Retro Classic “The Chaos Engine” May Come To Consoles

The recently revealed PC version of The Chaos Engine may make its way to consoles. Producer Neil McKenna spoke to Digital Spy at Rezzed and said “We’re looking very closely at working with consoles, but nothing is signed at the moment.”

The new version of the game is not a HD remix or a remake but based on the original Amiga source code which is run in an emulator.

The graphics have had a little “gloss” added to them, the checkpoint system has been adjusted and characters can move in sixteen directions rather than eight, but apart from those tweaks the game is exactly the same as the original 1993 title.

“We haven’t added any new playable characters, any weapons, messed around with the balancing, any of that,” explained McKenna. “It’s our intuition that people just want to play The Chaos Engine, they didn’t want to play some crass HD remake which we’ve all seen.”

“We’ve seen dozens of terrible remakes of classic games. When we sat down and looked at it, it didn’t even need that. The gameplay, even though it is old-fashioned, it just works really well. You just need to add anything in.”

No release date has been given but you can pre-order the PC version here.

Source: Digital Spy.

31 Comments

  1. OMG, I’ve been wanting this for ages!!!!

  2. It’s our intuition that people just want to play The Chaos Engine, they didn’t want to play some crass HD remake which we’ve all seen.”

    so what they mean is, we didn’t bother asking the fan base we just assumed you would play the same game as it was in 1993 with a couple of tweaks.money for old rope and all that :P

    to be fair I wasn’t a fan of the game first time around so may be a bit biased.

    • It’s the Bioshock of it’s age.

      • Wow! I thought it was good but nothing like that! Still… people think of it fondly and it’s nice to see it getting some love.

        Bioshock of its age. Sheesh! *walks away muttering to one’s self*

      • “It’s the Bioshock of it’s age.”

        no it really isn’t.

      • Victorian/Techno mash ups? Cybernteicaly enhanced bad guys? Magic weapons?

        Yes it is.

      • Never going to agree with you. hated the game personally. horses for courses and all that

  3. Wow. Now that is a blast from the past, I sunk hours into this one on my trusty Amiga 500 which (if you’ll allow me to boast) had an external 20mb hard drive :)

    • They were so effing expensive! My mate’s GVP 20MB had 2MB of RAM onboard too. That was £320. Ugh!

      • If your mate’s HDD was the same as mine then it was the size of a box of cornflakes and kicked out a lot of heat and noise. Yeah I remember the prices being outrageous for parts too.

      • Come to think of it I never did fill up that drive, and it had a hell of a lot on there

    • Me too. Me and a mate must have finished it 5 times. Wonderful game, the steampunk look was ace.

  4. I still have this and no.2 for my a1200. Would dig it out if it were not buried so deeply in the cupboard!

  5. IMO it’s Retro, but no classic.

    Recently played the MD version to completition (Port spoiled somewhat as was SNES version by poor scrolling) and whilst i love the graphical setting (steampunk is very much my thing), it’s honestly little more than another tarted up Gauntlet clone at heart.

    As St and then Amiga owner i was a big Bitmap Bros fan, but other than Xenon, 2 Speedball’s and Gods, i found a lot of their stuff to either be style over substance (Xenon II, Magic Pockets etc) or just not all that (Chaos Engine and Z for starters).

    • Magic Pockets… Was that the one with the guy in shades? Also I remember there being a small pedal bike involved.

      • That’s the one.The ‘Bitmap kid’ shades, cap etc.You pulled whirlwinds out of your pockets to trap your foes, push bike was a power-up, you could hammer around on for a while, blating everything in your path.Had a Betty Boo soundtrack as well.

        Not to be confused with Brat, also doing rounds on ST/Amiga.

      • Betty Boo rocks ;)

  6. Great stuff, look forward to it. Noting that they are using an Amiga emulator rather than a HD remix or remake. It would be awesome if Rainbow arts (or current license holder) could borrow it and release Turrican II asap!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rvQzQL6kSo

    Utterly awesome game and a proper Amiga favourite :)

    • Oh yeah … It’s crazy to think my next-gen console choice could come down to which platform blags a HD remake of Turrican .. ;-)
      btw, there’s a shareware pc clone called Hurrican which is worth checking out.

      • That’d be too crazy!
        I still have the game and working Amiga (was at last count) but might have a look at that shareware version….the soundtrack needs to be original for full effect though! :P

  7. I want Bitmap Brothers ‘GODS’ :( Best Amiga game EVER :P

  8. Gods was bloody awesome.Even better on MD (64 colours and ran faster), plus the A.I reacted to how good or bad you were doing.Never, i say never understood why it takes so much flak at times.

    Hurrican i loved on PC, but if we are talking Turrican, pity Thornado (3D Turrican on N64) never went anywhere.

    Besides if were talking about pure Amiga code running on console, lets stop faffing abart, we all know what’s really need on PSN and XBL as of yesterday…Super cars II.

  9. Didnt think they would ever do this, take my money

  10. Used to play this on my megadrive. Ah, the good days.

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