Top 10 'Most Influential' Amiga Games

stacybro writes "There is an article on Wired about the Top 10 most influential Amiga games. As someone who actually programmed on the Amiga way back when, I can attest to how far they were ahead of the clones when it came to graphics and audio hardware. I often wonder where the PC world would be if Amiga or Apple had had the marketing smarts (or maybe it was cut throat attitude) of Microsoft. 'Defender of the Crown (Cinemaware, 1986): Way before the Hollywood-ization of the game industry, Cinemaware evoked the era of classic movies with this game and others, such as Wings and the classic B-movie tribute It Came From the Desert. Cinemaware titles were definitely precursors of the CD-ROM era of flashy titles such as Myst and The 7th Guest. More importantly, they brought strong and realistic characterization and depiction to the world of computer games. Cinemaware is still alive today and currently working on an update of Defender of the Crown.'"

Comments

apple should of used some of the amiga hardware

[Joe The Dragon]

and may even took them over when Amiga when down.

Re:apple should of used some of the amiga hardware

[Captain Splendid]

You know what the really sad thing is? All of the games listed there that I've played, save two (Pinball Dreams and Lemmings), I played on other platforms (NES, SNES, Genesis, PC).

Oh, and where the hell is Populous/Populous 2? Those games alone would have made me run out and get an Amiga if I'd had the cash. Talk about addictive.

Re:apple should of used some of the amiga hardware

[operagost]

Are you kidding? Apple thought users only needed two colors and one mouse button. The only similarities between an Amiga and a Mac were the CPU.

Re:apple should of used some of the amiga hardware

[jddj]

No. No, no, no.

I say this as a former Amiga owner/lover, and someone currently sitting at a desk with a Powerbook, a W2K, an XP and an Etch machine cranking away (very hot in here right now...). I coded multimedia apps on Amiga, recorded 3D to my PVR hard-disk-recorder, was heavily invested in my Amiga stuff.

But it became all-too-clear to me what was wrong when I showed the Amiga's NTSC-TV-resolution picture to a PC-using colleague and heard him go "oooh - gross!".

The standard Amigoid response is to explain how the flickering NTSC-resolution picture is somehow superior to the stable, higher-resolution and cheaper-to-buy progressive-scan image the PC guy is used to.

The response of smart marketing people is to figure out what the PC guy wants to buy and deliver that or something marginally better for a premium price.

The Amiga's hardware was so locked into the NTSC/PAL mindsets (and truly DID excel at these things) that moving to higher resolutions the market was starting to demand required abandoning the prized "Amiga hardware" that made the brand special. Without the "Amiga hardware", you had a commodity box with an "incompatible" processor, card bus and OS (in the mind of a consumer).

So while the "Amiga hardware" made the Amiga quite special, it also proved its undoing, particularly as Apple and eventually PC card makers provided the desired higher resolutions and as time went on, got smarter about providing tools for analog and eventually digital video (and sold them at QUITE a premium I might add. Geeks decry high prices for hardware, but a good profit margin keeps a company around. For how long has Apple been on the brink of bankruptcy now? Where is the Amiga?))

Yes, I realize that 3rd parties eventually grafted on solutions - beginning with high-res greyscale displays for the "Desktop Publishing" (remember that term?) software that (as a professional matter) never really arrived for the Amiga either. (voice of experience: I remember wanting to tear my eyes out after working with the first of the bezier-curve drawing apps for the Amiga for an hour on a 640x480 interlaced screen, black pixels on white background, AAAAAHHHH!. Meanwhile, my day job offered me the opportunity to work with Adobe Illustrator 88 on a 21" greyscale progressive-scan monitor. The writing was on the wall for the Amiga...).

Apple absolutely did the right thing for their brand by ignoring NTSC/PAL analog video resolution, focusing on higher-res, higher-refresh square-pixel displays and developing the QuickTime architecture for digital video. They knew where their bread was buttered.

Re:apple should of used some of the amiga hardware

[Bluesman]

The Amiga was released long before the Microsoft and the PC was the 800 pound gorilla of the home PC market. There was no dominant software platform. If anything, it was the Commodore 64, the best selling home computer up to that point. It was everywhere. Toys R' Us had an entire aisle devoted to C64 software -- it was Nintendo and Dell rolled into one. There was no Microsoft Office, it wasn't even on the radar. Totally level playing field as far as software goes.

On top of that, the Amiga was far and away the best machine for price/performance. The Amiga 500 was $500. You couldn't touch a Mac or a PC at that price, let alone one that had a color GUI.

So, on all counts, the Amiga was exactly what the customer wanted.

But nobody knew about it, not because there was bad marketing, but because there was no marketing. Not ever. Nobody outside of the the hard-core tech nerds had ever heard of the damn thing. It wasn't in the business computer mags, it wasn't on TV, it wasn't anywhere.

It was, perhaps, the biggest missed marketing opportunity of the 80's. Commodore was a household name, and I guess they expected that, and that alone, to translate into Amiga sales. Huge mistake. Even Microsoft pushes Vista, even though it's nearly inevitable you'll buy a copy someday.

The top of the list in my mind...

[CaptainPatent]

Nothing beat the breathtaking brutality of blowing up a worm with a rocket launcher!

Datastorm

[Threni]

I got an emulator only the other day, just to play this. It's like no-ones heard of it. Everyone knows all the crap Ocean conversions and movie licenses, but Datastorm is pure gameplay. It's basically Defender 10 (or so) years on. One hard, fun game. And it's legally downloadable from the author's website here: http://www.sodan.dk/oldbits/oldbits.html

It came from the desert

[caffeinatedOnline]

Ah, the memories that title just invoked. I had forgotten about this game. Trying to shoot the antenni off the ants, trying to bed the girl, driving from point a to point b dodging more ants, and that damn mine!! I owned my Amiga for years, and I think that I may have beaten this game once out of the millions of times I tried. They should make a repeat of this game!

Wings

[Rob the Bold]

I liked Wings on the Amiga. My Cinemaware favorite. I even hacked a joystick adapter to use a 15-pin analog joystick on my Amiga to use with it.

And holy crap! Wings is available again -- on the GBA! http://www.cinemaware.com/gbawings_main.asp Now can I had a flight stick for a Game Boy?

Let me be the one to say it

[Opportunist]

Where the hell is Turrican? And where is Wing Commander?

Populous

[Tsu-na-mi]

Rather than Syndicate, I think Bullfrog's Populous was more influential. It ushered in the era of the 'god' sim. Most of the rest I can agree with, but I had never even heard of Another World, and I consider myself an avid Amiga gamer back in the day.

I think the author may have a bit of tunnel vision, insofar as the games are rather limited to a few publishers (Psygnosis & Sensible Software make up half the titles).

Notably missing are Blood Money, Arkanoid (maybe because it's a port), and Battle Squadron.

Some other Amiga games worth mentioning

[SirBruce]

The update to Defender of the Crown already came out a few years ago. IMHO, it largely sucked. I only played it a couple of times before putting it back into the box. I never did get the hang of the 'cinematic' swordfighting controls.

Virtually all of Cinemaware's games could have been listed, but DotC and Wings are probably two of the best examples. Rocket Ranger and It Came From the Desert are also heartily recommended.

The list in the quoted article does have some glaring ommissions. Dungeon Master was the first 3D realtime action CRPG, and I think the Amiga version was superior to both the ST and PC versions. Also woth mentioning are Populus and Artic Fox, which I think really shined in the Amiga versions. Finally, there is Faery Tale Adventure, which I think was one of the best isometic action CRPGs ever, irrespective of platform.

Re:Some other Amiga games worth mentioning

[nogginthenog]

IIRC Dungeon Master was the first Amiga game to require 1Mb of RAM and actually increased memory upgrade sales.

Missing Games

[Wyrd01]

Everyone's going to have their own take on what was influential to them. I grew up playing games on my dad's Amiga (500 through 4000 over the years). My shoddy descriptions won't do them justice, but two games that were very important to me are missing:

Faery Tale Adventure: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faery_Tale_Adventure
A giant, continuous world full of quests and tasks to run. Like most old games it was very unforgiving... you could die quickly and easily if you weren't careful. I spent hours exploring that world. I remember finding a flying goose and being able to fly across the land. Ah the memories.

Dungeon Master: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeon_Master_(compu ter_game)
The first real-time, first person dungeon crawling game. Casting spells involved clicking a series of runes in a particular order, Fireball was Fire then Wing. On the 13th level of the dungeon was the boss, whom you had to capture in a forcecage, a very challenging battle. You could also go down to the 14th level whose only resident was a huge dragon. Food was a big issue in the game, you had to manage your food stocks carefully. The dragon at the bottom of the dungeon could be killed for a heaping pile of Dragon Steaks. To me this was the most influential game on the Amiga, it is my favorite Amiga game of all time.

Obvious Omissions...

[cca93014]

Dungeon Master, Carrier Command, Kick Off 2, Xenon 2, F/18 Interceptor

Dungeon Master was way, way out there. You could even carry your characters over to the sequel title!

There was so much originality in the Amiga gaming scene that is sadly, sadly lacking in modern gaming. Looking back at the Amiga it was so far ahead of its time in so many ways...food for thought...

Re:Obvious Omissions...

[JoeCommodore]

Dungeon Master, yeah, now that was something. I'll add to the list

- ArmourGeddon - switch between piloting one of several combat machines (heavy tank, light tank, helicopter, strike fighter, stealth bomber, and armored hovercraft) combat against the computer or another player via serial. All the simulators were quite fun to control. Sure with the BZFlag guys would get ideas from it.

- Gauntlet I and II - FOUR Players at the same time with all the good sound and graphics! Sure did the arcade version justice also of note were the Amiga versions of the Arcade hits Star Wars and Empire Stries back too.

- Vroom - Very nice Formula one racing, hit the wheels of your opponent right and you can sail over them (in arcode race mode). Not much high-detail but well done visuals and mechanics.

- Elite: Frontier - The best sequel there is, it was a showstopper of Elite goodness.

SpeedBall

[SheldonYoung]

SpeedBall II: Brutal Deluxe is still the most adrenaline-pumping game I have played, though the original Half Life came close. The balance and playability of SBII was spot on, the sounds complemented the atmosphere and two-player mode was immensely fun.

F18 Interceptor!

[smellsofbikes]

I think it might've been as late as 1988 when my brother and I had F18 interceptor networked on our amigas: head-to-head networked air combat flightsim, with excellent color, speed, and stereo sound, when a lot of people were still using black-and-white Macs that went 'beep'. My friends in college were literally unable to believe such things existed until they saw it.

It was a blast programming the Amiga

[dougsha]

I'm still enormously proud of my Cinemaware game "King of Chicago". It was Cinemaware's 2nd best-seller in its first 2 years - waaaaay behind sales of Defender of the Crown by Kellyn Beeck (250k units DoC - amazing in '85, 50k KoC - nice in sales in '86). King was definitely not one of the 10 most influential Amiga games, however, because I rolled my own interactive narrative system - Dramaton ( GDC talk on Dramaton: http://www.zogax.com/verbiage/battle.htm ) - which was just a little too out there for anyone to replicate.

I did the first version of King on the Mac in '86 and then ported it to the Amiga and the Apple IIGS. I did my own art on the Mac (using digitized clay heads) but C-ware wisely redid the art for the Amiga, which had a lot to do with the big sales. Rob Landeros (who later formed Trilobyte and did 7th Guest) did the art.

Coding on the Amiga was a blast. The main online hangout for developers was BIX, the Byte Information Exchange. Simple things like screen-flipping for animation were poorly documented and there was little agreement in the first years about the best way to code them. You had to get down and dirty writing little fragments of code executed by "the copper" - the video coprocessor system.

"Cinemaware is still alive today and currently working on an update of Defender of the Crown.'" - And screwing the original game devs royally. They stripped any mention of Kellyn Beeck from their current version of Defender of the Crown and left my name off the King of Chicago credits on their website. Here's a little discussion with a current Cinemaware employee on the Indie Gamer's forum about their current version of Defender of the Crown http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?t=9738 &highlight=King/.

At least they'll never butcher King of Chicago because they'll never figure out Dramaton.

Self-horntoot warning - I am also very proud of the game I did before King of Chicago - ChipWits - which I am reviving at http://chipwits.com/ .

How about this game: Cube Defender of the Polyvers

[BlueTrin]

This game beats all the competition