Keith Stuart looks back at the 30 year old Commodore Amiga:
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Commodore Amiga at 30 – the computer that made the UK games industry
It’s 30 years since Commodore launched its powerful Amiga 1000 computer, ushering in the era of Worms, Lemmings and myriad other Britsoft classics
In 1985 my family made a terrible mistake – a mistake that would have far-reaching consequences; a mistake that would blight my life for several painful years. I still look back at it with a sense of sadness and, yes, if I’m honest, fury. What happened was this – and if you’re a gamer of a certain age, you may want to sit down: my family bought an Atari ST instead of a Commodore Amiga.
With its powerful 16bit processor and vast 256k of memory (expandable to 512k and beyond), the original Amiga 1000 was the epoch-shattering home computer that effectively invented the concept of the all-round multimedia machine. The Atari ST, meanwhile, was pretty good for midi music.
Today, the Amiga is 30 years old and the internet is full of veteran computer users nostalgically wallowing in its seminal importance. In fact, many of those people probably experienced the internet for the first time on an Amiga, via its original 1680 Modem (it had a 1200 baud rate, speed fans).
But at the time, I didn’t care about its serious computing prowess or the fact that its multitasking operating system was incredibly advanced. I cared about games. And the Amiga was amazing for games – especially for British developers.
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