Path: menudo.uh.edu!usenet From: keithc@library.welch.jhu.edu (Keith Christopher) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Subject: REVIEW: MegaBall AGA Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.games Date: 3 Jan 1994 18:36:09 GMT Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Lines: 198 Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator) Distribution: world Message-ID: <2g9oip$8jn@menudo.uh.edu> Reply-To: keithc@library.welch.jhu.edu (Keith Christopher) NNTP-Posting-Host: karazm.math.uh.edu Keywords: game, arcade, brickout, Arkanoid, shareware PRODUCT NAME MegaBall AGA BRIEF DESCRIPTION MegaBall AGA is a game like Arkanoid or Brickout: using a paddle and a bouncing ball, you clear away rows of bricks. The game has splendid graphics on an AGA Amiga. AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION Name: Ed Mackey Address: PO Box 475 Wayne, PA 19087 USA Telephone: not given FAX: not given E-mail: mackey@bix.com SHAREWARE FEE $15.00 (US) gets you the registered version of the game plus a board editor. An additional $5.00 gets you a music disk. SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS HARDWARE Requires a mouse. Megaball AGA does not require any special hardware because its default mode is 640X400 in 16 colors. If the machine is an AGA machine however, it will default to 640X480 256color. MegaBall does not require a hard drive. It worked fine on my A4000 ! SOFTWARE None. Will work under all AmigaDOS versions 1.3 or greater. It worked fine under AmigaDOS 3.0. COPY PROTECTION None. Megaball is hard drive installable and does not require the original disk. MACHINE USED FOR TESTING A4000 (AGA graphics) 4MB Fast RAM, 2MB Chip RAM Workbench 3.0 INSTALLATION After obtaining the demo version of the game from an ftp site, I unpacked it onto my hard drive. The icons are AmigaDOS 2.0-ish and look nice. This game ranks among the easiest I have installed on my hard drive. The installation of MegaBall AGA is a simple as they come. Just drag and drop! Once the game is installed, you'll see that there are two graphics modules. If you have an AGA Amiga, you can remove the non-AGA module, and vice-versa. NOTE: if you leave both graphics libraries in the drawer you can tell if one is running in AGA mode by looking at the title screen. If it says "MegaBall AGA", then the game is in is AGA mode; if just MegaBall, then it is in ECS (old chip set) mode. After installing from the floppy (or just unarchiving it to hard disk), all users should copy the fonts to the FONTS: drawer. AmigaDOS 2.x and 1.x users need to copy some libraries to the LIBS: drawer. REVIEW Needless to say after installing on my AGA machine I was eager to see the game up and running. I double clicked the MegaBall icon and was off! You are first greeted with a title screen that has pretty good sound in the background. It displays some options like SHIFT-Q to exit and '2' for a two player game. It also displays all the falling "icons" you can grab while playing that will do things during the game: "Diet", which shortens your "paddle", "+1" which gives one an extra life, etc. I should have spent more time here because I failed to notice a "Kill" icon. After hitting a block, I managed to catch one of these and lose a life. For those who haven't figured it out by now, MegaBall AGA is an Arkanoid-type game. However, the sound and graphics are much better than those of Amiga Arkanoid, and the registered version contains a board editor to create your own boards! This game multitasks very well! I was downloading about 3MB worth of ftp'd files while playing and still achieved 1650 cps with my 14.4Kbaud modem. I noticed an interesting feature while doing this, however. While finding no mention of it in the documentation, I was in the process of chasing down a single block when the download I was also doing finished. Well Term3.4(tm) jumped to the foreground and MegaBall AGA dropped out of site along with my jaw. Well I thought, I'll have to start screen 5 all over again. NOT SO! After shutting Term3.4 (TM) down, I flipped through the screens... and lo and behold, when the MegaBall AGA screen came to front, it was paused! Upon entering the screen again, the game resumed right away, but hey, I'm not complaining! A couple of nice features include: o Typing "B" during play pauses the game and causes it to drop behind all other screens. o SHIFT-Q kills all lives and takes one back to the highscore and title screens. Another SHIFT-Q exits. A cute voice thanks you for "using the self destruct mode" when hitting SHIFT-Q during play. o The game can be modified using icon tooltypes, and this feature is clearly covered in the AmigaGuide-format documentation. The game is loads of fun if you enjoy a "blockout" type game to test your reflexes. All in all, I really enjoy MegaBall AGA. If you have an AGA machine, I do suggest you at least get the demo version to check it out. You'll be back for more. DOCUMENTATION Documentation is in AmigaGuide format. It covers everything one would need to know. LIKES AND DISLIKES I think I most like the graphics. They are smooth and look awesome on my AGA machine! The sound support is also excellent and modifiable. I don't think there was any part I disliked; however, I would like to see an "iconify" option. (But then, I think it's necessary in almost all software!) COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS In comparison to Arkanoid II (PC) I have to go with MegaBall AGA. The graphics and sound are MUCH MUCH better. While play style is much the same, in my opinion, MegaBall AGA performed much smoother. BUGS There were no bugs I could find. The game ran even if I didn't have the Megaball.font in FONTS:! VENDOR SUPPORT I have had no need for this. WARRANTY I saw no mention of a warranty. CONCLUSIONS This is definitely an excellent product, and I hope to see more games from Ed Mackey. MY RATING: **** (4 out of 5 stars) COPYRIGHT NOTICE Copyright 1994 Keith Christopher. All rights reserved. --- Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews Send reviews to: amiga-reviews-submissions@math.uh.edu Request information: amiga-reviews-requests@math.uh.edu Moderator mail: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu Anonymous ftp site: math.uh.edu, in /pub/Amiga/comp.sys.amiga.reviews