Phantasy Star II getting a fanmade port to the Amiga platform

These are interesting times for retro ports. First, we had folks porting games to Sega consoles from other platforms, then someone ported Shinobi and Golden Axe to SNK’s Neo-Geo platforms, and now someone wants to bring Phantasy Star II (1989) to the Amiga platform. I’m certainly not against it.

Homebrew developer RetroLover is now hard at work on an Amiga conversion of the seminal and very influential Genesis/Mega-Drive JRPG Phantasy Star II. That game is their favorite RPG of all time, and this is their way of paying tribute to it and the Amiga platform. The game is being rebuilt in Scorpion Engine, which is made for development of Amiga, Genesis, and even Neo-Geo games, but RetroLover is aiming to make this as faithful to the Genesis original as possible. They’ll still be adding enhancements to make it easier to play through, such as an improved battle system based on that of Phantasy Star IV (1995).

For now, though, the port is still early in development. However, RetroLover has released a demo for the public to try and is open to feedback. If you have a way to run Amiga games, I’d say give it a go. You can find a link to download it below the break.

For those unaware, the Amiga were a series of 16-bit computers from Commodore, who had previously made waves with their earlier 8-bit computer, the Commodore 64. The first Amiga computer, the Amiga 1000, released in 1985. The Amiga’s zenith came with the Amiga 1200 in 1992. The Amiga series of computers were also based on the Motorola 68000 processor, which just so happens to be the same main processor that the Genesis had, but later Amiga computers used later revisions of the 68000 series processors. The Amiga line was discontinued in 1996 after Commodore declared bankruptcy following multiple missteps in the 90’s, along with them and many other computer companies losing their market share to IBM, which left lasting effects on the home and business computer industry felt to this very day. Amiga computers enjoy a cult following in the modern era, with new games constantly being developed for the platform by homebrew enthusiasts and even new updates to Amiga’s operating system. There’s even an Amiga mini console available today called the A500 Mini.

Amiga does have some history with Sega, however. A couple of Sega games received official ports to the platform, including a few games that were made for Genesis like Space Harrier II and Last Battle. Sega outsourced all of those ports to other developers though, and many of them had notoriously dubious quality. It was also common for western developed games on Genesis, and other platforms like Super Nintendo or even other computer platforms like MS-DOS, to be developed, at least partially, on Amiga computers. Sega Technical Institute made great use of the Amiga platform when developing Genesis games like Comix Zone. Deluxe Paint, which released in 1985 and was updated up through 1995, was made for the Amiga platform first and was the go-to program for sprite art and animations for many western developers. Like many Amiga software, Deluxe Paint also enjoys a cult following today, which even birthed an independently developed browser-based version of it that works with Amiga formats and modern formats. (Try it for yourself)

With all that background info out of the way, we’re back to Phantasy Star II. You can download the WIP Amiga port from RetroLover’s itch.io page right here. Keep in mind that it currently only works with Amiga 1200 computers, but RetroLover says they will try to make it compatible with all Amiga hardware. If you have an Amiga 1200 and a way to load digital software files on it, give it a try and then give RetroLover some feedback. You can also play it on an A500 Mini using it’s WHDLoad feature.

Are you surprised to hear about Phantasy Star II getting ported to Amiga? What do you think of the port, if you got to try it? Did you ever own an Amiga or play games on one? (I did) Let us know in the comments below.

 

 

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