My Favourite Amiga Games
Hi, just a selection of the games I played and loved back in the days of my Amiga 500... arguably the best system I've owned (bold words). All the games in my list I bought, no copies, the art on the boxes and manuals were almost always brilliant (Shadow of the Beast etc) and well worth it. A number of years ago I sold my Amiga and all those games (most of them boxed) for next to nothing on eBay. Devastated. At some point I'll try and gather a collection hopefully...
The Amiga tends to get a hammering from the staff as being a bit below the likes of the SNES and Megadrive, but I'd set it out on its own (with the Atari ST) from the consoles. It was different, a different style, a different experience. It had a desktop with icons and folders, you could plug in a printer and run off your essays for school, it used a mouse and keyboard, and it had "apps" before apps were a thing. I had software for making music, word processing, painting, playing games, and making games (check out Shoot'em up Construction Kit!).
Music is a strong point for the Amiga in my opinion, especially its ability to produce intros and title tracks that really stood out. Just try listening to the intro music for Speedball II or Gods on the Megadrive then on the Amiga 500. It also had a distinct art style and graphics that looked great, especially in games produced by the likes of the Bitmap Bros or Psygnosis. They were able to really squeeze amazing quality from the Amiga in their games with clever use of limited colour palettes and distinct pixel art which I believe in many cases holds up even today.
The Amiga played a huge part in my teenage life and I loved it - I still remember getting my Screen Gems Amiga 500 Bundle at Christmas, it was a good pack (apart from Nightbreed... and Days of Thunder...) along with the "Heroes" pack including the likes of Running Man and Barbarian II which were bad but good also. Overall however the good outweighed the bad. Yes, you can list plenty of terrible games, but here are some of my favs that were great:
Walker - bought this purely on the box art... looked very cool, was alright to play with quite a lot of tiny pixelated gore in this right to left side scrolling shooter. You use the mouse for the aiming and the arrow keys for "walking" left and right. It was unique in its controls at the time I felt, and had a real dark and grim atmosphere. I never hear anyone talking about this game but it was a polished arcade shooter, but of course that meant it was also pretty difficult.
Realms - I spent a lot of time with this one. It was an empire building sim in a fantasy setting (humans vs orcs vs elves vs dwarves) with interesting isometric views for the battles. Nice melancholy music throughout, and a great "Amiga game" intro movie where a tear is shed by one of the characters in a very well animated effect. You would begin with one or two cities up against one or more enemy factions. Over time you would set taxes, build the cities and set trade links while raising armies. You could then set those armies off to conquer neighbouring settlements and fight battles. The battles were played out by commanding units in classic rank & file battles. A must try.
Gods - ok, it was ultimately frustrating and rock hard... but I kept returning to it. Gods was a great example of how much better title music was on the Amiga compared to SNES/Megadrive. Have a listen and see what you think. A sort of platforming, shoot 'em up, puzzler where you traversed various levels, platforms, ladders and doors to avoid traps and "spring out of nowhere" enemies. There were various weapons to use and upgrade throughout the game and a shop mechanic between levels to buy health and further upgrades, however you'd rarely have enough money to buy anything. Very good example of a Bitmap Bros game with their style of graphics, great looks and colours.
Speedball II - An absolutely fantastic futuristic sports game, simply what Jeff's Phil Lambeer's Combat Basketball failed to imitate. The game was a violent handball played with armour, metal ball and metal court/pitch. It was fast and fun to play and could be run in a team development mode where the aim was to get promoted and win the top league. Your players could be trained at a cost over time or you could trade for better players - which was awesome due to the great player portrait art. Future punks and cyborgs! Again, great music for the intro that was missing from the ports, so please try and have a listen to the superior original version. Also, the "ice cream, ice cream" half time voice sample is sadly missing from the ports, its a nice touch.
Midnight Resistance - basically a Contra-esq side scrolling shooter, but good on the Amiga and lovely "pick a weapon" voice sample. The only game of this sort other than Turrican that I owned, and for me was a great arcade side scrolling shooter. It went all the way with the Contra blueprint with shooting in eight directions as well as crawling and big boss fights at the end of each level - one of note being the face off with a Blackbird jet I believe? Sunsetting in the background... on a mountain top... great stuff. Music was great too, especially in the opening level when you can just stand on the bonnet of the Jeep that your girlfriend(?) is driving as she ploughs through the enemy soldiers and drops you off down the road.
Cannon Fodder - poignant. What a game. What a title track, fully voiced. A point and click to move and shoot game played from an aerial perspective. Amazing gameplay, really you will have a good time with this even today. A simple mechanic, but brutal, especially after developing a fondness for your team of soldiers who stay with you from level to level. If they die, they are gone and a new soldier takes his place. Between levels grave stones appear on the hills behind the path that new recruits wait on as they queue at the door to get into your next squad... its harsh. You have to play it though and experience that gameplay.
Monkey Island II - "classic twelve disc swapping charm." Having played and enjoyed the first game, I think on two or three discs?, without getting very far in it I was already a fan of the series to be. The second game was bigger and better with more charm and atmosphere. The disc swapping was a pain, and there didn't seem to be much pattern to the swapping either, but overall it was worth it. I found it too difficult of course, as with the first and didn't complete it at the time but it was a 'must' play. Admittedly better these days with the remastered versions on xbox and ps (use the original graphics option though), but back then it was superb and raised the bar for these types of games. Also, great music.
Moonstone - An impressive intro movie for this one, which sets the tone well. A genuinely tense game to play, I enjoyed it and loved the graphics but I was constantly scared of the enemies and the one hit kills. Great one screen levels to work through with fantastically animated fighting and gore. As is the case with most of these games that I'm listing, I never got very far in it or should I say lasted very long but it was one of those games that I returned to constantly to give it a go. Very challenging, but do try it to see some of those fights.
Shadow Of The Beast II - An odd, weird and baffling game but it looked good, sounded good and was intriguing enough to keep going back to (never got anywhere in it though). It was sort of a side scrolling, puzzle solving, fighting game thing. Probably one of the better examples to go to for parallax scrolling of the era. Lovely art style as with all Psygnosis games, immediately identifiable and a very polished Amiga game, just too difficult to work out what to do. Yet another example of amazing intro movies on the Amiga with a very grand and dark/menacing story opener, but the piece de resistance is the guitar solo for the game over screen, class - you have to see it and you will, often.
Deluxe Paint 2 - why not... I spent many an hour trying to draw things on that, then "animating" them with the tab key which cycled the colours. The example art and the cover art on the box was not achievable but sold it well. Would be great if I still had those image files to load up now and take a look through what I created. However, a great example of the sort of pack-in software you got with the Amiga, not possible on the consoles so you have to give the system a star for that.
SWOS - SO, this is what I spent most of my time playing... so much so I wore out the discs, they stopped working, I was devastated. I sent them to an address listed somewhere on the box or the manual and weeks if not months later the discs returned to me having never been opened and a "no longer at this address" type message on the box. Unless you like football (soccer) you won't like this, however it was and is amazing. Essentially I took a team from the bottom league in Scotland and played every game through to promotion to the top and getting into European competition. It was endlessly brilliant, the games themselves were brilliant, the team management was brilliant and making your way up the leagues and getting job offers from abroad and moving to new leagues was all brilliant. I have to say its one of my all time top games. And yes, a fully voiced song intro - "You're a goal scoring superstar hero, etc etc" - I got this on Megadrive recently and realised how far behind the Amiga it was. The newish version on Xbox didn't have the real player names anymore so that was ruined, so it needs to be the original on an Amiga for me at some point again in the future.
Skidmarks - Better on the Amiga than the Megadrive... on the Amiga the cars actually left skid marks, as they should. Not on the Megadrive (I should point out that I like the Megadrive and all consoles and own all of them and collect games for all of them, literally). Not a huge thing but the game was called Skidmarks so it should make use of them. A really enjoyable, top perspective racing game on a mixture of track types etc etc. Nice and arcadey and we need some driving games included in a games list. Good handling also, felt good pulling skids round the corners, as it should.
