Amiga Games Companies

Discussion about Amiga games and gaming. However, please do not post requests for copyrighted software.

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Overall, who produced the best Amiga games?

Bitmap Brothers
6
22%
Team 17
6
22%
Sensible Software
3
11%
Psygnosis
8
30%
Ocean
0
No votes
Graftgold
0
No votes
Electronic Arts
2
7%
Mindscape
0
No votes
Codemasters
0
No votes
Other
2
7%
 
Total votes: 27

manny77
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Post by manny77 »

I just voted for Team-17,

SuperFrog rocks! Marvellous ultra fluid graphics, sound, musics and playability!

And what about THALION, that released LionHeart? My Amiga500 was squeezed by this game! I heard the dear fat-Agnus, Paula and Denise that cry for the effort...

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Muerto
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Post by Muerto »

ok, dident know they had a name... spooky :)
-- you cant escape Muerto --

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Doc
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Post by Doc »

Yeah where is Cinemaware, the best software house EVER.
( Wings, TV Sports series, Rocket Ranger, It came from the desert, etc...)

And Cryo also ( Dune ).

Ahh, so many great companies that went bust: Sensible Software, Team 17, almost all... are dead !
Damn, damnnnnnnnnnn, damn Nintendo, damn Microsoft, damn them ! They produce crap, and Amiga is dead, ahhh.

Although I have most of games systems, my heart will allways be with: Battle Squadron, Project X, Lotus, Wings, Another World, Dune, Centurion, Pirates, Pong, Street Fighter 2, Sensible Soccer, No second prize, Lost Patrol... I could go on forever. :(

manny77
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Post by manny77 »

Hey Doc!
Team-17 is not dead! Look here:

http://www.team17.com/

They are in good health indeed!
Worms 3D is coming soon on consoles and PCs:

Image
Image

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Doc
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Post by Doc »

Wow. Team 17 is really alive, and I don"t like worms that much. Worms this, worms that, can"t they think of somethink better than worms ?
Where are Project X and Alien Breed talents?
What... programmers run away ?

Amiga companies are dead and burried ( except Psygonosis who took the turn on Playstation at the right time ).
European software houses are killed by piracy, and Japanese rule the roost.
Don"t get me wrong I love Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid, but OUR HERITAGE is out...

kyz
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Post by kyz »

Doc wrote:Wow. Team 17 is really alive, and I don"t like worms that much. Worms this, worms that, can"t they think of somethink better than worms ?
The American bigwigs say no, so no. Team17 has to write new versions of Worms every 10 days because Worms is a Big Hit, a Big All-Formats Hit, and that makes lots and lots of money for the American bigwigs. And now they have to compete with Super Monkey-Ball and dancing mats in the "Party Games" category.
Doc wrote:Where are Project X and Alien Breed talents?
What... programmers run away ?
I think they're all still there, just fixing the netcode for Worms 2003.
Doc wrote:Amiga companies are dead and burried ( except Psygonosis who took the turn on Playstation at the right time ). European software houses are killed by piracy, and Japanese rule the roost.
Don"t get me wrong I love Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid, but OUR HERITAGE is out...
Have you heard of Grand Theft Auto? Made by DMA Design (now called Rockstar North to please the American bigwig bosses) Have you heard of Core Design's Tomb Raider? You know, with the Hollywood film and everything? It may be crap, but it's British crap! Wip3out? British? Surely not! There's also Sony's GTA-knockoff "The Getaway". Except it wasn't developed in a Tokyo backstreet, it was written by a bunch of Londoners.

Complaining that the British don't make enough anime-style role-playing games is like complaining they don't make enough anime cartoons. Of course they don't, it's a cultural export from Japan. The trouble is that British kids (and American kids, and obviously Japanese kids) love watching anime all day and can't be bothered with old-hat British cartoons, except the occasional Nick Park plasticine blockbuster financed by the Americans.

It's the same trouble with games companies. They're not out of business due to piracy, they're out of business because it's profitable for the distributors (usual the Americans, although now it's the Japanese too) to market every game like it was the next big hit, selling it at full price, then letting the developers get the blame if it's not a big enough seller.

On the other hand... have you seen SEGA's bank balance? Brown trousers! Playing the latest Sonic game on the Nintendo machines? How the mighty have fallen... :)

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Doc
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Post by Doc »

Impressive knowledge there kyz. But Sensible Software, Cinemaware, Innerspace,Bloodhouse, Bitmap Brothers, Ocean etc. went bust due to piracy. Plain and simple. People at Cinemaware said so in their interviews. If thay had programmed for SNES, Squaresoft would eat shit. All they know is RPG.

Psygonosis and Codemasters survived because they jumped on Playstation bandwagon. And made a fortune. But Amiga spirit ( as it was known is dead, capish ? ). No Worms will save it. No more Stardust, Dune or Battle Squadron. Nor their fantastic 2d graphics nor awesome music.

Those idiots at Delphine and Cryo obviously forgot how to program descent games. Factor 5 with Chris Huselbeck even escaped to N64.

Shame for Sega though, Yu Suzuky ruled...

Riley
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Post by Riley »

Doc wrote:Impressive knowledge there kyz. But Sensible Software, Cinemaware, Innerspace,Bloodhouse, Bitmap Brothers, Ocean etc. went bust due to piracy.
Well, I think that Sensible's downfall can be attributed to a large extent to their failure of finding a publisher for their adult adventure game called Sex, Drugs & Rock'n'Roll. It was a very ambitious project at the time, and they spent 3 years and a lot of money working on it - for nothing. You can read what Jon Hare had to say about it a couple of years ago here:

http://www.purplesensi.co.uk/snd/jonsays.html

Bloodhouse merged (in 95, I think) with another Finnish game company called Terramarque (the authors of Elfmania), and the resulting company (ingeniously called Housemarque) is still in business, afaik. They released a snowboarding game for the XBox last year.

Also Bitmap Brothers is still in business to my knowledge, concentrating on the GBA.

kyz
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Post by kyz »

Doc wrote:Impressive knowledge there kyz. But Sensible Software, Cinemaware, Innerspace,Bloodhouse, Bitmap Brothers, Ocean etc. went bust due to piracy.
The piracy argument has never worked. The majority of games pirates are habitual thieves whose main concern is getting something for nothing, not their love of gaming. The would not buy games if they didn't pirate them. You cannot force these people to buy the games they pirate. If pirate copies were mysteriously not available, they would not buy the games they would otherwise have stolen.

Arguments made by games publishers that "piracy" is the cause of their woes are utter lies. They prefer to have a scapegoat they can put all the blame on. It avoids them having to say "we charged too high a price for these games, and not enough people bought them" or "we make boring games that aren't worth what we charge for them".

I have 10 games for my Playstation 2, but for only _2_ of those games did their creators see any profits from my purchase. Yes, I only thought that 2 of the games I bought were worth £40. All the others were bought second-hand. If the games were sold at £30 or less, I'd be far more likely to buy them first-hand. And I'm an avid gamer. Most console owners only buy about 5 games over the lifetime of their console. And for every single console game sold, Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft/Sega/whoever take a big, non-negotiable cut from the profits. You can make more money on a PC game than you can with a console game, but it has to be a big hit. In fact, it's thought that 95% of games produced make a loss rather than a profit. But imagine how much profit Sony have made from Everquest, or EA have made from The Sims.

Ocean did not go bust. They were bought out by Infogrammes, and I think Atari now owns them. It's not a terrible loss, Ocean were mostly known for publishing other people's games and making dire movie licenses in-house. The Bitmap Brothers are still here. Cinemaware have re-opened. Sensible were, as Jon Hare admits, badly managed. He's still working in the games industry, afaik, so we've only lost the brand name, not the talent. Bloodhouse were some demo coders that got lucky, and it seems they've now teamed up with some more demo coders. NEO (the austrian friends of Factor 5) are still here, despite their god-awful Tunnel B1. Factor 5 are still here, making kick-ass Star Wars games for the GameCube. Even Bullfrog is still here, now known as Lionhead Studios (black and white, etc). Steve Turner (of Graftgold fame) went back to IBM, as he found the games industry too stressful and unreliable as a source of income, compared to a corporate programming job in a huge faceless organisation.
Doc wrote:People at Cinemaware said so in their interviews. If thay had programmed for SNES, Squaresoft would eat shit. All they know is RPG.
I would have trouble calling anything that Cinemaware made an "RPG". Things like Wings and Rocket Ranger were more action adventures. Things like Ultima, Heroes of the Lance and Dungeon Master were computer RPGs. They were aimed at real-life role-playing gamers (as Baldur's Gate is today). Console RPGs (like Zelda, Final Fantasy, Breath of Fire, etc) were an invention of the Japanese, and are aimed at being cute and accessable, with more emphasis on their graphics and plot than their stats building and combat rules.
Doc wrote:But Amiga spirit ( as it was known is dead, capish ? ). No Worms will save it. No more Stardust, Dune or Battle Squadron. Nor their fantastic 2d graphics nor awesome music.
Well, I wouldn't say the Amiga "spirit" is dead, it lives on in the people who created all those wonderful games. For me, the spirit of the Amiga was CUSTOM CHIPS TO DO ALL THE WORK. This was rejected by the PC community, to their cost. Nowadays, they admit the Amiga was right, and every PC gamer has a dedicated graphics card and dedicated audio card. Every console has its own super dedicated graphics chips and sound chips. I also admired people who would trick the Amiga's hardware into giving 110%, which is also something that all the best games do. In fact, you may remember the special performance-analysing Playstation that developer got, allowing them to tweak their games to get 100% out of the graphics pipeline.

Sadly, the 2D scroller has gone the way of the dodo. Only retro freaks like myself still play these platformers and shoot-em-ups. The only games that get away with not being 3D these days are puzzlers. But then, I've really grown to like the first-person shooter and 3D RPGs/racers/platformers. I didn't like DOOM, because it was mindless blasting, but Half-Life had a fantastic plot. It really showed off what FPS games could be like, if they put a little time and effort in instead of just bolting some graphics on to an engine. GTA: VC is really immersive, you can lose track of time playing that. Like all good games, there's no real end to it. A fixed progression through games can be interesting, but there's limited value once the game is completed. Could you imagine a paint package that would make you draw the mona lisa every time you used it...?

The other thing is that the Amiga's awesome music came from the fact the people making it were AWESOME COMPOSERS. But, being composers, their skills can be transferred to a big-budget music studio. Their knowledge of harmony, melody, orchestration, etc can still be used. The Amiga was a step up on the lesser machines because it could play samples instead of limited synth sounds. Well, now you can have CD quality studio recorded music in your game, you don't have to use a channel-limited sample replayer with a small bunch of effects.

If you're interested, by the way, Geoff Crammond has agreed to remake Stunt Car Racer, but only if his financier gives him complete artistic control over the game. No games publishers have taken him up on his offer yet. And you wonder why I moan about games publishers.

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Doc
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Post by Doc »

Yet another burst of knowledge by kyz. Few people like you and me are still around.

It"s not true piracy arguement is out, because in Amiga era all of my friends copied games to one another because the hardware allowed it. You can"t copy PS/PS2/XBOX game only with game system alone.
It is THAT EXACT reason why has Hiroshy Yamuchy ( CEO Nintendo ) insisted on cartridges for their consoles. Even on N64.

Other point I am trying to get across is that, if you compare games between consoles and computers in early 90s and now the difference is huge. In early 90s Amiga easily swept the floor with both SNES and Genesis. For example, if you compare Dune or It came from the desert to Final Fantasy 6, it"s preety clear which one are better. Cinemaware is Alpha and Omega, even to this day.
I mean Wings are THE BEST aircraft dogfight simulation ever, and all their other games are fantastic in so many different genres. Defender of the crown, TV sports series... everything. And Cinemaware didin"t re-open, don"t kid yourself buddy. This punks are amateurs.

However, if you compare stuff that Japanese made in 1997/98 : Final Fantasy 7, Metal Gear Solid, Zelda-Ocarina of time, Resident Evil, Castlevania SOTN etc., to stuff that former Amiga developers have done at the time like... nothing... it"s also clear who rules the roost now.

My conclusion is that, unfortunately European developers have lost videogame battle, because neither of their game ( apart Grand Theft Auto, Wipeot 2097, Colin Mcrae Rally, Rareware stuff ) is worth playing. Period. They even failed to match the magnificence of their previous work on Amiga.

And are you sure that DMA design renamed to Rockstar North, because I think Rockstar something already exists and they made Oni.

And yeah, I remember Sony"s performance analyser ( first used by Yamuchy team in Gran Turismo ), and adore Amiga composers ( although number 1. slot goes to Noboe Uematsu ). I also recall Nintendo always had custom chips as well, therefore SNES could outrun Genesis although Genesis had faster processor ( Motorola 68000
at 7 Mhz, compare to SNES"s 3,5 Mhz. )

I loved Doom, because IT WAS REVOLUTIONARY ( and it"s shotgun is still the best), and hated vastly over-rated piece of crap like Half Life by Valve and Gabe Newill.
Story is crap, level design is crap, enemies are annoying, intro and ending could not be worst, everything except the weapons. In fact Goldeneye is SO MUCH better. And not the mention brilliant work like Metal Gear Solid.

May I recommend the best book ever written about videogames, called "Game Over" by David Sheff. Fantastic work.

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KeMoT
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Post by KeMoT »

Hard to chose from.
Clash of titans like Team17 - Psygnosis is very tough.

I am confused...
The brave ones own the world...

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WarpedJuicerNeim
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Post by WarpedJuicerNeim »

21 votes casted for a poll that is 4 years old. Wowsers !!

anyway i voted the Bitmaps because of Xenon 2 and Cadaver ,they were my absolute Amiga all-time favorites.

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BuZz
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Post by BuZz »

It's reasonably quiet around here :-)

Possibly because there are quite a few well established "Amiga" forums already out there. But the exotica forums still have a purpose.

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oHIo
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Post by oHIo »

22 votes as ive just read it and gave mine to the Bitmap Bros who always gave us specail memories!!!

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Voltron
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Re: Amiga Games Companies

Post by Voltron »

My Choice Is:
Electronic Arts,
because:
The Best Music for This Company was composed by The Best:
ROB HUBBARD.
Defender Of The Universe

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