Obsession is a pinball game released in 1994 for the Atari STE and in 1995 for the Amiga. Among its features are the ultra-smooth hardware scrolling and its great and colorful graphics (64 colors) Ball movement and flipper control are with variables like gravity, friction and acceleration incorporated. The game features four different tables. All levels can be freely accessed via the main menu screen.
Review
STORY / GAMEPLAY Though a pure pinball, Obsession's tables have their own little storyline. The "Aquatic Adventure" has Bobby Bubble heading for the Sitnala archipelagos, escaping from Captain Notpoite's secret dungeon and stealing his secret map. The map apparently leads to a strange and uninhabited island surrounded by a great coral reef called Shark's Nest. Bobby straps on his diving gear and enters the warm -but deadly- water. Next up is the mysterious "X-ile Zone". This is set in the year 2058 when a nuclear disaster left the surviving humans into warring tribes of savages. Your objective on this very table is simple: Kill the enemy tribe leader! Next table is the "World Series-based Balls & Bats" where your baseball team starts off in the American league and must progress up to the quarter finals, semi-finals and ultimately the World Series! This table boasts some highly original features such as the Pitcher’s Box. If you crack the ball into this, the game will halt for a second before the pitcher throws one of his three available specials at you (Fast Ball, Slow Ball or Curve Ball). Use your reflexes to catch the ball on one of the flippers or it will go out of play, counting as a strike. Next is the "Desert Run" table and its story takes place in the Paris-Dakar Rally! This table is a bit lacking the originality and variety of the rest and it's a simple old-style pinball. Well, Obsession pinball is surely great and a nice ST treat, but it unfortunately falls behind the Digital Illusions pinball series (Pinball Dreams and Pinball Fantasies titles) mainly because it's slightly less polished. Nevertheless, it plays the same.
GRAPHICS / SOUND The Amiga version includes all of the original STE visuals but in 64 colors (the Atari STE offers up to 40). All tables are beautifully designed, having their own story-line graphics. Each table's scrolling is smooth at all times while, comparably, the STE version occasionally loses some framerate. The sound is great too with some high quality tunes along with a variety of sound effects that suit its table's storyline.
CPU: Motorola MC68000 7.16 MHz MEMORY: 512KB of Chip RAM (OCS chipset - A500), 512 KB of Slow RAM or Trapdoor RAM can be added via the trapdoor expansion, up to 8 MB of Fast RAM or a Hard drive can be added via the side expansion slot. The ECS chipset (A500+) offered 1MB on board to 2MB (extended) of Chip RAM. GRAPHICS: The OCS chipset (Amiga 500) features planar graphics (codename Denise custom chip), with up to 5 bit-planes (4 in hires), allowing 2, 4, 8, 16 and 32 color screens, from a 12bit RGB palette of 4096 colors. Resolutions varied from 320x256 (PAL, non-interlaced, up to 4096 colors) to 640x512 (interlace, up to 4 colors). Two special graphics modes where also included: Extra Half Bright with 64 colors and HAM with all 4096 colors on-screen. The ECS chipset models (Amiga 500+) offered same features but also extra high resolution screens up to 1280x512 pixels (4 colors at once). SOUND: (Paula) 4 hardware-mixed channels of 8-bit sound at up to 28 kHz. The hardware channels had independent volumes (65 levels) and sampling rates, and mixed down to two fully left and fully right stereo outputs