40 years of Amiga – the arcade machine for the home
The Commodore Amiga set the standard for gaming from 1985: for the first time, the computer made it possible to play games at home in arcade-like quality.
(Image: Amiga 1000 mit Competition-Pro-Joystick und "Turrican 2": Wie hier auf dem Factor-5-Stand auf der Amiga-34-Messe bildete das eine typische Gaming-Situation der 1990er ab.)
This is part two of a three-part series on 40 years of the Amiga. The article on the history and architecture of the Amiga has already been published. The next part will be published tomorrow, Friday.
The Amiga brought the arcade into the teenage bedroom. Whether it was "Defender of the Crown", "Turrican" or "Shadow of the Beast", the first contact was a decisive moment for many. It was a new gaming experience, as the Amiga was miles ahead of the competition in many areas. We take a look back at some of the gaming highlights of the machine of the future and show what was so groundbreaking about it.
When the Amiga came onto the market in 1985, it demonstrated unprecedented graphics and sound capabilities on home computers. A resolution of 640×400 pixels in up to 4096 colors simultaneously and four-channel sound with sampling –, which is hardly impressive from today's perspective, was groundbreaking in 1985. And even if 320×256 pixels in 32 colors simultaneously was the rule in games for technical reasons, it still outperformed the competition. This was the case with PCs, home computers and consoles.
The Apple Macintosh, introduced a year earlier, was only capable of displaying grayscale graphics, the IBM PC was mostly rudimentary and was equipped with CGA graphics, whose meagre 16-color palette looked as if it had been inspired by a pack of highlighters. Even the rival Atari 520 ST, which was introduced shortly before the Amiga 1000, only offered 16 colors at the same time – from a palette of 512. In addition, the ST had to use an inexpensive sound chip of the 8-bit home computer era, the AY-3-8910, which was also used in the Schneider CPC, for example.
Arcade machines were the benchmark until then
Instead, the reference for computer gaming experiences were the arcade machines, which offered graphics and sound splendor that no home computer was able to reproduce in the same quality – until the Amiga came along. Thanks to its custom chips, which took over special tasks and thus relieved the main processor, the Amiga 1000 was unique in its performance when it was released. However, the gaming start was slow. Although the hardware was predestined for gaming, not a single game was shown at its presentation in New York on July 23, 1985. Commodore positioned it more as an alternative to the Macintosh and IBM PC.
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The first games that appeared for the Amiga in 1985, such as "Seven Citys of Gold", looked more like better C64 conversions that did not make full use of the Amiga's unique graphics and sound capabilities. This changed in 1986, with two games causing a stir: "Marble Madness" was a conversion of an Atari Arcade title. The game, in which you had to steer a marble through an isometric 3D maze, caused quite a stir: the Amiga version was on a par with the machine and the mouse control worked very well, although this did not make the game easy. The machine had a huge trackball.
"Defender of The Crown" was again like an interactive cloak-and-dagger movie: In the game, you fought for sole power in medieval England and had to outdo three other contenders. There were colorful jousting games, fair princesses to rescue and castles to conquer – all in a graphic and sound splendor never before seen on home computers.
Curiously, the Atari ST conversion is considered to be the better version in terms of gameplay, because the Amiga version had to be completed under extreme time pressure and some game elements were missing. Nevertheless, the version for Commodore's computer is more rounded in terms of graphics and sound.
(Image:Â heise online)
Developer Cinemaware made a name for itself with its atmospheric, cinematic games. Whether with "Lords of The Rising Sun", which was considered the "Defender of The Crown" around Japan, the B-movie parody "It Came From The Desert", where a city had to be protected from giant ants, or "Wings", which simulated the air battles of the First World War – all games combined a dense cinematic atmosphere.
The Amiga 500 marked the breakthrough in gaming
The year 1987 was groundbreaking: the Amiga 500 was by far the most successful computer in the Amiga series: as a keyboard computer and considerably cheaper than the Amiga 1000, nothing stood in the way of its success as a gaming machine. With "Ports of Call", a real time waster came onto the market in the same year: Rolf-Dieter Klein and Martin Ulrich, who sadly passed away in March 2025, created a business simulation in which you took over a shipping company and had to generate profits and also park the ships in the harbor without accidents. The other business simulation that came from Germany and quickly achieved cult status was "Oil Imperium" –, which was released in 1989. Here you didn't have to park oil tankers, but had to drill oil wells faster than the competition and not destroy the drill in the process. The aim was to eliminate competitors and trade successfully. Both titles quickly became cult games and cemented the reputation that good economic simulations come from Germany.
