Atari & Amiga @ 30
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The Commodore Amiga is thirty years old today. The Atari ST turned thirty last month.
The best known and loved Amiga, the 500, wasn't actually released until 1987, but 1985 saw the launch of the A1000, which was a quantum leap from the Commodore 64. Apparently, the name 'Amiga' (the feminine version of 'amigo') was partly picked because it comes before Apple, alphabetically.
The best known and loved Atari ST, the 520, was the superior machine, though. Apart from the weak solder on the joystick ports mysteriously placed on the underside. Apparently, the name 'ST' stands for sixteen/thirty-two, which is how many times better than the 500 and A1000 it was.
I personally got my ST second hand. Although I played our Spectrum waaay more than my brother, he was the driving force for replacing it. Truth be told, I didn't really know what it was that we were getting, but once we had it home, I loved it. Speedball 2, Supercars II, Carrier Command, Midwinter 2, Hard Drivin', Bad Dudes v Dragon Ninja, Shinobi, Falcon, Hostages, Cannon Fodder, simply too many wonderful games to mention.
Share your memories. -
My clearest memory is that the amiga was better than the ST!
Amiga 600 with extra ram FTW"Like i said, context is missing."
http://ssgg.uk -
Yay, ST vs Amiga fight. Brings back memories.
I'll rise. Bugger off with your ST being better than Amiga. (It did have a faster clocked processor than the Amiga though).
Snes > mega drive
Specify > C64
Etc
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Yeah, I doubled the RAM in my STFM after a few years. The difference was so clear.
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Send messageThe og fanboy war.
Amiga best, sound chip too stronk.
Happy memories include Cannon Fodder, Gods, Heimdall, The Lost Vikings, Robocod, Xenon 2, Uridium, Brutal Sports Football, Soccer Kid, Golden Axe (the sickest of all the arcade ports), Body Blows, Apidya, Silkwyrm, Deluxe Motherfucking Paint 3, Zool, Chaos Engine, and way too many other long forgotten games that were so much fun and felt so creative and new at the time."Let me tell you, when yung Rouj had his Senna and Mansell Scalextric, Frank was the goddamn Professor X of F1." -
A500, action replay, 40MB HDD, CDTV...couldn't use more than one at a time due to the expansion slot + US Robotics 14,000 baud modem, 4MB RAM upgrade...hackers paradise...
Train game, copy to memory, save to floppy, shut everything down, swap out Action Replay for 40MB HDD, boot everything up, copy game to HDD, connect to BBS, make comment on training examples, upload trained game, wait a few days, game packaged with hack screen and credits, download to hard disc and copy to floppies, go school, sell latest hacked game in the playground and down the market..."Better than a tech demo. But mostly a tech demo for now. Exactly what we expected, crashes less and less. No multiplayer."
- BnB NMS review, PS4, PC -
SWOOOOOOS -
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Send messageI've been trying to find an old Amiga demo. It was basically just a song with a column of limp penises on either side of the screen, which flicked to attention in time to the music. I'm not sure why, but I thought it was the coolest thing ever.
I've tried a search and found some... interesting stuff, but not what I was looking for. -
SWOS, Speedball 2, Wings, Knights of the Sky, Geoff Crammond F1, Lotus Turbo Challenge, Chaos Engine, girls, underage drinking on street corners, The Prodigy, 808 State, Vic Reeves Big Night Out...GT: WEBBIN5 - A life in formats: Sinclair ZX81>Amstrad CPC 6128>Amiga 500>Sega Megadrive>PC>PlayStation 2>Xbox>DS Lite>Xbox 360>Xbox One>Xbox One X>Xbox Series X>Oculus Quest 2
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Are there good emulators?
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Send messageSomeone find my willy song, please. -
The Amiga 500 was our first home computer and my first taste of home gaming. I skipped the NES and didn't bother getting a SNES until it was a year old because I had what I needed.
My mum used to get a load of copied games from some guy at her work. I remember the box we'd keep them in.
We had so many that I'm sure I've forgotten more than I remember. Though Golden Axe, Barbarians, Buggy Boy, Speedball 2, Sensi Soccer, Robocod and Robocop all got played extensively.
Probably none more so than golf simulator, 'Leader Board'. Quite possibly the only video game my dad ever booted up on his own to play. I'm no fan of golf but we'd play that for hours. Looking at screenshots now, it's hard to believe it's the same game I put so many hours into. -
RamSteelwood wrote:My clearest memory is that the amiga was better than the ST!
Amiga 600 with extra ram FTW
This.
The Forum Herald™ -
I had an STFM with 2MB in it. When it packed in I had tunes that needed that extra RAM to load and now I'm fucked.adkm1979 wrote:Yeah, I doubled the RAM in my STFM after a few years. The difference was so clear."..the pseudo-Left new style.." -
My bro has an Amiga 1200 AGA. We used to go to car boot sales and markets on a Sunday and buy demo disks. For those not familiar with Amiga demos, they probably aren't what you think they are.
Amiga Demos
It's on the Amiga 1200 that I first discovered Elite 2 : Frontier. I was crap at it and didn't really get anywhere, but it still felt vast. Canon Fodder was amazing. Lemmings 2 got played quite a bit. Sensible Soccer of course and Speedball 2 is one of the greatest games ever. The Body Blows games were an atrocious attempt at a beat em up though!
I did get an Amiga CD32 a bit later on for some reason. There was a game I had on that called Liberation, which was absolutely fantastic. -
The atari was inferior in every way cept clock speed and more significantly, inbuilt midi ports
The amiga had a bunch of custom chips though, the blitter, the copper etc which meant prettier games in the end (and a much stronger artist following)
The ST still won out as a 'serious' machine though cause of the midi ports, they became ubiquitous in recording studios
Im not going to list all the games i played though, there were so many i cant remember much of them its like a great big lump in my head. Damocles and Frontier though. I liked being on my own in space i think -
I used to love playing hard drivin' on my st using the mouse to steer and the joystick as a gear stick. Good times.The Forum Herald™
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Had a mate who had the usual seemingly infinite stack of copied games, was kid in a candy store stuff for a console gamer like myself drip-fed games with saved pocket money/bday/Christmas. The Secret of Monkey Island was beyond incredible for me, I'd never played anything like it. He couldn't save progress for some reason, so we completed it over two days after a late sleepover request. Simon and the Sorcerer was also the bollocks. I even enjoyed Hook until I got fully stuck.
Zeewolf, loads of football games, Robocod, RoboCop, Lethal Weapon, Bart Vs Space Mutants (with RAM upgrade intro), Skidmarks, Final Fight, even the ubershite SF2 port while I waited for the SCE on Mega drive. Too many more to list. -
Moot_Geeza wrote:Had a mate who had the usual seemingly infinite stack of copied games
haha same, his dad was a ship captain and brought shitloads of cracked games back from faraway lands, giant drawer stacked with them. the main reason when i try to remember an amiga game its like i cant see the forest for trees.. or something -
I have a theory that Amiga gamers often became very early adopters of the original PlayStation. This is purely based on three IRL examples of people I know.
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Seems like the ST had better polygon games, at least at the start. 2D graphics on ST were close but the sound chip seemed miles behind."..the pseudo-Left new style.."
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That holds up for me and a few I know too. Psygnosis innit.Moot_Geeza wrote:I have a theory that Amiga gamers often became very early adopters of the original PlayStation. This is purely based on three IRL examples of people I know."..the pseudo-Left new style.." -
Of course, never made the connection but yep. It's a shame Ocean weren't able to back the Saturn.
Edit: A quick glance at their Wiki suggests they lasted longer than I remembered. Replace with....US Gold. -
Aren't they kindof a part of Squenix now?"..the pseudo-Left new style.."
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I came to the ST after the Master System and never really got on with it. Those terrible 1-button joysticks, and many sloppy arcade ports (my main interest at the time) just weren't up to scratch, and we sold it on pretty quickly. Later some friends had Amigas and were always trying to show off their games, but by then I was moving through PC Engine to Megadrive to SNES and never looked back. -
I think a lot of kids I know managed to get an amiga or atari because it looked like they might've done schoolwork on it. I know my parents wouldn't have got a pure gaming machine for me."..the pseudo-Left new style.."
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IanHamlett wrote:Aren't they kindof a part of Squenix now?
I don't know such stuff! -
We started with a BBC when my brother and I wanted a Spectrum, because my Dad said it would be 'more educational'. Instead it just had fewer games which we couldn't swap with most of our friends.
There was Elite though.
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