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My Amiga games

Once upon a time, when I was young and impressionable, I developed a love for computer games - particularily cute and colorful Japanese games like Pengo, Bomb Jack, Bubble Bobble or Super Mario Brothers. As a twelve-year-old, I got hold of a Swedish computer called ABC80, and immediately started to write games for it.

A few years later, my dad brought home a 286 PC, for which I wrote lots of GW-BASIC games under the name Martinsoft. I thought the name was suitably silly and continued to use it when I later began to write Amiga games in assembly language.

Between 1991 and 1994, I wrote seven Amiga games, which you can read about below. If you have an Amiga computer or a PC with an Amiga emulator, you can also download and run them. You can get the excellent Amiga emulator WinUAE from winuae.net.




Martinsoft Pengo

August 1994

Basically, it's Pengo (old arcade/C64 classic) meets Bubble Bobble. You're a penguin in a maze made out of ice blocks – you kill your enemies by pushing the ice blocks onto them. My game has 64 levels, a 2-player mode, lots of hidden things, lots of bonuses, and a brilliant "evil boss": the Sarvebuk.

(The most frequently asked question about Pengo is "what does sarvebuk mean?". Well, sarve is Estonian, and comes from sarv which means horn. Buk doesn't really mean anything. Sarvebuk means, insofar it has a meaning, a buk with horns. It's a word my brother Hannes invented when he was maybe five years old. )

This game took a year to write, mainly because I did my best to make the game really user-friendly and compatible with different Amigas & screen modes. The finished program consists of 23000 lines of assembly code.

The magazines that reviewed Pengo awarded it the scores 88%, 93%, and 4/5, respectively.






Motorola Invaders 2

July 1993

The AGA-only sequel to Motorola Invaders (see below). It's like its predecessor, but better in every way. The black/white graphics of the original are replaced with colorful 24-bit copper gradients. The enemies are cooler, the gameplay is more varied, and the music is a sampled 1-minute heavy metal track. How could it possibly get any better?

The One reviewed the game on its PD review pages, and gave it 89%. Another mag gave it 9/10.

I wrote this game in only four days, so its user interface isn't the best; but it's pretty good fun nevertheless.

To run it, put the two files into the same directory on your HD, and make sure you've got lots of available chip memory. You may have to restart your Amiga without a startup-sequence.

2 disk ADF version for WinUAE:






Magic mouse

Summer 1993

Vertically-scrolling cute platformer. It's possible to play it; there are about 30 levels, but I never finished it as some of the basic game ideas were flawed.






Dominion

Summer 1992

Two-player only strategy game, vaguely reminiscent of Populous. Both players start with a couple of droids, which will automatically conquer land on the game map. The more land you have, the more money you'll get - and for the money you'll be able to buy new, smarter droids. If two droids from opposite teams meet, the weaker droid will be destroyed. If your opponent doesn't have any land left, you've won.






Popcorn

1991-92

Basically Pacman, but with a vertically-scrolling isometric-perspective maze, only one enemy per stage, no power pills, but many other bonuses and bonus systems. Also: Really garish graphics! Would it have killed me to use a more desaturated palette?






Motorola Invaders

April 1991

A weird twist on Space Invaders games; you're trying to save your computer from viruses. The viruses, which look like this , come swarming down randomly. They don't fire at you, but when you shoot one, it falls, and if it hits you on the way down you'll lose one life. You'll also lose one life if a virus reaches the ground alive. On the later levels, there are over a hundred viruses on-screen simultaneously.

Every third stage is a boss stage, with a giant virus (1/4 the size of the screen) as your enemy.






Amoebamania

February 1991

A very simple 2-player only game. Both players control amoebas that can move left, right and jump. You win by jumping onto your opponent and devouring it.

This game works best on standard A500s. On faster Amigas, it may flicker and the sound effects may not work properly.