My thoughts on what could be done with the Amiga.

[thomsedavi]

Hi, I'm a sort of long-time Amiga fan of about 24. I've got a couple of A500s in my bedroom, a disassembled A1000 (I took it apart to see the signatures on the inside and haven't got around to putting it back together again), a couple of monitors, a stack of software but no working mice or joysticks, which is a tragedy because I can only play pinball games at the moment. (Though I'm hoping to acquire a joystick soon, but what I REALLY need is a working mouse so I can play Lemmings, my favourite game in the whole world ever).

Anyway, I don't want the Amiga to be forgotten but I'm not really interested in emulation either, unless it can be done in a really convincing way.

I have a couple of ideas. I'd quite like to actually try to program some new A500 games myself as a hobby and mail floppy disk copies to anyone who wants them - is anyone still doing anything like that? I think it would be neat, but I'm not sure if anyone still makes the sort of floppy disks that the A500 used any more. I think there are probably a few people like me who would appreciate having something new for their Amiga, but I obviously don't seriously expect it to make any money, if I even find time for it. Doing software for an A1200 would also be neat, except I don't see the point in excluding the A500.

My other thought is that since technology has become so small, it would be relatively easy to produce an A1200 the size of a mobile phone that could be plugged into a regular monitor. It would be cheap, and there's a huge range of pre-existing software that could be miniaturised - how small could they make a disc with the storage capacity of a floppy? A quarter the size of a postage stamp?

I think they've already done something like that with the Atari, so why not the Amiga?

I have a strong attachment to old computer games. I think it's mostly nostalgia, but partly because, growing up with old computer games as I did, I'm able to see through the shiny modern graphics of new computer games. Old computer games compensated for their basic graphics by having real personality, and being made by small groups of people rather than huge companies helped a lot too. More room for personal expression.

A final question of my long rambling post (you have no idea how much I'm holding back): what software would I need to acquire to program new Amiga games, anyway? And what manuals, for that matter? And I guess I'd need a hard-drive, too... not to mention a MOUSE...

[thomsedavi]

Just a suggestion - if you do make any games, why not distribute them as ADFs? It would save postage, people could use them under emulation and they could be converted back to physical disks for real Amigas.

The problem with emulation (for me) is that it removes too many boundaries... if I were to make an Amiga game with the intention of having it run emulated on a PC, I'd just think, why not cut out the middleman and write a game directly for the PC? Why not write it in Flash, even?

A large part of the project would be designing a physical manual (probably something very basic, maybe eight pages stapled together) and a box (probably one of the small 133mm x 191mm boxes) and trying to produce the whole thing as a 'professional' product, maybe even try to print the name of the game directly on the disk the way they used to. And I realise that by this I've already lost any profits I might make.

Maybe it's just me, but I think the idea of a brand new boxed Amiga game would be fantastic. When was the last time a boxed Amiga game was available? Eight years? When was the last time a game was sold on floppy disk, for that matter?

To me, the difference between taking a computer game out of a real box with a real manual and downloading the game is the difference between seeing the Mona Lisa in person and looking at it on a postcard.

I imagine someone would put it on the internet rather quickly, but that doesn't bother me much, since the important thing to me would be the box and manual and presentation.

If anyone else would like to see a new boxed Amiga game, let me know because part of me thinks this would be a futile task so I need encouragement. Otherwise I'll just make Flash games.

[thomsedavi]

I've been pondering my idea to write a new computer game, and something occurs to me. Amiga game creation is probably the only area in the world in which practically no work is being done whatsoever. Every fifth person in the world is writing a novel, or a webcomic, or painting something. There are an extraordinary amount of PC games, console games, movies, television shows, flash animations, that sort of thing being made.

It seems every creative industry is packed to bursting. What is the only thing in the world almost no one is working on? Amiga games! (And ZX Spectrum games, and Sinclair games, and C64 games, and so on... but you know what I mean).

It's strange, but making Amiga games is one of the very few ways of doing anything 'creatively unique' at this time.