Amiga, Commodore and creativity

[Luzur]

Space Crusade is a 1992 video game for the Commodore 64 based on the Space Crusade board game. It was one of the earliest video games of the Warhammer 40,000 series.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I'm fairly certain Space Crusade was the first "official" video game adaptation of the Warhammer 40k universe.

There may have been earlier games heavily inspired by it, but they weren't official.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

On Friday April 29 1994, Commodore declared bankruptcy and its West Chester, Pennsylvania, headquarters closed its doors. A wedding of two former Commodore employees still living in the area took place on the same day, as a result of which a number of other ex-employees who had moved away were back in town and joined remaining employees for an impromptu wake.

Dave Haynie's legendary video "The Deathbed Vigil and Other Tales of Digital Angst":

 

[Luzur]

This week marks the twenty-five year anniversary of the demise of Commodore International. This weekend, pour one out for our lost homies.

https://hackaday.com/2019/05/02/twe...vuQIWUZejyvFqfDFG7MG_WanL_xhNHH1mLYfiTL-z9q64

 

[Silentstorm]

The problem with this kind of game is that you never know much of its actual reputation and ratings go to the fact it is retro in itself. Why would anyone play this, rather than an unplayed episode of Magic Candle or a Gold Box SSI is what I want to know.

It caters to a crowd with no unplayed magic candle or goldbox games, so a few hundreds alive at best... People dont have such fond memories of the vic 20 compare to c64 or amiga considerably more impressive machines in my opinion . So this kind of games is just an hobby thing and only real purpose is make the devs feel younger again i think.

Thought many of these games are sold so i don't think there is just some hobby purposes, but yeah, retro computers get a ton of games, particularly the ZX Spectrum, though there are also some free homebrew games here and there, still, i am pretty sure i have seen recent C64 games for sale on Itch.Io where they gave you roms to play the games.

Though it reminds me of one interview i read somewhere where they asked old programmers for the ZX Spectrum if they played homebrew games and what they thought about them, and i think most of them said they didn't and one was genuinely suprised and asked out loud why the hell were people learning to code for an old system when they could be making games for modern PC's and get a much bigger audience.

My guess is that it's a mix of a hobby, love for the original system, and since they like the games for that system, they know what fellow fans love and can make games that the system's fans will gladly pay for even if the audience market isn't the biggest.

 

[Silentstorm]

Actually, that makes me wonder something, indie games are making sure many genres don't die, but they focus a lot on console style games, sure you have your indie RPG's and strategy games like Xenonauts and ATOM RPG but not that many that go for the style of old computer games.

I certainly don't see many isometric games, i don't see C64 like platformers and other genres like games on digital game stores, not even one screen platformers like you would get on the ZX Spectrum such as Manic Miner, which is weird, because the old computers have a lot of fans and people who grew up with those kind of games.

Is it just that, well, people are making their C64, Amiga and Spectrum inspired games to the actual computers themselves and thus don't give a damn about indie markets, modern consoles and computers and keep on not putting their games available to a more mainstream audience making sure they never grow at all beyond the people who still use their old computers?

Just something i found myself wondering, then again, people are probably too used to console like platformers or ones inspired by them nowadays.

 

[Luzur]

Well, i guess they make the games just because they can and it is fun to wrestle with the limitation of the retro machines and yet deliver a nice game, and they prob dont really care about others then their fellow hobbyists.

 

[Astral Rag]

Spoiler

Very "creative" port

 

[CryptRat]

I owned Street Fighter 2 on Amiga. You had to swap disk once or twice between two fights (the game used 8 disks) so it was terrible. Also owned Street Fighter 1 which was even worse despite tooking only one disk, what a terrible game it is.

 

[Silentstorm]

Honestly, Street Fighter 2 wouldn't get a good western port for a long time, then again, Street Fighter like fighting games(i mean games that are fast paced with combos and special moves, not games like Way Of The Exploding Fist) was something i feel like western developers weren't good at for a long time(even back then, i thought Mortal Kombat was crap and Killer Instinct not that great) and the ports being awful compared to consoles wasn't that suprising.

Well, i guess they make the games just because they can and it is fun to wrestle with the limitation of the retro machines and yet deliver a nice game, and they prob dont really care about others then their fellow hobbyists.

I guess, i just find it funny then when some people complain that games nowadays aren't like they used to, or that even indies don't make games like they used to play, no wonder, when those kind of games are being made still for the old computers and hobbyists, i mean, i have seen some MSX homebrew games on Steam, and NES games, Micro Mages is a really recent homebrew game that seemed like a decent platformer fo the NES...and then just recently i found the game on Steam as a port WITH ROM INCLUDED which, holy crap, feels like a much nicer way of making games for hobbyists and still letting indie gamers try them out and see if something becomes popular.

Then again, porting games to modern systems can only be really hard work so who cares, and i do see a lot of C64 homebrew games being sold on Itch or have the rom version being free to download with instructions for emulators which is really nice and awesome of them, though it seems ZX Spectrum games tend to be sold less on places like Itch and the ones that have roms don't talk about how to run them in emulators or anything like that.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Actually, that makes me wonder something, indie games are making sure many genres don't die, but they focus a lot on console style games, sure you have your indie RPG's and strategy games like Xenonauts and ATOM RPG but not that many that go for the style of old computer games.

I certainly don't see many isometric games, i don't see C64 like platformers and other genres like games on digital game stores, not even one screen platformers like you would get on the ZX Spectrum such as Manic Miner, which is weird, because the old computers have a lot of fans and people who grew up with those kind of games.

Is it just that, well, people are making their C64, Amiga and Spectrum inspired games to the actual computers themselves and thus don't give a damn about indie markets, modern consoles and computers and keep on not putting their games available to a more mainstream audience making sure they never grow at all beyond the people who still use their old computers?

Just something i found myself wondering, then again, people are probably too used to console like platformers or ones inspired by them nowadays.

If you aren't already, you might want to keep track of this site.

Neil is practically breaking his back bringing us the best news of retro projects on retro platforms.

 

[Silentstorm]

If you aren't already, you might want to keep track of this site.

Neil is practically breaking his back bringing us the best news of retro projects on retro platforms.

I know about that site, i was just talking about how odd it is to not see C64 and Spectrum like games on digital stores like Steam when indie games go for nostalgia a lot, but yeah, that site is pretty good, and found quite a few interesting games there.

Basically, if someone is into old computers(everyone here i assume) you should check it out, there's more than Commodore stuff, since the ZX Spectrum, MSX, Amstrad and other systems get a lot of love too, and don't worry, not every game is physical only, a few let you buy roms or are freeware to begin with, though not all of them are RPG's of course.

 

[Gerrard]

Most of the console ports to Amiga were awful even when the hardware was more than capable of pulling it (NES games originally).

 

[Silentstorm]

Most of the console ports to Amiga were awful even when the hardware was more than capable of pulling it (NES games originally).

Yeah, there is this one series on Youtube called Battle Of The Ports, where for the longest time the guy focused on Arcade Ports to computers and consoles comparing them(the last video was Shadow Of The Beast, so he seems to be going for more than arcade games now) and the Amiga, and a lot of computers, didn't always have the best ports, particularly when it came to controls.

Then again, the guy seemed to like a suprising amount of ports to the Commodore 64 and from time to time finds an Amiga port that is at least decent if not good.

 

[Gerrard]

Yeah, why did they go with 1 "Fire" button as standard is something I cannot understand. I knew of a few games that supported 2 button controllers/joysticks, but many didn't even have 2 separate buttons.

 

[CryptRat]

Yes, only one button was a mistale. And then I didn't own any two button controller, so the very rare games where you were meant to were problematic, FIFA is a weird game when you can only pass the ball but cannot shoot.

The other funny part was how pressing "button" instead of "up" to jump was very unintuitive the first times I played on a console coming from Amiga.

 

[Silentstorm]

Yeah, that was a big problem, many games used two or more buttons, but computer ports really loved that 1 button thing and really did their best to adjust things, it's just that many times it wasn't as comfortable or as good to control as the original, and that is if the ports didn't have any other problems, and the weird thing is that Amiga and the Commodore 64 could have good arcade games or platformers, they got exclusive or computer only games that show that perfectly, making it more clear just how bad some ports really are.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Most of the console ports to Amiga were awful even when the hardware was more than capable of pulling it (NES games originally).

Yeah, there is this one series on Youtube called Battle Of The Ports, where for the longest time the guy focused on Arcade Ports to computers and consoles comparing them(the last video was Shadow Of The Beast, so he seems to be going for more than arcade games now) and the Amiga, and a lot of computers, didn't always have the best ports, particularly when it came to controls.

Then again, the guy seemed to like a suprising amount of ports to the Commodore 64 and from time to time finds an Amiga port that is at least decent if not good.

Thanks very much for this, I have been looking for something like this for quite a while.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Speaking of ports and the early days of the Amiga, the English Amiga Board actually opened my eyes recently to certain facts about the Amiga - that early games for it were frequenting very badly programmed compared to the C64 and that most ports suck compared to their C64 versions. I was shocked to see how many users on that board preferred the C64 versions of games. I just assumed that EAB (English Amiga Board) was a synonym for AFU (Amiga Fanboys United).

 

[Silentstorm]

Thanks very much for this, I have been looking for something like this for quite a while.

And hey, there are lots of videos, though the first ones are purely subtitled with no voice as the guy wanted people to focus on the audio of the different ports, still, looking at those videos i can see how C64 programmers liked to do their own ports that were different from what the Amstrad and Spectrum had a lot of the time, and tried to do their own thing, not always sucessful, but still, they at least tried.

Amiga ports on the other hand, are hit or miss, with a lot of misses sadly, in particular, there were a few developers that are a surefire sign of a port going to be bad, still, the guy is now doing more than arcade ports and it's cool that he seems to be focusing on Commodore Amiga games that got ported elsewhere:

 

[Jarpie]

Came across this in youtube



The Amiga Development System

 

[Jarpie]

Was this yet in here?

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

Guyz what's your opinion about AmigaOne line of hardware? Is it really a modern take on Amiga experience or just overpriced scam that can be recreated easily by emulation org installing something like Aros/Aeros/Icaros as OS on x86?

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Well well well, what have we here?

 

[piydek]

I've been toying around recently with an idea of bringing my A1200 with phase V Blizzard 1220 back to life. I'll have to do capacitor recapping just to be sure, I'll have to put together a new PSU, which is most likely going to be a Meanwell rt-65b as it comes highly recommended from the amiga community, and I'll have to set up the flash-based HDD. Then there's the problem of output - I don't have an amiga-compatible monitor unfortunately. I'll have to think of what to do about that.

But before i do that, I'll continue using my Raspberry PI 3b+ based amibian amiga. So there's the question I have for you guys: do you know of any joysticks similar to competition pro (there's some of them on ebay, but they feel a bit like a ripoff since they used to be aroun 10 pounds when they were in stock at retailers) that's usb based and can be used with RPI? I'd really like to get myself a Monster Joysticks one day, but for now they don't have a usb-based one.