The First REAL Amiga Game

By first REAL Amiga game, I am referring to the first game on the Amiga that tapped its custom chipset such that the game could not be mistaken for an ST or IBM PC game. In addition, I am referring to a game that was not just an "upgrade-port" of an 8 bit original.

In Best Amiga Games I highlighted some games that are unmistakably Amiga games. But which was the first Amiga game to clearly differentiate itself from ST and MS-DOS slop?

I'm not just talking about the Amiga's 32 from 4096 versus the ST's 16 from 512 or EGA's 16 from 64. That is just color palette.

If we are just talking about color palette, we can cite Defender of the Crown of 1986:

Palette is certainly a factor, but it is only one factor. What I am talking about are Amiga games that feature all of the following:

• Super-smooth hardware scrolling and sprite/bob-shifting
• Big sprites, lots of sprites (and/or bobs)
• Copper coprocessor and bit blitter employment
• Precise controls and collision detection
• Proper Paula audio
• Palette exploitation (no. of on-screen colors)
• Overall coinop-quality presentation, perfomance and playability

That is, an Amiga game that is unmistakably so when it is seen, heard and played. An Amiga game that cannot appear on rival platforms without becoming a soulless husk of its original self. Veteran Amigans can ID real Amiga games from as little as an image or soundtrack fragment.

Also, the game in question must have good gameplay. DotC barely even features gameplay. Thus, discounted.

I am talking about the first game you played where you thought: "Yes! This is it. This is why I bought an Amiga."

Well, here is my answer.

The first real Amiga game was the 1988 shoot 'em up known as Hybris:

Coded by Martin Pederson in 1988, Hybris is the first real Amiga game that covers the above-enumerated criteria. Yes, the ST and IBM PC could caricature its static graphics but NOT its scrolling, its sprite-shifting or its soundscape.

You know Hybris is an Amiga game as soon as you hit the fire button and watch that projectile glide over a smoothly-scrolling playfield before hiting its target with a meaty boom.

At any rate, Hybris was the first game that made many of us happy to have an Amiga. We were playing this arcade-quality shooter before the PC Engine and Sega Genesis even came out. And Hybris was followed up by Battle Squadron and Silkworm of 1989, both of which came out in the same year as Shadow of the Beast.

But while Shadow of the Beast defined Amiga-game audio-visuals of the high-production kind, it did not have gameplay on par with Hybris, Battle Squadron or Silkworm. However, Beast has the most distinctly Amigan audio-visuals of any Amiga game in existence.

After those four games Amigans were graced with the two best Turrican games and SWIV from 1990-92.

Therefore, 1988-92 marks the point of real-deal Amiga gaming. We do not need to cite other great Amiga games to support our argument that 1988-92 was prime-time for the Amiga.

But consider as well:

• The A500 was selling well and ST and 8 bit ports were fewer
• The Amiga games-catalogue was growing rapidly across most genre
• The IBM PC did not yet completely dominate (no Doom)
• The "16 bit" games-machine aka console did not yet dominate

1988-1992 was a good time to be an Amigan. And 1989-90 was the apex. After the Amiga there would never again be a microcomputer that could carve out territory between PC and console.

A lot was lost.

cf. Shoot 'em up History.

A part of: History of 1990s Computer Games.

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