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Offline mugenakumaTopic starter

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I want an Amiga gaming system!
« on: February 05, 2004, 02:43:50 AM »
Hello all,

I am interested in finding and purchasing an Amiga computer, specfically for gaming. I want to get the best and most powerful Amiga system, at least when it comes to games.

So what Amiga model should I get?

What specific features, RAM, drives, etc. should I look for?

Should I just get the system on Ebay or is there a better place?

Lastly where is good place to get some cool games? I am looking for games like Shadow of the Beast or other well done graphically & sound "intensive".

I would really appreciate any info provided. I will never forget when I was 10-13 yrs old,  gawking at my cousins Amiga games & system. It put to shame the computer I had. I would love to relive those days, but with my own system!  :-D

thanks,

Glenn
 

Offline MaDDuck

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Re: I want an Amiga gaming system!
« Reply #1 on: February 05, 2004, 03:20:12 AM »
depends-------
A PAL A500 running 1.3 will be great for old games!

A A4000 with a 68060 or PPC and a SD/FF or graphics card for the new ones


Or Amitholon!
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Offline Jagabot

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Re: I want an Amiga gaming system!
« Reply #2 on: February 05, 2004, 03:21:33 AM »
"Best" Amiga gaming system? A plain old A500 with 512k chip and 512k fast RAM. (no foolin). And they're really cheap to buy (ask redrumloa for one, he has a whack of them, brand new and he's very reliable).

Then you can always get an A1200 for the AGA games afterwards and you're set [ohh, I have a couple of those too!]  :-D

Nothing runs as many Amiga games as an A500.
If I have military spec stuff listed on eBay, you can find it here  :-)
 

Offline Jagabot

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Re: I want an Amiga gaming system!
« Reply #3 on: February 05, 2004, 03:24:45 AM »
Mind you... if you already have a nice PC, go download WinUAE and grab "Amiga in a Box" while you're at it, and you will have the fastest Amiga ever made right inside your PC through emulation. (You may want to buy the Cloanto Amiga Forever package so you get the ROM images as well).

You can download over a thousand Amiga games and other goodies from Back2Roots and more elsewhere.
If I have military spec stuff listed on eBay, you can find it here  :-)
 

Offline Matt_H

Re: I want an Amiga gaming system!
« Reply #4 on: February 05, 2004, 03:27:11 AM »
There are two types of Amiga gaming:
There's classic Amiga gaming, the older stuff from when the Amiga was more popular.
Then there's the more recent stuff that'll require a PPC accelerator, 3D accelerator, etc.

I assume you're after a machine for the former :-)
An A1200 should suit you pretty well, although you should make sure it's a Commodore model, not an Amiga Technologies model, as those have trouble with bootable floppy games (copy protection issue). An Amiga Tech model should be fine if the floppy's been replaced.
A 200MB hard drive sounds like it'll be enough for what you're planning to do.
You'll probably want an 030 accelerator with some RAM. You should be able to get by with less than 16MB.

This'll probably go for $200 US on ebay. You can get it cheaper in a direct sale.

You could also get an A500, but you won't be able to run AGA games. It's also harder to expand (based on the availability of hardware at present). It's considerably cheaper, though.

Welcome to the Amiga!
If you need anything else, don't hesitate to ask!
 

Offline mugenakumaTopic starter

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Re: I want an Amiga gaming system!
« Reply #5 on: February 05, 2004, 03:37:42 AM »
Thanks for all the quick and helpful suggestions.

I am actually not really into 3d games. What I really love are cool 2d games! Shooters, action adventures, etc.

Cosidering this maybe the A500 would be best. I saw a bunch of new refurbished A500's on ebay.  

So if I am looking for cool 2d games what system should I get? An A500?
Do those refurbished A500's on ebay have the features I want/need?

 

Offline JetRacer

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Re: I want an Amiga gaming system!
« Reply #6 on: February 05, 2004, 04:09:19 AM »
The people saying you should try UAE are probably right. Because many games will only run with specific hardware and roms and that's only a mouseclick away when using UAE. I for one can remember having to rip out the 512KB expation to play one game only to be forced to put it in to play the next. And having to re-kick it to run pre WB 1.3 games.

So if you buy hardware don't expect to be able to run anything that claims to run on A500, nor advertized as being non-aga.
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Offline mugenakumaTopic starter

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Re: I want an Amiga gaming system!
« Reply #7 on: February 05, 2004, 04:11:59 AM »
I guess I could do that. Emulation just kinda seems like a half a*% way to go.

So most games won't work on an A500?
 

Offline leirbag28

Re: I want an Amiga gaming system!
« Reply #8 on: February 05, 2004, 05:17:51 AM »
mugenakuma:

Listen carefully...believe me........one thing you don't want to relive of the Amiga days.is the Disk LOADING and disk SWAPPING!.................this is what I recommend and is really easy to get on eBay:

get an Amiga 1200 with a 68030 50mhz accelerator and 16 megs of RAM ( the 68030 and memory you can get later but its better to save the trouble)
Also get it with a 2gig Harddrive.

Almost all A500 games can work on it or made to work see........there is this package called WHDLoad that lets you install alot! and I mean alot! of floppy games onto the hard drive that werent even meant to be installed..get this package! you can download it on Aminet (register it later but it still works)

Then once you have this you can escape out of most games and load another one without having to reboot. You can force some to run on NTSC that were meant to be run on PAL (England's TV format) or you can force some to run in PAL that were meant to be run in NTSC...NTSC gives a slight speed up on games.

the 2 gig HD is so that you can fill it up with tons of games.......get them free on Back2theRoots  website.
Trust me this is the best setup because you can play both Old games and New AGA games..as I said, WHDLoad enables you to play many of the games meant for the A500

Get MagicMenu and ToolsDaemon so that you can run all the games straight from the Menu bar with complete ease instead of opening windows and drawers searching for games on a 2gig HD understand?
CD32 is actually the best Amiga ever made by Commodore!...
 

Offline mepmepmep

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Re: I want an Amiga gaming system!
« Reply #9 on: February 05, 2004, 05:38:13 AM »
Quote
I am actually not really into 3d games. What I really love are cool 2d games! Shooters, action adventures, etc.


Get an A500 with 1MB of memory and one ore two decent joysticks = TAC2. That is one investment that you will not regret!

You can use an emulator for checking games out, but for serious playing, you WILL miss having a joystick!!! Keyboard tapping just makes you feel ridiculous...

Good Luck!
 

Offline mepmepmep

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Re: I want an Amiga gaming system!
« Reply #10 on: February 05, 2004, 05:57:16 AM »
Quote
So most games won't work on an A500?

Wrong, most games DO work on the A500!!Especially those type of games that you are talking about shooters and so on... In fact some of the best shooters of all time was produced for the A500.

I could agree with the above poster, but:

There's a massive difference in pricetag between an A500 and an A1200HD/030.

The A500 is ready for a gaming session out of the box, the 1200HD/030 requires some knowledge and tweaking to get those oldies running.

Those golden oldies that you seem to want to play mostly comes on one or two disks so the diskloading on the A500 wont be a huge problem. Unless you are extremely inpatient.
 

Offline mugenakumaTopic starter

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Re: I want an Amiga gaming system!
« Reply #11 on: February 05, 2004, 06:08:26 AM »
O.k so I guess I want an A500.

What's the deal with this A500 that redrumola is selling: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2784781315&category=4598

Does this computer work? If not how much should I expect to pay for a A500?

Does anyone know of any good places to buy good 2D software?
 

Offline Wolfe

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Re: I want an Amiga gaming system!
« Reply #12 on: February 05, 2004, 06:22:11 AM »
mugenakum

"Does anyone know of any good places to buy good 2D software? "

Software Hut  Check out the Daily specials.
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Offline mugenakumaTopic starter

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Re: I want an Amiga gaming system!
« Reply #13 on: February 05, 2004, 06:53:52 AM »
Thanks for the link.

Well now I am getting more and more confused.

I just saw some stuff on the Atari ST, specifically a review of this game for the Amiga called Lionheart. This game looked AWESOME and the article I read mentioned the Atari ST and it taking advantage of some sound features the game has.

I went to ebay and found a  Atari 520 ST 520STFM. How is this compared to an Amiga 500?

Anyway I still am looking at those refurbished "defective" A500's on ebay. If anyone has any opinions on those please let me know.

I am pretty handy with hardware and built all my own personal computers so modding an Amiga, if necessary, shouldn't be heard.

Anyway after looking at this one page,  http://www.cus.org.uk/~alexh/games/games.html

I am DYING to get an Amiga or and Atari ST?

Those Thalion brand games look beautiful! Those are the types of games that I want to play on my future Amiga system, colorful, animated 2D stuff!
 

Offline aardvark

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Re: I want an Amiga gaming system!
« Reply #14 on: February 05, 2004, 07:31:47 AM »
Atari software and Amiga software are incompatible, so to run Atari software you'll need an Atari machine. A500s are more compact, but A2000s are a better machine for expandability.  They're both the same generation so they will generally run the same software.  Rom versions are important, too as some software will only run on 1.2 or 1.3 roms.  2.04 roms are better and the latest is 3.1 roms which will run the latest OS version 3.9 (providing you have an accelerator)  The accelerators are easier to fit into an A2000, but some are available for the A500 as well.

These machines will _not_ run AGA games.  It is possible to get graphics cards for the A2/3/4000 models to run VGA resolution games, most of which also require a fast accelerator.  AGA games will only work on A1200 and A4000 machines.  Degrader software is available to give backwards compatibility for games.  Amigas have always been amazingly expandable (with the exception of A600s and CDTVs) with A1200s towerized running PPC processors and A2000s running 68060 processors.

Don't know if you're in Europe or North America or elsewhere, but certain models are more common in one area than another. Me I like my A3000T with Cyberstorm PPC and 060 processor with a Cybervision graphics card.  Still won't run AGA software though  :-(
Overall, if I were you I'd be tempted to go for the A1200 with a 3.1 rom and at least an 030 processor if you're looking to the best of Amiga's past and an A4000 or A3000 if you're looking to upgrade to Amiga's future.  Hang around Amiga Org and you'll get an idea where we're heading. 8-)