Game Frenzy
by Milan Pollé

When I was asked to write about my favourite Amiga game I thought about all the great games that have been made for the Amiga. The Amiga has such a wide variety of great and original all-time classics.

I thought about great games like Hybris (my favorite shoot-em-up), Lotus II turbo challenge (especially great with four players), Paradroid '90 (more about this one later), Speedball II (joystick killer), IK+, Chuck Rock, Indy 500, Super Cars II (lots of sequels in this list), Shadow of the Beast (groundbreaking graphics and music), Wings of Fury, Flood, SWIV, Pinball Dreams, Starglider II (a whole universe to explore) and indeed Cannon Fodder, the list just goes on and on. I just had to list these, friends of mine still talk enthusiatically about these games and playing these classics together still is lots of fun today.

A few of these have been ported to other platforms, but none of those were as good as the originals. It would be great to see the new Amigas extend and surpass these classics.

I had to pick one. It wasn't that hard though, my choice was obvious. It had to be Genetic Species.

Genetic Species

The demo of this game impressed me so much I wrote the developers (Marble Eyes) to let them know. Talking to them was fun and inspiring, they were obviously very motivated. I mentioned a few ideas and one of them was used in the game.

Genetic Species was launched on the 24th of May, 1998 at the WOA, after a development time of about three years. The launch was very succesful, it was the best selling game at the fair. Being launched in 1998 this is a fairly recent game.

So what's the story?

I must admit I don't remember it too well, I had to look it up. I usually don't remember the story of a game unless it has really been integrated into it.

Actually the story to Genetic Species is quite interesting, detailed and well written. In short:

Starting with the 21st century, large corporations had been taking over the world, in the end, everything was under control of a few hundred people. Industry had been moved into space and to the moon, to be free from environmental and ethical concerns.

As a security measure every employee had been implanted with electronics ensuring their loyalty.

However competition between rivalling companies was fierce, resulting in wars being fought out anywhere, including the earth, holding the human race hostage.

Enter the Counter Force Alliance or C.F.A. an underground alliance between several countries, established in the 22nd century. However, there wasn't much they could do against the corporate power yet.

At one point a major war between three companies broke out with one of them coming out victorious. They started shipping out troops and cargo from the lunar Cantex Supply Station to the Atlas Mining Asteroid. That asteroid is was being converted into a powerful space fortress. It seemed like it could be a threat to the earth, which an alliance between the two remaining military corporations seemed to suggest as well.

2 of 3 lunar military bases get destroyed in what seems to be a nuclear selfdestruct in defense to some unknown enemy aggressor.

Luckily the C.F.A. have been developing a device called the BioShifter. This device is capable of taking control of humans, cyborgs and droids. Prototypes have been planted within many corporate complexes. The first one has now been activated in the Cantex Supply Station. It's upto you to find out what is going on.

(no wonder I couldn't remember the story :^)

Gameplay

First of all this is a first person shooter, it's a 3D game based on a Wolfenstein-like engine. Luckily there's much more to it than that.

The wonderful range of special effects soon makes you forget that this engine is limited to hallways and rooms without any height differences only. The subtle moody lighting with transparent lightbeams here and there, the impressive pyrotechnic weapon effects, smoke, partially transparent walls etc. All this not only helps to make the graphics look outstanding, it also enhances the tense atmosphere tremendously.

The gameplay isn't limited to 'If it moves, shoot it, if it doesn't move, try to shoot it anyway, press button, collect key'. Sure you have to find a key or another way to open a door every now and then, but the gameplay involves much more than that.

The levels consist of various missions, you have to complete multiple tasks in order to progress to the next level. The tasks and missions are really varied, sometimes with time limits, often taking over certain enemies is essential to be able to finish a level.

Parts of the levels are connected by elevators, just like in Paradroid. So the size of the sub-levels you explore doesn't become confusingly large. If you do get confused there's a built-in map to help you navigate.

Levels aren't linear, there are corridors crossing everywhere and around every corner there could be an enemy waiting to kill you, this really adds to the tension. Enemies come looking for you when they hear you make a sound, so you really have to explore the surroundings very carefully.

I won't go into very specific mission details here because it would ruin the game for people who still haven't played this great classic. If you haven't played it yet, it has been released for free on Aminet, it's a large download but it's really worth the effort.

Overtaking and controlling your enemies was mentioned before. This element was inspired by the classic Commodore 64 game Paradroid, of which there is a very good version available for the Amiga called Paradroid '90.

To overtake an enemy you use a device called the Portable Probe Device, or PPD. You shoot it at an enemy to overtake it. It helps to first stun the enemy using a tazer, but you can try to fire the PPD multiple times at an enemy and often you will succeed. The catch is that hitting an enemy with the PPD will damage that enemy, once overtaken, it's energy will be your energy. In the worst case an enemy can get killed by using the PPD on it a couple of times.

One reason to overtake an enemy could be because you are running out of energy. So you'd better make sure you haven't damaged the enemy you want to overtake too much and that you don't damage it too much with your PPD.

Once you overtake an enemy, you will see the body of your former host drop to the floor, a pretty cool detail. Now you have all the characteristics of your new host. This means weapons and abilities, but also physical appearance. For instance, overtake a spider and you will have it's very low point of view, another side effect is that spiders cannot open doors.

So often you will need to overtake different kinds of enemies to gain different abilities in order to complete your tasks.

There's another use for the PPD. It has a built-in camera which will show you where it's going in all kinds of psychedelic colors. You can steer the PPD once it's airborne, but you have to respond very quickly because it moves really fast, it will smash into walls pretty easily.

You can use this functionality to look for enemies around corners.

You can only carry three items, weapons or other items and select between those. So often have to plan what you are going to do carefully and how you are going to finish a task. This adds both strategy (often multiple solutions are possible) and a puzzle element.

There are the usual health and ammo items scattered around the levels as well as save items which save your progress. This means you cannot just save your game at any time and makes you more careful about losing a life.

Computer terminals are located here and there, you can use them to change your settings and look at a simple blueprint of the elevator connections between parts of the level.

The developers have hidden many secret rooms, passages and compartments throughout the levels, which makes it a lot of fun to explore the levels a couple of times after finishing them. Sometimes you can see bonus items (or enemies) through holes in a wall, you will need to figure out how to get to them.

GS vs Others

This game was out in the same year Quake 1 was out on the Amiga. Quake uses a lot more complicated geometry for it's levels. Still the end result looks rather drab, with the limited range of colors used, mostly greys and browns and the simplistic looking special effects. The gameplay also is rather two-dimensional.

By comparison Genetic Species is really great looking, with a lot more variation in colors, even though, like Quake, it only uses 256 colors. Within that limited amount of colors it even uses transparency for the score and energy overlays and smoke and additive blending for weapon effects and explosions. Explosions in Genetic Species can fill whole rooms and can really feel dangerous.

The varied gameplay of Genetic Species make this a lot more fun than Quake 1 in my opinion.

Marble Eyes had been thinking about making Genetic Species multiplayer capable, but sadly this never came to pass. So in this respect Quake 1 has the edge.

So what, you might say, there were other first person shooters for the Amiga at that time. Indeed, there was Breathless, Fears, Gloom, Nemac IV, Alien Breed 3D, so what's so good about Genetic Species? All of these games have something going for them, Genetic Species has the edge in graphics, gameplay and framerate, the other games couldn't get all of these elements right.

What makes this game so good?

It was already while playing a demo of this game that I noticed it was something special. Imagine walking down sparsely lit corridors, noticing the walls around you start looking worse and worse. They look dirty, rusted, aged. Then finding yourself in a room full of eggs. All of a sudden you start hearing crackling sounds all around you, the eggs are starting to hatch! Small creepy spiders are starting to climb out of these eggs everywhere!

Quite scary, very well done and ofcourse a bit like the movie Alien.

The thing that really draws you into the game and keeps you in the game is the great atmosphere. It's tense, often scary. This is accomplished by the atmospherically lit intimidating surroundings, the great haunting soudtracks (CD audio tracks) and the often scary enemies. The sound effects in this game are also very well done. The engine supports upto 16 channels of audio using AHI, so it can use an audio card as well.

Not rarely will you suddenly have to run for your life. Walk into a room only to find it's filled with creepy crawly spiders immediately going after you. You can overtake a spider, but you will still be recognized as an enemy. Other times things happening during your mission will leave you with a very short time to run for safety.

The variation in gameplay keeps you coming back for more, you won't be easily bored with this game.

What happened to it?

Even though the game outsold all other games when it came out at the WOA, something very unexpected and very unfortunate happened shortly after.

A leading Amiga magazine did a review of it and it was an unbelievably clumsy one. Apparently not reading the documentation, the reviewer had missed major elements of the game (for instance, he completely missed the most essential element, being able to overtake enemies with the PPD). Needless to say the review wasn't a positive one at all.

This was a totally unexpected setback for the developers. They were very upset with this unfair and unprofessional review and rightly so. You can read all about their frustration when installing the truecolor update for Genetic Species.

This must have influenced the sales of Genetic Species, the developers weren't really happy with the results after working on this masterpiece for three years.

Time went by. Nintendo released the Gameboy Advance. A few Amiga games had been ported to the Gameboy Color, though they weren't as good as the originals. First person shooters were starting to come out on the Gameboy Advance and they weren't looking as good as Genetic Species, by far.

I started wondering if the Gameboy Advance could handle Genetic Species, after all it runs so well on even the lowest specced Amigas. I posted a few screenshots in the largest Gameboy Advance forum and people were very impressed by this game. Interest increased and someone decided to make a petition to port this great game to the Gameboy Advance. I added a small website with information to this petition. Lots of Gameboy Advance and Amiga users signed and showed their support.

I contacted Marble Eyes again, they were very pleasantly surprised by all the sudden interest in their game and all the people signing the petition. They said they would need to find a developer for doing the port as they didn't have time to do it themselves.

They found a developer in Entale, Entale employed former members of Marble Eyes and they were located closely so they could easily work together.

Even though Genetic Species had been written completely in assembly language, which is very impressive by itself, Entale succeeded in porting a fully working first level to the GBA in no time. They said it looked the same as on the Amiga and they could probably get the framerate up to a good speed as it hadn't been optimized yet.

Then the ran in to difficulties typical for current game developers; finding a publisher who would invest in the product. A publisher could not be found and that is where this dream unfortunately ended.

What could be improved?

Well that's easy. At the time it was released this game was pretty much state-of-the-art on the Amiga. But as it is with the cutting-edge technology, that edge moves forward at a fast pace.

Nowadays the levels could be done using lots of polygons, so the Wolfenstein-engine limitations would be eliminated. Rooms and corridors wouldn't all have to be the same size anymore. There could be stairs, catwalks, elevations, enemies could be above or below you, you could fall into pits, there are lots of possibilities.

The great lighting and weapon effects are now commonplace, they would have to be done very well to still impress.

Importantly, enemies could now be fully animated 3D objects instead of prerendered images, this should enhance their look a lot, as they are a weak link in the graphics of Genetic Species. Making them 3D would make their animations much smoother and allow them to blend in better with the lighting of their surroundings

The thing is, display resolution has also improved a whole lot. Genetic Species runs in low resolution, or even less on slower systems. The problem with high resolution is that it becomes easier to spot weak parts in a game's graphics. It takes a lot more effort to make something look convincing in high resolution than it does in low resolution. With low resolution it's easy to add more detail than the resolution can handle, the missing detail is added by your imagination.

Reading the documentation of Genetic Species will make you realise it's enemy AI is very advanced. Enemies will respond to sound, go to the place where they last heard you and track you down from there, badly hurt enemies will try to run for help and pass your location on to others.

However in a simple one-on-one combat, the AI is hard to spot, often enemies will freeze when shot at, as if their AI is interrupted by you shooting at them. This area could be improved to make those man to man battles a lot more interesting.

I mentioned I didn't remember the story. This is not surprising, the story is quite complicated. Nowadays it's very common to have rendered animations between levels clarifying the storyline. This would help draw you into the story a lot. There are mission briefings in text, but they are a lot less effective. It feels more like you are playing mission by mission instead of progressing through a whole story. Those cut-scenes could also be done ingame, using the same graphics as the game itself.

For the rest though, more of the same please! Genetic Species is very enjoyable the way it is now. At the very least, apart from updating the 3D engine, just new sets of levels and missions would suffice. New weapons and enemies would be a nice addition, but I wouldn't really miss them if they weren't added.

If there would be a possibility for a sequel of Genetic Species to be made for the new Amigas I would buy it the minute it was out, just like I did with the original. I know Marble Eyes and Entale are very motivated and friendly people and they deserve all the attention they can get for making this awesome game.

The original Genetic Species is now available for free, if you haven't played it yet, go get it now, you have missed out on a great Amiga game experience.

Milan Pollé
Project Manager, Zeoneo Limited