Merry Christmas everyone! So it's christmas, and I thought I'd pull out a couple of things from my harddrive.
You might have noticed this, well, attempt at a platformer that goes by the name of "Wheelchair Hero". I'm working on it on-and-off, but there is actual progress. One of the issues I had postponed was some sort of rudimentary color management, meaning some basic strategy regarding palette use. Another one was to add some strategy elements, so the... game?... doesn't get too boring too quickly. Anyway - here's another work-in-progress screenshot of "Wheelchair Hero", and, yes, it looks as if this will become a game. :-)
Wheelchair Hero with new elevators, NPCs, items, better colors
Also a little bit of work has been done on "reed" texteditor: a little update to the GUI layout, and it now shows actual settings' values.
"reed" on AmigaOS3.9
And while we're at it: When creating a game, why not create two? Or even three? So I started drawing assets for more playable stuff. This next one might be called "Attack on the Beach", and maybe you can make a guess what it's all about from this mockup-picture:
"Attack on the Beach" concept picture
Finally, something that I had on my mind for decades. With all the knowledge gained from hundreds of programming experiments and attempts, I thought it's about time to somehow tackle the challenge. I'm pretty sure everyone gets a "rough" idea what this one might be about from this early title picture. ;-)
"Airborne Trooper" work-in-progress title picture
* * *
Thanks for reading, happy holidays & stay healthy!
Again a good round of really nice stuff this time - an arcade remake, updates to OCS/ECS first person shooter "Citadel", some sort of "re-release" on AmiNet, a modern lightgun game ahead of it's time, and a little bonus for fans of platformers.
Pitfall II: Lost Caverns
Yet another remake of an arcade classic, and yet another game built using the Scorpion engine. In Feb. 2021, an early alpha version of "Pitfall II" for Amiga was released to the public!
Activision's original "Pitfall II" for the Atari 2600 was a real stunner upon release, with its huuuuge playing area, context sensitive music, improved graphics, and more. It was later released by SEGA as an arcade game.
Highly active Amiga game (engine) developer Eric "earok" Hogan is working on this new version of "Pitfall II", which is based on the C64 version, and requires an Amiga 500. A little bit of acceleration (e.g. Amiga 1200) is recommended for smooth performance.
The game is in alpha stage at the moment, but it already very much looks like "Pitfall II"!
1995 game first-person shooter "Cytadela"/"Citadel" - from Poland is undergoing some updates by the original authors.
"Citadel" is certainly one of the better first-person-shooters on the Amiga, and probably the best that runs on OCS/ECS Amigas. It received very good reviews when it was first released.
In March 2021 the original authors annouced some updates to the original game. There are no to little gameplay changes planned, but some fixes and enhancements, like optimizations for faster Amigas, better animations, and things like that.
You can watch a video of "Cytadela"/"Citadel" running on a (emulated) high-spec Amiga on Kane's YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nu-k4-aK8Zk
It looks as if as of now no updates have been made available to the public, so a little more patience is required.
Meanwhile, you can download the original 1995's "Citadel" from Polish Amiga Portal (Polski Portal Amigowy) (Polish and English version available): https://www.ppa.pl/rodzynki/cytadela.html
Just a quick note about "Renegades Deluxe" from 2014, which is a new version of 1995 PD classic "Renegades":
"Renegades Deluxe" has recently been uploaded to AmiNet - which is great, because this beautiful 2-player-split-screen-deathmatch "Alien Breed" clone apparently hasn't been available elsewhere for some time.
Here's a video of "Renegades" and "Renegades Deluxe", including some background information and awesome prototype cover art, from CaptainNow Creations' YouTube channel:
Have you ever held a lightgun in your hands? I bet not everyone did, because most lightguns we know depend on the cathode ray of a CRT (cathode ray tube) TV. Many CRT screens, especially millions of home TVs, have been replaced with LCD flat screen ones over the last 20 years, so lots of lightguns became useless.
But with the help of increased CPU performance, HD video, kickstarter, and indiegogo, the Sinden Lightgun was created, or is still being created - a lightgun that works with LCD displays. Somehow, it wouldn't be long until Amigans picked up such a thing - and here we have it: near the end of Feb. 2021 the first new Amiga lightgun game in a looooooooooong time was shown to the public, Terminator-style shoot-em-up "Bean Vs The Animator"! (You can also play it with a mouse.)
The Sinden Lightgun doesn't seem to be widely available yet, and the game is currenly just an exclusive pre-release (see video below), no release dates or further updates have been published so far. But from what we can see there's some great artwork here, some serious atmosphere and level of difficulty, and a lot of shooting. Plus it's a game you can play with a lightgun, plus it supports a lightgun device so modern it's not even available - yay!
Watch a video of Amiga Bill from "The Guru Meditation" reviewing his exclusive edition of "Bean Vs The Animator" (2021-02-25):
(Out of respect for the author of the game and indieretronews - the game's preview video is set to "unlisted" on YouTube - let's just leave it here with this little note. Click the link for more details and game preview video. By the way, the game looks great.)
* * *
Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for "Games galore #20"!
If you don't remember "Bruce Lee" from the Commodore 64 you shouldn't even be here. If you do, on the other hand, rejoice!
Ok, if you don't remember "Bruce Lee", you're of course still free to rejoice, too: One of theee classic C64 games of all time has been remade as "Tiger Claw", originally for the C64, and is now being commercially released for the Amiga! (And Windows, MacOS, Linux, btw.)
"Bruce Lee" original C64 version title screen (1984)
Developers Lazycow and Saul Cross weren't lazy at all, and have updated their game since 2014 with extra features, a training mode, and even a deathmatch arena. Now they've created ports for the several platforms, including the Amiga (1MB RAM required). Heeeeeee-haw!
"Tiger Claw" Amiga in-game graphics (2018)
The release appears to be just perfect: you can download digital copies from itch.io for all platforms, in several different file formats (.iso, .adf, ...) - but the real fun starts with the awesome physical release: The beautiful box (see image below) contains a bootable, labelled CD-ROM in a jewel case, a floppy label for your private backup copy, stickers, a poster, a 20-page manual, pin-buttons, postcards - man, you even get a shuriken!
"Tiger Claw" box artwork - awesome!
This is a no-brainer, a must-have. "Tiger Claw" is probably the most lovely game release the Amiga has seen since "Frontier - Elite II". The game alone is really great, but the physical packaging is just outstanding. Check the links below (see "Sources") for more information if you're still hesitating.
New games! Amiworx and Amiga68K-Productions have some new stuff waiting for you classic Amiga gaming aficionados.
"Tales of Gorluth" by Amiworx got some sort of sequel by the name of "Heroes of Gorluth". It's an action adventure platformer, and claims to have some interesting NPC interaction, boss battles, lots of action, and high quality graphics and sound. It's available as digital download, and CD-ROM edition, which is limited to 300 copies, and requires a 68020 CPU, ECS/AGA, and 2MB RAM. You can get a glimpse of it's epicness over at:
Finally, "Elfie the Unicorn" is a cute new game for kids by Amiga68K-Productions. It's a Gianna-sisters style jump-and-run game made especially for the developer's daughters, and requires a 14Mhz CPU, ECS/AGA, 2MB and Kickstart 3.0 or higher. "Elfie the Unicorn" is still in production - more testing/balancing, new difficulty levels, and maybe new levels will be done - but you can already download a beta version, and it's free:
Our take on the "Best Amiga games" / "Top 10 Amiga games" subject, from a slightly different point of view, where a Competition Pro joystick is not the only Amiga expansion device allowed, and exceptional technical achievement, sweaty pixel art or perfect overall style may put a game on the list.
Collect boni, earn extra ships, get the hi-score - Quasarius is a (very) classic Space Invaders type shoot-em-up game for Amiga by Raliza software. The graphics are simplistic, but perfectly moody, as is the soundtrack. "Quasarius" was written in BlitzBasic by Rafael Lima, with music provided by "Akira". It should run on any Amiga with at least 512KB RAM and OCS or above. (It has been reported that it doesn't run on Kickstart 1.3, though.)
It's donationware, so consider making a donation if you like the game, encouraging the authors to continue developing for the Amiga. The developer already announced he's like to do a - probably (very) classic, too - side-scrolling beat-em-up game.
Arti has ported "Mini Metal Slug", a "Metal Slug" remake, to AmigaOS3. It's a one-man-army comic-style shoot'em up game, and it demands some serious processing power: 68040 CPU, fast emulator, or Vampire accelerator is required.
The AmigaOS3 version is based on HunoPPC's AmigaOS4 port of the game. HunoPPC has done a lot of other ports, mostly for AmigaOS4, and some for AROS, MorphOS, Linux, MacOS, Windows.
Titles include "World of padman", "Return to Castle Wolfenstein", "OpenBor"
"Xgalaga", "Aliens versus Predator 2000", "Enemy Territory: Legacy", among others.
Classic 1989 Amiga (later MS-DOS and other platforms) game "It came from the desert" by Cinemaware, heavily inspired by 1950s monster movies like "Tarantula", "The giant behemoth", and especially "Them!", gets a new treatment as a feature film production!
The Finnish production is directed by Marko Mäkilaakso ("War of the dead"). The script is written by Mäkilaakso, Trent Haaga, and Hank Woon Jr., and the film stars Mark Arnold, Claudia Trujillo, Vanessa Grasse, Harry Lister Smith, and Alex Mills, among others.
It's currently in post-production, a release date hasn't been announced yet.
Film poster art
The trailer - available on YouTube, see below - looks promising, hopefully we get another fun monster movie gem like "Tremors" (1990).
