Fish Head Buddha (Amiga) - A Playguide and Review - by LemonAmiga.com
36Fish Head Buddha is a surreal point and click game, created by Matt West, and released by F1 Licenceware in 1997. This Amiga Exclusive was requested by Lemontube backer Predseda, which needs some kind of introduction to understand how to play it. Let's check it out!
Please Support These Videos!
https://www.patreon.com/lemontubeamiga
My Backers:
1. ποΈποΈ*Johnny Smoesau* ποΈποΈ
2. π₯ Bloxyman22 π₯
3. π₯ Sepp π₯
4. π₯Kim Lemon π₯
5. π₯ Predseda π₯
6. π₯Paul Henderson (Loki) π₯
7. π₯ Eric Johnson π₯
8. π₯Bernhard Lukas π₯
9. π₯Ramon Schmitt π₯
10. π₯ URS Retro π₯
Production Notes:
Captured: 11th Nov 2020
Narrated: 25th May 2021
Edited: Nov 2020, Sept 2021, Jan 2022
The saga of Fish Head Buddha
========================
The saga started after our silver backer Predseda asked me to play this in order to discover it's secrets. The game is about Karma, or Cause and Effect - stored potential energy, which plays with life to create a Chaos. I played the game, and figured out what to do (although I cant figure out how I brought up the inventory screen in the video, having loaded it up several times since to check, and no indication of that key in the manual). When I looked at the size of the file, it was 44GB - which was too large for my small HDD allowance at that time. So I used Handbrake to convert it down to 4GB, and promptly deleted the original. Only then did I discover the extent of compression artefacts in the background - which spoiled the look of the game.
I considered what I wanted to talk about, but hardly any Buddhist things went into the one-take narration. I didn't want to talk about the game, but the mechanics of how some things work. At the end I wandered into the old 'how much of anything is God?' philosophy, almost saying 'The Sun is God', which might seem in poor taste for a Buddhism video. I didnt talk much about Buddhism at all, and this is a shame, as I used to be one, and few would be drawn to Buddhism from this video. It's more a mix of Pagan witchcraft mixed with Newton's Laws, which would be misleading to most people.
The random Chaos continued into the edit, as things went wrong, the editor constantly crashed. Then I discovered the on-disk manuals and tried to squeeze those in to the edit, and I narrating an extra bit to cover that. The intro was also recaptured to show me pressing the ESC key to bring up the options board; something missing in the review. Then some bits of the other manual were shoved in on top of footage (where I spent ages trying to put enough spaces in the text to format the on-screen table), and also above existing narration, which makes it hard to read and keep up.
The experience was very much a battle, with some struggling and despair due to thwarted intentions. It was very much like being trapped inside an elastic band, which was stretching and contracting in all directions, pulling me back to, and around, the centre like gravity. So with relief I rendered the final 60fps video.
The 60fps video didnt work. I put the whole lot through Handbrake several times, but no joy. All videos were unplayable. So I'm rendering a 50fps video as a last resort, even if it means 10 frames per second will be dropped. Combined with the bad re-compressed footage, the video is barely watchable. I also put a disclaimer up at the start, to tell people these are just my thoughts, and are not Canon or anything.
The 50fps video didnt work either. I tried using handbrake to re-encode both 50 and 60fps videos, but it didnt work. In the end, I took the 50fps re-encoded video and re-rendered it down to 1080p at 50fps using my video editor. Finally, it worked.
Danscore
======
The phrase - 'The Amiga makes it possible' is not a tag line by coincidence. It means some programmers can go to extremes with their ideas, and think outside of the box, without having to work out how it could be designed using Unreal engine etc. The aim of this game is to accrue Karma; which means more fish will appear; which can be caught; which affect the controls of the game. Looking at the manual, it seems we need to collect them at least in some kind of order, and some kind of limit is reached when you have collected enough of each to balance things out perfectly. In practice, the more the player tries, the more frustrating the game becomes, and this is all part of the gameplay. I think this is a game for people who don't mind waiting, and the manual recommends returning to the main menu, and saving the game up to make sure gains aren't lost. Beating the game means surrendering to the game, which can be overpowering for those who just want to get somewhere, and feel the payoff and reward of personal achievement. I am impressed with the presentation, but the game loaded straight up from disk on my copy, which missed out on all of the vital documents on the disk. Music is terrific for the intro and menus, but in-game it can get a bit boring. The fun factor is there, but not much to bring players back, I give it 5.5/10.