Commodore Amiga
(Redirected from Amiga)
- For emulators, see Amiga emulators and Emulators on Amiga.
The Amiga is a family of personal computers by Commodore. Introduced in 1985, its unique arcade-like chipset gave it high-end graphical, audio, and multitasking capabilities far ahead of other systems at the time. It was only a modest success in America, where IBM-compatibles ruled, but it became huge in Europe, especially UK and Germany. They were often used for gaming, demoscene activities, video editing, and computer graphics.
However, Commodore was plagued by some of the most criminally incompetent management in the history of technology. The competition eventually caught up, while the Amiga stagnated and was very poorly marketed. Sales collapsed in the early 90s, and after the CD32 flopped, the company closed its doors.
And even so, out of sheer obsessed devotion of its old users, the Amiga lives on! Its operating system is currently maintained by Hyperion, while A-Eon still makes compatible PowerPC-based machines. There is also AROS, a full-featured open-source clone compatible with plain x86 PCs.
Note that between it's launch in 1985 and Commodore's demise in 1994, there were several generations of Amiga chipsets which determined its capabilities and games that could be played. The launch A1000 and later A500 used the Original Chip Set or OCS, and was the typical baseline for games released between 1985 to 1993. The Enhanced Chip Set or ECS with only minor improvements would release later and be found on A500+ and A600 models from 1991 onwards. The final generation, the Advanced Graphical Architecture or AGA chipset, would release in 1992 in A4000 workstations before being more commonly featured in the A1200 and CD32 in 1994. Check the supported chipsets for the games you're trying to play to see if you're machine supports it if running on physical hardware.
The list
[edit | edit source]| Cover | Title | Genre | Chipset | Description | Screenshot |
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Agony | Shoot 'em up | OCS, ECS | A beautiful shmup where you take control of the smoothly animated owl from Psygnosis logo, who here is a warlock which seeks to obtain the ultimate power. Some of the best visuals you will ever see on the Amiga! |  |
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Alien Breed (series) | Shoot 'em up, action-adventure | OCS, ECS | Your spaceship has been boarded by very unfriendly aliens. A trilogy of Gauntlet-style top down shooters with heavy exploration elements and gritty aesthetics. Later the series got PC remakes. |
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Alien Breed 3D | FPS | AGA | Scientists have created clones mixing human DNA and alien eggs... what could possibly go wrong? First-person spin-off of the original trilogy, actually made by a different team. There's a PC fan remake. |
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Another World (EU) Out Of This World (US) |
Action-adventure | OCS, ECS | An experiment goes wrong and a scientist is transported to an alien world where everything is out to kill him. A widely ported classic, sure you're better off getting the 20th Anniversary version instead, but this is the original (along with the ST one). |  |
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Apidya | Shoot'em Up | OCS, ECS | Amazing shmup, instead of piloting a ship or something like that you have the hero turned into a bee, taking down on insects and other small creatures on a meadow. The music was composed by the legend Chris Hulsbeck. |  |
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Arabian Nights | Platformer | OCS, ECS | Good platform game with all that item collecting stuff |  |
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Battle Squadron | Shoot'em Up | OCS | Blast off to planet Terrainia and destroy the evil Barrax empire! Fun and gorgeous vertical shmup from the same Danish team who made the excellent Hybris (and the terrible Sword of Sodan too, but you can't win them all). You fight on the planet's surface and its caverns. Only downside is that the music is extremely repetitive, just one track for the whole game! Also on the Mega Drive, but that version is quite a bit worse in graphics. |  |
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BC Kid | Platformer | OCS | This is a unique port of Bonk's Adventure, most of the game has been updated with the style of Bonk's Revenge and Bonk 3, and there are a lot of background changes! If you don't have a PC-Engine/TurboGrafx you might as well get this version since all Bonk ports are pretty much a remix. Some stylistic clashes though! |  |
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Black Crypt | Dungeon Crawler | OCS, ECS | Raven Software's debut game. Similar to Eye Of The Beholder and Dungeon Master, but with steep difficulty curve. |  |
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Bombuzal | Puzzle | OCS | Control a blue Zoombini and detonate all of the bombs on each stage without either killing yourself or getting trapped. The different tiles and bomb types make this easier said than done. Also on Atari ST and SNES (where it's known as Ka-Blooey). |  |
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Cannon Fodder | Top-Down Action | OCS, ECS | Good fun shooter. You control soldiers on different missions. Has a good intro soundtrack. |  |
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Fate: Gates of Dawn | RPG | OCS, ECS | Epic adventure through Winwoods (players alter ego in game) nightmare. Some facts about this game - One of the biggest worlds in RPGs, 11 races and 32 classes, capability of controlling four teams with 7 people each. The original German version had some explicit nudity, which was censored in the English release. | |
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First Samurai | Action Platformer | OCS, ECS | An excellent and rather underrated action game with a lot of character. As a samurai hunting down the Demon King who killed your former master, you will explore large stages searching for mystic bells and level specific special items that you use to summon a ghostly wizard head that allows you to progress further to reach the boss. As well as your typical health meter, your sword also has a meter which is used to activate the checkpoint pots littered around the stages and fills up by killing enemies. The deliberate and leisurely pace won't be to everyone's taste, especially those more inclined to arcade-like titles as this requires a decent amount of exploration and backtracking, but its still hard to deny its quality. Also available on Atari ST with significant sound and visual downgrades, DOS, and SNES with similar graphics but completely different (and worse) levels and controls. |  |
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Franko: The Crazy Revenge | Beat 'em up, kusoge | OCS, ECS | An epic Polish developed shitpost of a brawler with violence, swearing and nudity aplenty (male flashers only, so don't get too excited). Hell, even some of the sound effects are basically just stolen from Final Fight. Truth be told as a game it's pretty bad with its subpar controls and constant loading on floppy disk formats, but the hilariously awful MS-Paint art somehow makes the whole experience circle back to being so bad it's good. Worth experiencing at least once. |  |
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Fury of the Furries | Platformer | OCS, ECS | No, not that kind of furries! This game is really good. You play as "Tiny", a cute little fuzzball with the ability to change into four different forms to help him fight and navigate his way through 8 different regions including desert, forest, factory etc. Namco bought the rights to this game and made it into Pac-in-Time. When a big company like Namco wants your game you know it's good. |  |
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Genetic Species | FPS | AGA | One of the last commercial Amiga releases, this is certainly among be the best-looking original Amiga games ever. |  |
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Hunter | Action-adventure | OCS, ECS | You're an elite agent, and your mission is to single-handedly kick some invading army out of an archipelago. Perhaps the very first sandbox game, a whole decade before GTA III made the style popular, with a fully 3D open world, various vehicles to use, buildings to enter, and items to loot. |  |
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Jim Power in Mutant Planet | Platformer/Shooter | OCS, ECS | A nice and somewhat infamous platformer, it cycles between platforming and shoot 'em up stages and has the most ridiculous excuse plot ever conceived. It has a amazing soundtrack by the man himself Chris Hulsbeck. This one is the original version. |  |
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Lemmings | Puzzle | OCS | Original version of the classic puzzle game, awesome music as well. |  |
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Lionheart | Platformer | OCS, ECS | A unique plaformer and system exclusive where you play as a feline barbarian out to kick some evil ass. Also features a shmup section where you ride a dragon to reach the evil wizard's castle. Modern PC remake here. |
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Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge | Racing | OCS | Arguably the most famous arcade racing game series on the Amiga. Race an Esprit through a series of circuits around the world to get the top ranking, but make sure to watch your petrol during the race as you will need to refuel. Unfortunately, the game runs in a constant split-screen even in 1-player which is pretty annoying, but otherwise is completely solid. |  |
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Lotus Turbo Challenge 2 | Racing | OCS, ECS | The sequel to Lotus embraces its Out Run roots more closely by making all the tracks point-to-point stages where you just race against a countdown timer, with the rankings and car refueling of the original totally thrown out the window for simpler arcade thrills. Thankfully the game is now fullscreen in 1-player, fixing the largest issue with the original game. The best new feature however is multiplayer by serial link, allowing you to link another Amiga or Atari ST for races up to 4 players. Arguably the best game in the Lotus series. |  |
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Lotus III The Ultimate Challenge | Racing | OCS, ECS | The third Lotus game is more of the same, but now offers up the options of both the circuit racing of Lotus 1 or the point-to-point arcade racing of Lotus 2 across a new series of environments. Other than that, the only new real addition is the RECS course creator which just allows you to modify track variables used to auto-generate a track, not directly create one yourself like the course creator in Core Design's Jaguar XJ220. The new soundtrack by Patrick Phelan is godly however and elevates what would otherwise be a minor improvement over Lotus 2. |  |
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Mind Walker | Puzzle | OCS | One of the earliest titles available for the Amiga platform that honestly feels like a drug-fueled fever dream. The basic gist is that you form paths between the Crystals and Sockets in the pseudo 3D, randomly generated worlds as either a wizard, human, nymph or spriggan, all the while sentry spheres routinely attempt to scan and kill you. The catch is depending on what character you are determines what type of world tiles you can create paths on, so the spriggan can only create paths on ground, nymphs on water, the wizard on towers and the human on blocks. Thankfully you can use Pyramid tiles to switch to the character you need in case you get blocked off. Get ready to give that in-game map a workout to prevent becoming totally lost. So bizarre that it warrants a playthrough. | |
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Lost Patrol | Survival/aRPG | OCS | Vietnam, 1965 - after the crash of the chopper you assume the leadership over a team of seven soldiers, your mission is to get them safely to point Du Hoc, you can bet your ass it's not an easy task. One of the best games set it Vietnam War ever. |  |
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Onslaught | Strategy/Action | OCS | Select a neighboring territory to attack on the world map followed by a sidescrolling segment. You've a limited inventory of weapons and ammo so you have to make decisions about what to keep or skip. When you finish 2-3 stages you fight the boss in a weird qix-like stage. Music is awesome. | |
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Overkill | Shoot 'em up | AGA | Basically a Defender clone on steroids, this is a simple but quality game. Its fast and colorful graphics showed what the AGA could do. |  |
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Pang | Action | OCS, ECS | A near arcade perfect port of Buster Bros. from Mitchell. Use your harpoon guns to shoot the balloons in each stage, which will split apart into smaller balloons when hit. |  |
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Payback | Action | AGA | Once upon a time, there was a disgruntled Amiga fan who really wanted to play GTA. So, like any reasonable person would, he just played it on the PC... nah, just kidding, that'd be too easy. Instead, the complete madman set out to create a GTA clone for the Amiga that surpassed GTA in every way. | |
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Perihelion: The Prophecy | RPG | OCS, ECS | Sci-fi RPG with great atmosphere. If you're looking for a cyberpunk game - try this one. |  |
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Pinball Dreams | Pinball | OCS, ECS | One of the best pinball games ever developed. With four tables and up to eight players the game was ported to a number of consoles including PS3 plus PC and iPhone. |  |
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P.P. Hammer and his Pneumatic Weapon | Puzzle Platformer | OCS, ECS | A Lode Runner inspired platformer where you use your jackhammer to dig through blocks, which eventually refill, in order to collect all of the treasure on each stage. |  |
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Project-X | Shoot'em Up | OCS, ECS | A challenging shmup developed by Team 17, which uses a Gradius-style power bar. It received a PS1-only sequel called X2: No Relief. |  |
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R-Type | Shoot'em Up | OCS | A respectable port of Irem's classic from developer Factor 5. Thankfully includes 2-button joystick support for easily controlling the Force ball, and feels slightly easier than its arcade big brother. |  |
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Ruff 'n' Tumble | Platformer | OCS, ECS | Be careful when you play marbles in the park. You might fall in a rabbit hole. And the hole may be a teleporter to a planet inhabited by warrior robots ruled by a mad scientist. Always carry a submachine gun, just in case. This is one cool game. The action is fast and intense, the levels are huge, the sprite work is gorgeous, and the animations are just excellent! | |
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Sensible World of Soccer '96/'97 | Sport | OCS, ECS | A sports game, but a very good sports game with great gameplay. Also available for PC and Xbox Live Arcade. |  |
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Shadow Fighter | Fighting | OCS, ECS, AGA | A late title to the Amiga, released after Commodore's demise, and probably the best fightan on the system (even better than Body Blows). Cool graphics, with lots of parallax and raster effects, and a good number of well-animated animu-ish characters. Also on the CD32. |  |
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Shadow of The Beast 2 | Platformer | OCS | Features some of the best music, artwork and atmosphere. The music on the opening and game over screen are particularly good. Story is about a half beast who is searching the world of Karamoon for his half sister who was stolen from the mother by the antagonist named Zelek. |  |
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Slam Tilt | Pinball | AGA | The last 21st Century pinball game before they went under, and what a game! Since it uses the AGA chipset, the visuals are the best on the system! |  |
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Superfrog | Platformer | OCS, ECS | An evil witch has turned the prince into a frog and abducted his beloved, but he won't let that stop him. Team 17's take on a mascot platformer, which borrows elements from both Mario and Sonic. Thankfully it plays well and is not just another shameless rip-off. Later received an HD remake, but that has been delisted. |  |
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The Chaos Engine | Run n' Gun | OCS, ECS, AGA | One of the best looking game on the Amiga. Great gameplay and music too. |  |
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The Great Giana Sisters | Platformer | OCS | Shameless but damn good gender-reversed Super Mario Bros. clone from Germany. The Amiga port is not as impressive as the C64 original (pretty much the same graphics despite the much better hardware), but it's still a solid game. |  |
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Turrican | Platformer | OCS, ECS | The amazing conversion of the amazing Commodore 64 original, with delicious improved 16-bit graphics and the now legendary soundtrack delivered by none other than Chris Hulsbeck. |  |
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Turrican II: The Final Fight | Platformer | OCS, ECS | Even better sequel, which improves on everything that was good on the first and features better joystick support and some of the BEST GODDAMN MUSIC IN GAMING. |  |
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Turrican III: Payment Day | Platformer | OCS, ECS | The third game is a departure from the previous titles, as it was developed without any involvement from creator Manfred Trenz. The extreme exploration was toned down a bit (even though it's still far more complex than any Contra), and the multi-directional beam was traded for a grapnel a la Bionic Commando, but it's still a very worthy representative of the series. It's actually the same as Mega Turrican, except the Mega Drive one has better graphics. |  |
Videos
[edit | edit source]External links
[edit | edit source]- Amiga Forever - the official (commercial) Amiga emulator & game collection
- Archive.org - play Amiga demos in your browser
- Amiga 500 Archive - OCS games for download
- AROS - open-source AmigaOS clone
- A history of the Amiga - in-depth article
- The 68000 Wars: part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 - in-depth article series
- The Amiga Buyer's Guide - in-depth guide on the various Amiga models if you're looking to own & run the physical hardware
| Fourth Generation | ||
| Consoles | Philips CD-i - Commodore CDTV - Pioneer LaserActive - Sega Mega Drive - SNK Neo Geo - Super Nintendo Entertainment System - Funtech Super A'Can - NEC TurboGrafx-16 | |
| Handhelds | Bit Corporation Gamate - Nintendo Game Boy - Sega Game Gear - Hartung Game Master - Atari Lynx - Welback Mega Duck - Watara Supervision | |
| Computers | Commodore Amiga - Atari ST - BeOS - Fujitsu FM Towns - Sharp X68000 | |