Amiga Addict magazine - DMA Design - Issue 02 February 2021 by Simulant

BRITAIN'S BEST-SELLING (ACTIVE!) MAGAZINE FOR AMIGA USERS

ISSUE No. 2 FEBRUARY 2021 £4.99 / $6.50 / €5.50

- User Groups - Interviews - Readers' Letters - Demoscene - Hardware & Tutorials

DMA DESIGN The history of Lemmings & other DMA classics! With Mike Dailly & Steve Hammond

GAMES & CONSOLE MADNESS

PLUS

We go crazy with game coverage including: Jim Power, Addams Family, Super Sprint DRS

Ruairi Fullam, PT-1210 DJ Tips, Simon Butler, classic magazine memories & much more!

YOUR MONTHLY SOURCE OF AMIGA NEWS, INTERVIEWS & SOFTWARE FUN FOR 68K | PPC | OS4 | MORPHOS & MORE!

February 2021

AMIGA ADDICT

Am ig a

Also a 5-page CD32 & CDTV console section!

A Pl dd ay ict e In r G 's C si u om de id ! e ple te

Adam Spring's moving tribute to Dave Needle

AMIGA ADDICT

February 2021

MEET THE ADDICTS We give the acronym "AA" a whole new addictive meaning...

Jonah

Ravi

ravi@amiga-addict.com (Scottish in spirit)

Your favourite lemming? "Scottish Twirler (Lemmings 2). I'd listen to the great Highland music on the Scottish level and watch the lemmings dance and jig!" First Amiga accessory you owned? "Audio Engineer Sampler. An amazing piece of hardware unlike others - a separate unit, instead of clipping on the back. Very high quality but sadly the left channel stopped working. It had a mad sample 'From the land down under' in an Australian accent." Best snack whilst using an Amiga? "Strawberry laces. My addiction started at a young age - like Adrian Mole's addiction to Wine Gums!"

Your favourite lemming? "Blocker - these guys are the unsung heroes, laying down their lives to save the rest! I always felt bad hitting the nuke button at the end." First Amiga accessory you owned? "A set of extension leads for the joystick/mouse ports. No more scrabbling around at the back of the machine when swapping the mouse for a joystick in 2 player games.." Best snack whilst using an Amiga? "When I was a kid at school, it was james@amiga-addict.com Pickled Onion Space Raiders - no explanation is needed (unless you live (mouse smells of pickles) outside the UK!)."

James

Ian

ian@amiga-addict.com (builds bridges)

Your favourite lemming? "Builder - most lemmings are all about destroying stuff, but my guy is making beautiful structures all over your screen! And clicking to start the next part of the bridge - so satisfying!" First Amiga accessory you owned? "The first thing that didn't come with my Amiga was the A600 1MB expansion. Seeing 'Expansion RAM detected & utilised' when loading Lemmings made you feel godlike!" Best snack whilst using an Amiga? "Definitely a bag of Pick 'n' Mix from Woolworths back in the day. These days, probably Haribo or a nice bag of Quavers (if I'm playing Pushover)."

Your favourite lemming? "Bomber - sometimes a little force is required to get things done!" First Amiga accessory you owned? "One of the ﬁrst that stands out would be my beautiful Star LC-200 dot matrix printer. A very useful accessory and a lavish buy - well worth the expense, with exceptional print quality even in full colour!" Best snack whilst using an Amiga? "I like to brew up a cup of peppermint tea, load up Worms (err sorry, I mean hannah@amiga-addict.com Lemmings... I don't want to upset Mike and Steve!!) and snack on a bag (picks the wrong game!) of Bassetts Liquorice Allsorts. Though I do enjoy a 7 Up too."

Hannah

How time flies, or at least it seems that way! The Amiga Addict team have been having fun - this month has flown by. We are trying to make the best of things here in the UK, despite the pandemic, usual winter blues and post-Brexit/New Year hangovers - and let's not forget our terrible British weather! "Jonah the Moaner" or what, eh?! I hope all of our readers are keeping safe and healthy, while also still having a bit of fun. We're Amiga users - and we've always been a happy bunch. You can't help but have fun when you're using the best 16-bit computer ever made... sorry Atari ST! You've all certainly put smiles on our faces this month (Deputy Ed. - "Nice cheesy segue Jonah!"), with lots of readers sending in photos of their first magazines arriving (See Amiga Addict In The Wild, page 7) - now it is our turn to keep you in good spirits, with this latest instalment of Amiga Addict! Our small team learned a lot with Issue 1. We were inundated with orders, ideas and constructive criticism. I, for one, did not foresee myself still being up at 3am on the mornings of our first posting days - printing over 700 address labels and stuffing each envelope by hand, whilst trying to rock a newborn baby back to sleep! I'd like to thank the AA team for working hard to bring that first issue together so quickly. We appreciate the support of our advertisers too. It's fair to say that everyone involved is a true Amiga magazine addict. Actually, we have lots of classic magazine memories this month, including some amusing insights from ex-editor of Amiga Action, Paul McNally! (See A Day in the Life... page 24. Along with magazine expert Paul Monaghan's The Amiga, Magazines & I, page 25.) And what a great second issue we have managed to collate! As always, we could not have done it without the continuous help of the Amiga community, AA contributors and readers. Before you get stuck in, let's also give a shout-out to the podcasts, YouTube channels and news websites that have given us such positive coverage since our launch. Issue 1 was very well received and we were discussed by Console Shock, Pixel Fix, Retro Asylum and The Retro Hour podcasts (to name just a few!). We hope any readers that haven't yet listened to these shows will tune in and give them a try. Unfortunately we experienced one setback. In our first issue we promised we'd be covering Edu Arana's UnAmiga next month. Edu kindly posted out a review unit in plenty of time, so we would be ready for the article. However, we're still waiting to receive it due to postal delays! We won't forget to include a review when it does turn up though (along with details of the new 'Reloaded' version. See Amiga News, page 6). Thankfully everything else we aimed to include is right here in these pages. The front cover uses a screenshot we grabbed whilst playing the original Amiga Lemmings at AA Towers. It's a fun intro, with lemmings jumping out of a hot-air balloon before the game starts, and it is this type of polish (and outstanding gameplay) that so many 90s Amiga games had. By this point the bar was being raised, and Lemmings along with many other 90s titles proved that the Amiga had new tricks and was still relevant in a time of growing PC dominance. DMA Design was there at the cutting-edge, pushing the hardware and gameplay boundaries with many Amiga titles right up until the dawn of 3D (see DMA Design, page 18). I also have to mention this month's moving feature on Dave Needle (see From Cornwall to Jupiter... page 11). The article idea, when suggested by Adam, was so important to us that we wanted to allocate him as much space as possible in the magazine for his feature - so this tribute will also continue next month, in a two part series. Dave Needle is truly missed, and all of us Amiga fans will forever owe him dearly. We are thankful to Adam that he can share his memories and aid in reminding us to keep Dave in the forefront of our minds. His legacy will always live on. Right, no more spoilers... until next time, enjoy and keep Boinging! - Jonah Naylor (Editor)

February 2021

AMIGA ADDICT

REGULARS

Your favourite lemming? "A toss up between Digger or Pickaxe - tunnelling always seems like a very direct shortcut! Also the ﬁrst useful lemmings from the original game." First Amiga accessory you owned? "The ﬁrst really exciting and expensive one was an internal hard drive in my A1200. I'd never owned a hard drive before, it was so fast and had a lovely clicky read noise too!" Best snack whilst using an Amiga? "Wispa Gold. I still eat one daily! In editor@amiga-addict.com the 80s, I'd always choose a Wispa if I needed some extra creative DPaint (eats too much chocolate) inspiration or Amiga gaming energy. A retro bar with a nextgen upgrade."

AMIGA ADDICT

February 2021

DMA DESIGN ISSUE 2 - FEBRUARY 2021 REGULARS

DAVE NEEDLE

Meet The Addicts & Editorial............................3 Amiga News.........................................................6 Keyboard Warriors & Back In The Day.............8 What?! Amiga Pie!..............................................51 Demoscene.........................................................52 Back Issues, Subscriptions & Next Month.....55

AMIGA FOCUS Amiga Addict In The Wild..................................7 Amiga: High Street to High Demand?.............9 UK User Groups & Amiga Meets.....................10 Memoirs Of An Amiga Gamer.........................16 The Amiga, Magazines & I................................25

DEMOPARTIE S Deputy Edito r Ravi's exclusive inte rview with Nova's or ganiser Ruairi Fullam .

cluding mes section in A whopping ga wer, No Family, Jim Po The Addams t DRS! & Super Sprin Second Prize

GAME GUIDE

TESTBENCH StarShip Next Generation & Amiga Power "The Album with Attitude".....15 Black Magic Box Secrets...................................42 Light Gun Adaptor For Classic Amigas...........44 Amiga Tech Tree................................................46 DJing & PT-1210................................................48

CD32 & CDTV We celebrate Commod ore's home console innovations wit h CD media!

PAGE 39 & 42

Six Of The Best...................................................28 Moonstone - "A Hard Days Knight" Game Guide........................................................30 The Addams Family...........................................32 Jim Power In 'Mutant Planet'..........................34 No Second Prize.................................................36 Super Sprint DRS...............................................37 CD32 Corner.......................................................39

PAGE 53

ON SCREEN

ONSCREEN

PAGE 28

From Cornwall To Jupiter - Memories of Dave Needle (Part 1).........................................11 DMA Design........................................................18 A Day In The Life at Amiga Action..................24 Demoparties with Ruairi Fullam.....................53

PAGE 18 PAGE 11

Dave Needle is fondly remembered in a two part tribute by Adam Spring, both on a personal level and for his legacy.

AMIGA INSIGHT

CONTENTS

Oh no! More great AA interviews. W e talk to the illustrious Steve Hammond & Mike Dailly formerly of D MA Design.

*Amigas were used, but not harmed, in the creation of this magazine.

WWW.AMIGA-ADDICT.COM • MAGAZINE@AMIGA-ADDICT.COM • TWITTER.COM/AMIGAMAGAZINE • Editor, Writer & Graphic Designer Jonah Naylor • Deputy Editor, Writer & Researcher Ravi Abbott • Game Reviewer & Writer James Walker • Writer, Proof Reader & Community Correspondent Ian Griﬃths • Proof Reader & Advertising Manager Hannah Clark Amiga Addict is an independent publication. The publishing company - Simulant Systems Ltd - has no connection with Commodore, or any subsequent trademark/ branding rights holders such as Cloanto/Amiga Corporation. The views expressed in this magazine are those of the individual writers' opinions only, and are not the opinions held by Amiga Addict magazine publication or its publishers.

We take great care to ensure that what we publish is accurate, but cannot be liable for any mistakes or misprints. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without our explicit permission.

February 2021

AMIGA ADDICT

PUBLISHED BY

REGULARS

Email your news & press releases to magazine@amiga-addict.com

New Unamiga Model Edu Arana never stops working hard on his Unamiga hardware. He has produced the new Unamiga Reloaded Standalone. This is an FPGA Amiga 500 compatible computer as before, but now with extra enhanced cores like the Minimig RTG, ZXNext and SNES. It also includes embedded TZXDUINO, RTC, Wiﬁ capability and improved audio and video outputs. These units sell fast, and at time of going to press they were already out of stock. Check back at www.arananet.net under their Amiga section for more stock soon.

Stephen Jones - Kickstarter Success! Last month we reported on Stephen Jones' new Checkmate 1500 Mini Kickstarter. We'd like to congratulate him on reaching and surpassing his target of £50,000. Great news Stephen! We're looking forward to seeing these new computer cases in Amigans' hands soon. An Eye On The Time with A1K For Amiga users without a Real Time Clock, constantly resetting the time in Workbench can be frustrating! But now there is a simple RTC unit by Marcel Jähne for A500 and A1000 computers on GitLab. Gerbers and BOM are available so it is easy to make an aﬀordable unit of your own. Available from: gitlab.com/ marceljaehne/a1k-simpleclock

parallax scrolling, nice music and SFX. It looks awesome from the screenshots and we're excited for a review as soon as we get our hands on it. Expected for release this month via Poly.play and Itch! More info: tigerskunk.itch.io/inviyya

New Gradius Port - Tinyus Already well-loved for his other Amiga game conversions (Tiny Bobble, Tiny Invaders, Tiny Galaga), pink^abyss is now tackling the arcade hit Nemesis (aka Gradius in Japan) by Konami. He is joined by Fade1 for the graphics, as well as Bartman, who is doing the arcade reverse engineering. This new Amiga port will even run on a trusty old A500, but will be capable of 50fps on higherspec machines. We'll keep you updated. Black Dawn Rebirth Deluxe & Expansion With enhanced graphics (including a full animated intro), new sounds, 21 levels, 14 weapons and 21 types of enemies the new Deluxe Edition of Black Dawn Rebirth sees widespread upgrades to this Dungeon Crawler Amiga game. A map editor and game source code is also now included. In addition, the new Rogue expansion pack is coming soon, allowing procedurally generated dungeons! See: timeslip1974.itch.io/black-dawn-rebirthdeluxe-edition Inca Man In Development Fans of the recent Amiga port of Magica should pay attention to this one! Amiten Team are working on a new platform puzzle game in a similar vein entitled Inca Man. See YouTube stills below.

This Looks Creepy - Wilcza Buda EMC Studio have released a demo of an adventure game called Wilcza Buda. It is done in a similar style to that of games like Myst and looks really quite scary. One to be anticipated by horror or mystery fans. Their website invites you to "Enter the code that was displayed on the [demo] ﬁnal screen"... Download to solve the puzzle at: www.wilczabuda.pl

AMIGA ADDICT

MiSTer Floppy Disk Drive Adaptor Forum member Lukage of misterfpga.org has developed an adaptor board to allow the connection of a floppy disk drive to the MiSTer FPGA. A significant step in helping MiSTer Amiga users to access original Amiga floppy disks, as well as allow software and game preservation through backup. Stay tuned as we hope to bring updates on this project in future issues.

Amiga Programming Comeback? Francois Lionet (author of AMOS on the Amiga) and team are due to release their ﬁrst fully stable version of AOZ Studio this month. Although this is actually for PC, MAC and Smartphones, we have been told that AOZ is almost fully compatible with AMOS on the Amiga! We hope this may lead to cross-development solutions in the future... Don't Pay For Display! There's now a cheaper way to output pixel perfect HDMI from your socketed DIP Denise chip Amiga. The mod consists of using an existing oﬀ-the-shelf adaptor board that is readily available - along with a Raspberry Pi Zero, Micro SD card and some HDMI cabling. It is easy to set up and no soldering is required. See c0pperdragon's GitHub page for full instructions and information on what components are needed: github.com/ c0pperdragon/Amiga-Digital-Video

Inviyya, New Amiga Shooter Developer Tigerskunk is working on Inviyya, a new horizontal shooter for classic Amigas. Inviyya will feature 6 levels, special weapons, three layer

Streets of Rage!! Prototron resurrected his project to port Streets of Rage to the Amiga last year. So far, with community support, he's managed to create a fully playable demo that has been coded using AMOS Professional 2.0 and ﬁts on one ﬂoppy disk - quite a feat! Just join 'The Zone' on EAB forum to download the demo (it's worth it!). Once a member visit: eab.abime.net/zone.php

February 2021

...In The Wild

February 2021

AMIGA ADDICT

Send your reader comments & letters via email or Discord: magazine@amiga-addict.com www.amiga-addict.com/discord

Keyboard Warriors REGULARS

(Basically just send anything in - we'll probably print it!) Confusing Subscriptions I wanted to congratulate you on this initiative. I ordered and read the first issue with great pleasure. I am here to ask if it is possible to make a subscription to the magazine? Thanks and compliments again, - Carlo Pastor, Italy. Thank you for your support and kind words Carlo! We are happy you enjoyed the first issue of Amiga Addict. I am glad you brought up the question about subscribing. We've been asked quite a few times how subscriptions work. We are honoured to say that some readers were very excited after reading Issue 1 and then wanted to quickly subscribe before Issue 2 was available. Many wondered how to start their subscription on a future unreleased issue..? Well as daft as it may seem, we've set all subscriptions up so that they always begin on the current issue. If you want to start your subscription on the next issue, please wait until that issue first becomes available on our online shop - then place your order. There will always be a month long window in which to order any current issue, so don't worry about missing them. We have also started stocking back issues too. Details on page 55.

Insert Disk 2 It's great to have an Amiga Format and CU Amiga replacement after all these years! - Scott Byrne-Fraser (via Twitter) A Love of Fruit Some great content in issue one. I’d love to see an article showing how to get OS3.1.4 installed and optimised on a Raspberry Pi. - Rob Hazelby (via Discord) Remember, Always Backup! Hi AA! I would like to see an article on how to preserve and restore old diskettes. - Wayne Bushby (via Discord) Very high praise indeed Scott! I'm not sure we are worthy though! Really great ideas Rob & Wayne - we'll ask Hannah to add them to her 'Final Data' database for the future. If any readers feel they can contribute these types of topics, please get in touch. Dear AA, I have just read the ﬁrst issue of Amiga Addict Sta Let r and was really impressed. I particularly found ter the Dodgy Rocks and Jump Besi Jump game reviews spot on by Ian! Keep up the good work! I also wanted to write in to ask if your readers may know of any independent game developers or homebrew coders, who would like to see their games and software released? I am currently setting up a publishing business and we are looking for Amiga titles, as well as other platforms. If you are reading this and are a game designer or coder, please contact me at hobbyraum20@web.de I look forward to issue 2 and wish you all the best! - Matthias, Germany

We continue our jaunt through the Thatcher years - a mixed bag of gloom and boom memories for readers here in Britain (your outlook often depending on your own family's ﬁnancial standing back then). The early to mid-80s saw steel industry closures and miners' strikes, yet the upper echelons of society were doing just great. And the UK's tech industry was booming, with many bedroom coders and software publishers earning their fortunes. Video game crash? What's that? As a decade, the 80s was a wacky paradox, with lots of world-wide innovation and notable events to fondly remember. (Ed - "Hmm, maybe we should have tried including some of latter here!?")

BACK iN THE DAY '8 6

What does this have to do with the Amiga? Absolutely nothing! Well actually, some of it is relevant in terms of social context - the Amiga 500 is soon to become Britain's most popular home computer. But ﬁrst - let's set the scene a little further...

Commodore Magazine News

At The Box Oﬃce

Sinclair Sold To Amstrad

Catchphrase

Popular Computing Weekly has the Commodore Amiga in their news three times in '86. First with news on availability from UK retailers after the Amiga release. Amigas are then front page headlines later in the year, with breaking news of the new A2500 to be manufactured in Germany (reported to eventually replace the A1000). They also inform readers of the as-yetunnamed cutdown model for the home market (A500)!

Us 80s kids were a lucky bunch! Similar to last issue's 1985 seeing massive movie franchise releases - 86 didn't disappoint with Top Gun, Crocodile Dundee, Platoon, The Karate Kid Part II, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Aliens, Ferris Bueller's Day Oﬀ and Stand By Me. Not to mention loads of other massive ﬁlm titles! Timothy Dalton is chosen as the new James Bond and Pixar Animation Studios is founded.

Sir Clive Sinclair - despite owning a very successful home microcomputer brand (the ZX Spectrum) - was haemorrhaging cash due to other Sinclair Research product lines. Sinclair were losing around £1,000,000 per month in 1986! Lord Sugar acquired the ZX Spectrum range for a cool £5,000,000 to expand Amstrad's line up. Amstrad quickly expanded further to become Europe's largest computer manufacturer.

One of ITV's most successful game shows of all time is debuted in January. Host Roy "Say What You See" Walker became one of the highest paid television personalities in his 13-year run with the show. For tech fans, it is Mr Chips that is fondly remembered - a character in the innovative computer-generated puzzles that contestants had to solve. As Roy would often say, "It's good, but it's not right!".

AMIGA ADDICT

February 2021

Amiga: High Street to High Demand? - Deputy Editor Ravi summarises the UK's once distinctive Amiga retail market

AMIGA FOCUS

hen I entered the Amiga world in 1993 at eight-years-old, it still had a huge user base and retail presence in the UK. Earlier users may have had entirely diﬀerent retailers and experiences depending on location and which shops you had in your city centre.

t a young age, I was clueless about Amiga retail and computer retail in general. Your weekly trip to the supermarket with Mum was about as retail as you would get. With all your money coming from your parents, you were happy to blag one of the many Amiga mags and live oﬀ the demo disks until the next visit. My dad was a professional Amiga user and, like everybody else, desperate for support. One day, he told me we were heading to an ‘Amiga Store’. I was amazed that such things existed - what would they sell? Most of the games I got were copies and handed to me in the playground. I don’t think I even had an original game disk in my entire collection!

Image courtesy of Dustin Michailovs.

e travelled to somewhere about an hour or two drive from Nottingham. The memory is hazy, but this was a huge building built with red brick. The best thing about this place was rows and rows of boxed Amiga games. I already had pirate copies of many of these games, but seeing them lined up in the boxes got me very excited. Seeing those sexy black Psygnosis boxes with stunning designs really caught my eye. I had always thought Amiga games and Euro gaming was cool, but the heavy metal look of this box art really conﬁrmed it for me. Not cute Nintendo, not educational looking Acorn, but that cool, metal, alternative gothic look which was sooo 90s. Having said that, I was immediately drawn to Lemmings 2: The Tribes. My dad got me a copy and I did not regret my choice - it included a

Virgin Megastore, Nottingham 1986-2007.

Britain's local computer shops - a mainstay of every town & city in the 1980s to early 2000s.

storybook as well as the manual with amazing additional info on the Tribes. It really made me respect Psygnosis and the extras you would get in a big box game.

s I grew older and was allowed to go into the city centre myself, it became part of our weekly routine. Go into the city centre on a Saturday with far too much hair gel. Go to the local arcades to see the boys try to prove their skills on Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat. Then head around the stores. Hanging around retail stores these days is discouraged, but you would spend hours looking through titles and discussing them back then. In a similar way to how the whole family would row over what to watch in the video store on a Saturday night!

he retailer that really stood out to me was Electronics Boutique - that place was just so damn stylish. The whole revamp in the 90s made it look like a mix between Claire’s Accessories and Vice City. Black signs with UV purple all over the top - it was stunning. The shelves were always rammed with the latest titles and Amiga was given a big presence. Shelf space in these units was really important and in a way it reﬂected the popularity of the system. More popular, more shelf space and better range.

ou would ﬁnd that retailers who had an interest in Amiga would promote it more than other retailers, who might be shifting other machines and have incentives and deals with those manufacturers. For example, we had a three-ﬂoor Virgin Megastore in Nottingham - a fully custom place which

February 2021

even had a Futurama-style tube system for sending stock and receipts. Virgin at the time were still pumping out Amiga games as well as console titles, so there was a huge shelf just for Amiga that I would make a big deal out of to my mates.

s time went on, Amiga slowly started to disappear. The shelves got smaller, and other systems appeared like the PlayStation. Even places like Beatties, who only had a small computer retail section, started getting Sega stuﬀ in, and consoles began to dominate. The only computer section popular was big box PC games. This change in the market forced Amiga retailers in the UK to become independent strongholds in certain areas. Mail order remained strong and others were forced into car boot sales - people setting up epic shops with hardware, multiple tables and thousands of pieces of software, often at cut price or pirated.

t’s a testament to the Amiga that these retailers were able to keep going for such a long time - I plan to explore this in a future follow-up article. I would love to hear your experiences via the letters page of what Amiga retail was like in your country, what happened and what you found unique.

he amazing thing about all this is that, thanks to the internet, we have Amiga retailers today, in 2020. That's 26 years since Commodore went bankrupt. With the online world making it easier to sustain a niche business, they are even growing. And, against the odds, a few physical shops also remain operating. Now that's dedication to the cause.

AMIGA ADDICT

UK User Groups & Amiga Meets

AMIGA FOCUS

- There is something special about computer clubs and gatherings. Ravi explores why. Computer clubs, or user groups, have been an essential part of the hobby even before the birth of home computing. Famously, the Homebrew Computer Club in California helped birth the Osborne, Apple 1 and an angry Bill Gates threatening to sue everybody over software piracy. But as communities have moved online and found new ways of interacting, user groups seemed like they were on the way out. The vintage computer scene worldwide has shown that user groups are still essential to keeping a platform going and maintaining a core userbase. The crazy thing is many of these user groups have been running since the 80s or even earlier! With Amiga, the user group scene is very strong and really helps bring new people to the platform, as well as oﬀering vital support to veterans. Long after the companies have come and gone, names have changed hands and technology has changed, the user groups will still be doing their thing. Amiga user groups are popular around the globe, with very active groups in the US, Canada, Australia, and throughout Europe. Seeing as we are a UK magazine, I will focus on those groups initially - and with seven currently active nationwide,

hopefully you can ﬁnd one in your local area. In my travels, I have visited groups at home and abroad, but I’ve noticed a few themes and commonalities that seem universal wherever I go. Roles User Groups often have: • The Organiser - Usually collecting the fee payments to support the hire of the venue (often a church hall, community centre or anywhere with a cheap rate and electricity) and making sure everything runs smoothly, they’re the backbone of the group. • The Food Person - Somebody who prepares snacks and interesting feasts. Often they have a passion for cooking as a hobby. • The Fix-it Felix - Someone who can ﬁx anything with limited tools and their encyclopaedic knowledge of computer innards. • The Gamer - A person so dedicated to gaming, they ignore the rest of the user group and spend their time either trying to get a high score or button bashing. • The Coder - That guy who has a massive knowledge of programming and loves to talk about it. Everybody else just nods along, pretending they know what they are on about. • The Passion - Everybody at these

Amiga North Thames (ANT) ANT are the Amiga group for the Big Smoke. Based in North East London, and chaired by the legendary Mickey C, ANT has been a UK Amiga staple for a long time. Often hosting events and turning up at other events as a group, they are a great bunch. They love Classic, but there is a heavy Next Generation focus. www.amiganorththames.co.uk LINCS Amiga Group (LAG) Lincolnshire Amiga Group has a real family feel. They meet up monthly in the tiny village of Whelton, and if you’re into Amiga, this is a great place, with PowerPC fans, Classic fans and a tasty pinch of MorphOS. This group is really welcoming, and has a great family vibe with everyone helping out and supporting each other. www.lincsamiga.org.uk South West Amiga Group (SWAG) South West Amiga Group serves areas of the South such as Bristol, South Wales, Swindon and Salisbury. This group is massive, the biggest in the country - their regular events are close to a full Amiga show! It’s stunningly well organised with over 100 attendees at events, and it’s become one of the ‘things to go to’ on the retro circuit, while still maintaining the traditional user group friendliness and support. Look out for their “Workbench” events. www.southwestamiga.org.uk/ Scottish Amiga Group (SAG) The Scottish Amiga Group is a small group serving the whole of Scotland! They meet up regularly and have a very special connection to hardware, as Rob Cranley - hardware hero who has just worked on Stephen Jones’ Checkmate custom boards

AMIGA ADDICT

February 2021

meetings has a love for their machines and enjoys nothing more than bringing them along, plonking them on a table, and having people drool over them. During the pandemic it’s been hard to meet, so some user groups have held socially distanced meetings. There have also been some virtual events and some new groups have even been formed. Hopefully all these Amiga groups will be active and running again, once the virus situation is improved. Maybe we will see even more pop up! If you’re thinking of starting a group, or we’ve missed yours out, let us know where you are and what you’re about. And that goes for international groups too - we’d love to follow up with an international article, so let us know about your country's user groups and what they do.

Don't move... I've spotted some Amigans!

- is a key member, as well as the awesome Stephen Leary, of Terrible Fire fame. This group is a great laugh if you're up for a whiskey and a bit of Amiga. https://www.facebook.com/ groups/626138110921245 Robin Hood Amiga Group (RHAG) Robin Hood Amiga Group was formed in 2020 as a support network for Amiga users in the areas the legendary Robin Hood would roam - Nottingham, Derby, Sheﬃeld, Mansﬁeld, Doncaster, Worksop and Yorkshire. It’s only had one socially distanced meeting so far, and then had to go online due to the lockdown. I am running this one, and there seems to be a big demand in the Midlands, so hopefully this group will have a strong future. www.rhamiga.com Norwich Amiga Group (NAG) Formed in 2017 as a pub gathering, this has now grown to a huge group with over 400 members. It covers all aspects of Amiga, and has a dedicated userbase who repair, recap and upgrade each other’s machines. They can often be found playing Micro Machines, or getting stuck into a SWOS tournament. www.facebook.com/NorwichAmigaGroup/ North West Amiga Group (NWAG) Founded in 2015, NWAG is serving the North West, covering areas like Liverpool, Blackpool and Manchester. It’s also a hop, skip and jump from North Wales. Liverpool being home of Psygnosis, this group has an awesome connection with Amiga’s gaming roots. This group looks really friendly and constantly on the hunt for new members. www.bambiamiga.co.uk/spudmiga/nwag/

From Cornwall to Jupiter... Memories of Dave Needle (Part 1)

The man behind the curtain Wizard of Oz-like visuals come to mind when I think about my friendship with Dave Needle. The lens of nostalgia is tinted with a kind of greyness similar to that famous opening sequence of a farm in Kansas. A kind of greyscale on the cusp of transition to Technicolor wonderment. In my Oz, America’s Midwest - with its landscape and culture - is replaced by Britain in the last decade of the 20th century. The Munchkinland Mayor is swapped out for a Prime Minister considered boring by most people (he was even reimagined as a grey puppet by Spitting Image). The swirling visual in my story is not provided by a tornado either my swirl is more like the stirring contents of a pot, consisting largely of Dave Needle-infused hardware - Amiga computers, Atari Lynx handheld gaming units, even the more expensive 3DO.

All these devices existed in the marketplace and user community of the European region I was in at the time. With the benefit of hindsight and the experience of living in the US, I would say this area was more of a melting pot for ideas than America. All Dave Needle's products were developed and sold there first. People in the UK were also forced to be resourceful due to the prohibitive cost of something like a computer at the time. Community-based learning was supported by the British tendency to create structure around, and apply rules to, a given object or happening. Multipurpose computers like an Amiga were, in other words, an investment on many levels for most of the people using them. The market wrangling seen in the US did not extend to British shores in the same way either. You need only look to YouTube for one of the many videos outlining how Nintendo or IBM (and clones of their PC architecture) sewed up the US market to get that story. The overriding norm in a place like Britain was to make a computer last for as long as possible, if you could afford to buy it in the first place. My first computer was a Commodore 64, which I bought around 1990. I wanted the Amiga 500 that I had seen in Dixons (a chain of stores that no longer exists in the UK), but it was out of my price range at the time. This is where my Dave Needle story begins in one respect. Though I did not get the Amiga 500 I actually wanted, it is the earliest memory of something I would discover about myself years later - that I had a natural instinct for technology trends, quick to identify patterns related to development, use and future directions.

Dave Needle & Adam P. Spring trying on some Minions themed merch at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, 2015. The discussion whether Dave the Minion was inspired by Needle - which occurred over a “ﬁsh and chips” dinner - was the inspiration for this photograph.

I remember bringing the Commodore 64 home and firing up some Bad Dudes versus Dragon Ninja, then Cauldron I and II. All of which was loaded onto my new computer via an archaic cassette tape system, old even for that time period. Several thoughts entered my mind as the Commodore Datasette came to life, and multiple colours flashed on my television set. It was not the floppy disk-based

February 2021

system I wanted, which I just assumed would have faster loading times. It was a Commodore machine, but it did not feel like it had any connection to the Amiga 500 I had just seen in Dixons. I could feel the disconnect on the technology end quite keenly. A similar feeling would come over me again a few years later, this time via the Atari Lynx. It was around the time when Atari had started to lower the cost of the Lynx, Batman Returns was a flagship title, and a classmate had brought his Lynx to school. I could say it was to show it off to people, but as he got asked to move schools about a year later, it was more likely he just had it to openly play in the classroom during lessons. This was, remember, the years of a John Major government - the great unwashed in rural areas like Cornwall were not exactly given a runway to cleaning themselves up. Having already played a Game Gear, a feeling came over me that day similar to the one I had when I first used my Commodore 64. This time, however, it felt like there was some kind of connection between that and the Lynx. The Game Gear felt like a downgraded version of the system Dave and RJ Mical had originally called the Handy Game, and would later become the Lynx. Taking the Handy Game to market Over twenty years later - on a trip where I stayed at Dave’s house (the same trip the photo of him with the first Amiga off the production line was taken - see page 14) I got confirmation that the Game Gear was based on their designs, those of the Handy Game. I discovered that several other members of the original Amiga team had worked on the Handy Game as well, including Dale Luck and Glenn Keller. Nintendo and Sega had seen the Handy Game as part of the Epyx strategy to go to market. Dave even told me his story of flying to Japan with Dave Morse and Joe Horowitz of Epyx to show Nintendo (and Shigeru Miyamoto) the handheld system in 1988. Nintendo would eventually tell

AMIGA ADDICT

AMIGA INSIGHT

by Adam P. Spring

Imagine a small Cornish town by the sea at the beginning of the 1990s. Dark winter nights playing out on a coastal landscape - battered by the winds and rain coming oﬀ the Northern Atlantic Ocean. This was the starting point for my adventures in personal computing as I stayed warm indoors - and by default, the ﬁrst steps toward a friendship with video games pioneer Dave Needle.

AMIGA INSIGHT

We had just finished eating “fish and chips” (an American variant of the British delicacy best served with curry sauce, mushy peas and malt vinegar) when, all of a sudden, the person sitting across from me started speaking in tongues. The words coming out of his mouth were “snaught pit.” I was about to get my first cultural lesson in how to interact with someone from Jupiter - Glenn Keller’s description of dining with the Jovian Ambassador is the most on point:

My Atari Lynx II sits in front of my Game Gear as somewhat of a humorous reminder of Dave Needle. He got the last laugh over Sega & the Tramiels (who eventually acquired the Handy Game) in the end.

the Epyx team - along with Henk Rogers who had set up the meeting - that they had something to show them. Needle, Morse, Horowitz and Rogers were some of the first people to see the Game Boy outside of Nintendo. After also seeing the Handy Game, Sega would also go on to create the Game Gear. It is hard not to look at the boxed Game Gear on my shelf today without thinking of Dave. This was especially the case when the capacitors inside of the Game Gear failed, as it sat pristinely in its box my secondhand Lynx II with the crack in the screen cover is still in working order in its original condition to this day. Even with modifications by Atari - who acquired the Handy Game technology via Epyx - the system architecture developed by Dave and RJ Mical still shines through. Sometimes, poetic justice plays out in the funniest ways. “Dave Needle was a brilliant engineer and a great human being. His greatest strength, other than his Jovian super powers, was his ability to listen and then cut straight to the heart of a problem. He had a profound influence on the lives of many, both personally and professionally.” - RJ Mical, Director of Games at Google

bag man when he rolled up to the waiting area of SFO airport. This is especially the case as I attempted to load my bag into his car, my British manners taking hold. The juxtaposition of cultures - New Yorker who had been living in California for the best part of 40 years meeting a well-mannered Brit - it was like a Laurel and Hardy routine made real. The photo seen at the beginning of this article was taken near Fisherman's Wharf on this same trip, and is where we went after I got picked up at the airport. The wharf is now a popular tourist destination, but it started out as a settling point for Italian fishermen in the 1800s, and in more recent times, parts of the James Bond film A View To A Kill were also set there. I provide more context about this location because I think it was at a restaurant called the Codmother on this wharf where I first got introduced to the Jovian Ambassador. The real Dave Needle.

The Jovian Ambassador will see you now… Dave and I had been talking for a long period of time prior to ﬁrst meeting up in San Francisco. I had been writing an article on the Amiga and its user community (which is still freely available to read at the Annals of the History of Computing website). Dave had been helping me connect some of the elements that were not widely known. Little did I know that my research would take me to Jupiter as well... Dave insisted on picking me up at the airport the ﬁrst time we met. It’s still humorous to think that a person I viewed as a technology wizard wanted to be my

AMIGA ADDICT

February 2021

“Whenever a group of Dave's friends get together for lunch, someone will almost inevitably say "snaught pit”, and the others will usually (but not always) accept. "Pit" of course, is the Jovian word for lunch. "Snaught" is a little more complex, not expressed so simply in English, and includes some of the essence of Dave. "Snaught" means something like "Can I do something for you or give something to you, but just because I want to and it is my pleasure, with no obligation or need on your part for a return favour." It is, of course, in the spirit of "snaught" perfectly ﬁne to refuse such a request, if you feel an obligation or burden to return the favour. This, to me, gives a hint at a small part of who Dave was. The potential side reference to an English word for bodily ﬂuids smacks of another side of the Needle-nose, but we may never know. It might be that it is just a coincidence of the Jovian language.” - Glenn Keller, developer of the Paula Chip RJ Mical would later recall the long version of the origin story for the Jovian Ambassador to me. The short version, however, is that Dave Needle had been a

Amiga Needless to say, I am preaching to the converted when talking about Amigas in this magazine. Out of respect for the accomplishments of Dave Needle, however, I provide a brief overview.

sickly child. One day, the sickly child died and was replaced by the Jovian Ambassador. His mission was to be raised as a human and to inform humans that aliens were not what was being imagined or pictured in science ﬁction. Sitting at the learning tree “Dave was probably one of the most brilliant people I’ve known and worked with. He obviously had a really facile, creative mind, and was really determined. His ability to be such a brilliant designer, given the limitation of the tools available at the time; he was just way ahead of everybody else.” - Trip Hawkins, Founder of Electronic Arts and The 3DO Company I have said it before publicly that being around Dave or talking with him was like going to the learning tree. He had a wisdom and intuition that was ingrained - nurtured by being at the forefront of a tipping point moment.

This moment for Dave Needle was the emergence of video games and multimedia-based computing in the home, for the general user. He was not defined by his achievements as a person when I knew him, but he was a great influencer. It is no exaggeration to say that the video game industry would not be the same today without his involvement. He pushed boundaries in high fidelity hardware at a time when it was not part of the established way of making a product. He brought people together that helped build the foundation for things to come. The more I got to know Dave, the more I realised his influence was recognised behind the scenes too. Stories of Dave Needle were part of the folk tales that exist between development teams. I have been fortunate enough since Dave passed to meet other engineers of Needle calibre - all very humble, given their achievements. I consider Ed Catmull - father of texture mapping and co-founder of Pixar - one of those people. This should give you an idea of the high regard that I hold Dave Needle in.

Side note: the most out of the blue conversation I have had about an Amiga came from speaking to an artist at Pixar on one of my visits to the studio, who cited the computer that helped them become a digital artist as an Amiga 2000.

Amiga computers, Lynx handheld systems & 3DO consoles - all systems Dave Needle had a hand in designing - are still remembered at time of print.

Handy Game / Atari Lynx Handy Game or Atari Lynx was ahead of its time and still holds up today. Dave applied a planar extraction/shrinking technique to its hardware, which he had developed previously for an alien-earth attack arcade game. Similar graphic features were not seen in another video game system until Mode 7 in SNES. The Lynx was a 16-bit machine with a 4096 (12-bit) colour palette at a time when other handheld game systems were 8-bit. You need only look to Chip’s Challenge - or the homebrew version of Mortal Kombat - to get a sense of what the Handy Game could have been. That

Above: MK I Lynx. The homebrew version of Mortal Kombat for the Lynx is available at: atarigamer.com It can be downloaded or played in emulation on the website. There is even a Mortal Kombat II ROM on the same website. It was made for April Fools’ Day.

February 2021

AMIGA ADDICT

AMIGA INSIGHT

Dave in his home, 1990. He is pointing at an early prototype of what would evolve into the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer. The keyboard to the right & some of the disk drives around his oﬃce may also look familiar.

Small form factor Amigas like the 500 and 1200 were so popular in Europe that they went toe to toe with companies like Nintendo or Sega in places like France, Germany and the UK. The game Zool (top left) demonstrates that developers were able to adapt as well - when Mario and Sonic The Hedgehog created the mascot era of video games. The big box Amigas (from the 2000 - 4000) had a substantial “behind the scenes” inﬂuence on the video and computer graphics industry as well. I have had many conversations about this since moving to the US having befriended people like Tim Jenison.

AMIGA INSIGHT

Dave Needle was at the Sanyo plant in Japan when the first Amiga came off of the production line. It was a surreal experience helping him bring the first Amiga back to life for Amiga 30 at the Computer History Museum, California.

The ﬁrst Amiga was signed at the Sanyo factory by everyone on the Amiga team, the day it came oﬀ of the production line.

is, had it received the appropriate backing from game developers. It took twelve years after the release of the Atari Lynx for a handheld system - the Game Boy Advance - to exceed what Dave Needle and RJ Mical developed in the late 1980s. The article Retrospection: Atari Lynx can still be found at archive.org. It is worth a read and mentions Amiga. 3DO The 3DO Company has a footprint of inﬂuence wider than most people realise. Former employees went on to work on other consoles like Dreamcast and Xbox; created Niantic Labs of Pokémon GO fame; had a hand in creating what became Google Earth; even had CTO level roles at Lucasﬁlm. It is a little-known fact that the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer had the port of Super Street Fighter II Turbo I wanted as a teenager as well. This is something I made Trip Hawkins aware of when I interviewed him for this article.

There is a duality to remembering Dave Needle, which you will hopefully get a sense of throughout my articles about him. The friend & the hardware pioneer as a public ﬁgure. Each became more distant for the more I got to know him – as he just became my friend Dave. There were many layers to both the public & personal Dave Needle.

In our next instalment... I will go into more detail about staying with Dave Needle and getting to know some of the original Amiga and 3DO team. I will talk more about other elements of his life, driving a U-Haul full of Amigas across America, as well as what it was like to be in a car with Jupiter’s favourite son. Adam P. Spring PhD has been deeply involved with high end 3D imaging since 2006. Most projects he can openly share, publications and podcasts are at his websites: remotely-interested.com laserarchaeology.com

AMIGA ADDICT

The one thing I would like to emphasise above all else is my friend Dave Needle. None of the computer & video games hardware he had a hand in creating will ever replace or truly sum up the friend who passed away in 2016. He was one of a kind on so many levels.

February 2021

STARSHIP

These are the voyages of the starship Amiga. Its mission to boldly go… oh damn who broke the warp engines! That's how it goes right?

GENERATION

Let’s ﬁrst talk about how signiﬁcant this is, before we address what the update contains. Amiga Next Generation has always been a two horse race between OS4 and MorphOS. Hyperion used to do a yearly update for OS4 around Christmas time, but this has not

So what's in this update? - New kernel (exec) version 54.28 with many bug-fixes and stability improvements - Improvements and bug-fixes in the graphics.library, workbench.library, dos.library, application.library, elf.library and many other essential libraries making them more robust, bug-free and future proof - Bug-fixes and improvements to the USB-stack - Many bug-fixes and improvements to console.device, ram-handler, appdirhandler and env-handler - Many bug-fixes in all reaction classes, datatypes and device drivers

Amiga Power (album) - Jonah puts his headphones on to review "The Album With Attitude" audio CDs & booklet Nothing quite evokes the feelings of an important period in one's life like music can. This is also true of a classic Amiga game soundtrack. Like an emotive time machine, transporting the listener directly back to their youth, music can rekindle those ﬁrst wondrous encounters like they were only yesterday. OK, so that sounds like a load of bull... Let's see how emotive Amiga music really is... enter Matthew Smith (not the Speccy Manic Miner one!) with his Amiga Power double-CD album.

More contents than Linford Christie's "Lunchbox".

- New OS components such as the append dos command, an OS4.1 version of DiskDoctor from Olaf Barthel, SataControl, appdir-handler, ssh2-handler - Many, many more bug-fixes, improvements and new features Supported Systems: AmigaOne XE & SE, MicroA1, AmigaOne 500, AmigaOne X1000, AmigaOne X5000, Sam440, Sam460, Pegasos 2, Amiga Classic PPC This is all positive stuff, fixing bugs and improving stability is always welcome, but where are the big features? The big feature everybody in the OS4 world - especially those X5000 owners - is looking for is multi-core support. This new kernel brings us closer to this dream. A multi-core machine will leave the latest ‘fast’ classic Amigas in the dust and really make full use of the X5000, which currently only uses a single core, with some models having four cores in total It’s going to be really interesting to see how this plays out with the dual core up-and-coming AmigaOne A1222 ‘Tabor’. Good work Hyperion! Live Long and Update.

• Produced by Matthew Smith • Released July 2020 • Price: $32 (inc. delivery) • Available from: www.010101-music.nl

Before we go any further (Deputy Ed "For Pete's sake. Get on with it!"), I have to say I'm blown away by the packaging of this album. A professionally pressed set of CDs, hardback cover art by Roger Langridge and 100-page "Mighty Booklet" which talks us through the game audio track selection. The booklet goes even further; including interviews, useful information and insightful Amiga Power-related tidbits. It reminds me of a Collins Pocket GEM book - a mini Amiga gaming encyclopedia! The concept of the album is an unusual premise; to take us through some of the best loved Amiga games featured in Amiga Power and on its coverdisks over the years. Matthew hasn't given us the predictable "best of book" here though, instead he accompanies this historical game journey with a full soundtrack by all the big name Amiga composers, such as Allister Brimble, Jon Hare, Chris Huelsbeck, Rich Pelley and a lot more. Right! I've had a really good look around AA Towers for an audio CD player - we don't appear to own one... I even asked my son, who replied "What's a CD Dad?"

February 2021

I'm starting to feel old... let's just get this playing on the A4000 via PlayCD. Disc 1 is utter joy! We start out with a collection of tracks selected by the album's Kickstarter backers. There's Sensible World of Soccer, Lotus Turbo Challenge 2, Speedball 2 and Super Skidmarks to name a few. A mix of reimagined, remixed and enhanced compositions of classic gaming music that charges my hairy back with static shock. We even get an advertisement for the ﬁctional Amiga Power ﬁsh drink (FMAX)! I'm totally hooked and grinning. Now on to Disc 2! I'm a little biased with this one, as it features music from Gravity Power - one of my favourite games. I'm even feeling a little seasonal when the Fire & Ice track kicks in. This album is an undeniable must buy for any Amiga Power fans - as well as the wider Amiga gaming audience. It is so well thought out - I'd recommend it even just for the engaging and indepth booklet! ENDED

ME RECOM

AMIGA ADDICT

TESTBENCH

It’s not only the Starship Discovery that has been ﬂip-ﬂopping between dimensions, changing as fast as Michael Burnham's hairstyles. It seems like we have entered another dimension in the world of Next Generation Amiga too! I had already written this month’s entry all about Hyperion’s lack of updates for OS4. But as soon I submitted the article, I slipped on a mushroom, fell on my arse and got transported to another dimension! Damn this spore drive! Suddenly, after four years of no updates for NG, Hyperion released AmigaOS4 Final Edition Update 2 on the 23rd of December, just in time for Christmas!

happened for four years, leading to MorphOS seeming to be the only up-to-date contender and OS4 going by the wayside. The reliance on custom hardware for OS4 survives on this market and updates but until now, Hyperion have been busy with court cases and updates of the classic OS 3.4.1. This update is just the injection the Amiga NG world needed! It really helps all those people with OS4 machines out there and turns it into a two horse race again. Competition fuels creativity!

Memoirs of an Amiga Gamer

AMIGA FOCUS

- Remember gaming on the Amiga? This author does...

The Amiga 500 knows how to welcome us!

I remember the day I ﬁrst saw an Amiga well. It would have been the summer of 1989, when two friends of mine (who were brothers) called me up excitedly, inviting me over to see their new computer. Caught up in the thrill, I ran straight there to see this new step in computer evolution.

A good Amiga arcade port, Super Hang-On.

Now you need to remember - this was a full year before the UK saw a Mega Drive and I, personally, had come from the world of the Spectrum. So, to suddenly see this many vibrant non-clashing colours and arcade-level music and graphics had me in total awe.

Led up to their bedroom, they showed me a large - but sleek - beige computer nestled under their TV; a hand on the screen holding a ﬂoppy disk invitingly with the words “Amiga Workbench v1.3” written on it. The older brother reached for a game they had just bought. It was called Super Hang-On (a Sega arcade classic). “Watch this,” he said, as he put the ﬂoppy into the drive.

In-game it didn’t disappoint either, with it being a seemingly perfect arcade port (to my young eyes at least), as we chose our track and expertly controlled the bike with the included Amiga mouse, which gave us smooth analogue controls, all set to wonderful renditions of the Sega arcade soundtrack. We played the game solidly on that day, not once tempted to stray to the other games the brothers had received with their machine.

The room went dark, and as the game began to load with the soon-to-befamiliar whirring and clunk of the drive, a faithful-sounding motorbike accelerator began to play as the Super Hang-On logo appeared on the screen. This was followed by a stunning full colour picture of a motorbike rider. I was lost for words.

At the end of the evening I went home giddy. I was in love with this new computer and I had to do whatever I could to buy one myself. I knew, on being told the painful price of £399.00 (about £1,000 in today's money), it

We still have a lot to learn! More Amiga magazine memories & classic adverts from the pros.

AMIGA ADDICT

February 2021

by Paul Driscoll

A bloody and brutal ﬁghter...

would be a long and arduous journey, but I still vowed to do everything in my capability to save enough to buy this machine. Needless to say, I would be a frequent visitor to my friend's house that year, arriving any time I was invited to have another go on this amazing machine. They had bought it from Silica Systems with the Ten Star bundle, an amazing collection of ten fun games that we played ravenously over that summer. We had a number of favourites in that pack, including Barbarian. This Palace game was a wonderful update of the 8-bit title, having two Barbarians battling it out with their broadswords, as we each tried to pull off the infamous spinning head chop move on our opponent. The satisfaction of seeing your opponent’s head fly off - bouncing to the floor as their body crumpled - was a sight to be seen! And then to be followed up with the ultimate finishing move humiliation, as a goblin creature walked onto the screen, kicking the head carelessly away and dragging the headless corpse behind him... Then there was Thundercats, which was a fun (if simple) arcade hack-a-thon, where you played Lion-O taking out hordes of repetitive enemies. Looking back at the game today, it was a weak license, but back then, as fans of the cartoon, we felt it was an addictive Rastan-style arcade romp and it had us enthralled. My favourite game in that collection though was Buggy Boy. The Amiga port of the little-known Tatsumi arcade racer had you controlling a buggy as you rode tracks collecting flags and running through gates. The port was perfect, capturing the feeling of the arcade game superbly, and it joined Super Hang-On as one of our games of choice.

COMMU NI ARTICL TY E SUBMI SSION

Kick Oﬀ 2 - tremendous footie gameplay.

The excellent Amiga port of After Burner.

Throughout that year and the next, I spent my time saving all I could from my meagre part-time job, and asking for money on birthdays and Christmas to put towards my Amiga fund. But despite my best efforts (and, in truth, eating into that fund to still buy Spectrum mags and games - I had to keep my gaming addiction going somehow), by the end of 1990, I had still only saved just under half of what I needed. Easter 1991 soon arrived and I knew we would be going to the Isle of Wight for a holiday, so I formed a plan to ask for help from my parents whilst they were in the chilledout relaxed holiday vibe - the type only a bungalow by the sea can provide. I had prepared for weeks for this moment, researching facts and figures on the importance of computing, both in improving my schoolwork and future career options. I flagged how the floppy disk medium would make gaming cheap, so although the initial outlay would be expensive, it would actually save money in the long run compared to gaming consoles. I even showed its ability to handle home finances and things useful to my folks. My parents were impressed with the effort, preparation and passion I showed that day, and they agreed to put up the remaining amount to buy the machine for my birthday in June.

Initially, the Batman Amiga bundle was the one I planned to get, with a tie-in Batman game based on Tim Burton’s film. There was also a brilliant arcade home port of The New Zealand Story and a flight sim called Interceptor. It also had a paint package called Deluxe Paint II. The trouble was, by the time my birthday had come and gone, and I finally had the money, a new bundle had caught my eye and I had decided to change my decision.

Back to The Future 2 and played it for a bit - I found it looked great, but actually wasn’t too hot gameplay-wise. So, I tried the next title and the next, each title more disappointing than the last… On the Screen Gems bundle at least, I realised the games were, despite their great graphics, not very good and at the end of that day only After Burner (thankfully the US release version), Shinobi, Alien Syndrome and Kick Oﬀ 2 impressed me in gameplay terms. Still, I wasn’t too fearful of the quality of games I now owned, as I knew from my friends at school that I could put the ten blank ﬂoppies that also came with my machine to very good use.

Now that the machine was no longer an impossible dream, and the money to buy it was ring fenced, any new money I earned now went to buy Amiga gaming magazines in preparation for the big day. My favourites in this period were GamesX (a weekly multi format magazine), Amiga Format, and (of course) Amiga Power, which ﬁrst came out in May with a free game on the cover called Bombuzal.

Ian is our resident DPaint artist here at AA.

I remember the very advert I saw for that bundle: it was in Issue 12 of Games-X magazine, released on the 11th July 1991. The pack was still £399.99 from Digicom, but more importantly it had the 512K RAM upgrade that I had been told by friends was vital to get. It also had what seemed to be an awesome and enticing number of games. Called the Screen Gems pack, it had licenses of many of my favourite movies of the time. There was Back to the Future 2, Days of Thunder and Night Breed, alongside the gorgeouslooking Shadow of the Beast 2 and, of course, the paint package Deluxe Paint II. If that wasn’t enough, there was a 1MB edition of the football game Kick Off 2 and the Sega Arcade Smash Hits Compilation. As such a Sega nut, the thought of having Amiga ports of After Burner, Out Run, Shinobi, Thunder Blade and Alien Syndrome had me drooling. Within days of seeing the advert and staring at the looping attract screen of Back to the Future 2 in my local Currys shop window, I was convinced. I made the purchase. Now I only had to patiently wait for my Amiga to arrive. When the machine finally came, I carefully unboxed it and set it up. I nervously booted up my first game of

Amiga Shinobi often doesn't get much love.

February 2021

My life of Amiga gaming would consume my teenage years, even avidly continuing to play the machine at uni alongside my PC and Saturn. In all that time, the Amiga offered me a plethora of games, and showed me new virtual worlds and experiences. It introduced me to one of the best art package series of all time (Deluxe Paint), and how to do basic coding in AMOS. It offered me amazing scene demos, such as Jesus on E’s and State of the Art, and gave me my first encounter with the underbelly of the scene with the Grapevine magazines. Yes, the Amiga was my childhood, my first real love - it is part of me completely and despite me owning many other gaming systems since, my singular love of the Amiga has never diminished or been replaced over all these years. Long Live the Amiga! (Ed- "We'd like to thank Paul Driscoll, who is a Retro Lover and a host of the Retro Gaming Discussion Show podcast: www.twitter.com/rgdspodcast")

AMOS makes programming easy(ish!)...

AMIGA ADDICT

AMIGA FOCUS

Night Breed - based on Clive Barker's movie.

DMA DESIGN AMIGA INSIGHT

DMA: the early days Both the UK and Amiga have spawned some amazing games companies over the years, some of whom are still world leaders to this day. You only have to look to Electronics Arts and Team 17 for two examples of companies that started life on the Amiga and, 30 years later, continue to dominate the modern gaming scene. One company with a strong Amiga legacy stands out from the rest. In their early years, they created Lemmings, one of the most recognisable brands of the 90s, and later they would move on from the Amiga to develop another iconic series, Grand Theft Auto. Their name was DMA Design, and they were unique in their style and the quality of their work. DMA would later morph into Rockstar North, going on to make over six billion dollars with some of the biggest titles in the world, such as GTA V and Red Dead Redemption. As young whippersnappers in Dundee, the story of the DMA dream team begins with Dave Jones, Russell Kay, Steve Hammond & Mike Dailly, all school friends, but how did this legend of a company start? On page ten of this issue, we have a feature on the importance of computer user groups and that is also hugely relevant to the DMA story. We chat to Mike Daily & Steve Hammond, key players in the success of DMA on the Amiga to ﬁnd out more. How did you guys meet? I heard it was a computer club? Mike: Yep, when I was about 15 or 16, I

The history of Lemmings & DMA Amiga games, with special guests Mike Dailly & Steve Hammond by Ravi Abbott went to a local-ish computer club, carrying all my gear with me - my Commodore Plus/4, PSU, joystick and 14” black and white CRT - all lumped into a giant black holdall, and dragged on a couple of buses. But just as well I did, for my life changed because of it. It’s strange being able to pin down such a life changing event. It doesn’t happen often. When did the company actually start and how was it founded? Steve: Officially 1988, but it went back a bit before then. Us founders – I like saying that, even though my contribution to founding DMA mostly involved just physically being around – us founders met each other at the Kingsway Amateur Computer Club over the course of a few years. We would talk about making games during breaks and I’d unsuccessfully try to follow the programming talk. Although I could do graphics, so I was useful in that respect. Some games were made - Mike and I did a breakout game called Freekout for example. By 1987, Dave decided he’d rather have a games company than be at uni, and took it from there. The instigating event, if you want to think of it as a story, was Dave buying an Amiga 1000 with his redundancy money from Timex. Where did the name DMA come from? Mike: Dave originally wanted to call the company “Acme Software”, after the Road Runner “Acme” company. Dave found out it meant “The pinnacle of perfection”, and liked it, but he discovered a company in California was already called this (at the time), so had to think of something else. There’s even a screenshot of Menace with the Acme logo before he swapped – so it was quite late in the day! When searching for a new name, Dave scanned the Amiga Hardware Reference Manual and came across “Direct Memory Access” or DMA. He liked this, and so DMA Design was born. DMA soon got an office - Dave Jones’ dad ran a chippy across the road and owned the office space. They crammed into the upstairs space and got to work! What was the DMA office like? Fancy décor? Pure luxury?

Mike Dailly playing, erm I mean... "testing".

AMIGA ADDICT

Steve: Functional. Absolutely functional,

February 2021

Games-X poster of the DMA Design team.

unless you count Dave’s office chairs. Those come under the heading of pure luxury! Our first office looked the part, grey and beige, with refitted desks along the walls, a bookcase, and not much else. The bay window was nice, but the back room had no window at all. That’s where I’d be if I turned up to the office from uni, since I was still freelance at the time. The second office was larger, but was maybe one of those old jute mill accommodations originally, with large blocked up fireplaces. It looked like someone’s living room. It was only once we got to Discovery House that we were in a building specifically built as office space. Just a typical office, with desks and partitions, the odd fridge and kettle here and there. Luxury, again, was a matter reserved for Dave: he had a 6ft long model USS Enterprise in his office! DMA were not the only boys in town in the UK - Psygnosis had an office in Liverpool. Being in the North themselves, it was not hard for the boys to travel down and kick off a fantastic developer relationship between two legendary UK software houses. As time went on, the relationship showed cracks and Psygnosis were swallowed up by Sony, sadly losing their iconic name in the process. What was the relationship with Psygnosis like and how did that help the company in the early days?

Later, when I got my A1200, I moved to Devpac, along with Hisoft Pascal. In the oﬃce in the early years, Dave and I both used PDS (Programmers Development System by Andy Glaister, who later formed SN Systems). It was a cross development kit, and allowed rapid dev on a PC. Once the A3000 appeared, the oﬃce moved to them for development, as they had enough memory to actually dev on, along with fast processors and HDs as standard.

Steve: Good to begin with: trips, enormous pizza, being taken for meals and put up in hotels - all that stuff. It was one of the highlights, visiting Liverpool, where Dave would drive us down in his Rover. While he did the business stuff, I’d wander around Liverpool with Mike. Very low-pressure! What Psygnosis brought was additional guidance, lots of playtesters and they generally acted as QA. As the years went on, things deteriorated. I wasn’t privy to any of the business, but the rough edges were soon apparent. The lowest point for me personally was when they half-assed the Hired Guns manual, shouting that they needed the text to be sent over right now. So I spent the next two weeks cleaning up, polishing, and then sending them the text. Which they then promptly sat on for 11 months, before giving it to a third-party typesetter at the last minute and missing out all the punctuation. Scott sent them notes about the game controls and installation instructions, with the understanding that they’d write them up themselves. They just pasted them in unaltered. It was a disaster. That really grated. I was halfway through typesetting the thing myself on the Amiga, but was told that it had to be done on a Mac. We didn’t have a Mac. Not at that point anyway. So that was that. Developing for multiple systems must have been a challenge. What equipment and setup did DMA have in the offices back then? Mike fills us in on the technical side of early DMA: How much did Devpac help with your Amiga development? Mike: I didn’t actually use Hisoft’s Devpac that much initially - I used ArgAsm (Jez San’s assembler), as it came free with Amiga Format (Issue 7 apparently). It was fast and easy to use.

What was it like developing for multiple systems like Atari ST, C64? Did you have a system implemented? Mike: Not really. They were so different you’d just have to write each game from scratch. The Amiga and ST could share code, but everything else was just about replicating the code as best you could, either using a line by line conversion, or more likely, just seeing what the outcome was supposed to be, and writing a function to do it. Shadow of the Beast was like this. We had a VHS of the full game, and got disks with the graphics, then we just wrote it from scratch, levels and all. It was sad but inevitable that many companies started leaving the Amiga in favour of other faster and more cutting edge systems. Some Amiga companies really struggled to fit into the modern age of 3D. The huge, failed ‘Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll’ project took down Sensible Software. Despite that many other companies such as Reflections, Codemasters and Psygnosis moved smoothly onto platforms like Sony’s new PlayStation. DMA made that transition with the super successful Grand Theft Auto. At what point did DMA decide it was time to leave the Amiga? Mike: After Lemmings 3. Even before this, DMA had decided to move onto consoles and PCs. But DMA had a contract for 6 games with Psygnosis, so we had to complete the contract, and Lemmings 3 was it. DMA Design went on to create the fantastic Grand Theft Auto series long after leaving the Amiga. Rumours have been flying around for years that GTA was developed on or for Amiga originally. I think there has been some confusion here - a game called Crime Inc was developed on the Amiga by Scottish

February 2021

OK! Just to clear up rumours - can you confirm that Grand Theft Auto was not developed on Amiga? Mike: Nothing to do with the Amiga. The original was an isometric demo that rotated on the PC, written in Pascal and x86 assembler. Then after seeing Clockwork Knight on the Sega Saturn, it evolved into a top down engine, with the whole game being based around “arcade” scores, and the missions added on at a very late date – in the grand scheme of things. It had nothing to do with the Amiga demo shown to DMA. I vaguely remember seeing it on screen, I don’t think it was even moving. I had no idea what the gameplay was, and it certainly looked nothing like GTA did. When someone brings a demo to an interview, you don’t play it properly. You run it, take a quick look, then move on. No one “played” it. Grand Theft Auto would prove to be a genre- and era-defining game which was, and continues to be, hugely influential worldwide. And it was programmed by Mike Dailly and those original Amiga crew! The series continued to grow into a 3D sandbox game with GTA III, and onwards into the heavily cinematic and story-driven open world crime sim it is today. DMA Design got the Houser brothers onboard and transformed into Rockstar North, which still remains one of the most trusted and respected companies in the modern video game world. As you look at the kids of today mowing down people in the latest edition of GTA, or dead-eying some enemies in Red Dead Redemption - remember you can say ‘it all started with a humble Amiga opposite a chip shop in Dundee, one day in the late 80s’.

Steve, Mike & DMA - a talented line-up!

AMIGA ADDICT

AMIGA INSIGHT

The original DMA oﬃce had bags of charm.

As we know now, the guys were hugely successful on multiple platforms - in fact Lemmings is one of the most ported games in history. With so many systems to port to, you will be surprised to ﬁnd they had no automated process...

developer Mark Gallagher. Mark created a top-down full working city and the game is impressive, especially for Amiga. In 1993, Mark was interviewed by DMA at the time showing them the disk and game. He claimed that his copyright was stolen. Mark ﬁled a £1.5million legal action against Rockstar North in 2003. This claim was apparently settled out of court, according to a now-deleted post on Mark’s website..

The critters that stole our hearts!

AMIGA INSIGHT

Only a few games developers in the world can claim to have had a truly global impact that has captured the world's imagination. The gaming world would not be the same without iconic characters and mascots, whether it be Mario, Donkey Kong or Pac-Man. Here in the UK, these characters have always seemed from a distant alien land. While we did have our own set of icons, the earliest mascots that got legs were considered very odd, and a sign of the depression and recession that the UK was under in the 1980s. Miner Willy of Manic Miner fame was an early one, created during the unrest that would lead to the UK miners’ strike. He was hardly a symbol of fun - even if he did have to dodge walking toilets. More of a placeholder than a mascot then. The 80s obsession with eggs seemed to also spawn a wave of egg-based characters and games, with Chuckie Egg and, of course, the most famous egg of the bunch - Dizzy. While in the 70s it was perfectly fine to sell a pet rock to children, it was a bit hard to see an 80s egg gaining worldwide fame coming directly off the British fried breakfast but it would definitely find some fans in its home territories. Just in time then, the legend of Lemmings was born. Not a single game could have the cross-appeal this puzzle title held. People loved it and it really stamped the mark of eurogaming across the wider gaming world. It’s a testament to its popularity that it has been ported to over 32 systems, and achieved worldwide recognition as one of the world’s most famous videogame icons. It certainly holds the crown for eurogaming in general. Where did these green-haired critters come from?

Lemmings' oﬀers rewarding puzzle-play.

AMIGA ADDICT

Scott Johnston had been hired to work on Walker as a freelance artist. Wanting to create little men for the titular mech to shoot at, Scott and Mike got chatting about how small they could actually make them. Scott wanted to do them in 16x16 pixels, but Mike argued they could fit in 8x8! Eventually, Mike came up with an animation page of his 8x8 characters, complete with innovative ways these little dudes could be killed. Gary Timmons added some extras, making the animations even more fun. As soon as everybody at DMA saw it, they were on board and the legendary title started! First thing we need to ask is “What is a lemming?”. Well, it's a small rodent from the Arctic with a rather strange urban myth connected to it. Lemmings would move to a new breeding ground when the herd got big enough. Being not very smart critters they would often fall off cliffs or drown leading to the urban myth they would commit suicide when the herd hit peak size.. Many myths have centred around lemmings including them falling from the sky and exploding. This small rodent actually had some great backstory and when Mike Daily decided to make animations of death sequences they seemed to fit in ideally (even though I have never seen a lemming walk on its back legs)! The noise of lemmings exploding, popping and getting squished actually took this from a kind of death simulator to popping bubble wrap levels of satisfaction. What were the essential pieces of software you used to develop Lemmings? Mike: Deluxe Paint III was the first and most important. I think everyone would agree the animations were what made the game, and this all came from DPaint. After that, Dave’s PDS system, Russell’s MASM (command line x86 assembler) – and whatever Brian used for the ST, I can’t remember...

Mike's original 8x8 sprites proof of concept.

Mike: Russell did the first test, and he managed to hit the magic 100 number. Dave then did the same thing, and also reached that. 100 seemed like a good number back then. It filled the screen with little sprites, and gave a satisfying explosion when you failed. We could have pushed it a little more, but numbers like 128 etc don’t mean anything to gamers. 100 is a nice round number. The crossover levels were a pain. Because the palette was dictated by the source games, I couldn’t use any traps or metal etc. So design was very limited. It was, however, a really nice little surprise for gamers to see another game screenshot and work through it, so they were worth doing. We had to use games that only used 16 colours. This meant games like Blood Money, which used a full 32, were out. So we asked Psygnosis for permission to use other games, and I hacked together screenshots of them in DPaint. The Hell themed levels were a bit dark, with lots of gruesome deaths for the lemmings. Were you worried how people would react? Mike: It wasn’t a “Hell” theme really, it was a fire and brimstone theme. However, I suspect the level “666” probably nudged gamers into thinking that. No, we were never worried about that. Lemmings was very much a “cute” game, and you were, after all, rescuing them from the fires, not condemning them to it.

Dave then wrote a built-in level editor, which we all spent a huge amount of time in.

The user interface in Lemmings is an understated work of simple genius. For example, the cursor in many of the games that came before had been a simple pointer or arrow. This time round, you have a square, “crosshair style” target. This naturally brings to mind the idea of targeting the lemmings for action, without a second thought.

How hard was it to create Lemmings? Did you have to limit the amount of sprites on the screen? Did you have fun doing the crossover levels and how did you pick the titles?

Along the bottom of the play area, you have a visual menu with the skills the lemmings can perform. This might not sound very groundbreaking, but you have to remember that, at the time,

February 2021

"...I often think Lemmings must be a nightmare for anybody with OCD as soon as you have a clear path, your lemmings won't behave..."

Who did the sound effects and voices? How were the sounds designed? Mike: Scott Johnston, who did the graphics, introduced his brother Brian to DMA. Brian was then commissioned to do the music and sound effects for the Amiga version. While doing this, he got his (and Scott’s) mother to do some phrases that he then sped up a little and produced the voice of the lemmings. So... Scott and Brian’s mum did the voices, and Brian did the sound effects. The sound in Lemmings was groundbreaking. The first time many people realised their computers could play music or songs was via Lemmings. In a world that was mostly dominated by PC beeper games, hearing a version of ‘How Much Is That Doggy in the Window’ blasted, while critters got squished all over the place, was a real treat. It also helped that most of the tunes that came with the game were instantly recognisable, from nursery rhymes to classics your gran would sing when drunk. The Lemmings soundtrack was legendary. Was it literally just ripping off a load of old classic tunes? Steve: I’m not sure what the rationale was, other than just chancing it. We

Lemmings 2: The Tribes is much tougher!

started out with movie theme tunes. "Mission Impossible" was the one that was tested in the game. However... games were starting to get bigger, movie tie-ins were becoming more common, and as such, they now "knew" games could be big business. Therefore, games were good targets to sue for copyright infringement. So rather than get sued by 20 different studios, DMA/Psygnosis decided to do tunes that were out of copyright - which is why we have all these well known, and old, tunes. However, it then turned out (after the game was released), that "How Much Is That Doggy in the Window" wasn't out of copyright, and Psygnosis had to do a deal retrospectively with the copyright holders! There was a huge focus on the puzzle elements and ramp up of skill level on Oh No! More Lemmings. Did you feel more changes and fixes could have been done? Mike: Oh No! More Lemmings was essentially a data disk, so changes were limited. It was also very much to be considered as an expansion, and as such – you would have already completed (more or less) the original. So they felt it was a continuation, harder (mainly) than the original. What were your views on Lemmings 2: The Tribes? Did you enjoy working on this title? Mike: Lemmings 2 was a fun project. I did the Super Nintendo version of it, and enjoyed doing it – even though it was a major programming challenge. I loved the new tech Dave came up with to make ports to consoles possible – though it was tricky, it was a big upgrade from the previous method. I did think, however, that there were way too many skills. Some were pointless, while others were major finds and useful. But really, there probably should have been less than half the number we had. I did love doing the SNES one though. It

David Jones at DMA - nice ceiling mobile!

February 2021

was incredibly technical, challenging, and required huge amounts of optimisation – all of which I loved doing. I was also able to sneak in some really cool easter eggs. (see my GDC talk on YouTube) How did the children's television workshop influence All New World of Lemmings? Mike: They were looking at the number of lemmings walking around and figured it would be a nice thing to use for counting on the show. However they were too small to be on-screen, so Dave increased the size of the lemmings in Lemmings 3 so that they would be more visible, and more attractive to them. However, the deal fell through and we were stuck with these larger sprites... What did you think of 3D Lemmings? Mike: Played it once, didn’t like it. Puzzle games were not huge at the time, especially of this variety. Very much like a god game, you had to maintain and control the levels till everything ran smoothly. I often think Lemmings must be a nightmare for anybody with OCD - as soon as you have a clear path, your lemmings won't behave, as they have a mind of their own and will do what they want. This sense of impending doom drives modern titles like Fortnite and PUBG to this day. As Lemmings grew, so did their skills, their backstory. Lots of people have their own personal favourite Lemmings titles for a variety of reasons, but as it changed hands, Lemmings games seemed to decline. But luckily the spirit of the original game continues, unofficially, as Mike Dailly is currently porting it to the ZX Spectrum Next. It’s amazing to see this legendary title still alive and kicking in 2021, and let’s not forget - there are still systems it’s not been ported to! Mike has created a detailed document online for more Lemmings history: www.javalemmings.com/DMA/Lem_1.htm

All New World of Lemmings for AGA Amigas.

AMIGA ADDICT

AMIGA INSIGHT

many menus contained only text - having a simple and easily understandable visual for each option was something completely new in popular culture. It gave the game a real pick up and play feel that helped it be so successful. This UI style got adapted to every type of design, from later point and click games to household appliances. The ﬁnal part of this stunning menu was a minimap. Something considered standard in a GTA game nowadays, or any game with a huge world. The inclusion of these features really made the game stand out, but also appeal to players of all ages and skill levels. I still regard the Lemmings user interface as one of the best in gaming even today!

AMIGA INSIGHT

DMA’s Amiga legacy DMA were not just “the Lemmings guys” and have a great catalogue of titles on the Amiga. Menace was Dave Jones’ first title - a simple shoot ‘em up that morphed into DMA’s first release. It did compete against its rivals on the Amiga by being comparatively easy - most titles in that genre at the time were really tough. Interesting use of parallax effects and music by David Whittaker made this game stand out. Menace did not have the polish and style of later titles, but you gotta start somewhere! Menace was your first title at DMA. Did this really get the idea of a company going? Mike: No, this was Dave’s first title. He did it while still at uni, and then when money started coming in, he realised he could make a living from it. So dropped out of uni and started DMA. He then offered me a job as a programmer, and I started as DMA’s first employee. The office wouldn’t open for another three months or so, so myself and Russell worked out of his bedroom for three months! How hard was it to port to the ST? Mike: It was pretty tricky by all accounts. The ST can’t scroll very easily, so Brian (who was given the job of porting it), came up with a system of eight screens, with each screen being a couple of pixels further on. It wasn’t nearly as pretty, but it played reasonably well. The first collaboration between the legendary Psygnosis and DMA Design Blood Money - was a step up in presentation, gameplay and style. The intro started with an awesome speech sample that left all that heard it openjawed. Then the title sequence, with a bumping soundtrack with tills ringing and full animation, really showed us the direction DMA games were taking. The ingame soundtrack by David Whittaker was equally stunning, and really sums up that Amiga dark ambient sample

period. The graphics were beautifully drawn, the gameplay was tough but consistent. Balancing the risk of collecting coins while avoiding enemy fire made the game engaging and it felt like it offered something different to the shoot ‘em up norms of the time. The changing forms also added to the levels, each having a noticeably different feel and making the game more like a real world and not just a repeat of levels in different combinations, like many shoot ‘em ups at the time. Did you guys see Blood Money as a bit of an update to Menace? A redux? Mike: No, not really. This was again another of Dave’s games. He based it on Mr. Heli – which we were both fans of from the arcade, though swapped the gems for falling coins. It’s a mechanic I love and felt made the two player game brilliant fun. But really, it was very much just his “next game”. How did the Blood Money take full advantage of the Amiga hardware? Mike: He changed how he was doing the rendering and it allowed a lot more on screen - he lost that ultra-smooth scrolling, though really... no one cares that much about it. What people care about is smooth input, and he kept the player moving at 50FPS, while the game itself ran a little slower. This gave the impression of a highly responsive player – and that’s all anyone cares about. The player was a hardware sprite, so didn’t mess with the main rendering, and he used the blitter to “blit” the scrolling in 2 separate blits, which also cleared the screen and allowed him to then cover the screen in sprites. The game ran pretty slowly for games those days, but the smooth player movement “conned” people into thinking it was okay. We can’t talk about DMA without mentioning Walker. This is such a unique and stunning title - one of DMA’s best and an Amiga exclusive. Inspired by a mech in the background of Lemmings, it

Menace is a great quality Amiga shooter & marks the start of DMA.

AMIGA ADDICT

February 2021

DMA logos in Amiga games (top left to bottom right): Blood Money 1989, Lemmings 1990, Walker 1993 & All New World of Lemmings 1995.

started development just after Blood Money. The concept was very strong and different to games at the time. Each level was a different time period. You controlled the mech against waves of ground, sky and vehicle-based enemies, all relevant to the time period, with the earlier levels set in Berlin 1944 having horse drawn cannons and later levels moving into LA 2019, modern day Middle East and 2420, all having progressively more futuristic opponents. The control mechanism for Walker was unique too - the keyboard was used to control the walker’s direction and the mouse to control the guns. If the mini gun was used too much it would overheat, and these elements added new gameplay mechanics. Killing enemies with controlled bursts of fire and squashing them by walking back and forth with the walker was both necessary and added to the fun. The two methods of control also made it a title that was adaptable to co-op play, because it was easy to grab a mate and let them control the gun, while you controlled the walker’s direction - both watching on in glee as these tiny enemies were splattered all over the level. Walker is a side scroller, but goes from right to left which is a bit odd! Why was this decision made? Mike: No idea actually! It may be because the walkers from Blood Money (which inspired the game) were baddies and so always attacked you right to left. So when other walkers were being created

Hired Guns is a very original Amiga cyberpunk dungeon crawler.

for the full game, they copied those original sprites, and as such.... also went from right to left. But that’s all I can come up with!

Cyberpunk is an up and coming genre once again. It’s always been a staple of sci-fi fans and DMA were no different. Hired Guns was a stunning dungeon crawler with a boatload of atmosphere. The sound effects and feel of this title made for an immersive world that was both engaging and fast paced. The AI was smart and, while gameplay was split across four screens, could follow you around as you control the separate mercenaries. Standing out from Doom clones like Death Mask where deathmatch was the focus, the role play elements of Hired Guns and upgrades made you feel like you were part of a greater cyberpunk universe. How much of an influence was sci-fi fantasy on this game? What was the inspiration? Steve: Well it was a fantasy game to begin with. I remember pushing for it to be a sci-fi game on the basis that no other dungeon crawler was sci-fi and also that I liked sci-fi! I have to be fair and tell you that, according to Scott, it became sci-fi because he became enamoured with the robot guns in the special edition of Aliens. This explains why there’s so many traditional fantasy monsters - the work was done, so I came up with a story reason for them to look the way they did in an SF setting. Bio-engineered weapons

Steve: Scott was intending to implement a neural net for game AI – in 1992! – until some other programmers persuaded him that it wasn’t actually possible for the Amiga to handle what he’d planned. I think the arguments got highly technical.

Coming out the same year as Doom, did you feel dungeon crawlers were still huge in geek culture?

The multiplayer aspects of the game were fantastic, did you get hooked in the oﬃce?

Steve: This was the early 90s; it’s hard to convey just how isolated everyone was from the wider world. Were dungeon crawlers important in geek culture? I have no idea. I’m not even sure geek culture was a recognisable thing at that stage, and certainly not in those terms. It was perhaps more ﬁne-grained. I could point to scenes rather than cultures, interests rather than philosophies. Such as the Amiga demo scene, for example, though I suppose that forms a subculture. But then I was thoroughly naive back then. For me, anyway, it was just normal: my cultural horizons at school were bullies, snobs, football fans, and then myself and my friends in whatever was left over.

Steve: Funny, I never played it multiplayer, only by myself.

Scott liked dungeon crawlers and wanted to make his own, I think it was as simple as that. I came on board when he noticed some Cyberpunk 2020 screamsheets (in universe newspapers) I’d written and typeset for myself, and asked me if I wanted to write the Hired Guns story. What drove us was doing whatever held our interest. It was a fantastic way to work, creatively, but it meant Hired Guns was very much done for the art of it and not with any thought to the commerciality. The unfortunate thing was the release at the same time as both Doom and Frontier: Elite II. Elite had been eagerly awaited for nine years at that point, and I’m convinced it took the bulk of that year’s Christmas money. Doom just made everything else look old. How important was the AI to the game and how did it create a real world feel?

Another DMA Design game with pioneering gameplay mechanics.

What’s your favourite part of the game and why? Steve: Gonna be self-indulgent here and say the backstory. I wrote and planned way more than would fit in the one game. The whole thing’s set against the mystery of why communication was lost with Earth a couple of decades before the game starts. I’ve known the answer to that since day one. Sony has shown no interest in reviving Hired Guns – that horrendous and disastrous PC remake in 1997 probably killed any possibility – so I guess I might take the rest of the story and file off the serial numbers one day! I mean, I wrote the bulk of it in my own time, usually at 11pm when the world, and my neighbours, were finally quiet enough to think! It’s something I’d love to revisit one day. I guess for the game itself I’m proud that, even in 1992, my dozen characters had a balance of male and female (and robot!). Because why shouldn’t it? DMA were one of the best Amiga legacy companies. They may have morphed into a bit of a sandbox one trick pony, but as Rockstar North, they are still at the forefront of gaming. Looking towards the future with more companies revisiting their own legacies and bringing back old brands, I personally would love to see Rockstar take on Walker or Lemmings again. Maybe Hired Guns versus Cyberpunk 2077 - who knows? One of my favourite Rockstar titles is still Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis after all...

AA used DOSBox on Amiga to try out this early 1994 GTA prototype!

February 2021

AMIGA ADDICT

AMIGA INSIGHT

Walker remained an Amiga exclusive, coder Ian Dunlop also developed a port for the Sega Mega Drive, but that was later cancelled. Walker 2 was also planned to be released on the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer, but that too was cancelled. Out of all of the DMA titles at the time, I felt Walker could have been huge if it had been given a chance on consoles, and could have sat nicely alongside the mech games that came along in the future and were very popular in the Japanese gaming world.

designed to look frightening as an added psychological edge against enemies. Yeah, the f**king description on the box got this wrong… thanks again Psygnosis for not giving a damn about anything which wasn’t Lemmings!

IN THE LIFE AT... Y A D A

Production Ed Neil Jackson is obsessed with Valhalla though, so he hasn’t been demanding the copy anyway. In fact, all he seems to be doing is going round the oﬃce doing impressions and quoting Valhalla. It’s both funny and annoying in equal measure. It probably won’t be long before it’s just annoying.

9.34 am Spend a bit of time with Jim and Fiona - the art

AMIGA INSIGHT

by Paul McNally

team. The cover looks a bit too dark and menacing for me, for a game that actually plays quite cute. It’s the only artwork of good enough quality we have though - it’s a monthly ‘argument’ about image size and one that editorial rarely wins.

11.15am Need to ﬁnish oﬀ my review of Sierra Soccer. It’s As a kid, I always loved The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole (even the computer game version we had in our house on the Amstrad CPC 464), so when Amiga Addict asked to me to diarise a day in the life of working at Amiga Action, well - it didn’t take long to put that idea into words. Fridays were always fun days, so let’s pick a typical Friday in the life of AA (that one, not this one!). Without stepping in my Delorean, let’s head back to Friday, May 21st 1994.

8.00 am Manchester, UK. It’s only a few days after my

birthday, which all still seems like a bit of a blur and I am waiting for my lift to work. Amiga Action HQ is based near Macclesfield in Cheshire, about an hour’s drive away if the traffic is alright, which it never is. The journey actually tends to pass quite quickly generally though, as we tend to play a game where we have a copy of the company’s internal telephone list, take turns to pick a name off it at random and talk about that person and what we find annoying about them. Happy days!

9.00 am Adlington, Macclesﬁeld. The start of the working

day, and we are about a week or so from the deadline of the July 1994 issue of Amiga Action. On the cover we have Valhalla - that’s already been decided and it’s due to go to print a couple of days ahead of the main mag deadline. Valhalla is a game that has been criminally overlooked in the Amiga press so far - it is possibly the ﬁrst game ever to have full speech and is an adorable puzzle, platform type thing with a bit of an air of Zelda about it in some respects. The devs at Vulcan Software are great - it’s a brother and sister team, and what they have put together, we think is pretty groundbreaking. As with the cycle of every mag I have ever worked on, the ﬁrst couple of weeks tend to be spent not doing much work and then in the last week to ten days desperately trying to catch up and get everything ready in time.

nearly time for the World Cup and we also have Empire Soccer in the issue, which is rubbish. Sierra Soccer on the other hand is actually quite good. It’s not as good as Sensible Soccer, but for a game named after its publisher (as, weirdly so, is Empire Soccer) it’s come oﬀ the bench and had a solid game.

12.45pm We have a PR visit and it’s one of our faves - Helen from 21st Century Entertainment is in to take us to lunch and then show us their latest version of Pinball Illusions on the CD32. The problem with PR lunches is that we more or less do them every day with one company or another, and there is the sum total of two decent places to go in Macc, although rumours abound a Pizza Express might open soon. So oﬀ it is to “Liberty’s American Diner” again, to have more or less the same food and a couple (maybe more) of pints before heading back to the oﬃce to play drunken pinball with Helen for a bit.

3.30 pm With lunch and PR schmoozing out of the way, it’s time for Friday afternoon’s weekly Sensi Soccer tournament. This is where the normally mild mannered editorial staﬀ can almost come to blows over a number of recurring weekly arguments - “My Zipstik isn’t working as well as yours, the button isn’t as responsive” - and the perennial favourite of diving over an outstretched leg to cheat a penalty. This particular tournament is more fraught than normal, with GB Action’s Andy Sharp getting to his feet for an argument after one such show of unsportsmanlike behaviour. Obviously this is greeted by mass laughing and swearing as he slams his poor joystick down and stomps oﬀ in defeat.

5.15 pm It’s hometime and time to battle through the

traﬃc in my lift back to Manchester. Need to make sure we don’t forget a copy of the phone list to make time pass a bit quicker, although to be fair, we will probably start with Andy from GB Action after his performance.. Paul McNally is Managing Editor at BGFG, a portfolio of PC tech and hardware gaming website brands based in Manchester, and is the former Editor of Amiga Action.

Amiga Action's original review of Valhalla with an impressive 94% rating.

AMIGA ADDICT

February 2021

My name is Paul Monaghan and I am a games magazine addict. Phew, that feels good to get oﬀ my chest! In all honesty though, anyone that knows me (or listens to my output for Maximum Power Up podcast) would know this about me already.

Paul started on Atari ST. We love the ST here at AA - it really aids us in highlighting just how amazing the Amiga is!

Games magazines have always played such an important part of my gaming experience, so whenever a new one appears - such as this very issue of Amiga Addict - I have to check it out. I can talk about games magazines for hours! However, as this is a brand new magazine, I want to share some of my own Amiga memories, as well as some magazine chat. So what makes games magazines so important in my eyes and - more speciﬁcally - the Amiga titles? Back in the late 80s, my mum was in a new relationship with someone that worked at WHSmith, and like most relationships that have children involved, it helped to keep the kids onside. One day, I was given several comics and games magazines from the previous week/month and was told they "just get chucked when not sold". One issue was Your Sinclair, which came with a covertape of game music from Double Dragon, Shinobi, Silkworm and more. I listened to that tape loads, but the main enjoyment came from looking at the magazine. YS has always been known for its great writers, but at my age I was mainly focused on the screenshots. Screenshots of well known games I had either played in the arcade, or more likely on my friend's Amstrad 464. My 8-bit owning friends never seemed bothered about the games magazines.

"...while I loved my SNES, even more friends were now Amiga owners. I needed to get one." Sure, at times you got a full game on the likes of Crash, Zzap etc, but this was still before the major covertape wars, when the 8-bit micros began to fade away and complete games helped shift copies. Mind you, for the cost of a magazine you could almost buy a budget game of your choice from the local market games stall on a weekend. Now to bring the focus onto the Amiga and please refrain from the abuse - the ﬁrst machine I owned was an Atari 520 STE (Ed. - "Hmm... I don't know if I can refrain? I'll try my best just for you Paul!"). Christmas Day 1989 was a great day ﬁnally a computer of my own! It was bundled with about 20 games, some utilities and also an issue of ST Format, a magazine I would cross paths with a few times over the following years. The ST was perfect in my eyes and at the time was a worthy rival to the Commodore Amiga. However this opinion wasn't to last. Although there were several ST mags, the games featured in them seemed to dry up quickly, and any dual

February 2021

format Amiga & ST mags split up fairly quickly too, the Amiga version being the one that lived on. I just want to take this moment to point out one example that did buck the trend however. Bear with me while I share a little bit of magazine history. ST/Amiga Format was an early magazine from Future Publishing that covered both 16-bit machines equally. However, when Future sold their multiformat magazine ACE (Advanced Computer Entertainment) to publishing rival EMAP, one clause was that Future were no longer able to have a multiformat mag on the market. The one million pounds that Future received from EMAP helped the company grow and expand, and ST/Amiga Format would relaunch as two separate magazines, both continuing for several years with ST Format folding in 1996, and Amiga Format following in 2000. Amiga Format has always been highly thought of by Amiga fans, covering the whole Amiga scene from gaming, business & music software and more. The team of talented writers made sure AF was a must-read. Although two friends of mine went down the ST route, more of them seemed to be getting the Amiga. Commodore didn't need a hardware bundle with over a dozen games, as they had marketing know-how. How many of us wanted The Batman Pack, Cartoon Classics, Screen Gems, Desktop Dynamite? One or two killer games, as well as Deluxe Paint etc

AMIGA ADDICT

AMIGA FOCUS

Atari ST Image by Felix Winkelnkemper CC-BY-SA-4.0

The Amiga, Magazines & I

CU Amiga

1989

1990

This was the best-selling classic Amiga magazine in the world. It was also the best all-rounder.

Originated from Commodore User which started in 1983, with a later name change to CU Amiga.

was enough to make any non-Amiga owner jealous. Two early memories stick in my mind from looking on with envy at the A500. The first was playing Night Breed - The Interactive Movie. Despite being underage, I loved looking at horror films in local video shops, and the world of Night Breed looked amazing on the video cover. The game wasn't so great, but the graphics blew my mind back then And seeing some of the monsters from the film on my screen was amazing! Remember at the time a lot of people still had 8-bit machines. It was a big leap. The second memory is playing Lotus Esprit for the first time. I know it was available on various systems, but the Amiga really nailed it! Everything looked so shiny, it ran so smooth, the music blasted out and my Amiga owning friend knew how good it was.

Lotus Esprit - almost perfect on the Amiga.

I also remember an Amiga advert at the time, that had Zoe’s Sunshine On A Rainy Day as its soundtrack. If one advert was going to show how colourful the Amiga was, this was it. As mentioned earlier, Commodore marketing knew how to hit it out of the park! It was Christmas 1994 when I got my A1200. The Atari ST had already been

AMIGA ADDICT

Amiga Power

Amiga Action

1991

1989

Amiga Power was all about games. Known for nocompromise review scores and a sense of humour.

sold and replaced with a SNES some time prior to this, and while I loved my SNES, even more friends were now Amiga owners. I needed to get one. With the help of several paper rounds, I accumulated some money to put towards a machine out of local free ads paper Loot. Times were diﬀerent back then, and ringing someone up on their landline to try and grab a bargain at 6am was almost the norm. I sometimes think back to why I wanted to go from SNES to Amiga. The SNES has always been my alltime favourite machine, but the Amiga did a lot of things better. Having previously owned an ST, I had played games like Dungeon Master, Carrier Command and Battletech. Some of these titles gave me my early education for genres that I still love to this day. Whichever genre the SNES had, some AAA titles for the Amiga could almost match it. OK, true - games such as Super Mario World, Street Fighter 2 and Super Metroid will always be hard to beat. But although there were some weaker points to the Amiga library, games such as Alien Breed, Secret Of Monkey Island 2 and UFO Enemy Unknown are just a few I can mention that made the Amiga stand out. As well as this, there are titles that although not exclusive to the Amiga were more at home there: Zool, Theme Park and The Chaos Engine instantly spring to mind. I have said several times on the podcast that EA always knew how to get the most out of the Sega Mega Drive, and for the Amiga the likes of Gremlin, Bitmap Brothers, Sensible Software and Team 17 released many great titles for the Amiga over the years. For example, Team 17 brought the likes of Superfrog, Alien Breed, Body Blows, Project X and Worms. That’s one hell of a list! Worms came along just as the mainstream Amiga scene was in decline,

February 2021

The original AA (well, other than Amstrad Action!). See "A Day In The Life" on page 28 to get the idea!

but how many of us sat around our machines with friends taking it in turns to blow the little fellas away? So onto the magazines. As mentioned I had paper rounds, and nearly all the money earned was spent on games magazines. In the early to mid 90s, the shelves were full of them, several titles for each machine. But Amiga magazines had one big difference over the console rivals - cover disks! At this time, being an Amiga owner was like being a king! Various titles trying to tempt you to buy them - Amiga Action, Amiga Format, Amiga Power, CU Amiga, The One For Amiga and more. Each magazine had a key focus, and a style of writing cooked up by a talented pool of writers (a whole series of articles could be written to cover the likes of Stuart Campbell, Cam Winstanley, Steve Jarratt and others). Back then the writers themselves were like rock stars. Even back in the 8-bit days of Jaz Rignall and Gary Penn, the readers would hang onto every word. If they say something is awful then you stayed clear - after all these reviews were written by gamers for gamers. The first Amiga exclusive magazine I started buying was Amiga Action. It had been going for years, always had some great cover disk content and just like when I used to buy ST Action, I liked the layout and design. Nearly every issue came with at least two disks, although some issues had three and a couple of issues even had four taking up the entire cover! I interviewed ex-Amiga Action staff member Paul McNally earlier this year, and we discussed cover disks and the "war" with other magazines. The issues that came with four discs had to use thicker paper for the cover, just to try and stop it bending and being damaged. Although publishers Europress and later

DEDICATED AMIGA

AMIGA FOCUS

Amiga Format

UK NEWSTAND

Amiga User Int.

Amiga Shopper

The One Amiga

1999

1988

1991

A magazine very late to the game for UK newstand publications. The team were mostly ex-CU staﬀ.

Before AUI went solo, it started as a supplement to Commodore Computing International in 1986.

Amiga Shopper was the best buyer's guide - with monthly tech tips, hardware & software.

The One was originally an Atari ST, Amiga & PC magazine started in '88 before Amiga rebranding.

"...the regret was throwing away hundreds of games magazines, Zero, ACE, Amiga Action, GamesMaster, Playstation Power and many more. They were worthless and taking up too much room - at least that was my opinion back then." IDG would keep Amiga Action running until late 1996, the quality was soon fading during 1995. Not to worry if you were an Amiga owner though, as Future Publishing had you covered. Amiga Power and Format catered for two diﬀerent types of Amiga user. Power focused on games, and like Action the cover disks were full of game demos and, at times, full games. Most Amiga fans will be able to think back to many hours spent on some of these. One of the biggest was on Amiga Format with Cannon Soccer, where Sensible Software put out a fantastic crossover of two of their most popular Amiga titles. Public Domain software was also included over the years, and although these were not seen as polished as AAA titles, so many had an addictiveness that the full-price games lacked.

issue. Some issues around Christmas time almost hit 300 pages! Even as the Amiga market hit troubles in mid-1994, magazine veteran Steve Jarratt took over as editor. Steve had launched so many successful magazines during his stints at Future, Total!, Edge, (Official Playstation Magazine was still to come at this time), and getting Steve in gave Format a shot in the arm. He even featured on several promotional videos for the magazine something he admitted he cringes at looking back, when I interviewed him a few years ago. The magazine lasted until 2000 and the cover disks changed from floppy disks to CD-ROMs during the final years. By this point my A1200 was long gone, but the staying power of this magazine always amazes me! PS2 magazines were just around the corner by the time Format ended.

With Amiga Format, you had the best of all worlds. Just like the magazine itself, the disks featured game demos, music and business programs. For Format, any game demos were a small extra. The main selling point was giving away software that often cost over £100 for free If a particular issue of a magazine didn't have great disk content, then at the very least you had some potential blank disks whenever you might need them….

One of my biggest regrets was in 1999. I was 19 and got married. However the regret was throwing away hundreds of games magazines, Zero, ACE, Amiga Action, GamesMaster, Playstation Power and many more. They were worthless and taking up too much room - at least that was my opinion back then.

Amiga Format had so many experts covering each area of the Amiga, so you knew you were in safe hands. To 15-year-old me, I found it a bit boring back then, as all I used my A1200 for was games. However, looking back today you see how much work went into an

Fast forward 15 years to 2014, and this was where games magazines returned to my gaming life. Physical magazines were on the decline by then. Obviously gamers wanted news quicker than a monthly update. Although there were still a handful of magazines available, it was Retro Gamer that got my attention again. I had started collecting games and machines again in 2012, but collecting games magazines was a lot more interesting. I started to buy certain issues again that I remembered as a kid. The magazine could have had a memorable cover, or a certain review that I was interested in. During Amiga Power's run Stuart Campbell was known for some scathing review scores, with some as low as 2%! How could I turn such things down? So to wrap things up for today, I love games magazines. They help me with research when interviewing magazinerelated guests for Maximum Power Up. Hopefully, I will get chance to share some magazine history for certain titles in future issues of AA, and share some background stories from guests. Keeping a history of these magazines is so important and if you were there during the 80s and 90s - you'll know why.

Classic magazines would give away software in abundance.

February 2021

If you want to follow any of Paul’s gaming thoughts check out @maximumpowerup on Twitter and ﬁnd all episodes of the podcast on www.maximumpowerup.com, which features a lot of gaming chat and a ton of interviews with games writers.

AMIGA ADDICT

AMIGA FOCUS

Amiga Active

Six of the Best - Retro Asylum Podcast (Steve Erickson)

by Stufm Do you all have your favourite retro platforms?

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Retro Asylum mainly focuses on the UK retro gaming scene, in particular the 8-bit and 16-bit machines many of us grew up with - namely the C64, Spectrum and Amstrad, and later the ST and Amiga. Dean is a huge Spectrum fan; Matt and I love to talk all things Commodore. Mads and Chris will also take the show beyond our usual 8-bit and 16-bit comfort zone, and will happily delve into newer platforms, games and genres. Awesome. OK let’s get on to the list…

We're big fans of Retro Asylum's mag style website & artwork.

Each month, we catch up with a notable ﬁgure in the world of Amiga and retro gaming, and ask them to whittle down their list of favourite games to a selection of just six. This month we’re talking to Steve Erickson aka Press Play On Tape, one of the hosts of the UK’s #1 retro-gaming podcast, Retro Asylum. Hi Steve - can you tell us how you got involved with Retro Asylum? Hi. I joined the Retro Asylum team about seven years ago after writing for their website and later getting interviewed on the show by then host Sam Dyer - the same Sam Dyer who would later go on to create Bitmap Books. I was later asked to become a permanent member of the team.

Shadow of the Beast Along with Blood Money, Shadow of the Beast is where my love for the Amiga started. I saw both of these games on display in my local games shop and couldn’t believe what I was seeing. One glance at the meteorite intro for Blood Money and the insane level of parallax scrolling in Shadow of the Beast and I was in love. With its ridiculously unfair diﬃculty level, I would later discover that Shadow of the Beast isn’t so much a great game as it is a great showcase of the Amiga hardware, but even so I still have a soft spot for it even now. There was always the 'Ten Pints' cheat code if you wanted to see all of the levels.

Who else is on the Retro Asylum team?

Super Cars 2 Having long been a fan of top down racers going all the way back to Super Sprint in the arcade, Super Cars 2 seemed like the deﬁnitive overhead racer when it hit the Amiga in 1991. With its impressive scrolling tracks, upgradable weapons and excellent multiplayer mode, I lost many hours trying to dodge missiles, improve my lap times and beat my mates at this classic Amiga racer.

We’re led by retro gaming veteran Dean Swain, and there’s myself, Matt Wilsher and rounding out the team are hosts Mads Kristensen and Chris Worthington, who we kindly allow to do most of the work. They run a game club each month on our Discord channel, where a particular game is played for the month and then covered in-depth in a podcast episode.

Stunt Car Racer Spot number three was a toss up between Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge 2 and Stunt Car Racer, and while the former may well be the definitive arcade style racer on the Amiga, Stunt Car Racer just edged it with its sheer originality and brilliance. Who can forget the first time they took off on the little ramp - suspension creaking

Shadow of the Beast showcased the Amiga's hardware capabilities.

Racing and weapons - always a happy mix!

AMIGA ADDICT

February 2021

COMMU NI ARTICL TY E SUBMI SSION

Bubble Bobble I think I'd not only be letting myself down, but I'd be letting down Amiga fans everywhere if I didn't include an arcade conversion on my list, and what better conversion to mention than Bubble Bobble? Not only is Bubble Bobble a brilliant single screen co-op arcade game, it also happens to be pretty close to arcade perfect on the Amiga. From the excellent rendition of the arcade game’s theme music and intro, to almost exact replicas of the original's graphics and levels, Bubble Bobble absolutely shines on the Amiga. And it doesn't get much better than playing the game cooperatively with a friend. A gold standard in arcade game conversion.

Can you get up the tower with your frog(?) who can't jump?

and cracking as you bounced down on the other side? Or getting your backside handed to you by the computer while you tried to learn the nuances of the Roller Coaster? And if you ever managed to set up a two-player game using two Amigas and the famous null modem cable - the game was elevated to a whole new level of brilliance. A masterclass of programming and level design, SCR is a game that is still unparalleled to this day. (Ed. - "The AA team wonder if Stunt Car Racer will make it the triple next month?!") Nebulus I remember being completely mesmerised the ﬁrst

Like a scary oversized Christmas Elf - don't mess with this guy!

Battle Squadron Whilst the Amiga may not have been the ultimate platform for shooters (that accolade would probably have to go to the PC Engine), when they were done right they would absolutely shine on Commodore's hardware. There are plenty to choose from - from SWIV and R-Type to Xenon 2 and Project X - but my choice has to be Battle Squadron simply because, for me, it comes closest to delivering a true arcade-style shoot'em up in the home. With slick graphics, loads of enemies, super smooth scrolling, great music and even better playability, Battle Squadron delivers on all fronts. The Retro Asylum podcast comes out every month on all major podcast platforms. Links to their podcast catalogue, Discord and social channels can be found at www.retroasylum.com

Arcade quality title screen, SFXs and gameplay.

February 2021

AMIGA ADDICT

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AA may be in the lower leagues, but we take safety very seriously.

time I saw the rotating tower in Hewson's seminal puzzle platformer Nebulus. Usually I'm a fan of racing games and shoot 'em ups - but there was something about seeing Pogo (the weird frog-like protagonist in Nebulus) trying to hop his way to the top of the tower without falling off platforms or getting hit by abstract flying shapes that just made me desperate to get my hands on a copy ("Copy" *ahem* being an accurate description of the bulk of the games in my Amiga collection back then but let's not get into that right now!) When I did finally manage to get hold of the game, I wasn't disappointed. With its cunning level design, brilliant graphics and bonkers submarine sections linking levels, Nebulus rightly became an instant hit and it's still one of my goto games when I boot up my old A500.

ter Charac Select

All characters have the same starting stats and equipment, but begin the game in diﬀerent areas of the map. The recommended starting character is the Blue Knight (Sir Godber by default), as he starts in the top left of the map, meaning you can get rid of those horriﬁc spear Troggs ASAP, before they appear in multiples!

ent Equipm

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road Sword – 10G Claymore Sword – 25G Chainmail – 30G Plate Armour – 50G Battle Armour – 75G

Stats

Strength – How much damage you deal (a good one to level early) Constitution – How much health you have (level this stat up by at least one point before any other) Endurance – How far you can travel across the map on your turn (lowest priority to level)

Experie nce

Experience Points (XP) can be spent to increase your stats. You earn one each time you beat a lair. In a game with three or four human players, one stat point costs one XP. In a two player game they cost two XP points, and in a one player game they are three points.

Key ns Locatio

Home village – Each knight starts the game at their home village in one of the corners of the map. If you have less than three lives remaining, you can get more by trekking back here (which can take several turns depending where you are). You cannot visit other knights’ villages. Stonehenge (near bottom left of the map) – Make an oﬀering of a magical item here in exchange for an extra life. Once you have defeated the Guardian in the Valley of the Gods and retrieved a Moonstone, you need to bring it here during the matching moon phase to trigger the druid ceremony and complete the game. Wizard’s Tower (top right of map) – This is the residence of the mighty Math the Wizard. He will increase one of your stats, give you an item or (if you annoy him too often) turn you into a frog. Try and visit here once as soon as you can.

There are two cities in Moonstone: Highwood (top left of map) and Waterdeep (bottom right of map). Tavern – Here you can gamble to try and win more money. The odds are against you, so this isn’t recommended unless you have money to burn. Remember, when the fun stops, stop! Merchant – Here you can buy the armour, swords and daggers you’ll need to help you in your ﬁghts. Buy the Battle Armour (75 gold) and Claymore (25 gold) as soon as you can. Healer – Give him some money to heal you to full health (or just some herbs if he thinks you didn’t give enough!). Mythral the Mystic (Waterdeep only) – If you give him money he will either raise or lower one of your stats. I would hate to see this guy’s rating on Trip Advisor - most of the time you end up paying him and he reduces your stats! Avoid! High Temple (Highwood only) – Here you can buy magical items like the fantastic Rings of Protection. Head here as soon as you have the gold.

l Magica Items

Ring of Protection – This increases your max health by 20. Potion of Healing – Heals your knight fully. If you are already fully healed, this will give you an extra life. Talisman of the Wyrm – Reduces the damage you take from the Dragon’s attacks. This effect stacks, so it’s worth having more than one. Scroll of Wyrm – Choose an enemy knight to be attacked by the Dragon. If the scroll is cursed, the Dragon will instead attack you. Scroll of Hawk – Move to any location on the map (with the exception of the Valley of the Gods). If the scroll is cursed, you will be transported to a random location on the map. Scroll of Haste – Move further across the map in your turn. If this is cursed, you will only travel half as far. Scroll of Protection – Skip a fight when attacked by another knight. If the scroll is cursed, you will still have to fight but with inverted controls. Scroll of Acquisition – This allows you to steal one item (including gold and equipment) from another knight, teleporting it into your inventory. Gem of Seeing – Discover what reward is contained in a lair (useful if you don’t fancy your chances in a fight and want to see if the reward is actually worth it). Magical Keys - There are four magical keys to find hidden in the lairs. Once you have all four, head to the Valley of the Gods to fight the Guardian for the Moonstone. Press Space when on the map screen during your turn to access your inventory. Here you can use items such as scrolls or healing potions.

AMIGA ADDICT

February 2021

Enem Strateg y ies

Troggs These humanoid creatures are some of the most annoying enemies, armed with either a spear, an axe or a hammer. The most dangerous variety are the ones with spears, as they have an insane reach. Walk up and down the screen and either overhead swing or forward lunge them after they have attacked and missed. When they come in numbers from either side, it’s essential to try to concentrate on one at a time and kill them with a forward lunge. The long, blood squirting death animation will allow you to one vs one the remaining enemy before the next spawns and hits you in the back. Rinse and repeat until they are all dead. Attacking the spear Trogg lairs early will make things easier for you in the long run, as they will spawn in greater numbers later in the game.

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War Beasts These horned creatures resembling the death dogs from the film Willow are fast. They will charge you from alternating sides of the screen - it’s key to avoid the first charge and stand on the side they just came from. As soon as you see them appear for the return charge, execute an overhead swing which should hit them before they hit you. Beware - the timing is tight, you may also take damage! Once one beast is dead, be ready to dodge the next and repeat the process. Mudmen The scariest enemy when I was a kid (mostly due to the organ chord as they burst from mud), but actually the easiest to beat. Keep moving at the start to avoid getting immediately one-hit-killed. Move up the screen and wait for the mudman to approach, overhead striking him when in range, then move to the bottom and do the same thing, the timing is easiest as he approaches you from below so stick to that if you’re having trouble. If he catches you in his vines, use the down + fire button defence to break free. As soon as you kill him, keep moving as another may burst from the depths to drag you to your death.

- "A HARD DAYS

Ratmen Called ratmen but looking more like large echidnas, these tree dwellers will try their best to swarm you. Stand near the bottom of the screen (avoiding their dangling tail which can hoist you up to KNIGHT" GAME GUIDE your death) and spam the back attack this should hit them on either side of by James Walker you. You should expect to take some damage, but they are very weak and it’s nothing a big strong knight like you can’t handle.

Baloks These mountains of muscle will try to land on you and kill you as they enter the battle, so look out for their shadow and keep out of the way! This fight is a similar technique to others - move and wait, then just as he jumps to get close to you, perform an overhead strike. This should hit him, but move the instant it does (as these guys have some fast attacks) and repeat. If he does a high jump be prepared to move to avoid being crushed. Trolls These towering blue giants are tough and are another priority to try and kill early. When there are multiple on-screen they can pinball you between them for massive damage. As with the Troggs move up and down the screen and overhead swing or forward lunge after they have attacked and missed. The Dragon Unless he’s eaten one of your friends and has stolen a Key to the Valley, you don’t have to kill the dragon to win the game. But if you do manage to beat him, you will be rewarded with the Sword of Sharpness which is the most powerful in the game, so it can be worth the effort. You may not have a choice if it attacks you whilst flying across the map, but if you do choose to fight, make sure you go into the fight with as many Talismans of the Wyrm and Rings of Protection as you can. The key to an easy fight is distancing - make sure you’re not so close that it tries to use its downward fire breath on you, but also not so far away that you cannot connect with an overhead swing. Once you have the distance worked out, run up and down the screen striking the dragon on the end of its nose as it rises up or down the screen breathing fire. You may get burned a few times getting the timing or distance worked out. The Guardian You know the drill by now! As with many other enemies in the game, kite her up and down and overhead chop after the Guardian misses an attack, then immediately move. Be patient. This isn’t that tough a fight with the above strategy but beware - if you die, you lose three lives instead of the usual one. Be sure you have plenty going in just in the case the worst happens. As many Rings of Protection and stats as you can manage to accumulate will help too of course!

February 2021 2021 February

AMIGA ADDICT ADDICT AMIGA

The Addams Family

• Developed & Published by Ocean • Amiga platforms: OCS / ECS • Release year: 1992

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- John "Boatofcar" Shawler of the Amigos Podcast reviews an old family favourite

Gomez, stand by that big old tree, it'll make a lovely shot. Say cheese...

They’re creepy and they’re kooky, mysterious and...OK, I’ll stop now. With its all-star cast and MC Hammer cameo, The Addams Family was something of a blockbuster when it was rebooted in 1991, and game developers from every platform jumped at the chance (see what I did there?) to knock out a game featuring Gomez, Fester, and Morticia. Licensed games have somewhat of a reputation, and that reputation is...less than stellar. Likewise, Ocean’s licensed games in particular are by and large known for being rush jobs that bear little to no resemblance to their source material. Would The Addams Family be any different? In the game adaptation developed and published by Manchester-based Ocean and released for the Amiga, Atari ST, Mega Drive, and SNES, you play as Gomez and travel from room to room in your mansion to rescue various Addams family members who have been kidnapped by baddies of all stripes. There is some in-game text fluff referring to the events from the movie regarding Fester’s lost memory and evil lawyer Tully, but that is really the extent of the movie “tie-in”. At its core, The Addams Family is a Japanese-style platforming game. The player begins their journey outside the Addams Family mansion. Venturing inside, Gomez is greeted by a hall of stairs and doors, each of which lead to a different part of the mansion where Wednesday, Pugsley et al await your rescue. So far, so standard, right? Well, yes, but the devil is in the details, as they say. We’re all aware that the back of the box of

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The Addams Family is a true platformer with lots of challenges.

many an Amiga platformer promised a “console-quality” experience, but did not deliver. A couple of things make The Addams Family stand out from the pack of Zools and Superfrogs. For one, up-tojump has been jettisoned in favour of the much more precise button-for-jump. You have variable jump control. When you press the jump button briefly, Gomez only jumps a little. When you hold it down, he gets more altitude. The fact that it took an extra five or six years for Amiga game developers to catch up with their Japanese counterparts on consoles in this regard pains me no end. Outside of the jumping, the controls are tight Gomez has just the right amount of momentum. The levels are well thoughtout and borrow from the best tropes from the East. There are no blind jumps into spikes, and there are no pits at all to fall into. Unlike some Amiga titles, where it’s clear that 99% of the effort went into designing and animating the main character, all of the enemy sprites are colourful, fully animated, and varied according to the level. You face bounding snowmen in the Freezer level, jumping jack-in-the-boxes in the Game Room, and (my personal favourite) bookworms in the library. The bosses in the game are huge, and, while sort of generic (“Goblin,” “Witch,” “Dragon.”) each offer a different challenge in finding the correct pattern, and none of them are unfair. Although the game levels are linear (think more Super Mario World than RoboCod), there are plenty of secrets to find. Hidden doors and areas are sprinkled liberally throughout the mansion as you’d expect from the Addams’ residence - and discovering them rewards the player with extra lives, hearts, and powerups. One secret

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area accessible from the hall of stairs is a room full of 1-Ups - enough to get the most players to the end of the game. While not precisely a cheat, it was just what I needed as an inexperienced player to be able to see all of the sights of the mansion and complete the game - a rare feat for someone as unskilled as myself. The Addams Family is not a perfect game. Most of the levels should be half their current length, particularly the Oven and Conservatory levels. Some enemy patterns verge on the unfair, and it is sometimes next to impossible to avoid taking hits. Even though the levels are linear, level progression is open. Although this allows the player to explore rooms in the mansion in any order and see the majority of the game, if you do not take the route which gets you extra heart containers from the beginning (Old Tree > Freezer > Conservatory), you will not be able to beat any of the proper levels. The game should have been more clear about this route in the handy hint boxes found at the beginning of levels. The other unfortunate aspects of this game are related to the Amiga and Atari ST port in particular. By 1993, sales of consoles had overtaken the 16 bit computers, and most developers were

Simon Butler was part of the Addams Family graphics team. See his column on page 51.

The biggest ﬂaw of them all is the removal of the room names from the computer versions. In the Mega Drive and SNES version, each room of each level has a clever, humorous name in the vein of Manic Miner on the ZX Spectrum. Why this was removed for the audience that would have cared about it most is a mystery to me. Even with these ﬂaws, The Addams Family is still the best Mario-style platformer on the Amiga, and I recommend you give it a go if you are a fan of the genre. John Shawler is the host of the Amigos: Everything Amiga Podcast and This Week in Retro. He can be contacted at john@amigospodcast.com

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putting more effort into developing SNES and Mega Drive ports than their aging computer cousins. The Amiga version of The Addams Family lacks the beautiful background graphics of the console versions, about half of the music, and several power-ups. Gone are the fencing foil and superball, victims of the one button controller curse. Gomez retains the speed shoes and the flying propeller fez, undoubtedly the coolest flying gimmick you’ll find in an Amiga game.

It's nice to see the whole family together not trying to kill each other!

GRAPHICS 93% Even without the background graphics, some of the best looking sprites ever drawn on the Miggy.

SOUND 99% Though it’s missing tracks present on the console versions, this game boasts simultaneous sound eﬀects and excellent music. The tunes will stick in your head!

attack the various rooms in the mansion, you’re going to get frustrated. That said, having access to all of the rooms in the mansion straight away still provides a fun experience for the novice player..

PLAYABILITY 99% Absolutely the best controlling platformer on the Amiga, bar none.

92%

GRAB FACTOR 80% Without knowing the proper route to

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VERDICT

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Jim Power in 'Mutant Planet'

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- Ben Unwin has a couple of regrets in life. One such regret dates back to 1993... Bourn Market in Cambridgeshire. For my family in the 1990s, this magical wonderland of cut-price counterfeits was a highlight of bank holiday weekends. Based at an ex-RAF 1940s airﬁeld, the stalls ran the length of two runways, with hundreds of vendors selling everything imaginable and featuring a heavy emphasis on what can be charitably described as ‘unlicensed’ products. Amongst the knock-oﬀ Nikes and bootleg Ben Shermans, there was usually at least one stall selling computer games, which for me was the highlight and granted an opportunity to buy games for less than high street prices. Bucking the trend however, as far as I could tell these were the genuine article, meaning the reduced prices were not at the cost of authenticity. As long-term enthusiasts of the hobby, most of us probably have at least one gaming regret. These can range from misjudged jettisoning of old hardware to missed opportunities. And Bourn Market was the scene, during a visit in 1993, of possibly my biggest gaming regret…

its golden period of game releases. However, for those of us with limited disposable income, our best source of new games were magazine cover disks and one of the very ﬁrst that I slammed into our shiny new Amiga’s ﬂoppy drive contained a demo for Jim Power in Mutant Planet. The screenshots and blurb inside the accompanying magazine looked good, but nothing could prepare me for the audio-visual onslaught that would hit me upon loading it up. Coming from the ST, where smooth scrolling and full screen visuals were a pipe-dream, Jim Power was a genuine assault on the senses. Full screen, multi-layered, highcolour, 50fps parallax scrolling, with a pumping soundtrack by none other than the mighty Chris Huelsbeck… and that was just the title screen! I played that demo endlessly, imagining that one day I would get my hands on the full game.

The preceding eighteen months had been an exciting period for me, progressing quite quickly from my trusty C64 to a second-hand Atari ST, and then, for Christmas 1992, my dad bought me a brand new Amiga 600. Unlike my C64 or ST, this was stationed in my Dad’s study and was intended as the ‘family’ computer. As you might imagine, I had lobbied heavily for the Amiga to be the micro of choice for this purpose... and word processing wasn’t my primary motivation. I had long been a distant admirer of the Amiga, and while I wouldn’t have admitted it at the time, my ST had been chosen purely for budgetary reasons. I couldn’t aﬀord the additional premium associated with Commodore’s 16-bit powerhouse, and to ﬁnally have one at home was a dream come true. By 1992, the Amiga was at the tail end of

For the uninitiated – of which I suspect there are many – Jim Power is primarily a side-scrolling run-and-gun platformer. As the name suggests, you take control of Jim as he battles his way through several levels of action across a variety of environments, tasked with rescuing the President’s daughter from the clutches of Vulkhor, devilish ruler of the Mutant Planet. Initially armed with a feeble single-shot arm cannon, over the course of the game you acquire upgrades that increase the number, size and direction of the projectiles - these enhancements coming in step with increasingly lethal adversaries. You also have at your disposal a super-shot, triggered by holding and releasing the ﬁre button to

Is this Amiga Addict's "spooky tree" issue?

Jim puts James Bond's jetpack to shame.

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• Publisher: Loriciel • Amiga platforms: OCS / ECS • Release year: 1992 unleash a high-powered blast in all directions. Additional help comes in the form of a collectable shield, which surrounds Jim in a protective forcefield that makes him temporarily invulnerable. This is a challenging game, with enemies coming at you thick and fast and most requiring multiple hits to dispatch. Initially it can seem quite daunting, with the fast pace meaning you have little time to react to the enemies as they appear. This is made more difficult by the fact that you can’t shoot and move at the same time (perhaps run-then-gun would be a more accurate description?!) However, with caution, it’s possible to make steady progress - although admittedly some memorisation of the enemy locations and types does help. The enemies themselves all tend to move in predictable patterns, displaying little in the way of AI. The game is quite oldschool in that respect, but no worse for it as it offers the opportunity to practice and perfect the stages over time. However, your foes are only half of the problem, with numerous environmental hazards to negotiate. Indeed, the platforming can be even more fiendish than the enemies, with many sections requiring pixel-perfect accuracy and timing. Once again, caution and practice are your best weapons here. That said, you can’t afford to dawdle for too long, since there is a timer continuously threatening to rob you of another life should you allow it to reach zero. Regular clock pick-ups are available to offer a stay of execution for just a little bit longer. In between the main levels are some horizontal shoot-em-up stages where Jim straps on a jetpack to take the fight to the skies. These are no cake-walk either, although more straight forward than the main stages having no environmental

Stunning Amiga graphics & sound.

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A varied mix of beautifully drawn enemies and colourful backgrounds.

obstacles to contend with. Some boss fights are also tackled whilst donning Jim’s jetpack, adding an additional level of manoeuvrability and variety to these encounters. Despite the difficulty, like all good games of this type, it never feels unfair or insurmountable. The controls are tight and responsive and collision detection is spot on. There is no inertia to contend with, so Jim stops on a dime, making the previously mentioned platforming perfectly achievable. There is a sense of weight to the jumping - almost as though Jim’s arm cannon is weighing him down but it’s linear and predictable, and quickly becomes second nature. The jetpack can feel a little sluggish at times, particularly against some of the huge bosses which can very quickly overwhelm you with their sheer size and speed. However, once again, a little pattern recognition goes a long way here. Whilst the gameplay is satisfyingly action-packed, as I alluded to above my initial excitement came from the sheer technical wizardry on display. I had experienced nothing like this on any machine previously and my jaw hit the floor. Parallax scrolling has always excited me – even to this day I get a kick out of it – and Jim Power has some of the best parallax of any Amiga game, in fact, of any game you care to mention! Multiple overlapping layers, rich in detail and colour. Those of us more familiar with the Amiga’s unique capabilities will recognise the use of the Copper to create an impressive gradient on the background layer, and while the foreground displays noticeably fewer colours, they are artfully deployed. The sprites are less remarkable, but are reasonably well animated and certainly don’t detract from the overall aesthetic. Some may argue that the visuals are too busy, or too chaotic, but there is no

The ﬁnal battle. Even Lennox Lewis would have trouble with this chap!

denying the technical prowess on display, and to a graphics junkie like myself, it’s nothing short of pixel pornography. And what better way to accompany such a visual feast, but with a feast for the ears as well - courtesy of the legendary Chris Huelsbeck. While they may lack the iconic familiarity of some of his betterknown tracks, all of the tunes here display his signature style and quality, with the opening track being a personal favourite that I regularly listen to outside of the game itself. Also of note is that these play alongside the sound effects, something of a rarity in Amiga games due to the relatively limited four channels of sound. What this all adds up to is a game that is quintessentially ‘Amiga’ in its look and feel. By leveraging every last drop of the Amiga’s horsepower, the result is a game that defines what the Amiga was capable of in the right hands. While the gameplay may not offer anything particularly original, it’s delivered with such polish and finesse that the experience is nothing less than special. When a game looks and feels this good, does it really matter if it isn’t bursting with originality? It’s hard for me to be completely objective when dealing with a game so wrapped up in nostalgia, but it remains an easy recommendation for any fan of Amiga action games. Bourn Market, 1993. I have in my hand a copy of Jim Power for the Amiga. However, something stops me from buying it. Perhaps concerns that I’ve played the demo so much that I’ve already exhausted a sizable chunk of the game. Maybe thoughts that the other levels are just more of the same, or not as good. Review scores have been mediocre, surely my hard-earned money would be better spent on something else...

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I don’t remember what I ended up buying that day, but I can say with conﬁdence that I made the wrong choice, and it paled in comparison to the enjoyment I would have experienced had I instead handed over the cash for Jim Power. It’s hard to imagine today, when practically anything can be purchased with a few taps of a touch screen, but 27 years ago games weren’t so readily available. I would never see Jim Power for sale again. That was my one opportunity to own it and I foolishly let it pass me by. Of course, with the passage of time came other opportunities to play the game via emulation, something I have done on countless occasions since, each time kicking myself that I didn’t buy the original when I had the chance. Fortunately, this year I have been given the opportunity to correct my mistake, ordering a brand-new copy courtesy of a Kickstarter that promises to release physical versions on multiple platforms. And so here I am, closure at last, after 27 years of regret.

GRAPHICS 92% Arcade-quality graphics with stunning parallax and not a hint of slowdown. Pushes the Amiga to its limits!

SOUND 90% Chris Huelsbeck. Nuﬀ said..

GRAB FACTOR 83% The initial wow-factor pulls you in, then the satisfying combat and platforming keeps you coming back for more.

PLAYABILITY 81% Responsive and precise controls ensure that progress is always achievable and, above all, fun!

86%

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No Second Prize

• Developed by Thalion Software • Amiga platforms: OCS / ECS • Release year: 1992

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- Duncan Styles of everythingamiga.com gives AA readers a thrill on two wheels

Many Amiga bike games prefer the simulation-style driving view.

1992 seems to have been a good year for Amiga games. As if to prove the point... here is something a little diﬀerent from Thalion Software. No Second Prize is a motorcycle racer with 3D graphics. The people behind Thalion were demo coders for the Atari ST, and while the visuals may not be as complex as say, F1 Grand Prix, by being frugal with the polygons, Thalion have managed to create a racing game that is both smooth and fast. Something that becomes clear when the game opens with an impressive intro accompanied by a great tune. When the time comes to choose your racer, you pick from the standard types you’d expect. Slow but hardy, through to fast but fragile - somewhere in the middle always seems to be the best bet. Select auto or manual gearbox and then set the sensitivity of your mouse. This is because you will steer/lean your bike moving the mouse left and right, while the buttons allow you to accelerate and brake. It’s a great way of implementing

Like Jaguar XJ220, the Amiga mouse can be selected as a controller!

an analogue control method using just a mouse, and while it may take some time to get to grips with, persevere and there is a real thrill as you weave between opponents at top speed. You can practice any track, but when you begin your racing season, the 20 races available have a preset order. The tracks themselves may be based on real world locations, but there are no changes in elevation at all - all you get are short dips and bumps. As well as the usual bends and trackside objects on each track, two types of obstacle are found on some tracks - oil patches, and something that seems to represent debris. Both will slow you down, but not to the same extent as hitting another rider or a trackside object. There is no music while you race, but the constant hum of your bike doesn’t grate. Passing other bikes causes a simulation of the Doppler eﬀect on their engine note which is a nice touch, and you will also hear the chase helicopter which follows the race leader at all times.

“Why have a chase helicopter?” you may ask. The game features a replay function. You can watch the last lap or so and there are a few cameras to choose from, one being the view from the chopper. Great to relive that brave overtake. The aim is to win each race, or at least get the highest place you can - this is a season of races after all. While you are only racing a handful of named riders, you will ﬁnd many others out on the track, but the black and brown bikes are there purely to increase the on-track action. If you crash too much you will damage yourself and/or the bike. Do that too often and you will have to sit the rest of the race out and allow it to complete at accelerated speed. No Second Prize is a great game, something very diﬀerent from the usual Amiga racer. It does everything it sets out to do well. The main downsides are the control method (which requires a steady hand) and lack of unique levels. Stick with it though and you will be rewarded with unique gameplay.

GRAPHICS 89% A very fast 3D engine (for the time).

SOUND 85% Great music and audio.

GRAB FACTOR 75% 20 tracks with little to no real variation could get repetitive quickly.

PLAYABILITY 90% Exciting racing. Not the easiest game to control, though rewarding once you get the hang of it.

VERDICT These guys are seasoned pros. Rich, attractive and ready to win.

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85%

Super Sprint DRS

• Developed by mcgeezer • Amiga platforms: AGA / CD32 • Release Date: Coming soon

- James "Mansell of Amiga racing" Walker exits the AA car park & warms up his engine

I was very pleased to hear that it was with those memories in mind, and his days playing in the arcades of Sunderland, that Graeme has put multiplayer at the centre of this release. The original arcade supported three players, with the fourth always computer controlled. DRS will feature the option to have all four cars controlled by human players, giving it a leap ahead of even the arcade original. Adding this feature has introduced its own interesting challenges - with no CPU car to set the pace and end the race if the humans are struggling, each track requires a time limit be set. Sounds also needed some thought Paula has four channel sound, perfect for each player, but to get everything sounding correct, there needs to be a separate channel for the skidding sounds. Graeme’s solution to this is having the ﬁrst two players to join the game get sound priority across the four channels.

The game will also be tweaked for AmigaLive, meaning if you're playing online, it's really just like one player and you will have access to all voice channels. On original hardware, the parallel port is supported for three or four players, or if you’re on the CD32, the option of splitting the joystick ports with an adaptor is being explored. Now on to the technical details of what’s going on under the bonnet of this F1 car! The game is for AGA machines only, and is running in high-res interlaced and dual playfield mode, with 64 pixel wide hardware sprites. Each track in the game is made up of an upper and lower playfield - when a car goes under bridges, the Amiga's hardware sprite priorities are changed to suit. Performance has obviously been something to contend with since the start, with the additional overhead of using high-res mode. Graeme explained his choice switching to the aforementioned 64 pixel wide: “It may not look like it, but those exploding cars and choppers that fly past in the arcade game are 64x116 and 64x80 pixels respectively, so getting the Amiga to display them brought its challenges. At first, I decided to use the blitter to plot those sprites and dedicate the cars to the hardware sprites in 32 pixel wide mode.

The team at AA are pretty excited about this one!

The problem though was the onscreen display (OSD) panels (scoring/laps) have to all be kept updated too on the upper playfield with the CPU. After a bit of thought, I did a bit of CPU vs memory rebalancing and moved the hardware sprites into 64 pixel wide mode. This meant I could display the cars, explosions and choppers using the hardware sprites without affecting the OSD panels. Sure, it cost me a bit chip RAM, but the huge performance gain was well worth it.” Development started mid-April last year, and a release is expected in January this year, so hopefully you will be able to get your hands on it shortly! The planned release will include a limited boxed edition, including the game on a floppy disk. A month after the boxed version is out, the game will be made available to all as a free download. We will, of course, be featuring a review once we get hold of a completed copy - I have played an early release (with 7 out of 8 tracks playable and a few bugs remaining to be squashed) and can confirm this is on track (no pun intended!) to be an amazing conversion. The game runs smoothly, controls well and feels right! (Ed. "We're looking forward to the full release, which actually may now be out as you're reading this".) To keep up to date with the project check the FB page here: www.facebook.com/ gaming/supersprintdrs/ You can also see the development diary videos and other good techie content on Graeme’s YouTube channel by searching for Graeme Cowie.

Ready for some head-to-head gaming? The tracks look promising.

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There aren’t a great deal of good things to come out of the year 2020, but one of them is deﬁnitely the upcoming project from Graeme Cowie (mcgeezer), Super Sprint DRS. As you can probably guess from the name, this is a conversion of the 1986 Atari arcade game Super Sprint, a game I have fond memories of playing on the cab in my village youth club. As a boy, Graeme owned an Atari ST - before remedying that situation and upgrading to an Amiga a couple of years later - and has fond memories of crowding around Super Sprint on that system with his mates. Sadly, there was never an oﬃcial home release on Amiga.

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CORNER G

reetings fellow Amiga fans. My name is Mads Kristensen, and I am one of the hosts of The Retro Asylum podcast, where I - along with my cohosts Dean, Matt, Steve & Chris - talk about all things retro gaming on a regular basis. I am here to tell you about the wonderful Amiga CD32 and the games I recommend you play on it. But before I do that, let’s have a quick history lesson on Commodore’s attempts at creating a game console.

ommodore have tried their hand at creating a gaming console for the living room a few times over the years, starting with the ill-fated Commodore 64 Game System (commonly abbreviated as the C64GS), which was released in December of 1990 and was a complete commercial failure. The C64GS was pretty much just a Commodore 64 that had the keyboard removed and the cartridge slot moved to the top of the machine instead of in the back right corner. You still controlled the games using a single button joystick, but most of the original C64 games wouldn’t run without modiﬁcation, because they needed a keyboard to play, or just to start (even joystick games often needed a keyboard to start the game).

fter the failure of attempting to consolise the Commodore 64 with the C64GS, Commodore got back on the horse and made another attempt of consolising existing hardware only a year later. In April of 1991 an Amiga 500 with 1MB of RAM and one of those fancy new CD-ROM drives was released - the Commodore Dynamic Total Vision, more commonly known as the CDTV. The CDTV was meant as a media appliance that you could have next to your VCR under the TV in the living room, and it included a wireless remote control that doubled as a gamepad. The CDTV was somewhat of a ﬁasco too, sadly, partly because it was an extremely expensive piece of tech, and partly because existing Amiga owners could simply buy the A570 CD-

ROM add-on for their A500s, which would run the exact same software as the CDTV.

hird time’s the charm of course, and in 1993 Commodore attempted to consolise the A1200 instead. The result was the Amiga CD32 - a true console in both looks and feel. The CD32 boasted the AGA chipset, a Motorola 68020 CPU, 2MB of Chip RAM, a double-speed CDROM drive, and it was backwardly compatible with the CDTV. It also featured the unique Akiko chip, a small chip which performed some of CD drive logic, but more importantly provided specialised hardware to perform “chunky to planar” conversion routines, which are important in the 3D games that the Amiga frequently struggled with. All in all, this was an A1200 with a CD-ROM drive ready to connect to your TV in the living room. Most importantly though, the CD32 sported a real gamepad - with a directional pad, four coloured face buttons, and two shoulder buttons. Finally, we had an Amiga with a “proper” multi-button controller that could compete with the other game consoles on the market. Not only that, the CD32 was the ﬁrst 32-bit console to be released in Europe and North America (Japan’s FM Towns Marty was released a half year earlier, but was exclusive to Japan). Now we’re talking, right? This must have been a resounding success... right?

rong. When the CD32 was released, Commodore was in major trouble. They ended up ﬁling for bankruptcy in April of 1994 - only eight months after the CD32 was released. In that brief period of time, 100,000 units were sold in Europe alone - so there was an install base to cater to, but with no new

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sales coming in, many software houses disregarded the CD32 altogether. The ones that did release for the system often did the bare minimum required - just publishing straight Amiga 500/1200 ports.

o why, you ask, should I care about the Amiga CD32 today? Amiga games are great, and I love Amiga games of all genres but... the Amiga has a major ﬂaw when it comes to some genres - the single button joystick. I was a staunch defender of up-to-jump in the schoolyard back in the day, but I’ve grown older and wiser. This is where the Amiga CD32 becomes interesting. It had six buttons to choose from, and users of course expected that developers took advantage of that. That means that even the many lazy ports the platform received - had been tweaked to use multiple buttons. Here’s a way to play those fantastic Amiga platformers with a proper control scheme! Furthermore, since the CD32 had no keyboard or mouse (although you could connect a mouse if you wanted), games were designed to work using only the gamepad. This makes these the perfect Amiga games to play from the couch today. So ﬁre up an emulator, grab your favourite controller, and load up some Amiga classics.

n this series of articles, I will try to introduce you to some titles that I think are still worthy of your time and attention today. Some may be obvious while others will deﬁnitely surprise you. And a few you may never have heard about before, those precious few that were exclusive to the Amiga CD32.

CD32 & C64GS console images courtesy of Evan Amos.

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by Mads Kristensen

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Bubba 'n' Stix is a puzzle platformer - you guide Bubba through the world trying to ﬁgure out how to progress, which usually involves using Stix in a variety of humorous ways. There are a lot of things to do with Stix - you can use him as a pool cue, boomerang, stirrer, temporary platform, snorkel, crowbar, baseball bat and a general-purpose prodding device.

Bubba 'n' Stix Developer/Publisher....Core Design Ltd. Year................................1994 Programming................Mark Watson & John Kirkland Graphics & Design.........Simon Phipps & Billy Allison Music..............................Martin Iveson According to Simon Phipps, when he was asked to design Bubba 'n' Stix, he was given the difficult task of creating a game that was moody, dark and atmospheric, using realistic, rotoscoped sprites and featuring a kind of Indiana Jones-style adventurer armed with a stick. Of course, Simon Phipps should be just the guy to design an Indiana Jones look-alike - after all, he is the guy behind the fantastic Amiga classic Rick Dangerous. After thinking it over for a few weeks and struggling with finding realistic but exciting things to do with a stick, Simon and Billy Allison did some brainstorming and came up with the crazy, completely unrealistic concept that is Bubba 'n' Stix. Luckily, Core Design ran with the idea. In Bubba 'n' Stix, you control the eponymous Bubba - a hapless handyman returning from a hard day's work, only to get kidnapped by Waldo, an intergalactic big-game hunter who apparently is one human short in his collection of exotic animals. Being a bit of a moron, Bubba pulls the first lever he comes across on the spaceship, thus opening the cargo hatch that he and a bunch of other alien lifeforms are standing on. Bubba and the others are dropped on an alien planet, and Waldo sets off after them to recapture his prizes. All is not lost however - Bubba meets his new best friend: the sentient twig called Stix. And the unlikely pair set off to find their way out of this mess.

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This is an excellent game - a true Amiga classic - and if you ask me, it really shines on the CD32 with its animated intro and CD audio tracks. The addition of a separate button for jumping is just icing on the cake, as it makes the platforming a little easier to control. The graphical style is cartoony and extremely pretty. The whole thing just oozes charm at every step. Just take a look at those sprites - Bubba has so many different moves and expressions that you never tire of looking at him. The whole shtick with the stick (Ed. - "I see what you did there!") is brilliant as well, and you'll be laughing every time you see Bubba use him in a new funny way. The puzzles in Bubba 'n' Stix can be a little hard. Level one you'll breeze through, but by the second level, you'll already have your work cut out for you. You've got to approach it like you'd approach an adventure game - explore the area, find out where you can and can't go, and then start experimenting with all the switches and levers and stuff. Personally, I found the second level to be an example of brilliant game design within the puzzle platformer genre. It was hard to get through, but once I got it, everything I needed to do seemed logical. Only a game that dares to be difficult can give you that extreme feeling of joy and cleverness when you finally beat a level. It's definitely a game that will frustrate you along the way, but stick with it (pun intended) and there's a real gem of a game to be uncovered here. Reviewers back in the day all liked Bubba 'n' Stix - apparently it was never a commercial success, but it was very well received by the critics. Amiga Format awarded the game an 85% score, and in an excellent review written by Steve Bradley they write: "Foliage is the foe on level one with the odd alien thrown in for good measure, although it's not the baddies that are difficult to despatch one sound swipe with your wooden pal is usually enough to deal with them - it's the puzzles, the brain teasers that cause the hold-ups. One minute you're bowling along like a good 'un and suddenly you come to a cliff face seemingly impossible to ascend. Next you're trying to get across a pool of water and... well you can't can you?" They continue with: "But don't let the puzzles put the fear of Bubba in to you. They can be frustrating,

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but all you expert game-players out there should be able to crack them after a while." They ﬁnish their review oﬀ with these words: "If one were generous, one could suggest that Bubba 'n' Stix is one of the most interesting and unusual platformers to recently appear. I am and it is. And despite the small number of levels, it looks great and plays like a dream." Bubba 'n' Stix is a game I suggest you give a go on your CD32 or emulator today. This is not a game for everyone, mind you - you've got to be ready for some exploration and a trial and error approach - but if you love puzzle platformers and the adventure genre, there is much to love here. The quirky humour and brilliant graphics by Simon Phipps and Billy Allison are sure to keep you entertained for a long time. For my money, the platforming is not what this game is about really, it's about the puzzles and the adventure - so if you're playing using an emulator, use those save states to save yourself from having to start all over when you die, and enjoy this wonderful Amiga classic.

Critical Reception

Amiga Format............85% Amiga Power.............84% CU Amiga...................81% The One.....................92% C & VG........................88%

Cannon Fodder Developer...................Sensible Software Publisher.....................Virgin Year.............................1994 Programming..............Julian Jameson Graphics......................Stuart Cambridge Music...........................Jon Hare & Richard Joseph War has never been so much fun! That's the message you are greeted with when you start up Cannon Fodder and are treated to what is, for me, one of the most memorable game intros. The song is catchy, the images fun and quirky - it is

do their very best to get to that point. You have a primary and secondary ﬁring mode - the primary being a machine gun and the secondary being either throwing a grenade or shooting a bazooka, depending on which one you have currently chosen. The secondary weapons are used to blow up buildings and vehicles, but a well-placed bazooka shot is also just the ticket when dispensing enemy snipers.

In Cannon Fodder, you control a squad of cute little soldiers seen from an overhead perspective, much as you may be familiar with from real-time strategy games today. The missions start off with simple objectives such as "kill all enemy", "destroy enemy buildings", or "destroy enemy factory". But as you progress harder missions require you to "rescue all hostages", "kidnap enemy leader", "protect all civilians", or "get civilians home". There are 24 missions to complete, spanning terrain such as the jungle, Arctic wastes, the desert, moorlands, and an underground base. Each mission consists of up to six phases, meaning that you have a grand total of 72 levels to complete - that's no small task, as this game gets deviously difficult after a short while. Before you take on a mission, you are presented with "Boot Hill", where your eager recruits line up waiting to be tossed into battle. The first time you see Boot Hill, it's empty - it's just a green, grassy hill with a lot of soldiers lining up below it. But as you lose troops in battle, each of those lives lost is depicted as a grave on the hillside. Higher ranking officers get nicer graves, while your common foot soldier gets a simple wooden cross. While the humour in the game may be very tongue-in-cheek, little touches such as this show you that the designers also wanted to send a message about the meaninglessness of war and the losses it brings. Many did not perceive it as such back in the day though, and the game drew criticism because of its humorous depiction of war. The controls in Cannon Fodder are fairly straight forward. You click somewhere to make your troops move there, and they'll

The game is a joyful mix of strategy and action. Sometimes the best way of completing a mission isn't the most obvious one, so planning is definitely needed, and running heedlessly into battle will almost certainly get you killed in the later levels. Sometimes you need to split your troop up into smaller troops in order to get through the levels. You can, of course, only control one troop at the time, but the soldiers that you aren't controlling will defend themselves, so this can be used to perform a pincer movement if need be. In some missions, there are vehicles available such as choppers, tanks, and jeeps, and using these vehicles in the correct manner is often paramount to your success in the mission. Some missions also have sentry guns that you can use to fire rockets or shells at your enemies, adding to the destructive fun! Your soldiers gain in rank for every mission they survive, and an increase in rank means an increase in accuracy, range, and rate of fire, so these high ranking officers quickly become invaluable assets, and you will cry bitter tears when they finally die. The first four troops are called Jools, Jops, Stoo, and RJ - named after the game's programmer Julian Jameson (Jools), designer and musician Jon Hare (Jops), musician Richard Joseph (RJ), and graphical designer Stuart Cambridge (Stoo). If you are in any way like me, you will quickly become very fond of these four characters. These are the troopers you start out with, and pretty soon you will be protecting them as much as possible, mainly by sending lower level grunts out as cannon fodder, in order to keep these guys alive so that they may increase in rank and become super soldiers with an incredible range. I can almost hear you thinking: "That's all good but, isn't it impossible to control on the CD32 without a mouse?" Well, my dear reader, the answer to that question is, quite surprisingly, a resounding NO! It controls like a dream - much to my own surprise, as I was quite sceptical going in. The game has been perfectly adapted to be controlled using the CD32 controller, so sit back, relax and enjoy some Cannon Fodder on the big screen in the living room. If, on the other hand, you really need the mouse you can, of course, just

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There are so many things I'd like to tell you about Cannon Fodder. Like how the sombre music played after each mission, as you are being forced to watch the names of all the soldiers you lost, was a song that Jon Hare wrote as a teenager after losing his girlfriend. Or how the jokers dressed up as soldiers in the intro are in fact the development team having a fun day out of the oﬃce recording a music video. If you're interested in these details, and a whole lot more, I suggest you buy Read-Only Memory's excellent book Sensible Software 1986 - 1999, in which the author Gary Penn pieces together the history of Sensible Software and their entire catalogue of games through interviews with founder Jon Hare.

Luckily, all reviewers back in the day seems agree with me on this one: Cannon Fodder is a bloody great game! Most scores are in the 90% range. Amiga Power featured Cannon Fodder on their front cover in the December 1993 issue, and, in their conclusion where they list pros and cons, they simply wrote: "Uppers: everything, Downers: nothing, The Bottom Line: buy it!" while slapping a 94% score on it - and they retain that 94% score for the CD32 version. Cannon Fodder on the CD32 is an absolute joy to play. It looks good, plays beautifully using the controller, and still sounds awesome to this day - so if at all possible you should play this on a proper sound setup. I highly recommend you give this one a go.

Critical Reception

Amiga CD32 Gamer...90% Amiga Format............92% Amiga Power.............94% CU Amiga...................90% The One.....................91%

(Ed. - "Mads will be back again next issue for another round of CD32 Corner, with more picks from this underrated console. We're glad it is ﬁnally getting some love. Thanks Mads! See pages 28 & 52 for more from the Retro Asylum podcast hosts.")

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ONSCREEN

just quintessential British humour. We are immediately told that this game is "not in any way endorsed by the Royal British Legion" - whereafter we are presented with the well-known poppy, of course signifying just that. For our nonBritish readers, the remembrance poppy is traditionally worn to commemorate those who died for their country. There was a whole debacle about this game because of the use of the poppy back in the day, but let's not get into that...

plug a mouse into your CD32 and oﬀ you go. But do give the controller a chance for that couch gaming goodness.

Black Magic Box Secrets - The CDTV set out to be the next big thing. What happened?

TESTBENCH

I ﬁrst learned of the CDTV in Amiga Format issue 24, from July 1991. This article's title was inﬂuenced by that very magazine issue. At the time, I owned what most teenage boys of that era did - a trusty Amiga 500 with a half meg memory expansion, a pair of joysticks and a healthy selection of games consisting of a mix of legitimate purchases and games ‘borrowed’ from friends. The CD-ROM had been around for some time by this point. Developed by Sony and Denon in 1984, CD-ROM drives were already appearing in some PCs before the release of the CDTV. I remember, as that same teenage boy, seeing a PC at my mum’s work, complete with CD-ROM drive with an encyclopaedia full of text, pictures and grainy video. "How marvellous," I thought as I browsed through the content. Remember, in the early nineties, the internet as we know it today was still an invention barely out of Tim BernersLee’s lab, so research for me meant going to the local library and ploughing through encyclopaedia compendiums for my school projects and essays. Compared to that, imagine suddenly having an entire compendium on one shiny disc!

Inside its hi-fi-like casing is an Amiga 500, a single speed proprietary CD-ROM drive, an early PCMCIA-style card slot and a power supply. On the rear are similar ports to the Amiga 500, minus the mono composite output (not present on the EU CDTV). Included, however, is the odd choice of mini DIN ports for joystick/ mouse and keyboard, as well as a pair of MIDI ports. In addition, the CDTV houses a removable video card that includes antenna in/out sockets for the RF cable, much like an old VHS recorder. This card also provides a composite out, removing the need for a separate RF modulator. Commodore, in one of their more baffling decisions, had also chosen to leave out the 9-pin mouse/joystick ports of the Amiga 500. Additional peripherals available include a black version of the popular Commodore 1084S monitor, black Commodore A1011 external floppy and a black CDTV branded keyboard and

Because of this, when I next visited my local newsagents and saw the front cover of Amiga Format with this amazing machine on the front of it, my teenage eyes opened wide. I rushed home, eager to start reading the 7-page spread AF had dedicated to introducing us lucky Amigans to the world of CD-ROM. I have since re-purchased this issue from eBay.

by Andrew Siddall mouse. A wireless trackball/keypad combination device - which was presciently named the CD1200 - was also released, helpfully including a pair of standard 9-pin joystick ports on it. The front of the machine holds the slot to insert the CD caddy, an LCD display, the on/oﬀ switch, a headphone jack, a reset button and a collection of standard CD control buttons. All references to Amiga are removed and the machine simply sports a discreet logo reading ‘Commodore CDTV’. All this on release was priced at £599 in 1991, the equivalent of approximately £1295 in 2020. Even now that would be considered somewhat on the pricey side! The CDTV was released to the market in March 1991 at the World of Commodore show in the UK and the CES show in Las Vegas in the USA. It was marketed as a multimedia machine and not a home computer, with Commodore insisting the machine was not placed next to its fellow Amigas on shop displays, but with the TV and hi-ﬁ equipment. With the machine being a computer with a CDROM drive, it is uncertain what consumers examining it would have made of it in that location, perhaps as a horribly overpriced CD player? Furthermore, Amiga owners anticipating a CD-ROM drive add on and discouraged by the high price, also avoided purchasing the machine. Commodore would later provide that drive in the form of the A570 in 1992. CDTV sales were not strong, with approx. 29,000 units sold in the UK and 25,800 in Germany. Along with its main competitor, the CD-i from Philips, it was not considered a commercial success.

Amiga Format introduced many of us (including Andrew) to the new CDTV - with its unusual trackball input device and dark futuristic design.

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COMMU NI ARTICL TY E SUBMI SSION

My CDTV Story So that’s the history lesson. How does the CDTV feature in the Amiga community now? While not nearly as plentiful as the Amiga 500 and 1200 on sites such as eBay, it is available for those looking - I got mine by placing a wanted advert on Amibay. A seller from Poland got in touch and we negotiated the sale of his working CDTV, which included an 8MB RAM upgrade, a CD drive switch (to enable running as a basic A500) and new power supply for £240. ‘Working’ turned out to be ‘only just working’, with a loose front display with old problematic connections and a somewhat intermittently reading CDROM drive. At the time, it didn’t bother me - after all, it was a 29-year-old machine and I’d read on forums that such aged drives could be expected to show signs of wear and tear. Having ﬁxed the laser on my CD32, I was conﬁdent I could get the CD drive on my CDTV going reliably.

adjustments as the machine ages, because adjusting the voltage can shorten the life of the laser. As the drive is proprietary, replacing it will be extremely difficult. The final fix was the front display. Fortunately the loose fixing was easily remedied by gluing some half broken off clips, but the connections between the LCD and the motherboard required replacement parts. These were sourced from a kit sold by www.sordan.ie and the results can be seen in the photos above. Pictured above top are the old connections, middle top the new ones. This did require some soldering skills, but nothing too complicated even for an amateur like me! You can also see a board with two ribbon cables that I fitted. This is the mouse/joystick adaptor kit. It is a small board that is inserted into the CIA chip socket with the CIA chip inserted into the board itself. The ribbon cables then run to two standard 9-pin joystick/mouse ports, which can be hung out the back of the case or fitted into the spare expansion port cover plate, should you have the tools to do so. An 8MB memory upgrade, which sits on a blue daughterboard, is inserted into the 68000 CPU socket. The final upgrade was to integrate a Gotek drive. To do this, I dismantled an old external floppy drive to get the control board and connector cable. I then

The CDTV screensaver is slick!

ran the connector cable from the ﬂoppy connector on the rear of the CDTV back inside the case and removed the PCMCIA connector board. I placed the Gotek in the space that was left, as can be seen in the last of the above mod photos. It’s not the tidiest arrangement and there are 3D printed custom covers also available, but it works for me. Other upgrades are available such as the Wicher accelerator board, a SCSI interface and a Warp 060 board is planned for some point in the future. Whether you need such speed in a CDTV is, of course, up for debate, but the community will decide that. I also plan to put a SCART to HDMI converter inside at some point to provide HDMI out by cannibalising the board from a Flylink or similar. To sum up, should you get one? My personal view is yes. It’s a not-too expensive addition to a collection, and while the CD32 plays much of the CDTV title list, it doesn’t have the presence or the good looks of the CDTV. The CD32 also doesn’t run what I think is the best title for the CDTV, Xenon 2, which comes with a thumping 3D stereo CD soundtrack! In my opinion, the CDTV is a handsome machine and - with the right upgrades can be an Amiga you can place in your living room as Commodore originally intended!

Image courtesy of 'Pillock' via Discord.

After some initial frustration, getting the CD drive going proved to be reasonably straightforward. Adjusting the voltage ‘pot’ on the laser head itself, while testing after each adjustment, has improved the situation somewhat. It still takes a few inserts to get the CD recognised, but it runs ﬁne afterwards. I suspect however this will require further

Most of Andrew's mods are shown above.

The Amiga A570 CD-ROM drive was single speed & used a "CD caddy".

Andrew's CDTV is used as his living room entertainment system.

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AMIGA ADDICT

TESTBENCH

The CDTV has a built in audio CD player GUI.

Light Gun Adaptor for Classic Amigas - This month James trades his ninja-yoroi for a Sega Phaser? Next, pigs ﬂy...

TESTBENCH

I have always been a big fan of light gun games. It still seems like magic that (on a CRT at least) you can point a plastic gun at a screen, pull the trigger and see something happen exactly where you were aiming. A few people may not even be aware that the Amiga had light guns. The ones I am aware of were made by Trojan and Actionware, but they are not so easy to come across in this day and age. It is, however, still pretty easy to get your hands on a Sega Light Phaser and, given it has the same 9-pin connector as the Amiga, there is the opportunity to adapt it to work on the Commodore system. The pinouts are not the same between the Sega port and the Amiga one, so in

order to use it you will need to correct that. Fortunately, if you have seen the ﬁle “PhaserAdapter” when playing the WHDLoad version of Operation Wolf, you will know that someone has already worked out the correct pin translations. To test if this did in fact work, and thinking the readers of this magazine would be interested, I invested in a Light Phaser and set to work creating the adaptor as per the pin-outs in the ﬁle.

Parts I used 1x Male 9-pin DE-9/D-sub connector 1x Female 9-pin DE-9/D-sub connector (I chose to use connectors with a breakout board/terminal block, to allow easy re-pinning if required and to keep it even simpler to do with minimal tools) Short length of Cat5e cable (or similar cable with at least 4 wires) 10K ohm resistor

So, where to start? The very simplest solution would be to cut the plug oﬀ the Phaser and wire on a brand new, repinned connector. This would be a perfectly acceptable solution, but I wanted to do this non-destructively, so I decided to create an adaptor instead.

Other items Wire stripper/cutter or knife Screwdriver

How to make your adaptor Strip the wire and cut away the additional pairs of wires you don’t need. I chose to use the first 4 wires I normally would when wiring an ethernet plug - if I’d have remembered I was going to draw a diagram of it later, I would have used just the solid coloured wires! Assuming you want to use them add the strain relief collars to the cable at this point otherwise you'll kick yourself later. Wire up the connectors as per the diagram below. The resistor could be added either end, but I decided to keep everything as per those original instructions. It is now probably a good idea to whip out your multimeter and check continuity between the ends of the adaptor, just to confirm everything is wired as per the instructions and has good contact. Be especially careful with the wires connecting with the resistor if you are going the screw terminal route rather than solder, as they can get missed by the screw and pull out, if you’re not careful. Once you’re satisfied with your handiwork, plug the female end of the adaptor into the Amiga (port 2) and the Sega Light Phaser into the male end. You should then be all set to fire up some light gun games! Speaking of which, here is a selection you might want to try... there are, of course, more games than those listed here that support the light gun, but I think these are a good cross-section. All games listed on the facing page were played on an A1200 via WHDLoad.

Wires stripped & ready to go (RIP Maplin you were overpriced, but you'll be missed).

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DE-9 connectors that re-open are versatile & ideal for future mods or adjustments.

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James really makes a neat looking adaptor cable - his AA desk isn't normally this tidy!

Amiga Light Gun Favourites Capone

Cyber Assault

TESTBENCH A pretty simple shooting gallery, including side scrolling sections and Featuring some great graphics and music this iis basically a sci-ﬁ fairly decent graphics. Enemies die in one hit, but things heat up as you dungeon crawler, but once you enter a section with enemies, all combat progress, with some dropping sticks of dynamite to shoot once you is handled by the light gun. It’s a nice game and a nice idea, but ﬁddling have taken them out, and a machine gun pickup to use. Won’t hold your with keys for movement while shooting isn’t ideal.It’s probably more interest for too long, but worth a play. suited to traditional mouse and keyboard control.

Firestar

Die Hard 2

This is one of my favourites on this list. Graphics aren't amazing, but the gameplay is great with some decent variety (at least by lightgun game standards!). There are weapon pickups that allow full-auto ﬁre, screen clearing RPGs, item and health pickups, boss ﬁghts and destructible scenery. The levels also change things up. Check it out.

There's a lot in this one. Fly left and right by shooting the arrows to locate and destroy enemy ships (shown as red and green dots on the scanner) and to ensure the safe passage of innocent vessels. Enemies have diﬀerent abilities and take multiple hits. You can repair and upgrade your ship between rounds. Not just your standard shooter!

POW

POW is basically an Operation Wolf rip-oﬀ, but it’s pretty fun and quite challenging at that. There are soldiers and vehicles to destroy as well as animals to avoid. This probably wouldn’t have made the list if I thought people would have to pay money for it, but you probably already have this as part of your WHDLoad setup, so give it a go!

Skeet Shoot

You probably know what to expect here, but this is a decent clay pigeon game. You get 4 shots per pair in this version, and you need to hit the required number of targets in the allotted time. There are multiple locations (which just means a new background, frankly) and bonus rounds where a bird rapidly drops eggs.

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AMIGA ADDICT

Amiga Tech Tree - Our roundup of current Amiga hardware & software solutions An apple never falls far from the tree... yet since the demise of Commodore, it has been diﬃcult to determine what an Amiga actually is. Whether you are new to the hobby - or an established fan returning - there's an assumption that you must have an encyclopaedic knowledge of Amiga-like hardware.

TESTBENCH

You should know each system, its speciﬁc CPU and all the resulting intracacies, right? (Otherwise you're a lamer!) Well, do you know your berries from your squirrels? Can you see the wood for the trees? (Ed. - "Ok, enough with the rural puns now please!?") Wondering what the hell we are on about? Join the club! The AA Tech Tree helps illustrate what is available. In the future, we may go into more detail, such as speciﬁc architecture, software, add-ons and turbo boards. This month we'll stick to ‘Machines you can buy currently’.

EMULATION

CLASSIC HARDWARE

NEXT GENERATION

Several years ago, many emulators would not even work properly. Emulation has since become huge - we now have to split it into the following:

Classic Amigas are the traditional models based on the Motorola 68000 architecture. Interestingly, Classic got pushed as people tried to upgrade machines. Even PPC turbo cards are often regarded as Classic.

Amiga NG (Next Generation) is an attempt to continue Amiga-like systems on a PowerPC architecture.

Software Emulation Packages for Linux and Windows (such as FS-UAE / WinUAE) have kept the Amiga alive and cheap! Amiga Forever and other distros like Amigsys and Amikit are great solutions. They're constantly updated!

The general rule is: As long as it's an original branded Amiga, then it counts as Classic.

There have been many custom PPC computers produced and sold. Two main operating systems dominate this platform: Amiga OS4 - traditional Amiga in a modern form, such as the X5000 and Sam range.

Hardware Emulation (FPGA) More accurate than software emulation many FPGA devices are being released, with new components and that real Amiga feeling but in a new form factor.

This scene is thriving. There are so many OS versions and turbo cards etc, it's hard to count! New products are constantly being created for classic Amigas - freshly printed new PCBs, new cases and addons to keep these babies alive!

MorphOS - jazzed up Amiga-like OS. Support for old Apple PowerPC hardware has enabled more people to join this scene, where OS4 machines are out of their budget.

FPGA MACHINES

NEW PRINTED BOARDS

OS4/MORPHOS SYSTEMS

FPGA has been exploding - the unique thing about these systems is you can update the ﬁrmware and run other systems (or "cores") on the hardware. Want an Amiga-Atari? You got it!

For the hardcore Amiga user! Your board is getting old so you want to replace it? Newly created PCBs now allow this. The thing is, you have to desolder and resolder all of the original components! Crikey!

The Amiga NG machines available are indeed pricey, but boy are they sexy! We'll exclude Apple PowerPC stuﬀ here, as that's not on sale any more. Both OS4 and MorphOS operating systems are supported.

Currently Available

Minimig MISTer FPGA Apollo Vampire Standalone FPGA Arcade

A500++ A1200+ Amiga 1000 Phoenix Acill AMIGA 4000

Currently Available AmigaOne X5000 AmigaOne X1000 AmigaOne 500 Sam 460ex/cr

SOFTWARE EMULATION

NEW CASES

PPC EMULATION

Emulation packages for all types of hardware are available. Here are some of the most popular.

Want a new home for your Amiga but still want the computer to look oﬃcial? Try a modern clone, or even a replica with a twist!

Interestingly, PowerPC software emulation is starting to gain momentum, providing further solutions for powerful Amigas.

Currently Available Amiga Forever (Windows) AmiBerry (Raspberry Pi) AmiKit (multi platform) Amibian (Javascript)

AMIGA ADDICT

Currently Available

Checkmate A1500+ A1200.net Case

WinUAE FS-UAE

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AMIGA ADDICT

DJing & PT-1210

Image courtesy of 'Chiptography'.

TESTBENCH

- We learn how Ravi Abbott (aka The Formula) mixes things up using his Amigas...

Live at Steel City Chiptune, Sheﬃeld.

Supporting DJ Yoda: History of video games tour.

Ever wanted to be an Amiga DJ? In this guide, I will show you how. What equipment you need, the hardware, the software and, of course, the essential tips and tricks. Many artists and DJs have used Amigas to add to their set over the years (Paradox for example), and talking with some ex-DJ friends, some people even used to have them in nightclubs to trigger samples, so it’s no stranger to the scene. The Amiga has a library of thousands - and I mean thousands - of modules in .mod format just waiting to be used, and they are pretty much unheard outside of the Amiga community. Yet they span a great period of dance music history and many genres, and really have a lot to oﬀer a good set. The main issue with using them in this way has always been that there is no real-time manipulation of the music as you would get with traditional DJing. Until now! PT-1210 is a fantastic piece of free software for DJing on the Amiga. It works with all models and so any Amiga you might own can get you started. The name itself stands for “ProTracker 1210”, after the famous industry-standard Technics SL1210 DJ decks. All a good DJ needs is a turntable

Amigas set up in battlemode with mixer.

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and two decks - and in this case your Amigas become those decks. PT-1210 brings functions a DJ back in the day could only dream of! This program comes from Kicken Corporation, DJ Hoﬀman and Akari - all established musicians and quite famous on the scene. They found an odd version of ProTracker (1.2), discovered that it had some of the elements needed for real-time mod manipulation, and went on to create something amazing and unprecedented. PT-1210, like anything, requires skill and practise to use, but once you are used to it, it's as much fun as using any CDJ or deck. The main skill you require is beat matching, and this has to be something you can do in your head, listening to the timing and tempo of the tunes, just as DJs used to do back in the day. These days, many DJs use a Sync button to automate this process, but you have no option to do this in PT-1210, so it’s all down to your own skill. It's about correcting the tempo with your ear, picking the right sections. The functions of PT-1210 allow you to change tempo, loop sections, choose starting positions in the mods as well as many other options, some I am still discovering to this day.

The lovely PT-1210 intro.

How to Set Up Your Hardware to be an Amiga DJ Monitors

You may not know this, but the Amiga has a built-in High Pass Filter, that can limit or compress the sound output. For DJing on big sound systems, disabling this really improves the sound. You don’t have to mod your Amiga however, you can simply run a small program from Aminet and the Amiga’s LED will let you know when the ﬁlter is turned oﬀ. Again, if you write it into your Startup-sequence, you can have it boot just before PT-1210, and then you won’t need to worry about it later. You can get the utility here: www.aminet.net/package/util/misc/LED

Being able to see what you’re doing is essential and you don’t want two whopping great CRTs in front of you for your whole set. I use tiny 7-inch screens, which are great. Taking the component output from the Amiga, the RGB is then free to be used to do dual output to say a SCART lead or projector. The monitors are only about 35 quid each, so it’s a small investment for a big gain! www.bit.ly/36HlSd9

Speaker Separation

The most essential part of any set is tune selection. Modland FTP is the best place to get your modules, and with over 400,000 tunes, it's a stunning resource and fully searchable at www.exotica.org.uk/wiki/Special:Modland

We all know the sound comes out of the Amiga in the left and right speakers separately. While this creates a great experience for those old skool demos, it’s potentially a nightmare for DJs. It's very hard to mix with drums in one only ear! If you use a phono Y-Cable on the left output (red) then the Amiga outputs without separation.

The killer function has to be the ability to turn channels in the module on and off at will. No other format apart from the relatively new stems has this, and boy - is it good! Those horns on the Lemmings soundtrack driving you insane? Just mute them. That synth stab not quite working for your mix? Just take it out. Mixing can really develop by building up tunes, starting with a single channel and mixing in another tune to build a fuller sound. Let’s face it, a lot of mods were made in somebody's bedroom, so this is essential as you will run into more bad samples than you’ve had hot meals. This feature can really make Amiga DJing a unique experience. This amazing piece of software has not been updated for a long while, but it's functional and does the job. Being the first version, it has its own eccentricities - file names must not have symbols and sometimes spaces and numbers in names drive it crazy. You will get the occasional crash of course, although personally I think this adds to the show.

Tunes

Mod Sample Master is also amazing. A huge selection of tunes broken down to list each and every sample! Essential. modsamplemaster.thegang.nu Finally, don't forget the amazing www.modules.pl for all the latest fresh mods.

Having your Amiga crash in front of a full club gets a great reaction from the audience. Guru! Guru! Guru! There is a limit to how many tunes you can have at your disposal and you cannot browse directories in the first version. There is a hacked updated version doing the rounds with directory support, but come on - let's support the proper releases! Who knows what features they will add. A feature I really would love is if tracks that have already been played could be greyed out, for example. Installing PT-1210 can be done in a few ways. If you choose to boot via floppy, the number of modules you can use will be limited to the size of the disk, which is quite restrictive. What I personally do is to take the PT-1210 executable from the floppy disk and copy it to my hard drive. Simply writing it into your Startup-sequence will mean it will boot with the Amiga and you can fill your PT-1210 directory with mods.

The main menu for mod selection.

PT-1210 in action playing a mod.

February 2021

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What?! Amiga Pie? - Simon Butler, AA's pixel pushing columnist talks of what could have been... Everyone tried their very best, but it was doomed from

...the game is really quite promising, such a shame it was canned.

Simon Butler

orking in-house at Ocean was something of a doubleedged sword. You had job security, matched with a more than decent salary. The only downside being that Ocean, when I arrived, was very much the house of arcade conversions and/or movie licenses. After the debacle that was Total Recall however, I was allowed to design an “original” title. My enthusiasm was matched only by my incredulity. I chose to do an isometric title and, wanting something with scope for sprite design and some nice environment options, I plumped for a haunted house theme. Not overly original, but what is? Presenting a pitch document to Gary Bracey, he gave it the greenlight, but there was a caveat. I had to incorporate a license, Universal Monsters. "Not the end of the world," I thought. How wrong I was. Universal were adamant their creations not be squashed down to Knight Lore size sprites. They had to be drawn in realistic proportions, or as close as possible. This single detail killed the project from day one, regardless of it dragging on for many strenuous months. There were four of us working on the project; Martin MacDonald on pixels, Mike Halsall code, Barry Leitch our musician and me pushing pixels and doing design work. What could go wrong? Making the characters “realistic” meant the environments had to grow in tandem, and isometric environments eat tiles at a prodigious rate. A big door or window uses more tiles resulting in less variety in the graphics.

Ocean's promo advert was published in Amiga & ST magazines.

February 2021

AMIGA ADDICT

REGULARS

AA had a blast on The One's coverdisk demo from Feb '93...

the start. Ocean was resolute it be completed, so we soldiered on. Martin and I churned out interior and exterior levels; sprites walking diagonally with six frames, with eight frames. It was a nightmare. Barry worked on the soundtrack, safe from the chaos outside his sound room, but the worst victim was our beleaguered coder Mike. Somehow, the project just got away from him and then more out of hand as time went on. After far too many months, Ocean ﬁnally pulled the plug. Long days and nights had gone into our endeavours, but it was always a futile task; one we were glad to put behind us. While writing this, I Googled the project and was pleasantly surprised to see a selection of screenshots. These are all that remains of what could have been a decent project. I recall towering stacks of disks all around my Amiga with countless versions of background graphics, sprites of every shape and size and some days barely knowing what to do with them all. Sometimes wanting to do nothing more than throw them all in the bin. I have one or two sprite ﬁles, a smattering of background work, but nothing else survived. Not one to squirrel away disks I have no need for, due to the absence of an Amiga, this title like so many before has disappeared into the ether. It was a strange and complicated project - hell some days, fun on others - but it was a learning curve and a title that still crops up every now and then. “Whatever happened to Universal Monsters?” What indeed?

Demoscene - Matt Wilsher (of Retro Asylum podcast) knows a thing or two about disk swapping...

REGULARS

Class, did you do your homework from Issue 1? Good. And hopefully you ended up in a YouTube rabbit hole of similar videos and now you’re an expert on the demoscene. Great!

where you could use a modem and connect to a remote server (usually a high spec Amiga with multiple modems hanging oﬀ it) which would be chock-full of the latest productions, utilities, music samples and all sorts to download. At. Very. Slow. Speeds! This was a whole subculture in and of itself, which really deserves its own article.

Coming home from school every day to see a stack of Jiffy bags waiting for me on the doormat never ever lost its appeal. I was a swapper, someone in a group who would spread around new demos, new productions, disk magazines and the like, moving them across the UK and globe. The best swappers would be critical for the functioning of a top-level demoscene group, moving their goods around at breakneck speed (for the day), and spreading the word of their group, and others, either via the postal service or bulletin boards. This role could not be underestimated. Coders wanted to code, musicians wanted to compose, and graphics folk wanted to pixel-push. They didn’t want to waste time with the admin of sending stuff out, trudging to the post office to send Jiffy bags. Swappers did. I wasn’t a very good swapper, too slow with responses and too slow getting the disks copied for the next person. But that buzz of opening Jiffy bags full of disks with the latest productions on them was so special. In the days before instant access to anything digital, this was the way to get your hands on new demos. Booting up the disks, seeing those demos fly onto the screen for the first time - often completely in awe of what the humble little Amiga was doing right in front of your eyes. And years later, the same demos still impress.

Scattered about the page are some snippets of letters and stuff I received over the years. Then there’s graffitied-up disks to consider. We used to sign disks so our name got even further around the world. It was always a joy to receive a disk from a far distant contact in Australia or deep in the Soviet Union with my name already on it. That disk had made it across the world and back! Whoever said disks were fragile never swapped them in the demoscene! We managed to make the noisiest of disks work against all odds! It may seem strange not to cover coders, artists or musicians here in part two. I myself was also a musician. However, like any well oiled group of people, there are those who don’t always get the plaudits, yet play such a vital role in keeping the wheels of the organisation running so well. Swappers were some of the oil in that machine, spreading the word about their esteemed group members’ amazing efforts and making damn sure the world knew about it.

Matt's "Swapper" letters oﬀer a behind-thescenes insight into the demoscene.

More than anything, we made friends. If you were worth your salt as a swapper, you’d write a nice little letter to your contact telling them what was enclosed and what you’d been up to since the last package. In some cases, these folk become good friends of yours, pen pals if you like, with a shared passion, shared love and sometimes the same taste in music, girls and ﬁlms. This was one of the greatest aspects of being a swapper. I made some great friends, who sometimes felt like better friends than my real world friends and I’m still in touch with a couple to this day. It’s funny how we’ve all changed so much over the years, yet still have that desire to feel the excitement, buzz and vibe that surrounded the early to mid 90s demoscene.

posting the Jiffy bags around the world. So how did we achieve this feat? Easy, we faked the stamps. It was as easy as putting Sellotape or Pritt Stick over the stamp enabling us to rub off the post mark at the other end ready to use the same stamp again! Totally illegal, of course, and there was always talk that someone knew someone who’s goldfish’s owner's uncle had been caught for this and sent a massive postage bill by the mail service. We carried on regardless - at least until the postal services caught us out with better technology and started putting ‘under payment’ notices on the packages. Our freebie days were over and we had to start buying stamps. Thankfully by this time, the vast majority of us had part time jobs, paper rounds or something of equally low pay to fund us.

Swapping wasn’t without its controversy. Most of us were in our teens, so we didn’t have access to lots of cash for

Bulletin boards, as I mentioned earlier, played a key part in this spreading mechanic. A proto-internet, essentially

AMIGA ADDICT

February 2021

Homework time. Let’s get you acquainted with the mighty mega demo. A multiload production - in which each part of the demo is a diﬀerent section - before dynamic loading (known as a trackmo) became common place. Budbrain’s Megademo sits up there as a shining example, complete with some fart humour. Secondly, The Silents & Crionic’s Hardwired, which is widely regarded as a hugely pioneering demo in terms of the design, not to mention the amazing visual eﬀects and sublime music by the venerable Jesper Kyd. Google him and wait to be impressed. And it would be remiss of me not to mention that many of the group The Silents went on to form Digital Illusions and late DICE games development studios. The Amiga runs deep in the world of gaming to this day! (Ed - "Thanks Matt for another great column! The AA team love any excuse to play some demos and crank up the volume on the old 1084S! Don't forget AA readers, there's more from Matt at Retro Asylum podcast: www.retroasylum.com")

Demoparties with Ruairi Fullam - Deputy Ed. Ravi has a tea break with a seasoned demoparty organiser... The modern demoscene worldwide is huge! Events are happening all over the world and they still have huge numbers attending, with massive parties like Revision and Assembly pulling in hundreds of people every year. But what about closer to home?

We sat down for an exclusive chat with organiser, Ruairi Fullam (aka rc55), about the UK demoscene and its history.

Did you attend any wild demoparties as a young man? “I was quite late to the game - the first party I actually went to, I ran with dotwaffle in 2005! Sadly, as I was comparatively young back in the day (I am 38 now!), I only hear anecdotes about chaotic events with mulleted Scandinavians facing off against each other in central European car parks. You can still have an absolute rager if you want, but most people have grown up and there is no hostility anymore. At the same time, it is not obligatory and if you prefer to talk with like minds or work quietly on your productions - it’s all good to do so.” There was a big connection with cracking and piracy back in the day. Is this still the case? “Piracy isn’t really that interesting to the vast majority of demosceners, so I’ve not heard it discussed much at all. I think sometimes the odd chip-tune musician writes some music for a crack, but as I understand it, that scene is so segmented and understandably paranoid that everything is on a need-to-know basis.

Ruairi Fullam isn't just handsome...

What is a demoparty? “A demoparty is a weekend long event where demosceners (real-time computer arts enthusiasts) can spectate or submit productions to competitions which are showcased to all participants. Productions can be demos (noninteractive real-time programs that showcase design and programming talent), intros (ﬁle size constrained equivalents), graphics, music and wild (anything goes) competitions. Cutting edge platforms are given equal exposure as beloved classics like the C64 and Amiga. The events themselves are usually held in some kind of large hall, where visitors usually stay the entire weekend. It’s very social and collaborative, but also very lively as the evenings draw in and competitions are interspersed with live acts and DJs. To the average bystander though, it will all seem quite confusing why there is a

I think as most of us came of age and had the means, it didn’t seem too unreasonable to just buy games and software.” What were the famous UK demoparties back in the day? “I wish I knew! I’ve been a begrudgingly dominant force of UK party organising since 2005 – before that I ﬁgured the scene was mysterious and impenetrable. Maybe you could check in with a veteran like SirGarbageTruck, who is a fountain of knowledge in that regard.”

A warm by the ﬁre at Sundown Festival.

the intensity of Revision, where you can run around a lawn with a water pistol, drink beers in the sun and enjoy the competitions and entertainment in the company of the wonderful and charismatic Dutch demoscene. I also love Evoke in Cologne, which oozes German coolness and has a wonderful organising team, and would be remiss not to shout out to Nordlicht (Bremen) and Syntax (Melbourne). I must also note that if you are mega keen on Commodore platforms, you will be well catered for at platform-focused events like X and TRSAC. There’s also the colossal Assembly event, which admirably has always worked hard to represent its demoscene roots, but is dominated by the gaming events which have been the main focus of the event for a long time. It is still worth looking into though as many high proﬁle productions are released there.” What is the history behind Sundown/ Nova? “A friend of mine locally was running regular LAN gaming parties at local town halls, and it occurred to me that these venues might work for a demoscene event. I joined the #ukscene IRC channel and pitched the idea – dotwaﬄe was instrumental in bringing this to fruition and the support of Smash, Meteorik, DVS and NE7 was invaluable too.

Have you been to any international demoparties? “I go to as many Revision (and previously Breakpoint) parties in Germany every Easter as I can. They are the absolute peak experience and capture the true essence of the demoscene. And it’s a big event too - around 800 of us cram into the EWERK hall in Saarbrucken for a nonstop party and the highlight of the year. There is also Outline, which is a joyful event held at a campsite in North Holland. It’s considered a respite from

February 2021

Nova, 2014.

AMIGA ADDICT

AMIGA INSIGHT

The UK scene is unique, and much more idiosyncratic - the main party, ‘Nova’ (formerly called ‘Sundown’) is held in a quaint seaside town called Budleigh Salterton. It's a stunning event as sceners essentially take over the village for the duration, with the party ending with a beach party and piling into the local chip shop. It often happens around the time of the summer solstice, and being near Stonehenge, some of that party crosses over too.

hall full of computers and mostly fellas chanting enthusiastically at a reﬂective blob on a huge screen with banging techno music!”

AMIGA INSIGHT

Our first event had around 30 people, a ropey office projector and a battered rave sound system which combusted on its second use, causing me to run out the hall with the smoking amplifier in hand! The following years, we’ve tried to iterate on the quality of the event by adding a huge projection screen, massive sound system, lights, lasers, smoke machines, a dedicated peaceful sleeping area and livestreaming the entire event professionally (thanks to Kris on our organisation team).” Do you have any funny stories? “Not being sure of noise laws and figuring on an anything-goes mentality, I managed to thoroughly upset a local lady, who complained to the council about our banging music which continued until 3am. Having heard about this, I turned up at her doorstep with a huge bouquet of flowers and apologised for ruining her sleep.It all worked out in the end thankfully. Her husband did look a bit bemused however - maybe he had to step up his flower-buying after that!

at midnight on Friday and Saturday for a huge campfire and rave on the beach. You’ll usually find Hoffman banging out tunes until the small hours, while the bacon rolls and beers are flowing throughout.” What do you count as the essentials for a demoparty? “I have seen people turn up without as much as a sleeping bag, but I’d recommend bringing a laptop, inflatable mattress, sleeping bag, pillow, earplugs and noise cancelling headphones. As for the experience, demoparties are so welcoming and sociable, so don’t be afraid to get chatting with people.” What entries and creative works really stood out for you? “Historically State of the Art by Spaceballs (Amiga) was the demo that pulled me into the scene. In recent years, my favourite has been Dying Stars by Orange (PC), Number One/Another One by Fairlight and CNCD (PC) and of course EON by The Black Lotus (Amiga).”

What makes Budleigh such a good location for a demoparty? “For our international visitors, Budleigh seems so quintessentially British – although it is a pain in the arse to get to, the sunny pebble beach, friendly locals and good weather keep people coming back. Since our noise complaint, we’ve made it a tradition to head to the beach

AMIGA ADDICT

There are a lot of things to consider, in that outstanding real-time rendering technology is freely available in the form of Unreal Engine and Unity, so it is hard to appeal to newcomers who may feel they are reinventing the wheel for a niche audience.

I personally think embracing middleware (Unity, UE, Notch) to widen the appeal for blockbuster demos to be made is a good thing, and size coding should still be as prominent as it is now. Sundown Festival has a great vibe.

How much inﬂuence do you think the demoscene has had on mainstream culture? “I’m not sure that it had a huge impact historically, but as of very recently, I think it’s been absolutely massive – even if the link hasn’t been acknowledged as such. Fairlight’s internal PC demo creation tool (formerly known as Demolition-FX) has evolved into a massively successful commercial product known as Notch, which is used at world scale live events by acts such as Billie Eilish, Jay Z and Coldplay. It has Adobe levels of dominance in real-time visuals, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was acquired for hundreds of millions of dollars. The demoscene has also had a good relationship with the games industry – the founders of DICE (creators of the Battleﬁeld series of games and EA’s Frostbite engine) are formerly of the Amiga demogroup The Silents.”

Hmm... More fragrant by the bin, or inside?!

consider whether it exists to service nostalgia or steadfastly pursue pushing technology to the absolute limits.

It’s also worth considering that old school platforms have limited appeal to the younger audience, who do not have the emotional attachment to them that the veterans do.

The venue we use is a public hall, so we often get locals pop in the front door expecting a wool selling convention or flower sale. It is always quite a laugh to see the reactions as they come in! Another thing we do is order a pizza delivery and the whole hall will applaud when the driver turns up! As our event production values escalate every year - one of our organisers (Polynomial) has cultivated a fervent enthusiasm for lasers and smoke machines. During a DJ set by d0pefish, his smoke machine use saturated the hall so much with a plume of dry ice that it set the fire alarm off, causing us to have to get the caretaker off his couch at 11:30pm to reset the alarm. We did try to disable it ourselves to no avail.”

Teletext art competition at Nova.

What would you love to see more of at demoparties? “I think the demoscene is at an inﬂection point right now, and collectively needs to

February 2021

If I were a true idealist, I’d love it if there was more of a focus on the groups, talent and personalities, so an audience can be cultivated in the same way you’d expect of a sports team, and a culture rich with history and lore would be great. I always loved it when some groups would turn up to parties with massive banners and branded clothing – giving a veneer of competitiveness, style and seriousness. Maybe that’s a bit too contrary to the underground roots, but I think the internet has evaporated the notion of underground culture. As much as the social aspect of the demoscene is wholesome and wonderful, the thrill of competition and spectacle of good productions is truly the icing on the cake.”

Thanks Ruairi! Hopefully after this pandemic we can see more demo events spring up and continue to confuse the locals of Budleigh. If you are outside of the UK, check out some of the major parties going on in Europe. You're guaranteed to have fun!

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• From Cornwall to Jupiter... • Memories of Dave Needle (Part 2) • Amiga pinball games special • Across The Pond • The Amiga Show with Anthony Jarvis • CD32 Corner: Flink & Henk Nieborg interview • Unamiga hardware reviewed (we hope!?) • As well as our regular columns including gaming articles, Demoscene, Simon Butler, Back In The Day '87, Amiga News, Keyboard Warriors & Six of the Best!

February 2021

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February 2021