Datasoft is one of my favorite C64 publishers (Bruce Lee, Conan, Zorro, Mr Do, etc.). And one of their legendary RPGs was the Alternate Reality (AR) series. AR was an unfinished series of games that was quite innovative when it came out in 1985, yet failed to ever realize its complete vision to the end. It was originally supposed to have 6 individual installments. And it's graphics were pretty wild for the times.
Wiki:
There were two games that were ultimately published: The City (part 1) and The Dungeon (part 2), originally created on and for Atari 8-bits. In fact, while the C64 version has a solid place in my personal history and heart, the Atari version is apparently considered to be superior at least in terms of its opening intro music.Alternate Reality had a raycasting engine similar to Wolfenstein 3D, which came seven years later, but was recognized for popularizing the system. However, the design implemented right-angle movement only.
Another upshot of the fact that the graphics were rendered rather than simple images is that while the sun was setting, the entire palette of colors changed convincingly. Distant waterfalls moved, and the rain was realistically rendered.
I discovered late last year that The City had also been ported to Amiga, which made my eyes pop open fast and furiously. I had no idea. My brother - not a big gamer at all - had beaten the C64 version of The City all the way to the end, which was very unusual for him. He'd gotten hooked and never gave up.
Anyway, I like to use real disks when I can find them. And it surprised me to discover that Alternate Reality: The City is really hard to find in 2020 for Amiga on original media. I mean, it took me months to locate a single copy, and the copy I did finally acquire was pretty beat up (and a bit smoky). But to have the original box felt like a massive win, as well as the manual and single 3.5" disk, which I'd never held in my hands before.
Spoiler:
No, there is no WHDLoad version. I kind of wonder if this game ever left US Shores for the Amiga. The copyright is 1986, but the Amiga version was made in 1988 based on dates shown in the loading screens, which in retrospect kind of surprises me based on some of the hoops I had to jump through to get it to work.
If you want to play this game you either need to download a cracked version or find the disk (just one single disk). I've not tried to copy the game yet but my guess is it has some sort of screwy protection scheme; I'll try a later version of X-Copy at some point as I do worry I've got one of the few physical copies out there. EAB's game search FTP is down at the moment so I haven't been able to see if they have a copy.
- This doesn't smell smoky, at least. Just good ol' refreshing plastic.
No surprise: it didn't work at all.
Then I fired up my A3000 running OS 1.3. Also nope! I disabled Fast-RAM and retried to no avail.
So I pulled out my Beast that Never Fails, the Amiga 2000 with a GeForce 030@40Hhz.
Nope.
I went into the GVP software and disabled the accelerator so it could bang the 68000. Still nothing!
I retried deactivating the accelerator and Fast-RAM.
Bingo!!
Looks like I should have rolled out my stock A500 or A1000 to really get the mood just right but for heaven's sake, by 1988 I feel like the setup shouldn't have been this crazy.
Regardless, the Amiga version - like the highly touted Atari version - also came with the iconic theme music with "karaoke lyrics" (and the Amiga graphics were slightly improved, as was the intro tune's synth).
- The intro animation of the UFO beaming lights into the city was much improved, if a bit jarring as I'm so used the to 8-bit version.
I look forward to playing this more at a later date, but I think for now I'll look into trying to duplicate my original disk for archiving purposes. Anyone else here have a history with Alternate Reality?
