The Rise and Fall of the Commodore Amiga - Kim Justice
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 มิ.ย. 2024
- #retrogaming #amiga
Today's video is quite a special one - one that's been requested for a long time...we're looking at the history of the almighty Commodore Amiga - how it came to be, how it flourished, and how arguably the best and most advanced computer of the 80's was mismanaged and manhandled into never quite becoming the computer it should have been. British folk may not be aware of the chaos that reigned behind the scenes in America, and Americans may not be aware of the success the computer had in Europe that arguably kept it - and Commodore - alive.
This video is split into three parts: Part 1 covers the story of how the Amiga almost became the Atari ST, and the subsequent war between the two computers that followed. Part 2 covers the computer's mismanagement by Commodore and all that led to the fall of the company. Part 3 covers the long time that Amiga Inc. has spent in the wilderness, still existing but thrown around all over the place by people who simply couldn't make good on their promises.
It's a bumper video, to be sure - just remember that only Amiga makes it possible. Enjoy!
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This video would not be possible without the existence of Dave Haynie's legendary documentary, Deathbed Vigil - a 2 hour document of the fall of Commodore, made by those who were right there in the heart of it. You can watch this classic right here: • The Deathbed Vigil and...
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No I guess you're right perhaps the Japanese takeover and computers did not happen in the 80s perhaps not even in the 90s but what you left out was it happened via the South Koreans!!
Remember are us a so-called economy for sure Hurley was the bed of manufacturing it's located everywhere but here in the United States I should know how many u.s. citizen I live in central Ohio so don't you stay in there and preach virtue nonsense to me!!
*Only 18* 👇👇👇
803777.loveisreal.ru
You made me remember how sad I was as a child when all my favourite Amiga magazines released their last issues, especially Amiga Power. I lived for each issue of those!
Me To ! now i searched old Amiga Power and Amiga Action :)
I really miss the AMIGA. It was the only computer ever created that actually felt like it had a soul.
Well said my friend....I agree...nothing else is the same as an Amiga.....it is very special.....
You obviously never owned a Speccy. That said, I loved my Amiga more than my Spectrum, but there’s no doubt it had a (cheap, rubbery) soul.
All of the 8 bits had massive soul. I had a lot of experience with primarily the BBC B+, speccy 48k and +2, and a little with the C64. They were all distinct and great computers with their own quirks. I could tell you which one is my favourite, which is not a straightforward thing, but that isn’t the point, I still look more fondly on all of them than the ST/Amiga era. I went PC after my 8 bit computers in the very early 90s, and never looked back.
So Amiga took a $500K loan from Jack Tramiel, who was taking advantage of their desperation to practically steal their company and their technology. Amiga uses it stay afloat long enough to make the multimillion dollar deal with Commodore. They go back to Jack and say, "Here's your money back. Thanks!" What an awesome play on their part, beating Tramiel at his own cutthroat game.
It was hilarious, because they took the cheque into Atari and Tramiel accepted it saying "if someone gives you a cheque for $500k you never refuse it". Not sure he knew what it was for.
Also, I also have heard that the Atari ST wasn't developed from scratch at Atari. Engineers at Commodore were working on a 68000 based computer and when Tramiel left for Atari they followed him there, taking this initial 68000 design with them.
Tramiel was used to being such a dickhead that when he got full-on countered, he threw such a hissy fit that he pretty much demanded on the spot that his company create competition for them. It was beautiful.
At least I will respect Tramiel for being a cut throat business man to the core.
Whatever the hell was wrong with Gould?
As much as I love Kim's work I don't think she is correct. Looking over a few articles online it appears that Atari (before Tramiel) made the agreement with Amiga and that the deadline for repayment was end of June, 1984. Tramiel didn't even take over Atari until that same month, so he was not the one to make the deal.
@@Trenchbroom yes because whatever you read on the Internet is true and debunks all below it
As someone who was very proudly an Amiga owner, in almost the same time frame, thank you so very much for this excellent video. I got an A1200HD in 1993, and my last Amiga was an A4000/040 which I stopped using every day in 1999 or so, in the mean time I also had an A500, A600, A2000 and a CD32. I miss using an Amiga, there is just something missing and sterile using this Windows 10 box.
My neighbor bought an A500 in 1989 when I was 14. I used to babysit for him so quickly fell in love with the little beige wedge. Eventually I managed to convince my parents to chip in to my babysitting funds and I replaced my old ZX Spectrum with my own A500 in 1990, which I gradually upgraded with an extra floppy drive, then a hard drive (with a massive 20MB of storage!). By the time the 1200 was released I was able to sell the 500 and just barely have enough for it. The 1200 I likewise upgraded with a much larger hard drive than the 40mb it came with (I think it was around 600mb) and a 68030 cpu and 8mb RAM expansion. A couple of years after that a friend of mine went overseas and so I fostered his A4000 with an 050 in it, as he didn't want to sell it at the time (he ended up coming home and trading it for an Apple Mac once Commodore had died - the guy who bought it wanted it for video editing). After Commodore died and software support became non-existent, I reluctantly packed up my A1200 and replaced it with a PC in 1998, occasionally getting the 1200 out for a bash. I kept the A1200 in its box until eventually I realised I hadn't used it in several years and so sold it in 2002 to a guy who wanted it for video editing.
It was a bitter end for me also - I learned OS fundamentals, shell scripting, Perl, C, gained an understanding of TCP/IP, sockets and so on, and so many other skills as a kid that eventually developed into a career as a software developer - and played a lot of awesome games too of course.
I look at the machines my kids use now - one son has a Macbook, the other a HP all in one Windows machine - neither of them encourage fiddling around and learning about how they work in any way at all, and so my kids pretty much just take them for granted as they are, like an appliance. I wonder if once current generations who grew up with machines like the Amiga are gone, what will the next generation of tech nerds be like?
There was no 050 processor, the last processor Commodore put in Amiga 4000, was a 040. Later there was 060 accelerators/upgrades, as well as PowerPC accelerators.
Im guessing that Amiga4000 your talking about had a 68040. Theres was also a cheaper version of Amiga4000 with 68030 processor.
loved my old amiga, it was a lot more versatile than my mates consoles, the games were often a lot better, but for me , one thing stands out to this day, Deluxe paint was awesome, i dont think i have ever found anything to this day that could compete with its raw simplicty of use, RIP AMIGA !
The Amiga was so ahead of it's time about ten years, that the Amiga was multimedia before multimedia became a thing.
Excellent video, certainly brings back memories. We got our first A500 (expanded to 1MB RAM) back in 1988, and I stayed "loyal" to the Amiga until I finally got my first Windows PC in 1998. The fact that the same A500 machine continued to entertain our family for 10 years was a real testament to its quality!
I have a really good mate that nursed his A500 with a 68030 + hard drive expansion through our Uni years.
I loved that computer and played Civ 1 on it to death but soon after with the release of Doom and Frontier and the inability of the Amiga to handle Texture mapping he saw the writing on the wall and buckled and bought a PC.
For reference I got through 1st year Computer Science in 1992 with an Amstrad 1640 ECD with a 20mb hard drive.
I have a great picture of us watching Fractint rendering a zoom on a Mandlebrot really slowly.
Halcyon days.
Luv and Peace.
In Canada, a friend of mine and I operated a community TV station that we started in 1990. In 1992 we bought our first A3000 and in 1994 an A1200. We managed to get parts until 2012 at which time they had both died an honorable death. But for us it was the beginning of a miserable era. The video and music editing capabilities of the Amiga were the very best for TV. With live editing and/or CG with pic in pic with action in one of the pic or both was never matched until Intel came out with its 4 core I7. So yes we miss the Amiga - the best video computer ever built.
Outside the European gaming scene, the Amiga at least had it's home within the TV/video production outfits of North America.
Not correct.
Amiga was great in game scene, but it was very used in TV Broadcast in Europe too... And it was used in Virtual Reality too (the first commercial game platform vor VR VIRTUALITY was based on Amiga), and 3D art renderig at low cost too. No any other platform of that age could compete Amiga costs/benefits ratio.
.
+cdn soul - I take it the A/V power mac's didn't quite cut it, then?
@@raffaeleirlanda6966 But was never seen at its potential,,, it may of been used that way, but no one really knew it was possible, because it was covered over as a "a personal computer" marketing, therefore, was more treated as a home computer.. Most of that could of come down to hardware at the time.
Doing virtual realty, TV production does not sound like "a personal computer" It was more advanced than anything at the time, but still the limitations... They all had them, not just the Amiga. Compare to say, now in 2021, where hardware s up to snuff, the reality of "virtual reality" was possible, and it was "included" in the marking as it something that they push towards.. compare to the old days.
awesome video, you've got mad editing skills. this is like legit tv quality right here.
supernoob17 legit comment
What was it edited on?
@@earthstick Amiga
I wrote games for the platform back in the day. It was a really cool platform, and the 680x0 was a great processor to write Assembly on. The "blitter" was a great little co-processor, and very clever.
I was writing a programing for the coldfire and lightwave combo risc/cisc rendering program so anybody could input and transcribe ,and then render any of the files .Not to mention cinema 4d and so forth. The output to mpeg 4 and default to true 24bit/48it ,and eventually the true 64bit 3d if Amiga had actually gone that far again. This also, would have worked with the Toaster on a RISC CPU(s) as the toaster oven /screamer. Then again this was when as a test i asked so called Amiga inc if they really owned it they smiled and said well we bought the name that is it , and no the x86 is true 8bit .That dev for the Amiga OS 4.x ,and the hardware would be x86. using JIT Emulation IT loses everything. It sucks I stopped developing for it then and there. Yep, Fleccy was stunned .All he said was butttt ,and I walked away ..... It was at the Y2k show. This, brings me to the point of why Microsoft was really kicked out of that show ,and how and when and what the PS3 was and is. Some can Laugh at this ,but one thing is for sure jealousy always rears its ugly head when somebody like me has these events in his life and knowledge.
What games did you make please?
What Amiga always needed was someone in charge who not only "got" the Amiga, but _believed_ in it. Basically, an enthusiastic visionary like Steve Jobs. David Pleasance would have been a good choice, but, alas, it was not meant to be... :(
JW3HH
This is really well done. My Amiga 500 was possibly my favorite all time computer.
+homeycdawg Mine too. I can make a great case for the A1200 with its ability to expand into an A4000 like machine without the cost but the A500 was the machine that just did it all for its time and it seemed like every month something new came out that just blew you away, pushing the hardware.
I can't really think about the Atari ST as a competitor. It was such a poor machine. I really felt sorry for anyone at school that had one. Knowing they would miss out lol
Clay Mann
I never had the pleasure of playing with an A1200, but I had an expansion module for my A500 called the GVP A530 Turbo.which added a 68030 processor @40mhz, 4mb SIMM RAM, and a 120mb SCSI hard disk, which made the computer perform about on par with an A3000. Best part was that it had a hardware switch that rebooted the machine in stock A500 mode for maximum compatibility with A500 only games.
Man I miss that computer.
homeycdawg
how soon I forget these things. Of course the A500 was very expandable itself. I remember now I only ever got a memory upgrade that you stuffed underneath but pretty much like you, I expanded my A1200 with 040/40mhz which was horrendously expensive for a teenager like me at the time but my god, it was something special. Remember how 3D things like flight sims suddenly started running smooth? but I was really buying into the hardware to do 3D rendering work in Cinema 4D and Imagine.
The dark side finally lured me in when the PC was just running so fast, 300mhz, 400mhz, 1ghz!! and me on 40mhz. How could you resist? lol
+homeycdawg Do you still use your A500? If so then there's a terrific expansion called the Grafitti which gives the amiga extra screenmodes. I think it's a shame it wasn't included in the amiga as standard, because it would have made Doom a lot more possible on our humble machines. Especially with an 030 and extra memory under the hood. It might be worth a look for you. Barely any games support it, but interesting if you're a coder.
nicholasthetaylor
I don't unfortunately. I think some of it's innards have gone bad, especially on the expansion. I still have it in a box around here somewhere because I could never bring myself to get rid of it.
Luckily I was able to transfer all the stuff off of it long ago so I can still access all my old stuff with an emulator. It's not the same of course, but it's nice for memorabilia since I made hundreds of songs and animations on that thing as a teen.
Dave Please absolutely smashed it here in the UK, smartest marketeer and always got the right people in at the right time. he even had an excellent business plan to bring back Amiga, Commodore and the CBM's back from the brink. And he was look forward further still, since Power PC computing and RISC was becoming more prevalent... all that was sunk by the guy that ran ESCOM at the time.. despicable.
It took me a lot of courage to watch this vid, I was an Amiga fan for years after it was considered "dead," and still have a souped-up A1200 now, which I do cartoon animations on. Therefore, a documentary about the turmoil in its management history makes me a bit sad! :-( although people were (and still are) impressed by my animation work, it was tiresome having to constantly defend my decision to use an Amiga to everyone! I DO have a laptop PC for everything else computer related, let my Amiga be!
I've been binge-watching this channel for the past 3 days while stuck in bed sick, thanks for entertaining me and taking my mind off the pain Kim Justice :)
Wow, absolutely loved this video, Kim! The Amiga is my all-time favourite system. Great getting some in-depth insight into what exactly went on. Only Amiga makes it possible!
You never forget your 1st and the A500 was mine. You could do so much with it and it was a head of its time.
Ahh the Batman pack, still remember carry'n that massive bastard home through the rainy streets of Belfast. Excellent video Kim, thx for the memories ;)
Gotta like all the classic packs, even Cartoon classic pack
I always keep wondering, the Amiga was so ahead of it's time how would the Amiga be now if Commodore wouldn't have gone bankrupt as they did. I miss the Amiga times so very much.
It was too late by the time of the bankruptcy. Way too late. The inertia of the PC market was such that nothing could stop it by then. PC components were cheaper and higher tech quality than what you got on the Amiga side. In fact, many of the "new" 3rd party Amiga products coming out in 1993 were just PC market hardware ports with a 5x price sticker on top of it for the custom coding. You weren't going to get any new customers that way, just the same old cult following from the 64 days. Not enough to drive the market to what it became. Then there was too much legacy targeting as well - most amiga's didn't even have hard drives so software was still being delivered in copy protected floppy access only. That certainly didn't help with its so-called professional image they needed to portray. Fact is, there was some chance of genuine success as a leader in the 80s but it was forever gone once the decade rolled over. Just too many screw ups and lack of direction to what the Amiga was even supposed to be.
+Sal
There was zero innovation from Commodore. It pretty much put in no research or innovation to advance the platform.
Commodore was built on the backs of off the shelf components.
@@oldtwins At least Commodore was trying to rectify their "mistakes" by the 4000T and optical drives. They got there too late though, far too late.. The CD32 didn't even make a dent. let alone anything that came after.I
If management had been better, than perhaps Commodore and the Amiga would still live today, but now due their failure must resort to living memories by emulation.
@@Tech-geeky I'd say the Amiga's barely hanging on by a PPC-based thread still.
@@DFX4509B fair comment
Fantastic doc Kim. Commodore (16 then 64 then Amiga 500+, then 1200 and CD32) was my entire childhood and this brings back so many memories !
You make the most comprehensive retrospectives,your good at it don't ever stop.
A very fair telling of the story, methinks.
I did a fair few things on the platform back in the day, including a little program called, "Disney Presents: The Animation Studio."
I also used my Amiga on a day to day basis up until around 1998, whereupon I bought a PC and installed Win98, Linux, and BeOS.
These days, I live almost exclusively in Linux, crashing back to Windows whenever I want to play a game. However, my A3000 still works...
Great video about my favourite computer. Even after I got my Saturn in 1997 (my second favourite machine) I still played the Amiga just as much. October 1998 saw the purchase of a PC, mainly due to the unavailability of Championship Manager 2 (a series well worth a review) and the retirement into the loft of the Amiga, though it still got an outing from time to time, as emulation was never the same
My brief exposure to Amiga one summer was very memorable, that I still look back on it. We got to play with the Video Toaster suite, in addition to the many cool games. I only wish I could have had longer with the system, but I'm glad I got the time I did!
Cool to finally see more of why it failed.
Sensational work, Kim Justice. This is not a topic I was particularly interested in beforehand as I don't have experience with these machines, but you did a great job telling the story and making it very interesting from beginning to end.
Amiga was the best, sad to hear how they fell! Have such fond memories - Great video!
I loved my Amiga 500 - I remember saving for ages, dad driving me to Silica Systems where I walked away the proud owner of a A500 in the Flight Of Fantasy bundle pack. So many fond memories...
+Tango_Echo_Alpha My Cartoon Classics came from the same company, best Christmas ever!
+201081hero So many great games and soundtracks, having an Amiga gained automatic entry into the cool gang at school!
Superb video. RIP Amiga.
Awesome video. The Amiga was my first exposure to video games, so it holds a special place in my heart. I have fond memories of playing Body Blows as a very young child.
Yet another example why you're among my absolute favorite TH-camrs. Keep up the good work, your videos are always the highlights of my day.
Kim your videos are amazing! This makes me so nostalgic for my old Amiga 500 and it's a fascinating story.
Nicely done. I discovered the A1000 in 1985 but it was too expensive for me. Even the A500 with monitor was a stretch. But I bought one in April 1989 and used it RELIGIOUSLY for 5 years. I finally had to move to the Windows world after that. So many good memories though. And I still have all my Amiga stuff.
You are a complete genius. This video is SO informative, well-edited, long, and just overall brilliant that my jaw is still on the floor. WOW!!!
Excellent trip down memory lane! I started with the zx spectrum then desired the Sam Coupe, could not find a shop that sold them, but that was fortunate because I got an Amiga 500. Then a 512kb expansion that brought my A500 up to 1MB. I was hooked. Moved on to the 1200 and payed a fortune for a 256MB hard drive for it "yes a stonking 256MB". Shame that very few games would allow installation. "just another nail in its coffin". Upgraded with 4MB of fast ram and a 68030 with FPU. I felt like I was working for NASA with all the power at my finger tips. Shame very little software took advantage of upgraded hardware "Another nail". Then the misjudged CD32 wasted development resources. A 14.4 kbit/s modem allowed access to the few bulletin boards whose numbers I could find. Everytime I got a connection I believed I could potentially start world war 3. I would spend my pocket money on public domain discs. Still have hundreds of them in the attic. Shame to see how Apple and Amiga had such opposite outcomes considering there commonalities.
AMAZING video thanks Kimbo. Thanks so much for putting this together, award winning stuff. The CDTV I'm not going to blame Commodore so much as the whole market was looking at that, Philips CDi etc. However yes the rehashing of earlier models was a big mistake and sitting on the AGA chipset for so many years was unforgivable. I actually owned an A600 and really liked it, its smaller form factor was pretty cool. Keep up the good work mate. Amiga was so far ahead of the game at the time, it really could have been Apple (indeed the history is not too dissimilar with bad management at the top level during a period of the companies life).
The Amiga was one of the last special computers, as it had a perfect balance of game quality and good graphics. Now most of the games have stunning graphics but lack soul and are often remakes of remakes. Plus with the Amiga you felt part of a community. Maybe nostalgia makes me see things rose tinted now...
Another terrific video. This was my first proper computer and I absolutely loved it. I cannot believe what a short time I had it though for all the memories (Christmas 1991 in the Cartoon Classics pack until 1994 when I sold it at a car boot sale).
The latter half of your video... I ended up in tears... Most videos that speak about the fall of Amiga end after the CD32. You did the rest. And many things you said I mirrored, year by year. I saw Tyschtschenko on an Amiga exhibition in Sweden in the late 90'ies. The last of its kind. I put myself in debt to buy a powerpc card, graphics card, network card. Then I got a cheap windows machine for almost free around 97-98 and finally got rid of my maxed out A4000 with all extra cards in the beginning of 2000. I kept away from emulation for a long time, feeling it wasn't the same. I saw Amiga as a religion, an identity, an important vision. When things went down I was heartbroken and had a kind of existential loss. I learned to never be a brand worshipper back then, and always be ready to work with what is mainstream at the moment.
+JemyM Almost exactly the same here. I had a C64 in the early 90's, and got an Amiga 1200 for my b'day in '94. I expanded it with a 68030 accelerator board, HDD, more RAM etc. around 95 - 96. The A1200 was even the first computer I got online with. I read all the Amiga magazines and kept up with the news such as the PowerPC accelerators, possible new Amiga models etc. There were such great hopes back then, but sadly all those dreams got crushed. It was very sad to see the beloved and once great Amiga getting abused like that over and over again.
As a school kid, I could never afford a PPC board. Instead I got a cheap Pentium system around 1997 and gradually stopped using the Amiga. I learned to tolerate Windows (though I've never liked it, or Linux, too fiddly), and the power of the Pentium CPU and Voodoo GPU allowed that PC to do wonderful things that would have been impossible on the Amiga. Of course, 3dfx went under a few years later, another sad story. But life goes on...
It was 1993 for me. Got a bridgeboard and ended up so much in love with the diversity of high quality programs available on the x86 platform that I hardly used the amiga side at all. Maxed out my bridgeboard setup with a graphics card that blew away the specs of the AGA in the 4000, and some generic 16 bit sound card that made the native amiga 8 bit sound like some kind of dinosaur from yesteryear. But I wanted more speed, more power. Especially this time web browers became popular, which the Amiga only had truly pathetic offerings. I eventually bit the bullet and sold the amiga contraption off after realizing I could build an entire new 486dx2-66 with modern 32bit 1600x1200 graphics mode for less than the cost of the amiga hunk of junk that I had an extreme distaste for by then. Anyway, I still got my floppy discs from that time but I never had any desire to turn an amiga back on and till this day, have no desire for it either.
JemyM Well he has dates and most info wrong. Never worship anything or anybody, but Yehusa That being said Amiga is still the best, and should be held in high regard. Just not worshiped. You should have had the PA-Risc/Itanium on it as I did or any of the other Risc cpus. True he has done a nice video nonetheless.
I was so rabid a Commodore supporter I STILL won't own an Apple product :-D
Fantastic video. I got my A500 in 1991 and it led me down the path that feeds my family today. There was just something about that machine that was magical. It's not something you can put your finger on but it's there and anyone who had one will probably tell the same story. I hate that things happened with the platform the way they did. It was so far ahead of its time there's no telling where it could be today given the proper marketing, R&D, etc.
Loved the game clips too! You included most of my favorites except for Magic Pockets and Gods ;-)
Around the late 80s there was a fantastic ST package for £400 that came with some great games. Among them were Xenon, Space Harrier, Bomb Jack, Gauntlet 2, Nebulous, R-Type, Afterburner, Super Hang On, Overlander, Pac Mania. Great starter pack and not too bad a price.
Christ dude you're really pushing the boat out to deliver, your latest system retrospective type reviews are absolutely amazing and deserve WWWAAAAAAAAAYYYYY more views. This was bliss and always wanted an 'history of the amiga' video in this light. Fantastic stuff, and I have a suggestion for a future video: The history of Ocean Software. I know you touched upon it in your navy seals vid but I think it would be worthwhile for you to have a crack at a full 20-30 minute video on the subject!
Both the Amiga and the Atari ST were also favoured by musicians for music production and MIDI sequencing (as a cheaper option than a Mac). I had an Amiga 1500 in the early 90s which I upgraded with additional RAM and an internal hard disk. Though, apart from music I also spent many hours gaming: Syndicate, Populous II, Alien Breed, Chaos Engine, Monkey Island, Speed Ball 2 - Brutal Deluxe, Lemmings, Superfrog and James Pond II to name a few. This very well researched video brings back memories!
Kim, once again this is one of the most awesome videos you've produced. Loved watching it. Thank you !
When I got my A600. Best Christmas ever.
CWx Daf Christmas 92 here.
I saw my first Amiga just a couple of years after setting my sights on the C64, and it was by far the most impressive machine I ever had the pleasure of witnessing. For 3 straight years I begged my folks to let me have one, as I had to settle for visting friends who by the late 80s all had an A500. It wasn't until xmas 1990 that I finally got my hands on one. It was definitely one of the best and most memorable Christmas' ever!
I just discovered the channel randomly, started watching this video with the idea to skip after a few minute and I couldn't stop till the end! Many thanks, for the beautiful video and for the invaluable document of the story of the Amiga
Your videos are well written, well edited, and full of great information. So glad I found them. I thought I had exhausted all my options.
The Amiga was the driving force of electronic music in the UK in the early 90s ,from rave ,hardcore ,and jungle was mostly made on Octamed 2.0 with support for midi ,until Cubase came along ,but now the Amiga and Octamed is having a bit of resurgence because it is that bloody good in music terms anyway ,what a great episode 👍👍
Jimmy Cauty of the KLF used a monstrosity of a machine that he interconnected through his own custom peripherals, an ST, an Amiga, a NEXT computer and the cheapest Windows PC he could find acting as some kind of switching and monitoring controller for the whole thing. It was called the Trancentral Control Deck.
And by the mid 90s he was just using a single laptop. Its amazing how quickly music technology changed.
so depressing :'( I miss you, Amiga!
I got my A500 system in early 1988; at the time, it was an incredible computer for the price and blew everything away. Most of us were very proud about owning this cutting edge system. Two years later, it was frustrating to see the next generation, Amiga 3000, was nothing more than a warmed over and shrunken Amiga 2000 with a faster processor and a little more memory, with the same 8 bit 4 channel sound and 4,096 colours at a price that helped to sell PC clones with superior VGA graphics and a Sound Blaster card. Then prices dropped on hard drives, but prices never dropped for anything on the Amiga; the cost of adding a hard drive to my Amiga 500 was nearly the same as buying a PC clone with a hard drive in 1992. Oh, but SCSI was better than the PC's IDE I was told, but I knew I'd rather have a cheap IDE than nothing.
When the A1200 and A4000 finally came out, VGA had been replaced with SVGA, and the PC had 16 bit sound. Dollar for dollar, the A1200 was hopelessly outclassed by even the budget PC's and used PC's from a year previous. To add insult to injury, the games on the PC were becoming far superior. When Commodore's ship finally sunk, I realized my folly in putting so much faith in a single company that can be run into the ground by the likes of Mehdi Ali. The openness of the PC clone market was what made it great, affordable, and turned that into the hotbed of innovation Commodore once was. I switched to PC in 1994 and never regretted it, grateful that my only Amiga was the late, great 500.
The A500 was a financial stretch for me in April 1989. But by the time the A3000 came out, money was better. I just never could justify it though. I stuck with my A500 for 5 years.
Damn fine video. As someone who grew up with Commodore machines owning and loving most of them. This is a subject near and dear to my heart. So all I'll say about it is that with half decent management, if the engineers that created the marvel that was the Amiga had been listened to. Today we'd all be using Amiga's, not PC's. Of that I'm certain because it was so far ahead of its time in every way.
This is insanely interesting. I loved both the Amiga and the Atari ST as a kid, but I never really knew anything about the politics behind them. Amazing job, mate. You make great vids! :)
This video brought back a lot of good and bad memories for me. I too felt that disappointment when Commodore closed and the slew of brand owners after them did almost nothing with the technology, though I hadn't realised to what extent Commodore had in the downfall of the system itself.
On the flip side there's just so many good memories from my childhood with these machines, which is why I own three A1200s!
Thank you so much for making this. :D
The Amiga here in the UK was massive. It truly was a powerhouse of a machine.
I had an A500+ Best gaming experience I have ever had
+Mortal Porcupine sad that that's the best gaming experience you ever had. I also had an Amiga 500 and while it was a real fun gaming experience it was far from the best. I personally liked more games on the C64 than I did on the Amiga and the PS1 absolutely destroyed the Amiga in the amount of fun games it had. I have had many systems in the past like the Dreamcast, Xbox, PS3 among others which brings me to the PC which by far out of every system has the best and most games for me.
+carlos muniz I have had many systems too. I prefer the Amiga..... deal with it
Amiga was nice but PC is better. Deal with that, ha.
+carlos muniz Better how? better because it is more powerful? At the time the Amiga 500 was out it had a miles better games library than the PC. If you are talking about todays PC's then thats a stupid comparison
Nope, talking about overall game genres and library. While the Amiga 500 was a good gaming device at the time, to call it the best ever is just not appropriate IMO. Even when compared to the C64, while it had better gfx and sound I feel that the music in games and the variety of games was much better on the C64. Same reason I feel the PS1 was much better, it just had a much better variety and choice of genres than the Amiga did. And same reason the PC is better, even back in the DOS days. Having better gfx and sound is just icing on the cake.
Great video history! Not sure if you were aware but Dan Wood - kookytech.net recently did an hour long video interview with Commodore UK's manager at the time, David Pleasance. He goes into great detail about the exec side and what happened with the UK market including a lot of background stories, well worth the hours watch. You could easily do a follow up vid on just the UK history alone there's so much to it!
An awesome video. I got an A600 as a birthday present after wanting an A500 for years, only to get fusked by Amiga with the the A1200 releasing weeks later at the same price. It made me the bitter, ill-trusting geek I am today.
I have watched this many times now and have watched lots more of your videos on the strength of this. I subscribed and will like everything I have watched thus far and remember to do it in future. This is informative and at times hilarious.
You are probably one of the most underrated channels here on TH-cam. Keep up the good work, dood.
I liked that apod idea. All us amiga fans have dreamed many "what if" scenarios. My personal biggest was about cd64 lol, the one that would kill the playstation ! I really love amiga computers, had the best time with them and nothing can replicate that experience, sadly. A great video here, well done !
Always love your videos Kim, I remember getting an Amiga when I was really young, well it was my dad's but he would pretty much let me on it as much as I wanted. I have fond memories of playing games and I remember also playing a lot of the Amiga Format demo disks to death particularly the Moonstone game since I never could find it in local stores. Also I loved the splicing in of clips from RoboCop as it is a favourite of mine. Great job must have taken a while to collect all the info on this, really informative and entertaining. Thanks for uploading this.
This video and the rest of your vids NEED more views! Superb stuff.
LOVED the puches in que with the punches. Smoooove editing there Kim.
That explains a lot. The Amiga was a lot better than a PC with MS on it in 1995. In 1995 I did a bunch of bench marks with a 99Mz pentium PC. The PC one most of the tests, but if I ran all tests at same time, the Amiga did them in about the same time as it took to do the longest (because of all the parallel processing). The PC never finished (I left it 2 days). I also put an A500 under a desk and got people to try it out, I did not tell them what it was. They told me that this new Microsoft's Windows-95, is really fast (win95 was due for release in a few weeks). They were very disappointed when they saw win95. The only advantage of PC over Amiga 500 was: separate keyboard, and the display could do 480p (where as the Amiga could only do 256p or 512i).
Later amigas could use higher resolutions, also you could add a graphic card to a amiga2000 and get just as good resolution as the pc. It had zorro2 and isa expansion ports.
Again, another fantastic video from your channel!
It really does beg the question... would it be possible for some company to come in and re-release a truly 21st century Amiga which is ahead of the curve again? Doubtful, but we can only dream!
I would have loved to have seen what the company would have been capable of if David Pleasance had taken over the running of the Commodore Amiga brand; it certainly appears that he had a grander, yet more realistic, and fully-realised vision of where he wanted to take the company post-buyout.
Wonderful look back on an amazing machine that could have been so much more, loved it back in the day, happy memories.
this is an awesome video, with so much information and detail. it's the first video of yours I've seen and i just subscribed so i can make sure i watch more of your videos!
My first ever computer was an Amiga 500. Got it Christmas '90. It was part of the bundle pack which included Shadow of the Beast 2, Nightbreed, Impact, Back to the Future 2 & Days of Thunder (amongst others). Even to this day, I still consider the Amiga to be the most joyous gaming experience I've ever had.
I rarely seen a "machine" inspire so much passion. My A600 taught me everything about programming and if i'm now an engineer, it's probably thanks to him. I keep him religiously in my attic. I can't say that about all the PCs i got then
+Rick Blaine *her
Mine was a boy :D
+Rick Blaine Same here, I've had C64, Amiga 500 twice and the Amiga 1200 and still got the Amiga 1200, many people have wanted to buy it off me years ago when I wasn't using it because I moved over to the PC but nope, wasn't getting rid of it, funny thing is, half the games I've got don't work anymore.
+ 10000 Rick Blaine, passion is the true word, economic killed, but passions will stayed till the end, Amiga spirit make me stay young and i will give this passion to my soon for sure !
Brilliant video Kim, filling in the late 80s/early 90s gap for a micro-kid who grew up with the Vic and Spectrum.
Just one thing was missing in your account of the Amiga v Atari ST battle - the role they both played in dance music history, as sequencers. While the Amiga was used for countless DIY underground rave, hardcore and jungle/dnb records from 1990 - 1995, the ST was the choice of electronic musics auteurs. Aphex Twin was one and, famously Fatboy Slim STILL uses it for sequencing, he's stuck with it for 30 years. If you made dance music with a computer, it was guaranteed to be either the Amiga or the ST.
Not just electronic music - punk and indie bands also used the ST to arrange their stuff. Some still do for the retro affect (and, indeed, effect)
Atari Teenage Riot began life as a guitars and drums band, as Alex puts it, and went electronic because he was already using the ST for arrangements and mixing and figured he may as well use it for more.
That's very interesting, I didn't know that@@medes5597
What a massive beast of a computer the Amiga was, especially the 'part' that stuck in the back and extended it another 6 inches. Aside from that it was mint.
Thanks for the video Kim.
I must say that I found your description of David Pleasance's attitude as "refreshingly free of bullshit" to be quite accurate. I was present at the 30 years of the Amiga celebration in Denmark this summer where he had a talk explaining Commodore UK's unsuccessful buyout plans after the bankruptcy and he was clearly speaking his mind honestly and accessible to every willing soul in the room which is certainly a common attitude of engineers and creatives but usually less so of management/business creatures. That the man feels it worth his time to talk with what are essentially customers from 20-25 years ago is indicative of his values.
Also, did you republish the video recently? I noticed my name in the Patreon supporters list but the video dates from November 2015, a date at which I am pretty sure I was not a supporter yet. I am certainly glad for the mention though!
Keep up the good work!
"Couldnt sell tuna to a cat" ha ha ha :)
The Stoned Videogame Nerd isnt it "...snow to the eskimoes"?
This is fantastic. Thank you for making this.
Masterful- so glad you're making stuff.
Dude, you make extremely well-made, well-written videos. I tune in to tune out, if you know what I mean - your videos giving me a great break or escape from the real world.
Thank you for this trip down memory lane.
It is quite the thought experiment what Commodore and Amiga could have been if it had been in more capable hands - especially considering the quite dedicated user base.
I grew up with the C-64 and Amiga and still play the awesome and innovative games that was made on them - unfortunately only on emulators.
It's possible that instead of apple dominating the tech industry, commadore would instead
Don't forget the Commodore 64 Games System, which was basically a consolised C64 computer with no keyboard or expansion ports that was released in December 1990, shortly after the Mega Drive went on sale over here. It died the same year it was launched.
Great job!
This Mehdi Ali guy explains a lot. I think the 1200 should have had an upgraded Paula with 8 channels, true stereo and maybe more RAM. Would have been the best soundchip ever.
Also, the CD32 had some manufacturing error with capacitors incorrectly placed on the mobo.
If you cut R&D to a minimum, improving things and avoiding mistakes get harder.
Got an A500 in autumn of 1992, roughly two years after my brother got a C128DCR that was pretty much exclusively used in the C64 mode by us. I still remember how strange the solid 3.5" disks used by the Amiga felt at first and how amazing graphics were. Of course I upgraded it to 1 MB RAM within the next few months to be able to play all the games that we got from people at school and in the neighbourhood or by renting and copying them - at that age I could only afford maybe two games per year, when I had my birthday or for Christmas. After seeing some VGA PC games on my uncle's computer I was longing for an A1200 which should also have a hard drive so that I could really enjoy Indy IV, and I got one for Christmas in 1993. This video brought back the memories of 1994 and 1995, when my father told us that Commodore went bankrupt after reading it in his daily newspaper. I entirely forgot the story of Commodore UK and David Pleasance almost buying Commodore/Amiga. ESCOM had a bad reputation with us for being one of those PC retailers that we hated for selling the wrong machines to people. :-) But we sure did hope that they'd save the Amiga and continued using ours although our parents brought a DOS PC into our home by the end of 1994. I think I lost hope and interest around 1997/98 when I bought my first own Windows PC and spent less time playing computer games because girls became more important. But I still got my A1200 in my parents' cellar, always thinking one day I might unpack it again. My brother was a bit more patient with the system and bought an A4000T which he still uses now and then, mainly to play Sensible Soccer against an old friend.
I absolutely love your video's Kim, I'm glad there is somebody else who appreciates the Amiga like i do. Honestly, i don't know anybody besides some family members who have any experience with it.
Amiga 500 still the best computer I have ever had. Something about it was so special to this I have just pick up recently a amiga 1200
A glorious hardware platform mismanaged by its parent company. I can remember back in the late 1980s-I’m talking about the US. There was a certain skepticism about investing in this company’s hardware, as though the death knell might sound at any moment. When they collapsed, it was almost viewed as inevitable. The Amiga was great. But Commodore . . .
It makes you wonder what could’ve been. At least we have emulators now to experience what used to be.
Thanks for the great video!
The Amiga had character and charm. I never saw one back in the day, only heard / read about them and started with a Dell PC then forgot about Amiga until the pandemic when I got my 1st Amiga - A Vampire V4 Standalone. Then adding a ReAmiga 4000 and 3000 big boxes. Amazing what the dedicated community has done with it and they are still passionate these dacades later with manufacturing technologies allowing re-implementation's of boards / cards, and even new cards like ZZ9000 GPU's and USB zorro cards.
Nice touch using the amiga-font on screen :)
So that's one in the eye for the "piracy killed the Amiga" brigade (there are _still_ people who think this)
In actual fact it was just a shoddily ran organization almost from the outset.
Great vid as always.
there will always be people who think piracy is bad.
Great video. Thanks for the upload!
Excellent work! Thank you. Loved it.
This video is great, thanks for making it.. l started making music in the early 90s on the Amiga. l did the music for a few crack intros and demos. The Amiga was the first sampler, the first machine that allowed you to sequence beats from old records. (without spending 1000s on Akai gear. It was truly a DIY machine. l miss it still.
Superb video Mr Justice. I do enjoy these!
I've been watching your stuff for ages now... you do a great job Kim 😎
Great in-depth video , I like learning about older generation computer/gaming systems .... very interesting
I didn't learn anything new, but still You have done great editing and collecting most important informations in one place.
That was a very good video, enjoyed it very much! I spent most of my teenage years with a C128 and an A500, never knew the story and the people behind.
This is one of those vids thats good to watch more than once, to help soak everything in.
wow great video, so much information! I always wanted an amiga - being from the states I never saw one but the screenshots in gaming magazines drove me wild
Another great video! I have a request. I think you should do a video on Psygnosis. I don't know much about them and growing up as a console gamer, they are a mystery to me but their games look gorgeous. Your "shadow of the beast" video was great and makes me want to see more.
A superb video. Very well produced.
great video, really enjoyed it. Super informative
Sony was among the companies that wanted to buy the Amiga before they came out with the PlayStation ...
but Amiga sales was quite good at the time and Commodore was still a giant and didn't budge to the deal ...