The settlers - the very first in the computer game series from 1993, is one of my favourite games. Scrolling around the map, gradually building up my village, sending geologists into the mountains, optimizing the road network, and a million other activities at a relaxed pace. And just taking in the sights and sounds of the whole village performing all its assigned tasks of course. It was a wonderful strategy game.
It was also perhaps the first game which made me think about computer hardware expansions. Settlers had a lot of stuff to keep track of, and larger maps were completely out of reach for any actual Amiga I ever came across. On an unexpanded Amiga 500, you did not even get all the sound effects. My friend who got the game first did have 1 MB of memory, but also a second floppy drive which apparently took some small amount of memory from the game, kicking it into reduced sound mode.
When I got the game myself (I fell in love it pretty much the first time I saw it), I brought it home and ran it on my Amiga 500+ with one MB of memory and no external drives. Not only did I get a few more sound effects, I also got the option to have music! Great music at that. A long, medieval-sounding, epic soundtrack of a song, with emotional ups and downs making the whole game feel even bigger and somewhat more serious.
I recently found a fantastic piano rendition on Youtube. 13 minutes long, and perfectly capturing all the magic of the original.
Highly recommended.
I should fire up an emulator … Perhaps try a huge map I could never play on a real machine …
… wonder if I still have my saves from a bunch of years ago when I started playing the game in emulation from the start? I got a lot further than I ever did back in the day.
Anyway: longest, most roundabout listening recommendation yet?