Agony (1992 video game)

Agony is a horizontally scrolling shooter with a surreal fantasy background. It was released by Psygnosis in 1992 for the Amiga.[1] Agony features a barn owl flying its way through six worlds filled with monsters. The owl uses various waves of echolocation which the player fires at the enemies.

Agony
Cover art by Roger Dean
Developer(s)Art & Magic
Publisher(s)Psygnosis
Designer(s)Yves Grolet
Platform(s)Amiga
Release
Genre(s)Scrolling shooter
Mode(s)Single-player

Plot

According to the manual backstory, the sun-wizard master Acanthopsis discovers the "Cosmic Power" with a toll on his life. Before dying he teaches it to his disciples, Alestes and Mentor. Alestes has been transformed into a barn owl, and has to pass through Mentor's traps and monsters in order to reach the Cosmic Power.

Music

The theme song is by Tim Wright, a classically themed, piano-led instrumental. The title song was adapted without giving him proper credit by the keyboardist of Dimmu Borgir in the song "Sorgens Kammer" for their Stormblåst album.[2] The band did not know about this. Following several months of communication between Wright and Dimmu Borgir, and in a nod to the composer, the band did not include the track on a later re-recording of Stormblåst.[3] The title song is also slightly different from the version that Wright originally submitted to Art & Magic. Franck Sauer advised Wright that he could source improved piano sounds for the piece, and requested permission to change them. Wright agreed, but did not hear the end result before the game went to the final master, and consequently some notes within the piece were transposed; this 'mistake' was also covered by Dimmu Borgir.[2]

Legacy

Around 2010, graphic artist Franck Sauer started to offer the game's binary files (ADF format) for free download on his personal webpage, making the game Freeware.[4] On July 4, 2020, the programmer of the game, Yves Grolet, uploaded all his Amiga development files (which included full source code for Agony) to WeTransfer.[5][6]

References
  1. "Agony". Lemon Amiga.
  2. Agony notes at Psygnosiss
  3. Re-recording information at Punk TV
  4. Agony by Franck Sauer on "From fat pixels to tiny triangles" (accessed 2020-10-30)
  5. 30 years later, here are all the files from my last Amiga hard drive. by Yves Grolet on Facebook (2020-07-04)
  6. "Source code released of legendary Amiga game Agony". GenerationAmiga.com. 8 July 2020. Archived from the original on 9 July 2020. Retrieved 9 July 2020.
  • Agony page from the game's artist Franck Sauer
  • Agony at Amiga Hall of Light
  • Agony at Psygnosis.org
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