More breaking news of Amiga gaming: Spectacular low-end first person shooter "Grind", formerly known as "Dread", just got a new demo release.
With a new name and new developer team, "Grind" is the overhauled and polished successor of "Dread", and now we can see (part of) what has been happening in the meantime. A new demo version of "Grind" just got released, and the results are stunning. It's currently only available for patreon supporters - but thanks to YouTube and famous retro gaming channel Saberman RetroNews we can watch a video and enjoy the outstanding diesel-punk look of playable demo level "Darkenward East".
Finally we get some news about hardcore shoot-em-up "Reshoot Proxima 3".
And it's great news. The long awaited sequel to "Reshoot R" (and "Reshoot") is ready for launch - "Spieleschreiber" Richard Loewenstein and team have just put a new trailer video on their YouTube channel:
A pretty spectacular Breakout type of game for AmigaOS4.
On the occasion of a nearing release of the A1222 Tabor mainboard, Daytona675x (of "Souverän Soccer" fame) is reworking some his creations, among which is "VoxelNoid". It's a wild variation of the classic Breakout idea, complete with 3D, flamethrower, and pumping music. Being a next-gen-Amiga game, the visual quality and number of objects moving on screen exceeds pretty much anything seen on classic Amigas. "VoxelNoid" has a lot of action, but it is done with simplicity and a tad of elegance. Great stuff!
Here's a video from the author's YouTube channel Dän Bänän (2023-08-04):
More arcade ports, a fun snake game, a game for the little ones, and a harddisc load of mini-games/demos.
"BreakThru" work-in-progress
1986 arcade game "BreakThru" was released for 8-bit computers back in the day, and some modern platforms more recently, so far - and is about to become available for the Amiga, too. It's a side-scrolling shoot-em-up somehow typical for its time - which means it's also an arcade classic. The Amiga version is still work-in-progress, but it already looks pretty much 100% like the original version.
Final system requirements haven't been set, currently the game runs on all Amigas with 1MB, with the author hinting at maybe slightly higher CPU demands as development progresses.
1982 vertically scrolling shoot-em-up "Xevious" is another arcade classic (albeit far more successful than the aforementioned "BreakThru"), and a favorite of many retro gamers. It never got officially ported to the Amiga, but thanks to the efforts of developers tcdev, jotd, and no9, who carefully recreated the game's code and music, we can now play it in perfect arcade quality on our Amiga machines. This remake also includes "Super Xevious", the sequel to the original game.
"AmiSnakes" is a simple, fun parallax scrolling snake game that was released around April 2023. If you've ever played a snake game, you'll immediately feel at home here. Even if you've never played a snake game before you'll probably immediately feel at home here. All you have to do is eat pills, and grow. Isn't that great? Yes, it is, but with great length comes great responsibility.
So, long story short: The game has neat graphics, and some nice music, and, well, it's a fun snake game, check it out!
Additional sources: https://www.ppa.pl/forum/strefa-tworcow/45464/amisnakes (Polish forum thread)
Bertie’s Animal Kingdom
In
Feb. 2023, a game that wasn't became a game that is: "Bertie's Animal
Kingdom" is a very nice looking educational game for kids that was kinda
released about 20 years ago, but got washed away in the shrinking,
dissolving Amiga market of the time. Now it has been rediscovered and
re-released (for free).
It's a quiz game, in which you have to guess animal names. Obviously it's quite an easy game for grown ups, but with its nice sounds and beautiful hand drawn graphics "Bertie's Animal Kingdom" is a pleasant experience for all players.
Towards
the end of 2022, developer team "Electric Black Sheep" let us take a
peek behind the scenes of game development, opening up their "attic" by
releasing a number of proof-of-concept / tech-demo / mini-game
productions, including titles such as "Chopter", "Harvest", "Star Dust
Wars 2", "Walker", "Starship Troopers", and a couple more. All of them
have some pretty spectacular graphics, most are also playable and have
sound. It'll be very nice to see how the ideas and techniques used in these demos show up in future "Electric Black Sheep" projects.
Platformers, arcade ports, shoot-em-ups - and a chaotic multiplayer game for up to six human players!
Minky
In October 2022, full version 1.0 of "Minky", a seriously cute looking platformer game, was released. By December 2022, version 1.4 was released, with a couple of bugfixes and enhancements, e.g. you can now select joystick-up or 2nd-button for jumping.
"Minky" plays a bit slower than for example "Mario Bros.", has some nice music, and most of all looks just gorgeous. Anyone who can resist Minky's big, slow blinking eyes, must be a totally heartless person.
The game requires an Amiga 500 with 1MB or better, and can be purchased from as little as 1.99EUR (see link below).
Here's a video from YouTube channel Screen Shooters (2022-11-20):
In Nov. 2022, developer team "Electric Black Sheep" released their proof-of-concept mini-game "None Of Us", which is a top-view scrolling shoot-em-up with a spectacular headlamp field-of-vision feature. So according to the developers it's not meant to be a full-featured game, but it's a highly attractive release nonetheless, reminiscent of "Alien Breed" and arcade shooters like "Commando". And it'll be interesting to see how Electric Black Sheep will refine their field-of-vision technique with the experience gained from this project, for a possible future "full" game.
"Flying Shark" is a 1987 arcade shoot-em-up that was ported to the Amiga in 1988 by Firebird. Developer Magnus T has been working on a remake since about March 2022, and the latest development update video was released on his YouTube channel in May 2023.
The new Amiga "Flying Shark" is currently a 5-level demo that runs on Amiga 500 with 1MB RAM, and is unavailable for the public. But if you're really interested and do a little bit of research, you can find an earlier demo release. (Hint: Try "Additional Sources" below.)
Here's the latest "FlyingShark" video from Magnus T's YouTube channel (2023-05-23):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkeGg9aV1IQ
An updated, downloadable demo can surely be expected soon!
...is a cute, chaotic, and somehow mean action game for up to six human players simultaneously, plus computer controlled enemies. The goal is to be the last (wo)man standing in a fight to push each other off the "arena" platform. All Player characters and NPCs look the same, the eponymous arena shrinks as you play, and if the opponent you try to push away steps aside, there's a good chance you might fall into the abyss yourself.
That certainly sounds like a ton of chaos, and an equal amount of fun! "Chaos Arena" was releases in Nov. 2022, and runs on Amiga computers with 1MB RAM and Kickstart 1.3 (and probably higher). Four human players can join the chaos on joysticks (via "four-player" parallelport adapter), and two on keyboard.
Here's a video from YouTube channel OSDane (2023-05-13):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkLz-4pbroM
Go to the game's itch.io page for more information and download:
In February 2023 the final version of this fantastic looking adventure platformer was released. You can get it from the game's itch.io page (see link below) - and even name your own price! (If you like the game, make sure to support the author with a couple of dollars/euros.)
"Denise" is a new Amiga (and C64) emulator for Windows, MacOS, and Linux. And it's surprisingly good!
Development of "Denise" seems to date back to around 2017, when it started as a Commodore 64 emulator. In March 2023 author PiCiJi released version 2.0, which adds Amiga 500 and 1000 emulation. Running Fedora Linux, I gave it a quick try.
Apart from downloading and extracting the archive, no program installation was required. Just double-clicking "Denise" program icon, and selecting Kickstart ROM file and ADF in the preferences, I was able to nicely play a round of "Tinyus", with sound, and without any glitches or performance issues (i7-4790T, 2.7GHz).
Double-click icon, select Kickstart ROM, select ADF, and play. Nice!
"Denise" has a little bit of history, which certainly helps when a new
emulated platform is created. Preference and menus need a little more work (localization, graphics), but nothing's missing, and everything (still) looks very clearly structured with the added Amiga-related items. (Most?) changes to preferences take effect immediately.
When playing "Tinyus", I had to make a little change to the input
configuration: "Tinyus" needs the Space-bar key, which is occupied by
Joystick-Fire-Button per default. Assigning a new key just took a couple
of seconds without reading instructions. Perfect.
"Denise" preferences: C64 and Amiga cores
"Denise" feels as if it has been designed with a lot of modularity in mind. For example it looks as if the (emulated)
video output section from the existing C64 emulation is being used for
Amiga video, too - which totally makes sense, as both machines generate
quite similar video signals. And there is a "core selection" setting - future new cores can probably be expected.
More "Denise" preferences
Emulation performance was perfect with "Tinyus", which is also reflected by SysInfo's speed test results: "Denise" runs cycle-exact. (No further performance tests were done by me at the current point in time.)
SysInfo: That looks pretty cycle-accurate.
To round it up, here's a shot of "Denise"'s C64 emulation running "Destroyer", and the C64 settings window.
"Denise" C64 emulation and preferences
It's still a bit rough around the edges, and a bit limited, but, wow, "Denise" is a fantastic new Amiga 500 and 1000 emulator! And you get a great C64 emulator along the way! Try it, it's great!
You can download "Denise" from its sourceforge website
"Red 41 The Silent Death" by Digital Warp is an unfinished game that only got a preview back in 1993. Roughly thirty years later, then-developer-team-member Daniele Pomposelli has dug out the latest available version from his private archives.
Although incomplete - some fundamental game mechanics are missing in this alpha-version - it's a fantastic looking jump-and-run-and-gun game, somehow reminiscent of Turrican (of course) and maybe Breathless (if it had 2D side-view)?
"LUMA" is an easy to learn, but increasingly challenging puzzle game. If you like this sort of game, this one will get you addicted immediately. It's a port of a C64 game by Shallan, in which you have to direct beams of light through tiled playfields containing obstacles.
A nice little tune is playing along as you push mirrors and the lights' power supplies around the playfield, graphics and sound are a nice Amiga-ish rendition of the original C64 game design, and somewhere around level 30 and up solving puzzles becomes genuinely hard brain-work. Very good!
"Cybernoid" is a 1987 Hewson multi-screen shoot-em-up game that was released for many 8-bit platforms, Atari ST, and Amiga. "Cecconoid" is a 2019 game heavily inspired by "Cybernoid", available for Switch/Android/iOS/Windows/Linux, and should be ready for release on the Amiga quite soon!
According to the information available, it requires an Amiga with 1MB of RAM, will be distributed by Thalamus Digital, and will have a physical, boxed release.
Yeah, "Cecconoid" looks and sounds really nice, with its minimalist visual approach, detailed and dynamic mechanics, lots of action, and cool electro soundtrack. But not only that: another mini-arcade-game called "Eugatron" is included!
Certainly among the most spectacular news for Amiga gamers during the last couple of years was this new Doom-clone game called "Dread" that runs (well) on an unexpanded 7MHz Amiga 500.
Well, it still does - but behind the scenes, around Oct. 2022, things have changed a little bit, with a new name for the upcoming game: Grind!
"Dread" will be continued as a non-commercial project by KK/Altair, while "Grind" is set to become a full, patreon-backed game developed by John Tsakiris.
"Aquabyss" is a trading simulation set in the 19th century. It was released in Oct. 2022 by Aged Code, and is continuously being worked on.
Tons of beautiful graphics make this game a joy to watch, and you'll need plenty of time to fully explore it. "Aquabyss" requires 2MB ChipRAM, 8MB FastRAM and 15MB of harddisc space, but a faster CPU is recommended. It is playable without internet connection, but if available, updates can be received, and high-scores can be shared via game server.
