What Made YOU Buy An Amiga?

[XtC]

Here's an interesting thread for you all...


Go on, what made YOU buy an Amiga


If you bought an Amiga in the 80s, what did you see or hear that made you splash out on something more expensive than an Atari ST?

If you bought one in the 90s, what was the reason?

...and if you've only just bought one now - why?!?

[Akira]

Well, my uncle bought it for me. Why? Because he thought it was the BEST option among all computers.

This was an A600, in 1992, btw. Size took a big part in his decision too, since he bought it in Germany and I had to sneak it past customs when I returned to Argentina :D:D:D

Why did I wanted the Amiga? Come on, you know why. It is/was superior to everything First time I see it running on TV (playing Pacmania and R-Type 2) I was gobsmacked.

[Riley]

Well, my dad bought our first Amiga in, uhh, must've been in 88 or 89. He actually was considering the ST first, but after getting no reply from the Atari distributor in Finland for his inquiries, he went to the Amiga ditributor instead. In retrospect, of course, that Atari ditributor made us a real favor.

[silvaheart]

Well, the first Amiga I bought was a Amiga 500/Kick1.2/512kb on 26.03.88 ! I still know the extact date, cool eh ?!

I bought it because I've first seen it at a friend of mine. He played Test Drive & Marble Madness there, and I wanted it too ! As soon as possible ! Also he showed me an app named "Aegis Sonix" and I was stunned ! I always wanted to do my own music using a computer ! So I went along ...

Then in 1995 an A1200/2MB/540MB-HDD came and this time I wanted to see the coooool AGA-Demos done by several demo-groups.

Yo, that's my Amiga story.
Since 1998 I own several PC's (4 now), all built up by myself. But I'll never forget the Amiga times ...

Silvaheart

[menace]

I bought my first amiga in may of 1989, after owning a c64 since 1986 - which is still working fine, by the way - which is more than I can say for that amiga It was an a500, that was eventually expanded with an extra 512k of memory, external diskdrive (SO essential for xcopying ;]), and eventually a harddiskcontroller and 40mb harddrive. After the machine burned (I kid you not) at Odyssey 95, I got a second-hand A1200 through a friend (Hi Slummy!), which was eventually expanded in turn with a Blizzard 030-board at 50mhz and other odds and ends.

Before I even had my c64, I had a spectrum for about a year. That's dead and gone by now.

Nowadays I have two a500's, the c64 from 86, the A1200, three pcs (Celeron 700, Duron 1200 and Athlon XP 1800+) and a real lack of space in my apartment

And why? Because it felt like MAGIC, that's why, that you actually OWN a machine that had graphics capabilities to rival those of the arcade machines I loved so much, and the DEMOS.... So that's my story, there.

[BuZz]

A friend of mine bought an a500 and showed me populous, shadow of the beast, megademos, and his util disk with copper colours and music
and it was just incredible. Everything it did was amazing. I was a spectrum user at the time and i just HAD to get one

Currently I'm using

a4000(T)/060
a1200(T)/040/PPC
a2000/060
a3000/060
a1200/030
a500
atari 1040 ste
C64
Spectrum 128
Sinclair QL
Dragon 32
BBC B
Acorn Electron
BBC Master
Sun Ultra 1
HP9000 (800) Series hp-ux server
laptop

and some other machines

[Talus]

Haha. Anything is incredible to a Spectrum user

I never bought an Amiga. Went straight from C64 to PC.

But one of these days...

[MrTickle]

Go on, what made YOU buy an Amiga

Well, a couple of my friends had 500s and all I had was a C64. We were not a rich family, and i'd always been a little behind with the computers and consoles... Then the 1200 was announced and I was determined to be the first kid in my year with one. I saved up £200, and my parents made up the difference and got it for my birthday! Oh wow.. I was sooooo happy It was THE best birthday present I ever had, bar none.

And, well, I've never looked back

[Wildwest]

Father-in-law had one first, then brother-in-law and I was just so mightily impressed. Thought the games were just awesome. I could'nt keep off it when I got mine, my wife became an amiga widow over night, hehe. Mind you, when she discovered megaball deluxe, she tried a miltary style takeover but I resisted god'dam it...she has got the highest score to this day though in fact she never even signed her name, instead taunting us with "Top that boys"
BuZz, she's a harder woman than even Judy

[vektron]

Hi everyone!

Just registered here, seems like a nice little community and ExoticA is by far the best site I know. Cheers to you BuZz, XtC and Vital!

I got my first Amiga in 1991 (A500) after seeing Turrican II on a friend's Amiga and this machine instantly captured me... I was in school back then and there was a lot of disk-swapping going on... those were great times!

In 1994 I bought an A1200 (one of the last Commodore-manufactured models) from a friend and equipped it with a Blizzard 1230-IV board, 32 Megs of RAM and a 420 (later 4 Gig) Meg HD and stuck it in a tower case. I am still using it for playing old games, coding some stuff in BlitzBasic and of course ripping tunes and gfx and building my own collection of modules (basically just using DosControl, HexEd, TrackDOS and some tools I coded myself)...

Nowadays I like to play PC games like Operation Flashpoint (reminded me a little of playing "Hunter" on the Amiga) and GrandPrix. But nothing beats a session of playing games like Rick Dangerous (WHAAAH!), Traders, Turrican, Pirates and all those classics on the Amiga. There was much more innovation back then (doesn't mean there's no good games now) but I especially remember this 200K game "Dogfight" (Shareware) which was just two airplanes shooting and throwing bombs. Played it against my brother and we had 8 hours of pure fun with this simple game.

Yep, good to know there's still a community out there. I think what made the Amiga special was that it was made by people with great enthusiasm and devotion for their work, in terms of hard- and software. Not like Microsoft crap which is coded by thousands of people not knowing what the other hand does and relying upon ultra-fast, ultra-big hardware.

My PC is just a machine, but the Amiga is a part of my youth I wouldn't wanna miss... like a girlfriend

[spectral]

I bought my first A500 with kick 1.3 back in 1990. I had had my c64 since 4 years, and was still enjoying it, but around 89-90 a lot of friends were getting Amigas, and I had been playing some games at a friends place (Test Drive, Marble Madness, Bomb Jack, etc), and I just knew I needed to get one. Got a full diskbox worth of games and some demos (among those Red Sector Megademo) and this is what made me into the geek I am today I guess Memories..

Time flew by, and I got into the scene a little bit, did some tracking in protracker, and when the a1200 was announced I knew this was an upgrade I couldnt miss out on, and so I started saving and got me one of the first a1200's that were shipped to Sweden. Was disappointed at how slow the people adopted AGA, for a long time all there was was Team HOI's demo, and some other not so impressive things. But at least I got more mem to track and stuff Got my first hdd some year later and that was probably the best upgrade I ever did, don't know how I could have lived with disks for so long before.. but scsi back then was just too expensive and I wasn't rich..

Well, in 96 after the tbl tint mania started out in the demoscene I knew I needed a faster cpu, and so I saved money and sold my a1200 and bought an a4000/030, man.. that was fast for me back then in 1997 I got a new 1200 and bought an apollo 060 66mhz card for it and was in heaven, but I wanted 060 in an A4000 so when I got an offer to buy an A4000 with 060 I sold all my amigas to be able to afford it, but then the bastard sold it to someone else and I was stuck without amigas.. only took a year before I felt that C= urge comming on and I got myself an a1200 with 030, and last year I bought an A4000T with 060 and PIV, toccata, ariadne etc, and it kicks ass. Sadly the amiga isn't something i use for daily surfing, etc.. I use my pc for that, but the feeling of the Amiga will always be there, so whenever I feel bored I just power up my Amigas and fiddle with wb, watch demos, etc.

Hope you weren't bored to death by this text. If you were, just power up your amigas and get unbored

[jPV]

Well.. first "I want that computer" moments were when I saw some rendered pictures made with Amiga on one finnish computer magazine. It was somewhere 86 I think. Then we were playing around with a500 in local home electronics shop... the Say command was soo cool :) Then my friends started to get a500:s and I was hooked with Interceptor, Speedball, Xenon2 etc.. and finally I had to change my old c64 to a500, of course. I think it happened somewhere 89/90... got good money from c64 in exchange :) I still have my first a500 and now several other Amigas too.. I'm writing this with my trusty a1200, which is still my main computer :) Atari wasn't option for me.. I never knew any Atari owner where I was living. Everyone had Amigas... so there really wasnt other options

[Wizor]

Well, friend got one and before that i was all the time at his place playing with the C64. So when we opened the box and after a half an hour of trying to find the powerswitch we finally were able to load Sidewinder we were literally struck by an emotion that i have never ever felt since

PURE amazement.

After that i spent even more time there until i got my first Amiga A500/1Mb about 4 years later.

Oh..and the ease and speed of loading the games....damn floppies were *fast*!

[Zzap64]

I remember it was back in 1992 when I bought mine....I was a late starter!
I was working for Oxford Mobius at the time and working on Mirrorsoft and Domark titles. I had just started working for them during the summer holidays as a games designer for work experience and then went onto work for them full-time.
I remember I was told if I worked for 3 weeks during the hols they would buy me an Amiga A500 Think it was the sleepwalker pack. (I could have my dates one or two years wrong either side of 92 though?!).
Used to love the Psygnosis releases and Future Cop was a cracking title at the time. We did some work on Super Space Invaders and War in Middle Earth, so they impressed me also....can't forget Planet of the Robot Monsters too.
After that I bought a A1200 which was great for a short time...until I discovered my PC....which I can't now live without. You can't always live in the past you have to move on...but it is nice to reminisce!

[dalezy]

a mentally weak guy in my class was talking me into that, since he always took a piss on me still doing musick on my c64.

good thing: i bought the amiga.
bad thing: i sold the c64. good thing i got a new one.