![\"Amiga](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/SEC_259777783-6091.jpg\")
\n\t\tThe Amiga is 40 years young today (Metro)<\/p>\n
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\n\t\tThe Amiga is 40 years young today (Metro)<\/p>\n
GameCentral lists the most iconic games ever made for the Amiga home computer, back in its glory days of the 80s and 90s.<\/p>\n
It may not be much of a household name nowadays, but anyone who grew up gaming in the late 80s knows that, here in the UK, the Commodore Amiga<\/a> series of home computers was one of the most popular formats of the time.<\/p>\n Its success was one of the reasons the belated release of the NES never took off, something which has affected Nintendo\u2019s popularity in the UK ever since. However, once the Mega Drive<\/a> and SNES<\/a> launched in the early 90s, the Amiga slowly became overshadowed and, eventually, all but forgotten, apart from a mini-console release<\/a> in 2022.<\/p>\n The Amiga celebrates its 40th anniversary on June 23, but because it was only ever really popular in Europe its legacy is a difficult thing to honour, with only the occasional remaster<\/a> or reboot<\/a> for any of its games. But nevertheless, here are 20 of its most memorable titles \u2013 almost all of which were originally made in the UK.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Alien Breed<\/p>\n One of the very first games developed by long-running British studio Team17<\/a> \u2013 who are still going today as an indie publisher \u2013 this top-down shooter is heavily inspired by the movie Aliens and remains an all-time favourite amongst Amiga fans.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\tExpert, exclusive gaming analysis\t\t\t<\/p>\n Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter<\/a> for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning.<\/p>\n Its initial success led to a long line of sequels and spin-offs but while it attempted to segue into being a 3D shooter it was never able to compete with new challengers such as Doom. The attempts at a modern reboot never took off either, which currently leaves the franchise in limbo.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Flashback<\/p>\n When you think of cinematic games, your mind probably goes to big budget PlayStation games like God Of War and Uncharted. But in the 90s, that term was being used to describe 2D platformer Another World<\/a> and its spiritual successor Flashback.<\/p>\n While Another World was all style and little substance Flashback, which also appeared on contemporary home consoles, was way ahead of its time in terms of storytelling in an action games and including a relative amount of non-linear gameplay.<\/p>\n A remake<\/a> and a sequel<\/a> have both been attempted but the original was very much of its time and even its spiritual sequel, 1995\u2019s Fade To Black, wasn\u2019t a hit, despite being one of the very earliest third person shooters.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Cannon Fodder<\/p>\n The Amiga would have been a far less exciting format without British developer Sensible Software, who have no less than three entries in this list. Cannon Fodder is arguably their greatest creation and something completely unique both then and now.<\/p>\n It\u2019s essentially a top-down squad based action game, controlled by a mouse (all Amigas came with a mouse \u2013 it was the joystick you had to buy separately) where squad-mates would drop like flies, to later be memorialised in an in-game cemetery.<\/p>\n The game was heavily criticised by the Daily Star for using images of a poppy but while Sensible were clearly goading tabloids into giving them free press, which they got, the game itself is very clearly anti-war and quietly poignant in terms of the fate of its virtual soldiers.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Frontier: Elite 2<\/p>\n When the Amiga first arrived in 1985, 3D polygonal graphics were all but unknown on home consoles, with even the milestone release of 1993\u2019s Starwing (aka Star Fox) on the SNES requiring a more expensive cartridge with extra processing power.<\/p>\n And yet the Amiga was filled with hugely ambitious 3D games \u2013 all made by British developers and including the likes of Cybercon III, Infestation, Starglider, and Damocles. They all ran with horrendously low frame rates but despite that, Frontier still managed to simulate astronomically accurate solar systems and physics.<\/p>\n Like many pioneering games on the Amiga, including 2D titles such as Shadow Of The Beast, Frontier wasn\u2019t actually much fun but it was always interesting to explore and play around with. And then when you got bored of that you could play the Amiga version of the original Elite, which was a lot more enjoyable.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Hunter<\/p>\n Speaking of hugely ambitious 3D games with terrible frame rates, that are no fun to play, Hunter was essentially GTA 3 but almost 25 years earlier. The story campaign had you trying to assassinate an enemy general but there\u2019s also a sandbox mode where you can take on targets in whatever you like, across an archipelago of islands.<\/p>\n This involved driving around in a wide range of vehicles, that you could get in and out of at any time, as well as walking, swimming, and fighting on foot. It was horribly difficult but shared similarities with Midwinter and Carrier Command, in that all three games were decades ahead of their time, in terms of sandbox gameplay, and made by British developers that are now all but forgotten by the wider industry.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n IK+<\/p>\n Although Street Fighter 2 didn\u2019t appear until 1991 (there were several versions on the Amiga but none of them were very good), one-on-one fighting games weren\u2019t an entirely unknown concept before that, not least because the original Street Fighter came out in 1987.<\/p>\n That very same year, the sequel to International Karate, by Jimmy White\u2019s \u2018Whirlwind\u2019 Snooker creator Archer Maclean, appeared and it\u2019s fascinating how different a concept it is, not least because there\u2019s actually three people fighting at a time.<\/p>\n It\u2019ll forever be most famous for the cheat code that lets you drop the fighters\u2019 trousers but that doesn\u2019t negate the fact that this is probably the best pre-Street Fighter 2 fighting game on any format.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Lemmings<\/p>\n Once one of the biggest gaming franchises of the 90s, Lemming sadly fell out of favour, and drifted into obscurity in the ensuing decades, primarily because it\u2019s best played with a mouse, which most consoles never had.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a puzzle game where you have to stop swarms of lemmings falling to their death, as you block off and dig through the landscape to help them. The series was considered important enough to appear on a Royal Mail stamp<\/a>, although it\u2019s now most famous for being an early work by DMA Design \u2013 the studio that went on to become Rockstar North.<\/p>\n Without the financial success of Lemmings there would never have been a Grand Theft Auto, which is a sobering thought. Although Sony owns the franchise now, after buying original publisher Psygnosis.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Rainbow Islands<\/p>\n Rainbow Islands may be an arcade conversion, of one of the many games claiming to be the sequel to Bubble Bobble, but its true home has always been on the Amiga. It\u2019s certainly the only place it\u2019s ever enjoyed the degree of fame it deserves, thanks to a near perfect port by legendary developer Andrew Braybrook, creator of Uridium and Paradroid (Commodore 64 games which both had sequels on the Amiga).<\/p>\n We know what it looks like, but Rainbow Islands is an incredibly nuanced action platformer, that\u2019s filled with secrets and enjoys one of the most flexible weapon systems in any 2D game. The rainbows you shoot out are at once projectiles, traps to catch enemies beneath you, and platforms to be traversed. It\u2019s a genius concept that cannot be re-released today<\/a> in its original form because its soundtrack is technically a knock-off of Somewhere over the Rainbow.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Warhead<\/p>\n Arguably the first ever combat flight simulator, this went unnoticed by many even at the time, although it\u2019s a wonderfully imaginative evolution of games like Elite, that focuses solely on combat and arrived a full year before Wing Commander.<\/p>\n It features a relatively realistic, physics-based control system and surprisingly involved story missions, obviously inspired by the previous year\u2019s Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Developer Glyn Williams went on to make the Independence War games, which acted as spiritual sequels, but sadly they\u2019re almost completely forgotten too. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n Sensible Soccer<\/p>\n In some ways it\u2019s a shame that Sensible Soccer was so successful, because it meant Sensible Software never got around to making other more experimental titles, like Cannon Fodder and Wizkid.<\/p>\n An evolution of earlier game MicroProse Soccer, this was a direct rival to the otherwise popular Kick Off series and was very much the EA Sports FC of its day, except with a sense of humour and played from a top-down perspective.<\/p>\n It has a spiritual sequel today, in Sociable Soccer<\/a> by original creator John Hare, that\u2019s seen some success, but nothing like Sensi in its heyday.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Sid Meier\u2019s Civilization<\/p>\n Although the Amiga rarely got the same games released on contemporary consoles, it did get lots of arcade conversations and PC ports. The PC didn\u2019t really come into its own as a games format until the mid 90s but there were notable titles before that time, including the original Civilization in 1991. A franchise so successful the most recent sequel<\/a> came out just this year.<\/p>\n The Amiga version was a bit slower, because of the limited processing power, but it worked very well and so did seminal real-time strategy game Dune 2 and UFO: Enemy Unknown \u2013 what would later become known as X-COM. Its predecessor Laser Squad was also a cracking turn-based game, even if it still looked like a ZX Spectrum game.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Super Cars 2<\/p>\n Unsurprisingly, top-down racing games are not something you see much of nowadays, even from indie developers, but there were lots on the Amiga, including arcade conversion Ivan \u2018Ironman\u2019 Stewart\u2019s Super Off Road and the excellent Skidmarks series.<\/p>\n Super Cars 2 is most people\u2019s favourite though, not because it does anything particularly original but simply because it does it very well. The inclusion of weapons is relatively unusual though and ensures multiplayer matches are always glorious chaos. It was also essentially a sister series to the equally popular Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge games.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe<\/p>\n This list of games isn\u2019t in any particular order but the two frontrunners for our favourite Amiga games of all-time are Rainbow Islands and this: the best game the Bitmap Brothers ever made and still the definitive example of a future sports game.<\/p>\n It\u2019s basically a hyper violent version of handball crossed with hockey, where you aim to get the ball into the goal by any means necessary, including punching your opponents to the floor and creating score multipliers by throwing it at devices at the side of the arena.<\/p>\n A follow-up has been attempted multiple times, with a new one currently in early access<\/a> from Rebellion but nothing has matched the elegant simplicity of the original\u2026 or its amazing theme tune.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Populous<\/p>\n As much as his reputation has been tarnished nowadays, Peter Molyneux<\/a> was on fire during the Amiga era, doing all his best work while at now defunct developer Bullfrog, with titles such as Flood and Syndicate. Populous was his most famous game at the time and along with SimCity (which was also available on the Amiga) helped create the now largely abandoned god game genre.<\/p>\n It\u2019s arguable how much real strategy was involved in the gameplay, but at the time Populus\u2019 open-ended nature and isometric graphics were a revelation. The sequel never added any real depth to the concept though and the franchise has been mothballed for almost two decades now.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Starglider 2<\/p>\n We\u2019ve already discussed many of the Amiga\u2019s most innovative 3D games but arguably the most impressive is Starglider 2. Rather than being a straight shooter, like its predecessor, it is a completely open-ended sci-fi adventure where you can travel anywhere in a solar system, nominally in an attempt to blow up an enemy space station with a special bomb.<\/p>\n No one ever bothered with that though and instead spent their time exploring the fascinating 3D worlds that featured no loading screens and flat-shaded (as opposed to wireframe) polygon graphics, as you travelled from outer space, through the atmosphere, and onto a planet\u2019s surface.<\/p>\n The highlight was undoubtedly listening to the space whales in the atmosphere of the system\u2019s gas giant but the whole game was a technical marvel, with many of the team going on to develop Starwing for Nintendo.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Exile<\/p>\n While the Amiga had plenty of its own exclusives, and many titles shared with rival home computer the Atari ST, much of its portfolio was made up of ports from other formats, whether it be arcades, the PC, or earlier 8-bit computers. Exile is one such game, having first appeared on the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron.<\/p>\n That means nobody outside the UK has ever heard of it and yet it\u2019s a fantastically ambitious action adventure, with completely open-ended gameplay, a realistic physics engine, and clever artificial intelligence. Perhaps if it had had modern style signposting, and a lower difficulty, it might be better known today but the unfortunate truth is that if a game isn\u2019t popular in the US or Japan it\u2019s rarely ever seen again.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The Secret Of Monkey Island<\/p>\n Lucasfilm Games were a loyal supporter of the Amiga and while their later point \u2018n\u2019 click adventures had increasing trouble running on the format the original Monkey Island worked perfectly and thanks to the Amiga\u2019s excellent sound chip was arguably the definitive version at the time.<\/p>\n Still one of the funniest games ever made \u2013 which says just as much about its level of competition as it does the game itself \u2013 this is both a charming screwball comedy and a graphic adventure whose puzzles are perfectly pitched as difficult but not impossibly illogical. As a bonus, the series is still going today, thanks to the 2022 soft reboot<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The Sentinel<\/p>\n If this were a list of most underrated Amiga games, The Sentinel would comfortably sit at the top since, even at the time it came out, very few people had ever heard of it. And that\u2019s despite it having been released previously on various 8-bit formats.<\/p>\n The Sentinel is a remarkably unique stealth game, where you control an immobile robot and must avoid the glare of the titular Sentinel by teleporting from one spot to the other across an abstract 3D landscape. It was the creation of SIr Geoff Crammond, but as good as Stunt Car Racer and Formula One Grand Prix were, it\u2019s The Sentinel which stands as his greatest achievement.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Wizkid<\/p>\n This is the main reason we semi-resent the existence of Sensible Soccer, as it\u2019s the weirdest and most experimental game Sensible Software ever made. It\u2019s nominally a sequel to their earlier 2D shooter Wizball, which was also ported to the Amiga, but has almost nothing in common with that in terms of gameplay.<\/p>\n You play as the disembodied head of Wizkid in what could vaguely be described as a mix of Arkanoid and Rainbow Islands, as you knock tiles and other objects onto enemies below you. It\u2019s when you rejoin your body that things get really weird though, in what is one of the most thoroughly British video games ever made.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Worms<\/p>\n No Amiga list would be complete without Worms, which was initially made as part of a programming competition run by the magazine Amiga Format. At heart, it\u2019s a pretty simple riff on Artillery games, where you have to judge the trajectory of shells fired from fixed gun emplacements, but here you can move and there\u2019s a much wider range of weapons.<\/p>\n More importantly, it\u2019s filled with very British humour and a fantastic multiplayer mode. The series continues to the current day, although after the failure of battle royale spin-off Worms Rumble<\/a> the next mainline entry has been reduced to an Apple Arcade exclusive called Worms Across Worlds.<\/p>\n Email\u00a0gamecentral@metro.co.uk<\/a>, leave a comment below,\u00a0follow us on Twitter<\/a>.<\/p>\n To submit Inbox letters and Reader\u2019s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our\u00a0Submit Stuff page here<\/a>.<\/p>\n For more stories like this,\u00a0check our Gaming page<\/a>.<\/p>\n Arrow Arrow Arrow
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