Why are there so many Amiga fans on this forum?

[killbot]

If you look narrowly at platformers and fighting games it was not on a par with the consoles (though there were some fun platformers with a lot of charm). But the Amiga had amazing strength-in-depth; rather than specialising in a couple of popular genres it had dozens of fantastic games in every genre. RPGs, adventures, simulations, strategy games, puzzlers, racers, shooters. It had 3D sandbox games before they were even a thing (Mercenary 3, Hunter). It had a thriving indie scene based around PD distribution long before indie games became cool.

It was a fantastic machine, I adored it.

[Hiro]

I'm not from the UK, and for me the Amiga is the best machine, period. It had gorgeous games, and not only games. It was 10 years ahead of everything else that was around in the mid-80s, a graphic based OS that was both multitasking and "plug and play", lots of excellent tools (with Deluxe Paint you could do things that other machines wouldn't even dream of), excellent sprite and scrolling handling, and a marvellous sound chip.

Still play with it every week with great enjoyment, and it's something I can't say about any other system. Stellar machine.

[Spector]

You really want to see someone completely ignorant about the Amiga, then read this. you will know who I am talking about.

http://www.retrovideogamer.co.uk/index.php?topic=263.0

That guy is a nutter though. An absolute raving loon with other opinions which are laughably extreme, so I wouldn't be too surprised or concerned.

[RodimusPrime]

You really want to see someone completely ignorant about the Amiga, then read this. you will know who I am talking about.

http://www.retrovideogamer.co.uk/index.php?topic=263.0

That guy is a nutter though. An absolute raving loon with other opinions which are laughably extreme, so I wouldn't be too surprised or concerned.

I could not grasp his argument at all.

He basically said that the ST or megadrive could do everything the amiga could so there was no reason to have one.

Even when people pointed out that even if that was the case, a lot of amiga games never came to those systems he was still adamant that because they could " potentially " do them then it was not worth having.

Ignoring the obvious fact that argument worked both ways, its an idiotic statement anyway.

[thingonaspring]

A natural progression for me from the Commodore 64. The C64 was the family computer (two brothers and my dad), but I saved up to buy the Amiga myself, so my first system purchase. And because of that will always hold a big part of my heart.
So many games that I could spend hours and hours playing. And still can. Champ Man, Settlers, All of the point and click adventures.
And even when you've had enough of games, it was the first time I ever got into things like Deluxe Paint and Octamed, which made me want to make games for a living.
So easy to find either (relatively) cheap games, or copy them from a vast network of friends who also had Amigas.
A choice of 3 or 4 magazines every month, with more free games, demos, utilities, everything.

Only my ps3 has come close in how much use it's had out of any systems I've owned throughout my life.

[station]

As a bedroom developer, there was nothing you couldn't do with relative ease. DPaint, Protracker, AMOS, the software, games and hardware was perfection to me.
I think the majority of Amiga owners eventually dabbled with doing their own thing eventually - I reckon the massive surge of gaming in the UK following the 8-bit games in the late 80's and 90's was due to the Amiga.

[gman72]

Yes but what about those of us who think that the actual act of coding is as dull as looking at bus timetables?

[thingonaspring]

Yes but what about those of us who think that the actual act of coding is as dull as looking at bus timetables?

Well you've got your SNES and MD's and you don't understand Amiga fans, right?

I was just trying to highlight why they were so good for me, like you asked
it's just personal preference, isn't it? you're not missing anything, as such.
i find street fighter 2 and any of it's million incarnations about as dull as bus timetables personally
although at that time, i too found the thought of actual coding very dull (still do!), but it was the more visual creative stuff that got me interested at the time.

what made you buy a 1200, if you weren't overly keen on the 500, by the way, if you don't mind me asking?

[Rayne]

As a 90's kid this whole thread is pretty fascinating. My first system was a Sega Mega Drive, followed my a PS1. I hear all about the SNES vs MD battles, the boutique Neo Geo AES but the Amiga is rarely talked about on gaming sites or forums. It's interesting to see something so, seemingly, universally loved that until recently I always had pegged as an obscurity.

[mrmessy]

As a bedroom developer, there was nothing you couldn't do with relative ease. DPaint, Protracker, AMOS, the software, games and hardware was perfection to me.
I think the majority of Amiga owners eventually dabbled with doing their own thing eventually - I reckon the massive surge of gaming in the UK following the 8-bit games in the late 80's and 90's was due to the Amiga.

I loved messing around on DPaint. Something I sorely missed when I moved on to the SNES (and the PS after that). This is one of the reasons the Amiga got my vote.

[Treguard]

As a 90's kid this whole thread is pretty fascinating. My first system was a Sega Mega Drive, followed my a PS1. I hear all about the SNES vs MD battles, the boutique Neo Geo AES but the Amiga is rarely talked about on gaming sites or forums. It's interesting to see something so, seemingly, universally loved that until recently I always had pegged as an obscurity.

As has been said, depends on the forums. I absolutely loved my Amiga 500+ from the day me and my brother got the Cartoon Classics bundle for Christmas 1992, through to having my A1200 with WHDLoad these days. Just the whole package, great variety of games, awesome sound, utilities and word processors to do homework on, PD Games- and the Amiga just seems to have more of a sense of community amongst it's users than you seemed to get with the SNES or Mega Drive, where you felt more like a consumer than a participant, if that makes any sense.

[psj3809]

All my friends who had a C64 or Speccy all moved onto the Amiga. I'm sure if the majority moved onto an Atari ST i would have got one of those. Back then i didnt really see much difference between the two i must admit.

Games were so expensive back then (after being spoilt with £7.95 or £1.99 Speccy games) so i didnt buy tons, i did however buy tons of floppy disks ! As my friends all had Amigas it was great. Years later of course i feel guilty but back then i couldnt afford to buy many games, i know it doesnt justify it but come on i'm sure most of us did it !

[gman72]

what made you buy a 1200, if you weren't overly keen on the 500, by the way, if you don't mind me asking?

Of course I don't mind you asking, mate.

Funnily enough the reason I purchased the A1200 was because it came with an HD (cant remember the size but I'm guessing it was MB rather than GB) and the chap I purchased it from who was in fact a freelance coder - and still is... he makes a great living - had put a SID player on the desktop and installed loads of SID tunes in the HD. It was a great SID player too as it allowed muting and soloing of individual channels on the fly so you could hear what each track was actually playing, very handy for those of us who like to try our hands at SID remixing. So, Yeah, I certainly didn't buy it for the games... Eventually the SID player stopped working correctly and the Amiga was sold on.
The A500 I had before was used totally albeit briefly as a gaming machine however.

[Katzkatz]

As has been said, this being a UK based forum - the Amiga(especially the A500) sold very well here. Remembering back to my 8 bit days - the Spectrum owners outnumbered the C64 owners. Come 16 bit days - it was the Amiga owners which outnumbered the ST owners - I'll leave out the 16 bit consoles for the moment.

The jump for 8 bit to 16 bit, was so impressive at the time; I'm not just talking about the Amiga, but the ST(with the Power Pack Games Bundle for the UK), seeing Sonic or Mickey's Castle of Illusion on the MD, Street Fighter 2 or Mario Kart on the SNES and something like the Atari Lynx - just comparing that to what the Gameboy could do. It sort of sticks in your mind - so much more.

I admit the actual cost of the games - did sort of come as shock to me - at the time. One of those things - as you have to rely on pocket money or the money from your weekend job. Especially, compared to the prices for the 8 bit machines. Of course, piracy helped.

It might be mainly know for being a games machine - but I think a lot of people later on, used it for more serious stuff(e.g. AMOS, OctaMed and NoiseTracker, Deluxe Paint - good job that was bundled with it, Wordsworth, Vista, Lightwave, etc.). I think it depends on the age group here - but I suspect a lot of people have memories of it from the early 1990s.

[AceGrace]

In the UK at least it was a natural upgrade to go from the Speccy/C64/Amstrad etc.. to the Atari ST and the Amiga.

At the time, consoles were not on my radar and seemed like a real backwards step. We all moved from 8 bits to Atari ST/Amiga. I remember when one of my Amiga owning friends bought a Master System with Rocky and told us that the game cost him £30.

We laughed and laughed. He never lived that down.

Consoles in the UK didn't really get a foothold until the Megadrive/Snes came in really IMO.