Amiga Forever - Amiga GamesAmiga ForeverCustomersMemory LaneAmigaForever.com&Amiga GamesDepending on who you ask, theAmiga is (or was) either a great computer, or the ultimate games machine, orboth. Amiga Forever itself covers this topic in depth in its historicalsections (e.g. In the ), where it becomesevident that what was originally conceived as a games machine, and then grewinto a multimedia computer with a multitasking operating system, also had tobe constantly reinvented as both technology and market conditions evolved.There were times, after the release of the Amiga in 1985,where dedicated games machines were not very successful. As Jay Miner oncetold Cloanto's staff in a 1990, 'Little didthey know when they designed the Amiga that the whole video games thing was going to turn around and gothrough the cellar in a year or two.' From this perspective, or inconsideration of the Amiga's other troubles, judging what was right or wrongabout the Amiga could lead to conclusions that may not be shared 20 yearslater, when dedicated games machines are still very popular, and when so much ofwhat remains and is remembered of the Amiga itself is, after all, its legacyof games. Even we at Cloanto, who were developers of since the beginning, were somewhatsurprised of this evolution.What is left to us today, and what the Amiga Forever projectitself aims to preserve and make accessible in a fully legal and authorizedcontext, is a legacy of thousands of Amiga games. These are titles that madehistory, for the new ideas in game design they introduced, for theirplayability, and for their innovative use of the Amiga's exciting andpowerful hardware.
These games are part of the Amiga culture, and of thememories of those who made it and lived it. We are grateful to thepreservation organizations and sites, as well as to the original gamedevelopers, who made it possible to access these Amiga titles via a simpledownload. Included GamesDifferent editions of Amiga Forever may come with differentselections of included games, also in consideration of space and ofavailable ROM and operating system versions. These titles are preinstalled, and canbe started directly from the Amiga Forever software. We are confident that once you start playing thesegames you willbe tempted to download several more Amiga game classics, which are easy toinstall and use in Amiga Forever.
As Amibian doesn’t include a window manager, it’s easiest to download and copy everything to a USB stick using your operating system of choice. Helpfully, UAE4ARM can read Amiga ADF floppy images even if they’re in a ZIP file. T-Zer0 is an Amiga h-scrolling shoot'em up game released in 1999 by PXL Computers. Click for screenshots, downloads, cheats and more info!
CompatibilityThe Amiga emulation software and the ROM and operatingsystem files as included in Amiga Forever can be used toplay all Amiga games which are available for download from various sites.Sometimes, the download sites include specific configuration instructions,which describe how the emulation software has to be configured (e.g. TheCPU, or the minimum or maximum memory, etc.) As long as these instructionsare followed, the games will work.Some games were designed to run on newer Amiga systems (e.g.those with the AGA chip set, and the newer 2.x or 3.x Workbench), or onspecial Amiga systems (e.g. The CDTV or CD).
Another round of looking at 2019's Amiga game development scene.RESHOOT PROXIMA III DevleaksRichard 'Spieleschreiber' Loewenstein and crew are blowing people's minds with outstanding shoot-em-up games, and the excitement never stops. PROXIMA III is the next episode in Richard's RESHOOT games series, and it's going to be another awesome one.
He's released a couple of so-called 'Devleaks' videos so far, giving a rough idea of what the end result might look and feel like. Again, as with RESHOOT and RESHOOT R, this will make your eyebrows raise. How PlayStation can you go on Amiga? Be amazed.Here's Richard 'Spieleschreiber' Loewenstein's latest RESHOOT PROXIMA III Devleaks video ('Xmas Update' 2019-12-22). This is pretty impressive.!But. Might there be even more to it?
In this next video, an earlier 'Devleaks' clip, you can see that the game is running in 'Amiga 1200 (Blizzard 1260)' emulation, using FS-UAE. Wait a second - are we going full 68060 here? Does this mean this game will go even further and compete with Vampire-levels of performance? With the presumed releases of TF1260 and WARP1260 ahead. Is this going to be the killer application that will lead the Amiga into it's next m68k-generation? To Spieleschreiber's YouTube channel, and stay up to date!Support Amiga game development at Spieleschreiber's patreon page!Hyperborea making progress'Amiga DreamTeam' is working on 'Hyperborea', promising the 'world's first real Amiga 1200 Danmaku bullet hell classic vertically scrolling shmup game'. Not so much is known about the planned game mechanics or level design, and there's no music or effects yet, but, wow, this is a lot of stuff moving around the screen!
This very much looks like it's gonna be another envelope-pushing game, with, for example, fast, colorful graphics by using a cleverly designed engine allowing for lots of in-game colors on a low-color screen.Check out 'Hyperborea' latest work-in-progress video below, showing a little bit of menu-action, and a lot of bullets and stuff (2019-10-09). Amiga DreamTeam's facebook page, and show your support at:Amiga DreamTeam has a YouTube channel - tune in at:Inviyya under developmentInviyya is a horizontal R-Type-type shooter for Amiga 500 (OCS) with 1MB RAM.Doesn't that alone sound awesome?A demo has been released over a year ago, but it looks like this classic-style action game is still under heavy development. The latest preview videos (on the game's facebook page, see links below) look increasingly polished, playability seems to be getting tweaked to perfection, and so on. And it has a damn catchy music track.Here's the latest Inviyya video on YouTube (2019-11-02). In case you've missed it (like I did): On Dec. 16th a lot of technical details about the upcoming AmigaOS 3.2 have been published.After many websites have reported about the announcements made by thedevelopers, and a preview screenshot has been released, now we get a lotof detail information about bug fixes and new features of release 3.2.above screenshot was published in September (see 'Sources' below), and shows many of the new features: font sensitive GadTools GUI, shell command history (with tab completion), printer settings with arbitrary device(-name), system-window-wide 'iconify'-gadget, to name just a few.On Dec. 16th, user '4pLaY' made a series of forum posts on AmigaLife (see link below), publishing technical detail information obtained from AmigaOS developer Thomas Richter, about the various new features and the numerous bugfixes and improvements in AmigaOS 3.2.
For example we learn that utility.library got a couple of new string handling functions, that the bootmenu ('Amiga Early Startup Control') got some new settings, GadTools DrawBevelBox function can now draw another type of bevel-box design, and many, many more little or not-so-little changes. Very interesting read - for users, and maybe even more for developers, for the countless technical hints you get.By the way, it is also rumoured that a new SDK (Software Development Kit) can be expected. (See 'Sources' below for all the bits and rumours.)Head over to AmigaLife website to get all the latest technical details:Sources:https://www.reddit.com/r/amiga/comments/cz70fu/amigaos32previewdetails/https://vintagecomputerssociety.blogspot.com/2019/09/preview-of-amigaos-32-has-been-announced.htmlhttp://www.amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-204-EN.htmlhttps://www.amiga-classic.org/article.php?sid=15https://forum.amiga.org/index.php?topic=74270.0https://forum.amiga.org/index.php?topic=70692.0. The name 'VARTA' strikes fear into the hearts of Amiga 500 plus, and A501 memory expansion owners: VARTA rechargeable batteries have been built into these devices, and with growing age are prone to leak green acid, damaging the printed circuit boards and other components.Original rechargeable battery from an A501 memory expansionSo it's an absolute requirement to remove that rechargeable battery, and clean the PCB from all acid that might have spilled out, if you want to keep your device intact. Most Amigans seem to use vinegar and alcohol for cleaning, sometimes using a tooth-brush to rub off any damaged material.
If you don't catch the 'infection' in time, traces or components might be damaged, requiring repairs.But still it would be nice to have a working backup battery installed to your machine. Coin-cells, type CR2032, are a good replacement, they're widely available, and do not leak. But keep in mind that these aren't rechargeable - the Amiga provides recharge-current to it's batteries, so when replacing the original rechargeable one, we need to take care of that to avoid (additional) damage.Removing the rechargeable VARTA battery shouldn't be a problem, you just need a soldering iron. Next is the cleaning - and if you're unlucky - repair job.When you're done so far you can install you coin-cell. The original VARTA batteries are 3.6V. CR2032 coin-cells are 3V, that's within range for the clock chips used in Amiga 500 pluses and A501 memory expansions (mostly OKI M6242 chips).With some googling I found on how to do the replacement. He's done what's required, and added a few details, mainly putting the new battery on a separate board to avoid stress to the original PCB when exchanging the coin-cell in the future - an idea I like very much.
I basically did the same, but wanted to keep my A501 in 'one-piece', so I decided to put the extra board onto the A501 itself. According to one CR2032 manufacturer's docs, a diode and a 200 ohms (minimum) resistor are required to keep the Amiga's recharge-current away from the new, non-rechargeable battery. With a little more experience and new information gained, there was something left to do.Disclaimer: This is not an instruction. Useat your own risk. No responsibility taken for whatever you do.
Kids, dont try this at home., but then it's a weird number, and the TF530 is capable of more. It's been quite some time since I built my TF530. In the meantime Mr. Leary has released new firmware versions, improving the accelerator's compatibility with higher clock rates (among other things, probably). So the day had come to try a little tweaking.First of all I had to test the latest firmware release. I fired up my laptop running Xilinx's CPLD programming software, connected the USB-cable to one, and TF530 5V power input to another USB port on the laptop.
Surprise: The Amiga boots! It pulls enough power from the laptop's USB port to boot to Workbench!
And of course the laptop (running Windows) complains about a USB device pulling way too much power! Ok, I'd better disconnect the power, remove the TF530 from the Amiga, reconnect, and try again.Faster!Without any changes to the TF530 I uploaded the latest software to the CPLDs. Worked flawlessly, and SysInfo shows a little speed increase of about. Not precisely earth-shattering, but a welcome improvement.From 5800 Dhrystones to 6000 just by firmware update!I had never thoroughly tested the memory chips, and the new firmware needed something to do, so I started Microbotic's excellent MBRTest-2 memory testing program, and ran a couple of tests.
To my surprise there were no errors - my handling and soldering of the memory chips was fine from day zero!No RAM errors, very good!So far, so - very - good. I had seen some accelerator configurations where the 68030 had been overclocked by about 25%, and the FPU on my TF530 is a 40Mhz model anyway, so, yeah, why not try 40Mhz on the 33Mhz CPU?33Mhz CPU and 40MHZ FPU - will they run fine at 40MHz?Replacing the tiny SMD type 32Mhz oscillator with a 40Mhz one requires some fiddling if you don't have a heat-gun, but these oscillators seem to be quite tolerant to heat, and I managed to do it using a soldering-iron without any visible damage. After some cleaning it was time to switch the Amiga on, and see how she does.7500 Dhrystones!Hotter!Once again, to my surprise, this worked flawlessly! Wow, running at 40Mhz we get about 7500 Dhrystones in SysInfo! The 68030 is getting a bit hot - I'll be adding at least a small heatsink just to avoid unnecessary stress on the material.TerribleFire 530 with CF card adaptor inside the 'Amiga 530'As a final touch to my 'Amiga 530' I wanted to delete AmigaOS3.9 from the CF card, and reinstall OS3.1.
With some little adjustments OS3.9 ran quite well on the machine, but it's still comparatively resource-hungry, and in some parts unnecessarily bloated, thus slow. Installation of OS3.1 - no surprise here - was quick and worked flawlessly, too. Another reset, and.the Amiga now boots to Workbench in about 9 seconds!This is really good. I could try to get a 50Mhz CPU and install a 50Mhz oscillator - the 40Mhz FPU should be able to take that (the 33MHz CPU probably not so much.) - but for now I'm really perfectly satisfied with the performance.
NOTE: The 8.2.2 update is NOT a Design 3D CXi or SE 7.5 (Mac App Store) update. Software acquired through the Mac App Store is updated through the App Store. To update your Strata Design 3D CX 8 software to CX 8.2.2 do the following.
Firmware update, plus faster clock, plus operating system downgrade really make a difference. I'm assuming an added heat-sink will make the setup safe and stable in the long term.Now will THIS be the last part of the series of articles about 'Building the TerribleFire TF530 accelerator'? Probably not! There's still so much to experiment with - we haven't even touched the SPI port yet!Once again a huge Thank You! Stephen Leary for developing and releasing this awesome accelerator! 'The Story of Commodore's second cult-computer': German printed magazine 'retro GAMER' shows its love for the Amiga by releasing a special issue.196 pages strong, with more than 60 Amiga games reviews, and additional articles covering Amiga models, art on the Amiga, the public domain scene, the best Amiga 1200 games, and 'outsider' games.Being a special issue some of the articles have been published previously, but there are also many new articles, and the majority of pages has been reworked or newly created.
New articles include reviews of Alien Breed, Another World, Dune 2, The Great Giana Sisters, The Secret of Monkey Island, Sensible Soccer,Stunt Car Racer, Wing Commander, Worms, and more.Retro Gamer 'Amiga' special issue costs 14.95EUR, and can be purchased at magazine stores, or.Go to retro GAMER's website for more information. It very much looks like 2019 will surpass many previous years in number of new games released for the Amiga. In fact it becomes pretty hard to keep up with all the new developments.RESHOOT R'RESHOOT' from 2016 by Richard Loewenstein looked awesome, and was kind of something new on Amiga, but Richard isn't done with us yet: now he's given us 'RESHOOT R' with more assembler coded action, more bullets, extra weapons, more outlandish looking enemies, more insane sound effects, and more awesome pounding, hypnotizing music. It runs on AGA Amigas (CD32 included), claims to put up to 100 objects on screen at the same time, more than 400 colors, with transparency effects, still parallax-scrolling at 50Hz - no accelerator required, yet runs on 68020 to 68060, taking advantage of additional RAM if present.Hats off, RESHOOT R rivals ' in being the most advanced shoot'em up on the Amiga ever. R - additional info / download / purchase:(purchase 'signature' edition)(purchase digital)(purchase 'pure' edition)(RESHOOT, predecessor)RygarNot finished yet, but with preview videos out, we can pretty safely assume a 2019 release. 'Rygar' is a fantasy themed game for AGA Amigas, a remake of the 1986 Tecmo arcade game. Jump, shoot, dodge, run - somewhere in between 'Lionheart', 'Shadow of the Beast', and 'Ghosts'n'Goblins'.
It already looks very good, and has some above-average game mechanics. Expect some more improvements and bugfixes, this is gonna be an exciting game.Here's the latest in-development video. Additional info / download / purchase:(download)(download)PONG 4K goes commercialOne of the oldest gaming ideas got a massive update with 'PONG 4K'.
You still try to catch and reflect a ball, but that's pretty much where the similarities end. 'PONG 4K' is the successor to 'PoNG4' - for Amiga CD32 only, has an intro video, CD soundtrack, lots of bleeps and blurps, dark yet colorful graphics, giving it a 'Speedball' like dystopian future atmosphere, with parallax scrolling, four players simultaneously, gravity effects, obstacles. Originally released in 2018 it's got a commercial release in 2019.
Pong is dead, long live PONG! 4K - additional info / download / purchase:(purchase physical)(PONG 4K download)(predecessor, all Amigas)AirTaxi full version releasedDave May's 'AirTaxi' is a 1994 game heavily-inspired by 'SpaceTaxi', in fact it looks like a super-polished, enhanced version of the classic. A demo has long been on AmiNet, but recently the full version (.adf) has been released, and even an updated rework is considered by the author. 'AirTaxi' can be played by up to 5 human players simultaneously (2 joysticks + 2 joysticks on parallel port + keyboard), and runs smoothly on any Amiga with 1MB ChipRAM and some acceleration (25Mhz). It's got speech, soundfx, obstacles, weather conditions, bad guys, nice little character animations, etc. this looks very entertaining to play with a couple of friends!
Additional info / download / purchase:(demo version)TrapRunner source code releasedFrank Wille's 'Trap Runner' had a 'party release' in 2018, but is still going strong in 2019 with an updated 'final release', and recently the sourcecode has been released. The game is a 'Giana Sisters' type jump-and-run with super cute graphics and sounds, very classic, and it also has the best storyline ever: rescue girl from bad guy. Add playability, intro screens, and of course this irresistable marshmellow-smurf-kindof character - you just can't go wrong with 'Trap Runner'.You can buy a physical edition of the game, and you can also try your hands on the sourcecode. It's designed to be portable to other platforms, but there's some assembler code involved. From the screenshots, the music, and the video, this is an awesome game.
Gameplay looks above-average, the action is frenetic, graphics are good to stunning, smooth and stylish, and then there are these outstanding music tracks (some of which almost speak out 'I love Iron Maiden!' ) and sound effects.Bevilacqua's work is really impressive, he's applying minimalistic gaming ideas from the smartphone-generation to the Amiga, and does so with amazing technical skill.
The boxed 'Deluxe Edition' of SkillGrid (or any of RETREAM's games, for that matter) is just beautiful, a must-have for any serious Amiga gamer.Find out more, listen to the music, and get your copy of 'SkillGrid' at:If you just want to order your physical edition you can go here directly. Krzysztof 'Bitplan' Donat from Poland has just released a nice tool to handle your ADF files, and do a bit more.GoADF!
Is more than just your average ADF disk writing tool. It shows information about your ADF files, like filesystem type, used/free space on disk, and more, it can extract individual files from an ADF, it can mount ADFs as a logical drive to AmigaOS, of course it can write your ADF files to floppy disk, and it does a couple of other useful things.It also has a nice Workbench GUI, and it's free.:-)Get your copy of GoADF! BlitzBasic, or AmiBlitz, is a BASIC dialect, originally developed specifically for the Amiga, keeping the Amiga hardware's special features in mind, allowing reasonably unexperienced coders to get great results, and quickly.
Many games have been written in BlitzBasic, including the outstanding Lemmings-clone.Surprisingly there wasn't a facebook group dedicated to Amiga BlitzBasic - until now. Amiga BlitzBasic coders now have a group on facebook to share, exchange, and chat about their BlitzBasic experiences.The group's name is ' Amiga BlitzBasic & AmiBlitz', it's a closed group, and as such of course you need to have a facebook account, and request to join the group.C u there! Happy BlitzBasic coding! Oh, that's a nice one: 'Shogo: Mobile Armor Division', one of the best FPS games ever for the Amiga, originally released in 2001 (for the Amiga) can now be purchased as digital download.Mobile Armor Division' was initially released for Windows in 1998, and was one of a couple of ambitious ports to the Amiga platform done by Hyperion. The digital download is only 14.95EUR, and you need a next-gen Amiga running AmigaOS4.1 or some decent - in other words: PowerPC - AmigaOS3 hardware to run the game.Click this link for more details:Sources:http://hol.abime.net/1912https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shogo:MobileArmorDivisionhttps://www.facebook.com/HyperionEntertainment/posts/278613.
Retro is hip. Calvin Harris and many other contemporary musicians openly state the influence the nowadays called 'retro-scene' had and has on their work. Do Muse owe more than just a bit to 'The Last Ninja'?' The Last Ninja' is frequently listed among the best games ever for the Commodore 64 and the Amiga (as 'Ninja Remix'), and on either platform it's blessed with an outstanding soundtrack. Among all of 'Last Ninja's music tracks, composed by Ben Daglish and Anthony Lees, the best known is probably 'Wilderness', of which many remakes can be found on the net, including.In 2018, Muse released their album 'Simulation Theory', and on first sight you get the (semi-)retro idea they obviously had. The cover instantly reminds you of 'Blade Runner', 'Strange Days', 'Tron', and the likes, the whole bunch of 70s to 90s science fiction cinema classics.
Equally does the music take you back a couple of decades. The opening track's drums almost speak out 'eight-zero-eight', and it's classic analogue synth sounds all over the place.So let's start at what could be the beginning:Commodore 64, 'The Last Ninja' - 'Wilderness' by Ben Daglish & Anthony Lees, 1987.
Masterpiece of 3-channel SID composition. The only thing it lacks is a distinctive drum sound, but once you get it, it still has a strong underlying groove, and on top of that some beautifully crafted melodies, mostly in the pentatonic scale, along with lots of arpeggiated chords.Three years later, Jochen Hippel creates a remix of the same composition for 'Ninja Remix', with added drums, emphasizing the groove (and adding an uptempo section):Amiga, 'Ninja Remix' - 'Wilderness' by Jochen Hippel (based on original C64 version), 1990.
It staggering? There's even arpeggiated chords., even that '.Muse wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the Amiga 500.' , so it's no surprise we hear a lot of the then-common sounds and styles in Muse's music.
Portions of 'Algorithm' almost sound like a direct hommage to the Commodore 64 and Amiga game music composers at the time, and in this case even some of the chord progressions match.Did Ben Daglish & Anthony Lees' 'Wilderness' slip into 'Algorithm'? Did Muse steal from the composers? Well, fortunately there's no copyright on chords and sounds alone. The overall composition of 'Algorithm' is very different from 'Wilderness', and especially the vocal sections evoke a very different mood, so there's probably no question 'Algorithm' is a standalone creation. But still there is a huge 'Oh yeah.!' , as the similarities to 80s and 90s video game music are undeniable, and obviously intentional. Certainly not directly taken from 'Wilderness', but at least on a subconscious level it is possible 'The Last Ninja' has left a lasting impression in the back of the Muse's minds (or Bellamy's).
And if it's not 'Wilderness' specifically, then it's the blend of game music by composers like Martin Galway, Chris Huelsbeck, Rob Hubbard, Ben Daglish, Anthony Lees, and others, and the technical equipment available at the time - including an Amiga 500 - that certainly have contributed to 'Algorithm'. It's as if Muse are giving a friendly nod, maybe even taking a bow, to the generation of 8-bit musicians. Retro computer music has become a part of music history. Given Muse's popularity, one could say it has left it's niche existence somewhere between children's bedrooms and demoparties, and reached the open mainstream.Ben Daglish passed away on Oct.
1st 2018.Anthony Lees passed away in Aug.Additional sources:used names and material belong to the respective owners.