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Desert Island Retro

The Rise and Fall of the Commodore Amiga


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  • 1 month later...

The Amiga, definitely was my favourite home computer, beating the ZX81, Speccy and C64 which I also had.

For many of us, Commodore going bust, just came out of the blue and we saw it on the front of an Amiga magazine.

I finally gave my A1200, up in July 1996, when I got my first PC, after I had deliberated about getting one for pretty much 6 months to a year before.

I think had Commodore not gone bust and the Amiga still had been supported more or another more powerful Amiga had been released in 1994/95 time, I would have stuck with it until 1997/98, before getting a PC. I think with PC's becoming more and more popular and affordable, there wouldn't have been any real market for Amigas or another home computer beyond 1997/98 time anyway.

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  • 1 year later...

 Over a year since last post so sorry in advance....

 

 I regularly boot up the Amiga emulator. Theres still some addictive games out there. Zeewolf for one, although graphically inferior to anythine even the 1st Playstation ran, gameplay was pretty top notch. I bought my first A500 based on a sound sample. My choices between the A500 or the Atari ST 520. The original game Lemmings, when the door in the ceiling opened, on the A500 a sample played 'Lets Go!'.... Nothing on the Atari 520. The irony, I bought the A500 because of a sound sample, but the Atari ST520 was used throughout the music industry for its sound capabilities.... 

 I remember my days contributing stupid letters, Hot Topic stories and other experiences to the old Digitizer on ITV Teletext and C4 Teletext, earning myself a full 6 years of continuous subscription to Amiga Format (winning the star letter on the Hot Topic) many many times. Back then, the whole world blamed the demise of the Amiga on software privacy. But I remember picking up a few 'pirate' games of titles before the original game was even released. It was rumoured that the software houses themselves released 'unofficial' copies of their games, just like 'pirate' copies, pre-release for publicity. I think Amiga Format once mentioned in the dying months of the Amiga, for every full price purchased game, there were 40 pirated copies...

 Nothing will ever beat the Spectrum for piracy. A few versions of 'The Key' or 'Tape 2 Tape', then the Jet Set Will 2 bug where a few 'POKE's prior to loading, would allow the game to not only be fixed, but saved entirely onto a blank casette tape. That seriously upped my street cred at Hull Grammar School back in the early 1980s...

 lol, i'm still mentioned under 'BONES' on the Digitiser hommage site 'SuperPage58' http://www.superpage58.com/do-you-see-digitiser-a-to-z.htm

Bring back the AMIGA!!!!!

 

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The ST didn’t have any music capabilities, the sound processor onboard was the extremely weak Yamaha sound chip .  It was just that musicians adopted the Atari as it had built in midi port and some excellent software like Cubase, Steinberg.   The ST was widely used by professional musicians.

J

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I bought the Amiga/C64 forever package https://www.amigaforever.com/

Haven't loaded up the Amiga emulator for ages, but I do like a game on Football Masters, which is a really basic football management game. Railroad Tycoon is a great game of it's time and one, I've played fully through on the emulator. Got quite addicted to Pinball Fantasies (the fairground table) when I rediscovered it.

Last time I was using it, a friend of mine, saw the game I was playing (can't remember what it was but it was a late run and gun type platformer) and said, wow I didn't know the Amiga could do graphics like that.

It was capable of doing some great stuff, like in Batman the driving sequence and surely it can't do that moments, like running Quake.

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I bought an a1200 back in August, never really got round to setting it up.  It was expensive and it wasn’t in the best nick to be honest.  I had a flash drive connected with all the goodies, WB and all available games but I never go round to expanding the internal memory plus I couldn’t be having the hassle of having to get it recapped.

J

 

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20 hours ago, A:E said:

The ST didn’t have any music capabilities, the sound processor onboard was the extremely weak Yamaha sound chip .  It was just that musicians adopted the Atari as it had built in midi port and some excellent software like Cubase, Steinberg.   The ST was widely used by professional musicians.

J

Yeah of course. I do remember now.

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It was all down to the Midi port on the Atari ST.  I mean maybe GEM was a better GUI than Workbench.  I really wanted an ST as well but I was more than happy with my Amiga and Noisetrekker.   It was just amazing to be able to create dance tracks and the like on a home computer.  I had a few music synths and drum machines back in the day, I would often create overlay tracks and put my Amiga through my mixing deck. 

Times ;(    I miss those care free days and being single with absolutely no real world worries, living with the parents ;)

J

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