Ancient Games (Amiga), Gladiators, I Ludicrus - Lets Play - by Lemon Amiga.com
43⚔️ Ancient Games takes inspiration from the classic Epyx Summer Games series; which itself was inspired by Track N' Field. Stop to gaze, and gawp in wonder at the magnificence of history's most treasured sports event, the Olympic Games!!! I also play Gladiators! and I, Ludicrus.
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Production Notes:
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Captured: - 27th August 2019 (all three games)
Narrated: - 2nd Sept 2019
Edited: 27th August 2019 - 8th Sept 2019
Rendered: (V6) - 8th Sept 2019
Do you have the power, of a Gladiator? Do you have the will, or the skiiiill? Yes several years before American Gladiators, the ancient Greeks were already at it, around 553 B.C. I discovered these games while searching through the Lemon Amiga database for games based on ancient times. 'Ancient Games' was found in Aladins WHDLoad games on EAB, but I found it ran too quickly in emulation, even with A500 settings. Gladiators I found by typing that in as a search, and it popped up on Lemon. I Ludicrus was a game I'd only seen in screenshots before (wot? Actual screenshots?), and I was interested to track it down just to see how bad it really was.
There are a few more Roman themed games out there, including: Cohort and Cohort 2, Annals of Rome, Encyclopedia of War: Ancient Battles, Legend of Rome, and Rome AD92: The Pathway To Power. Other games from the ancient period perhaps include: Conquest for Japan, Genghis Khan, and Lords of the Rising Sun. No plans to cover any of these, as I never played them before, and only saw some screenshots in magazines.
I didnt record my first try of Ancient Games, because it was clearly a bad game. I even say as much during the review of Caesar, noting the Zipstick would take too much punishment. But as the next shows will be the Top 100 Amiga PD Rip-offs, this vid was made to bridge the gap between the Ancient games and the Rip-offs. As such, this vid is mostly played for laughs, and is not meant to be taken seriously. I cant offer much of a guide to these titles either, as I cant even play them, so thats why its a Lets Play and not a Playguide.
After editing I removed two blank sections from the film to cut down on waiting for long load times. But I forgot to switch on the ripple editing, so all the game audio and my narration went completely out of sync. I managed to find one problem, only to find another, and you can see by the added speech bubbles that I had to go back and work on it for a while. In the end it took five re-renders before it was fixed.
Danscore:
Ancient Games isnt fun, and feels like a PD demo than an actual commercial release. Even if you can get it to run at a normal pace, the CPU opponents certainly dont, and still run at turbo speed to win each event without breaking a virtual sweat. As Ancient Games is a one-player only game Vs the CPU, this is a bit of a blow, and considering this was a commercial release, it didnt get any magazine reviews when it came out in 1991. It feels homebrew and plays that way. I give it 4 out of 10 for the humour. Gladiators? Lets just say I dont think I could play it twice, so I give it 3 out of 10. Of course I Ludicrus is also borderline unplayable, and is no fun whatsoever. Its the type of game people say is only worth seeing in a video and not playing in real life. So I give that game 1 out of 10 - and seriously, thats at least 1 point more than the game is actually worth.