Amiga: F/A-18 Interceptor (1988)

After a little break yesterday, I'm back to present you...


...F/A-18 Interceptor


A well-balanced combat flight simulator, that does not require hours of training and reading through hundreds of pages in the instruction manual but is still hard enough to guarantee you hundreds of hours of fun!

Who would have guessed, in the game you pilot the famous F/A-18 Hornet... and even the F-16 is available for free flight mode and mission number 1. Nevertheless, I could never really tell a difference between them in terms of flight quality.

Interceptor is set in the San Francisco Bay Area, with a few notable landmarks such as the Golden Gate Bridge, Oakland Bay Bridge, Alcatraz or downtown San Francisco. Frankly, this game would be fun even without the missions! I remember flying around just to explore the area or doing little stunts, like flying under the Golden Gate, climbing as high as possible or messing around with the aircraft carrier. 


But the six missions are also quite enjoyable, although I was never able to successfully complete the last one. Anyhow, Bob Dinnerman - the game designer - states that it is possible to destroy the enemy carrier!

Your jet fighters are equipped with air-to-air missiles, Sidewinders and AMRAAM. If you run out of them, you still have 500 rounds in your Vulcan gatling gun in order to shoot down your enemy. 

Amiga: Lemmings (1991)

Oh noes! 5, 4, 3 ... plop plop plop...




Lemmings!


About 20 years ago, a new hype about naive, little green fellows was born. Following their leader one after another, they would literally climb, dig, build or even suicide anywhere without hesitation. In other words, Lemmings are team players - it does not matter much to them if they die, as long as their population makes it to the exit and survives. Honorable!

(encyclopediadramatica.com)

DMA Design (now Rockstar North) did an excellent job on the level design. What the player basically does, is guiding his Lemmings around obstacles and finding a save way towards the exist. This is not always as easy as it sounds. Rocks block your way, seas of lava are only waiting to cook your little friends, cliffs have to be climbed and tunnels to be dug. All of this with only a limited amount of time and a certain percentage of Lemmings that must survive.

Personally, I like the Amiga version the best. It has such a cozy atmosphere, the gameplay gets you hooked instantly and the music is brilliant. Most of the songs are classical or traditional tunes, neatly remixed by Brian Johnston - they are the cherry on the top.

NES vs. iPhone / iPod touch

Okay, I admit it. This post will be a little off-topic. Yesterday, I was randomly browsing the app store for free games. After downloading a few, I started playing Giant Moto, a little dirt bike, motocross obstacle racing game.

Does this remind anybody of some other, oooold game?

The game above is called Excitebike for the NES, ... 25 years old and another Nintendo classic! Both games have an almost identical gameplay with mostly the same game features, such as a "turbo", which will eventually overheat the engine if you overuse it or similar jumps and obstacles. 

So if you liked Excitebike and you are looking for a mobile version, that is close to the original, you should give Giant Moto by Tim Miller a try!

If you don't have an iPod touch or iPhone, but still own a NES, this is even cooler. Nintendo Entertainment System is pure nostalgia!

Click the image and download Giant Moto from iTunes.

Amiga: Silk Worm

After all the cuteness of Mario and his friends, this blog requires some serious side-scrolling action! It is time for:


SilkWorm


Be prepared for some heavy shooting, literally hundreds of enemies will appear around you, getting more with each level. Choppers, tanks, mines, missile launchers and jets will swarm around you to eliminate your helicopter or jeep and all you can do is fire back as much as you can!

This game by Tecmo was released in 1988/89 and was available on most platforms, such as Commodore C64 / Amiga, Amstrad, Atari ST and NES...




This video pretty much sums it up, a good game for in between with a decent level of difficulty! Sometimes I just insert the disk and let the intro theme play. Another fantastic tune by Barry Leitch, who also composed the music to Lotus Turbo Challenge 2, as I already mentioned in my previous article on that game.

For all of you who want an easy job - here is the cheat: Scrap 28 in the options menu!

Nintendo 64: Mario Kart 64

Todays article will be dedicated to Nintendo's arcade classic ...


... Mario Kart 64


It is early 1997, the N64 has not been out on the market that long, as me and my friends are craving for the sequel of the entertaining Super Mario Kart for Super Ninento consoles. Once again Mario and his friends promised us many hours of fun, chasing each other in multiplayer mode with new characters and "weapons".

And they kept their promise! In Mario Kart 64, four different types of game modes exist. Grand Prix, Time Trial, Versus - up to 4 human player can compete against computer opponents; and Battle Mode - human vs. human, you shoot off 3 balloons, which are tied to the Kart, with weapons like bananas or turtle shells.

Choosing your character wisely, also adds to the varying level of difficulty, represented by the engine size of your Kart, that can be either 50, 100 or 150 cc. Peach and Yoshi e.g. are limelight and will therefore accelerate more quickly than heavyweights such as Bowser, Wario or Donkey Kong. And of course Mario and Luigi are god-tiers and offer the best ballance!^^

Grab your controllers and have fun!

Emulator vs. the real thing

Dear readers!

I have already made some posts about games on the Amiga, hopefully reviving the memories of that great era. But in the heat of the moment, I almost forgot to tell you about emulators: a wonderful and easy way to "virtualize" a whole Amiga setup on your PC.

There are two popular freeware emulators around, UAE (available for MS Windows, Linux, Mac-OS) and Fellow. Both have been out for many years now and I tested both of them. I ended up using WinUAE though, since it ran stable and gave the majority of tweakable parameters.

Get it here: www.winuae.net

It offers you default setups for standard A500, A600, A1200, A2000 and so on! Speed them up by adding RAM, pick another processor, choose Input devices, add hard-drives - no problem, just a few clicks! WinUAE can even emulate the god-like chattering sound of the floppy-disk, while it is loading into memory.

So for those of you who want to play around with an Amiga, but do not own one anymore - try an emulator, it is close to the real thing!

Along with the emulator, you might also need:

• Kickstart 1.3 and 2.0 ... that is the firmware, stored on the ROM chip of the Amiga
• Amiga Workbench ... the OS, you might need it in order to run some games or text-to-speech in "Say" ;)
• games!

The problem here might be the copyright. Nevertheless all of the software can easily be found on the internet^^

Have fun and happy guru meditation!

Amiga 500: Lotus Turbo Challenge 2

Game #2 on my list of must-haves for the Amiga is

Lotus Turbo Challenge 2

 Marks - Set - Go


Lotus 2 is part of the famous Lotus trilogy and came out in 1991, developed by Magnetic Fields and published by Gremlin. It is a pseudo-3D arcade racing game, like many others during that time. But still, Lotus 2 is outstanding.
- It has an absolutely fantastic intro-tune and even the little jingles between each level are remarkable!

I am pretty sure, that all of you people, who had an Amiga during their childhood will remember this great game. If not, listen to the intro theme I am posting below and I promise your memories will return.

Amiga 500: North & South

So when I go back in time, remembering the good old Amiga days, this fine game here is one of the first, which comes to my mind:

NORTH & SOUTH

I didn't have my own 500 yet, so I used to play this classic at my friends house. As far as I can remember, it came out as a single disk release in 1989 and offered lots of action, inside jokes, two player mode and even a little strategy;)


Check out this longplay youtube video. Instant amiga atmosphere!!

In the following...

I will continuously present and comment on


- classic video games & software, mainly for the Commodore Amiga and Nintendo consoles.

- some vintage movies every now and then also.


Feel free to leave a message and share your precious memories