What was your Amiga moment?

[Pentad]

I was talking with some colleagues over lunch about computers in the 80s and the Amiga, Atari ST, and Macintosh came up. The question was asked what was the moment that sold you on whatever platform you ended up buying.

For example, a few people older than I said seeing the GUI on the Mac was revolutionary since they had started on Mainframes and text.

One person said MacPaint and Page Maker sold him on the Macintosh. Another said one of the MIDI programs on the Atari ST (he was a music major in college) sold it for him. He really compared the music software he had on the ST with an architect moving from manually drawing to AutoCad.

I thought really hard about my 'Amiga Moment' and I guess the first time I saw the Boing Ball demo and they *pulled* down the screen so you could do other things. I remember thinking how powerful that was. Having used Macs in school (I was 15 in '85) we got the whole GUI deal but multiple screens, well that was revolutionary.

So, I ask you, what was your Amiga moment? What made you say 'I have to have that'?

-P

[QuikSanz]

I had a friend that had a C64. It died and he got an A500, thought it was very nice with good games around 1991. He got a 386 and was moving so I bought it with all software. Within a year I found an A2000 with a GVP 030/40 and picked it up Added a Tek 2060 that died some years ago. Found a guy here or on AW that was selling a loaded A4000T for $1000 and picked that up. Good stuff that I won't part with!

[David Wright]

Seeing the Dpaint waterfall image in color cycling at the software rental shop. Kept playing with the amiga when I visited there and finally got the Amiga 1000.

[dovegrace]

Seeing my best friend's stepdad editing a presentation in Deluxe Video, then playing Firepower an hour later (which blew one of his speakers).

Sure as Hell blew my Coco 2 away...

[LoadWB]

The COMPUTE! Magazine article introducing the Amiga 1000 piqued my interest, and subsequent articles held it.  My BBS buddy running his BBS on a 500 in 1990 got me even more, but I was still C64/128.  But seeing Shadow of the Beast in 1991 sold me.  My first 500 system bought in 1992 did not come with the game, but I realized I had this amazingly capable computer on my desk.  Never once since as I moved from project to project, hobby to hobby, interest to interest, never did I consider for a second my Amiga couldn't do what I needed.

[B00tDisk]

Seeing early ads for it in Compute! and a hands-on demo with one at a store - Deluxe Paint, showing off some color-cycling stuff.  Just floored me.

[outrun1978]

Mine was picking up a copy of my first ever Zzap 64/Amiga magazine as I had been given a Commodore 64 for my 11th birthday.  I flicked through the magazine and saw reviews for Shadow of the Beast and Turrican.......  My jaw dropped at the graphics.......

[tasmanian guy]

For me I had a mate who had an Amiga 500 in 1988 or thereabouts I think.

Seeing F18 Interceptor in action (I loved flight sims) just blew me away.  Hitting the afternoons and feeling the thump from the stereo sound ...it was like wow!

I had to wait until early 1990 before receiving my Amiga 500.  Glad to see the pack in game was F18 Interceptor!

[lost_loven]

Seeing sword of sodan and sidewinder on a black and white tv  between 2 big speakers blasting in my face on a a500 sold me in 1989 Picked up a a500 a month later!

[Speelgoedmannetje]

2 Amiga moments for me
First was playing Lotus, Buggy Boy and Xenon 2 on my cousin's Amiga 500 back in the heydays and being totally blown away by it (while we had a 386 with VGA at home)
All games were in 'vga' (as I considered it) with awesome sound while I most often had CGA or EGA games with pc beeper, and if I were in luck, VGA support.

Later on, in 1999 I had a powerful Pentium 2 with 3dfx pc, a friend of mine offered to buy me his Amiga 500 for a small price, and I could use a spare computer for entertainment when my big pc was doing heavy work (windows 98 wasn't that much multitasking). So I replaced my old 286 monochrome as 'co-pc' with the Amiga.
First I thought it was broken, as I dutifully inserted the workbench disk and then inserted the game disk, and almost all games were displayed as 'NDOS'. But then one lucky day I forgot to eject the disk, and the next time I powered up the Amiga, I was being welcomed by the awesome intro of Pinball Fantasies
That was the second time I was blown away by the Amiga, years after it's heydays

[EugeneNine]

Just before I graduated high school I started seeing the ads in the computer magazines then when the small commodore 64 shop near me closed down we would go to the owners trailer to by/sell what stock he had left he had an Amiga 500.  I graduated and moved to Ohio and right next to the big MicroCenter store was a little place called Computer Success where you could see the 500/2000/3000.  The price of the 500 dropped to $499 and you could walk over to microcenter and buy a PC for 3x the price that much or a mac for 10x the price that and neither could do what the 500 could.  I bought my 500 and started messing with emulators as well.  Soon after it has replaced my c64 when I bought the A64 hardware adapter.  Then a PC emulator let me do all my school work and if the mac ever did anything useful I could emulate that too.  For that $500 investment I basically had 4 machines (c64, Amiga, PC and Mac) which would have cost much more to buy each separately.
Could never afford a 2000/3000/4000 so I ended up taking my 500 mainboard and a 286 and building a case around them so I had similar to a 2000 with bridgeboard.  My first job out of college was at a pc shop so I ended up moving to the dark side up until Windows Xp was such a flop that I moved to Linux.

[SnkBitten]

I think it was Byte magazine that ran a preview of the Amiga before it was ready for production which I had read.  Later  a local Commodore computer group had a show with an Amiga 1000 demonstration.  Watching the demonstration made me want one, especially after reading about it. There was an Apple shop that was going to carry it and I got my name on a list for when they would get them in.  I started saving and visiting the shop every week asking if it was in yet.  Finally it arrived and I bought it November 20, 1985....I still have the receipt though not the A1000

[BozzerBigD]

Seeing a demo of the game Walker in a computer shop sold me on the A1200. I'd had a Atari 1040ST until that point and yeah it had 1Mb of Ram but it was increasing obvious by 1992/93 that is had had its day! The most obvious evidence of this was the awful lack of channels and tinny music on Lemmings 2 on the ST and the fact there was no intro cartoon :-( Seriously, having the music actually cut out so that you could have a sound sample of a Lemming saying "yippee" was unbearable! It makes me shudder to this day. To think that most people fondly remember the Atari ST for music and MIDI and yet it had a pitiful sound chip makes be yearn for a time line where the ST and Amiga were a point project under Jay Miner / Jack Tramiel at Atari. Atari might hav been able to beat Apple in that time line with the name and video game pedigree in the USA with a proper games capable computer like the Amiga being marketed as a multimedia / gaming platform to smash the NES. The cost reduced A500 would have been a priority under Jack and may mave come out in 1986! That could have worked out ok?

[BozzerBigD]

@EugeneNine

until Windows Xp was such a flop

Windows XP was the first 'good' Windows OS (if you discount the Windows NT line). I don't really follow you. Do you mean Vista was a flop?

[EugeneNine]

@EugeneNine



Windows XP was the first 'good' Windows OS (if you discount the Windows NT line). I don't really follow you. Do you mean Vista was a flop?

Windows 2000 was the best.  It was the first with the NT4 kernel with the 9x interface.  XP moved some portions of the outer OS into the kernel and forced the IE integration as well as a bunch of other crap that wasn't needed
2000 was way more stable, faster, more secure.

Most people forget 2000 because XP came out so fast due to the IE court case.