Guardian, The Amiga’s Answer To Nintendo’s Starfox

Guardian was clearly aiming to ride the wave of Nintendo’s hugely successful Starfox franchise—but did it succeed? Sales figures were never made public, and while the game did see releases on both CD32 and AGA formats, it never really “took off” in terms of media attention or marketing push.

Acid quickly built up an impressive catalogue, releasing titles like Roadkill, Guardian, Gloom, Skidmarks, and Woody’s World within just a few short years. Each of them was a strong release in its own right, and it didn’t take long before the developer/publisher had earned a well-deserved reputation for quality.

Guardian is a vector-based action game where you pilot a ship with one simple mission: blast everything in sight and protect mankind.

The game delivers impressive visuals and responsive controls, though it takes a little practice to master the quick-turn mechanic. Once you do, it really clicks.

Both the graphics and sound stand well above average, but what makes Guardian truly special is its technical wizardry. It pushes the Amiga hardware far beyond what was thought possible, using clever programming tricks that defy the limitations of the chipset.

The CD32 version comes with awesome exclusive CDDA music, and it could easily have been the definitive edition. Unfortunately, the game is a little too demanding for the hardware, which makes it run slower than it should. That said, if you’ve got an SX-1 or a similar CD32 expansion that lets you install fast memory, the experience jumps from “just okay” to downright brilliant.

I recently tested the game again on my SX-1, which is purely a memory/expansion upgrade without any CPU boost. The performance was impressively fluid, but I remembered it being even smoother back in the day. So, I fired it up on my A1200 equipped with 030 and 060 CPUs. While there was a slight speed improvement, it wasn’t quite the big leap I had expected.

Guess what—yep, I’ve got several versions of this game too. Three, to be exact, including the Acid Attack bundle, which I also mentioned in my Skidmarks article a while back.

To be fair, the three versions have next to no real differences, but that didn’t stop me from picking them up. Well, technically, the A1200 version shown above was a gift from my good friend in Sweden, Jonny Høgsten, more than a decade ago. The CD32 edition, on the other hand, was the first one I actually purchased—and it still stands as the best of the bunch.

I can’t really compare Guardian to Starfox, as I never spent much time with Nintendo’s classic. Back then, most of my friends (myself included) never upgraded to an SNES. Instead, the natural leap for us was from Amiga straight to PlayStation or PC.

That said, we did rent an SNES a few times along with some games. Starfox was among them, but somehow we always ended up sinking our hours into Donkey Kong Country, Mario, and the like instead.

What I can say for certain, though, is that Guardian is absolutely worth having in your collection. It may not fetch a high price today, but it’s a game that deserves your time and attention. Personally, I’d place it firmly in my top 50 Amiga games of all time.

Big thanks to Hall of Light for the screenshots, and as always, the box shots come from my own collection.

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