Exclusive Amiga Games - Part 1

This is the first episode of my new series covering only exclusive Amiga games, those that never landed on any other systems, those that none other than Amiga gamers could ever experience. They do deserve to be remembered though, regardless if they're good or bad, so hopefully you'll go along with me on this journey.
I make those videos in my spare time, so if you like what I do here, and feel generous, you can support me on Patreon or become a KZbin member. You don't have to though, if you can't, or don't feel like it. A like and subscribe is great too!
Patreon: / oldandnewvideogames
If you'd like to connect, you can find me on twitter: @kad3t_uk
Gameplay recordings that you've seen in this video as a background to my commentary came from amazing retro gaming related channels that do a great job preserving the classics for the future. They all deserve your subscription, and they all have mine. These are:
0:00 Intro
0:21 Agony
2:13 Alien Breed 3D II: The Killing Grounds (@khajrane)
4:23 Arabian Nights
6:26 Ambermoon (@ravencrest1985)
8:47 Apocalypse (@vagosmoros7073)
10:30 Black Crypt (@themanaiacalgamer8451)
13:08 Breathless (@brdfsz9142)
15:06 Brian the Lion (@ByUrien84)
17:12 Cedric and the Lost Sceptre (@worldoflongplays / played by lemm)
18:47 Assassin: Special Edition
20:55 Outro
#amiga #exclusive #retrogames #retrogaming

[@sideeggunnecessary]

I loved dungeon crawlers as a kid, and when EverQuest came out, it was like everything I ever wanted in a game

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

It changed the gaming landscape forever, no doubt about that.

[@Heliophanus]

All I remember about Assassin is that I absolutely hated the camera. Having to get so close to the edge of the screen to scroll, then constantly stumbling into enemies that you couldn't possibly see...

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

:)

[@RagnarokiaNG]

The main thing I remember from Arabian Nights is the old lady who knits so fast she explodes, which I imagine is the right thing to remember from it.

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

What about the dude in first level who hangs on the wall and is suspended by his arms? Do you remember how he looks like when you free him?

[@J_Stamps86]

I loved Brian the Lion, but it was pretty frustrating at times with the blind leaps of faith. I always felt that Premiere was my favourite platformer on the Amiga, but I used to talk about that game to other people and nobody had ever heard of it. I started to get convinced it was some sort of Mandela effect and it was a game I'd created in my head that never really existed. Then I found it on KZbin, lol. I vaguely remember Apocalypse, which I can't have thought about since I played it back in the mid nineties.

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

Premiere was interesting, and pretty fun too. For me however it would have to be Superfrog. Because of the sheer amount of secret areas, caches of gems and pathways.

[@J_Stamps86]

@@OldAndNewVideoGames not to mention Superfrog had an awesome soundtrack to it that I sometimes still hum to myself today.

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

@@J_Stamps86 Agreed.

[@nodeSVN]

Amberstar, Ambermoon, and later Albion are some extremely underrated RPGs. At least Albion made it to PC and is available again on GOG.

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

And it's a spiritual successor to Ambermoon.

[@SWW_Productions]

I enjoyed this! Agony is my favourite in this list. Used to play this in the old days. I just LOVE the look and the idea of the game, and all those fabulous colours and animated backgrounds. Wonderful stuff.

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

Thank you! :) I hope to have the next one ready for Tuesday.

[@danyoutube7491]

There IS music during gameplay in Alien Breed 3D II, I remember it well. I don't know whether that's because I played the 4mb version rather than the 2mb version, but there definitely was moody, subtle music in the background.

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

I know there was one in first game, don't remember it in second. Though, you may be right and it requires beefier config, and that's all.

[@b0gster]

I actually needed this, thanks! I wouldn't say no to Exclusive Commodore 64/ZX Spectrum game lists either.

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

In time. I'm not done with C64's "10 Years of" series yet even...

[@nicholsliwilson]

Agony is beautiful. I keep my Amiga Mini to hand for Amiga games & Agony is right there. I don’t usually like zoomed in shooters but Agony is so pretty I love it. Alien Breed 3D II shows what later model Amigas can do but I wish it was a bit better optimised. Arabian Nights is one I never played. Sounds like I should do? Ambermoon is new to me too. Looks interesting, from what you’ve said It’s worth checking out? Same for Black Crypt. Apocalypse (not to be confused with Apocalypse or Apocalypse) is great fun & to be honest I assumed it was an arcade conversion? It actually makes me think of Cannon Fodder even though it’s very different. Breathless is again new to me. What you’ve shown reminds me of FPS’s on the Game Boy Advance. Pretty sure I learned of Brian the Lion from you? It’s quite good. Cedric and the Lost Sceptre is another new one to me because by ‘96 I’d moved on from the Amiga. Blasphemy, I know. Maybe something to look at though. Same for Assassin: SE. It’s great to see games I’ve never played alongside some gems I love here, thanks. I think that will make for a good series personally?

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

Yeah, presentation-wise Agony is on another level. It doesn't hurt that it plays well too. It's not the best shooter out there, but it looks amazing. Oh, definitely play the Arabian Nights! It's sooooo good! There's few larger "worlds" and they're all thematically different but you get like a lot of new items, you learn new mechanics, it doesn't get stale for a minute. The LemonAmiga score says it all. And the adventuring bits, while mostly environmental, are straight up adventuring bits and not just "get key, open door" stuff. Ambermoon and Black Crypt are both great, and both worth a playthrough but... And I'm gonna anger someone probably, if I was to settle on one only, it's gonna be Ambermoon. Oh, and Albion that you know of, is its spiritual successor. So if you liked it, you'll likely to enjoy Ambermoon too. Cedric, while a mixture of genres, often feels more like an adventure than a platformer, so... It's fun but I'm not sure it knows what it is itself. Not everyone enjoys its gameplay loop. The next video after this one is another of those Obscure DOS Games one, but after that, it's probably next about Amiga exes. Though I wanna fit in at least one episode for Early Windows and C64 before end of December. So, we'll see how it'll go. But yeah, I had fun with this first episode, so it's definitely going to be a thing.

[@Grzegorz54321]

Have you seen Dread on Amiga, it's a masterpiece of optimization.

[@nicholsliwilson]

@@Grzegorz54321 never plaid it but just had a look & yeh, it looks really impressive. I’ll have to give it a go. Retro gaming is a weird thing isn’t it? I can play far more sophisticated & better looking games on my modern(ish) PC & yet seeing a recent, really well optimised game for a 16bit home micro from my youth makes me happy.

[@ihateevilbill]

2:15 Alien Breed 3D 2 was so impressive. I remember having a copy that I tried in my A1200 (which had the 8MB upgrade). You had to play it on a postage stamp sized screen. Luckily I had already been saving up for a Blizzard 1230 @ 50Mhz + 68882 FPU (and a 16MB stick of ram instead of 8) and if I remember right it would actually play pretty well. Something like 3/4 screen size. Gloom, Frontier Elite 2 and Super Skidmarks 2 were the main reasons I was upgrading (oh, and shapeshifter so I could play Marathon and Links golf) and I wasnt disappointed. It ended up having a 120MB hard drive in it as well... Right up until it decided not to switch on one day. I wasnt pleased.

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

Oh... Frontier is one of my all time faves on any platform. It must've been amazing having it run at full speed! :)

[@ihateevilbill]

@@OldAndNewVideoGames It really was. Even the intro ran smoother with the 030. Me and my best friend would sit and watch the space opera before playing. So good. The only problem was that the frontier engine couldnt tell if a space port was on the front side or back side of the planet. If it was on the back side there was a real good chance you'll be flying into the planet at 1 million mph. Save and save often ;) XD

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

@@ihateevilbill Ha ha ha :) Yeah, I heard about it. I never had a better Amiga than A500, and moved to PC directly after so I never experienced it. But PC's port had its own slew of issues. Though it all may have missed me cause I used to land and take off by hand.

[@ihateevilbill]

@@OldAndNewVideoGames The A1200 was my pride and joy (as you could probably tell). I even added a cd-rom to the machine. And that meant having to build my own 2.5" to 3.5" IDE adapter. Those were the days. I also eventually moved to PC around the time of Wolfenstein or possibly Doom. I was doing an HND in computing at the time so had access to a lot of PCs. My friend was so addicted to Doom he failed his HND XD The only thing I didnt like was the lack of game controller compatability when I first moved to PC. It felt like being back on the Spectrum using QAOP to play side scrollers. It was all very strange. It wasnt until I converted a PS1 controller to use the parralel port that gaming actually became fun again.

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

@@ihateevilbill Arguably, the Amiga choice of controllers, while very open and could even use those from some of the older systems (all my C64 joysticks graduated to Amiga with me), was the biggest limiting factor for it. Single-button controls was terrible. I mean, it was OK, for those smaller 8bit systems, but we should really get at least 3-buttons on our controllers - be it joysticks or gamepads. And I know that some joysticks had 2 separate buttons and some games supported it. But that's not only at least a button to few, but also few and far between.

[@AntipaladinPedigri]

19:40 The first Tomb Raider got heavy flack for killing wild cats, too.

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

Weird times, right?

[@sideeggunnecessary]

I remember laser squad and eye of the beholder 2

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

Great games, both. Neither an exclusive. :)

[@raggeragnar]

Black crypt is one of the dozen+ games that made me buy an Amiga.

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

I remember playing it first and expecting nothing special. It was a copy I got from a buddy of mine and read nothing about it before, so I didn't even know what it's gonna be. But it really surprised me.

[@raggeragnar]

@@OldAndNewVideoGames : I had played Dungeon master and Eye of the beholder before Black crypt , and being fond of that genre , I didn’t think any game could top them. I was wrong. First came eobt2 and then Black crypt. My oh my how sweet it was.

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

@@raggeragnar I love to be "disappointed" like that. ;)

[@arudegesture]

I think it's a good theme for a new series! Keep 'em coming!👍

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

Oh, I will. Next one next week.

[@arudegesture]

@@OldAndNewVideoGames Nice!

[@drstephenstrange897]

I'm still haunted today by the sound of those eyeball monsters in Black Crypt.

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

Ha ha ha :) But good memories otherwise, right?

[@drstephenstrange897]

@@OldAndNewVideoGames Oh yeah!

[@AmigaDog]

Hell yeah Do More Amiga videos😅🤘🏻

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

The next video (as voice over RAWs for it are recorded already) will be the next episode of Obscure DOS Games, but after that, more likely than not, I'm doing a second of Amiga Exclusives.

[@AdurianJ]

Loved Black Crypt

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

Good game!

[@ObiKKa]

Ah. I like the idea of showing average user ratings from LemonAmiga's database at the bottom right corner of the video screen for all games.

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

Yeah, it's gonna be a thing now. I like it too. :) It's in the second (today's) video too.

[@sheets75]

My only complaint about Agony is that the enemies tend to be dully colored and often are camoflaged in the backgrounds. Which was probably done on purpose to make the game harder.

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

That may be the case.

[@Asphodellife]

The fact that Apocalypse did not run in 50fps was a real shame to me; I wanted to play it so bad, but the lower framerate hurt my eyes. Pity it was not optimized better. Breathless was very good looking for the time; compared to the blockyness that was Gloom and Alien Breed 3D with great in-game sound and atmosphere. I think it was the turning point whereafter the Amiga got titles like Nemac IV using even higher resolutions if you had the machine for it.

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

If you had the machine for it is a great summary of these more demanding shooters. That's why I liked Gloom Deluxe, cause you could make it run on a basic Amiga. Sure, it was in a very small window, but it worked. Same for The Citadel. You could say that I was "a fan" of squeezing as much as it was possible from the aging basic hardware. :)

[@AntipaladinPedigri]

2:59 *is being shot at* Protagonist: *looks away instead of dodging* damn, maybe if I don't see my enemy, he won't see me, too?

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

So, kinda like with the urban legend about dinosaurs? That they only saw movement?

[@jothain]

Imo Arabian Nights is very under rated game. I think it gets better pretty much throughout the game. Also the side scrolling shooter parts are better made than ie. Mario games.

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

I loved Arabian Nights, and I'm glad to find someone else who did too. It's a quality title, and it's a wonder that it wasn't ported to any other system.

[@AntipaladinPedigri]

18:24 the King could have at least given you some pants before sending you out on a deadly quest for a trinket he misplaced in a drunken stupor

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

:)

[@Toon_Pirate]

Is Brian the Lion the Bubsy of the Amiga?

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

That's... That's a valid question. o_O

[@AntipaladinPedigri]

1:11 damn, so this is the route Hedwig had to pass to deliver Hogwarts acceptance letters. No wonder I never received mine! All because someone did a pisspoor job at guiding her through the obstacles!

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

Or she's like the Santa. And you didn't make the cut. ;)

[@sideeggunnecessary]

Who gave the black crypt characters game of thrones names 😂😂😂

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

Or... who copied Black Crypt characters into GoT? ;)

[@elmariachi5133]

I never came to play BlackCrypt, yet- But don't you dare even comparing EotB to Dungeon Master just because of the graphics. We all know that EotB is a joke in this 'contest'. ;)

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

:)

[@Zontar82]

Breathless is the best fps on the system, just like shadow fighter is the best fighting game on the system

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

Both are excellent! :)

[@assassindelasaucisse.4039]

Toasty!

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

:D

[@diegofloor]

Looks like someone grabbed the steam code already, btw (not me)

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

It's alright, maybe you'll be lucky with tomorrow's video. :)

[@diegofloor]

@@OldAndNewVideoGames I mentioned because the sign asked to let you know, but I didn't find any message letting you know haha. BTW, just found your channel and I'm having a great time watching your content.

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

@@diegofloor Thank you so much! :) And please have a little understanding for those older videos of mine if you ever get to them, as they were pretty rough. xD

[@AntipaladinPedigri]

5:35 *attacks guard directly from the front* *dies* *attacks guard from behind* *dies* *runs into guard* *dies* There is no winning at this game, is it?

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

xD

[@AntipaladinPedigri]

7:53 damn, you keep swaying and walking into walls. How much did you drink last night?

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

A lot but not enough? ;)

[@AntipaladinPedigri]

15:40 Jesus the Dragon? Damn, in what part of the Bible was that?

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

You know how there's the new and old testament? It's from the "oldest testament". ;)

[@AntipaladinPedigri]

They still keep releasing paid DLC for the Bible?

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

@@AntipaladinPedigri Is there any other? The latest, I believe, was the Church Roof addon. ;)

[@DezorianGuy]

Wow, you speak of Ambermoon and mostly show theleast interesting aspects like training your party and saving your game. Didn't you find any more interesting footage of it? It feels like you have no idea what you're doing. Sorry if I sound like a jerk, but Ambermoon is a fantastic game that should be presented in a more convincing manner, so that more people get to play it.

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

I actually completed Ambermoon, and agree that it's fantastic. It was easily one of my most favourite RPGs on the Amiga. That said, as you probably noticed not all videos are my own. The reasons are many, but most immediate of them all would probably be time. So, sorry to disappoint, I hope that you found at least a thing or two else interesting in the video. And if not, I get that too. Thanks for watching nonetheless! :)

[@theriverofgordon1470]

Agony is a beautiful game but it always struck me as a very bland game.

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

Well, it had pretty stiff competition on Amiga.

[@theriverofgordon1470]

@@OldAndNewVideoGames that is true. I should try it out again sometime just for curiosity sake.

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

@@theriverofgordon1470 :)

[@felipes.carvalho8790]

assassins special edition = loser Strider

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

It's not that bad, at least compared to Amiga's Strider.

[@gsestream]

at least ab3d:II is actually reasonable, the first part is trash. I wonder if descent could have been done on amiga, as the actual nice looking 3d game. aladdin

[@danyoutube7491]

In my opinion Breathless was visually pretty and smart, but bland. Alien Breed 3D, despite being pixelated, was far more interesting and colourful and had excellent level design. There was visual variety in the different weapons and you could actually see your weapon on screen, whereas with Breathless you didn't which just exacerbates the nagging sense of emptiness in its grey, monotonous world. The Breed 3D games had much more varied and interesting environments.

[@federicocatelli8785]

Dunno Descent on Mac works only with PowerPC equipped machines

[@brdfsz9142]

I have to protect the first AB3D. Actually this game is really fun with real 3D (with water!) what running reasonably well on a plain A1200. Chunky, yes, but that's the performance what can do with only Chip RAM (read the TL;DR below), and a reasonably cheap, but not too fast CPU (68EC020). That's actually the market on Amiga where the companies can sell games. CPU accelerators/RAM expansion is too expensive in those times - a 68040 or a '60 CPU was just a dream for most of the Amiga users. If I right remember the AB3DII is failed from financial perspective. In the video, the Breatless part is a part of a longplay what played on an emulator (actually played by me) where CPU -> Chip RAM speed is breakable (with this, the emulation is not perfect, but Breatless doesn't care). Without this, the game can only do 20-22 FPS even with very fast CPU emulation (even order of magnitude multiple of any real Amiga CPU can do). TL;DR: The actual problem with Amiga full screen texture mapped 3D was mostly the Chip RAM bandwidth (more specifically the CPU -> Chip RAM data copy) and the base computer's configuration (like a plain A1200) where there is no other RAM, just chip RAM (where the CPU actually only get half of the RAM's cycles = roughly can do half of the possible CPU performance). And the smaller part of the problem is the special planar display mode (what's perfect for bitplane manipulation - eg. what do in 2D platformers - but horrible for raw bit data display - like copy calculated 3D images to the display RAM (on those times, where no physical 3D accelerators)). (Chip RAM that's where the graphics display is done - more or less like VRAM in PC's graphics cards, but in Amiga other functions too using this RAM, eg. sound.) The first problem (CPU -> Chip RAM data copy) sadly can't evadable, that's why can't see games what can higher than 20-22 FPS (in 320x200/240/256 resolution) even with very fast CPU (68060, or later PowerPC), on AGA chipset (the chunky to planar conversion is actually can do with clever code, with minimal impact to the performance). Unless the CPU can actually calculate all 3D with reasonable speed (like Descent on Amiga with external graphics card and a 040 or 060 CPU - running perfectly fine, like on PCs - but these Amiga configuration's price is horrible in those times), the data can't copy to the Chip RAM fast enough to display.

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

I think there actually was port of Descent on Amiga, but years after it was only kept alive but the remaining few fans, and Commodore and Escom have been long no more.

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

I agree.