Video Game Chronicles: Hola de nuevo, Amigas!

A long time ago, I discussed everything but mostly nothing with “members” of the older generation who adamantly claimed that “music turned to shit in the 70s”… Of course they were die-hard Rock ‘n Roll-fans, and this must have been some time in the early 90s after “too much water had flown under the bridges”. I think it’s only normal and human to wish for something new and exciting to turn up in the spheres. Something that fascinates an unspecific group of individuals to no end. Something to get absolutely passionate over. Let’s say a new genre of music in this case – And not necessarily something that replaces one’s original targets of affection. But something that could carry the power to rekindle that flame inside… Now, does it ever happen? Not very often, probably. I don’t think I have ever met anyone who says things like: “I grew up with, and used to love 80s music [Current year minus a value between 1980 and 1989.] years ago, but now, P. Diddy is exclusively my jam.”

And then, there are always the extremes…

Because for the longest time (and still many years later), I believed that nostalgic sentiments, for this “something” that one once was closely affiliated with, automatically came with age and that a total nostalgic disconnect was nothing but absolute denial. If you were more or less hopelessly fixated with something as a teenager and then as a young adult, you’d get these yearning feelings for both these “somethings” in the similar chronological order – As long as enough time went by.

Unsurprisingly, in an article called “Video Game Chronicles”, these thoughts, around this phenomenon known as “nostalgia”, are centered around… Video games…

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In 2020, 30 years have gone by after the Commodore Amiga became an everyday source of fascination on a near hypnotic level for yours truly. Seeing an arcade game (Space Invaders) for the first time as a shit-kid – That’s one thing. And the Commodore 64 was (and continues to be) a love affair like no other… But with the Amiga, it was somehow a slightly more “sneaky” deal. Initially, it was this totally unapproachable Future Machine. Because it was so much The New – With entertainment that almost had a “Science Fiction”-like aura to it. And there was that line… The line that was rubbed out in the mid- to late 80s. The moment where it all became reality.

“Those badly aging and primitive 8-bit games…! They will one day be seen as nothing more than kids’ stuff… Everybody will laugh at them and think: How could people in their right minds have been playing this?!” (Not my quote. You can be absolutely sure of that!) “Sometimes, it’s just nice to play something simpler.” (That’s definitely something that I can agree with these 30+ years later. Even after a whole day and evening at the arcades, and when one almost (Ha! “Almost”.) had to be pulled away from Afterburner at gunpoint, it was nice to come home and fire up Mega Apocalypse for the C64.)

As the industry started to grow up following one Punk-like and rebellious youth, the time had come for it to embrace the “serious” side of interactive entertainment. And why not show the world that Coin-Op-quality games could actually exist outside the arcades? Now, that’s something that oversteps dimensional boundaries.

So along came this powerful 16-bit juggernaut known as the Amiga. (Except it kind of slowly crept into our consciousness instead of with a bang.) And like many other platforms, it had a slow start in this still mostly uncharted territory. Paula and Denise flashed their assets and Fat Agnus was one smooth talking son of a bitch while Commodore’s slightly older, exceptionally beautifully singing daughter (Yeah, that’s naturally a SID-reference.) slowly ended up in the shade where it continued to struggle for a couple more tough years… Oh, Commodore, how things could have been different today… Now, we come to the parts of the equation: Price vs. media vs. quality.

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I saw an Amiga in full flirtation mode several months before I even touched the ivory-white keys of a C64. I was impressed as hell as it was the more or less timelessly modern P.C.-looking A1000 hooked up to Commodore’s own color monitor. (And an amplifier + loudspeakers for increased effect.) In 1986-87, this particular model of the super-computer cost at least four times more than a C64… So that was one dream immediately crossed off the list – The hard fact that I’d never in Hades get the Pesetas to buy one. The C64 cost €175. If you had that money, you only needed €725 more to get an Amiga. Meanwhile, almost everybody else at school were getting C64s, so that’s what I wanted too. The desire grew medically insane. And the magazines mostly wrote about 8-bit games because, well, in 1987, they still dominated the market.

The big 16-bit games were still for the few who could afford the big machines. It all felt like an excluding club at first. But in a moment of clarity, Commodore realized that they had to release a consumer model in order to take everything to the next level. Enter the A500 in January 1987. But due to the 8-bit era still going at its strongest, it took a good while before the Amiga could take center stage. And around the summer of 1989, things started to shift. Change is natural, of course. But at the same time, certain other parts in the whole industry around “video gaming” started to gradually slide off the rails. It was a chicken and an egg situation.

So during nearly a decade (1985-1994), Commodore had two platforms on the market. A good C64 game gave the player at least a couple of hours of entertainment. Others didn’t, so from a subjective point of view, they simply weren’t worth the €15-20 they cost. Amiga software was way more expensive. (We’re talking closer to 100% more since you mostly had to fork out between €30-40 for a new game.) And in many cases, they didn’t last much longer than an “ordinary” 8-bit game. That realization was probably the first lump of rat poison in the goat milk – That the new generation of games weren’t light years bigger and better. In the swirls of some hazy 16-bit memories, we might remember all those double disc games where the first disc had an intro with animations and sampled sounds. And that stuff effectively took up all 800+ KB, which left one disc for the entire game. And then, it wasn’t much more sophisticated anyway. It just looked like it. Because the presentation was exciting and fresh as the milk from the tit.

For some reason, the prices always continued to feel disproportionate. And it hadn’t really changed when P.C.-gaming started to become a phenomenon around 1993. With those price-rates, we were getting closer to standards of today’s new games as far as “commercial market value” goes. The difference is that a triple-A game today costs millions and millions to make and produce. Back then, they didn’t. (I’m not sure if the term “AAA” even existed back then.) The thing is that good games still only cost €60. (Comparatively. And we’re not talking about this fucking micro-transaction / loot box / DLC plague that can’t fuck off and die soon enough.) Games just weren’t predicted to sell millions in the early 90s, so the money “probably” had to come from “somewhere else”.

So what about console-games? They were relatively pricey too. But it was no big deal, because you knew that if you got a “Super Mario”- or a “Sonic”-game, there were intellectual properties and company reputations at stake – They had to be good every time and have a certain “Value For Money”. And they did. They had some serious lastability and replayability, and most of all: They were sold on media that was designed to last. As an investment, the Mega Drive- and SNES-games are a goldmine. (Although quite volatile.) I think you can get something like €300 for Chrono Trigger if it includes the box, maps, manuals, and stuff. Maybe even in VG+-condition… Try peddling Rise 2: Resurrection for the P.C. for €200 and see how far you get. But I digress.

Back to 1990. Everything started to shift fast now. The Amiga had more or less taken over. The P.C. wasn’t a threat, because who the hell gamed on a P.C…?! Rich people and Sierra fans. But all the more or less generously priced games, both attractive and not so attractive, had a familiar tail – The dreaded pirates. Everybody copied. (At least everybody I knew. But I did also purchase originals every now and then.) If a game could be copied, you can bet your ass that your friend or your friend’s friend’s pet had a Quartex crack of it. And it wasn’t easy resisting getting caught up in the sub-culture when people one knew IRL started to get rid of their Amigas after a (too) short honeymoon. I had the paper-round for the entire summer of 1992 just to be able to pirate shit (Like in: “Shit I probably wouldn’t have bought anyway.”) off BBSs with a 14.400 HST U.S. Robotics modem. (A €550-phone bill didn’t somehow feel nearly as bad as, e.g., a dozen original and mediocre Amiga-games would have for the same amount of money. Nor did it feel bad to download disk-images at 1,3-1,7 kb/s.) Nobody gave a single shit. Because in the end, the was nothing to care about. The Amiga-enthusiasts more and more often got an inferior version of a game that also was available on the P.C. This strange indifference infected almost everybody… Or at least many of us… If there ever was a perfect Catch 22, this was it. (Any bad conscience or feelings of guilt for old crimes? Maybe a bit, yeah… Especially when it comes to Psygnosis, Delphine Software, and a handful of others… Another World was a late exception – That one, and numerous good games, I just had to buy…)

So the distributors and software houses of course didn’t get the “expected” money from the sales, which subsequently, understandably, and presumably started suffocating the incentive to be fully creative. Who knows how bad it was? If you suddenly couldn’t even trust the video game media who were getting review copies for free – Then who could you trust?! Even then, there were “rumors” about software houses paying for good reviews with dinner and various bribes. Or asking reviewers to keep quiet about game-breaking bugs… So you bought one game, and it was close to shite. Strange. That favorite mag of yours said it would be awesome – For reals this time…?! And then you bought another one, and it was even worse. How many times did you need to get burned before you started pirating the software instead?

And hence, the snowball was in motion. Whose fault was it? When the consoles started getting the really good games, Amiga gamers were left with more and more poor ports and recycled game ideas that signaled that this might be the beginning of the end for Commodore’s potential world dominator. And not even the Amiga 1200 helped it getting back to being the No. 1 choice for computer entertainment. Everything was sliding towards the same grave that we as users collectively kind of had helped digging for it. (And we’re still strictly talking about the games here. The Demo scene was an entirely different dimension…) Commodore themselves weren’t of course entirely without blame. Various articles in old magazines hint that the business relations between them and the publishers and investors weren’t always the best – To put it mildly. And as a user, it would get harder and harder to support such a platform. Because, god damn, have you seen all these new P.C.-games with VGA-graphics…?!

Once this “mass-hypnosis” let go, it must have started a worldwide downward spiral and a strange disconnection. The novelty just wore off one day and developers abandoned the machine one by one. “8-bit nostalgia” was already a growing thing in 1996. (Because that’s when I surfed the Internet for the first time and noticed this.) And the truth remains throughout the computer- and console generations: The most important aspect of any video game is, and always has been, the playability and availability. And if it “happens” to be well done from a technical point of view, you have got yourself an All-Time Classic. (Like Andrew Braybrook’s games.)

For yours truly, the Amiga honeymoon and subsequent marriage lasted at least three years. Then, the seemingly inevitable happened. I lost interest in Amiga gaming the moment I saw Sonic The Hedgehog II, Streets Of Rage II, and Thunder Force IV on the SEGA Mega Drive. It was almost exactly like meeting an absolute sweetheart while being in a bad relationship. Inside the mindset of an unapologetic Commodore fanboy, a video game console was seen as something lesser. It was followed by a brutal and quite glorious awakening. (As if SEGA had ever produced anything sub par?!) I still don’t know why the devil I bought Mortal Kombat for the Amiga when I just could have downloaded it. Because it was one major disappointment compared to the Mega Drive version… No, it was more like a cold shower. A disappointment would’ve been Midwinter II: Flames Of Freedom. Which was nothing but a shaky P.C.-port never meant for a Motorola 7 MHz 68000 CPU… And then there was RoboCop 3… (With that infamous dongle… That too felt like cash wasted…) Turrican III was the very last game I bought for the Amiga, because that one was still top of the line stuff. These were all games priced €35-45. Let’s use a what else than trustworthy Internet inflation calculator for some perspective: €35-45 in 1993 would be around €55-70 in 2019. So with today’s prices (badly) compared: Why would anyone buy Mortal Kombat for the Amiga for €55 when one could get the superior Mega Drive version for €60…?

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There are, expectedly, tons of high quality “Gold Standard” games on the Amiga. The relatively recent and deep search for those even reminded of that classic scenario: “Not being able to see the trees because the forest blocked the view”. That was then. This is now when there are countless shocking reports of the original Amiga discs dying from bit-rot. (Getting demagnetized with age, more like.) But thanks to a legion of enthusiasts, most of the software is now future proofed. Without the pirates and crackers, would this have ever happened the way it did? Probably not. Those old Noname-disks, they ceased to work one by one. Easy come easy go. Fair enough. And maybe it just wasn’t meant to last for decades. You can talk about piracy and preservation, but… Where would all these software treasures be today if certain “copy protection”-removing consumers hadn’t taken care of business and done what had to be done? I just can’t figure out why “nobody” considered it back then – There we were, playing these games and maybe subconsciously thinking that they would be gone once the machines died on us. But then what? Get new machines? No. Suddenly, they weren’t manufactured anymore… So they would be replaced by new platforms and new, even better games…? Yeah, except… What if we one day felt the need to play the Classics? What if some of the games never got better “replacements”?

Which is a link back to those initial thoughts around “nostalgia”. It’s safe to say that I have almost had this affectionate vs. indifferent relationship with the Amiga after its final commercial years. Like many computer game players, I did violently get caught up in the feverish Amiga-craze and shamefully rejected the C64 as soon as the first stack of disks had been X-Copied. It was time to move on… Except it wasn’t. Because then, of course… Years pass and sentiments have a tendency to change almost equally violently… Why is it still so radically different now? Why haven’t I re-visited the Amiga as much as the C64? It must have had everything to with the aforementioned availability, bad cracks, and emulators that “kind of works and sort of don’t”… So many colorful impressions from the Amiga were forgotten through the years. Which happens if you’re away from any platform for– It’s not even “years” – Effin’ decades… And one day, you just can’t remember all the good stuff.

But that’s why we have the Internet and the preservation communities…! And better and better emulators…! A top-selling machine like the Raspberry Pi does a decent job with, e.g., Amiberry, and a program like UAE on a decent computer – It’s getting there. Closer and closer with every update…!

Last but not least, I think we all can agree that video games are art. And as art, they should be preserved. Every single piece of software. (Okay, maybe not “Victory Road”, but you get the idea.) That relationship between game developers and crackers can therefore only be seen as something ultimately symbiotic. Because the hard reality was that one day, many of these games couldn’t be bought anymore. (Without making some shady second hand scammer richer.) In the late 90s, you just didn’t see companies uploading their games for free to their sites, solely for preservation purposes. (But I believe Factor 5 was early in doing this?) But on the other hand, the software had been spread. And it had been transfered to a new medium. Hence, the art was future-proofed. (The flip-side of the coin would be all the bad cracks missing fragments or even chunks of the original software.)

And that’s beautiful in any context – That no matter what happens to the original software (Or hardware!), we can revisit them all and relive this entire era – Through the magic of emulation if there’s nothing else…

Anyway. The time has come to dig through the Amiga software library and re-discover what hits, originals, and so called “head turners” that exist on this once and future powerful multimedia machine. This is also an opportunity for tearing off those rose-tinted welding goggles and take a look at what we’re dealing with here. Or see if that nostalgia goes into some kind of overwhelming overdrive. Because from the late 80s and on, it was both hard and out of the question to reject the aforementioned two hotties and the smooth talker accompanying our new “Spanish girlfriend”. Exactly. Some of the impressions might be a bit warped… But what was it that enchanted us? 4096 colors? Better resolution? 4-channel stereo audio? The 512 KB RAM that could store sampled arcade quality sound? The CPU that could handle real 3D graphics and not just wire-frame ones? Or that the games loaded quicker? (Ish.) So we had digitized HAM photos, 32 on-screen colors in most games, the extra graphics processor that could perform some really neat tricks… And entertainment that represented all this.

Which we are going to take a look at next.

(As expected, the following five articles don’t form a complete list of anything. They’re just collectively a sizeable chunk of these all-time classics, exclusives, and novelties… And so called innocent pleasures. Because around here, “guilty pleasures” don’t exist.)

In other words: Memorable, pure Amiga experiences…!