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I just got an Amiga 500, and I know damn near nothing about it
TheSonicRetard
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I went to a 2nd hand shop yesterday here in Texas, and to my shock I saw an Amiga 500. I know the Amiga was gaming heaven in the UK, but it never caught on in the US. I snatched it up and it came with 5 games - Chaos Engine 2, Superfrog, Rough n Tumble, Leonheart, and it came from the desert, along with this joystick with 2 buttons. Oh, and this floppy called "Kickstart 1.3."
I have some questions about the joystick. The only game which seems to support 2 buttons is Lionheart, but both buttons do the exact same thing, despite the options screen giving me the option of choosing 2 buttons. The other games only support 1 button. Is this common?
Speaking of the joystick, this is crazy, but I actually owned one of these joysticks way back in the 80's. I bought it at this random store I went to where we used to buy Sega Master System games, and the guy there sold it to us as an SMS controller. I had never seen another controller like it before, nor had I seen one since, until I bought this baby. I'm guessing this is the official amiga controller or something? It's blue with a big red handle, and 2 red buttons on the base.
I'm interested in picking up other games for the thing, but after stopping at Lemon Amiga, I'm completely overwhelmed. There are thousands of games for this machine, and I have no idea which are good or bad. Mind recommending me some games?
I have some questions about the joystick. The only game which seems to support 2 buttons is Lionheart, but both buttons do the exact same thing, despite the options screen giving me the option of choosing 2 buttons. The other games only support 1 button. Is this common?
Speaking of the joystick, this is crazy, but I actually owned one of these joysticks way back in the 80's. I bought it at this random store I went to where we used to buy Sega Master System games, and the guy there sold it to us as an SMS controller. I had never seen another controller like it before, nor had I seen one since, until I bought this baby. I'm guessing this is the official amiga controller or something? It's blue with a big red handle, and 2 red buttons on the base.
I'm interested in picking up other games for the thing, but after stopping at Lemon Amiga, I'm completely overwhelmed. There are thousands of games for this machine, and I have no idea which are good or bad. Mind recommending me some games?
TheSonicRetard on
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I don't remember there being an official joystick for the Amiga. Your stick sounds like a Competition Pro but I don't remember the base being blue.
I don't know if you can do it with the 500 but with the 1200 you can install a CF hard drive inside and load your games from the workbench off of it to pretty much eliminate loading times. Worth looking into as it's pretty cheap and easy as mods go
man just see gamefaqs top whatever for amiga.
great find though.
Yeah, it doesn't seem like the 500 has a harddrive at all. It all runs off floppies. My machine only has 1 floppy drive, too.
What a weird computer.
That joystick is actually what caught my eye before I saw the amiga. I instantly recognized it from when I was a kid, and it blew me away because it was my favorite controller for the SMS. I hadn't seen one in 20 damn years!
Never had a clue it was an amiga controller. I played some wonderboy in monsterland earlier today on my SMS with the joystick and the nostalgia rush was incredible.
It looks like these things come in different colors too. The one I have is the EXACT color scheme as our old one that I used with SMS.
There's also a game I can't remember the name of, maybe someone will know it. You could have 2 players, one pink and one blue little characters with wands. Each level was a single screen with multiple platforms and ladders I think and you moved your way up a tower. Remember it being quite fun.
Games of particular note:
- Gunship (Apache simulator)
- Red Storm Rising (submarine sim)
- A-10 Tank Killer (Warthog sim)
- Airborne Ranger (basically metal gear)
- the original Pirates!
Pretty sure I still have all my Amiga disks at home, will check back tonight. I had Dragon's Lair (on five floppies), but good lord the load times on that bitch. That's what I get for not having parents who'd spring for the hard disk!
I'm pretty sure the joystick you have has two buttons which both do the same as it was the norm for computer joysticks at that time (PC joysticks excluded as they were analog and super expensive). So two buttons but just one function + plus some joysticks had like a little switch which enabled an "Auto-fire"- function which is like if you tap the button constantly.
If I recall correctly some games require the machine to have memory expanded to 1024 MB instead of the standard 512 MB but otherwise you should be able to run pretty much all Amiga games except some will require a mouse.
Some of the best games I remember are (I'm leaving out what the others have mentioned):
Flood (A platform game with many cool ideas. Great fun.)
Spoiler so only watch a bit
Elite (A space flying trading/fighting game) - It was on all platforms but the Amiga one is the best imho
Silent Service (A simple submarine game but not too simple and great fun)
Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge (Arcade style racing - best with two players)
There were many other games like fight sims and strategy games but they have all been bettered many times over on PC's.
If recall the Kick Start floppy is like a disc with operating system and few utilities and a Basic interpreter one it. If you're into programming it may be worth a look but otherwise it's only of value if some game requires you to be run by booting from the kick start and then run a program from the game disc.
A note of warning. Computer viruses existed on the Amiga so to safe it's a good habit to turn of the machine when switching game otherwise it can spread from disc to disc and destroy games.
Finally if the Amiga gets all to difficult there is a great emulator you can run on your PC instead only you will need a joystick interface to get the real experience.
The game was called Rodland. You make the ladders yourself using the wands...it's a great game.
In the same vein, there was Rainbbow Islands on Amiga too.
You want a great RPG - pick up Dungeon Master!
CABAL
Man I had so many awesome games on my Amiga!
Like this one:
HOSTAGES
Just listen to that soundtrack! It's amazing!
Also in the same vein:
ALCATRAZ
Good times. The Amiga 500 made me a gamer.
Rodland that's it!
Everytime I see something relating to Amiga I remembered it but never knew the name.
Simon the Sorcerer is an awesome game, plays similarly to Monkey Island but in a fantasy setting. If you're a fan of the genre then you have the Indiana Jones games as well.
Also, the original Dune.
- Monkey Island
- New Zealand Story
- Cannon Fodder
- Cabal
- Settlers
- SpeedBall 2
- Flashback
- Another World
- Syndicate
- The Chaos Engine
- Turrican
- International Karate
- Loom
- Hostage : The Embassy Rescue
- Shadow Dancer
- Pushover
- James Pond 1 + 2
- Eye of the Beholder 2
A hand full of these were ported to the Mega-Drive/Genesis and SNES, but if you have not had the chance to play them, might as well get them on the Amiga.
Tumblr
Fortunately the Amiga community has always been very rabid. We're talking USB, WIFI, HDD and VGA mods. Their dedication knows no bounds.
Loom
Defender of the Crown
Might and Magic III
Archon
The only game I can think of that hasn't been mentioned already would be North & South.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/pablocampy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgJyyVKaSNs
I also second ZOOL, Cannon Fodder, James Pond and Speedball 2.
I have a sharp 68k, essentially the japanes m68k pc, and it blew ms away when I got it, but it's library of quality games is pretty much limited to awesome arcade ports. It seems the amiga library is quite different. I'd always avoided 80's console/pc hybrid gaming as... Well I knew nothing about it and kinda assumed it was low quality. Damn I was wrong.
Any other must play games like lionheart? I keep hearing that shadow of the beast is a killer app, but I have that on the SMS and genesis and it blows. Is it much improved on the amiga?
Moonstone (I believe this was still Amiga, and not early 486 era)
Others have already mentioned other great games, but I didn't see these 2 mentioned.
Because I am looking at these videos and wanting to play some of these games
The C64 was superb, I had both that and an Amiga (though I had the A600, then a CD32 with an SX1 expansion...which still lives under my tv). I've still got all my big box Amiga games too, I just couldn't part with them. Most Amiga games have been covered now, though I don't belive Shadow of the Beast has been mentioned. Infamous at it's release for being crazy hard but having gorgeous graphics. I'll let wikipedia do the talking:
As a sonic fan I wouldn't recommend going anywhere near Zool or Superfrog, they've aged badly, whereas Sonic hasn't. They're very floaty, not overly smooth and just don't play well.
However for the C64 I would recommend Creatures 1 & 2. The second game in the series is still, to this day, one of my all time favourite games and I think it has aged fantastically. The first game is a pretty run of the mill platformer that broke things up every few levels with a "torture stage" this was a single screen puzzle level. You had a cute little fuzzy creature on a conveyor belt, heading towards some horrible monster with a chainsaw (or some such variation on that theme), you had to figure out how to crush/destroy the monster or stop the conveyor belt to save the cuddly little creature. If you didn't then it was murdered in a horribly bloody fashion.
For the sequel they realised that the puzzle parts of the game were the most popular, so it largely consists of single screen platform puzzles, broken up with some entertaining mini games. It's horribly, horribly violent, sickeningly cute and is absolutely fantastic.
This was the first level, which was really easy:
You've got the little dude at the bottom on a conveyor belt heading towards the Acme Press, powered by the monster on the bike. You start half way up and there are two monsters you can't see on there you need to dispatch, then hop over the lake and breath fire on to the bomb, then kick it down. It blows a hole in to the section below and you can jump down and shoot the brake leaver holding the cycling dude in place. He flies off the screen and the creature is saved. Easy peasy. It then gets tricky:
Creature on burning spit, water filled balloons, save him before being fried to a crisp! Giant Bomb overview: http://www.giantbomb.com/creatures-2-torture-trouble/61-12455/
General advice on the C64. The joysticks you're using with the Amiga should work fine on the C64 (as will mega-drive pads and master system pads), only one button will be used though. Every c64 I've come across in this day and age has a dodgy power switch which can be tricky to flip on and off, it's really easy to fix if you come across one in a shop so don't let this put you off. It'll plug in to your TV just fine.
The C64 has a cartridge slot, some games came on cartridge. I also remember having an "action replay" cart that let you pause the game and access code in the background, fiddle around with variables etc. It could enable infinite lives by pausing the game with a button on the top, and putting it in to "search" mode. You then lost a life, pressed the button on the cart again to pause the game and it recognised what variable had changed and stopped it. I was amazed by this voodoo at the time.
But most games will come on tape, so you'll need a decent tape deck with it too (they're not built in). Again if the tape deck is faulty they're usually pretty easy to fix (it's normally just the elastic band inside that turns the heads has stretched and needs replacing).
General Amiga advice. Don't know if this works on the A500, but it did on the A600/A1200 but if you hold down both mouse buttons when booting up it should give you some config options. I remember some of the options allowed the A1200 to play A500 games without issue. One of the options was also to switch between Pal and NTSC.
Oh and get a copy of Workbench, the Amiga OS, it's fun to play around with.
It's a shame you're not in the UK, I see C64s a fair bit at carboot sales and keep meaning to pick one up again!
PSN: SirGrinchX
Oculus Rift: Sir_Grinch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNfsY4CnJzA
Edit - as for joysticks - you couldn't beat the Konix Speedking, and then later the Konix Speedking Analogue
These sticks were amazing
http://img.over-blog.com/481x475/1/27/40/16/Evolution-joystick/Joystick-evolution-Speedking-analogue.jpg
Kokotoni Wilf
Forbidden Forest
Beyond the Forbidden Forest
BC's Quest for Tyres
Gumshoe
Fred
If you can find it (I still have mine!) then a lot of the above came on a "Soft Aid" tape, similar to "Band Aid", all the proceeds went to the same charity.
It even had "Do they know it's Christmas" song on the other side of the tape. Was never a fan of the song, but that tape spent more time in my C64 than anything else.
PSN: SirGrinchX
Oculus Rift: Sir_Grinch
Edit:
Also, I can't believe no one recommended Lemmings 2: The Tribes. That game is fucking nuts - you thought they couldn't make a proper sequel to Lemmings, but they did and it is absolutely massive.
Shadow of the Beast blows on any system it's on. It's just not a very good game, though the Amiga version is one of the prettiest (and arguably has the best soundtrack). 2 and 3 are better, but even back in the day I would not have called them great. Play mostly for curiosity's sake and to appreciate the rather stellar aesthetic design.
I further recommend tracking down Delphine Software's catalogue. Aside from Out of This World and Flashback (both of which are great on the Amiga), Cruise For A Corpse, Operation Stealth/007: The Stealth Affair and Future Wars are all awesome technical showpieces. They did some pretty impressive things with the system at the time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3PtCmCDym4
Rodland, James pond ... Anything bitmap brothers is a good bet.
Magic pockets, Gods, Leander (my #1 suggestion), Lotus Esprit, Shadow of the Beast series ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn6YR3uGFWg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2w-tiRnac2k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpcO2yMxO3U
Also not a SHMUP but:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQSsq7HCNHw
edit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVDfnU6D52g
Speedball 2!
No remake even comes close, though perhaps one of the reasons is a lack of the following:
And FOR FUCK'S SAKE PEOPLE, I'm glad you mentioned Dungeon Master, Gods, IK+, Turrican 1 & 2, Shadow of the Beast 2, etc, etc, but for the love of all that is holy you forgot Stunt Car Racer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wey5s5ceMxE
How could you?
Also equally disappointed about the lack of Supercars 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWzlO7HkF3w
I wish I could give some good recommendations on games. Most of what I played were shareware & public domain games downloaded from Aminet or BBSes. It had one of the most thriving shareware communities of the era.
I loved that computer, though.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
And it somehow ran smoother and did more than my 486 running Windows 3.1 and DOS 6.22.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I don't think any emu*ator even today produces as smooth full screen scrolling as you can see on the original machine.
Which reminds me, I'm really sad for everyone who missed out on the whole demo scene too.
Impossible Mission 2 which is kind of a platform/puzzle hybrid type of game, one of my favourite games on the amiga though I've still never actually finished it, all I remember is getting safe codes to change buildings, and trying to piece together some kind of recording but I'm not sure for what. And the first thing that popped in my head when I thought of that game was "Destroy him my robots" and then the main guys death scream whenever you stuff up.
There was also a few beat em ups, dynamite dux which was an arcade port I think, and there was another one Ninja Warriors which I use to play the shit out of with my older brothers. It was a 2D side scroller where you where funnily enough a ninja, but the twist was as you started losing health/ going through the game more and more of the costume would get hit off till eventually you where just a cyborg skeleton.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_akK3cOHfk
And ok this one been mentioned already but goddamn I love this game IK+
I think my entire idea of fighting sound effects as a kid came from this game, and such a simple game that was sooo much fun especially if you actually had 3 people playing. Then the random things like pressing space bar dropped everyones pants, or the F keys changing the backgrounds, or giving the miyagi ref a chequered shirt for some reason. Even the bonus stages where fun, kicking bombs away and blocking bouncing balls (with the occasional head), and that theme song
Silkworm was another I use to play heaps of, it was a shump side scroller, but the main thing was one player was a helicopter and the other player was a jeep
I'd also second a few of the games already mentioned, New Zealand Story, Rainbow Islands, Hunted
(Man I wish I still had my A500
Trivia time: All of the sound effects were shamelessly stolen from Bruce Lee's Enter The Dragon.
(Trivia bonus: An extremely similar fighting game, Barbarian*, stole its sound effects from the movie Conan the Barbarian.)
* For the OP: You need to get the Palace version of Barbarian 1 and 2, and also the Psygnosis version of Barbarian 2!
Also, Globulus
The Colonel's Bequest
Workbench was amazing
Goddamn I miss this computer sometimes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRLhyObYbQo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7RW9ODTQ9k
I think, by now, just by looking at the related videos on Youtube, you'll find most Amiga classics...
MOTHERFUCKINGKIWIBASTARDS