Reshoot-R on Classic Amiga

First of all, I am sorry for the long delays between posts.

My wife and I are celebrating our tenth wedding anniversary this year and decided to do the trip of a lifetime to Europe. It was my first time to go to Europe and we saved for ages to be able to go. We had a wonderful time and we were away just over a month in May and early June. This is why the blog (and everything else) took a back seat for a bit.

Among many things we did, I finally got to go to the Monaco F1 Grand Prix in 2019, something I have dreamed to do since I was very young. FYI in case you didn't already know, I am a huge F1 fan, having watched every race since 1988 - it's a bit off topic sorry but here's one picture:

Now that I am back home, I am catching up on the Amiga news and there is a bit to digest!

One thing worth noting quickly though is that this month is now the 7th year I have been doing this blog! I started it back in June 2012 covering the AmigaOne X1000 and expanded it to cover NextGen and Classic Amigas. Amigas are one of my very favourite things to muck around with when not working or watching f1 races :-)

It is amazing that I am still doing the blog, but there is still so much interesting stuff happening in the Amiga world in 2019 - how could I stop now?

I hope you have enjoyed this blog, however long you may have been following it. It is still fun for me to do, and I will continue it as long as it is :-)

Today I wanted to take a quick look at the recently released game called Reshoot-R, which is a shoot em up sequel to the original Reshoot game I looked at on this blog here.

Given the time I have been away, I did a big order a while back for Amiga Future, Reshoot-R and Trap Runner. They all arrived in two packages this week and I was very keen to unwrap!

I have fallen behind a bit with Amiga Future magazines while saving for our trip so I had bought a few issues to catch up with some left over money from our trip!

Since this post is focused on Reshoot-R, it is only fair to check out that first! The cover looks great!

I bought the Signature Edition, which include not only the game on CD (bootable on CD32), it includes an audio CD of the music from the game and a signed postcard from the author Richard Lowenstein! This version costs EUR47.95 which is a bit steep in my view, but it does include the audio cd too.

You can opt for the much cheaper download only version which costs EUR29.95, or the Pure version for EUR34.95 which includes the download version, game CD, instruction manual but not the audio CD.

A closer look at the included CD's, etc inside the box:

 Reshoot-R requires AGA to run, so it needs an Amiga 1200, Amiga 4000 or Amiga CD32 to run.

Here it is about to be loaded on my Amiga 4000:

However I did have problems with it on my Amiga 4000. It installed ok, but on launch it would crash and reboot every time. I tried the installer on the CD, and extracted the archive version on the CD too but no luck running it. Maybe it doesn't like the 060 or AmigaOS 3.9? I tried it on my A4000t as well and hit the same issue. I should look into that some more as it is weird.

Anyway, being impatient I copied it to my Amiga 1200/030 running AmigaOS 3.1 via CF card, and I am pleased to say it worked perfectly on that:

My initial feedback on this new version is that Reshoot-R is considerably better than the original Reshoot release. I think the graphics look better and the game dynamics are better too.

You can choose to play the game without music and/or sound fx from the main screen.

The high score table and ability to upload the scores to an internet high score table is a nice touch too.
 

Like most shoot em ups, Reshoot-R is basically shoot anything that moves.

The power ups you can collect along the way are essential as the game gets harder quite quickly. Being able to move quicker, extra weaponry, etc are well implemented.

The included manual explains the game controls using CD32 controller or joystick and keyboard, and also the interesting story of the game development - very interesting read!

The star of the show for me is the music though - I really enjoyed it and it suits the game very well.

I think this game lends itself well to two player, which I was surprised was not included - I hope a later version will include a two player option!

Graphically the game looks good, thanks to the work of Kevin Saunders.

Screenshots don't do the game many favours as it doesn't show the graphics at it's best, but they are good, and the action and frame rate is smooth at all times. The speed of the game is good, and the difficulty level ramps up how you would expect it to.

I think having some additional lives and level stage codes to avoid starting from the beginning again each time would help the game a bit. It made it hard for me to show screenshots from the later sections of the game as I was not good enough and kept having to start again to get to the parts to take a picture!

I borrowed these last few images from the APC&TCP webshop as I couldn't get that far into the game to do them myself - sorry!

Having said that I guess I have to accept I am not as good at shoot em ups as I used to be back in the days of Xenon 1/2, Silkworm, Menace, Blood Money, SWIV, R-type 1/2, Katakis, Hybris, Battle Squadron, UN Squadron, Atomic Robokid, Project X, XP8, T-Zero and many many more too. Sigh, rattling these off makes me realise how many cool shoot em ups there have been on Classic Amiga.

It is great to see a modern shoot em up on Amiga in 2019 and I recommend picking up Reshoot-R! You can buy it from APC&TCP website here

Reshoot on Amiga CD32

This weekend I had a look at Catacomb 3D on CD32 and there is also another new game for Amiga CD32 in 2016! We now have Reshoot for Amiga CD32 (Amiga 1200/4000 as well) which is available now for EUR36 from Amiworx.de and Ares Shop.

I purchased and received my copy in the post last week prior to the Adelaide Retro Computing meeting, which gave me the opportunity to show it to plenty of Adelaide attendees on the CD32.

Here is the Game box and internals - the game itself was written by Richard Lowenstein, with graphics supplied by Australian Kevin Saunders:

As you can see from the system requirements on the back of the box, the game runs on a stock standard Amiga CD32/1200/4000 with no accelerator cards or extra memory needed.

Inside you get a miniature Amiga Joker magazine with a "review" of the Reshoot game, which is actually the instructions!

I am impressed with the quality of the gamebox packaging and CD - it looks exactly like a professional CD32 title from when the system was still available!

Here is Reshoot in the CD32 ready to run:

Here is the game title screen:

The graphics are nice but the screenshots below don't do it justice:

There is a nice Retro soundtrack and spot effects during the game.

I should say from the outset that this game is really hard. Really. I like to think I am good at shoot em ups like this but I don't last long at all!

I was hoping to show more screenshots of the game once I mastered it a little bit, but I sucked so badly at the game I never got the chance! The bullets fired at you follow you around the screen, which makes it quite hard to avoid being killed quickly.

As mentioned I took the game to the Adelaide Retro computing meeting this month with an Amiga theme and had Reshoot running on the CD32 on the big screen for everyone to play on the night. Feedback was positive, but people agreed it was a tough shoot em up!

I think the game itself is attractive, plays fast and looks great.

Others will probably have better luck than me - I will certainly give it another go soon though, as I don't feel I did the game enough justice to do a full review of it. I did want to show it here though.

I include a publicity shot below from the developer from further into the game, which I never got to  -so you can get an idea of the harder (!) enemies later on:

Maybe I am just getting older and no longer as good at these types of games as I think I am! Please don't take my word for it being tough, please try it for yourself!

So there you have it - we have two new games for Amiga CD32 (and other Amigas too) in 2016. Catacomb 3D and Reshoot and the promise of even more games in the works - how fantastic! :-)

Catacomb 3D on Amiga CD32

It is amazing to see that we have new games for Amiga CD32 in 2016! Today I want to take a look at  a new CD32 game called Catacomb 3D, which is a sneak preview of the game provided to me by Pascal Papara ahead of it's release. Thanks mate!

For those who know their game history, they will know that Catacomb 3D was originally written on the IBM PC in 1991 by ID Software, and was the prequel to the classic game Wolfenstein 3D.

Catacomb 3D was a landmark 3D game that lead to ID Software classics like Wolfenstein 3D, Spear of Destiny, Doom, Quake and the whole first person shoot em up game genre which is still very popular today.

I am embarrassed to say I have never played Catacomb 3D before, and so the first time I have ever played it is as a port to the Amiga CD32 in 2016!

The funny part was I remember back when these 3D PC games in the 1990's were being touted as not being able to be run on an Amiga and was a strong reason why many people went PC to play these games.

How wrong was that decision - we have Doom, Quake, Heretic, Hexen, Wolfenstein 3D, Descent, Rise of the Triad and many other PC games from that era that run fine on Amiga!

And now, in 2016 we have the game that started it all, Catacomb 3D on Amiga CD32! It was ported by Bzili, and will be released soon as commercial game to purchase as a CD32 title from Ares Shop, Ebay and potentially other vendors that are interested in distributing it!

As with most ID Software titles of the period (Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3d), the main menu to the game allows you to start new games, load a game (I would assume saving doesn't work given it is CD32 - not tested):

You can even play a simple pong game from this menu called Skull N Bones!

Anyway, distraction aside, lets get into the game proper, starting with the CD32 controls, included in the manual to come with the game:

From the main menu we can choose Easy/Normal/Hard game style - I wimped out and chose Easy:

We start entering the level called "The Approach":

Still makes me smile seeing this running on a CD32!

In this game you need to locate the exit gates to progress to next levels, but there are keys to find, as well as additional weapons that can help defeat the enemies along the way:

The longer you hold done the fire button, the more powerful the shot you fire. The level is indicated by the level of the nuclear explosion graphic on the right side of the display.

The Health boosters (called Heals) are essential to get anywhere in this game as you need to keep healing yourself as you go along. These functions are mapped to various buttons on the CD32 joypad as shown earlier.

Health is shown graphically with your head on the top right, which turns into a skull the more times you are damaged. You die if it changes to a full skull!

A little later in the level and you can see the blue circle indicating an exit gate:

I then moved on to the next level, Nemesis's Keep:

Things start getting trickier from here as we need colour coded keys (located in the level) to open locked off sections of the level:

Here is the red key:

Making things even more interesting is that you can shoot the walls, some of which reveal secret tunnels and passages - some even lead to whole secret levels!

Here is an example hidden room, which I shot at a wall to reveal:

As always the enemies are close at hand to slow down my progress:

Moving through the game, and several levels in now things seems easy enough until you start finding some really nasty enemies that require a lot of shots, nukes and bolts to kill. I found myself healing constantly and realised this game is definitely not easy:

It was about this time that my luck ran out in the Brick Chamber, with two nasty enemies taking me apart and with no bolts, nukes or heals left I was easy meat:

Oh dear, game over:

This game will also run on Amiga 020 systems like Amiga 1200 and 4000, and ideally runs best with 4MB Fast memory. It does run ok on 2MB memory though, like on my Amiga CD32 I tested here.

Catacomb 3D is a very fun and challenging game. I am grateful for the sneak preview of the game on CD32 and it is expected to be released very soon to purchase, so keep an eye out for it!