Lotus Games Amiga Original Versions by Magnetic Fields (1990-92)

Lotus Games Original Versions

The Lotus games are 2D racing games developed by Shaun Southern and Andrew Morris of Magnetic Fields for the Atari ST and Amiga from 1990-1992. Due to their precise controls, challenging gameplay and smooth sprite-scaling, the Lotus games are some of the best arcade-style racers to appear on computer-game machines.

Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge Amiga 1990

Magnetic Fields released Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge for ST/Amiga in 1990. The original version of Lotus is famous for its smooth framerates, accurate controls and split-screen 2-player option. The Amiga version is (trivially) audio-visually superior to the ST version. For example, the ST version does not draw the dotted lines in the middle of the track, reducing speed-conveyance. The Amiga version was coded by Shaun Southern.

The original version of Lotus features 32 courses, 20 cars per race and strategic pit stops. When Lotus came out it was the best arcade-style racer on Western home computers.

Lotus Turbo Challenge 2 Amiga 1991

Magnetic Fields subsequently released Lotus Turbo Challenge 2 for ST/Amiga in 1991; it was also coded by Shaun Southern. And Lotus 2 was also excellent. Lotus 2 featured full-screen single-player mode (not split-screen single-player mode), better graphics and a more professional presentation than its predecessor.

Lotus 3: The Ultimate Challenge Amiga 1992

Lotus 3: The Ultimate Challenge was released by Magnetic Fields in 1992 on ST/Amiga. Again, Shaun Southern coded the original ST/Amiga versions of Lotus 3.

Lotus: The Ultimate Challenge IBM PC 1993

Jon Medhurst of Cygnus Software Engineering ported Lotus 3 to IBM PC MS-DOS 2.0 in 1993. This is a very good port. It was renamed to Lotus: The Ultimate Challenge because the PC did not host Lotus or Lotus 2.

• Create over 3 trillion tracks using RECS (Racing Environment Construction System)
• Larger object & actor sprites than Lotus 1/2
• 3x cars: Esprit S4, Milan & M200 Concept
• 13x scenarios (Snow, forest, mountain, desert, fog, wind etc.)
• 64x pre-defined tracks (circuits & stages)
• Full-screen single-player or split-screen 2-player

The IBM PC MS-DOS version of Lotus: The Ultimate Challenge was distributed on 1x 3.5" 1.44MB HD diskette and installs to hard disk drive via Install c:. The install size is 1.3 megs (2 files). Lotus requires an i80286 CPU and 640K conventional RAM.

Note how ST/Amiga hosted Lotus in 1990 whereas the PC did not get a Lotus game until 1993.

The Atari ST version of the Lotus games played about as well as the Amiga versions, but the ST version of the original Lotus of 1990 lacked the dotted lines on the tracks, thereby reducing speed-conveyance. In addition, the sound effects and music of the ST version were not as good as the Amiga version.

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