Kayleigh's Retro Isolation 2 - Day 38

Captain Planet and the Planeteers for the Commodore Amiga

"A fun platform game. I like the music 6/10"

#retro #retrogaming #captainplanet #amiga  #gaming #isolation

Kayleigh's Retro Isolation 2 - Day 26

The Chaos Engine (AGA Version) for the Commodore Amiga 1200

"Good fun two-player game.  I wasn't very good, but it was still fun.  7 / 10"

#retro #retrogaming #thechaosengine #commodoreamiga #amiga #isolation

Kayleigh's Retro Isolation 2 - Day 13

Chuck Rock for the Commodore Amiga 1200

"It was fun.  The pooping dinosaur made me laugh  7½ / 10"

#retro #retrogaming #chuckrock #amiga #commodoreamiga #isolation

Kayleigh's Retro Isolation 2 - Day 12

Gloom for the Commodore Amiga 1200

"Very sensitive controls, but I liked it.  It's like Doom, but not as good - 8/10"

#retro #retrogaming #gloom #amiga #commodoreamiga #isolation

Kayleigh's Retro Isolation - Day 63

Kayleigh's Retro Isolation - Day 63
Monday 25th May 2020

Cannon Fodder for the Commodore Amiga

"I like this.  It's fun!  7/10" - Kayleigh

Kayleigh's Retro Isolation - Day 46

Kayleigh's Retro Isolation - Day 46
Friday 8th May 2020

Stunt Car Racer on the Commodore Amiga

"Really fun! It's funny when you fall off the track. My favourite track is The Ski Jump. 7/10" - Kayleigh

Kayleigh's Retro Isolation - Day 42

Kayleigh's Retro Isolation - Day 42
Monday 4th May 2020

Superfrog on the Commodore Amiga

"I really like this game.  I've played the remake on the PSVita but this version is really fun.  7/10" - Kayleigh

Kayleigh's Retro Isolation - Day 32

Kayleigh's Retro Isolation - Day 32
Friday 24th April 2020

Magic Pockets for the Commodore Amiga

"Not too sure.  It was Ok, but the controls felt sluggish. 6/10" - Kayleigh

Kayleigh's Retro Isolation - Day 24

Kayleigh's Retro Isolation - Day 24
Thursday 16th April 2020

Pinball Fantasies AGA for the Commodore Amiga 1200

"I like this game. Partyland is my favourite! 7 / 10" - Kayleigh

Kayleigh's Retro Isolation - Day 6

Kayleigh's Retro Isolation - Day 6
Sunday 29th March 2020

Pac-mania for the Commodore Amiga.

"I really like this game, but I have played it before so I knew what I was doing. 9/10" - Kayleigh.

Kayleigh's Retro Isolation - Day 3

Kayleigh's Retro Isolation - Day 3
Thursday 26th March 2020

Lemmings for the Commodore Amiga.

"It was very good until level 10 when it started to get harder. The mouse was very sensitive. I thought the Lemmings were cute. . 8½ / 10" - Kayleigh.

Gaming Memories - December 1989

Looking back at what I was reading and playing exactly 30 years ago this month, December 1989 was a good year for racing games on the Commodore 64. My Amiga owning friends might have had the eagerly awaited home version of Hard Drivin', but I had the Commodore 64 versions of Turbo Outrun and Stunt Car Racer, both of which scored higher than their Amiga counterparts between both Zzap and Commodore User reviews.

It was however around this time when I decided to ditch Commodore User in favour of the more C64 friendly Zzap 64/Amiga as my primary source of C64 news and goodness since Commodore User was aiming more for the Amiga market. Shame on them, as the C64 still had plenty of life left in it to last a few more years.

Retro Gaming Trekkie Dad (Episode 1) - Castle Master for the Commodore Amiga

The first of (hopefully) many new videos from me, reviewing/playing old and new computer games, with the occasional smidgen of Star Trek thrown in here and there. 

This episode is devoted to the classic 3D adventure game Castle Master by Incentive Software.  Released back in 1990 by Domark Software, it was the fourth game to utilize the revolutionary Freescape solid 3D system and is an excellent example of early virtual reality on home computers.  So be prepared to spend the next 1 hour 30 minutes watching me wandering aimlessly around Castle Eternity, getting lost, destroying spirits, and getting even more lost before finally defeating the evil Magister once and for all.

 

Giving the Amiga a clean!

So yesterday, I decided to give the Amiga 500 a clean.  I tend to use my A1200 more for general use, so this has been the first time I've fired up the A500 in quite a long time.  Glad the GVP A530 is working fine and the hard drive still contains lots of graphics, music (and very basic 3D renders and objects) I created in the mid-1990s.  Ahhh, the memories.

The case wasn't too yellow, so no need for retrobrite, however, I was able to blow out a considerable amount of dust, dirt, and lint from under the keys and on the motherboard.

Retro Game Boys Episode 10 - Lotus III The Ultimate Challenge (Commodore Amiga)

Stuart introduces Kieran to the classic racer on the Commodore Amiga, and also risks a tenner!  Enjoy our feature length 10th episode! (it's only feature length because we got carried away playing the game!)

Retro Game Boys Episode 5 - Lemmings (Commodore Amiga)

Our first episode of 2016.  Kieran gets to choose the game for this edition of the Retro Game Boys.  This time it's Lemmings for the Commodore Amiga

 

Let's Go!

 

Deluxe Paint Pictures

I've been rummaging through some old floppy disks on my Commodore Amiga recently and have been looking at some old pixel art drawings I did years ago.  They're pretty naff compared to some of the work I've seen done on the Amiga, but these are my very own dating all the way back to 1993 and I remember being rather proud of them.  I still am.

 

All were created on my Commodore Amiga 500 and hand drawn pixel by pixel using the excellent Deluxe Paint III and IV between 1993 and 1996. Remember, I only had a screen resolution of 320x256 and 32 colours, or 640x512 and 16 colours to work with.

 

Just click on the pictures to enlarge and view them in all their full blockiness.

 

Aft Stations - 1993

 

Aliens (based on a pencil drawing I did) - 20th May 1995

 

The TNG Bridge - 29th October 1995

 

The TNG Bridge - 31st December 1993 to 1st January 1994 (I remember doing this on New Years Eve)

 

The TOS Bridge - 2nd December 1994

 

Control Room - 5th March 1994 (Based on a picture I saw in a Commodore magazine)

 

Docking - 1993 to 1994.  This was the first proper picture I started working on using D-Paint.  It took me awhile to get it perfect.

 

Galileo Shuttlcraft - 16th April 1995

 

Country House - 24th July 1995

 

Star Trek/Wars - 31st March 1996

 

Lt. Jadzia Dax by me and Steve Ready - 28th July 1994.  I was never happy with the face, but the rest was good.

 

Engineering - 1993

 

Deep Space Nine and Runabout - 20th to 26th June 1994.  Gosh, I needed some tips from JJ Abrams on how to do decent lens flares.

 

Star Trek Generations - 2nd February 1995.  The Enterprise was scanned from the TNG Technical Manual if my memory serves me correctly.

 

Star Trek Generations - 30th January 1995.  Simple but effective use of colour gradiants in D-Paint.

 

Stargate - 1995 - Another simple picture that didn't take me long to do, but I think it came out really well.

 

The Flintstones - 3rd October 1993

 

AND finally a couple of stills from a video I did years ago with some early green-screen effects on my Amiga, featuring a rather young (and thin) me.  Blimey these are 20 years old.  I feeeeeeel old.

 

Stuart on Eminiar VII - 1996

 

Stuart on Delta Vega - 1996

 

 

Retro Game Boys Episode 3 - Pac-Mania (Commodore Amiga)

Another day, another episode. This time, the Retro Game Boys play Pac-Mania on the Commodore Amiga 1200 and have some rather young, super-excited special guests join in on the fun too. Wacka Wacka Wacka Wacka.

 To be notified of future episodes, please subscribe to us on Youtube, follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook!

  

TWITTER : https://twitter.com/RetroGameBoys

FACEBOOK : https://www.facebook.com/retrogameboysUK

YOUTUBE : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyrzqpPlew1UqDlUyCQN0qg (we'll get a custom address when we have enough views)

 

We also have a web site at www.retrogameboys.co.uk

Alive and Kick'Starting'

Kickstarter is addictive....  There I said it.

Last year, I backed my first Kickstarter...  a book called "Commodore 64: a visual Commpendium", by Sam Dyer, and published by Bitmap Books.  It surpassed all expectations and became quite a hit with fans of the Commodore 64 (including me).

So, when I heard that Sam was producing a follow up book entitled "Commodore Amiga: a visual Commpendium", I just had to back it immediately.

The book had a target goal of £25,000 so I think it came as a bit of a surprise to most when the total amount pledged to the project came in at just short of £130,000.  Wow.  It just goes to show how much love there is for the old Commodore computers.

Anyway, after several months of waiting, the book finally arrived through the letterbox today, and WOW.

The book is fantastic, and considerably larger than the Commodore 64 one.  The graphics on each page depicting various well known games are truly remarkable, with a small piece of text from well known people from the Amiga days (game/demo programmers, designers, graphic artists and fans)

AND due to the massive success of the project, backers also get loads of cool extras with the book as standard.

• Shadow of the Beast 2015 Remix CD by Tim Wright (CoLD SToRAGE)
• I Love Commodore Amiga Sticker
• Metal Amiga engraved bookmark
• Amiga pen
• Amiga Ball Pin
• 6x Demoscene postcards (one signed by the author of the book)
• Another World poster
• Ask Me About Loom badge (from The Secret of Monkey Island) Limited to first 100 Backers

I highly recommend this book (and the Commodore 64 one) to any person who has an interest in old computer games - even if you never had a Commodore computer.  I cant wait for Sam's next book which I hear may be about the Spectrum.

Amiga Book - http://www.funstock.co.uk/commodore-amiga-a-visual-commpendium-book
C64 Book - http://www.funstock.co.uk/commodore-64-a-visual-commpendium-c64-book

Now, I've just got to wait for the other Kickstarter projects I've backed to arrive, including Matt Gray's "Reformation" C64 music project, From Bedrooms to Billions : The Amiga Years, Marcel Donne's "Project Sidologie" CD Box set, and Uncle Art's Elite 2 (Frontier) Orchestral and Retrogaming Music Remakes.

Both Books - the Amiga Commpendium and the C64 Commpendium.

Both Books - the Amiga Commpendium and the C64 Commpendium.

 

Remember this from The Secret of Monkey Island?

Demoscene Postcards

A3 Poster from the cover of Another World

Shadow of the Beast 2015 Remix CD by Tim Wright

Sticker!

The full booty!

Oh yeah, I got my name in the book as an official backer!

Games that remind me of my childhood Number 18 : Formula One Grand Prix (Commodore Amiga)

If I can blame my below average GCSE results on someone (other than myself), then it would have to be Geoff Crammond.  Why I hear you ask?  Because he made the amazing Formula One Grand Prix on the Commodore Amiga!

For my first Amiga game that reminds me of my childhood, I bring you this wonderful title, from the creator of some of my favourite Commodore 64 games (namely, The Sentinel, and Stunt Car Racer).

Riding at the back of the pack with Stuart Wilson!

 

During study leave at school, I spent countless hours playing this with my friend Philip when I should have been revising for my exams.  It was without a doubt one of the best, and most realistic racing games on the Amiga, featuring detailed and very fast polygon graphics.  In fact, the game ran amazingly fast on a stock A500, although later on I was lucky enough to get a GVP A530 Turbo accelerator, turning my Amiga 500 from 7mhz into 40mhz.  This game ran super fast! 

 

Customise your racers and teams.

 

Featuring the sixteen grand prix tracks from the 1991 Grand Prix season, the game was not officially affiliated with the FiA which means that although the car liveries and driver helmets were accurate, none of the drivers were real people and were all fictional.  This was great though because the game gave you the option of naming the drivers and teams yourself.  We had great fun naming the racers after people at school, or famous celebrities.

Each track has an excellent image which you can view and plan your race

Along with practice mode, qualifying and single races, players could also take part in a full season.  The game did allow for more than one player using a unique system that allowed each player to play on their own before the computer took over the car, thus allowing the next person to take control of their car.  A novel idea, but very annoying if your car crashed or span out of control when under control from the computer!

Spinning out of control

F1GP (as it was known) also had to ability to play the game from different camera angles – a feature not seen in many racing games on the Amiga.  Interior and external views were available, and trackside cameras were positioned around the track so that replays could be viewed from almost any angle.  All great stuff.

 

About to overtake.

 

The game was simple to get in to thanks to some great features including “brake assistance”, “steering help”, “damage on/off” and “throttle assistance”.  These could be enabled or disabled using the function keys.  Some of these made the game too easy, but at least the option was there to turn them off for a much tougher experience.

 

View from behind - note the white 'guide' lines on the road.  These could be turned off.

 

I love this game.  I’m not really that interested in Formula One racing, but this game was fantastic.  Geoff Crammond made several sequels after this, and although graphically they are far superior, the original was and always will be the best. 

 

External view

 

AND, it was always fun to race round the track the wrong way, smashing in to the computer controlled cars.  Once they had all been smashed and taken out of the race, I could then turn around and finish the race, knowing I would win because I was the only car on the track!

 

The famous Monaco track, in all its polygonal beauty.

 

The box

The box