FastRobPlus

Same here. I stepped back a bit and thought "did I ever have an illegit copy of an Ultima game?" Turns out, the answer was no. I bought them all outright, even when I was a poor kid.

That's a nice setup.

Pretty cool. Reading this makes you sad that he died a bit after and never got a chance to move technology forward like this again.

So the one or two man "company" is alive and reselling emulated games made by game developers of the past. In other words - exactly the same necromancy Infogrammes practices on Atari nostalgia, but on a much smaller scale.

After Commodore, Amiga went to Escom - a huge computer distributor in Europe. Following the Amiga name after Escom collapsed is pretty pointless. It became a shell game run from P.O. boxes. The "Amiga" we all know and talk about ended in around 1996. Anything that happened after this can and should be ignored in the same way we ignore Infogrammes endlessly telling us how great they are because they invented pong, then releasing unplayable games like the new Alone in the Dark. Just to give you a taste of what’s happened with Amiga since then: Where I live (Seattle area) there's a city called Kent that wanted a sports arena, but the public was against funding it. In 2007, Amiga came forward and pledged 2.5 million dollars to gain arena naming rights and to ensure the project was started. The problem was, as far as anyone could tell, Amiga was just one guy working out of an unmarked rented room of a building in Issaquah. When some folks on Amiga.org contacted the local newspaper (Seattle Times) they investigated and shone a light on the situation. The money came due, and Amiga was never heard from, leaving people to speculate that the Kent city council knew that Amiga was not good for the money, but used the illusion of a real company backing their project to get the groundbreaking done, effectively sidestepping the rules that say the city could not begin the project without private funding. So when you hear the name Amiga mentioned in the same breath with some new technology or project, its probably safe to assume: It will never materialize I might even be some kind of ruse or scam

Congratulations!

Nice!

I seem to remember really liking Jungle Hunt on the VIC-20.

I think my Amiga experience helped put me at the top of the pile when I interviewed at NextBase/Automap back in the early 90s. That job ended up with my becoming global policy manager for Xbox. So maybe the motto is true: Only Amiga Makes it Possible.

Even on a site where all of us owned STs, I think it would be nearly impossible to argue that there was a PC in the 1980’s that was better than Amiga. Rather than rehashing a lot of debate, check out the ST vs Amiga thread here

Nice! If you have not checked out Alternate Reality: The Dungeon on the Atari, it might be worth a look. It really is a pretty good RPG and it was made for the Atari. Also - while not exactly an RPG, Omniternd's Universe is a deep, stat based game with an interesting plot.

I put Neverwinter and Xeen in there to test the wong answer feedback rule. If you get them wrong, the test says somehting snarky.

Very funny... On the same subject, isn't Albion the setting to something like a million FRPGs?

Totally agree about Realms of Arkana. Also agree with you about MMIV. They did apparently start work on it, but switched off when they found not quite a big enough installed base of HDD users to justify the effort.

Check out the Atari 8-bit forum here on AA. Many there think that Alternate Reality (City or Dungeon, take your pick) are among the best RPGs for any 8-bit. So it isn't just Amiga owners. Amiga and Atari 8-bit owners have a lot in common.

We'll have to 'agree to disagree' on most of your points. I do consider Space Hulk an RPG, but like you said, it's subjective. You are right about the Amiga not having Phantasie II. though I totally forgot the Amiga had Phantasie III. That game was fantastic.

Amiga was king of the RTS.

I always thought Amiga had far more and better RPGs. Some great ones: Hired Guns, Might and Magic 3 (my all-time favorite RPG, and Amiga is the best version), Ultima VI (was also on 64, but not well made for the 64), Eye of the Beholder, Drakkhen, Amberstar/Ambermoon, Black Crypt (did you know Raven made an Amiga RPG?), Bane of the Cosmic Forge, the Ishar series, Space Hulk (Warhammer), Dungeon Master, Swords of Twilight (really interesting RPG by FreeFall associates!) ...there were a lot of really good RPGs in adition to the huge amougt that came out for both systems...

Can you really run full screen/full sound C64 emulation on an '060? If so, I think I'd like to try.

I can’t imagine that you’d need an Atari if you like the C64 version of the games. The differences between versions were usually pretty insignificant. Very early games could favor the Atari if for no other reason than there was no C64 version planned during development, so the game was built around Atari-specific characteristics. Archon for example was supposed to be impressive because it featured a playing board that gradually lightened and darkened over time – a trick possible because Atari had so many grayscales. When it became a hit, it was ported to other systems that could not replicate the trick, so one of the coolest features of Archon was lost. I think problems like this helped the games industry mature, and the larger companies like Activision, Sierra and EA began to design games with multiple platform in mind at the outset.

That was so the result rating can make fun of you if you get them wrong.

Amiga games are more modern and accessible. So they tend to feel more playable. By contrast, C64 games often lack documentation and have obscure/nonstandard controls, but lots of enjoyable games did come out for it. Even though the Amiga is the obvious choice, Space Taxi is one of the best arcade games ever made, and it's exclusive to the C64.

Yeah - too short. I'll expand it to 30 or so.

Inspired by the recent Ultima and RPG threads here, I've created short quiz. Let me know what you think! http://www.thebitplanes.com/?p=135

Recap of the Seattle event here and here.