After nearly 30 years, Settlers II arrives on Amiga — classic RTS sequel finally gets the Commodore version it deserved

(Image credit: Ubisoft / Look Behind You)

The Settlers (1993) was a popular city-building real-time strategy game, originally released in the twilight years of the Amiga’s reign as the king of home computers. Perhaps understandably, then, when the sequel was being prepared to be published, the Amiga was overlooked. The Settlers II: Veni, Vidi, Vici saw a PC/DOS-only launch in 1996. Now this historic ‘wrong’ – from the dedicated Amigan point of view - has been righted, with The Settlers 2 Gold Edition being primed for release by German dev team Look Behind You (h/t Golem.de) (machine translation). The release comes 32 years after the original, and 29 years after the sequel’s DOS debut.

Some assert that the original Settlers pioneered the city-building real-time strategy game genre. Indeed, at the time, many great RTS treasures seemed to have popped up. Notably, Dune II from Westwood Studios (which went on to release the Command & Conquer series), was another twilight highlight of the Amiga titles. Also worth mentioning are Mega-lo-Mania, Syndicate, and Powermonger.

Minimum system requirement is an AGA Amiga with 68040 at 40 MHz

After reading the headline, some might excitedly go and dust off their original Amiga A500 from the attic. However, The Settlers II has some pretty steep minimum system requirements in Amiga terms. At a minimum, you will need an AGA chipset Amiga (A1200 or better) with a Motorola 68040 accelerator (at least 40 MHz) and 32MB of Fast RAM. If you have that kind of spec, the other necessities like AmigaOS 3.1 and 600MB of hard drive space are probably going to be covered.

Those specs are just a minimum, though. 68k processor-driven Settlers II gaming in resolutions above 640 x 480 pixels pushes up the recommended specs to include a graphics card(!), plus a Motorola 68060 at 100 MHz or faster.

Developers Look Behind You also shared a range of PowerPC-accelerated Amiga specs for those true devotees to the platform. Ancient processors such as the PowerPC 603e and PowerPC G3 800 get mentioned in this section.

Image 1 of 2

Coming soon, but you’ve already waited ~30 years

Look Behind You have The Settlers II Amiga teed up for its official launch on October 18, this year. The title is officially licensed by Ubisoft, who own Blue Byte, the company that launched the Settlers sequel on PC/DOS, and subsequently Mac and Nintendo DS.

The developer says that the release comes as a “lovingly optimized version that showcases what the Amiga is truly capable of.” Moreover, it is ready to be released in three editions for Amiga fans.

The physical Boxed Edition is slated for day one availability at €49.90 ($58). In the box is a DVD and a download code, plus a color world atlas, German and English manuals, plus four collectable postcards. On the same day, the Digital Edition will become available at €29.90 ($35).

Additionally, for those with a little bit more patience and money, the Collector’s Edition will be released on December 1. This 100-unit limited €99.90 ($117) edition comes in a wood box “in the authentic Settlers II design.” Also in the box, you will find a palm–sized Settlers II castle motif magnet. We’d also assume it comes with the stuff previously mentioned in the physical boxed edition.

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TOPICS

Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.

20 Comments Comment from the forums

RickTheMelon

As an Amiga fan, this is dearly beloved that this made it after all these years.
UbiSoft to their devs: "Can we make an Ubi launcher for Amiga and make some money?"
Dev: "...."
Reply
salgado18

Maybe took this long to add microtransactions? \sarcasm

If I had history with Amiga, I'd be delighted by this. Physical box included.
Reply
jonaswox

The stupidity of these people. With one hand they are actively destroying our ability to play old games, and with the other they feed us "REVAMPED" editions of 20 year old games for hefty premiums. If one cannot see where they wanna go with this, I think you are asking for it.

You will buy a game, and then in a year there was a microsoft update. So you have to buy the game again. New processor? You need a new binary!!!!!! New license !!!!!!! We can buy the same game 800 times if they get to decide. GTA showed the way, and their CEO was never even shameful about how they deliberately are designing the release schedules to get the most people to buy the game more than one , two or even 3 times. Somehow everyone has forgotten how unplayable that game was , for unfathomably long. The online part was broken for many years. The meme's of not being able to reach customer suppoert for months, to then get insta callback if you tell them you have problems with the shark cards. Its a complete joke.

I cannot fathom what the world has become in so few years. It was literally illegal to target kids with advertisements in my youth. Today we cant enforce that, because one of the richest companies in the world would have to pay someone to do some vetting of the ads (poor google) , and we have agreed that wow that is an unbearable weight to lift, and we wouldnt wanna compromise the stock price , amiright? Shit makes zero sense anymore. My sons school have been without toilet for the youngest classes for 5 years. They are busy buying big cars, and 200million dollar chimneys, getting ready for their announcements disguised as press meetings. And the freaking kids cant get a toilet in the capitol of denmark , one of the supposed richest countries per capita in the world. Im seriously speechless.

Big business is literally writing the laws in just a few years, and are already deeply involved for anyone not woken up yet. In my youth it was frowned upon to nudge politicians as a company. Today it is a systematic business - and simultaneously we label ourselves the least corrupt nation in the world. You could not make this shit up. smh 2 the end.

And then, to top all this stupidity and abuse on the interwebs. We have gotten the online safety act which will make sure of absolutely nothing. The kids will still get showered in gambling ads, virtual currencies for obfuscation, NSFW content without choosing it, and an endless spree of grown up base dwellers ready to greed them in roblox. U cant make this stuff up.
Reply
Findecanor

The system requirements for this game are so high that there is no factory-made Amiga that could meet them.

The Amiga 4000/040 has a CPU at 25 MHz, not 40.
There was the late model 4000T/060 with a 68060 CPU at 50 MHz though (during the ESCOM years)

And the motherboard supported max 16 MB Fast RAM:

So, in other words, you would need some specific hardware upgrades, which very few people back in teh day had.

But today, perhaps an emulator, a Vampire (CPU in FPGA) or a PiStorm (ARM-chip that emulates the CPU) would work.
Reply
JeffreyP55

Admin said:
The Settlers II launched for PC/DOS in 1996, but it is only now reaching the Amiga.

After nearly 30 years, Settlers II arrives on Amiga — classic RTS sequel finally gets the Commodore version it deserved : Read more
Amiga fanboy since 1985. It was a great platform in the day.
Amiga and commodore 64 forever is all the interest I have left.
R.I.P. Jay Miner, the father of the Amiga.
Reply
TerryLaze

jonaswox said:
I cannot fathom what the world has become in so few years. It was literally illegal to target kids with advertisements in my youth.
When where you a youth?! 1687?
All the adds have always been targeted at kids.
All of the Saturday morning cartoons where adds for action figures and othe r products, with other adds interrupting those adds.

Findecanor said:
So, in other words, you would need some specific hardware upgrades, which very few people back in teh day had.
They had 3rd party accelerators even back in the day.
A 40Mhz 040 was available in 1994. (for more money than the crown jewels)
Yeah it would be very rare which is probably why they didn't release it back then, there was not a big enough market for it.
https://amiga.resource.cx/exp/cyberstorm1
Reply
MagicSN

Findecanor said:
The system requirements for this game are so high that there is no factory-made Amiga that could meet them.

The Amiga 4000/040 has a CPU at 25 MHz, not 40.
There was the late model 4000T/060 with a 68060 CPU at 50 MHz though (during the ESCOM years)

And the motherboard supported max 16 MB Fast RAM:

So, in other words, you would need some specific hardware upgrades, which very few people back in teh day had.

But today, perhaps an emulator, a Vampire (CPU in FPGA) or a PiStorm (ARM-chip that emulates the CPU) would work.
No, they are not high (note: I am the author of this Settlers 2 port to AmigaOS).
My port of RetroArch for AmigaOS requires at minimum a PiStorm CM4 equipped Amiga. THAT is high requirements. A 40 MHz 040 are LOW requirements.

25 MHz 040 is not enough to run Settlers 2 (we tried).

For most Amiga Users - even in the 1990s - "factory-made" was irrelevant. Especially as the factory-specs were always so behind.

"no factory-made Amiga" - that is exactly what we hated back then - that they only did Amiga games for "factory-made specifications". Our powerful hardware (of us Amiga users) was NEVER supported. No support for graphics boards, no support for PPC Boards... now I am doing Amiga games. Do you expect me to do the same mistake ? No.

And of course I am not doing it like "I target x". I port the game and then look "were can it run". Of course there is optimizations, and sometimes even doing "more minimal versions" (like the 320x256 version I added so that it can run on a 68040 and 50 MHz 68060). But what is your suggestion ? That the game should not have been ported because it does not run on some ultra-lowend setups nobody has anymore ?

Settlers 2 runs fantastic on a 100 MHz 060, a Vampire, a Pistorm, an AmigaOne x1000, in Lowres Mode even on a 40 MHz 040. This is for today's (small as it is) Amiga Market pretty lowend specs.

To compare:

Heretic 2 - AmigaOS 4 machine or PiStorm
Gorky 17 - AmigaOS 4 machine or PiStorm or 400+ MHz WarpOS Setup
RetroArch - AmigaOS 4 machine or PiStorm CM4 or 400+ MHz WarpOS Setup

The requirements of Settlers 2 are MUCH MUCH LOWER.

68020 was the lowend in 1995 or whatever. Today 68040 is lowend on Amiga.
Reply
MagicSN

jonaswox said:
The stupidity of these people. With one hand they are actively destroying our ability to play old games, and with the other they feed us "REVAMPED" editions of 20 year old games for hefty premiums. If one cannot see where they wanna go with this, I think you are asking for it.

You will buy a game, and then in a year there was a microsoft update. So you have to buy the game again. New processor? You need a new binary!!!!!! New license !!!!!!! We can buy the same game 800 times if they get to decide. GTA showed the way, and their CEO was never even shameful about how they deliberately are designing the release schedules to get the most people to buy the game more than one , two or even 3 times. Somehow everyone has forgotten how unplayable that game was , for unfathomably long. The online part was broken for many years. The meme's of not being able to reach customer suppoert for months, to then get insta callback if you tell them you have problems with the shark cards. Its a complete joke.
The AmigaOS version has nothing to do with Microsoft.

And well, of course you do not get the Amiga version for free if you already own the PC version. While Ubisoft gets licence fees, the profit of PC and Amiga version goes to different people.

MagicSN
Reply
JeffreyP55

TerryLaze said:
When where you a youth?! 1687?
All the adds have always been targeted at kids.
All of the Saturday morning cartoons where adds for action figures and othe r products, with other adds interrupting those adds.

They had 3rd party accelerators even back in the day.
A 40Mhz 040 was available in 1994. (for more money than the crown jewels)
Yeah it would be very rare which is probably why they didn't release it back then, there was not a big enough market for it.
https://amiga.resource.cx/exp/cyberstorm1
Had them all. 030 and 040 for A2000 and A3000.. Also $1000.00 German video cards I bought that never worked seamlessly with Workbench.
One of my A500 had a hard drive plugged into the expanding slot. Not great for portability but at least you could still boot from floppy disks if need be.
Also had 020 and 030 bridge boards running DOS or windows 3.x. SX CPU. Clipped a Cyrix 040 SX ontop of the 386. Also a VGA card. Living it! LoL.. Not a speed demon of the day.
Reply
TerryLaze

JeffreyP55 said:
Also had 020 and 030 bridge boards running DOS or windows 3.x.
Man, I always dreamed of a bridgeboard, such an insane idea to have a full PC on a daughterboard for a gaming computer.
Way way out of my price class...
Reply

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