What was your Amiga era?

[edd_jedi]

I've read pretty much every issue of Amiga Format over the last few months (PDFs on my iPad!) and one thing that has really struck me is that I have been most interested in the issues released during my own Amiga era.

My first exposure to the Amiga was a friends in 1993, but I didn't get my own A1200 until early 1994. I was a 'hardcore' Amiga user for about 3 or 4 years, when the PC took over in 1997.

So I have found every issue between roughly late 1993 and 1997 really interesting as I remember most of the games, writers, programs, hardware releases etc. But I found reading the earlier issues (1987-1992) and the later ones (1998-2000) really quite dull.

The earlier ones are full of old games I have never played, and everything is related to the Amiga 500. I only ever had an AGA Amiga so find the majority of early games (with a few exceptions of course) a bit primitive. The 93-95 AGA era of games were in my opinion the best. On the plus side, it is quite nice to read a magazine from a time when the Amiga was in its prime and there was a bright future.

On the other hand, the later issues are so full of doom and gloom, for obvious reasons, that it's really quite painful to read it. Frankly I would have been ****ed off if I'd wasted £5 on a magazine that just moaned about 10 year old hardware and the lack of games

So what was your Amiga era? Do you also find yourself uninterested by games/hardware etc that was released outside of that time?

 

[roy_bates]

i actaully cant remember when i had my first amiga(it was a long time ago now)

i dont really get bored with the games or the hardware,im just drawn to it like a magnet,even if its someone elses.

 

[SkydivinGirl]

I didn't get my Amiga until 1992 when I could finally afford one. Shortly after getting my Amiga 500, I bought a GVP Sidecar and 8MB RAM. I stuck with that until the A4000D was released. Unfortunately, Commodore went under not long after that so I sold all my Amiga stuff in late 1994.

Still, it was a memorable time and computer so that's why I enjoy them so much now. I'm still learning a lot since I didn't have the Amiga that long.

Heather

 

[commodorejohn]

I didn't actually get an Amiga until 2000, and sold it off far too shortly thereafter (my parents would only let me have one computer, and I wanted a C128.) Didn't get back into Amiga hardware until 2010. During the original Amiga era, I was a Mac kid.

 

[-Acid-]

1993 to 1997-8 was my main time. I remember one day going to WH Smith's and saw the upside down cover of CU and couldn't believe it was the last one. In 1997 I finally got a Playstation as the games just could not be ignored any longer once I had been forced into playing FF7 by a mate.

Besides the likes of Dynablaster, Sensi and the Premier Manager series I barely played anything until I got an A1200 so that is the time I class as the best Amiga era as I was there and lived and breathed the Amiga in those years.

 

[BrooksterMax]

1991 with the arrival of the family a500+ and trying to work out what games were compatible with the brand new Kickstart and Workbench!

Finished in 1995/96 with the arrival of the Pentium PC.

Although I still have my Amiga, naturally.

 

[jack-3d]

I bought my first Amiga in 97, it was 1200, B1230IV+8MB and 420MB disk. Then many upgrades followed like B1240/40, BPPC, G-Rex, all replaced by Pegasos 1, Pegasos2. In 2007 sold everything and bought A1200 back ;o)

 

[Harrison]

When the 16 bit era began I bought an Atari STFM in 1987. I knew the Amiga was superior, but couldn't afford the £100 difference at the time. So mostly played ST games and used that as my main computer through school. It wasn't until the release of the A600 in 1991 that I bought the first Amiga of my own.

However, I kept up to date with the Amiga right from the start because I used to buy ST/Amiga Format (before the magazine split into separate magazines for each system), so for the 13 issues I followed both systems and had the cover disks with Amiga software. Plus I bought multi-format magazines like The One and Zero, and have subscribed to Edge since it was released.

Also some of my school friends at the time had Amigas so I would play on those, especially Kick Off 2 and a few others.

As for ending. It wasn't until 1998 that I finished using Amigas (A4000) as my main system. I had to buy a PC for my University work. However, I carried on using my Amigas for years after that, with my A4000, A1200, A600 and CD32 all setup and in use. And I still owned all my Amigas until very recently when I decided to sell my A4000 about a month ago.

 

[moijk]

Amiga era

Amiga era

My Amiga era was somewhat short. Around 1990 I bought the Amiga 500, and around 1994 i sold it. Drooled over a 4000/30, could afford it - but never bought it. was a lot of money and i wanted to buy the right computer. ended up being a 486dx2-80 which wasn't as fun - but at least was what everybody else had at that time. used that until around 97 when i bought a pentium 100 laptop which ended up a year later with freebsd 2.2.7 and amiwm desktop environment. which was the first "amiga retro" visit. In 2008 however I bought a cd32 and a year later ended up here.

 

[Collz69]

I got my first Amiga (A500) in 1993, I was in my last year at high school, I swapped it for my NES.

Played championship manager & premier manager to death for the following 4/5 years until I bought a PC.

 

[sneeker]

Got an A500 in 1990 I think (screen gems pack was the current pack at the time) with a load of random games like turrican nd golden axe, powerplay cruiser and a non working half meg upgrade, added a working half meg upgrade and external floppy over the next year or so.

When the 1200 came out a few people got one, I was debating an a1200 with a 120mb hdd, but decided that for the same price I could get a 386 sx40.. so over to the pc I went.

After years of using winaue I decided to finally get a 1200 last year, so now doing all the stuff I missed out on first time round.

 

[WonkeyDonkey]

It started around 1989 for me. I got stationed at Ripon in North Yorkshire (Beautiful place btw) and went out one Saturday morning to the local Currys type electrical shop (I dont remember if it was actually Currys or something else at the time).

They had an A500 on display in the window but it remained boxed, you couldnt actually see the thing of beauty inside.

After I asked for one of those, I was determined not to leave without a monitor. I didnt have my own TV and in the end opted for the old favourite : Philips CM8833 Mk II. I bought it all on my first ever credit account.

When I got it all back, I opened the monitor box and realised there was the little desktop tv tuner inside the box. I was mega pleased with this since the guy in the shop said I would need to pay extra to get hold of the tuner.

A short while after came the obligatory half meg trapdoor upgrade.

After that came the jewel in the crown for me - the sidecar HD! Only the posh folk had one of these! lol

I started with the commodore A590, but it had major issues. When I took it back to the shop the guy told me that they had reports of a bug in the commodore drives that meant every time you powered it up, a tiny little bit of the rom was somehow erased, and that eventually it would become totally unreadable and useless. At that point I returned it and paid some extra to 'upgrade' to the GVP A500HD8 with a whole 2 meg ram.

Together with an upgraded rom for my A500 and my set of AMOS Professional discs and manual, I spent many a happy evening writing code in AMOS and watching in awe at what it was capable of!

Happy days

 

[Nobby_UK]

i actaully cant remember when i had my first amiga(it was a long time ago now):laugh:

Ditto !

But I do remember that we were considering an Atari ST
Then Commodore dropped their price to match it,
(October 1989 says Wiki) So we got the 500

I play games from many eras, not so much the newer ones
because my PC is not up to it

 

[roy_bates]

all i remember was the first amiga i had,it had 512kb of ram and kickstart 1.2(£400 i think)

it did have a few games with it,but i dont think i can remember that.

before that i had a commodore 64 and few other 8 bit machines.

my cousins had a 128k+2 spectrum and the other one had a amstrad(much later) so you can imagine all the talk about whos was better(i didnt get into this little chat as i liked all these anyway,even then i just let them "discuss whos was best")
back then amiga fans were all over the pc boys saying there system was better etc infact im sure they did it to the atari boys as well.

 

[Merlin]

I went from a C64 breadbin to an A500 Plus (Bart Vs. The Space Mutants was one of the games that came with it, along with Captain Planet - was it The Cartoon Classics Edition?), then on to an A600 and that was it until a few years ago when I finally got an A1200.

I think my era was 1989-ish and went on until 1993 or thereabouts.

 

[Buzzfuzz]

1982 with the C64 by a friend of my grandpa and 1985 he showed me his Amiga 500 with 1084 monitor, insane amount in Dutch guilders and I mean really insane!

It was however late 1990 before I got my own Amiga 500.
I used that till late 1997 and then got my first Pentium 75 for school.

And late 2009 I started again and we all know how that went.

 

[ObjectiveD]

My First Amiga was an A500 KS1.2 in 1988 (5th year at secondary school) - cost me £425 from Silica. I remember fitting a Fat Agnus later to get a whole 1MB of chip ram - was really nervous about doing this and still remember the horrible scrunching sound of taking the old chip out before cutting and resoldering the right line . Switched her back on an booted/worked first time (phew).

It was this machine that really hooked me on computing/programming and enabled me to make a career of it (thanks Jay) . Prior to this I had a Green Screen Amstrad CPC 464.

Replaced it with a A500+, then an A1200 before my sabbatical into the worlds of the Mac and PC, before returning to the fold.

 

[rkauer]

Started around '89 with a A500 OCS with 512kb slow fast. Ever drooled about the A2000 which was a machine I could never afford.

Almost got drowned in my own drool when I saw the A3000.

Keep it that way alongside with a win pc until the A1200 came over, then replaced both computers for the 1200.

With time added a multisync monitor, then trapdoor RAM, then a Squirrel + CD, then 14k4 modem , then GVP 030 with 8Mb(!) RAM, then 060 until I gave up on the Amiga near 2000 in the most imbecile move of my life.

 

[Paul_s]

1990 all the way through to 1999.

The only reason I eventually upgraded to a PC was due to me wanting to use the Internet/graphics more than gaming and BBS's were starting to wane by the later 1990's. By that time the Amiga was hard to keep up-to-date (and expensive graphically/speed!).

I regret letting go of my Amiga stuff in 1999. Sold it damn cheap I miss my 500 more than my 1200 though. Booooo.

 

[direktorn]

I boughy my first Amiga 500 around 1989 after selling my motorcross for twice the cost of the Amiga. It was the only upgrade from the C64 i felt possible at that time. I realized that I was wrong as I didn't like the Amigabasic at all (compared to the C64) so I sold it and got myself an C64 once again (speaking about "upgrade"...)

That stayed with me until I in 1992 found the Amiga 1200 that I got really early (on of the first to be delivered to Sweden). WB3.0 was something completly different and I remember I convinced a friend (who had a crush on my sister) to "borrow" his HD from his A600 that he never used and I filled it up with modules (40 MB HD)

After that I fell in love with the A4000 but I'm not sure when I actually got it, must have been around 1993. I got mine used and I paid 11.000 SEK for it. After that it has always been 4000 boxes, even got myself a tower case (that did not work), PPC card etc. Remeber when some friends and myself got together and bought a CD-R, costed a fortune (Around 14.000 if I remember correctly)

I stoppded using my Amiga around 2000 when i bought my first PC and ran Windows 2000 64-bit.

So from '89 to '20 kind'a. I have also downloaded a few swedish Amiga magazines and is kind'a fun to read the reviews of games and apps and to try them out again