Amiga in the movies: Robot Ninja (1989)

An Amiga 500 was spotted in 1989 splatter-comic movie "Robot Ninja" - both on screen, and behind the scenes.

Robot Ninja (1989) poster artwork (see end of article)

The movie is a very gory, but also funny and slightly tragic low-budget sci-fi/horror production. If this fits your taste, it's really enjoyable, with a lot of handdrawn comic panels thrown in, goofy, but (very) rough characters, and some actually quite ambitious, visionary storytelling, complete with dream sequence, Terminator rip-off scene, and everything.

"Robot Ninja" was written, produced, directed, and edited by J. R. Bookwalter, who also supplied some of the music. 

The opening credits might look somehow familiar to longtime Amiga users.

A couple of frames from the opening credits

The comic panel sections of the opening sequence feature some animated text - could this be some Deluxe Paint animations that we're looking at?

A couple of frames from the opening sequence, with comic panels, and animation

Only a few minutes into the movie, we get a little news report that features some sort of artwork of the "Robot Ninja". 

Is Robot Ninja connected to the Ridgeway Murders... ?

So far, all of this feels very much like something Amiga. It wouldn't be surprising if one shows up in the movie... and indeed, soon a machine can be seen that looks remarkably like an Amiga 500.

Someone is playing a game...

...on a computer with some extra equipment...

...that looks very much like an Amiga 500...

...and runs a GUI with a blue background.

So after this character has played a round of "Lords of the Rising Sun", he returns to what seems to be AmigaOS Workbench 1.x.

More artwork shows up during the movie - isn't there a faint title bar, that maybe says "Deluxe Paint"? And there's another news report, that uses a font that just looks all familiar.

The "Robot Ninja" shown on the computer display - with title bar.

The font used by this TV station looks very familiar.

We get to see more of the computer equipment. There seems to be a dot matrix printer on the left side (maybe a Star LC-10?), and a floppy drive right next to the keyboard. And is there another, bigger printer, on the right side?

1989 computer workstation in "Robot Ninja"

In this sequence, the movie's anti-hero is in very bad shape after a heavy fight - he tries to decipher what's written on the computer display, but he's dizzy, and his vision is blurry.

Robot Ninja can't properly see the computer display.

But then, finally, all doubts are dispelled: Yes, this is an Amiga 500. With a red LED. 

It's really an Amiga 500, with PSU, 1010 floppy drive, and 1084 monitor!

The movie's ending credits feature some digitized images with a little bit of animation.

A couple of frames from the pictures during the ending credits.

When the credits' text (Topaz font? Opal font?) begins to roll, it gives more clues about Amiga usage during production, and some enthusiastic praise for the computer.

Amiga 500 in "Robot Ninja" ending credits

The titles, and we can pretty safely assume also the digital artwork in the movie, were indeed created on an Amiga 500, as was the music by Mr. Bookwalter. Maybe the entire editing was done with some gen-locking, VHS-recorder-controlling Amiga setup, at "The Imagination Industry" and Richard B. Perrine?

"Robot Ninja" is a very nice example of Amiga usage in movie production. Looking at its imaginative, bold style, it's a perfect tie-in with the idea of the allround-creative Amiga user. Mr. Bookwalter obviously is one such person. He felt he had to put the machine into the movie, give it big credit, and the fact that he did the work for "Robot Ninja" on an Amiga 500 is pretty cool in itself. It's proof that even the lowest-cost model, a literal bedroom-computer, can be a (low-res) film industry workhorse. 

Now, why isn't there a "Robot Ninja" game for the Amiga?

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https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100503/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_Ninja

"Robot Ninja" poster image:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_Ninja#/media/File:Robot_Ninja_(1989)_poster.jpg
https://theschlockpit.com/2020/03/29/in-praise-of-robot-ninja-1989/

A techno music album created with OctaMED SoundStudio (and Camouflage)

"Breathless" is an album of electro/techno music created on an Amiga computer over the latter half of the 1990s. All tracks were composed with OctaMED SoundStudio, using Amiga samples and MIDI sound devices.

I had learned that Amiga computers are great for sound and video. Demos like "Desert Dream" and "Lethal Exit", and esp. the intro music of the game "Epic" had left me very impressed. So I got an Amiga 600 and started playing with OctaMED. A MIDI interface and a Roland Juno 106 analog keyboard were added soon after, then a Yamaha FB-01 synth module, followed by a lot of other devices.  

Over a couple of years, many pieces of synth music were created, all of which were more or less experimental. Until a handful stood out, and I thought it would be nice to put together an album. A few more tracks were created on-the-fly, to give the album more playing time - I just like music to have a little extra time to develop.

Around 1999, when finishing the album, I had expanded my setup to an Amiga 4000 with graphics, network, and Prelude 16-bit soundcard, and added a PC for recording and post-production. I had also upgraded the software in use to the latest version of OctaMED, called SoundStudio, and great audio/MIDI program Camouflage.

The music was initially composed with OctaMED SoundStudio (OMSS), using a mix of entering notes step-by-step, live jamming with MIDI-recording, and a few longer audio samples. Some of the tracks were then played back in OMSS, and recorded as audio tracks in Camouflage, to free up MIDI instruments and add more sounds.

A couple of notes on individual tracks:

Track 1, "Where the sun shines", features the Amiga playing back a catchy synth riff sampled from a Roland Juno 60 keyboard, and some speech samples.

Track 3, "Too hoppin' mad", is a spiced-up remake of an older track called "Hoppin' at the spot", and it has a funny story: The idea was to have some rhythmic chords, played on a Roland JX8P keyboard, enter on the first breakdown, and continue over the groove. But I forgot to switch on OMSS' "chord mode" - when MIDI-recording the chords, all (most) notes ended up on one track in OMSS in near-random order. When listening to the result for the first time, I was pleasantly surprised, and added distortion from a guitar effects processor to intensify the effect. The string/pad segment was mostly created in Camouflage, using OMSS as a "looper" for the MIDI instruments. 

Track 4, "Into the ominous" features some random bleeps: These are created by just some random notes played on a Yamaha DX7 II keyboard: The battery was old, it had lost its memory. The sound is the result of an undefined state of one of the synth's memory slots. (Except for a handful that I had restored or overwritten, they all sounded pretty much the same at that point: random bleeps. lol.)

Track 7, "Breathless" is the most Amiga of the tracks on the album. The idea was to create an "epic" (?) acid track, it was initially called "Hildesheim", and it's a bit noisy. OMSS is playing back sampled synth sounds, and controlling a Kawai XD-5 drum synthesizer. Lots of samples were taken, in an attempt to recreate the filter sweeps of an analog synth. There's also a tiny bit of live filter mixing - you can probably recognize it by the better sound quality.

Track 9, "Farewell" is a groovy, simple track, that serves as a basis for some acoustic guitar solo jamming.

All tracks were recorded and "mastered" on a PC using Samplitude. I'd have loved to finalize the tracks using the Amiga version, but at the time PCs had become so fast, that they could handle a handful of audio effects in realtime, whereas an Amiga would require minutes to do the calculations. EQ-ing, compression, extra panning, and reverb was added, and the final tracks exported, stored, and burnt to CD.

In hindsight, everything could've been done better. The reverb is too much, it makes everything sound quite muddy. But it also enhances the hi-resonance synth sounds on nr. 7, "Breathless". The mixing and mastering has lots of flaws - there's some heavy banging, around 500Hz or so, on some tracks, sometimes created by individual sounds, sometimes by the mix. And so on - but overall, and as an entity of different compositions, I think it turned out somehow listenable, and, in parts, even a little catchy or moody.

The entire album has just been uploaded to YouTube. The videos were created with Blender in 2024, as a little "visualizer" for the music.

"Breathless" CD cover front / inlay / back

"Breathless" album playlist on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7Gy7PSuZtfIULzpMRIN2RU_JwjGSheOv

YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/@SchwabingDeepSpace

"SchwabingDeepSpace" blog:

http://schwabingdeepspace.blogspot.com

One of the few physical copies of "Breathless"

An Amiga plus a lot of good will equals... Crysis!

Can an Amiga computer run milestone first person shooter "Crysis"?

Well. "Yes it can." But you need some - just a little! - suspension of disbelief. Here's a prototype created by author lifeschool, that uses a slightly different approach to bringing the amazing graphics engine of "Crysis" to the Amiga. System requirements are comparably moderate:

• PAL Amiga 
• Kickstart 3.0 or higher
  
• 1MB Chip and 4MB fast memory
• 500MB free disk space

68030 or better CPU is recommended, though.

You don't believe me? Here, see it for yourself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDrog6vN5tM
(Saberman RetroNews)

Ok, by now you will have found out that "Crysis" was turned from a dynamic first-person-shooter into a Laserdisc-/DVD-style game, so this isn't precisely a "direct port" of the PC version. ;-) But it's still a fun idea, it looks great, and it's even got a "virtual Windows 10 desktop". And it's under active development - so there's a chance one day it'll play just like the original!

If you want to know more, you can go to the game's itch.io website:

https://lifeschool22.itch.io/crysis-amiga-os-interactive-demo

Grind - multiplayer!

Spectacular Amiga 500 OCS 7Mhz first person shooter "Grind" is boldly going serial-link multiplayer.

"Grind" has come a long way from the early "Dread" demos. It's becoming a super polished game, with tons of atmosphere, thanks to the fine tuned visuals, and sounds, and of course the stunningly fast Doom-like 3D graphics engine. And it's got what way too few Amiga games, especially first-person-shooter games, have: it's multiplayer!

A new demo has just been released that features the latest serial-link (nullmodem) program code, a set of options to make adjustments to the multiplayer game mode, two arenas for players to duel, and a round of other updates.

Here you can watch a video on "Saberman RetroNews" YouTube channel (2024-07-14): 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMSdk5p5tnc

Check YouTube's video description for more information. 

If you like to directly support "Grind", you can go to the game's Patreon website: https://www.patreon.com/Grind_Amiga

 

 

Games galore #41: Rick Dangerous remake, Hop to the Top, Cube, Connect, CyberPunks 2 release, Space Cavern Blaster

2023 was a great year for Amiga gaming, a lot of games to review, and the stream of new releases doesn't stop. In this issue: Rick Dangerous, a bunny, a long overdue release announcement, puzzles, and multi-platforms.

Rick Dangerous (remake)

In March 2023 "Z-Team" released their "Rick Dangerous" remake for Amiga 1200 and CD32. The game was originally created by Core Design in 1989 for OCS Amigas, and is a classic adventure platformer. The remake aims to recreate the original as close as possible, based on the enhanced Nintendo Wii edition with better graphics.

Screenshot from z-team.itch.io/rick-dangerous-amiga

"Rick Dangerous" remake is available in several flavors, including releases for Windows and MacOS, but it's always the Amiga game - running in an emulator, if necessary.

Screenshot from z-team.itch.io/rick-dangerous-amiga

Go to the game's itch.io website for more information and download:

https://z-team.itch.io/rick-dangerous-amiga

Additional sources:
http://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2023-03-00085-EN.html
https://www.indieretronews.com/2023/03/rick-dangerous-platforming-classic-as.html

Hop to the Top!

In April 2023, Rob Smith created this little Easter-themed jump'n'collect platformer, and shared the development process in a video. The game is written in AMOS, and in it, you have to save a white rabbit from drowning in the water that's flooding the bottom of your screen.

"Hop to the Top" was created in a short duration of time, and is a simple game - but it looks great, has proper sound, plays quite nicely, includes source code, is free, and we have a full video of how it's done. That's a lot of value for the money - Happy Easter indeed!

Here's Rob Smith creating the game (2023-04-02):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgoWRKUk7-U

Make sure you visit Rob's website for more information:
https://robsmithdev.co.uk

"Hop to the Top" download:
https://robsmithdev.co.uk/youtube/easter.zip

Additional sources:
http://amiga-news.de/de/news/AN-2023-04-00012-DE.html

Cube

In April 2023, "Cube" was released, a dungeon-crawler style adventure/puzzle game, heavily inspired by the 1997 science-fiction-horror movie of the same name.

The game has slightly unusual system requirements, it's probably best suited for a Apollo Vampire cards: AmigaOS3 or higher, RTG 1920x1080 24bit, fast CPU (1000MIPS or higher), 250MB RAM

If you're looking for a quick round of "Cube" claustrophobia in full HD resolution, with some nasty traps for you to get caught in, then this game is certainly for you.

Here's a video from YouTube channel "Deathstar" (2023-05-03):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLQWt5nwOG0

Go to the game's itch.io website for more information and download:

https://8080.itch.io/cubeamiga

Additional sources:
http://amiga-news.de/de/news/AN-2023-04-00074-DE.html

Connect v1.4

"Connect" is a puzzle game that dates back to 2022, and has received updates, bringing it to version 1.4 in August 2023. Graphics are minimal, but it looks good and functional, and if you have a 1MB Amiga you get some music - but this is all about puzzling, gameplay has priority over eye-candy. "Connect" has several different playing modes, in all of which the players have to properly connect microchips, and you can even print out playfields (remember paper?) to solve them with a pen. That's a really nice feature - no mobile Amiga? Just print the game!

Here's an instructional video from "LogicalByte" YouTube channel (2023-03-25)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RYtbNw1B88

Go to the game's itch.io website for more information and download:

https://logicalbyte.itch.io/connect

Additional sources:
http://amiga-news.de/de/news/AN-2022-10-00054-DE.html
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=112108
http://amiga-news.de/de/news/AN-2023-04-00116-DE.html

CyberPunks 2 release

This is an important (albeit late) update to our previous report about "CyberPunks 2". For a short period of time, it seemed as if the game had somehow been put on hold, or something, but reality couldn't be further from that: 

In May 2023, Mutation Software released "CyberPunks 2" commercially.

Very good. :-)

Here's a video from Mutation Software's YouTube channel "AmigaDweeb" (2023-03-21)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeC2zzaAkdw

Go to Mutation Software's website for more information and purchase:

https://softwareamusements.com/MutationSoftware/index.html

Additional sources:
http://amiga-news.de/de/news/AN-2023-05-00019-DE.html

 

Space Cavern Blaster

Finally for today, and also released in May 2023, we have "Space Cavern Blaster" by dotmos. It's a fun little jump'n'collect platformer, and it is multi-platform, namely it's available for Amiga, Atari ST, C64, DOS and Sega Megadrive.

Being a multi-platform release, "Space Cavern Blaster" doesn't even attempt to do fancy tricks with the Amiga's Copper and Blitter hardware, so don't expect spectacular effects a la "Turrican" or "Reshoot" - but it's nonetheless a nicely looking, slightly quirky, well playable, and certainly enjoyable new game.

Here's a video from YouTube channel The Retro Game Planet (2023-05-27):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThWeT8z1Jb4

Go to the game's itch.io pages for more information:

https://dotmos.itch.io/space-cavern-blaster

Additional sources:
https://www.indieretronews.com/2023/05/space-cavern-blaster-highly-challenging.html
http://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2023-05-00036-EN.html

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Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for "Games galore #42"!

Check out "Games galore" main page with all articles -
click here!

* * *

Support Amiga game development! Buy a game!

Software updates (2024-03-14)

A round of notifications about updates to well-known and widely used software titles, that popped up over the last nine months - just in case you missed something.

AmiSSL 5.14

At the end of Jan. 2024, the latest version of network encryption package AmiSSL was uploaded to aminet.

http://aminet.net/search?query=amissl

https://github.com/jens-maus/amissl/

ANAIIS

USB stack ANAIIS' version 1.24 was uploaded to aminet in Feb. 2024.

http://aminet.net/package/driver/other/anaiis

 

Denise 2.1 and 2.2

In Sep. 2023, C64 and - since version 2.0 - Amiga 500/1000 emulator "Denise" got updated to version 2.1, and in Dec. to version 2.2, adding RTC emulation, improvements in accuracy, speed, file handling, and GUI usability, improved video drivers, screen rotation, and more.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/deniseemu/

http://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2023-09-00072-EN.html

E-VO 3.7

In March 2024, Amiga E compiler E-VO version 3.7 was released, fixing many bugs.

https://github.com/dmcoles/EVO/releases

http://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2024-03-00029-EN.html

FlashFloppy 3.42

In Jan. 2024, floppy-emulator firmware FlashFloppy was updated to version 3.42. As with previous version 3.41, released around July 2023, it contains mostly minor improvements.

https://github.com/keirf/flashfloppy

http://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2024-01-00047-EN.html

G-Copy

Arne Urbaniak's Amiga-disk-on-PC copy program "G-Copy" was updated to v0.5 in March 2024. "G-Copy" supports Greaseweazle, ADF-Drive, and DrawBridge floppy controllers.

amiga-news' article provides a download link:

http://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2024-03-00057-EN.html

IBrowse 3.0a

Wow, veteran Amiga webbrowser IBrowse has made a major version leap in Nov. 2023, and received an update in Dec. 2023. AmiSSL 5.12 is now required for secure connections, program stability has been improved, a bug in webpage rendering was fixed, and there are a couple of other enhancements. 

https://www.ibrowse-dev.net

icon.library / IconLib

icon.library replacement "IconLib" got updated in June and Dec. 2023, bringing it to version 46.4.581. The updates contain some bugfixes/workarounds for better compatibility, and an icon-to-PNG conversion script for ImageConverter.

https://aminet.net/package/util/libs/IconLib_46.4

http://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2023-06-00085-EN.html

PED81C

Meanwhile, Simone Bevilacqua has made a couple of updates to his pretty cool pseudo-chunky AGA graphics system "PED81C", the latest having been published on New Year's Day 2024. Skimming over the changelogs, there is a number of improvements regarding the system code, and some 68030/68040/68060 CPU specific optimizations.

https://retream.itch.io/ped81c

P96 and P96Prefs

After P96 version 3.4.0 was released in Aug. 2023, version 3.4.1 followed in Feb. 2024.

New features include EHB screen mode emulation, support for Rainbow II / BSC Framemaster cards, support for Commodore A2410 cards, new drivers for GBA-PII++ and VA2000 cards, and updates to Picasso IV and Draco Altais card drivers.

P96Prefs also got updated, the latest version being 47.15.1, which was uploaded to aminet in Jan. 2024.

https://icomp.de/shop-icomp/de/newsreader/items/p96-v3-4-1-herausgegeben.html

http://aminet.net/package/driver/video/P96Prefs

WBDock2

WBDock2 (for AmigaOS 3.1 - not to be confused with "WBDock" for AmigaOS 1.3) was updated a couple of times in July 2023, the latest version being 2.907. Changes include a different background configuration behaviour, slight change in autohide behaviour, auto-refresh when changing WBPattern, a typo fix, and an experimental "seperator" app.

https://thomas-rapp.hier-im-netz.de/amiga/wbdock.html

http://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2023-07-00063-EN.html

WinFellow

In Sept. 2023, after a long period of silence, Amiga emulator WinFellow got updated to version 0.5.9, and shortly after to 0.5.10. The updates fix numerous bugs, contain some improvements in usability, drop Windows XP and Vista support, meaning a later version of Windows is required, and now a native ARM build is included in the release archive.

http://petschau.github.io/WinFellow/

https://www.amigafuture.de/app.php/newsportal/?start=0&ulg=de&news_id=41173

Bars&Pipes goes AROS

Outstanding news for Amiga musicians: Professional music program Bars&Pipes has been ported to AROS!

Bars&Pipes is a professional grade MIDI music composition program that was originally developed by Blue Ribbon Soundworks in the 1990s. It supports Amiga audio via AHI and plugins (called "tools" in Bars&Pipes).

Users might have wondered if there's a future path for music creation with Amiga and Bars&Pipes - now we know. Alfred Faust, who had officially taken over development from Blue Ribbon Soundworks many years ago, has finished his port of Bars&Pipes to AROS, AmigaOS' portable (m68k, x86, ARM, ...) sibling. This was possible after AROS chief developer Franck Charlet updated AROS' camd.library (Commodore Amiga MIDI driver library) to work with camdusbmidi.class of AROS' USB stack (Poseidon). 

Which means that not only does Bars&Pipes now run on AROS, securing future use, and giving access to massive CPU and hardware resources to create sound, but also that Amiga/AROS music software using camd.library can now access USB MIDI devices!

Bars&Pipes Pro 2.5b from 1994 on AmigaOS

That's very good news indeed - big Thank You to Alfred Faust, Franck Charlet, and everyone else. Bars&Pipes has the potential to become AROS' first "killer application".

Alfred Faust homepage with Bars&Pipes, SuperJAM, and more music software:

http://bnp.hansfaust.de

amiga-news.de news article:

http://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2024-03-00051-EN.html