Amiga Power & AGA Gems | grapeswriting

Angry, Anarchic and Adored; Amiga Power - the Magazine with Attitude

This is the story of a magazine that only ran for a little over five years, but left an enormous footprint on both the gaming and journalistic worlds and is still loved and revered today. I have been a games reviewer for four years now, finally living a dream that I had harboured since my mid-twenties. There was only one reason for that dream: Amiga Power. In the 1990s I was an avid reader of the magazine. I marvelled at the skill of the writers, their irreverent humour, their (virtually) unbreakable moral compass and, more than anything, their resolute ‘we absolutely believe in what we are doing and don’t give a damn about anyone else’ attitude.

It was easy to sense their togetherness and camaraderie and I desperately wanted to be one of the gang, to share their fun and enthusiasm and to spend my working day doing something that I absolutely loved. But I couldn’t. Yes, I adored the Amiga and had played and held strong opinions on many of its games. But, I didn’t live in (or anywhere near) Bath, I was young, naive and under qualified and wouldn’t have had the first clue on how to land any writing position, let alone my dream job. And if I am honest I wasn’t a good enough writer either (which probably would have been quite an important factor had push come to shove). So I had to make do with just being a reader. But even as a reader you still felt like a member of an exclusive club. It is the only publication in my life that saw me visiting the newsagent on the scheduled day of issue (and the day after, and the day after that, as it was invariably late!) Once I had scored my copy, I would then take an early and extended lunch break wherever I was working, grab a drink, find a quiet corner of a pub and bask in the latest instalment of gaming madness.

Amiga Power was launched by Future Publishing in May 1991, featuring many of the writers from Your Sinclair. The first edition was preceded by issue ‘zero’; a free supplement given away with Amiga Format in the same month. Issue zero was essentially the first ‘All time top 100 Amiga games’ list including mini reviews of each entry, which was to prove a popular and recurring feature of the magazine.

Issues zero and 1, published May 1991

During its five years a number of people were tasked with editing duties, including: Matt Bielby, Mark Ramshaw, Linda Barker, Stuart Campbell, Jonathan Davies, Cam Winstanley, Tim Norris and Steve Faragher. Throughout the various editorial eras, the same policies dictated the content:

1. The magazine was about Amiga gaming and nothing else. The team neither understood nor cared about printers, workbench or other tech; their one and only focus was gaming on the Amiga.

2. They would only review finished games and they would be brutally honest and fair in their assessments, using a single percentage score to rate a game.

3. They would use the full range of the percentage scoring system, so an average game would score 50% and only the cream of the crop would score over 90%. When the curtain finally came down the average score given across the full sixty-five issues was a shade under 64%, so they were perhaps a tad more generous than they had originally intended, but they certainly stuck pretty closely to this mantra. Where other magazines would throw high scores around like confetti, Amiga Power staff would argue that this devalued the entire scoring system. If, for example, Amiga Action (or “Michael Jackson” as they were cunningly referred to in print) gave Rise of the Robots 92% (and they did – yes, they really did) then how could you trust their scoring of any other game? Stuart Campbell (stalwart of the magazine from its birth to issue thirty-nine and returning later as a contributor) summed it up in the very final issue, “Percentage ratings are meaningless unless you use the full range, and you can't give credit where it's due if you're pretending that everything's good.”

The stance on using the whole percentage range, while both helpful and popular with readers, ultimately saw them falling out of favour with a number of software companies, many of whom perceived scores in the 60’s or 70’s as being unfair or even damning. Perhaps they should have checked out the reviews of International Rugby Challenge or Ed the Duck 2 before taking umbrage, but I digress and we will return to those later. Team 17 took offence at reviews of Kingpin and All Terrain Racing in particular (awarded 47% and 38%

respectively) and it is claimed that following this they attempted to issue a lawsuit against the magazine, stopped providing review copies of their games and sent instructions to other magazines not to share their review copies with anyone from Amiga Power. Interestingly, I had suspected this falling out long before it became public knowledge, being the subject of the first letter I had published in “Do the write thing”; the unhinged and astonishingly entertaining letters section.

I spotted the Team-17 falling out before anyone else!

I got a game for my efforts though...

Office life! (Pictures reproduced with kind

permission of Cam Winstanley)

The magazine used numerous running jokes, enabling regular readers to feel included and part of the gag. Ranging from the use of the word “Natch” (which caused huge speculation regarding its meaning but was actually just a simple abbreviation of “Naturally”), their hatred of “Slippy Slidey Ice Worlds” and “Leaps of Faith” in platform games, the monthly letters from the likes of Isabelle Rees and Stuart N Hardy (which were both mad and entertaining in equal measure), their use of (not so) secret names to refer to other rival publications (“Currant Bun” for The One was another) to the extensive use of editorial (that’s enough of this, let’s move on – Ed.) interjections, with some reviews literally being a conversation between the reviewer and the Editor; all gave the magazine a unique inclusive and slightly anarchic feel. The team had particular fun in the “Do the write thing” section, both with their acid and sarcastic responses and also in their choice of title for each letter. It was standard for each letter to be headed by an attention grabbing phrase lifted from the main text, but more often than not it would be completely out of context, misleading and very funny. One example that I still recall; a letter containing the phrase, “the Queen Mother swallows a fish bone and the world goes crazy...” was titled, “The Queen Mother Swallows”!

It can be easy to imagine that glossy national magazines from large and successful publishing companies are produced by professional teams wearing slick corporate suits in huge, shiny and impressive office buildings. Amiga Power, despite being owned by one of the leading publishing houses in the UK, was actually written and edited by a small team with never more than eight fully employed writing staff, working out of a cramped back office in Bath and relying on other regular contributors. I once rang the office with a cheat I had discovered for Theme Park and had expected my call to be answered by a receptionist and to have to leave a message. Instead the phone was answered by Cam and I found myself discussing the latest releases with him! The team would joke that the office was particularly hard to find and consequently the publishers never visited, either because they had forgotten where they were or were simply too afraid. In the reunion arranged by Guardian Games in 2016 and attended by Cam Winstanley, Stuart Campbell, Jonathan Davies, Dave Green, Lisa Kellett (now Lisa Winstanley), Tim Tucker and Rich Pelley, they painted a picture of organised chaos, with extremely long and flexible working hours including some very late nights as each publishing date approached. Some of the contributors even admitted to still being at school or college when they were writing for the magazine.

The key to the publication’s success was that we, the readers, knew we could trust them. They had our back; they weren’t going to bow down to the might of the industry. If Amiga Power recommended a game then there was a very good chance it was worth our money. But more than that, we could also enjoy the wonderful entertainment provided by their no-holds-barred slaughtering of a poor release, which was often the highlight of an edition. In issue 26, International Rugby Challenge scored an unprecedented 2% (with a footnote that half the score was for comedy value); the review going to such lengths as to provide a helpful list of things that weren’t as bad as the game, which included the war in Bosnia, the famine in Somalia and the depletion of the ozone layer. A single-figure score wasn’t a one-off either, in the same edition Ed the Duck 2 and 4th and Inches were both awarded a derisory 3%.

It is far easier to review the extraordinary, whether excellent or appalling, than it is to critique a product that is average. There are many more adjectives that cover the extremes than the mundane, which is odd since 90% of things sit in that middle ground, being neither exceptionally good nor bad. The genius of the writers saw them constantly reinventing ways to review a game. Since the bulk of games reviewed were boringly average, it says everything that the content was always funny, informative and felt fresh, even if it was a review of the thirtieth bog-standard platform game released that year. I cannot stress enough how difficult this is to do and how effortless they made it seem. Indeed, the more average the games, the more their imagination would run riot, producing content of a quality that their rivals could only dream about.

In less than a year after launch the magazine had become the most popular Amiga games publication in the UK (in fact it was the best selling in the world, bar one from Germany), with a circulation of over 60,000 by 1992, remaining consistently over 45,000 until 1995, and even the final issues were selling in excess of 18,000 copies. The team have since stated that despite the Amiga effectively dying in 1996 with very few gaming releases to write about, Future were reluctant to close the magazine down as it was still outselling the likes of GQ. At its height, Amiga Power ran to 148 pages, but by the last few editions it was only 52 pages long and included a fair amount of completely irrelevant padding. Issue 63 for example, featured only four game reviews but contained a six page special on Michael Caine films! By issue 64 only two games were reviewed.

The original Secret Garden photo and how it appeared in the magazine.

No idea why it was reversed though!

(Picture reproduced with kind

permission of Cam Winstanley)

The editorial team were steadfast in their beliefs and never shied away from controversy, unafraid to take on the press, software publishers and other gaming publications regardless of the potential consequences. Probably the one instance remembered above all others is the highly publicised spat with the Royal British Legion over the planned use of a poppy on the front cover of issue 32, to accompany coverage of the release of Cannon Fodder. This was seized upon and blown up by the tabloid press and resulted in an extremely rare climb down, with a hasty redesign of the cover. Stuart Campbell, extremely unhappy with this decision (which was made in his absence) then stoked the fire with an editorial in the next issue that included the line: “Stuart

Stuart Campbell left Amiga Power after issue 39 but returned later as a contributor. (Picture reproduced with kind permission of Cam Winstanley)

would just like to say, ‘Old soldiers? I wish them all dead’.” This was supposed to be tongue in cheek; a bastardisation of a lyric lifted from a little known Wonderstuff song but, perhaps unsurprisingly, it created further controversy and ultimately resulted in a public apology from Publishing Director - Greg Ingham. Stuart has since suggested that this episode felt like the beginning of the end for him and he subsequently left after issue 39 to join Sensible Software as the ‘Chief Executive Co-ordinating Development Director with Special Responsibility for Gameplay’ (that can’t be a real job title; surely someone has made that up? – Ed.)

Forget the controversy though as for those five years Amiga Power was truly special. Each edition was an event and you felt that the writers were your friends. I was occasionally lured to the dark side and bought other magazines (including, I am ashamed to admit, both Michael Jackson and the Currant Bun since you ask) but in truth it was only out of morbid curiosity. I would invariably find them unsatisfying but would return to them periodically hoping things had improved, only to find that their reviewing standards remained consistently uneven. I could find no humour that would appeal to anyone over the age of eleven. And at no point did I ever come close to feeling that as a consumer I could rely upon their opinion. In my mind Amiga Power always stood head and shoulders over the competition. As a comparison, despite their demise over 25 years ago, I own and still read 59 issues of Amiga Power. I own no issues of any other Amiga magazine.

The final edition (issue 65) was published in September 1996. The closure of the magazine was very sad for the loyal readership, though inevitable given the decline of the Amiga market following Commodore's implosion and the rapidly escalating Nintendo/Sega console war. They had been joined by Sony who were the new kids on the block with their all-new PlayStation. Time was pretty much up for the Amiga and, by default, its associated magazines. Perhaps there is small consolation in that the team were given notice of the end (so many magazines simply disappear without warning) and were able to produce a final ‘goodbye’ edition and wrap things up in true Amiga Power style, with the contributors being killed off throughout the issue by the ‘Four Cyclists of the Apocalypse’.

The best analogy I can offer is that Amiga Power was to Amiga gaming in the ‘90s as Channel 4’s ‘The Tube’ was to music in the ‘80s. Chaotic, unpredictable, anarchic and at times completely mad, and their rivals may well have looked down their noses at them, but underneath the craziness we all knew with an unflinching certainty that they understood and respected both their audience and their subject matter completely. In this day and age with slick advertising and corporate public relations being far more important than the actual product, it is highly unlikely that we will ever see their like again.

So, to: Matt Bielby, Linda Barker, Colin Campbell, Stuart Campbell, Jonathan Davies, Steve Faragher, Dave Green, Sue Huntley, Lisa Kellett, Sal Meddings, Paul Mellerick (RIP), Steve McGill, Jonathan Nash, Tim Norris, Rich Pelley, Gary Penn, Mark Ramshaw, Jacquie Spanton,Tim Tucker, Cam Winstanley, Bob the Hamster, the Four Cyclists of the Apocalypse and everyone else involved, I love you all and I thank and salute you. You were part of something pretty damn special and you should all be very proud. Natch.

AG 11/01/2022

Article appeared in issue 11 of Amiga Addict magazine, May 2022.

A (nearly) full set of AP looks something like this.

The OCD in me wishes they hadn't forgotten the 'W' on the spine of issue 45 though...

I have been able to track down Amiga Power legends: Stuart Campbell, Cam Winstanley and Rich Pelley, and would like to offer my eternal thanks to them for providing some great photos and for kindly answering the Q&A below:

Name?

Stuart Campbell

Cam Winstanley

RICH PELLEY

What was your position with Amiga Power?

Stuart - In order: Staff Writer, Reviews Editor, Deputy Editor, Acting Editor, freelancer, murder victim.

Cam - Started off as staff writer, ended up as the editor for four or five issues. Presumably I held other positions in-between.

Rich - Long-haired student layabout / freelance writer. I mainly did the tips, which I hated. Also for some reason THEY ALWAYS WROTE ME IN CAPITALS because apparently I shouted when I was on the phone. Also I infamously once sunk my mum's car on the beach at Weston-Super-Mare.

What are you up to nowadays?

Stuart - After very narrowly failing to dismantle and destroy the UK with Wings Over Scotland for the last 10 years, I'm currently noodling around entertaining myself by writing enormous blogs about old Spectrum games and doing various little bits and bobs here and there while I'm looking for new kinds of trouble to get in.

Cam - After experiencing life as an Amiga Power Mighty Being, all further achievements have proven to be entirely without merit.

Rich - Freelance writer for The Guardian. Nothing about videogames though.

What are your memories of your first day at Amiga Power?

Stuart - They put me and Mark Ramshaw in a room full of Amiga games and told us to play them until we knew stuff about them. We spent a week just basically going through the machine's back catalogue to get up to speed.

Cam - That the office was very small and cramped. That I really didn’t know how to type – I’d spend agonising minutes looking for the ‘H’. That there was no orientation period – I was given a game to review and so it all began… with a sideways-scrolling beat ‘em up called Motorhead.

Rich - I was never on staff because I was still at school at the time! I'd been writing for Your Sinclair during my GCSES. I went into the office to see Matt Bielby who had moved over to launch AP. I remember it was my 16th birthday - must have been after school - and he gave me a copy of PGA Tour Golf to review. I then had to get my Dad to take me to Dixons to buy an Amiga to play it on.

What is your favourite game genre?

Stuart - I like all kinds of stuff but my favourite genre is and always has been arcade games (not necessarily ports of actual coin-op cabinets, but instantly accessible action games). Those are what attracted me to videogames in the first place and they're still what I like the most.

Cam - Of all time? Probably the Battlefield series on Xbox. Back on the Amiga, I loved the hard-to-define games that could only have been released on the Amiga – Super Skidmarks and Jetstrike immediately spring to mind. I hated platformers (yes, all of them) and don’t even get me started on football management games.

Rich - Rainbow Islands.

Do you still own an Amiga?

Stuart - No, I've got far too much clutter now and my vast collection of old computers and consoles was one of the first things to go. I keep everything on my Retropie these days, it's better than original hardware in almost every way.

Cam - Still? I never owned one. AP was so badly paid; I had neither the spare cash to buy one nor a rented room big enough to set one up in. Besides, the office was full of them and I was there 13 hours a day, so why did I need one at home?

Rich - No, my dad threw it in the bin.

What is (or was) your joystick of choice?

Stuart – HAVE YOU EVER EVEN READ AMIGA POWER?

Cam - The Bug was the only joystick that any Amiga gamer needed. If they hadn’t been so fragile, it would have been a good idea to add them as factory standard.

Rich - Er...? I think I had a red one!

What game caused the most heated argument as to whether it was good or not?

Stuart - In the early days there was actually some brief debate about Kick Off 2, but common sense won out quickly. We also had a few battles when compiling the Top 100s, mainly in the early years before we came up with better methodology - basically taking turns to pick - but I don't really recall any of them now. The thing that sticks in my mind is Pinball Dreams, which I really wanted to give over 90% but got overruled by Matt Bielby on the grounds it was "just a pinball game". I argued hard, but I was a novice staff writer and he was the Ed and that was that.

Cam - The right to say what you really thought was enshrined in the Amiga Power Constitution, so no one ever tried to change anyone’s point of view. The closest we got was probably asking Stuart Campbell whether this month’s fight with the world was worth picking. He usually thought it was.

Rich - Certainly not Battletoads, which was delayed for ages and ages, they didn't send AP a copy to review so I bought it from the shop and gave it about 1 out of 10.

Looking back, is there a game review or score you think you got badly wrong? (Either too high or too low?)

Stuart - There's stuff I'd go back and give 5% more or 5% less now, but I can't really think offhand of any where I feel like I got it significantly wrong first time round. The most embarrassing mistake I made was not being able to get sideways jumping to work in Dragon Ninja back in issue 8, but even once you figured out how to do it it was still a bloody awful game so it didn't actually make much difference.

Cam - There was a baffling German strategy game called The Settlers in which you built medieval villages, connected them with roads, planted crops and so on. I remained clueless even after a full week of playing it but had run out of time, so ended up fudging it by writing the most middle-of-the-road review of my life. I didn’t use the phrase, “if this is the sort of thing you like then buy this” but I might as well have done.

Rich - Not for Amiga Power. But I literally got death threats for giving some Star Trek game 50% in PC Format.

Favourite memory of working at Amiga Power?

Stuart - Oh, far too many to choose. Completely at random I might pick a couple of nights from the first year or so when we were "working late", which actually meant sitting around playing Gem'X and Asteroids competitively while eating chips and drinking. (These were the days at Future when you could go and get a takeaway on expenses when you were doing overtime.)

Cam - Mainly that we were such a closely knit team that at the end of a working day, we’d often decamp to the pub or cinema together. It always felt as though we were all pulling in the same direction. Oh, and I ended up marrying the beautiful Lisa Kellett. Which was nice.

Rich - Going to the pub afterwards even though I was massively underage! Also the AP Viking Funeral when we floated the last ever copy of AP down the river, and went to the pub.

Biggest regret from your time working at Amiga Power?

Stuart - That the company got too big and corporate. There was a beautiful sweet spot in the early 90s where it was big enough to have hundreds of staff while still being pretty anarchic and feeling almost like being at university but with wages. That was changing palpably even in my time there (1991-94), although it really accelerated in the mid-90s, with the symbolic pivot point being the official Playstation magazine licence. I was glad to be out by then, even though it meant missing out on the big shares bonanza.

Cam - How brief the magazine’s golden age was. By the time we’d established a strong editorial tone and the sales figures were at an all-time high, the Sega vs Sony vs Nintendo console wars were already devouring home computer gaming. AP went from dizzying heights to cost-cutting and managed decline in less than a year.

Rich - I was once so late at handing in the Complete Control and Last Resort sections (I think I must have been at University at the time) that Steve Farragher sent me a telegram. A TELEGRAM!!!

Did you ever meet Isabel Rees or Stuart N Hardy?

Stuart - Not to the best of my recollection.

Cam - Never did, although Isabel did track me down for a Twitter chat (@bspine2098) about a decade ago.

Rich - I seem to be friends with Isabel on Facebook. Not Stuart N Hardy though!

Can you recommend a lesser known title?

Stuart - That was our job, we aimed to do it every month. But what I do recommend are some of the incredible things homebrew coders are doing on the Amiga now - stuff like the stunning arcade ports of Amidar, Pac-Man, Rygar and Nemesis. I'd have completely flipped over those back in the day, and they run on bog-standard A500/A1200 hardware.

Cam - It’s from Microprose so can’t be that obscure but I was once so obsessed with Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising that I once played it for about 16 hours straight. But only once.

Rich - Um... Flippit & Mongoose? Or have I made that up?

The 2016 reunion was brilliant – can you envisage doing another?

Stuart - I'd do another one in a heartbeat. It was properly wonderful seeing some of the team again for the first time in years, and the event itself was a delight. I had an absolute ball. It's just a shame there was railway maintenance so some of us had to rush back to catch an unusually early last train.

Cam - Imagine our surprise that a live event organised by readonlymemory.vg was sold out and standing room only. Given that the ‘90s gaming boom has since given birth to the likes of Amiga Addict, maybe there’s a thirst for a sequel, especially as the fans get older and their nostalgia grows.

Rich - Yes, was great seeing everyone after all those years. Also there were quite a lot of girls in the audience. Actual girls.

What was your favourite PD game?

Stuart - Asteroids. Perhaps the first thing I'd ever class as an arcade-perfect home conversion on any format.

Cam - Gravity Power, of course.

Rich - Um... can't remember any. Sorry. Gravity Power???!

If you could do it all again would you change anything?

Stuart - "I REGRET NOTHING! I APOLOGISE FOR NOTHING!" (War Marshal "Mad Dog" Kazan, East-Meg One, date unknown.)

Cam - I’d give the games a lot more respect. Creating anything is so difficult that even the worst game is tougher to complete than anything I’ve ever achieved. A combination of youthful arrogance and the magazine’s fanzine-like house style meant that many of my reviews were primarily exercises in being clever and/or self indulgent, when I really should have kept that for the feature pages and devoted more of the word count to explaining both the game and the reasons for its review score. Or maybe that’s just the old me rolling his eyes at the young me. Kids in the 1990’s, eh? Tch. ("You're fired"- Stuart)

Rich - I might have put my rates up.

AG 11/01/2022

Featured in A miga Addict magazine, issue 12.

AGA Games

Six AGA Games You Really Should Play...

Alan looks at some of the best A1200 / CD32 games

It is a sad fact that in its final years, Commodore made a bit of an unholy mess of the development and marketing for its entry level Amiga. The original A500 had been launched in 1987 and for six years little had changed, apart from the release of the marginally improved A500+ in 1991. Developers were working to a constant, with compatibility enabling them to produce games for the machine with no complications. The A500 was incredibly popular, selling up to five million units with many hundreds of games being released in its lifetime.

It all gets a bit complicated

However, 1992 saw the release of the ill fated A600, followed by the more powerful 32-bit A1200, and finally in 1993 the CD32 was launched. Unfortunately, the timing was less than ideal; the A1200 was released only months after the similarly priced A600 and sold less than a million units worldwide, while the CD32 was discontinued after only eight months due in no small part to Commodore’s bankruptcy, racking up a disappointing 100,000 sales in Europe.

The net result of this technical merry-go-round was that game developers found themselves essentially caught between a rock and a hard place. A title developed for the newer, more powerful machines wouldn’t run on those owned by the majority of Amiga owners, limiting the potential market massively. On the other hand, games designed to run on the A500 and A600 failed to utilise the potential of the most up-to-date machines, offering buyers of Amiga 1200s little benefit for their purchase.

The majority of releases saw developers preferring to limit the specifications of a title in order to retain a larger potential market. Some games proudly boasted "A1200 enhancements" but these were often nothing more than an improved palette and sometimes additional sound, with no other gameplay changes whatsoever.

Diamonds in the rough

But amongst all these halfway-house compromises, some games were produced specifically for the AGA machines. Not nearly enough unfortunately (as an example there were only 147 CD32 releases, and many of those were straight ports of existing A500 games), but a modest few were able to offer the user a glimpse of the true potential of their shiny new hardware. I am going to look at six standout A1200/CD32 titles that showcased what these machines were capable of. You may well have played them. And if you haven’t, you really should…

Banshee

Developer - Core Design, Publisher - Core Design, 1994

At first glance Banshee is a mindless vertical scrolling blaster, hugely influenced by the 1942 series of arcade games. But as you play you realise that it isn’t quite so mindless at all.

Shooting certain enemies sees them drop a variety of power ups. These can be cycled by shooting them further and choosing the correct one at the right time adds a strategic element to the gameplay, as does the fact that the play area is one and a half screens wide, allowing you to pick your route to either do battle with the hardest parts of a level or simply avoid them.

It looks and sounds absolutely gorgeous and is a brutal test of the player’s skill and reactions, though things do get just a little easier in the fantastic simultaneous two-player mode. It has also nailed that get just a little further each time you play formula, essential for any game of this type.

I love Banshee and consider it to be probably the best shoot-em-up you can play on the Amiga. Utterly glorious!

Gloom

Developer - Black Magic Software, Publisher - Guildhall, 1995

The original Doom (Ed. – “Doom was recently voted the greatest classic game of all time by our sister magazine: Pixel Addict!”) was released for personal computers in 1993, and so began a race between developers to produce a viable clone for the Amiga. Out of those that were released, Gloom is my personal favourite.

Alien Breed 3D (also 1995) deserves a worthy mention, offering the player an ability to carry more weapons and explore vertically as well as horizontally, but while Team 17’s latest instalment to the hugely successful Alien Breed series may have been more advanced, it didn’t display with quite the definition of Gloom and required quite a powerful Amiga to play.

Gloom includes fabulous network or split-screen two-player options and was one of the first A1200 games to encourage the purchase of a CD32 controller (to allow for easier strafing).

At the time this title was technically astonishing, genuinely breaking new ground for the Amiga. Played with a CD32 controller, Gloom is enormously impressive, properly scary and brilliant fun.

Guardian

Developer - Acid Software, Publisher – Guildhall, 1995

Any gamer worth their salt has played Defender, one of the true giants from the Golden Age of Video Games. It was fast, colourful, manic and hugely addictive. Can you imagine the fun if it was in 3D?

Well you don’t need to imagine, as Guardian is just that. Originally designed to rival Star Fox on the SNES, the game eventually became a three dimensional take on Williams’ 1981 classic.

Interestingly, Guardian is one of the few games that was programmed first for the CD32 and then ported to the A1200, rather than the other way round as was usually the norm. Viewed today, the graphics can appear a little chunky and unsophisticated, being made up of fairly large polygons, but to see them thrown around smoothly and accurately in three dimensions in 1995 was really pretty special.

Gameplay is fast, tough and enormously rewarding and, as with Gloom, a CD32 controller makes life so much easier. Guardian was really pushing the envelope at the time and did what no one else had done before.

Slam Tilt

Developer - Liquid Dezign HB, Publisher - 21st Century Entertainment 1996

Real pinball is a fantastic way to spend an evening and, if you don’t agree, well I’m sorry, but it looks like we aren’t going to be friends. Computer pinball on the Amiga had always been a bit of a hit and miss affair (Ed. - “I see what you did there…”) but right from the off 21st Century Entertainment had the genre absolutely nailed.

They released four hugely impressive titles, beginning with Pinball Dreams in 1992. Then came Pinball Fantasies (also 1992) and then the fantastic Pinball Illusions followed in 1995, which was for AGA machines only.

However they saved perhaps the best offering until last with Slam Tilt, released in 1996 for the A1200 only. Four beautiful tables with ramps, chutes, hidden secrets, extra flippers, a large LCD display screen and multi-ball features are all present and correct.

But it is the physics that mark out a truly great pinball game and in this respect Slam Tilt is verging on perfection. Fans of the genre should consider this to be an essential for any collection.

Roadkill

Developer - Vision Software, Publisher – Acid Software, 1994

Roadkill is a top-down racing game that appears to be the illegitimate lovechild of Super Sprint - the Atari 1986 game, and Deathrace 2000 - the 1975 film.

You race around a series of simple circuits; a top three finish each time enabling progression to the next round. The emphasis is very much on extreme violence, with tracks littered with spiked walls (to ram the other competitors into) and collectable rockets and missiles which can be used to eliminate your opponents from the race. Other power-ups include speed-ups, extra traction and armour.

The racing view is zoomed in which makes control tricky, but this is balanced by the tracks being wide with road markings indicating upcoming changes of direction. An on-screen track map also helps with navigation, as does the option to have a practice lap before every race.

Along with the wanton violence and playability, the stars of the show are the music and absolutely fabulous speech samples, which continually encourage you to, “Destroy him” or, “Take his life” with a deep throaty rasp that would give the voice-over guy from the 1980s aftershave commercials a serious run for his money.

Roadkill is a simple idea, brilliantly executed, and is one of my favourite games from any system.

Super Stardust

Developer - Bloodhouse, Publisher - Team 17, 1994

If you ever owned an A1200 or a CD32, the one thing you really wanted was something to show it off to your friends. And if you wanted to show off, there aren’t many titles that show an AGA machine off better than Super Stardust.

Stardust, produced by the same developer and released for standard Amigas in 1993, was already pretty special. Super Stardust on the other hand was an AGA only title and was utterly spectacular.

Super Stardust is, like its predecessor, essentially an Asteroids clone. But that is a somewhat massive understatement and simplification, a bit like saying that Mozart, “used to dabble with music.” Where Asteroids relied upon simple black and white vector graphics, Super Stardust revels in its utter gloriousness. The game is stunning, with beautifully drawn and colourful backgrounds coupled with extensive ray tracing making the spinning rocks appear jaw-droppingly gorgeous. And just when you thought your jaw couldn’t drop any lower, you reach one of the utterly astonishing 3D tunnel sections where your brain turns to mush as you try to contemplate how the machine can possibly be doing this.

Add in rocks of different strengths and speeds, a variety of collectable guns (each of which can be powered up), a huge variety of additional craft , end of level bosses that have to be negotiated and you have one of the most enjoyable and definitely one of the best looking arcade blasts it is possible to play on the Amiga.

Truly spectacular.

So there you have it - my recommendations for six essential AGA games that you really ought to check out. There are other fine offerings of course, but these are my personal favourites. They all stand out by having solid gameplay, looking and sounding fantastic, and, importantly for me, each has absolutely huge instant pick-up-and-play appeal.

If you have any other suggestions for titles that you think I should have included - these are in no particular order and there is always room for a part two, so email me your thoughts at: alan@addict.media.

Until the next time, happy gaming!

AG 05/03/2023

Featured in A miga Addict magazine, issue 20.