Classic PC strategy game Master of Magic gets an Amiga 68K port

Master of Magic has made its way to the Amiga, more than 30 years after its original PC release. Developer Angree has released a native Amiga 68K conversion of the fantasy strategy game, using the ReMoM engine to bring its empire building, tactical battles and extensive magic system to Motorola 680×0 hardware. The port supports AGA and RTG graphics, includes native Paula audio and runs directly under AmigaOS without PC emulation.

A fantasy strategy classic from MicroProse

Originally released for MS-DOS in 1994, Master of Magic was developed by Simtex and published by MicroProse. Designed by Steve Barcia, it followed the studio’s earlier Master of Orion, swapping space exploration for a fantasy setting filled with rival wizards, competing civilisations and magical creatures.

Players take control of a wizard seeking dominance over two interconnected worlds, Arcanus and Myrror. Starting with a small settlement, they’ll establish new cities, manage resources, construct buildings, recruit armies and explore unfamiliar territory. Each world contains different races, creatures and resources, with magical towers providing connections between them.

There’s plenty happening beyond city management. Master of Magic features tactical battles in which individual units move across a battlefield, supported by spells capable of influencing combat. Players can summon creatures, strengthen their troops, attack enemies directly or use magic to improve their cities.

Wizard customisation plays a major role, too. Choosing different magical abilities and spellbooks changes the spells available for research, giving players several approaches to military expansion and economic development. Victory comes through eliminating rival wizards or successfully casting the Spell of Mastery.

ReMoM brings the PC original to AmigaOS

The new Amiga release uses ReMoM, a reconstruction of the original Master of Magic engine developed by jbalcomb. The project translates disassembled game code into C, creating a foundation developers can adapt for different operating systems and processor architectures.

For the Amiga conversion, developer Angree has adapted the engine to run natively on Motorola 68k processors. The conversion draws on software components from the developer’s previous Amiga versions of OpenTTD and OpenXcom. These provide graphics, audio and operating system routines adapted for Amiga hardware. It’s a native application rather than a PC game running inside an emulator. The Amiga handles the game through its own operating system, graphics hardware and audio system.

Hardware requirements and display options

Master of Magic requires a Motorola 68020 processor or better, with a 50 MHz 68030 recommended for gameplay. The port supports Amiga computers equipped with the AGA chipset and systems using RTG graphics cards through CyberGraphX or Picasso96.

The minimum operating system requirement is Kickstart and Workbench 3.1. Players need 8 MB of Fast RAM, plus 2 MB of Chip RAM for AGA configurations. Storage requirements are relatively modest. The game needs approximately 25 MB of disk space, increasing to around 60 MB with the optional music files installed.

The conversion runs on an AmigaOS screen, allowing Workbench to remain active during gameplay. A dedicated preferences utility and an in-game Amiga Options menu provide settings for display modes, the screen title bar, frame-rate information and mouse pointer behaviour.

Paula audio and optional MIDI music conversion

Audio receives its own Amiga implementation. The port uses the computer’s Paula sound hardware directly, avoiding software mixing and the additional processor load associated with it. Music requires a separate conversion process. The original PC game uses General MIDI, so the Amiga release includes an optional utility for converting the musical data into 11 kHz mono IMA ADPCM audio files.

The conversion utility runs under Linux or Windows Subsystem for Linux. Once processed, the resulting 116 music files occupy approximately 32 MB and can be streamed from disk during gameplay. Players who don’t need music can skip the conversion entirely. Sound effects remain available through the native Paula audio implementation.

Original game files are required

The Amiga release doesn’t include the commercial Master of Magic game data. Players must provide the original files from an existing copy, with the GOG version of Master of Magic Classic supported. Installation involves copying the required LBX resource files and CONFIG.MOM into a directory on the Amiga, followed by extracting the port into the same location.

Existing save files can be transferred between the PC and Amiga versions in either direction, allowing players to continue their games across both platforms. The current release is a preview build, with the Amiga-specific implementation covering graphics, audio, system integration and the reconstructed game engine. It brings the original Master of Magic campaign, its two-world setting and its turn-based strategy gameplay to native Amiga 68K hardware.

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