Showing posts with label Amiga CD32. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Amiga CD32. Show all posts

Thursday, 6 August 2020

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Achy breaky Menace

I scrutinise Guru Larry Jnr's allegation that the licensed Amiga platform game, Dennis the Menace, was deliberately rendered unbeatable to cover-up the fact (?) that it was released unfinished. In a separate article found elsewhere on my blog, you'll find an interview I conducted with the game's coder, former Ocean Software developer Ben Walshaw, to establish if there is any truth to the rumour.

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Monday, 3 August 2020

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Sleepcoding with former CTA developer, John Scott

Sleepwalker programmer, John Scott, drops in to answer my questions concerning one of the Amiga's most impressive action-puzzle games. Not only satiating kid's craving for entertainment, Sleepwalker actually fed plenty of undernourished children in the UK and Africa via its affiliation with the Comic Relief charity appeal. Solidifying its seal of quality, Lenny Henry makes a vocal cameo appearance during the cutscenes, enhancing Ralph's already quirkily endearing persona.

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Nutty but nice

Renowned Amiga demo group, Melon Dezign, have a dabble at game development. Cutesy, highly polished, single-screen, old-school platformer emerges starring a pair of Naughty Ones. Can it out-Bobble the troubled Bubble dragons in the addictivity stakes? Would the crackers steer clear out of respect and recognition for Melon's animated intro contributions?

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Saturday, 1 August 2020

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To boldly go where no Amiga mascot has gone before

When Beavermania takes the world by storm, no Amiga is left unchewed! Mrs Beaver, wife of pop-mega-star, Jethro Beaver, has been kidnapped by rival band, the Rappin' Rabbit Rockers. By way of retort, our options include dissolving the group in exchange for our wife's safe return, or traipsing through six death-defying wilderness landscapes, tail-spinning bunny riff-raff into orbit, while attempting to stay one step ahead of the encroaching, auto-scrolling screen.

Collecting charisma stars in-game seems a bit redundant given that Beavers already oozes feel-good vibes owing to its austere, yet adorably cute visuals and endearing introductory animation. Whether that's enough to sustain its appeal, substantiating longevity is debatable.

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Alien ant buys the farm

Gremlin's Sonic-squishing hopeful, Zool, was in the '90s to be converted to run in coin-op arcade cabinets destined for seaside towns around the nation. Despite evidence of a prototype appearing on the Bad Influence TV tech show and in several gaming magazines, the finished product ultimately failed to materialise. I track down some of the key developers commissioned to make it happen and investigate why it didn't.

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A vicious circle

Sonic the Hedgehog spinning into existence in 1991 sparked a desperate rush amongst game developers to replicate its success on non-SEGA hardware, minus the spiky blue-rinsed garden critter. Opinions remain divided regarding which Amiga game came closest to achieving this objective, though my money is on Kid Chaos. Nothing compares in terms of dizzying velocity, and technical brilliance. It doesn't look too shabby either! Why then was it largely met with indifference amongst gamers despite reviewing well in 1994? I explore the potential explanations here in written form, as well as via an adapted for video YouTube presentation, which includes contributions from Kid Chaos artist, Andrew Morris.

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Friday, 31 July 2020

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Chaos is more than a theory

And Chaos Engine is more than a shiny, polished Gauntlet clone garnished with a steampunk makeover. The Bitmap Brothers' run-and-gun overhead shooter is as intrinsically entwined with the Amiga's gaming legacy as any other venerated title you care to mention. It demands no further introduction... or review, but here's one of each regardless.

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Thursday, 30 July 2020

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Who cares what picture we see?

Premiere has to be the ultimate movie license game in history in that it's a homage to all the movies encapsulated within six of Hollywood's major genres. Rather impressively, The 8th Day accomplished this feat without paying a penny in royalties to a single studio. Genius!

Cast as a distraught movie editing assistant, we're culpable for the safe return of six stolen film reels. Tirelessly tracking the hijacked canisters obliges our hero to ransack six distinct scenarios themed around horror, wild west, sci-fi, Egyptian, animated and classic black and white movies. Fail to recover this purloined paraphernalia in time for the movie Premiere and Grumbling Studios will go bust with our career prematurely cut short.

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Duck season, wabbit reason

Being a community-spirited anthropomorphic samurai duck, landlocked in an Amiga-based platform game, naturally, the onus is on us to Donk!, sword-swish and Taz-spin our way through 112 eggtraordinarily zany levels gathering an endless stream of crystals to protect earth's precious atmosphere from the villainous Eider Down. It goes without saying really.

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Revisiting Dennis with former Ocean artist, John Lomax

To investigate if there is any truth to the rumour that Ocean's Dennis the Menace Amiga/SNES licensed platformer was deliberately sabotaged to cover up its unfinished status, I contacted one of the artists who worked on it. With that myth neatly dispelled, we discussed his contribution to the game and its critical reception amongst gamers and journalists.

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Wednesday, 29 July 2020

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I've got the secret, I've got the key to another way

Environmentally speaking, Fire & Ice features two prominent scenarios lodged at either end of the temperature scale, yet also more moderate ecological habitats that sit somewhere in between these two bipolar extremes. Fire and Ice (subtitled The Daring Adventures of Cool Coyote), aside from being climatically jarring for those of us susceptible to chilblains, is a traditional platformer escapade that entails killing meanies to recover the individual components of keys required to make progress.

Adding a soupcon of subtlety to the proceedings, Cool Coyote can encapsulate enemies in an icy straightjacket, subsequent collisions shattering their mini prisons in a manner reminiscent of Bubble Bobble's joyous bubble-trapping function. Tiny puppy followers can be gathered to bolster our ice-powered pellet projectiles. Whilst blindly attempting to track Cool Coyote's route through the territories, they zap enemies in synchrony with their esteemed leader of the pack.

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Tuesday, 28 July 2020

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A page right out of history

Junior, Son of Chuck, demonstrates he's a chip off the old block in the sequel to Core Design's prehistoric platformer, Chuck Rock. As before, it's hard to play without imagining being trapped inside a vintage Flintstones cartoon, except now we're in charge of a nappy-clad, further regressed Bamm-Bamm, wielding a club taller than he is on a quest to save his kidnapped dad from the clutches of the stony-hearted Brick Jagger. It's hardly a chore when the audio-visual presentation is so enticing, exquisitely crafted by esteemed professionals who clearly had their hearts invested in this passion project. Much like living in Bedrock, endless comedic touches keep us amused throughout while we bash and crash our way to a poignant family reunion.

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Stick a red nose on your conk, and let's stonk

Playing as man's best friend, bipedal wonder dog Ralph, it's your duty to protect your pet human, Lee, from sustaining injury as he obliviously sleepwalks around his home town. Don't be silly, if you just woke him up, there would be nothing to do, and where's the fun in that?

It's a lot like a one-Lemming reinterpretation of DMA Design's famous suicide-prevention puzzler, only we manipulate our charge by directly shunting him out of harm's way. Sleepwalker is also notable for raising a wad of cash for the Red Nose Day charity appeal as part of Comic Relief.

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Monday, 27 July 2020

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Trolling's for girls

Anyone who bought the Amiga CD32 launch pack in 1993 will be familiar with the Academy Award collecting huckster, Oscar. It didn't win any, but the power of suggestion can't have hurt the zany, movie-themed platformer's prospects. Except, that is, if you'd already forked out for Trolls and realised too late that one was essentially a re-skin of the other. Swap the bridge-patrolling protagonist sprite and his motivation for charging about like a demented squirrel mascot trapped in an Amiga flyer and you have a completely fresh adventure, ready to accompany Commodore's snazzy new 32-bit, CD-based console-beater.

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Saturday, 25 July 2020

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Can you just stop saying stupid things and free me from this lovely, cute, fragrant cheese

One of the many Monkey Island wannabes that failed to grab a piece of Lucasart's point and click pie back in the '90s is Sixth Sense Investigations. You play as a private eye detective solving supernatural mysteries for rich people. Whilst this premise has potential to be intriguing in its own right, it's the unintentionally hilarious and politically incorrect dialogue that makes the off-kilter adventure game worth playing. Attempt script translation on the cheap and this is often the result. Nonetheless, never has it been this funny on the Amiga.

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Thursday, 23 July 2020

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You'll like this, not a lot...

Adventuresoft's magical, fantasy point and click adventure, Simon the Sorcerer, evokes a number of superficial parallels to Secret of Monkey Island... points them out with glee, giggles and then moves on to do its own thing. For many British people, it's considered far superior to Lucasarts' gold standard piratey shenanigans given that the dialogue, humour, pop-culture references, Chris Barrie's voice-over, and everything else in between, are more relevant, therefore more deeply affecting. But obviously it's not enough to produce a very British game for British people and expect the audience to be rolling in the aisles with gut-busting cachinnation. Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps is British and surely not even British viewers think that's worth torturing their peepers with. What makes Simon the Sorcerer so special is... oh, read the article. It's a long, complex tale.

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Wednesday, 22 July 2020

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Jumpers for goalposts

Reviews of Sensible Soccer's Cannon Fodder have never been so much fun! I analyse the life out of the masterpiece, spinning off into two separate articles. One covering the origins of the 'Boot Hill' graveyard scene, and another that dissects the overinflated controversy concerning a certain red flower used as a charity organisation emblem by the British Legion.

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