Thank you for the video. This game was revolutionary for its time, in fact most of what are now referenced to as RPG uses all the mechanics contained in. Even the scrolling screen was revolutionary. Replaying it in 2020 can be done, but would be very clunky. I played this as broke and clueless 21 yo in 1993.
Same age as you my friend, and we apparently also spent our time doing much the same things! 😊 Playing Syndicate on our Amigas! I had an Amiga500+ and also an Amiga1200... Both were stunning machines really... I remember I used to hook mine up together using... Well, I can't remember how I did it now, but I used to hook them up together and share the memory between them as well as the disk drives. To make things run smoother. I've not seen anyone do it anywhere on UA-cam at all, but back then I hooked them up all the time. It was only a few cables and, I think, it was a program on an Amiga Format disk that enabled me to do so. Back then I was a bit of a computer prodigy from the age of about 6 to 13. Taught myself programming on my Spectrum, did a little bit on my Amiga 500+ and also the Amiga 1200. I was more of a circuit-bender rather than a proper programmer on the Amiga! But then in college I discovered music and all of a sudden computer programming and gaming meant nothing to me any more! From then on it was guitars and LPs and CDs! 😊
I would've been around 16 in 1993 and think I got my first Amiga in late 1991. Really feels like a lifetime ago now but Syndicate alike Speedball 2, Desert Strike, The Settlers, Cannon Fodder, Alien Breed, Lemmings & Populous 2 bring back a lot of memories.
Syndicate was a really revolutionary and advanced game for it's time. And they hit the cyberpunk atmosphere perfectly. There was a fun thing I recall you could do with the persuadertron; overtake like 50 people and have them follow you into a car. Then get out of the car and immediately blow the car up. All of the people would be set on fire and run in an almost perfect ring of fire away from the car. This actually had an impact on the population of the region of that mission, and on the tax rate. Unfortunately none of that mattered in a play though because the difference in taxation from the very tiny decreased population of this was so miniscule; was still an interesting feature and kinda fun to mess around with, again kinda revolutionary mechanics given the age that the game was made in. An actual useful mechanic here though was that if you set the tax rate very high a region would eventually rebel and you got to play it again, enabling you to once again acquire found guns and also persuaded enemy agents from that mission. I loved this game.
How different the Amiga and the Dos versions are! No music at Amiga, no sound and fireworks at miss. debrief, no ping sound for the target (faster the closer you get at Dos) but the fire is colored (grey at Dos) and you can hear the screams (censored at Dos). I remember playing this game so often that i managed to do most missions with only 1 agent. Even reduced the brightness of my monitor by then and played in the evening/at night for that feeling of darkness and dystopy. *"Mission completed."* forever!!
@@bighands69 Played those games on my Amiga: Turrican 2 I came mostly for the incredible OST, Alien Breed both the game play and the music (the title track is amazing) and Syndicate for the gameplay (and also those really cool animation videos)!
I was also a bit disappointed with Syndicate Wars; it sort of had lost a bit of it's previous charm, though I wouldn't outright say I didnt like it. It did had a really interesting mechanic with it's 3D objects in that the cities were destructible and even featured a kind of voxel terrain altering where when you blew up explosives on the ground the terrain got lowered with craters. For the time period the game was released this felt really revolutionary too. Sadly it wasn't really utilized for any meaningful purpose so it was only because I found it fun to blow up the entire level, got some fun out of that nonetheless.
@@bighands69 Can't remember who made Turrican but Bullfrog, Team 17 and DMA Design were certainly heavyweights of Amiga gaming. My top 5 Amiga developers were probably Bullfrog (Syndicate), Team 17 (Alien Breed), DMA Design (Walker), Sensible Software (Cannon Fodder) and Bitmap Brothers (The Chaos Engine).
This game worked on A500 with 1MB of RAM. Even if it was a little stripped down when compared to the PC version it was a great achievement. The PC version of this and Syndicate Wars can be downloaded for free on GOG now.
Fabulous game. Many thank for the show ! Can you imagine the sadness discovering that the CD32 version just consisted of the four floppies copied on a CD while we could expect for an 256 color version with all videos, sounds and of course the CD ambient soundtrack of the PC CD version.
When l was around ten years old, I wanted to be one of the agents, enhanced, unstoppable badass carrying big minigun... and solving all problems with violence.
One of the few games I finished back in the day on the Amiga - that last level was pretty brutal. On the credits - I didn't know the Amiga version was a port - what system had the first version of this game?
Amiga was so good. I remember we had Amiga and my friends had the crappy Atari console 😂 I was king. Wish I could play Amiga games again but on RetroArch iOS they just don’t load for some reason
One of the best games I ever played o my Amiga , pure violence 😂 lent it to some boy at school and forgot I gave it to him … and he didn’t remind me lol
*Even at that time* in my life and at that age (from 1988 to 1993 - from 9yrs old to 14yrs old) I realised that pirated games *_REALLY DID_* detrimentally affect the game's makers/programmers and producers/& software houses etc. 🤔 I genuinely felt bad for every pirated game that I owned. But then, I *didn't* feel _too bad_ for _too long_ really... Because, if I have a copy of something and I actually like and enjoy it, then I go out of my way to make sure that I own it! I mean that I HAVE TO own the box with that lovely artwork and nice looking instruction manuals! 😊 For me, copied games always work like they're demo or rental copies for me to try out first. If I enjoy the game? 🤔 Then, pukka! 🤘🏼😊👍🏼 I'm off to buy it at the weekend! 🤞🏼😀👌🏼 Occasionally you'd play a copied game and you'd get right near to the end of the game or so, and THEN...! YOU discover that at a certain, particular spot, the game _ALWAYS_ crashes! So you have to 'upgrade' and purchase the game _anyway!_ So that wouldn't ever really bother me...😊
23:35 Gotta get to the upper part of town and use that pointless train as under the station there are not one but two waist high fences to stop us super soldiers. I think the devs were teasing you on purpose :D
Do any of you remember that the unreleased demo version had people walking dogs and women with babies in prams?!? 🤔 I saw screenshots for them, but they never ever released them in the game. Couldn't be slaughtering women and children (babies!) or dogs! 😊 😀 😝 Can you imagine the screaming women and the babies in prams if you'd set them on fire?! Or dogs running about on fire too?! Evil or what?! LoL! 🔥🔥🔥 😊 🤔 😁
I have another missions in America. For example Alaska- Defend The Fortress. California- We Need You. Colombia- Madman Returns. How is it possible? All Europe, Africa and Australia were same like your game. Have I another version of this game? Is it depends on when I opened the location on map? Thank you.
Memory was beginning to be a problem on Amiga at the time. As Al82 Retrogaming Longplays said, It's already fabulous for a conversion on a system with only 1Mb RAM. And don't forget that only 512K Chip-RAM can be used for data storage. 512kb Fast-RAM are just for CPU treatments. Storage on floppy disks can be recalled too. The game already needs 4x 880kb disks and mod music needs more storage than the little MIDI files of the original PC DOS version. In short, for a conversion of a game which initially required 5x 1.44Mb floppy discs (for 12Mb uncompressed on HDD) and a 386/486 CPU with 4Mb RAM, this A500 version is clearly a tour de force and I suppose that music was on the top of the list of things they decided to sacrify.
It's running on the A1200 - the A500 is just way too slow for the purposes of the video. Try watching some of the later missions - you'll see why the 68020 was needed.
![NARC Longplay (Arcade) [QHD]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/yptpWO66HA4/mqdefault.jpg)
Undoubtedly my favourite of Bullfrog's games - check the video description for time codes (including individual missions)
Thank you for the video. This game was revolutionary for its time, in fact most of what are now referenced to as RPG uses all the mechanics contained in. Even the scrolling screen was revolutionary. Replaying it in 2020 can be done, but would be very clunky. I played this as broke and clueless 21 yo in 1993.
@@gerasmus Same here, but Flood is also a great game, bought that game when i was a young teenager.
This absolute legend turned thirty this summer
In 1993 i m 15 now i m 42. This game has been my 1st best game ever. Amiga rules
Same age as you my friend, and we apparently also spent our time doing much the same things! 😊 Playing Syndicate on our Amigas! I had an Amiga500+ and also an Amiga1200... Both were stunning machines really...
I remember I used to hook mine up together using... Well, I can't remember how I did it now, but I used to hook them up together and share the memory between them as well as the disk drives. To make things run smoother.
I've not seen anyone do it anywhere on UA-cam at all, but back then I hooked them up all the time. It was only a few cables and, I think, it was a program on an Amiga Format disk that enabled me to do so.
Back then I was a bit of a computer prodigy from the age of about 6 to 13. Taught myself programming on my Spectrum, did a little bit on my Amiga 500+ and also the Amiga 1200. I was more of a circuit-bender rather than a proper programmer on the Amiga!
But then in college I discovered music and all of a sudden computer programming and gaming meant nothing to me any more! From then on it was guitars and LPs and CDs! 😊
I would've been around 16 in 1993 and think I got my first Amiga in late 1991. Really feels like a lifetime ago now but Syndicate alike Speedball 2, Desert Strike, The Settlers, Cannon Fodder, Alien Breed, Lemmings & Populous 2 bring back a lot of memories.
Syndicate was a really revolutionary and advanced game for it's time. And they hit the cyberpunk atmosphere perfectly. There was a fun thing I recall you could do with the persuadertron; overtake like 50 people and have them follow you into a car. Then get out of the car and immediately blow the car up. All of the people would be set on fire and run in an almost perfect ring of fire away from the car. This actually had an impact on the population of the region of that mission, and on the tax rate. Unfortunately none of that mattered in a play though because the difference in taxation from the very tiny decreased population of this was so miniscule; was still an interesting feature and kinda fun to mess around with, again kinda revolutionary mechanics given the age that the game was made in. An actual useful mechanic here though was that if you set the tax rate very high a region would eventually rebel and you got to play it again, enabling you to once again acquire found guns and also persuaded enemy agents from that mission. I loved this game.
That game made me a gamer. For me THE No. 1. Especially because the sound on the Amiga was awesome.
How different the Amiga and the Dos versions are!
No music at Amiga, no sound and fireworks at miss. debrief, no ping sound for the target (faster the closer you get at Dos) but the fire is colored (grey at Dos) and you can hear the screams (censored at Dos).
I remember playing this game so often that i managed to do most missions with only 1 agent.
Even reduced the brightness of my monitor by then and played in the evening/at night for that feeling of darkness and dystopy.
*"Mission completed."* forever!!
I played it senseless as well. Did the same with Turrican and Alien Breed.
@@bighands69 Played those games on my Amiga: Turrican 2 I came mostly for the incredible OST, Alien Breed both the game play and the music (the title track is amazing) and Syndicate for the gameplay (and also those really cool animation videos)!
This game is one of my favorites on the PC, and i love Syndicate Wars too.
I didn't like Syndicate Wars at the time it came out, but I replayed it a couple of year back, and it's a clever game - enjoyed it.
I was also a bit disappointed with Syndicate Wars; it sort of had lost a bit of it's previous charm, though I wouldn't outright say I didnt like it. It did had a really interesting mechanic with it's 3D objects in that the cities were destructible and even featured a kind of voxel terrain altering where when you blew up explosives on the ground the terrain got lowered with craters. For the time period the game was released this felt really revolutionary too. Sadly it wasn't really utilized for any meaningful purpose so it was only because I found it fun to blow up the entire level, got some fun out of that nonetheless.
This was one of my favourite Amiga games with the combination of immersive gameplay and cinetmatics.
Great, someone who really knows the game! You didn't miss the Uzi in miss. 1 and the Minigun from the police car in miss. 4. 👍
I keep forgetting there’s a minie gun in m4 lol
Bullfrog was a real good company.
I love bullfrog games !
Syndicate, Alien Breed, Turrican and lemmings were probably the best Amiga games there was.
@@bighands69 Can't remember who made Turrican but Bullfrog, Team 17 and DMA Design were certainly heavyweights of Amiga gaming.
My top 5 Amiga developers were probably Bullfrog (Syndicate), Team 17 (Alien Breed), DMA Design (Walker), Sensible Software (Cannon Fodder) and Bitmap Brothers (The Chaos Engine).
@@krashd And DMA eventually became...
...ROCKSTAR!
Wow!
This was the shit back then !!! The video sequences .... just wow .... incomparable
This game worked on A500 with 1MB of RAM. Even if it was a little stripped down when compared to the PC version it was a great achievement. The PC version of this and Syndicate Wars can be downloaded for free on GOG now.
Fabulous game. Many thank for the show !
Can you imagine the sadness discovering that the CD32 version just consisted of the four floppies copied on a CD while we could expect for an 256 color version with all videos, sounds and of course the CD ambient soundtrack of the PC CD version.
Yep - CD32 version is literally the disk version on a CD. I think the 3DO version has different music/CD soundtrack.
This was so epic as a kid.
Man where can I get this game? I remember watching my teacher play this on old MAC when I was 6th grade and was filled with amazement.
I loved it! Could not remeber that there were only 2 different types of civilists
This Game caught us. Watching Bladerunner, Playing Syndicate. A Masterpiece
This was thee game loved it, total classic. We need a pc up to date better graphics version of this now!!
Settlers-cannon fodder and This.The mighty Syndicate Wars. man I get goose bumps
Call your team "Marks Team" and it unlocks all the weapons and mods (if I remember correctly. It was 27 years ago)
Yep - it does (PC version cheat code is Cooper Team) :)
Atlantic Accelerator, what a mission, so hard (and yeah, I never did finish the American Revolt missions).
Still better than Cyberpunk2077, even has functional monorail
Spectacular game in it's time.
Nice memories from my childhood
When l was around ten years old, I wanted to be one of the agents, enhanced, unstoppable badass carrying big minigun... and solving all problems with violence.
And did you? :)
Miss this game....
One of the few games I finished back in the day on the Amiga - that last level was pretty brutal. On the credits - I didn't know the Amiga version was a port - what system had the first version of this game?
PC 🙂
@@AL82RetrogamingLongplays
That is a new one to me I always thought it was an Amiga exclusive. Learn something new everyday.
@@bighands69 It's on a few other systems. Sega Mega Drive got a conversion, even the Atari Jaguar!
Amiga was so good. I remember we had Amiga and my friends had the crappy Atari console 😂 I was king. Wish I could play Amiga games again but on RetroArch iOS they just don’t load for some reason
Loved the game, never really understood all of the gameplay tho...
One of the best games I ever played o my Amiga , pure violence 😂 lent it to some boy at school and forgot I gave it to him … and he didn’t remind me lol
*Even at that time* in my life and at that age (from 1988 to 1993 - from 9yrs old to 14yrs old) I realised that pirated games *_REALLY DID_* detrimentally affect the game's makers/programmers and producers/& software houses etc. 🤔
I genuinely felt bad for every pirated game that I owned.
But then, I *didn't* feel _too bad_ for _too long_ really...
Because, if I have a copy of something and I actually like and enjoy it, then I go out of my way to make sure that I own it!
I mean that I HAVE TO own the box with that lovely artwork and nice looking instruction manuals! 😊 For me, copied games always work like they're demo or rental copies for me to try out first.
If I enjoy the game? 🤔
Then, pukka! 🤘🏼😊👍🏼
I'm off to buy it at the weekend! 🤞🏼😀👌🏼
Occasionally you'd play a copied game and you'd get right near to the end of the game or so, and THEN...!
YOU discover that at a certain, particular spot, the game _ALWAYS_ crashes! So you have to 'upgrade' and purchase the game _anyway!_ So that wouldn't ever really bother me...😊
Loved it
Anyone knows what is that soundtrack sound? I love it, gives game great atmosphere, but what is it?
I’ve found several game soundtracks on Spotify.
23:35 Gotta get to the upper part of town and use that pointless train as under the station there are not one but two waist high fences to stop us super soldiers. I think the devs were teasing you on purpose :D
Best ever
Do any of you remember that the unreleased demo version had people walking dogs and women with babies in prams?!? 🤔
I saw screenshots for them, but they never ever released them in the game.
Couldn't be slaughtering women and children (babies!) or dogs! 😊 😀 😝
Can you imagine the screaming women and the babies in prams if you'd set them on fire?!
Or dogs running about on fire too?!
Evil or what?! LoL! 🔥🔥🔥 😊 🤔 😁
Are there mods or hacks for syndicate for Amiga to adding music like on dos version?
Эх, хорошая была игрушка :)
I loved this game. Is there any equivalent modern day version?
Amazing game, except the final...
Which is the definitive version, Amiga on a A1200 for the faster gameplay (as opposed to the A500) or the pc dos version?
PC DOS - better graphics and has in-game music.
One of the first games that looks and sounds better on the PC (and was available on both platforms)? 😕
Even though you're technically right, somehow I like the lower res Amiga version more. The PC version looks more empty or something.
5:27:44 - Demis Hassabis as a playtester? Was this his first official credit in a game?
Great game, thx
luv it
Has anyone played American Revolt on the Amiga?
I have another missions in America. For example Alaska- Defend The Fortress. California- We Need You. Colombia- Madman Returns. How is it possible? All Europe, Africa and Australia were same like your game. Have I another version of this game? Is it depends on when I opened the location on map? Thank you.
Were you playing the American Revolt expansion disk?
as much as i loved this gem, it had the WORST pathfinding engine of any game i have everplayed..
and the MUSIC???
There is no in-game music in the Amiga version.
Memory was beginning to be a problem on Amiga at the time. As Al82 Retrogaming Longplays said, It's already fabulous for a conversion on a system with only 1Mb RAM. And don't forget that only 512K Chip-RAM can be used for data storage. 512kb Fast-RAM are just for CPU treatments. Storage on floppy disks can be recalled too. The game already needs 4x 880kb disks and mod music needs more storage than the little MIDI files of the original PC DOS version.
In short, for a conversion of a game which initially required 5x 1.44Mb floppy discs (for 12Mb uncompressed on HDD) and a 386/486 CPU with 4Mb RAM, this A500 version is clearly a tour de force and I suppose that music was on the top of the list of things they decided to sacrify.
what a fuckin game!
...bit too fast on accelerator/emu. Great game though.
The 68000 on the A500 was far too slow for recording purposes, so this uses an A1200. There isn't really a happy medium.
#08.03.83
Looks sped up.
It's running on an A1200 config
Uhm, a little too fast.
It's running on the A1200 - the A500 is just way too slow for the purposes of the video. Try watching some of the later missions - you'll see why the 68020 was needed.
#Sty
What a classic