I realise that recently I have been focused on blog posts for my Retro PC builds (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3), but rest assured Amiga has never left my attention in 2024 - I have got and played lots of interesting software for Amiga this year!
I was looking through my collection of Classic Amiga software recently, and realised that a lot of the attention of Amiga fans is the peak popular period of the machine from 1988-1993.
The period of time after Commodore went bankrupt in early 1994 and prior to 1988 is rarely mentioned unless you were using an Amiga during this period, like myself.
This is a shame as there are some many amazing games released for the Classic Amiga in those periods. I realised in 2024 it has been over 30 years since Commodore went bankrupt!
Since 2000, when the UK mainstream Amiga Format magazine disappeared, leaving us with AmigActive and a few other magazines (which I covered in more detail in my earlier blog post here), the coverage of games from this era onwards dropped to a trickle.
This reflected the market also, since much less games were released after 2002 until around 2015, when interest in the Amiga returned in a big way, fuelled by the Amiga 30th anniversary celebrations that year.
But the release of Amiga games never actually stopped throughout the period. Some games released with physical boxed versions, and some were only electronically distributed.
I want to give some air and information of the noteworthy Amiga games released across the era from 1985 to 2024. This will potentially be a lot of parts, and I will do them as I get time.
This is not exhaustive list of every game, and I am sorry in advance if your favourite title was missed in the list.
The idea here is to give some of these games a new lease of life with the returned Amiga enthusiasts keen to try out the Amiga games they missed out on when they moved across to PC/Mac.
In my case, I had an Amiga from 1988 to 1994. I was forced into PC land in mid-1994 when I had to leave my Amiga at home, when I left to another state to attend university. I got an Amiga 1200 again in 1996 and the rest is history - I bought a lot of software for the Amiga in 1988-1994, and again from 1996 until today.
I will work backwards from most recent games released in 2024, eventually (hopefully) all the way back to 1985.
In this first part I will look at 2024.
Why do I do it this way round?
Simple. It is because the Amiga software from 2024 is still easily obtainable, and you can help support current developers by buying these new games now - and hopefully to push them on to new projects on the Amiga into the future!
Old games are in the past, collecting them now gives no financial help to current Amiga developers. The old developers long ago moved onto to other platforms and projects, with a few exceptions where they have returned to code games once again.
2024
It is wonderful that in 2024 we have so many interesting brand new games to try out on the Amiga platform. For me I was surprised how many new games we saw released!
I tested all the Amiga games using real Amiga hardware - Amiga 500 or Amiga 1200.
I also tested the games via FS-UAE on my 2020 Intel Mac Pro to make taking screenshots for this blog post a lot easier.
Off topic, it is amazing that the Mac Pro I use is 5 years old next year, considered old and slow and ready for replacement! Incredible how time flies.
As I type this, the newest boxed physical Amiga game release is Dungeonette from Mutation Software. It has just released in the last week and you can buy it now, or buy the digital copy if you don't care about the physical box. It requires an AGA Amiga, so an Amiga 1200, 4000 or CD32 is needed.
I haven't received the game yet, so I can only play the playable demo (available online) at the moment.
This is a great Dungeon crawler game. In the demo I can only try out a small sample of the dungeons on offer, but it gives me a taste of what is to come when the boxed copy arrives.
You start with a basic sword, no spells or magic - and a key to open the initial dungeon level:
After beating up a few enemies on the path to the dungeon entrance, you are given a potion to restore health and buy items from the shop before you enter:
I guess I didn't do so well as I had limited coins collected in the initial level to buy upgrades:
Once in the Dungeon itself, the view is deliberately obscured to be what would be visible by a flickering torch light, setting the mood for the game.
This gives you less warning of enemies around, and makes it a bit spooky to go into rooms, unsure how many enemies lie in wait...
There is a map you can refer to in order to see where you are, and what has been explored so far.
The spiders are scary, as they have lots of little spiders around them, making surviving their attacks challenging.
As you find keys you can unlock doors to explore further into the dungeons.
I enjoyed the playable demo and look forward to receiving my full game box so I can explore the game much deeper:
The next 2024 game release I wanted to show is called Tiny Pixel Adventure, an Amiga 500 platform game quest to locate Jars and keys to open the exit. I will concede I was not very good at this game!
The graphics, although small, are very pretty, and the music is great also. This game is under very active development still, not fully completed yet, and is at v6 as I write this.
The level layouts kind of remind me of Super Mario world, not that that is a bad thing. I like the colours used and the control system works well.
At the start a sleeping animal lays out the next steps:
I kept dying on this level, misjudging jumps mostly. You have a limited number of arrows to shoot enemies, most of which required multiple arrows to kill. There are arrows dotted around the level, but you do need to be cautious with how many you use.
I saw the next screen a lot!
I think Tiny Pixel Adventures is a great game, I just need to be better at it!
The big game I was very keen to play in 2024 is Roguecraft by Badger Punch games for Amiga 500.
Roguecraft is a port of the Commodore 64 game
Rogue 64, which was in itself a very impressive game you can also buy. I have that version on the C64 too. I covered it in my previous blog post looking at the
new games for the Commodore 64 in 2023.
The C64 Rogue 64 original game viewed the dungeons from above:
The extra stickers, bookmark, instructions and postcard were welcome inclusions. I wish we had more physical box releases, but I am very happy we still get some in 2024!
To call Roguecraft a C64 port of Rogue 64 (although true) is an real injustice, as the engine used on the Amiga is completely overhauled into a new isometric 3D map, in a similar style to D-Generation or Cadaver back in the early 1990's.
Music is written by the legendary Jogier Liljedahl, who has written so much great Amiga module music over the years.
Instructions are included in the game itself, but there is not too much to learn - the game is very easy to get into:
You have some heroes to choose from, which sets the difficulty level of the game:
The music is amazing, the graphics very impressive. I find the gameplay excellent. Very easy to get into, but difficult to get far without planning your strategy.
You need to minimise health damage and save up the potions and health bonuses you find around each level map for when you most need them, rather than using them straight away.
To help, you get an automap feature in the top right, health bar and strength level in the top left. You can find and drink potions to increase both. There is also Heart objects that restore your full health.
As you collect items, the inventory in the bottom left fills up, and you can use these when needed.
As mentioned there is definitely a strategy involved on when you use the potions and health, to maximise your health/strength levels and avoid getting killed so quickly by more difficult enemies you encounter.
There is a key to find somewhere on each level map, which you can use to open the gate to exit that level (as above)
As you would expect, the game quickly gets more difficult as you move through the levels - I got hooked and ended up playing it a lot longer than I had planned to!
You will see the Game Over screen a lot initially, as you work out how best to use the potions to extend your life when fighting the harder enemies.
Roguecraft is very much recommended - a great new original game for the Amiga in 2024.
The game was written by Hoffman, better known for his amazing music modules in the Amiga demoscene. He even released a vinyl record of his Amiga music produced on Protracker, which I am lucky enough to have a copy of also.
He did a few Amiga scene demos, and then moved into writing Cecconoid. He live streamed this game development on Twitch, which was no doubt fascinating to watch and learn from if you are into developing software for the Amiga.
You can buy the digital copy of the game
here.
One thing I knew for sure is that the game music would be awesome, as all his music compositions on the Amiga are awesome.
I was not disappointed, the music is great.
Included in the box was an audio CD of the music used in the game.
In the main menu you can also step through the music if you want to listen to it without playing the game:
The game itself involves trying to escape each level without getting killed by various traps and enemies through out the level:
The game is mainly presented in Monochrome, which is a unusual choice for the Amiga, but there is colour dotted around the game in places:
Your weapon has to be loosely aimed, as the weapon is the dots (bullets?) that emit from the spaceship constantly.
The bullets are constantly moving to different shape depending on your location, angle to other objects, etc.
I hit the Game over screen often, but it was never unfair - I need to get better at this game for sure:
There is also another mode game type included in Cecconoid, which you can launch from the initial menu.
This presents a open playfield with enemies to kill with the same style of weapon, but a lot more difficult as the enemies are greater in number and there is nothing to hide behind, so running around quickly without being hit by one of them is quite challenging!
Cecconoid is an interesting game and well worth trying it out!
AMI H.E.R.O is another physical box release in 2024, released by Tukinem.
The boxed version of AMI H.E.R.O. is available
here, and is done by the folks that produce the K&A Plus magazine in Poland. I ordered it and I am waiting for the box to arrive in Australia, but since the digital version is included with the purchase, I can try it out now. You can get the digital version from
here
In this game you have a helicopter built into a backpack you can use to navigate the levels, setting off bombs to open passageways and kill enemies.
The levels descend downwards and enemies block some paths and not others. It is a bit of trial and error to learn the correct path for each level without running out of a limited number of bombs to get to the person you are supposed to be rescuing in each level.
The music is fairly repetitive, but the gameplay is good fun.
There are certainly plenty of new platform games in 2024, many created with the new Scorpion engine framework. I am impressed with the graphics in a lot of these games. The next game being a great example of the the quality of these new games.
This game is called Dr. Dangerous - Secrets of the Temple of Xol'Tan. Another Amiga 500 game.
The music and graphic style is quite different to Tiny Pixel Adventure, and I have to say I enjoyed playing this game a lot. The music sounds like Shadow of the Beast II in style (and I suspect the samples might be also), but the game itself is what impresses me most.
You need to collect 9 batteries to clear the level, with a limited number of zappers to shoot enemies. Very limited.
There are security buttons dotted around the level to unlock security doors to gain access to additional sections of the level.
The graphics are great, and the level design is well done also.
I eventually located all the batteries and could exit the first level:
Level 2, and things get harder.
I really recommend Dr. Dangerous - it is a lot of fun. I would love to see a physical box release for this...hint hint. They have floppy disk label and box art ready to go if you want to print them out yourself!
Next up is a game submitted to AmiJam 2024, called Tale of Evil by Electric Black Sheep. It is really intended for Amiga 1200, but apparently can be played on an accelerated Amiga 500 with 1MB chip memory. I tested it on an Amiga 1200.
In this game you control a cat, which cannot defend itself on its own. You need to collect 6 objects to get Olivia to be enabled.
This is a very different kind of game to what I have seen before. The levels are laid out in a multiscreen way, with view from above viewpoint, like many adventure style and run and gun games on the Amiga.
Without weapons, this game is quite hard, and I admit I didn't get very far in it.
I managed to collect a few of the objects, but never all 6!
Seems like I still need a few more...I tried to find them but kept getting killed. I think the enemies make this game a bit tough considering you can't shoot back.
Graphically though, the game shines, looks and plays well.
I need to try again a few more times for sure, as the activation of Olivia in the initial part of the game is just the start of a very large adventure with a lot of maps to explore and enemies to defeat!
Olivia can attack enemies, and shield the cat from attack. Apparently Olivia (once activated) can be controlled by a second player in the other joystick port - making it a great game to play with someone else.
Neon World is another new game in 2024, available for Amiga 500 and downloadable
from Github here.
This game is a shoot em up, and nice to see after a lot of platform and dungeon crawler style releases.
The movement of the ship is slow and this makes avoiding enemies at the start quite hard, but it is a fun challenge and I kept on trying for quite a while to make progress - unfortunately I didn't do so well!
In 2024 we also saw a number of classic arcade games that never saw an Amiga release being ported to the platform. An example from no nonsense games is Riviera '79, a view from above racing game that runs on the Amiga 500, based on the original Super Monaco GP arcade game:
Actually, after I downloaded it, they changed the name to Rivera '79 - I assume there is some copyright thing. But anyway, here it is:
This game is very much like playing Major Motion or Turbo from the early Amiga days.
Tough, unforgiving, typical of this type of game in that era.
I admit to enjoying it though.
It is basically a continuous rolling road - it continues until you give up essentially.
Not much chance of me troubling the top of this leaderboard...
In 2024 we also saw a number of classic arcade games that never saw an Amiga release being ported to the platform.
An example from jotd666 is Konami's 1982 release
Pooyan, now available on the Amiga 500:
You need to shoot the enemies balloons as they descend from the top to the bottom of the screen - you can move up and down to shoot them, but need to avoid their bullets hitting you and knocking you out of the place you shoot from to the ground:
Evidently I am not very good at it - I didn't last long!
Donkey Kong 500 is another jotd666 arcade port to the Amiga 500 in 2024, originally released back in 1981:
It surprises me how great these ports are, and really don't get why it has taken until recent years to get a developer willing to make these arcade ports happen on the Amiga - but I am glad thanks to jotd666 to have them on it to play in 2024.
He has done great work on other ports in the past few years also.
jotd666 has released many others this year as well, such as Elevator Action, Galaga 500, and
more.
Another new release game in 2024 for Amiga (as part of AmiJam 2024), is Bitwise Brain's
Battle Squadron 2.
AmiJam 2024 had a theme of "sequels that never happened". Choosing Battle Squadron, a true Amiga classic shoot em up is ambitious target for sure.
The game itself has a soundtrack by Hoffman, which was always going to be great. And it is.
The backgrounds look terrific, and the graphics are excellent.
The gameplay is excellent, the controls respond well and the game is fairly weighted in difficulty. Powerups help make dispersing enemies easier as the game progresses.
Finishing the levels is satisfying, but where is the end of level boss?
I love the game, and think Bitwise Brains did a great shoot em up for the Amiga.
With all that said, to be honest I don't think I would put the game in the same league as the original Battle Squadron. It is comparing apple to oranges - this game is quite different in feel to the original.
Another game submitted to AmiJam 2024 is
Fast Food 2, a spiritual sequel to the original
Fast food game released back in 1989 on Amiga by Codemasters. Fast Food was a followup to the Dizzy games series.
Fast paced, I found it hard to collect all the stars as I didn't see anyway to avoid getting hit! I guess I needed to eat the food more often.
Even on the Easy level I found it hard. Perhaps I am just getting old!
The game is viewed from above, looks great, with Dizzy and the other enemies looking great also.
This is one game I definitely have to try again - it is easy to get into and hard to finish!
The next game to look at is called
Glubble, made by Amiga demoscene group Oxygene for Amiga 500 systems, as part of the Revision 2024 demo party .
From the start, you can see the graphics are something special - not surprising given it comes from a demoscene group...
Enter your name and choose the 1st level - the other unlock as you make progress.
Glubble is a puzzle game for the Amiga - and a tough challenge at that.
I quickly discovered I suck at puzzle games. You need to glue all the same color blobs together, moving them left and right using the left and right mouse buttons.
I hit retry a lot of time before I finally worked it out. Music is great too by the way.
With the next levels unlocked, I could try the next one: Save codes are there to pick up where you left off.
The game doesn't shy away from the fact it is difficult - they even tell you directly on the screen.
I failed again many times trying to work it out.
The hint gives away what to do, I needed to connect the red ones to form a bridge that the blue blob could ride on top of while moving both to the left.
Job done - level 2 complete and feeling good about myself for working it out.
I won't spoil the game by showing how to solve the puzzles - you need to try it yourself! I definitely recommend trying out Glubble.
Andy Vaisey wrote another great Puzzle game in 2024 for the Amiga 500 called
Spheroid. In my case I got it from Amiga Addict magazine as they included on a 2024 cover disk. The game was written in Blitz Basic 2.
I mention Blitz Basic with some sadness, as the author of Blitz Basic 2, Mark Sibly apparently passed away this month - my sincere condolences to his family and friends. The Amiga community has lost a great guy this month.
Moving back to Spheroid, the game involves navigating a metal sphere through a maze to the end exit tile in a fixed number of moves.
In the way are different coloured tiles with different properties to make progress much more difficult. The types are listed above. You need to look at the map and think carefully which way to go before you set off!
I found myself really enjoying this game - easy to get into, but difficult to solve the puzzles as you move through the levels. I recommend getting Spheroid too!
Ami Robbo 2 was another AmiJam 2024 entry by tukinem, and whilst only a demo at this stage, gives a good idea of what is to come.
You go through the level looking for keys to unlock doors to eventually locate the exit to the next level.
I kept getting killed by the ghost so sadly I didn't get as far as I wanted to! It looks like a promising game.
The last game I plan to cover that was released in 2024 is called
The Lost Pixel by Amiga Factory, for AGA Amigas. This game was created using the
Redpill AGA toolset.
Your task is to collect all the lost pixels scattered over various retro game related screens to finish the level.
First area is tetris themed, with tetris blocks and Russia theme background.
It is a platform game, but one that requires some thought too. You can't kill or jump on enemies, you have to avoid them.
I enjoyed this game, but failed a lot - hence I saw a lot of this screen!
I think it incredible that so many games have been released on Amiga in 2024, and I haven't even covered all of them! I wanted to include
Star Dust Wars Directors Cut here, but I had trouble getting it working.
You can see more games
here if you want to learn about some other releases in 2024 as well.
It is a great sign for the future of our platform, with hopefully many more great games to come in 2025.
I have also been enjoying the many amazing Amiga 500 demos released this year - well worth checking out if you haven't already.
pouet.net is the place to go.
I show below Amiga 500 demos like Ghostown's Cockbusters and Desire's Inside the machine, running from real Amiga floppy disks, as it should be:
This has been a crazy year work wise, and I had wished to write way more blog posts than I ended up doing - my apologies for that. I hope today's blog post makes up for the lack of posts compared to normal!
I am not sure if this will be my last blog post this year or not, but just in case it is, I wish you and your family a Merry xmas and a happy new year!
