It doesn't happen too often that one stumbles [pun!] upon Amiga material from 1987, and is genuinely surprised. "Dance of the Stumblers" is a staggeringly beautiful, dynamic Amiga-generated animation that just has to be seen.
According to the video's description/comments, Mr. Segal (no, not the similarly named actor), award-winning animator and filmmaker, created this animation with Aegis Animator on an Amiga 1000, using cues that he had written down from the music track beforehand. Due to high demands on the hardware, playback was slow, so it was set to 1 frame per second, and photographed at the same rate with an animation camera. (See links below for more information.)
The result is an amazing example of Amiga creativity!
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.
Also in February, version 3.5.091 of web browser "AWeb" was recompiled with the (then) latest (compare below) version of AmiSSL for improved https support.
In May 2023, Thomas Wenzel released a new version of his software bundle for the Prelude sound card, and fixed a number of bugs in AmigaAMP, which is now at version 3.34.
Tons of new developments in Amiga gaming land over the last couple of months - here's the next round.
Temptations
"Temptations" is an Amiga 1200/CD32 remake of an 1988 MSX game of the same name. It's a multi-screen platformer similar to "The Abu Simbel Profanation": You have to guide your game character safely through various hazards like moving platforms, spiky obstacles, or dangerous animals. The game looks very nice indeed, it has some truly epic sound effects, and it appears to be reasonably hard to play, with some potential for frustration. Very tempting!
"Atris" is a Tetris clone for your big-screen Amiga. It looks super polished with its hi-res, hi-color graphics, and some beautiful piano music is playing along as you stack tetromino upon tetromino. Beauty comes at a price, and in this case you need a reasonably upgraded Amiga: the game requires AmigaOS3.x, AHI, RTG (800x600 16-bit or better), 35MB of free RAM, and a fast CPU (100MIPS or better).
Here's a video from YouTube channel Deathstar (2022-09-11):
Do you have any idea how many frogs die in car accidents each year? I don't - but I'm imagining thousands, maybe millions. On top of that some are eaten by crocodiles and snakes, they drown, or simply fall off the edge of the screen. Horrible.
Enter "Croaker". Generations of frogs have been saved in "Frogger" since 1981, and generations will be saved in "Croaker" from 2022 on.
By all means go to AmiNet, download "Croaker", play it, and save frog lives!
Which game would Pac-Man play if he had an Amiga? Probably "Emotiworld". And it makes a lot of sense: We don't know about emoticons' typical diet, but the visual similarities are striking. They look like Pac-Man's grandchildren.
"Emotiworld" has similarities with the classic arcade game of "Pac-Man", but it's certainly not a clone. In each of its levels, you have to collect a lot of heart-emoticons, and avoid running into evil emoticons like ghosts and angry faces. Doesn't that sound like a nice round of not-too-complicated entertainment?
Roughly a year ago an early work-in-progress demo of "Invanoid" was released - and the game is precisely what its title says: A mixture of arcade classics "(Space) Invaders" and "Arkanoid". The idea is nothing short of brilliant, and we're eagerly awaiting further news!
As always, lots of stuff happening: fantasy dungeons galore, a literally "classic" platformer, and, yes, a new 3D racing game!
Riamel Black Prophecy
A game-that-wasn't turned into a game-that-is: "Riamel Black Prophecy" is an iso-3D dungeon-crawler and role-playing-game from around 1994, and the sequel to "Lords of Time". Legend has it that a couple of copies of the full game might have been sold, but it was basically considered unreleased. Some time around 2018 efforts were started (see links below if you wanna read the full story) to find and restore "Riamel Black Prophecy" - and in 2022 it was finally made publicly available (again).
Well, "Lords of Time" was a hit and still has some following, so "Riamel Black Propehcy" is a must for fantasy RPG fans!
The game requires 1.5 MB RAM, 512 KB of which must be
ChipRAM, and two floppy drives or a hard drive.
Ah, very good: A new 3D-racing game! "Hyper Runner" by Raster Wizards (creators of Barbarian+) is under development, with occasional preview videos being released. It's obviously far from finished, but the graphics look fast and beautiful, with a couple of nice touches showing great attention to detail: the track color gradient gives a nice illusion of depth and merges near perfectly into the background imagery, ship engines gradually turn on and off, z-scaling of graphics looks pretty much perspective-correct, female speech samples, ... - yeah, an all-round very good looking package with some proper house music.
This Gauntlet-style arcade game popped up in May 2022. In "Dungeoneer Turbo" you control a weirdly cute looking green PacMan-ish character who encounters all kinds of otherworldly creatures on his quest to make it through the dungeons.
The graphics look quite simple, but effective, and it appears to be quite a fast paced, smoothly playable game - perfect for many quick and addictive sessions of top-view dungeoneering action.
This is a platformer created by Amigamers that clearly takes strong inspiration from early 20th century cartoons such as Felix the Cat or early Mickey Mouse.
So Junior must climb and jump and run and collect, dodge rats and other charming characters, and make his way through numerous levels. The graphics are cartoonish, the game doesn't look too easy to play, there's a nice honky-tonk piano tune playing along, and (almost) everything is presented in old-film sepia color tones - very good!
The game requires an Amiga with 1MB RAM and Kickstart 2.1 or higher.
Dungeon crawling is popular among Amiga gamers, and "The Cthulu Project" is an upcoming new dungeon crawler game by Captain DarkN3mo. Cool.
No release date has been set yet, as the game is obviously still under development (see video below) - but we can already see all the ingredients required for a nice round of classic underground crawling: 3d graphics, 4-way step movement, compass and map, fantasy sci-fi/horror theme, ... and on top of that it's friggin' Cthulu him(them?)self!
We've reported about this game before, and for a short period of time a new preview video was available on YouTube channel "AmigaDweeb" (@MutationSoftware). It was published on Dec. 10th 2022, but has been removed.
AmigaOS is undoubtedly alive, as proven by Hyperion Entertainment and AmigaOS developer team, who have just released another update.
In a nutshell, this update brings improvements and fixes to IconEdit, ShowConfig, TextEdit, RAM disk, several gadgets (listbrowser, sketchboard, layout), window.class, boards.library, and a couple of other things.
Check out Hyperion's press release for full information and download:
Over the last decades I've tried countless different setups in order to properly capture the Amiga's video output. Pretty much all of them were unsatisfactory, or just way too expensive (think A4000 plus V-Lab Motion or PAR). Old PC analogue capture cards give quite good results, but device drivers and PCI slots for these are getting really rare. So - finally! - I've decided to drop my attempts with the Composite video connection, and build an S-Video adapter for the Amiga.
Composite video merges all video information into one wire, so its signal quality is somehow limited by design. Composite video is easily available on all Amigas (built-in, or via A520 TV Modulator), but the real disappointment happens when you see this signal recorded with some average digitizing equipment. Weak colors, red all over the place, blurred, misaligned - the results are hardly enjoyable.
The Amiga provides separate red/green/blue component signals on its DSUB23 video output, which many people (including me) use with a RGB-to-SCART cable. Such a cable gives great picture quality, but only if the receiving device a) has a SCART input connector, and b) uses the separate color components.
Among my video capturing attempts was a Terratec USB box with a SCART connector, which looked great from the outside. But it turned out it doesn't use color components, only the Composite signal provided on one of the other SCART connector pins. Blurred, washed out, ...again. Sigh.
S-Video, aka Y/C, uses two wires: brightness (Y, gamma, luma, luminance), and color (C, chroma, chrominance). That doesn't sound like much on first sight (hear), but S-VHS tape recorders featuring S-Video were super expensive back in the day, and most modern analog video capture devices, including the cheap ones, have a S-Video input. So at least some improvement of picture quality can be expected just from the different specifications, and maybe from a different signal path inside the capture device.
The design of the circuit looks straightforward, it uses a AD724 video chip, and it adds another Composite video output which may come in handy some day. Nice, let's start building!
The DSUB23 video connector was created from a DSUB25 one, and the SMD video encoder chip needs a little "daughterboard" adding "human-readable" soldering pads (holes).
Test-ready build of S-Video adapter
Oops, something went wrong...
First testrun: There's clearly something wrong here. This is what you get when you use a PAL crystal (4.433619MHz), but still have the AD724 set to NTSC output by connecting +5V to STND (pin 1), as shown in the (NTSC) schematics. To switch the chip to PAL video mode, STND must be connected to ground. (As noted in the bottom section / "2017-04-03 UPDATE" of the article at Everything Amiga.)
Slightly better soldering, and added composite video out
It took me a couple of attempts to get a working "daughterboard" with the AD724. Maybe the small green PCBs are of inferior quality. Or maybe just my soldering skills are, and I fried something a little too long.
Here are some pictures of the results, with RGB-to-SCART and Amiga 1200's built-in composite video for comparison.
RGB-to-SCART
A1200 built-in Composite
Composite (via S-Video adapter)
S-Video, Hi-Res 640x256
S-Video, Hi-Res laced 640x512
S-Video, Super Hi-Res laced 1280x512
Wow, it's pretty much as good as RGB-to-SCART! I certainly didn't expect that much of an improvement. (And I never knew "Palette" prefs shows up in different shapes depending on screen size. Nice.)
A very cheap USB video capture device
And here's a frame of S-Video captured with a 15EUR USB dongle capture device:
Screenshot of Amiga S-Video capture on Linux computer
Wow, that's... pretty good! Ohyeah, I can use that! :-D
To give the thing some protection, esp. when plugging/unplugging it, a simple housing was quickly created. It's a bit flimsy, and not particularly beautiful, but it'll do for now.
With this successful proof-of-concept I'll probably build another adapter, with better layout, less wires, and a sturdy, more precise case. Also maybe some shielding will further improve picture quality.
Current "final" build state, with "modular" video chip board
Awesome! It works, is usable, and I'm totally surprised by the amazing capture quality. I expected either total failure, or a just a slight improvement, due to cheap, inferior capture device. But it turns out S-Video makes all the difference, two wires are obviously far superior to just one.
Happy New Year! The AMIGA alive Web Directory got updated with 57 new links and a round of corrections - now 529 websites listed.
As always, if you're looking for something specific, make sure to check the "Misc / Mixed" section, as some websites cover multiple different subjects, e.g. software authors may have created very different applications. And/or try your browser's text-search functions to find keywords like application names, authors, game titles, etc.
Please leave a comment if you spot errors, broken links, or would like to see a (your?) website listed.
