That was a really great game at that moment in time.
I played it quite a bit.
Modern games are very different to that. I don't have
any close attachment to those "who got the better 3D
engine". They seem to lack cleverness; it's all a
unified, singular game experience following a very
simple recipe that has been dumbed down. Clones.
Sometimes there are exceptions to that formula; I
liked little nightmares, even though it was also very
dumbed down, but it was a bit different still to the
usual 3D engine colour-flash-splashy effects.
That's something many did not have. 85% sales were Amiga 500 and not upgradeable. IIUC possible to put Motorola 68060, but AGA required full replacement. And it remained something unseen. Something too late to crave for after bankrupcy. Something like unicorn. Like Roland for DOS gamers. We had SB clones on ESS chips, and they only had AdLib music. We were entering game configuration tools, and there was a choice of Roland. Supaplex had especially visible Roland choice. But nobody knew what is that Roland.
As far as I can tell, non-AGA graphics is also charming enough. For many years I only had EGA and many games were not runnable, they demanded VGA. AGA does not feel like much anticipated upgrade like VGA was. There are hardware clones like MiniMig that lack AGA support and it is passable. IIUC MiSTer FPGA has MiniMig core with same lack of AGA.
> We were entering game configuration tools, and there was a choice of Roland. Supaplex had especially visible Roland choice. But nobody knew what is that Roland.
I distinctly remember this.-
PS. In retrospect I wonder how it came to be that devs actually put in the effort/resources to code for such not-so-widely adopted hardware.-
Were Roland MIDI keyboards used by the developers to capture game audio tracks as played by musicians? Maybe they already had the driver code from that.
That's a cogent theory, also, in that I am sure many game composers used Roland hardware. So you were basically, "playing it back non-lossy" as "intended by the composer", in many ways.-
I have especially fond memories associated with this logo (which is a work of art all of its own IMHO): https://amiga.lychesis.net/assets/Logos/Psygnosis_1990_b.png
And this one https://amiga.lychesis.net/assets/Logos/SiliconSynapse.png, besides being a very cool name, will forever be associated in my mind with The Lost Vikings (although I played that one on a PC, not the Amiga).
I remember seeing the Amiga bouncing ball demo and being amazed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ga41edXw3A
The Amiga was the second computer that I ever owned. The first was a C64 that I bought freshman year. (My father bought a TRS-80 before that.)
Agree about the Silicon and Synapse name, they never should have changed it into Blizzard ;)
If you click the color cycling animations it shows the palette being actively changed and is very interesting to observe!
Defender of the Crown gives me so much flashbacks. The artwork is still great!
https://amiga.lychesis.net/games/DefenderOfTheCrown.html
That was a really great game at that moment in time.
I played it quite a bit.
Modern games are very different to that. I don't have any close attachment to those "who got the better 3D engine". They seem to lack cleverness; it's all a unified, singular game experience following a very simple recipe that has been dumbed down. Clones.
Sometimes there are exceptions to that formula; I liked little nightmares, even though it was also very dumbed down, but it was a bit different still to the usual 3D engine colour-flash-splashy effects.
Calling it AGA gave a snicker to many people I'm sure
That's something many did not have. 85% sales were Amiga 500 and not upgradeable. IIUC possible to put Motorola 68060, but AGA required full replacement. And it remained something unseen. Something too late to crave for after bankrupcy. Something like unicorn. Like Roland for DOS gamers. We had SB clones on ESS chips, and they only had AdLib music. We were entering game configuration tools, and there was a choice of Roland. Supaplex had especially visible Roland choice. But nobody knew what is that Roland.
As far as I can tell, non-AGA graphics is also charming enough. For many years I only had EGA and many games were not runnable, they demanded VGA. AGA does not feel like much anticipated upgrade like VGA was. There are hardware clones like MiniMig that lack AGA support and it is passable. IIUC MiSTer FPGA has MiniMig core with same lack of AGA.
> We were entering game configuration tools, and there was a choice of Roland. Supaplex had especially visible Roland choice. But nobody knew what is that Roland.
I distinctly remember this.-
PS. In retrospect I wonder how it came to be that devs actually put in the effort/resources to code for such not-so-widely adopted hardware.-
Were Roland MIDI keyboards used by the developers to capture game audio tracks as played by musicians? Maybe they already had the driver code from that.
That's a cogent theory, also, in that I am sure many game composers used Roland hardware. So you were basically, "playing it back non-lossy" as "intended by the composer", in many ways.-
Things were much better back then ;]
I do not think the feeling one got when looking at Amiga visuals, in comparison to the state of the art then, in terms of wonder, can be described.-
Perhaps one's first contact with a GPT3-class model's chat, might be comparable.-
I still remember the day I got Shadow of the Beast, as a young teen. Both the visuals and audio were amazing.
https://www.editions64k.fr/product/amiga-demoscene-pack
Rabbits!
https://amiga.lychesis.net/assets/SAK/SAK_NightFlight.gif
Almost like a lost art now. Good old Amiga ...