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

Games
23

Man I loved my Amiga. What a great platform.

24

Exile was just mentioned, but it wasn’t described. I’d like to talk about it a bit - I think it is an important game to look at to see some really neat ideas that I don’t feel have ever really been duplicated.

In exile you play this little spaceman guy who can fly around with his jetpack, and you ‘aim’ by moving a little aiming line in front of you which can go up and down. It’s hard to explain without seeing it, and it can take some getting used to to be proficient at it.

Exile is completely physics based. It’s extremely difficult. Enemies remember where they last saw you. It’s supposedly a massive game. There’s a lot of cool devices and stuff you get like being able to save 2 teleport locations, throw grenades, and a lot more stuff I can’t really remember right now.

I just think Exile is a game worth checking out for game developers, even if you can’t even get past 5% of the game.

In regards to amiga emulation, there are quite a few options. You can even buy something called “Amiga Forever” or something like that that makes it really easy and slick. A lot of games best versions are also the amiga version so it’s worthwhile to get into this stuff.

25

Speaking of which, it is available right now for 2.5 bucks in a bundle from Groupees (the “Value Edition” gives you access only to the Workbench 1.3 rom - no AGA games for you, or something!)

26

Years back you could also get something called “AIAB” (Amiga In A Box) Which was basically a complete setup of Workbench 3.x with WinUAE with lots of applications and games all pre-installed.

More recently, some of the emulator sites have started to release “CD32” collections, so you could for example grab a ISO with every Amiga title ever made by Psygnosis complete with a CD32 menu, control scheme and loader - which of course you can emulate with WinUAE and a CD32 BIOS+Some extra roms.

You should be able to get a full pack of Amiga Workbench, WinUAE configuration and ROM images from 1.2 and up from the Amiga Forever package.

https://www.amigaforever.com/

Re. Exile:
Here’s a link to the review from Amiga Power that gave it a 89%. (Which is probably 14 out of 10 on “mainstream” pc review sites these days…)
http://amr.abime.net/review_1017 (AGA Version for Amiga 1200)
http://amr.abime.net/review_65 (Original version for ECS/OCS chipset) - Funny thing I noticed is that back then Amiga Power used to run “On the Other Hand” Reviews, so the main reviewer gave it 89% and the Other Hand gave it 80%.

Some more games you shouldn’t miss:

27

It’s by no means a duplication of the game’s mechanics, but Pixeljunk Shooter is pretty clearly inpired by Exile.

28

Moonstone
Z-Out
X-Out
Captain Blood

I’d say that’s true for post 1991 or so PC games that had VGA graphics and Soundblaster support but if you find yourself tempted to play some ugly EGA or CGA game with crappy Adlib sound there’s a good chance that the Amiga (or Atari ST) version is better.

29

Deuterous - what a cool game

30

I miss the Amiga so much. Best system I’ve ever had. These game lists just remind me why.

31

Murder on the Mississippi - this game was magical

Heart of Africa

Heroes quest, police quest and all the quest games

32

I don’t recall Murder on the Mississippi being converted to the Amiga.

I will second recommendations for Hero’s Quest (the original Quest for Glory), a Pirates!, and the 1MB SimCity.

I never liked many action games, so these will be a bit different than many: SSG’s Gold of the Americas, SSI’s Roadwar 2000 (and, if you like that, Roadwar Europa) and Phantasie III and Sword of Aragon. If you like adventures, Interplay’s Mindshadow, Borrowed Time, and Tass Times in Tonetown were all great. (Disclaimer: I played the Roadwars and the adventures on an ST.)

Although I didn’t like most action games, I have to mention the Amiga version of Marble Madness. Also I played Karateka on the ST, but there’s been a recentesque reverse engineered Amiga version.

Speaking of the ST, everyone should download an ST emulator to play SSI’s Colonial Conquest and President Elect, neither of which made it to the Amiga. (I also have fond memories of Rings of Zilfin.)

The Gold Box games all made it to PC, of course, but I also have fond memories of the Amiga versions of SSI’s Gold Box games. The Pool of Radiance conversion was shoddy, but the best to me were Champions of Krynn and Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday. (I also loved the ST Hillsfar, although I know the game has a bad rep for some reason that I’m going to blame on its console version.)

I also liked the Amiga Might & Magic III, but I don’t think I could go back to it today other than for occasional nostalgia.

Among games I didn’t play, QuestBusters described the Amiga Ultima IV as being like playing with miniatures (I played it on the ST). EA made early conversions of classics Adventure Construction Set and Seven Cities of Gold that I think might have been for the A1000 only or at least maybe broke under Kickstart 1.3. But that shouldn’t be an issue any longer with emulation–I keep meaning to try them.

I don’t know how late Amiga games compare to PC counterparts. It depends how much care was put in the conversions. But I have fond memories of Accolade’s Search for the King, EA’s Keef the Thief and Hard Nova, and Dynamix/Sierra’s Adventures of Willy Beamish.

33

I had no idea there was a proper Pirates! version for the Amiga.
It looks gorgeous and sounds glorious! The sword fighting is giving more troubles than on my beloved 8-bits version, so I may have to pick the skill at fencing…
Thanks for the recommandation.

34

Even after that, despite games being 256 colours VGA at higher resolution that most Amiga games ran, the PC games couldn’t get side-scrolling “right” compared to side scrolling games on the Amiga, it just looked wrong for some reason.

And didn’t everyone have a hard-drive for their Amiga in the 90s? :-)

The Amiga version of Microproses Colonization was one of the last major Amiga game releases I believe, and it was a very well done port. They even used the Amiga “UI” elements so you could pretty much resize every part of the Colonization UI and have it where you wanted it, so map, commands, etc, were all tiny windows you could repostion and resize. It was quite nice.

35

I had two hard drives connected to my Amiga 500. 20 meg and 85 meg! Ran a BBS on it.

36

I loved BBSs

ASCII art!

37

Only had the A590 on my 500 for Workbench+Games and stuff, but on my A1200 I had a 80MB and a 1GB SCSI to run my BBS, good times :-) – Wonder if I can still boot that computer.

38

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…

39

Lots of excellent suggestions. Some great games that I didn’t yet see mentioned:

Black Crypt: A Dungeon Master clone with more varied environments and interesting character classes.

Bug Bomber: The best Bomberman-clone ever made. It has a single player campaign as well as local multiplayer for up to four players. The twist is that in addition to dropping bombs you can collect energy which allows you to lay eggs that hatch various minions to your own personal army.

Mechforce: An incredibly detailed turn-based mech battling game with a lot of customization in creating your pilot character and custom mechs.

Nuclear War: A turn-based strategy game about nuclear war with silly humor.

Eco: A kind of precursor to Spore. You start as a simple bug and have to hunt for food and then reproduce, at which point you get to manipulate the genes of your offspring and slowly evolve into more advanced lifeforms.

Flood: A classic platformer but you have to escape a flood of water that is slowly filling up the levels. I remember the fluid dynamics seeming incredibly realistic for the time of this game’s release.

Super Cars: A top-down racing game where upgrading your car and different kind of weapons play a large role. I played so, so many multiplayer matches of this and the sequel back in the day.

Knightmare: A later dungeon crawler by the maker of Captive.

Battle Squadron: A beautiful SHMUP with over-the-top weapon upgrades.

Blasteroids: An asteroids clone that had a great two-player mode. The unique feature in this is that your ship can transform between the normal ship, a fast weak ship or a slow, heavy ship and in two player mode the fast ship and the heavy ship can combine into a single mega-ship.

…oh man, there are just too many to list.

40

This is a really cool looking game! vid It’s like a quirky proto-DEFCON.

I had this! It came with a poster of the squid guy, and it really creeped me out. Infact the entire game creeped me out/scared me. I preferred the later, more light-hearted Sink or Swim for flood-based platforming. Though that was cross platform.

Based on the UK TV show, no less.

Your post reminded me of a game called Gravity Force – one of my faves. Well, actually I liked Gravity Power more – a version the developers made specifically for Amiga Power magazine to release as a cover disk, something which frequently happened back then (e.g. unsensible soccer, and the Cannon Fodder / Sensible Soccer cross-over).

I also remember playing a game with similar gameplay where you could select from many ships types, an one was a pink ship type called a bloater or a spud or something like that which had a farty engine sound.

edit: Also, Silly Putty! Though that was later released on the SNES, but for a while it was an Amiga exclusive :)

41

Oh, and Interplay’s Neuromancer.

42

I was going to add this, but then couldn’t remember if it was Amiga or C64 (probably both).