I bought my first Amiga in 1993 and one of games I bought on day-one was Premier Manager, a cracking football management game. I was instantly hooked and played it very late into that first night (or, more accurately, the following morning), which was unfortunate as the next day was my (first) wedding day!
“Do you take this woman to be your lawful wedded wife?”
“Yawn…”
I will leave you to imagine how that went down. Long story short, I still have an Amiga but not that wife. But this was the pull of the game; it was hard not to be hooked by Premier Manager. Exceptionally well presented and user friendly, the normal stuff we are now familiar with in a football management simulation was all there, but at the time it had not been seen before on the Amiga. It didn’t quite have the depth of Championship Manager (on the PC), but I didn’t mind that as it gave it a more ‘pick-up and play’ feel and once you knew what you were doing you could fly through a season in an hour or two. That said, it was still pretty detailed, with more stats that you can shake a stick at and plenty of gameplay options to keep you busy.
You would start in charge of a team from the (then) English fourth division. For each match you had to pick a formation, select your team and set some basic parameters for how they would play. Each player had statistics in ‘passing’, ‘tackling’, ‘shooting’ etc. allowing you to choose the right one for the role you wanted them to play. At the same time it was also necessary to keep an eye on club finances, wheel and deal in the transfer market, sell advertising space and develop your ground. Games were ‘watched’ on a basic display which would provide a written commentary until the magic words: “he shoots” would cause you to hold your breath to see if it would be followed up by: “goal!!!” or: “saved”, “wide” etc. Matches could be watched at a variety of speeds, the fastest taking just a couple of minutes. The game was fun, addictive and hugely time consuming.
Most importantly, it was fair. Of course the odd freak result would occur (as in real life) but in general if you assembled the best squad (and that was easy to judge by way of a five star rating system for both individual players and teams as a whole) and you did the basics right, for example playing players with a decent level of fitness in their preferred positions, you could normally expect to be relatively successful over the course of a season. Do well and you would be offered a job at a bigger club. Fail and you would be sacked and have to start afresh at a club from a lower league.
As a game, it was well made, tight and thoroughly enjoyable and I played it a lot. In late 1993 Premier Manager 2 was released which added a few new whistles and bells but retained exactly the same high quality of gameplay. And then in December 1994 came Premier Manager 3 which, unfortunately, didn’t.
Now that’s a very long introduction where I have hardly mentioned the game actually being reviewed, but it was necessary, as it was by making an unholy pig’s-ear of one of the key elements that made first two games so good that ultimately rendered the third instalment pretty much unplayable.
At this point I could continue with a proper review. I could tell you about the improved tactics in PM3, the superior presentation and enhanced visuals with matches now being displayed on an isometric pitch, allowing you to pause at any time and make tactical changes. I could, but really there isn’t any point.
Because for some reason the programmers saw fit to mess with the algorithm that decided the outcome of each match and suddenly results were being generated apparently completely at random. I appreciate that an unpredictable element should form part of the match result calculation, but it should be a given that if a weak team (let’s say Torquay United) played a strong team (for example Liverpool), while you knew a shock was possible, you would expect the game mechanics to ensure that the stronger team would win most of the time.
This simply didn’t happen. Every result seemingly had no basis on team strength, formation or tactics. This was hugely frustrating if you had clocked up many hours on PM1 and 2 and considered yourself to be rather proficient, as I had and indeed did. In fact, it was so frustrating that I rang Gremlin Interactive at the time and spoke to one of the development team, pointing out the apparent failing in the game mechanics. They stated that they had deliberately altered things so you couldn’t sail through a season without changing tactics and this time it was important to: “scout future opponents and prepare your team to counter their strengths and exploit their weaknesses”. Armed with this gem of information I tried again, following the advice and trying every variation in team setup I could think of. And nothing changed.
After many, many hours desperately seeking the missing piece in the jigsaw of options I was finally forced to accept that the game was fundamentally flawed and I game up. You can have as many clever little tweaks and additions as you like, but the bottom line for a strategy game is that you absolutely have to feel that your actions are affecting things. And they weren’t. Not even slightly. This made the entire experience utterly pointless and unrewarding.
So there you have it. If you want a fun, engaging, challenging and satisfying football manager experience for the Amiga, then Premier Manager 1 and 2 are exceptionally well put together games that will eat great chunks of your life. However the third instalment is flawed so fundamentally that it is, unfortunately, a complete waste of time even attempting to play it and should be avoided accordingly.
(N.B. The verdict score is calculated as being an average of the first four scores, but is, in my view, around 40 odd percent too high).
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Graphics - 70%
Solid and well laid out, clear and easy to navigate screens.
Sounds - 30%
There aren't many in truth, the crowd sound during matches does the job but is nothing spectacular.
Grab-Factor - 80%
Easy enough to pick up and play, the clear graphics and good presentation makes life easy and the five star player / team rating system is simple and helpful...
Playability - 10%
...Or at least it would be if it worked. There is lots to do, but it is all utterly and completely pointless since your actions have absolutely no bearing on results.
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Verdict - 47%
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AG 27/05/2018
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Featured in Amiga Addict magazine, issue 8.
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© Words and pictures copyright grapeswriting.com
Premier Manager 3 - Review
(Gremlin Interactive, Commodore Amiga Game, 1994)
Wonderboy - Review
(Acidbottle, Commodore Amiga Game, 2022)
In the mid to late 1980s every footballer modelled themselves on Gazza, every cricketer aspired to be Ian Botham, and every platform game wanted to be Super Mario Bros. Super Mario Bros. was released by Nintendo in 1985 and it remains the blueprint for the perfect 2D platform game.
With bright, clear levels, brilliant gameplay, a beautifully judged difficulty curve and easy to learn, sharp and precise controls, it is largely credited with reinvigorating the video games market after the crash of 1983. It made the Nintendo Entertainment System the must-have console of the time and laid the ground for countless sequels that were to follow.
In 1991 Sega (who were seeking a rival to Mario) introduced Sonic the Hedgehog and from that moment those two characters had the ‘cute platform game’ market sewn up for years.
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Can we join in?
Looking on forlornly at this game war was the Amiga, which can boast its own catalogue of platform games. These range in quality from those that are completely unplayable, right up to a those that are really quite impressive and lots of fun. My particular favourites include Team 17’s Superfrog, Gods by the Bitmap Bros and Ruff and Tumble from Renegade Software.
But while there were many attempts at cracking the elusive formula, the platform genre was one where the Amiga was more often than not outperformed by its console rivals. Despite plenty of highly competent efforts, it could never boast of a stand-out contender to match the exploits of Mario or Sonic (with Superfrog perhaps coming closest in terms of looks and speed of gameplay).
Furthermore, Commodore, who had a habit of making some truly disastrous decisions in the 1990s, made a particularly bad one by throwing its entire corporate weight behind Zool – Ninja of the Nth Dimension. Zool was aggressively marketed as being a genuine rival to Mario and Sonic but was, in reality, at best a very ordinary game and, at worst, highly irritating and flawed (please don’t get me started, that’s an entirely different review…).
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Better late than never
But now, a mere 25 or so years after Commodore’s demise, the Amiga can perhaps boast a genuine rival to Nintendo and Sega’s flagship characters. Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce Wonderboy.
Now you will probably recognise the name. This isn’t a new game and certainly isn’t an Amiga exclusive. The original Wonderboy was released by Sega back in 1986 for the Arcade and versions were produced for the Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, SG-1000, Sega Master System, the Sega Game Gear, and later on the Nintendo Wii (Virtual Console).
The sequel – Wonderboy in Monster Land did get an Amiga release in 1987, but both this and most of the subsequent sequels are rooted firmly in the fantasy role playing genre. The original Wonderboy however is a pure platform game and a terrific one at that, and I was incredibly excited to discover that Acidbottle had produced a version for the Amiga.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery
There is little doubt that Wonderboy was heavily influenced by our cheeky Italian plumber, being released just a year after Nintendo’s masterpiece. It is straightforward left-to-right platform action that sees you navigating seven worlds, each split into four stages (sound familiar?), jumping between platforms and dodging bad guys, with a number of collectable power-ups to help you along the way.
Where Mario throws his fireballs, Wonderboy can collect a stone axe that he can launch to dispatch the enemies. You can also ride a skateboard, killing bad guys upon touch. There are no coins to collect but instead food is scattered throughout each level; each item will replenish an ever-depleting health bar. The bar diminishes further with each brush with an obstacle and when it is exhausted or if you touch an enemy you lose a life.
An angel can also be collected periodically that provides a temporary shield, killing enemies on touch and protecting you from taking damage from enemy hits (though you can still die from falling off a platform). All the power-ups are contained within eggs which are hard to miss. A boss-battle at the end of each level has to be navigated, and there are special dolls to collect too. There is one hidden on each stage of a level and if you can collect all 28 then a bonus eighth world is unlocked.
If you hold the fire button while moving you can sprint – enabling you to make longer jumps (exactly as in the Mario games) and, brilliantly, a two button controller is supported (which is pretty much essential as the game would be unbearably painful to play using up to jump).
It doesn’t have to be pretty
Graphically there are two ways of judging it. On the one hand the game, while bright and clear, is simplistic in terms of design and the palette used. But on the other, we need to remember that this was never a 16 or 32 bit game. It is a reproduction of an 8 bit classic and in that respect it is absolutely perfect, with the looks and gameplay being completely faithful to the original. The same can be said for the sound too, it is genuinely a fantastic reproduction.
Now those that aren’t familiar with the original game may turn their nose up at this. They might scoff at the simplistic looks; they may laud the parallax scrolling evident in games such as Shadow of the Beast or draw unfavourable comparisons with the fluid character movement in the likes of Flashback. And they would be right, those games are certainly graphically far more impressive; almost as if they were developed for a machine from a future generation (which of course they were).
Gameplay is everything
But let me tell you this. If you offer me a choice of 95% of the ‘mig’s platform games or Wonderboy to play for an afternoon, I’m choosing Wonderboy every time. What is true now was true in the 1980s. Something may look and sound fantastic but what makes a truly great game is nailing that all-important gameplay experience. Wonderboy does that. The control is simple, sharp and intuitive. The levels are well designed. It is challenging and fun. It is, in short, about as close as you can get to a 2D Mario game without booting up a Nintendo classic. And for me it doesn’t get much better than that.
Welcome to the ‘mig Wonderboy. Come on in, put your feet up and make yourself at home. You might be 25 years late but it was bloody well worth the wait...
Graphics - 85%
Not stretching the machine by any means, but clear, crisp and completely faithful to the original.
Sounds - 85%
Again, simple but completely authentic to the Arcade version.
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Grab-factor - 92%
Very easy to get going, much harder to keep going!
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Playability - 94%
Hard to fault. Well designed, classic platform fun. It may have the simplistic looks of an 8 bit game, but it plays better that the majority of platformers released for the Amiga.
Verdict - 89%
Wonderboy can be downloaded from https://acidbottle.itch.io/amiga-wonderboy
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AG 01/01/2023
Featured in Amiga Addict magazine, issue 19.
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© Words and pictures copyright grapeswriting.com
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