AMIGA LIMBO OF THE LOST FROM CD32 The Unseen Unreleased Amiga Game Collection
According to the various interviews with the developers, Limbo of the Lost was in development for over 10 years. The original prototype was developed for the Amiga personal computer. The developers released a few images of this early, incomplete prototype as part of a bunch of press that included a preview in Amiga Computing issue 88 (July 1995, page 98) and The One Amiga issue 81 (June 1995, page 32). A demo was released on one of the two cover CDs that came with Amiga CD32 Gamer issue 12 (May 1995, page 18).
Playing the Demo[]
Limbo of the Lost Amiga Demo Speedrun
Full playthrough.
The demo of the Amiga version is very short. It consists of only two rooms, and is on a strict timer that is about 1 minute and 10 seconds long. The timer begins after getting past the tutorial messages, and on top of that, Briggs keeps on knocking on the screen after just a few seconds of not making any interaction, further complicating any attempts at interacting with the demo. Once the timer runs out, the demo goes back to the "click here to run the demo" screen.
To complete the demo, you need to open the locked door in the starting room. This can be done as follows (keep in mind that you need to right-click to swap between different interactions):
- Take the unlit torch from the wall on the right.
- Go through the door on the far right.
- Use the unlit torch on the jar of human fat on the table.
- Use the unlit torch on the lit torch on the wall.
- Return to the previous room.
- Use the lit torch on the locked door.
And that's it, demo complete.
The demo can be played in WinUAE emulator, using an image of the CD32 disc. You can find the disc and the instructions below:
- https://thecakeisaliegaming.wordpress.com/2016/01/29/amiga-cd32-emulation-guide/
- https://archive.org/details/amiga-cd-32-gamer-vol-12
Remember to set the Frequency in the Sound settings to 22050, otherwise the sounds will be garbled!
Comparisons[]
'Dose', a Neogaf poster recognized the background of a couple of the images as being very similar to another Amiga game called Guy Spy. The poster then created this comparison gif:
Looking closely, one can see that while the images are not identical, there are clearly similarities that could not have occurred by chance. Many of the lines in the images match up exactly:
Now, it is important to note that many, if not most, game developers use art from other games and copyrighted sources during the prototyping process. In fact, there is an entertainment-industry-wide concept known as a rip-o-matic wherein creative professionals "rip" existing assets from a commercial product and hack them together to help visualize their upcoming product. Since a rip-o-matic is never sold or even shown to the public, this is a perfectly normal and legal thing to do. It is only the apparently plagiarized assets in the final Limbo of the Lost commercial product that make this Guy Spy correlation noteworthy.
A Neogaf poster went so far as to make this extremely detailed comparison image.
Among other comparisons, the animations of the main character of Cruise for a Corpse bear a notable resemblance to Briggs in the Amiga prototype:
Some of Briggs's voice quips heard in the Amiga demo are the same as in Valhalla and the Lord of Infinity, though voice acted by Laurence Francis.
Concept Art[]
It is interesting to note that the characters in the Amiga screenshots bear a close resemblance to their associated concept art, while the characters in the final product bear nearly none. It could be thought that, perhaps, the developers changed their minds over the course of the 10 year dev-cycle, but this seems unlikely for the simple reason that they continued to show the same concept art to the press -- even up to including it on the bonus DVD. Because of this, it seems more likely that no one on the team had any strong modeling ability, thus necessitating the use of any existing models that would be close enough to the original designs. Some come rather close, others not so much.
Articles[]
Screenshots[]
In-game screenshots[]
Promotional screenshots[]
The following screenshots are present in the files on the CD32 disc. The disc can simply be mounted on a PC, and the files viewed using a program like XnViewMP.