40 YEARS OF AMIGA

IN 1985, COMMODORE LAUNCHED A POWERHOUSE 16-BIT COMPUTER PLATFORM THAT WAS AHEAD OF ITS TIME, AND HOSTED MANY ALL-TIME CLASSIC GAMES. FORTY YEARS ON, WE SPEAK TO DEVELOPERS AND FANS TO CELEBRATE A FAMILY OF COMPUTERS THAT HAS BECOME SIMPLY TIMELESS

- GRAHAM PEMBREY AND NICK THORPE

When the Amiga arrived in the mid-Eighties, it was a real generational leap, a platform that seemed to offer just about everything a computer user could possibly want.

Commodore's 16-bit hardware offered a sophisticated desktop environment, and its multimedia capabilities made for graphical and audio packages that aided many an owner's creative ambitions. But of course, we're here for the games, and the powerful custom hardware of the Amiga opened up new possibilities for developers. The audiovisual capabilities of the machine allowed for arcade conversions and similarly styled games with detailed, colourful graphics and rich sounds that had never been possible in the home before, while the raw computing grunt allowed for greater depth and more detailed simulations in the slower-paced, more thoughtful games that have typically been the preserve of computers.

Although sales started slowly, the introduction of the Amiga 500 in 1987 was a shrewd move. This model was seen as a natural successor to the home computers that had dominated the European gaming scene in the Eighties, and became a top games machine in the region. Players felt right at home as part of the Amiga clan, often staying connected through magazines that fostered their own communities around the shared joy of gaming. However, the openness of the platform created a culture around the computer that went as deep as you wanted it to. If you wanted to flex your programming muscles and push the hardware to its limits, the demoscene beckoned, and those who fancied themselves game designers could submit their works to public domain software libraries. In fact, quite a few developers got their start in the industry by following those paths.