I never owned an Amiga - what games did I miss?

Games
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I had an Amiga. Or rather, my Dad did: An A500 and later an A500+. We didn’t have extra hard drives, but I did have a RAM upgrade and extra floppy disk drives which cut out a lot of tedious disk swapping. A friend’s brother had an A1200 and was a bit of a wiz at making games on it, and another friend had an A600.

Some of my all time favourite games (I keep a spreadsheet) are Amiga games. And this isn’t (entirely) nostalgia either – I’d happily play some of them right now, and have played them in the last X years and they’ve stood the test of time. (Other haven’t – I’m looking at you, Turrican)

When I think back to the Amiga, though, I don’t think about specific games, I think about the marvellous smorgasbord of game genres and the experimental and creative attitude that developers had back then. Practically every new game I played was in some way different from the last, offering something completely new and unique (except for the obvious case of sequels). I think that’s something I’m really missing these days, and finding that only indie games can even come close to scratching that itch. Its not something you get at all in AAA games today, and something only Indie games really offer, though even thinking about them, with the wealth of history behind them, a lot of indie games are still utterly generic and copy-cat ish or stick to the same genre-conventions.

I would say that this could be applied to most 8bit and 16bit era games on other platforms, but I definitely think the “home computer” market was crazier. i.e. I think about Nintendo and Sega consoles, I mostly think of JRPGs and Platformers… I think of home computers, and I think of the utterly bizarre.

The difference was also an attitude that carried over to the magazines and culture (see the previously mentioned Amiga Power)

Plus, the music for games on the Amiga was fab. It sounded like stuff you heard in the charts on TV/radio.

In addition to what has already been said, here are a bunch of Amiga-only games, or games were I preferred the Amiga version (Usually due to sound at the tiny expensive of a smaller color palette)

  • Sensible World of Soccer
    • This has already been said, but it’s one of the best games in existence, and the best version is on the Amiga :)
  • Alien Breed
  • Space Hulk
  • SWIV
    • Helicopters + Jeep fun.
  • Silkworm
    • Helicopters + Jeep fun: The sideways version. (It was SWIV 2?) vid
  • Zeewolf
    • Fab psued-3d helicopter game. vid
  • Gunship 2000
    • Helicopters!
  • Desert Strike
    • Having played the Mega Drive, Amiga and PC versions I can safely say the Amiga version is best ;)
  • Jetstrike vid
    • Like Wings of Fury but at a gazallion fps. It was really buggy though. I don’t think it contained Helictopers…
  • Brutal Sports Football
    • Basically real-time Bloodbowl
  • Valhalla
    • Adventure game with digital speech! vid
  • DreamWeb
    • I played both PC and Amiga. But I played Amiga first. vid
  • Pinball Illusions/Fantasies/the 3rd one vid
    • Best Pinball game I’ve played to date.
  • KGB
    • DOS version might be better, actually
  • Skid Marks
  • Supercars I and II
  • Escape from the planet of the robot monsters
    • An early Arcade port. Not as good looking as the arcade version, but still great. vid
  • xy-bots
    • Another arcade port? vid
  • Final Fight
    • ANOTHER arcade port. But great. I don’t remember seeing it on any other platforms? vid. (Streets of Rage on the Mega Drive was better though, even if it was a Final Fight clone)
  • Assassin
  • Gods
  • The original worms!
  • Ancient Art of War in the Skies
    • Had a overland campaign mode thing and a cool dogfighting section
    • Possibly better on DOS.
  • Benefactor

Also the Amiga had a rich “PD” (Public Domain") scene. Think indie games/shareware!

  • Baldy
    • A genericish platformer, but amusing.
  • Breed 96
    • A cross between SimCity and a 4X. I only had a demo for this, but I was obsessed by it. I think since then I tracked down a full copy and played it on WinuAE. vid, but it doesn’t show the 4x/strat layer :/
  • BIP/Biplanes/Salmon-Pink Max
    • This is one of my favourite games to this day! Vid
  • Air Taxi. vid. 3 please.

Didn’t they remake that on PC 5 years ago? I swear they did, and read about it on RPS. I’ll look it up…