Do you use Amiga?

Hi all,

To my impression, Amiga is an old-style computer.
Does Amiga has markets? (Business or game)
Any new games developed for it?
Does its games has the same quality as those of Geforce or ATI?

Thanks in advance
:)

Your impression is right.

Q: Does Amiga has markets? (Business or game)
A: It will always have a following of die-hard people that refuse to let go. They are upgrading its OS and its hardware, but it seems it will never be relaunched and compete with todays PC's.

Q: Any new games developed for it?
A: Probably. Check out fansites or just google it. You won't find amiga games on the shelves anymore though, as there's only a small community left. You might still find a demo scene working on it though.

Q: Does its games has the same quality as those of Geforce or ATI?
A: 2D games released in its glory days far outshines today's 3D games. This is my opinion though, but I suspect many people will agree with me.

Remember that it was a machine that was replaced by IBM PC's in the mid 90's, and thats the kind of programs and games you can expect to find for it.

I believe some Amigas support AGP cards, the AmigaOne I think does.

But Amiga is dead. Unless someone can produce a large wad of cash, collate all the patents and organize some good programmers, marketing people and games producers, (and receive a huge amount of luck) then it's never going to be more than just a hobby thing these days.

Agreed, and that's fine by me. The Amiga was a great computer but it's had it's day. I'm not sure what a new Amiga could bring to the table these days. Between them, PCs and consoles cover all the bases.

It still lifes in my heart and oh well in form of UAE on my computer. :O)

Amiga OS4 looked like it had some pretty good ideas, if they had released an x86 version then I would have probably given it a shot.

and they themself most likely as well ^^

Yeah, amiga either has to be the original hardware or x86...using ppc is pointless.

Emulation mostly.
It happens.
No. Most are way better, and at least 12 years old.

ah :) - i still have the ROM Kernel manuals + devpac +
my rusty old a1200 blizzard 030... stored in a garage though,
so probably buggered now ;)

Ahh Amiga.

Well, everything has its place. I always found it hard to hear people saying that the Amiga was dead even though there were still *some* people (enthusiasts) using them, but I had to kind of join the crowd eventually because it just was not keeping up with the times, and my desire for modern computing and support outweighed my fondness for that platform. Also I had to sell my Amiga as part of immigrating so that was the end of that.

I feel sorry for the endless list of companies who keep buying the Amiga rights and properties only to meet the same curse eventually and have to sell. I'm surprised os4 has come out at all. Progress is very slow in that market and I would hazard to say that *most* people using Amiga's nowadays are enthusiasts and hobbyists. I would have to say there's probably more people using Linux nowadays than the Amiga.

I wouldn't ever really say the Amiga is dead but it is not very viable as a mainstream operating system/platform anymore. When Commodore dropped the Amiga that was pretty much the end. It would be nice is BlitzMax compiled for the latest Amiga hardware but I would say that's no big loss at this point. Not that I don't totally LOVE the Amiga, it was such a cutting edge platform with *GREAT* games and such great community loyalty. I am really glad to have been able to get onto the Amiga bandwagon at the right time in my life to lay a foundation of inspiration and creativity that I can build upon. And I would agree many many Amiga games are better than many many other games being released today.

Defoc8: How much do you want for your Amiga? I've been thinking about getting one again.

just like atari all amiga is now is a name of nostalgia
ok infrogrames(?) trade under the atari name but they are no more atari as you or i am (i could change my name by deed pole to elton john but that wont mean im entitled to his royalty cheques (probably made out to reg dwight) or i can sing as well as he allegedly does ;) )

escom bought the last stock of amigas to resell and perhaps the rights to the manufacturing of new stock
but they bellied up not so long after

one chip amiga ... nice as it is unless its like £5 to buy its got no chance up against even the most basic of handhelds

people buy and sell amiga rights on what seems like a daily basis
perhaps one day (if puki won the euro millions we could have lynched him for some dosh) someone will have all that it takes to make a viable a1200/cd32 and then work on how to sell it to the world dominated by sony nintendo and microsoft

amiga os on x86, just join the ranks of linux distro's

so in reality the only amiga's outside of still working originals exist only in winUAE and other emulators

Not even linux distros, because they have mature graphics and wifi drivers. More like Haiku or SkyOS (as discussed in other recent threads here!).

At the time the Amiga was for me the forerunner both in the o/s and in the hardware, but alas it got overtaken by the copycats and the more mainstream off-the-shelf companies (PC's, etc).

I don't use an Amiga emulator since I don't have the ROM anymore, but I do watch recorded videos of Amiga games from time to time - lots of them on YouTube and such, and at recordedamigagames.com or whatever it is.

How many people here have developed games based on Amiga games?

>When Commodore dropped the Amiga that was pretty much the
>end.

Commodore never dropped the Amiga, it might have saved the company if they had bet on the PC instead. Escom didn't drop the Amiga, they just decided to restart production and then not sell them. Tulip didn't own any rights to the Amiga, they only bought the Commodore 8bit rights and trademarks. Gateway on the other hand did own the rights, but didn't want anything to do with the Amiga, so they leased the rights to Amiga Inc.

TBH I would still develop for the amiga if it was viable, the main thing now as everyone says is its just not there like it was in the old days.

as the st amiga and mega drive (and fm towns?) were 68000 but under the hood different beasts i got to wondering just now (probably did ages ago too but never put keyboard to use)

the pc florished as olivetti and others reversed the original IBM XT ending a behemouth of different standards of personal computing most sharing the same os (CP/M?) but would they run software for other machines? if the cpu was different then id say no

once they started using ega and eventually vga shareware games and the odd full title started to show up ports of 8/16 bit games some hit and miss but the seeds were sown
in those days the specs were adequatly comparable, some had bigger ram and faster cpu's but the gfx were standard unlike todays array of wotsnames

but back to the point
what if ST/Amiga/68000 based systems were more like the MSX
different manufactures and alternate hard/software but to an extent compatible
as time wore on i guess the systems would start to blend together amiga taking on the midi port ST the better GFX chips, perhaps even housing a megadrive/genisis slot (pretending that SEGA was part of this group) till in the end all thats left is 3 manufactures with the same rebadged a500/520 and do what they like with the boxed editions
iir ST was great in the early days of DTP as well as MIDI and amiga had video toaster and others

so the core gaming system its all down to the name on the box (like vhs was)
but for work stations you picked the one for you

co operating systems instead of compeeting might have saved them both
in the pc world its this competition between amd/intell soundblaster/adlib ati/nvidia and others that has lead to the evolution of the pc, whereas the competition only created a price war not a technology leapfrog

but history was written otherwise

the cpu was a small part of the Amiga, it was full of custom chips as well.

How fast us a PC with 8 mhz
amiga wins big times both in prize and speed.

i think even a NES is faster than PC 286 8mhz.. even the nes had 1,6 mhz

:D

Yah and Amiga was better than Atari ;-D

There's probably still one or two dead bodies on the Titanic...

The Amiga is a nice computer, there's no denying it. I wish it had survived, but I also think that if it had survived, it would have suffered a worse fate than death.

OS3.1 epitomised the Amiga experience, in my eyes. OS3.5 and 3.9 were not the great improvements I thought they could be. 4.0 definitely not.

If/when I get my hands on an A1200, fit a 1GB CompactFlash in place of a real hard drive and install an OS, it will be 3.1. Quite what I will do with it, I don't know. I'll probably install DevPac, Brilliance, Deluxe Paint, AMOS Pro, Blitz Basic, Deliplayer (and loads of mods!) and a few demos but apart from a nice curio, I will stick to using WinUAE at 1920x1200.

if that was aimed at me i know that
i was just making an msx/3do analogy

edit:
ive been off for a week, sleeping alot and havign crazy dreams (and ive been sober since mid december !!!)

some time this morning (as i keep on waking up every 2 hours) i had this dream about playing a mega bizzare version of deflektor using the amiga gfx etc
perhaps instead of sleeping i should have been learning to code again

ho hum back to work monday

Was thinking to sell my amiga on ebay - will have to dust it
off + make sure everything is there... i think i still have all
the dev stuff.. dont know whether its worth selling it though.
Is this still demand for retro hardware?

What Amiga games had the quality of a GeForce level graphics application? Was this a Europe only thing?

GeForce level graphics = 3D without personality
Amiga graphics = Glorious hand drawn 2D by great artists even by todays standards.

Some amiga game graphics have been rarely surpassed in terms of the artistic nature of the graphics. Psygnosis were always one of my favorites for this. Shadow of the beast IIs presentation, music, graphics and artwork were awesome (pity about the gameplay though)

Errm, used mine last friday to run this: (excuse the blurring, I can't do snapshots from Amiga -> PC.)



Was really just an excercise to see if it still went though. I was pleased it did!