Last updated on September 3rd, 2023 at 03:10 pm
Mega Lo Mania is an Amiga game that was released before the real-time strategy genre was established. The game is about four gods who are competing for control of a new planet by fighting over a series of islands.
Mega Lo Mania is a highly engrossing and addictive game that looks great and sounds fantastic. It is a real-time strategy game that can reach over 2 hours per level and still have that “just one more game” feeling. The game is set on a new planet, and the player is one of four gods vying for control of the planet by fighting over a series of islands. The game is simple to play, and it is entirely possible to track down Mega Lo Mania on your favorite abandonware site.
The game is a large-scale simulation game where players help foster new life and promote pizza connection.
The men in the game don’t need weapons since they all come with laser pistols by default, so the very last level of the game is incredibly tedious meat. The game is a mutant aberration of ancient gaming history, and it hasn’t aged particularly well.
The music is an arrangement of Holst’s Mars theme on a loop, which was done in awful early 90s DOS audio.
Overall, Mega Lo Mania is a great game that is worth playing for more than ten minutes. The game is a jokey, quirky way of using the components of history, and it is not a history lesson.
he game is ranked 30 of 3,921 games on Amiga, with an 86% rating.
The Remake
Gigalomania is Real Time Strategy game, along the lines of the 1991 game Mega Lo Mania, for Windows and Linux.
Gigalomania should work on any non-ancient Windows, Linux or OS X PC. Gigalomania is tested on Windows 7 and 8 (32 and 64 bit) and Ubuntu 14.04 64 bit, and with Intel Bay Trail, HD 4000 and NVIDIA GTX 675M graphics. Older versions ran okay on Windows XP, and with Intel GMA 3100, NVIDIA (6100, 8600GT) and ATI Radeon HD6570 graphics. Touchscreens/tablets are also supported, this is tested on Windows 8 (tested on the Asus Transformer Book T100). (See the Mac OS X homepage for details on that version.)
For Android, this requires Android 2.3.3, and has been tested on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and Asus Nexus 7 (2013). A resolution of at least 480×320 is recommended.
For Nokia Symbian smartphones, this requires S60 5th edition (Symbian^1) or later (e.g., Nokia 5800) – the Ovi Store should let you know if it’s compatible with your phone. For Maemo, this has been tested on the Nokia N900. For Meego, this has been tested on the Nokia N950.
If the game fails to run, or has problems, please try the following:
- For Windows, make sure you have installed the required libraries/DLLs (see Windows download, above).
- On Linux (including the Pandora), try running from the command line (from Terminal window, type gigalomania) to see if that gives any informative error message.
- Ensure you have the latest drivers for your graphics card.
- Please contact me to report any problems.
On PC platforms, Gigalomania also supports using the graphics from Mega Lo Mania (from the Amiga version – should be in hard disk format, e.g., Whdload version) if you have that game. The “data/” folder should be copied into the main gigalomania/ folder, and then rename the “gfx/” folder to something else (e.g., “xgfx/”). It’s up to you to legally obtain the game if you want this feature!
- Select game type “SINGLE ISLAND”.
- Select a player.
- Click “PLAY ISLAND”.
- A number (initially ‘0’) will appear; move the mouse over it and increase the number by clicking the right mouse button (or on a touchscreen, touch the number, then use the arrows that appear to increase the number of people). This is to select how many people you want to play the island – the more people, the easier it is. In the full game, you have a fixed number of people to use across all the islands, but for this demo you can choose as many as you like. On the first age, try about 15-20 people to begin with, then adjust accordingly for future games if you want the game to be easier or harder. Later ages will require more people.
- Select one of the squares of the island shown in the top left. Each square (or “sector”) has different elements in it, which affects what things you can make, and how quickly; some sectors may be better than others. When you click on a square, the game will start.
- Screen layout:
- In the top left corner is a map of the island. The currently displayed sector is highlighted with a grid. Coloured boxes in a square represent sectors which are occupied by either you or the computer players. Smaller coloured boxes in the corner of a square represent armies that are present in that sector. To the right of the map are displayed the player shields. If any armies are in the current sector, then the number of soldiers in each army for each player will be displayed next to the shield. Above the shields is a picture of a arrow – clicking left or right button on this icon changes the speed of the game (or on a touchscreen, click this icon to cycle through the three rates of time).
- In the main screen area is a depiction of the current sector. This may show buildings that are in the sector, along with armies.
- To the left, below the map is the main control panel. Firstly, the name of the island and the age for the current sector is displayed. For sectors which you control (i.e., have a tower in), an interface is below that, giving you control over things which are done in this sector.
- Most parts of the interface should have popup help text which explains what you can do by pressing which mouse buttons (though not on pure touchscreen platforms like Android).
- In the main control panel to the left, click the lightbulb icon (“VIEW AND ALTER CURRENT DESIGN”). A new panel will appear, with three columns of icons. Select one on the right most column, e.g., the rock icon (“DESIGN A ROCK WEAPON”). Now some additional icons will appear just below the lightbulb, including an icon of a man, with the number “0” below him. Use the right mouse button to click on the man icon, and increase the number (or on a touchscreen, click on the man icon, then use the arrows that appear) – this is the number of people designing the weapon you have selected. The clock will start counting down.
- When the design is complete, you will be told “Ergonomically terrific” or “The design is completed” at the bottom of the screen. Click the lightbulb at the top of the main control panel, to return to the main interface (“RETURN TO SECTOR CONTROL”). Then click the shield icon (“VIEW ARMY WEAPON STOCKS AND ASSEMBLE ARMY”) to go to the army screen.
- The icon for the weapon you designed will be displayed, with “OK” beneath it to indicate that you can make the weapon. Click and hold down the left mouse button to add people armed with this weapon to your army. The total number in your army is displayed beneath the shield icon to the lower right.
- The mouse cursor should now have changed to a shield icon. Move the mouse over the map at the top left. Click on the map square containing the enemy tower.
- The army will be deployed, and the map will switch to the new sector. Your people will attack the buildings there, and eventually destroy them. The AI may deploy soldiers to defend, depending on what weapons they have invented.
- To complete the island successfully, you must destroy all enemy towers and people.
You can also view some videos:
- Complete playthrough of every island (v0.25, Windows).
- Playthrough of the first island (v0.22, Nokia N900).
The game can be entirely controlled with the mouse or touchscreen, though additional keys are: P – [un]pause game; Escape – quit and return to start screen. There is also an option to enable a one mouse button interface, rather than requiring two mouse buttons – to enable, go to “Options” (from the screen where you select an Island to play), and click to change to “ONE MOUSE BUTTON UI”. This may be preferable for some users (e.g., on touchpads). (Touchscreen-only platforms like Android don’t have this option.)
When you first load the game, you can choose between two game types:
- Single Island: You can choose to play on any island of any age you like. Use “NEXT ISLAND” and “NEXT AGE” to select the island and age. You always have a large pool of people, from which you can play with as many as you like. Essentially this game style treats each Island as an individual game, with no scorekeeping between islands. (This is the only form of gameplay available in versions 0.13 and earlier.)
- All Islands: Here you must start on the first age. Each time you win and island, it is removed from the list, and you do not play it again; only when every island in an age is completed do you advance to the next age. Within each age, you may choose the order in which to play the islands by selecting “NEXT ISLAND”. You only have a limited amount of people (determined by the difficulty level that you choose on the next screen), and receive an additional allocation each age. Be careful not to use them all up too soon! The options menu in the main screen also has options for saving and loading games.
You then choose which colour player you wish to be. Each player has their own special skill:
- Red People – Your unarmed men will be stronger.
- Yellow People – Other players will be more likely to agree to form an alliance with you.
- Green People – You can build new towers more quickly.
- Blue People – Your buildings will be stronger against attack, and take longer to destroy.
Next you will be shown the main menu. To the top left will be shown an island to play, identified by the text to the left (e.g., “Alpha of the First Age”).
There are ten ages in total: 10000BC, 2000BC, 1AD, 900AD, 1400AD, 1850AD, 1914AD, 1944AD, 1980AD, 2100AD. For each island you start in a particular age, and can advance up to three ages in the future (eg, if you start in 10000BC then you can advance until 900AD). Note that different sectors can be in different ages – the age is a measure of the current level of technology, rather than how much time has passed.
The main menu options are as follows:
- “Next Island” – cycle through the islands available to play in this age. In “All Islands” playing mode, once you have completed an island, it will no longer be available to play (unless you start a new game).
- “Next Age” (available in “Single Island” playing mode only) – Cycles through the ages to play.
- “Options” – displays a sub menu as follows:
- “Continue” – return to the main menu.
- “Music On/Off” – whether in-game music is enabled – click to change this.
- “Sound On/Off” – whether sound effects are enabled – click to change this.
- “One/Two Mouse Button UI” – in two mouse button mode, the left and right mouse buttons are required. In one mouse button mode, only the left mouse button is required (e.g., changing the number of people is done by left clicking, then clicking on the left/right arrows that appear). Useful for touchpads. (Note that using a touchscreen on Windows will always utilise the one mouse button method or showing left/right arrows, whatever this option is; and pure touchscreen platforms like Android don’t have this option.)
- “Disallow/Allow Nukes” – whether to play with nuclear weapons. If disallowed, then nuclear weapons and defences are not available (this means that the age 1980 has no weapon or defence associated with it).
- “New Game” (available in “All Islands” playing mode only) – restarts the game.
- “Load Game” (available in “All Islands” playing mode only) – loads a previously saved game.
- “Save Game” (available in “All Islands” playing mode only) – saves the game. There are 10 available slots to save in.
- “Play Island” – start playing the currently displayed island.
- “Online Help” (Nokia Symbian and Android only) – launches the browser to this web page.
- “Quit” – exits the game (not available on Android, where applications never “quit”).
See Quickstart, above, for a basic introduction for the game. This section now explains the game and interface in more depth.
The map of the island is shown in the top left. Click on a square to view that sector. You can also move armies by right clicking on a square with one of your armies, and then left clicking on the destination square (not available on touchscreen platforms).
When there are more than two players (including you), you can try forming an alliance by clicking on their player shield (sometimes you may be asked to join an alliance, too). There must always be at least two opposing sides (so an alliance with three players is only possible when there are four sides; if a player is wiped out, this may cause an alliance to break up).
To the left, below the map, is the main control panel which is displayed when viewing one of your sectors. The following icons are available. Many of these icons take you to a sub-menu when you click – to return to the main menu, click the icon that appears at the top of the sub-menu (just below the island map):
- Top row:
- Person icon – displays how many spare people in the tower – this doesn’t include people put to work (see below), or armies in the current sector outside the tower. Spare people will, left to their own devices, gradually reproduce and grow your population.
- Shield icon – displays the health status of each building. When you are attacked by enemy armies, the health will go down, until each building is destroyed! If a building is destroyed, you lose all the men inside that building. If the tower is destroyed, you lose control of the sector! Once you have designed/manufactured shields (see below), you can use them to repair buildings – click on the shield (the mouse will change to a shield icon – on touchscreens, a shield icon will appear in the top right corner), then click on the building you wish to repair. Note that shields for 1400AD onwards require a factory to be manufactured first (see below).
- Defences icon – allows you to deploy defenders. Once you have designed/manufactured defensive weapons (see below), you may deploy them to the building turrets (if you haven’t, this icon won’t be available). Click on the desired defence weapon (the mouse will change to a shield icon – on touchscreens, a shield icon will appear in the top right corner), then click on a building turret to deploy. You can also return defenders back inside by not clicking on a defensive weapon (or clicking again to disable the deployment), and click on a turret that has a defender deployed. Note that defensive weapons for 1400AD onwards require a factory to be manufactured first (see below).
- Armies icon – allows you to deploy armies. One you have designed/manufactured offensive weapons (see below), you may deploy them. You can also deploy unarmed men, which are weaker, and can’t attack buildings at all (but can help fight enemy armies). Click on the icons to add men to the army, then when ready, either click on a map square at the top left, or click in the main sector view (to the middle/right of the screen). Note that offensive weapons for 1400AD onwards require a factory to be manufactured first (see below). Also note that for offensive weapons for 1400AD onwards, more than one person may be required for each weapon you deploy.
- 2nd row:
- Blueprints icon – once you have designed any shields or weapons (see below), this will allow you to view your designs, and how much of each type of element it takes to build one. Elements must be gathered or mined (see below), and you only have a limited amout of each element in the sector. Viewing the blueprints of designs allows you to see how much you need to mine of each element. Once all the elements are used up, you can trash the design by clicking on the dustbin icon with both mouse buttons (or just a standard touch on touchscreen platforms). In some cases, it may be possible to design the invention again, with whatever remaining elements you have left.
- Design (lightbulb or potion) icon – this allows you to design shields, defensive weapons and offensive weapons. Each age has one shield, defensive weapon and offensive weapon associated with it. Click on what you want to design, then click on the person icon to change the number of designers. More designers will mean less time to design it, but leaves less people to do other things (including reproducing). Note that designs for 1914AD onwards require a Lab to be built first.
- Factory icon – designs for 1400AD onwards must be manufactured rather than being created automatically. Use the factory to do this: select which design to manufacture, then set the two numbers: the top is the number of factory workers, the number below is the number to manufacture. More factory workers make the job go quicker, but leaves less men for other tasks!
- 3rd row:
- Element icons – Elements are required to design and create shields, defensive weapons and offensive weapons. There are various types of elements. Gatherables are picked up automatically. From 2000BC onwards, you sector may have an open pit mine (marked by a large hole shown in the main sector view), which requires you to assign people to mine those elements. From 900AD onwards you can build a mine, which may show more elements that can be mined (again, you need to assign people to mine each element). Each sector has a different set (and amount) of elements, which affects which designs you can make. In later ages, you may find you need to mine elements before you can design anything (since designs only show if you have enough of the required elements).
- Bottom row:
- Building icons:
- From 900AD you can build a mine, which allows the mining of additional elements (in later ages, you may need to build a mine before you can design anything).
- From 1400AD you can build a factory, which allows manufacturing of shields, defensive weapons and offensive weapons for age 1400AD onwards (see above).
- From 1850AD you can build a lab, which is required for designing shields, defensive weapons and offensive weapons for age 1914AD onwards.
Once you have deployed your army (see above), you can move them to another sector by right clicking on the main sector view (not on a building) (for touchscreen platforms, just tap normally) (the mouse icon will change to a shield – for touchscreen platforms, a shield will appear in the top right corner), then click on the square on the map view in the top left, where you want the army to move to. You can also move armies using only the map, by right clicking on a square to select an army in that square (non-touchscreen platforms only).
To return an army to a tower in one of your sectors, first move the army to that sector (if not there already). Then select the army by right clicking on the main sector view (or normal tap for touchscreen platforms), then left click on your tower (the main building with four turrets).
In later ages, you will find maps that have squares not connected (i.e., separated by sea) – in these cases, only air units can move between them. Air units are available in ages 1914AD, 1944AD and 2100AD.
The offensive weapon corresponding to 1980AD is a nuclear missile, which can be used to destroy any sector completely! This is deployed like a normal army, but such an army can only contain 1 nuclear missile, and nothing else.
The defensive weapon corresponding to 1980AD is a nuclear defence. This does not defend your sector, but if the sector is nuked, one of these will launch and nuke the sector from where the nuclear missile came from.
The defensive weapon corresponding to 2100AD is a laser. This defends both against conventional and nuclear attack.
As well as attacking your enemies, an army can build new towers in unclaimed sectors. When your army is in a sector with no other players, a clock will appear as they build a new tower. Once the tower is built, you have control of the sector just like your first sector. Note that sectors you control behave fairly independently – e.g., each sector has its own set of designs, elements and so on. Only people and offensive weapons can be transferred between sectors, by deploying armies.
When a sector reaches 2100AD (possible in Age 7 onwards), it is possible to place some of your people in suspended animation, to “save” them. This has no real effect when playing in “Single Island” mode, but in “All Islands” mode, it contributes to your final score if you complete the game (finish all the islands).
Choosing windowed or fullscreen mode
Gigalomania runs in fullscreen mode by default on most platforms, but you can in windowed mode by running from the command line with the argument “windowed”. E.g., on Windows, run with:
gigalomania.exe windowed
On Windows you can also doubleclick on gigalomania_windowed.bat to run in windowed mode.
On platforms where Gigalomania runs in windowed mode by default, use the command line option “fullscreen” to force fullscreen mode.
- Aapo Rantalainen – Maemo and Meego port.
- Andreas Herzig – OS X port, and features.png graphic.
- Fredrik Sörensson – Linux port, and switch to using SDL_image instead of FreeImage.
- kas1e ( kas1e AT yandex DOT ru ) – AmigaOS 4 port.
- Mark Harman – Main programming, and ports for Windows, Linux, Android, Symbian, AROS.
- René Thol – AmigaOS 4 port.
- Rob Hunter – Speech samples, and additional programming.
- Sebastien Chev – Open Pandora port.
- Stephen Fish – Various graphics (the good graphics are done by Stephen, except for those files listed below; the rubbish graphics are placeholder graphics done by me;)
- Thore Sittly ( TSittly AT gmx DOT de ) – MorphOS port.
Also see Licences for contributions we’ve taken from 3rd parties.
Please contact me at mark dot harman at ntlworld dot com .
If you are reporting a bug, if possible please send me:
- Any reported error messages.
- The “log.txt” file. This can be found:
- For Windows, in %APPDATA%\Gigalomania.
- For Linux (including the Pandora), Maemo and Meego, in $HOME/.config/gigalomania (in Ubuntu, go to menu Places->Home Folder, then make sure View->Show Hidden Files is selected, then open the folder .config).
- In OS X, in the “app” folder that the program is located
- For Symbian it’s located in the folder private/200353ef on the drive that you installed the game on. Seeing this folder is a bit tricky, as it’s hidden when viewing on the phone. You can access by connecting your phone to a PC and selecting “mass storage” to view the drives (though this may only be possible if you’ve installed to an external SD card).
-
- For Android, it’s located in the folder net.sourceforge.gigalomania/. You can view with a file explorer app (such as ES File Explorer), or access by connecting your phone/tablet to a PC. If you can’t see the folder, try rebooting your phone before connecting to your PC.
The log file is overwritten each time you run the game, so you’ll have to take a copy straight away – although note that the last-but-one game log will be available under “log_old.txt”; in the case of assertion failures, it will also be copied to “log_assertion_failure.txt”.
- A description of what happened, and what steps you took that resulted in the bug.
- Does the bug happen every time?
- Any details of your system may also be helpful, e.g.: operating system and version, CPU, graphics card, Direct X version if relevant, make/model of smartphone/tablet if relevant.
Help wanted!
If you would like to contribute to Gigalomania, there are various ways you can help:
- Musicians – Some more music would be nice to add to the game (music for intro etc, maybe different music for different ages). More sound effects would also be useful to have.
- Graphics artists – I have a graphics artist working on some images, though there’s no reason why there couldn’t be additional graphics sets for different styles, so feel free to contribute. Please contact me if you want info on the expected graphics formats, or things like additional data files (e.g., the POV Ray files for the building graphics).
- Porting – Feel free to port Gigalomania to other platforms – it should be easy to port to any OS that supports SDL. If you send me the files, I can integrate them into the main source. (Please check the Git repository on Sourceforge for the latest version to work with.)
- Tell people about it! – If you like the game, then please feel free to tell other people about it, on your blog/Twitter/website/etc :)
- Give me a nice rating :) (On Google Play for Android, or other hosting sites…)
- Videos – videos of the gameplay (e.g., on YouTube) would be useful to have, partly to help raise awareness, and also to act as gameplay
[Download]
- For Windows, download the installer. If you get an error when trying to run, you may need to install the Visual Studio 2012 Update 4 x86 Redistributable and/or the Visual C++ 2008 SP1 x86 Redistributable (or for older versions v0.26 or earlier, you may need to install the Visual C++ 2010 SP1 Redistributable).
- For OS X, download the OS X archive. For more details, see the Gigalomania Mac OS X port homepage.
- For Ubuntu/Debian, download the relevant binary installation from the Ubuntu packages page. For other Linux distributions, you have to compile from the source (see below).
- For AROS x86, download the AROS archive. For other AROS platforms, you have to compile from the source. The AROS x86 archive is also available on The AROS Archives and Aminet.
- For MorphOS, you must currently compile from source (see below).
- For AmigaOS 4, download from OS4 Depot.
- For Android smartphones/tablets, download from Google Play. For devices without access to Google Play, you can install the Android APK.
- For Nokia smartphones running Maemo, see the Maemo packages page.
- For Nokia smartphones running Meego, you have to compile from the source (see below).
- For Nokia smartphones running Symbian, download from the Nokia Store (note that the latest Symbian version is 0.25; Symbian is no longer supported on newer versions).
- For Open Pandora, download the binary package. You can also compile from source (same instructions as for Linux).
- The source code is available, released under the GPL v2 or later. Please see the file gigalomania_source.txt (in the source archive) for details on how to compile.
- A full list of download files, including older versions, is at https://launchpad.net/gigalomania/+download.
