Did Amiga collecting ever take off?

[Fearless]

Did collecting Amiga software ever become very popular? I never hear too many people discuss it?!

[Ze_ro]

Well, it's certainly not as popular as NES or Atari 2600 collecting... but there are plenty of people who collect Amiga stuff. Most of the people here on this board are more interested in video game consoles rather than old computers (even when they were primarily game machines themselves). You might want to check out English Amiga Board.

I have an Amiga 3000 in my basement which I use once in a while. Although I like the Amiga, the compatibility issues make collecting original disks somewhat difficult.... luckily, WHDLoad saves the day in most cases.

--Zero

[tom]

Sure, I got a couple of hundred Amiga titles. Lots of classic games on that Computer, Civilisation, Battle Chess, Psygnosis stuff, Cinemaware stuff...etc...
Thing is, Amiga games were ported to many consoles incl. Genesis and SNES, Syndicate, Flashback, Sensible Soccer, Worms, Theme Park, Populus...these are also Amiga classics but many USA gamers only know these games on above named consoles.

[icbrkr]

You don't see much discussion on this forum about it, but I hang out on amiga.org, particles.org (my own forum) for discussing my miggies. I've personally got a ton of them: Amiga 500, 600, 1200, 3000, 4000T, CDTV, and 2 CD32s (NTSC - one new in box).

[Technosis]

I've got a fair bit of boxed Amiga stuff that I got back around 1992 or so. Some nice stuff like Deneris, Amnios, Ultima IV (complete w/ cloth map, etc),
Baal, Battle Squadron,....and lots more. For box art you can't beat the old Psygnosis games. It's a shame that the Amiga never caught on in North America. While NA was going through the Nintendo (NES) craze, the Amiga was out there offering stuff light years ahead.

[courtesi96]

Any CD32 titles worth owning if you already have them on the Amiga?

[robotriot]

The CD32 version of Speedball 2 comes to mind, it's pretty good. Also Defender of the Crown 2, which is identical to the regular version gameplay-wise, but with more animations and added speech.

I collect Amiga games as well (in fact, I've got more games for CD32 and Amiga than for any of my consoles). You just can't beat the excellent box art on a lot of the games (especially Psygnosis, as already mentioned), it just looks better on the shelf than the smaller console game boxes

[Trebuken]

If one were to buy an Amiga for gaming, what model and hardware requirements would you all suggest?

[crazybaconlips]

An A1200 will do you right; they're fairly inexpensive, upgradable, and don't take up much space (the computer is built into the keyboard). Under $200 for a complete set.

[Steve W]

I used to have hundreds of.... erm, 'borrowed' games aquired from a friend of mine who frequented the BBS scene. It was pretty hard to find Amiga games around here, so I don't have a lot of originals. I did manage to keep a lot of the boxes and instructions, but a decent amount of them ended up in the trash years ago. I've even got a bunch of games that I haven't ever played before, like Mercs, Ogre, Heroes of the Lance, Rogue Trooper, The Colony, Speedball 2, and a bunch of others sitting on the top of a shelf under a thick layer of dust.

[AdamAnt316]

I don't think it was used much as a gaming machine, but I do have an Amiga 1000 setup with several boxes of software (much of it from an Amiga-related disk magazine), as well as an external hard drive full of various programs. I'd like to find a newer Amiga model (especially a one-piece model, like the 500/600/1200), but haven't had much luck in the wild as of yet. As far as why the collecting of Amigas isn't that popular, it could have something to do with the high price (the Amiga 1000 originally cost $1,295 in 1985, when a C-64 was selling for less than a quarter of the price), and therefore was rarely bought to use merely as a gaming machine; also, the fact that the PC and Mac had firmly taken hold of much of the computer market by that time. Just my 1/50th of a dollar...
-Adam

[tom]

I don't think it was used much as a gaming machine, but I do have an Amiga 1000 setup with several boxes of software (much of it from an Amiga-related disk magazine), as well as an external hard drive full of various programs. I'd like to find a newer Amiga model (especially a one-piece model, like the 500/600/1200), but haven't had much luck in the wild as of yet. As far as why the collecting of Amigas isn't that popular, it could have something to do with the high price (the Amiga 1000 originally cost $1,295 in 1985, when a C-64 was selling for less than a quarter of the price), and therefore was rarely bought to use merely as a gaming machine; also, the fact that the PC and Mac had firmly taken hold of much of the computer market by that time. Just my 1/50th of a dollar...
-Adam

Isn't it amazing how it's different from Country to Country, here in Europe the Amiga 500 (Batman pack) took over as a gaming computer fromt the ST, C-64, Spectrum (UK). For years it was the gaming computer number 1, until the PC 'retired' the goold old Amgia between 92 - 95.

[Technosis]

Isn't it amazing how it's different from Country to Country, here in Europe the Amiga 500 (Batman pack) took over as a gaming computer fromt the ST, C-64, Spectrum (UK). For years it was the gaming computer number 1, until the PC 'retired' the goold old Amgia between 92 - 95.

This is a bit of history that I wish went differently in North America. Here the PC always had more users than the Amiga (or Atari ST for that matter). This is despite the fact that the PC platform was SO inferior to the Amiga and Atari for gaming. When other people were raving about the CGA graphics on their PC's and random beeps for sound, Amiga users had parallax scrolling, awesome sound, etc......

[Ze_ro]

If one were to buy an Amiga for gaming, what model and hardware requirements would you all suggest?

It kind of depends on what you want to play. Most of the disk-based games out there are meant for the Amiga 500, and due to various compatibility issues, may not work on newer Amigas. However, the Amiga 1200 has a built-in hard drive (hooking a hard drive up to the Amiga 500 requires extra hardware) and the newer AGA chipset which some later games take advantage of for better graphics. The 1200 is also faster and has more RAM, but is a bit more expensive and harder to find.

Your best bet overall is to go with the Amiga 1200, but know that you'll have to resort to WHDLoad to play a lot of games... you might also need a RAM expansion card for WHDLoad to work well (Accelerators and expansion cards for the 1200 are relatively cheap in comparison to other Amigas)

--Zero

[Iron Draggon]

I'd certainly love to have an Amiga collection... if for no other reason than to have all the old games that were never ported to the Genesis or the SNES... Black Crypt comes to mind... I hear the only reason it was never ported to the Genesis as planned was because it was pirated so much on the Amiga... that says to me that it was a really great game that should've been ported!

[Ed Oscuro]

Black Crypt comes to mind... I hear the only reason it was never ported to the Genesis as planned was because it was pirated so much on the Amiga... that says to me that it was a really great game that should've been ported!

Yeah, that doesn't make sense to me either, but maybe it meant they didn't have enough funds or thought that interest in it would've been mainly dead. Ha! I'd love to have that game, actually.

I have a few Amiga and Atari ST games, nothing too fantastic though. Probably should shuffle off some of the strategy RTS type games that I don't really play (Laser Sqad, although I should at least try it first).

[rbudrick]

I'd love to have an Amiga collection. I never owned one, but I do have a certain nostalgia for them, since a friend had one in about 1990, and we oohed and aahed when we got to play Shadowgate and stuff on it because we always talked about how cool it would be if we ever got to play an Amiga...they were "the" gaming computers of the day here in America. They were the underdogs back then, and not many people had one.

If I wanted to get an Amiga, what's the most powerful one I can get (what's the max RAM, best graphics card, sound card, etc., etc. I should look out for?)? Will it be compatible with all AMiga software and peripherals?

-Rob

[robotriot]

If I wanted to get an Amiga, what's the most powerful one I can get (what's the max RAM, best graphics card, sound card, etc., etc. I should look out for?)? Will it be compatible with all AMiga software and peripherals?

-Rob

The moster powerful ones would be A4000T computers with PPC accelerators. I'm not exactly sure where the limit is RAM-wise, but the most I've seen so far was 256MB, but you don't really need that. Also, for most games, you don't need graphics- and soundcards, only the newest games require that sometimes. The Amiga has either an OCS/ECS chipset built in, or the AGA chipset. The former has a max of 64 colours in realtime, while the other does 256. So that's probably the main difference, the soundchip is identical in all Amiga models. There are compatibility problems though with the newer Amigas, A1200 and A4000 can't play all the old A500 games. If you want to get an upgraded Amiga like the A4000, you should get WHDLoad, which is a program that lets you install the old games to harddisk, and contains fixes for most of them, so that they run on more modern Amigas as well. However, most interesting games are really for the A500, so it would actually be sufficient to own one of them.