At Gamescom this year, Retro Games, Ltd., made an impressive showing with their THEA1200 release. It’s a retro computer that emulates the classic Commodore Amiga 1200 from the 90s, complete with a full-sized keyboard and support not only for running the built-in games, but also for adding your own games and running the system with the classic Workbench desktop operating system. With the Amiga trademarks and IP ownership starting to get straightened out, and with the possibility of working with the newly established Commodore International, it’s a great time to be a Commodore Amiga fan.
Lemmings on the Amiga
Of all of the systems and computers I’ve owned, my Amigas were among my favorites. They were home to some truly original and groundbreaking titles. The library was massive, and you were bound to find something that tickled your fancy. So, this week, I thought it’d be fun to take a look at some trivial bits of information about the Amiga and its games. So, here are 10 rather obscure facts about gaming on the Amiga.
10. Lemmings began as an argument over whether an 8×8 pixel box could house a recognizable person
During DMA Design’s work on Walker, Mike Dailly attempted to show that small animated figures could be rendered smaller than the proposed 16×16 sprites. The walking character he produced in Deluxe Paint served as the conceptual origin of the lemming. Russell Kay reportedly viewed the animation and remarked, “There’s a game in that.”
9. A number of the levels in Lemmings were basically playable advertisements for other Psygnosis games
DMA designed distinct stages inspired by other Psygnosis titles such as Shadow of the Beast, Shadow of the Beast II, Menace, and Awesome. A few even recycled music linked to those releases. Multiple subsequent ports modified or eliminated these nods.
Worms on the Amiga
8. Worms originally used stolen graphics from Lemmings in both a literal and technical sense
Before Andy Davidson created the worms, he developed an Amiga tool called Jack the Ripper that examined graphics remaining in memory after programs closed. He pulled Lemmings graphics and applied them to an early artillery prototype known as Lemartillery. The figures shifted into worms because the Lemmings could not be used for commercial release.
7. The original Defender of the Crown on the Amiga was programmed in around three and a half months by one of the Amiga’s own creators
Cinemaware’s initial contractor had fallen significantly behind schedule. Founder Bob Jacob contacted R.J. Mical, who had contributed to the Amiga’s system software, and offered $26,000 to complete the game before the firm’s contractual October 1986 release. Jacob later noted that the Amiga edition was likely the weakest in gameplay and quality assurance because of the hurried pace.
6. Xenon 2: Megablast actually used a licensed track for its background music.
In 1989, licensed commercial music in home computer games was uncommon. The Bitmap Brothers pursued Bomb the Bass’s “Megablast (Hip Hop on Precinct 13)” so intently that publisher Rhythm King and musician Tim Simenon granted a license for the game. David Whittaker adapted it for the Amiga, and the conversion kept recognizable samples from the original record.
Lotus Turbo Challenge 2 on the Amiga
5. Lotus Turbo Challenge 2 was able to turn two Amigas into a four-player racing system
Linking two machines via a null-modem serial cable enabled two players to use separate full screens, while three or four could compete with split screens across both computers. The manual even outlined setups for one-versus-two or two-versus-two arrangements.
4. Kick Off 2 allowed players to build highlight reels on a floppy disk
Goal replays could be stored on a separate data disk, including match and player details. An included editor could then merge chosen clips into what the game termed a Golden Goals disk. By 1990, this approach was remarkably close to an in-game video-editing feature.
3. Frontier: Elite II stuffed an absurdly large universe on a single 880k floppy disk
The main game occupied one standard Amiga disk, while a second disk held saved positions instead of the universe itself. Procedural generation produced the galaxy, and the simulation relied on astronomical-scale star systems and planets modeled at roughly a 1:1 scale.
Alien Breed 3D 2 on the Amiga
2. Team 17 gave the source code to its Alien Breed 3D games to Amiga owners for free
In March 1997, Amiga Format released the source code for Alien Breed 3D and Alien Breed 3D II: The Killing Grounds on its cover CD for personal use. This choice ultimately allowed modern developers to rebuild, refine, and expand the engines for accelerated Amigas.
1. The CD32 contained advanced hardware that almost no CD32 game took advantage of
The Akiko chip featured hardware-assisted “chunky-to-planar” conversion. This mattered because texture-mapped 3D graphics are simpler to compute in a chunky-pixel framebuffer, whereas traditional Amiga hardware relies on planar bitplanes. In theory, Akiko resolved a key weakness in the Amiga design for early 3D titles. In reality, the CD32’s brief lifespan and the abundance of direct A1200 ports meant few commercial games were built around it.
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