Old Amiga versions of RnD and MM

Discussion about Rocks'n'Diamonds, Boulder Dash, Supaplex, Emerald Mine and any other BD hybrid.

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rsn8887
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Old Amiga versions of RnD and MM

Post by rsn8887 »

The more I play MM and RnD, the more I like them :)

Thank you Holger Schemel for these amazing games.

I am curious about the history behind Mindbender/Mirrormagic/RND. Did it all start on the Amiga, or maybe even on the C64?

I found pictures of a very old Amiga 500 version of Mirror Magic on The Hall of Light game database here: http://hol.abime.net/3889

It looked so much worse back then, so much better now.

Is this the only version for the Amiga? Was it maybe an early prototype of Mindbender? Or was it a sequel to Mindbender?

Is there maybe an old version of Rocks’n’Diamonds for the Amiga 500, too?

Maybe as Shareware?

Edit: I just remembered Mindbender on the Amiga had a two player mode with two mouse pointers (birds) one yellow one green! How cool!
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Holger
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Re: Old Amiga versions of RnD and MM

Post by Holger »

I am curious about the history behind Mindbender/Mirrormagic/RND. Did it all start on the Amiga, or maybe even on the C64?
In a way, it started all on the C64, which was my first computer (must have been around 1984). I played lots of games on it, and I especially liked the games "BoulderDash" and "Deflektor". At the same time I wrote my first own computer games (in BASIC), but first I started with programming graphic adventures (in German language). The first one was "Der Weg nach Bree" ("The way/road to Bree") in 1986, heavily influenced by Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings". You can still find it on the web:

C64 Game Base: http://www.gamebase64.com/game.php?id=12633
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqucP7P1WdE

You can even directly play it in your web browser right now (if you can read a little bit German):
https://archive.org/details/d64_Weg_nac ... Schemel_de

:D

But back to Mirrormagic! I started writing it two years later (1988) on an Amiga 500 for the now unknown German games label "Time Warp Software" (which was part of "Rainbow Arts", which some may remember for games like "The Great Giana Sisters" etc.). Unfortunately, that company went bankrupt before releasing my game, but it was taken over by "Gremlin Graphics", which released the game under the name "Mindbender". I found out about that just by chance, when I stumbled upon the game quite some time later in a bargain bin in a local electronics shop! :D
I found pictures of a very old Amiga 500 version of Mirror Magic on The Hall of Light game database here: http://hol.abime.net/3889

It looked so much worse back then, so much better now.

Is this the only version for the Amiga? Was it maybe an early prototype of Mindbender? Or was it a sequel to Mindbender?
This is a very early development version that was never officially released (of course). I have no freaking idea when, how or from where it came from! :lol:

You can see that this version still has the very old "Amiga theme" artwork set (including the famous Amiga bouncing ball), before I later changed it to the current "Magic theme" (where those Amiga balls were changed to "magic kettles" etc.).

Maybe I should add this old artwork set as an option to the current, R'n'D based Mirror Magic... I may also put those old Amgia disk images online for download (especially the never released "golden master" from "Time Warp Software").

Years later (around 1994, now having some free time during my computer science studies), I digged out the source code from an old Amiga floppy disk and ported the game to Linux and X11.
Is there maybe an old version of Rocks’n’Diamonds for the Amiga 500, too?
No, R'n'D was developed (based on the Mirror Magic code) on Linux (heavily influenced by "Emerald Mine" on the Amiga, of course). There never was an Amiga version before the Linux version (but later there was an Amiga port of the Linux version of R'n'D!)
Edit: I just remembered Mindbender on the Amiga had a two player mode with two mouse pointers (birds) one yellow one green! How cool!
Yes, that was indeed cool! :D

This feature will probably never be available for the current version of Mirror Magic, as using two mice on the same computer was very very rare. I was inspired by the two-player-mice-mode by the Amiga game "Shanghai", which was a very beautiful Mahjong clone:

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_(video_game)
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZITQz7ZKz-8
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