Amiga Appreciation Thread

[Angles Morts]

I'd guess they are talking about the Mist (which came from the Minimig) and it's successor the Mister.

[MikeJ]

1 hour ago, Anne Summers said:

Didn't even realise there was a new version until I saw that video. Now I've seen the website and they say that it's for the "new generation of FPGA builds" - not sure what that means (well I know what FPGA builds are but didn't know there was a new generation of Amiga ones = would this be something like an Amiga version of the Spectrum Next? And do such things really exist?). 

 

https://www.checkmate1500plus.com

 

I would be after the original Plus to install my A1200 into rather than the Mini. I think by "new generation" he means new compared to classic Amiga hardware, e.g. Mister FPGA setups.

 

[Vimster]

Amiga demoscene book - https://editions64k.fr/

Tempted to pick that one up.

[Klatrymadon]

I couldn't try this (I didn't have an Amiga as a kid, and no longer have the one my uncle shunted to me about ten years ago!), but what a cool project: an arcade-faithful Gradius port!

[drob4]

Just bought an (original) copy of Sensible World of Soccer (the first version) for my 600. I’m getting a read error when I try and load it. I’m assuming it’s the disk (it was sold as untested), but it looks in good condition.

 

Is there anyone out there who is willing to check it for me on their Amiga (no-one I know has an Amiga)? I’ll bung it in the post to you; if it works you’ve got a free game (and I know my drive is on the way out), if it doesn’t, you’ve got a couple of coasters and I’ll continue my search for the game.

[Nathan Wind]

Can you make Amiga disks on a PC like you can Atari ST ones?  If it's possible you could write the image to a blank and swap the internals over.

[drob4]

38 minutes ago, Nathan Wind said:

Can you make Amiga disks on a PC like you can Atari ST ones?  If it's possible you could write the image to a blank and swap the internals over.

Sadly, I don’t have anything else with a 3.5 drive.

[Vespa Alex]

3 hours ago, Nathan Wind said:

Can you make Amiga disks on a PC like you can Atari ST ones?  If it's possible you could write the image to a blank and swap the internals over.

Nope. Amiga disks were a higher capacity than PC ones and you can’t read them 

[SeanR]

1 hour ago, Vespa Alex said:

Nope. Amiga disks were a higher capacity than PC ones and you can’t read them 

 

11 512B sectors over 80 tracks is hardly "higher" capacity, especially in a world that already had 1.44MB floppies.

 

(plus an ST, with a decent drive, could write 11 sectors too, using the right software)

 

no, it was all about the custom formatting used to encode the disk, and then read it back.

[MikeJ]

15 hours ago, drob4 said:

Just bought an (original) copy of Sensible World of Soccer (the first version) for my 600. I’m getting a read error when I try and load it. I’m assuming it’s the disk (it was sold as untested), but it looks in good condition.

 

Is there anyone out there who is willing to check it for me on their Amiga (no-one I know has an Amiga)? I’ll bung it in the post to you; if it works you’ve got a free game (and I know my drive is on the way out), if it doesn’t, you’ve got a couple of coasters and I’ll continue my search for the game.

I’ll test it for you if you like. 

[Count Buffalos]

So, after setting up a MiSTer and never having owned an Amiga, what are the must-haves for the machine? I'm not at all interested in arcade conversions that were good at the time, rather original games

[SeanR]

39 minutes ago, Count Buffalos said:

So, after setting up a MiSTER and never having owned an Amiga, what are the must-haves for the machine? I'm not at all interested in arcade conversions that were good at the time, rather original games

 

Hired Guns

Cadaver

Blood Money

FA18 Interceptor

Faery Tale adventure

The Secret of Monkey Island

Walker

The Killing Game show

Body Blows

Cannon Fodder

Chaos Engine

Starglider 2

Dune II

Turrican II

 

I suppose the Amiga version of Dungeon Master too

 

and

 

Gods

Shadow of the Beast

Sword of Sodan

 

if you want graphics over gameplay

[matt0]

1 hour ago, Count Buffalos said:

So, after setting up a MiSTER and never having owned an Amiga, what are the must-haves for the machine? I'm not at all interested in arcade conversions that were good at the time, rather original games

 

Seanr already covered a lot of ground but you can't go wrong with any of these:

 

Sensible World of Soccer

Speedball 2

Qwak

Apidya

Pinball Dreams

Pinball Fantasies

Megalomania

Stardust

Wings

No Second Prize

Silkworm (technically an arcade conversion but substantially different and imo the best shmup on the system)

 

For local multiplayer:

 

Worms

Gravity Power

Moonstone (very clunky by today's standards but still fun)

 

If Mister has an A1200 core then you can add:

 

Banshee

Overkill

Pinball Illusions

Slamtilt Pinball

Guardian

Super Stardust

[Vespa Alex]

Stunt Car Racer

SWIV

Rick Dangerous

[Count Buffalos]

I did play a bit of Stunt Car Racer back in the day on my C64!  How does it hold up? Is the frame rate horrible?

[MikeJ]

12 minutes ago, Count Buffalos said:

I did play a bit of Stunt Car Racer back in the day on my C64!  How does it hold up? Is the frame rate horrible?

 

I dunno how it will run on the Mister but on my 030/50Mhz A1200 it's still pretty choppy, I think the framerate locks at a certain level like F1GP does. The WHDload version has a "turbo mode" that improves things significantly.

[christaylor]

Looks like we're missing some top-down racing action so far!

 

Supercars II and Nitro (3-player!) are both essentials, and I'd say Supercars 1 is also definitely worth a play-through, has slightly weightier car models than 2.

 

The single screen top-downers are also great, Indy Heat, Badlands, Ironman Super off-road.

[Vimster]

Played Blood Money recently, looks amazing but plays abysmally. Hasn't dated well at all, sadly

[K]

I'd also recommend the Alien Breed games (Tower Assault holds up pretty well these days, as does AB2 if you can get past the abysmal opening level), Switchblade, D/Generation, and Exile.

[Zio]

The original Dune is pretty great on the Amiga.

 

Back in the day I had a strategy adventure burgle-em-up called The Clue. I've been meaning to give it another playthrough for ages.

[Anne Summers]

For me the most interesting period is when Amiga games were truly a generation ahead of anything else. Defender of the Crown is the best example because it was so early in the computer's life. Up to about Shadow of the Beast which I still think is the most graphically impressive Amiga game of all time. But after it, consoles and PCs started to catch up and overtake what the Amiga could do pretty quickly. 

 

I had a play of Defender of the Crown 2 the other day, which seems to be basically the same as DotC 1 but with a few extra features. Not even sure it's got AGA graphics despite being a CD32 game. Definitely not a full sequel so I'm not really sure what was going on there. However I'd say that despite the title it's pretty much the definitive version of DotC.

 

Has anyone said Mega Lo Mania? It was ported to consoles but far superior on the Amiga with mouse control. 

[gizmo1990]

On 19/01/2021 at 23:07, Vespa Alex said:

Nope. Amiga disks were a higher capacity than PC ones and you can’t read them 

 

Kinda related, but I didn't think this was possible so thought I'd post it here. Looks pretty easy.

 

 

[Clipper]

On 19/01/2021 at 23:55, SeanR said:

 

11 512B sectors over 80 tracks is hardly "higher" capacity, especially in a world that already had 1.44MB floppies.

 

 

At the time of the Amiga's release in 1985 I believe PC floppy discs were only double density 720kb, so at the time the Amiga 880kb floppy discs were regarded as being higher capacity.

[Vespa Alex]

11 hours ago, gizmo1990 said:

 

Kinda related, but I didn't think this was possible so thought I'd post it here. Looks pretty easy.

 

 

 My original A500 had a pc drive fitted by a local computer repair place when it was two or three years old, so there were ways of doing it back then. 

[SeanR]

8 hours ago, Clipper said:

At the time of the Amiga's release in 1985 I believe PC floppy discs were only double density 720kb, so at the time the Amiga 880kb floppy discs were regarded as being higher capacity.

 

yeah, the 1.44mb disk was introduced in 1986

 

ps. no one bought the A1000...

[Clipper]

You are forgiven

 

Next time just post this please

 

[Dudley]

20 hours ago, Clipper said:

At the time of the Amiga's release in 1985 I believe PC floppy discs were only double density 720kb, so at the time the Amiga 880kb floppy discs were regarded as being higher capacity.

 

Were they different disks or did the Amiga just format them differently?

[Clipper]

18 minutes ago, Dudley said:

 

Were they different disks or did the Amiga just format them differently?

There is alot of techie stuff on this but basically as I understand it the floppy disc controller on the Amiga does not allow you read/write individual sectors, only a whole "track" so it can fit more sectors in (11 vs 9 on PC) so it is higher capacity.

The discs are the same.

[Nathan Wind]

I fell asleep at 'There'.

[Protocol Penguin]

Any generic blank Double Density floppies were fine for use with the Amiga, it was just the formatting that was different. 

 

(Fun fact: Due to the Atari ST using standard disk formatting, you could load games directly from ST floppies in your PC floppy drive when using ST emulators. A feature that Amiga emulators could never do due to the non-standard Amiga floppy format.)