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The Chaos Engine Amiga Bitmap Brothers 1993


The Chaos Engine



The Bitmap Brothers released The Chaos Engine for the Amiga and the Atari ST in March of 1993. The Chaos Engine is a top-down run and gun game set in a steampunk world known as The World of Chaos. The Chaos Engine features single-player mode, 2-player coop and 8-way scrolling, movement and firing.

In assuming the role of mercenary the object of The Chaos Engine is to destroy the time-space Chaos Engine and free its inventor trapped within, Baron Fortesque.

Players select one mercenary from a pool of six. In single-player mode the computer controls the other mercenary and the Wisdom stat governs its AI.


 By collecting coins in the gameworld mercenary stats and weapons can be upgraded.


Amiga Chaos Engine was designed by Eric Matthews and Simon Knight and was programmed by Stephen Cargill and Mike Montgomery. The splendid graphics of The Chaos Engine were drawn by Dan Malone. The Chaos Engine in-game audio was composed by Richard Joseph, and its titlescreen track was composed by Farook and Haroon Joi.

The Chaos Engine Features



  • Select one hard-nailed mercenary from a pool of six
  • The six ball-breakers: Mercenary, Brigand, Gentleman, Navvie, Thug and Preacher
  • Each merc is constituted by four prime stats and up to four special abilities
  • Merc prime stats: Skill, Health, Speed, Wisdom
  • Each merc wields a unique ranged weapon (a firearm) with three abilities
  • Cash is collected and spent on stats, weapon power-ups and special abilities
  • Special Powers: Molotov, Bomb, Shot Burst, Dynamite and Map
  • Single-player + AI merc or two-player coop
  • Joystick and keyboard control
  • 16 levels of play: Four worlds consisting of four rounds each
  • 16-color 320x200 resolution (320x176 active drawspace)
  • Top-down 8-way screen-scrolling playfield
  • 8-way movement and firing
  • Height-mapped terrain (verticality)
  • Avenue of approach: stairways, bridges (chokepoints)
  • Environmental hazards such as jets of steam
  • Traps, puzzles and secret passageways
  • Nodes must be activated in order to progresss: Node activated. Exit open. Level complete.
  • Collectibles: Treasure (cash), silver keys, gold keys, food, death token
  • Password system
  • End-of-round stat summaries for both mercs
  • Digitized sound effects and speech
  • Incredible in-game and titlescreen music
  • 8 different monster types

The Amiga version of The Chaos Engine required 1 meg of RAM and was distributed on 2x 3.5" 880kB DD diskettes. It was not hard disk drive-installable.

Criticism of The Chaos Engine


  • Sprite-shifting and screen-scrolling are not silky-smooth (but smooth enough, to be fair)
  • Collision detection is slightly off
  • Weapons lack firing sounds and mercs lack footstep sounds
  • The on-collect sound of coinage is not loud or clear enough
  • Sprite drop-shadows are not dark enough

That said, the controls, music, speech, pixel art and animations are utterly superb.

If The Chaos Engine was not created with the Atari ST in mind it probably would have been technically better. But the Bitmap Brothers developed all of their games with the ST in mind, at least from Xenon of 1988 to The Chaos Engine of 1993.

All of the early Bitmap Brothers games could have been better if the Atari ST didn't exist. For example, The Chaos Engine could have displayed in 32-color full PAL display mode at 50 FPS, as Alien Breed of 1991 does.

The Chaos Engine IBM PC 1994


Scott Walsh of Wave Software ported the Amiga version of The Chaos Engine of 1993 to IBM PC MS-DOS in 1994. IBM PC MS-DOS Chaos Engine displays in 256-color VGA 320x200. In terms of framerate the PC version of The Chaos Engine is comparable to the ST/Amiga versions, but the original ST/Amiga color schemes are inarguably superior. And the Paula audio rendition cannot be beaten.


The PC version of Chaos Engine requires 590K of free conventional RAM (604,064 bytes). Chaos Engine PC audio supports Roland music and digitized sound via Sound Blaster.

The Chaos Engine 2 Amiga 1996



The Bitmap Brothers released the Chaos Engine 2 for the Amiga in 1996. The Chaos Engine 2 is a split-screen deathmatch game in which the player goes up against the computer or another player, along with the standard enemies. Thus, The Chaos Engine 2 eschews the original's coop adventuring in favor of versus run and gun.

Chaos Engine 2 gameplay and audiovisuals leave much to be desired. Indeed, Chaos Engine 2 would have been a massive disappointment for me back in the day had I been awaiting a sequel to one of the best run and gun games of the 1990s. Thankfully, most fans of early-90s Amiga games had moved on from the Amiga before Chaos Engine 2 reared its ugly, consolized head.

In 1996 Chaos Engine 2 should have been a thugged-out sequel built from the ground up for the 14 MHz A1200 with 2 megs of chip and 4 megs of fast, not a strange mutatation of the original's concept. Deathmatch should have been an optional mode of play in the sequel, not the main thing.

As you can see from the screencaps, the color-scheme and sprite designs are nowhere near on par with the original, nor is the audio. The color-scheme seems to have been chosen with a Sega Genesis port in mind. And so does the dumbed down console-like user interface (CD32/Genesis).

Chaos Engine 2 of 1996 only offers four mercenaries to choose from whereas the original Chaos Engine of 1993 offered six (Thug and Preacher were omitted).

In the interests of even-handedness the head-to-head gameplay is innovative in so far as the Amiga did not host any great head-to-head run and gun games; afterall, The Bitmap Brothers were an innovative development studio.

But in 1996 you could have been playing Quake or Abuse in network play with many more than two players -- in full-screen.

The Chaos Engine 2 was designed by Simon Knight and programmed by Steve Cargill, Steve Kelly, Robert Trevellyan and Mark Vick. Chaos Engine 2 audio was composed by Richard Joseph, and its graphics were drawn by Gary Carr and Mike Malone.

The Chaos Engine 2 has an active drawspace of 320x125 x2. Once again, the screen-scrolling is not smooth.

The Chaos Engine was distributed on 3x 3.5" 880kB DD diskettes.

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