Vapourware The definitive, authoritative, and probably non-exhaustive list of non-(IBM) PC cRPGs

[Kev Inkline]

Most of time answer is going to be Amiga.

Between 1986-1993 for sure

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Most of time answer is going to be Amiga.

Between 1986-1993 for sure

I would put upper date to somewhere -91, after that PC is going to be superior.

 

[Kev Inkline]

Most of time answer is going to be Amiga.

Between 1986-1993 for sure

I would put upper date to somewhere -91, after that PC is going to be superior.

Yea I guess, both platforms could run each other's port still those few years between. Can't exactly remember when pc sound cards caught up with Amiga, so my utmost limit was the release year of the pentium, but won't argue against yours either.

 

[octavius]

For a solid 40 maybe 50 percent of these games, the only person with a single video for them is this dude
https://www.youtube.com/user/petsasjim1/videos
He has over 20,000 videos. Crazy.


...Which one of you is it?

BLOBBERT?

 

[luj1]

Did anyone manage to get Perihelion up and running on Windows using emu?

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Might have something to do with Amiga not being very successful in the USA, and being big in the UK, who afaik has never been much into crpgs, those few crpgs which came for Amiga were made in the USA or in the continental europe, and ported to DOS anyway, like Ambermoon and Amberstar.

Correction, the Amiga (and the C64 before that) was extremely popular in whole Europe, not just in the UK. So it doesn't matter too much what UK people supposedly liked or disliked. I guess in general the Amiga attracted a lot of action game developers, many from the demoscene, as technically speaking developing RPGs was relatively uninteresting from a graphics programmer's perspective. Maybe that's one of the reasons. And probably the fact that D&D originated from the USA.

Weren't there a few American musicians who started on the Amiga demoscene or were they all on the DOS demoscene?

Most of time answer is going to be Amiga.

Between 1986-1993 for sure

I would put upper date to somewhere -91, after that PC is going to be superior.

VGA and Adlib came out in 1987, though adoption of those, or similar sound cards, wasn't widespread until 1990 or so. Though DOS didn't reach an equal of the Amiga until around 1994. Games between those years tend to depend on the game. I've noticed that games on Amiga can have issues with loading times, while DOS games usually have inferior sound and music.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Hey rusty. Don't forget the 3 Ishar games for Mac. Dungeon crawling series that is quite good.

You mean the three Ishar games for the Commodore Amiga, but those were ported to the PC, so Rusty isn't counting them. Similarly, Rusty is not listing The Faery Tale Adventure, despite it being the first Amiga-original CRPG and the first Open World CRPG.

 

[luj1]

Did anyone manage to get Perihelion up and running on Windows using emu?

Zed Duke of Banville Well?

 

[Rincewind]

I don't quite think rule 1 should be so strict, I mean games that have been originally published on some other platform than PC and are superior on that platform compared to their PC port should make it into the list, imo.

A prime example of such game is Faery Tale Adventure (Amiga), whose superb music is completely lacking on the MS-DOS port, but because of the rule 1 won't be listed.

Wait for my list, which will address exactly that.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Did anyone manage to get Perihelion up and running on Windows using emu?

Zed Duke of Banville Well?

What difficulty are you experiencing? Cloanto's Amiga Forever emulator can run Perihelion, provided the Perihelion .adf files are undamaged.

 

[Mortmal]

Wow, they're still making CPC games? That's cool, I never even heard of the platform before this thread.

Most "famous" old computers have very active communities still making games

I had no idea it was famous, I kinda thought the frogs just used a commodore 64 like normal people.

Computers used to be built in france too before, and those amstrad had a more agressive pricing range so they were popular. Still it was something for plebs, when they had a CPC i had an amiga.

 

[Rincewind]

Between 1986-1993 for sure

Both VGA and the Roland MT-32 appeared in 1987, so from that year onwards Sierra and LucasArts adventures are arguably the best on the PC (although sometimes the Amiga music can be also quite good). I guess the same goes for other types of games, but maybe RPGs are a bit different because many of them are a bit lackluster in the graphics and especially sound departments (compared to other genres).

 

[Mortmal]

Between 1986-1993 for sure

Both VGA and the Roland MT-32 appeared in 1987, so from that year onwards Sierra and LucasArts adventures are arguably the best on the PC (although sometimes the Amiga music can be also quite good). I guess the same goes for other types of games, but maybe RPGs are a bit different because many of them are a bit lackluster in the graphics and especially sound departments (compared to other genres).

Think the landmark pc version turned to be superior was around eye of the beholder 2 release. Still the amiga version was excellent and very close so 1991 and you were not missing much .PC being clearly superior was 1992 and ultima underworld.

 

[Rincewind]

Did anyone manage to get Perihelion up and running on Windows using emu?

1. Install WinUAE
2. Install BetterWB (or ClassicWB, if you're not so familiar with the Amiga)
3. Get any Amiga game you want from the Retroplay WHDLoad Packs archive
4. Profit

One benefit of this approach vs using ADF floppy images is the much faster loading time (plus sometimes unofficial bugfixes).

 

[Rincewind]

Between 1986-1993 for sure

Both VGA and the Roland MT-32 appeared in 1987, so from that year onwards Sierra and LucasArts adventures are arguably the best on the PC (although sometimes the Amiga music can be also quite good). I guess the same goes for other types of games, but maybe RPGs are a bit different because many of them are a bit lackluster in the graphics and especially sound departments (compared to other genres).

Think the landmark pc version turned to be superior was around eye of the beholder 2 release. Still the amiga version was excellent and very close so 1991 and you were not missing much .PC being clearly superior was 1992 and ultima underworld.

These days I recommend the AGA WHDLoad versions. I replayed the AGA version of EoB 1 last year and it's excellent.

 

[Rincewind]

Weren't there a few American musicians who started on the Amiga demoscene or were they all on the DOS demoscene?

Dunno, but the demoscene was (is?) predominantly a European phenomenon. Various reasons have been cited for this (personal computers were much more popular in Europe than in the USA; cracker/copyparty culture; less money and "success" oriented culture; geographical proximity due to smaller cities vs US megacities, which helped with building communities before the Internet — or maybe just European kids were way cooler Or just the long Scandinavian winters; there was not much else to do...)

First answer here is quite enlightening, basically what I summarised above.

 

[Rincewind]

Related:
Demoscene accepted as UNESCO cultural heritage in Germany

 

[octavius]

Related:
Demoscene accepted as UNESCO cultural heritage in Germany

Klasse!

 

[Grauken]

Between 1986-1993 for sure

Both VGA and the Roland MT-32 appeared in 1987, so from that year onwards Sierra and LucasArts adventures are arguably the best on the PC (although sometimes the Amiga music can be also quite good). I guess the same goes for other types of games, but maybe RPGs are a bit different because many of them are a bit lackluster in the graphics and especially sound departments (compared to other genres).

Think the landmark pc version turned to be superior was around eye of the beholder 2 release. Still the amiga version was excellent and very close so 1991 and you were not missing much .PC being clearly superior was 1992 and ultima underworld.

These days I recommend the AGA WHDLoad versions. I replayed the AGA version of EoB 1 last year and it's excellent.

Nobody sane would play the Amiga versions over the DOS ones which are still better and easier to run

 

[Rincewind]

Between 1986-1993 for sure

Both VGA and the Roland MT-32 appeared in 1987, so from that year onwards Sierra and LucasArts adventures are arguably the best on the PC (although sometimes the Amiga music can be also quite good). I guess the same goes for other types of games, but maybe RPGs are a bit different because many of them are a bit lackluster in the graphics and especially sound departments (compared to other genres).

Which part are you disagreeing with Zed Duke of Banville ?

 

[Rincewind]

Between 1986-1993 for sure

Both VGA and the Roland MT-32 appeared in 1987, so from that year onwards Sierra and LucasArts adventures are arguably the best on the PC (although sometimes the Amiga music can be also quite good). I guess the same goes for other types of games, but maybe RPGs are a bit different because many of them are a bit lackluster in the graphics and especially sound departments (compared to other genres).

Think the landmark pc version turned to be superior was around eye of the beholder 2 release. Still the amiga version was excellent and very close so 1991 and you were not missing much .PC being clearly superior was 1992 and ultima underworld.

These days I recommend the AGA WHDLoad versions. I replayed the AGA version of EoB 1 last year and it's excellent.

Nobody sane would play the Amiga versions over the DOS ones which are still better and easier to run

Except all insane Amiga fans. It shows you never owned that machine.

 

[Grauken]

Between 1986-1993 for sure

Both VGA and the Roland MT-32 appeared in 1987, so from that year onwards Sierra and LucasArts adventures are arguably the best on the PC (although sometimes the Amiga music can be also quite good). I guess the same goes for other types of games, but maybe RPGs are a bit different because many of them are a bit lackluster in the graphics and especially sound departments (compared to other genres).

Think the landmark pc version turned to be superior was around eye of the beholder 2 release. Still the amiga version was excellent and very close so 1991 and you were not missing much .PC being clearly superior was 1992 and ultima underworld.

These days I recommend the AGA WHDLoad versions. I replayed the AGA version of EoB 1 last year and it's excellent.

Nobody sane would play the Amiga versions over the DOS ones which are still better and easier to run

Except all insane Amiga fans. It shows you never owned that machine.

Never claimed to own one. It's funny, of all old computers, the Amiga never got an easy to use emulator which is why most people into retro gaming skip its library entirely

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Both VGA and the Roland MT-32 appeared in 1987, so from that year onwards Sierra and LucasArts adventures are arguably the best on the PC (although sometimes the Amiga music can be also quite good). I guess the same goes for other types of games, but maybe RPGs are a bit different because many of them are a bit lackluster in the graphics and especially sound departments (compared to other genres).

Which part are you disagreeing with Zed Duke of Banville ?

I didn't want to derail the thread with a discussion of the development of PC technology, but even though IBM created the VGA graphical standard in 1987, the new VGA cards were quite expensive and resource intensive. If you examine games making good use of VGA graphics, it seems there weren't any before 1990 and only a few released that year, though the number released increased greatly in 1991 and again the following year, by which time CD-ROM was also coming into use for games. For example, you referenced Sierra and LucasArts adventure games, but King's Quest V was released in 1990 with EGA graphics followed by a 1991 re-release with VGA graphics (and a CD-ROM re-release in 1992), and the first King's Quest game to be created with VGA was King's Quest VI released in 1992. Similarly, Space Quest III released in 1989 with EGA while Space Quest IV released in 1991 with VGA, Leisure Suit Larry III released in 1989 with EGA while the next game in the series released in 1991 with VGA, and Quest for Glory II released in 1990 with EGA while Quest for Glory III released in 1992 with VGA (and the original game in the series received a VGA re-make that same year). Audio in games seems to have taken even longer to surpass the Amiga, although that's more difficult to determine.

 

[Rincewind]

Never claimed to own one. It's funny, of all old computers, the Amiga never got an easy to use emulator which is why most people into retro gaming skip its library entirely

It just takes some non-zero effort, man. Excuses like this are a bit lame, there's *tons* of guides (both written and videos on youtube) that will help you set up a nice Amiga environment in a few hours, even if you're a total newbie.

Even the CRPGAddict was able to do it, so c'mon. But sure, it's not like popping in a cartridge...

 

[Grauken]

Never claimed to own one. It's funny, of all old computers, the Amiga never got an easy to use emulator which is why most people into retro gaming skip its library entirely

It just takes some non-zero effort, man. Excuses like this are a bit lame, there's *tons* of guides (both written and videos on youtube) that will help you set up a nice Amiga environment in a few hours, even if you're a total newbie.

Even the CRPGAddict was able to do it, so c'mon. But sure, it's not like popping in a cartridge...

Lol "set up a nice Amiga environment in a few hours"

I never had problems emulating Amiga, I've gotten actually difficult systems to run, Amiga just has shit setup with obnoxious fans making it more difficult. But most people, rightfully so, want to download an emu, plop in a ROM or Disk and start playing, which they can for the majority of major systems.

What I said and what I encountered over the years is that many people just skip over the Amiga. That's a fact and attitudes like yours aren't helping. Yes, Amiga fans exist and quite a lot of them, but you don't get new fans or converts like other systems. Shame, but it is what it is.