Games galore #39: Tapper, Galaxian 500, Freak Out, Settle the World, Boxx games, Megafrog

Happy New Year! Tons of new Amiga games have popped up in 2023, and we're still trying to keep up.

Tapper

Very good, in May 2023 another arcade classic got properly ported to the Amiga: "Tapper" from 1983, which was previously available for many other platforms.

It's a quick and fun game in which your job is to supply your pub's customers with adequate amounts of beer. Some just want a glass full, others need the extra pint, and you never know how many will ask for a drink at the same time. So things might get hectic in this game, and the new port to Amiga is pretty much arcade-perfect.

Here's a video from YouTube channel Saberman RetroNews (2023-05-26):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uf7SMiGiTR8

Check video, and sources below, for more information,
or just click here to download "Tapper":
https://mega.nz/file/C5s2iTqL#lWpWrL2huZUm-ZrzyMB-rJ27YKzGAXsZ0RnQ-6aTDEo

Additional sources:
https://www.amigafuture.de/app.php/newsportal/?start=0&ulg=de&news_id=40945
http://amiga-news.de/de/news/AN-2023-05-00135-DE.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tapper_(video_game)

Galaxian 500

And here's yet another arcade classic: With "Galaxian 500", highly active developer Jean-Francois 'jotd' Fabre adds another member to the awesome series of his "500" ports. "Galaxian" is an advanced variation of "Space Invaders". Just like Jean-Francois' previous works, it looks pretty much identical to the arcade version, and plays as good.

Here's a video from YouTube channel Saberman RetroNews (2023-06-17):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE97fN0RQbs

Go to the game's itch.io website for more information, and download:
https://jotd666.itch.io/galaxian500

Additional sources:
http://amiga-news.de/de/news/AN-2023-05-00139-DE.html
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxian

Freak Out (work-in-progress)

'If "Pong" and "Breakout" had a baby...' - that's how author Michael Kafke describes his creation, and this description is quite accurate. (Not to be confused with the 1993 game of the same name.) Maybe "Freak Out" is closer to "Arkanoid" than to classic "Breakout", and certainly it has more colors than the original "Pong", but that's just the details. The game is still work-in-progress, for example there's very little sound yet, but it looks fine with its clean playfield design and detailed, yet unobtrusive, background imagery. Also it's already playable, and has a nice presentation, so... yeah, very good, (don't) freak out!

Here's a video from Michael Kafke's YouTube channel (2022-07-11):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-DrqzpePa4

 

Settle the World

Around Aug. 2022 developer Christian 'TheoTheoderich' Wiegel announced his turn-based strategy game "Settle the World", and has been working on it since, releasing a number of videos. 

Most obviously, the graphics are stunning. Interestingly, according to the description of a four hour development log video that was released by the author in Nov. 2023, they were created using artificial intelligence. Does this mark the first time AI has been used to create content for an Amiga game? The beautiful imagery in the game intro is accompanied by a tasteful and fitting soundtrack, the user interface looks pleasant and functional. "Settle the World" is already a quality production, and is still under further development, ensuring a very enjoyable experience for Amiga strategists.

The game requires an Amiga with 1MB ChipRAM, 4MB FastRAM, and a hard disk. Some CPU upgrade is recommended.

Here's a video from the author's YouTube channel (2023-02-11):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eK596gjAX4

Go to the game's itch.io pages for more information and download:
https://theotheoderich.itch.io/settle-the-world

Additional sources:
http://amiga-news.de/de/news/AN-2023-07-00078-DE.html
https://amigaportal.de/index.php?threads/settle-the-world.682/

Boxx remake, Boxx 2 remake, Boxx 3 remake, Boxx 4

Get boxxed! The Boxx games are a series of platform games with a nice selection of game mechanics, simple, but cute and effective graphics, and a couple of strategy elements. The average Amigan might get confused by the extraordinary high number of "Boxx" games, but in the end that doesn't matter. What matters is that all "Boxx" games are equally fun to play, and suitable for players of any age. If you like your platformers smooth, and with a little bit of thinking, you'll love the "Boxxes".

Boxx 3 remake, v0.2 beta, Aug. 2023

Boxx remake

https://lemming880.itch.io/boxxremake

http://aminet.net/package/game/jump/Boxx (2015 game)

Boxx 2 remake

https://lemming880.itch.io/boxx2remake

http://aminet.net/package/game/jump/Boxx2 (2015 game) 

Boxx 3 remake

https://lemming880.itch.io/boxx3remake

http://aminet.net/package/game/jump/Boxx3 (2017 game)

Boxx 4 

https://lemming880.itch.io/boxx4

Here's a video of "Boxx 4" from YouTube channel OSDane (2023-07-19):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OPr8iS9w0o

Additional sources:
http://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2023-04-00079-EN.html
http://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2023-09-00043-EN.html
http://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2023-07-00055-EN.html

 

Megafrog (work-in-progress)

Around Nov. 2022, author Friar85 released this nice variation of the classic Frogger arcade game. Have you ever played "Crossy Roads"? Then you have an idea about "Megafrog". In "Megafrog", most things are a little bit bigger than in Frogger, in fact the screen scrolls vertically, meaning you'll need an extra bit of endurance to master the game. Also there are a lot more features than classic Frogger ever had, like crossings, and cars at different speeds.

It's been quite a while since we last heard from the game, but the preview looks smooth and solid. "Megafrog" runs on any Amiga. A little CPU upgrade (14MHz or better) is recommended, and a 2-button joystick is supported.

Here's a video from YouTube channel Saberman RetroNews (2022-11-01):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNVk9HnTx4E

Go to game's itch.io pages for more information and download:
https://friar85.itch.io/megafrog

Additional sources:
http://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2022-11-00018-EN.html
https://www.indieretronews.com/2022/11/megafrog-amiga-work-in-progress-frogger.html

 

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Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for "Games galore #40"!

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

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Support Amiga game development! Buy a game!

Games galore #7: EON, Super Metal Hero, Bagman, Legacy, Tapper, Verge World Icarus Rising

It's been a little while since Games galore #6 - we need to catch up a little, here are more games, and game announcements, from late 2019 and early 2020.

"EON" for AGA Amigas

"EON AGA" is a new Amiga game in development by Goblins / AmigaWave and Wonderboy Bobi (Francois Perez). It's the official port of "EON" for PC computers, created by Wonderboy Bobi in 2014.

In January 2020, a first video of "EON AGA" popped up on YouTube, and it immediately becomes obvious where this is heading. "EON" is a (very) "Shadow of the Beast"-inspired jump-and-run game, and as such it has big shoes to fill when run on an Amiga. "Shadow of the Beast" was a real stunner back in the day, and it still often serves as a demonstration of the original Amiga's graphics capabilities. Now "EON AGA" targets the later AGA-equipped machines, and of course it must not disappoint in the visual department - from what we can see in the videos so far, it easily succeeds, with nicely drawn, detailed graphics, lots of colors, and butter-smooth, fast, multi-layered parallax scrolling. It also already has some intro screens and atmospheric music.

"EON AGA" is still under development, we can expect a lot of improvements. It's main platform are stock Amiga 1200 and CD32 machines, but there have already been successful tests on next-generation/OS4 Amigas.

On June 28th, a new work-in-progress video was published on AmigaWave's YouTube channel ("EON AGA wip 02"):
 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHWA4swXBG4

Visit "EON"'s facebook page for more details and updates:
https://www.facebook.com/eonamiga/

Additional sources:
https://twitter.com/CanalAmigaWave
http://www.indieretronews.com/2020/06/eon-amiga-aga-shadow-of-beat.html
https://www.myabandonware.com/game/eon-dxg (2014 Windows version)

Super Metal Hero

"Super Metal Hero" by TenShu and Michael Gibs is a new platformer-shoot-em-up, to be published by Double Sided Games, with a release planned for Q4 2020. While earlier announcements stated the game would require a 68030 CPU and 4MB of FastRAM (see "Additional sources" below), now Double Sided Games' announcement just mentions a (stock?) Amiga 1200.

https://doublesidedgames.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/super-metal-hero-amiga-5-1024x614.png

"Super Metal Hero" seems to be somehow inspired by "(Mini) Metal Slug", which would partly explain the possible higher hardware requirements, but then this is just speculation, we'll have to wait for a final release to really know what hardware it runs on.

Whatever - it looks great, it sounds great, it moves great, it just oozes "arcade". This is certainly among the most exciting games of 2020.

Watch the latest gameplay teaser video for "Super Metal Hero" (July 29, 2020):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhFgm87kbs8

You can go to Double Sided Games' website and read their full 2020 games line up, including "Super Metal Hero":
https://doublesidedgames.com/announcing-2020-games-line-up/

Additional sources:
http://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2020-02-00072-EN.html

Bagman

"Bagman" is an open-source remake of the 1982 arcade game, for Windows, NintendoDS and: Amiga! According to author Jotd, he's disassembled the original arcade game code to get the game mechanics (near) perfectly right.

"Bagman" original arcade game flyer
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e4/Bagman_arcade_flyer.png

There are two separate Amiga versions available: a "big" one for machines with gfx boards, for which some FastRAM and acceleration is recommended to get decent performance and playability, and a "small" one, which only requires 2MB of memory, and should run at 50 FPS arcade-perfect speed. The "big" version also requires SDL and AHI, but offers a quite unique "panoramic" widescreen mode. Long story short: this looks like another fine retro release, with a proper Amiga port, and classic fun original game!

Watch the "version 2C" work-in-progress game video:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qj4rYteTrL4

Find more information about "Bagman" remake on Jotd's website:
https://jotd.pagesperso-orange.fr/bagman/index.html

If you wanna dig really deep, you can find "Bagman" sources and developer information on GitHub: https://github.com/jotd666/bagman

Additional sources:
http://www.amigarevive.eu/new-games/new-amiga-game-bagman-remake-wip/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagman_(video_game)
http://www.indieretronews.com/2019/12/bagman-arcade-classic-gets-early-alpha.html
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=51741
http://www.pouet.net/groups.php?which=7403

"Legacy" (2003) port

Legacy is a first-person turn-based RPG originally released in 2003. It got ported to the Amiga from around 2013 to 2019, but that version never got published. Thanks to EAB member BSzili, since February 2020 an Amiga demo version is available, and it doesn't look shabby at all.

It's a typical dungeon crawler, with nicely drawn graphics, that runs in 320x240, or 640x400 (640x480 RTG) pixels screen modes. System requirements are an ECS or AGA Amiga with Kickstart 3.0 or higher, 1MB ChipRAM, 4MB FastRAM, 68020 or better CPU, and harddrive. Graphics cards (RTG) are supported. If you're using the Amiga's native chipset you can install some patches for better performance (BlazeWCP for WB3.1, or SystemPatch for WB3.0)

Currently there's no definitive info if a full version will be released. But if you're really into playing "Legacy" after you've tried it on your Amiga, you can buy the original full version of the game (by Redshift, for PDA devices) and continue playing - the game-save data is compatible!

Here's a game video from famous YouTuber Saberman's channel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oANXGTNj5os

You can download "Legacy" demo from BSzili's website:
http://bszili.morphos.me
(NOTE: 2020-08-02 "Legacy"download link currently broken)

Additional sources:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=100916
http://www.indieretronews.com/2020/02/legacy-pda-dungeon-crawler-will-be.html
http://www.indieretronews.com/2020/02/legacy-pda-dungeon-crawler-was-in-works.html
http://amiga-news.de/de/news/AN-2020-02-00073-DE.html
https://www.mobygames.com/game/legacy_

"Tapper" 1982 arcade game port

In March 2020 EAB member "Old_Bob" published news about his new port of classic arcade game "Tapper" to the Amiga. It requires an Amiga with OCS chipset and 1MB of ChipRAM. That's cool, no fancy stuff here.

The arcade game was great, the Commodore 64 version was great, all existing versions of "Tapper" are great fun to play, and this new Amiga port looks just as if it would continue this great tradition of serving beer at high speed and satisfying your customers. We're very happily looking forward to the final release.

Here's an updated demo video from April (work-in-progress V.02a):

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XhvQRtzvx8

Additional sources:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=101226
http://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2020-03-00024-EN.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tapper_(video_game)
http://www.indieretronews.com/2020/03/tapper-arcade-beer-drinking-classic.html

https://www.myabandonware.com/game/tapper-31 (Windows, CPC, Atari 8bit, ColecoVision, Apple II versions)

Verge World Icarus Rising

Retro Bones Games presents "Verge World Icarus Rising", a voxelspace 3D racer with some shoot-em-up and exploration elements. You play as Nix, a smuggler on a desert planet, who needs to complete the "Death Run" challenge, in order to be accepted by the good guys and join the revolution against the tyrannical, corporate regime. Awesome.

You basically manoeuvre your air-/spacecraft through canyons at high speed. The game uses a voxelspace real-time raycasting graphics engine that's looks amazingly fast, and it's handdrawn titles, in-game pictures, and sprites are pixel art at it's finest, very reminiscent of 1950s/60s science-fiction artwork. The sound effects and music deserve special mentioning, as these too have been worked on to support the "classic sci-fi" atmosphere of the game.

Watch the latest work-in-progress demo video (June 4th, 2020):

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

Go to Retro Bones' website for more information, and "Verge World Icarus Rising" demo download:
http://retrobones.com/

Additional sources:
https://www.facebook.com/RetroBonesGames/
http://www.indieretronews.com/2020/03/verge-world-icarus-rising-unusual-wip.html

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Bonus gaming news:

Inviyya update: Demo V2

We've met "Inviyya" before, we know that it's gonna be a great "R-Type" style shoot-em-up game - but just to remind you that you need "Inviyya", here's the latest demo version video (V2, of March 8th 2020) showing a couple of new features since the last one has been published:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD9G7CA4v5o

As always, go to Tigerskunk's website for more updates, and "Inviyya" demo download:
https://tigerskunk.itch.io/inviyya

Additional sources:
https://www.facebook.com/Inviyya/
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=84345
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=88840 
 

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Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for "Games galore #8"!

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

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