Amiga. Forgotten gaming or sleeping giant waiting in the wings?
New portable Amigas could see classic re-releases
The Amiga as a gaming platform could be about to make a much- heralded comeback. With the new generation of PDAs and handheld consoles offering it a lifeline, the Amiga could be about to resurface. Let’s look at the evidence.
The 16-Bit Amiga home computer was one of the stars of the rich period of gaming in the late eighties and early nineties. Made originally by Commodore as a business machine, the early models were hampered by the absence of a battery backed continuous real-time clock, and gave up a lot of ground to the technically inferior PCs of the day.
Coming with a palette of up to 4096 simultaneous on screen colours and able to throw around sprites better than the consoles of the time, the Amiga became a favourite with European gamers. Titles such as Lemmings, New Zealand Story and Speedball were all massive hits for the machine, and although the Amiga was let down by only supporting one button joysticks, it became a highly successful games platform.
Then it pretty much died a gaming death. There are of course, legions of fans that dedicate a great deal of time and effort to the Amiga but as a games machine it’s pretty much had its day. Or has it?
An announcement on Amiga.com has today highlighted a deal between the now independent Amiga Company and Japanese electronics giant Sharp that could be one of the ways gaming on the Amiga is to be resurrected. Amiga announced that it will be developing software to run on and around the new Sharp PDA’s Linux based operating system and would be calling on its development community for “innovation and leadership in gaming, 2D, 3D, animation, video, and music applications.” Did you spot the operative word?
It’s missing here but you can’t have everything “Amiga is excited to be part of the Zaurus PDA project, and we look forward to bringing the excitement, brilliant content and magic of the Amiga community to Sharp," said Bill McEwen, President/CEO of Amiga Incorporated. "Amiga is adding new dimensions of content for the next generations of computing devices, and we see the new PDA platform as an important area of strategic business growth and applications for the Amiga community. We intend to develop some really great applications as consumers more fully understand the great potential and skill set of the Amiga community." This at least shows the seriousness of the Amiga revival.
The other way that Amiga games could see a new lease of life is on the Game Boy Advance. Nintendo’s new pocket beast is, in gaming terms, of similar spec to the Amigas of old. This means that there are thousands of games that could be dusted off and re-coded for Game Boy Advance, in the way Nintendo has done with its SNES games, F-Zero and Super Mario World.
Mike Montgomery at Bitmap Brothers said, “We would have worries that the crazy levels of piracy that plagued the Amiga in its heyday would still be a problem. We are still closing sites down all the time that carry images of our intellectual property from the Amiga days. This being said, there is no reason why we shouldn’t consider re-releasing the Amiga games, if it were financially possible to do so.” Talking on the Game Boy Advance Montgomery said, “We are looking at the Game Boy Advance with great interest. Xenon, Speedball and our other famous titles are all in the initial stages of “should we or shouldn’t we?” and some are even further along. We have a third party GBA development kit in the office. I’ll tell you more at E3”
Codemasters were a little more pessimistic. “We have no plans on supporting any future Amiga platform,” said a company spokesman. “And if we are going to port any Amiga games across to Game Boy Advance it’s a secret at the moment.” Rest assured we have dispatched one of our crack teams of ninja spies to find out what is going on.
The future looks good for Amiga gaming. As portable technology drags itself forward, the pattern may continue, with today’s home entertainment becoming tomorrow’s entertainment on the move.
The 16-Bit Amiga home computer was one of the stars of the rich period of gaming in the late eighties and early nineties. Made originally by Commodore as a business machine, the early models were hampered by the absence of a battery backed continuous real-time clock, and gave up a lot of ground to the technically inferior PCs of the day.
Coming with a palette of up to 4096 simultaneous on screen colours and able to throw around sprites better than the consoles of the time, the Amiga became a favourite with European gamers. Titles such as Lemmings, New Zealand Story and Speedball were all massive hits for the machine, and although the Amiga was let down by only supporting one button joysticks, it became a highly successful games platform.
Then it pretty much died a gaming death. There are of course, legions of fans that dedicate a great deal of time and effort to the Amiga but as a games machine it’s pretty much had its day. Or has it?
An announcement on Amiga.com has today highlighted a deal between the now independent Amiga Company and Japanese electronics giant Sharp that could be one of the ways gaming on the Amiga is to be resurrected. Amiga announced that it will be developing software to run on and around the new Sharp PDA’s Linux based operating system and would be calling on its development community for “innovation and leadership in gaming, 2D, 3D, animation, video, and music applications.” Did you spot the operative word?
It’s missing here but you can’t have everything “Amiga is excited to be part of the Zaurus PDA project, and we look forward to bringing the excitement, brilliant content and magic of the Amiga community to Sharp," said Bill McEwen, President/CEO of Amiga Incorporated. "Amiga is adding new dimensions of content for the next generations of computing devices, and we see the new PDA platform as an important area of strategic business growth and applications for the Amiga community. We intend to develop some really great applications as consumers more fully understand the great potential and skill set of the Amiga community." This at least shows the seriousness of the Amiga revival.
The other way that Amiga games could see a new lease of life is on the Game Boy Advance. Nintendo’s new pocket beast is, in gaming terms, of similar spec to the Amigas of old. This means that there are thousands of games that could be dusted off and re-coded for Game Boy Advance, in the way Nintendo has done with its SNES games, F-Zero and Super Mario World.
Mike Montgomery at Bitmap Brothers said, “We would have worries that the crazy levels of piracy that plagued the Amiga in its heyday would still be a problem. We are still closing sites down all the time that carry images of our intellectual property from the Amiga days. This being said, there is no reason why we shouldn’t consider re-releasing the Amiga games, if it were financially possible to do so.” Talking on the Game Boy Advance Montgomery said, “We are looking at the Game Boy Advance with great interest. Xenon, Speedball and our other famous titles are all in the initial stages of “should we or shouldn’t we?” and some are even further along. We have a third party GBA development kit in the office. I’ll tell you more at E3”
Codemasters were a little more pessimistic. “We have no plans on supporting any future Amiga platform,” said a company spokesman. “And if we are going to port any Amiga games across to Game Boy Advance it’s a secret at the moment.” Rest assured we have dispatched one of our crack teams of ninja spies to find out what is going on.
The future looks good for Amiga gaming. As portable technology drags itself forward, the pattern may continue, with today’s home entertainment becoming tomorrow’s entertainment on the move.
Companies:
Amiga
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