Which Amiga?

[reidy4040]

I am wanting to purchase an Amiga as when i was younger my older brother had one and we had many hours of fun on it. Which Amiga is best? And which is compatible with most games? Also how do you know which games will play on which Amiga?
Cheers

[tokyoracer]

Simple answer to that is the A1200. Not too expensive (but rising fast) and is very compatible with it's boot up options.

[quenthal]

Amiga 500 is nice with older Amiga games (most of the games), but for some later games (1992 and onward) A1200 is probably the best choice.

Older games used OCS/ECS chipsets, and usually they are playble after some fiddling with all Amigas. When Amiga 1200/4000/CD32 (which used AGA) were released, some games mainly for those machines became available.

Using software called WHDLoad, you can install most (even those older) games to harddrive, which could make A1200/A4000 perfect for Amiga gaming.

I don't have links available right now, but there are many sites listing Amiga games and their requirements. You could also try out games using some Amiga emulator, like WinUAE before getting in the process to get them running on the real thing.

Keep an eye out for Minimig too, which is small motherboard emulating Amiga 500 nearly perfectly with classic joystick ports running games from flash cards.

[reidy4040]

do you know anybody that sells them?

[quenthal]

There might be some Amiga 1200s (as well as minimig when they become available) at www.amigakit.com

[reidy4040]

what about second hand?

[nine3o]

Your best bet for second hand is eBay, but you may want to ask here if any one has one for sale.

Also look to pay any where from $75 to $200 U.S. on eBay (depending on condition and if it has a hard drive)

[Rob]

Amiga Kit stock them.  You can pretty much guarantee that there will be one on Ebay any given time too.

If you want to use WHDLoad to run games from the hard disk I would recommend getting a RAM board or 1230 turbo card with RAM.

A quick search of Ebay in the UK brings up 2 turbo cards and a 8MB board.

A good alternative to a hard disk is to use a Compact flash card and a CF-IDE adapter.

A lot of people install laptop CD drives in the A1200 too.

If you're prepared to pay a bit extra and do all the above you'll have a nice little games system.

[bloodline]

Don't forget about the MiniMig: http://www.acube-systems.com/

[tokyoracer]

And if you have them (where-ever you are), Car Boot Sales or in America, Swap Meets or something like that is a good rescorce for Amiga's but they are becoming rarer.

[rkauer]

amibay is another good source of computers and parts.

[McVenco]

reidy4040 wrote:
what about second hand?

If you are only into playing games, look for an Amiga 500. Sure, the A1200 is better, faster and more expandable, but 90% of all Amiga games runs on a standard A500, and they are a lot cheaper. Try Ebay for a nice little package (A500 + mouse + joystick + tv-modulator), or search your local ads paper/thriftstore/Craigslist.

If you really want to dive into more possibilities, go for an A1200, but for just games, I still value the A500 best.

Don't pay more than €50,00 for an A500. Here in Holland you can usually get a complete set (sometimes even with monitor) for almost half that price, if you're a bit patient with searching for it...

[tokyoracer]

@ McVenco, I'v never found any game that's incompatible without ReloKick on the A1200. I can't see how you could imagine to go without AGA graphics, you would miss out on so many good games.

[McVenco]

@ McVenco, I'v never found any game that's incompatible without ReloKick on the A1200. I can't see how you could imagine to go without AGA graphics, you would miss out on so many good games.

The only AGA game that I find worth playing often is Slamtilt. All my other favourite games are OCS and run fine on a 1MB A500.

Relokick is cute, but it's just like using an A1000 where you have to load the Kickstart disk first - after a while it really gets annoying.

For gaming I'd have an A500 over an A1200 anyday.

Also: if someone just wants to play some old games for good old time's sake it's totally ridiculous to advice him to buy an expensive A1200 with an 68030 accelerator and putting WHDLoad on a 4GB harddisk (or advicing to buy a Minimig for that matter). That's like buying a Ferrari when you only want to drive 5 miles to the pub once every 3 weeks.

Go for an A500. It's more retro than an A1200 as well
(who needs 32 bit when playing Pacmania :-) )

[tokyoracer]

What about Banshee? Super Stardust? Superfrog? Should I go on? (< thats a question not a game by the way :lol: ).