Top 10 Amiga Platformer Games - Boat's Picks

[@Djformula]

This video gives me goosebumps its so good. Great job boat. It really shows the strength of knowledge Amigos Podcast has.

[@AmigosRetroGaming]

Thanks Ravi! I had to namecheck you with the James Pond jig :)

[@MKKelley]

I really like these top 10 videos. Thanks for making these!

[@AmigosRetroGaming]

Thanks for watching! 🙂

[@davemoylemusic]

There's just something special about the music on amiga games. Nice selection 👌

[@AmigosRetroGaming]

Thanks Dave!

[@EricBarbman]

Furiously typing that you left out Brian the Lion and Nicky Boom. More seriously, although I agree mostly with the lower part of your list, less with the top positions, I can appreciate the quality of your commentaries : well thought and insightful, they "connect" with my personnal experience and memories.

[@AmigosRetroGaming]

Nicky Boom just looks so horrid as a character that it’s hard for me to get past it 🙂

[@theamigashow9506]

I loved Soccer Kid, and completed it back in the day. It took an entire summer 🤣

[@AmigosRetroGaming]

It's such a fabulous game!

[@VampireJack10]

"Heart and head - sometimes that's all you need......" Oh Boat, you naughty boy!

[@AmigosRetroGaming]

Get your mind outta the gutter Jack! 🙂

[@VampireJack10]

@@AmigosRetroGaming 🤣

[@LegendaryWizball88]

Loving these videos. I was fortunate enough to have a Japanese MegaDrive and Super Famicom when I had my Amiga 500. I had copiers for both so could play everything. This meant aside from being a filthy pirate not many platformers on the Amiga were interesting to me. But I did enjoy a few. My favourites were Fuzzball, Bubble Bobble (single screen so maybe that’s a separate genre), Rainbow Islands, Rodland, Superfrog, Gods, Leander and Toki.

[@AmigosRetroGaming]

I’ll have to check out Fuzzball! Leander doesn’t do anything for me, I’m afraid. We reviewed it on Amigos a few years back.

[@LegendaryWizball88]

@@AmigosRetroGamingIt’s fantastic. Great graphics. Awesome little tune. But my goodness it is brutally hard. But if I dare say it a bit of a hidden gem. Pretty fun intro if you get the two disk version too.

[@dizkko1808]

Addams Family and Soccer Kid were great. My other notables would be Magic Pockets, either Zool, and the Trolls game, which I remember being surprisingly fun. I also remember a Yogi Bear platformer which was hard as nails and I had to give up on after only a level or two.

[@AmigosRetroGaming]

Magic Pockets and Zool were on the bubble! I was decidedly not a fan of Trolls. kzbin.info/www/bejne/qZKQXpqqfLZ_f9U

[@Seedy32]

If Crash Bandicoot, Sonic and Mario are Sony, Sega and Nintendo's respective mascots, Superfrog is the undisputed mascot of Amiga. The music from the CD32 release is absolutely incredible.

[@AmigosRetroGaming]

No argument from me there!

[@midi_in]

Wow. Once again, beautifully written and presented. But.... please pace yourself Boat! I don't want you to run out of genres too soon! Seriously, Will we see you beat Addams Family once again on Saturday's Amigathon? It's been a real highlight of the event for me. Playing platformers isn't my favourite thing but it's very cool watching you complete that one.

[@AmigosRetroGaming]

The Addams Family will be completed at Amigathon! Thanks for the kind words :)

[@Nebulous6]

For me it's The Killing Game Show, Odyssey, Robocod, Lionheart, Rodland, Putty Squad, Assassin Special Edition, Kid Chaos, Deliverance, and Gods. I'd love to know more about how Robocod was programmed for the OCS machines. Anyone notice the large number of colors per character, the detail to the backgrounds, and how fast and smooth it moves with all that's going on? I don't think they were using dual playfield mode. In fact, they've far exceeded what dual playfield is capable of for OCS. Some kind of magic going on there. The Amiga 500 version is superior to the Genesis version and is even a bit better than the SNES port.

[@Zontar82]

gods was and still is amazing, deliverance was almost a rip off, and putty squad was playable only recently, the original one was just called putty

It's definitely dual playfield mode, so 8 colours for the foreground, 7 for the background with what looks like an interesting EOR effect for the background blitting using some minterm combination. Sprites would be joined to give 16 colours and the effect where he extends is really easy to do on the amiga because sprites can be any height and repeating sprite contents vertically is possible. I'm only starting to play around with this sort of stuff, so there's probably a lot of other tricks going on. The smooth 4-way directional scroll is pretty easy to do too once you know how.

[@Nebulous6]

Riddle me this. How did they get that many colors per sprite and such a wide variety of colors per character. And yes, I'm aware of techniques like appending and combining sprites and how their colors work in OCS. I'm still not convinced it's dual playfield. Compare the flat -- almost monochromatic sprites in Shadow of the Beast (dual playfield with racing-the-beam Copper mountains in the background) -- to the very colorful sprites in Robocod.

@@Nebulous6 It could be single playfield with higher bpp and a repeated sprite layer in the background, however, I think it's more likely that it's dual-playfield and the characters utilise more colours by combining bobs with sprites where necessary, eg. overlaying one on top of the other to effectively have access to something like 24 colours if you blitted the bobs into the foreground playfield. On the C64 you look at the raster interrupt to find out what's going on, but on the Amiga you look at the copper list. The copper list would likely reveal all.

[@pacbilly]

Was there ever any doubt as to what the number one would be? With the possible exception of Aladdin, I don't think I've played the Amiga versions of ANY of these games. That definitely needs to be remedied, especially with Addams Family and BC Kid. Odd they saw fit to rename him, not based on his head-bonking gimmick, but rather his temporal relationship to Christ. Astute viewers will note: there's nary a Psygnosis title to be found on this list, and rightly so.

[@AmigosRetroGaming]

Yeah, Psygnosis platformers...not so great.

[@rickyderocher3181]

What? Boat picked Adam's Family and not Super Frog for #!? I''m shocked! Shocked, I tell you! 😛

[@gwobcke]

I am pleased PP Hammer got a mention, it is forgotten by many. No love for Nicky Boom though :(

[@AmigosRetroGaming]

Yes. No love for Nicky Boom. That guy’s a freak! 🙂

[@DataHombre]

PP Hammer is an excellent game. C64 version is also very good.

[@Seedy32]

In some ways, I'm surprised that Zool wasn't on this list.

[@AmigosRetroGaming]

It was close. In terms of well known platformers it's probably in the top 5 but it's lacking in execution and gameplay.

[@Seedy32]

@@AmigosRetroGaming I agree with both of those points! I figured the soundtrack and hilariously forced "Chupa Chups" product placement in Zool 2 may have edged it in there, though 😅

[@Zontar82]

I would add Monster business, flood, bubba n stick and Switchblade 2

[@AmigosRetroGaming]

Monster Business is a new one to me! Re: Bubba and Stix, that one will definitely make an appearance on the Top 10 Puzzle Platformers list.

[@Zontar82]

@@AmigosRetroGaming it's a game similar to snow bros, so maybe not 100% platform

[@BrutalBarracuda]

Wiz n Liz nowhere to be seen 😱 I would have also had Rodland in there. Great vid tho 👍

[@AmigosRetroGaming]

Sorry BB, I know about your love of W&L! Rodland is going to make an appearance on the top 10 single screen platformers list :)

[@moregamemusic]

It's a bit sad that usually on lists like this I never see the platform game Brian the Lion. It's certainly not a masterpiece by any means and can even be a little frustrating in places, but it's hard to find a more console-like game on the AMIGA

[@AmigosRetroGaming]

It’s a good game, but barely edged out by these on my top 10. The enemy patterns and overly linear design are its main flaws. The graphics are superb though!

[@Prasinjo]

But-but-but, where are Turrican 2, Wolfchild and RuffnTumble? Surely these are platformers, yes? :)

[@AmigosRetroGaming]

I don’t know about Wolfchild, but Turrican 2 and Ruff are run and guns for me!

[@DataHombre]

Ruff’n’tumble and Brian the lion surely before Addams Family or Tony the Tiger… 🤷🏻

[@AmigosRetroGaming]

Ruff n Tumble I consider to be more of a run and gun game.