My dad was a TRS80 and IBM-PC guy, so I never had access to an Amiga when I was young. Can anyone make any recommendation as to what games are worth tracking down to play? Were there any games that were ported to PC or consoles that were better on the Amiga?
As a side note, I’ve been glancing through the Hall of Light and I’m seeing a number of magazine reviews that were penned by some of the frequent posters at QT3. It’s pretty neat!
Edit: Alright, I’ve only seen Gary Whitta in there and I’m not certain if it’s the same person that posts here.
I love old games, but I’ve found that rarely if ever I want to play the Amiga version of something. Everything significant was ported either to PC or a 16bit console, and even when the Amiga version is slightly superior, the difference is never big enough to justify the floppy disk juggling and loading times it would involve, even when emulated.
Amiga Lemmings, for example, supported 20 more lemmings than the DOS version, and had better music. Cool, but hardly a deal breaker.
Obviously Paradroid '90, Faery Tale Adventure and FA18 Interceptor.
The sensible soccer games were great. Some of the early codemasters game were also excellent. Shadow of the Beast, Wizball, Dungeon Master, these are the ones that I can think of right now.
MicroProse did a full conversion of Sid Meier’s Pirates for it. It was fantastic, so much better than the original, and better than the Pirates Gold! update they’d do a few years later for PC.
The Cinemaware games get slagged a lot, but I loved Wings! Great career mode style play.
I liked the whole subgenre of light action-strategy that seemed to have disappeared since then. I am thinking especially of Carrier Command, which has got an interface and features that make it really ahead of its time. It is still an intuitive joy to play.
Another genre that seemed very popuplar on the Amiga and hardly anywhere else was the top down racer, ARPG flavored. Nitro, for instance.
Turrican 1-3: great Metroid-inspired jump’n shoot titles with some of the best soundtracks of their time. I’d also point to Bitmap Bros classics like Gods or Speedball 1 & 2, but those were available on PC, too.
Oh man, I remember the Amiga. Mainly I remember looking at them in the displays of computer shops, along with the Apple IIc, burning with envy because they were so damned expensive. So I went home and played with my Commodore 64 and dreamed.
Amiga also had a ton of great strategy titles, Deuteros, Millenium, Dragons Breath (Where my name comes from) Conquest, Not to mention games like Alien Breed, Superfrog, Cannon Fodder, ambermoon, Speedball.
Many of these were on PC as well, but had much better versions on the Amiga. The goldbox games comes to mind.
Also, I can’t believe no-one has mentioned Populous yet!
Some of my Amiga favorites off the top of my head:
Dark Castle & Beyond Dark Castle - Originally Mac games but a fun (and difficult) side scrolling fantasy game. Keyboard controls plus mouse to aim and throw rocks at things.
Firepower - Tank battle that let you play side by side with a friend.
Psygnosis games - All difficult. Gorgeous graphics (for the time). My favorites were Obliterator, Lemmings, and Blood Money.
Rick Dangerous - Side scroller Indiana Jones style game.
Powermonger - Populous-esque but without god powers.
Arkanoid - The Amiga version was near identical to the arcade. An impressive feat, for the time.
Cinemaware - The games to show off your Amiga’s graphics. Favorites of mine were Wings, Rocket Ranger, and It Came From The Desert.
Don’t know to what extent some of these were ported, and I actually played these on the Atari, STE, but:
Anything by early 90s Sensible Software, especially Cannon Fodder, Mega Lo Mania and Sensible World Of Soccer.
Anything by the Bitmap Brothers, especially Speedball 2, Gods, Magic Pockets and Z.
Anything by Psygnosis, especially The Killing Game Show, Lemmings 1 and 2, and Blood Money
Populous 1 and 2
Killing Cloud (probably doesn’t hold up well but man I played the hell out of it)
Midwinter 1 and 2
Carrier Command
Stunt Car Racer
Supremacy
Super Cars 2
Flashback
Dungeon Master
I owned an Amiga 500 and 3000. Some of those games really bring back memories.
The psygnosis games were great.
However, one game stands above them all with fondest memories, which was Fairy tale adventure. This was the first, huge open world game I ever played. I think it was a trilogy, and I played a sql to it on the PC many years ago. I never found the third game, if there ever was one.
Another one I loved, was Turrican and Turrican II.
Oh, and how can I forget bubble bobble and rainbow islands? So many hours wasted on those games.
Truly, the Amiga was a golden age of gaming.
The irony is, that if I had some emulator and a complete game library, I do not think I would have the patience to play these games anymore.
Special Mentions: (Some might have been x-platform, but the Amiga version is most likely the best version because; AMiGA)
Hired Guns (FANTASTIC game! THey were gonna remake it a few years ago, then you heard nothing. Think there is a developer ISO around where you can play some of it in Unreal Engine 2 or 3…)
Sensible World of Soccer '94
Kick Off 2 + Player Manager 2 (You can manage the matches then play them if you own both)
PowerMonger + WW1 Expansion (Why this didn’t get a “HD Remake” or w.e. is a crime against humanity…)
