AMIGA alive

Saturday, December 26, 2020

Merry Christmas everyone!

Stay healthy, and have a peaceful time.

Xmas Lemmings, 1991

Merry Christmas!

Wednesday, December 16, 2020

Games galore #14: Jab Jum, Jump Besi Jump, Duckstroma, Super Pumpkin Bros

An issue full of platform games, probably Amiga game developers' favourite genre, and the true Amiga gamer's bread-and-butter, right after his preferred joystick model. Let's go!

Jab Jum

Unfinished jump'n'run game "Jab Jum", along with it's sourcecode written in AMOS, was rediscovered by English Amiga Board user "jarre" in October 2020. With a little bit of extra work some downloadable files were created (see links/sources below), so now the public can enjoy this previously lost creation.

"Jab Jum" is reminiscent of "Great Giana Sisters" and the likes, but being an unfinished AMOS game this is of course a bit of a stretch. It looks cute and fun nontheless, and maybe if some enthusiastic coder is interested in investing some time to iron out a couple of remaining issues and maybe add more levels to the game this could be a great new (re-)release.

To run "Jab Jum", an OCS Amiga with Kickstart 1.3 and 1MB RAM is required.

Watch a demo video of unfinished "Jab Jum" here (2020-10-27):

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

Download the playable 1996 demo of "Jab Jum" from...

https://mega.nz/file/voNxxSBa#00WIB33P3ldQfYPjYDNNO8oMqbqRifp5ds5SYnmkT8o

Additional sources:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=104454
http://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2020-10-00063-EN.html
http://www.indieretronews.com/2020/10/jab-jum-blast-and-run-unreleased-amiga.html

Jump Besi Jump

This is as platform as platformers can be. In fact it's all about the platform. The game is simply over if you don't hit the platform. It doesn't get any more platform than this.

So in the game you are this little white dog, probably called "Besi", that uses an Amiga boingball to bounce from platform to platform, climbing ever higher into the clouds. Are you already addicted? Yeah, it sounds a bit like "Flappy Bird", only vertically, and with bouncing. But it has more to offer: some platforms are moving, you can collect stars, you can actually finish a level, and there's an occasional bird coming along, making your climbing and bouncing life a little harder, or maybe even easier.

Nice and simple graphics, with vertical three layer parallax scrolling and what appears to be a copper-shaded background, plus a nice in-game soundtrack - "Jump Besi Jump" has great potential to keep you glued to the screen for prolonged periods of time.

The game requires an Amiga 500 with 1MB RAM.

Here's a video of "Jump Besi Jump" (2020-10-29):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1k-pkXcXSs

You can download "Jump Besi Jump" from AmiNet:

http://aminet.net/package/game/misc/JumpBesiJump

Duckstroma, work-in-progress

How many games do you know that give you the ability to lay an egg? And take you back to the year 1985? Enter the duckmension of "Duckstroma", yet another platform game, previously released for ZX Spectrum and MSX computers, now in development for Amiga and NES systems.

You play Aura (a duck) and your goal is to deliver a couple of - presumably floppy - discs to some client. Along the way you have to get rid of enemies by jumping on top of them, and lay eggs which can be used to reach higher ground. Certainly a game every Amiga jump'n'run fan will appreciate, as maybe will the average passionate KFC customer.

"Duckstroma", developed by UltraNarwhal, works on any Amiga with 1MB of RAM, and is planned to be available in 2021.

Duckstroma - Amiga - WIP 2 (2020-11-07)

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

Keep an eye on the game's website for the upcoming Amiga (and NES) version:

https://narwhal.itch.io/duckstroma

Additional sources:
https://narwhal.itch.io/duckstroma/devlog/195886/footage-of-wip-amiga-version
http://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2020-11-00023-EN.html

Super Pumpkin Bros, alpha version

"Super Pumpkin Brothers" is a single screen platform game with some shooting, that obviously takes some inspiration from "Super Methane Bros", or maybe even more from the unreleased "Snow Bros". According to the history books (namely: the internet) the project initially started in 2007, an early preview was released, but then was put on ice, and has only recently been restarted.

Whatever the case, it's a super funny looking game, created by what appears to be a mostly French team of developers. The visual style is very cartoonish, especially the enemies look so dumb and lovable, it makes you wanna pet them, not shoot them. But that won't get you far in the game - better watch the beautiful tutorial sequence of the game, and find out how to turn them into tomatoes.

"Super Pumpkin Brothers" is humorous, fast paced, great looking, and great sounding. Currently there seems to be no dedicated website, and no public download, but from what we can see so far this has cult classic qualities.

Here you can watch a video of "Super Pumpkin Brothers" alpha version (2020-11-11):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ll4v_W_Yuw

Additional sources:
http://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2020-11-00025-EN.html
http://www.indieretronews.com/2020/11/super-pumpkin-bros-exclusive-video.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Bros.

* * *

...and again some bonus gaming news:

"Mini Metal Slug" mockup for Amiga 500

Also some kind of platformer, but with a lot of shooting: based on the Invyya engine, using assets from the GBA version, this conversion-mockup of "Mini Metal Slug" popped up in October 2020. It's not really a playable game - but it looks awesome!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FAQ8AioSJg

* * *

Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for "Games galore #15"!

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

* * *

Support Amiga game development! Buy a game!

Tuesday, December 15, 2020

Games galore #13: Tristam Island, Vegetables Deluxe, Teserae, Wiz - Quest for the Magic Lantern

More new Amiga games! It's always great fun to write these articles, skimming through YouTube videos, news reports and forum posts, discovering new stuff and updates of old stuff. This time we have a text adventure, a puzzler, an arcade classic, and a jumping and running wizard.

Tristam Island

Commercial title "Tristam Island" was announced around the beginning of October 2020, and meanwhile has been fully released. It's a Infocom Z-Machine interpreter text adventure, available for 36 (!) different platforms, including Amiga. Here's a snippet of it's storyline:

"After crashing your plane at sea, you end up drifting to a small island, with not much to survive. You explore, and find out the island was inhabited, years ago. But why did the people leave? And why is there a fence around the white house at the top of the hill?"

Hm, that sounds mysterious. So make sure you have a glass of wine and a bowl of peanuts at hand, and dive into the world of "Tristam Island". According to the author you'll have to solve puzzles and explore lots of different places, in sometimes dark, sometime humorous settings. The game aims to avoid frustrating limitations and weaknesses of early games of the genre, and have a "standard" level of difficulty.

"Tristam Island" can be purchased for 3.99 USD on itch.io, giving you access to all platforms' versions.

Go to the game's website to find out more, and download a demo version:

https://hlabrande.itch.io/tristam-island

Additional sources:
http://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2020-10-00003-EN.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-machine
http://aminet.net/package/game/text/tristam-island-demo

Vegetables Deluxe

Also from early October is Mike Richmond's "Vegetables Deluxe", originally developed for the Commodore 64 in 2019, now available for all Amiga computers.

In this puzzle game you have to match tiles in a kind-of four-in-a-row way using your mousepointer, but there's more to it. More complex game rules, and four different playing modes should keep you occupied for hours and hours. Nice and simple graphics, some visual effects, neat accompanying music and decent sound effects - very good job, this has addictive qualities.

Here's a great review video of "Vegetables Deluxe" (2020-10-07):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNMrR-SQE1E

Go to...

https://mikerichmond.itch.io/vegetables-amiga

...to download - and don't forget to pay for! - "Vegetables Deluxe"

Additional sources:
http://www.indieretronews.com/2020/10/vegetables-deluxe-fabulous-c64-match-3.html
http://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2020-10-00012-EN.html

"Teserae" Tetris clone

Smash hit game Tetris has another clone with "Teserae" for Amiga 500 (and higher). Created as an Atari ST port in the early 1990s, it seems "Teserae" has now been resurrected by Artstate Digital, and re-released. Whatever the case, you know the rules, and as every Tetris clone it's great fun. An arcade classic plus great music and dizzying background visual effects in a pocket sized archive - a must have for the casual gamer.

Here's an old video from the previous Amiga release (2012):

Download the 42 kB zip archive from the author's website on itch.io:
https://hewco64.itch.io/teserae

Additional sources:
https://hewco64.itch.io/
https://www.facebook.com/Hewco64
http://amiga-news.de/de/news/AN-2020-10-00022-DE.html
https://twitter.com/ArtstateDigital

Wiz - Quest for the Magic Lantern

Mutation software boldly returns to the Amiga gaming scene with a bunch of releases, among which is beautiful platformer "Wiz" for AGA Amigas.

"Wiz" is just a joy to watch and listen to, this maybe has to be the cutest platformer of 2020. No big surprises here, little wizard jumps and runs and collects things, and so on - but with it's great looking AGA color palette, loveable characters, lots of little animations, music and sound effects that perfectly fit the atmosphere, and an overall child-friendly approach, it's really a game that does everything right. Great work - buy it!

Created by Adrian Cummings, "Wiz" was released in early November 2020, with a separate CD32 version available.

Promotion video "Wiz - Quest for the Magic Lantern (Amiga AGA)" (2020-10-15):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtbdQ4H3hmI

Go to...

http://mutationsoftware.uk

...to find out more, and purchase the game!

Additional sources:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=102758
http://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2020-10-00026-EN.html
http://www.indieretronews.com/2020/10/wiz-quest-for-magic-lantern-promo-video.html

* * *

...and again some bonus gaming news:

Epic Skidmarks - for webbrowsers

"Skidmarks" and "Super Skidmarks" are Amiga game classics no one should miss. 25 years after the original releases the original developers have revisited the concept, and created "Epic Skidmarks - for webbrowsers!

https://epicskidmarks.com title screen

So now if you're equipped with a modern webbrowser you can enjoy Skidmarks mayhem in high-definition quality, with a massively upgraded physics engine, and internet-multiplayer.

Of course nothing beats the original Amiga-1200-8-player-nullmodem-link experience, but apart from that, "Epic Skidmarks" certainly is every Skidmarks fan's dream come true.

in-game screenshot

Go to...

https://epicskidmarks.com

...and play "Epic Skidmarks" (beta) right now!

You can follow latest "Epic Skidmarks" news via twitter:

https://twitter.com/EpicSkidmarks

* * *

Stay tuned for "Games galore #14"!

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

* * *

Support Amiga game development! Buy a game!

Tuesday, November 10, 2020

Games galore #12: Atarenium Falcon, New Bubble Story, Magica, Super Sprint AGA

Roughly covering July to September 2020's Amiga game developments, in today's issue we have a somehow unusual original game, a couple of remakes of 8-bit and arcade titles, and as a bonus the full release of a classic.

Atarenium Falcon

Around early August "Atarenium Falcon" by Last Minute Creations popped up, as an in-development game demo. Obviously a direct ZX81 port, written in 8086 assembler, under the influence of Iron Maiden. The medium is the message here - it's an Amiga game.

So you're an Amigan, and in this game you kind of have to reclaim stolen coal from yourself to win the game. Doesn't that sound great?

This arcade game looks a bit unusual, yet cute and interesting. With it's quirky backstory - see game's website, link below - you kind of wonder what little surprises it may have in store.

"Atarenium Falcon" was first presented at the Decrunch 2020 in Wroclaw, Poland where it placed 2nd in the GAMEDEV competition. The demo version is still a bit rough around the edges, a final version is announced, but no release date has been set.

You can download the in-development demo from the game's website:
https://lastminutecreations.itch.io/atarenium-falcon

Additional sources:
http://www.indieretronews.com/2020/08/atarenium-falcon-new-amiga-game-demo-by.html

New Bubble Story

The development history of "New Bubble Story" by Alain Treesong, Mike Parent, and musicians mAZE and Ixien, is a bit of a convoluted one - let's just say it's a remake of 1987 multi system game "Bubble Ghost", and Amiga 1200 game "Super Bubble Remix".

Which basically means it's fun! In this arcade action game your goal is to control a ghost, and safely blow a bubble to the exit of some haunted house. Mouse movements control the ghost's screen position, mouse buttons rotate the ghost left and right to get the correct blowing direction.

Presentation screen (from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kZTxy7UtWA )

The upcoming "New Bubble Story" is a rewrite from scratch, with new levels and sprites, old levels improved, animations, lots of music, and probably many more changes. From what we can see and hear so far the game looks and sounds cute and super polished, and with the unusual "analog" mouse-input method on top of it this is pretty certainly going to be a home-arcade smash hit.

The game is in a early stage of development, label "Agima" is planning to release it in 2021, including a physical boxed edition. It's target platform is an Amiga 500 with 512K ChipRAM and 512k FastRAM.

Here's an early gameplay video from July 2020:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-VCqVir-sU

Additional sources:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=102986
http://www.indieretronews.com/2020/07/new-bubble-story-upcoming-amiga-remake.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kZTxy7UtWA

Magica

First released for Amstrad CPC, single-screen arcade platformer "Magica" recently made it's way to the Amiga, thanks to coder Andy Noble. This is another cute looking game, with gameplay similar to "Bubble Bobble".

Stun enemies with your magic, then kick them to stun other enemies, or to create some potion, then collect potions to be able reach the level exit door. Awesome. Good old arcade fun, with a beautiful title screen painting setting the perfect mood for the little wizard and potion sprites you're about to meet. The game requires a standard Amiga 500 to run.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_0qcRu-BB4

You can download "Magica" Amiga from Andy Noble's website:
http://andynoble.co.uk

Additional sources:
https://www.usebox.net/jjm/magica/
http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/games/new-game-magica/
http://www.indieretronews.com/2020/09/magica-rather-lovely-amstrad-game-is.html

Super Sprint AGA development update

Single-screen top-view racer "Super Sprint AGA" is making progress. You've probably played "Super Sprint" for hours on an arcade machine or some 8-bit home computer, an Atari ST, or even an Amiga, and in case you haven't, you should've done so, and do so now - but regardless, in any case you should make sure you keep an eye on the game's upcoming new AGA Amiga implementation.

If you're interested in the development process, you can follow the author's YouTube channel and watch his development update videos. As he says in his latest video (#12): "...it's starting to look like a bit of a game..." - well, this is a bit of an understatement, in fact it is very seriously starting to look like a very good game.

Here's "Super Sprint AGA Development update #12" video on YouTube (2020-10-09):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxF0vGbEJoM

Check out "Super Sprint AGA"'s facebook page at:
https://www.facebook.com/supersprintdrs/

Additional sources:
https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=101722

* * *

....and some bonus gaming news:

Dawn Patrol full version free download

Amiga Future magazine has added the full version of WWI flight simulator "Dawn Patrol" to it's collection of free downloads. The game received very positive reviews back in the day when it was first released. Several archives are available, e.g. ADF images, and WHDLoad installers. "Dawn Patrol" requires an Amiga with 1MB of free RAM.

Go to Amiga Future's games download section to find "Dawn Patrol" full version:
https://www.amigafuture.de/app.php/dlext/index?cat=46

Additional sources:
http://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2020-09-00066-EN.html
http://hol.abime.net/282
http://www.lemonamiga.com/?game_id=1732
https://www.myabandonware.com/game/dawn-patrol-2ah
https://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga/dawn-patrol/

* * *

Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for "Games galore #13"!

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

* * *

Support Amiga game development! Buy a game!

Friday, October 30, 2020

COVID-19 cancels Amiga Meeting 2020 live event, online event planned

As Germany faces it's second wave of Corona virus spread, serious restrictions apply to public gatherings, forcing the "Amiga Meeting" to cancel it's live event, and go online.

From Monday, Nov. 2nd 2020, Germany will be locked down to large extent - but not as much as during the first wave of infections in March/April - for the duration of the month. As a result, the "Amiga Meeting" community event, held since 2000 by the Amiga Club Hamburg and the Amiga Club Schleswig-Holstein, and planned for Nov. 6th to 8th, has been cancelled. According the their website, too few people declared interest to personally attend, given the expected circumstances. As a substitute, an online event at Discord is planned for Saturday, Nov. 7th 2020, 13:00h (CET).

http://www.amigameeting.de/amiga/layout/meeting2019.png

Go to http://www.amigameeting.de for more information!

The online event will be available at: https://discord.com/invite/F7pkkg2

Stay home, stay safe, join online!

Monday, October 26, 2020

New printmag: AMIGA ADDICT - preorder now!

Awesome news from the printed side of things: A new magazine is underway!

Continuing the tradition of great english language Amiga magazines like AMIGA FORMAT, CU Amiga, and others, AMIGA ADDICT is a new printed magazine from the UK.

Or more precisely: not "is", but "will be" if all goes well. For the first issue at least 500 preorders are needed, for the publishers to get an idea of the market, and cover production costs.

Some of the first issue's contents are: PageStream review, RaspberryPi Amiga 600, Cloanto interview, Simon Butler interview, contributions by AmigaBill and Kim Justice, game reviews, and much more. Preview pictures and articles look very promising. It's a full color A4 print, and it seems it's created on Amiga using PageStream. Both printed, and digital download versions will be available.

The new printmag's logo design

This is a great chance to obtain what might be a future historic magazine issue, and support an Amiga startup along the way!

Go to...

http://www.amiga-addict.com

...and preorder the first issue!

Saturday, October 17, 2020

Amiga Art Contest 2020: A tiger and a mouse on a tablet

Having invested some time on getting a graphics tablet running, and equipped with a now 68040@40MHz driven Amiga, the deadline of the Amiga Art Contest 2020 by Douglas from 10 Minute Amiga Retro Cast (10MARC) and Pixel Vixen popped up somewhere, and pretty much from out of nowhere I started painting...

The graphics tablet is a "Lifetec" branded Tevion/Aldi LT 9310, powered by a homegrown floppy-port-PSU, and connected to the Amiga 1200's internal serial port at 19200 baud and 200lpi, using FormAldiHyd driver from AmiNet.

FormAldiHyd requires MUI, which makes it look a bit nicer than if GadToolsBox had been used, and probably saves the author some typing, but ultimately it's an unneccessary dependency. Anyway, FormAldiHyd hooks into AmigsOS's input handler system, thus is more or less application independent.

PersonalPaint 7 was chosen as the paint program - it's quite fast, straightforward, and system friendly. Basically what I wanted is just some software that's able to properly set pixels on screen according to my hand's movements. 640x512 hires interlaced is my preferred screenmode, and you cannot be more Amiga than a 32 color picture - this will be the artwork's geometry.

Work-in-progress, using graphics tablet and mouse

The tablet works! But over hours of painting it turns out you need some strong nerves to keep going despite all the hiccups. Practice makes a huge difference, once you get an intuitive idea about the graphics tablet's dimensions and haptics - both it's overall physical features, and it's drawing area - and the speed the system is able to handle, you can make really good progress, but the tablet becomes unresponsive from time to time, or stutters badly - resulting in interruptions in workflow, and sometimes random dots and lines in the drawing area. (PersonalPaint's multi-undo is very helpful here.) I wasn't able to identify the bottleneck, experimented with FormAldiHyd's settings, New8n1.device as a replacement for AmigaOS's serial port driver, etc. Most times just touching (moving) the mouse would re-enable graphics tablet input, but at some point I kind of gave up and would keep using the mouse for a couple of minutes for painting, then give the tablet another try.

The tablet is still amazing fun to use, and moving a pen is incredibly much faster and smoother than moving a computer mouse with your entire arm. This may affect the results: I ended up using a drawing tool other than pen/airbrush only for the peace symbol, everything else you see in the final result is hand and finger movement. (Ok, maybe the tiger's eye was flooded.)

After three days of occasional painting sessions, I thought from here on it might get worse, so I stopped. When doodling around the first concept that came to my mind was something with a dog - as you can see it turned into a tiger-dog. I had some horror themed ideas, like a Hound of the Baskervilles or so, but then some positive vibe won't do any harm, and the little mouse was created.

'Nuff said - here's the picture:

The final result, as submitted to the Amiga Art Contest 2020

A lot of amazing pictures (and MODs), have been submitted to the Amiga Art Contest 2020, showing there's no shortage of creativity in the community. Tiger and mouse are very proud to be among the contestants. Thanks, 10MARC, Pixel Vixen, and all artists and judges!

Head over to...

https://www.amigaartwork.com

...to see the rest of images!

Watch 10MARC's Amiga Art Contest 2020 presentation and results video (live-streamed on 2020-10-17, 15:00h):