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The Amiga Thread
Squirminator2k
they/themNorth Hollywood, CARegistered User regular
they/themNorth Hollywood, CARegistered User regular
When was the last time we did one of these, eh? I can't remember. In fact there hasn't been an Amiga thread, to the best of my recollection, so I'm doing one now. I know that the Amiga wasn't quite as popular in the US, but it was fairly big in the UK, Europe and Australia. So there we go.
The Amiga was the most popular home computer of its day. More expensive than the Atari but less than most IBM PCs, it was capable of putting out graphics and audio that were unbeatable by both. I won't waste time listing every single model of the Amiga - OPs are not my forté, I'm afraid - but I will link to the Wikipedia articles for what are considered the "important" Amigas.
Amiga 500
Amiga 2000
Amiga CDTV
Amiga 1200
Amiga 4000/4000T
Amiga CD32
Important/noteworthy games for the Amiga
The Secret of Monkey Island (1990)
Lemmings (1991)
Alien Breed and sequels (1991-1996)
Apidya (1992)
The Settlers (1993)
Superfrog (1993)
Sneech (1993-1999)
Beneath a Steel Sky (1994)
Liberation: Captive 2 (1994)
Frontal Assault (1994-1996)
Xtreme Racing (1996)
Worms: The Directors Cut (1997)
There are, of course, more - but if I listed them all here then you lot wouldn't have anything to talk about!
The Amiga was the most popular home computer of its day. More expensive than the Atari but less than most IBM PCs, it was capable of putting out graphics and audio that were unbeatable by both. I won't waste time listing every single model of the Amiga - OPs are not my forté, I'm afraid - but I will link to the Wikipedia articles for what are considered the "important" Amigas.
Amiga 500
Amiga 2000
Amiga CDTV
Amiga 1200
Amiga 4000/4000T
Amiga CD32
Important/noteworthy games for the Amiga
The Secret of Monkey Island (1990)
Lemmings (1991)
Alien Breed and sequels (1991-1996)
Apidya (1992)
The Settlers (1993)
Superfrog (1993)
Sneech (1993-1999)
Beneath a Steel Sky (1994)
Liberation: Captive 2 (1994)
Frontal Assault (1994-1996)
Xtreme Racing (1996)
Worms: The Directors Cut (1997)
There are, of course, more - but if I listed them all here then you lot wouldn't have anything to talk about!
Jump Leads - a scifi-comedy audiodrama podcast
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I'm not saying that makes this one inappropriate though.
Lack of Dungeon Master on your games list is a criminal offense, however.
I did omit New Zealand Story, though. That's one Hell of a platformer.
Where Madness and the Fantasical Come to Play
Then I'm going to have to ask you to turn in your membership card.
Heathen.
Stumbled across it yesterday, thought it seemed cool.
I do remember for the first half year or whatever of owning it, we didn't have the "Y cable" (what the manual called it) so that we could get sound to come out of the monitor.
I probably spent most of my time programming the thing, but New Zealand Story was seriously awesome, as well as Rainbow Island and Xenon II.
Did anyone else play Kid Gloves 2? I loved that game, but it doesn't seem as if anyone else played it.
Also, New Zealand Story is awesome. Have you played the DS remake?
Speedball 2, Supercars 2, Speedball 2, Supercars 2, Speedball 2, Supercars 2...
I did recently review the Amiga version of Mick & Mack as the Global Gladiators for RealVG (I occasionally write retro reviews for the site... very occasionally. I've done three since the website launched, four if you cound New Zealand Story Revolution for the DS) and upon replaying it recently I found it to be a fairly solid platform game.
I got so much enjoyment out of this game as a kid. The gore was awe inspring for me at the time.
and worms
god, that was a great computer
I remember people asked me where my copy of Monkey Island was installed, and they were like, "C? D?"
and i was like 'shit son, DF0'
No, I have had the pleasure of playing it on a compilation disc my brother bought for the Xbox. I'm not sure which one, but it included Rainbow Islands, which I also loved.
Talking of text-adventures, did anyone else enjoy Silicon Dreams? I never had the intellect to get anywhere of note in it, but it was one of my first experiences with "go north".
A fully functional multitasking windows GUI that fit on a floppy and booted into 512K of RAM.
Nothing as awesome as the Amiga can be long in this harsh world.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
Dungeon Master, and the sequel (though I had to cheat to finish it, fuckin hard)
Star Control!!
Out of this World and Flashback..
My original A1000 monitor still works, I have it hooked up to an old VCR and use it to watch TV in the garage...
I had a 1000, a 500, another 500 with Grass Valley(?) hard drive and memory expansion, a 3000, another 3000 I modified to fit a Video Toaster in (not recommended) and a 4000. I still have one of the 3000s, sold off the rest.
Did a ton of animation in Lightwave for local access TV, a few band's video projects, helped out a friend who did work for Todd Rungren's videos and Babylon 5...
:^: :^:
That's the ticket. Great site, brilliant game. Me and a friend played that bastard for hours. He'd use the number pad to move us around, I'd use the mouse to pick stuff up and throw. We'd get about 4 levels in, then restart with a new party. No, I don't know why either. Dungeon Master is a must play game, no-one has an excuse to not give this bad boy a go. The magic system was the best ever, leading to genuine miscasts of spells in combat. And it was actually dark underground, leading to some real dilemmas in a tight spot as a torch started to burn down. Do you go for a fireball to hopefully take down that baddie? Or use the mana to cast a light spell so you can back away and regroup before the lights go out? Genius design.
I was enjoying Lure of the Temptress, but the game wouldn't save on my Amiga for some reason. I kept playing through until a guard outside a hut kept on killing me for doing something wrong.
Beneath a Steel Sky can go and die in a fire. Played it again recently on SCUMM (it is legal freeware now). It just makes no sense whatsoever. Great script, good voice acting, but the puzzles are so unintuitive. You literally had to use every object on every person or other item. You had to do stuff just because you could do stuff, and only later would it become apparent what that stuff did. Example: your aim is to escape the city. At one point you buy a ticket for a tour. A tour that leaves the city. Great yes, this is your way out? No, you have to give that ticket away FOR NO REASON to a super-rich factory owner so that in return he gives you a tour of his factory. Because of course you expected that to happen right? "Oh hey, a ticket out of the city, I'll go and give this to someone else and find a different way to get out myself." And that is one of the more obvious puzzles.
Heimdall 2 taught me to hate computer game magazine reviewers. The review said the game would last months, I finished it on the second day. Clearly the reviewer was a total fucktard. I was unemployed at the time and so that game cost me my gaming budget for a loooong time, and it had almost zero replay value. I'm still bitter.
I loved the Amiga though. Anyone notice how all the joysticks for both this and the Atari ST all looked like sex aids? All they needed was a rumble function.
Liberation
Super SKidmarks
Wing Commander/That Fighting Game
Diggers/Oscar
Speedball
Cannon Fodder
Banshee (Mary Whitehouse ftw)
A racing game where you could destroy things, I really can't remember the name!
Litil Divil (Or however it was spelt)
Sim City (CDTV)
Super Stardust
Beneath a Steal Sky
Simon the Sorceror (Chris Barry/barrie/my spelling is awful!)
Microcosm
Alien Breed: Tower Assault
D/Generation
Dizzy Prince of the Yolk Folk!
Exile (FAN-FUCKING-TASTIC! Never did complete it though)
Bubba n Stix
Rise of the Robots (sob)
Shadow Fighter (I think, could have been Shadow Warrior, the box is at home, it was an excellent beat 'em up though, even by today's standards)
Skeleton Krew
Then for the Amiga I had hunderds and hundreds of games, still do, all boxed in my cupboard. Some classics:
Defender of the Crown
Zool
Prince of Persia
Monkey Island 1 and 2
Rick Dangerous
Speedball 2
Shadow of the beast (1,2 and 3)
Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge 2 (Peasoup!)
James Pond 1/2
Turrican 1,2 and 3 (3 was never quite as good)
Stunt Car Racer (I adored this game)
Worms
Elite
Populous
Lemmings 1 and 2 (2 not as good in my opinion)
Syndicate
Dune 2
Mortal Kombat (It came with a "15" sticker on the box! Oh and shang tsung could only morph in to your character)
Hired Guns (fucking AWESOME game)
Alien 3
Alien Breed 3d (It's like doom!)
Chuck Rock
Battle Chess
Dreamweb (controversy! It has badly drawn sex in it! And gore!)
Body Blows
Brutal Sports Football
Chaos Engine
Probably an absolute ton more stored away, those big boxes take up some space though. I have the majority as backups in a couple of big disk trays (ah back when backing up games was not frowned upon and actually expected. Monkey Island manual instructed you to do it!).
I also have practically every demo desk I ever owned.
You could say I loved the Amiga a little bit too much, but it was during the phase that I gamed nearly everyday and, in my youth, actually had enough free time to get away with it.
Now I feel lucky that last night I was able to put an hour in to Crackdown.
PSN: SirGrinchX
Oculus Rift: Sir_Grinch
Also: DF0: was a floppy drive. DH0: Was the Hard Drive.
I was an ST owner during the Amiga's heyday. But I'd grown up on the Sinclair Spectrum in the 8-bit era, so Commodore was kind of the enemy.
The ST and Amiga had largely the same games line-up at least until about 1993. The ST could push polygons marginally faster but the Amiga was better at 2D (which of course 95% of games still were back then) with a blitter chip as standard and a larger on-screen colour palette.
They were really the last two 'other' personal computers to be genuinely successful before the IBM-compatible PC and, to a lesser extent, the Apple Mac finally took over the entire freakin' world.
But I always admired the Amiga's tenacity - somehow it stayed a workable platform long after the world at large had abandoned it, and its fanbase simply refused to let it die. There's no way in hell it should've survived through the late '90s, but somehow it did. And for that, I tip my hat to the Commodore Amiga, although to date I've never actually owned one.
Steam | XBL
Awesome Games -
Gaurdian: Game of Kings (starfox clone!)
Zool 1+2
Settlers
Base Jumpers
Mad Bomber
Oscar
Pinball Dream/Fantasies
Loads more I can't remember.
God, my parents were dirty pirates back in the day, I didn't realise that amiga games werent supposed to come on blank floppy disks with marker pen on them for years...
And shame on you Squirminator2k for not putting in any Bitmap Brothers games.
By the way, I play Monkey Island from DF0 AND DF1. Yes, I had a second disk drive.
---
I've got a spare copy of Portal, if anyone wants it message me.
MAN, I loved this game...
Bombing missions, strafing runs, dogfights...it had it all, with a great story too...
The way your plane took damage was the best thing ever back then..I bet I could play this for ours still today.
I don't think t he A500 is capable of using a vga monitor. Well, I'm sure it's technically feasible, but I don't know if a product to do it actually exists. The Amiga used an extremely low refresh rate, below what most VGA monitors can handle. Not just a question of getting a cable with the right pinouts.
The full desktop sized machines (ie A2000) had a special expansion slot to plug in a card that would let you use a VGA screen, and even then it's capped at 60hz. I have one in mine, and it works splendidly:
There do exist adapters to give the Amiga a composite output so you can use it on a regular television, but the quality is amazingly shitty. Maybe fine for games, but try to read text on the desktop and you'll give yourself a headache.
Edit: Also!
1. I was going to mention Amiga Forever, but I was a bit wary of doing so - it's the E word, y'see.
2. You are right, and I will not go outside and throttle myself. Speedball II and The Chaos Engine are two of my favourite games of all time, and I'm also quite fond of Gods ("Into the wonderful").
3. I had my copy installed on my Hard Drive. My second Hard Drive. Alongside LeChuck's Revenge, Beneath a Steel Sky, and a WHDInstall of Simon the Sorcerer CD32 (full talkie soundtrack! Chris Barrie! Lawks!).
Hey, don't forget Elite 2: Frontier. The entire universe on a floppy. And now they're trying to convince us we need Blu-Ray?!
And forever one of the greatest games ever.
Amigaforever is legal, btw. They bought the rights to the OS from... whoever the hell owns them now.
Cinemaware, oh yes. I think my favorite was IT Came from the Desert, but they are all good. I believe you can also download most of them for free now (legal abandon/freeware, direct from the developers www.cinemaware.com )