List of old Abandonware Games I Have on My HDD

[Awar]

1869
Goblins 1, 2, 3.
Life and Death ( surgery simulation )
Sword of the Samurai
Motor City
Schiffbruch
High Seas Trader
Barbarian for Windows
River City Ransom ( NES )
Metal Gear 2 ( MSX )
Project Firestart ( C64 )
Battletech
Floor 13
History Line 1914-1918
Dylan Dogg adventure
Genghis Khan 2
Hunter ( Amiga )
Black Sect
Transarctica
War in Middle Earth
Twilight 2000
Yes Prime minister
Beneath a Steel Sky ( great P&C adventure )
Earthworm Jim ( win95 )
Centurion ( strategy )
Annals of Rome
Bubble Bobble
Flashback
Eye of the Beholder 2 ( fantastic old RPG )
Kings Bounty
Celtic Tales: Balor of the Evil Eye
Conan
Day of the tenticle ( Lucas Arts adventure )
Prince of Persia 2
Sim Ant
Sim City 2000
Wasteland
Megatraveller 2
Black Thorne
Indiana Jones IV ( I think I have 3 somewhere, I just need to find it ).

There's more, but I have it backuped somewhere.
These games are downloaded from various sites and might not work, especially on WinXP, I don't have a clue if they work on Mac.

[Milesian]

Wow, some of those games are a blast from the past.
I had some like Sim Ant for the Amiga and Sim City 2000 for the CDTV (yes, I was daft enough to buy one )

I always meant to get Floor 13 so I could assasinate and supress "Subversive Groups", then when I downloaded it a couple of months ago I found I basically had to keep in power the people that I intended to get rid of
Far too repetitive to be entertaining.

Life and Death, I remember that one but never played it. Any good?

My two favourite old games were "Pirates!" by Microprose (I actually felt bad for the people of Cartagena after I pillaged it for the 1186th time in a row)

The other was Rome AD92. I won the election to be senator by stabbing the successful candidate just at the right time so the level ended just before the guards could get their hands on me

[Awar]

Life and Death, I'm sure some better medical sims were made afterwards.

Rome AD92... I think that's Annals Of Rome ( I'm not sure though ) a lot of games have different titles depending on where they were released. UK, US, Japan, Europe...

What's a CDTV??? Do you know what name it had for the rest of the world?
If you had Sim City2000 for that machine, it was hardly a bad investment, the game is awesome. There's a Sim City for GBA SP, I think of buying one just so I can play it when travelling.

[Milesian]

Yeah, I'm not sure about Rome AD92. Possibly is the same game you are talking about, basically you control a slave who has to flee his home island (thanks to a volcanic eruption) and eventually progresses through society until he becomes emperor.

The CDTV was a spectacular failure by Commodore
As far as I know, it was the first commercial system that used CD's instead of floppy discs. It also utilised a large infra-red joypad instead of the standard joystick of the time. They only brough a few CD based games out(Pyscho-Killer ) was funny though ), thankfully it also came with a floppy disc drive and was Amiga compatible so basicallyy I invested all that extra money just to play the same amiga games I already had been with my old 500.

Anyway, I sold it to some gullible bast, and make a few hundred quid out of it

CDTV Specifications:

CPU: Motorola 68000 @ 7.14Mhz.
Memory: 1 Meg Chip Memory.
Chipset: Enhanced Chip Set. (ECS)
OS: Kickstart 1.3 + CDTV module.
Debute: March 1991 (At CES, Las Vegas)
Launch Price: £499 (CDTV, Joypad & 2 titles)
Versions:
CDTV: CDTV unit & joypad.
Pro pack: keyboard, mouse & diskdrive.


http://www.cdtv.org.uk/

[Awar]

Yeah, it was called CD32 in the rest of Europe. Nobody here bought it because for a relatively sane ammount of money one could have bought an expansion unit for Amiga 1200 that basically worked better than the console. 499 pounds.... damn!


And, yes, I believe that 'Annals of Rome' is the same as 'Rome AD 92'. I have the AoR game in a .rar or .zip file.

[Tommy Vercetti]

LOL! Hunter. "you destroyed a church -4000 credits"

[Milesian]

Yeah, it was called CD32 in the rest of Europe.

Actually, the CDTV was a predecessor to the CD32 (shown below).
The CD32 was a consol designed to compete with the Sega Megadrive and was based around the A1200.

CD32 Specification

CPU: Motorola 68020 EC
Memory: 2 Meg Chip Ram.
Chipset: Advanced Graphics Arcutecture (AGA) & Aliko.
OS: Kickstart 3.1 + CD32 module.



The CDTV was something unique and it's architecture (design) was a cross between the A500 and the flagship A3000.

And, yes, I believe that 'Annals of Rome' is the same as 'Rome AD 92'. I have the AoR game in a .rar or .zip file.

Excellent, I've been looking for that.
Share the Ware, man

[Milesian]

Launched in September 1993 at a price of £299 the Amiga CD32 was presented as a top of the range games console to compaire with the Sega Mega-CD and Philips CDI (Which has dieing at this point, Even after a redesign). The CD32 used the same graphics chipset as the Amiga A1200 launched in autumn 1992, This new chipset could display upto 256000 colours from a pallet of 16.8 million.
The CD-Rom was a twin speed, multi-session unit, You load a CD like you would most game consoles, a lift up top reveals the CD-Rom, You place the CD on and close the top, Gone is the need for a caddy. The CD-Rom still uses a none standard interface, Unlike the CDTV the CD32 uses a small ribon to connect to the motherboard instead of the normal cable interface just incase you were wondering.
The CD32 has a single expansion connector like the CDTV's but this one lets you add the optional FMV card to let you play Mpeg video CD's or add a new CPU.

The CD32 has a "fall back mode" to let you play most CDTV games, This is done by the CD32 looking for either the CDTV.TM file or CD32.TM file, If the CDTV.tm file is found the fall back mode is activated and an ECS screen is opened, If the CD32.TM file is found an AGA screen is opened. Smart.
The CD32 is missing a few CDTV items so full backward compatiability, Some things you wont miss (Do you use the propriaty memory card slot? Good because the CD32 doesnt have one.) but other things that where nice are also gone, No IR port so you have to use a joypad or joystick, The CD32's joypad does support a few things, For one it has four action buttons and two menu select buttons plus the standard 4 direction keys and a play/pause button, This isnt that unusuall but it does use a standard Amiga joystick port which upto then only suported three buttons and no play/pause button.
The CD32 was made after the CDTV but was developed at the same time as the CDTV-CR prototype and it shares a few things, They both have an FMV card upgrade option (Different connectors though)(The CDTV-CR's FMV card was developed first and was then adapted for the CD32), The CD32's AUX port (A cut down serial port that was used for an optional modem or mouse or keyboard) is also on the CDTV-CR and the CD-Rom interfaces look the same. (But the CDTV-CR's CD-Rom is on a slide out tray, Unlike the CD32.)

The CD32's screens are very like the CDTV's, They have just been upgraded to show off the extra colours and faster CPU.
The main screen and preference screens where re-written, The main screen shows the CD-Rom flying through space, The colours at the top of the screen cycle through the complete pallet and a background music was added, There is no version number as the Prom was surface mounted to the motherboard, Changing the chip was not an option.
When a CD is inserted the screen goes black and then there are two animation that can appear,
1: At the top the words Amiga CD32 slide in and then slide out.
2: Or (Something else, What happens?).
The preference screen has been cut down to just language selection, The CD32 makes no use of the on-board clock so there is no reason to set it up, The screen position is fixed as it is just ment to connect to either an SVHF input (SVHF is a cut down Scart and scart doesnt need to be positioned either) or the RF input (Standard ariel, Again doesnt need positioning.) so that was removed, That just leaves the screen saver (which the CD32 doesnt have, very very sad.), Key press sound effects (They are always on), Display frequency (Never was any good), That just leaves the language selection (And easter egg).
The language display scrolls as it does on the CDTV but when a country is selected (Or you just stop over it for a second) the correct flag will lighten and will flap in the wind.
The globe just sits there and spins, Which is nice, Ermmmm......

Each of the preference screens can be opened by pressing one of the coloured buttons.
Red for , Blue for , Green for and Yellow for .

The audio player is very much the same as the one on the CD32, A few of the buttons have moved and the background colour is now light blue to dark blue (Instead of light blue to cream).
The CD comes up as normal, The CD tracks are displayed in the boxes on the right, The track thats playing is displayed in the box above the CD laser, The time played is displayed in the box under the CD and unlike the CDTV, If a CD+G or CD+Midi is in the CD32 it is shown just under the play time box.
The play / stop / rewind and other buttons are the same as on the CDTV's CD-Player.
The CD32 CD-Player can still display CD+G and CD+Midi CD's by pressing the bottom left button, Just like the CDTV did.
When the CD-Rom cover is opened the CD slides out and the CD32 resets and waits at a black screen untill the top is put back down (With the CD in or not).

The CDTV had a small amount of memory set asside for your preferences to be stored in, This was called the Bookmark, The CD32 expands that idea by having a full 1Kb of Flash RAM, This was used by a number of games as a way of saving your position, The problem is if you have a few games you can fill up that 1Kb very quickly so you will need a way to delete the files when you get boored of a game, That is what this screen is for, You can lock a score into memory (Which will survive a reset) or unlock it (So it wont).
Once you selected the title you wanted to lock or unlock press the red button and the key onthe side of the box will turn and lock / unlock the score, The number of locked and unlocked scores are displayed on the bottom of the box.

Misc Notes:
The CD32 only had a 24Bit Address bus, This was due to cost cutting before the CD32 went into mass prduction, They used the 68EC020 14Mhz CPU, The EC unit was a cheaper CPU and it still had a 32 Bit Data bus so still remained the worlds first 32 Bit Games Console.

Due to the cheaper CPU the CD32 can not have more than 8 Meg of fast ram (The same as the CDTV) without changing the CPU.

Commodore put a large advertising budget into the launch of the CD32, Including TV adverts, posters and lots lots more. One of the best advertsing stunts was for the CD32, Commodore made a masive poster and put it up on the bill board right outside Sega`s UK office, There main competitor saying "TO BE THIS GOOD WILL TAKE SEGA AGES." with a nice big picture of the CD32.

The CD32 uses the same power suply as the A590 Harddrive upgrade for the Amiga 500.

Spec: CPU: 68020 (EC Version).

Memory: 2 Meg Chip Ram.

Graphics chip: AGA.

CD-Rom: 2X Speed, None standard interface.

Ports: Aux port (Cut down serial port), SVHF out, RF out, Composite out, RCA Audio left & right out, two Joystick ports (Standard Amiga style), Power in, 182 Pin expansion slot (For a CPU upgrade or FMV card).
Display: From 320X200 (low res, None interlaced) to 1280X400 (Super High res, Interlaced).

OS: Kickstart 3.1 (The first Amiga to have Kickstart 3.1), Patched to add CD32 features like CD-Player.

[Milesian]

This is the CDTV, It is a 16 bit home computer styled in a set top box design but what is it?

Amiga.. Isnt that a Zip drive?
Well for starters the CDTV is an Amiga, which was one of the most popular home computers in the mid 80`s to the early 90`s.
The Amiga is based around Motorola`s very popular 68000 CPU (With late Amiga`s using the faster 32bit 68020, 030, 040 & 060 versions) used in Apple Macintosh, Sinclair QL (First ever multitasking computer which used the 8bit 68008) and Atari computers but the Amiga was the best computer out of these because it used custom made chips to take away CPU intensive tasks like disk drive access, sound generation, memory access and video output, These custom chips could operate totally independant of the main CPU, accessing the computers memory and running there own tasks, only calling the CPU when the task was done. This made the Amiga more powerfull than its competition and lead to standards such as CDXL found on the CDTV (A movie format which didnt use the CPU but instead the CD-Rom streamed the file to memory where the graphics and sound chips read the data and plays the movie.)

To know about what the CDTV is you have to know what an Amiga is, Specifically the Amiga 500 and Amiga 3000
The 500 was your normal home computer which was launched in the late 1980`s, It had 512Kb (0.5 MB) of memory and a first generation graphics chip set (Original Chip Set) and was the follow up to the first ever Amiga, The A1000.
The Amiga 3000 was the Amiga`s flag ship (Top of the range model) in the early 90`s, It was a 32bit design using Motorola`s new 68030 CPU, used a second generation chip set (Enhanced Chip Set) and included an SCSI interface (SCSI is a superiour harddrive interface, faster than IDE and capable of having more drives on a single interface) on the motherboard.

But what about the CDTV?
The CDTV was Commodore`s first attempt at making a CD-Rom equiped computer and when it launched in March 1991 at the winter CES in Las Vegas was the first ever computer to come as standard with a CD-Rom drive.
The CDTV is at heart a cross between an Amiga 500 (Most popular Amiga at the time) and an Amiga 3000 (The flag ship), The CDTV uses the same super fast memory, Enhanced Chip Set, keyboard design (PCB / case but not connector or colour) and DMAC (Direct Memory Access Chip) as found in the 32Bit Amiga 3000 but used the same OS (Operating System), CPU (16bit 68000 @ 7.14 Mhz), amount of memory and the same 16Bit arcutecture (design) as the Amiga 500.

The CDTV was developed at the same time as the Amiga 3000 but was launched just after, It was developed by a division within Commodore called "Special Projects", This division normally deals with one off none mass production projects.
Guy Wright, Who made the welcome disc had this to say about "Special Projects":

"The special projects section was separate from the rest of Commodore - financially, emotionally, and even physically. We had our own entrance at the very back of the Commodore plant and a small two floors area that had originally been warehouse space."

The CDTV was not to be sold as a normal computer to normal computer users, instead the CDTV was to be designed for a new market, one which at the time had not really been explored all that much, it was to basically be a set top box, a device that does not look out of place next to a video casset recorder or hi-fi system, designed so anyone who could operate a television remote could instantly use it.
That is why the CDTV looks like it does, it could easily be mistaken for a standard (harmless) CD player. It was also the first ever black Amiga and was originally designed with a TV remote syle controller. (But this was dropped for the more usable joypad packaged with every CDTV)


CDTV prototypes.

As with all designs the CDTV evolved over development, the first prototype was the CD-A1, it doesnt look to different to the normal CDTV, The casing is very similer although it may be a little narrower (As the volume buttons are on the drive) and there is no ventalation slots on the top or on the sides, The front display is different, The volume controls are under the CD-Rom instead of on the right hand side, The reset button on the bottom right has power/reset marked on it, Could you turn the CDTV off with the reset button? Not the way the final CDTV was made but the prototype may have been able.


This prototype was very much a hack, Commodore had used standard, Well tested chips but the motherboard was a new design and with that lots of problems, wether this prototype ever worked is doubtfull. How many CD-A1's exist is unknown but the ones that have are probably in the hands of the original developers.
The next CDTV shown to the public was very different, infact it was almost the final version, The CD-Rom is replaced with the final version, The Volume buttons are in the right place (Under the Commodore lable) and the case now has ventalation. This unit was shown to developers and also reviewed in Commodore Format.

The first thing you will notice about this picture is the remote, Its a TV remote, Well no actually its the first IR controler, It is a CDTV specific one, It has a numeric pad, Audio CD controls and power / Genlock buttons.
This is the only time the CDTV was shown with this remote and it isnt known if it works but it wouldnt be hard for them to have made it, The IR interface was still causing trouble and no doubt there were other problems but it was shown working in the Commodore Format review, It played Tetris on a TV.
The power / reset lable is still there and there are lables on the power and drive read lights and there is a lable under the C= Commodore lable on the top right hand side, It reads Interactive Graphics Player.

The final design, The external work was finished well before the motherboard design was debuged. The first CDTV to have this design was functional but the sound distorted at anything but the quietest sound, The IR port had a major work around, the socket has a Motorola 8 Bit CPU with small EMPROM mounted on top, Infact the signals to connect the CPU to the motherboad remain on all motherboards.
A Prom Flash card was fitted to the motherboard which ment that updating the Prom as software bugs were worked out was a simple 15 second job,This card was later available to all developers on the CATS Developers list. (Visit the "upgrading" section for more info on the Prom Flash card)
The CDTV went through some debugs after this but no more major changes occured.
The "Interactive Graphics Player", CD read and power lables were all removed which is about the only external change.
The CDTV went on to launch around the world, normally at The World Of Commodore shows, In the UK the CDTV was launched at the WOC 1991 in Earls Court, London.
In America the CDTV was launched in March 1991 Winter CES in Las Vegas.
The CDTV had a big launch at Commodore show's all over the world, 3rd Party companys were left to advertise in magazines but they only advertised it in Amiga magazines, Selling to the sold, Even when Commodore advertised they were aimed at Amiga 500 owners, offering discounts for A500 trade-in's.

This being so it sold more in the first month than the A500 did, Amiga's most popular model, but this didnt last and soon people started asking why it didnt have OS2.04 and a PCMCIA slot like the A600 that was just launched and with in a year the CDTV was considered a flop but it was still sold up to 1993 and Commodore secretly developed the CDTV's replacement, The CDTV CR unfortunatly due to the bad name the CDTV got the CR was never launched and the CD32 was launched in early 1993 supporting many of the features found on the CDTV CR, After the CD32 was launched the CDTV started its drift into the background and by late 1995 the CDTV was not supported by software or hardware developers.

The CDTV's potential was never really realised, It is a very powerfull computer with good quailty sound and excelent video quality.

[Milesian]

In case you haven't fallen asleep yet, before the CDTV I had the Amiga 500.
Before that I had the original Nintendo NES with gamepads, lightgun (ah, Duckhunt ) and even the Gyromite Robot (looked great, totally pointless).

My earliest memeory of gaming however is playing Pong on the venerable old Grandstand VEC (am I really that old? )