Your first ever Amiga experience?

[ByteRyder]

What was your first experience with an Amiga computer?

I clearly remember the first time I saw an Amiga. I was like 8 or 9 years old and went to my friends place. He had an A500 running Indianapolis 500 and it literally blew me away! Light years ahead from what i had seen until that day. I fell in love and of course.. I HAD to have one myself.

Now evey time I run Indy 500 I remember how stunned I was with the graphics and it takes me back to that day.

 

[ad-rs1600i]

That's a cool story

My first exposure to an Amiga was seeing Lemmings on my friends brand new A500 Cartoon Classic. I thought it was excellent, but it wasn't until I saw Spaceball State of the Art quite a bit later on that I felt I had to have an Amiga on my desk Probably because I was a die hard 128k speccy user and loved the self-deprecating Your Sinclair mag :shhh:

 

[ptp170]

I remember vividly the first time I saw an Amiga. It was at a local computer fair in Worcester... Something call 'Shadow of the beast' was demoing on it...god knows what that was all about

 

[Mendel]

At my cousins place. It was 1989. We were playing Bomb Jack, Gianna Sisters and Buggy Boy. I had not even seen a NES then, the only thing I could compare those games to was my C64 and I was amazed by them. How could they look and sound so good!

Later I got a NES to myself because I thought Mario looked awesome too and the neighbours had one... but by then, games like North and South and Lotus made me regret getting NES instead of Amiga...

 

[AndyLandy]

I'd just received my copy of 3D Construction Kit for my ZX Spectrum, back in about 1989-ish. I'd been wanting it for ages and it finally arrived.

It came complete with a tutorial video of how to use it. Said video focussed on the Commodore Amiga for its demonstrations and it just blew me away. It was streets ahead of my poor little Speccy. And that was it, I had to own an Amiga...

And now here I am, with more Amigas than I know what to do with!

 

[Harrison]

Mine was seeing the Juggler demo running on the newly released A500 in a computer shop in Southampton. First time I got to use one was playing Kickoff 2 at a friend's house after school.

I didn't however own my own first Amiga until much later as I couldn't save enough that year to afford an Amiga, so bought an Atari STFM instead. Regretted that as every game had the better Amiga screenshots on the box just to rub my nose in it. At least I did get to play Dungeon Master long before Amiga owners, plus the best version of Captain Blood.

 

[fitzsteve]

Was also at a friends house, I was maybe 10 years old? He was older though, think it was in fact a friends 'older brother' that owned the A500.

He showed me Test Drive and Silkworm.

I was blown away as I was still playing Boulder Dash & Dizzy on my Spectrum 128k

 

[AndyLandy]

Mine was seeing the Juggler demo running on the newly released A500 in a computer shop in Southampton.

Computer shops in Southampton, eh? I discovered that the local branch of Diamond Computers used to be on Lodge Road. If they were still in business, they'd be five minutes walk away from my flat...

 

[lostrego]

Mine was around 1989-90 at the house of one friend's older sister, his brother in law had an A500, and remember playing shadow of the beast on it, the graphics and music were so amazing (I've only seen 8 bit games until then) that my mount was open all the time

 

[Mendel]

I took many many trips with my parents to my cousins home back then. It was a small car trip away. Every time we would play a lot of amiga games and some board games as well, including a very nice miniature table minigolf game

And pretty much every time when I was leaving, my cousing would hand over to me a cassette... You see he also had a double decker tape recorder, c64 and friends with access to games. At the time, I had no idea this was actually illegal. But I had great time finding out what games were on the cassette after each trip to my cousin. He didn´t tell me what was on them ever so I would mark the numbers in datasette counter where each game was and I would give them my own names where part of the name was the name of the game and part of it was a short finnish description of that game so according to my markings there would be games like gianna tyttö hyppely , out run ferrari ralli and commando ukko ammunta

Sometimes I would even get original games though. I wonder where the original rainbow islands went It was 100 finnish marks, I remember it clear as yesterday when I got it. Also there was something called history in the making collection which had many, many cassettes with all kinds of epyx games and stuff... I have to find these again some day.

 

[Ed.D]

I bought a C= A500 from my mum's mail order catalogue. I used to set it up on the living room coffee table and plug it into the telly. When the session was over I packed it all away, back in the wrappers and the box.

There was no internet at that time I think and most exposure to what was available was either by visiting the local shops or looking in magazines which were only just starting up then. We had a Diamond Computers here in Bristol, on Gloucester Road but they were a bit snobby in there, only wanted to serve the people with loads of money , A3000 and A1500 owners.

My earlier years on the Amiga were usually spent discovering the OS and productivity apps as I wasn't really into gaming except for flight sims, A10 Tank Killer, F-117.

I really wanted to understand programming at the time but couldn't grasp the weird syntax, it just wasn't english .

 

[Amiga Forever]

In 1990, I went to my friends house and He got Amiga 500. He showing me Fight Sim, Lemmings and other games blow me away.

In 1991, I went to the shop(MIRCOFUN) to get Amiga 500 but they told me that They been discontinue. They say go for Amiga 500 Plus Cartoon Classic and I bought it when I hold it with .

I went home then ran upstairs with Amiga 500 Plus Cartoon Classic. I open the boxed then plug everythings. I Learn about Amiga workbench then notice there is Speech....I thought let try this one

"Hello everyone"

Next one....I did it for laugh as I turn the volume up really louds to make sure my mom heard it

"Mommmmm, come up here Nowwwww"

My mom did heard it and she went upstairs and she was like as she didnt expect AMIGA can TALK

Only Amiga Made it possible

My first game I think it was Lemming or Simpson or captain planets and they all were enjoyable games

 

[Templar]

What was your first experience with an Amiga computer?

I clearly remember the first time I saw an Amiga. I was like 8 or 9 years old and went to my friends place. He had an A500 running Indianapolis 500 and it literally blew me away! Light years ahead from what i had seen until that day. I fell in love and of course.. I HAD to have one myself.

Now evey time I run Indy 500 I remember how stunned I was with the graphics and it takes me back to that day.

Our stories are very similar, although most of us has a similar one I pressume. I was 12 years old back then, but my friend was playing The New Zealand Story on his A500. Of course you cannot imagine my face and jaws when I saw that. After some months I bought my A500.

 

[ByteRyder]

IMHO today a computer is not really seen as an hardware and software machine and is more of a commodity, every home has one and a couple years later people just throw them away. Back then, in my country, not everyone had a computer. They were very expensive and most people didn't know anything about them. The only computer (besides Spectrum) I had seen was an Intel 80286 that required a boot disk to access a command line interface.

But anyway, this is interesting. The Amiga 500 is the machine that brought most of us together. What a great piece of technology.

 

[mike_cc]

That was very true, certainly in our house. Back in the 80's from about 1983 onwards, my two best friends had computers but my parents didn't know anything about them. It probably helped that my two best friends had teachers as parents. One had a BBC micro, which we played Chucky Egg, Meaty Oars and Ghosts 'n' Gouls on. But my other friend, a couple of years later, got an A500 (Rvn:6a, it turns out, as I've just checked!).

We played for so many hours that he used to accuse me of coming over to see the computer instead of him!

Games like Robocop, Blues Brothers, F18a Interceptor and Rick Dangerous were just too much fun. I think my favourite though, to this day, was XenonII: Megablast.

About 12 yrs ago, When PC Format ran a make your own game section, they did it with the Bitmap Bros and made an updated version of XenonII called Xenon 2000. When I installed it I put the real version of Megablast by Bomb da Bass as the game music!

There have been mixes and dance tracks, put together in the past, but none can outrun, or equal, the power of megablast.

 

[ptp170]

My last post got me thinking about the show I visited back in '89/'90. It appears they still run the computer fair there every couple of months it's organised by a company called Excalibur Fairs & Events. Would be great to get something running regularly down this way!

Genuinely surprised it's lasted so long at the old location though!

 

[ad-rs1600i]

I'd just received my copy of 3D Construction Kit for my ZX Spectrum, back in about 1989-ish. I'd been wanting it for ages and it finally arrived.

It came complete with a tutorial video of how to use it. Said video focussed on the Commodore Amiga for its demonstrations and it just blew me away. It was streets ahead of my poor little Speccy. And that was it, I had to own an Amiga...

And now here I am, with more Amigas than I know what to do with!

That is spooky, I remember the reviews for 3d Construction kit in Your Sinclair back in the day!! I had forgotten all about that program!!

---------- Post added at 18:05 ---------- Previous post was at 17:57 ----------

IMHO today a computer is not really seen as an hardware and software machine and is more of a commodity, every home has one and a couple years later people just throw them away. Back then, in my country, not everyone had a computer. They were very expensive and most people didn't know anything about them. The only computer (besides Spectrum) I had seen was an Intel 80286 that required a boot disk to access a command line interface.

But anyway, this is interesting. The Amiga 500 is the machine that brought most of us together. What a great piece of technology.

That is so true! I think the Internet is largely responsible for getting the whole world into computing. Back when I was a kid with my Spectrum it was a niche thing, something for enthusiasts only. Then someone made www.pistonheads.com and then my dad had to have one lol p Few more steps in between but not many!!!

 

[moijk]

My first Amiga experience were reading in computer mags about it. First time I tried one was when i bought my Amiga 500. Turning it on was the first live example

 

[jvdbossc]

We (most of my friends) still had c64, but the rumour went there was a much more powerfull machine called Amiga out, with much more possibilities. It also had a normal printer port... :blased::roll:

Then one my friends bought an A500. I had mine about a year (second hand) later. I also had a pc and an C64 was sold icard

ps: the rumours said it was the successor of the commodore 64.

 

[Harrison]

Mine was seeing the Juggler demo running on the newly released A500 in a computer shop in Southampton.

Computer shops in Southampton, eh? I discovered that the local branch of Diamond Computers used to be on Lodge Road. If they were still in business, they'd be five minutes walk away from my flat...

There used to be loads of computer and video game stores in Southampton, as well as arcades.

The best computer shop in Southampton was down East Street. From the top of the road it was on the right-hand side on the first corner. A small shop that I think is a hairdressers now. I@m trying to remember its name. Directly opposite that is still a Game store, which before that was a Virgin Games and a Electronic Boutique.

And just around the corner in the Bargate shopping centre was another Game opened much later, opposite the Sega arcade.

Further down East Street also on the right-hand side about half way down, not quite opposite Games Workshop, was a more serious computer shop, and it was in the shop window I first saw an Amiga.

There also used to be quite a good little video game store at the end of the road in the East Street shopping centre (isn't that being pulled down now?). Plus another Game on the top floor of Debenhams.

And in St Mary's street there was a gaming store called Compuserve that had rows of networked Amigas and STs where you could rent time on the machines and could pick from the library of games they had in the shop to play whilst there. Was a great place.

There were also loads of other shops around Southampton in the 80's and 90's. Such a shame most are now gone.