Sunday 16 August 2015

Favourite Amiga 500 Games


The finest computer of all time.

The Amiga 500. The best computer of all time?.... YES. Having witnessed the intense 8bit rivalry between Spectrum and Commodore 64 users I took care to choose what I thought was the better machine between the Amiga 500 and the Atari ST in the 16bit era. I believe I made the right choice. The graphics and sound capabilities of the Amiga 500 seemed way ahead of it's time. The ST gave it a run for it's money but just never seemed quite as good.

All the beans on toast was worth it.

I blew half my college grant on it, possibly back in 1989, and lived on beans on toast for weeks, but it was worth it. The applications for it were very cool, great art and music programs. Amiga's were used in TV production, that's how powerful they were. But the major reason for an arcade junkie like me.  The games.

It was all about the games.

I got a solid 4 or 5 years out of it before moving on to PC's. Not a very long time compared with my ZX Spectrum years but still it was the best time in my videogames playing life and therefore a time I'll never ever forgot.

Workbench 1.3

So here are my favourite twenty Amiga games. Not in any order besides alphabetical. I'll let you decide which you think is the number one game. Hell, It might not even be in this list which just goes to show how many great games existed for the finest computer of all time.

Saturday 1 August 2015

Favourite Playstation Games


Back in 1995 before PS4, PS3, PS2 and PSOne there was Playstation. Originally a joint project with Nintendo as a SNES-CD console, Sony's first entry into the video games console market, which at this point was known as the fifth generation, proved to be a massive success and the best selling console of this generation against so many other competitors.

Competitors like Panasonic 3DO, Amiga CD32, Atari Jaguar, Neo Geo CD, Sega Saturn, Nintendo 64, and that's just the systems I can remember. I'm sure there were many more.


The Playstation was by no means perfect. I remember many systems having the CD laser head warp with heat and then it became difficult to read the data from the discs, unless you turned the machine upside down and placed a bag of frozen peas or similar on top of it. Well that's what worked for me.

However, here are some key points which I feel ensured the Playstation was more of a success than any of the other consoles I've mentioned above.

1. 3rd party software developers were embraced.
2. CD storage and retrieval media used rather than cartridges.
3. Marketing Playstation to teens and young adults rather than families.
4. Released on time. N64 was too late. Sega Saturn was rushed.


I was lucky enough to be one of the people that chose the Playstation over the other consoles. Even though it was said to be less powerful, only 32bit, than the N64 and the Saturn, both 64bit, it just seemed to have a larger and more varied catalog of games available for it.

So here are my fifteen favourite original playstation titles. Please be aware that they are not necessarily the best games for the Playstation, some of their sequels are much better, but these games are definitely the most memorable for me. It may surprise you that there are no Final Fantasy or Metal Gear Solid games in the list but at the time I just never got to play them.