Lunark – A Review

Way back in 1992, a wonderful platform game appeared on the shelves of our favourite computer game stockists (John Menzies in Clydebank for me personally). That game was Flashback from Delphine Software, for the Commodore Amiga.  Released at the height of the Amiga’s popularity and taking advantage of all the Amiga’s considerable attributes, and being somewhat of a spiritual successor to an earlier successful Delphine game for the Amiga, namely Another World, the pre-release hype around the game was electric and once we got to play it on our own computers, that hype was very much warranted.  The game was excellent and has, over the decades become synonymous with the kind of quality game that the Amiga became renowned for.  It was of course subsequently released on just about every other computer or console that you could shake a stick at, and in doing so further cemented its popularity as an epic game that would likely have a worthy Top 10 spot in many a gamers list of best games for their favourite console or computer. 

So, what does Flashback have to do with this article – given it’s titled Lunark I rightly hear you ask?  Well, let me enlighten you dear reader. Just as Flashback was the spiritual successor to Another World back in the day, Lunark is the spiritual successor to Flashback, albeit 30 or so years later…

Released in the 1st quarter of this year by Canari Games, and available on multiple platforms (such as PC, Nintendo Switch, Playstation and Xbox), Lunark is – as they state on their web site “A modern take on the 2D cinematic platformer genre”, but for anyone who has ever played Flashback, it’s way more than this assertion by the developers, the game is clearly an homage to Flashback specifically, which is obvious from the opening moments of the game to the cinematic cut scenes as you pick up something interesting or something that has importance to the game which you should focus on, but let’s not dwell on that, as I’m sure the developers are treading a line here and not wanting to be specific in their advertising.

So, to the game itself…

You play as the character Leo, who is a courier who seems to have abilities beyond your average Joe and who also has a mysterious past. Leo is fulfilling courier contracts via the Moon which is now a colony of Earth and is seen as a lifeline to an Earth that is sharply in decline. In deference to the AI called NOAH who literally takes no prisoners and has a tight control of the population and what they can or can’t do via a series of killer robot sentries and drones, Leo plies his trade.

Along the way Leo will come up against a series of characters and quests as he navigates his way through this beautifully pixelated world.  He will of course encounter robots, sentries, and defence systems which will all need to be overcome as he begins to get embroiled in the narrative of the story and his adventure continues. 

Without giving any of the story away, Lunark is a superb return to gaming of simpler times.  That’s not to suggest that the game is in any way simple as it can be just as difficult as the games that inspired it, perhaps even more-so at times.  The pixel art is lovely, although in an effort to be detailed, the items that you may need to interact with can sometimes be lost in the colourful surroundings.  I especially enjoy the atmospheric lighting in the different areas which Leo explores and the overall detail, given the pixel density, is quite surprising. The gameplay itself is smooth and is controlled easily, with minimum buttons to remember.  Leo’s animation style is almost an exact clone of what we saw in Flashback and Another World (and Prince of Persia if I’m going to be complete in my comparison).  Walking, running, jumping, rolling and shooting are all present and correct as you would expect from such a game.  There is a shielding mechanism to utilise and weapons to protect yourself with. Progression through different areas will require completion of other tasks, which are easy enough to figure out in the main, with the more difficult areas to progress through requiring a bit more thought on occasion. 

The music is again a tribute to bygone games of this genre and is very good.

The game, overall is an excellent platformer in its own right but the link to previous games makes it that bit more satisfying, however if I had one gripe, it would be the save stages. The game can only be saved at certain points throughout Leo’s progress, and the duration between each of these stages can take some time, so getting killed and having to be respawned back to where you were 10 minutes or so previously is very frustrating.

I would definitely recommend Lunark to any fan of Flashback or Another World, or if you simply like a good platformer.

The Never Ending Story – the Computer Game review

The NeverEnding Story holds a special place in my heart. I came to the story, much like most of us in the UK, via the 1984 Miramax Movie of the same name which was a screenplay adaptation of the original 1979 German book release by Michael Ende and was translated into English by Ralph Manheim in 1983 for consumption by Western English-speaking audiences.

I say that the story holds a special place in my heart due to the amount of boxes it ticks for me personally – from a movie perspective anyway such as, it’s heroic fantasy; it’s a young boy performing heroic things (like I could only imagine myself doing); it’s rescuing  the Princess, and in this story that would be “the Childlike Princess of Fantasia”. The music for the movie had an amazing score by the legendary synth pioneer Giorgio Moroder and Jazz composer Klaus Doldinger with a main theme song full of Synth arpeggios and wonderful vocals by Limahl and backing vocals from Beth Andersen to die for (and being very much a synthy nerd, this was like catnip for me). Add to that, the great premise – being based around a young boy who runs into a vintage book shop to escape bullies and who then finds an escape into another world through one of the books he finds there.  In 1984 I wished I was that young boy, escaping my own challenges and that meant it really struck a chord with me.

In later life, I would read the book and I would love that just as much. The story and the film is a rousing whimsical fantasy adventure combined with moments of heartbreaking agony (anyone of a certain vintage who watched this film or read the book as a young person will know exactly what I am referring to). It is a fantastic story of good versus evil and the sacrifices that are made to overcome that Evil. And Evil in the context of this story is ‘the Nothing’, a malevolent force that will consume all in the Fantasia universe as soon as dreams cease to provide enough energy to sustain it.

When my daughter was old enough, we watched this as a family now and again, and it has become a firm favourite of hers too (much like a lot of the great 80’s films I’ve shared with her over the years).

Of course, the success of the film meant that there were many video game adaptations of it, and that’s what I want to talk about here.

Released in 1985 by Ocean Software for the Commodore 64, Sinclair ZX Spectrum and the Amstrad CPC , with the Apple II and Atari 8 bit versions following a year later, the game was a text based graphical adventure game (the graphics coming in the form of stills depending on your current location).

You play as the main protagonist of the story – the young hero Atreyu as he adventures through the land in search of the saviour of Fantasia. This is a large adventure, spread over three sequential parts, covering approx.. 100KB of Data.  The story begins with the young Empress within her Ivory Tower, weakened by the impending Nothing and Cairon the Physician explaining the need for a great hero to save them from ‘the Nothing’ which is destroying their land. In parallel, Atreyu who is walking in the Great Forest, enters the story.  It is here Atreyu will encounter characters such as Rockbiter and Teenyweeny, who explain to him what is happening and they then head off towards the Ivory Tower to alert the Princess to the impending doom, leaving Atreyu to his quest, but first he has to find the Auryn, a magical medallion which contains the strength of Fantasia, then find the saviour and return the Auryn to the Princess. From here, there are many items to collect along the way (as with any adventure game worth its salt), including an important horn which allows Atreyu to call upon Falkor the Luck Dragon.  Atreyu will encounter a variety of locations and characters along the way who will aid, or try and delay our hero in his quest. Thankfully, the questline in the game avoids some of the darker moments of the movie.

The game is detailed and the text descriptions and overall narrative for the adventure is excellent, as are the graphics which are displayed in the top third of the screen, representing your current location in the world, superimposed with box-outs displaying items you are carrying or portraits of inhabitants that you are engaging with at the time.   I originally played this game on my ZX Spectrum , which was and remains my favourite version. Later in life (but still a long time ago) I replayed it on the Commodore 64 which to be fair is more colourful and graphically impressive (and yeah it has the Martin Galway version of the theme coming from the superb SID chip).  I haven’t played the other versions but from researching them, all versions seem to suffer from the fairly poor parser I experienced on the Spectrum and C64, which is capped at 40 words and is missing the important ‘examine’ command (which is almost adventure game heresy).  All versions of the game seem to have had a fairly decent reception from the various magazines of the time with ZZap64! rating the game at 65% (harsh!) and Sinclair User providing the highest score 4 out of 5 (80%) overall, which edges the Amtix! score of 79%, which I would like to think was due to the wonderful Spectrum 128 version of the game, that included the excellent looping theme tune from the movie, making great use of the 128’s AY-3-8912 sound chip and of course Fred Grey’s interpretation of it.

In summary, the game was enjoyable and a good adaptation of the movie (although, like the movie, it was only half of the story!), especially the Spectrum version and I do believe that anyone wishing to try it nowadays won’t be disappointed, irrespective of which version you choose (but you should choose the Spectrum 128 version!).

There were two subsequent games, based on the movie, namely the Neverending Story II: the Arcade Game, a dreadful side scrolling platform affair made up of 7 sub games which was released in 1990 by Linel for the C64, Amiga, Spectrum and MSDOS between 1990 and 1991 and the Neverending Story, Auryn Quest which was based on the book rather than the movie and was released in 2002 by Octagon Entertainment for Windows.  This version was mainly a 3D first person puzzle adventure game with elements of run and jump added for good measure.  Both of these games were drastically different to the original text adventure, and both were universally panned by the gaming magazines of the time.

My new Amiga 1200 Accelerator!

So, I’m a lucky retro computing loving boy!

I happen to own a sweet ass Amiga 1200 (in the cool CD32 limited edition case from A1200.Net) as you will see from the photo’s on the site.

I’ve had an accelerator in this machine for many years (way before the cool CD32 case) and what I had was a Blizzard MkIV 68030 running at 50Mhz and 32Mb RAM. This would have been eye wateringly expensive in 1995 when it was released at 299DM and probably out of reach for the average Amiga fan (especially when to get proper use from it you would have had to have owned a hard drive too). My lovely Blizzard served a purpose for years and is probably still the best “Old school” accelerator for the Amiga 1200 (bang for buck). Excellent for running Workbench from my Compact Flash HD and subsequently WHDLoad games worked a treat. Of course being a straight up 68030 accelerator – it’s very compatible with all the software available.

After visiting Amiga 32 in Neuss (Germany) and seeing the Vampire running and then seeing my friend Mike’s experience with the A600 version, I signed up for the A1200 version once it was announced and after the usual wait (probably 6 to 8 months) I got the Opportunity to buy one and subsequently parted with approx. 450 Euros as I really wanted to try that out on my own machine.

After a few months of ownership, I have to say I simply wasn’t happy with it. Initially the firmware allowed the IDE interface to run the CF Hard Drive at very fast speeds but I soon realised it disabled the PCMCIA (which I used regularly to transfer stuff from my PC to my Amiga!). A new firmware was released that fixed the PCMCIA, but disabled the onboard IDE!! I moved my CF back to the Amiga’s own controller and thankfully, yes I could use the PCMCIA again. I observed slower access speeds on the CF HD but still quicker than it was when using the Blizzard so it wasn’t such a hardship. I discovered that lots of WHDLoad games would crash with the “Software error” splash screen or just not run at all, and then there was the issue that any games or demos not developed for RTG would not appear on my LCD screen but flipped back to my CRT. The sound was also still coming from my CRT irrespective of where the image was but I think the main thing that didn’t sit right with me was that the Vampire “replaced” the core Amiga system and in doing so lost the Spirit and nostalgia of using the machine. It feels weird to talk about technology in emotional terms – but that’s what I was feeling. It just felt a bit wrong…

It was fast enough – sure – way faster than anything else on an Amiga – but I don’t need that on an Amiga – I’ve got a very capable PC for those things anyway. Here’s the benchmark so you can see for yourselves:

I decided to sell it on and that was that.

Fortunately… one of my friends is Stephen Leary who created the well respected “Terrible Fire” range of accelerators, most notably for the CD32 (which I also have one for my own CD32 and it’s awesome!). Stephen had been working on a prototype Terrible Fire for the A1200 (the TF1260) and I was very lucky to be offered an early release version to try out on my A1200 (see – this is what I mean about being a lucky retro computer loving boy!).

Stephen’s TF1260 is simply awesome! It’s much faster than my old Blizzard but gives me the same feeling of my Amiga 1200 still being very much part of the experience and not replaced – but enhanced, and enhanced significantly! Gone are the compatibility issues from the Vampire and because I can only run it on my CRT (where it should be!) there are no issues with flipping between screens. This is a very modern take on an old school requirement. Here’s what it looks like inside my A1200:

Internal side of the TF1260
Underside of the TF1260

And here is a wee benchmark:

I will never get tired of seeing the “phone me now” on Sysinfo 🙂

Interestingly when I still had the Vampire I was doing a test on it and comparing real world performance with the Terrible Fire and as we Amigans do, I filmed a comparison with the Frontier Elite intro (because we all know, the faster your Amiga is, the smoother the intro looks) and I was astonished to see how poorly it performed on the Vampire compared to the Terrible Fire. Here’s the link to the comparison that my friend John pulled together – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZK8Xin1A38&list=LL&index=5&t=34s

So – what have I learned with my accelerator journey of the recent months?

I’ve learned that I don’t want to “replace” my hardware with something new. I’ve learned that enhancing it is the way to go and I’ve learned that I can spend an awful lot of money on something that will give me a poorer experience than what I had before, but ultimately I’ve learned that through good friends and their ability to create I have something way better than what I had in the first place and the Vampire experience was simply a bump in my Amiga journey!

Deacon Blue – Raintown

Image result for deacon blue raintown

Released in May 1987, with it’s iconic Oscar Marzaroli’s grim snapshot of Glasgow’s skyline in the 60s adorning the album cover, this was Deacon Blue’s first album and it catapulted the band into the UK pop scene with the beautifully written and performed “Dignity” as it’s title track. Only being 16 years old at the time, this was in equal measure the soundtrack to my youth along with New Order’s 1987 superb compilation album and Erasure’s “the Circus” album.

The Raintown album however was something different. Clean guitar, beautiful chords, great lyrics (only a certain Scottish demographic will know what he means when Ricky Ross sings about Bogey packing his lunch in a Sunblest bag – classic) and raspy singing from Ricky and soaring supporting vocals from Lorraine McIntosh all begin with the hauntingly wonderful “Born in a Storm” which segues smoothly into the Raintown track which sets the tone for the whole album.

The album had several chart successes from it’s single releases but for me, aside from Dignity my favourite song is “Love’s great Fears”. I do enjoy listening to this from start to finish on occasion – not necessarily only on a dreich Glasgow afternoon

Born in a Storm
Raintown

John’s Top 5 Amiga Games

Anyone who knows me knows that the Commodore Amiga is my favourite home computer of all time (with the Commodore 64 a close second place).

I have seen many top 5 games lists in my time for all different computers and consoles, but none have been so varied and different as the top 5 Amiga games lists I’ve come across over the years, so to come up with my own list will undoubtedly be just as different and contentious as all the rest. Some games will overlap on other lists but likely in a different pecking order and maybe my choices won’t even be on other lists at all, but as it stands all I can do is offer my own personal choice of Top 5 games for this amazing computer – the Commodore Amiga!

01 // WINGS

Image result for amiga wings

Released in 1990 by Cinemaware at the peak of the Amiga’s popularity, Wings holds a very special place in my heart and is a game I return to often on my own Amiga.

Set in World War 1, Wings is a game of three parts — ‘dogfighting’ (which is quite hard to master!) that places you in the cockpit of a bi-plane (with a tendency to have its machine guns lock up just as you’re about to fire on the
enemy!); ‘top down strafing’ where you’ll attack convoys and supply lines (whilst avoiding red cross ambulances of course) and ‘top down bombing missions’ to destroy strategic targets such as aerodromes and ammunition caches.

All of this is set to a continuous backdrop of wonderful storytelling by reading the diary notes of your protagonist everyday to a lovely musical score which makes you feel quite part of the timeline. The graphics for the game are detailed and very well drawn and the gameplay is easy to pick up and quickly becomes absorbing although the dog fighting is a little bit harder to master than the other sections of the game.

02 // Defender of the Crown

Image result for defender of the crown amiga

Another game by Cinemaware — it was a real toss of the coin between this and Wings as to which of them would be my number one! To think that a game of such high quality in graphics, music and gameplay came out in
1986 is astonishing! This is a real testimony to what the likes of RJ Mical and his colleagues could achieve with the amazing hardware in the Amiga and programming ability to match. Set in the middle ages of chivalry and conquest in England, the objective of the game was to take on the role of a Saxon lord and help shake off the yoke of the Norman invaders by building armies, besieging and raiding enemy castles, rescuing maidens, winning
jousting tournaments and expanding your kingdom. The game has it all. Action sequences and turn based strategy with the aforementioned
amazing graphics and sound.

03 // The Secret of Monkey Island

Image result for secret of monkey island amiga

There is something very special about The Secret of Monkey Island. From the opening bars of music followed by the game’s graphical intro you really feel that you’re in for a treat. You play Guybrush Threepwood and your goal is to become a famous pir

ate! The journey to achieve pirate status is a proper fun filled and challenging adventure. I hadn’t played any other
Lucasfilm games before Monkey Island so this style of game was new to me. The point and click interface, the humour, beautiful graphics… this game kept me enthralled for weeks! My friends would come over during the summer and we’d play it until the wee small hours. We all helped puzzle out the challenges and get to the next task. Such good times.

Created by the talented Ron Gilbert and released by Lucasfilm Games in 1990, the Secret of Monkey Island came on four disks within the by now expected ‘big box’ format. You certainly felt like you were getting value for money.

04 // Sensible Soccer

Screenshot

After being disappointed in the quality of football games on my computers for years I thought we were getting somewhere when I bought Microprose Soccer for my C64. It was a real step change to what came before and it was a brilliant game. When I finally got an Amiga and then got Kick Off I thought that finally this was it… a proper football game that was in equal measure difficult to play as it was fun once you’d got used to the style of play. I didn’t think anything could match it… I was wrong in a BIG way! My very first game of Sensible Soccer back in 1992 had me hooked! Adopting the top down view similar to Kick off, the fast pace and clever play style made for an instantly playable game which when played with friends is a total blast!

The detail of the games as they progressed and the options to manage your team line up, formation and so on whilst competing in whichever league or tournament you want to is so much fun and often leads to hours of play in
a single session.

05 // Dune II

Image result for dune ii amiga

Before Westwood thrilled us all with the massively popular Command and Conquer series, it cut its teeth on the Amiga with this absolute gem of a game! Launched in 1993 through Virgin games, the game came on five disks. Based on the Frank Herbert book and the subsequent 1984 film, this forerunner of the Real Time Strategy genre begins with asking you to choose your ‘house’. The houses are essentially the warring factions (Atreides, Harkonnen and the Ordos), all vying for supremacy and the right to sole production of the drug ‘melange’ or ‘spice’. From choosing your house you are quickly into the action, building your bases, defending and attacking in equal measure and crucially mining for ‘spice’ (whilst avoiding the Worms that would rear out of the sand and destroy vehicles if you weren’t on hard ground). This game had me hooked! Many blurry eyed mornings were the result of playing this game,

The Amiga and its games have provided me with many, many years of enjoyment and it was really hard to pick a top 5 when other games such as Speedball 2, North and South, Cannon Fodder, the Settlers, Another World, Flashback, Alien Breed, Lemmings, Syndicate and so many others are pretty much up there too!