Out Of The Blue? – Tales Of Gorluth

Every now and then, while browsing gaming websites, reading magazines, or catching up on retro gaming news, I stumble across new titles or work-in-progress updates for both old and new platforms. It’s not often I completely miss the announcement of a major commercial release — but somehow, once again, I did.

Luckily, I wasn’t too late to the party. The very day I placed my order — about two weeks ago — the game sold out on the developer’s website. Talk about timing! I ended up ordering two copies just to be safe. The second one might end up in the hands of a fellow Amiga enthusiast someday — we’ll see.

Now, you might be wondering: What exactly is Tales of Gorluth? To be honest… I’m not entirely sure myself. I’ve only seen a few underwhelming YouTube clips and some screenshots that didn’t really explain much. I’ll probably end up recording my own footage and capturing proper screenshots — when time allows, of course.

Unfortunately, the game doesn’t seem to run in E-UAE at the moment. It’s probably just a configuration issue on my end, but until I sort that out, this one remains a bit of a mystery. Time will tell.

The game arrived in a standard jewel case — not sealed, but it did include a printed manual and inlay, though with only limited information. One thing that was clearly listed, however, were the minimum system requirements: 68030(!) CPU, ECS or AGA chipset, 2MB of chip RAM, 1MB of fast RAM, and a hard drive. That’s quite a spec list — especially considering that the A1200 only came with a 68020 and 2MB of chip RAM as standard.

The reason for these hefty requirements? The game was developed using the Backbone engine, which, as many of you know, is fairly demanding. Other Backbone-based games have shown similar performance needs, so this isn’t entirely surprising.

I’ll return with more in-depth impressions once I’ve had time to properly test the game. So far, it looks promising — but I need to put my nostalgic bias aside and give it a fair evaluation rather than getting caught up in the hype of “Yay, a new Amiga game!”

P.S. The music is composed by a band (or group?) called Blue Metal Rose, and there’s even a track by the legendary Chris Huelsbeck included. I’ll dig deeper into the soundtrack after I’ve spent more time with the game.

Oh — and yes, I’m back! Expect more updates and Amiga news from me soon.