This long-form article is divided into four main sections:
- [§1.0] Amiga Overview (Hardware Specs & Historical Pricing)
- [§2.0] Amiga Game Reviews
- [§3.0] Best Amiga Games / Developers
- [§4.0] WinUAE Amiga Emulation
Amiga Overview
[§1.0]
Manufactured by Commodore International from the mid-80s to the mid-90s, the original Amigas were powered by Motorola 68000 microprocessors (MPUs) clocked at 7.15909 MHz (NTSC/USA) or 7.09379 MHz (PAL/UK, Europe). Released in 1985, the Amiga 1000 was the first Amiga.
By May of 1984 it was known to the public that the Amiga would employ the Motorola 68000 microprocessor (M68K). All subsequent Commodore Amigas were Motorola 680x0-based.
The Amiga 1000 of 1985
The Amiga 1000 aka A1000 debuted in July of 1985 in the U.S.A. Upon its release the Amiga 1000 retailed for US$1,285 with no monitor or US$1750 with RGB color monitor. The Amiga 1000 was housed in a plastic injection-molded desktop form-factor. The detached keyboard could be garaged under the main unit. The original A1000 featured a 7.1 MHz M68K microprocessor, 256K of Chip RAM, 192K of ROM, three CPU-unburdening 20,000-transistor VLSI custom chips (ASICs), four screen modes, four color modes, 25 DMA channels, 16-bit data bus, 24-bit address bus and 18 32-bit wide registers.
In addition, the A1000 featured one internal 3.5" 880K double-sided double-density disk drive, 89-key full-stroke detached keyboard and 2-button Commodore 1351 mouse.
The A1000 was bundled with Kickstart disk, MetaComCo's TRIPOS-based AmigaDOS disk operating system, R.J. Mical's C-coded Intuition windowing system and Commodore's C-coded Workbench desktop environment and hierarchical filing system.
The Amiga employs a single-user preemptive multi-tasking operating environment bolstered by a graphical user interface and command-line interpreter (CLI or Shell). Amiga operating environment software elements are intricately interwoven and underpinned by Carl Sassenrath's kernel, Amiga Exec. The Workbench GUI is mouse-driven, icon-based and features drop-down menus. The Workbench increased general-user accessibility that was welcomed by the majority, but power-users usually eschewed the mouse in favor of CLI, MetaComCo's The Shell of 1986 and Bill Hawes' ARexx of 1987: an Amiga user that quickly types screen-width commands while barely ever touching the mouse -- that's a power-user.
The operating systems of the IBM PC (MS-DOS), the Apple Macintosh (System 1.0-3.0) and the Atari ST (TOS/GEM) were not as advanced as the multi-tasking operating environment of the Amiga: the original A1000 could concurrently run a few dozen windowed processes that users could immediately switch between.
By mid-1986 in the U.S.A the Amiga 1000 with A1050 512K RAM and 1080 color monitor retailed for US$2000 whereas the Atari 1040 ST with 1 meg of RAM and SC1224 color monitor retailed for US$1800 and the Macintosh Plus with 1 meg of RAM and monochrome monitor retailed for US$2600.
A1000s could be hooked up to conventional analog television sets (RF modulator), RGB CRT monitors (80 column display) and NTSC composite monitors (60 column display). The 13" color Commodore 1080 aka Amiga Monitor Model 1080 was the official A1000 monitor in 1985 [0.1]. In addition, A1000s could be hooked up to stereo systems. No additional video cards or sound cards were required.
In May of 1986 the 512K-RAM PAL Amiga 1000 debuted in the U.K. and retailed for £1475 with one disk drive and £1675 with dual disk drives. By January of 1987 the 512K-RAM A1000 with one disk drive was commonly retailing for £950 in the U.K. As well, 2 meg memory expansion boards for the A1000 retailed for US$900 in July of 1986 and £449 by October of 1987.
The NTSC Amiga 1000's 256K of 150-nanosecond DRAM is internally expandable to 512K via front-mounted snap-in Chip RAM A1050 memory expansion cartridge (4x 64K DRAM chips), which retailed for US$200 in 1985. In addition, A1000 memory was externally expandable to an astonishing 8½ megs of external Fast RAM aka expansion memory via side-mounted expansion bus.
Amiga 1000 RAM Expansions (RAM boxes)
Comspec Communications Inc. of Canada released the AX1000 and AX2000 pass-through RAM expansion boxes for the A1000 in August and June of 1986, respectively. The AX1000 featured 1 meg of Fast RAM and retailed for US$750 whereas the AX2000 featured 2 megs of Fast RAM and retailed for US$900.
Access Associates released the Alegra memory expansion unit in June of 1986. The zero-wait-state 512K-RAM (256K bit DRAMs) Alegra retailed for US$380 in September of 1986. The Alegra supported up to 2 megs of RAM (1M bit DRAMs).
MicroBotics released the StarBoard2 memory expansion unit for the Amiga in August of 1986. The zero-wait-state StarBoard2 supported 512K to 2 megs of 150 nanosecond Fast RAM and 68881 math coprocessor. There were six StarBoard2 variants available in March of 1987, retailing from US$350 up to US$950. Note that up to two StarBoards (or one StarBoard and one Alegra) could be connected in series to the Amiga 1000 side-mounted expansion bus.
A1000 IBM Compatibility in 1986
The A1060 Sidecar was developed by Commodore of West Germany based on their Commodore PC-10 IBM PC-clone hardware. While A1060 units were available by as early as June of 1986, the A1060 was not officially released in the U.S.A. until May of 1987, at which point it retailed for $US995 even as the Commodore PC10-2 IBM clone retailed for US$600! By mid-1987 most computer users would rather have A1000 and PC10-2 rather than A1000 and A1060. The A1060 granted slow IBM PC/XT compatibility to the A1000 via a 4.77 MHz Intel 8088 CPU, 256K of 150-nanosecond RAM, Monochrome Display Card, Advanced Color Display Adapter, 3x ISA slots and a 5.25" 360K disk drive. The A1060 could run MS-DOS from a partition on the hard disk drive and also supported the Intel 8087 math coprocessor.
While the A1060 was no doubt a pioneering piece of kit, we can see that Commodore were already being distracted by IBM PC compatibility concerns -- yet the A1000 was technically superior to the IBM PC, XT or AT of 1981-85. In addition, the Amiga's preemptive multi-tasking operating environment was superior to Microsoft's MS-DOS or IBM's PC DOS. As the name suggests IBM -- International Business Machines -- were dominant in the business sector by the early 80s (as was Microsoft), but IBM were struggling to bring down their prices for the home computer market (as was Apple with their Macintosh and Apple IIc). Thus, a share of the home computer market was still up for grabs even in the mid-to-late 80s.
The problem was that IBM's dominance in the business sector (the biggest computer market) could be leveraged to the home computer market since office workers and businesspeople would want to transfer their files from company computers to their home computers, and vice versa: what you have at work might as well match what you have at home -- it makes perfect sense! -- why would you not purchase an IBM PC for home use once they became affordable? [Note 0.1.]
It is very difficult to compete with industry-standard hardware -- all-but-impossible once it gets cloned, chipset-consolidated and cost-reduced.
That said, the Amiga 1000 was absolutely State of the Art in 1985. No subsequent base-line Amiga was state of the art upon its release; all were derivative of the A1000. The A500 was a compact machine and the A2000 was a hardware-hacker's dream machine in 1987, but neither were as far ahead of the competition as the A1000 was in 1985. In my humble opinion the A1000 is the greatest personal computer ever released.
The A1000 was an open system that was designed to expand greatly. Atari Corp. needed to release more Atari ST models (1985-1989) in order to outprice and undermine the A1000 (520, 1040, STE); and the Macintosh Plus of 1986 employed a closed system in accordance with Apple's design philosophy.
[Note 0.1.] That said, you could still bring DOS file system disks home from work, update the contents of the disks on your Amiga, and then take the disks back to work the next day. Consider:
Central Coast Software released DOS 2 DOS for the Amiga 1000 in 1986. The CLI-driven DOS 2 DOS facilitated the transfer of ASCII and binary files between 360K and 720K MS-DOS disks and AmigaDOS disks. DOS 2 DOS retailed for US$55 in 1986. In addition, Consultron released CrossDOS for the Amiga in September of 1989. CrossDOS could read from and write to 360K and 720K MS-DOS and Atari ST disks. CrossDOS featured AmigaOS integration, nine MS-DOS functions, and optional text file filters. CrossDOS retailed for $30 in 1989 and was later bundled with Workbench 2.1 (1992) and greater.
Amiga 1000 Accelerator in 1986: Turbo Amiga
Computer System Associates (CSA) of the U.S.A released the Turbo Amiga for the A1000 in 1986 and the Turbo Amiga Tower for the A1000 in 1987. The Turbo Amiga of 1986 was housed in a cube-cabinet chassis and featured a 32-bit 14.32 MHz Motorola 68020 CPU, 14-20 MHz 68881 FPU (floating point unit aka math coprocessor), 512K of 32-bit static DRAM (upgradeable to 2 megs), 5x expansion slots, SCSI interface, 20-100 meg Winchester hard disk drive and internal power supply rated at 100W. As with the A1060 sidecar the Turbo Amiga simply slotted into the A1000's side-mounted expansion bus.
Upon its release in 1986 the Turbo Amiga retailed for US$4000, depending on options. Note that CSA's Turbo-charged Amiga 1000 was ten times faster than a stock A1000 and up to 50x faster under some conditions (it depends on the code being executed).
The Turbo Amiga Tower was the same as the Turbo Amiga but for its Highrise chassis, seven 100-pin Zorro expansion slots, four IBM PC/AT expansion slots, provision for two hard disk drives, and 200W PSU. By mid-1987 the Turbo Amiga Tower with 020 CPU, FPU, 512K of RAM, SCSI and 20 meg HDD retailed for US$5000.
Note that 68020s did not become mainstream on Amigas until the advent of the Amiga 1200 in 1992 (it took some time for the 020 to drop in price).
When general Amiga users upgraded their A500s to A1200s in 1992, they were blown away by the speed increase provided by 32-bit 020s and 32-bit RAM. Well, imagine what that was like in 1986.
A1000 Disk Drives
The Commodore Amiga 1010 3.5 External Disk Drive retailed for US$300 in early 1986. The A1010 was mechanically identical to the internal A1000 disk drive of 1985 (3.5" 880K double-sided double-density). The original A1000 disk drive of 1985 could store up to 901,120 bytes (880K) on a diskette and had a data transfer rate of 62,500 bytes or 500K bits per second.
In early 1986 Commodore also released the Amiga 1020 5.25" 360K External Disk Drive, which retailed for $US400. The 1020 was used in conjunction with the Sidecar or DOS file transfer utility, covered above.
As for hard disk drives, Tecmar of the U.S.A. released the T-Disk 20 meg 3.5" external hard disk drive and T-Tape external tape drive for the A1000 in 1985, which retailed for US$995 and US$595, respectively.
MicroBotics released the MAS-20 hard disk drive for Amiga in 1986. The MAS-20 featured 20 meg storage capacity and a parallel port interface. The MAS-20 retailed for US$1500 in 1986.
Early Amiga 1000 Programming
MetaComCo released ABasiC, Macro Assembler and MCC Pascal 68000 in 1985 as well as Cambridge LISP 68000 in 1986. Lattice released Lattice C v3.03 (aka "v.1.0") in 1985, Microsoft released Commodore Amiga Basic (AmigaBASIC) in 1985, TDI Software released Modula-2 in 1986, Manx Software Systems released Manx Aztec C and Quelo 68000 Family Assembler in 1986, and Absoft Corp. released AC/BASIC and AC/FORTRAN 77 in 1986. By 1989 Quelo had added support for 68020/030 CPUs and 68881/2/51 FPUs. Absoft also released FORTRAN/020. Commodore released Amiga Pascal, Amiga Assembler, Amiga TLC Logo and Amiga LISP in 1985. An Amiga version of Turbo Pascal was heavily advertised by Borland International in 1985-86, but it was never released. (Borland had amassed 400,000 Turbo Pascal users from 1982-85.)
Amiga coders sometimes employed C for prototyping Amiga games but then rewrote much of their code in M68K assembly language for greatly increased speed. C was too slow for coinop-style Amiga games, which was the Amiga's prime province. ABasiC and AmigaBASIC were even slower (much slower). Microsoft first released BASIC in 1975, but commercial home computer games (note the specific qualifiers) were being coded in assembly language by 1976, two years before Taito's Space Invaders coinop came out.
HiSoft of the U.K ported their 1986 Atari ST version of HiSoft Devpac Assembler to the Amiga in 1987. Later, M68K game code was often written in HiSoft's DevpacST Editor/Assembler of 1988 and ported to the Amiga (the ST/Amiga both being M68K-based). Some top-level British and German Amiga game coders used 1040 STs of 1986 as development systems (even by as late as 1990) because 1040 STs were cheap, had 1 meg of RAM out of the box, and could be hooked up to cheap SM124/144 monochrome monitors that displayed in 640x400 resolution with line-scan frequencies of 35.7 kHz and vertical refresh rates of 71.2 Hz. Some other top-level Amiga game coders used Mega STs, 68020/30-accelerated Amiga 2000s or IBM PC-compatible i80386-based assembly language development systems with workstation-level graphics display capacities, which were hooked up to even better, but much more expensive, monitors. [0.2]
As for editors, ED/EDIT were bundled with AmigaDOS whereas variants of MicroEMACS were released into the public domain in 1985. Microsmiths of the U.S.A released TxEd (aka TED) for the Amiga in 1986. TxEd of 1986 and CygnusEd of 1987 were favored by many Amiga programmers.
Amiga Custom Chips
Known as Lorraine, the Amiga chipset was designed by Jay Miner of Hi-Toro in 1984. Jay Miner is The Father of the Amiga. The origin of the Amiga's chipset lies in Jay Miner's Atari 8-bits, not the Commodore 64. No line can be drawn from Amiga Agnus/Denise back to C64 VIC-II yet lines can be drawn from Agnus back to ANTIC and from Denise back to GTIA. However, Amiga Paula was like the spiritual successor to C64 SID for C64 owners that upgraded to Amigas (and many did by reason of brand loyalty to Commodore).
Jay Miner is a legend of LSI and VLSI design; a Hero to computer gamers.
Unless the software is entirely CPU-bound the speed at which the Amiga does stuff cannot be measured by the clock-rate (MHz) of the Motorola 68000 alone. The Amiga's M68K is clocked slower than the Atari ST's M68K, but the ST has no custom chips that can accelerate certain operations and unburden its M68K, whereas the Amiga does.
Famously, the Amiga's M68K is supported by three custom chips (ASICs) known as Agnus, Paula and Denise. Put simply for our purposes, Agnus or "the animation chip" includes the copper coprocessor, the bit blitter aka 3-input bimmer (block image manipulator) of Xerox PARC origin, and the DMA that reduces M68K overhead when playing sound; Glenn Keller's Paula (Portia) or "the sound chip" includes the four FM-synthesized audio channels and control inputs (mouse & joystick); and Denise (Daphne) or "the graphics chip" includes the color DACs and 16px-wide virtual sprites.
By custom chipset, we are referring to computer chips that are designed at the transistor-level for a specific purpose that is unique to the computer.
Amiga Graphics
The NTSC Amiga 1000, 500 and 2000 can output non-interlaced 640x200 video in 16 colors from a palette of 4096 or non-interlaced 320x200 video in 32 colors, 64 colors (EHB mode) or 4096 colors (HAM mode) from a palette of 4096 colors.
The NTSC Amiga 1000, 500 and 2000 can also output interlaced 640x400 video in 16 colors from a palette of 4096 or interlaced 320x400 video in 32 colors, 64 colors (EHB mode) or 4096 colors (HAM mode) from a palette of 4096 colors.
The PAL Amiga 1000, 500 and 2000 can output non-interlaced 640x256 video in 16 colors from a palette of 4096 or non-interlaced 320x256 video in 32 colors, 64 colors (EHB mode) or 4096 colors (HAM mode) from a palette of 4096 colors.
The PAL Amiga 1000, 500 and 2000 can also output interlaced 640x512 video in 16 colors from a palette of 4096 or interlaced 320x512 video in 32 colors, 64 colors (EHB mode) or 4096 colors (HAM mode) from a palette of 4096 colors.
The screen refresh rate or raster frequency of the Amiga is 50 Hz and 60 Hz (PAL/NTSC) whereas the line frequency is 15.60 kHz and 15.72 kHz (PAL/NTSC).
A typical Amiga playfield is hardware-scrolled and features hardware sprites and/or bobs (blitter objects) -- over 100 simultaneous on-screen objects can be smoothy shifted about by top-level assembly coders, complete with precise collision detection and on-impact sound effects. Suffice it to say that it is the custom chips that separated Amiga games from IBM PC and Atari ST games.
Most Amiga games run in 16-color 320x200/256 (NTSC/PAL) standard low-res, but some run in 32-color full PAL overscan mode or 64-color extra half-brite mode. EHB was added to Denise revision 6 in January of 1986.
In Amiga games on-screen colors typically ranged from 16-64 drawn from 4096 up to hundreds drawn from 4096. cf. Platform Game History for more info.
4096 simultaneously on-screen colors drawn from a palette of 4096 colors -- that is, Hold-and-Modify aka HAM mode -- was usually only employed by Amiga games for load-screens, titlescreens and other static screens; that is, digitized paintings or photographs. And even that was rare.
The Amiga 500 of 1987
Commodore released the Amiga 500 aka A500 in October of 1987 in the U.K. and the U.S.A. The 512K-RAM A500 initially retailed for US$699 and £499 in the U.K. By December of 1988 Commodore's recommended retail price for the A500 was £399 in the U.K. By mid-1988 the A500 retailed in Germany for 350 DM (£320). The Amiga 500 was known to be in development by August of 1986.
The A500 of 1987 was housed in a compact beige plastic wedge-shaped case similar to the Commodore 128 and 520 ST of 1985. The A500 and A2000 had no Kickstart disk: Kickstart was instead stored in 256K of ROM.
The A500 was the most popular Amiga by far. The A500 came with 512K of 150-nanosecond Chip RAM as standard but most Amigans upgraded to 1 meg of RAM by 1987 and some Amiga games ran better or had more features with the upgrade by 1988.
The 512K-RAM Amiga 501 RAM Expansion Board of 1987 fitted into the A500 trapdoor slot and retailed for £150 in July of 1989 and £39 by 1992. The Commodore A590 20 meg external hard disk drive of 1989 fitted into the A500 side expansion port and retailed for £730 in July of 1989 and £300 by mid-1991. The A590 also featured provision for up to 2 megs of Fast RAM (4x 120-nanosecond 256K DRAMs), which retailed for £325 by 1992. The hard disk drive that resided in the A590 case was an Epson HD755.
As for third-party Amiga hard disk drives for A500s, the SupraDrive 20, 30 and 60 meg hard disk drives by Supra Corp. of the U.S.A. retailed for US$995, $1195 and $1995 by March of 1987. In January of 1987 the Micro Forge 20 meg and 40 meg hard disk drives retailed for £1500 and £1750 in the U.K., respectively.
Amiga 2000 of 1987
Commodore released the big-box 1024K-RAM Amiga 2000 in March of 1987. Upon its release the A2000 retailed for US$1495. As "big box" suggests the A2000 was highly expandable and IBM-like in appearance -- it was at bottom an A500 but with great internal expansion potential that could transform it into a beast. Serious Amiga hardware users would often expand the A2000 into a graphics workstation, the most famous of which was the Video Toaster of 1990 by NewTek of the U.S.A.
As for expansion slots, the A2000 featured 1x 86-pin CPU bus slot, 5x 100-pin system bus Zorro II slots, 2x IBM PC/XT-compatible slots, 2x IBM PC/AT-compatible slots and 1x video slot for genlock or framegrabber. A2000 memory was internally upgradeable to 9 megs. The A2000 came with a 200W PSU and weighed 22.5 lbs, which is almost half the weight of the IBM PC/AT of 1984.
Commodore U.S.A. released the A2620 and A2630 Accelerator Card for the A2000 in 1988 and 1989, respectively. The A2620 card featured a 32-bit 14.3 MHz Motorola 68020 CPU, 68881 FPU (math coprocessor) and 2-4 megs of 32-bit 100-nanosecond RAM. The A2630 card featured a 32-bit 25 MHz Motorola 68030 CPU with 68882 FPU and 2-4 megs of 32-bit 100-nanosecond RAM. Over stock A2000s the performance increase conferred by the A2620 was 200% whereas it was 400-600% with the A2630. The A2620 supported the 25 MHz 68881/2 FPU whereas the A2630 supported the 33 MHz 68881/2 FPU (floating point unit aka math coprocessor).
MicroWay of the U.S.A. released the Flicker Fixer Advanced Graphics Adapter for the A2000 in 1988. Slotting into the A2000's video slot the Flicker Fixer provided steady and sharp displays by removing visible scanlines and the flickering that plagued the Amiga's interlace graphics modes. The Flicker Fixer doubled the display's horizontal scanning frequency to 31.5 kHz, displayed in 12-bit color at up to 704x470 overscan resolution and drove IBM PC VGA monitors and multi-scan monitors, such as the NEC MultiSync, Mitsubishi AUM and Sony Multiscan CDP. Thus, the Flicker Fixer increased user-productivity by reducing eye-strain and increasing the size of the active workspace. The Flicker Fixer retailed for US$600.
IBM PC Hardware Emulation on the Amiga 2000
Commodore of the U.S.A. released the A2088XT Bridgeboard in 1987, the A2286AT Bridgeboard in 1989 and the A2386SX Bridgeboard in 1991. As their model numbers suggest, the A2088XT includes the Intel 8088 4.77 MHz CPU of the IBM PC/XT and comes with an XT-compatible BIOS, 512K RAM, MDA/CGA display and socket support for the 8087; the A2286AT includes the Intel 80286 8 MHz CPU of the IBM PC/AT and comes with an AT-compatible BIOS, MDA/CGA display, 1 meg of RAM and socket support for the 80287; and the A2386SX includes the Intel 80386SX 16/20 MHz CPU of the IBM "PS/2" and comes with an AT-compatible BIOS, 1 meg of RAM, MDA/CGA display and socket support for the 80387. The A2386SX supports up to 8 megs of 80-nanosecond RAM. The A2088XT and A2286AT were bundled with MS-DOS 3.3 and GW-BASIC 3.2.
The A2088XT retailed for US$700 or £460 in 1989 whereas the A2286AT retailed for US$1500 or £780 in 1989. In 1992 the A2088XT retailed for US$500 whereas the A2286AT retailed for US$800.
Vortex of Germany released the Golden Gate 386SX and 486SLC PC/AT Emulator for bigbox Amigas in 1992. The Golden Gate 386SX was clocked at 25 MHz and supported up to 8 megs of RAM whereas the i80486SX-compatible 486SLC was clocked at 25 MHz and supported up to 16 megs of RAM. Both featured 32-bit internal data bus, 16-bit external data bus, 1K of cache, FPU support, 60 nanosecond RAM, built-in PC/AT IDE hard disk drive interface and 360K/720K MS-DOS disk read/write on Amiga disk drives. In 1992 the Golden Gate 386SX retailed in Germany for 798DM, in the U.S.A for US$599, and in the U.K. for £399.95 whereas the 486SLC retailed in Germany for 1498DM, in the U.S.A for US$1099, and in the U.K for £699.95. The optional Golden Gate PC/AT floppy disk controller supported 5.25" 360K and 1.2 meg and 3.5" 720K, 1.44 meg and 2.88 meg DOS-formatted disks in AmigaDOS.
In retrospect, I think it would have been better if Commodore redesigned, expanded and cost-reduced the A1000 rather than release the A500 and A2000. Several third-party manufacturers released expansion boxes that granted A1000s more power and expandability, such as the Turbo Amiga and Turbo Amiga Tower of 1986/7 by CSA (covered above). Such expansion boxes demonstrated that A1000s could keep apace with future Amiga models, non-Amiga workstations and general hardware evolution, even without an official Commodore redesign -- but the third-party expansions were expensive and unofficial. Thus, my preference for Commodore redesigns, refinements and expansions into the early 90s.
Expert Services offered the Rejuvinator for the A1000 in 1989. The Rejuvenator granted A1000s 1-meg ECS Agnus, 1 meg of Chip RAM (8x 256Kx4 80-120 nanosecond CMOS DRAMs) and a video slot for the Flicker Fixer (covered above). However, installation of the Rejuvinator required A1000 disassembly. In addition, the 1-meg Agnus and 1 meg of Chip RAM could be replaced with a 2-meg Agnus and 2 megs of Chip RAM (4x 1Mx4). Thus was the A1000 brought up to compatibility specifications aka rejuvinated.
IBM PC Software Emulation on the Amiga
IBM PC emulators on the Amiga that emulated Intel-based PCs in software included PC-Task of 1992 by Chris Hames and PCx of 1996 by Jim Drew and Microcode Solutions. PC-Task emulated the i80286 whereas PCx emulated the i80x86. Both PC-Task and PCx allowed Amiga users to run MS-DOS in a preemptive multi-tasking windowed environment -- something that MS-DOS itself could not do.
PC-Task supported stock M68K and 020 acceleration whereas PCx supported 020 acceleration and above only.
Macintosh Emulation on the Amiga
ReadySoft Inc. of Canada released A-Max for the Amiga in 1989. A-Max is an Apple Macintosh 128K emulator that allows Amigas to read actual Mac disks and run Mac software, Mac ROMs and Mac's System OS. A-Max was initially driven via cartridge that contained 2x Mac ROM sockets and plugged into the Amiga's external disk drive port, but A-Max was later driven by an internal expansion card (A2000-only) that had 2x Mac ROM sockets and a long list of other features. A-Max supported the connection of actual Macintosh external disk drives but was later able to read/write Mac disks on Amiga disk drives. Via A2024 or Moniterm Viking 2000 monitors A-Max displayed in up to 1008x800 resolution and A-Max v2.5 allowed for 2048x2048 scrolling displays (on the Amiga, screens can be trucked with cursor keys or the mouse cursor).
Upon its release in 1989 A-Max v1.0 retailed for £200 in the U.K. A-Max v2.0, Plus and v2.5 of 1990-92 added more and more features. A-Max eventually allowed accelerated Amigas (030, FPU, MMU) to run Mac productivity software at high speed.
In March of 1989 the 16 MHz 030 Macintosh IIcx with 16 MHz FPU and 1 meg of RAM debuted at $US5400 whereas in September of 1989 the 25 MHz 030 Macintosh IIci with 25 MHz 68882 FPU and 1 meg of RAM debuted at $US6300.
By comparison, in 1989 an A2000 with a 2-meg A2630 (or a 4-meg GVP A3001) and A-Max would set you back US$3300.
The above set-ups do not include monitors. Thus, you could add a 19" 1K-res Viking monitor (see below) to the A2000 set-up and it would still be cheaper than the Mac IIcx with no monitor.
Amiga Monitors [0.1]
Commodore released the Commodore 1080 monitor aka Amiga HR monitor aka Amiga Monitor Model 1080 in 1985. The 1080 was a 13" RGB analog color monitor with a CRT-pitch of 0.39Dmm, a 15.3 MHz electron-gun bandwidth, a horizontal scanning frequency of 15.75 kHz, and a vertical scanning frequency of 60 Hz. In RGBI mode the 1080 could display in 80 columns by 25 lines in 6x7 character boxes or in 640x400 interlace resolution.
Amiga gamers and home productivity software users (A500 users of 1987-92) typically used Commodore 1084S or Philips CM8833 14" color CRT monitors. The 1084S line frequency is 15,750 Hz whereas the Philips CM8833 line frequency is 15,625 Hz. The 1084S has a raster frequency of 60 Hz whereas the CM8833 has a raster frequency of 50/60 Hz. The 14" Commodore 1080/1 color monitor of 1985 (A1000 users) has a line frequency of 15,625 Hz and a raster frequency of 50/60 Hz. 1080 CRT-pitch is 0.39Dmm whereas 1081, 1084S and CM8833 CRT-pitch is 0.42Smm.
The 1084S was the most popular monitor for Amiga gamers and home productivity software users. In the U.K. the 1084S retailed for £400 in July of 1988 and £260 in July of 1989 whereas the CM8833 retailed for £550 in July of 1988 and £230 in July of 1989.
Entry-level Amiga monitors featured 13" screen sizes, built-in speakers and potentiometers for manually moving and stretching screens in order to center views and eliminate "black borders". Both the 1084S and the CM8833 had built-in stereo speakers and headphone jack.
The Commodore 1940/1942 Multisync 14" color CRT monitor scanning frequency is 47-75 Hz vertical and 15.6-15.8 kHz and 27.3-31.5 kHz horizontal. Note the range of frequencies that are auto-scanned by the 1940/42. Thus the term multisync or multiscan. 1940 CRT-pitch is 0.39mm whereas 1942 CRT-pitch is 0.28mm.
Commodore released the 14" 1950/CM-314 Multiscan color monitor in 1990. The 1950/CM314 has an electron-gun bandwidth of 30 MHz, a vertical scan frequency of 50-80 Hz and horizontal scan frequency of 15.5-37 kHz. The 1950/CM314 could display in up to 800x600 resolution. The 1950/CM-314 retailed for US$450 in 1992. The 1960 Multiscan color monitor has a raster frequency of 50-87 Hz and line frequencies of 15.75, 31.5 or 35.5 kHz. The 1950 pitch is 0.31Dmm.
Commodore of West Chester released the Commodore A2024 High Resolution Monitor in 1988. Engineered by Hedley Davis the A2024 is a 15" paperwhite 4-shade greyscale multi-sync monitor that auto-deinterlaces normal mode displays (flicker-free interlace) and can display in up to NTSC 1008x800 or PAL 1008x1024 resolution in extended mode. The A2024 has an electron-gun bandwidth of 80 MHz, a vertical refresh rate of 63 Hz NTSC or 50 Hz PAL and a horizontal scan frequency of 56.25 kHz. The A2024 was designed for use with non-color home and business productivity software; that is, for assemblers, word proccessors, databases, spreadsheets and DTP/CAD. The A2024 was compatible with the A1000, A500 and A2000. The A2024 was Commodore's answer to Atari's SM124/144 640x400 and IBM's MDA Hercules 720x350. [0.2]
Moniterm of the U.S.A. released the Moniterm Viking 1 monitor for the A2000 in 1989. The Moniterm Viking 1 is a 19" P104 white-phosphor 4-shade greyscale monochrome CRT monitor. The Viking has an electron-gun bandwidth of 110 MHz, a vertical scan rate of 66 Hz and a horizontal scan rate of 66 kHz. The Viking can display in up to 1008x800 on A2000s. Unlike the self-contained Commodore A2024 of 1988, the Viking relies on an internal video card that fits into the A2000's video slot. In 1989 the Moniterm Viking 1 retailed for £1700 in the U.K. and US$2000 in the U.S.A.
Meanwhile, NEC released the NEC MultiSync XL monitor in the U.S.A in 1988. The NEC MultiSync XL is a 64lb 20" CRT multiscan monitor with an electron-gun bandwidth of 65 MHz, a vertical scan frequency of 50-80 Hz and a horizontal scan frequency of 21.8-50 kHz. The IBM-, Mac- and Amiga-compatible NEC MultiSync XL could display in up to 1024x768 resolution. The NEC MultiSync XL initially retailed for US$3200, but the price had dropped to US$2200 by December of 1988.
Being enclosed in portable wedge cases A500s of 1987 and A1200s of 1992 were commonly plugged straight into big-screen TVs and stereo systems.
Here is the original version of Deluxe Paint of 1985 by Dan Silva of Electronic Arts of the U.S.A. Amiga graphicians used Deluxe Paint to create the graphics in many Amiga and PC DOS games. In terms of productivity software Deluxe Paint was the Amiga's Killer App of 1985.
The original Amigas were affordable to middle-class families yet they were on the cutting-edge of operating system, software and hardware development upon their release. The Amiga 1000 was so far ahead of the competition that Commodore's marketing department barely knew how to describe its capacities to prospective customers; there was no formal language that described the technology; the Amiga ushered in the age of multimedia computing.
Those who owned an Amiga in 1985 were living in the future by seven years pretty much across the board. Examples:
- Preemptive multi-tasking GUI OS bolstered by a command-line Shell CLI (and later ARexx)
- Multimedia & Genlocking
- Custom chip-powered audiovisuals
- Hardware mouse cursor
- Plug n play & ease-of-use
Third-party Amiga Accelerators
As for third-party Amiga accelerators, consider that in 1990 you could purchase for your bigbox Amiga 2000 a 68040 clocked at 25 MHz with MMU and coprocessor that came in at up to 25 MIPS and 8 MFLOPS, which was at least twice as fast as an i80486 clocked at 25MHz. And in 1992 you could purchase for your Amiga 500 a 68040 clocked at 28 MHz that was 40 times faster than a stock A500. RAM was 32-bit and ranged from 4 megs on the A500 to 32 megs on the A2000.
- In 1989 GVP released the GVP Impact A3001 for the A2000: 25 MHz 68030 CPU, 25 MHz 68882 floating point math coprocessor (FPU), 4-8 megs of 32-bit 80-nanosecond nibble-mode DRAM, DMA SCSI controller and 30-100 meg 3.5" hard disk drive. The 4-meg GVP A3001 came in at 8 MIPS and retailed for US$2300.
- In 1990 GVP released the GVP Impact A3050 for the A2000: 50 MHz 68030 and 68882. The 4-meg GVP A3050 came in at 15 MIPS and retailed for US$4400.
- In 1991 RCS Management released the Fusion 40 accelerator for the A2000: 25 MHz 68040 (25 MIPS / 8 MFLOPS) and 32 megs of 32-bit RAM.
- In 1992 Progressive released Progressive 040/500 accelerator for the A500: 25 MHz 68040 and 4 megs of 32-bit RAM.
- In 1992 GVP released the GVP A530 Turbo accelerator for the A500: 40 MHz 68EC030 CPU, 40 MHz 68882 floating point math coprocessor (FPU), 8 megs of 32-bit 60 nanosecond RAM (2x 4 meg SIMMs), DMA SCSI controller and 240 meg hard disk drive (can add 6x hard disk drives or CD-ROM drives).
Commodore released the Amiga 1200 October of 1992. You wanted to add Fast RAM to your A1200 immediately. 2 megs of Chip RAM was not enough. And no, I'm not talking about plug-in 16-bit PCMCIA RAM, I'm talking about 32-bit trapdoor RAM. As well, people added M68030 accelerators as soon as they hit the market.
Amiga Game Reviews
This is an index to Amiga game reviews and other Amiga articles published by Lilura1, author of Computer Game History. The Amiga games are listed in alphabetical order and review scores for playability, graphics and audio are appended.
Enjoy! And remember: Amiga forever.
An [--] appended means the Amiga game lacks audio or graphics (a silent game / text-only game).
***
Welcome to my write-up on the best games for the Amiga, and the best game developers for the Amiga.
The Amiga is a Western microcomputer manufactured by Commodore. In the tradition of 16 bit gaming the Amiga was most famous for its shoot 'em ups and platformers that pushed its custom chipset to the limit and allowed it to contend with the Genesis and SNES consoles even towards the end of its lifetime. It was its copper and its blitter, its parallax hardware screen-scrolling and its sampled sounds that enabled it to stand the test of time in the highly competitive arena of 16 bit gaming.
Over 150 Amiga games ran at 50 FPS, too.
Best Amiga Games
[§3.0]
Defining an Amiga Game
But what constitutes an Amiga game, and what constitutes an Amiga developer?
Strictly speaking, I venture to state that an Amiga game is a computer game whose code targets the Amiga's chipset; and developers whose code targets the Amiga's chipset are Amiga developers.
The Amiga must be first and foremost in the mind. Ideally, the advantages of Amiga hardware are tapped into on a custom chipset level, not just the M68K which the Amiga shared with several other platforms (though at differing clock-rates).
Sadly, this was not done as often as one would have liked: it always disappointed me that so many Amiga games were ports of Atari ST and PC DOS slop: inferior 2D gaming platforms in the Amiga's heyday, to be sure, since they lacked custom chipsets.
Bitmap Brothers Games
The Bitmap Brothers of the U.K. was founded in 1987 by Mike Montgomery, Eric Matthews and Steve Kelly. The Bitmap Brothers mostly buffed Atari ST ports, so how can their games properly be called Amiga games?
If a few colors are added or the music and sound is better, is it an actual Amiga game or a glorified ST version on the Amiga? Consider:
- Xenon of 1988
- Speedball of 1988
- Xenon 2 of 1989
- Speedball 2 of 1990
- Gods of 1991
- Magic Pockets of 1991
- Chaos Engine of 1993
Don't get me wrong, I like the Bitmap Brothers' games even though they don't run at full frames. All Bitmap Brothers are well-designed. Also, the non-AGA pixel art of Mark Coleman and Dan Malone is masterwork. But I don't consider the Bitmap Brothers focused Amiga developers because six of the seven games listed above had ST as lead.
Even when the Bitmap Brothers employed the Amiga as lead (Chaos Engine), the game still didn't run at 50 FPS or have 256 v-pixels. And yet Chaos Engine came out in 1993, eight years into the Amiga's life-cycle.
Next, the reader is going to have to convince me that LucasFilm's The Secret of Monkey Island -- which some Amigans hold in high or even highest regard -- is an Amiga game.
- The Amiga version of SoMI came out eight months after the original EGA version.
- SoMI is built on the cross-platform SCUMM engine which has its origins on the Commodore 64.
- Also, remember the smooth scrolling in SoMI? Yeah, neither do I. What I remember is jerky scrolling. Like ST and MS-DOS slop of that era. I also remember slow-down.
TMFX music aside, where is the Amiga in this game? SoMI is not an Amiga game, it is an MS-DOS game on the Amiga. The MS-DOS version is also better than the Amiga version.
To all those "Amiga gamers" that rate SoMI as the best "Amiga game", please repeat after me: "The best Amiga game is better on PC. And PC gamers were playing it eight months before I was. But I am a true Amigan -- really!"
Delphine's Flashback of 1992 didn't belong properly to any platform at any time (its genesis on the Sega Genesis); even Another World of 1991 was developed with the ST in mind. There is nothing about Another World or Flashback that says, "I'm an Amiga game".
Mike Singleton's Midwinter is an Atari ST masterpiece. In fact, most of the best 3D "Amiga games" are ST-firsts.
Best Amiga Game Developers
I have arranged the Amiga developer listing in rough chronological order of their releases. Only developers that put the Amiga first and pushed the Amiga's chipset can make this cut. Also, only what I consider to be their great games are listed. To make this cut there can be no hint of ST/PC taint in the games cited. Thus, this list is merciless in that even some of my fave games on the Amiga did not make the cut due to ST/PC taint. But what is ST/PC taint? It's when a so-called Amiga game is a port of an ST/PC game or when a so-called Amiga game is hamstrung by dual-development with ST/PC versions.
A game with Amiga soul would be a game that targets the Amiga's chipset and unique capacities; that is, the game would feature Paula music and employ the bit-blitter, the copper coprocessor and such-like. The game would probably run in full-screen (no "ST" borders) at 50 FPS (or at least appear to). The game could also display in up to 32-color full PAL overscan, 64-color extra half-brite mode or greater, though such are not preconditions. A game with Amiga soul is a game that cannot appear on ST or even PC VGA without being reduced to parody or caricature; that is, it is distinctly Amigan in nature.
In addition, an Amiga-original or Amiga-first game does not automatically mean that the game pushes the Amiga chipset. For example, the Amiga game may be developed with ST/PC ports in mind, which can hamstring the Amiga version from the outset.
I would like to remind readers that this is a list of developers, not publishers. The developer is the individual or team that designs the game, programs it, draws its graphics and composes its music whereas publishers oversee the game's development and fund, market. package and (often) distribute the game. Publishers are mentioned if they are inseparable from the technical development of the game. Note also that some developers self-published. Thus, there is sometimes a grey area.
Please note that this list of developers is not yet exhaustive.
Cinemaware / Master Designer Software
Cinemaware of the U.S.A. was founded in 1986 by Robert Jacob and Phyllis Jacob. Master Designer Software of Cinemaware are most famous for developing Defender of the Crown.
Discovery Software International
Discovery Software International of the U.S.A. released Arkanoid and Sword of Sodan in 1988.
Cope-Com
Cope-Com of Denmark was founded in 1987 by Martin B. Pedersen and Torben B. Larsen. Cope-Com developed Hybris of 1988 and Battle Squadron of 1989.
PREDATOR CLOAKING.
Reflections
Reflections of the U.K. was founded in 1984 by Martin Edmondson and Nicholas Chamberlain. Reflections are most famous for developing Shadow of the Beast of 1989.
ICONIC.
Random Access
Random Access / The Sales Curve of the U.K. developed Amiga Ninja Warriors of 1989, Silkworm of 1989, Saint Dragon of 1990, SWIV of 1991 and Rod Land of 1991.
Gremlin Graphics
Gremlin Graphics Software of the U.K. was founded in 1984 by Ian Stewart and Kevin Norburn. Gremlin Graphics developed Venus the Flytrap of 1990 and Zool of 1992.
Core Design
Core Design of the U.K. was founded in 1988 by nine ex-Gremlin Graphics employees. Core Design developed Chuck Rock of 1991, Jaguar XJ220 of 1992, Blastar of 1993 and Banshee of 1994.
Graftgold
Graftgold of the U.K. was founded in 1983 by Steve Turner. In the Amiga sphere Graftgold are most famous for developing Paradroid 90 of 1990, Fire & Ice of 1992 and Uridium 2 of 1993. Rainbow Islands of 1990 doesn't count due to ST taint.
DMA Design
DMA Design of the U.K. (Scotland) was founded in 1988 by David Jones. DMA Design are most famous for developing Blood Money of 1989, Lemmings of 1991 and Hired Guns of 1993.
Factor 5
Factor 5 of Germany was founded in 1987 by five ex-Rainbow Arts employees, which included Julian Eggebrecht. Factor 5 developed the Amiga Turrican Games, Amiga R-Type of 1989 and Amiga BC Kid of 1992.
BIG-ASS ROTATING GUN.
50 FPS, arcade-quality run-n-gun games bolstered by a perfectly-polished platform game means that Factor 5 rank highly. Turrican was designed by Manfred Trenz and composer by Chris Hülsbeck. These guys knew how to tap into Amiga Alienware.
Ordilogic Systems
Ordilogic Systems of Belgium was founded in 1987. Ordilogic Systems developed Unreal of 1990.
JAW-DROPPER IN 1990.
Aptly-named since its production values were indeed unreal. The game is part-platformer, part-railshooter. It has Amiga written ALL OVER IT.
Art & Magic
Art & Magic of Belgium was founded in 1991 by Yves Grolet, Yann Robert and Franck Sauer. Art & Magic developed Agony of 1992.
OWL.
Art & Magic are aptly-named as well. Games with haunting visuals and instrumentals on this level are rare. Agony is stamped with an Amiga seal, too. One could never mistake Agony for a lowly ST or artless MS-DOS game. It is impossible.
Bullfrog Productions
Bullfrog Productions of the U.K. was founded in 1987 by Peter Molyneux and Les Edgar. Bullfrog developed Populous of 1989, PowerMonger of 1990, Flood of 1990 and Syndicate of 1993.
Magnetic Fields
Magnetic Fields of the U.K. developed Super Cars 2 of 1991, the Lotus games of 1990-92 and Kid Chaos of 1994.
Kaiko / A.U.D.I.O.S.
Kaiko / A.U.D.I.O.S. of Germany was founded in 1990 by Frank Matzke, Peter Thierolf and Chris Hülsbeck. Kaiko / A.U.D.I.O.S. developed Apidya of 1992.
ALMOST PERFECT.
One of the best horizontally-scrolling shoot 'em ups on the Amiga. The music is absolutely awesome and the graphics aren't too shabby either. Even current gen gamers would find Apidya playable.
Sensible Software
Sensible Software of the U.K. was founded in 1986 by Jon Hare and Chris Yates. Sensible Software are famous for developing Sensible Soccer of 1992 and Cannon Fodder of 1993.
Team 17
QUANTITY & QUALITY.
Team 17 of the U.K. was founded in 1990 by Michael Robinson, Martyn Brown and Debbie Bestwick of 17-Bit Software of Britain and Andreas Tadic, Rico Holmes and Peter Tuleby of Team 7 of Sweden.
Team 17 games were polished, targeted the Amiga's chipset and ran at full frames or at least appeared to: the ones that technically did not do so appeared to do so. Team 17 had the quantity of output with the quality. Most notably, Team 17 developed Alien Breed of 1991, Project-X of 1992, Superfrog of 1993 and Worms of 1995.
Krisalis Software
Krisalis Software of the U.K. was founded in 1988 by Tony Kavanagh, Peter Harrap and Shaun Hollingworth. Krisalis Software developed Soccer Kid of 1993 and Arabian Nights of 1993.
Euphoria
Euphoria of The Netherlands developed Disposable Hero of 1993.
Thalion
Thalion of Germany was founded in 1988 by Erik Simon and Holger Flöttmann. Thalion are most famous for developing Lionheart of 1993. Otherwise, they were mostly an ST developer.
PRIME PIXEL ART.
Bloodhouse
Bloodhouse of Finland was founded in 1993 by Harri Tikkanen. Bloodhouse developed Stardust of 1993.
ASTEROIDS & TUNNELS.
King-tier Asteroids clone with light-sourced, rotating asteroids and high-speed tunnel segments reminiscent of Space Harrier. Pure gaming and extremely difficult to play without a quality input device.
More REAL Amiga Developers
Other developers that qualify include Kingsoft for Emerald Mine of 1987, VDT for Datastorm of 1989, Rainbow Arts for Rock 'n Roll of 1989, TLK Games for Tecnoball of 1991, Vectordean for James Pond I/II of 1990/91, Rob Anderson for Moonstone of 1991, Ocean Software for Parasol Stars of 1992, Blue Byte for The Settlers of 1993, Vision / TWB for Overkill of 1993, Scipio for Yo Joe of 1993, Interactivision for Prime Mover of 1993, Neon for Mr. Nutz of 1994, NAPS Team for Shadow Fighter of 1994, Edgar M. Vigdal for Deluxe Galaga of 1995 and Nordlicht for Mega Typhoon of 1996.
In my humble opinion, those are the games and developers that really mattered on the Amiga; those are the games with Amiga soul. Even if its gameplay isn't great, Shadow of the Beast, especially, brought a degree of production value and artistry to M68K games that didn't exist beforehand.
First-generation Amiga Games
From 1985-86 the Amiga was getting ports of MS-DOS and 8 bit games. None of these differentiated the Amiga by much. For example, increasing the palette range, employing digitized speech or taking advantage of increased diskette capacity to fully load game-data into 256K of RAM was simply not enough. Indeed, and this is undeniably true, at this point you were glad to still have access to your C64. In respect to games, no one was going to shelve their C64 at this point.
We are talking about 1985-86, which is before the Amiga 500 of 1987 and its 512K RAM, which most gamers expanded to 1 meg in 1987.
For example, by March of 1986 there were 30 games available for the Amiga in the U.S. Sounds like a lot right? I mean, come on. It's March of 1986, man. 30 games by March of 1986 is good, man. But consider that more than half of them were Zork-style Infocom games that retailed for US$40-50 each. Yeah, I didn't buy an Amiga to play text-based adventure games such as Zork. There were seven games by Electronic Arts, four by Mindscape and three by Activision. These games barely begun to exploit the Amiga's custom chipset capacities. There were much better games than those available on the Atari ST in 1985 and the Atari 8-bits in 1981.
For example, the ST had SunDog and Time Bandit in 1985. Yes, I think those games are a little bit more impressive than... Zork. In 1985 the C64 had Elite and Revs as well as Paradroid and Gribbly's Day Out (just to name a few). Yes, I think I'd rather be playing those games than... Zork.
Zork is a mainframe game that came out in 1977. I didn't buy an Amiga to play 8 year old mainframe text-based games; I didn't buy an audiovisual powerhouse to read text.
Here is an alphabetical listing of Infocom games that were released on Amiga. Of the 36 Infocom games released on Amiga 25 of them had been released by 1986. Note that all Infocom games were professionally published and well-written; my point is that they are conversions and almost wholly text-based in nature.
- Arthur: Quest for Excalibur Amiga Infocom 1989
- Ballyhoo Amiga Infocom 1986
- Beyond Zork: Coconut of Quendor Amiga Infocom 1987
- Border Zone Amiga Infocom 1987
- Bureaucracy Amiga Infocom 1987
- Cutthroats Amiga Infocom 1986
- Deadline Amiga Infocom 1986
- Enchanter Amiga Infocom 1986 ("Zork IV")
- Enchanter: Sorcerer Amiga Infocom 1986
- Enchanter: Spellbreaker Amiga Infocom 1986
- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Amiga Infocom 1986
- Hollywood Hijinx Amiga Infocom 1987
- Infidel Amiga Infocom 1986
- James Clavell's Shogun Amiga Infocom 1989
- Journey Amiga Infocom 1986
- Leather Goddesses of Phobos Amiga Infocom 1986
- Lurking Horror Amiga Infocom 1987
- Mind Forever Voyaging Amiga Infocom 1986
- Moonmist Amiga Infocom 1986
- Nord and Bert Couldn't Make Head or Tail of It Amiga Infocom 1987
- Planetfall Amiga Infocom 1985
- Plundered Hearts Amiga Infocom 1986
- Seastalker Amiga Infocom 1986
- Sherlock: Riddle of the Crown Jewels Amiga Infocom 1988
- Starcross Amiga Infocom 1986
- Stationfall Amiga Infocom 1987
- Suspect Amiga Infocom 1986
- Suspended Amiga Infocom 1986
- Trinity Amiga Infocom 1986
- Wishbringer: Magick Stone of Dreams Amiga Infocom 1986
- Witness Amiga Infocom 1986
- Zork: Great Underground Empire Amiga Infocom 1986
- Zork II: Wizard of Frobozz Amiga Infocom 1986
- Zork III: Dungeon Master Amiga Infocom 1986
- Zork Trilogy Amiga Infocom 1986
- Zork Zero: Revenge of Megaboz Amiga Infocom 1989
On the other hand, by 1985-86 the Amiga clearly distinguished itself via paint, animation and music programs such as Deluxe Paint (the Amiga's Killer App of 1985), Aegis Animator and Deluxe Music Construction Set as well as NewTek's DigiView and DigiPaint. And of course, the Amiga's multi-tasking GUI-based operating system was lightyears ahead of the home-computer competition.
The Pawn, Chessmaster 2000 and Defender of the Crown of 1986 were the first games on the Amiga that began to differentiate Amiga graphics and presentation from MS-DOS, Atari ST and 8 bit games. However, ST Pawn was just as good as Amiga Pawn, ST CM2000 had better speech than Amiga CM2000 (sampled rather than synthesized), and ST DotC had better gameplay than Amiga DotC (but came out later).
Those three games were the first to employ slick user interfaces that actually wowed people without fail. However, two of those three were still ports rather than real Amiga games. And Amiga DotC barely even featured gameplay.
And by reason of genre those three games did not employ hardware scrolling and other fancy chipset features that could have elevated the Amiga far beyond PC DOS and 8 bit games.
Marble Madness Amiga 1986
Electronic Arts ported Atari Games' Marble Madness coinop of 1984 to the Amiga in 1986 Marble Madness was the first good arcade conversion to appear on the Amiga. Having its origin in a coinop, it also featured actual gameplay.
In Marble Madness players must guide a rolling marble through scrolling isometric maze-like terrains en route to the goal or finish line within a certain time limit or against a second player.
Marble Madness features eight levels of difficulty, a scrolling isometric playfield, kinetics and six tiered and undulating terrains replete with hazards. Amiga Marble Madness supports single-player or 2-player simultaneous play.
Amiga Marble Madness stages are 288 pixels in width and up to ~1,100 pixels in height.
Amiga Marble Madness was lead-programmed by Larry Reed, drawn by Ian Gooding and debugged, optimized and audio-assembled by Steve Hayes and Bill Lee. Atari Games' coinop Marble Madness was designed by Mark Cerny, programmed by Bob Flanagan, drawn by Mark Cerny and Sam Comstock, and composed by Brad Fuller and Hal Canon.
***
Amiga Arkanoid of 1988 is the first coinop port for the Amiga that is better than any other version, including the original coinop.
But it was not until 1989, that is, until four years had past (Amigans were already noting with concern the slowness of Amiga releases in 1986-87), that the Amiga's chipset started getting pushed hard consistently. Consider that Shadow of the Beast, Hybris, Sword of Sodan and Battle Squadron came out in 1988-89. These were the first REAL Amiga games.
After 1989 there was a steady-stream of Amiga games that pushed its hardware for several more years. And while that period could have lasted longer, you were glad to have had an Amiga.
MS-DOS Games Versus Amiga Games
In the early 90s the IBM PC caught up with the Amiga in terms of 2D capability via VGA. And it caught up to the Amiga's soundchip via sound cards. And the IBM PC had more raw processing power, more RAM and more HDD pedigree than Amigas. Moreover, it had the market. Thus was the Amiga Doomed as a computer game machine by the mid-90s, but as early as 1991 it was evident that Amigas could not contend in 3D computer games; only in 2D computer games did the Amiga contend. It is, however, quite a feat that 2D computer games on the Amiga rode 1985-tech for one decade. Bow down to the original Alienware.
The IBM PC MS-DOS port of Joe and Mac furnishes one example of how VGA had caught up to Amiga graphics by 1992.
General Amiga Game Articles
- Most Technically Advanced Amiga Games
- Amiga Games in 1990
- The First REAL Amiga Game
- 1980s Amiga games that made Atari ST owners jealous
- Early 1990s IBM PC Games that made Amiga owners jealous
- History of 1990s Computer Games (does not leave out the Amiga)
- The Cinematization of Computer Games (does not leave out the Amiga)
- History of Shoot 'em Ups (Amiga is strong)
- Amiga Shoot 'em ups Listed in Chronological Order
- The First Flat-shaded 3D Games (some more Amiga games)
- Best English Football Games on the Amiga (1989-98)
- Street Fighter Games Amiga 1988-95
- The Amiga's Doom (1993)
- Amiga Diablo (1996)
WinUAE Amiga Emulation
[§4.0]
In the mid-to-late 80s PC emulation of the copper and blitter was said to be impossible. The base-line Amiga chipset was not usably emulated on PC until 1997. Even Pentium 100s could not emulate A1000s at full-speed and in cycle-exact mode.
WinUAE Warp Mode
WinUAE Warp Mode is used to speed up OS, application and game operations. To toggle WinUAE Warp Mode, hit End + Pause keys. Warp mode will not work if the program you are running is CPU-limited.
WinUAE Save States
WinUAE save states allow you to save and load game states instantly and at any time. In addition, save states allow you to bypass save register restrictions and slow saving routines. To save and load game states, go to Misc. Load/Save Game State.
WinUAE Recording
To record in WinUAE, go to Output under Host, click Video and choose Xvid MPEG 4 codec, click Audio and choose PCM 48 khz sound. Then click AVI output enabled to start recording.
Naturally, you will need to have the Xvid video codec installed for it to be selectable in WinUAE.
WinUAE Take Screenshot
To take a screencap in WinUAE, hit the F12 key, go to Output and click Save Screenshot under Ripper.
WinUAE Help Key
The Help key is the Page Down key.
Amiga Emulation
The purpose of this section is to help people set up their very own virtual Amiga 1200 in order to gain access to the best Amiga games and applications.
WinUAE Installation
In setting things up there are two main barriers to entry.
The first barrier is that, for the uninitiated, this is a rather involved process. I found it to be enjoyable and nostalgic, but you are talking here about setting up an emulator, not a simple emulator for a console like the Genesis or SNES, but an emulator for a line of complex computers that sport custom chipsets that were so advanced for their time, people joked that the Amiga was designed by aliens (blitter, copper, extended palette, hardware scrolling, sampled sound etc.).
That means it's pretty esoteric and there are lots of configurations and settings to deal with. You are going to be setting up a virtual hard disk drive, installing an elegant operating system onto it that is foreign to Windows users, and then installing a few applications that are needed to run the games. Also, you will be typing into a command line interface at certain points, known as Shell. So yeah, this is going to be daunting for some people but believe me when I say: you can do it!
A1200 Kickstart ROM & Workbench 3.1 ADFs
Ok, the second barrier. Well, this one's a little more serious because even if you're willing and able to put in the time and effort, you may still hit a road block, which is that in order to emulate an Amiga 1200 you first require the A1200 Kickstart rom (to boot the Amiga) and Workbench 3.1 ADFs (to install the OS).
The ROM and ADFs are not freely available to people who do not already own the original A1200 hardware (and can image their ADFs and dump their rom with GrabKick); so, if you don't have an A1200 enshrined in your living room then you will have to purchase them both from Cloanto or Amigakit (rom and ADFs).
Amiga Forever by Cloanto
You could also simply purchase Amiga Forever from Cloanto and just be done with it, since it's the complete emulator already set up with the necessary files.
Ok, so assuming you've got the rom and ADFs, how do you go about setting things up?
First of all, you will need the WinUAE Amiga emulator developed by Toni Wilen (UAE itself was originally coded by Bernd Schmidt). This is the most amazing emulator I've used, and I've played around with a lot of emus over the years. Anyway, download WinUAE and install it to a non-Program Files folder.
You can now download games and play them, though at this point you can only do so from diskette images, which are called ADFs. This means they load slowly even when using WinUAE's built-in 800% floppy disk speed increase. Plus, you will have to swap disks during gameplay in some cases, just like the old days. Moreover, many of the ADF download sites have lots of ads and the files may be glitched and contain cracktros and the like, when what we want is instant loading from the hard disk, no disk-swapping, no glitches, and extra features such as guides, trainers and convenience tweaks, right? This is the magic of WHDLoad.
To achieve this, follow these instructions:
- Set main ROM file to Kickstart 3.1
- Set CPU to A1200/4000, Set Chipset to AGA
- Set RAM to 2 megs Chip and 8 megs Fast
- Set Floppy Drive Emulation Speed to 800%
- Add Hard File: DH0: System
- Add Directory or Archive: DH1: Programs
- Mount Workbench 3.1 Install diskette (ADF) to DF0:
- Save the configuration
- Click Start
- Once in Workbench, Format DH0: as System
- Load the Installer from the diskette in DF0:
- Install the Workbench diskettes (End + Pause for warp speed)
- Reboot
- Congrats. You just installed Workbench 3.1 to System DH0:
- Download and place LHA.run, Installer and WHDLoad into Programs
- Install LHA, Installer and WHDLoad
- Place WHDLoad game installs (with their *.info files) into Programs
- Double-click to play
Here are pics showing a few of my setups: spartan original interface, Classic WB interface with most of the bells and whistles installed, and the spartan interface again but this time showing the WHDLoad game-launch icons.
WHDLoad Amiga
As it pertains to Amiga games, normally you would have to download WHDLoad installers from WHDLoad.de, source the ADFs, and then install them one-by-one, but killergorilla and Retroplay have done the work for you already:
Download WHDLoad pre-installed Amiga games from the Retroplay archive at ftp2.grandis.nu Turran FTP in the Retroplay WHDLoad Packs folder.
To get the games going in WinUAE, all you need to do is download the archives (3-4 gigs in total), extract their contents using something like 7z, and then simply place the folders for the games you want to play inside your /WinUAE/Programs folder (with their *.info file). Then, in Workbench, you simply double-click on the game icon to play. WHDLoad used to require registration but now it's totally free, and that is just awesome.
To get the games going in WinUAE, all you need to do is download the archives (3-4 gigs in total), extract their contents using something like 7z, and then simply place the folders for the games you want to play inside your /WinUAE/Programs folder (with their *.info file). Then, in Workbench, you simply double-click on the game icon to play. WHDLoad used to require registration but now it's totally free, and that is just awesome.
Note that with some games you might get the message:
To fix this, get the skick346.lha archive from Aminet and extract it with lha in Workbench (if you extract it with 7z in Windows then WHDLoad will not recognize the files as the correct ones - even if Workbench displays them). Once that's done navigate to /System/System, open Shell, type lha x programs:skick346.lha programs:, and hit enter. The archive extracts...
Now, create a "Kickstarts" folder in /System/Devs and place the now-extracted Kick34005.A500.RTB into it. In addition, you will need to copy your rom file in there and rename it to Kick34005.A500. That should fix the error for those games but for Ishar you will need to repeat the process for Kick40068.A1200.
If all went well you now have a setup that will bring you great joy. And the best part is? You did it yourself, step by step, so you at least have an inkling as to what's going on.
If all went well you now have a setup that will bring you great joy. And the best part is? You did it yourself, step by step, so you at least have an inkling as to what's going on.
Amiga cRPGs
The Amiga hosted its fair share of great cRPGs that a lot of people haven't played or even heard of. Some of these were exclusive to it, whereas others offered an extended color palette and superior sound and music over their PC counterparts.
List of Amiga cRPGs
Here is a list of cRPGs for the Amiga that you might like to check out:
- Black Crypt
- Bloodnet
- Bloodwych
- Captive
- Chaos Strikes Back
- DragonLance cRPGs
- Drakkhen
- Dungeon Master
- Eye of the Beholder
- Faery Tale Adventure
- Fate Gates of Dawn
- Hired Guns
- Ishar: Legend of the Fortress
- Ishar 2: Messengers of Doom
- Ishar 3: The Seven Gates of Infinity
- Legend of Faerghail
- Liberation: Captive 2
- Moonstone: A Hard Days Knight
- Perihelion The Prophecy
- Pool of Radiance
Back to:
- Computer Game Reviews (Index of all reviews)
- Home Computer Game History (Master Index)
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.