Obscure Amiga Games - Part 23

Another week, another 10 Obscure Amiga Games. :) Also, a sci-fi inspired problem in the outro, and one that's been bothering me for years...
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Gameplay recordings that you've seen in this video as a background to my commentary in no small part 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
0:19 Beavers (‪@worldoflongplays‬ /played by NPI)
2:38 Battle Valley (‪@towerbridge04‬ )
4:52 Beastlord (‪@worldoflongplays‬ /played by RickyC)
7:29 Bermuda Project (‪@1goshortplay‬ )
9:42 Beyond Dark Castle (‪@insanelygruz‬ )
11:41 Blade (‪@AlexMenchi‬ )
13:48 Black Shadow (‪@hipoonios‬ )
16:21 Blastar (‪@AlexMenchi‬ )
17:56 Blasteroids (‪@oldschoolstyle1883‬ )
19:30 Blazing Thunder (‪@worldoflongplays‬ /played by Schlauchi)
21:09 Outro & The Big Bang Problem
#retrogames #retrogaming #amiga

[@J_Stamps86]

Beastlord is the game that I was trying to remember a while back!!! So glad to finally have that itch scratched, haha. Also, nice to see Beavers which I also used to play but had completely forgotten existed until now. This is why I love this channel.

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

Glad that I could help! Not even knowing that I am. ;)

[@williamwright9079]

Beastlord had alot of atmosphere. Moody graphics and the strange ambient sound driving your adventure on to interact with weird charactors and beating up drunk thugs in a forest. The matrix is real!

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

OMG, I bet that they use me to power a toaster, or a welder that's never used cause it's rusted or something. ;)

[@kyleolson8977]

Beavers: The intro to Beavers (at least on Amiga CD32) is legendary. The whole presentation outside of the gameplay is charming, although I think the actual in-play graphics are not as strong, but still appealing. Battle Valley: Chopper control has strong Choplifter vibes, particularly when the chopper turns to face the camera. I think this game was some important starting point for a few people (or at least very close to it). There's a name on here: "Charles Deenen", a Dutch sound developer who was Audio Director for Interplay games like Fallout and Baldur's Gate and is a senior sound director at EA Canada. This was either his first or second game. I think there's also a Lamborghini podcast where's he's talking about the sound of the car. I haven't had chance to do all the research, but I imagine he is full of interesting stories. Beastlord: I would say he's more of a "Dar" from "Beastmaster" than a "Riddick". The game makes the unusual choice to use Parallax Scrolling for the main playfield. This is why they use this surface that looks like thick purple vines. It gives the game a sense of speed, but it also doesn't feel like any sort of natural terrain and character movement speeds don't match the terrain. Bermuda Project: I assume you're searching the sea to solve the mystery of what happened to Robert Maxwell. As a very early mouse adventure game Bermuda's context menu approach feels like the adventure game "Road not taken" when compared to the LucasArts style. Beyond Dark Castle: Dark Castle was a game only tolerable on the original releases, especially the Mac, where players did not have high expectations for a platformer control scheme and the audio-clip sound effects were cute as opposed to ear piercing. Even by the Genesis release in 1991 the gameplay was ancient. I suppose it could be viewed like an intentionally tough modern game like Octodad, but I have no patience for those. Beyond did not get as many ports, so it's likely that the audience was getting smaller. Blade: It makes sense the publisher made a mess releasing this. The best choice for the game probably would have been to port to PC. It's too late for the Amiga and the game is pushing the limits. The assets/idea would have been good enough for a niche PC release in 1997-1998. But if the publisher had no money, then they would want to get it out the door and take in a few bucks. Black Shadow: I love the old fashioned Controller/Mouse indicators. The use of the Amiga sphere gives the game the feel of "Amiga Demo" Blastar: It's Core, It's 1993, it looks very professional. Blasteroids reminds me of Strike Force. Strike Force was the Defender sequel from the post boom arcade years. Both games use the colorful palette that Atari and Midway used individually from the mid 1980's until the early 1990's, although Blasteroids is unmistakably Atari Games. The game is clearly inspired by Sinistar. If you told me this game was started at Williams as a Sinistar sequel and snuck over to Atari Games, I would believe you. I wonder why this game wasn't bigger in the Arcade? I'm pretty sure I saw it, but not very much. It might no have been the style of the time. Maybe it doesn't play well. It's not particularly flashy for a 1987 machine. Blazing Thunder: Someone realized that they liked the part of Ikari Warriors where you got into a tank and made that the game. I can't prove that's the origin story, but I believe it.

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

I can't believe now that I've not made a single beaver joke. It was basically begging for a terrible one. ;) Charles Deenen you say? I'm gonna have to look him up, he does sound interesting, and I *do* love Fallout. Well, parallax is not something that everyone knew how to pull off. But I do appreciate it in all games I see it in. Today, it's nothing special, but back then, it could be the difference between the game that was not special, and one that was considered to be rather nice looking. Well, the further we got into 90s, the less popular were the games that had 8bit 80s design at their core. And good. Cause as much as I loved these, old should be old, and new should be new. If that even makes sense. xD Sadly, most late Amiga games, and by late I mean past 1995, were rather disappointing. In one way or another. You know, any origin that can't be disproved is true until it is (disproved). ;) Not true obviously, but you know, there's noone here to disprove it. ;)

[@calibmatlock]

Beavers is gorgeous to look at. It's so smooth.

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

OMG! And now I don't know if it was not a pun. ;)

[@pju28]

How the last time I wrote in the comments, you do awesome videos and show real obscure games I never heard about it. Well done 👍! Greetings from Austria 🇦🇹

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

Thanks a lot! :) Doing my best! New video tomorrow btw.

[@Bowen_Landry]

I fully agree with you on Riddick, except maybe include those old xbox entries. I heard they are great.

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

Oh, the Riddick game's were really good!

[@Zontar82]

the first dark castle was literally unplayabòe, the second one seems a BIT better. Thanks for the video :)

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

Amiga also had a practice mode where you could move your character with a mouse all around the screen, so you could kinda cheese your way around a particularly demanding stage if you had to. xD

[@Toon_Pirate]

I update my CV with every new title and good quality you bestow upon me as a viewer. I'm nearing critical mass in unhirability - employers simply can't afford a graphic designer with an intergalactic hero side hustle!

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

Avengers don't need to hold real life jobs, they need to save universes. I will direct you towards either @MrBeast or Elon Musk, perhaps one would be willing to finance your heroic endeavours! :)

[@TeaAndTankControls]

The ending got me so intrigued, I dropped my earphone in my dinner trying to hear it better. The earphone appreciated it too, as it was slightly hungry. The big bang theory, huh? (Pun not intended, go figure) I've heard theories that the universe is in fact "pulsing", so from the big bang it expands, then contracts again into another big bang. Though why would it contract, what force would cause that? Only now do I ask myself that question... There are theories about the simulation too and, as a big Matrix fan, I'd say it's plausible, with the appropriate amount of Agent Smiths and Oracles. Joke aside, that little theory is supposedly proven. You know, how the particles act differently when observed than when not. So not only are we a simulation, we're also some being's Netflix show. As a serious personal opinion, I don't know... I honestly think the whole thing is a hell lot bigger than us ants. Plus, some definitive proof would be nice. PS Of course the simulation can run Crisis. This is Crisis. ^^

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

If it was a simulation though, would lean more towards zoo-kind of a simulation or ancestor one? That said, there's another option. They always show us a milky way as this huge spiral of solar systems. Which is correct. But 2D. And if you've ever saw how it looks like in 3D (and there's pictures of it online), it kinda looks like neurons in a brain. It's funny to think that perhaps our solar system is just one brain cell, of a bigger much advanced organism, and our planet may very well just be a rotting part of that cell, slowly speeding up its decaying. But it will carry on, for millions of years longer, for as long as that bigger creature will be alive for. And what that creature is? Perhaps a space whale? It's just a theory, a space theory. ;)

[@TeaAndTankControls]

@@OldAndNewVideoGames I'm not familiar with the ancestor simulation idea. Can you please explain it? I would like to think we're an adventure game but I think we're more like the Sims, more or less autonomous, but with some mischievous space kid sometimes intervening to make our lives hard and see how we react. There is this kind of Sims theory in Callahan's crosstime saloon. A great adventure game btw. Hmm, we being part of a huge organism isn't such an out there theory actually. It makes sense, since everything is kind of connected. It would be a problem if the organism started dying itself. Like in Serge Brussolo's book called "the fever" (more or less), where the planet is a living organism but getting sick and dying and how that alters the landscape, weather etc. Another book that would make a great movie. Oh my goodness, I forgot about the rest of the video. It is indeed top notch jokes all around. Tell me please the beaver lore is for real in the game, that would be great :D

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

@@TeaAndTankControls I'll start from the end, because why not. ;) Beaver lore is 100% correct and in the intro. Part of which is in the intro to the video itself. I didn't fit all of it, and when I used to use whole intros in the past, my viewership died in like first 15-20 seconds, so not doing it anymore. xD As an interesting tidbit, my first long abandoned YT channel, that was active 15 years ago, I was uploading video game intros only, and had a little over 1000 of them. The username is @kad3t and the channel is still active. Though not being used at all. Just hanging there for posterity. Well, ancestor simulation theory is one of the off-shoots of the simulation theory that assumes that in the future we'll be able simulate brains, whole organisms, and eventually environments. Like a planet, or even maybe a solar system. I like to think of it as hands-off kind of a simulation, though that's my interpretation and not part of it. So, let's say that in the year 3207 we can do it, right? And we somehow lost all information what happened between 7200BC to 2100AD. But we know exactly how life on Earth spawned originally, how it evolved and why it evolved the way it did, and we have some data about pre 7200BC times. And naturally post 2100AD, so we know where we'd end up eventually, how the World would look like, what will be the World's politics and tech level. So, we could craft the simulation using all that data, and just let it run. Without any interruptions, assuming that if we allow it to develop naturally, it should not only show us our evolution but also more or less realistic recreation of history. Funny enough an ancestral simulation theory was one of the ispirations for the Matrix. Heavily modified, but had an impact on the movie none the less.

[@TeaAndTankControls]

@@OldAndNewVideoGames Braver-fu is for real then? How cool! That's one more game for my list. Too long intros do discourage viewers, I've noticed that myself. But sometimes I can't help it. I'd check out your old channel, since I appreciate a good intro. May I ask why you abandoned it and started a new one? That is one convoluted theory and sounds a lot like the pre-history in Foundation. But there are so many moving parts, I don't think the future people are going to get the same result as their reality. Maybe there's something like a butterfly effect at some point. Also, it sounds too much like "we all have a predetermined destiny", which is something I personally don't like.

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

@@TeaAndTankControls Oh, no, not the beaver-fu. Just the music bands and the kidnappings. ;) I didn't abandoned that channel and started this. Not the case whatsoever. I've abandoned that channel. 13 years have passed, and I've started this one. :)

[@Qba86]

"I refuse to acknowledge any other movies" Escape from Butcher Bay *was* quite cinematic. Does it count? ;)

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

Oh, the games were fantastic!

[@colleenlove2114]

Very cool thanks 🍒😃

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

Likewise! :)

[@obscuredoblivion444]

In the beginning was the Word

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

:)

[@ObiKKa]

A typo in the fourth title in the description's list. It's Bermuda, not Permuda at the start. - BTW, the developer of the sixth title, Blade, still has a company and put up many old games on his itch and Steam store pages, including a couple remasters from a series in this year of 2024. His itch page is mostly focused on music somehow. They are also linked to his Bandcamp page for music downloads. There's even a Wikipedia page about him but it's mostly focused on his music, writing and drawing works.

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

It's fixed. Thanks! :) And that's interesting... I suppose he moved to music. Less stressful occupation perhaps?

[@nicholsliwilson]

Beavers looks interesting? Looks & from what you’ve said like it should have been bigger than it was? I’ll have to try it out? Battle Valley look like an 8bit game with 16bit graphics but it looks fairly good for 1989. Speaking of 8bit on later hardware, Beastlord. I don’t know Bermuda Project but it’s UI is interesting, with branching menus to choose actions? Animated features in dialogue boxes is quite good for the time? Beyond Dark Castle is a fun one. It plays pretty well & it is different in it’s own way. I’d suggest people give it a go to see how they find it? Blade’s from 1997? Thats late for an Amiga release but then again there are nee games coming out now so what do I know? Black Shadow includes some varied graphics on screen but that really doesn’t help because it’s a visual mess & the bad controls don’t do it any favours. Saying that Blaster looks great but is also let down by over-thought controls. Did I learn about Blasteroids from your channel? I know I only found it recently? It’s fun but it does try to do too much instead of just iterating on Asteroids. Funny thing, I know of Blazing Thunder but I didn’t remember a thing about it until just now! I do remember it being fun though. It’s a matter of personal opinion but I think the big bang was a large explosion… what? 😄 Seriously though, I think the nature of the universe is totally beyond our comprehension. The universe is infinite but as finite beings we can only truly understand finite concepts, for now anyway. Fun video with a great variety of games & a philosophical question at the end, thanks!

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

Beavers, I feel, was a bit underappreciated. Sure, it's not the best platformer out there, especially on the Amiga, but it's really good nonetheless. Oh Beastlord... I definitely do not recommend it. Talking about new games, I am actually considering at some point starting new series with games released for older platforms today. That's in the future though. While Blasteroids may be objectively speaking the best out of all three shooters, I think I like Blaster most. Its controls are not great but can be gotten used to. So, what you're saying is the genesis may be in some other dimension that we have no comprehension of, and while in ours there may have been nothing, or even it (the dimension) may have not exist, the others might have? Interesting. It kinda too, in a way, explains a lot. Though leaves me a bit unsatisfied. xD There's gonna be another thing at the end of the next one too... Tomorrow hopefully. There's a lot on my mind, and it's not always something I understand or can explain.

[@nicholsliwilson]

@@OldAndNewVideoGames it’s perfectly possible our finite universe has infinitely expanded & contracted over & over again. Right now we’re expanding but eventually it will collapse in to one limp of all matter & when it’s compressed down as far as it can it will explode again *BUT* that’s really just trying to explain it in finite terms again. I personally think we can’t understand the ultimate base of our universe because it doesn’t fit anything we understand or can conceptualise, it doesn’t fit in to our understanding of physics at it’s most fundamental level. That being said it could turn out to be so much simpler than we ever imagined & we as a species will be pissed off we didn’t get it all along? 😄

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

@@nicholsliwilson Well, it is possible that we wont be able to understand everything about universe ever, or at least until we're capable of observing other dimensions. But if we were to spend as much money on research as we spend on wars, wouldn't we be progressing in an exponential rate?

[@nicholsliwilson]

@@OldAndNewVideoGames yep, yes we would. Unfortunately as I’ve said many times, humanity is too stupid to survive & we’ll be the architects of our own destruction. Sorry to bring the mood down.

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

@@nicholsliwilson Oh, you're definitely not bringing the mood down. I too believe that we're going to destroy ourselves. I would love us to have some restraint and not do it, if possible, but I'm not having high hopes.

[@arielbochman]

What game is the outro from? It's beautiful!

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

It's from Blastar :)

[@toxicmule]

If we are living in a simulation, I would really appreciate someone letting me know the cheat codes. I am tired of this class and would like to try out a different one.

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

Ah, the Matrix approach. So, if there are pre-set rules, and they are run by the machine, using code no less, there have to be ways to break it, bug it, or otherwise find a hole that would allow for bending or omitting of said rules. Yep, I'd like a cheat of my own too.

[@toxicmule]

@@OldAndNewVideoGames I tried jumping up, sitting down, moving left, right, left , right but couldn't figure out what to press for B, A, Start, or Select. Will update if I figure it out....

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

@@toxicmule Have you tried the Konami code?

[@toxicmule]

@@OldAndNewVideoGames Great minds think alike! I only have half the code so far...where is Indiana Jones when ya need him? =)

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

@@toxicmule This comment says something completely different in my email notifications. That's fine though, and don't worry, I wouldn't have been offended not picking up on the literal Konami code, it was late here, I sleep for just a couple hours at night, so I allow myself to miss things and make small mistakes. ;) Also, the more pressing question is, where are Ghsotbusters? Cause, who you gonna call!?

[@furiousapplesack]

I also lean toward simulation theory. Or universal reincarnation, like the bang would be the birth, the expansion the growth, planets are molecules, it shrinks in certain ways in certain places as it gets older, and destructive aberrations are cell deaths and cancers. That being said, I don't BELIEVE anything about it as I require hard evidence of some kind, it just seems to me that these two are more likely than the alternatives. Technically, it could even be both theories at the same time. If it makes you feel better, you should view it as a fun thought experiment and nothing more as it would quite literally change nothing about the way you would be conducting yourself. It's like, if you found out for sure that there's a god but knew nothing else about it, that alone tells you nothing. What does the god want you to do? What does it hate? Which religious text is accurate to it, if any? The truth is, nothing fundamentally changes about your life.

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

Nothing's written in stone. Which is great in a way. Cause until we know, we can exercise this little simulation for fun. I don't know which theory is right, or if even any of them are. It may be something else entirely. I do not believe in God however. Or Gods. But if you're leaning towards the simulation theory, which is the one that you think is more feasible? An outside so to speak simulation, meaning someone or something's making a zoo out of us? Or ancestor simulation, so future generations simulating us to learn about our history? First would suggest possibility of some kind of an external influence. Perhaps pushing us to conflict for some higher beings benefit, or halting our progress, or anything else really. I mean, they'd had the means and reason to check out various scenarios. And second seems more observational rather than pro-active. Giving us freedom to make out own mistakes and face the consequences. Or perhaps some other variant?

[@furiousapplesack]

@@OldAndNewVideoGames Yeah, it's funny, a friend of mine once pointed out this conundrum in which claiming simulation theory is almost the same as claiming a god, as the implication is that something created the simulation in the first place. But I don't think that's necessarily the case. In a way, the universe is made of data and math and operates on equations so it stands to reason that evolution had its effect on the system and the math itself evolved. But assuming it WAS created by something, it would be something like us. "Created in its image," in the same way we make videogames and they're always based on human interests and preferences because we have no other way to do it. We can't do "programming like a Zebra." Nonetheless, even though I don't believe in a god, I'm open to anything with enough proof. One of the joys of atheism; there is no obligation to make and prove a claim. Maybe the most likely of all, is that no human has ever even begun to think about it accurately or figure it out even .1%.

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

@@furiousapplesack The funny thing about us, is that we can imagine pretty much anything. All of the sci-fi is the best example of that. And that creativity is the best proof that we're not only sentient, but also unsupervised. Why? Because "Human centipede". ;) But seriously, that's good enough for me. I mean, I don't mind. I can be simulated, it's all good for me, for as long as I have my own independence. Or at least no realisation that I am being somehow controlled. Ignorance is bliss. Still, someone once said that if met with a species or civilization evolved and advanced enough, they would appear to us as Gods. Same way we would to let's say someone in the 2000BC. Not only we have tech they could never imagine, but we live longer, and have a whole 7000+ years of knowledge on them available at a moment's notice. Assuming we have that tech with us, like a phone and some kind of a cross-temporal Internet access. On a side note, that's gotta be expensive! And even if we don't, we KNOW a lot. We may not realize it, but we can explain most phenomena like eclipses, earthquakes and such, we know math, like advanced math, and we can pretty much recreate stuff like simple steam engine, printing press, gunpowder, compass, concrete. Most of us could re-create those within couple of tries. And most of it could be like magic to people of 2000BC.

[@gumdeo]

Beavers look great, should have been more widely appreciated. 🦫

[@OldAndNewVideoGames]

I agree!