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I'd just like to point out, it's quite easy to find these games with a
quick search, but it's surprisingly hard to find the *good quality* videos.
Also, I looked up a number of games and got either the PC or Atari ST
version, or sometimes SEGA. These all had *awful* music - not even
remotely comparable to the Amiga versions. And here I was thinking the
Atari ST was a good system...
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGf5xpaRIx8
Shadow of the Beast II
What you see on screen is actually how the Game Over sequence actually
looks. You die, the screen fades to black, then the image shown fades
up, along with the music. Then that fades to black again, and you go
back to the main menu.
Actually, *all* the music in this game is extremely atmospheric. This is
the best individual bit, and the only really good video I could find.
Also, *all* of the graphics has this same kind of theme to it. (Although
obviously the in-game stuff isn't to quite the same quality as this
still image.) It's strongly reminiscent of the cover art to YES, I've
you've ever seen that.
So brilliant soundtrack, impressive graphical style... not a great
*game*, however. Nobody in my family has ever worked out how to get off
level 1. If you walk up to the gardian and say "ten pints", you gain
invincibility... and even then none of us can figure out how to get off
level 1. There appears to be no way out...
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQSsq7HCNHw
Lotus Turbo Challenge II
(Not to be confused with Lotus Notes, as I once did to my cost...)
OK, so I don't actually remember the game at all. But the music is awesome!
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3enImd8QVQ4
The Choas Engine
The music has sirens in it. What more does a 12 year old boy want?!
That's a bit of an injustice though. The whole game is pretty damned
cool. I love the way that as you get near the end of the first "world",
the driving background music starts to include sudden uplifting choir
chords. It sounds trivial, but it's surprisingly effective.
Nobody I know has ever completed it without the cheat code. This game
gives you a code each time you reach the next world ( = 4 levels). But
the code includes how much health, ammo, etc you have. There was a cheat
code in a magazine that takes you to world 2 with several billion
credits, so you can buy everything in the shop. You then dominate
everything in sight, and if you die you can buy yourself back to life.
Even then, the game is no pushover!
I still remember the final ending:
"I have guided you here so that you might set me free. THE CHOAS HAS
ENDED!! You will be remembered..."
(Remembering that this was one of the first computer games to include
human speach, rather than bleeps and chirps...)
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIFfSLzNEeU
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mA0ljCqwv2c
Cybernetix
We got this free on a coverdisk. (CU Amiga?) A cracking shareware game
[which nobody actually paid for]. The floating asteriods look
impressively photorealistic. Very hard game though.
The first video shows the title screen music, which is amazing. The
second one shows the music you only get if you achieve a highscore. If
you just die, it goes back to the title screen, but if you get a
highscore, you get this uplifting track... which eventually goes back to
the main music loop.
I still dream of one day creating something 1/10th as cool as this.
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57YNerorom8
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjCqnfrCd-A
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylpexiLJ7ss
Apidya
This is you standard side-scrolling shooter. Got a demo free on the
cover of Amiga Format. Bought the whole game, and loved it... although
my comrades and I rarely got off world 1 ("Meadow's Edge"). World 2 was
"Pond", which we managed to get to a few times. There's a cheat that
lets you access any level, and that's the only way I've been able to see
what most of the other levels look like.
No cheat code is required to play the *music* from each of the levels,
however. By this method, I discovered the three levels from the "Techno
Party" world have awesome music. (I haven't included level 2, because
it's not quite as cool as 1 and 3.)
The cheap code lets you start at the beginning of the Techno Part world,
but I didn't last very long at all!
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fv8n1HUyJbo
Xenon II
Not about the music so much this time. (Although it is the quite awesome
Assult on Presinct 13 - or rather, "hip-hop on" this.) Is it bad that 2
decades after I first saw this, I still remember the exact attack
patterns of all the enemies??
I first saw this game on an IBM laptop with one of those super-blurry
blur and purple LCDs. The sound was just a kind of crackly bleepy sound.
I'm blown away by how great it looks on an Amiga. (YouTube has chewed up
the highly detailed green background, unfortunately.) I love the whole
visual style of this game - a kind of slightly demented history of
evolution. I wish people still made games like this...
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3gIjMm2P-g
Oh, Apidya again? I guess I posted that twice...
Here you can see the game's intro sequence. (Is this thing Japanese or
something?! Can anybody understand WTF is going on? And what happened to
that girl's FACE??! o_O Weird people.) That's followed by the first two
levels from Meadow's Edge. Again, I can still remember all those attack
patterns.
The graphics has lots of obvious repeats in it, but still, for 16
colours, it's pretty amazing, no? I love the amount of variety they've
poured into this.
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DInBUpFCHY4
Disposible Hero
I still have the poster for this game on my bedroom wall. All these
years later. This was one hell of a great game. It was STUPIDLY HARD,
however. Even on lowest difficulty, it was insane. Even the game critics
noted how epically hard it was.
This video is a complete play-through of the entire game, from beginning
to end. It shows you the whole game intro, lets the title music play
through to the end, and then plays the entire game. (There seems to be a
slight lag between video and audio tho.)
Without dying once. Um... I'm not sure how that's possible. Guy playing
this must be INSANELY GOOD!
Turns out there's a cheap that turns on a special menu where you can
skip levels, be invincible, and so forth. This is the only way I have
ever reached level 5. Even with all weapons unlocked, I have *never*
completed the final boss fight without invincibility. (And *with*
invincibility, winning isn't exactly much of an achievement...)
That text screen you see at the beginning? That's part of the game. This
is one of the few videos where it's ledgible. DH comes on two 720KB
floppy disks. You put the first one in the drive, you hear a click, and
*instantly* this text appears. The game intro sequence is written into
the bootloader code, on the boot track of the floppy. Not too many games
went that far.
While the text scrolls past, the rest of the game loads in the
background. Then you get the scenematics. The bit afterwards is where it
asks you for the code on the plastic wheel; it's copy protection.
I remember the spinning 3D ship blowing my mind somewhat. Presumably
it's all precomputed, but it still looks impressive. (For reference,
"Gloom" was a Doom-clone for the Amiga. On my heavily upgraded machine,
it managed 1.2 seconds per frame. Not frames per second, but seconds per
frame. 1200 ms. Ouch!)
The title music is also really cool. And those samples seem suspiciously
similar to the ones used in the Prodigy's Hyperspeed track...
Level #1 commences at 5:30, if you want to skip to that. Just look at
how many different enemies you fight. Notice the water at the bottom? It
has reflections of everything in the game. It ripples. Sometimes there
are splashes. Little touches like that make no difference to the
fundamental gameplay, but look awesome anyway.
In a way, it's a pitty the guy dispatches all the bosses so quickly.
There are animations that don't even get a chance to play. Most bosses
can be killed by hitting them in a certain place, and if you know where
to hide or what their attack patterns are, you can avoid death -
sometimes surprisingly easily. Of course, when you play the game "for
real", you don't know these things, which makes the encounters much more
panicy and challenging.
Note that operating a mouse pointer with a joystick is HARD! ;-)
So level #1 is your standard technological world. Level #2 starts at
9:30, and it has a really weird, slightly disturbing flesh and machine
vibe going on. See those giant teeth that keep springing up at
unexpected moments? Or those translucent blood bubbles that kill you?
It's a pretty hard level, eh? Notice how some of the jars of flesh are
pulsating? Or how those cannons are hidden behind little sliding doors?
Makes no difference to the game, but it's yet another detail, another
finishing touch.
You can see with the final boss how if you hide in certain locations, it
actually can't hit you. Once you figure that out, a tense battle becomes
a trivial walk in the park. Which almost seems a pitty. ;-)
Level #3 starts at 14:00. You can just make out the "insert disk II"
message on the loading screen. The menu screen has really good music,
but most of the levels have fairly average music. THIS level has my
favourit music in the game - both the level and the final boss. The
rapid guitar loops, the ferocious bassline, and further in, the frenetic
synthesizer lines. And then the boss at the end... that's quite a short
music loop, but a great one none the less.
I don't even know how to describe the art style of this level, so I'll
leave it. But note that once again, the landscape itself is loaded with
guns and cannons, and all of the enemies are completely new. And there
are multiple mini-boss fights along the way. You bearly get to see it,
but there's a very 3D-looking track-thing half way through the level.
It's also maddeningly hard to evade the flying-bat-thing and not hit the
walls ( = instant death). And later, you face another one, and the door
locks you in! (See that fan at the bottom? That blows you upwards, and
you have to constantly tap down to avoid hittin the ceiling! And the fan
speeds up and slows down just to fuck with you!!)
And that final boss? WTF *is* that thing?! o_O Some great artwork
happening there...
Level #4 begins at 18:30. This is the furthest I've ever got in the game
without cheating. This is a very interesting underwater level. I've
never completed it without cheats. Heck, it's usually hard enough to
*get* here without dying. (DH follows a scheme where you start on level
1, and continue until you run out of lives. You start with IIRC 2 lives,
and touching a wall = instant death. It's actually kinda cool the way
your ship dramatically falls off the screen in a smoking arc...)
Level #5 start at 22:30. It seems quite a short level, and not quite as
detailed as the rest. Oh, and that tunnel at the end? That's *hard*!
The final level begins at 26:00. This is basically a giant boss fight.
I've *never* survived without invincibility. It's just too hard! The
video doesn't even show it, but that first guy has the power to
teleport. Like, he's in one place, he vanishes, and then he reappears
RIGHT ON TOP OF YOU! And you only have a split second to take evasives.
The way it plays through in this video, it looks trivially easy. I
assure you, it is not!
LOL factor: Psycho-analysis, "J. Waaning".
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zYdQAKvMUw
HydroZone
What you see is what you get. Fly through a tunnel, try not to hit
anything. It's written in BlitzBasic, which was kind of the VB of it's
day. Personally I used AMOS instead, but Blitz had a huge following. It
was a bit more low-level than AMOS.
One commentor wrote that they "can't believe the 3D is this smooth on a
stock Amiga". Uh, yeah, it's only drawing rectangles and a few lines.
How hard can it be?? The blue colour gradient you see is a trick
involving custom-programming the video chip; it uses no CPU power.
For such a trivial game, it was astonishingly addictive. And
infuriatingly hard, actually. I did try to write my own version in
TurboPascal, but a combination of analysis paralysis and synchronisation
problems meant I never got far...
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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