1992 PC Games
This is a curated list of PC games that came out in 1992. The PC games are listed in alphabetical order. Both MS-DOS and Amiga games are included. I will expand on this list in the future.
1992 was one of the most innovative and impressive years of 1990s computer game history. Consider:
- Alone in the Dark by I-MOTION predates Resident Evil by four years
- Darklands by MPS Labs invented RTwP six years before Baldur's Gate came out
- Dune 2 by Westwood Studios formalized the RTS genre, which became HUGE
- Flashback by Delphine was the first massive and full-featured cinematic platformer
- Joe and Mac by Elite was the first top-tier VGA-based port of a coinop platformer
- Laser Squad by Target was the first proper 16-bit turn-based tactics game
- LINKS 386 Pro by Access Software was the best golf sim
- Parasol Stars by Factor 5 was the best platform game on Western home computers
- Premier Manager by Realms of Fantasy was the best team-sports management game
- Sensible Soccer by Sensible Software is arguably the best English football game ever made
- Street Fighter 2 by Creative Materials was the first great versus Fighter on PC and one of the best coinop ports in history
- Ultima Underworld by Origin was the first realtime t-mapped game to be developed and demonstrated
- Wolfenstein 3D by id Software was the first major FPS to be released
In 1992 the PC was not beating the Amiga in coinop genre because its VGA chipset was not yet being banged hard by 2D coders. Thus, the 64-color extra half-brite mode of Unreal and Agony or the 32-color PAL overscan mode of Alien Breed and Project X continued to contend, but the PC versions of Street Fighter 2 and Joe and Mac smashed the Amiga versions to pieces, which suggested what was to come in the next few years: the Amiga getting beaten at its own game.
Moreover, the PC was beating the Amiga black and blue across most other 1992 genre, from the casual adventure game to the grognard flight sim. In some genre Amiga ports of PC games were laughing stocks; needlessly so in many cases, since poor Amiga ports stemmed from PC-developer ignorance of Amiga hardware and/or a lack of care and consideration. However, it amused me that Monkey Island 2 on the Amiga had smoother scrolling and hardware mouse cursor movement than the celebrated -- indeed, revered -- PC original.
Sierra On-Line did not understand the Amiga or care much about the Amiga versions of their games, but LucasFilm did because they took pride in every release, whether it was for the lead platform or not.
Across any and all genre of the early 80s to the late 90s LucasFilm were simply much better at coding, writing, drawing and composing than Sierra On-Line, period.
LucasFilm was high quality, Sierra On-Line was low quality. It really is that simple.
Audio-wise, Amiga Paula of 1985 was still able to at times contend with PC digital sound and MIDI music of the Sound Blaster and Roland MT-32 combo. Consider for example the sampled sound of Project X and the orchestrations of Agony.
By 1992 the Atari ST had been decimated by the Amiga and yet there the ST was, still moping around, as if to ensure that some future Amiga games would get hamstrung by the ST's feeble tech-specs, as many had been in the past. I've said it before and I'll say it again: if only the ST was killed off by the advent of Shadow of the Beast back in 1989, but alas, the ST was truly the turd that would not flush.
Successors to the ST and A500 respectively, Atari released the Falcon and Commodore released the Amiga 1200 in late 1992. The Falcon and the A1200 were much more powerful than the ST and A500, but they were not powerful enough to compete with the combo of Intel's x86DX and the audiovisual chipsets of big-box PCs (sound cards and S/VGA cards).
Note that Falcons and A1200s were housed in ST and A500-like semi-portable enclosures; they were not big-box machines, but rather microcomputers. Very, very cool micros that you could take into your living room and plug into your big-screen TV and stereo system.
Falcons were powered by Motorola 68030s clocked at 16 MHz and A1200s by Motorola 68EC020s clocked at 14 MHz. However, out of the box the base-model Falcon only had 1 meg of RAM and the A1200 only had 2 megs of ChipRAM. Adding 4 megs of 32-bit trapdoor FastRAM significantly increased A1200 speed and unlocked its power, but the A1200 also needed an 030 accelerator to approach the 386DX's number-crunching speed: the 020 with 2 megs of ChipRAM being akin to the 386SX in power, which was not a Doom-level CPU. [1]
Both the Falcon and A1200 featured SVGA-like displays and good audio capabilities though A1200 audio was not improved over A500 audio yet the Falcon featured 8-channel 16-bit digital audio DMA. Sadly, both machines lacked hard disk drives and CD-ROM as standard. Sure, some Falcon and A1200 owners upgraded these micros into what amounted to multimedia workstations, but was the average game-dev going to tap that potential when most did not upgrade and big-box PCs already had unassailable market penetration? The A1200 needed at least 4 megs of FastRAM, 030 speed and hard disk drive as standard in order to get noticed by big PC devs in the U.S., many of whom had long since regarded A500s as toys and big-box Amigas as NewTek Video Toasters; across the Atlantic they did not think of Amigas as PCs, per se -- and yet they were -- except they were not IBM-compatible.
Suffice it to say that the Falcon and the A1200 never took off as computer game machines; they had no Killer App upon launch and nothing much to make them stand out later on like their predecessors did: Oids and Dungeon Master on 520 STs or Beast and Lemmings on A500s (and many others besides). Relative to release date and tech-specs no A1200 or Falcon game was as impressive as those.
On the other hand, the IBM PC compatible was already hosting Falcon 3.0 of 1991. Base-model A1200s and Falcons could not have handled Falcon 3.0 even if they were out, which they were not (late-92).
That said, some games were released for the Falcon and A1200, most ST/A500 games ran on them, some A500 games were enhanced for the A1200, and some games ran faster on the A1200 (such as The Settlers of 1993), but Amiga game-devs did not get the chance to push the A1200 and its AGA chipset hard before the Amiga lost the two-front war against PCs at one end and the new consoles from Sega, Nintendo and Sony at the other.
Thus did microcomputer gaming fade out by the mid-90s: the Falcon and the A1200 were the last microcomputers. [2]
With all that said, I am thankful for the Falcon and A1200: they were cool and highly expandable machines.
***
The King computer game of 1992 was Dune 2 by Westwood Studios.
Each entry below links to either technical overviews, reviews or deep delves on the game. You can click an image and mouse-wheel up and down through the images.
Note the two Commodore 64 shoot 'em ups one of which was coded by The Master, Manfred Trenz.
List of 1992 PC Games
Best 1992 Computer Games: Awards
- Best RTS game of 1992: Dune 2 (PC)
- Best Turn-based tactics game of 1992: Laser Squad (PC)
- Best cRPG of 1992: Darklands (PC)
- Best Adventure Game of 1992: Star Trek: 25th Anniversary (PC)
- Best FPS of 1992: Wolfenstein 3D (PC)
- Best Flight Sim of 1992: Aces of the Pacific (PC)
- Best versus Fighter of 1992: Street Fighter 2 (PC)
- Best Platform game of 1992: Parasol Stars (Amiga)
- Best Racing sim of 1992: Formula One Grand Prix (PC)
- Best Coinop port of 1992: Street Fighter 2 (PC)
- Best Shoot 'em up of 1992: Project X (Amiga)
- Best Physics of 1992: Formula One Grand Prix (PC)
- Best Presentation in a 1992 game: Dune 2 (PC)
- Best Sound Effects of 1992: Street Fighter 2 (PC)
- Best Music of 1992: Shadow of the Beast 3 or Agony (Amiga)
- Best 3D game of 1992: Alone in the Dark (PC)
- Best 2D game of 1992: Dune 2 (PC)
- Best Game of 1992: Dune 2 (PC)
[1]
Third-party Amiga accelerators of the early 1990s:
In 1991 RCS Management released the Fusion 40 accelerator for the A2000: 25 MHz 68040 (25 MIPS / 8 MFLOPS) and 32 megs of 32-bit RAM.
In 1992 Progressive released Progressive 040/500 accelerator for the A500: 25 MHz 68040 and 4 megs of 32-bit RAM.
In 1992 GVP released the GVP A530 Turbo accelerator for the A500: 40 MHz 68EC030 CPU, 40 MHz 68882 floating point math coprocessor (FPU), 8 megs of 32-bit 60 nanosecond RAM (2x 4 meg SIMMs), DMA SCSI controller and 240 meg hard disk drive (can add 6x hard disk drives or CD-ROM drives).
[2]
As well, both Atari and Commodore would release their own consoles in late 1993: the Atari Jaguar and Amiga CD32 -- two utter laughing stocks. Note that Liberation: Captive 2 of 1993 was released for the CD32 before the A1200.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.