Heimdall is an isometric adventure game developed by The 8th Day and published by Core Design in 1991.
Tag Archives: Amiga
Captive, Amiga
Captive is a classic Tony Crowther game, published by Mindscape in 1990. It is a futuristic, first-person RPG/action game in the style of Dungeon Master.
At first I didn’t really much like the game – I thought the graphics were dated and garish and the controls finicky – BUT… after a bit more reading/research I managed to get a foothold in the game and I really started to enjoy it.
Tony Crowther Week
Born in Sheffield in 1965, Antony Crowther is a prolific and highly-regarded British video games designer/programmer who has had success across a number of different platforms.
Crowther is particularly well known for his Commodore 64 games, although he has worked on pretty much every gaming system known to man. He still designs and programs games to this day.
Castle Master II: The Crypt, Amiga
A direct follow-up to Castle Master, published by Incentive Software in 1990 and again using the Freescape Engine – one of the earliest 3D game engines.
Castle Master, Amiga
The fourth Freescape game, Castle Master, was developed – not by Major Developments this time – but by Teque Software Development. It was published by Incentive Software in 1990.
Total Eclipse, Amiga
The third Freescape game, Total Eclipse, was released on 8-bit home computers first (ZX Spectrum, C64 and Amstrad CPC), and later appeared on 16-bit machines, including this excellent Amiga conversion, published by Domark in 1989.
Xenon 2 Megablast, Amiga
This 1989 shooter was designed by The Bitmap Brothers but programmed by The Assembly Line – a collaboration that resulted in one of the best-remembered Bitmap Brothers‘ games.
Simon the Sorcerer, Amiga
Simon the Sorcerer is a very fondly-remembered, British point-and-click adventure game published by Adventure Soft for the Amiga in 1993.
It looks and plays similarly to the classic LucasArts adventures of the late 80s and early 90s – Loom, Monkey Island, and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis – and has the same verb/icon system as pioneered by those games.
Uridium 2, Amiga
Uridium 2 is the sequel to Andrew Braybrook‘s classic Commodore 64 shooter, published on the Amiga in 1993 by Renegade Software, and it really is quite excellent.
The basic premise of the game is the same as the original: fly your ship (the Manta) over a variety of big spaceships (dreadnoughts), blasting surface features, shooting down other craft, and landing on a designated runway when the time is right (usually after the last attack wave has passed). Once you’ve landed you then engage in a separate minigame which is a single screen shooter in which you must send in a drone to destroy the dreadnought’s core. Succeed in doing that and the enemy ship explodes, moving you onto the next one.
The graphics and scrolling are beautiful – as is the general control of the Manta. Just like in the original Uridium: the Manta in Uridium 2 can tilt onto its side (to squeeze through smaller gaps), and can even fly upside down (which you couldn’t do in the original). You can’t land when your ship is tilted, though. Unlike the original: in Uridium 2 you can pick up better weapons by shooting stuff and flying into the dropped power-ups. You can even drop a weapon you don’t like by waggling the joystick side to side. Which is a nice touch.
Other nice touches include: the female digitised speech (voiced by Emma Cubberley), the bombs (great fun!), the gigantic explosions when the ships go up (not quite as dynamic as the speedy acidic melting of the original, but still good nonetheless), the A1200 “Mayhem Mode” (an extra “Bullet Hell” type mode, for the Amiga 1200 only, with more on-screen sprites than the regular version, and a faster-moving ship), and an excellent two-player cooperative mode.
Uridium 2 has a lot going for it. It’s a worthy successor to the classic Uridium, and arguably the best shooter on the Amiga. The presentation throughout is top quality and the action is engrossing and challenging. Uridium 2 isn’t perfect though. I prefer the ‘reaction’ minigame of the original to the core shooter of the sequel, but that’s just down to taste. The ‘core’ shooter section does improve and become more interesting as the game progresses (because the core’s defences increase as you reach higher levels), although the control of the drone in the core is a bit too ‘bouncy’ for my liking. It’s a minor gripe, though. Uridium 2 is still well worth a play if you can find a copy.
More: Uridium 2 on Wikipedia
Crystals of Arborea, Amiga
Trees, trees, and more trees! That’s what you get when you explore the ancient island kingdom of Arborea. And with a name like that it is no surprise.
Crystals of Arborea is a real-time, first-person, tile-based, party-driven RPG with combat, exploration, and day/night scenes where the colours cycle to give you a nice atmospheric setting.
