Amiga Games Inc Sells For Half A Million

[Karloff]

Amiga Games Inc Sells For Half A Million

Writer's Group Film Corp is the new owner of Amiga's 300+ back catalogue of games.

Amiga Games Inc (AGI), which holds more than 300 classic video games in its vaults, has been sold to Writer's Group Film Corp. for $500,000, in stock and cash. Writer's Group intends to distribute its new collection on smartphone and mobile devices, and future distribution announcements are planned. For now, Writer's Group is just happy to have an asset that, it believes, will be of great benefit; in the nostalgia dollar if nothing else.

AGI's mission in life has been to repackage Amiga's old titles for new mobile platforms. If you're the kind of gamer who goes nuts for old 16-bit games, then you may have already discovered it. It's not clear at this point what plans its new owners have for the Amiga library, and no, we don't know which of Amiga's many, many titles [http://www.angusm.demon.co.uk/AGDB/AGDB.html] are actually among the 300+ Writer's Group apparently bought when it purchased AGI.

So which would you rather see hit the small screen thanks to this purchase? I'm a Lemmings fan, but Lord alone knows whether that - or which of the Amiga's other beloved classics - are actually now in the Writer's Group collection.

Source: Market Wire [http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/writers-group-film-corp-announces-execution-definitive-term-sheet-new-acquisition-amiga-otcqb-writ-1808742.htm]

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[ron1n]

Gods Remake for mobile platforms and then ported to PC please.

 

[TiberiusEsuriens]

Point and click adventure is a perfect genre to throw on mobile devices! Dragon's Lair, Monkey Island, King's Quest. While they now have the grandfather of all RTS games, Dune II, I doubt we'll see anything come out of that. A turn based game like Civ I & II on the other hand...

Unfortunately we'll probably just see simple arcade games like Paperboy. Not that its bad, but there's no way that this sale could live up to its ultimate potential.

 

[J Tyran]

now that was the ultimate gaming platform. all the functionality of a computer with a keyboard, and added peripherals with the plug and play of a console.

Never thought of it like that before but its true, I had two Amigas in my teens and they where almost as convenient as a console (apart from disk swapping). Shame they died really.

As for this news, imagine if they did HD remakes and ported the games to the Ouya.

 

[Steve the Pocket]

Wait. So this one company had somehow acquired the rights to every game ever released for the Amiga? How the heck did that happen? A lot, if not most, of those games were created by a company that's still around in some form or another. Lucasarts, Rockstar North, EA... did Commodore have an XBLA-style "we are the publishers of your game; we own it forever" contract or something?

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

Wait. So this one company had somehow acquired the rights to every game ever released for the Amiga? How the heck did that happen? A lot, if not most, of those games were created by a company that's still around in some form or another. Lucasarts, Rockstar North, EA... did Commodore have an XBLA-style "we are the publishers of your game; we own it forever" contract or something?

Nope, they have acquired the rights to all the games that Amiga Games Inc held the rights to. Read the article source, it will explain things.

OT: The only Amiga game I could really say I would have been interested in was Alien Breed, but I played it on an emulator again recently and it just didn't feel like it used to. Probably because I'm not 13 anymore.

 

[GoaThief]

Best platform in history.

Would love to see all those games hit Android. Could this be what the Ouya needs to flourish too? If they could integrate a section on there with a large catalogue I can see it shifting a serious amount of hardware if promoted.

 

[Bostur]

now that was the ultimate gaming platform. all the functionality of a computer with a keyboard, and added peripherals with the plug and play of a console.

personally i miss interceptor. insane fun to fly under the golden gate bridge over mach 1 in your f18 with into the danger zone playing on your tape deck

And the best OS I had the pleasure of using for about a decade.

Interceptor was good fun, one of the first games I saw on the Amiga.

Most games I played were PC ports or remakes from 8-bit systems. But I also remember some timeless classics like Settlers, Lemmings, Pinball Fantasies/Dreams, Carrier Command, Defender of the Crown.

Pinball Fantasies / Pinball Dreams are games that I think would be perfect for remakes on various platforms. Simple to play, simple control schemes, perfectly polished.

 

[Antari]

It will be interesting once we can see what games they have control over. There are some gems in that lineup.

 

[shrekfan246]

now that was the ultimate gaming platform. all the functionality of a computer with a keyboard, and added peripherals with the plug and play of a console.

Never thought of it like that before but its true, I had two Amigas in my teens and they where almost as convenient as a console (apart from disk swapping). Shame they died really.

As for this news, imagine if they did HD remakes and ported the games to the Ouya.

id actually consider getting one then.

actually could that be the key to a new console. give one the functionality of the old amiga. keyboard, plug and play, add a controller option, ability to make use of non game programs

You mean... like.. a PC?

Admittedly they're still not just plug-in-and-play, but... neither are consoles at this point.

OT: It'd be cool to see a resurgence for Lemmings, but then I don't have any mobile platforms that aren't actual handheld consoles, so I don't think it makes any difference to me either way.

That seems to be a pretty cheap selling point to me, though, unless there's just something I'm missing here.

 

[Bostur]

now that was the ultimate gaming platform. all the functionality of a computer with a keyboard, and added peripherals with the plug and play of a console.

Never thought of it like that before but its true, I had two Amigas in my teens and they where almost as convenient as a console (apart from disk swapping). Shame they died really.

As for this news, imagine if they did HD remakes and ported the games to the Ouya.

id actually consider getting one then.

actually could that be the key to a new console. give one the functionality of the old amiga. keyboard, plug and play, add a controller option, ability to make use of non game programs

You mean... like.. a PC?

Admittedly they're still not just plug-in-and-play, but... neither are consoles at this point.

PCs certainly were no near plug-in-and-play in the late 1980's early 1990's when the Amiga had its prime. The need to mess with memory extenders, setting up sound cards, having multiple system boot disks made PC gaming extremely complicated at the time. In comparison many games on the Amiga were mostly a matter of inserting a floppy and waiting - for a long time...

Some of the old microcomputers gained some ease of use and simplicity, because people didn't expect backwards compatibility or 3rd party support. OS's were built-in or shipped with the hardware. Peripherals were tailor made to fit together for the system. In many ways they worked like modern consoles, with some of the same benefits and disadvantages.

Things worked out of the box, but peripherals were expensive and competition was sometimes lacking. 3rd party peripherals did exist but could sometimes require a large amount of tweaking and nerding to use.

 

[Steve the Pocket]

Wait. So this one company had somehow acquired the rights to every game ever released for the Amiga? How the heck did that happen? A lot, if not most, of those games were created by a company that's still around in some form or another. Lucasarts, Rockstar North, EA... did Commodore have an XBLA-style "we are the publishers of your game; we own it forever" contract or something?

Nope, they have acquired the rights to all the games that Amiga Games Inc held the rights to. Read the article source, it will explain things.

Still, over 300 games. I'm surprised that's not all of them!

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

Still, over 300 games. I'm surprised that's not all of them!

Go have a look on wikipedia, there's 131 games beginning with "A" alone.