Hello everyone,
I thought it would be fun to start a thread where we can all share our very first experience with an Amiga.

- When did you first encounter it?

- Which model was it (A500, A1200, etc.)?

- What game, demo, or software left the biggest impression on you?

For me, it was the Amiga 500 back in the 90s, playing Shadow of the Beast and being blown away by the graphics and sound. It’s what got me hooked on computers in the first place.

Looking forward to hearing your stories and memories! Tunnel Rush Game thanks!

@helena11

Amiga 500. Christmas 1993. I even have a photo of me and my brother playing our very first Amiga game: Rick Dangerous.

Sure, there were other memorable Amiga events - getting A1200 in 1995, playing with emulation on a fast PC in 2002, trying to run OS4 under WinUAE in 2014, or returning Pegasos 2 back to life in 2022. But nothing beats those two happy child faces.

@helena11

Amiga 1000 around 1989... Sometimes my father used to bring me into this his friend's "office" (typical basement for nerds with dark walls...), where they were making software for Atari/PC. This guy had bought the Amiga just for little experiments, but unfortunately he sold it quickly because he felt Atari/PC were superior as my father told me years later, lol... On it I well remember Arkanoid, Populous, Defender of the crown, Nebulus, Super hang-on, IK and Star goose.
The irony is that in 1992 we were looking to replace our aging C64 with a 286/386 and the same guy advised us to buy an A1200, which ultimately we got the latter, although he had always seen the Amiga as a "toy machine". Not much related, since early 2000s he has been the directory of developers of Microsoft Italy until 10 years ago, but this is another story...

Last edited by dipsomania on 23-Sep-2025 at 06:12 PM.
Last edited by dipsomania on 23-Sep-2025 at 06:11 PM.

My friends,
the tipping point has been finally reached:

the ONE thread that makes sense and actually delves into what the Amiga means to us all,
was not created by a human, but rather an AI-powered bot.

WELCOME TO THE FUTURE












/m
thanks for your submission

_________________
I HAVE ABS OF STEEL
--
CAN YOU SEE ME? CAN YOU HEAR ME? OK FOR WORK

@helena11

I was already married and a father when I first encountered Amiga systems. I purchased an A2000HD bundled with a good suite of programs, some games and programs for children. At the time, my personal favourites were Appetizer Write, Appetizer Paint and Lemmings.

Of course that was a long long time ago.


redfox

Last edited by redfox on 24-Sep-2025 at 02:21 AM.
Last edited by redfox on 24-Sep-2025 at 02:12 AM.

@thread

It was late 1987, couldn't tell you exactly what month or day, but the imprint on my technology journey was indelible.

I was living and attending my final year of high-school in Teslić, a small city in the middle of SR Bosnia & Herzegovina (SFR Yugoslavia). I was an avid consumer of everything '80s: Movies, pop music, video-games at the local arcade, and personal electronics. A close high-school friend was one of the few people in town who had a C64, and many a weekend I would be over at his place to play some new game, explore some new nifty feet the C64 could accomplish with the magic of talented software developers, and even test the game my friend was developing.

It was in this setting in which my friend informed me that he had sold his C64 and was now a proud owner of an Amiga 500. I had read about the initial A1000 and subsequent release of the A500 and A2000 in Yugoslavian computer magazines which I bought frequently. This new computer system seemed to be nothing short of wizardry incarnate, and a new high bar for other systems to match. But there and then, the fantasy was poised to become a reality.

That coming weekend I was at my friends place and in the presence of a machine for which I had yet to fully grasp the possibilities. He had only just got the machine so he only had several games. There was some forgettable shooty action war game, IK+ which was a fun 2-player game, though also available on C64, and then the thing that blew my teenage mind was Test Drive. This was no mere arcade-like fun point-scoring racing game: It was a first person driving simulator.

One could be excused for thinking the world-changing experiences ended there. The Amiga, however, had a couple more tricks to show. Enter, Workbench.

Now, by this time I had already seen GEOS on the C64 and Windows 1 on a PC at a local office, and they were "Not thrilling, but nice". What I saw in Workbench, past its blue, orange, black and white exterior, was the future. Here was not merely a visual launchpad for programs, it was a workspace in which a person interacted with the computer. And then he brought up the Say program, and the Amiga spoke.

My father was coming back from Australia in a short while and he was already bringing back my requested C64, but in that moment I knew I had to have an Amiga. Though it wasn't until my university days in late 1989, that I echoed my friend's journey and sold my C64 to get an Amiga 500.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Today, when I might in some relevant conversations among my contemporaries bring up the Amiga computer, I am saddened by the mostly blank faces who look at me as if I am from an alternate timeline. I am saddened because their computing journeys were less colourful and bereft of the imagination-sparking experiences bordering on pure joy.

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All the way, with 68k

End of the 80s, drawing with Deluxe Paint on my brother's A500. In need of disk space to save my "art", I deleted some strange other files on that floppy, since they weren't loadable pictures anyway. Somehow, Deluxe Paint wasn't booting anymore the next time, though...

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amiga-news.de

I think the first time I knew of Amiga was likely from the gaming magazine, my brother had a Spectrum, so he got a subscription to Crash magazine, and in it, it would have advert for games from all platforms, it would show say the Spectrum, C64 and ST images, but the one that always looked the best was Amiga.

The few times i got to go on the speccy, i was interested in programming on it and making games, this lead me to wanting a computer i could program on. I read somewhere that Amiga was the best computer to make games on. I think also the local video games shop had big box copy of Amos that had Make Games, Make software, Make Anything on the packaging! Then next to that was even better sounding SEUCK, (shoot em up construct kit) as someone who wasn't that good at programming, this sounded even more amazing, with no programming knowledge make amazing games!

Also in the shop a lot of big box games that was interesting to me where on the Amiga, being into space/star trek, I loved the fun sounding nature of the Space Quest games, Wing Commander, Elite, Star Control, Starlord Etc all where really interesting too me, these game were not on Mega Drive, which my brother was more interested in getting.

A Pc was way too much money, and i dont know why, but the Atari ST, just never interested me, Amiga was the platform I wanted.

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AmigaNG, YouTube, LeaveReality Studio

@MEGA_RJ_MICAL

And the link to a dubious 'game' website gives it away.
I suppose one must be quite a bit socially awkward to not notice that, and to fit in well here...
But at least the bot does not ad hominems - yet

By the way, as a non-native speaker, I like your poetical style !

@Senex

Quote:

Senex wrote: End of the 80s, drawing with Deluxe Paint on my brother's A500. In need of disk space to save my "art", I deleted some strange other files on that floppy, since they weren't loadable pictures anyway. Somehow, Deluxe Paint wasn't booting anymore the next time, though...

Yep, been there! I was in a rush to save a game of Emlyn Hughes International Soccer on the Atari ST and thought that there was enough room on the program disk! The only issue was that the program formatted and created its own saved game disk wiping the game! I actually got a replacement from the shop owner that sold it to me (with an additional poster) who took pity on me and this stupid foray into computer game destruction! I never did that again though I would have had a complete melt down if I had done that with Deluxe Paint IV AGA later on!

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"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

Quote:

codis wrote: @MEGA_RJ_MICAL And the link to a dubious 'game' website gives it away. I suppose one must be quite a bit socially awkward to not notice that, and to fit in well here...

Ah friend codis,

at long last someone who can hold a mirror to his own possibly pale disheveled self, hiding in the shadows from the searing daylight of """society"""!

Yes we are.
Socially awkward, forgotten and forlorn, we are.
United in Amiga, we are (or should be)


Quote:

By the way, as a non-native speaker, I like your poetical style !

Much obliged, friend of austrian sensibilities - oh so much obliged.
And yet, remember: it is not I to be poetic, life itself is,
I do nothing but QUOTE /QUOTE it.

And now, now, let's sit back and enjoy the grotesque dance of the nimrods,
opening their hearts and memories to a chinese blob of code in service of some shady online games.



Some of the best possible regards hurled gently in your direction,
/MEGA


ps.!!!!! MY FIRST AMIGA EXPERIENCE!!!!!!!!!!

Last edited by MEGA_RJ_MICAL on 24-Sep-2025 at 02:22 PM.
Last edited by MEGA_RJ_MICAL on 24-Sep-2025 at 02:17 PM.

_________________
I HAVE ABS OF STEEL
--
CAN YOU SEE ME? CAN YOU HEAR ME? OK FOR WORK

@MEGA_RJ_MICAL

Quote:

MEGA_RJ_MICAL wrote: ps.!!!!! MY FIRST AMIGA EXPERIENCE!!!!!!!!!!

The first line in the video "You don't get to bark, we're doing something important here".

That should've been written on the walls of every office at every Commodore facility around the world.

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All the way, with 68k

Back in 87 a friend was going to sell me his C128 at quite a high price but then I found the ST in a magazine and thought that'd be better. Then I was in Belfast one day in a computer shop and seen an Amiga showing one of the NewTek demos - I wanted THAT!

The A500 was too expensive for us, but I later found someone selling French A1000s. It included the 256KB upgrade and it had stickers on the Keyboard to make it qwerty. Got one of those and I was very happy.

I later swapped the CPU to a 68010 and added an A590 HD/Ram expansion ...which plugged in backwards. 2.5 MB RAM and a 20MB HD was sheer luxury!

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Whyzzat?