Platform Shooter "Enemy 2" Released!

This Christmas is proving to be an exciting one for Amiga gamers. First, Putty Squad is finally released to the public, and then hot on its heels comes platform shooter "Enemy 2".

The original, "Enemy: Tempest of Violence", German language version, was published by Anachronia way back in 1997, with an English version published by Alive Mediasoft in 1999.

Unfortunately, regardless of its quality, this was a title that came too late in the Amiga's commercial lifespan to make much of an impression on the gaming scene.

Years later the author of Enemy 1, Andre Wuthrich, was kind enough to release the game into the public domain.

Before you download and start playing Enemy 2 the authors recommend that you play through Enemy 1 first if you've not done so as the the story in part 2 continues where Enemy 1 left off.

(Enemy 1 footage, captured by einokeino303)

For more information and links to download both parts 1 and 2, point your web browser at the Anachronia web site.

New Arcade Style Joystick From AmigaKit.com

If your trusty Competition Pro, Quickshot or adopted Megadrive pad is starting to show its age then perhaps you're in the market for a new joystick to compliment your Amiga setup.

The problem that you'll no doubt find is that decent brand new Amiga joysticks/controllers are extremely difficult to get hold of, and usually a second hand device purchased from Ebay is your only option. That was until a recent press release posted to the English Amiga Board appeared, courtesy of AmigaKit;

"We will shortly be launching a brand new Amiga joystick which we have developed over the last 6 months. 

The high quality joystick is manufactured for many years of Amiga gaming. 

It features [an] arcade style controller with metal shaft and micro switches. 

It has independent fire A and fire B buttons that can be user switches to single fire A operation if required."

Now, the joystick's not cheap. Weighing in at a hefty £49.15 (odd price, I know) it's certainly out of impulse buy territory. However, if the images on the AmigaKit web site do the device justice then it looks to be an extremely high quality device, and the parts don't come cheap.

For more information or to purchase the joystick, point your web browser over to this page on the AmigaKit web site.

For those of you who received money for Christmas, perhaps this will give you some idea of what to spend it on.

Putty Squad Finally Lands on Amiga!

If you already know about this then move on. This news story has been plugged via Twitter, Facebook and every Amiga and retro related site imaginable. Work's been really hectic as of late, and unfortunately this has been the first chance I've had to give this a plug.

Originally due for release towards the latter part of 1994, and reviewed in the September 1994 issue of Amiga Power (reviews also appeared in other magazines of the time), Putty Squad has been one of the most talked about of all the Amiga's "missing in action" titles. Not surprising really, when it would seem that the game was completely finished and sat there gathering dust.

Now, some 19 years after its release System 3 Software have kindly given us Amiga owners a rather lovely Christmas present - the full version of Putty Squad, to download, for free!

Simply point your web browser over to the System 3 web site at http://www.system3.com/, and you'll see a link to Amiga Putty Squad on the main page.

The zip file contains two disk images, so you'll need to either play these in an emulator, or have some way of getting the images back on to floppy disk.

If you'd like to find out more about how this release came to be, you'll want to read this thread over on the English Amiga Board.

Those of you who'd like to install this to hard drive may want to download the WHDLoad installation, which you'll find here.

It just leaves me to finish by saying a big thank you to all at System 3 and the Amiga community for helping to make this available to the rest of us.

Right, I'm off to give this a go and see what all the fuss is about.

Happy Christmas.

Allister Brimble's "Amiga Works" - Only 150 Copies Remaining

Musician Allister Brimble is the man behind some of the Amiga's most iconic game tunes. Working on titles such as Alien Breed, Project X, Full Contact, Troddlers, and many more, if you did or still do play games on your Amiga, then you'll have certainly heard some of his output.

Following a successful Kickstarter campaign last year, Allister released his double-CD album "The Amiga Works", earlier this month to much acclaim from the Amiga fanbase. Such was the celebration for this new release that fans were posting and uploading photos of the album upon its receipt.

Limited to 1,000 copies, supplies are now running out. Here's the man himself;

"Hi all, 

Down to the last 150 copies of my limited edition Amiga Works double CD album now..

Amiga game music remixed to modern day standard.  

Head to www.amigaworks.com to get your copy"

It's likely that these copies will go quickly, so if you want to add this to your collection you'd better get your skates on!

Amiga PD's Top 100 Amiga Games Book - Update

The brainchild of Amiga PD's Christian Clarke - The Top 100 Amiga PD Games (the title is likely to change before release) is a work-in-progress eBook project, with an end goal of showcasing the very best the Amiga Public Domain games scene has to offer.

The release is an ambitious one, and although assisted by fellow Amiga gamers Graham Humphrey, Robert Hazelby and Lifeschool, Chris has authored the majority of the completed game write-ups himself.

Last week Chris was busy getting the formatting to look good on the Amazon Kindle, and from the released screenshot (see below), the results look extremely promising indeed.

At present the book has over 50 reviews completed, and work is continuing, ready for a mid 2014 release.

Naturally, we'll have more news on this as the book progresses. In the meantime, you may wish to visit the Amiga PD Facebook page, where Chris has posted-up details of a new interviewee he's just secured.

New Amiga Game in Development - "Chaos Guns"

Us Amiga users aren't treated to many new games these days. Unlike the ZX Spectrum scene which seems to see a new game released on an almost weekly basis, the 16-bit Commodore platform plays host to a mere trickle of new titles during the course of an average year.

The majority of these games are single player titles, with the occasional 2-player game cropping up every now and then. Clearly realising that the best games are those that are played in groups, a number of Amiga programmers, artists and musicians have got together to develop "Chaos Guns", a 4-player top-down shooter, similar in style to the legendary "Chaos Engine".

Here's the English Amiga Board's Predseda;

"Fellow Amigans, I am proud to announce that we have been working on a new Amiga party game. It is a mixture of Alien Breed (top view), Chaos Engine 2 (unique cooperative/competitive gameplay) and Hired guns (four independent views) so it is why we call it Chaos guns. 

It will be a story based game for four players, playing with 4 joysticks through an adaptor (or two on keyboard), where each player has his own goal of the game (depending on character chosen out of 12), but all the players also have one goal together, which will force them to collaborate in some parts.

There will be seven really LARGE levels, each player has his own independent window with full scrolling. Game will offer various weapons, enemies, boss fights, puzzles and additional quests. Each character has his own starting position and characteristics (strengh, weight, ability to survive in gas/water, speed and a lot of others) and they can walk through all the maps freely and meet each other.

At present we have an alpha version, work started a month ago and our game was first time presented at Bytefest party two days ago. We are at the beginning, we have been working on it for one month, but we already have results. Now players can walk freely, shoot, die, drawn in water, enter buildings, reload ammo, use stairs. I hope we will release a public demo soon, after some optimalisation and graphics enhancements. 

It is a party game, so all four players are needed. We have a lot of ideas, I hope it will evolve quickly. Expected release date is June next year.

Minimum hardware requirement is Amiga 1200 with MC68030 processor and 8MB fast RAM.

Our project leader is Dave DeSade, he also make a lot of graphics and draw maps. I am now responsible for sprite animations. Our programmer is MarK, and musician is Nooly. I think these names are probably unknown to most of you, but I hope they will surprise you in the positive way. All team was formed recently, so we do not use a group name yet. 

I will keep you informed, if you are interested."

A demo of the game in action at this year's Bytefest

If you'd like to see more then you can find a YouTube clip of the game engine in action here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAKu-OHhdj4

Meanwhile, the development discussion thread can be found over on the English Amiga Board at THIS link. There's some amazing development sketch artwork there which you really must check out.

New Amiga Game - Magic Ball

Released on the 19th of September, as an entry in to the Retrokomp/LoadError Party Retro Competition is a new Amiga game entitled "Magic Ball".

Put together using Backbone, the game requires Amiga WB 2.0 an above, plus 1.5 megabytes of RAM.

The gameplay is very similar to another fairly new Amiga release, Downfall, which sees the player continuously falling, and it's your job to ensure your character doesn't get hit by any nasties on the way down. 

Initial feedback from those over on the English Amiga Board seems to indicate that this is a rather tricky game, so you'd better get some practice in!
For more information, including download links to the complete game, point your web browser over to: http://retrokomp.org/joomla/index.php/download#magicball

A Brief Update From Remainder Software

As far as I can tell, the last time I reported on Remainder Software (authors of the Amiga versions of Downfall - download and install at once if you've not tried it!) and their next release was way back in December of last year.

In that update we were told that control, jumping and basic collision detection had been implemented, but very little else.

Due to various work and family commitments from the Remainder team we've heard very little since then. That was until earlier this evening when the following message appeared on their Facebook Group;

"Hello!  

I have been rather quiet of late, due to a combination of nice weather (so trips to the pub have been frequent) and clearing off on holiday recently. Now I am all back and settled, however, work has now resumed! 

Tonight I have started work on implementing some enemies in the game. There won't be loads as the challenge will be more in the platforms and puzzles but it's still a tricky and involving part of the game to get working.  

Pics and so on in a few days (I hope!)."

We're not recommend you hold your breath until the next update, but if/when I hear anything further I'll be sure to post details on the blog.

JetHunt AGA - Coming 2013

Today's update brings news of another Amiga game in the works - an Amiga version of the classic platformer H.E.R.O.

Here's Coagulus with the details...

"After having much more fun coding the Amiga version of Timebomb, I've been working on my next Amiga release. 

JetHunt is my remake/tribute to H.E.R.O. which I started on the Amiga in 1992 (!) and released finally last year for the PC. After my conversion of Timebomb went so well, I felt it was only fair to release JetHunt for the machine I started it on.  

The game will require AGA but is already looking quite good. It uses a dual playfield display with a main 16 colour hardware sprite and 256 colour titlepage and status bar. I've had to make a few changes to the PC version, the screen scrolls a little so all I had to do is halve the res on the gfx but I think that makes it look even better. 

Still lots to do. This will take a while but I'm sure I can do it. 

Here is a youtube vid of it so far running in WinUAE. PC version is here.  

Fingers crossed....  

Coagulus"

Further updates will be posted to the blog as and when they surface.

Update: The latest WIP video can be found below;

Cropky - A New Amiga Puzzler

Released towards the beginning of May, Cropky is a modern take on the pen and paper classic "Dots", which pits two people against each other, both trying to capture enemy dots.

This Amiga version is slightly different to the original as instead of trying to capture dots you're attempting to link two dots together with an adjoining line. Not only that, but the Amiga revamp supports both two player and Amiga Vs player options.

Featuring some amazingly high production values, this has clearly had a lot of time, effort and care put into it.

Take a look at the footage below, kindly captured by p3c3...

Don't forget to turn the volume on your computer up, as the music is excellent.

It's Been a While

It's been a fair old while since I updated the Amiga Gamer Blog, and for that I apologise.

A combination of a new job in a different industry and getting married, has meant that my Amiga hobby and my interest in retro computing/gaming has had to take a bit of a back seat.

Things seem to have quietened down now, and I'm hoping that I can start to breathe life back into the blog once more.

Many thanks for your patience.

Amiga PD Interviews Dave Townsend

Released way back in 1987, Dave Townsend's Bull Run lets you step into the shoes of the Union or Confederate commanders at the Battle of Bull Run, the first major battle of the American Civil War.

With a modern update now in the works AmigaPD.com have decided it was about time Dave was tracked down and given the APD interview treatment.

The interview is a fascinating read where Dave reveals what attracted him to the Civil War idea, different release versions of the game floating around, how the AI was coded, and much more besides.

To read the review, point your web browser over to the AmigaPD.com web site, and once you're done don't forget to leave a Mencap donation.

Solomon's Key Lands on The Amiga!

While it's great to follow the progress of a new Amiga game or port from inception to completion, it's also just as exciting for an Amiga game to land on the platform completely out of the blue.

Solomon's Key is one such title that firmly follows the latter, as earlier today it was not only announced on the English Amiga Board, but a link to the full download was also supplied!

Coming hot on the heels of earlier 21st century ST to Amiga ports such as Gauntlet, IK, Joust and Super Sprint, this is another highly polished title that for one reason or another failed to appear on the Amiga back in the day.

Now, thanks to the efforts of EAB member Asman and with help from Wanted Team, the ST version has been ported over to the Amiga, and with stunning results.

Not content with porting the game over, the conversion team have even gone to the trouble of making everything that bit more authentic by adding an old-skool and very stylish 'crack' intro, which not only looks good, but also features a lovely tune.

Apologies for the quality of this photo (and me in the background), this was a quick snap I took

So, what's the game like? Well, fans of the arcade original won't be disappointed. Sure, it's not a 100% accurate conversion, but it's extremely well polished. The graphics are lovely and colourful, and sound can be a mix of both music AND sound effects at the same time.

The game supports two button joysticks/pads, with the first button used to create or destroy blocks, and the second to fire spells. It would have been nice if a third button could also have been coded for, as up for jump does make things tricker than they should be. 

Those who wish to use keyboard controls are also well catered for, and there's even an option to redefine your own keys should you wish.

Apologies for the angle of this photo. I took it by pointing my camera phone at my monitor

Gamers looking to go for high scores will be interested to learn that high scores are saved to disk, making it possible to return to the game at a later date/time in an effort to beat your personal best.

System requirements are fairly small for this title. As long as you have at least 1 meg of chip RAM free you'll be able to enjoy the game in its entirety. If you've got 512k chip and 512k fast RAM sound FX will be disabled.

You can even run this on a bog standard 68000 Amiga, but the game will run a little slow.

Those of you who still have your Amiga set up, or an emulated Amiga and use it for games should certainly consider getting this installed and fired-up on your system. You won't regret it.

Check out the English Amiga Board Solomon's Key thread HERE, and download the DMS file HERE.

My thanks go to the Lemon Amiga Facebook page for the heads-up on this one.

Moebius Goatlizard In-Game Footage

Here's a very quick update to the blog.

In yesterday's blog post I announced the release of a new Amiga platformer "Moebius Goatlizard", and with the news also reaching other web sites via the game's author, interest in the title has increased.

Always one to quickly upload Amiga footage as soon as a new game is released, YouTube user s2325 has just uploaded footage of the game in action. So, if you're not able to or can't be bothered (shame on you!) to get this up and running in your own home you now have a chance to see it...


My thanks go to s2325 for making this available.

Moebius Goatlizard Released!

It's been a long time coming, but after months of waiting we can finally get our hands on the full version of Moebius Goatlizard.

Originally released by Dave Hughes of Stonechat Productions for the ZX Spectrum in 2012, and followed by a Sam Coupe conversion by Blackjet that same year, this has now been ported to the Commodore Amiga by Blackjet.

Work on the Amiga conversion began in August of last year, and today (14th April) the completed ADF image was uploaded to the Black Jet web site ready for you to download and play on either real or emulated Amiga systems.

The author tells us that the object of the game is to:

"Run around collecting the inter-galactic aliens, avoiding things and generally have a right rollocking good time doing it"

Full instructions, background information and a download link for the Amiga version of Moebius can be found at: http://blackjet.co.uk/amiga.php

If you're planning to transfer the ADF to disk and want to make a really nice job of it, the disk label can be found here (PDF).

I'd completely forgotten all about this title, so I must thank the Lemon Amiga team for the heads-up on this one. Cheers guys!

The Top 100 Amiga Public Domain Games Vote

Graham Humphrey of Amiga platformer Downfall, Christian Clarke of AmigaPD.com and myself are working on an article of the 100 best pd games (including Licenceware / shareware / amiga magazine cover disks) and would like some help working out the order to rank them.

Therefore we would really appreciate if you could contribute to our project by voting for your top 30 games from the list below: (we have asked for your top 30 to reduce the chances of 0 votes and games on same number of points, but if you can't stretch to 30 just submit what you can!)

Act of War
Aerial Racers
Agent Lux
Air Taxi
Alien Bash 2
Alien Fish Finger
Aquanaut
Asteroids
Atom Smasher
BabeAnoid
Beetle
Black Dawn 2
Bob's Magic Garden
Breed '96
Bull Run
Burton Bird
Colonial Conquest 2
Crazy Sue
Croak
Cyberman
Cybernetix
Defender
Deluxe Galaga
Deluxe Pacman
Depth Charge
Diamond Caves
Dithell In Space
Dogfight v1.1
Doody
Downfall
Drip
Dynamite Warriors
Elektrek
Elevation
Fatal Mission 2
Fayoh
Fayoh 2
Fleuch
Gravity Power
Hoi AGA Remix
Hydrozone
Infection
Insectoids From Outer
Space Jet Set Willy '97
Jump and Roll
Jump Em
Knights
Larn
Lethal Formula
Llamatron
Lord of Alcandria 2
Mad Bomber
Megaball
Mine Runner
Morton Strikes Back
 Move Em
Mr Beanbag
Og!
Pacman '96
Peg It
Pengo
Pod
Poing
Pollymorf
Premier Picks
Qbic
Quasar Wars
Quicksilva
Relics of Deldroneye
Renegades Return to Earth
Rocketz
Santa and Rudolph
Scorched Tanks
Sneech
Solidquad
Springtime
Stairwoids
Super Foul Egg
Super Obliteration
Tanks N Stuff
Tanx
Toobz
Top Hat Willy
Total Chaos
Total War
Touch 'n' Go
T-Racer
Tracker Hero
Trick or Treat
Truckin On
War
Wibble World Giddy
Willy's Weirdy Nightmare
Wired Chaos
WITNESS
Wizzy's Quest
Zaxxon
Zerg
Zombie Apocalypse

Due to requests from members of the Amiga community the following two games have been added to the list:

Extreme Violence
Knockout 2

They above will replace games which get 0 votes.

If there are any games you've not heard of then visit this link over on the AmigaPD web site, which contains a slideshow of all the games, and a folder where you can download an archive containing all the disk images.

To vote you'll need to be a member of the English Amiga Board. Votes need to be submitted to this thread.

Voting starts now and will close at 23:59 UK time on July 31st. Votes received after this date will not be counted.

After this we'll write up mini reviews of each title and count down to the number one title over the course of a few weeks.

Thanks in advance for all your help.

Amiga & CD32 Music Compilation Coming This May

"Paula Agnus Denise" is the name of a new Amiga and CD32 music compilation, due for release this May.

Featuring covers of tracks originally composed by legendary artists such as Chris Huelsbeck, Allister Brimble, Tim Wright, and more, this looks like to be something worth keeping an eye out for.

The album contains a whopping 19 tracks, and will be available to purchase digitally or on CD, which comes with a 12 page booklet.

For more information, including the full track/artists listing and download links, point your web browser over to THIS blog post over on the VG247.com web site.

Updated versions of Arcade Game Selector

If you're one of the many people who only use their Amiga systems for gaming, then the Arcade Game Selector may be right up your street. Rather than loading up Workbench, you simply switch your Amiga on, and the machine then loads the game selector system up straight from hard drive.

Previously available as an AGA only release, English Amiga Board member tomcat666, has now produced an ECS version of his game selection system, for lower specced Amigas.

Here's the man himself with the details;

"I decided to update the AGS (Arcade Game Selector) menu systems for use in my A1200 (with 030/50Mhz) and my un-exapnded A600. 

As a base I took the OCS version of AGS system that I found on this forum. This version had nice sub-directories handling and a few other enhancements over the original AGS version (and the other enhanced one from lennon)... 

I am also including all of my start scripts and pictures for the games so you can set it up quickly. 

This one is similar to KGLoad with a few differences - menu is bigger (no cover photo), you can start ANY game from it, not just WHD games! 

It was fun to do some work in Amiga E language - never done that before"

 For more information, including download links to both the AGA and OCS versions of the Arcade Game Selector, check out THIS thread over on the English Amiga Board.

Retro Asylum Ep 35 - Swainy's Top 10 Amiga Tunes

Those of you who are big fans of Amiga game music will definitely want to give episode 35 of the Retro Asylum Podcast a listen. Hosted by the one and only Swainy, this latest show covers the presenter's favourite Amiga game tunes of all time.

Here's the blurb for this latest episode;
"Our resident Cockney nutter has returned to take you back to the early 90′s as he play’s his personal favourite top 10 Commodore Amiga tunes from games that he has played on the system.

Also, discover how to join the Retro Asylum team of hosts and there are more details on the UK’s biggest retro event this year. So, sit back and enjoy some real classic tunes chosen by the UK’s No1 Retro Gaming Podcast!"

For more information, and for links enabling you to stream the podcast from the site or to subscribe to the show via iTunes, point your web browser over to:

http://retroasylum.com/ep-35-12-swainys-top-10-amiga-tunes/

International Karate Comes to The Amiga!

Way back at the start of November last year I reported on three Atari ST games that had been lovingly ported to the Amiga. Converted by English Amiga Board member Meynaf, the titles were Gauntlet, Joust and Super Sprint. All three games ran perfectly on expanded Amiga 1200's, and I found them to be extremely playable.
Maynaf's been pretty quiet since then, but earlier this week, and out of the blue, he announced that he'd ported over the beautiful looking International Karate from the Atari ST. Not only that, but he'd made it available for download.
Here's the game in action on an Atari ST;

IK footage captured by 2PeteShakur
Naturally, the online Amiga community were extremely excited by this news, downloaded it and started testing it on real and emulated Amiga systems.
Feedback from users has already started to come in, and with people experiencing the odd freeze, unusual colour schemes or the game running too fast with 28mhz 030 processors, it may be that Meynaf has to make a few tweaks and issue an update before we can get a stable and perfectly running version of IK on the Amiga.
Nevertheless, what Maynaf's achieved so far is already amazing work, and I suggest you get this installed on your Amiga at once.
You can download IK Amiga by clicking on THIS direct link, which points to an LZX archive. I would also suggest you keep visiting the IK link over on The English Amiga Board, as it looks like this may be the place to go to for news of any updates/issues.
Here's hoping that once Maynaf's finished tweaking this he moves on to more previously un-ported and exclusive ST titles.

Interview with Stewart Gilray (ex-21st Century Entertainment)

In today's update to the blog I bring news from the Retro Collect tearm, who earlier this week announced that they'd managed to bag an interview with ex-Amiga programmer Stewart Gilray.

Stuart worked on a number of Amiga titles in his earlier years, including Marvin's Marvellous Adventure and Pinball Fantasies, to name but two.

Here's the blurb from the Retro Collect web site;

"Joining the RetroCollect Squad this month is our very first special guest, Just Add Water's Stewart Gilray. Having spent an odyssey in the gaming industry - since the days of floppy disks & cassette tapes - this gaming veteran has countless enticing stories to tell, all of which lead up to how he became an inhabitant of RuptureFarms.

For those unfamiliar with the name, you'll have experienced many of Stewart's past releases without even realising. Having spent many years working for the likes of Hewson Consultants, 21st Century Entertainment, and of course Just Add Water; games such as Marvin's Marvellous Adventure, Pinball Fantasies, Gravity Crash and the more recent Oddworld titles have all been blessed by this British gaming icon.

But enough talking from us, Stewart has more than enough to say in the latest episode of RetroCollect FM. Discussing his colourful past, Stewart gets carried away by a wave of nostalgia discussing his early days including the ups and downs before arriving on his more recent ventures with Oddworld Inhabitants".

The podcast runs for over two hours, and is broken down as follows:

• Introduction and the early years
• The later days
• Gravity Crash and Just Add Water
• Oddworld Inhabitants
• Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee New N' Tasty

Download, subscription and information links are as follows;

Podcast Download Link - Click here
Subscribe on iTunes - Click here
Podcast Information - Click here

The Lemon/EAB Super League 2013 - Round 4

The latest round of the Lemon Amiga and English Amiga Board Super League is here, and for round 4 the two games are 2012's "Downfall" and "BabeAnoid" from 2003.

Downfall is a conversion of an Atari Jaguar game, where you have to keep your main character on screen while the screen scrolls upwards, whilst BabeAnoid, as the name suggests, is an Arkanoid/Breakdout clone.

Both games are public domain titles, and as such are free and legal to download.

The competition is open to anyone, and you're welcome to join in at any time.

Rules, screenshots of the games and links to download them can be found on this thread over on the Lemon Amiga Forums.

Get yourselves signed-up and take part!

Recommended Site - JD's K240 Page

Released by Gremlin Graphics way back in 1994, K240 was a complex but extremely playable strategy game, which I must have spent hours playing back in the day.

Clearly I'm not alone in my love of this ancient title, as fellow fan "Jonathan", has created a massive sub-section over on his web site detailing all kinds of tips, tricks, trivia and notes related to the game.

Those simply after tips to help play the game are well catered for, but those who want to know more about the game's copy protection, undocumented features, text strings, in-game history, and how the CU Amiga demo differed from the final product, are in for a real treat.

Don't be put off by the 1995 look of the site. Yes, it looks extremely basic, but it's the content that matters, right?

If you've got a spare 10 minutes, you could do a lot worse than give JD's K240 web site a visit. There's some great stuff there, and I found the content fascinating.

Pop over to: http://www.jonnydigital.com/k240

AMITEN SOFTWARE CD Compilation VOL I

The Spectrum and C64 scenes seem to be awash with not only new game releases, but releases that come as fully packaged products. The Amiga on the other hand seems to suffer from few new games landing on the platform, let alone ones that come in physical packaging.

Thankfully, English Amiga Board member Amiten, has just announced the physical release of "Amiten Software CD Compilation Volume 1", a compilation disc featuring a selection of complete games, game demos, tech demos and music from the Amiten label.

Here's Amiten with the details;

"I want you to know that I have available for sale 1 CD-Rom (limited units) called Amiten Software CD Compilation Vol I.

The CD includes three complete games (SPACER REMAKE / FISH and RUNPUFF)

Also included INSIDE the Intro and Mega Demo called "Just Forever" and and my last job 14 tracks of musical Tech / ambient / House.

As added features playable demos of AMIVANIA and AMIKILL.

The CD-ROM price is 10 € each shipping included worldwide.

It comes in a CD-ROM printed ligthscribe and printed cover.

Each CD comes with a serial number and is printed to register your copy by sending an e-mail to the address clubamiten@gmail.com with serial number thereby ensuring you get free updates for games SPACER REMAKE / FISH and Run Puff only when is avaliable.

The demos of the games AMIVANIA & AMIKILL are just and early demos of what will one day when they are finished and will be shared at the time otherwise are not included in the option of free updates.

I accept paypal as a payment" 

(Amiten Software CD Vol 1 - Cover)

There's far too much on the CD for me to cover it in this blog post, so I suggest you visit this massive post on the English Amiga Board, where Amiten covers each title on the compilation. You'll also find details there detailing how you can order an ISO of the compilation if you're not bothered about a full physical release.

"Snaky 2013" First Preview Footage

Here's something that'll interest all the puzzle fans out there - English Amiga Board member gibs, has just announced that he's working on a new snake-based puzzler.

Going under the name of "Snaky 2013", the objective of the game is to clear each level of fruit, while at the same time ensuring that you don't crash into your tail. Initially this is pretty easy to do, but this task gets increasingly difficult as the levels become more complex, and the number of fruit items grows, meaning your snake's tail becomes longer and longer.

Featuring some nice music, sampled Pac-Man sound effects, and even some basic cut-scenes, it's clear that work on this project is already at an advanced stage. Take a look for yourself, as gibs has uploaded footage of the game in action...

At present the game isn't available for download, and no date for the full release has been given. Naturally, I'll make sure that should any further news regarding Snaky 2013 surface I'll post it on this very blog. However, if you wish to keep up-to-date with the game's development progress, I suggest you follow this thread on the English Amiga Board.

Dangermouse Adventure - Latest Updates

Following a number of quiet months due to work commitments, Christian of AmigaPD.com seems to have really thrown himself back into the development of his Dangermouse themed adventure, as progress updates have been cropping up online on an almost daily basis over the past week or so.

The first of these updates covers the development of the combat routines, which are apparently now complete.

Here's Christian;

"[I've] completed [the] combat routine, [and] now need to add to all room locations where combat takes place - Fingers crossed just a case of removing REM statements. 

Ironically the longest part of the process was making the video as my screencapture software had expired and ended up spending ages converting various media files argh!!!!"

You can see the combat routine in action below;

With that completed, work has moved on to the title screen, and that's also been ticked-off. Here's what it looks like. It's a nice, clean and simple design.

(Note the Mencap logo. Don't forget to donate)

And finally, here's your chance to have some input on the game. Christian is looking to change a number of the room names to more Amiga related ones, and he'd like your suggestions.

For more information and to take part you'll need to head over to this link on the English Amiga Board.

AmiQuake 2 Reaches Beta 10

Things seemed to have gone rather quiet on Novacoder's port of Quake 2 to 68k machines, but in the last few days he returned to the English Amiga Board with a number of exciting updates...

"It's been a bit painful recently, I had to start from scratch a couple of times to understand some strange bugs I was getting. I think I've now ported this thing to AGA using about 3 different engines!

Anyway, I've now got the sound working well (at last). Sound is going to very configurable BTW. You'll actually be able to change things like the AHI audio unit & playback rate using the Quake console and using the menu you'll be able to switch between 16 and 8bit sound.

Memory consumption has also be a pain to fix-up, I've had to re-write most of the hunk memory allocation routines. It used to need over 80MB just to run the demo, I've now got that down to about 40MB, I still can't run the full retail game with 64MB but I haven't given up yet.

There's not too much left to do now really, I've got a couple of strange bugs that have crept in recently that I need to fix (probably as a result of my optimizations) and maybe I'll do some last minute performance tweaks. With a big project like this, you could carry on doing little performance tweaks forever so you need to know when to give up.

It's just about playable on my 060 now with sound + dynamic lighting and particles enabled using a slightly reduced screen.

I'd also like to add mouse wheel support for changing weapons if I get time".

A day or two later he returned with the comment below, and some exciting YouTube footage of the game in action on a real Amiga 1200.

"Finally got it running at a good speed on my A1200, a lot of people didn't this would even be possible on AGA 68k!"

As soon as I hear anything further regarding this project I'll update the blog. In the meantime, you can follow the progress of this conversion from the beginning to the present day by viewing this thread on the English Amiga Board.

Spectrum to Amiga Conversion - The Pyramid

Released for the ZX Spectrum way back in 1983, Fantasty Software's "The Pyramid" was amongst the earliest batch of titles for the system to move away from simply being a conversion of one of the current arcade games doing the rounds.

Coded by Bob Hamilton, with assistance from Darren and Ian Hamilton, the game saw you control Ziggy, as he descended through the 15 layers of The Pyramid. A pure machine code title, the game featured smooth, well animated sprites, and arcade style gameplay.


OK, so what does this have to do with the Amiga? Well, during a recent browse through YouTube, I discovered that back in 1992 the game was ported to Commodore's 16-bit system. As The Pyramid was a much-loved favourite of mine on the Speccy, I wanted to give the Amiga version a go, and thankfully, as the author of the Amiga version had commented on the video I dropped him an email.

Whilst waiting for a reply to my email a quick search on Google directed me to the Langford Productions web site, where the author Richard Langford, had detailed a number of his projects, including his Amiga conversions. Naturally, amongst that list was his Amiga conversion of The Pyramid.

Along with a couple of screenshots and a link to a YouTube clip of the game in action, sitting proudly in The Pyramid section are scans of The One's review of the game, which they award an impressive 88%, while commenting;

"The Pyramid game from prolific author Richard Langford is up to his usual excellent standard of presentation, winsomely embellished with little touches, animations, sound and music effects.

The game is ace value for money as it offers change each play, allowing you to take a different pathway through the pyramid every time. I'm the sort of person that likes to see all the different screens and nasties - so I consider this feature a major plus.

Langford has really thought about speed and graphic rewards here, producing a must for anyone who plays games for the same reasons as me."

Unfortunately, Richard's web site doesn't have download links to his old games, and so I was unable to fire the game up. Thankfully, Richard responded to my message really quickly, and attached the ADFs of disks 1 and 2. He also responded to my comments regarding how much I loved the Spectrum original

"The game was originally public domain software and was just written as a bit of fun. Can’t remember when exactly I wrote that game, but I’m guessing around 1992. Unfortunately at the time I didn’t have a copy of the original game which is why my version is not really much like the original at all."

Armed with the disk images I quickly set about transferring them back to floppy disk, ready for play on a real Amiga.

The thing that struck me upon loading the game up was the sheer quality of the presentation. The menu screens are well drawn, colourful, and they made me smile. Why? Well, there's a jaunty little tune playing in the background, and while cycling through the various intro screens one of them displays a small trumpet with buttons/keys. Each of these represents one of the Amiga's sound channels, and on top of each of these is a little green bug who depresses the buttons as the tune progresses. It's all very slickly done.

On to the game itself, and the same high level of production continues. The sprites are colourful, well animated, and move around the screen smoothly. Despite what Richard told me in his email, I felt that the game played very similar to the Spectrum original, but at the same time featured numerous enhancements. Special pick-ups increase your score, and each level features a gorgeous animated backround, which makes clever use of colour cycling.

The most amazing thing about all this is that the game was coded in AMOS, and just goes to show what can be done with the language if put in the right hands. Also, although coming on two disks the game loads quickly, and you're not left waiting long to get into the action. Very important!

If you'd like to try the game yourself, you'll be pleased to learn that Richard has been kind enough to let me make the disk images available for download, and so I've uploaded them to my web site. A zip containing disks 1 and 2 can be found HERE (556K).

For those unable or unwilling to get the game up and running on a real or an emulated Amiga system, you can see the game in action below.


If time allows I intend to investigate some of Richard's other Amiga titles in the not too distant future. If they're up to this standard then I know I'll be in for a real treat. In the meantime I'm going to give this just one more go. Happy zapping!

The Story of "Stalker"

I was hoping to blog about this discovery when news first surfaced, but due to other commitments I've not had time until now. On the plus side it has meant that I'm now able to track the complete story from beginning to end.

The whole saga began on the 27th February, when English Amiga Board forumite DDNI, uploaded this photo (see below) to the forum, and commented;

"This lucky chap just got a new A1200 from Petro. Any ideas what game this is on the screen? I didn't see anything on HOL."

A number of possible leads and suggestions came in from fellow EAB forumites, with fellow forum member diablothe2nd, coming up with some interesting avenues of investigation. However, Later than day DDNI got back to the forum, and posted the following;

"Hi I made contact with Jozsef Punk. He kindly sent me this information:
___________________

Stalker is a prototype of an Amiga game I developed with two of my friends about 20 years ago. The main unique feature of the game was the rearrangeable playfield. The player controls a two leg robot in a scene that is built by same sized blocks. These blocks are moveable in rearrange mode.

Developers are:
Ferenc Bardos - Graphics
Viktor Dara - Music
Jozsef Punk - Programming

If you are interested, I have different versions of demos of the game in adf files.
The game has never been finished and has not been released.
We did not find a publisher to finance the development.
______________

Hopefully I will have some .adf files to try soon".

Members of the English Amiga Board didn't have long to wait, as the next day DDNI was back, and gave the following update;

"Got the .adf files which feature four versions from 0.18 to 0.64.
This game looks like it could have been great.

So far there isn't much in the game, but the mechanics are all there. The graphics and sound are crisp and atmospheric. It seems like the only things missing now are the game levels... I have been promised the full source code and support documentation too!

I will share these if and when I have got the green light.

Stay tuned!"

DDNI was also kind enough to post up four screenshots of the game. You can see the full selection here, but here's one to whet your appetite. 

Later that same day DDNI posted-up a short follow-up message;

"So now I have the source code and a later version of the game. (sadly it has a Read/Write error. Can this be overcome?)

Jozsef has given permission for these to be shared publicly.

I will upload the adfs to the zone and provide the source code to anyone who wants it.

There have been no restrictions placed on the source code, but I assume referencing the original artist is an expectation".

EAB moderator Prowler, offered his services in an effort to repair the ADF, and in the meantime fellow forumite s2325 was kind enough to record and upload footage of the game in action to YouTube. The following day Prowler posted a quick update;

"I would say that there's a reasonable chance that the broken disk can be fixed.

Disk Block 1221 is at offset 98A00-98BFF in the ADF image. It's a data block, which doesn't appear to be massively corrupted, thankfully.

I will give it my best shot tomorrow in the emulator".

With Prowler busy working on repairing the disk, TheCyberDruid got to work on producing an entry for the game on the excellent Hall of Light web site. The completed entry can be found here.

Later that day Prowler returned with some fantastic news;

"Hey, I think I got the disk fixed!

The game now loads complete with background graphics, but the fix involved a certain amount of guesswork, so there may still be errors in the affected file (Stalker.data.1), so please post your bug reports here in that event (including what's needed to trigger the bug) and I'll have another look.

The fixed disk image will be up in The Zone shortly.

In fact, I can get all versions except 0.18 running in WinUAE with an A1200 KS3.1 configuration. Version 0.18 gives a Guru Meditation Error: 8000 0006 Task: 00203278.

It's a real nice-looking game, so I guess I ought to attach some screenshots here now..."

You can find the screenshots at this EAB link, and more here.

If you'd like to download the ADFs of Stalker you'll need to be a registered member of The English Amiga Board. If you are, you can simply click here.

Meanwhile, the Amiga Music Preservation Society have ripped the music, so if you'd like to download that you can find it at this link.  

The Amiga community should thank DDNI for his efforts which have lead to the discovery of this long lost title.

Who knows what the next undiscovered Amiga production will be.

New Port Incoming - Strife AGA

Released on the PC way back in 1996, Strife is a first person shooter that possibly pushes the Doom engine to its limits.

Featuring some basic RPG elements and the ability to talk to NPC's in the game, this FPS is a little different to the majority that came out at the time.

At this point you're probably asking "What does this have to do with the Amiga?". Well, in a recent post over on the English Amiga Board, forumite lantus360 revealed that he'd begun porting this over to AGA Amigas. Not only that, but he'd already made some stunning progress.

Here's his initial post;

 Hi guys,

"I got my A1200 setup finally up and running so of course i decided to set up a compiler and start messing around

I managed to get an AGA Port of Strife ported over in a few evenings of coding.

If you don't know what this is its an old FPS based RPG that uses the Doom engine by Rogue. It's the last ever title that used the Doom engine and its a really awesome game"

Keen to demonstrate how well the game was already running after only a few days of development, he continued;

"Here's a quick look at how its performing - note its running on a Blizzard 1260 060 at 50mhz. Speed is looking pretty good, I could probably tweak it faster. I don't know if an 030 will handle this. I'd say a minimum 040/40mhz to be considered playable"

It would seem that further tweaks are planned for this exciting conversion, as lantus360 finished his initial post by saying;

"I am certainly interested in squeezing as much performance out as possible so I will take a look at the DoomAttack source. Having said that I cant see it running very well on an 030. Maybe at one of the smaller screen sizes it might be playable

Right now I'm timedemo'ing at 17fps on my 060/50mhz. I'm not sure where that lies in terms of comparisons to other similar Doom engine games. I'd be interested in any numbers people may have as a guideline"

To follow the development progress and discussion of this game point your web browser over to this link over on The English Amiga Board.

Dangermouse Adventure - A Quick Update

Despite initially making speedy progress developing his AMOS coded adventure, Christian of AmigaPD.com found that due to work commitments development had to come to a near standstill over the past couple of months.

Thankfully it looks like his work pressures have reduced somewhat, and development on the adventure is now continuing apace.

In his latest development update Christian revealed what aspects of the title he'd recently been working on.

"Work continues on the Dangermouse text adventure game. I have now finished adding the correct image to all 400 locations.

What remains to be done is:
Test Luck Routine
Test Combat Routine
Test Inventory System
Complete End Game routine
Correct text alignment for locations 201 - 400
Make version available for play testing.
Correct text input routine so that player can only enter valid key inputs (simple else command returning routine to current location).

Last routine still to do - Save and load routine."

With a whopping 400 separate locations this looks to be an absolutely massive game, and certainly one you won't be ploughing through in one sitting. It could be time to dig out that graph paper and prepare yourself for an oldskool mapping session.

As soon as any further news surfaces regarding the Dangermouse adventure I'll post the details on this very blog. In the meantime you can follow the progress yourself by going to the AmigaPD web site at http://www.amigapd.com/ or the AmigaPD Facebook Group at https://www.facebook.com/amigapd?fref=ts

Retro Gamer 113 - The Amiga 500

Just landed in newsagents up and down the country is issue 113 of Retro Gamer magazine. Sporting an unusually sparkly white Amiga 500 on its front cover, this edition features a massive multi-page Amiga 500 love-in.

Although one of the sections covers essential peripherals, the remainder of the article is firmly rooted in gaming, highlighting some of the Amiga's finest titles, and explaining why these should be in your collection.

The magazine also covers some of the Amiga's rarest/collectable games, with (unsurprisingly) Mario Brothers rip-off The Great Giana Sisters being their jewel in the crown.

If that wasn't enough, there's a huge buying and rarity guide covering well over 200 Amiga titles, plus an interview with Amiga collector and Downfall Creator Graham Humphrey.

For more information, visit the Retro Gamer web site at http://retrogamer.net/

Physical Release for Tales of Gorluth?

In his latest work in progress update, "Tales of Gorluth" developer Viddi, has revealed that he's now completed the design and implementation of 24 levels, and that the game currently weighs in at around 10 megabytes.

He also explained that cut scene animations have now been added, and that the game features a lot of text, which he'll need help with when he comes to translating it into other languages.

Probably the most exciting part of the update though, is where he hints of a physical release;

"...thinking of professional printed inlays and booklets or even a pressed CD"

If this progresses beyond a mere suggestion I'll be sure to update you in a future blog post. In the meantime you can keep up-to-date with the game's development by following this thread over on the English Amiga Board, or by visiting the official Tales of Gorluth web site.

Wolfchild Maps Now Online

Here's an update I originally meant to post way back on the 30th of January, when the news broke, but for one reason or another I didn't get around to it. Sorry!

Core Design's "Wolfchild" has to rank as one of my favourite Amiga platformers. It looks great, plays well and features some fantastic music. It's one of those games that even now I'll fire-up a couple of times per year to have a go on. So, when English Amiga Board member CodyJarrett, announced that he'd ripped and uploaded the maps to the game I was extremely interested.

You can view the results of CodyJarrett's efforts by pointing your web browser over to the following link on the Amiga Hall of Light web site: http://hol.abime.net/1745/gamemap. Once there you can look through the layout of each level separately, or download the complete game map in one convenient zip file.

I don't know how long it took CodyJarret to rip the maps and get them into a suitable format for on and offline viewing, but I'm sure it wasn't a five minute job.


I always found Wolfchild to be an absolutely rock hard game, so I'm not convinced that the addition of a map to my gaming arsenal is going to change things, but you never know.

Right, time for another go!

Final Fight AGA - WIP 2

Just when you thought that the Engligh Amiga Board's Lielo had given up on his Final Fight AGA conversion, he returns to the EAB with news of what's been updated since he last posted, along with a new work in progress video.

Here he is to bring us right up-to-date;

"3 months on and here's a quick update on the current state of this project.

Firstly, my thanks for the support/advice from all of you that have taken a look here, and my apologies for any misunderstanding on my behalf. The Blitz Support Suite provided much insight besides the cia tracker player whilst other considerations have led to the development environment becoming slightly more user friendly and in time customisable. I've been re-configuring some of the graphical aspects and doing some 'destruction testing; putting as much as I can into the memory and tailoring to suit where I can.

The demo shown here now uses 5 bitplanes with a layer of 8 attached sprites for the parallax, and runs at 50 fps for the most part, although enemy collisions were turned off some time ago during the testing process. I now have an 020 testing machine using an external FD to load the adf as the internal is unreliable. Results on this and 030 are similar, the 020 showing slowdown when other objects are blitted on top of 4 enemy onscreen with busy AI. The 030 showing slowdown when pushed a little more! The most recent development is the mapping of the first 'slum' section to save memory, I'm glad it works. Of course I may return to aspects of the previous graphics setup depending on several things, but this is the development setup for now. The development will focus on producing a playable game for the 020 which is optimised for 030. I'm considering using fast ram 030 blitting for static objects and stuff like that.

I'm thinking there will be a 'modern' options screen where various optimisations/comprimises can be considered e.g. force 50 fps/ blit every frame, max number of enemy.

There is still plenty of memory to play with (now) although the characters happily eat memory - atm just over 930kb left after loading from workbench.

The next thing to do is put the 'Hollywood' character in there and then the rest of the objects, then work on the AI and object interaction, if there's room then I can add some 'palette swap' characters before finally adding the little touches like enemies emerging from doors, and maybe some energy bars!? To me it's worthwhile spending a lot of time on this first section of the game as that's the core from which the rest of the game will build. It's been said before, (Bippy); but Final Fight is basically made up of variations upon a theme. Once the characters and weapons are in there the development should speed up.

I'll get another download going soon. Thanks for taking a look"

Footage from the latest version of the game can be found below.


As soon as I hear anything further regarding the Final Fight AGA project I'll let you know. In the meantime, you can follow the development thread for this title over on the English Amiga Board. Simply click on THIS link.

Passing The 10,000 Views Milestone

Wahey! The blog's recently passed 10,000 views!

When I started this blog around the middle of last October I did so with the main aim of encouraging myself to keep up to date with what was going on in the Amiga gaming scene. If one or two individuals also stumbled upon my postings and found them interesting or useful then I felt that would be a bonus.

As the days and weeks went by and I became familiar with the Blogger interface I started to keep an eye on the viewing stats. Initially the number of daily visitors to the blog was in single digits, but as time went on this quickly grew, and now it averages at around 90 to 100 page views per day. This number may seem low to many, but it's beyond anything I ever anticipated.

Since setting this blog live I've also discovered just how vibrant the current Amiga game development scene is. Sure, it's nowhere on the level of the ZX Spectrum homebrew scene, but it's still a bustling little side of our much loved machine.

Another interesting side to the Blogger stats are looking at the referring site information. So, where do the majority of visitors come from? Well, it didn't come as much of a surprise to see The English Amiga Board coming in at first place. It's more often than not the first place where news of a new Amiga game first lands, and out of all the Amiga forums I've visited the people there seem to be the most supportive towards new projects.  If you ignore the various google site referrals, second place goes to the Amiga.org forums, with the excellent Amiga link portal Brutal's Amiga Links, coming in a close third.

I'd just like to say a big thank you to all the people who have sent in comments or emails of encouragement over the past few months. The feedback has been amazing, and as long as the Amiga gaming scene continues to be as vibrant as it has been over the past 4 or 5 months I'll continue to update the blog as often as I can.

Here's hoping 2013 will be another exciting one for Amiga gamers, and here's to the blog reaching 100,000 page views!

Tales of Gorluth Official Trailer

In Friday's blog post I updated you all on the development progress of Backbone created RPG "Tales of Gorluth", which I originally looked at way back on the 2nd of January.

Well, since my post on Friday there have been further developments, and yesterday Viddi, the developer, uploaded a really professional looking teaser trailer for his forthcoming game.

Take a look below, and make sure the speakers are turned up!

The music playing in the above trailer isn't some tune ripped from another source. No, this is actually taken from the soundtrack to the game! I personally feel this is some of the best music I've heard on the Amiga in many years, and can't wait to hear the rest of the tunes.

If you want to follow the development progress of "Tales of Gorluth", I recommend visiting this thread over on the English Amiga Board. If you've not read through the thread before you'll find it a fascinating document detailing the highs and lows of the development process, and I'm hoping that in a future posting Viddi reveals some details relating to the development of the music. Well, I can hope!

In the meantime, you may want to bookmark the official "Tales of Gorluth" web site, which can be found at: http://www.talesofgorluth.de

I'll bring you more news on this as and when it appears.

Lack of Updates - A Quick Explanation

Regular readers of the Amiga Gamer blog will know that I try my very best at updating it roughly every other day. Now, the more observant of you will notice that this is my first posting since Friday.

I must apologise for the lack of updates over the past few days. I've recently got myself a new job and have been busy getting back into the world of full-time employment.

Please understand that I'm not losing interest in the blog, but it is possible that I may not have as much time to devote to it as I have done previously. I shall ensure the blog is updated as often as I can. It's just that it may not be as often as it was before.

We shall see!

Tales of Gorluth - an Action Adventure created with Backbone

Way back on the 2nd of January I reported on the development of an as yet unnamed action RPG created entirely in Backbone. Since then Viddi, the author of the game, has spent hours and hours developing the title still further.

A few days ago he was kind enough to release footage detailing how far he'd progressed, as well as revealing what he has planned as development continues.

Since Viddi's initial update back at the start of January he's now reduced the size of the playfield to ensure the game retains a decent speed. He's also created a new status panel, which you can see at the bottom of the screen.

Other updates include the squashing of a number of programming/development bugs, the addition of new monsters, weapons and items, and 12 levels have been designed and implemented, with work on level 13 now underway.

Viddi also tells us that "The soundtrack is going to be enormous", and that there are 12 tracks so far. The music is one of 'the' things that really stands out about this release. Yes, the graphics look lovely, but it's the music that's absolutely gorgeous. I don't know if these are compositions he's put together or if they're tunes he's 'borrowed'. I'm thinking (and hoping!) that it's the former.

Check out the latest footage of the game in action below, and make sure the volume's turned up;


Further developments include the registration of www.talesofgorluth.de, the addition of an online manual, the completion of the game's logo, and the main menu structured and implemented.

Could this be one of the Amiga game highlights of 2013? It's certainly starting to look that way.

To follow the progress of Tales of Gorluth, visit this thread over on the English Amiga Board.