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New Commercial Amiga 500 Game Released

Posted by BeauHD on from the blast-from-the-past dept.

Mike Bouma writes: Pixelglass, known for their "Giana Sisters SE" game, has released a worthy new game for the Amiga 500, called "Worthy." Here's a description of this cute action puzzler: "Assume the role of a fearless boy and collect the required number of diamonds in each stage in order to win the girl's heart! Travel from maze to maze, kill the baddies, avoid the traps, collect beers (your necessary 'fuel' to keep you going), find the diamonds, prove to her you're WORTHY!" Time to dust off that classic Amiga or alternatively download a digital copy and use an UAE emulator for your platform of choice. Have a look at the release trailer.

123 comments

  1. I never acrually had A 500 by rossdee · · Score: 2

    But I did have a 1000, then a 2000 and a 1200

    But that was many years ago, I didn't bring the Amigas with me when I migrated (legally) to America 16 years ago.

    1. Re:I never acrually had A 500 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, the A2000 is essentially an A500 with a lot of expansion ports.

      Games that followed Commodores programming guidelines works on A1200 but commercial companies wrote hacky crap back then too.
      Sometimes it helps switching to OCS-mode and turning off CPU caches in the boot menu but if there is a lot of cycle timed stuff you might be screwed anyway.

    2. Re:I never acrually had A 500 by corezz · · Score: 2

      Lucky bastard in living outside N. America where the Amiga was viewed and treated as a TITAN in computing and gaming. As a kid i wished i lived in Europe at the time. It seemed like everyone overseas completely understood the power and potential of the Amiga. Not so much in USA though. Canada was a bit better -- many people had it here.

    3. Re:I never acrually had A 500 by Mike+Bouma · · Score: 1

      Games that followed Commodores programming guidelines works on A1200 but commercial companies wrote hacky crap back then too. Sometimes it helps switching to OCS-mode and turning off CPU caches in the boot menu but if there is a lot of cycle timed stuff you might be screwed anyway.

      This game works out of the box on the Amiga 1200:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

      To get the bulk of Amiga 500 games to work on the Amiga 1200, you could use a bootdiskette with ReloKick/TUDE (aminet.net) and afterwards put in the game to boot.

      Alternatively there are WHDLoad installs for nearly all Amiga games, which takes care of this transparently (amongst bug fixes, high score savings, adds a HD icon, etc):
      http://whdload.de/

    4. Re: I never acrually had A 500 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You are not Silvia Bunge, and you stayed as much in a previous post. However, releasing a patient's medical condition to a third party without consent is a violation of federal law. Despite pledging to cease these posts not more than a couple of hours ago, you have continued to spam Slashdot. As I stated previously, I will be bringing these posts to the attention of the UC-Berkeley administration. In this post, you are claiming to violate HIPAA, which would be yet another serious breach of ethics.

      Let's be honest here, you're not Silvia Bunge. However, the UC-Berkeley will probably be interested in seeing how trolls are pretending to be one of their faculty members performing official business of the university. It is entirely possible that UC-Berkeley's lawyers might take legal action to cease your behavior. Silvia Bunge would probably be able to take legal action against you as well, plus this might be a criminal matter.

      Don't bother replying. Your word is no good. Besides, nothing you say or do is going to prevent this from being brought to the attention of the UC-Berkeley administration, including the chair of the psychology department. You can count on the administration promptly bringing this to the attention of Silvia Bunge. It's up to UC-Berkeley what consequences arise from your behavior.

    5. Re: I never acrually had A 500 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      Your comment is irrelevant. The fake Silvia Bunge posts will be reported to UC-Berkeley regardless of anything you say or do. Frankly, I don't care who's making those posts. That's for UC-Berkeley and the real Silvia Bunge to deal with. I just want to stop having just about every comment section on Slashdot polluted by this nonsense.

    6. Re:I never acrually had A 500 by Bert64 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There were quite a few games back in the day where the game itself ran fine on A1200 (or A4000, accelerated amigas etc), but the copy protection scheme didn't and caused the game to crash. Cracked versions ran just fine, while legitimately purchased versions crashed.

      --
      http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
    7. Re:I never acrually had A 500 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Use an Amiga?

    8. Re: I never acrually had A 500 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Obviously, elasti-neck reimer posted it all.

      It isn't that hard to tell!

    9. Re:I never acrually had A 500 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A friend of mine had one. Great graphics, loved the shoot-em-ups. But as I recall if you removed a disk without unmounting it first it was easily corrupted and unusable.

      This game looks pretty neat. Sort of a blend of Balderdash and Pac Man.

    10. Re:I never acrually had A 500 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      7)https://pastebin.com/cFj4B7Tq

      Removed for contributory copyright infringement. You creimertards never learn. Tsk, tsk.

    11. Re:I never acrually had A 500 by maestroX · · Score: 1

      But that was many years ago, I didn't bring the Amigas with me when I migrated (legally) to America 16 years ago.

      Guilty before proven innocent?

    12. Re:I never acrually had A 500 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      *meant to say "Boulderdash"

    13. Re:I never acrually had A 500 by Dogtanian · · Score: 1

      I was going to say something similar- that it said something about the current attitude that he felt the need to include that qualification in the first place.

      --
      "Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
    14. Re:I never acrually had A 500 by fuzzywig · · Score: 2
      "But as I recall if you removed a disk without unmounting it first it was easily corrupted and unusable"

      Not sure who told you that, but no, unless it was trying to write as you ejected it, it was fine. Even if you did corrupt a disk, the rest of it was still readable, only the file that it had been trying to write would be damaged.

    15. Re:I never acrually had A 500 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, you were spared the horror of PAL. After 10 minutes of looking at a Commodore 1084 with a 50Hz refresh rate and you'll want to gouge your eyes out.

    16. Re: I never acrually had A 500 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ha good troll NTSC was an inferior format with lower Res and poor colour representation

    17. Re:I never acrually had A 500 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Close. He fucked an Amigo or two illegally immigrating here, but thanks or playing. See ya next week! Same time! Same channel!

    18. Re:I never acrually had A 500 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I live in Europe and I still have and use 2 Amiga 500 computers and 2 Amiga 1200 computers... I will most often use emulation though :-)

      Long live the Amiga!

    19. Re: I never acrually had A 500 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'd take that over big borders and slowdown, it wasn't until consoles moved to HDMI that all the lazy ports stopped.

    20. Re: I never acrually had A 500 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The Dreamcast had 60Hz PAL support and games asked you for 50Hz vs 60Hz. It had an old school RGB SCART cable too, not the inferior RCA cinches shipped with the PSX, N64, PS2. So, the best of all worlds! Except we had a used Dreamcast and it died while the console was already out of production and not sold anymore (CD drive stopped working I think)

      PAL composite on the 3D consoles sucked.

    21. Re:I never acrually had A 500 by KingBenny · · Score: 1

      *sigh* i got suckered into buying an atari st , and an STE ... my friend had an amiga 500 though ... but it never gave quite the same feeling as the ole c64

      --
      Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
  2. Why is this news? by Zedrick · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There are still commercial games being released for the C64 every year (+ smaller free games). I don't follow the Amiga-scene as closely as the C64, but surely it's the same there?

    Not complaining about the Amiga getting some attention on slashdot, I just don't see why it's news.

    1. Re: Why is this news? by TJHook3r · · Score: 4, Interesting

      News to me! Had no idea these platforms were still supported and if supporting a system that was 'obsolete' more than 20 years ago is not nerdy, then I'm handing my card in!

    2. Re:Why is this news? by corezz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      From following many 8-bit retro computers i'd say C64 and Amiga are the two most active. About the same level in terms of new software releases. As for new hardware though Amiga has a lot more out and coming out than C64. For many hear on /. we have had Amigas (and C64's incidentally) growing up so news like this is fantastic. Gets me more excited to buy/donate/take part in such a project because it brings back great memories. I wouldn't have known about this release if it wasnt posted here. So at least for me, this post helped.

    3. Re:Why is this news? by 91degrees · · Score: 1

      I had no idea commercial C64 games were still a thing. Any links?

      Of course there's still a reasonably healthy C64 demo scene and the C64 mini has its fans, so I guess this is not that great a surprise.

    4. Re: Why is this news? by tlhIngan · · Score: 2

      News to me! Had no idea these platforms were still supported and if supporting a system that was 'obsolete' more than 20 years ago is not nerdy, then I'm handing my card in!

      Well, they aren't supported - the companies behind these platforms are long dead (except maybe Apple), and the platforms dead.

      However, just because the machines are effectively dead, doesn't 'mean there isn't still a fan community. And better yet, a lot of these platforms are still readily available, because they were made in such quantities that there are plenty hidden in attics and basements and still plentiful at swap meets

      And of course, there are emulators. Almost all these new releases may come on floppy discs or cartridges and also digital download.

      Practically any common 8-bit platform has new releases for it - the Atari 2600, C-64 (and other Commodores - VIC-20, C-128), NES, game boy, etc.

    5. Re:Why is this news? by Zedrick · · Score: 1

      Actually I can only find one commercial game released this year: https://www.protovision.games/games/sams_journey.php?language=en

      was also thinking about Planet X2, but that one (and several others) was relased in 2017:

      http://www.the8bitguy.com/product/planet-x2-commodore-64/

      Not as impressive as I imagined, but 2018 isn't over yet.

    6. Re: Why is this news? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Serious question: how well can a developer get paid writing C64 games? Are these part time projects or can a developer afford to work on these full time?

      It's been a long time since I've done any C64 programming. Is it possible to find the C64 Programmer's Reference Guide or some of the Compute's books online? Those were very helpful for learning C64 programming.

      One scene I was involved in and I'm sorry to say is pretty much dead is TI calculator gaming. There are still a few releases, but most of the developers have moved on and new ones haven't entered the community at nearly the same rate. I have fond memories of the old Zshell games and, later on, some of the really good games released for the TI-89.

    7. Re:Why is this news? by Mike+Bouma · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I think it's good to include some more light-hearted news items from time to time. Sam's Journey on the Commodore 64 is IMO newsworthy as well, it put a smile on my face just like Worthy. :-)

      Sam's Journey release trailer:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

      Retrogaming is still big. I would really love to see a new Amiga home computer which covers such games, maybe using SDL/AmigaOS4/PPC like A-Eon is working on (A1222/Tabor).
      http://blog.a-eon.biz/blog/

    8. Re:Why is this news? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 0

      Yeah, there are still regular releases on the Amiga. This one does look exceptionally nice, it has to be said.

      It's an interesting time for Amiga (and C64) developers. Back in the day, pre-internet you had to rely on books and, if you were lucky, text files posted on BBS systems to learn about the system. If you owned a disassembler or monitor cart you might be able to look at other people's code and figure out how it worked.

      Now not only is all that knowledge online and searchable, but you have extremely good emulators that allow you to see things like DMA slot allocation per scanline, stuff that was barely understood back in the day. On systems like the Amiga one of the biggest challenges is memory bandwidth management, which is far far easier now when you can examine it cycle-by-cycle in an emulator.

      I wish I had more time to do Amiga coding. I've got ideas I had 25 years ago that I want to try out now, as well as new ones. I was thinking that it might be possible to get 8 channels of sound with reasonably low overhead using the blitter, for example.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    9. Re:Why is this news? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I understand these projects are mostly done on free time, mainly as a hobby and for the pleasure of dealing with the platforms limitations... but one can't help but wonder if the author shouldn't simply keep the retro style but try his luck on IOS/Android and maybe stand a chance to make at least some beer/coffee money.

    10. Re:Why is this news? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually I can only find one commercial game released this year:

      https://www.protovision.games/games/sams_journey.php?language=en

      was also thinking about Planet X2, but that one (and several others) was relased in 2017:

      http://www.the8bitguy.com/product/planet-x2-commodore-64/

      Not as impressive as I imagined, but 2018 isn't over yet.

      Protovision? I want to play those games. Anyone have their Area Code?

    11. Re:Why is this news? by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      1+ for the 8 bit guy and his work on Planet X2.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    12. Re: Why is this news? by sproketboy · · Score: 2

      Check out the 8 bit guy on youtube. He just released a RTS game on C64.

    13. Re:Why is this news? by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      There is a small but upward trending market for New Games for Nostalgic platforms.
      I find these new Games really show off the capability of these old systems, combined with all the new tricks that modern development can offer.

      Today development for a C64 would be like programming a Game back 30 years ago with the development staff with access to a Supercomputer for development. That can optimize to a massive level for the Target system, while the code can be more manageable.

      I have seen some nostalgic remakes done in CGA that actually makes CGA colors look good. While normally being the worst possible colors for display Cyan, Magenta, White (your choice of 16 colors for a background)
      Then you can pallet swap to Green (Light or dark), Red (Light or dark), Yellow (or brown, well dark yellow)

      Still you really cannot get good colors, unless you are hooking to a blurry Composite display which you use the color blurring problem to your advantage to show more colors.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    14. Re:Why is this news? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Ugh, I've got a mod stalker again. Whipslash, are you seeing this?

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    15. Re: Why is this news? by tlhIngan · · Score: 2

      Serious question: how well can a developer get paid writing C64 games? Are these part time projects or can a developer afford to work on these full time?

      It's been a long time since I've done any C64 programming. Is it possible to find the C64 Programmer's Reference Guide or some of the Compute's books online? Those were very helpful for learning C64 programming.

      One scene I was involved in and I'm sorry to say is pretty much dead is TI calculator gaming. There are still a few releases, but most of the developers have moved on and new ones haven't entered the community at nearly the same rate. I have fond memories of the old Zshell games and, later on, some of the really good games released for the TI-89.

      No, just like the 80s, most software developed for these platforms were developed by hobbyists.

      You're going to need a regular day job. The 8-Bit Guy on YouTube released a game last year, and made about 1000 copies of his game for C64 (at least the materials - boxes and such. Manuals and disks he replicates himself). They sold quickly, but he's been hesitant to order a new print run in case they hang around far too long. (Of course, he has a "baggie" version of his game with the disk and manual in a plastic bag, again, like the 80s).

      The market is small, and it's really easy to get into. Usually that's a recipe for disaster as it leads to an influx of poor quality software, but it's a niche small enough that it doesn't generally attract much attention. The tools are easy to get and really easy to develop for these days (since most emulators have really good debuggers, and yes, you're developing in emulators because you can assemble/run/debug much quicker on your desktop PC (with nice high res screen, quality keyboard, etc) than to write it out on your C-64 and debug and assemble there.

      If you're lucky, you'll make a couple hundred bucks out of it. Like I said, hobby money.

    16. Re: Why is this news? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Serious question: how well can a developer get paid writing C64 games? Are these part time projects or can a developer afford to work on these full time?

      It's been a long time since I've done any C64 programming. Is it possible to find the C64 Programmer's Reference Guide or some of the Compute's books online? Those were very helpful for learning C64 programming.

      One scene I was involved in and I'm sorry to say is pretty much dead is TI calculator gaming. There are still a few releases, but most of the developers have moved on and new ones haven't entered the community at nearly the same rate. I have fond memories of the old Zshell games and, later on, some of the really good games released for the TI-89.

      It's basically a hobby. I write new games for the NES and you spend months programming to get a few hundred dollars. Some games do make a few thousand, but there are very few people that can actually make a living on this unless they are a publisher or also develop the hardware like retrousb.com or InfiniteNESLives.com. I would say that the Atari 2600 and the NES are to of the largest homebrew scenes right now. You can learn more at nesdev.com, nintendoage.com, and atariage.com to learn about development being done on these systems.

    17. Re: Why is this news? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Simply buy a FPGA Amiga. MiST or, in some months, Apollo Standalone. You can buy brandnew 68k Amigas nowadays, no problem :-)

    18. Re:Why is this news? by IGnatius+T+Foobar · · Score: 1

      From following many 8-bit retro computers i'd say C64 and Amiga are the two most active.

      Amiga was a 32-bit computer.

      --
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    19. Re:Why is this news? by necronom426 · · Score: 1

      This "Aliens" themed one was released yesterday:

      https://psytronik.itch.io/orga...

    20. Re: Why is this news? by TJHook3r · · Score: 1

      Thank you kindly (and the couple of other posters) for the heads-up. I've seen a lot of great work going into emulation but had no idea there was such an active scene in original content... my rich mate had the Amiga and I had the Spectrum!

    21. Re:Why is this news? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There were a few Red/Green/Yellow CGA games in old times too, but old CGA-only games are the most likely to be unplayable due to using a timing loop. Sadly there was one promising-looking Japan-themed game in red/green/yellow that I couldn't play :)

      Games with CGA/EGA/VGA choice ( or CGA/EGA, or even EGA only) I had no trouble running almost all of them on 500MHz to 2GHz CPUs.
      The space sim game "Epic" or its sequel Inferno was a VGA game that I couldn't play because it ran too fast. I was bummed.

  3. Quite a few commercial games actually by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There have been quite a few commercial titles for the Amiga in the last few years actually, shipped on floppy disks in a fancy box with user manual just like back in the day.

    Not published by the giants like Psygnosis and DMA Design, but individuals and smaller publishers, but nonetheless there are still a few handfuls of newly made games published since 2010.

    Of all the old dead computers, the Amiga is remarkably alive. There's even new hardware being made for it even today.

    1. Re:Quite a few commercial games actually by corezz · · Score: 1

      Agreed. I tend to watch 8-bit guy, and other retro channels and its truly astonishing how much new hardware and software keep coming out for the system. I've been leaning on buying a collection of retro Amigas so i can try out this new hardware and software.

      Fun fact DMA Design, since you mentioned them, renamed themselves and are now known today as Rockstar Games. The same fellas who do Grand Theft Auto. Several other game companies, who birthed on the Amiga, are still around today. Just under different names and or bought out and under a different roof (e.g. Pygnosis = SCEA, Sony's in-house Juggernaut for Playstation)

    2. Re: Quite a few commercial games actually by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      From Lemmings to GTA.

      It's all about brutal slaughter :-D

    3. Re:Quite a few commercial games actually by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      DMA Design is Psygnosis is Sony Liverpool is dead.

    4. Re:Quite a few commercial games actually by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      DMA Design is RockStar North, one of the most powerful developpers in the VG world now.
      As DICE, Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Team17 and even Fumito Ueda, they were deeply involved in Amiga games developpement.

  4. Trapped in Amiga Hell by mentil · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    I knew nothing about the Amiga, and a few months ago set up an Amiga emulator to play an obscure game exclusive to that platform. Learning the basics about all the different systems and specs and addons and which were most appropriate for a latter-day game was a drag. The system has more classifications of RAM than DOS did. It was harder than it should've been to figure out why nothing happened when I turned on the emulator, even after configuring BIOS. I had to pay attention to which OS versions worked with which BIOS versions (and some require certain hardware) and try to find two that were compatible. That the OS is usually called 'workbench' and so too is the main utility disk, is confusing. Eventually I got the OS installed to a virtual hard drive, and then the game itself. Trying to patch the game from Windows was an additional hassle. Too bad the game was buggy and meh. Oh and no savestates so it's a drag every time the game crashes.

    I'm spoiled by DOSBox. Wish they just emulated the AmigaOS API so you didn't have to faff with it.

    --
    Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
    1. Re:Trapped in Amiga Hell by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      All emulators have save-states. I agree that WinUAE in particular has too many options to chose from, but to be honest what you're describing here is a case of "you're doing it wrong."

      Try FS-UAE, it's made to work both like a flexible emulator, and a hassle-free Amiga gaming front-end.

    2. Re:Trapped in Amiga Hell by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Chip RAM and Fast RAM. (Chip RAM is more flexible and accessible by the custom chips for audio/video; Fast RAM is only accessible by the CPU. Fast RAM is faster (because the CPU is never held up by the custom chips.)

      While Chip RAM is a necessity, Fast RAM isn't. A normal Amiga 500 will have 512kB of Chip RAM.

      Trust me, compared to the wonderful world of EMM386.EXE with Conventional, Expanded, Extended and Himem, Amiga memory management is not tricky.

      And, yeah, BIOS is a PC term. ROM is the generic term, and on an Amiga, it's called Kickstart. Workbench 1.3 runs with Kickstart 1.3. Workbench 2 with Kickstart 2. In fact, in reality, the "OS" is mostly stored in Kickstart (ROM). (Classic example, the program that runs the entire user interface shell (explorer.exe in Windows terms) is a mere 6 KB. No, it's not some literally incredible compression and hand coded assembly feat -- it actually just kicks off code that's stored in ROM.)

      What that boils down to is the Kickstart and Workbench boot disks should match. And, as for 'virtual hard disks', On the Amiga 500, often home computers of this era didn't have hard disks (stupidly expensive things at the time, especially as they were SCSI based) so it was far more normal to boot from floppy disk. Later on, with Amiga 1200s, IDE disks became available and booting/running from HDD became far more normal.

      Basically; you're used to modern PCs where the ROM is only the very basics and the OS is generally loaded off disk; whereas most other computers of that era (especially Macintosh, Amiga, Atari, Commodore 64) are more load from ROM based. (Although frequently they did need a disk to boot from, that disk didn't have anywhere near the entire operating system.) These preconceptions probably didn't help you!

      Yes, Macintoshes worked the same. It wasn't till much later that MacOS was mainly loaded off disk.

      (And, no, Wikipedia is wrong, kickstart is not just the boot firmware. It's more than that. After all, it contains Exec, which is the real kernel of the Amiga operating system. Of course, it was common for Amiga games to ignore the operating system and interact directly with hardware - frequently, a reset / reboot was the only way to exit a game!)

    3. Re:Trapped in Amiga Hell by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And, no, Wikipedia is wrong

      So fix it.

    4. Re:Trapped in Amiga Hell by squiggleslash · · Score: 4, Informative

      I think blaming the Amiga for problems setting up an emulator is a little unfair. There are several versions of the Amiga, and each came with a ROM and the correct disks for that ROM. If you bought an operating system upgrade, you'd get the right ROM and right disks with it. Additionally, the disks for older operating systems generally worked with newer ROMs.. There was nothing difficult about it. The term "BIOS" is inappropriate, the ROM contained the core operating system, not merely the bootloader and I/O library a BIOS contains.

      One other thing to note is that people running games generally didn't run the disk part of the operating system. The game would run directly from the disk, the computer booting right into it.

      RAM... it wasn't hard for actual users in practice and there weren't "more classifications of RAM than DOS did". DOS had various types of memory which literally could not be interchanged - applications that used "extended" etc RAM had to use it. For the most part, with the exception of one type of usage, both (or all three, if you count low address space non-chip RAM) types of RAM were interchangeable. The "exception"? Chip RAM had to be used for anything that involved graphics or audio. And that was it.

      Ultimately though it sounds like either your emulator didn't have built-in profiles supporting the stock Amigas, or did but you choose to tweak them in the same way a novice might start tweaking hardware settings in a PC emulator. If the former:

      Amiga 500: Kickstart 1.3 + 512k chip RAM + OCS
      Amiga 500+: Kickstart 2.04 + 1Mb chip + ECS
      Amiga 1200: Kickstart 3 + 2Mb chip + AGA

      If you want to run games, that's enough. You don't need anything else. If you want to use it as a serious machine, you'll ideally need the same version of the disk part of AmigaOS as your ROM.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    5. Re:Trapped in Amiga Hell by Mike+Bouma · · Score: 1

      WinUAE has become overly complex, I agree. I once wrote an Amiga emulation tutorial for OSNews.com, step by step, but since then so many new features and options have been added (even AmigaOS4 for classic PPC upgraded amigas!).

      The solution I think is to get Cloanto's Amiga Forever package instead, it includes pre-installed scripts for games/workbench, ROMs and a GUI frontend:
      https://www.amigaforever.com/

    6. Re:Trapped in Amiga Hell by narcc · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Good luck with that. You can get away with correcting typos, but changing anything more significant than that is damn near impossible and not worth the hassle. Too many users, with too much free time, have too much of their ego wrapped up in 'their' articles.

      --
      Required reading for internet skeptics
    7. Re:Trapped in Amiga Hell by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So true. The hoops to jump through to get EMM386 memory optimized to work with DOS/Win3.1 apps what painful. QEMM software made it a lot easier. I miss the Amiga days. I had a Amiga 2000 with a GVP accelerator 20MHz 68020 with 4MB of memory. It sure flew!

    8. Re:Trapped in Amiga Hell by BadDreamer · · Score: 1

      That sounds like a very strange way to run an Amiga game. Amiga games almost never ran from Workbench. In fact, I know of no game which required an install and then running from Workbench.

      Normally you had an Amiga, with Kickstart in ROM, and you booted from the first game disk. That was it. And that is how it's still done on the emulator.

      Installing OS and then game is a very roundabout way, and not normal. I can understand you had problems since you did something hardly anyone has ever done in the history of the Amiga!

    9. Re:Trapped in Amiga Hell by sad_ · · Score: 1

      Wish they just emulated the AmigaOS API so you didn't have to faff with it.

      http://aros.sourceforge.net/

      --
      On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
    10. Re:Trapped in Amiga Hell by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In an emulator you can see all the different variants of Fast memory though: 16 bit (also called slow RAM), old Fast (fast RAM that falls within the original 68K's 24 bit address space), Z3 Fast (32 bit address range), and RTG RAM.

    11. Re:Trapped in Amiga Hell by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm spoiled by DOSBox. Wish they just emulated the AmigaOS API so you didn't have to faff with it.

      The vast majority of games only used the OS to load the game from the floppy disk, after that they killed the OS to free up resources and took full control of the Amiga.
        Also, those that didn't do that were often written against Commodore's guidelines, doing stupid shit like directly jumping to an address in ROM to call an OS routine to shave a few CPU cycles off doing it the proper way. So then when a new Kickstart came out old software started crashing and clueless users just pointed the finger at Commodore for breaking stuff !
        Then there were other dumb things like delay/timing loops in games that were basically just busy loops with an assumed time per cycle. If the user had a CPU card or the code was running in fast RAM timing went to hell.

        TLDR: old games rarely used the OS, just emulating the API isn't enough.

    12. Re:Trapped in Amiga Hell by mentil · · Score: 1

      The game came on several disks and I didn't want to swap between them constantly. Also, installing the english patch more or less required a hard drive install, which AFAICT requires running the game from workbench. I agree that's not a typical step, though.

      --
      Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
    13. Re:Trapped in Amiga Hell by BadDreamer · · Score: 4, Informative

      There will be no constant swapping. Multidisk games for the Amiga were pretty much uniformly very smart about that. And swapping disks in the emulator is a keypress away, it's really smooth and simple.

      Patching will not require a hard disk install; usually installing to hard disk on the Amiga means copying the files over. There is no registry, not even any ini files, just a directory with files. You can patch those files and put them on the disks again, or even patch on the disks.

      It's very far from a typical step. It's almost completely unheard of. And it is very amusing you complain about "emulate the AmigaOS API" since games do not use AmigaOS. They go directly on the hardware.

      The only reason you had to "faff with it" was because you decided to do you. Seriously, don't blame the Amiga for something the Amiga makes dead simple, and the amulator makes dead simple, but which you decided to make difficult.

      Running Amiga games on an Amiga emulator makes DOSbox seem complicated. What you did was the equivalent of installing Windows 3.1 on DOSbox to be able to run a pure DOS game.

    14. Re:Trapped in Amiga Hell by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      There was no api in a lot of cases. Commodore documented what hardware addresses registers lived at in their addison wesley hardware reference guide which was one of the only early bibles of documentation available and you manipulated them directly. for example bit6 of bfe001 is the CIA's left mouse button state register, copper registers for background color etc. Some routines you could call from ks by calling them directly too, since the easiest way to get the best performance was to turn off all the running operating system and just handle your own stuff yourself in the vertical blanking region (interrupt called from routines stored at $00004c).
      Then, CBM moved some of the rom locations between revisions of the kickstart rom saying anyone doing this was not using things properly and they should have been using c and the c api's to access everything (slowly) and moved the memory map about so you had to be using their memory allocation calls instead of turning things off completely, which you found new things living at in different revisions of the chipset roms, which is why you see compatibility issues between for example 1.2 and 1.3 chipset games and demos that really pushed the performance envelope.

      If you pick for example a earlier rom such as ks 1.2 unless you need some fancy feature introduced later, give it plenty of slow and fast ram, and start off with the lower cpu emu's, pretty much most stuff will run on the base variants with just a 512kb ram expansion.
      The fact it even works mostly at all is a miracle, and the emu peeps will tell you the stuff that doesn't was "badly coded" and should be rewritten. Given the benefit of hindsight that's probably correct, but its not how I remember things going down at the actual time.

      Source, I used to code games and demo's for the amiga in m68k in the late 80's.

    15. Re:Trapped in Amiga Hell by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      If you want an easy solution then Amiga Forever packages up the WinUAE emulator, the ROMs, a launcher, pre-installed OS images and a bunch of other goodies.

      For most games you just double click on their name in the launcher and play.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    16. Re:Trapped in Amiga Hell by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Amigas have different kinds of RAM depending on where it is connected, but the only kinds most people need to think about are chip and fast. The os is called amigados, the graphical desktop is called workbench. If you just use one of the emulator profiles, you don't have to figure out the configuration.

      On the other hand, I found whdload (the main way to play older games on Amiga) to be a boondoggle. Most games don't work with readily available images. I tested many, many of them on my 1200 before I sold it.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    17. Re:Trapped in Amiga Hell by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Amiga 500: Kickstart 1.3 + 512k chip RAM + OCS
      Amiga 500+: Kickstart 2.04 + 1Mb chip + ECS
      Amiga 1200: Kickstart 3 + 2Mb chip + AGA

      You can make that even simpler and remove the A500+ option.
      Titles that requires at least A500+ but doesn't work on A1200 does to my knowledge not exist.

      Some titles like Settlers will make use of the extra memory on A500+, but then again, it works even better on A1200.

    18. Re:Trapped in Amiga Hell by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The main problem with making an Amiga simply "download and run" is copyright. The reason you have such an easy DosBox experience is because of the great work by the FreeDOS people, who wrote a complete OSS version of MS-DOS. AFAIK that hasn't happened with AmigaOS, so you have to cobble together copyrighten software to get it to work.

      Blame the never-ending copyright laws if you want something to blame. The DOS world is just as complex, if not more than the Amiga world, it's just the complexity is all hidden by the software that's all been re-written OSS. I assure you it was just as complicated 20 years ago before FreeDOS.

    19. Re:Trapped in Amiga Hell by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      There will be no constant swapping. Multidisk games for the Amiga were pretty much uniformly very smart about that. And swapping disks in the emulator is a keypress away, it's really smooth and simple.

      ISTR doing a bit of swapping, and I hardly even had any multidisk games. However, in an emulator you can just give yourself three external drives and generally not do any swapping, even the virtual kind. Only a few games use more than four disks. For those games, it's bananas to not HD install them.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    20. Re:Trapped in Amiga Hell by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Lol. If you can't setup an Amiga emulator you're mentally deficient. Why don't you just kill yourself?

    21. Re:Trapped in Amiga Hell by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The reason you have such an easy DosBox experience is because of the great work by the FreeDOS people, who wrote a complete OSS version of MS-DOS. AFAIK that hasn't happened with AmigaOS

      AROS is close... still not 100% compatible or 100% free (needs some Commodore binaries to run Amiga games) but it's a good start.

    22. Re:Trapped in Amiga Hell by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And, by and large, that doesn't matter a bit. The Amiga configures its memory automatically and assigns a priority to each different chunk that it finds. When you code, you normally only need to worry about chip RAM because that's where your assets need to be for the custom chips to find them. Beyond that, just allocate your memory and the system will give you space in the best memory it has available. It's quite flexible and accommodating, and *very* different to the old crummy DOS memory model.

    23. Re:Trapped in Amiga Hell by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It was reasonably common for games to come with hard disk installers so the option was there, and that of course saved faffing with disk swapping, slow loading times and so on. Disk swapping is still relevant under emulation, even if the loading times are not - some games came on 10 or 11 disks, and with only 4 emulated drives, you'll be inserting and ejecting disk images quite a lot.

      Later on, there were some games that required hard drive installation, but they were generally much bigger games that came on CD-ROM.

  5. Awe was Synonymous with Amiga by corezz · · Score: 2

    Ahh yes the wonderful memories. (I had in chron order: Amiga 500, Amiga 2000, Amiga 1000, and finally the Amiga 1200 ... i also ended up buying a friend an Amiga 3000 so he could do pro video work with Video Toaster, which he later repaid me -- sometime when i had the Amiga 2000. Amazing times.

    If i'm not mistaken the PC was in CGA 4 color mode with beep-beep speaker sound. Mac's were in black and white. While the Amiga 500 was doing things in 4096 HAM graphics modes, full multi-tasking, and with stereo sound. Just to name of few of its brilliant architecture.

    Just to show my support and respect for that machine I will go buy the game now

    1. Re: Awe was Synonymous with Amiga by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I too would buy the game, but it is for PAL Amigas. I am an NTSC kind of guy. I donâ(TM)t Alternate my Phase. (:

    2. Re:Awe was Synonymous with Amiga by 91degrees · · Score: 1

      The PC did have EGA by that point (16 colours from a selection of 64). This does only give 4 shades for each channel though, which is a bit limited. 16 bits per channel looks a bit ugly by today's standards but it does allow more flexiblity and hand drawn images can look pretty good.

    3. Re:Awe was Synonymous with Amiga by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      I had a cga monitor on my Amiga for a while. The Amiga has an output that will drive it. The clocks are the same. Worked okay for text displays, where there is lots of contrast, and I was just using it mostly for text at that point. Bbsing and text internet.

      Pc graphics went from ega to vga in the Amiga's day. Most Amiga games use nowhere near 4096 colors because it's non-trivial to even display that many. Easy enough for stills but not animation. However the Amiga did manage to continue to smash the PC in the audio department for a long time. A pc sound card that would outperform Amiga cost about half as much as the A500 itself.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    4. Re:Awe was Synonymous with Amiga by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Unless I'm misunderstanding... you've got a tiny problem with your wording there... 16 bits per channel would be outright amazing ( That'd be 48bit graphics ). EGA was 2 bits per channel giving it a colorspace that was a little on the candy coated side of things. VGA came out just a few years later but still wasn't as good as Amiga for high color applications until hoops and hacks (Mode X ) got more advanced capabilities out of the card.

    5. Re:Awe was Synonymous with Amiga by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In 1992 I remember comparing my copy of Monkey Island for Amiga 500 with my friend's PC copy: he had shitty 16 colour graphics, awful PC speaker sound, and something like 20 low density 5 1/4" disks which we were forever swapping. I never understood why anyone would want a PC over an Amiga.

    6. Re:Awe was Synonymous with Amiga by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In 1992 PCs already had 256-color VGA graphics, and 3 1/2" floppies were already the standard. Maybe your friend just had a crappy computer, or couldn't find the right Monkey Island version :P

    7. Re:Awe was Synonymous with Amiga by 91degrees · · Score: 1

      Yes. 4 bits per channel. 16 levels. Silly mistake on my part.

    8. Re:Awe was Synonymous with Amiga by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fuck you man. Slashdot really is a cesspit these days, I'm out.

    9. Re:Awe was Synonymous with Amiga by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Might be 2 bits per channel. 6 bits total for an RGB pixel, gives you 64 colors. But that's the total colors possible and you have to use a 16 color palette, hence 4 bits by pixel.

      Per channel refers to each of R, G and B (later A for the alpha channel. e.g. Nintendo GameCube has an unusual 24bit graphics with 6 bits per channel : six bits for each of R, G and B plus six bits of alpha, so it had well featured effects like rendering fur by piling textures on top of each other, but games had some banding)
      Some computers had RGB video output and a simple 1bit one/off on these, giving eight ugly colors.

    10. Re:Awe was Synonymous with Amiga by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In 1992 PCs had VGA, 3"1/2, hard drive but no sound card installed ; and that was if you had a brand new PC.
      Such as a 386 SX at 16MHz, if you got a cheap (affordable) one. Was a bit better than an Amiga at some things like real time 3D games but not very great yet.
      Also, Indiana Jones "Indy 3" was in 16 colors! The next one, Atlantis was a master piece and in 256 colors but took 10 megs of disk space.

    11. Re:Awe was Synonymous with Amiga by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Amiga sound stagnated though. E.g. the Amiga CD 32 (which I've got but not plugged to anything yet) had the same sound from 1985 as Amiga 1000 and 500 (I watched a few youtube videos). It's embarassing compared to a SNES, but the SNES had a really powerful music chip (it seemed to beat the N64 sometimes)

  6. For all 1MB Amigas by 91degrees · · Score: 2

    You mean I need to buy a RAM upgrade just to play this game!? Damn!

  7. Slashvertisement by thesupraman · · Score: 1

    Its not news....

    1. Re:Slashvertisement by nogginthenog · · Score: 2

      I'd say it's news for geeks. It's a polished new release for a 32 year old platform.
      The guy ain't gonna make megabucks from this, it's only sold 140 copies so far.

    2. Re:Slashvertisement by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 1

      I'd say it's news for geeks. It's a polished new release for a 32 year old platform. The guy ain't gonna make megabucks from this, it's only sold 140 copies so far.

      Agreed.

      Retro games are huge for geeks. There's not only the nostalgia factor; they have to be at least a bit good in actual game play, as they can't rely on stunning visuals.

  8. Somehow the trailer does not look that awesome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Somehow I remember playing Amiga games at our neighbour back in the day to be more fun and also look more "interesting", no? I would have thought with modern tools and such new games would look more awesome, like the 8-bit computer guy's space thing for the C64, ...

    1. Re:Somehow the trailer does not look that awesome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I saw the trailer and also had a "meh" moment. As far as Amiga games go this one is very disappointing and I wouldn't buy it. The sound effects in the trailer clearly aren't taking advantage of Amiga hardware, they sound like C-64 effects.

  9. RAM hell won't happen on any Atari ST. :P by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The Atari ST was (oversseas) seen as a perfect mixture between Business&Gaming.

    I had quite a few exclusive games (Bolo...), quite a few IDEs (Pascal, C...), quite a few serious programs: Signum (which I did my thesis on), huge DTPs, midi.

    The shareware/floppy/cdrom/print "Scene" here did rival the Amigas.

    Nice fact: The ST was purely sold with the hd mono monitor in Europe, you could just attach any good and large pal tv to it.
    The extreme versatility was ignored it the states. The name Atari was just limited to cartridges.

    If you want to play a game on an Atari ST/or Atari ST Emu, you have to decide whether it should be in mono/hd or color low rez. Done. RAM is just RAM, OS is just OS. :P

  10. Not a "PC" Game by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A new Amiga game, and it had to be a "guy gets girl" game, basically a caveman trope. You can't do this anymore, it isn't PC.

    #MeToo

  11. Cracked By Crystal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Waiting for it to be cracked by Crystal, it wouldn't really be 'amiga' if it wasn't cracked =D

  12. Re: Amigas are for cows. by Philotomy · · Score: 0

    Missing option: hot grits.

  13. what about Amiga Bomb Jack Beer? by mooterSkooter · · Score: 1

    Did the amazing Amiva conversion of Bomb Jack make it to slashdot recently? That is seriously impressive and beats the hell out of the Elite conversion. If you have an amiga then you just tty it!

  14. This game has been made possible... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This game has been made possible by the generous contributions of the DeBeers Corporation and Anheuser Busch...

  15. It shouldn't be called "Worthy" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Drinking as much beer as possible while trying to collect enough diamonds to "win" the "heart" of a girl.

    The game should be called "Bro Ho".

  16. preview guide channel used to run on amiga crashed by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    preview guide channel used to run on Amiga it crashed a lot.

  17. Planet X2! by Layzej · · Score: 2

    Here's a new real-time strategy game developed last year by the "8-bit guy" for the Commodore 64: http://www.the8bitguy.com/plan...

    I'm not sure they're getting rich on this, but if you're nostalgic and love to code... why not?

  18. Re:OT: Open letter to APK by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Fuck your peace, fuck you, and fuck APK. I'm gonna fuck that guy right up when I find him. Where do you live APK? Address and phone number? I fucking dare you!!

  19. This is bugging me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In TFS it says

    ... and use an UAE emulator for your platform...

    Let's ignore for the moment the fact that the E probably also stands for emulator. What the fuck kind of pronunciation leads you to say 'an UAE'? Are you calling it Ooh-aye? Uh-way? I can't be the only one that looks at it and sees just an initialism (you-ay-ee)... Right?

  20. WinUAE has different goals by Weaselmancer · · Score: 1

    Toni Wilen, the programmer for WinUAE has different goals in mind other than creating an excellent gaming experience. He's trying to recreate the *entire* Amiga ecosystem in a single program. His web page usually has him asking for obscure boards and roms because he wants to emulate it all. I think this is a grand goal.

    Every single board I used to drool over in the old Amiga magazines and wish I could buy, he wants to emulate. So for someone like me being able to run an Amiga Blizzard board or an accurate Amiga 4000 or some such...it's a way to scratch a very old itch.

    Toni also got MMU emulation working, which made Amiga Linux possible. It was a HUGE kick to see the old m68k linux stuff come up in the emulator. Not everyone's cup of tea, obviously. But a lot of fun. Reading the EAB threads as the thing was coming closer and closer to boot was pretty exciting. I'm sure I'm a minority on that, but still, I thought it was a lot of fun.

    But to your point, WinUAE can also provide an excellent and simple gaming experience. The first default configuration tab has default *stock* Amiga configurations right there. Just select an OCS Amiga 500, and 99% of your games will run. You don't have to drill down into the tech stuff and twiddle chipsets to make things work.

    --
    Weaselmancer
    rediculous.
  21. Re:preview guide channel used to run on amiga cras by tuxkamen · · Score: 1

    The local community access television station here as recent as 2013 had an Amiga whose sole purpose was text crawls for advertisements and subtitles like the ones that pop up showing the names of the hosts or interviewers.

    --
    Use a little common sense once in a while. --Book of Mooch Ch. 5 verse 14
  22. Re: Amigas are for cows. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nope, you don't get to imagine such things. There is only DRUMPF COLLUDING WITH RUSSIA, while naked with Putin on a freshly killed grizzly pelt. DRUMPF WILL DIE IN PRISON!!! VIVA LA REVOLUCION!!!!!!!

  23. Well, Anita Sarkeesian will be cunting about this. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    eom