Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Gaming => Topic started by: StevenJGore on March 30, 2004, 01:55:58 PM
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My second game-related thread of the day! (Mainly because I'm bored at work, but also because I'm in a retro-mood!)
I've just been reading a review of a game by Scott Johnston, in which he states that an AGA version of Hired Guns was being worked on but was never released, and it has got me thinking about games in general that were never finished and/or never released on the Amiga (I'm thinking more along the lines of games from the "original" software houses such as Team17, Microprose, US Gold, Psygnosis, etc, rather than the "newer post-Commodore" software houses such as Digital Dreams, Clickboom, Vulcan etc).
A few of the games (mainly sequels) that were never released include:
- Eye of the Beholder 3 (US Gold announced there would be no conversion)
- Fade to Black (Amiga hardware wasn't fast enough for this Flashback sequel)
- Simon the Sorceror 2 (well, until the relatively recent conversion, which wasn't by the original software house)
Games that were started but never finished include:
- Hired Guns AGA
- Inferno (CD32)
- Cyberwar (CD32)
- Extractors (a follow-up to Diggers for the CD32)
- TFX (famously released partly-finished on CU Amiga's cover CD)
CD32 magazines around 93/94 were literally FULL of previews of games that would never make it.
Some reasons for the above (which I'm sure everyone is familiar with) are Commodore's demise (causing most software houses to exit from the Amiga scene), Sony buying Psygnosis to concentrate on Playstation development, and most significantly the rise of the PC, which left the Amiga way behind in terms of hardware capability.
At the time, having just completed Eye of the Beholder 2 AND Flashback, I was devastated to hear that neither sequel would be coming to the Amiga. The previews of Inferno and Cyberwar looked good (graphically anyway!) and again lead to more disappointment. Hired Guns AGA sounds really cool, and apparrently would have had significantly enhanced graphics and sound (even though the graphics for the ECS version were already excellent, and sound was already somewhat enhanced for 2MB machines).
The point of this thread? Not sure really! I was just wondering if anybody knew of any more games for the above two categories, and their thoughts on why the game(s) didn't make it. Also, I'm sure it reminds us how lucky we were that the "new wave" of Amiga software houses stepped in and took post-Commodore Amiga gaming into the late 90's and the 2000's. It also makes me even more sad that the Amiga isn't what it once was :cry: :-D
Steve.
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Elite: First Encounters was one I was particularly looking forward to, along with Magic Carpet and a few other decent titles that were promised on the Amiga and never released.
Magic Carpet was actually in an advanced stage before the Amiga release was canned.
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/me waits for the Amiga Games That Weren't opening:
http://agtw.abime.net/
Varthall
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Hey look, we all have nearly the same posts number :-D
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Sorry to ruin the post number club :-)
I had a game called Legends of Valour, that I gather was meant to be the first of a series, but I don't ever remember seeing any sequels....
Was the graphical adventure version of Fate of Atlantis ever released on the Amiga?
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How was called the stunt car racer clone done on the CD32 ?
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Games that were started but never finished:
- Lambda ( http://www.illuvatar.demon.co.uk/Lambda.html )
- FoundationEDGE ( http://www.nutts.demon.co.uk/foundedge.html )
Forever unfinished:
- Frontier (well, it's soo buggy, I would like to see it re-released with some modernizations)
Promised but not yet developed/released:
- SOF (port, http://www.amiga.com/games/083000-hyperion.shtml )
- truckload of AmigaDE games :-)
Surely unreleased AmigaDE games do not need to be mentioned/gategorized???? ;-)
Things that should have been:
- Turboraketti3 (well, turboraketti2 was too addictive, too bad that the author lost the source code)
- Illuminatus :-) (Finnish april joke http://kaunis.to/archive/txt/illuminatus.txt ) :-D :-D
- 3D AdventureminiDash (archy, you could still do it U know, see aminet for adventureminidash) ;-)
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I was realllllly hyped up about Lambda. ;) I remember that everytime I made a small demo to my user group, I would make it a point to show them the new demo of Lambda.
Too made it's never gotten anywhere. (P.S. The demo works on MOS too... :P)
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Was the graphical adventure version of Fate of Atlantis ever released on the Amiga?
Yes, that one was definitely released. I've got it on my hard drive :-) I think it's relatively common. The Action version of FoA seems to be the rare one.
There's no Talkie version of FoA for the Amiga, sadly. I'm not sure if it ever was in development for the CD32, but given how much stuff was announced for the CD32, it probably was.
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Putty Squad, as far as I can remmeber that was never actually released on the Amiga was it?
Also, a game whose name I cant remember but it was being delevoped by Terramarque, the guys that made elfmania, it involved you driving a police car and catching the bad guys.
The most famous game not released on the Amiga, Grand Theft Auto (it started life as an Amiga project).
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I have always been an Elite etc fan and the screen shoots for Lambda looked damn nice! If game play was any good, I definately would have bought that one :)
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Uhm, Putty Squad was released? Was it not? I am pretty sure I have
played it several times on CD32... but I might be way wrong here.
A game which haunted me forever was Witchwoods... there is even a
soundtrack produced by Chris Hüelsbeck for the game, or someone
else... but Chris I think it is. Supposed to be a Zelda clone released
by Team 17 it got cancelled... and shortly afterwards they released a
preview of The Speris Legacy... with Zelda III look-alike-graphics...
with nice AGA graphics and faces handdrawn for the characters one
spoke with...
but, when the game finally was released the Zelda III graphics were
gone, replaced with grapchis which seemed ripped out of Breath Of Fire
for the SNES... and the pictures representing the characters were
taken out... and also the grapchis where not AGA anymore... and if
that was not enough they also discarded many of the originally thought
of areas to visist... the game had gotten streamlined with no
exploration to do whatsoever (besides inside the areas which one
almost could count as levels) and it was really a pretty tragic game.
Witchwoods... what happened to it? Originally seeming to be so
nice... transformed into nothing but a seriously bad game.
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Quake 3! :roll:
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Things that should have been:
- Turboraketti3 (well, turboraketti2 was too addictive, too bad that the author lost the source code)
- Illuminatus :-) (Finnish april joke http://kaunis.to/archive/txt/illuminatus.txt ) :-D :-D
- 3D AdventureminiDash (archy, you could still do it U know, see aminet for adventureminidash) ;-)
And Super Cars 3!
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I've got both Putty Squad and Extractors (preview version) for CD32,
downloaded from various sites. So they are available even if they
were no officially released.
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Are you sure you have "Putty Squad", and not just "Putty"?
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Hoya!
@jahbaloo
Supercars 3??!!!!!!!!!
EEERRRKKKK!!!!! Do you have, perchance, any screenshot????
Supercars is great but Supercars 2 is DEFINITIVELY one of my all-time faves!!!!!
Be funky
M A D
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I've been looking all over the world for Putty Squad, it was one of the best demos I ever played, most impressive looking game for its time. Does anyone know where to get it now?
The first Putty was good, but average compared to Putty Squad!
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Putty Squad was never released (http://hol.abime.net/?id=4395). A playable demo was released on a few Amiga magazine cover disks, but the full version never made it, unfortunately. Looks like it would have made full use of the AGA chipset, and would have been very impressive at the time.
A few others I thought of since my original post are:
Lost Eden
Mega Race
Lawnmover Man (maybe a good thing!)
Magic Carpet
UFO 2: Terror from the Deep
Zool 3
Steve.
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IIRC Putty Squad did get released around 1999 by a company who later ran into some legal problems, Alive Mediasoft
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seems so..
amigaflame (http://www.amigaflame.com/amitop99.htm) # 7
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@Rebel-CD32
I have Putty Squad (The Demo) Really nice. But it does not look like its AGA, even though it requires it. I think ECS Amigas are capable of this...............just look at ElfMania, RuffNTumble, and LionHeart. What I always hated about some software houses is how they made the games on Tiny screens with huge black borders all around (Like Putty Squad, Mr Nuts and many USGold games) All games should be overscan as standard......meant to be played on a TV...its the only way to compete with the consoles evenly. If it looks good on a TV it will look even better on a Monitor, but not vice versa nessesarily. Some pixels need to be thicker for TV
Sword Of Sodan 2 was another game I hear was never released to the public but according to one dude here in amiga.Org, he said he has the completed game in his possesion
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Hmm... games never released...
Well, I bought a whole big pile of Amiga magazines so got to see reviews of a lot of upcoming games which apparently got the axe either before being released or at least after a demo came out. Some of the demo's were still cool to play.
I do believe Putty Squad came out, I seem to recall playing it.
I recall that Team17 were working on some kind of kinda top-view game, something to do with Knights in medieval times - Knights and Merchants?. It looked very nice but I never saw it. There were many games with beautiful graphics and screenshots but I never saw them surface, ever.
Some of them have been mentioned already .. .magic carpet was gunna be so cool. Infero, TFX (not a big sim fan tho)
etc
There were some psygnosis games that previewed but never arose. Something like "Pinky" which was hyped as being the next big amazing thing, never saw the light of day - looked like a trippy platform game.
I wonder if any of those game resources, source code, graphics and so on are still existence, and whether people would want to try to get hold of that stuff to continue development? I think THAT is the big question here.
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@pwest
I have Pinky.....the Full game :-)
it has nice graphics but the game play is kind of stinky. I am not fully satisfied with this game
And anyone who thinks SuperCars 2 is cool.........then you have not tried ATR and OverDrive (both by Team17) and also TurboTrax (Excellent)
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Heh, you can also get ATR from my site (Legally) :)
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All these things have been discussed before. Go on through Amiga.org search engine searching for "missing games..." and you'll see... ;)
Love&Peace
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Aggg.. It seems I misinterpreted the post I replied to. I thought he mentioned a couple of games he wanted/thought that "there should've been this and that game"..
I would've wanted another Super Cars, but could it have topped number 2?
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EDIT: sorry, forgot to mention it was a reply to MAD..
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I may be wrong but I remember that Great Giana Sisters wasn't released. Or at least withdrawn from sale due to a more than passing resemblance to a certain plumber we all know!
Chris
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GGS was pulled, but lots of people had bought it, so it is still quite easily available. It is also available on that collection CD...
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Another title that was never released was Player Manager 2. Although a title with the same name was released by Anco several years later, the thought of a Dino Dini's PM2 was on the way. According to what we've see for DD PM2, this was going to be one of the greatest Amiga game of all time with unique AI...
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manicx wrote:
Another title that was never released was Player Manager 2. Although a title with the same name was released by Anco several years later, the thought of a Dino Dini's PM2 was on the way. According to what we've see for DD PM2, this was going to be one of the greatest Amiga game of all time with unique AI...
Yeah, and Anco even released a "PM2 Extras - The Chase for Glory".. I browsed thru one Amiga Magazine here, and in the ad (for PM2 extras) it says "Got time on your hands?" and you see George Graham infront of a computer, seemingly playing PM2 :)
Also, HMV provides an "Amiga Top 10" list, and just for the sake of nostalgia I'll refer it:
1. SWOS Euro 96, Warner
2. Worms, Ocean
3. Premer Manager 3 Deluxe, Gremlin
4. Tracksuit Manager 2, Alternative
5. SWOS 95/96, Warner
6. Super Skidmarks, Guildhall
7. Ultimate Soccer Manager, Sierra
8. Football Glory, Hit Squad
9. Player Manager 2, Virgin
10. Sensible Golf, Virgin
The mag's from August 1996, and the front page says "TRIUMPH! You can save Amiga! Tell VIScorp what you want... Freepost letter enclosed" :-o
Cheers!
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I recall that Team17 were working on some kind of kinda top-view game, something to do with Knights in medieval times - Knights and Merchants?. It looked very nice but I never saw it. There were many games with beautiful graphics and screenshots but I never saw them surface, ever.
Might that game have been Tiny Troops?
I remember a whole lot of games which never saw the light of day... most of them have been mentioned (Cyber War, Megarace, and so on). I'll add a few:
- Speris Legacy 2
- Flight of the Amazon Queen (not sure, was this ever released as a full game? I have the demo which lets you meet some of the designers of the game)
- Pussies Galore (Team17 platformer, I saw some screenshots in CD32 Gamer but nothing else ever seen of it)
I'm sure there's lots more....
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Flight of the amazon queen... i have the full game on my machine... somewhere... damn these multi gigabyte drives!
i remember seening the screen shots of megarace and drooling slightly. then the bloke who ran the college computer dept. got a copy and installed it on one of the PC's there. my god it was pants. it was just streaming video for the track and a little car sprite that moved left and right... no realtime stuff like wipeout, or hell, lotus2!
then the computer guy got fired for copying games on college premises. tsk tsk tsk...
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it was just streaming video for the track and a little car sprite that moved left and right... no realtime stuff
Yeah, I seem to remember that there were quite a few titles like that due for release on the CD32... Megarace, Lawn Mower Man, Lost Eden, and Cyberwar were all low-resolution streaming video games. I think that if any of these titles had been finished and released, then the general opinion of reviews would have been "nice graphics, shame about the gameplay".
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To be honest, i would have still bought Lost Eden. just for something to go "wow" at after i lent my microcosm disc to a "friend" and it came back with a diry great scratch on it :pissed:
and a pre-rendered game isn't so bad as an adventure game like monkey island etc. etc.
but i was sore at mega race. i love racing games and it made me sick that they could even think to release something like that.
what ever happened to inferno? ok so prerendered cut scenes but i think there was an element of being able to "go do something else" other than play the same piece of video as a mission.
what gets me is, what has happened to the source code for these games? i think magic carpet was pretty near final release, but the basic CD32 isn't gutsy enuff to run it. i'd love to see a miggy "release" of the dusted of source, like that flight sim that CUamiga released from oceans vaults. so what if it needs an 030/040 with 16Mb fast ram. how many users machines don't more than exceed those specs anyway?
once again pie in the sky stuff. i'm going out for a smoke to get my feet back on the ground... but i can dream.... :-D
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I recall that Team17 were working on some kind of kinda top-view game, something to do with Knights in medieval times - Knights and Merchants?. It looked very nice but I never saw it. There were many games with beautiful graphics and screenshots but I never saw them surface, ever.
I think it had to be named "King of the thieves" by Tadic/Holmes/Brimble :)
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Hoya!
Would have been probably a number one...
As for SuperCars 3, I persist!
If my memory does not play tricks on me, I think I heard about it in a computer mag...
Reckon I will ask Google... ;-)
As for Gianna Sisters, the game WAS released but after many years. In the mean time, pirates provided...
Be funky
M A D
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Team 17's top down game was Witchwood wasn't it. A zelda clone with great gfx.
G
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BattleCraft
This game would have helped keep Amiga in the picture at the time but came to a screaming halt when most of the hard work had been done. Whether Bizzard stopped the author I don't know but they should have supported him and maybe they would have another market, albeit small. I still have the demo and map builder on my 1200 and fire it up now and then to think what might have been.
ACE