Professionally published homebrew games.

[Cammy]

I am really pleased that this year saw the first professionally published classic Amiga game in many years. Tales of Gorluth not only comes packed in a glossy CD case on a lovely, printed and pressed CD, but the game itself feels very polished, with a lot of attention put into the story, characters, graphics and outstanding music. For a game made by a very small team of homebrew developers the overall quality of the product produced is above and beyond what we're used to in our community.

Which is a shame, really, because time has proven that not only is there a market out there for new, boxed games for classic systems, but that with very little fanfare a new Amiga game can sell quite well despite the apparent lack of interest and the vocal minority of naysayers who love shooting down dreams. It's something I had hoped we would have been able to see earlier, but better late than never!

As well as Tales of Gorluth, there have been quite a few really good games released on the Amiga in the last decade but nearly all of them were only released as downloads in random places as well as Aminet, and most of them went unnoticed or were soon forgotten. Now, I'm certainly not trying to say that free, downloadable games aren't as good as one we have to pay for, but I know many of us would still love to buy a boxed copy to both keep as a collector's item and also help support the developers of these games so we can encourage them to continue producing amazing new software for our favourite home computers.

Nearly any other classic system you can think of has a homebrew game scene these days, and many of them have dedicated publishers taking care of quality control, producing and promoting the games these communities are producing. They offer boxed copies, loose disks, digital downloads and other options including some exclusive limited collector's editions all at suitable prices. They have attractive, modern-looking webstores where you can browse through their available games, viewing screenshots, videos and photos of the physical copies before you make your purchases.

So I thought I'd share with you some photos of some of the great homebrew games that have been published for all the other systems which don't even seem to have as big of a community as we have, but still have enough loyal fans to keep the dream alive.

Remember, all of these games were made by people like you and me, fans of the respective systems, not professional developers.

AtariAge publish some really professional products for the Atari computer and console systems. Here are some of their games:

Atari 7800

Atari 800

Atari 2600

Atari Jaguar CD

Super Fighter Team also gave Atari fans a welcome surprise:

Atari Lynx

The Commodore 64 market is very well taken care of with great products from Protovision, RGCD and Psytronik:

Commodore 64

As you can see, some games even get multiple releases on different systems, or sometimes come in value bundles:

Spectrum

Sega Mega Drive

Nintendo gamers aren't left out, with some cool new games from Infinite Lives, One Bit Games and Retro USB:

Nintendo Entertainment System

There are heaps more games coming out for various platforms but it would take forever to find and list them all, but for now here are a random assortment of examples to show some of the coolness we've been missing out on here in the Amiga community:

Spectrum

Odyssey 2

ColecoVision

TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine

AmigaOS4/Aros

So I guess what I'd like to do is discuss with the group what we need from an Amiga homebrew publisher, and talk about incentives for developers to finish their projects and get their games published rather than simply losing faith towards the end of development and either not releasing the game at all or just releasing an unfinished beta download somewhere.

Should we come up with a new, consistent packaging standards for all of our upcoming games the way some of these publishers have? For example I'd love to offer the options of a download, a floppy disk in an envelope, or a boxed disk with manual at least for each game that comes on disk.

I'd really like to set up a funding platform to help out Amiga developers, run by volunteers in the Amiga community.

 

[FastRobPlus]

I was also just thinking that it's odd that there is so little indie game dev work on Amiga when there is so much on the 8-bits.

A game similar to the currently trending "Five Nights At Freddie's" would work very well as an Amiga release.

That said, I think many who might do Amiga projects are busy trying to make games with mass appeal for the current crop of devices. For example, I've just recently shipped Fable Anniversary and Disney Fairies: Hidden Treasures, and am devoting my indie time to an Android project...

 

[Templar]

I will come back to your interesting topic later on, but you forgot M.A.C.E. by AmiBoing, Ace of Hearts - Collector's Edition by Cherry-Darling and Capcom's Battle Squadron - Deluxe Edition professional packages as well for AmigaOS 4.

 

[Cammy]

I really hope we can have some community discussion about this topic before Amigakit decides to insert himself as overlord and creative controller of all that goes on in the Amiga world. It really drains my enthusiasm I have for the Amiga when that guy forces himself in any thread he finds an opporunity to profit from.

- - - Updated - - -

I will come back to your interesting topic later on, but you forgot M.A.C.E. by AmiBoing, Ace of Hearts - Collector's Edition by Cherry-Darling and Capcom's Battle Squadron - Deluxe Edition professional packages as well for AmigaOS 4.

Oh, I didn't necessarily forget them, I was just mainly referring to the lack of classic Amiga homebrew games. It's very cool that the AmigaOS 4 market has a few games to buy!

 

[-Acid-]

The last indie game I bought was Sturmwind for the Dreamcast, it's an excellent game and I didn't mind paying full price for it. However the game has to interest me to get me to part with the cash and while Tales of Gorluth looks well made it's just not the type of game I want to play. If something that interested me came out for the Amiga I would definitely consider paying for it.

 

[Cammy]

That's fair enough, and all the more reason we need more of a choice in the market. I'd really like to help get those unfinished games out there so we can move onto newer games together. We should discuss our ideas, what kinds of games we'd like to see, and how can we best go about getting them made?

Also why don't more homebrewers aim at more than one system? Most of the hard work that goes into a game doesn't have to be completely redone from scratch for a port, but you can reach a larger audience by converting a game to another system once it's made. I think it would be beneficial for inter-community cooperation in developing a few cross-platform games.

 

[Templar]

I really hope we can have some community discussion about this topic before Amigakit decides to insert himself as overlord and creative controller of all that goes on in the Amiga world. It really drains my enthusiasm I have for the Amiga when that guy forces himself in any thread he finds an opporunity to profit from.

I think AmigaKit is irrelevant in such a topic. If you are talking about Tales of Gorluth game, then probably it was developer's decision to sell the remaining copies to an Amiga distributor and shop such as AmigaKit is. Don't forget that there is also APC&TCP (yes, the same guyz that print the Amiga Future magazine) as a publisher, who they will be gladly help you to publish your new games for 68k Amigas and/or AmigaOS 4.x.

I have bought all the aforementioned games, not just to support them only, but they really look and play nice. I've even paid for Ace of Hearts when it was first released as a download version and I have ordered the Collector's Edition as well. The same goes for Battle Squadron for AmigaOS 4.x and so on. But that topic would not mainly focus on games, but on new applications as well (last example is the very good DigiBooster 3 tracker program which is available from APC&TCP).

I hope AmiWorx will lead the way to see more commercial Amiga games in the future in such stylish cases with pressed media, inlays and manuals, and not just download versions only. System preferences varies, as it seems mostly developers are aiming to AmigaOS 4.x or MorphOS, because the user-base is much bigger than AROS for example.

What do you have in mind Moya, actually? As far as I remember, you're supposed to introduce some games in the past, but since then I didn't hear any news. Hope that your projects are not cancelled or set on hold status, unless you have lost motivation at all. Hope to hear some good news on your projects.

 

[sneeker]

Hmm. My tales of gorluth is actually on a CDR.. Printed front but the is a green tint to the back of it. Didn't know there was pressed copies about? Came from amigakit too so its all legitimate etc.

 

[commodorejohn]

This thread reminds me, I need to get back to work on some of my projects...

 

[Zetr0]

This thread reminds me, I need to get back to work on some of my projects...

You and me both my friend =/

 

[DutchinUSA]

Well, it's good to see you back roaming the forums

Flux Mastah' Zee ​

 

[rednova]

Miss Cammy:
I wish you success in your venture.
Good luck !!!