Commodore Amiga Appreciation Thread

[bushmonkey]

The Amiga 500+ was my first gaming machine and it will always remain my favourite. I'm now a programmer and I learnt to code with AMOS. I had 100s of games at the time, so many classics. The one I played the most though was North and South, so good in multiplayer.

 

[petran79]

If teens and adults were impressed, imagine what a 10 year old me felt when he experienced games on an Amiga 2000 back in 1989 with computer monitor.

Though when I visited the guy who had it, he usually avoided getting us to play adult or complex games. So I mostly played arcade ports or games like Ducktales, Fiendish Freddy, Batman, Xenon 2, Zak McKraken, Loom,Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Prince of Persia, Shadow of the Beast, Ghostbusters 1 and 2, Defender of the Crown, Beach Volley, Top Gear, North and South, Warlock's Quest, Mike the Magic Dragon (my avatar), Barbarian 1 and 2 etc
Favorite arcade ports were Bubble Bobble, Rainbow Islands, Shinobi, Ninja Spirit, Ninja Warriors, Dragon Ninja, Wonder Boy in Monster Land

Also painting on the Amiga was very funny.

But sometimes he'd play or demo some more adult oriented games and I felt even more impressed and shocked. Elvira 1, Weird Dreams, Lost Patrol and some sex games like Party Games.

This was really the future of video games. But I also played on NES, Gameboy and arcades too.

There is one game I am looking for:
Only clue was reading back then a video game magazine and it had a naked female elf on a pond staring scarred at you. Must be an RPG probably. If anyone has heard about that game, I'd be grateful.

 

[pixelpatron]

This was my jam!!!

Emerald Mine!!

Shadow of the Beast!!! (Drool)

Rick Dangerous ("Whaaaaaaa!!")

Batman: the caped crusader!!

Tower toppler!!

And The Killing Game Show

Of course there were others I loved, like defender of the crown, mousetrap, playing 2 player "Turbo" racing game(if anyone knows what i'm talking about, I think we were the only people on the planet to own that game) the three stooges, lemmings, and marble madness. I also remember horribly poor ports of dragons lair, space ace, and the ultra version of teenage mutant ninja turtles. (OMG the load times!!!)Yet through it all I loved every minute of it!

Still a SHIT TON of fun and fond memories of having this awesome computer during my youth, at the time I wished I had a NES like everyone else, but looking back now I'm glad it went down the way it did.

 

[Deleted member 5457]

The only problem Amiga had was one button control system.

It was a terrible idea in the first place , but building Amiga around it was even worse.

Competition pro was a legendary joystick, but still...

You don't wanna know on what kind of garbage I played most of the time... I tried every popular and less popular joystick and never really enjoyed playing on any of them.

 

[DJKippling]

Man the Amiga 500 was my favourite system ever. Soooo many great memories.

Games such as Putty, Menace, Body Blows, Base Jumpers, Super Skidmarks etc. Amazing!

Wish i could get Super Skidmarks to correctly emulate though :(

Edit: Oh and the lesser known games Transplant and Quick Money!

 

[j^aws]

A 2D shoot-em-up that you rarely hear anything about, Datastorm, a Defender clone (Eugene Jarvis). It's also like Resogun on PS4, where the amount of on-screen shit flying around was amazing, especially for a 1989 home system game:

 

[Zvonimir Boban]

Tower toppler!!

playing 2 player "Turbo" racing game(if anyone knows what i'm talking about, I think we were the only people on the planet to own that game)

Click to shrink...

Bloody hell, I was thinking about Tower Toppler just a couple of days ago AND a racing game which may or may not be the one you're thinking of. What are the fucking chances of that?

The one I remember was top down and you raced up. So it was more top down outrun than something like Super Cars which had you racing around a track.

You raced on the streets and as you got further and further the surroundings changed, and I vividly remember one area that we used to describe as Coco-Pops. I think the Split Screen was split vertically, rather than horizontally?

EDIT: Oh shit, found it!



Coco-Pops area 6 minutes in \o/

 

[Binster]

The Amiga was the best system. Turrican 2 was high quality business.

 

[Fularu]

The Amiga was the best system. Turrican 2 was high quality business.

Click to shrink...

No lies detected

 

[Shaneus]

Yeah, those sprites look so wrong running, yet so right!

This is such a criminally under appreciated thread for such an iconic computer.

The mod/ tracker scene was huge on the Amiga. Here's a selection of some gaming tunes:

Click to shrink...

I never got an Amiga, so this thread is going to be me just wishing I had. But I did get into the MOD and demo scenes though, even though I was exclusively a PC dude.

 

[buxtoc]

Any Deluxe Paint addicts?

I spent a very long time animating scenes, stitching them together by recording a few seconds to VHS and then syncing a soundtrack by dictaphone.

I forced my parents to sit through a Deluxe Paint remake of Jurrasic Park once. I was very proud of my work!

 

[Phediuk]

Simulcra (1990) was pretty rad.

 

[Shaneus]

Best personal computer ever. Sooooo many good memories, and I even owe my professional career to the Amiga (videographer).

I was dreaming back then of the Toaster (only available in NTSC), a mini TV studio with real time DSPs

From NewTek, with the then famous Kiki among core enthusiasts and AV journalists

Click to shrink...

It'll probably result in a double-post, but I think it's worth mentioning that Garth was wearing a Video Toaster t-shirt in Wayne's World 2. I googled it first because I had no idea what it was!

Edit: I suppose, as a Genesis/MD owner, I did benefit a massive amount from the Amiga scene given how many people made the transition from the Amiga to Sega's box. You could always tell the good Amiga ports too, usually because of Rob Hubbard music :D

Such a great thread, this. Will be swooning over it endlessly.

 

[Curufinwe]

Pinball Dreams and Fantasies were good for the time. I believe the Shift keys were used as the flippers.

 

[Fularu]

I only really liked one table in Pinball Dreams (Jukebox) and Pinball Fantasies (Circus)

Slam Tilt though... could play for hours on end

 

[Deleted member 5457]

 

[Stiflers Mom]

I am currently coding an Amiga OCS shmup...



This video is a couple of months old, game looks much better, with music and lots less glitches now...
Runs on an A500 with 512k+512kslow

 

[DrunkDan]

There are plenty of games I loved that have already been listed - Beneath a steel sky, lemmings, Gods, Shadow of the beast, Robocop and lots more - so I'll add a few others

Fantasy World Dizzy

Prince of the Yolkfolk

Batman

Zool

Flimbos Quest

And of course, the Monkey Island games (insert avatar quote haha). So many good memories of the Amiga and how it was the foundation for gaming.

 

[SymbiantXenos]

Still got my 500 and 1200.

I remember the outrage over Cannon Fodder. Ironic considering it was a game made in protest of war in the first place.

 

[TastyBurger666]

Why y'all acting as though the Amiga is dead?

More life in the old dog than there's ever been thanks to add-on's like the Vampire.

http://www.apollo-accelerators.com/

(Still wish I had my 1200, sigh)

 

[Putty]

Its where my career started 8). Did the music on Fifa, Mortal Kombat 2, half the music on Colonisation and the never released Primal Rage. My early PC game projects were still written on Protracker as well.

 

[buxtoc]

Still got my 500 and 1200.

I remember the outrage over Cannon Fodder. Ironic considering it was a game made in protest of war in the first place.

Click to shrink...

If I remember correctly it was this intro song that caused the controversy wasn't it? Incidentally, this is one of my favourite pieces of videogame music.

 

[Turrican3]

Best computer ever, and one of the most jaw dropping technical jumps in history (people would not believe it was actually running the infamous boing ball demo lol)

In hindsight some games were overrated, but it is still home to a huuuge amount of classics.

Still love the Amiga. :-)

 

[2+2=5]

Some games i forgot

lionheart

premiere

elvira 1,2, waxwork

skidmarks

 

[BitsandBytes]

Monkey Island series

Loom

Beneath a Steal Sky

Skidmarks (all versions)

Sensible Software games

Etc

Memories.....I really need to pick up an A500/600/1200. Someone do an Amiga mini with 50 games!

 

[MrSpiffing]

Click to shrink...

My Polish workmate told me about this game. His mother was not impressed by it back in the day.

 

[SymbiantXenos]

If I remember correctly it was this intro song that caused the controversy wasn't it? Incidentally, this is one of my favourite pieces of videogame music.

Click to shrink...

That and the use of the poppys

 

[buxtoc]

That and the use of the poppys

Click to shrink...

Ahh, yes. Text book red-top outrage. 'This filth disrespects our poppy'

 

[Tunahead]

glad to see most of the best stuff already posted.

Here's something a bit different, but very influential:

Click to shrink...

Good ol' Deluxe Paint. It had a feature most modern equivalents lack: Palette cycling. A particularly skilled artist could build a scene with a very particular kind of palette and then animate it by cycling a specific set of colors. Pixel art legend Mark Ferrari still utilizes the technique, examples of which you can find here: http://www.effectgames.com/demos/canvascycle/

 

[chironex]

Great stuff. Recently been reconditioning my A500, I have the A570 external SCSI unit which had 40mb drive back in the day, replaced the drive with an SD2Scsi adaptor and 4gb card and found compatible ram chips on eBay to bump the fast mem to 8mb. But now I'm torn between going down the rather elaborate route required to allow a rev5 motherboard to access >512kb chip mem or just waiting for an A1200 at a decent price. Without the bump in chip mem, WHDLoad is not really a viable option unfortunately. Still I've had a fair bit of fun digging out my old C compiler, installing Vim and working my way through the original Amiga Graphics Programming books. Programming the copper is really fun and different compared to modern graphics programming.

 

[pixelpatron]

Bloody hell, I was thinking about Tower Toppler just a couple of days ago AND a racing game which may or may not be the one you're thinking of. What are the fucking chances of that?

The one I remember was top down and you raced up. So it was more top down outrun than something like Super Cars which had you racing around a track.

You raced on the streets and as you got further and further the surroundings changed, and I vividly remember one area that we used to describe as Coco-Pops. I think the Split Screen was split vertically, rather than horizontally?

EDIT: Oh shit, found it!



Coco-Pops area 6 minutes in \o/

Click to shrink...

OMG it's TURBO!!!! Haven't seen that vid before! Boban!! Internet Bros. For life!!!

Wish we could somehow play this head to head! But I guess it's best we can't since I'd of destroyed you. (Face smirk).

 

[BitsandBytes]

Good ol' Deluxe Paint. It had a feature most modern equivalents lack: Palette cycling. A particularly skilled artist could build a scene with a very particular kind of palette and then animate it by cycling a specific set of colors. Pixel art legend Mark Ferrari still utilizes the technique, examples of which you can find here: http://www.effectgames.com/demos/canvascycle/

Click to shrink...

Those are lovely. Amazing what skill the hardware and software brought to the table.

 

[Binster]

Any Deluxe Paint addicts?

I spent a very long time animating scenes, stitching them together by recording a few seconds to VHS and then syncing a soundtrack by dictaphone.

I forced my parents to sit through a Deluxe Paint remake of Jurrasic Park once. I was very proud of my work!

Click to shrink...

I had deluxe paint 3 (I think?) when I was younger and used the animation module to make little cartoons of fuzzy creatures being killed.

I am now an animator in the games industry.

The Amiga makes dreams a reality :-)

 

[Boy Wander]

The only problem Amiga had was one button control system.

It was a terrible idea in the first place , but building Amiga around it was even worse.

Competition pro was a legendary joystick, but still...

You don't wanna know on what kind of garbage I played most of the time... I tried every popular and less popular joystick and never really enjoyed playing on any of them.

Click to shrink...

Looking back, all popular home computers of that era were hamstrung by single button joysticks, especially when it comes to arcade style games. Controls were often terrible with jumping being done by pressing up on the joystick.

 

[Deleted member 28967]

Any Deluxe Paint addicts?

I spent a very long time animating scenes, stitching them together by recording a few seconds to VHS and then syncing a soundtrack by dictaphone.

I forced my parents to sit through a Deluxe Paint remake of Jurrasic Park once. I was very proud of my work!

Click to shrink...

Yes, I used to draw naked chicks quite well( for the time and a teen with a mouse and 5-10 mins time lol ) in DPaint and used a 3D fill while mates watched, until my mother walked in and I had to listen to the "If that's what you're using the computer for" lecture lol

But I used to absolutely love DPaint and Brilliance, had one of my pix shown in the gallery of Amiga Format issue that I was well proud of.
Loved using Imagine too.

The funniest thing is I learnt to program on an Amstrad CPC 464, got an Amiga and just loved art/animations and 3D on it and now I'm a professional programmer. Its like the machine really tapped my artistic side and I loved that. Still have my original A1200 that I still use and updated with CF cards, WiFi, HDMI etc.
Had an A500, A2000( with 286 PC card and 8Meg hard drive lol ), and an A1200( with Blizzard 68030@50 and 8 gig ram expansion ) - the one I still have.

 

[Keyframe]

Amiga 500 is the reason I am still an avid gamer today. Best piece of electronics ever made.

 

[BradleyLove]

A 2D shoot-em-up that you rarely hear anything about, Datastorm, a Defender clone (Eugene Jarvis). It's also like Resogun on PS4, where the amount of on-screen shit flying around was amazing, especially for a 1989 home system game:

Click to shrink...

Preach on, brother. You have no idea how happy I am to see your post. If I recall Datastorm was a shareware game or something similar. Absolutely loved it.

 

[Orfax]

The Amiga was my teen years. I learnt to program C on it, and became a programmer thanks to it.

Any Deluxe Paint addicts?

Click to shrink...

Yes. I recreated metal album covers with it.

There were so many great games. After school my friends would come over and we would play the following games:
Kick Off 2 / Stunt Car Racer / Firepower

Lotus Turbo Challenge / Speedball 2 / Silkworm

Also loved the following games:
Faery Tale / Emerald Mine / Black Crypt

plus so many more....

 

[Fularu]

The lack of crazy cars 2 lovers saddens me :(

 

[MysteryM]

Of course there were others I loved, like defender of the crown, mousetrap, playing 2 player "Turbo" racing game(if anyone knows what i'm talking about, I think we were the only people on the planet to own that game) the three stooges, lemmings, and marble madness. I also remember horribly poor ports of dragons lair, space ace, and the ultra version of teenage mutant ninja turtles. (OMG the load times!!!)Yet through it all I loved every minute of it!

Click to shrink...

I'm assuming you mean Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge and its brother, Supercars both by Gremlin Graphics - two absolutely amazing games.

 

[basic_text]

If I remember correctly it was this intro song that caused the controversy wasn't it? Incidentally, this is one of my favourite pieces of videogame music.

Click to shrink...

I believe they also irked the Royal Legion by using the poppy imagery.

WHOOPS! apologies, I didn't see it mentioned earlier. Guess I was just too excited to post in an Amiga thread!

 

[Deleted member 14080]

I used to own Amiga 1200.
Good times.

 

[basic_text]

My Amiga history is that me and my brother got an A600 for Christmas (I forget my age!).

I believe Wizball was the first Amiga game I played. Given that we didn't have a pc, the Amiga was responsible for introducing me to the adventure game genre.

I remember that I used to play adventure games with my mum given that my spelling/vocab wasn't great at that age. I seriously think it was responsible for who I am today.

You haven't lived until you've played Monkey Island 2 on the Amiga with only one disk drive and 11 disks to keep swapping!

 

[Hyaku Shiki]

I love my Amiga!! This makes me wonder if they have Amiga games running on an SNES Classic. Anyone know? I'll have to ask in their thread.

 

[Fularu]

The first Amiga game I played was Hybris

Yep I was off to a great start!

 

[Funky_Monkey]

Loved my Amiga

Most of the Team 17 Games were great. Loved Alien Breed.

 

[Deleted member 21431]

Me and my mate spent hours playing Settlers, Hired Guns and Alien Breed 3D. Great times on my A1200.

 

[2+2=5]

Some other games

ambermoon/star

cadaver

darkmere

banshee

hired guns

ruff'n tumble

yo joe

benefactor

pushover

assassin

addams family

 

[buxtoc]

You haven't lived until you've played Monkey Island 2 on the Amiga with only one disk drive and 11 disks to keep swapping!

Click to shrink...

This kind of talk makes me feel like a very old man. But yeah, it was a pain. Who Framed Roger Rabbit is the game that sticks out in my memory as being a disk swap nightmare. Would load a little from disk one then ask to insert disk two, load a little from disk two then ask to insert disk one, rinse and repeat.

 

[basic_text]

This kind of talk makes me feel like a very old man. But yeah, it was a pain. Who Framed Roger Rabbit is the game that sticks out in my memory as being a disk swap nightmare. Would load a little from disk one then ask to insert disk two, load a little from disk two then ask to insert disk one, rinse and repeat.

Click to shrink...

Christ, yeah, was that 'Hare Raising Havoc'? I seem to remember that being a ball ache.