Universe (Amiga CD32) - Part 2

This week on Super Adventures, I'm still playing 90s point-and-click adventure Universe, because I want to be done with it. I played the demo years ago, when I was young enough for it to be imprinted into my brain and stick there. But I never played through the full game so I have no idea how the story ends and I'm just as clueless about the middle.

I mentioned in PART ONE that I wasn't going to spoil the ending, but I've changed my mind. Because we all deserve closure on this. That means I should give you a SPOILER WARNING. Oh, you should also know that despite what it says in the title, most of these screenshots are from the MS-DOS version of the game, as I switched systems. Not that it makes much difference.

Universe (Amiga CD32) - Part 1

Developer:

Core Design

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Release Date:

1994

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Systems:

Amiga, CD32, MS-DOS

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing Universe, by the makers of Rick Dangerous, Curse of Enchantia and later Tomb Raider. But Curse of Enchantia is the most relevant, seeing as this is a point-and-click adventure game.

Universe got fantastic scores from magazines back in the day, lots of 90s and high 80s... well, except for Amiga Power and Amiga Format, they both totally trashed it. Amiga Power gave it 21%! I've played the demo before so I have an idea of what my opinion's going to be, but I'll see if it changes as I get further into the story.

I should give you a SPOILER WARNING, as I'm going to be playing through a lot of the game. In fact, I'm going to try to finish it, though I'll try not to give the whole thing away. I'd suggest YouTube if you want to see the ending, I'm just showing off things that catch my interest and whining about the things that annoy me.

Lotus Turbo Challenge Games

This week on Super Adventures, I'm taking a trip back to the past... back to the early days of Super Adventures, when I thought it was acceptable to cover a bunch of old-school arcade-style sprite-based racing games in one article. I'd give them each three screenshots and write things like "Dodging cars is hard!" and "Hey, I got first place!" underneath.

I eventually learned my lesson and realised that these kinds of games weren't going to give me much to work with. You have a sprite of a car and you slide it left and right to get around the other cars and obstacles, while also trying to avoid flying off the track on the turns. There, I just described all of them.

But I could never resist showing off screenshots full of art, and it occurs to me that I never got around to covering the biggest stars in the genre. No Out Run, no Road Rash, not even Lotus 1-2-3. Uh, I mean Magnetic Fields' legendary racing trilogy, not the legendary spreadsheet software. Speaking of spreadsheets, did you know Lotus made a car called the Excel?

Anyway, I'm going to play some Lotus games and I'm going to show off all the artwork, and if I can find anything to write about them, well that's a bonus. Screenshots will be from the Amiga 500 versions unless specified otherwise, though I will have a look at some of the ports as well. These games made their way onto all kinds of systems, like the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, C64, PC... though not the NES or SNES for some reason. I've no idea why Nintendo got left out.

There was another game called Lotus Challenge released on the PS2 in 2001, but that's entirely unrelated so I won't be playing that one.

Kid Chaos (Amiga) - Part 2 - Guest Post

Previously on Kid Chaos, danger was lurking around every turn as the displaced caveman fought off rats, bats, bunnies and bees in his frantic escape from THE SECRET -GARDEN-. Will mecha-neko ever live to see world 2-1? Read on!

Kid Chaos (Amiga) - Part 1 - Guest Post

This week on Super Adventures, I've captured guest poster mecha-neko and teleported him to the distant past of 1994 to play a game about a caveman in the future. It's classic Amiga platformer Kid Chaos.

Hello everyone! It's time to dig up something really prehistoric!

Developer:

Magnetic Fields

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Release Date:

1994

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Systems:

Amiga 500, Amiga CD32

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This is Kid Chaos. The apex of Amiga platform action. The one where it all comes together. Years of technological experimentation, observation and innovation have led to this moment.

The title screen alone is lush as heck. The Amiga hardware can select 32 colours at once and this image displays 110 of them. The clouds all drift past at different speeds and everything, but you'll have to take my word for that as the .gif would be huge! It's like something you'd see on an AGA machine, but this is an A500 game.

If you want to see what all the fuss is about, read on!

Kid Chaos (Amiga) - Guest PostPart 1 - Part 2

Operation GII (Demo) (Amiga) - Guest Post

The week on Super Adventures, guest reviewer mecha-neko has dug up something properly obscure for you. It's the demo for a cancelled Amiga first person shooter called Operation Gii! Uh, Operation G2 sorry.

All these Alien Breed games Ray has been playing has inspired me some! I'm going to play a sci-fi shooty survival game of my own.

Developer:

Psygnosis

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Release Date:

August 1994 (Demo)

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Systems:

Amiga

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"Are you ready to battle with rogue robots on a radio-active spaceship in our fab Coverdisk demo?"

You bet I am, Amiga Format!

Mega lo Mania / Tyrants: Fight Through Time (Amiga)

Developer:

Sensible Software

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Release Date:

1991

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Systems:

Amiga, Atari ST, Mega Drive, SNES, DOS, X68000, PC-98, FM Towns

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Today on Super Adventures, I'm finally taking a look at classic Amiga strategy game MEGA lo MANIA (or Mega-Lo-Mania). It's also occasionally known as Tyrants: Fight Through Time in the US. It's never just called Megalomania, though maybe it'll help someone find this page on Google if I mention the word anyway.

This one's by eccentric British developer Sensible Software, creator of games like Wizkid, Cannon Fodder, Sensible Soccer and Sensible Train-Spotting, so I'm expecting to see tiny men running around the screen at some point. I should probably know already if they're in it as I've played the game before, but that was ages ago, I didn't play it for long and my strongest memory of it is being amazed that I actually worked out how to do something. It's one of those games where the first challenge is the interface.

Here's some random trivia for you: when Virgin Games published the game they decided to release a tie-in single called "Mega-Lo-Mania (Goin' All the Way)" to promote it. I don't think the song has any relation to the game or anything that happens in it, but it does have the same cover at least!

Okay I'm going to play this for an hour or so to see what it's like. Which means I'll either make it through a bunch of levels or just get really frustrated on the first one, depending on whether I'm able to figure any of it out. I actually started making some progress in Populous when I wrote about that, so there's always hope.

Mega Motion (Amiga)

Developer:

Extend

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Release Date:

1994

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Systems:

Amiga, DOS

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing... uh... I think it says Mega Motion?

Mega Motion is a budget-priced puzzle game that was originally released on the Amiga in 1994, late in the machine's run, and then two years later on PC, right at end of MS-DOS's run. It was developed by Extend, and it's apparently the only game they ever made.

I have played this one before, but it was years ago when I was a tiny baby and I haven't kept hold of many memories of it. I do still have a vague recollection of what you're supposed to do in the game, but what I mostly remember is that I was eating a pack of strawberry laces at the time. In fact it feels weird to play it without them.

Okay, my first observation is that they've used an extremely 80s snare drum sample in the theme music. The gated reverb is strong with this one. 

Alien Breed (Amiga)

Developer:

Team17

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Release Date:

1991

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Systems:

Amiga, CD32, MS-DOS, Android, PS3, PSVita

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm finally taking a look at classic Amiga run and gun survival horror Gauntlet 'em up Alien Breed! I've put it off for ten years, because it's bastard hard and I suck at it, but it had to happen eventually.

It was made by developer/publisher Team17, currently better known for the dozens of Worms sequels they've made, and for keeping Epic's game store stocked with free games. Alien Breed was their second game (after Full Contact) and their first to be a full-price release. Though it did get a budget re-release, named Alien Breed Special Edition 92. Or maybe Alien Breed '92: Special Edition. It's something like that. Either way it's an interesting choice of title, considering that the movie Aliens: Special Edition was released just a little earlier...

Alien Breed 92 isn't really a special edition however, more like a remix. In fact it's basically a stand-alone expansion pack, with twice the levels of the original and tweaks made in response to feedback, and I expect that if anyone were to ask if you'd played Alien Breed, it's the special edition they'd actually be thinking of. Or maybe they'd be thinking of that Alien Breed: Evolution game from ten years back, I dunno.

I'm going to check out both the Amiga games, original and special edition, to see how different they actually are, and I'll be giving them about an hour each. Though by 'an hour' I really mean '20 minutes', because time works differently when you're being hounded by a relentless murderous swarm of unfriendly extra-terrestrials.

Awesome (Amiga)

Developer:

Reflections

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Release Date:

1990

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Systems:

Amiga, Atari ST, FM Towns

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm looking at classic 90s shoot 'em up Awesome, which was suggested by the folks on my Discord. They realised I'd gotten caught in a bit of a rut last year, playing so many great games, and felt I should bring Super Adventures back to its roots. Its roots of me trying to figure out what the hell I'm doing in some obscure old Amiga game.

You can tell that the game came out before the internet was a thing as Awesome is not a Google friendly title. It says on the box that it has an awesome t-shirt included, but search for 'awesome t-shirt' on image search and you'll be scrolling for a long while before you find it. That's a bit of a difference from Reflections' earlier game Shadow of the Beast, which has a very Googlable name. One thing the two games have in common is the box art, which was a painting by frequent Psygnosis collaborator Roger Dean. You could tell Psygnosis games right away at this point because they were the ones that looked like Yes albums. Edit: none of that is true, the cover is actually a painting from John Harris called MASS: The Building of FTL1, painted about 10 years earlier in 1979.

Alright I'm going to play this for an hour or so and I hope you like GIFs because I'm in the mood for some moving pixels.

Exodus: 3010 - The First Chapter (Amiga) - Guest Post

This week on Super Adventures, guest reviewer mecha-neko has returned to pass judgement upon an old Amiga game from the early 90s that's presumably set 988 years in the future. Unless the title's lying to us.

Happy new year, everyone! Can you believe it's been over ten years since I started playing games as mecha-neko for Super Adventures in Gaming?

Today I'm going to revisit a game from my childhood. It's also one of the first games I wrote about as mecha-neko, but it's not one that's appeared on this site as a Super Adventure.

Developer:

Temet

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Release Date:

January 1992

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Systems:

Amiga 500

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To celebrate its thirtieth anniversary, I present space survival management/flight sim Exodus: '3010: The First Chapter'!

Micro Machines (Amiga)

Developer:

Codemasters

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Release Date:

1993 (Amiga)

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Systems:

Amiga, NES, SNES, SMS, SMD, GG, CD-i, GB, GBC, DOS

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing classic overhead racing game Micro Machines! It looks like it's called MicroMachines, but there is apparently a tiny imperceptible space between the words.

It seems a bit redundant to tell you it's a racing game seeing as I've already written up there that it's by Codemasters, but this was from way back in their early days when they were still allowed to dream of other genres. The title Micro Machines also seems like a bit of a giveaway, but I bet they could've found a way to turn it into a platformer if they'd wanted to. It wouldn't have been the first car platformer I've played.

Though hang on, is this actually the first Codemasters developed game I've played for Super Adventures? It doesn't seem likely, but the only other Codemasters game I can think of is Fantasy World Dizzy and that was developed by the Oliver Twins. Wow, 10 years and there's still veteran AAA developers I haven't played anything by. Though they were more of a B game dev before this came out.

My gimmick this year is that I'm only playing games that I've found on top ten lists, and Micro Machines was #6 in 1995s Amiga Power All-Time Top 100 list. Weirdly it started off down at #17 the year before but I guess it grew on them. The game started life on the NES a couple of years earlier, in 1991, but Codemasters didn't exactly have a licence from Nintendo, so they teamed up with Camerica to come up with sneaky ways to get around the lock out chip with their unlicensed cartridges. My favourite is the pass-through cart that comes with a handle to get it back out of your NES, because it's so distinctive looking. No handles on the Amiga disks though, sadly.

The NES game didn't go through quality assurance either, which made things a bit awkward when they found a bug after they'd started producing ROM chips. I don't know how many console games got a hardware patch, but this is apparently one of them as they stuck a device inside to correct the code. No chips soldered onto the Amiga disks though, sadly.

In fact the Amiga game's been a real let down so far and I haven't even turned it on yet.

Bram Stoker's Dracula (Amiga)

Developer:

Psygnosis

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Release Date:

1994

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Systems:

Amiga + eight other systems

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Today on Super Adventures, Keanu Reeves week continues with Bram Stoker's Dracula on the Amiga! I said I was only going to play three Keanu Reeves games, and this would be the second of them, but things get a little complicated with this one.

Bram Stoker's Dracula was a multiplatform title released to tie in with the 1992 Gary Oldman movie, but not all platforms got the same game. In fact it seems like there's actually five different games here, split across nine different systems. It came out on Amiga, SNES, Mega Drive/Genesis, Game Gear, Master System, NES, Game Boy, Sega CD and DOS PCs, so poor C64 owners were left out this time.

Nine systems in one article is a bit much, so I'm going to focus on the Amiga game mostly and try not to get too carried away with writing about the other versions, but I have to at least take a look at them. Yeah okay, I didn't show off all the different Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure games yesterday, I only played the home computer versions, but in my defence I was busy finishing the entire game three times over.

I'll also try not to spoil too much about the movie, but I get the feeling that's not going to be an issue here.

The Speris Legacy (Amiga CD32) - Part 4 - Guest Post

Previously on the Amiga CD32 Zelda-'em-up The Speris Legacy, I permanently ruined my only save file, and so I decided this time to investigate The Speris Legacy and write some Cool Stuff instead.

The Speris Legacy (Amiga CD32) - Part 3 - Guest Post

Previously on the Amiga CD32 Zelda-'em-up The Speris Legacy, our hero Cho tried to inspect a sinister looking plant and instantly died. What could happen next?

The Speris Legacy (Amiga CD32) - Part 2 - Guest Post

Previously on the Amiga CD32 Zelda-'em-up The Speris Legacy, our hero Cho left Sharma City in search of revenge. What will he find in the farming town of Gilliards Rhine?

The Speris Legacy (Amiga CD32) - Part 1 - Guest Post

This week on Super Adventures, recurring guest poster mecha-neko is back already with a detailed four-part report on what appears to be 'Zelda, but on the Amiga'. It might be good, you never know.

By 1995, the Amiga was done. The CD32 was a year in its grave. All the magazines save for the very nerdiest were shrivelling up into nothing as the games quickly vanished. Darth Vader, Sam and Max and a certain green-clad space marine made sure that there was no place in the computer world for slow moving, ugly games that couldn't talk back to you. Europe was falling in love with the Japanese consoles, every British kid was getting a Mega Drive II for Christmas to replace their Master System II, and Sonic the Hedgehog was appearing in two cartoons at once.

Only the brave, the mad and the heavily invested remained to try to magic up some glory from the abandoned hardware and win the hearts of the Amiga's vast and loyal European install base.

Developer:

Binary Emotions

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Release Date:

February 1996

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Systems:

Amiga 1200, CD32

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Say hello to light-hearted fantasy epic The Speris Legacy, featuring this rather nifty digitised painting of one hopeful adventurer who could easily be Neal McDonough in a blonde mullet.

Amiga Computing magazine described The Speris Legacy as 'pure genius', with its coverdisk demo asking 'The best game of the year?' in bold red letters. Amiga Power dedicated an entire cover to it with a brand new lovely illustration.

The Amiga could still have its hero!

The Speris Legacy (Amiga CD32) - Guest PostPart 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4

Brian the Lion Starring In: 'Rumble In The Jungle' (Amiga) - Guest Post

This week on Super Adventures, mecha-neko has returned to tell you a tale about a lion, called Brian.

Developer:

Reflections

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Release Date:

1994

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Systems:

Amiga 500, 1200, CD32

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Ray and I have played more than a few mascots and almost-mascots for the Amiga, but it's time to show you the last, and best. Introducing Brian the Lion.

Pinkie (Amiga) - Guest Post

This week on Super Adventures, it's guest poster mecha-neko's turn to play a game! I can't be expected to write about all the games all on my own, there are about 10,000 of the bloody things... added to Steam each year. Plus if anyone can find the good in an old Amiga platformer starring a naked pink worm man with no teeth or elbows, it's him. I hope.

Developer:

Data Designs, Scott Williams Games

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Release Date:

Winter 1994

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Systems:

Amiga

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Hello everyone! How are you doing?

I love a good mascot game, don't you? I'm in the mood for an obscure-as-heck Amiga mascot.

Say 'Hi!' to Pinkie, a brave new kind of hero!

Don't you just love him? Look at this happy guy! He's bounding from a platform, cheesing all the baddies off and having a right ball. We're sure to be having some good times jumping around on things together!

Ready?

Super Adventures in Amiga Fighting Games

This week on Super Adventures I'm writing about fighting games on the Amiga! Lots of fighting games, a dozen in fact! Why? Because I'm taking a two month break from Super Adventures after this and I wanted to give you something that takes at least that long to read.

Plus the more of them I play, the less I have to write about each of them, which is good because I am the last person who should be writing anything about fighting games. The only technical terms I know are 'special move' and 'block' and I've had really limited success ever doing either. Though Amigas and I have something in common, as they suck at fighting games too! And not just because of the one-button joystick and floppy drive.

So far this sounds like a lot of reasons why I shouldn't be playing these games, but I think there must be some good screenshots hidden in them somewhere, maybe even some good gameplay. Plus it's given me an excuse to create that nightmare crossover between IK+ and Human Killing Machine's title screens up there.

Anyway, here are 12 fighting games in vaguely chronological order: