Hillsea Lido (Amiga) - A Playguide and Review - by LemonAmiga.com
48Hillsea Lido is a seaside management simulator, created by Vulcan Software and released exclusively on the Amiga in 1995. You rent out slots on a beach front, and take a cut of the profits. Can you transform your sleepy town and retire as a millionaire?
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Production Notes:
Captured: 18th and 19th July 2021 (main game), and 12th Aug 2022 (theatre shows)
Narrated: 17th July 2022
I've been asked to cover various Vulcan games before, sure as Valhalla and others. Some of the more obscure ones like Bograts, and Tiny Troops, Timekeepers and Hillsea Lido are worth checking out, and this one seemed to grab my attention. Having read all the help files I could find, of which there are only a few, I spent quite a few days trying to master how the game worked, and had to abort some tries due to running out of cash. Eventually, I gave up on the sea front and instead played just the beach. When the first beach award appeared on the screen, it was like I had finally unlocked the core of the game, and could understand it more. To begin the review, I recorded me starting the game again, and then I cut to my beach-only savegame which was already in progress, to cut down on the initial grind phase; which is quite boring.
A year later, and also in July - the height of summer - I recorded the narration. I had to switch off my room fans to record it, and this meant I was rather hot and sweaty, rather appropriate. The narration seemed loud and shouty when I editing it, so I deliberately turned the volume down on the audio to make the voice seem quieter. I think this works a lot better. After I began to start the post-edit, I loaded up my save again and this time put all my effort into advertising shows. Sure enough, after a week I had enough customers to make money on the bingo guy, and then I went for the male strippers and made money on that too. This bonus show footage was then added to the review at the end.
I was searching for Vulcan Software online and it came up with the financial records from back in the day. The 1995/1996 records were there, so I grabbed the image, and put this in the video.
The name of the game was not mentioned much as a serious issue, but I put in a caption to say that the title would have been better as Beach Sim or something. Some time later, I added another caption, along with an edited image of the cover of Nuclear War, side by side with the box art image of this game. So the point about the game's title comes up twice.
Bugs:
I say Punch and Judy is French, but in fact it has it's origins in the charismatic 16th century Italian puppet Pulcinella; which may have inspired Pinocchio.
Danscore:
Management sims were hot property on the Amiga; from the endless Football Manager games, to Flamingo Tours; from Theme Park to this - a sea-front amusement sim. If we imagine this was called Advanced Seaside Simulator, and released by CodeMasters on every 8 and 16 bit platform, then this might be as well known as Theme Park. The idea behind the game starts rather dauntingly, with no tutorial, and the game expecting you to start from the street - which is the hardest area, and much harder than the beach. The game suffers from very few sound effects, and the building up of the crowd noise on busy days is largely lost. The 'end of the pier' shows are fun, and quickly attain the big bucks once there are enough people wandering about. So it comes with a difficulty curve which is steep at the start, and gets easier as long as the awards come rolling in; which feels more like a cheat mode than a game mechanic. I would have replaced the Warehouse lady with a Landlady; as it's up to the tenant to replace their own stock, and the land lady could host the hotel shows and be like Basil Faulty. Overall, I have a soft spot for this game and what it tried to do. Not exactly a tropical island paradise sim, but as Portsmouth goes, this game is actually more fun than visiting the (often very windy) real coastal city. This game was never going to be a world beater - like Theme Park or even California Games, but it feels like an 'Only On Amiga' kind of fan-made game for fans. I'd give it 7 out of 10. It's not quite addictive enough to come back to if you beat it once, and needs a lot of grinding unless you use the awards trick, which feels like cheating.