So its been pointed out in the comments below that you can actually play European Champions in Side View. I didnt have the instructions and couldnt find the option to switch between views cos there is no option...you need to press V during gameplay...so I apologise for the mistake..... but now ive found that out Im even more annoyed at the review because the side view rocks
However, it is worth pointing out that AP gave Wembley International Soccer a high score just scant months earlier - and its virtually the same game as European Champions (typical Audiogenic, recycling the same game over and over)
Only discovered this channel a few weeks ago and i bloody love it. Cant get enough. Been powering through these vids. Im too young to have played any of these games at the time but some look fantastic
The soundscape and overall atmosphere in Dreamweb is top notch. Very few games have such omnipotent feel of something really special. It grabs you. Biggest gaming magazine in Finland: PELIT gave it 91%, in Tapio Slaminen’s review. PELIT made 20 years later an look-back article about Dreamweb, which it well deserves.
In Italy, almost all of the games mentioned above were rated very highly by Italian magazines (TGM, K) except for Golden Axe, which actually looked pretty bad compared to the Megadrive version. Beach Volley was absolutely fantastic, one of the best sport games for Amiga. The editor who gave 24% to Dreamweb is crazy, drunk, incompetent or all three together.
I'll give the review of the game that magazine gave it 15%. It was fantastic on the arcade machine. It was great on the Sega megadrive and it was a really, really good version on the amiga.
Most if not all favorable game reviews back in the day were payed promotions only magazine that made a point of not having them at the time was a Finnish gaming magazine Pelit (because of Finnish law of "good and proper journalistic behaviour" was applied to all printed media not just the news papers) hence why you sometimes have such a weird high praise reviews on absolute garbage games.
Amiga Power was very entertaining and the writers knew how to write, but I think they got a bit big headed or something. Sometimes they'd be incredibly unfair or seemingly ignorant of having considerable personal biases , despite taking pride in being a bastion of truth amongst gaming magazines. Hopefully that didn't cause too much of a negative impact on games companies or on the Amiga as a whole.
Amiga magazines had a tendency to overrate games. With that said, lots of reviews from Amiga Power were full of incomplete/biased/wrong info. They really weren't as good as they thought they were.
This is such a good review/video of Amiga Power's POWER. This is one of the many reasons why I don't a) buy magazines and b) don't listen to reviews from people I don't respect or people I don't know, now. I knew of a person who wrote for Edge magazine back in the early 2000s, and told me that they didn't OWN a console!?! Just used to use the ones in the office.
Man i loved so many of these games, tho i got most of the mags back in the day most of the time i got them for the demos and the art work oh and the hints and tips ofc. Plus i think a lot of the fun was going in blind with the lesser known games as most of the time they were never full price and most played a lot better than the full price mainstream stuff (imo ofc). Great stuff as always buddy and love that intro made me think of 80% of the games i had as a kid haha. Roll on the next one.
I love you forever for sticking up for A.T.R! I was amazed to read about the low reviews it got! and like you say 'can't see what's coming up next?' Huh?!!!! I've played loads of top down racers that are far harder for that! I like micro machines but I'd argue off the top of my head that was much more unforgiving at times!
I think Amiga Power for most of its life had the right idea. It was reviewing games from the point of view of the consumer, imagining what the reviewer would have thought if they'd had to pay £30 of their own money rather than getting free review copies. Also their scores only appeared harsh because they used 50% as a baseline, not 70% like most mags, which makes sense but also makes their scores appear much lower. So yeah, they'd often score games lower than the competition but that's because 70% from AP was worth more than 80% in othere mags. That said, I think after some criticism and after getting a reputation for being unduly harsh they really doubled down and started marking games really harshly just out of principle, meaning by the end the mag was handing out single-digit review scores once or twice per issue. They did lean into their reputation for being hard to please a bit too much. But you can't argue with some of the results. They gave Rise of the Robots something like 5%, a completely justified score, when other mags who were either wowed by the graphics or just bribed with offers of exclusive reviews, were giving it 90%+. I think they were proved right on at least that one occasion.
This is the kind of extremely niche video that fits right in my own particular niche. Can two niches combine? I don't know, but I'm determined to find out
AP reviewers gave their own opinions and were one of the few games magazines at the time that weren't on the take. Most of the others would hand out generous review scores to any publisher that bought a lot of advertising.
@@AnthonyFlack I agree that being independent is a good thing, but many of this magazines also had very young, inexperienced and sometimes rather stupid writers in their teams. We had the same kind of thing in my country
@@Blackadder75 - I mean to say most of the other games magazines were essentially corrupt. AP put the reviewers' names on every review and let them say what they really thought; you could judge for yourself who was stupid. At the end of the day, it's just one person's opinion. They also decided to rate games on a scale fro 0-100 instead of from 70-100 which annoyed a lot of people.
Ha ha....this was great stuff as ever. And listening to you vent In these recent videos keeps making me chuckle. A couple of games in here I'm gonna grab and play as well so as always a worthwhile watch 👍
Easier than the coin-op but, yeah, I agree, such a great conversation, aside from being easier and missing a few screams it's pretty much spot on to the arcade.
I need a fucking secretary to keep up on here mate, i wanted to write summit good back about the great community yous guys have and how much i love the retro 5 and what they stand for..... but like 5 million notifications coming in and i try to at least acknowledge all of them.... ffs
@@oldstylegaming bruv thank you for your kind words 👍 I will msg you over the weekend I’ve been so busy with work and I have swap shop this Sunday I need to sort out 👍🔥🥳🥷🕹👾
8:23 That's exactly right. It never made sense to get a person who doesn't even like a genre to review a game in that genre. The person who reviews a game should be someone who's interested in playing the game, otherwise what's the point? But I guess some magazines (and websites) think the "comedy" value of a scathing review is more important than realistic reviews from people who actually reflect the game's potential customers. This isn't just something that's confined to the dark ages of games-mag reviews, though. I used to be a regular reader of Eurogamer, but fell out with that site for (among other things) getting someone to review "Earth Defense Force 2025" who stated up-front that they absolutely hated everything about the game. As I commented at the time (my comment's still there even if my account is long-closed): "What is the point in getting someone who actively dislikes a game in advance to write a 'review' of it? If they weren't being given a review copy, they wouldn't touch it with a bargepole - let alone spend their own money on it - so there's clearly no chance of them writing a fair review that's of any use to people who *are* interested in buying it. You might as well hire Ace Ventura to review one of those Cabela hunting games."
DreamWeb is by far one of the best point and click games on the Amiga. I am super biased ofc as Blade Runner '92 is my all time favourite film, but I also go as far to say that DreamWeb is my all time fav point and click game ;)
its a great game mate, very atmospheric and just captures your imagination from the start with unknown story that gets better and better as you work through the game
I remeber back in the day as a kid I was thrilled to play Golden Axe on Amiga. It was such a great game for me. And then I read a review in some magazine (polish one) and it was rated about 30%. I am sure now, that they just read Amiga Power review and that is why they rated this game so low. Me and all of my friends loved this game.
@@oldstylegaming It was awesome for me back then. I had no comparison to the arcade, cause I never seen it. My first encounter with Golden Axe was on Amiga and it was GREAT. Then I had the C64 version and it was so much worse (at this time I had C64 and I only could play Amiga games in a sort of establishment where you could rent time to play Amigas and NES)
Meta Guyver I had an arcade machine in my apartment with all the old games on it. One of my friends told me that the old games were just not fun to play any more and I kind of agreed with him. Many of them are genuinely not fun for for me to play today despite my fond memories of them. That being said we played the absolute shit out of golden axe many many times when he visited me. Also games like double dragon and shooters like 1943. We played that stuff until our arms started burning from tapping the buttons and we couldn't play it any longer. We didn't quit playing because we died - we quit because our arms were hurting too much. Track and Field was probably the worst game to play. You would need a week in a spa to relax your arms after playing that game :)
yeah spot on. I remember playing and finishing Dreamweb and being completely enthralled. I wonder if these guys are still around. Mind you game journalists these days you have to question a lot of the time. But yeah as much as I did tend to look to Amiga Power as a more accurate indicator that something wasn't as good as what oher mags made out, they clearly still talked a load of rubbish when targeting certain games negatively like this
Woah... Goldean Axe 35%? Elvira II 33%? Beach Volley 28%? Wow.. I'm glad I only bought a few issues of Amiga Power, those scores are just plain stupid. Well, you did them justice OSG with your perfectly accurate justifications. I mean, Elvira deserved 50% for the graphics ALONE! They were phenomenal at the time... and thats just the starting point. Oh well.. Thanks OSG for another great video!
I owned an Amiga and a megadrive back in the early nineties and golden axe on the Amiga was my favourite version. I played it more than the megadrive version. I always bought Amiga power every month and remember some of their reviews scoring very low compared to other magazines. I also bought other mags depending what was on the cover disks along with C&VG, megatech, mean machines and Sinclair user. I really do miss magazines nowadays.
I agree with ABTA's low note, the game is technically great but stupidly difficult! Has anyone ever been beyond the first indoor level??! On the other hand, the low note given to Golden Axe is ridiculous! It is one of the best arcade conversions on the machine!
I played & loved Golden Axe on the Sega Genesis... so i'm damn impressed at the Coding Abilities of those who were able to make such a game work on such a lower Specs system...
I agree with you, especially Ambermoon which was impressive, Elvira II which was really good and Dreamweb which is a gem, some of their reviews were questionable, felt like they were doing it for shock value maybe in some cases.
It's kind of weird with the Amiga mini how easy it is to try out thousands of games however in reality most of them are only really good for a quick trip down memory lane. Cannon Fodder will always rock though :)
imagine Alien Assault being ranked so low, i havent even played it but one look at it screams class, whoever was whining about it being too hard must be related to the idiot who couldnt pass the Cuphead Tutorial level. :P
So many reviewers of that time were total sellouts or lazy morons that didn't even play the games they scored. I know it still happens today, but back in the day you depended on those reviews to know if a game was worth your money or not. nowadays you can see gameplay and get as many opinions as you like on the internet. we didn't have that luxury back then.
Cool intro! I bought shitloads of mags back in the day but not Amiga Power for some reason? I was never keen on one man reviews, I much prefered the multiple opinion format like Zzap!64 (Zzap reviewed Amiga games later, it became Zzap!64/Amiga, you should check some Amiga reviews out maybe?) Benefactor was great! wtf they talking about? As for the Team17 reviews, take em with a pinch of salt coz as you pointed out about the bad blood between both parties. Massive differences in your scores and theirs, like you said it's bog roll material! Great vid m8 :)
I always find interesting how no one seems to notice that European Champions is an update to Emlyn Hughes Soccer. Same developer, same publisher, lots of features are the same.
Actually, they had different publishers, but the same developer. Audiogenic developed both games, but Audiogenic published Emlyn Hughes themselves. European Champions was published by Ocean
@@satan3959 Yes, you are indeed correct sir. All those games were made by the same guy: Graham Blighe . He coded Emlyn Hughes, European Champions (which was released under a dozen different names depending upon the country of release) and Wembley International Soccer. Each one is a sequel from the previous game. With Wembley, Audiogenic went back to publish the game.
Golden axe on the Amiga is pretty good. It's more colourful than the megadrive version,the music is better and it has the cut scenes. It doesn't run at 60 fps and lacks Arcade feel of the megadrive though.
I looked into the A. P Benefactor review, the reviewer does point out the long levels have no checkpoints and insta deaths are common, that's a bad combination level design to be fair.
Stuart Campbell really irritated me with a lot of his reviews and comments. It came across as him just trying to be edgy all the time. He hated the Kick Off games and vowed to have them removed from the Amiga Power Top 100 games list, which he did. Then whenever they were voted into the Readers Top 100 games list he would always have a snarky comment to make about it. A lot of the best Amiga games like the Lotus, Turrican and Super Cars series he rated as either OK or quite good which even back then I found astounding. There was also a really good platform game whose name escapes me that I remember him really liking in the review but then he said he was going to knock 10 points of the score because he didn't like the way the main character was dressed.
Regarding Team 17 - I remember on the flip side how AP always gave Sensible Software games incredibly high scores, right up until Cannon Fodder, where the reviewer literally said there was absolutely nothing bad about the game. Interestingly, not long after, one of its journalists, Stuart Campbell, landed himself a job with the company. I suspect it was Campbell who reviewed Cannon Fodder, but I can't remember for sure. Not that Sensible Software didn't make great games. It just makes you think.
Hey OSG, could you do 2 videos on the overrated and underrated games in Commodore Format magazine? It would be nice to see the difference in magazine review scores.
My suggestions for over-rated games in Amiga Power: I don't remember that many (apart from those of the "they were lucky to get 20%" variety), but here are a few. Blade Warrior scored 77% in issue 5 - distinctive aesthetics, but the gameplay felt rather clunky. Midwinter 2, 80%, issue 6 - I really wanted to like this one, but it didn't have the immediacy (or the graphical performance) of the original. Nick Faldo's Golf, 88%, issue 22 - considerably more challenging than PGA Tour Golf, but that was mainly down to the non-intuitive and overly-complex game mechanic. Super League Manager, 89%, issue 48 - interesting take on traditional football management games; it kept me amused for a while, but definitely not worth 89%.
I remember an article where they also explained their scale was different to other mags, such as The One or Amiga Format. My memory is sketchy so feel free to correct me, but I remember it suggesting that other mags gave scores in the 70s when the game was average, leaving the lower half of the 100 scale for the truly execrable stuff. It said that a 70 on the Amiga Power scale was for the “good” stuff while their “average” was in the 50s. This meant that the true gems got upwards of 80. This isn’t to suggest that they weren’t a bunch of pretentious wankers though. While I thought there was some good points they raised about design choices, such as racing games using “up” for throttle instead of the fire button, or platformers with “leaps of faith”, they were a bunch of knobs with their daft humour, in-jokes and needless “Ed” jokes. Edit: Dreamweb was amazing in atmosphere and detailed environments. I remember the box having that “Diary of a Mad(?) Man” and was enthralled with the game generally. The detail in the environments tapered off toward the end but it was an enjoyable time
Yeah read the pinned comment i have explained my mistake in there...but the side view only makes this crappy score even more laughable as the game is great
This really makes me wonder.... Were there any games I didn't buy or give a fair shake to because I had read a bad and unfair review? I can't remember specifically, but it's possible... I didn't have a lot of money to spend on games, so I was fairly choosey, and I did read the reviews... Sad to think I probably skipped at least a game or two for this...
I can kinda understand the Volleyball one as Volleyball wasn't a popular sport here to begin with, and it's quite a bare bones implementation. You're probably right that it was reviewed as single player, because the local two player option was the making of so many games, often turning something incredibly simple into a lot of fun as you could wind up your mates in person while playing such games (something sorely lacking in so many games today - online doesn't even offer 5% of the fun) Amiga Power as a whole I found to be a more honest magazine though, they actually treated 50% as average. A lot of games these days that deserve 40-50% end up with 8/10 scores elsewhere because apparently anything lower than that is considered an insult. 50% *is* 'average' and should be seen as that, most games should score around that. I think the Amiga Power logic was that if a game had more flaws than it had positives it had to score under 50%, as opposed to under 80% which means their scores tended to buck industry trends, but in my honest opinion, we should be pushing for more of that because when all your review scores are from 80% to 90% even for average games they becomes meaningless. A single negative / incredibly broken feature can ruin an otherwise great game, but so many reviews tend to ignore / paper over that. The Benefactor review though, yeah, that was harsh, but maybe it's just a game we appreciate more these days as it's something more subtle rather than in your face, although I thought even back then we were beginning to understand that on the Amiga, hence games like Sensible Soccer and Cannon Fodder with their dinky graphics getting such high scores. (Cannon Fodder 2 was massively overrated though, that one was just as bad as the modern sequels, the level design and attention to detail compared to the first was atrocious)
I think many of the games suffered from the single player experience but gained immensely from being played with friends. These days many of them are hard to enjoy for me. There are exceptions of course. I was never into football/soccer games but two of my friends played kickoff2 almost religiously back in the day. They both have almost no interest in games back from when we were 15 years old. For a birthday surprise I did set up an amiga with the Suzo Arcade stick they both used back then. It was quite fun to see them being just as competitive as they were back in the early nineties .
I actually watched the Amiga Power top 300 games. And I came to the conclusion that they hated Team 17. could just be me. But the fact worms appeared as a honorable mention was absolute rubbish
I reckon the reviewer's must of taken back handers from other game makers having a chat in some posh London bar with massive mobile phones .. these games are all at least 70 percent !
@G*P Unfortunately it has been quite some time since I last played the Amiga version so I cannot remember for defo. It *may* be that that particular version only had one continue, or even none at all...
Regardless of agree or disagree with your perspective for each game, these throwbacks are simply excellent. They bring back some long-forgotten gems and the feeling of a time where gaming was really fun. P.S. They gave 35% for Golden Axe ?? !!! 28% for Beach Volley ! Those games were huge hits among the gamers.
Amiga Power was the best gaming magazine that ever existed, their review of Tower assault was spot on. Are you a disgruntled Team 17 employee who took offence to them accurately reviewing your products?
Nah im just a bloke who plays games and knows when a review was bullshit mate cos yeah tower assault aint the best alien breed game but its certainly not a 46% game
Benefactor scored good to great in German magazines, but I never played it, because the screenshots looked so boring.. The 2D 'Alien Breed' games really are a very subjective topic, I think. The reception heavily depends on the type of gamer you are. I didn't like any of these games (but I loved both Alien Breed 3D games!), because I'm a completionist. I absolutely hate leaving a level behind with living enemies in it! Leaving loot behind is even worse! And Alien Breed's whole promise was completely based on this! It required the player to rush through the levels as quick as possible, wasting no time on watching the nice graphics or exploring more of the environment than absolutely needed. OMG, I get enraged, just by remembering this, still today! xD Games like ATR (and Micro Machines): I didn't like them very much ever, because they all felt like a step back from the great and old Supercars, which featured a load of nice weapons you could fire at your opponents! Elvira - mistress of the boobs received good critics here, too. The game fascinated me as a kid, not only because of it's name giver. It really was kind of horror, but it first started to work as a game for me, when I was older and understood how to do the fighting. Ambermoon also was an hit in Germany. I played the game and loved it for it's 3D parts and anything else xD Overall it seems, that our Amiga and game magazines here had way better standards than in the UK or elsewhere .. of course there still where some very fishy ratings, especially in the 'good' direction, with games like 'The cathedral', 'Rise Of the Robots', or 'Jonathan' having been massively overrated in Amiga Joker, for example.
I too preferred Breed 3D to the earlier 2D games (though they were quite fun for a while, and I loved the computer terminals where you could buy new weapons, keys etc.). I played a demo of ATR and thought it was fun, definitely not a bad game at all (and according to this video the reviewer thought it was bad for lack of track visibility, but he liked Micro Machines which gives you very little, and punishes you dearly for mistakes...) and had lovely graphics. I agree with you though about Supercars (2), I don't think it was ever bettered on the Amiga.
Never cared for the 2D games either apart from the visuals and the music, but I always felt the gameplay was lacking. Same for the first two Shadow of the Beast games, really.
@@oldstylegaming Yea non aga galatic got about the right score of 79 percent or so, Og bodyblows was pretty underwelming after the really good and responsive demo, I don;'t know what happen between the demo and the full version.
There is a clear game design fail in Elvira.. and you can see the fail @7:20. The radiator is not placed symmetrically under the window. Surely a game of max. 33%!!!!
I'll be honest, I would have rated Amiga Golden Axe that low at the time as I found the game to look and play rough when I tried it over my mates house, but in its defense, I also had the massively superior megadrive version which made it look and play far worse. That said, I expected more out of the amiga and it certainly is capable of far better, probably a lot more similar to the MD version than this version.