Amiga CD32 and Amiga 500/1200 Shoot Em Ups

[Ceph]

I suppose only few people here have an Amiga CD32; it was only sold for a short time in 1993/94 (until Commodore went belly up) and got most support from European developers. Back in the day the high price and lack of original games was prohibitve (many titles were just slightly reworked Amiga 500 games with CD music slapped on).
Nowadays you can get used CD32s and games relatively cheap, and since no-one knows how long those old magnetic Amiga floppies are going to last, I decided to buy a CD32 a short while ago. After all the real thing is so much nicer than an emulator.

Which shmups are must-haves for the system?

So far I got:

-Project X (vertical): Left me underwhelmed. Looks very basic; has a PD feel to it. Why does it get so much praise?

-Disposable Hero (vertical): One of the best Euro shmups. Great music and graphics. Not an easy game; you get 1 credit only.

-Banshee: Nice looking horizontal shooter by Core Design apparently inspired by 1942. I haven't played it much yet. Very weird background story.

[Shatterhand]

You already got the 2 must-have shmups for the system: Disposable Hero and Banshee.

Super Stardust is an asteroids clone.... but it is THE asteroids clone, if you have any interest in Asteroids gameplay, then this is a must have


Other options are Fly Harder and Jetstrike, though neither of them are exactly shmups.

Overkill is a nice defender clone

There's an horizontal shmup by the name of "Lunar-C" which I never played, so I have no idea.


Seek & Destroy is awesome, though far from being a shmup (It's more a Desert Strike alike without strategy and with lots more of shooting and explosions).


And that pretty much nails the whole shmup library for the system. There are some borderlines though.

[neorichieb1971]

Project X is a hori.

And in the day, it was awesome.


What about SWIV? No CD32 release?

[Shatterhand]

Disposable Hero is horizontal too.

ARe you playing on a TATE setup???

[Ceph]

Oops! And Banshee is a vert. It was late and I was tired

[Shatterhand]

Yeah, I am sure you were using a TATE setup now

[ill6]

Or lying down while playing!

[dakidski]

If you are into piracy, I highly recommend the 'cd32-888' compilation. (or, cd32-444, cd32-350, and so on and so forth. There are under 10 in total). They have all worthy games and demos on them, so you wont have to wear and tear your originals.

[dakidski]

Oh, and they made most amiga500 games run on cd32 too! So almost every shmup is on them.

[Turrican]

So far I got:

-Disposable Hero (vertical): One of the best Euro shmups. Great music and graphics. Not an easy game; you get 1 credit only.

-Banshee: Nice looking horizontal shooter by Core Design apparently inspired by 1942. I haven't played it much yet. Very weird background story.

Did you get these two original, or just you know, through other means? Because I've been looking for them, especially DHero - maybe you can redirect me to a trusted seller?

[dakidski]

So far I got:

-Disposable Hero (vertical): One of the best Euro shmups. Great music and graphics. Not an easy game; you get 1 credit only.

-Banshee: Nice looking horizontal shooter by Core Design apparently inspired by 1942. I haven't played it much yet. Very weird background story.

Did you get these two original, or just you know, through other means? Because I've been looking for them, especially DHero - maybe you can redirect me to a trusted seller?

I might have them, I'll check and report back. My copies are pal though. One store here in scandinavia still sells cd32 games, they even have unopened stuff... www.betafon.dk

[Turrican]

I might have them, I'll check and report back. My copies are pal though. One store here in scandinavia still sells cd32 games, they even have unopened stuff... www.betafon.dk

That's perfect with me, I live in Italy so I am PAL. Thanks a bunch!!

[Ceph]

So far I got:

-Disposable Hero (vertical): One of the best Euro shmups. Great music and graphics. Not an easy game; you get 1 credit only.

-Banshee: Nice looking horizontal shooter by Core Design apparently inspired by 1942. I haven't played it much yet. Very weird background story.

Did you get these two original, or just you know, through other means? Because I've been looking for them, especially DHero - maybe you can redirect me to a trusted seller?

Yes, they are originals. I got them from ebay; there may actually be a second copy of Disposable Hero on the way to me right now (part of a bulk sale). I'll know in a few days.

[Limbrooke]

Is the version of Project X you have the original or the 1993 re-release with modified difficulty?

Also, I never knew P-X was a CD32 game, although my Amiga knowledge is pretty limited, I figured it came out normally on floppies first.

[Shatterhand]

Well, it was released first in floppies indeed.

95% sure that the CD32 version was the 1993 special edition one. Wasnt this actually released with another game in the CD ?

[Ceph]

It's on one CD with F17 Challange, and it says "1993 Special Edition" on the title screen.

[Turrican]

It's on one CD with F17 Challange, and it says "1993 Special Edition" on the title screen.

and you can thank god for that.

p.s. very interested in DH - keep in touch!

[NAVVARR]

There were also the 'alien breed' games released for the CD32.

A must-have is 'Tower Assault'- its a great game. Also the CD32 version had a 'intro movie' -starring some of the authors of the game - it is one of the funniest intro's you'll ever see -not intensionally. -Its pure CHEESE -hilarious.

I know these ain't classic shooters, but the CD32 version of the Chaos Engine is also worth checking out- you can pick it up for buttons on ebay tooo.

[Shatterhand]

Alien Breed Tower Assault indeed is an awesome game.

The Chaos Engine is a game everyone should play. Great stuff.

[elend]

I vote Disposable Hero for the best Shmup on the Amiga. (http://www.andersdenkend.com/zwischenra ... able_Hero/ for a gallery).

Also Banshee has already been recommend and the infamous Project X, too. For some odd reason I don't like Project X that much anymore. It just feels weird to play it after all these years whilst playing japanese shmups in the meantime.

I know, this is a CD32 topic, but I have to recommend some normal (as in Amiga 500 / 1200) and maybe less known Amiga games, too.

Carcharodon - White Shark

I never ever played that one and it's quite expensive on ebay, but hey, it looks rather gorgeous?




T-Zer0

Released very very late in the Amigas last days by ClickBoom (who also released Capital Punishment). This Game is very european, yet features some great graphics and fullscreen bosses. The follow up was released on the PC as T-Zwei or.. uh.. forgot the other name.

Here's a videoclip: http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?doc ... 3834815492

[Herr Schatten]

I vote Disposable Hero for the best Shmup on the Amiga.

Only if you go by graphics alone. The best Amiga shmup is still Apidya. Uridium 2 and Z-Out I like also better than Disposable Hero. However, it's easily in the same league as Battle Squadron, which means it's top stuff.

Carcharodon - White Shark

I never ever played that one and it's quite expensive on ebay, but hey, it looks rather gorgeous?

It looks better in stills than in the actual game. The backgrounds don't look that great on every stage and they are very very repetitive. Most of the sprites look rather shitty and are badly animated. The gameplay is not so hot either. Lots of very uninspired formations. An interesting twist is that you have to fullfill a certain shotdown ratio per level. If you don't reach it, you have to play the level you just beat over again. While this is an interesting idea, it gets annoying really soon. The game's not totally bad, but there's a ton of shmups for the system I'd get and play before that.

[Ceph]

I've got the compilations recommended above; unfortunately some of my old favorites aren't on them.

Can anyone point me to a guide that explains how to convert adf-files so they can be loaded from CD? Better yet, is there a tool to create CD32 CDs?

For instance, I'd love to play some Paradroid '90 on my CD32. Uridium 2 isn't on any of the of the compilation CDs either...

[fl0w]

If you like Defender, you'll love Datastorm.

[Necronom]

@elend
You probably mean Steel Saviour...most people I know hate it, but I think it's pretty cool. It's definitely rather strange and it's hard to describe but you have to get the groove of it in order to enjoy it. At the beginning it seemed totally unplayable but after a while...has some impressively surreal shipdesigns though.

@ceph
Imho Uridium2 is by far the best one - fast gameplay and a really nice metalic look similar to the one of the Bitmap Brothers. Get one of those USB-Competitionpros for your PC and play it on Winuae. Even by todays high standards it's a nice one

[Shatterhand]

Well, T-Zero is often regarded as shit...great graphics, bad gameplay.

Not to mention that anything published by Clickboom should be avoided by other reasons (Research a bit about them and you will find they were a PUBLISHER who BADLY fucked up with the live of many people)


And I'll agree with Herr Schatten, Apidya is by far the best shmup on Amiga. Even then, Uridium 2, Battle Squadron and Disposable Hero are among the best surely I don't dig Z-Out as much as Herr Schatten though I think it's an awesome game, but I like Disposable Hero a little more

Regarding graphics, XP8 is usually regarded as a shmup with awesome graphics (As T-Zero is), but I can't say much about it, as the gameplay is HORRIBLE and I could never stand playing it for too long

http://hol.abime.net/1612/

And of course Stardust and Super Stardust , if you consider them shmups, though they are more about pre-rendered stuff than cool pixel-art.

[Ceph]

And of course Stardust and Super Stardust , if you consider them shmups, though they are more about pre-rendered stuff than cool pixel-art.

Stardust sure was impressive back in the day, especially the tunnel sequence. I played it on my trusty Amiga 500 about 12 years ago; didn't know there was a CD32 version.

[Shatterhand]

Only Super Stardust has a CD32 version.

The Tunnel sequence was mind-blowing for its time and hardware indeed.

There was an article in a british magazine (The One) where Andrew Braybrook (The guy behind Uridium 2, and one of the most amazing coders of its time) analysed the coding of the most impressive games on Amiga (like Elfmania and Turrican 2), and one of the games was Stardust.. he said that the Tunnel Sequence atually had just 3 frames of animation (If you remember, it looked SMOOTH as hell), and the thing animated in such a way to create an optical illusion that made it look very smooth. What made he go really crazy though was that the WHOLE sequence, with sprites, music and everything occupied just 96kb on the disk. At this he said something to the lines "I have no idea of how they crammed all this in just 96kb".

That article was very interesting reading

[Necronom]

@Shatterhand
Do have maybe a link to this article or even a scan of the magazine? Would love to read it. This whole 96kb talk reminds me very much of the demo scene...mainly a European thing. Are you guys familiar with the German codergroup Farbrausch? They did this really nice looking FPS called "kkrieger"...seriously cool graphics and just 96k! Just mindblowing! Would love to see backgrounds for 2Dshmups rendered this way...

Here's the link to the FPS...yeah I know, slightly offtopic, sorry:

http://212.202.219.162/kkrieger

[Shatterhand]

Yeah, I've seen this game, though it needed a heavy machine to run properly.

I don't have a scan of this article... I'll look on my old magazines later to see if I can find it, if I do, I'll scan it and post it somewhere, ok?

The stuff he found about Elfmania was really nice, I would never notice if I hadn't read that article. Turrican 2, in other hand, for most of the time uses just old tricks

[Ceph]

Project X seems to have a bug - when you move your ship, weapons and upgrades are sometimes selected without pressing a button. I tried the game with two different joypads and in two different CD32s, same outcome.