A600 & A1200 Pure Gaming?

[fatboy]

Hi!,
    I'm thinking of setting up an A600 (HD) or A1200 (HD) as pure gaming machines with WHDload
These will run on a TV (Via Scart)and I would like a 'pretty' Workbench, but not too memory hungry.

The machine will be for my Kids to show them that old games can be just as much fun (or more so) than the latest super consoles! (no doubt I'll have the odd blast on Super Stardust though)

Any advice on a 'clean' set-up and recommended system software/hardware?

I have messed around with the A600 (with 1 MB internal upgrade and 4 MB PCMCIA card.....it works with WHDload but is a little slow to launch games...probably the 16 bit PCMCIA card?)

[Fixer]

I managed to get a fair few games working on WHDLoad just with A600 2mb Chip. It was annoyingly slow though sometimes.

I think most people here would agree that the A1200 makes the ideal WHDLoad machine! :-)

[amigakid]

Go for an A1200.  You'd be a lot happier with it plus be able to play AGA games.  Get it expanded with at least an 030 and 8 MB RAM, CD-ROM and you will have a pretty nice but not overly expensive little setup.  Games I'd reccomend would be Chaos Engine, Shadow of the Beast series (all 3), an R-type style game, Hybris and OS 3.1 and up (3.5 or 3.9 prob be best), a good platformer like Soccer Kid.  Cheers and happy gaming

[fatboy]

The A1200 was my main option as I already have my own ('030' 50 Mhz, 32MB Ram, 60GB HD and OS3.9)

I will probably use another A1200 (lower spec), but I do like the compact size of the A600!

[cv643d]

You can cut the A1200 motherboard in two pieces then it will fit A600 shell. Search the gallery, someone here did that.

[motorollin]

Definitely go for the A1200. Upgrades like an accelerator and fast RAM, which will be necessary for WHDLoad, will be much more readily available and probably cheaper than A600 equivalents. Plus as has already been mentioned, you have the option of AGA games on the A1200.

As for your Workbench, if you have plenty of fast RAM then you can go wild. Birdie for textured borders, VisualPrefs for customised gadgets, nice backdrop, 256 colour NewIcons.

There are various patches on Aminet which can force certain apps to put their images in fast RAM, which will help to conserve valuable chip RAM which you will need for games.

--
moto

[leirbag28]

@cv643d

I would love to see that Broken A1200, as I would like to break mine in half and put it in the A600 case as well.........I doubt you can fit acceleratos and other things.

[IOWASURFER]

http://www.amiga.org/gallery/index.php?n=2129

Hey I found it!

very cool!

Joe..

[Cammy]

An Amiga 600 makes a great little gaming machine for the kids. My friend has an A2000 with only 3MB RAM, but it's filled with WHDLoad and other HD installed games and is awesome, so you don't always need an A1200.

Make sure you get them some newer (non-AGA) games like Fightin' Spirit, Stardust, Ruff n Tumble, Mr. Nutz, Project X, Superfrog and not just the really old games that most people can only remember.

Sure AGA is nicer and the A1200 is faster, but the poor little A600 would feel neglected and I bet the kids woud think it's cuter, and might not even notice the graphical or speed differences between the ECS and AGA Amigas.

You could use Magic Workbench or one of the other more colourful icon packages from Aminet, combined with a good colour palette (use Full Palette from Aminet to lock the colours) and then you can resize and remap any pictures you want with Personal Paint.

Or if you wanted another great option, you could get a CD32. Nearly every WHDLoad game will run on them, and the ones that need keyboards are being patched to use the extra buttons on the control pad, and of course there are heaps of awesome CD32 games too.

[Tomas]

I use a a1200 with a 68020/4meg accelerator. I find that this is enough for perfect playback of like 99% of the games i have. The only problems i have is some old certain games like oil imperium or newer fps games which runs a bit too slow due to lack of cpu power.

By the way.. has anyone gotten oil imperium to work using whdload? The problem here is that the drilling part of the game runs at least 5 times faster and there is some severe graphic corruption.