
Amiga Graphics Archive - erickhill
http://amiga.lychesis.net/
======
NeedMoreTea
So many memories.

Defender of the Crown, art by Jim Sachs, was remarkable so soon after the
machine's release. Especially as much was painted pixel by pixel. It was
ported to PC, in CGA and I think EGA, not that anyone could afford EGA! He
wasn't treated at all well by Cinemaware for the game that made the studio.
[http://amiga.lychesis.net/game/DefenderOfTheCrown.html](http://amiga.lychesis.net/game/DefenderOfTheCrown.html)

Some notables missing though.

No Eric Schwartz, Tobias Richter or Ken Offer? Eric did the Amy the Squirrel,
Juggler 2, Aerotoons, and a bunch of logo work for Commodore. Doesn't seem to
have done much since.

Ken did the HAM animation that was a major step up from juggler and a few
others. Can't remember if he developed or just worked for one of the early 3D
sw companies:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NT09y-MpC4E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NT09y-MpC4E)

Tobias did a lot of early Amiga CGI and animations, and the Star Trek game.
Later CGI for TV DS9 and Star Trek TNG, now running
[http://www.thelightworks.de/](http://www.thelightworks.de/)

There's bound to be a few others I forgot.

------
jasondc
What makes Amiga more nostalgic than other systems? An Amiga 500 was my first
computer, I learned Turbo Pascal and played Defenders of the Crown

To me, it was the only computer I've owned that had personality, which I can't
completely describe what that means, but no other computer has felt like my
Amiga.

~~~
cryptonector
It was flat out superior to everything else that was on the market at that
time, and in many ways. And it failed. Bad leadership, bad brand / lack of
rebranding ("Amiga??" "Commodore is for gaming, not for business!"). It made
for justified fanboys who got disappointed and had to settle for the garbage
that all other PCs were relative to Amiga.

It had superior:

    
    
      - graphics hardware, including the copper and the blitter
      - OS
      - HW extensibility
      - performance
    

Commodore even did the first SVR4 port to a production system outside AT&T,
and had brilliant people.

The Amiga outpaced all other PCs (x86 DOS/OS/2/Windows and Mac) for half a
decade, and was a fantastic gaming platform for its time.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
> the first SVR4 port to a production system outside AT&T

That was so complete that Sun tried quite hard to licence the 3000UX as an
entry level Sun workstation. Commodore couldn't/wouldn't agree licencing.

Which rather sums things up.

~~~
cryptonector
I didn't know this. Fascinating!

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armitron
So many classics here, some personal favorites:

[http://amiga.lychesis.net/resolution/Lowres/Agony_Loader6.ht...](http://amiga.lychesis.net/resolution/Lowres/Agony_Loader6.html)
[http://amiga.lychesis.net/resolution/Lowres/AlienBreed.html](http://amiga.lychesis.net/resolution/Lowres/AlienBreed.html)
[http://amiga.lychesis.net/resolution/Lowres/AlienBreed2.html](http://amiga.lychesis.net/resolution/Lowres/AlienBreed2.html)
[http://amiga.lychesis.net/resolution/Lowres/ShadowOfTheBeast...](http://amiga.lychesis.net/resolution/Lowres/ShadowOfTheBeast2_GameOver.html)
[http://amiga.lychesis.net/resolution/Lowres/ShadowOfTheBeast...](http://amiga.lychesis.net/resolution/Lowres/ShadowOfTheBeast2.html)

[http://amiga.lychesis.net/resolution/Lowres/Psygnosis_1992_L...](http://amiga.lychesis.net/resolution/Lowres/Psygnosis_1992_Lunatic.html)
[http://amiga.lychesis.net/resolution/Lowres/Psygnosis_1992_C...](http://amiga.lychesis.net/resolution/Lowres/Psygnosis_1992_CarlLewis.html)
[http://amiga.lychesis.net/resolution/Lowres/Psygnosis_1994_X...](http://amiga.lychesis.net/resolution/Lowres/Psygnosis_1994_X-
it.html)
[http://amiga.lychesis.net/resolution/Lowres/Made_Babylona.ht...](http://amiga.lychesis.net/resolution/Lowres/Made_Babylona.html)
[http://amiga.lychesis.net/application/AmigaBoingBall.html](http://amiga.lychesis.net/application/AmigaBoingBall.html)

~~~
w4tson
My fave:
[http://amiga.lychesis.net/game/ShadowOfTheBeast2/ShadowOfThe...](http://amiga.lychesis.net/game/ShadowOfTheBeast2/ShadowOfTheBeast2_GameOver.html)

Loved the music too! That game was one of the first I ever played. It was
dark, extremely difficult but with mind blowing graphics. Even though it
forced you to watch a lot of the animated intro after each time you died I
somehow never grew tired of it in the same way I did other games. It was other
worldly

~~~
unique_parrot2
My favorite was "light force". the loading times were awful. here is a litte
video
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnnAXux5Thk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnnAXux5Thk)

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PhasmaFelis
Amiga art was and is beautiful. I've always kind of gotten the impression that
Amiga game devs focused on huge, rich still images at the expense of
animation, though. Amiga classics like Shadow of the Beast have a lot of
stiff, limited animation; a lot of gorgeous bosses that are basically statues
on sliding rails, without even spot animation; a lot of enemies that just fall
off the screen or vanish when killed, rather than doing a death animation.

Of course all of that happened on other 8/16-bit systems as well, and there
were certainly exceptions on the Amiga. It's just such a contrast to the
obvious love and attention spent on still scenes. I wonder if it has to do
with the demoscene roots of so many Amiga artists and devs.

(Color-cycling animation still blows my mind, though. Fullscreen looping
animation with only a single flat image taking up space in RAM.
[http://www.effectgames.com/demos/canvascycle/](http://www.effectgames.com/demos/canvascycle/))

~~~
tom_
I'm not sure it's an aesthetic choice as much as the result of technical
limitations, memory limitations, and (perhaps most importantly) non-infinite
artist time.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
I feel like other systems with similar limitations (the SNES and Genesis,
notably) tended to have a different look, though.

~~~
tom_
Both of those platforms were a fair bit more technically advanced than the
Amiga in many respects, and a bit less memory-constrained. (Cartridge+RAM
would be equivalent to a >1MByte Amiga.)

But the key thing is always artist time - and the extent to which artist time
is finite is related to the budget! And budgets on SNES and Megadrive games
were probably a lot higher, on account of the larger potential market...

~~~
Torwald
> Both of those platforms were a fair bit more technically advanced than the
> Amiga in many respects

Can you elaborate on that?

~~~
tom_
Who should you trust? Me, or your lying eyes when they see the games? ;) But I
am shooting my mouth off a bit here because I've programmed a bit on the Amiga
but never for the SNES or Megadrive.

In CPU terms I guess they're all about the same. The SNES's CPU is half the
speed but no less effective for most types of code, and possibly more so for
some, as the 68000 is not an efficient CPU.

But both console systems had more colours on screen, more sprites, character-
based playfields, and more playfield rendering options. (The SNES has the
advantage here, but the Megadrive has two 16-colour playfields, plus sprites,
which is more than the Amiga can muster.) Result: more of the on-screen
razzle-dazzle that you want, to a greater or lesser extent, with lots of
colours, and no nede to cheat by using the copper to just add a nice gradient
background.

Of course, the Amiga has the copper and the blitter, which give you more
flexibility, and the sprites can be as tall as you like. But this never seemed
to actually translate into games that look better.

~~~
Torwald
> But both console systems had more colours on screen

The Amiga had HAM-mode with over 4000 colors!

> But this never seemed to actually translate into games that look better.

I think this has more to do with the production culture.

At that time the other PC systems didn't have good looking games either. But
the arcade systems had.

I think shops like Konami translated a culture of good looking games over to
the early consoles. (something that certainly was fostered by Sega and
Nintendo.)

------
digi_owl
I can't help wonder if we lost something in our race for realistic real time
3d rendering.

~~~
KozmoNau7
3D graphics can certainly look extremely impressive, I still find impressive
views in GTA V, and the new RDR 2 trailer is absolutely gorgeous.

But these 2D graphics are like paintings, in some cases rather
impressionistic, which is something else entirely.

The have been some non-photorealistic 3D games like that, LoZ: Wind Waker
springs to mind. Absolutely beautiful game, very cartoony and abstract.

------
germinalphrase
Man... I loved played games on our Amiga. I tried (half heartedly) to get a
few running on OSX, but never succeeded very much.

Anyone have good experience with emulation? I’d love to play some Marble
Madness for old times’ sake.

~~~
erickhill
Amiga emulation on OSX isn't awesome. The best emulators are actively
developed for Windows.

That being said, there is a growing scene around MiSTer and raspberry pi
emulation options, if you're into hardware hacking. The MiSTer costs quite a
bit more but feels more "real".

~~~
ant512
Amiga emulation on OSX is awesome. Try FS-UAE:

[https://fs-uae.net](https://fs-uae.net)

It's kept up to date and tracks WinUAE.

------
starsinspace
I love the graphics in the "Applications" category. Really brings back
memories. This style of art went away, sadly, like many other good things in
computing, it died with Commodore.

~~~
ofrzeta
Not entirely. Check this out: [http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article-
Old_School_Color_C...](http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article-
Old_School_Color_Cycling_with_HTML5.html)

~~~
Torwald
Think about the fashion industry, how they re-discover styles again and again.
Sometimes millennia old styles.

This will happen with all those nice 8bit- and 18bit-machine's graphics too.

------
JunaidBhai
Wow! This is fantastic! These are by far one of the best pixel art I have come
across. I run a design as a service company
([http://draftss.com](http://draftss.com)) dealing with designers day in day
out and yet, even in today's time it is difficult to find such a good pixel
art.

------
jacobush
Thank you for doing this. It's a cultural treasure.

