A weather balloon. An asteroid. Picnic plates and Frisbees photographed in soft focus. West Chester swamp gas.
When the history of computer games is written, the CDTV will be probably be regarded, at best, as an interesting blip on radar and, at worst, as a first wrong step from the glittering pinnacle of 1990 down the dusty road to April 1994. Its games may not be mentioned at all.
And, really, who would notice if they were not? It's with some reason that I've allied CDTV with UFOs here. You could have blinked and missed it. Or, seeing it, look back later, and wonder if it was really there at all.
Unveiled in the summer of 1990 and introduced in fall of 1991 by a CBM
flushed with the success of its A500, the CDTV - an A500 enshrined in a
gleaming black console with a CD drive, a meg of chip RAM and version 1.3
of the Amiga's operating system - never captured the imagination of the
public or the Amiga development community. Post-mortems have variously
attributed its demise to marketing -- failure to link the new machine
with the Amiga -- and confusion over the CDTV's mission. If not a
computer, and not a game machine, then what was it? It looked like
a CD player, and, in Europe, was often sold -- or gathered dust, as the
case may be -- alongside them in electronics shops.
Perhaps it was simply ahead of its time. Or, perhaps not quite far enough ahead.
Whatever the reasons, they translated into poor sales. Companies
typically don't notice a new platform until it has moved at least 100,000
units. A month before the CD32's European launch in August 1993,
a CBM official estimated combined sales of the CDTV and CDTV-compatible
A570 CD-ROM drive for the A500 at about 75,000, with about 30,000 of those
being
CDTVs.
The unit was not quite two years old by then, and already it had effectively
been an orphan for some months. Sporadic publisher "support" for
CDTV would continue into 1994 - with one CDTV-specific and two CDTV-compatible
games releases - but that was more a function of the quasi-compatible CD32's
introduction than ongoing developer interest in the
CDTV.
It was dead -- the CDTV II never went beyond prototype -- and in retrospect, it had been dead almost from the beginning. The three defining factors that stand out when looking back over CDTV's history are cancellation, mediocrity, and obscurity.
Cancellation: One hundred titles were planned for CDTV's anticipated launch in the fall of 1990. A year later, when the machine actually arrived, I'd be surprised if the volume of releases was even a quarter of that. Many of the games that Commodore projected in its two CDTV catalogues, or whose development was reported by the Amiga press, never turned up at all - nearly 70 all told, including, embarrassingly, five of those promoted on the Welcome Disk that shipped with the unit. (A number would later see release in CD32-specific versions.)
Mediocrity: Those games that did appear were often undistinguished
or, at least, enjoyed no distinction unique to CD. The machine
suffered, as did the CD32 for the first nine months, from an abundance
of straight ports, marginal CD upgrades, and cobbled-together CDTV-specific
curiosities. It has been widely said that the CDTV never had a really
good game, and while
not true - in fact, it has a few excellent ones - it's easy to see
how that impression developed.
Obscurity: Giving the platform the benefit of the doubt, about 50 CDTV games have been released. That's not an atrocious showing (though the ratio of released to unreleased stinks), and if you saw them assembled in one stack, it would look like a lot.
But during CDTV's brief active life, it tended to be treated like a crazy younger brother in an unenlightened society: locked in the basement instead of getting into a home. No one seemed to know what to do with it. Magazines heralded its arrival, then roundly ignored it. Retailers tended to shunt it to one side. Publishers made plans, and the plans gathered dust. These days, apart from few enterprising mail-order firms, CDTV games are a forgotten commodity.
Nevertheless, the last three years has seen a mild revival of interest in CDTV as gamers introduced to Amiga CD via the CD32 have returned to its roots in search of new diversions.
This may help in the search. In the following CDTV discography, we'll chart the machine's course in software in a full, commented catalog of published games. Each game is rated for quality, for any changes over a pre-existing disk-based version ("NA" where no disk version existed), for rarity and for CD32 compatibility.
It's a long and, I'm sorry to say, a largely unhappy story. Also a hard-to-tell one in places, as Commodore (the largest CDTV publisher) is no longer around to explain itself. But it's nevertheless an opportunity to peer into one of the most fascinating and neglected cubbyholes in the Amiga's history. Here's the radar profile of Commodore's most celebrated UFO.
Air Warrior (On-Line): Regardless of platform, this Kesmai multi- player flight sim reveals itself as a genuine piece of work when you're hooked up with up to 39 other pilots in a "party with machine guns" atmosphere online.
However, the CDTV version offers nothing out the ordinary. This may
have been a contemporary of the commercial SVGA version for the IBM and
compatibles, but the CD is just a delivery medium. If you're modem-less,
you can still fly only by yourself. And as a solo flight sim, the graphics
will seem Gunship-primitive. (Online, when you have to worry about simply
staying alive, the graphics are almost irrelevant.)
Besides, you can do better. The Amiga version has been significantly upgraded since this issue (circa 1992-93). Check AmiNet for the current version and spruced-up graphics files.
Bottom line: C. Changes from floppy version: None. Rarity: Not
much.
CD32 compatibility: Yes, provided you have a keyboard attached.
Battle Chess (Interplay): Given the advances in chess algorithms, this animated chess game is not exactly going to seem like Bobby Fischer these days. (Then again, Bobby Fischer doesn't seem like Bobby Fischer these days.)
But Battle Chess was always more fun to watch (love the death anims) than it was to actually play, and artificial intelligence was always a secondary consideration. I mean, what other chess queen swings her tush when she walks? What other rook looks as though he could join the Fantastic Four with no questions asked? What other pawns so deserved the name? Battle Chess is slightly slow, and the AI doesn't have much personality, but the game has it to spare.
Bottom line: B-. Changes: Digitized speech in the tutorial; better
music.
Rarity: Not much. CD32: Game proper works, but choosing the tutorial
locks up the machine. Available in a CD32-specific version, however.
Battlestorm (Titus): A mediocre multi-directional shoot-em-up whose basic simplicity of approach was ill-matched to the platform's potential - but that nevertheless helped establish a genre later fleshed out by flashier, disk-based Amiga games like Amnios and Blastar.
Bottom line: C-. Changes: None of note. Rarity: Fairly easy
to find.
CD32: Works fine.
The Case of the Cautious Condor (Tiger Media): Time has been unexpectedly kind to this first CDTV game - essentially a "talkie" graphic-novel version of EA's 8-bit Murder on the Zinderneuf, set in 1937 aboard a Spruce Goose-like clipper on a cruise over the Atlantic.
The plane's owner has summoned a dozen guests aboard - including your character -- in an effort to solve the murder of a customs agent (his illegitimate son). The host's apparent heart attack cuts the flight short, and you have a half hour to oblige your old friend, search the ship, eavesdrop on the guests, and identify the worst of the bad guys and gals aboard.
All of which is easier said than done, as you'll need to consistently
be in the right place at the right time, interpret what you learn, and
avoid some unpleasant dead ends. This conversion - Condor was first
released in Japan as a CD-ROM game in late 1989 - is expansive and lively
(if prone to stereotypes in characterization). The quality of the
speech is quite good, and the interface is dead simple. It wasn't
especially well-received when it first appeared in 1991, but it's easily
worth the pittance it's likely
to cost you now.
Bottom line: B-. Changes: NA. Rarity: None. CD32: Yes.
Casino Games (Saen Software Development): Don't bet heavily on this Dutch hodge-podge of video poker, slot machine and roulette from 1992. It displays no feel for any of these games of chance and offers nothing CD-specific and nothing that hasn't already been achieved by disk-based games in shareware. (Actually, the best thing about Casino Games is the "Jukebox" function,which allows you to browse through a range of bright supporting music.)
Bottom line: D-. Changes: NA. Rarity: Rare out of all proportion to its value. CD32: Works.
Chaos in Andromeda: Eye of the Eagle (On-Line): Well, it's ... it's ... it's big. This sci-fi RPG sucks up around 450 megabytes - a huge slab of data by CDTV standards. (The Case of the Cautious Condor uses 320.)
Unfortunately, all those megs don't add up to much. The disk-based original was mildly engaging - the graphics were tiny and ornate - but the photographic and audio additions have a cheesy, homemade quality, slow things down enormously and seem oddly out-of-touch with the game's small-is-good concept.
Bottom line: D. Changes: As above. Rarity: Hard to find. CD32: Flat doesn't work. A CD32-specific version was considered, but never surfaced.
Classic Board Games (Merit): A trio of board games - backgammon, checkers, and chess - with digitized instructions and commentary in six beautifully spoken languages, including Japanese.
Depending on your point of view, it's either unambitious or unpretentious. The computer opponent isn't going to beat UChess, the backgammon opponent's pieces move as though his fingers are broken, and, by rights, author Scott Lamb (the fellow behind Merit's Operation Combat modem games) should probably have increased the number of games in this translation from disk to CDTV. (Only 94 megs are used on the CD.)
Still, the voices are good-natured, the opponents aren't holy terrors, and I like not being overwhelmed by features. This is OK, but just OK.
Bottom line: C. Changes: Multi-language speech. Rarity: Little. CD32: Works.
Cover Girl Strip Poker (On-Line): How much you enjoy this will depend on what you're looking for. If it's good poker (yeah, right), forget it. The girls here bluff out every hand, however worthless their cards, and the game doesn't even follow standard poker rules. (You can bet yourself way into the hole, and pull five cards at the draw.)
And while I don't want to sound crass, where there's no real competition, there's no titillation when someone loses her shirt. This should just be called Cover Girls Strip.
On the other hand, if it's technical exoticism that interests you (yeah, right), Cover Girl's kind of neat. A lot of the demure strip teases practiced here are handled in black-and-white CDXL films (the CDTV's version of full-motion video), which have the quaint flavor of crank-driven card-flipping movies.
Bottom line: D. Changes: NA. Rarity: None. CD32: Works.
The Curse of Ra (Rainbow Arts): Right around 1990, the game development
fraternity in general - and Germany's in particular - seems to have enjoyed
a fierce, brief fling with things Egyptian. The children that sprung
from this union in Germany include Eye of Horus, Ramses, the PD games Pamehta
and Cheop, and Curse - a 200-level tile-matcher with roots in games like
Shanghai.
The Curse of Ra is actually quite clever, borrowing some ideas from maze games (transporters) and platformers (icy tiles) and should infuriate you in no time. The CDTV version is identical to the disk version - lacking, understandably, the copy protection and level editor. It's an odd choice for conversion to CD, though, as there's nothing particularly special about it.
Bottom line: C+ Changes: None of note. Rarity: A little. CD32: No.
Defender of the Crown (CDTV Publishing): Cinemaware was one of the three principal CDTV developers announced in the summer of 1990 (along with LucasArts and Virgin). That exactly two games (both Virgin's) surfaced from this trio speaks volumes for CDTV's downfall.
However, blame can't really be placed at the doorstep of Cinemaware, which had problems of its own and closed up shop months before the machine actually took flight. Its legacy seems to have fallen partly to Data East (TV Sports: Baseball and TV Sports: Boxing) and partly to Commodore (Defender of the Crown, DOTC II, and TV Sports: Football 2).
The CDTV take of Defender is essentially the disk-based version with speech (which sounds almost Australian in spots) replacing text, and the addition of an online manual. The graphics are still radiant, the music still lovely, and the whole package brings back the jubilant sense of discovery from the Amiga's early days.
Unfortunately, it's also still Defender of the Crown ... which is to say that the play-balance flaws that dogged the original remain in place. You can beat this great looking but basic conquest game in an hour or so and never look back.
Bottom line: D. Changes: As above. Rarity: Little. CD32: Works.
Defender of the Crown II (CDTV Publishing): Or DOTC: The Director's Cut. Literally. Assembled under The Director by DOTC artist Jim Sachs, this revised version features a new objective (raising 20,000 pounds ransom to save the king); subtly augmented gameplay (notably a real-estate market); a much more appropriate digitized voice; some new graphics (the huge overlaid silhouette of a galloping horseman to reflect your army on the move), some just revised (Sachs was never happy with the original Robin Hood scene) and some old ones that original coder R.J. Mical couldn't fit on the original's two disks back in 1986.
Consequently, there's a generally more grown-up, brawny feel to the game, and winning is much harder. However, weaknesses remain - the arcade sequences are still either too tough (jousting) or too easy (everything else) - and I wish Sachs had elected to perform a more thorough overhaul.
But there's more here than meets the eye.
Bottom line: B. Changes: NA. Rarity: None. CD32: Works.
Emerald Mines (Almathera): They should have called this Utter Boulderdash. Almathera snarfed up every level for this celebrated arcade/puzzle game it could lay hands on - literally thousands of them totaling more than 40 megabytes, from Ace Mine 1 to Enemy Mine to Oh No More Yams 9 to Ykikakau Mine 2 . It bundled them together with graphics and sound selectors and a neat interface. It allowed you to begin play every eight levels (because you'd never see most of them otherwise). And it fixed them to work under AmigaDOS 3.1. The result is a genuine labor of love: an amazing compilation of the sort that CDTV's very nature always invited, but that never materialized (save in the PD and shareware field).
Drawbacks: Almathera didn't exert quality control over the levels, which are often way too hard. And none of the EM editors are included.
Bottom line: B+. Changes: As above. Rarity: None. CD32: Works. Boot in PAL and disable any fast memory.
E.S.S. Mega (Coktel Vision): It stands for European Space Simulator, and it is probably the single most obscure CDTV title released.
And it deserves to languish in obscurity. Believe me, you don't
want it. The execution is downright trashy. Except for some 3D modeling,
and around 10 CDXL sequences in the space database, the graphics in this
space sim are barely above C64 level. The game begs for extravagant
sound, and the cover promises 300 megabytes of hi-fi music. But I
couldn't coax anything more
from it than the "boop" of the controller button presses and the bright
click of the countdown.
There is evidently some depth to the game. You equip the space shuttle with cargo, crew, and energy - were you aware that the shuttle has lasers? - and then get to launch, pilot, and land it (on a "shuttle carrier"). You send up and maintain satellites, and you build and manage a space station.
The program gives you little help along the way. E.S.S. Mega has no presence - the lack of sound kills it - and you never get the feeling that you're playing it so much as playing with it. And without ever having fun.
Bottom line: D-. Changes: NA. Rarity: Very hard to find. CD32: Yes.
Falcon (Spectrum Holobyte/Mirrorsoft): A great translation of the first serious Amiga flight sim, featuring the redoubtable F- 16. Set at the "Commodore Fighter Base," the CDTV edition is the ultimate Falcon package, incorporating an updated build of the basic game, both the Operation Counterstrike and Operation Firefight data disks, loads of CDXL sequences and speech (the latter both in the intro and the game) and a first-rate interface - plus all the features you came to expect from the disk-based game.
Bottom line: A-. Changes: Many, but mostly cosmetic. Rarity: Very hard to find. CD32: Yes, with the occasional audio glitch.
Fantastic Voyage (Centaur): That's right. The folks behind the OpalVision board published this big, polished multi-direction shoot-em-up (based on the now 30-year-old movie) on disk in 1991 and followed it up the next year with a CDTV version.
And it's really not a bad game, with pleasant graphics (good use of refraction and light, and decent modeling of the miniaturized sub) and lots of little side-pockets along the route to explore in search of those little necessities of arcade-game life.
However, the tuneup for CDTV was purely cosmetic. The music is now a bit beefier, and some changes have been made in the main menu - adding a music/effects option and dropping the NTSC/PAL and high-score table selectors.
Trivia: Centaur did one other Amiga game: King of Karate, the beat-em-up that it bundled with its 24-bit graphics board (which, by extension, must make it the most expensive Amiga game ever released.)
Bottom line: B-. Changes: Cosmetic. Rarity: Some. CD32: Works.
Global Chaos (Hex): Kind of a weird mish-mosh of early "multimedia" in which a platform game - the Rainbow Islands- style Top Banana - shares the limelight with a bunch of rave demos. Top Banana (which also has released on disk) looks alarmingly homemade, but is equipped with an array of charming sounds and sprites and plays quite nicely.
Bottom line: C. Changes: The rave tracks and demos are extra. Rarity: A little. CD32: Top Banana's fine, but the demos are glitchy.
Guy Spy and the Crystals of Armageddon (Readysoft): One of CDTV's best-kept secrets. This CDTV Version of this first entry in Readysoft's line of second-generation Dragon's Lair-style games turned up as an unadvertised double pack with the IBM version.
The animation's a good approximation of the Bluth games to which it was the intended successor, and each fight scene is its own sub-game. It's perfectly pleasant (though it exchanges one type of one- dimensionality for another), and it's certainly nice not to have to swap disks. (The follow up, the long-awaited Terror of the Deep, seems to have fallen into the drink.)
Bottom line: B-. Changes: None, really. Rarity: None. CD32: Works fine.
The Hound of the Baskervilles (On-Line): A Sherlock Holmes mystery based on yhe great British sleuth's best known case. Watson has laid out all the evidence for Holmes' perusal, and clicking on these documents and photos prompts verbal descriptions and the occasional cruddy sepia-toned animation.
It's rough-edged, but kind of enjoyable. Of course, it would be a lot more enjoyable to collect this evidence yourself. This doesn't even hold a magnifying glass to Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective.
Bottom line: C-. Changes: NA. Rarity: Not much. CD32: Works.
The Labyrinth of Time (Electronic Arts UK): The masterpiece.
Not so much an adventure as an experience, Labyrinth (as it was originally
called) is easily the best playing, best looking, and best sounding game
released for CDTV. The other-worldly HAM graphics, the looping cinematic
score (supremely spooky when played in a dark room), the giant-sized, fully-rendered
inventory, the distinctive, four-way views, the high level of interactivity
(flushing toilets and whatnot) and, the mystery and after a
while, the surprising depth - all combine for a first-person adventure
utterlyt unlike any other that appeared on the Amiga.
Curiosity: Designed by Terra Nova Development expressly for CDTV, Labyrinth fell victim to EA's rapidly cooling interest in the Amiga and wound up surfacing first on the PC and Macintosh.
Bottom line: A. Changes: NA. Rarity: It's always in demand, and, hence, can occasionally be difficult to find. CD32: Works.
Lemmings (Psygnosis): It's just Lemmings - you do know Lemmings, right? -and the mindless little green-haired guys don't need enhancements. (Except a survival instinct, perhaps.)
But this strategy classic is a much better puzzle game when played with a mouse instead of the CDTV's "are the batteries dead or were you standing in the way?" remote. And releasing Lemmings alone on a CD is a bit like putting a hundred drops in a glass and calling it a drink. Where is Oh No! More Lemmings, and where are the special Christmas levels?
Then again, it wasn't entirely alone. See Planetside in the "unreleased" section.
Bottom line: B-. Changes: Contains the Planetside demo. Rarity: None. CD32: Works, and was re-released virtually unchanged for the CD32.
Logical (Rainbow Arts): Another appealing puzzler from Rainbow Arts - and another rather strange choice for a CDTV conversion. More original than Curse of Ra, this puts me in mind of a more orderly version of a children's game called Avalanche. Logical defies you to distribute incoming marbles about a playing board via 99 different configurations of wheels and troughs. Instantly accessible, and even the first level is tricky.
Again, a straight-arrow port from disk to CD that doesn't push the hardware.
Bottom line: B. Changes: None. Rarity: Hard to find. CD32: No.
Mind Run (Crealude): Often categorized as "education," it is actually a set of tricky (and progressively trickier) brain teasers dealing with memory, stress, sounds, and reflexes. It's sly stuff, even for adults - not simply variations on a theme - and execution is so original and artistic that, however poorly you do, you'll always feel more entertained than oppressed.
Curiosities: Mind Run was coded using AMOS. It's also one of a very few multi-language games to distinguish American English from British English. (To no point, really.)
Bottom line: B-. Changes: NA. Rarity: None. CD32: No. (You can get into the program, but can't control it once there.)
Murder Makes Strange Deadfellows (Tiger Media): The second, and last, Airwave Adventure. (A third Tiger Media game, Angel of the City, was dropped midway through production.)
Unfortunately, the label went out on a rather sour note. This 1991 haunted-house mystery - based around your character's search for a new will - is a rather poor cousin to Case of the Cautious Condor. Storytelling dominates, and these sequences can be interminable.
Bottom line: D+. Changes: NA. Rarity: Hard to find. CD32: No.
North Polar Expedition (Virgin): Another obscure game, but an interesting one. This multi-player RPG basically consists of a multiple-choice trivia game, with each player assuming a role (leader, navigator, radio man, etc.).
What's unusual here is that your answers aren't necessarily right or wrong, but influential to varying degrees in terms of team morale and availability of supplies. Example: If you elect to extinguish a tent fire by smothering the flames with your sleeping bag, you'll improve team morale, but reduce your stocks.
Nice, too, that you don't need to be an expert at your role, and you can play well using informed common sense. And the "morning of so-and-so" banner that heralds each day is just enough like "The Shining" to be a bit creepy.
Bottom line: B+. Changes: NA. Rarity: Next to impossible to find. CD32: Works, but some graphics are scrambled.
Power Pinball (KarmaSoft): Sort of an interesting story, this. I'd never seen this game listed for sale anywhere and had figured it for dead (like so many other CDTV games) ... until it turned up in 1995 in a mail-order ad. The mail order company (the late Better Concepts Inc.) indicated it bought its stock from KarmaSoft (which didn't respond to an inquiry).
A guess: Power Pinball was manufactured back in the CDTV's heyday - were CDTV allowed to have such a thing as a heyday - but not distributed. Wonder if there are others like it yet to surface?
Unfortunately, even that little story's better than the game itself. In a world of Pinball Illusions and Slamtilt, 1990's Power Pinball is nothing special. It looks the way EA's Pinball Construction Set for the Amiga might have looked (had EA ever gotten around to finishing it), and the play isn't very involving when the ball's the size of a large pea.
On the other hand, it is what you'd expect in a CD version, incorporating the updated program and all 13 pinball tables (five from the original game and eight from the expansion disk).
Bottom line: D. Changes: As above. Rarity: None. CD32: No.
Prehistorik (Titus): Not quite Chuck Rock, but a fair amount of fun all the same. In this light arcader, you send a little caveman running about, collecting food, jumping over fires and chasms, and bashing angry dinos (and bears, who evidently were contemporaries of dinosaurs) on the head with an array of clubs. The action will seem a bit dated and primitive (heh) now, but it's playable. Nice rotating Titus logo, too.
Bottom line: C+. Changes: More music, sound, and polish. Rarity: Some. CD32: Works like a charm.
Prey: An Alien Encounter (Almathera): One of the last games aimed specifically at the CDTV. And compared to most other CDTV releases, this 3D action-adventure (from the developers of Chaos in Andromeda) doesn't seem like a bad game ... at first. You roam a large, alien- infested ship, freeing crew members, making toast of your uninvited guests and collecting the necessities of life. The graphics are OK, and movement consists of the square-to-square scrolling used in Space Hulk, Psygnosis' unreleased G2 and Angst.
But the ship's not that large, and however crowded it may be with aliens and crew, you always feel alone. There's no character interaction, and this isn't so much an open game system as a scripted story. Follow the script and get neat radio and video transmissions and an early end to the game. Depart from it and get an early end to your character.
Bottom line: D+. Changes: NA. Rarity: None. CD32: Nope. However, there's a CD32-specific version.
Psycho Killer (On-Line): Psycho Killer, qu'est que c'est?
C'est crapola. This most successful of On-Line's CDTV games opens with
your discovery of an abandoned car. (In fact, if you don't jam on
the brakes pronto, you're going to become one with it.) Its operator has
just been abducted by - wait for it - the psycho killer. And you,
being an honorable so-and-so, make
off across the English countryside (represented by blurry color photographs)
after them. You interact with the program by clicking on directional
arrows and onscreen "hot spots." Do the right thing, and live to see another
blurry photograph.
And after about 10 minutes, you turn it off forever. Psycho Killer is a decidedly amateurish effort, with its corny acting, ghastly tutorial, pseudo-poetic death scene, one-track story, and wobbly, silent movie-like version of video. The best parts about it, quite seriously, are the dramatic appearance of the On-Line logo at the start and the sax that plays behind the end credits. The stuff in between is negligible.
Bottom line: F. Changes: NA. Rarity: Easy to find. CD32: Works, but with a lot of sound problems. There's a CD32 version as well.
Raffles (The Edge Interactive): A straight port of the disk version, this is an isometric arcade-adventure in the style of Treasure Trap (though not nearly so nice graphically).
You're the burglar, Raffles, who's been trapped his mark's home and forced to collect diamonds hidden by her late husband. Naturally, they're in inconvenient spots. To reach them, Raffles can drag, jump on, and walk atop furniture in the manner of a misbehaving child. And they're protected: The house is populated, rather absurdly, by oversized mice and birds, and contact with them weakens you.
Nothing to phone England about, but you may have some fun with it.
Bottom Line: C-. Changes: None. Rarity: A little. CD32: Works, but requires a keyboard to play fully. (Keypad keys correspond to the number keys on the CDTV remote.)
Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective (Icom Simulations; now Viacom New Media): If there is a CDTV game that still warrants translation to the CD32, it's this superb triple-threat mystery.
And not because it makes extensive use of tidy CDXL film sequences or digitized speech - though those elements are delightful - but because it entertains while making you think, and doesn't do the thinking for you.
Sherlock Holmes is really just an engine for telling the story and sending you cruising about Holmes' London, setting off little acted-out stage plays as you go. And it does so with consummate style, intelligence, and characterization that are present in no other CDTV product (save Labyrinth). The video and sound quality are good, the acting isn't bad, the interface is idiot-prooof and the whole thing just oozes class.
But the crux of the game is your own creative thinking -- using what you've learned to bring a suspect to justice -- and that makes it memorable.
Unhappily, it's only a memory. Icom went on to make two additional SH games and Dracula Unleashed in this same general style, but never returned to the Amiga.
Bottom line: A. Changes: NA. Rarity: Hard to find. CD32: No. Gets as far as the beginning of the first video segment, then crashes.
Sim City (Infogrames): Another of the CDTV's few real hits. A very nice conversion of the Maxis' city-building classic that also includes both sets of add-on graphics (future and ancient cities), a "zoom" function, and a large, easily accessed info window. The "zoom" is especially nice, as it gives you an opportunity to peek at all the little animations the game tosses up - bringing out the ant farm in the sim.
Devotees of the original may find the controls somewhat difficult to master, but it's worth the effort.
Bottom line: A-. Changes: Many. Rarity: Some. CD32: Works OK on an NTSC CD32 booted in PAL, but you'll need to disable fast RAM. Won't save cities.
Snoopy: The Case of the Missing Blanket (The Edge Interactive): An amiable Peanuts game more or less keeping with the spirit of the classic strip that seemed to shrivel in the 1970s. All the main characters are here, and one or another is bound to stroll through any given scene, uttering some Peanutsy non sequitur in a voice straight out of the TV specials. The backgrounds are just right - nothing too complicated - and so's the interface.
The key players are Linus, who has lost his beloved security blanket, and Snoopy, who, in yet another flight of doggy fantasy, is playing detective. You send him through this extensive neighborhood, identifying, picking up, putting down, and using objects (each of which has a purpose) and doing a bit of platform hopping.
Don't think it's just for kids. The puzzles are basic, but you'll need to be thorough to solve them, and the blanket can be found in a couple of different places.
T'aint perfect, though. Slowdowns occur if there are three animations onscreen at the same time, and some disparities of size crop up. (Sally is as big as all the other kids, but Snoopy's perfect.)
Bottom line: C+. Changes: Better music and more speech. Rarity: A bit hard to find on CDTV, but did surface on disk. CD32: Works, but you'll need a keyboard in order for Snoopy to walk into the screen. Seems to crash if left unattended for more than five minutes.
Space Wars (Odyssey): Odyssey's second CDTV release and not too
shabby. Imagine the combat bits from Star Control as a stand-alone game,
and you pretty much have Space Wars. You pick ships, a scenario (empty
space, asteroids, black hole, or sun), and then have at it. A particularly
nice touch is that the ships look progressively more beaten-down as they
take
damage. It's accompanied by a long-ish "movie," mingling hand-
built models and animation, that divides its time between looking really
cheesy and really polished.
Bottom Line: B-. Changes: As above. Rarity: A little. CD32: Yes.
Spirit of Excalibur (Virgin): Perhaps you've seen Simon the Sorcerer, Dark Seed, or Beneath a Steel Sky on the CD32. Well, those "talkie" graphic adventures have an older brother on the CDTV. This translation, developed as "Excalibur," was the Amiga's first venture into this genre, and, if you are patient with its cumbersome nature, you'll find it rather good.
Set in England after the death of Arthur, Spirit focuses on the efforts of Arthur's rightful successor, Constantine, to win his kingdom. The upside: There's an enormous amount to do. Spirit has lots of little side quests to complete as in the fashion of The Lord of the Rings, and it's one of the few games to successfully balance a war game with adventure. It looks great. (Brad Schenk, co-creator of The Labyrinth of Time, was responsible for the CD-ROM version's artwork.) The music is an almost physical presence. And the speech takes this feeling to an even higher level. This is that rarest of commodities: the true CDTV game.
The downside: Spirit of Excalibur is burdened by a sometimes awkward interface. Hey, anything involving the stupid remote can be awkward, and there's a lot of trudging around for no good reason. The combat routine seems be an offshoot from Defender of the Crown instead of Lords of the Rising Sun.
Curiosities: This Synergistic Software game uses a variation of the engine originally developed for War in Middle Earth. They stuck with it for the disk-based sequel, Vengeance of Excalibur, and the excellent Conan the Cimmerian.
Bottom line: B+. Changes: Digitized voices for the characters. Rarity: Moderate. CD32: No way, no how. (Believe me, I tried.)
Super Games Pak (Odyssey): A trio of updated arcade classics: Byteman (PacMan), Jailbreak (Breakout), and Deathbots (Bezerk). The sounds and music (beefed up from the disk edition) are quite pleasant, but there's still not much going on here in terms of gameplay.
The basic Byteman and Jailbreak don't display any really new ideas, though Byteman makes the attempt, with walls that open and close. Deathbots is the most elaborate, but also the most conspicuously flawed, as it uses a different perspective (side view) for your character and the robots than it does for the backdrop (angled-down). Weird, eh?
Bottom line: D. Changes: More sounds and graphics. Rarity: A little. CD32: Works OK.
Team Yankee (Empire): On disk this is a pretty neat tank game with great vehicle graphics and decent enemy artificial intelligence, but oddly short on sound. On CD, this is a pretty neat disk-based tank game with the same good graphics and AI ... and even more oddly short on sound.
Bottom line: C+. Changes: None. Rarity: Some. CD32: Works fine.
Tiebreak (Starbyte): A tennis game, and a good one. It starts out neat, with a long CDXL sequence shot courtside, and it stays neat right on through the gussied-up courts and into the photo album and record book. The only fault (heh) I can find is that the perspective is always centered on the server, which places an unfair burden on the other player. Also, be warned: The only manuals I've seen are in German.
Bottom line: B. Changes: Tons. Rarity: Some. CD32: Runs ... sorta. You'll need to knock down any fast RAM first, and you can use a standard controller to get all the way through the setup menus. The bad news: The game proper recognizes only trackball or the CDTV remote.
The Town with No Name (On-Line): An interesting oddity, this menu-driven adventure is set in a polygonal western town with the most poorly drawn inhabitants this side of the Pecos. The game does have a range of places to explore and can occasionally be "so bad it's good" funny (the John Wayne and Clint Eastwood parodies are way off the mark), but simply ends up lame. You can't move around freely, and the sub-games are insipid. Why does this game exist?
Bottom line: D-. Changes: NA. Rarity: None. CD32: Works OK. Also resurrected from Boot Hill for CD32.
Trivial Pursuit (Domark): A genuine production number, this masterful board game conversion is the only game the publisher completed for CDTV.
The presentation is just wonderful: a great tumbling dice sequence;
a jolly, but bad-tempered bird named Russell as quizmaster (a vaguely John
Cleese-like character who can be told to stuff it when you start finding
him finicky and repetitive); delightful guest questioners (who have a certain
Rocky & Bullwinkle quality about them); and animation, speech, music,
sound effects, and crisp photos all over the place. When you pick
your circular piece at the outset, a gloved hand descends and places a
"chosen" sign on it. When you take too long to roll the dice,
Russell starts pecking at his seed (among other things).
Plus the game proper, of course. The board and pieces are just right. The interface is very to-the-point. And it has 2,000 questions -- 1,000 on each of the CDs. (This is also the only 2-D CDTV game - for reasons that are not quite clear, as the data takes up a total of 447 megs.)
Two potential problems: The question files aren't encrypted, so someone determined to "rehearse" could do so - much as Trivial Pursuit owners have been known to do with the board game. And certain categories, especially entertainment and sports, have an understandable European slant.
But pouncing on Trivial Pursuit for that would be like blaming an Englishman for being English. This is just about perfect.
Bottom line: A-. Changes: It's a total rewrite. Rarity: Some. CD32: Works OK on an NTSC CD32 booted in PAL. A one-disk CD32 version also exists.
Turrican 2 (Rainbow Arts): Turrican was the seminal Amiga platform game: a sort of high-tech Super Mario World, with loads of secret areas and interesting gameplay challenges. Turrican 2 is pretty much like its older sibling, with a wider, deeper palette and equally fiendish level layouts... and perhaps better music in the CDTV version.
Bottom line: B. Changes: Maestro? Rarity: High. CD32: No.
Ultimate Basketball (Context Systems): A graphically dolled-up, but pared-down, version of Sport Time's superb Omni-Play Basketball.
To my thinking, that's still the great Amiga roundball game. It captures perfectly the sport's running-water flow, and the disk version is definitely worth seeking out.
The water stills flows in Ultimate Basketball. Unfortunately,
it's less of a game, and the additions are only around the periphery.
Context didn't use this opportunity to include the add-on modules that
Omni-Play Basketball quietly accumulated over the years (though it does
use the sideview module that surfaced in the second edition of Magic Johnson
MVP
Basketball), and in fact, ditched the whole league structure as well,
leaving just the playoffs. (Probably a saved-game issue.)
Bottom line: C. Changes: Some additional graphics, which give the score screens a more television-like look. Rarity: Some. CD32: Works OK.
The Will-Bridge Practice Collection (Will-Bridge): Another obscure one. This series of playable bridge games was to consist of as many as five volumes: Introduction to Bidding, Intermediate, Advanced, Competition, and Advanced Competition.
At least the first three surfaced, and I've played two of those. If you're bridge fiend and can't find a second, third or fourth, this may do. The games are slow, rather broad graphically and spotted with odd interludes. But they're also cleanly designed, detailed, and instructive.
Bottom line: C. Changes: NA. Rarity: Considerable. CD32: They run, but won't play beyond a certain point.
Wrath of the Demon (Readysoft): Remember the days when publishers
put game specs in the back of the manual ("28 megabytes of graphics on
one disk, more animation than "The Lion King," 1,500 man years in the making")
as if
they really meant something?
Well, Wrath of the Demon will return you to that era, and, in this case, it really does mean something. Released on disk in the age of great sideways-scrolling action games kicked off by Shadow of the Beast, this major league arcade adventure features 15 levels of parallax scrolling, 3 megabytes of 100-plus color graphics and 600 screens. IBM coders still have trouble doing this sort of game well.
I won't trouble you with the story. Suffice it to say that monsters are attacking - monsters never just stay home and watch TV - and off you go to save the kingdom, with a man-ish princess in a very tight gown as an obvious (though unstated) enticement.
This straight conversion surpasses Beast on many levels. It's held back only by a graphical cartooniness. (I mean, the hero waves to you after he gets thrown from his horse.)
Curiosity: The disk-based followup promised (for years) from the same Quebec development team seems to have fallen into the fire.
Bottom line: B-. Changes: None of note. Rarity: Little. CD32: Caveat emptor. Runs, but, to my thinking. the controls aren't reliable enough for the game to be playable. You won't even make it through the opening horseback sequence (which is hard enough as it is). Experimenting with the settings on a Competition Pro joypad, I was able to get the game working, but with keypad controls reversed and some disabled.
Xenon II: Megablast (Mirrorsoft): The game that established the Bitmap Brothers. This rich and difficult vertically scrolling shoot 'em-up coupled an impression of great into-the-screen depth and a perfect difficulty curve with the same graphical sheen that marks the developer's subsequent games up to and including The Chaos Engine. And it still holds up.
Much was made at the time of the bopping, professionally composed score. Feh. (How come no one just puts realistic sounds in arcade adventures?) If this sort of thing matters to you, you'll enjoy the improvements here. Even if they don't, you'll still enjoy the game. But the CDTV version is otherwise pretty much the equal of the disk-based release.
Bottom line: B. Changes: Vibed-up music. Rarity: Very hard
to find. CD32: Yup.