Everyone has theirs - the games machine that made them.
That lured them in to gaming.
That made them love this ridiculous, terrible, awful, brilliant industry.
That they spent seemingly all of their childhood on.
That gives them warm pangs of longing right in the nostalgia gland.
For me it's the Amiga.
I was fortunate enough to get an Amiga 500 for Christmas back in…
I don't even know when.
1989 or 1990.
It was my first games machine, after my brother and I had begged our parents for one.
And I loved it.
For years I played it, took in all it had to offer, took advantage of things like X-Copy
- look it up, kids - and almost wasted away indoors playing the likes of… well, that
would be telling, wouldn't it?
See, I've put together my definitely scientifically accurate list of games that made the Amiga
great, and somehow managed to narrow it down to just 31, which I've then split across
three videos - I'll put the links to the other two in the description when they're
up.
It was really hard getting the number this low.
Some games you love will be missing, I'm sorry, and some you might know better from
elsewhere - the PC, the SNES, the Mega Drive, whatever - will be present.
I'm not claiming them to be exclusives or anything silly, just that they had an impact
on Commodore's machine.
So, for what it's worth, for what they mean to me, for how they changed my life, these
are the first 10 of the 31 games that made the Amiga great.
Syndicate I'm starting here because this is one of
my favourite games, ever, of all the times, even taking into account how poorly the Amiga
500 version - not shown here - has aged.
But good god, Syndicate back in 1993 was… wow.
Entire cities to explore, hijacking and driving any vehicle, laying waste to vast swathes
of the population, mucking about in a way I'd certainly never seen before in any game.
It was, and is, absolute bliss - ahead of its time is a phrase I may use a lot in this
list, but screw it - it applies.
Taking your four cyborg agents - or three, or two, or one if you're feeling gutsy - you
unleash them on a dystopian future world, completing missions of varying objectives,
some even involving not killing anyone, shockingly.
You're kitted out with a mix of weapons and useful items - though mostly weapons - and,
in what's now known as a formative moment for young Ian, are allowed - nay, expected
- to pump your agents full of drugs to make them more formidable on the ground.
It's dark, gritty and mature, and I never describe games like that because it makes
me sound like an arse.
All this couples with a multi-genre approach - management and strategic elements ladled
on top of… violent… soup - Syndicate was a statement of intent as to what games could
be.
The chaos of a Just Cause.
The freedom of an Assassin's Creed.
The nudey robotic ladies of twenty weird anime games I'm sure do actually exist.
The fact that Syndicate is a genuinely biting satire of modern capitalism just adds to the
mystique, and its utterly amoral view of the world still manages to whip up a few pangs
of shock even today.
Civilians are literally expendable - it does not matter if you kill them.
Blissful horror.
Lemmings A cry of 'let's go!', that green hair
and jolly walk, hundreds of them plummeting to their death, the fear in their voice as
you, the god of this world, are able to arbitrarily exterminate any and all of their kind you
see before you…
yeah, Lemmings introduced a lot of us to the concept of rather extreme treatment of digital
animals.
Technically it's a puzzle game with an array of delightful worlds and settings and brain-bending
problems to solve, littered with cute mascot characters and from the studio that became
the GTA team, DMA Design, aka Rockstar North.
But it is also a cruelty simulator.
Lemmings is one of the games that put the Amiga on the map.
Obviously.
That's why it's on this list.
While it was ported everywhere and to everything - almost like it was the Skyrim of its day
- Lemmo 2000 is so very Amiga.
I mean, the initial concept came from something made on Deluxe Paint, and it doesn't get
much more Amiga than that.
There's also the influence factor: without the indirect 'click-and-get-them-to-do-it'
control scheme of Lemmings, the real-time strategy genre might be a very different beast.
I know for one it was cited as a big influence behind the original Warcraft.
Not that that was an Amiga game, but you get the point.
Probably.
Special mention, unsurprisingly, goes to the add-ons and sequels - Oh No More Lemmings,
Lemmings 2 and some others I don't remember or care much about.
It's been a case of diminishing returns ever since - Lemmings is and was very much
of its time - but that first bag-o-games has gone down in history, and will never be forgotten.
Sensible Soccer OG Sensi was the initial game-changer, no
doubt, but it would be daft of me to talk that up and ignore Sensible World of Soccer.
Even if - and please don't hit and kick me here - I never actually got on with the
game because all that happened would be I'd lose control of the ball and my brother would
batter me about 10-2.
Anyway, personal gripes and harrowing origin stories aside, Sensible World of Soccer wasn't
at all the first football game on the Amiga - but it absolutely is the best.
The breadth of teams and leagues and cups and players on show is bewildering even today,
with the unknown minnows kicking it right next to the big boys of professional soccerball.
Like… errm…
Sheffield Wednesday.
Hmm.
It took me a while, but as I grew up I finally got Sensi.
It's the speed and flow, the feeling that - if you're good enough - you're always
in control.
The unpredictability that serves as a novelty even today, in this oh-so-scripted era of
modern soccerkicknet games.
1,500 teams, more leagues than you could ever care about, international competitions, tactics
editors and management modes are just neat bonuses - at its core, Sensible World of Soccer
is just a stupidly good game.
If you don't believe me, believe those who selected it as one of the ten most important
games ever made.
Actual, proper, official people did that.
Of course there's room to give a mention to Kick Off here - probably more Kick Off
2 than anything else - for laying a lot of the groundwork on the Amiga when it came to
football games.
Obviously the series went terrible as time went on, but we'll always have those original
two.
And maybe Dino Dini's Goal, to a lesser extent.
Turrican 2 It's a sequel, it's based on a thousand
and one different influences rather than being very much its own thing, and it's a game
that was actually intended for the Commodore 64 first, with the Amiga just happening to
beat the original version to market, so there's a fair bit working against Turrican 2 before
I've even started here.
And that's fair.
Understandable.
I get it.
Fortunately I don't have to make much of a case as to why you're wrong to doubt me,
because that music.
For all its me-too stylings and the fact that, quite frankly, Turrican might as well be a
Metroid spin-off - in more ways than one wahey there's a joke for those of us in the know
- there's no doubt in my mind it's an essential title in the Amiga's arsenal.
It's one of those games that stands toe to toe with anything released on the competing
consoles of the day and holds its own, giving Amiga owners a delicious taste of the kinds
of arcade platforming action they might otherwise miss out on.
The original wasn't quite all there, and number three was just a bit pump, but Turrican
2 remains one of the true Amiga greats; showing us a world of console-like gaming on a machine
known more for mice, keyboards and… umm…
I need to mention something other than Deluxe Paint… hmm…
Deluxe Paint 2?
Yeah, that'll do.
The Settlers This is a series all about PC, that's made
its home there almost since day one and has continued to flourish - well, to exist at
least - until the modern day.
Except… the Settlers was made for the Amiga and released first on Amiga, though we had
to wait an age for it to come to the UK.
Obviously it doesn't help that the Amiga's base models were woefully underpowered compared
to the ever-improving PCs of the mid-90s and that Commodore… well, died, but I for one
refuse to accept the Settlers as anything other than an Amiga great.
Right, with that fury out of the way: the Settlers is the Amiga's Civilization, or
Sim City.
It just is.
It's a city… or township… builder, a sort-of god game, a strategic management sim
with the complexity and depth you would expect as standard in the now, space year 2018.
Just when we were getting overwhelmed with all the studios pumping out the arcade hits
on the Amiga, showing it could compete with the consoles, Blue Byte walloped the Settlers
our way and reminded us the machine is also a computermatron, capable of that slow paced
strategy stuff.
I guarantee you there are people out there, formerly children, who learned the process
of ore to smelting to forging, or wheat to milling to baking, thanks to the Settlers.
I can guarantee you this as one of those people was me.
Laugh all you want, I was a stupid child.
Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge The first two games in this racing series
- Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge and Lotus Turbo Challenge 2, so named because it features
more than just the Esprit - did a lot to establish the Amiga in two fairly different ways.
I wouldn't go so far as to claim the original game is anything like a simulation, because
I'm not an idiot, but it does err more on the side of being a serious, po-faced racer
that shows the Amiga as capable of servicing that middle ground of players who don't
quite want Geoff Crammond's F1GP, but also who don't want Super Cars - and oh, there's
some foreshadowing for you.
Lotus 2 takes a different track… tack... throwing out a lot of the things that made
the first almost snap at the heels of the sim genre, like fuel and circuit racing, instead
making it a very Amiga-styled Outrun-alike.
The thinking there is it also came to consoles with the second game, so suffered a bit of
dumbing down, but I like it.
Lotus 2 is an immediately satisfying game, and one that holds its own to this day alongside
similar racers of the era, like Outrun, Super Hang On and any other Sega game I've forgotten
to mention.
I'm going to break a lot of hearts here and say Crazy Cars 3 became my go-to racer
on the Amiga, with the Lotus series losing its appeal as the machine aged.
But there's zero doubt in my mind this chunk of decidedly British racing action helped
the machine pull in more than a few fans over the years.
And I'm qualifying that 'decidedly British' comment by reminding you one of the cheats
for the game involved typing in 'pea soup', another 'Liverpool'.
British.
Super Stardust In doing the research I do for my videos that
doesn't involve actually playing the things - reading, or whatever it's called - I found
more than one review of both the original and Super Stardust criticising it for 'just
being an Asteroids clone'.
Well, yeah, but it's that with added power ups and cool graphics and pumping techno on
the soundtrack, as well as tunnel sections that blow your mind with how awesomerad they
look.
Super Stardust - and the original, which I'm only not using as the named game here because
it still annoys me how hard it is - was an important title for the Amiga because of what
it represented.
The demo, PD, bedroom - whatever you want to call it - scene was highly active on Commodore's
machine, but while a lot of indie games made their way to market, not too many made a huge
splash.
The Stardusts showed that this was possible - more so than anywhere else outside of the
PC.
It was such a viable option for amateur devs that Bloodhouse, the original dev team, still
exists in the form of Housemarque, which still makes Super Stardust games.
As an aside, those modern games, with versions popping up on PS3, Vita, PS4 and even PSVR,
are all really bloody good and live up to the won-derb - that's wonderfully superb
- quality the Amiga originals first achieved so very, very many years ago oh god I'm
so old.
IK+ One of the purest fighting games ever released,
International Karate Plus is a surprisingly tactical take on the batter-each-other genre,
requiring players to score the most points out of the three competitors present so as
not to get eliminated.
Also you can press T on the keyboard and their trousers fall down.
Often, always, forever hilarious.
Now, why I think IK+ is so important to the Amiga comes down to one thing: the genre.
The Amiga spent most of its lifetime trying - in vain - to get itself a game on a par
with Street Fighter 2.
It tried Body Blows, which failed.
It tried Shadow Fighter, which failed.
It tried Street Fighter 2, which failed.
But all along there'd been something hiding out in the background, something a bit different,
something that - I'm talking about IK+, by the way - something that offered a unique
take all of its own and, while not calling the Amiga its original home, called the Amiga
its best home.
There's logic in there, I think.
I honestly think we'd be able to feature IK+ on the esports circuit, it's that good
a fighting game.
It doesn't rely on chance, or repetition of moves, or scumming it like a cheesy scumming
scummer - it asks for timing, positioning and reactions to get through its fights.
As well as endless headbutts, because endless headbutts are hilarious and everyone should
do them forever.
And in the game.
Zeewolf The Amiga version of Desert Strike might well
be the best one, but to me it isn't the finest helichopper-based combat game on the
Amiga.
Nor is Gunship 2000 with its endless menus without words and tactics that involve hiding
behind a hill before popping up and smashing an opposing chopper with all the high explosives
you can muster.
It's Zeewolf, the 1994 3D chopper shooter that somehow managed to run on an Amiga 500.
I wish I could show you how poorly it ran on an A500, but I'm here playing this on
a specced up A1200, so there isn't much I can do.
Just imagine this, but at about eight frames per week, then you'll have an idea.
Regardless, Zeewolf is a technical achievement for the Amiga and the sort of last gasp swing
you get from a system when it's on its way out but developers have really got to grips
with the hardware.
Just when we'd all written off the machine, a game came out and made us go 'huh, now
that is pretty impressive.
Who knew?'
The 1995 sequel pushed things a bit more, with better graphics, tighter action and all
that stuff you usually get when someone's had a bit more time to work on something.
As we all now know, Zeewolf 2 was the game that turned around the fortunes of Commodore
and the Amiga, and we now all live in a world where the Amiga is the One True Machine, the
only gaming device and nothing bad at all happened.
Tha… that's not what happened.
Zeewolf changed nothing, but it did give a last hurrah for the Amiga - at least before
it disappeared into the realms of the hobbyists - by showing old hardware could still push
out something impressive that you just wouldn't get elsewhere.
Alien Breed I find it endlessly funny that the chat about
gaming's most difficult titles - the Dark Souls and Cupheads and Street Cleaning Simulators
nattering - always fails to mention actual difficult games from the past, like, say Alien
Breed.
You know, the one where it was more than possible to completely shaft yourself, get yourself
stuck, run out of time or otherwise end up completely dead through little fault of your
own.
Ah, all the fun of unfairness.
Anyway, I'm jumping ahead of myself.
See, Alien Breed and its sequels are Amiga games through and through - thoughtful and
deep, requiring you to actually consider what you're doing while at the same time motoring
through an abandoned - by humans, at least - space station.
This isn't arcade shallowness, and the depth of the experience is backed up by some lovely
graphics, fine sound effects and - of course, this being the Amiga - lovely music.
Oh, and an egregious rip-off of the Alien license.
Here's a little secret I'll let you in on, though: I love Aliens, I adore sci-fi,
the Gauntlet-style setup of Alien Breed is a particular favourite of mine and the ability
to blow down doors is something I think all key-requiring action games should allow.
But I don't like, and have never liked, Alien Breed.
It's too hard, in the bad way, to the point it just isn't fun, and it frustrates, and
it annoys, and it makes me stroppy and angry and want to turn it off and just play Midnight
Resistance instead.
Ah, lovely comforting Midnight Resistance.
Oh, and your obvious special mention here goes to Alien Breed 3D, which isn't one
I'd consider as having made the Amiga, but is one I'd put up there on the list of 'holy
buttcracks, it's impressive they were able to even do that on the Amiga'.
I mean, it isn't exactly Doom, but it's surprisingly good fun even now - if you can
run it.
And that, friends, is part one of the list of Amiga games.
Tune in, or whatever it is you're supposed to do these days, soon for parts two and three,
where I'll annoy you all more by not including that one game that really should have been
in there.
And never forget how bloody great the Amiga was.
Thanks for watching, please do like, share, subscribe, buy an Amiga second-hand, play
some of these games, come back and tell me how right I am, stop weeping that I didn't
put North and South in this part of the list, and move on with your life.
Oh and I now have a Patreon, which you can find the link to in the blurb below.
If you like this video, and the others I've done, and you've got a bit of change spare,
consider chipping in.
If you can't or don't want to, that's also fine.
I am still fond of you.
I'd like to offer my heartiest thanks to the following peeps for their five dollar
or more support on Patreon - without you, I'd be dead!
Which I should stop saying as it's patently untrue.
And, of course, a huge thanks to the higher tier contributors who help me to afford beans
and soup:
Videobrains - or Jake Tucker
Robbie Sabo
Lola Osman
Even if you're not mentioned, you're good people.
And a top pooch.
Thank you for your continued support, it helps stave off these unending headaches.
Though the Migraleve also helps.
BYE!
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