Support NeoGAF

[DECK'ARD]

And looking back, there wasn't really that much difference between the two machines.

Hardware wise there was a massive difference, and it wasn't so much the well-known blitter that made the difference but the display-list processor (copper) and the hardware sprites+scrolling.

You could do so much with the copper that an ST or PC at the time couldn't even dream of. From multiple levels of parallax, to palette changes, to multiplexing sprites, to actually animating the background without using any processor time at all.

The original Amiga was a beautifully designed machine, almost perfect in fact, that even Commodore couldn't match with the follow-up chipsets. As a developer it let you think outside the box, and come up with ridiculously neat solutions to things. The games, and especially the demo scene, that really pushed the chipset were like night & day when compared to the ST.

 

[ymmv]

In the console world folks are writing the PS3 off as a failure since it's unheard of for a console to come out winning once you're behind. The funny thing is that this was exactly what the Amiga did.

The Amiga 1000 was a glorious machine but also hideously expensive (especially in Europe), the ST on the other hand was cheap and powerful. As Jack Tramiel said it: a computer for the masses, not the classes. In the first year the ST easily outsold the Amiga and it looked like it could win that home computer generation, but with the introduction of the cheaper Amiga 500 things changed. The Amiga 500 was more expensive than the ST, but it was also a lot more powerful in the graphics and audio department. If you were a games player, you wanted the Amiga despite the hinger price. In 1987-88 the Amiga's user base got on equal foot and then it really took off. Atari tried to change things by putting their own blitter in the ST and then introduced the Atari STe, but the Amiga remained the popular choice.

In a way the Xbox 360 and PS3 are this generation's Atari ST and Amiga. At least the fanboy rivalry is just as fierce as it was 20 years ago between ST and Amiga fans.

 

[DECK'ARD]

The PS3 is more like the Acorn Archimedes

 

[p3tran]

The PS3 is more like the Acorn Archimedes

I loled :lol

 

[quetz67]

Oh wow, I remember that one. I got to play it in Grona Lund in Stockholm. As a game it was poor, but as an experience it was something else. It was the time when Virtual Reality was the future.

yeah, and the quality was so bad that now VR is history (not a problem of the Amiga of course)

 

[quetz67]

In a way the Xbox 360 and PS3 are this generation's Atari ST and Amiga. At least the fanboy rivalry is just as fierce as it was 20 years ago between ST and Amiga fans.

I loved my ST (was the first to get Dungeon Master) but I must admit the Amiga was graphically superior (man was I floored when I first saw screens of DotC).

It is strange how there is so much fighting about x360 vs. PS3 graphics where it is obvious that both can produce equally impressive stuff in its own rights

 

[rSpooky]

Thank you thank you thank you for this awesome thread> It is so good to relive these memories. Selling my amiga was the worst thing I ever done . the next bad thing was buying the amigacd32.

I think all my fav's are posted here,including DOGS OF WAR!!..here are a few that I think were missed. ( if not sorry, but can we ever get enough of AMIGA goodness?)


Zool

James pond

Operation wolf

Fire and Ice

Under pressure

T2

epic

I better stop now


and does anyone know of this game that took place in vietnam, where you had to rescue your crew from a chopper crash? It had fmv's and various gameplay such as tactical movement, sniper sections etc. I cannot find any info on it now, but I loved it.

 

[StarEye]

I've stayed faithful to the Amiga since I got one in 1990 or so. Deep inside, I'm still bitter, keep asking the question "what if...". I have a rather souped up Amiga 1200, connected to the PC through ICS to get online for easy download. I use WHDload, which is the greatest thing invented since the wheel - it allows me to patch and install Amiga games onto the harddrive. Playing classic titles like Alien Breed, Cannon Fodder, SWOS, Speedball 2, Pinball Fantasies, Lotus 2, Superfrog, Moonstone and all the other games that doesn't support installation - all with the click of a few button. I don't ever use the disks anymore.

I also have a huge collection of original Amiga games, a lot bigger than all of my other game collections combined. Amiga is my favourite piece of gaming hardware ever, and it's sad to see it become rather forgotten than remembered like NES/SNES/Megadrive/etc.

 

[Lord Error]

I also have a huge collection of original Amiga games, a lot bigger than all of my other game collections combined. Amiga is my favourite piece of gaming hardware ever, and it's sad to see it become rather forgotten than remembered like NES/SNES/Megadrive/etc.

Majority of gaming media is US-based, and Amiga was never quite popular there. C64, which was more popular, still couldn't hold a candle to the popularity of NES. I understand all that, but still when I see stuff like "Top 10 8-bit music" or "16-bit music" that doesn't include anything but music from NES and SNES games, it hurts to see ignorance on that magnitude

 

[Agent X]

Amiga is my favourite piece of gaming hardware ever, and it's sad to see it become rather forgotten than remembered like NES/SNES/Megadrive/etc.

Amiga won't be forgotten around here!

 

[DECK'ARD]

I wish the Amiga games on the Virtual Console rumour had come true ...

The unreleased version of Worms: Director's Cut, with the extra stuff like worm select and sinking landscapes would be a nice thing to put up there.

Graffiti Mode with the remote would work really well

 

[Superfrog]

Does anyone know where to find gameplay videos of the awesome horizontal shmup T-Zer0 (by clickBOOM)? This game has some of the nicest 2D graphics I've ever seen.

 

[kaleii]

and does anyone know of this game that took place in vietnam, where you had to rescue your crew from a chopper crash? It had fmv's and various gameplay such as tactical movement, sniper sections etc. I cannot find any info on it now, but I loved it.

That's Lost Patrol you're thinking of.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/lost-patrol

 

[rSpooky]

That's Lost Patrol you're thinking of.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/lost-patrol

YEah that was it.. Thanks for that .. Oh the boxes upon boxes of disks I had for this awesome machine it was insane. I spent all my allowance on (games) disks and amig a magazines

 

[callous]

Ah the Amiga. When European developers ruled. I iknow a guy who still uses an Amiga for pretty much all his computer needs.

Man I loved my Amiga. Stunt Car Racer, Ports of Call, Monkey Island, Fate of Atlantis, PGA Tour, Sensible Soccer and actually a whole hell of a lot of Japanese arcade games. It did everything right.

 

[MidiSurf]

So I finally installed Workbench 1.3 on my Amiga and I am having little problems with it... I'dont have any idea how to use it :lol. Is there any good n00b tutorials out there in the internet ?

I have already bought orginal manual for 1.3 but it will take at least month until it get's here in Finland.

I also find all my AMOS diskets and some getting started tutorial would be nice on that departmend too.

EDIT: BTW I just bought Lost Patrol (Mint condition) and it's freaking awesome.

 

[plague]

photon paint

 

[cs060mk2]

DP3

 

[Schrade]

The latest article on The History of the Amiga is up at ARS Technica!

A history of the Amiga, part 5: postlaunch blues

And for the previous ones:

A history of the Amiga, part 1: Genesis
A history of the Amiga, part 2: The birth of Amiga
A history of the Amiga, part 3: The first prototype
A history of the Amiga, part 4: Enter Commodore

 

[Gowans]

Just found the absoulte motherload of good quality amiga gameplay clips here

http://www.stage6.com/AMIGA/videos/

worth a peak, im gona have a good ferrit through memory lane later.


Speaking of memory lane I was talking with a mate about Robocop 3 the game, 3D where you could go round a 3D world in ur cop car or as Robocop with a jet pack killing nijas, wasted so many hours on that. Think it was out way before any shitty film too

edit: YES!!! found a vid on that link w00t!


PS anyone know if theres and retro/looking back Amiga podcats out there anywhere?

 

[haowan]

That Robocop 3 game was all right (well... it was pretty bad actually) until you got to the catacombs underneath the church at which point it became TERRIBLE and AWFUL and even if you could remember your way through and shoot the bombs before they hit you, on the other side of it all you'd just get shot down in a HAIL OF BULLETS and I never got past that part. Good atmosphere in the first part of the game though.

 

[Gowans]

doubt I even got that far, I was just a kid and would just drive around or fly about, normally changing the camera angles all the time being amazed at the graphics. I think the odd time I would get to the shooting parts I'd be rubish and go back into dicking around crashng into things.

Then I moved onto dicking around in flight sims, I remember being totaly chuffed with myself on GunShip 3000 for flying a helicopter through a tight tunnel

 

[Gagaman]

I still remember the box set my Amiga 500 was. It was that 'cartoon Classics' pack that came with Bart Vs the Space Mutants, Capitan Planet (awful, AWFUL game), Lemmings and a paint program I never got to work. Some of my favorites:

Gobliins 2
Amazingly funny, if rock hard, point and click adventure. I'll never forget their voices or that intro.

Cannon Fodder
A no brainier really. The mouse controls were perfection. The only war game I've ever truly enjoyed.

Super Methane Brothers
Essentially a Bubble Bobble clone, but a great one. 'GET A MOVE ON BUDDY!'

New Zealand Story
MOTHER FUCKING KIWI. Nuff said.

James Pond II Robocod
Another game with a legendary cheat code. THE LITTLE MERMAID.

Rodland
The only system to get a good port of this game, as far as I know. Great fun beating the living shite out of cute little creatures.

Parasol Stars
personal favorite Bubble Bobble game, and not ported enough elsewhere IMO.

Others I loved:

Super Frog
Pushover
Duck Tales (Almost like an RPG. The controls are really bad, though.)
MC Kids (Angry Nintendo nerd can say all he likes, but I was hooked on this as a kid)
Thomas the Tank Engine (Don't look at me like that! You could smash into the other characters and the sequel had a 2-player race mode!)
Quak (Team 17 platformer that's all about shit falling from the sky. not literally of course)
Jumping Jackson
Rock N Roll
Soccer Kid

Actually, here's a piece of Amiga appreciation art I did a while back:
http://gagaman.deviantart.com/art/Amiga-12185661

 

[MikeB]

A well done retro review of Turrican 2 (Jody rediscovering Amiga 500 classics through emulation and loves the game):

http://youtube.com/watch?v=pCWsQUOBo0o

Also reviewed:

Speedball 2 (likes the game):
http://youtube.com/watch?v=wAK0OfB2P1o

Wrath of the Demon (nice graphics, doesn't fancy the game)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Xj2QojC0gvI

Nitro (likes the game):
http://youtube.com/watch?v=d3K9lTmELiM

IMO compared to Nitro Super Cars 2 is a much better Amiga 500 top-down view racer:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=iWzlO7HkF3w (Amiga longplay footage)

 

[RamzaIsCool]

:lol hail brothers, wonder how many of us there are.

 

[DECK'ARD]

Just saw there's an extended trailer of Dave Haynie's Deathbed Vigil video up on YouTube, documenting the days after Commodore went bankrupt:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHI7_pU0y70

For anyone who hasn't seen the film, it's essential (if depressing) viewing. Dave was lead hardware engineer, and he takes you on a tour of the deserted Commodore HQ. A complete AAA chipset board is lying on a table in R&D (you see this in the trailer as well).

You also meet a lot of the development team at the time. Such a great bunch of people, and obviously very passionate about what they were doing.

Such a shame management screwed it all up

 

[Schrade]

Latest article in the History of the Amiga series has been released on ARS Technica. Part 6!

Definitely recommended reading for those who want to know more about the Amiga's history.

A history of the Amiga, part 6: stopping the bleeding

And for the previous ones:

A history of the Amiga, part 1: Genesis
A history of the Amiga, part 2: The birth of Amiga
A history of the Amiga, part 3: The first prototype
A history of the Amiga, part 4: Enter Commodore
A history of the Amiga, part 5: postlaunch blues

 

[FirewalkR]

So many memories... the Amiga, its games and its power, both seen in games and demos, are still unsurpassed to me.

Latest article in the History of the Amiga series has been released on ARS Technica. Part 6!

Definitely recommended reading for those who want to know more about the Amiga's history.

A history of the Amiga, part 6: stopping the bleeding

Great stuff, and the next installment is gonna be awesome, talking about the A500 glory days, games an demos. Hope they make that one longer, too!

:lol hail brothers, wonder how many of us there are.

My name is Legion.

 

[Schrade]

Eric Schwartz has posted an awesome animation with "Still Alive", the song from Portal in it.

It's a fun watch

Watch h.264 YouTube stream: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mg6wrYCT9Q&fmt=18
Download h.264/AAC MP4: StillAlive-AmigaTribute.mp4


It features an Amiga, a Mac and a PC in funny situations that match the lyrics of the song somewhat.

 

[Psychotext]

This thread takes me back to my youth in a big way. So awesome.

 

[Schrade]

Awesome video showing around 100 Amiga games plus some other videos of other games too.

http://zeb.3dvf.com/blog/en/index.php/post/2008/Good-old-time-The-Amiga

Damn I loved the Amiga style of music.

 

[FirewalkR]

Best. Machine. Ever.

*cries*

 

[kitch9]

This thread is making me misty...... My Amiga had the 1mb memory upgrade so it could hold a whole fucking disk, yeah!!

2 disk drives made life a whole lot easier too.......

 

[Psychotext]

This thread is making me misty...... My Amiga had the 1mb memory upgrade so it could hold a whole fucking disk, yeah!!

2 disk drives made life a whole lot easier too.......

I bought a hard drive for mine... the only way I could get most stuff installed was by grabbing the pirate versions though. Very annoying given my love for adventure games.

That thing cost a fortune too.

(Odd, just tried looking it up and while I'm 99% sure it fitted on the side of my A1200 I can't find it online)

 

[Red Scarlet]

Just found the absoulte motherload of good quality amiga gameplay clips here

http://www.stage6.com/AMIGA/videos/

worth a peak, im gona have a good ferrit through memory lane later.


Speaking of memory lane I was talking with a mate about Robocop 3 the game, 3D where you could go round a 3D world in ur cop car or as Robocop with a jet pack killing nijas, wasted so many hours on that. Think it was out way before any shitty film too

edit: YES!!! found a vid on that link w00t!


PS anyone know if theres and retro/looking back Amiga podcats out there anywhere?

Cool, will bookmark that site. I only knew about this one:

http://recordedamigagames.ath.cx/modules/tinycontent/index.php?id=2

At least I was able to finally see the last parts of Rocket Ranger.

Edit: oops, stage6 says it is shut down now.

 

[FirewalkR]

Edit: oops, stage6 says it is shut down now.

Another great thing that is no more.

*cries*

 

[Raide]

I used up countless hours playing with Deluxe Paint. Making animations and game sprites :lol

Turrican, Alien Breed series, GODS, Chaos Engine, Silkworm, Project-X, Super Skidmarks. So many amazing games I spent hours playing!

 

[HiVision]

just came across this thread... those were the days..
I had an A500 with the hard disk (20 megs!) and 3 meg of ram.. what a great little machine... I seem to remember it running faster than friggin XP does half the time. (but that may simply be rosetint)

Best games were:

F-18 Interceptor - the reason I bought an Amiga
Carrier Command - first game I played until morning
Starglider II
Deluxe Paint (not a game, but it has to be mentioned)
Populous
the original Lemmings

not to forget Demo Disks and Hacks (and the groups that shared them)

now that was a golden age - no internet and people sharing stuff with massive snail-mail chains.

 

[lilltias]

I WANT TO BE A PART OF THE AMIGA BROTHERHOOD TOO

 

[FirewalkR]

I WANT TO BE A PART OF THE AMIGA BROTHERHOOD TOO

That makes 2 of us.

 

[FirewalkR]

Awesome Amiga tribute animation by famed artist Eric Schwartz, to the sound of Still Alive, Portal's ending song.

http://www.amigafuture.de/downloads.php?view=detail&df_id=1038

 

[Schrade]

Awesome Amiga tribute animation by famed artist Eric Schwartz, to the sound of Still Alive, Portal's ending song.

http://www.amigafuture.de/downloads.php?view=detail&df_id=1038

You're late

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=10520450&postcount=529

 

[FirewalkR]

You're late

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=10520450&postcount=529

So it seems. But it's totally worth a repost.

 

[Lemming_JRS]

If you don't care about watching the longplays @ full resolution, this guy's got nearly all of them on his YouTube channel:

http://www.youtube.com/user/cubex55

including...

Gods!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBgt7XkLxvQ

Lionheart!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeBVhq1IEqA

Turrican 2!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UW4CDWyhxLw

Another World!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atlAr5kdpQM


now, if someone would just post longplays for Exile and Harlequin...

 

[FirewalkR]

If you don't care about watching the longplays @ full resolution, this guy's got nearly all of them on his YouTube channel:

Well, was Amiga full resolution that much higher? :lol

 

[MikeB]

Well, was Amiga full resolution that much higher? :lol

Older Amiga games were usually 320x256 or 640x256 with up to a maximun of hundreds of colors onscreen even on an old OCS/ECS Amiga (like LionHeart).

Larger shot (does look much better on a TV):

http://obligement.free.fr/gfx/award_capitalpunishment.jpg

For pictures the Amiga 1000 (1985) could do 640x512 and in up to 4096 colors.
http://obligement.free.fr/gfx/amiga_histoire_amiga1000_demonstration_1.jpg (not an actual screenshot)

This was better than PC (16 colors on top expensive graphics card) or Macs (2 colors)

The main competitor was actually the cheaper but weaker Atari ST series (many early cross platform Amiga games didn't push the hardware well due to ST=>Amiga porting):

STe (1989)
640x200 4 colors
320x200 16 colors

Later Amiga games like Napalm and Foundation or PC ports like Shogo or Heretic 2 did support higher resolutions, at least in combination with upgrades. Such games were released well after Commordore bankrupted.

http://obligement.free.fr/gfx/napalm-3.jpg

 

[Gowans]

Awesome video showing around 100 Amiga games plus some other videos of other games too.

http://zeb.3dvf.com/blog/en/index.php/post/2008/Good-old-time-The-Amiga

Damn I loved the Amiga style of music.

great mix up, I could name pretty much all of them, ahh.. so much free time as a kid.

 

[Schrade]

Aaaand the latest History of the Amiga article has been posted on ArsTechnica! This time it's about games!

Definitely recommended reading for those who want to know more about the Amiga's history.

A history of the Amiga, part 7: Game on!

And for the previous ones:

A history of the Amiga, part 1: Genesis
A history of the Amiga, part 2: The birth of Amiga
A history of the Amiga, part 3: The first prototype
A history of the Amiga, part 4: Enter Commodore
A history of the Amiga, part 5: postlaunch blues
A history of the Amiga, part 6: stopping the bleeding

 

[Dimmuxx]

Aaaand the latest History of the Amiga article has been posted on ArsTechnica! This time it's about games!

Definitely recommended reading for those who want to know more about the Amiga's history.

A history of the Amiga, part 7: Game on!

And for the previous ones:

A history of the Amiga, part 1: Genesis
A history of the Amiga, part 2: The birth of Amiga
A history of the Amiga, part 3: The first prototype
A history of the Amiga, part 4: Enter Commodore
A history of the Amiga, part 5: postlaunch blues
A history of the Amiga, part 6: stopping the bleeding

Nice, I have been waiting for part 7.

 

[ghibli99]

Glad this thread got bumped... might be time to dust of the A500 again to play some games and watch some demos!