The Amiga is a family of personal computers by Commodore. Introduced in 1985, its unique arcade-like chipset gave it high-end graphical, audio, and multitasking capabilities far ahead of other systems at the time. It was only a modest success in America, where IBM-compatibles ruled, but it became huge in Europe, especially UK and Germany. They were used mainly for gaming, demoscene activities, video editing, and computer graphics.
However, Commodore was plagued by some of the most criminally incompetent management in the history of technology. The competition eventually caught up, while the Amiga stagnated and was very poorly marketed. Sales collapsed in the early 90s, and after the CD32 flopped, the company closed its doors.
And even so, out of sheer obsessed devotion of its old users, the Amiga lives on! Its operating system is currently maintained by Hyperion Entertainment, while A-Eon still makes compatible PowerPC-based machines. There is also AROS, a full-featured open-source clone compatible with plain x86 PCs.
The list[]
Box Art | Title | Genre | Description |
---|---|---|---|
Agony | Shoot'em Up | A beautiful shmup where you take control of the smoothly animated owl from Psygnosis logo, who here is a warlock which seeks to obtain the ultimate power. Some of the best visuals you will ever see on the Amiga! | |
Another World | Platformer | With many a port made for various different platforms, the Atari ST and Amiga versions are the first ones to be released, with the Amiga being the most well known. Many ports followed, including SNES/MegaDrive, a Sega CD release (bundled with terrible sequel with creator Eric Chahi's minimal involvement), even a nice GBA homebrew port that Chahi himself assisted.Chahi details his opinions on each port here.A modern remaster for phones, newer consoles and PC also exists, and it's great.
| |
Apidya | Shoot'em Up | Amazing shmup, instead of piloting a ship or something like that you have the hero turned into a bee, taking down on insects and other small creatures on a meadow. The music was composed by the legend Chris Hulsbeck. | |
Arabian Nights | Platformer | Good platform game with all that item collecting stuff | |
BC-Kid | Platformer | This is a unique port of Bonk's Adventure, most of the game has been updated with the style of Bonk's Revenge and Bonk 3 and there are a lot of background changes! If you don't have a PC-Engine/TurboGrafx you might as well get this version since all Bonk ports are pretty much a remix. Some stylistic clashes though! | |
Black Crypt | Dungeon Crawler | Raven Software debut game. Similar to Eye Of The Beholder and Dungeon Master, but with steep difficulty curve. | |
Cannon Fodder | Top-Down Action | Good fun shooter. You control soldiers on different missions. Has a good intro soundtrack. | |
Fate: Gates of Dawn | RPG | Epic adventure through Winwoods (players alter ego in game) nightmare. Some facts about this game - One of the biggest worlds in RPGs, 11 races and 32 classes, capability of controling four teams with 7 people each. The original German version had some explicit nudity, which was censored in the English release. | |
Fury of the Furries | Platformer | No, not that kind of furries! This game is really good. You play as "Tiny", a cute little fuzzball with the ability to change into four different forms to help him fight and navigate his way through 8 different regions including desert, forest, factory etc. Namco bought the rights to this game and made it into Pac-in-Time. When a big company like Namco wants your game you know it's good. | |
Genetic Species | FPS | One of the last commercial Amiga releases, this is certainly among be the best-looking original Amiga games ever. | |
Giana's Return | Platformer | Unofficial sequel to the 80s classic The Great Giana Sisters. Very fun and challenging. Also on several other systems. Free: Official site | |
Hunter | Action-adventure | You're an elite agent, and your mission is to single-handedly kick some invading army out of an archipelago. Perhaps the very first sandbox game, a whole decade before GTA III made the style popular, with a fully 3D open world, various vehicles to use, buildings to enter, and items to loot. | |
Jim Power in Mutant Planet | Platformer/Shooter | A nice and somewhat infamous platformer, it cycles between platforming and shoot 'em up stages and has the most ridiculous excuse plot ever conceived. It has a amazing soundtrack by the man himself Chris Hulsbeck. This one is the original version. | |
Lemmings | Puzzle | Original version of the classic puzzle game, awesome music as well. | |
Lionheart | Platformer | A unique plaformer and system exclusive where you play as a feline barbarian out to kick some evil ass. Also features a shmup section where you ride a dragon to reach the evil wizard's castle. | |
Lost Patrol | Survival/aRPG | Vietnam, 1965 - after the crash of the chopper you assume the leadership over a team of seven soldiers, your mission is to get them safely to point Du Hoc, you can bet your ass it's not an easy task. One of the best games set it Vietnam War ever. | |
Onslaught | Strategy/Action | Select a neighboring territory to attack on the world map followed by a sidescrolling segment. You've a limited inventory of weapons and ammo so you have to make decisions about what to keep or skip. When you finish 2-3 stages you fight the boss in a weird qix-like stage. Music is awesome, and now for XBOX live arcade. | |
Payback | Action | Once upon a time, there was a disgruntled Amiga fan who really wanted to play GTA. So, like any reasonable person would, he just played it on the PC... nah, just kidding, that'd be too easy. Instead, the complete madman set out to create a GTA clone for the Amiga that surpassed GTA in every way. | |
Pinball Dreams | Pinball | One of the best pinball games ever developed. With four tables and upto eight players the game was ported to a number of consoles including PS3 plus PC and iPhone. | |
Perihelion: The Prophecy | RPG | Sci-fi RPG with great atmosphere. If you're looking for a cyberpunk game - try this one. | |
Project-X | Shoot'em Up | A challenging shmup developed by Team 17, which uses a Gradius-style power bar. It received a PSX-only sequel called X2: No Relief. | |
Ruff 'n' Tumble | Platformer | Be careful when you play marbles in the park. You might fall in a rabbit hole. And the hole may be a teleporter to a planet inhabited by warrior robots ruled by a mad scientist. Always carry a submachine gun, just in case. This is one cool game. The action is fast and intense, the levels are huge, the sprite work is gorgeous, and the animations are just excellent! | |
Sensible World of Soccer '96/'97 | Sport | A sports game, but a very good sports game with great gameplay. Also available for PC and Xbox Live Arcade. | |
Shadow Fighter | Fighting | A late title to the Amiga, released after Commodore's demise, and probably the best fightan on the system (even better than Body Blows). Cool graphics, with lots of parallax and raster effects, and a good number of well-animated animu-ish characters. Also on the CD32. | |
Shadow of The Beast 2 | Platformer | Features some of the best music, artwork and atmosphere. The music on the opening and game overscreen are particularly good. Story is about a half beast who is searching the world of Karamoon for his half sister who was stolen from the mother by the antagonist named Zelek. | |
Slam Tilt | Pinball | The last 21st Century pinball game before they went under, and what a game! Since it uses the AGA chipset, the visuals are the best on the system! | |
Superfrog | Platformer | Team 17's take on a mascot platformer, which borrows elements from both Mario and Sonic. Thankfully it plays well and is not just another shameless rip-off.
Now we have a HD remake on Steam and GoG.com, more than 15 years later! | |
The Chaos Engine | Run n' Gun | One of the best looking game on the Amiga. Great gameplay and music too. | |
The Great Giana Sisters | Platformer | Shameless but damn good gender-reversed Super Mario Bros clone from Germany. The Amiga port is not as impressive as the C64 original (pretty much the same graphics despite the much better hardware), but it's still a solid game. | |
Turrican | Platformer | The amazing conversion of the amazing Commodore 64 original, with delicious improved 16-bit graphics and the now legendary soundtrack delivered by none other than Chris Hulsbeck. | |
Turrican II: The Final Fight | Platformer | Even better sequel, which improves on everything that was good on the first and features better joystick support and some of the BEST GODDAMN MUSIC IN GAMING. |
External links[]
- Amiga Forever - the official (commercial) Amiga emulator & game collection
- Archive.org - play Amiga demos in your browser
- AROS - open-source AmigaOS clone
- A history of the Amiga - in-depth article
Videos[]
Fourth Generation | ||
Consoles | Philips CD-i - Commodore CDTV - Pioneer LaserActive - Sega Mega Drive - SNK Neo Geo - Super Nintendo Entertainment System - Funtech Super A'Can - NEC TurboGrafx-16 | |
Handhelds | Bit Corporation Gamate - Nintendo Game Boy - Sega Game Gear - Hartung Game Master - Atari Lynx - Welback Mega Duck - Watara Supervision | |
Computers | Commodore Amiga - Atari ST - BeOS - Fujitsu FM Towns - Sharp X68000 |