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LambdaCalculus
New Jersey, USA

Posted Tue Oct 10, 2017 6:07 am

My Amiga game collection is growing little by little, and I don't mind getting copies off of friends, but I do want at least a *few* legit copies of games for my library! ;)

So I decided while browsing eBay a couple of nights ago to look around for a couple of Amiga games, and to balance out buying so many super cheap Super Famicom carts.

(If anyone asks, yes, I have a real Super Famicom in my collection now! ;) )

One game that caught my eye was a new old stock Body Blows, still in shrinkwrap, no less! BOOM... "Buy It Now" hit! It's on its way now!
Screenshot_20171010-090216[1].png
BOOSH!!

I've played this game via its DOS port a lot back in the day, and have yet to even try the Amiga port out, so now I have a nice excuse to do so! :)

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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Tue Oct 10, 2017 10:37 am

Hard to ever go wrong with a sealed game, especially if it's one you really love from your past. And, I know this is shocking to some, but I just love opening sealed stuff. It's like I'm an archeologist that has discovered a new tomb deep under the Sphinx. I can't wait to get in there (and take pictures along the way).

This is the kind of game that, for me, I'd only want to play 2-player I'm pretty sure. And that's not a bad thing. I own Double Dragon II and it's a total blast to play with my son. But not solo. I'm willing to bet your Famicom's version would blow this one away mainly due to the lack of controls on the Amiga joystick. But from what I've seen, this game should look really cool.

I have a pretty well-oiled system down in place for deciding which games to hunt to add to my collection.

As our own Game Library is less than 100 games (the way I do them it is very time intensive) I need to carefully research each game that hits my radar before 1) deciding to buy it and 2) determining if it is worthy of a review. Time is precious, so I mainly only focus on games I'm expecting to be pretty good.

The first thing I do when I see a game on Ebay that piques my interest is open a new window for LemonAmiga. Next, I search for the game. Ninety-nine times out of 100 it's going to be there.

Now, please don't take this the wrong way because I LOVE our European brothers and sisters, but - for my process - I then look at the game's community score with a massive grain of salt. Over half of the members on Lemon are from European countries and I recognize that their machines and experiences were simply different that those in North America in some cases. If a game is a sim or action based, some games simply didn't play the same (or as well) as they did on NTSC machines, and sometimes the scores reflect that reality. But they wouldn't necessarily reflect ours - where the game may have been designed and developed.

So I don't count those issues against games the way most using the score feature on Lemon might. Also, many of the US-based classics are not rated as often as I'd expect. For example, if a game made in the US in the 80's really required the manual to play, I notice those games are often rated far less or rated rather poorly. But, if you actually owned the game in the US, oftentimes the game might be considered a classic this side of the pond and be a truly kick ass experience.

It requires analysis. You can't take it all at face value. But I do rely on a combination of the score and comments as one of the key factors in my decision making with the caveats explained above.

Over time, I hope AmigaLove will become a similarly useful resource for the "Top Games" on the platform. I have no delusions of ever logging thousands of games, though. We're trying to do full-on reviews, not just screenshots and data points. But I do value their scores and comments, warts and all. And Lemon is a gold mine for helping me surface some gems I've never heard of before - games I should and eventually will get to know.

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LambdaCalculus
New Jersey, USA

Posted Fri Oct 13, 2017 6:22 am

That's a very good way of going about the ratings and reviews here. And I do understand too that the US and European gaming markets are also catering to different tastes as well. Many European gamers enjoyed homegrown action games and/or arcade ports to the Amiga; US developers tended to focus on making more original games that took advantage of what the system offered, focusing on many different genres.

Understandable as well that many games that relied heavily on included documentation and manuals probably didn't go over so well in Europe. My only theory is that most of the time, documentation was probably not translated to other languages outside of English, which, considering how many different spoken languages there are across the European mainland, doesn't sit well with potential customers who may not be native English speakers. So they would probably deride a game because of language barriers.

I could be talking out of my ass here, but like I said, it's just a theory. I'll accept if I'm wrong.

That said, I know a few UK and EU Amiga devs did have their games brought over to the US; I know one example is Turrican, which did grace our store shelves back in the day. So perhaps I lucked out and did indeed get an NTSC copy of Body Blows! If not, well... it's a collection piece anyway, and I can at least lay claim to having a Team17 title in it! :)

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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Fri Oct 13, 2017 8:34 am

My only theory is that most of the time, documentation was probably not translated to other languages outside of English, which, considering how many different spoken languages there are across the European mainland, doesn't sit well with potential customers who may not be native English speakers. So they would probably deride a game because of language barriers.
The other reason I'd add is piracy. The Amiga piracy scene in Europe was massive. A bunch of games would get cracked literally the day they hit stores shelves (sometimes even before!). And these games would flood the market, without any instructions at all, and provide a very sub par experience (of course).
So perhaps I lucked out and did indeed get an NTSC copy of Body Blows!
Truth! You can usually tell by where the box was printed. It's not a guarantee, but it usually is a good indicator if it was indeed created for the North American market or not. If it was printed in the UK, it's probably PAL-centric.

That being said, I've had plenty of PAL software work just fine on my machines. It really depends on the game(s).

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LambdaCalculus
New Jersey, USA

Posted Sat Oct 14, 2017 4:04 pm

intric8 wrote: The other reason I'd add is piracy. The Amiga piracy scene in Europe was massive. A bunch of games would get cracked literally the day they hit stores shelves (sometimes even before!). And these games would flood the market, without any instructions at all, and provide a very sub par experience (of course).
Indeed true! In fact, Dan Wood from Retro Hour Podcast made a video about the piracy scene, where he talks about when kids in his school used to pass around disks of the latest games and whatnot.

Suffice to say, yes, I did pirate my fair share of DOS games as a kid... yes, I was very bad back then! :P

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mattsoft

Posted Sat Oct 14, 2017 7:37 pm

Body Blows is absolutely hilarious. It's kind of silly to make a fighting game on a system with ONE button, but there you go.

If I recall, Body Blows had multiple releases and versions. Originally it was ECS and then an AGA version came out later that had some minor improvements like player shadows. Body Blows Galactic (I think that was the name) was the sequel which was even more hilarious with space and alien themed players. Both were better games than the Street Fighter II port though, so there's that. :)

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LambdaCalculus
New Jersey, USA

Posted Mon Oct 16, 2017 5:47 am

And the last game in the series was Ultimate Body Blows, which I think is AGA only. It did have a CD32 release as well as a disk release, I think.

That's one I should look at more. I did play it via its DOS port but haven't seen the original Amiga version yet.

User avatar
mattsoft

Posted Mon Oct 16, 2017 2:03 pm

Let us know what you think of it -- it's been awhile since I've played it. That might be a fun one to go 2-player on amigalive.com. :)





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