Amiga Games - Menace - Classic Commodore Amiga Games

Menace Amiga
You know, this is one of those classic arcade games that just exudes charm.

It was released for the Commodore Amiga in 1988 by Psygnosis and was developed by good old DMA design (who went on to create Blood Money).

For me it is one of the good 'early' horizontal scrolling shmups for the Amiga that was playable, good to look at with great sound effects and a pumping soundtrack. Read on if you fancy a spot of danger, danger, danger...



The planet Draconia must be destroyed! Infiltrate this artificially created planet and blow it and every alien slimeball there away. So there is the games 'plot' - shoot first, don't even bother asking questions.

Let's be honest here, this game took 'inspiration' from the famous arcade games such as R-Type, Nemesis and Salamander - but it proved that coin-op gaming could be reproduced in your own home.



With six levels to play through the game offered a decent challenge. The graphics were nicely drawn and scrolled by smoothly enough. In true classic arcade gaming tradition you were able to power up your craft by destroying waves of nasties which would leave a token for you to collect.

You could shoot the token to change the powerup type from Guns to Lazers to Outriders and more. A nice voice over informed you of what you had just collected. I can still hear 'Outrider' in my head all these years later...



So, the weapons powerups was pure R-Type, and in more arcade game necessities there was always an end of level boss to deal with. Each boss was tough to kill and always had a weak spot for you to aim for.

Whilst there are better soundtracks to Amiga games there is something just bloody good about this one. The tune is almost jolly, but keeps the action going and really suits the game perfectly.

The spot FX are decent enough too with nice shooting sounds and explosions, but the voice overs and the end of level 'Danger, Danger....' really were superb back in the day. Eerie and 'menacing'.



What more can I say? It's six levels of pure blasting mayhem from the golden era of scrolling shooters. I loved it then and still like it now.

If you are a good arcade gamer then this one will be relatively easy for you to complete, but it is playable, easy on the eyes and ears. It also paved the way for the likes of Team 17's Project X and is a true classic game from the late eighties.



We recommend getting hold of the real Amiga hardware - but if not then download an Amiga emulator and download Menace. Alternatively you could try and play it online.

Please see our other Amiga retro game reviews - all links are listed in alphabetical order. Cheers guys

GENRE: Arcade game
RELEASE DATE: 1988
RELEASED BY: Psygnosis (On their Pysclapse label)
DEVELOPER(S): Dave Jones, Tony Smith, Dave Whittaker
PRICE: £24.95 - UK

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Amiga Games - Mortal Kombat - Classic Commodore Amiga Game

Mortal Kombat Amiga
Surely one of the greatest ever game programming achievements on the Commodore Amiga?

Probe Software converted the original arcade game to our favourite 16-bit machine, and to be fair, they did a damn good job of it.

Mortal Kombat had been maligned for being overly violent (blood in a computer game - gasp!), which made it even more popular down the arcades. With it being more popular than Mr Pop from ular, a conversion to home computers and game consoles was always going to happen.

I'm just glad that Probe put some real effort into it and avoided the route of the lazy port.

The arcade game was great because of the variety of characters, the wide range of moves the player could execute, the hidden special moves, the well drawn backgrounds and the superbly animated almost photo-realistic game characters.

Well, on the Amiga it was all pretty much there. Each fighter, the different backgrounds, the special moves...

What was most impressive about this arcade game was the fact that it was playable. The characters were nice and responsive, the moves were easy execute and the fights were fun (and violent).

Each character was quite different too (apart from Scorpion and Sub-Zero obviously!), and it wasn't just a case of the same character with a different 'skin'.

There were notable differences between the fighters; being able to freeze people as Sub-Zero was always worth a laugh, Scorpion and his 'Get over here!' was equally funny, Johnny Cage and his 'cool' shades etc etc...

The difficulty level ramped up nicely as you progressed through the game too. Each fighter was generally more difficult than the last - and if you were any good you would eventually face the weird Goro in the final showdown.

Finish Him!
Of course everyone remembers being able to finish off a fighter with a fatality move. Figuring out how to execute the moves was part of the fun of the game - but you did not have to in order to complete the game. That was the beauty of Mortal Kombat - they added great extras into an already playable arcade beat em up.

I never ever managed to figure out the finishing moves for all of the characters, but I did complete the game.


Sometimes the game was best played against a friend. It was extremely playable in 2 player mode - beating the sh*t out of each other had never been so much fun.

The only real downside to the game was the disk swapping and long load times - but we can forgive it that as the game could be played on a standard Amiga 500 - a great programming achievement.

So that's it, you have FINISHED IT! - Go play it again.

We recommend getting hold of the real Amiga hardware - but if not then download an Amiga emulator and download Mortal Kombat. Alternatively you could try and play it online.

Please see our other Amiga retro game reviews - all links are listed in alphabetical order. Cheers guys

GENRE: Arcade game (Beat em up)
RELEASE DATE: 1994
RELEASED BY: Midway, Acclaim
DEVELOPER(S): Probe Sofware (Gary Liddon, Paul Carruthers, Richard Costello, Jason Green, Lee Ames, Allister Brimble
PRICE: £29.99 (UK)

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Amiga Games - Marble Madness - Commodore Amiga retro game

Amiga Games Marble Madness
Now we're talking! Marble Madness was an excellent arcade game from Atari that was converted to home computers. The Amiga version was released by Electronic Arts in 1986 - and was a faithful rendition of the original game.

The original Atari arcade game was released in 1984 and had been a huge success with it's unique design, stereo sound and superb trackball control. It was only a matter of time before it was converted to home machines, and the version for the Commodore Amiga was very, very good.

Anyway, in Marble Madness you were basically a heavy metal ball - a marble. Your task in life was to roll around the 3D isometric platform levels and basically find your way to the exit. En-route to your escape you would encounter all manner of nasties and enemies; fiendish black balls, sweeping brooms, patches of ice, oil slicks and spinning hoops to name but a few.

The game played very nicely on the Amiga and managed to re-create the 'feel' (gravity and inertia effect) of the arcade original, and included all the humps and bumps faithfully from each screen. The fact that the Amiga had a mouse control as standard made this version stand out from it's 8-bit counterparts - controlling the marble with the mouse was almost as good as using the trackball control of the arcade version.

That was the only thing missing in this conversion: The lack of trackball control did detract slightly from the overall playability. The trackball control had made the arcade game stand out from the crowd with it's novel method of controlling your little ball.

Apart from that the arcade game had been richly soaked in colour - and we all know that the awesome Commodore machine could handle these sort of graphics in full colour - whereas the likes of the ZX Spectrum could not (see ZX Spectrum Marble Madness to see what we mean)


The catchy theme tune was in there too, but it had a habit of going from catchy to downright annoying when you fell off the same ledge for the 57th time.

Once you got the hang of the controls (nice and simple only; up, down, left and right) the game really opened up. The mouse was good for moving the marble around and responded to the inertia and gravity effects better than the keyboard did.

Playing against the clock, you had to complete each screen before the clock counted down to zero or it was game over. Colliding with an enemy did not kill you directly - it merely delayed you for a few of those all important seconds.

The game could be completed if you managed to make your way through all of the screens which was a task for expert players. I never managed to complete this be it in the arcade, on the Speccy or on the Amiga. Maybe I'm just crap at it - but even so it I played it again and again.

This was another arcade conversion that had been hotly anticipated - and it did not disappoint on release. The Amiga conversion really did the original justice - EA did well with this one. The playability was there and each screen was faithful to the original. Due to it's popularity in the arcades it was a big hit - even though it retailled at £29.95.

Marble Madness is still playable, still frustrating and still pretty addictive. It was always pretty simple in concept anyay and stands as a classic of mid 80's gaming. You could even say that this classic game directly influenced more modern hits such as Super Monkey Ball, which uses a similar inertia effect and gameplay style in certain stages. Here in Amiga Games we reckon you should play Marble Madness again - it's a modern classic and was totally innovative when it came out.

Steel your balls and give it a go - but prepare to be frustrated!

We recommend getting hold of the real Commodore Amiga hardware but if not then download an Amiga emulator. Alternatively you could try and play it online.

Please see our other Amiga retro game reviews - all links are listed in alphabetical order. Cheers guys.

GENRE: Arcade game
RELEASE DATE: 1986
RELEASED BY: Electronic Arts
DEVELOPER(S): Larry Reed
PRICE: £29.95 - UK

Nice ball play from Bri in Marble Madness - Amiga Games:


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