Although the A1200 and A4000 are superficially the same Amiga, with
the same basic chipset, memory and stuff, there are some differences
between them that cause games to fail on the A4000 even if they have
been checked out on the A1200. The problem is, in some cases these
games are marked "AGA compatible" when what the publishers really
mean is "A1200 compatible".
And then of course, there are the games that were released before the
AGA Amigas, which stand as much chance of failing on the A1200 as they
do on the A4000.
But in either case, the rules for getting a game to work are pretty
much the same. First, try the Early Startup options (hold down both
mouse buttons during system startup). Quite often all that's required
is to boot up in either ECS or OCS mode, sometimes disabling the CPU
caches as well.
If that doesn't work, the next step is to use a degrader utility. I
use Degrader, Relokick or TUDE, depending on the game in question.
First of all, try degrading as much as possible, without degrading the
system so far that it drops below any minimum hardware requirements
of course! (for instance, don't tell the degrader to emulate a 0.5 Meg
Amiga if the game you're trying to run requires a 1 Meg Amiga...)
The list below details the compatability of all my games with either
the A4000/030 or the A4000/060 or both.
And if you want to know what the most expensive degrader in the world is,
then check out the SuperCars 2 entry...
Note: I've only listed a game as being HD installable if the game itself
provides for it. There are, however, a growing number of third party
patches to install games to HD - check Aminet!
Key:
N - Not compatible
O, E, A = OCS, ECS or AGA compatible
C - Disable Caches (68030/68060)
D - Disable Data Cache (68060)
R - Rekick with KS1.3
G - Use Degrader/TUDE
S - Boot without SetPatch
V - Relocate VBR to $0
T - Use DTACK
! - Hard Drive Compatible
+ - Kill all background programs (if launched from Workbench)
# - Kill blankers/clocks (if launched from Workbench)
030 060 Notes
3D Pool N ?
A10 Tank Killer O#! O#!
Action Fighter E ?
Alien Breed R ?
Alien Breed Special Edition E CE
Alien Breed Tower Assault A! A!
Alien Breed 2 AGA A! A!
Alien Breed 3D A! A!
Alien Breed TKG ? A!
Apache E E (1)
Arcade Pool A A
Archer McLeans Pool A CA
Archipelagos E ?
Arkanoid 2 N ?
Assassin E CE
Balance of Power 1990 A! ?
Batman Caped Crusader N ?
Batman The Movie CO ?
Bermuda Project N ?
Bionic Commandos CO ?
Birds of Prey E! SE!
Blood Money CO CO
Bomber N ?
Captain Blood N ?
Carrier Command N N (2)
Chase HQ N ?
Crazy Cars N ?
Deflektor N ?
Desert Strike E A
Dreadnoughts ? N
Dynasty Wars R ?
Elite CO ?
E-Motion G ?
F19 Stealth Fighter E CO
F29 Retaliator N ?
Falcon CO CO (3)
Falcon Mission Disk 1 R R
Forgotten Worlds N ?
Formula One Grand Prix A! VA!
Frontier A!# A!#
Ghouls n Ghosts N ?
Gunship 2000 A! SA!
Hard Drivin R ?
Hard Drivin 2 A! ?
Interphase R ?
Italy 1990 N ?
Jinks N CO
Kick Off 2 CO ?
Knights of the Sky E!+ SE!+
Laser Squad N ?
Last Duel CO ?
Leaderboard E E
L.E.D. Storm N ?
Lemmings 2 A! A!
M1 Tank Platoon A!+ A!+
Midwinter N ?
Monty Pythons Flying Circus CO ?
Nitro N ?
Operation Thunderbolt E ?
Operation Wolf N ?
Pinball Fantasies AGA A! A!
Pinball Illusions A! DA!
Pipemania N ?
Populous N ?
Powermonger R R
Powermonger WW1 R R
Prince of Persia R R
Project X E ?
Project X 93 E CE
Putty A CA
Resolution 101 E ?
Robocop N ?
Robocop 3 N ?
Rolling Thunder R ?
Scrabble DeLuxe CO C
Scrabble (US Gold) E! ?
Sensible Soccer 92/93 Euro A A
Sim City 2000 A! A!
Skidmarks A A
Space Ace CO ?
Speedball 2 E N
Starglider 2 CO ?
Strider N ?
Strider 2 R ?
Striker A ?
Stunt Car Racer E A
Supercars 2 N A
Super SkidMarks (+Data Disk) ? A! (4)
SWIV N ?
Team Yankee E!+ ?
Tetris A! ?
Thunderhawk N ?
Tornado AGA A!# DA!#
Trex Warrior R ?
Turrican N ? (5)
TV Sports Football N ?
UMS E! ?
UN Squadron N ?
Vaxine CO ?
Worms A! DA! (6)
Worms DC ? A!
Xenon N ?
Xenon 2 N ?
XTreme Racing ? A!
Zeewolf A A
Zeewolf 2 ? CA
Notes:
1. There is a small gfx glitch in-game, which may cause the game
to be classed as N by some.
2. Although Carrier Command will load and appear to run just fine,
any keyboard input will result in the game going into slow
motion. It is possible to play the game entirely with mouse
input, but it isn't much fun, so I've classed it as N here.
3. Falcon doesn't appear to limit it's internal speed, so whereas
on the 030/25 it runs rather smoothly, on the 060/50 it runs
waaaay too fast!
4. Super Skidmarks will install entirely to HD with the addition
of the data disk. Otherwise it only partly installs.
5. Turrican, like Apache, has some gfx glitches here and there.
Since they are worse than in Apache, I've listed Turrican as N,
though it doesn't actually fail to load/run.
6. Worms can run with the 060 data cache enabled if the hdworm
executable is decrunched (using xfddecrunch or similar).
For games not listed here, check out Gerald Yuen's homepage - see the
links list back on the main page.