Nevryon Acorn Games Video Archive A3010/TV Card

[EightDeadlyWords]

Cheers to you guys who've commented on the music! I can hardly remember writing this soundtrack! Been a long time since I wrote game music, but I'm still writing music in bands.

[MathsYknow]

@EightDeadlyWords As a kid, I remember liking some of the music tracks so much that I taped them by putting my cassette recorder up to the computer speakers. I recall it didn't work very well because you could hear me tapping away on the fire button (this gave a more rapid rate of fire than if you just held it down).. The search that brought me to this video 20 years later was just on the off chance anyone had posted the music tracks. I expected zero results, not the music's composer! =)

[meltheofcgamergirl]

This game looks awesome! I love shoot 'em ups. Check out my channel for a couple of obscure shooting games that I've covered. Keep up the good work!

[espadav8]

Getting a full play through of this game would be amazing.

I forget if it was ever completed in our house. I do remember getting rather far, but my levels are getting mixed up.

Space ship - rocky planet (3 headed dragon) - inside space ship (thing that shot mines) - outside over grass (head thingy)? - inside slim place (forget boss)? - outside future city (forget boss again) - another alien world (???)

Sound right to anyone?

[HeartfeltDawn]

Quite possibly the best original Arc game soundtrack.

[cm1179]

did anyone complete this game? i reckon i'm a failry competent game player but i only made it to the last level once, with one life left. i remember being killed by a big blob of jelly type stuff which came from behind me and i just couldn't escape it and i never got to the last level again cos that skull boss was too hard. however, inserting disc 2 did show the ending!

[ojfoggin]

I only ever got past the 3 headed dragon boss once I think. And that was only if I managed to get to that level. I still remember the password for it now (mirador) but if you used the password then you didn't have enough powerups to last the level. LOL!

[MathsYknow]

@cm1179 I beat this game over and over on the easy skill level and wondered why I couldn't get to the top of the high score chart - you need to play on hard difficulty. So I did that, and beat the game over and over - it's fair to say I played it to bits! The skull boss was one of the easiest - just race up to him, sit just above his eye and kill him before his hands even reach you.

[shininnit]

I loved this game so much back in the day. Shame whoever's playing it here isn't very good at it ;)

[ahaulucky11]

Ahhhh..... this is a real "blast" from the past. My beloved mum threw out our perfectly functioning A3000 out a couple of years back. There should be laws against things like this.

[EVILmustDIE666]

i would love to play this awesome looking r-type clone:))))) any archimedes emulaters + the game on pc so i can play it because i love collecting horizontal shmups:))))

[billy128]

This is a great R-Type-ish shmup !

Very good graphics & sfx !

[jicaley]

4th Dimension were the best Acorn game programers imo.

[slapspak]

does anyone know where to get an emulation of this game? i used to love it , but so damn hard when you were 10.

[HideawayStudio]

I adored the music on this game by Peter Gillett - it was easily on a par with some of the Amiga greats! PG Where are you now??

Dan Wilson, MSK: Phaethon, Hamsters, !TCDdemo2...

[Adropacrich2]

I'm fairly sure with it's raw power the Archimedes could very easily handle software written routines for 50fps 2d games.Spectrum managed some perfectly reasonable routines this way and that was only some 3x faster than the cpu used in C64

Very few of the games written for the Archimedes were pushing it particularly hard

[Archimedes75009]

Well, you're not wrong at all.

In fact I've developped sprites routines which would make a game like Nevryon run in 1 VBL.

Unfortunately it needs much more memory so I believe a 2 MB machine would be necessary for a massive game like Nevryon.

Hats off to the team it's a fantastic game, and the music is just superb !

[Irondarkis]

I used to love this game! Do you have videos of the whole game? I need to see more :D

[keeble909]

Best video game music ever!

[Clive0075]

That was a really great game !

And you can read the coder also created the graphics (256 colours when the Amiga had only 32).

Sadly the game is not overscan, when it's so easy to tweak the VIDC (less than 100 ARM instructions to create).

Just amazing ! Hats off to him !

The 4th dimension was the main source of quality games for the Archimedes range of computers.

[Ahle2]

Wrong!

Every Amiga ever produced could do 4096 colors in HAM mode and 64 colors in EHB mode. And the best thing about the Amiga was the blazing fast graphics thanks to the blitter/copper/hardware scrolling/sprites... which the Archimedes lacked... It's really no discussion at all which platform was the best for games. Have a look at "Shadow of the beast", "Lion heart", "Jim power".. Well, i still believe the Archimedes was superior for software usage and CPU heavy tasks, due to the fast CPU.

[Ahle2]

"Jim Power" and "Lion hearts" has 300+ colors at screen at once thanks to the copper chip...

[Ahle2]

Well, 3D games are smother on the Archimedes as well thanks to the faster CPU (Not compared to my 68060 50Mhz A1200 though). I have almost not played a single game on the Archimedes running in full frame rate (50/60FPS) due to lack of gaming hardware and the CPU not fast enough to emulate these things (even though the CPU is very fast compared to a OCS Amiga)

[Clive0075]

Hello.

It's OK the Amiga was a great machine and I always wondered what kind of game machine the ARM2 based machines would have been with better graphic custom chips.

BUT : don't forget it's not because after some years excellent programmers (Fernando Velez on the Amiga, sbdy I met in my home town Dijon) managed to get the best out of it, that the Arc is not as good as the Amiga.

I myself coded 'code generated routines' to plot and unplot sprites and a game like Nevryon would be in the frame.

[Clive0075]

The ST and Amiga markets were huge so competing teams lifted up the quality level of their productions... Most Archimedes programmers were lazy, and conversions had no reason to be improved due to the lack of games.

Please understand my opinion : it's not because you never saw great 2D games that the machine was weak in this area... it's an easy shortcut you're giving.

[Stopmotionist]

The Archimedes had about the same amount of power as an AGA Amiga. Are you saying that OCS > AGA? Because if you are, you're making no sense at all.

[Archimedes75009]

No, I don't think so.

Palette is 4096, the 256 colours can NOT be chosen freely : you choose 64 and then automatically you get 3 additional tints.

The VIDC chip only handles 'chunky' : bitplanes are unknown on the Archimedes.

[Stopmotionist]

The AGA chipset had an 18-bit palette, so it had 262144 colors.  You're right about the color selection limitations, though.

I glossed over the more technical details, because the Amiga 4000 was a more obvious equivalent, having a similar soundchip, the same number of onscreen colors, and a similarly fast processor. It's definitely closer to an Archimedes than a PC, Mac, or X68000 - wouldn't you agree?

[Archimedes75009]

Well.

I think the Amiga is superior for the graphics but the chunky 256 colour modes on the Archimedes is easier to use than the Amiga screen modes (which proves Amiga coders are excellent).

For 3D the raw power of the ARM chip at 8 Mhz makes it a superior machine.

Anyway I love both machines, with a preference for the Archimedes because of the beauty of the ARM architecture.

[Stopmotionist]

68040 is about as powerful, but it was underutilized because of the 1200 (like the original Amiga was underutilized because of the ST).

I agree, though, that the ARM is superior.