Amiga Classics
Description
Amiga Classics is a bundle comprising a claimed three hundred plus Amiga games and emulators with which to run them. Though the packaging says the disc can be used on DOS, MAC, Windows and Unix platforms what it really means is that the disc contains files of Amiga games and a variety of emulators some of which will run on each of the listed platforms. In the Windows environment and presumably all others the CD does not autorun when loaded, there's no game browser nor is there an on disc manual to guide the user through the installation.
All the game files appear to contain public domain / freeware games. Most of the files that have been examined and played were included on cover discs for UK magazines such as Amiga Power and Amiga Format in the early 1990's, in addition all the game files contain multiple games so the claimed three hundred games is a significant under estimate.
Emulators need two things to work, program files and a KickStart ROM. This product contains a couple of files that fit the bill they are all Kick Start v1.3 which is needed for A500 emulation. This as a shame as the game files were intended for use with an A1200 machine and, while most run perfectly well, some do not..
As there's nothing to run and precious little to see to properly describe this compilation is to list the contents of the disc.
Note: the letters 'UAE' appear a lot in the following paragraphs, they represent either 'Universal Amiga Emulator' or 'Ultimate Amiga Emulator'
The contents of the disc are as follows:* In the root directory are folders, detailed below together with assorted documents and software. The documents consist of a partial list of the games on the disc, a 'read1st' document which is no help, and part of a document describing WinUAE version Beta 7. The software here is WINZIP95, presumably to to unpack the zipped files, and one of many versions of WinUAE an Amiga emulator.
- The folder AmigaInABox contains a single emulation program but with no documentation.
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The folder EMULATOR ARCHIVE contains the graphics driver Picasso v2 in .lha format and four sub folders, one for each operating system.
- DOS: There are two emulators here, DosUAE V0.6.8c a DOS port of the Unix Amiga Emulator, and Fellow v0.3 described as "a Commodore Amiga emulator for the IBM compatible PC."
- MAC: This contains many files are in .hqx or.sit format which appear to be the MACUAE emulator
- UNIX: Just a single file for UAE v6.0 in .bin format
- WINDOWS: This contains three versions of UAE 0.6.9 Win32 (releases 7, 12 and 13) together with XDMS a tool for decompressing Amiga DMS files.
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EMULATORS: This contains a separate folder for each of the following emulators, DosUAE v0.69 and v0.69c, Fellow v0.3 and v0.32, WinUAE v0.69 releases 12, 13 beta 7 and 13 beta 9. Also present is UAE v6.9 in .bin format for UNIX and a Kickstart ROM file
- FELLOW: Version 0.2.1 of the emulator which runs in Dos
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SUPPORT: There are two sub folders here, one for DOS and one for Windows. The DOS folder contains Gzip needed by DosUAE or WinUAE to use compressed adf's & rom files; and UAEL 3.6, a launch program for WinUAE and DosUAE. The list of programs that should be present references SDD5.3, a Vesa bios extender, which is not in this folder.
The Windows 95 folder has folders for DirectX3.0a and DirectX5.0 but both are empty it does, however have folders for each of the following launch programs ; UAEL 3.7, UAEGo Release 3 and UAELaunchPad -
TEXT: An assortment of text files describing the hardware needed to run Ultimate Amiga Emulator, UAE's version history, advice on transferring software to an Amiga and ROM files from an Amiga, emulation problems, and setting up a hard disc.
- UTILITIES: This contains Amiga Disk File Suite V1.5; ADF Transfer program v1.2; adf2disk which writes amiga disk files made for UAE back on amiga disks; ADSKUTIL - which retrieves files from an amiga disk format (ADF) image; an Amiga Floppy reader; UAE source codes; a demo version of WorkBench 95; and zipped files containing icons, blank discs etc
- GAMES: The contents of this folder is why most of us will buy this CD. It contains two hundred and eighty eight Amiga data files which are numbered sequentially in the form ASI001 to ASI250; GG001 to GG018; TOOLS001 to TOOLS019 and one file named PROTRACKER. NOte: There is no index that shows the contents of these files.
As was stated earlier these files contain multiple public domain games all of which are freely available. The ASI series of files was being sold in Amiga magazines back in 1993 as shareware / public domain software by a coupe of guys from the north of England known as 'The Assassins'. Each file in the series contains multiple games, the file ASI001 for example contains Amigoids, Avtatris, Cave Runner, Rollerpede and Tanx, while ASI246 contains Ooze, Cruel, and Lactose Intolerance. Most of the files in this series seem to run using an A500 emulation which is just as well because the KickStart ROM is for that machine.
The GG* are a series of compilation files known as "Games Galore", they require an A1200 emulation and, as the KickStart ROM on this CD is for the A500 it does not seem possible to play them with the emulators supplied.
The TOOLS files are just that, collections of software and utilities. For example TOOLS001 contains a selection of public domain sound programs including versions of Noise-Tracker and Sound-Tracker while TOOLS10 contains Pay-Advice v4.0, Show-Std, Flexer data-Base, Home Budget, Share manager, Amiga Diary and Any Month
Screenshots
Reviews
Players
Average score: 1.5 out of 5 (based on 2 ratings with 1 reviews)
The Good
What did I like about this compilation, to be honest very, very little. There is game content here but it's not what was expected and the tools provided are inadequate
The Bad
My first problem is with the documentation, or rather the lack of it. For example I find really hard to understand why the publishers only supplied details of the games in the first twenty-five game files. I mean, come on guys you must have had this information when you threw this thing together, the only way I can see what games are present on this disc is to open every one and then make notes.
Secondly there's so very little in the way of guidance on installing and running the emulators. One version of the Fellow emulator I did manage to get running under Windows proved to be a DOS program. When it ran it helpfully shut down Windows completely, no DOS window for this baby, and lost part of my work for me.
All the emulators I looked at had little in the way of documentation explaining how to configure them and link in the game files, Kickstarter Rom etc. I use emulators a lot but this was my first time trying to get an Amiga emulator to work. I spent all day trying to get some joy out of the stuff on this CD with limited success.
The emulators and software provided does seem very fussy about the machine it runs on. I tried the Windows emulators under WIN 98, WIN XP, Win XP Pro, Win XP with Win 95/WIN 98 compatibility mode and I even tried Win 3.11. Most of the software failed with a message that it was incompatible with the version of Windows being run. I've had this before and have usually been able to work around it, that wasn't possible here - wish I still had a WIN 95 environment because that seems to be what is needed. In the end I had to abandon all hope of using the supplied software on any of my machines and install the latest version of a freeware emulator just to see if any of the game files would run. The latest versions of FSUAE and WINUAE, together with help from other contributors to this site, had me up and running.
Now to discuss the games. The front of the package states that there are 'more three hundred games' in the package, this is not entirely accurate, here's the maths:
- There are 250 files in the ASI series each containing between two and six games, that's a minimum of five hundred games and a conservative estimate would be closer to seven hundred
- There are eighteen files in the GG series, I can't run these - more on that later - but looking inside the files with a hex editor shows that they are a 'Games Galore' series and that the series contains 175 games.
Even allowing for games in one series being duplicated in another the claimed number of games is, by my guesstimate, around half of what's actually here.
On the back of the packaging the more detailed description says that there are some games and some game demos. Having examined the game files for days now everything I've come across so far has been a freeware game and/or a covermount game. The ASI series of files were created by a couple of guys calling themselves 'the Assassins' and has been seen in old Amiga magazines being sold as compilations of public domain software as far back as 1993. They are all available on-line, I found them on the charityware site AmigaPD but they are available in other places too.
Now freeware and shareware isn't a problem for me, it's actually something I look for, I would prefer this CD to be clearly labelled about what it contains. To suggest that these are games and game demos implies that the content is largely commercial software and, while I have not been through every file, this does not seem to be the case.
Finally, and quite annoyingly, all the game files were intended for the A1200 machine. To run them you will need an appropriate Kickstart ROM but on the CD the only Kickstart ROM is for the A500. This means that all the Games Galore files are unusable, guess which kind of file I spent the first few hours trying to run :-(, and within the ASI series the odd game will fail to run, so far I've tried forty or so games and have had no more than half a dozen failures. I've also had problems with some of the files containing utilities and tools.
The Bottom Line
If you know what you're doing you don't need this because you can get all the games for free from the internet together with emulators and on-line documentation
If you don't know what you're doing you don't need this product either and for exactly the same reasons, this is definitely not for you. This compilation will not hold your hand and guide you gently through the process of installing and configuring any of the emulators on any of the platforms. In addition some of the games and game files are incompatible with the supplied Kickstart ROM.
Windows · by piltdown_man (254306) · 2015
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Game added by piltdown_man.
Game added December 18, 2015. Last modified March 9, 2023.