Remembering the CD32 (+ Amiga discussion)

Mr_Grinch

After reading the thread about Space Games/Combat I had to set my CD32 back up just so I could play Wing Commander (I could have played it on my PC but I like to relax on the sofa!). I fondly remember this poor forgotten console and wondered if anyone else had the opportunity to play on one?

Anyway, these things normally require a fairly detailed OP so I'm stealing bits from Wikipedia:

The CD32 - A tragic history.

The Amiga CD32 was the first 32-bit CD-ROM based game console released in western Europe and North America. It was first announced at the Science Museum in London, United Kingdom on 16 July 1993, and released in September of the same year. The CD32 is based on Commodore's Advanced Graphics Architecture chipset, and is of similar specification to the Amiga 1200. Using 3rd-party devices, it is possible to upgrade the CD32 with keyboard, floppy drive, and mouse, turning it into a personal computer.

The CD32 managed to secure over 50% of the CD-ROM market in the UK in 1993 and 1994, outselling the MegaCD, Philips CDi, and even PC CD-ROM sales.

The CD32 was released in Canada, and was planned for release in the United States, but a deadline was reached for Commodore to pay a patent royalty to Cad Track for their use of their XOR patent. A federal judge ordered an injunction against Commodore from being allowed to import anything into the United States. Commodore had built up CD32 inventory in their Philippine manufacturing facility for the United States launch, but, being unable to sell the consoles, they remained in the Philippines until the debts owed to the owners of the facility were settled. Commodore declared bankruptcy shortly afterwards, and the CD32 was never officially sold in the United States.

Ultimately, Commodore was not able to meet demand for new units because of component supply problems. The success of the CD32 in Europe was not enough to save Commodore, and the bankruptcy of Commodore International in April 1994 caused the CD32 to be discontinued only months after its debut.

A Personal Perspective

I got my CD32 as a Christmas present from my parents. Back in what must have been 1993, placing me squarely at 11 (and turning 12 three days later). They were never keen on buying me a console, they always insisted computers were better because I could do word processing, and get educational software and that they were a bit more productive. My Dad relented and said I could have a CD32 because it could later be upgraded to an Amiga 1200.

That Christmas was fantastic, I spent the entire of my day playing on Liberation (Captive 2) which amazed me at the time with fantastic 3D graphics, spoken dialogue, customisable characters and control over 4 robots who could swap arms, legs, head and all sorts.

[IMGhttp://amigatimes.wz.cz/clanky/dungeony/Liberation2.jpg[/IMG]

There were two pack in discs you could get, one with Diggers (Awesome...well...digging game where you had to mine for stuff) and Oscar (Pretty decent for the time platformer) and one with Wing Commander ('nuff said) and Dangerous Streets (One of the most God Awful 2D fighting games I've ever witnessed).

The discs tended to come with a couple of advertisements too, to show off the power of the CD32. Witness the UK advert for it below which I must have watched over and over on my actual CD32:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-xVY8Lio8E

It still remains one of my favourite Christmas memories to this year. All my friends had Megadrives and Snes's, but screw that, I had a 32 BIT CD based console (What little I knew...).

The Games

So the CD32 was basically an Amiga 1200, with a CD drive and without a keyboard and by and large the software library was pretty interchangable, but some classics were:

Simon the Sorceror - First time I'd played a talkie adventure and with Chris Barrie as Simon no less! I must have played this game to death.

Liberation - Mentioned above!

Microcosm - Bog standard shoot 'em up but with pretty fantastic graphics for the time!


Guardian - The Starfox of the CD32. Funky 3D graphics and free roaming. I spent way too much time playing this game.

Alien Breed Tower Assault - The game came packaged with Alien Breed 2 on the disc, but that was always too hard for me. I was always pretty shocked at how gory it was for the time and literally AMAZED by the FMV introduction.


Super Stardust - Asteroids but awesome! Recently spruced up somewhat and released on the PS3


Shadow Warrior - The only decent 2D fighter on the system (Body Blows sucked), good graphics, a bit of blood and a fairly decent combat system

Litil Divil - Port of the PC game, some knocked it but I loved it. Bright and colourful graphics.


Banshee - One of my favourite upwards scrolling shoot 'em ups and put your name in as Mary Whitehouse on the high score table and you unlocked gore mode! This meant as well as shooting marines etc, you could shoot old women and Polar Bears! Awesome!


Super Skidmarks - No laughing at the name, a brilliant racing game, loads of fun with friends over. Shame the port left a lot to be desired.


Superfrog - Need I say more? One of my all time favourite platformers.


Exile - Slightly Metroid-ish but more open for exploration. One of my all time favourite games.

Beneath a Steal Sky - Another talkie adventure, loved it.

Zool - The amiga's mascot who attempted to compete with Sonic and Mario. He failed. That said the games were very enjoyable and graphically pretty impressive.


There were more but those were some of my favourites! Sadly I sold a load of my CD32 games when I was younger, something I wish I hadn't as they're almost impossible to get hold of nowadays.

FMV!

So what did it have over the standard Amiga 1200 ports of games? Check it out!

Alien Breed Tower Assault with REAL ACTORS (developers) and amazing CG graphics! - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpMjlimdaB0

Cannon Fodder, actually quite amusing! War! Has never been so much fun! - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GK_TdYnAsF8

Microcosm - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmq4SB7YwBg

Roadkill - Check out dramatic stop motion style action - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfXlpSYlN_I

So, in honesty, it didn't have much over the Amiga 1200.

Expansions:

The CD32 can be enhanced using these devices: ProModule, Paravision SX-1 and DCE SX-32 (which optionally includes 68030 CPU).

Those devices extend the capability of Amiga CD32, allowing it to utilize hardware such as an external 3.5" floppy disk drive, hard disk and IBM PC keyboard. An Amiga CD32 can be turned into a de facto Amiga 1200 via the addition of 3rd party packages. The SX-1 appears to have been designed around Commodore's mechanical specs and not the actual production units – it did not fit very well and requires an internal 'modification' to fit properly. Consequently, the SX-1 can be jarred loose if the console is not handled gently. The upgraded SX-32 expansion pack (which included a 68030 25MHz processor) solves these problems.

As well as its own special controllers, the Amiga CD32 is also compatible with SEGA Megadrive/Genesis controllers.

I had, and still have, the SX1 expansion and the above article is correct. The actual unit needs a book placing underneath it as it doesn't have enough height to plug in to the expansion socket. Once you're setup it works fine though, and it must have shorted out on me at least a hundred times and never failed yet! I'm still rocking the same 250mb harddrive in the machine.

Finally

As I said, digging out my CD32 has really made me think back fondly on this machine and all the happy times it provided! Sure it didn't take off well, and it was basically an Amiga 1200 with a CD drive, but that's no bad thing. Had Commodore not crashed so badly it's very possible it could have done better but as it is, it's been relegated to relative obscurity, especially in America where it was never even given a chance.

If you've made it this far, thanks for reading! Anyone else have one? Play on one? Still have one? Have any favourite games?

::Edit:: Updated with some piccies if they work!

Lave II

I think I got an A1200 the very same year. Mainly because I was convinced it was effectively a CD32 - but sold it to mum and dad on the strength of Wordsworth and Workbench.

I never knew the CD32 version of Alien Breed got FMV's. As soon as I get a chance, I'm all over that.

I so, so, so wanted to play Liberation. I'm very jealous. I read the review in Amiga Power about a hundred times.

Mr_Grinch

Liberation is awesome, hunting out clues, bribing people, threatening them, killing them, running from the police, hopping in taxis. It was a multi-teared city and you could go in practically ANY building you saw.

Xenogears of Bore

I swear to god that you Brittons all got together in the early days of the internet and decided to make up a bunch of consoles, claiming that they were successful. Amiga, Megadrive Commodore this and that, all sounds so fake...

Mr_Grinch

Look at the trailer from Youtube and deny the awesome!

"Colours, so many colours!"

My CD32 could beat up your Genesis.

GrimReaper

You could run CD32 games on the A1200, I remember running a bunch of them like Guardian etc. Happy days. (obviously required a cd drive)

Mr_Grinch

Aye, the vast majority ran without issue but one or two did have (solvable) problems. I used to use my cd32 to play A1200 games, I still have the vast majority of them in the cupboard upstairs, and my harddrive with Monkey Island, Dreamweb and various other installs is still up and running.

Lave II

You had a hard drive!?!

You are like a god.

I remember when my friend had an AMIGA 4000 with a 30Mb hard drive.

It was the most powerful computer I could ever imagine. He didn't even have to swap disks to play games!!

brynstar

Man, this looks kind of cool. Shame it never came out here because I probably would have loved it. At the time I was ensconced in 16-bit cartridge systems, and of course the Sega CD.

EDIT: Yeah that hard drive sounds monstrous and impressive, especially for a game CONSOLE in that day and age.

Mr_Grinch

Had?

I still have a harddrive in my A1200 (well, CD32 with SX1). 6mb Ram too.

And my machine still really struggled with some of the later games on the Amiga, such as running Alien Breed 3D full screen.

::Edit::

In reply to Brynstar, in fairness it was more a console that you could upgrade to a computer. The base console never came with a harddrive, it just had the potential there to be upgraded at a later date.

Until I decided to write this op out, I never realised it didn't even sell in the USA!

I'm going to add "+ Amiga discussion" on to the topic to get some more discussion going

YerMum

I had a 1200, but my mate had a A4000/040 which had an expansion card that let him emulate a Mac on it. At the time I was very impressed by Day of the Tentacle running on an amiga, nowadays less so...

Rohan

I've always wanted an Amiga 1200 to upgrade from my Commodore 64... brand loyalty and all that, but also because the Amiga's were super-freaking-cool at the time, and were pretty much equal with the consoles for their popularity, though that was fading. Amiga machines also had always advantages over the pc's of the time, with advanced graphics, sound, expandability and a multi-tasking OS that actually worked. Sadly, Commodore invested too much into Amiga technology, with the failed CDTV as an example. They also thought the C64 was on it's last legs and so released the Terminator 2 pack, which included the computer and the cartridge version of Terminator 2. No datapack, no disc drive. The T2 pack sold like hotcakes, taking them by surprise, so they repackaged the C64 again the following Christmas with a disc drive, but it was too late... new C64 owners had been burned with the T2 pack and the 16-bit consoles were looking pretty for those who hadn't yet upgraded, and the 32-bit consoles were oncoming fast.

Poor Commodore... I still want to get my Amiga 1200, some day...

Mr_Grinch

They go for peanuts nowadays!

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/COMMODORE-AMIGA-A-1200_W0QQitemZ160156694760QQihZ006QQcategoryZ98930QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Local collect only, but 2 hours left on the auction and selling at £31 currently!

I also have that black joystick in one of the pics!

Rohan

I know, I want to get a C64 too, but there's a reason I can't... space. So... someday

Mr_Grinch

I love my C64 All works great except a bit of an iffy power switch which is sometimes a sod to turn off. It's also painful nowadays to wait for a game to load.

TheSonicRetard

Superfrog and Zool II validate the CD32's existence. While I'm not too particularly fond of Euro-style platformers (i.e. James Pond 2: Robopod), I can still recognize that the CD32 was a fantastic system, and one that I do not regret picking up.

Rohan

Mr_Grinch wrote: »

I love my C64 All works great except a bit of an iffy power switch which is sometimes a sod to turn off. It's also painful nowadays to wait for a game to load.

Are you kidding? Waiting is half the fun! Especially with a new game or demo, when you have no idea what awaits you after the ten minute loading session, sitting there before the computer with anticipation...

But yeah, I don't know how I had the patience to play some of those games. Games like the SSI adventures, especially AD&D - Champions of Krynn. Move several steps forward, disc access. Move several steps forward, random battle. Lots of disc access. Move several steps forward, disc access. Heh... it took me six months to finish that game because the city layouts confused me. Also, the random battle thing surprised me and annoyed me in Final Fantasy later on... I thought that style of game had long come and gone. There was another game I liked, too, that had you running a steam train engine with 3D wireframe graphics... it took an age to do anything, but still I played it.

Ah, happier times...

Sheep

It must have been great living in Europe in the early 90s. The market wasn't flooded with hundreds of thousands of copies of Windows 3.1/95, and you had more choices than "Mac OS or Windows". BeOS doesn't count and Atari was pretty much dead. Amiga never caught on. But in Europe.. The Acorn Archimedes and the RiscOS. Never owned one myself, but was able to fool around with it in one of my software classes. And then there was the Amiga. I always wanted one, mainly as a curiosity, and I was pretty surprised that they came out with a console system as well.

Seemed like these niche computers always managed to get a stronger foothold in Europe, more so than in the US at least.

The only thing I didn't care for was the crazy ass looking controller.

Rohan

Sleep wrote: »

It must have been great living in Europe in the early 90s. The market wasn't flooded with hundreds of thousands of copies of Windows 3.1/95, and you had more choices than "Mac OS or Windows". BeOS doesn't count and Atari was pretty much dead. Amiga never caught on. But in Europe.. The Acorn Archimedes and the RiscOS. Never owned one myself, but was able to fool around with it in one of my software classes. And then there was the Amiga. I always wanted one, mainly as a curiosity, and I was pretty surprised that they came out with a console system as well.

Seemed like these niche computers always managed to get a stronger foothold in Europe, more so than in the US at least.

The only thing I didn't care for was the crazy ass looking controller.

Hmm yeah, I remember playing around with the Archimedes, it was a fascinating machine.

Sheep

Rohan wrote: »

Hmm yeah, I remember playing around with the Archimedes, it was a fascinating machine.

Been a long time since I messed with it, but I remember being amazed that it could boot up and shut down in about five seconds, and the fact that it was impervious to virii because of design.

Spoilered for Hscroll.

When I was a young, budding computer enthusiast, I simply loved messing around with different operating systems based simply on their windowing system. Now the X interface is taking over everything.

:-(

Rohan

Sleep wrote: »

Rohan wrote: »

Hmm yeah, I remember playing around with the Archimedes, it was a fascinating machine.

Been a long time since I messed with it, but I remember being amazed that it could boot up and shut down in about five seconds, and the fact that it was impervious to virii because of design.

Spoilered for Hscroll.

When I was a young, budding computer enthusiast, I simply loved messing around with different operating systems based simply on their windowing system. Now the X interface is taking over everything.

:-(

I do pine for the greatness of the early nineties, all these experimental home computers... it was like the early eighties all over again. I miss home computers something fierce

TheSonicRetard

Sleep wrote: »

Rohan wrote: »

Hmm yeah, I remember playing around with the Archimedes, it was a fascinating machine.

Been a long time since I messed with it, but I remember being amazed that it could boot up and shut down in about five seconds, and the fact that it was impervious to virii because of design.

Spoilered for Hscroll.

When I was a young, budding computer enthusiast, I simply loved messing around with different operating systems based simply on their windowing system. Now the X interface is taking over everything.

:-(

God, you and me both. Just looking at that interface makes me want to just play with it.

Look at the interface I've been designing:

Lave II

Christ those screenshots bring back memories. Banshee was amazing, and I totally didn't know about the gore mode. Bugger.

Also, anyone remember that you could make your own 3D car in Skidmarks with Imagine (cf. Maya) . As a kid, and knowing that the pilot episode of Babylon 5 was rendered on Amiga's with Imagine, when Amiga Format (?) came out with a version of Imagine on the cover, and a big guide to making a cow on wheels for superskid marks I was so pumped...

Never got it to work though...

Sheep

TheSonicRetard wrote: »

Sleep wrote: »

Rohan wrote: »

Hmm yeah, I remember playing around with the Archimedes, it was a fascinating machine.

Been a long time since I messed with it, but I remember being amazed that it could boot up and shut down in about five seconds, and the fact that it was impervious to virii because of design.

Spoilered for Hscroll.

When I was a young, budding computer enthusiast, I simply loved messing around with different operating systems based simply on their windowing system. Now the X interface is taking over everything.

:-(

God, you and me both. Just looking at that interface makes me want to just play with it.

Look at the interface I've been designing:

I sent you a PM, btw. Did you get it, or are you ignoring me?

Mr_Grinch

Lave II wrote: »

Christ those screenshots bring back memories. Banshee was amazing, and I totally didn't know about the gore mode. Bugger.

Also, anyone remember that you could make your own 3D car in Skidmarks with Imagine (cf. Maya) . As a kid, and knowing that the pilot episode of Babylon 5 was rendered on Amiga's with Imagine, when Amiga Format (?) came out with a version of Imagine on the cover, and a big guide to making a cow on wheels for superskid marks I was so pumped...

Never got it to work though...

I'm playing Banshee right now! Awesome game. There were better pads for the cd32, slightly less...weird ones. The one I'm using now is a "Competition pro" pad. I'll take a snap later.

Gonna play some Alien Breed Tower Assault tonight with my friend

Technicality

Roadkill is still one of my favourite games ever. The concept of a driving game where the announcer is goading you to kill competitors (and going bezerk whilst awarding you fat sums of cash when you do as he asks) is sheer brilliance.

Mr_Grinch

I've still got that too, in original BIG BOX no less. It's a fantastically fun game and surprisingly has stood the test of time pretty well. It reminds me of an updated Badlands (which I really really enjoyed too!)

The Valentine Zombie

I somehow ended up with 2 A1200s...still got them. I remember spending half of my student grant in 1997 on an upgrade (a whole 10 meg of ram!)...I used Deluxe Paint a lot, usually for animations/Worms levels made out of cross-sections of science fiction spaceships, so the more memory the better. I even produced a wee disk-based fanzine for worms, made in shell/cli. I've been trying to find away of uploading all my Amiga files onto the pc to use on an Amiga emulator before all the disks corrupt...someone once mentioned trans-express or something, but I needed a null modem cable or something. Boooooo.

I was also fooled into buying Alien Breed 3D2...so veeeeery slow, so veeeery much worse than the original.

Unicron

Man I played a few of these games (Simon the Sorceror is a particular favourite, even played hookie one day just to be able to finish it ) but it was all on my inferior 386sx I remember ogling the Amiga's in our local tech store though, or the screenshots in game mags of the time. Good times, thanks for bringing it up again

Mr_Grinch

The Valentine Zombie wrote: »

I somehow ended up with 2 A1200s...still got them. I remember spending half of my student grant in 1997 on an upgrade (a whole 10 meg of ram!)...I used Deluxe Paint a lot, usually for animations/Worms levels made out of cross-sections of science fiction spaceships, so the more memory the better. I even produced a wee disk-based fanzine for worms, made in shell/cli. I've been trying to find away of uploading all my Amiga files onto the pc to use on an Amiga emulator before all the disks corrupt...someone once mentioned trans-express or something, but I needed a null modem cable or something. Boooooo.

I was also fooled into buying Alien Breed 3D2...so veeeeery slow, so veeeery much worse than the original.

I just happened to find a Serial cable that I used to use to transfer stuff last night. I could probably advise you on how to do it, but you do need some terminal software on the amiga (It's free, and you probably have some on a disc somewhere). You use a tool you can download to create a disk image, and then send that disk image over the serial cable.

If you'd like the cable then give me a pm, I'm not going to be in any rush for it back.

You need a serial port on your pc and a serial port on the amiga. Connect them up, make sure the settings are about the same and you can send files back and forth.

It's VERY slow though.

Oh and it's just come back to me now! The Amiga is capable of reading a PC Formatted floppy, but it HAS to be formatted as a 750K disc. You can:

1) get a few blanks, format them to 750K
2) create the disc images of your original amiga floppies and copy them to the blanks (Spanning multiple discs if necessary. IIRC the disc image software allows you to break the disc images up in to 750K chunks and combine them later)
3) Pop the 750K floppies in your pc, copy over the files to your Harddrive and rejoin them in to a complete disc image.
4) Store disc images away safely!

If you want to do a fair number then Serial is probably the quicker way though.

(Disclaimer: This is all from memory and may be totally wrong. I haven't done any of the above in about 4 or 5 years)

The Valentine Zombie

Mr_Grinch wrote: »

The Valentine Zombie wrote: »

I somehow ended up with 2 A1200s...still got them. I remember spending half of my student grant in 1997 on an upgrade (a whole 10 meg of ram!)...I used Deluxe Paint a lot, usually for animations/Worms levels made out of cross-sections of science fiction spaceships, so the more memory the better. I even produced a wee disk-based fanzine for worms, made in shell/cli. I've been trying to find away of uploading all my Amiga files onto the pc to use on an Amiga emulator before all the disks corrupt...someone once mentioned trans-express or something, but I needed a null modem cable or something. Boooooo.

I was also fooled into buying Alien Breed 3D2...so veeeeery slow, so veeeery much worse than the original.

I just happened to find a Serial cable that I used to use to transfer stuff last night. I could probably advise you on how to do it, but you do need some terminal software on the amiga (It's free, and you probably have some on a disc somewhere). You use a tool you can download to create a disk image, and then send that disk image over the serial cable.

If you'd like the cable then give me a pm, I'm not going to be in any rush for it back.

You need a serial port on your pc and a serial port on the amiga. Connect them up, make sure the settings are about the same and you can send files back and forth.

It's VERY slow though.

Oh and it's just come back to me now! The Amiga is capable of reading a PC Formatted floppy, but it HAS to be formatted as a 750K disc. You can:

1) get a few blanks, format them to 750K
2) create the disc images of your original amiga floppies and copy them to the blanks (Spanning multiple discs if necessary. IIRC the disc image software allows you to break the disc images up in to 750K chunks and combine them later)
3) Pop the 750K floppies in your pc, copy over the files to your Harddrive and rejoin them in to a complete disc image.
4) Store disc images away safely!

If you want to do a fair number then Serial is probably the quicker way though.

(Disclaimer: This is all from memory and may be totally wrong. I haven't done any of the above in about 4 or 5 years)

Damn, I didn't think it was as easy as that! Cheers for the cable offer BTW; I'll try the disk option first. I still don't get how the Amiga can read a PC disk...I'm assuming I'd be using a program found on one of the Workbench disks? And (stupid question) how do you format a disk as 750k on a PC? Been a while since I used one, and the PC I'm using right now doesn't even have a floppy drive for me to check lol. (My home PC does though).

Lave II

Mr_Grinch wrote: »

I've still got that too, in original BIG BOX no less. It's a fantastically fun game and surprisingly has stood the test of time pretty well. It reminds me of an updated Badlands (which I really really enjoyed too!)

The BIG BOX comment, made me realise what game you are going on about. I bought this, it was awesome. And the box was really fucking huge. It annoyed me, when placed next to my other boxes.

Talking of which, I wish there was a scummv-amiga-style program that allowed you to read you Amiga disks. If I had the Amiga license, I would knock that together and it would be instant cash. That or knock up a Wii Virtual Console style software to let people download the games. Surely the Wii has proven people will pay for access to old classics. And proven that the rights can still be got at. I demand this happens!

Oh wait... shit I own nothing with a floppy disk drive (bar my original amiga that is)...

Mr_Grinch

Pop it in pc drive and right click on A:\ in my computer.

GO to format and it'll come up with options, one of them is currently 1.44mb Floppy. It's a drop down, click it and select 750kb.

The Amiga can read it through some software that I think boots by default in workbench 2 and above. The drive appears as PC0: (As opposed to the standard DF0 or DF1 that amiga floppies do). Just try getting a disc formatted as above, pop it in your drive and PC0 should appear. You can now treat that as you would a normal floppy.

Dredging up knowledge from, largely, when I was 12 is not easy I did do this when I was between 18 and 20 too, but all that knowledge has been wiped out by alcohol.

Incidentally I know it can read PC discs because "back in the day" I used to run a 286 emulator on my amiga so I could play some "classic" adventure games such as the early Kings Quest/Space Quest/Police Quest and leisure suit larry.

It ran shit slow, but it worked!

Mr_Grinch

Lave II wrote: »

Mr_Grinch wrote: »

I've still got that too, in original BIG BOX no less. It's a fantastically fun game and surprisingly has stood the test of time pretty well. It reminds me of an updated Badlands (which I really really enjoyed too!)

The BIG BOX comment, made me realise what game you are going on about. I bought this, it was awesome. And the box was really fucking huge. It annoyed me, when placed next to my other boxes.

Talking of which, I wish there was a scummv-amiga-style program that allowed you to read you Amiga disks. If I had the Amiga license, I would knock that together and it would be instant cash. That or knock up a Wii Virtual Console style software to let people download the games. Surely the Wii has proven people will pay for access to old classics. And proven that the rights can still be got at. I demand this happens!

Oh wait... shit I own nothing with a floppy disk drive (bar my original amiga that is)...

http://www.amigaforever.com/kb/3-118.html

PC Floppy drives are MUCH more limited, they're not able to read Amiga discs at all, due to hardware. It's not just a case of writing a program. You'd need to hook an Amiga drive up to your PC, which can apparently be done via the parallel port.

The above link may come in handy for you, The Valentine Zombie, it has a number of ways to get Amiga floppies on to a PC. It all requires extra hardware though.

I agree though, some kind of Wii Virtual Console for the Amiga would be superb. There are a ton of classics I own that I'd gladly pay for again. Cannon Fodder being one of the main ones

And Speedball 2

Technicality

What I did to transfer my files was pull out my PC CD-Burner, hook it up to my a1200 (via the hard disk ide cable) and download some free (but hilariously dated and clunky) cd burning software from AMINET.

All my floppies and the contents of my huuge 2gig hard disk fitted on one CD. They don't make em like they used to.

Mr_Grinch

Same will work (normally) if you have an old parallel port CD Burner.