Yet another preview of "Grind" - the grown up brother of Amiga 500 Doom-clone "Dread" - just popped up on YouTube.
"Dread" was a super impressive project that spawned full-game-release project "Grind", and it's looking better than ever.
Here's the latest video, that was uploaded just minutes ago to famous retro-gaming channel Saberman RetroNews:
Check out Saberman RetroNews YouTube channel, and make sure you visit IndieRetroNews website for latest retro-gaming news!
An Amiga 500 was spotted in 1989 splatter-comic movie "Robot Ninja" - both on screen, and behind the scenes.
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| 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.
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| 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?
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| 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".
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| 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.
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| Someone is playing a game... |
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| ...on a computer with some extra equipment... |
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| ...that looks very much like an Amiga 500... |
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| ...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.
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| The "Robot Ninja" shown on the computer display - with title bar. |
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| 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?
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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?*
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/
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".
Check out "Grind" homepage at pixelglass.org:
And why not become a patreon supporter?
https://www.patreon.com/Grind_Amiga
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).
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| 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.
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| "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.
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| 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.)
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| 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.
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| "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
https://sourceforge.net/projects/deniseemu/
If you like to read some program code you can visit "Denise"'s git repo:
https://bitbucket.org/piciji/denise/src/master/
Additional sources:
http://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2023-04-00113-EN.html
Creating your first action game from scratch can be quite a challenge, and cause severe frustration. But at some point you begin to see some light at the end of the tunnel - and that's where the real fun part begins.
My experiments in creating something that might become... a game?! ...have reached a stage where (except for sound) pretty much everything is in place: timing, user input, movement, graphics, limits, ...and it seems to work! Stably!
To achieve this within a somewhat tolerable time frame (= this lifetime), some fundamental decisions had to be made:
- few colors
It turns out that Amiga color palette considerations can be very time consuming. To make progress, no attempts were made to max out the possibilities.
- single reference platform support
AGA compatibility has been dropped early on, OS3.x would be nice, but Kickstart 1.x support is a must for this project anyway (for personal reasons), so an Amiga 500 with Kickstart 1.3, OCS, 1MB RAM has become the single target platform. If possible, the... game? ...should fit into 512KB RAM. (256KB would be even better.)
- accept bad performance now, optimize later
This is something I really had to get into my head: It won't be fast! Not yet! Maybe never! I have a tendency to spend a lot of time thinking about loops, variable size, etc. without being sure the entire program architecture will work out. (Compare AA DevLog #0.) So to get a proof-of-concept of where and when things happen, the basic assumption was made that with some fundamental limitations set, the Amiga will somehow be able to handle the load within one, or at least two vertical screen refresh cycles, resulting in a usable frame rate. All other performance- or elegance-of-execution-considerations were dropped.
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| Everything still looks pretty... flat. |
Well, despite my self-imposed rules, I still tried to make some routines scalable, reasonably "elegant" (?), or spent a little bit of time on thinking about speed. It just happens, and is part of the fun.
Having an ugly, but working prototype of the game, a level editor speeds up further development considerably. Creating the editor was comparably easy, as many of the functions required were already there from the game files.
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| Editing an NPC's path/waypoints |
Now background tiles, foreground items, and non-player-characters (NPCs) can be easily added to the level - and as mentioned in the introduction, this put a broad smile on my face a couple of times. It's really fun to invent game mechanics - e.g. a path with waypoints for your NPC - and then be able to immediately see the effects in the game.
Thanks for reading, c u next time!
* * *
The games are: Croins (an Asteroids clone), Hyper Viper, Kangy, Marietto, and arcade sports game Slalom Speciale.
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| Hyper Viper, snake type game in a maze |
Some of the games have previously been released as shareware titles. Now you can download the ADFs from LC-Games' itch.io page, and enjoy all full versions.
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| Kangy, a platformer |
Arcade gaming with neat graphics and sound, and you get the full package, check this out: "Croins" is a well made Asteroids clone with pounding techno music on the title screen, "Hyper Viper" a snake-type game with a funny looking green worm and less pounding but equally enjoyable music, "Kangy" a platformer with cute looking animals and palm trees, "Marietto" is quite a unique blend of several classic game styles and can get pretty hectic, and finally "Slalom Speciale" is an unobtrusive skiing game.
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| Marietto - Pang meets Galaga meets Fury of the Furries |
All included games are decent titles, no technical spectacle here, but pretty straightforward, and very Amiga-ish, arcade gaming. Very nice - Molto grazie, Luca!
Read more, and download "Amiga games pack" from LC-Games' website page:
https://lowcarb.itch.io/amiga-games-pack
Additional sources:
http://amiga-news.de/de/news/AN-2020-11-00060-DE.html
http://www.indieretronews.com/2020/11/an-amiga-games-pack-released-by-luca.html
The individual games are: Doodlebug, Cyberpunks, Tin Toy, Tommy Gun and Castle Kingdoms.
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| Doodlebug, included in the "Mutation Gold Compilation" |
Go to Mutation Software's "Gold Compilation" website page for more information and purchase:
https://softamuse.itch.io/mgc-cd32
Mutation Software has also announced a new game: "Cyberpunks 2" for AGA Amigas, a sequel to top down shooter "Cyberpunks" from 1993 (for OCS/ECS Amigas). "Cyberpunks 2" is said to be for 1 or 2 players, have new levels and new gameplay, and a tentative release date in late 2021.
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| 1993 game "Cyberpunks", sequel announced |
Read more about Mutation Software's releases at:
https://mutationsoftware.uk
Additional sources:
http://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2020-11-00044-EN.html
http://www.indieretronews.com/2020/11/mutation-gold-compilation-and.html
http://hol.abime.net/6231 ("Gold Compilation" original 1998 release)
"Looty v2" for all Amigas with 1MB ChipRAM is an updated version of 1993 public domain title "Looty", inspired by ZX Spectrum game "Booty".
Here you can watch a video of "Looty v2" (2020-11-19):
Read more, and purchase (you can name your own price!) the game at:
https://mixelsoftware.itch.io/looty-v2
Additional sources:
http://www.indieretronews.com/2020/11/looty-v2-amiga-game-inspired-by-classic.html
http://amiga-news.de/de/news/AN-2020-12-00001-DE.html
https://www.amigafuture.de/app.php/newsportal/?ulg=de&news_id=38424
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=104728
Doom never stops. After "Dread" here's another 2020 low-spec Amiga first person shooter, called "Blask". Actually this project seems to have been around for quite a while, mostly under the name of "Alien Enemy: Dangerous", with occasional tech demos popping up - this one is the latest.
Not too much to show here, but this already looks quite enjoyable. Written in AMOS, it has what appears to be pretty smooth 3D graphics, proper graphics and color palette, and this simple, but quite convincing light source effect.
Certainly a welcome addition to the set of first-person shooters available for the Amiga, make sure you stay up to date on this one.
You can watch the latest tech demo of "Blask" on YouTube (2020-11-09):
You can download the demo here:
https://chomikuj.pl/marowu/blaskscr,7450164853.adf
Additional sources:
https://www.ppa.pl/forum/programowanie/36707/alien-enemy-dangerous/14#m702587
http://amiga-news.de/de/news/AN-2020-11-00021-DE.html
http://www.indieretronews.com/2020/11/blask-first-person-shooter-amiga-tech.html
...and again some bonus gaming news:
In November 2020 printmag "Amiga Future" continued their efforts of releasing full Amiga software titles for free with the addition of two highly regarded classics: "action-chess"-type games "Archon" and "Archon 2"!
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| "Archon" from 1985 (Amiga release) |
"Archon" (Greek for "ruler") by Electronic Arts was first released for Atari 8-bit computers in 1983, received rave reviews, and was ported to many other platforms, including Amiga. It's a fast-paced mixture of chess-type strategy, and realtime combat action sequences deciding the outcome of individual attacks.
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| "Archon" combat section |
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| "Archon 2: Adept" from 1988 (Amiga release) |
The games' disk files are available in ADF, IPF (Archon and Archon 2) and WHD (Archon 2 only) format, plus a manual in PDF.
Go to Amiga Future magazine's website to download "Archon" and "Archon 2":
https://www.amigafuture.de/app.php/dlext/search?search_keywords=archon
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!
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):
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
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.
You can download "Jump Besi Jump" from AmiNet:
http://aminet.net/package/game/misc/JumpBesiJump
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.
"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)
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 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.
"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):
...and again some bonus gaming news:
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!
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| The "expanded" memory expansion inside the Amiga 500 |
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| From ~5800 Dhrystones to ~6000 just by firmware update! |
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| No RAM errors, very good! |
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| 33Mhz CPU and 40MHZ FPU - will they run fine at 40MHz? |
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| ~7500 Dhrystones! |
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| TerribleFire 530 with CF card adaptor inside the "Amiga 530" |
Check out "Games galore" main page with all articles - click here!
