Traditionally, video gaming was a hobby principally participated in by young
boys, which from the viewpoint of capitalist-oriented publishers, left a
vast portion of the potential market untapped. In 1984, Case Computer
Simulations sought to remedy this by releasing a series of games aimed
specifically at girls. To eliminate any shred of doubt, they coined it
'Games for Girls',...
Monday, 12 October 2020
Teen reacts to the Amiga 500
I'm not quite sure how old he is actually. He looks like he's
in his late teens - certainly too young to have experienced the Amiga when
it was current anyway, and that's the point.
The title of Ryan Smith's YouTube, hardware tear-down video, 'Why not to
buy an Amiga in...
Sunday, 11 October 2020
Kid Reacts to Speedball II for the Amiga
Not an official 'Kids React' video, though probably the closest thing
we're likely to see. 14-year-old Brae joins his uncle (at gunpoint by the
looks of it) for a violent
bout of futuristic, cyberpunk sports-brawling. Thumb-screws firmly
in place and tightened, he even...
Meet the official Turrican II joystick
Don't be surprised if you've never seen
one of these before in the wild; they are extremely rare. Not eBay
l@@k l@@k super-mega rare, I mean really-properly rare. They were bundled
with copies of Turrican II for the Amiga and Commodore 64, only ever sold
in Germany from what I can gather. "Double fun" guaranteed!
Regrettably, the joystick itself isn't actually an...
When Halloween's over, true horror begins...
Oh wait, no need to. Wait that ...
HUDson Baulk
Writing my bottom 10 list of games featuring criminally gargantuan HUDs,
I Googled the heck out of the topic and found naff all. My problem was not
knowing the keywords people might use to describe all those ridiculous,
screen real estate hijacking gizmos and wotsits. Had I guessed that
'status panels' might be among them, I would have stumbled across this
post...
Block rockin' beats
Copywriters and marketing gurus are hired because they know precisely how
to deliver that killer, witty one-line zinger. The kind that grab you by
the jugular, mercilessly manipulating you into parting with your
hard-earned cash or signing your life away.
So what went wrong here? (see C&VG
issue 152, July 1994, page 63)
You beat your
brother.
...
1080p composite images of entire Amiga game levels
Over at Deviant Art TheGouldFish
has been busily creating stunning HD maps of some of the most popular
Amiga game classics.
They're constructed by snagging the backdrops using the map ripping tool,
Maptapper, and stitching them together with multiple in-game screenshots
of the enemies and animated segments to populate the landscapes.
Wow, what an arduous task that...
Tuesday, 6 October 2020
Is game sales chart data worthless?
Having compiled a multi-format game sales chart database comprising over
10,000 entries I couldn't help noticing a few anomalies. For instance,
games appearing in the top-selling lists that were never actually finished
or published for the designated system. Judging by the reader's letter and
editor's response below as printed in Zero magazine in the '90s, the
reason...
Don't read this
Something that's always baffled me is why people deliberately seek out
movie, game or whatever spoilers and then blame the person responsible for
the inevitable spoiling having revealed key details of the plot or solution.
An all too common occurrence sadly, yet the letter below written to Zero
magazine is in another league. I've never known someone to completely wash
their...
I'm afraid of no toast
If you don't currently suffer from any irrational fears, you may well develop some new entirely logical ones after playing Tony Crowther's Phobia, a uniquely stylised, claustrophobic headmasher of a shmup that will pilfer your precious sleep and haunt your waking dreams. Psychotherapy not included!download ebook in epub for...
Monday, 5 October 2020
Every Slimer has his day
Of course you've always wanted to be a vile, mucous-dribbling slug entrusted with rearing a brood of mini-mes. Crawl the walls, trap grubs in bubbles and feed them to your clan to keep them nourished, exuding a basking glow of green-blooded vitality. You win, you've got the job, congratulations. I've already switched your name to Steg the Slug and informed the social security office.download ebook...
There's no going back
If you're a firm believer in the old axiom of pooch as man's best friend and all copies of Sleepwalker, Fire and Ice and Scooby and Scrappy-Doo are completely sold out with no hope of a second dispatch, Doofus may well be the Amiga platform game for you. Protagonist Tim's pet - the eponymous Doofus - is utterly useless and the game, in general, doesn't fare much better. It's bland, uneventful,...
Sunday, 4 October 2020
Transformers - Amiga games in disguise
Meet Thexder, a jet-fighter-mecha-morphing robot from the land of the rising sun, available for every known platform under it. It's one of the earliest run 'n' gun platformers, hence the primitive graphics and sound. Look beyond this and a deviously clever, rapid-fire action experience awaits. One that inspired many better-known, much-revered examples from the genre such as Turrican, Metal...
Saturday, 3 October 2020
Remember the time when Saddam Hussein wrote in to Amiga Action magazine seeking flight sim advice?
Madman
I am having some trouble with the
68000-based F-18A laser targeting and bomb guidance system currently
being used in the Persian Gulf. As I know you are all incredibly
computer-knowledgeable on Amiga Action, I have decided to write to you
for help. Peace.
S. Hussein, Baghdad
What you need to do is gain control...
PD: public domain or pure drivel?
Back in the '90s we had legitimately free software as we do now, only it
was known as 'public domain' because the authors permitted modification
and distribution of their work as long as it was carried out on a
not-for-profit basis. As there was a tendency for PD software to emerge
from the brains and bedrooms of single, amateur coders, diplomatically
speaking, it was...
Friday, 2 October 2020
Walking alone? Never!
I can't decide if G Bucknell should be awarded the Amiga Action
letter-writing Muppet of the year award, or if he/she had ingeniously
managed to hudwink the recipient into believing they're completely
backwards just for a lark. Either way, I had to share this tasty morsel of
nostalgic nonsense from the long lost world of dead tree publishing.
Liver-fool
I am writing...
Big Bang games development
Reading through the letters pages of C&VG I stumbled across an
interesting perspective on the development of video games as expounded by
an unashamed pirate attempting to justify the money-saving rouse.
Thomas compares the cost of a pirated disk to that of a legitimate retail
package and questions why the gap should be so wide given that the only
difference is a...
The all-time greatest Amiga Power reader's letters ever!
My friends agree with me
Dear AP
I have been
reading your magazines since they first came out. But I would like to
share a few ideas. I have noticed in some other magazines they have had
a page with drawings of say Soinc (sic) punching Mairo (sic) in the
face. I find this quite funny and good fun to read and my friends agree
with me so...
Thursday, 1 October 2020
The collected works of moi
For reasons that now escape me, I once believed it would be a sensible idea to create humongous PDF compilations of all my articles, complete with 637 gazillion pictures. The largest of these megabooks filled several thousand pages, occupying well over a gigabyte of data. Problem is, they were totally layout-locked rather than reflowable as is the modern way, so absolutely painful to read on...
Remember when reading magazines made time-travellers of us all?
Why were Amiga magazine publishers (and magazine publishers in general) incapable of printing the current/correct publication date on their issues? I explore the contentious controversy with a bit of help from a bemused former Amiga Action reader.download ebook in epub for...
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