intelligence, the ability of make believe with the limited means

[Codetapper]

I dunno what you guys are smoking that think Kid Chaos is anything special. It's a standard dual playfield game (that's 2 fields of 8 colours), and imho, utter crap. Plays like a brick.

Static screen games like Universe are nothing special in terms of extra colours as you can work out a nice copperlist in advance for the entire screen. If it scrolled, that would be different.

Ruff 'n' Tumble has nice graphics but is nothing technically amazing. It is a standard 32 colour game, no parallax, and doesn't run at 50fps. From memory it sometimes drops an extra frame aswell.

Elfmania is fast, smooth, and looks like an AGA title. Lionheart also looks like an AGA game but bores me to death. So Elfmania wins for me!

[Steve]

I agree with Elfmania. Stunning looking game. Probably the best looking A500 game ever.

Banshee is also one of the best looking AGA games with loads of sprites flying around with no slowdown plus some huge bosses. A techincal masterpiece for sure.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Breathless. This game pushed the Amiga 1200 further than most. Graphically stunning and a technical tour-de-force.

So for me its:

ECS - Elfmania
AGA - Breathless

[Zetr0]

Thinking about OCS i would say

Hunter http://hol.abime.net/764

a fantastic game and a full 3d environment with vehicle manipulation just FANTASTIC and all that on a a500.... clearly impressive as it took PC FPS's years to catchup with that level of detail.... Imagine if Hunter was multiplayer..... oh yeah..... now that would be a great idea.

[DDNI]

Damocles!! No contest!

Just noticed that the AMR entry for Kid Chaos is wrong. It states that The One Amiga 72 (Sep 1994) scores it at 59%. The real score is 87%.

[tarr]

Originally Posted by spiff

but probably Ruff n Tumble or pinball dreams. Sacrificing the paralax scroll but weighting good graphics with smooth scrolling.

Ruff n Tumble scrolled jerkily at 25 fp/s. I was disappointed at that

[tarr]

Originally Posted by Codetapper

I dunno what you guys are smoking that think Kid Chaos is anything special. It's a standard dual playfield game (that's 2 fields of 8 colours), and imho, utter crap. Plays like a brick.

It had the "3d parallx" effect that stunned us players first in Street Fighter II. When we amiga harcore players found that Lionheart could do that too, we remained astonished and made a fool of megadrive owners. They said, then, that it was a 3d parallax scroll, but that it was slow. Kid Chaos had it and ran fast as hell, even though Sonic II on the megadrive was incredibly better. Anyway, I wanted to talk about technical achievements and machine exploitation.

[Rebel-CD32]

I had a huge post all typed up, I swear I posted it, but it's not here... wierd.

Anyway, I'll write up a list of technically impressive Amiga games when I get home. These games do things that no one thought was possible on the Amiga, or at least surprised us in some way. I think it should be about these technical achievements more than impressive gameplay or original ideas, since they might not always push the hardware to the limit.

[oneshotdead]

I see most people equate "technical achievement" with "eyecandy."

"Does it have 8-way parallax hardware scrolling? No? It is not a technical achievement."

This is natural I suppose since the Amiga always appealed to the graphics whores.

I wonder what an old school programmer from the golden age of the Amiga would pick, for his game which achieved the most technically.

Do you think it would be a pretty game like Shadow of the Beast?

[tarr]

Originally Posted by oneshotdead

"Does it have 8-way parallax hardware scrolling? No? It is not a technical achievement."

Oh, well, they call'em VIDEOgames, don't they? And video is the latin for "To See"

Ah, the finaly player would not give a damn about disk tricks or data stuffing: one or two more diskettes would not be a problem for anyone. Multi directional smooth and fast parallax scrolling is, from a gamer's POV, a techincal achievement! Many sprites and no slowdown, great music, great animations, rotating bitmaps, water effects, big, BIG end level bosses: those were the achievements players stopped finding in Amiga games and started finding in the 16 bits consoles. And playability is alwasys the result of a goog techinchal architecture.

[Galaxy]

What about those games that ran in HAM mode on A500 hardware. (there was at least 1 shoot-em up but I can't remember what the title was).

Originally Posted by DDNI

Just noticed that the AMR entry for Kid Chaos is wrong. It states that The One Amiga 72 (Sep 1994) scores it at 59%. The real score is 87%.

Thanks DDNI - scores for Kid Chaos and Wembley were transposed.

If you ever find errors in AMR please tell us as we want the data to be as accurate as possible.

[oneshotdead]

tarr wrote:

Oh, well, they call'em VIDEOgames, don't they? And video is the latin for "To See"

Ah, the finaly player would not give a damn about disk tricks or data stuffing: one or two more diskettes would not be a problem for anyone. Multi directional smooth and fast parallax scrolling is, from a gamer's POV, a techincal achievement! Many sprites and no slowdown, great music, great animations, rotating bitmaps, water effects, big, BIG end level bosses: those were the achievements players stopped finding in Amiga games and started finding in the 16 bits consoles. And playability is alwasys the result of a goog techinchal architecture.

Yes, video means "to see", just as audio means "to hear". But games aren't merely visual and aural experiences. Their mechanics allow the most important thing of all: interactivity.

Some gameplay is derived from graphics and sound (immersion), but mostly it is derived from mechanics. Text adventures had no graphics or sound, yet nonetheless had meaningful gameplay (choice and consequence).

Remember Dungeon Master on the Atari ST, back in 1987? In my opinion, that beats Lionheart hands down. Both are vastly different games, yet can be compared on a level. (as interactive experiences.)

Likewise, some late-90s PC RPGs are many more times advanced than any PS3 or Xbox 360 game with regard to gameplay mechanics. I honestly doubt we will see mechanical sophistication of that level in the near future. Games are all about eyecandy now, like they almost always were.

I think the criterion for technical achievement goes beyond graphics and sound which, as advanced as they were on the Amiga, were really at bottom only superficial. Shadow of the Beast is a superficial game.

In my opinion, the most technically advanced Amiga game is the one which crams the most meaningful gameplay (mechanics, visuals, aurals) into those one or two 3.5" floppy diskettes, totally immersing the player. But now we veer into the realm of subjectivity... I will think long and hard before I proclaim the best here.

As for compression as a technical achievement, I disagree with you that the player would not care for it, as I hated disk-swapping.

I agree with you that Amiga games fell to consoles, but I would also add they fell to PCs. The consoles outperformed the Amiga variant of shmups, beat 'em ups and platformers, while the PC outperformed the Amiga variant of the FPS and of the RPG.

If you wanted to play a platformer, you got yourself a SNES and played Super Mario World or you got yourself a Megadrive (Genesis) and played Sonic the Hedgehog.
If you wanted to play a FPS or RPG, you cranked up Doom or Wasteland on your PC, respectively.

There are exceptions (like Hired Guns), but Ruff'n'Tumble, Kid Chaos? No thanks!

Edit: By the way, in the English-speaking world (US, UK, Australia) we generally refer to Amiga and PC games as _computer_ games, not videogames.

[Ironclaw]

Same in Sweden... computer games.

[s2325]

microcomputer games here, but in '80s and '90s

[Calgor]

I think breathless looks pretty good for aga, and elfmania and lionheart for ECS.

For a very old game, Arctic Fox was pretty impressive for the day (1986) with its 3d graphics. Hmm, HOL entry shows 1985 (credits in my version and whdload show 1985, 1986 - a case of e.g. product 2000 being released in 1999? or 2 versions?). Didn't know the rarity was that high, first game we bought!

[Graham Humphrey]

Isn't it strange that most of the games that are considered "technically impressive" also happen to be really poor games?

[s2325]

which one?

[Graham Humphrey]

Okay, let's see... Kid Chaos, Universe, Elfmania, Shadow Of The Beast, Breathless, Brian The Lion... that's six already.

[s2325]

What's wrong with Brian the Lion? For me it's Donkey Kong Country for Amiga.

[DrF]

I thought Leander looked pretty nice, very crisp and detailed, and thats a OCS game, don't think it was anything technical it was just well done.

Another World I liked the look of too, as I remember that was writtern on a A500.