The Amiga Through The Ages ========================== by Mark Klocek This article is basically a nostalgia trip read it, only if you liked being bogged down by boring detail! I think the first time I discovered an Amiga was when I went ot a mates house in the late 1980s. Aged only about 9 or 10 I played an excellent two player game called Ebon Star, possibly one of the best games ever! Some time later my friend upgraded from Workbench 1.2 to 1.3 and Ebon Star was lost in the name of Amiga progress. Soon my uncle got an Amiga 500, when ever I visited I played this dream machine, my Amstrad CPC 6128 just didn't compare. Then I decided to get an Amiga. I got my first Amiga, the A500, in the first few months of 1990. It was the 'Class of the 90s' pack. I paid some of the 549 pounds and managed to convince my parents to buy me a Commodore monitor. I said it was educational (admittedly a standard ploy) and they finally caved in. I got my mum to set it up, heck I didn't know what to do, and she actually read the instructions. I threw on Interceptor didn't like it and decided to get some other games for it. As I was young and didn't have any money I pirated a few games from my uncle and my mate and finally I was rocking. I was hooked on Batman and I decided to eventually complete it without the trainer. Batman trully must be the best film license apart from Robocop from the Ocean stable. New Zealand Story supplied my platforming delights for a while, that was a stylish game. The games I most remember from these early days are Xenon II, Battle Squadron, X-Out, Ghouls N Ghosts, Kick Off (oh wow Kick Off!), Operation Thunderbolt, Power Drift (still beats some new driving games), Shadow of the Beast (one of the most graphically impressive games of the time), Speedball, Bobble Bubble (far better than Rainbow Islands), IK+ (still the best beat em up on the Amiga. Please someone rerelease it for AGA, imagine an IK++) and don't forget the best puzzle games Klax, Tetris and please don't forget the illustrious Sim City (best version on all machines bar the SNES but that was released years later). I sure I've forgotten other greats like Escape From The Planet of the Robot Monsters, TV Sports Basketball and Kick Off 2 (the best football game, STILL!) spring to mind. I've remembered some more now SWIV, Silkworm, Turrican, Ninja Warriors, Nuclear War, F-29 Retaliator, Blood Money, Eye of the Beholder, Pirates, Imperium, Llamatron, Super Cars, the Lotus Turbo Esprit Challenge series and loads of others. The thing about 1990 was that this was the start of the glory days of the Amiga 500. PCs were still in CGA and I laughed heartily at them, the games were simple and there were no Xenon IIs. And the sound it was the best available anywhere it absolutely rocked. Xenon II is the example of that but every tune in every game was always great. The Amiga was catching up in sales when compared to the ST and eventually surpassed what was considered our foe. It was technically slightly superior (especially sound wise but minus the midi port) and came with a double sided diskdrive (hahaha). The only consoles then were simple 8-bit Segas and Nintendos and the Amiga just out styled and out played them (but without the classic Mario and Alex Kid games). All was looking good and I finally bought some original games (Klax, Kick off 2 and Sim City were amoung the first). Of course most of my games were pirated but I tried hard to buy games and I bought quite a few in the end. The first Amiga milestone was Sim City, a God game with depth and interest that some wondered where the little people drove to all the time and was one train really enough to carry 100,000 people to work. This was the time of expensive memory a 512k expansion for the Amiga could cost as much as 120 pounds. It took a some time before I bought an expansion which eventually became standard, I think I was very pleased to get the expansion for the 'paultry' price of 70 pounds, though now you can buy them for less than 15 pounds. The second Amiga milestone was certainly the creation of Populous, the first ever proper God game. A game with such depth and interest that few failed to succumb to its charm. The control of the little people appealed to all. This game was converted to many formats. What gave this game its position in the Amiga history is its excellent 3D interface. I'm proud to say the Amiga version is the best for it has the Amiga power with the best (non-joypad) control system. Rave reviews in all magazines destined this one to be remembered by all. Remembering Populous brings us to Powermonger and Populous 2, both games I purchased because of my unfortunately pirate Populous. They as good as the original but with more to do and explore I recommend Populous 2 as it is A1200 compatible not like the other 2 (though there was a patch released on an Amiga Format coverdisk for Powermonger which I have). By January 1991 2 million Amigas had been sold worldwide with 500,000 Amiga 500s sold in the UK alone. This comfortably over took the Atari ST and the Amiga 1500 was almost ready for release. I think that around this time the Sega Megadrive was released yet again I was forced to tell people that it wasn't better and they used to the same CPU and that the Amiga had better sound to boot. However one thing I would of liked would have been a Zip Stick with 3 fire buttons. Also around this time the brilliant Atari Lynx was released (I bought one of these Amigas in my pocket) with some decent games I really liked California games, Gates of Zendecon and Rampage. Talking about the joy sticks, there were only 3 choices, the Navigator was like one of those sticks in planes, the Zip Stick and Competition Pro. The majority loved the Zip Stick or the Comp Pro. But there was a bit of rivallry between the joystick users. I also believe the best football sim ever was released Kick Off 2 was its name. Then in March 1991 came the next great Amiga milestone, Lemmings. It must be noted that Speedball 2 was released at the same time even though it was overshadowed by the illustrious Lemmings. Lemmings stole the heart of all Amiga owners with its original style of gameplay, cute graphics, its brilliant music and its difficulty. But what everybody really remembers about it is 'Oh No!'. Although Lemmings was converted to every machine known the Amiga original is the best with its fluid scrolling, no slow down, perfect control system and it supported that extra RAM I bought around the same time. Although many Lemmings clones have appeared now, Lemmings still remains the best and the eventual release of Lemmings 2 only bolstered the ergonomics of this game. Some time after Lemmings I purchased my expansion for 70 pounds, then a few months on almost every other game supported 1 meg. Although as usual it took some time before becoming standard with the true cries of 'we don't have that kind of money' it did and the Amiga benifitted. Around this time the idea of catridge Amiga games came to software publishers after the huge failure of both the Amstrad CPC and C64 catridge based machines. This idea never came to pass as they couldn't publish games until 6 months after programming them. In July 1991 there was the new big thing, the CDTV possibly Commodore's most a head of the time view of a changing market. There is no doubt today that CDs are where its at but Commodore proved to us that even in its finest hour it could so spectacularly fail. Only 60,000 CDTVs were sold. The idea behind the CDTV was simple through an a 1 meg Amiga 500, a CD drive and make it look like a video recorder. The CDi from Philips did the same and failed though not quite as badly as it was sold for a longer time in the shops. What must be remembered was that Xenon II was released and the original amazing sound track was now played through the CD with exactly the same brilliant shoot em up. Shame about the infra-red remote control though. Though of course in traditional Commodore style it was supposed to be released in January. The game with possibly the best sonics to ever grace the Amiga came out in September 1991 was Meglo-Mania. Not only was it a brilliant God game (hey I bought this one too) it had the best speech ever. From the Italian to the fiery red head. The music was atmospheric, though it didn't match up to the disk version of Xenon II, and fit the game like a glove. This game made the Sensible Software boys famous. Although I haven't mentioned the Bitmap Brothers, they are probably the most respected programming group to ever grace the Amiga. However also in the midsts of September 1991 they made their first and only mistake, Magic Pockets. This platform game was just not exciting enough probably because it was a little to slow. Sure it had that undeniable Bitmap style but.... However the Bitmaps have brought us Xenon, Xenon 2, Speedball, Speedball 2, Gods (often forgotten but bloody good), Cadaver (also generally forgotten) and possibly another Amiga gaming milestone Chaos Engine. But we'll find out about that one later. Christmas 1991 was the time of the release of possibly the most popular Amiga pack to ever see light. It was called 'Cartoon Classics'. It was bundled with 3 games and a 1 meg Amiga. Only one game is worth mentioning, Lemmings. Thats what sold this baby. This was the pack with a great suprise, the A500 + it the shores with a new Workbench but generally the same as the A500. But with a compatability of about 70 percent of all Amiga games released at the time. Possibly a mistake but maybe not, it lead the way for more Amiga improvements. February 1992 saw the 3 millionth Amiga sold and the release of Another World. This game was based on the plot that you were transported to an alien world through some freak accident and you must escape. Its style and animation was what brought it to life. One the Amiga's trully brilliant platform games. This is probably where the Amiga finally reached its peak. The CD-ROM add on for the A500s was supposed to be launched half a year ago but they kept on promising to release it soon. The Commodore machine was breaking down. This was the year when the PCs started rocking the boat, VGA was now standard and it started to enter the traditional Amiga based gaming market. But one thing about Amiga users has always been the belief that the Amiga is somehow special. Well it survived all of Commodore's marketing attempts. In March 1992 my favourite platform game was released. Parasol Stars, although many people do not agree it is better than Rainbow Islands, I know better. For Parasol Stars is the real sequel to Bubble Bobble and has far more in common with it than Rainbow Island. Still Commodore left the Amiga world standarding by still not releasing the Amiga 500 CD-ROM add on. It was about now when the whole Amiga realm of magazines and users started to really push the Amiga as an all round machine which could do everything from DTP to producing records which were sold around the globe as well as play great games. In May of the same year, rumours of a new Amiga came to light this was eventually the Amiga 4000 and Amiga 1200. When it was released of course the specifications didn't match up to the hopes of the industry, but it was still quite a leap from the Amiga 500. But this month was also when Commodore made the most horendous mistake, the Amiga 600, though it did )move the Amiga to more reliable surface mounted technology. The A600 was basically a cut down A500 with no SCSI interface, but with PCMIA and IDE interfaces replacing them, the numeric keys were lost and the modulator was built in. At the time the removal of th SCSI interface was deemed to be a travesty. But what was really bad about the A600 was it was released only a few months before the A1200, a far superior machine. The next Amiga gaming milestone was probably Secret of Monkey Island 2, a grpahic adventure game with 8 disks. This what gradually started the hard drive move for the Amiga, there really was no better way. This game is used as a yard stick against all graphic adventures even though it was made in the midsts of June 1992. July saw the coming of Sensible Soccer. Opinion was strongly divided as to whether Sensible Soccer or Kick Off 2. Both games got rave reviews in their day but Kick Off 2 was older. To be fair only the 1 meg version of KO was compared for it was so much better than the original with and I was a Kick Off 2 fan. To this day I think if Kick Off 2 and Sensible Soccer were released at the same time Kick Off 2 would have sold far more. But many people would kill me for saying that. Yet again both games have been converted to other computers and consoles but certainly in the case of Kick Off 2 the Amiga version is the best. With Sensible Soccer though resonable conversions have been made on the consoles. The 11th of September brough us the Amiga 4000, the first AGA Amiga. It not was well publised until 2 months after this low key event, but finally it had come. Finally after more than a year delays the Amiga 500 CD-ROM add on finally appeared. It was called the A570 and was priced to high at 350 pounds, hopes for a 250 pound add on were dashed. The Amiga 600 CD-ROM never appeared. Then October 1991 produced a major suprise, the price of the A600 was cut from close to 400 pounds to 300 pounds. This month also brought the first real attempt at a Sonic the Hedgehog beater, Zool. I personally didn't like it very much and I think Superfrog is a far better game, but some people adored this game. Finally the price of the CDTV had gone down from the original 699 pounds to 399 pounds. They were getting desperate with only 42,000 sold at this time. Also offers of partially trading in your A500 for a CDTV with keyboard and disk drive continued. November brought my favourite Strategy game, RoboSport. It has been forgotten by all. Why, damn you, WHY! BOOM! And to think you thought this was getting really boring! Finally the rumoured new Amiga appeared. It was the fabled A1200. Underspecced but still powerful, I bought one of these only a two months after release with an 80meg harddrive. Wow, I was bowled over. This machine rocked! Powerful (for me at least) and with a hard drive and this set up only cost 600 pounds. The best thing about it was now RoboSport was even better, yeah it kept the 399 pound price point. Now that the A1200 had come A600 owners were pretty peeved, especially the first buyers before the price cut, ohh were they ever so annoyed. They got so many people scarred that Commodore were going to bring out a machine every week which would superceed theirs that tons of people started worrying about upgrading to A1200s. But then just as quickly people thought, so what I want one. It had been a long time since the last bit of real gaming excellence for the Amiga, but finally the Bitmap brothers returned with Gauntlet for the 90s. Chaos Engine was phenomenally good shoot em up with bags of atmosphere. Following the Bitmap philosophy it was converted to every machine under sun and rightly so. And the great thing about it was that all the versions of it are very good and just about the same in the playability stakes (haven't played thr PC version though). Basically I've spent days playing this with friends on both Amiga and SNES. But at this time we were still waiting for the first AGA enhanced game. Finally June 93 unveilded the first AGA enhanced commercial game, Zool AGA. Same as the previous one with better back ground graphics and a little animation. It wasn't awe inspiring but considering everybody thought it was a good game it was a reasonable start. Though it must be noted that Walker from Psygnosis took advantage of the extra RAM on A1200s by giving you some speech. Over the first half of 1993 the Amiga world seemed to be getting quiet, even though Lemmings 2 had been released a month earlier there just didn't seem to be enough great Amiga stuff. Another Amiga moment came in August with the arrival of Syndicate, what a game! Best on the A1200 this game really rocked. Powermonger on steroids! Goal was finally released, it annoyed everyone by not being as good as Senisble Soccer or Kick Off 2, this game fell in oblivian. The price of the A600 was reduced to £199 (pissed off everybody again). September gave us the CD32, the first 32-bit CD console on the market. Also prices of the A1200 was reduced from 399 pounds to 299 pounds, yet again everybody was annoyed about paying more earlier (I personally didn't mind, if you want the technology you've got pay to going price on the day). The price of the CD32 was set at 299 pounds. In October the first AGA only game was unleashed. Overkill was a fast defender style shoot em up which was pretty playable. It eventually featured in a pack. In November the desktop dynamite pack was released. An A1200 with Oscar, Dennis (both poor games), Wordworth 2 and Print Manager. The ill fated CDTV fell in price once again to a very good £229 with a keyboard and disk drive. Finally the PAL Amiga world got the amazing Video Toaster and the most important raytracer, Lightwave. If you didn't know Lightwave has been used in Babylon 5 and Sea Quest DSV for all the graphics. In latest Babylon 5 series the Amiga was dropped. It is around this time that the Amiga started getting some brilliant raytracers. I think the AGA chipset brought this revolution around due to brilliant graphics it could produce. Christmas proved that great games could still be made for the Amiga, we saw the brilliant Frontier: Elite II (get the bug fixed version), the delightful Cannon Fodder and the cute strategy game Settlers. Cannon Fodder was pretty original though difficult but very playable. Elite II just showed that not all sequels are pap. Settlers was a genuinely fun strategy game. Amigas sold a bundle, probably due to the low price. CD³² games had started to come out though most were floppy ports with better music and a big rendered intro. January 1994 brought hope with the CD³² pack being improved and with possibly the best CD³² game being released. It was Liberation the sequel of the classic RPG Captive. Needless to say it was great (so great I bought it twice, and don't ask). Over Christmas 160,000 A1200s were sold and 70,000 CD³² were sold (far more than the Mega-CD I might add) March showed the first signs of the coming of Commodore's death. Commodore Australia went out of business and the creditors started to call the shots. In April Commodore's shares stopped being listed on the New York Stock Exchange. This was very ominous. There losses were $70 million dollars in the last quarter of 1992, which they reduced to $7.8 million in the last quarter of 1993. There was hope they'd survive because of their come back. But all was lost when on the Friday 29th of April Commodore went into voluntary liquidation. Commodore was up for sale. Original contenders were Amstrad, Philips, Hewlett Packard, Sony, Samsung, Nintendo and Atari. Commodore UK survived, but due to drying up stock and the fact that after the stock was gone they couldn't bring any money in meant they eventually closed down themselves some months laters. In November came another of the gaming greats, while the battle for Commodore still raged on. It was UFO: Enemy Unknown. Although there were some very good releases over the past months (Theme Park, Putty Squad, Banshee AGA and Super Stardust) there was nothing really breaking new ground. This game however brought great isometric strategy and some pretty scarry UFO stuff and made it into a playable (but ridiculously long) game. The only gripe was that it was a little slow. December brought us Zee Wolf, although this wasn't as good as its sequel Zee Wolf 2, it showed games made with vectors could be great fun. Possibly the most amazing thing about February was the release of Lemmings 3 which everybody has completely forgotten. It was a good game but really didn't add enough to the original. Anyway just thought I might mention it. Finally in March the A1200 got one of the most useful peripherals for it. A SCSI interface, via the PCMIA slot. Finally the A1200 could use all those tape drives, CD-ROM drives, SCSI hard drives and loads of other stuff. This finally made the A1200 a trully expandable machine, which it lacked even with those few PCMIA peripherals. Eventually almost a year after the collapse of Commodore ESCOM had control of it on the 21st of April 1995. A long wait. It cost them $10 million plus a few more million for some related Commodore stuff (e.g. $1.6 for the rights to Commodore's German trademark). To their credit they managed to get A1200s well in time for Christmas (only problem being the floppy drive) but at a price of £399 which most thought was too much. September 1995 brought the first commercial Amiga doom clone. It was cheekily entitled Gloom and it was great fun. The astounding thing about this game was the fact that everybody was predicting it was impossible to get it moving fast on a standard A1200. They were wrong this game moved pretty quickly and looked quite good. It didn't have all the features of Doom, but it was first on the block and Gloom Deluxe is even better. Christmas 1995 produced the next big thing. Worms a trully excellent game (which I bought because its so damn good) came on the market. Its an artillery clone with the style and playability of Lemmings. Although its too new to be called a classic, hopefully in a year or two it will still be remembered. February 1996 - Escom release the the Surfer pack. An Amiga bundled with software for the 'net. A good move. April, Viscorp bought Amiga of Escom for $40 million. Thats really the end of my Amiga story so far. Hopefully it will continue with a RISC based Amiga in early 1997... END ===