Amiga Memories

Monkey Archive Forums/Digital Discussion/Amiga Memories

Danilo(Posted 2015) [#1]
30 years Amiga - 30 years of memories.

- Commodore Amiga 500 - Top Games - Part 1
- Commodore Amiga 500 - Top Games - Part 2
- 20 of the best Amiga 500, 500+, 600 & 1200 platform games

In some games you can even see the beginning of 3D graphics - it's simply awesome.


Gerry Quinn(Posted 2015) [#2]
To be fair, there were 3D games such as Driller on the ZX Spectrum!

The Amiga's relatively slow CPU and bit-plane graphic architecture militated against 3D games such as DOOM, though before the end developers Team17 produced a reasonable Doom-a-like. Blitz itself (IIRC) produced Gloom, a smoother-moving and perfectly-playable Wolfenstein clone.

I have always said, though, that it was the combination of Windows 95 and DOOM that killed the Amiga. Windows finally caught up with pre-emptive multi-tasking [and while one program on Win95 could easily crash the whole system, the hard fact is that the Amiga with zero memory protection was worse], and there was a hit game that the Amiga could not reasonably represent. Even though the Miggy played arcade-style games more smoothly, it had lost its USPs and it started to be seen as limited.


skid(Posted 2015) [#3]
umm we're celebrating it's birth not it's death. for me highlights were:

* Seriously cool demo scene
* DPaint 4
* Blitz BASIC 2

low points:

* infected floppies
* no fast ram out of the box
* CD32 controller


DruggedBunny(Posted 2015) [#4]
Did you see they released DPaint I's source code? It's weirdly simple and, weirder still, all in C!

http://www.computerhistory.org/_static/atchm/electronic-arts-deluxepaint-early-source-code/

Blitz was definitely my Amiga highlight, along with Aminet and DPaint/PPaint.

I got into Amiga very late (1995-ish), but between then and 1999 is when hard drives, CD ROMs and accelerators became the norm and you could watch as people pushed the limits of 3D engines, emulators, etc (and see the latter speed up with each release).


Paul - Taiphoz(Posted 2015) [#5]
A500 to A600 and then had an A1200 for a very short period before I blew it up lol.. the 600 was pants and a total waste of my money at the time, at least thats what I recall thinking but dont remember specifics on why.

My High points, Zool, Godz and other classics like rainbow islands, bubble bobble giania sisters or what ever it was called and oh my how I loved Battle Squadron and Ayphidia (spelling?) those games sparked my love for shoot-em ups. damn don't forget golden axe and newzeland story.

Non game High's was when I erm bypassed security on the main London BBS to gain access to it's fidonet which I was restricted from at the time lol.

Low points I think james pond, I had such high hopes for that game and it tanked in my opinion even tho I think it actually did quite well..

My biggest regret was not properly getting into Blitz , I had it but never really did much with it.


skid(Posted 2015) [#6]
I purchased 20+ Amiga 600's and placed them in a case with Australian made ColorBurst cards and Kodak video printers.

Mark worked with the same crowd to release first ever Blitz, A5 ringbinder - check....




therevills(Posted 2015) [#7]
the 600 was pants and a total waste of my money at the time, at least thats what I recall thinking but dont remember specifics on why.


We had an A600... and it was I believe the first time that I realised that the number system was just marketing hype! And my parents fell for it too :(

The A600 was basically an A500+ with a different ROM and without the numpad! I so wanted an A1200!


Nobuyuki(Posted 2015) [#8]
no amiga here, fam was always PC people. Had to live vicariously through the demoscene of the 90s with crashy mod replayers and later st3, ft2, it, etc..... I know I missed a lot of nice stuff, but I still appreciate the neatness of it all


Pakz(Posted 2015) [#9]
Steam has more and more games from that period. Last game I saw remade was Battle Squadron. I will buy that when it is on sale.


Gerry Quinn(Posted 2015) [#10]
Had a 500 and then a 1200. I made a couple of Amiga shareware games with Blitz (so much nicer for my programming style than AMOS which I started on), but the market wasn't there then. I had more success later on the PC, though for that I moved to C++. Now I'm stuck again in this tacky new market ;)

I loved Rainbow Islands (came free with my 500). Other favorites: Might and Magic 2 (breath of fresh air after the slightly po-faced BT series); Dungeon Master; Civilisation (loved the little animation of a spherical Earth with dinosaurs etc. while it was generating a world); Sim Life.

Not sure how fast RAM would have helped that much. The CPU was slow anyway, and IMO fast RAM would have given a max increase of about 2x speed while interfering with the Blitter and other hardware. At least that's how I always thought of it, though I am not a hardware guy. My impression was that the Amiga benefited from the fact that you didn't have to care about caches etc. - the RAM speed and CPU speed were close enough that you had a fairly 'flat' model with the whole of the system open to you. It was only when the x86 powered ahead towards 100 MHz or so that it was clear that that architecture was ultimately superior. But like I say, not a hardware guy so feel free to tell me I'm all out to lunch on the foregoing!


Playniax(Posted 2015) [#11]
I was in Amsterdam a few weeks ago and I met R.J. Mical, Carl Sassenrath and Dave Haynie at Amiga 30 and I had a lot of fun. You could see they probably enjoyed it more than the people who came. Nice and truly great people! No wonder the Amiga turned out to be so great!

Made my first game on the Amiga https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CB-cK5x3TBQ

In 100% 68000 machine code! Won't do that again :)


CopperCircle(Posted 2015) [#12]
I loved the Amiga days and Blitz!, I remember getting my first publishing deal with Vulcan Software, for my Virtua Cop clone written in Blitz, unfortunately they closed down before it was completed/released.

Hard Target: http://hol.abime.net/4798


DruggedBunny(Posted 2015) [#13]
Cool, CC, I remember that from the magazines at the time! Didn't know it was a Blitz job.


silentshark(Posted 2015) [#14]
The Amiga was a great machine, and was top of the class in its day for 2D games IMHO.

Remember getting bitten by the Lamer Exterminator floppy disk virus (from a disk on a magazine). Kind of a precursor to all the malware business which has plagued PC's ever since, and doesn't appear to be disappearing any time soon now that organised crime/ states are behind it.

I used to like rainbow islands, kick-off, and a few others I've forgotten.

Re: what killed the Amiga, for me it was the more flexible nature of the PC. Despite early versions of Windows being so poor, suddenly by the early/ mid-nineties you could by an immensely powerful machine with a hard drive, and a graphics card (of sorts) which didn't cost the world, and was good for 3d games of the time.

That said, I'm always a Vic-20, C64, Amiga lad at heart :-)


Gerry Quinn(Posted 2015) [#15]
The PC processor was powerful and also the PC architecture was better suited to 3D games. The Amiga bitplane architecture couldn't have been worse for them.

You could get hard drives. The A500 had an (expensive) 20 MB drive you could plug into the side slot, With the A1200 you could plug in a standard 'thin' IDE hard drive - admittedly it made the Amiga casing bulge a bit!


GarBenjamin(Posted 2015) [#16]
Very fond memories of the Amiga. In fact I still have my system out in storage in the garage. Always planned on getting it out and setting it up one day. Lots of time spent messing around with AMOS, Blitz and C & Gamesmith. Had an A600. Was a great machine. I moved to the dark side (Windows) in 1998.


computercoder(Posted 2015) [#17]
Speaking of Amiga memories, I found this Amiga 1200 New Case Kickstarter! I thought it was pretty cool as most of the cases have taken on serious damage over the years of use and yellowing. These new cases have a plastic that is not supposed to yellow and is far more durable than the original plastic Commodore used.

The other interesting note is that Individual Computers is designing an Amiga Reloaded motherboard, which will allow you to use the CPU of your choice, and resembles features of both the A500 and A1200! These new boards will also fit nicely into the old A500, A1200 and these new A1200 cases!

I found it all interesting anyways. :)


Playniax(Posted 2015) [#18]
That Amiga reloaded sounds interesting!


Amon(Posted 2015) [#19]
My Creator, am I that old? Sheesh......