Amiga CD32 - Software

Software

See also: Amiga games, Amiga demos, and List of Games on the Amiga CD32

If the system is turned on without a CD, a splash screen with scrolling colours will appear and a tune will play. After this tune ends, the user can press the blue button on the game pad to enter a language selection menu. The user can also press the red button to access a menu where they can view the contents of the internal Flash ROM. Unlike most game consoles, this menu does not allow the user to delete items. Instead, the system will automatically overwrite the oldest entries when memory runs out. The menu allows the user to "lock" files to prevent overwriting.

At launch, the CD32 was bundled with two games, Diggers, a new game from Millennium Interactive, and Oscar from Flair Software. A later pack included the one-on-one fighting game Dangerous Streets, a move by Commodore that was met with derision by the press. Many reviewers had given Dangerous Streets terrible scores (Amiga Power rating it just 3%) and were surprised that with a slew of powerful rival consoles about to hit the market, Commodore would choose to show off the abilities of its machine with a poor game.

The CD32 was capable of running most of the titles developed for the Amiga CDTV multimedia device (differences in CPU speed and Kickstart version prevented some of the earlier CDTV titles from running). Many of the games released for the CD32 were simply ports of games that were already available for Amiga computers. One benefit of this is that, when appropriate, many games retain the ability to use an Amiga mouse (in port 2) or Amiga keyboard (plugged into the AUX port).

Like all later Amiga computers, the CD32 has a hidden boot menu that can be accessed by plugging an Amiga mouse into port 2 and holding both buttons down while turning the system on. Most of the options in this menu are not useful on a CD32, but from this menu you can choose to boot in either NTSC or PAL mode. This is important, as there are some games that will refuse to work if the system is in the wrong mode, since most games don't advertise what video mode they were developed for. It should also be pointed out that despite the naming, the menu really only allows a choice of 60 Hz or 50 Hz video output; a PAL system booted in NTSC mode will still output a video signal using PAL color encoding, which will usually result in a black-and-white picture when connected to an NTSC television.

While the console was fairly successful during its lifespan and managed to be the best-selling CD format console in 1993, it was not able to sustain its growth, with Commodore filing for Chapter 11 just a year after its release after not being able to secure additional CD32 shipments for the holiday season. It was speculated that the holiday season could have kept Commodore afloat for another six months. Another problem was the lack of original games, which had also plagued the CDTV before it.

The CD32 arrived at a time when new, technically demanding genres such as the first person shooter were becoming popular. The console was not capable of handling some or all of these new types of genres (the hardware is far less powerful than Atari Jaguar or 3DO), games developers saw more profit in shovelware — taking an older game and either adding an FMV intro or even (in some cases) just directly transferring the floppy game onto CD. A few pieces of original software did appear and some were well received but by and large the CD32 found itself with a software library mainly containing titles that were up to five years old and which much of the machine's target audience already owned. Given that, along with the fact that 'hot' games like Doom and Virtua Fighter were planned for release on the CD32's competitors, many observers blamed shovelware for the machine's relative failure.

However, a large fan base carried over from the success of other Amiga computers, and several notable titles, such as Microcosm, Liberation: Captive 2, Simon the Sorcerer, Super Stardust and Zool 2 prevented the console from sliding into total obscurity.