Amiga Story Part 2 (The 90s) | Nostalgia Nerd

I conclude the Commodore Amiga Documentary with the second part of it's story. This episode is based heavily in the 1990s. We start out with the Amiga 500 and the UK Batman Pack, before moving on through the further developments, staff changes, The Commodore CDTV, Amiga 500+, Amiga 600, Amiga CD32, Amiga 1200, Amiga 4000, Amiga 3000 and the later models and revisions. We go through the peak of Commodore and the Amiga and it's downfall and the various factors which influenced its fall from grace.
Many thanks to Jimmy Maher for writing "The Future was Here" - amzn.to/2jwyOYu - a valuable Commodore Amiga resource which I read before making this video!
Thank you to my fellow KZbinrs for lending their superlative voices;
LGR - / phreakindee
Techmoan - / techmoan
Pixelmusement - / pixelmusement
Dan Wood - / techguruuk
Kim Justice - / elmyrdehory
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♜Resources♜
Many thanks for all of those who helped with resources for this video. Please do let me know if I've missed anything.
Many websites were used for research.... Please check back soon for these updated resources and music listings.
Many thanks to Thomas Koch for use of his renderings - www.flickr.com/photos/tommesk...
And zgodzinkski - zgodzinski.deviantart.com/
Excerpts and magazine images;
www.archive.org
CC images;
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
Pages used for reference, CC;
Ranger Prototype Photos - www.amiga.org/forums/member.ph... (Chris Collins - ChrisXYZ of Amiga.org Forums)
Rev3 Photo - s1236.photobucket.com/user/nik...
Amiga 2000 Memory Board (Bill Bradford) - www.flickr.com/photos/mrbill/...
Amiga Memory Bus Diagram - www.cypherpunk.at/download/ea...
Amiga Unix - bboah.amiga-resistance.info/cg...
Mud Biking - • MUD - Kinnaur, Spiti, ...
Background Wallpapers (Andreas Argirakis) - andreas.blazer.nu/wallpapers.php
If you believe I have forgotten to attribute anything in this video, please let me know, so I can add the source in. It takes time to make these videos and therefore it can be easy to forget things or make a mistake.

[@LGR]

Thanks for having me play a small part in this video! Just _excellent_ work you're doing, sir :)

[@JomasterTheSecond]

Oh, g'day, fancy seeing you here!

[@MooseheadStudios]

Legend

[@NavJack27gaming]

Lazy Game Reviews you kicked ass. yeah, read those words you beast!

[@GerardKean]

I found these video under "related videos" when watching your channel

[@bignotoriousd1]

I thought that was your velvety-smooth voice.

[@NoobixCube]

Your long-form documentary content is seriously better than most of the documentaries on Netflix.

[@downforwardpunch00]

Michael Vaughan well said!

[@Stormwatch153]

Way better!

[@kylejscheffler]

Yeah, I can only watch secret mega secrets of the Nazi mega weapons buildings, that are secret, so many times before I want to invent a time machine to go back and slap all of the people who greenlit the documentaries at PBS

[@theevilmuppet]

Understatement is an understatement!

[@deletedions394]

And yet you lap it up for free.

[@jean_mollycutpurse_winchester]

I used an A500 to make the video animation graphics for the film, Murder by Moonlight (TV Movie 1989 with Brigitte Nielsen) Great machine.

[@benconway9010]

@read1986 Holy shit😳 that's nice "your still alive?" Wat kind of greeting is that😆😆

[@benconway9010]

And wat kind of animation was that I never saw the film or even heard of it. Sorry

[@tonyciantar6417]

@@benconway9010 trailer is on KZbin

[@shinyphil87]

My god, I love that - it was called 'Murder on the Moon' in the UK, and Julian Sands was in it. Yes it was a low-budget TV movie, but it was bloody good. And the effects were excellent, I salute you Molly!

[@atomattacker0670]

You are a legend in this case.

[@lurkerrekrul]

As an American Amiga owner, it was depressing to watch such an advanced machine be so mismanaged. There was a brief period here where the Amiga was considered the top of the line for games, but it didn't last long before IBM clones and VGA started to take over. I knew the writing was on the wall the day I saw a printed ad for Wing Commander. The graphics looked amazing and it wasn't available for the Amiga (then). Next came the golf game Links. For months I looked at the full-page ad on the back of magazines and waited for the promised Amiga version to show up. When it was finally released, I thought "At least now the Amiga will be listed in the ad and IBM owners can see that the Amiga can handle such games!" Literally the very next issue that came out, the ad for Links had been replaced by an ad for Links 386 Pro, which was IBM only. :( By restricting the Amiga only to authorized dealers (of which, there was only one anywhere near here) and having virtually no advertising for it, most people had no idea it even existed. Mention Mac or even Atari to people and they had at least heard of those machines, but say "Amiga" and they had no idea what you were referring to. Combine that with Commodore U.S.'s apparent hatred of games and you have a perfect recipe for failure.

[@vapourmile]

@Jandoor Thumpinbrushwheel "Well, it wasn't really a "brief" period - from 1985 to about 1992 IBM Pcs and Macs could not touch the Amiga for anything to do with games." Yes but: 1. Consoles could and consoles had the world's best selling games. 2. Nobody buying PCs or Macs at that wanted to play games, so "games superiority" was an irrelevance to them, that's why they bought PCs and Mac NOT an Amiga. 3. Once you have a PC and at least one console the argument for buying an Amiga gets immediately far harder to make.

[@peesda]

For me,Transport tycoon was the thing that made me sell amiga and bought 486dx4...i miss amiga ever since tho:(

[@lurkerrekrul]

@Jandoor Thumpinbrushwheel A friend showed me Wing Commander running on his 386, or maybe it was a 486, and the game was fast and smooth. When I posted about that on the Amiga games echo (distributed message forum accessed through local BBSs), people told me that I was crazy and that there was no way an IBM clone could play a good game. Later, I saw Dark Forces running on someone else's system and that impressed the hell out of me. I'd seen 3D games before, but never one that fast.

[@Docwiz2]

lurkerrekrul I went from the Atari 8-bit machine in 1984 to a PC in 1991 with a 386SX 2 megs of memory, Sound Blaster Pro, Super VGA video card up to 1027x768 that could run rings around the Amiga. I gave away my Atari 800xl machine back in 1993. I wanted an Amiga in 1986, but I was still in high school without a job. By the time I had a job, my college professor told me to skip the Amiga and Atari ST and I am glad I did. The PC games I played from 1989 beat the Amiga on everything but sound. Remember in 1989, SuperVGA was out and as well as Intel 486 was out along with Sound Blaster came out and was better than the Amiga, it did not do stereo until Sound Blaster Pro in 1991. The Roland MT-32 was way better than the Amiga at music (not digitized but still) and this was released in 1987. So VGA came out with the IBM PS/2 and could do 256 colors on screen as well as ADLIB and Roland MT-32 this was in 1987, but the hardware was there but the software wasn't there. I was emulating the Commodore Amiga on my PC as early as 1996 with an MSDOS version of Fellow. Mean Streets in 1989 was amazing and then there was Indianapolis 500 Simulator which was one game that uses polygon technology and sprites. It was amazing at the time, that's on the Amiga as well, which it has better sound, but the PC has better graphics. The PC turned out better obviously, but it's really down to Commodore not being better and turning to CD-ROM, instead of floppies. By the time AGA came along, the Amiga was already dying and by 1994 it was all over.

[@lurkerrekrul]

@@Docwiz2 I went from the Atari 2600 to the C64, to the Amiga, to a Pentium 233 and Windows 98. A lot of the time when I go back and play MS-DOS era games (in DOSBox), I'm often disappointed. Many of them have lousy sound, or very little sound and many of them are only in EGA with garish colors. Don't get me wrong, there are some great DOS games, but also a lot that to me look almost like they're still beta versions. To be fair, I have the same complaint about some early PS1 games, and the majority of 3DO games. One thing that annoys the hell out of me: Auto-aim in DOS FPS games. I aim at one thing and my shots hit something something completely different. Why couldn't they have included an option to turn that off? Whenever possible, I play such games with a source port, but that's not always an option. After the Amiga, my first Intel system was a 233Mhz Win98 machine. The person who built it for me put demos of Half-Life , Descent 3, Hexen II, Jedi Knight, and SiN on it. The first Four were good, but SiN took so long to load that I only ever tried it once on that system and since I wasn't used to FPS games, I had no idea what I was doing. Half-Life and Descent 3 slowed down in spots, but Hexen II and Jedi Knight ran great. I played all those demos to death and ended up buying Jedi Knight. Eventually I got faster systems and was able to play those other games. Even SiN turned out to be a great game once I had a system fast enough that it didn't take forever to load. To be honest, I'm not really a fan of today's gaming environment. They look great, but I hate the way everything is tied to online accounts. Even if it's not a multiplayer game, you still have to let it go online and get permission to run. If it's a digital-only game, you have to install some digital distribution platform like Steam or Origin and have every game that you "buy" tied to an online account forever. They can also 'brick' your games if they decide that you've violated any of their rules. Call me old fashioned, but if I buy a game I want to be able to install it on any system that will support it, install the patches I've previously downloaded and saved and then play the game, all without having to get some company's permission to do so.

[@jonathancook4022]

The effort required to put this 2-part series totalling 1 hour & 50minuites together must have been immense. Massive thumbs up!

[@psychoklown66]

Can't believe I just watched a 2 hour video about Amiga!!! Awesome work, probably took you over 200 hours to edit and create!

[@Nostalgianerd]

CCindy I am grateful you did! and yes, it took a good few hours!

[@arfanmedni7294]

It was worth it!

[@MuscarV2]

It's one hour...

[@georgebarrykeithgoddard1338]

@@MuscarV2 This is only part 2.

[@apu_apustaja]

@@georgebarrykeithgoddard1338 Yes, it was announced as a three-parter. Surprised nobody else but you spotted that.

[@general8284]

I think I've watched this series half a dozen times now. I'm not sure why I love it so much.

[@derealized797]

I have a huge box of game magazines that start in the late 80s and go all through the 90s. Also I came across some old radio shack catalogs from the early 90s, I couldn't get myself to throw them away. They just remind me too much of what things were like back in those days. The memories all come back just flipping through the pages. Great time time to be alive, there was a lot to look for.

[@spider-ham7140]

Don’t ever get rid of them

[@gazac48]

I worked for Commodore Australia, We sold the A1200 & the A4000, so Commodore Australia was still running long after what you said, Amiga's sold good in Australia, not as good as the UK but sometimes better then the US, Commodore US mismanaged was it down fall, we copied the UK with game bundles as well. Commodore Australia was also big in selling 386-486 PC at the same time, it was a great time & a great job, I got paid to play with Amigas.

[@99FriedEggs]

As a young hopeful game developer, I visited C= in Lane Cove a few times. I still have a CD32 controller and other widgets we were provided. There are a few moments in life that you know you'll never forget; oddly, for me one is attending the sombre C= Australia liquidation auction. At the time, the mob I was with were looking to Amiga repurpose boards into poker (slot / fruit) machines - C= Germany had been very supportive of the idea. May I just add Nostalgia Nerd has done an incredible job with this two-part documentary. Thank you!

[@adamwhite9330]

That's the one where Dan Rutter bought the floor scrubber, right?

[@Tech-geeky]

"We want the worst monitor you have " lol *funny look*

[@keithminter]

Todd in Neighbours had one. Fact.

[@Scotsman420]

@@keithminter Quality.

[@RETROCENGO]

This should be a Netflix documentary, I love it. Thumbs up

[@zubinix]

The Amiga 3000 was a beast. Easily my favourite computer of all time. Got mine in 1991 and it is still in operating condition!

[@spider-ham7140]

You should show it a good time and make love to it ever night.

[@SteveBenway]

Ahhhhh..... this is the Amiga video I've been waiting for. It's the era of the Amiga I got into, but also the era that's most ignored by retrospective videos. Great work!

[@Sturmpionier03]

I wish i was part of it, i had an Apple II back then

[@Tech-geeky]

and Dan..... IS the man :) right ?

[@jeremycline9542]

In the 80's the ultimate wow-experience was walking through a mall and seeing an Amiga setup in a store, playing game demos. Personally, it was the most mind-blowing thing I saw until, believe it or not, the Sega CD a couple of years later.

[@ParadiseDecay]

Oh I remember the time I spent 2 days typing in code from an Amiga Magazine to double the speed of all games. Only to discover it was an April fools joke.

[@BertGrink]

Hahaha your comment reminded me of a somewhat similar April's Fool joke published by one of the ZX Spectrum magazines; it was a machine code type-in program which would allegedly double the RAM in the Speccy, but in reality it would just show a message saying "April's Fool". Ahh the good old days eh? :)

[@billant2]

Ha-ha-ha as soon as I read the first part of your post, I almost went to start to dig out my old Amiga Magazines, but then I saw the letdown... he-he

[@Cuzjudd]

Hahaha oh deary

[@SleepyCatten]

Oh, those were the days. Nintendo Magazine System (or Nintendo Official Magzine, as I think it was renamed to) did an April Fool's joke for Mortal Kombat. If I recall, it advised to sellotape a 1p piece to the cart to unlock either the gore or a cheat mode.

[@eval_is_evil]

Hahahh, good times eh?

[@flaviapunktexe6924]

I must dry my tears... The Amiga 600 was my first girlfriend and i loved playing with her. Turrican, Die Siedler, Transplant, Oil Imperium and many more This were good times

[@bertjilk3456]

The MD / owner of a small company I once worked for told me: “accountants are necessary, but they should never replace visionaries as the leaders.” Sounds like Commodore missed this, unfortunately.

[@dijoxx]

From Boeing to Yahoo, many such cases

[@TimWoodVlog]

This brought back to many memories! Thanks for making this 😍

[@slipknotboy555]

I love your documentaries, Peter, they're great. And I loved all the voice appearances, including Kim, Clint, Dan, etc. - that was a nice (and fitting) touch.

[@davenghiem364]

I'm a startup tech co-founder, and a long time embedded hardware developer. I've been a PC guy since I was a kid, though my Aunt and Uncle used to work in the Commodore computer factory in PA, assembling C64's (good work for Viet refugees). So I have an intimate interest in what happened to the Commodore Amiga. Something that fascinates me about the machine, is all the mis management errors that contributed to the demise of the Amiga. Your videos, besides being historically informative, are some of the best tech business management autopsy videos I have ever, EVER seen! I spent two hours watching your videos, thinking to myself, "yup, that's not what I'd do, I'd do this. Or that's what I'd do, not that." I know hindsight is always 20/20, but holy crap, some of those decisions make me think, Good God, WTF were they thinking, given the data that they had?! More than anything, the Commodore Amiga's demise is instructional on how NOT to run a tech company! Thank you for this video series!

[@rasmasyean]

I think it's true that hindsight is 20/20, so it's easy to point fingers at him and her after the fact. The reality is that no decision they made would likely have saved the Amiga. The only reason why the Macintosh didn't bomb out completely before Jobs came back with the iPod idea was because Adobe partnership gave Apple a niche market that let them last a few more years before contemplating bankruptcy as well. It's "modular machines vs. complete machines". PC clones won, because as as PC guy, you know what "Open Architecture" means. It allows competition across all parts of the computer by various parties and you can mix and match the hardware you want. You chose the "best" video, "best" sound, "best" mobo, "best" peripherals...for YOURSELF, instead of having Apple, Atari, Commodore, Uncle Sam, etc...tell you what you should want as a "personal computer". And it will still be compatible with Microsoft OS when you change the parts to meet new needs. How do you beat that? ;)

[@fordoverlord]

Awesome video. I still got my original A500 I bought new in 1990, soldered more ram in it, swapped the CPU with a 68010 and the graphics chip. also got the fast men extension. I exchanged the Floppy drive with an SD card reader replacement, got all my software on that one 512Mb SD card now, haha. Still running strong, with an adapter to a TFT screen. Also got one A500+ I bought used from a friend, must have been late 90's. Also still runs fine :)

[@sgtunix]

I've now watched part 1 and part 2 of this documentary. It was an enlightening experience. I'm also particularly impressed with how you got hold of all that old footage from the 80s & 90s.

[@mik310s]

Your documentaries are of incredible quality, the amount of work and research thats gone into this is staggering. This is the 3rd time Ive watched this now over several years

[@simonoleary9264]

Me too 😊👍

[@azurabayta133]

This was a genuinely excellent and engaging history on one of my favorite computer lines. Your videos are always great, but this one feels like it's on a whole new level. Really enjoyed this. Kinda feel like digging out my A500 now!

[@CaminoAir]

Thanks again for another very impressive and very engaging video, Nostalgia Nerd. All the time, effort and thought put into these is both appreciated and rewarding.

[@OldManTheseDays]

Fantastic video. I worked at a company called Play, Inc. in the mid 90s that was founded by Paul Montgomery and Mike Moore (of Video Toaster fame). In fact the gal in that Toaster video, Kiki Stockhammer- was sort of the spokesperson for Trinity, one of the products we made. Paul used to say that coming from the Amiga market was like coming from the future. How true indeed.

[@SynthoidSounds]

I remember the lovely Kiki . . . actually met her briefly at one of the Amiga trade shows. It was such a different time, people were still building DYI PCs, the home computer club scene was a big deal then . . . and then there was Amiga, in a unique class of its own. Good times they were . . .

[@hpbifta]

Well done Nerd, possibly the most defining documentary on the history of the Amiga. I know this was a lot of work for you and am very impressed.

[@WskOsc]

The Amiga was a magical machine in the early-to-mid 90's. Even all these years later I've yet to find a flight sim that captured my attention like Battle Of Britain: Their Finest Hour, or Koala and many of my early years playing PC games was spent with things like Syndicate, Speedball 2, and Cannon Fodder - mostly wishing for the heady nostalgia (a word I probably couldn't even pronounce back then) of just a couple of years ago.

[@jakeryan6016]

This is an amazing piece of work. Your research is incredible, editing great and storytelling superb. Thank you.

[@Pixelmusement]

Happy to be a part of this video! These hardware stories have been extremely enlightening and have revealed to me an aspect of computing history that mostly flew straight by me, as 99% of my childhood was spent working with DOS and Windows PCs. :B

[@Lordborak316]

Great Vid, one interesting point to me. You say the plus came out in January 1992. I got my Amiga 500plus in November 1991 from John Lewis as I got it for my birthday. Apparently Amiga had run out of A500's and retailers were given the 500plus with out being told before it's offical launch. I still have the machine and the receipt. It still works and is still awesome.

[@Mysticsword]

Excellently done Amiga documentary vids. It brought back a lot of memories for me and a big hit of nostalgia. I also learned a lot from it. Kudos and keep up the great work.

[@shipguy55]

Nostalgia Nerd, you continue to make impressive videos. This felt like a real documentary, I started only knowing the basics of the Amiga, and by the end of it I was compelled and moved, and also saddened. Great video.

[@Checkmate1500]

Thank you for mentioning my Checkmate Digital 1500 it was mine and James Campbell's company and we had fun selling them.

[@Dynamitethedrummer]

As part of my upbringing, Commodore played a great role in my formation as a computer enthusiast, i remember all the pre internet with the bbs and all the dedicated comunity.. i want to go back..

[@tracexl]

Really appreciate these forays into the past of technology. So many of these, especially on the PC side, I'm not familiar with, as I didn't have a decent PC to use until about 1996. Thanks for this retrospective! It's really insightful and interesting.

[@chrisgareze2962]

really enjoy the slightly deeper technical insights into the machine you provide, great job.

[@cherriedquat]

Opening with one of the sounds from The Great Giana Sisters and closing with a clip from Frontier and then background music by Bomb the Bass from Xenon II Megablast is the best climax for the video possible! I'm in awe!

[@vallhund2901]

You should do a video about the expansion cards available on the Amiga. My first hard drive was a 30 MB SCSI hard drive installed on a third-party expansion card in my Amiga 2000. I also bought the Commodore IBM PC expansion card for the 2000 and used it to write all the code for my classes while I was pursuing my computer science degree back in the late 1980's. I remember Steve Bjork porting Unix to the Amiga before Linus Torvalds did it for the PC. Someone needs to tell his story and give him credit for what he did. I learned how to program in C on my Amiga 1000. My favorite Amiga game was Arctic Fox. I lost all my Amiga computer hardware and all my software in 2010 when I was going through financial difficulties and couldn't pay the storage unit fees. It was one of the saddest days of my life.

[@benconway9010]

Oh dear so "storage wars" got it instead then? 😆😂

[@nickarmitt4722]

What a great video, guy. I grew up with an Amiga 500 from 1991 and it truly shaped me. I would love to have them back. I remember friends coming round and seeing my games compared to their Master System and even Mega Drive. I even remember upgrading to the 1MB and having a whole plethora of "1MB only" disks. I still have a lot of them from Format and One. My pack was the one with Nightbreed and Days of Thunder... Not sure my parents should have gotten that for their 5 year old son. Love your videos.

[@mmarkotan]

Never had an Amiga, I was a Commodore 64 owner, but used to go to my friend’s place to play on Amiga 500. That was my dream computer in early 90´s. But great work you´ve done on this one, much appreciated. Thank you from Slovakia.

[@danwood_uk]

Enjoyed doing my Colin Proudfoot impression, seems the school drama classes paid off. Great video dude!

[@colonelvector]

Dude, these videos are always really well produced and edited. Interesting gaming history lesson too

[@mahrenballs]

This was a damn good documentary and I'm glad I came across it! What's funny is the main reason I kept watching it after it started playing was because I noticed that it said Techmoan was one of the voices, and I've been a fan of his reviews and skits and subscribed to his channel for years now so I planned on just watching until I heard whatever he voiced.. but it was such a well made video that it wound up sucking me in and I watched the whole thing! I never had an Amiga myself but I did have a Commodore 64 which is what got me started with computers so it was definitely interesting to see what I had missed out on, but I have to say the clip of Disney's Stunt Pilot was a blast from the past for me because I LOVED that game.. I still have the Windows version with it's original box (which came on 9 floppy disks I believe)! Anyway thanks for the awesome video and an unexpected trip down memory lane!!

[@Foebane72]

Wonderful, detailed video! In the last few years I've been getting more into the Amiga again than ever before, even if it IS WinUAE, just so I can experience the latest Demoscene stuff and feel all nostalgic for the old stuff! I'm glad that the WinUAE scene is huge, as the Amiga has so much to offer. The Amiga is a great retro computer, although I see an Amiga as OCS, ECS and AGA, as well as possibly PPC, with the corresponding AmigaOS, but not simply slapping the name onto a generic PC case. I just wish I hadn't turned my back so quickly on my A1200 so I could play Doom on PC, but I really wanted the genuine article and not a clone, and Commodore had gone bust by then anyway, so I figured I'd migrate. Considering I was an Amiga zealot and would argue with my fellow college students who either hated the Amiga or had a PC (this was around 1993), I'm sure they laughed their heads off afterwards at my sudden change of heart, but I had my reasons. I remember that I sold my A500 so I could buy Doom II, that's how much I adored my new fascination, PC FPS games. But lately, I've been back on the Amiga more than ever before!

[@blacknapalm2131]

28:59 *STATE OF THE ART*. This was a true MOMENT in time that blew everyone away. With the early bulletin boards and modems and the demo scene, it was an amazing time to be a gamer and techie.

[@mervynstent1578]

What was more amazing about the demo, it was running on a stock A500 with 1 Meg Ram! In early 1993, it was shocking what a 6 year A500 was still capable off! 😮

[@deancaldicott8759]

Thanks for reminding me how catchy that cannon fodder theme tune was, going to be stuck in my head all day now.

[@dannisboy22122]

I grew up in Australia with the c64 and the Amiga from when i was about 6 until the end of high school; when I went to the raves. Amiga owners got a sort of respect, and trading games at school was big, some Amiga computing clubs were just starting to mix it up with rave events. we never thought it would go down the way it did @ Jason (Below)... I too went to that Commodore Australia liquidation, you said it's a moment in time you never forget, and you are right, me and mum bought a couple of joysticks, a hand scanner, a 4MB PCMCIA card for my A1200, a 40MB external HD for mums A500+, and a few other things. It was hard to see the older enthusiasts loosing the support for our platform, that we had invested so much time and loyalty into. From 1994-2004 I wrote music on my Amiga1200 using Octamed sound studio (V6), filling up my 40meg hard drive to capacity with 40 odd electronic and techno tracks. I was poor, and I didn't own an Akai 4000 sampler, or and midi gear - instead i used what was available, and started ripping samples from game floppies by loading what was left in the "RAM disk" as an raw instrument. There would usually be a bank of samples used for the game after the hash-hiss of game data, that could be extracted with the sample editor. I got samples from the games "Gods", and "Shadow of the Beast" this way, to mention just a couple. In 2004, Octamed had been re-made for windows on PC: It was renamed "MED SoundStudio - So I converted all my music mods into pc format, bought MED, and a PC, and kept writing music 2004-today I still write music in software that started out on Amiga. My fingers fly over the computer keyboard as I type in hexadecimal code to write my tracks, and the tricks I know means I can keep up with modern production qualities for a fraction of the cost. Compared to modern "industry standard" music software, the ease of editing notes with the stroke of a keyboard is far superior to using a mouse to point to pixels in order to edit a note; as using the mouse makes me nearly vomit with frustration, as the mouse takes several seconds to do a task that should take a fraction of a second with a keyboard. I use modern software for Live MIDI and DJing, and (Octa)Med for composing, and detailed remixing. It's been 25 years of writing music this year, I have hundreds of tracks, so I've started uploading them. I miss the Amiga, the Paula chip was the best sound chip ever - it would interperlate between the bytes, making the sound "elastic" - unlike th PC version where velocity mismaches in wave transitions can create some clicks and pops if your not used to handling it. WINUAE is pretty cool. I mounted a virtual Hard drive and installed Dpaint5 AGA on it, want to see if i can load in old animation files i saved from the 90s. Here is a link to music i have uploaded so far... kzbin.info/www/bejne/fnS3Yp5nnLyXf68 I enjoyed your documentary Nostalgia Nerd! Well made

[@BDHO73]

Great video series Nostaligia Nerd, thanks for taking the time.

[@RetroUnlim]

Superb video sir, very well researched and presented. I watched it on my iPad whilst playing on my Amiga 1200 :)

[@NiGHTSnoob]

I heard Techmoan and LGR. What's not to like?

[@robertsissco2439]

I have watched a lot of tech documentaries ever since I first got "Got Lamp?" on DVD way back in the day, a lot of them on KZbin, why did I just find this now? And after watching several of yours on the Commodore, why didn't I see your two part Amiga until I re-binged The 8-bit Guy's Commodore history series for the umpteenth time? This was fantastic work, and holy crap have I learned a lot.

[@joolsstoo3085]

I realize sales weren't as good in north america but as a Canadian kid I had an amiga 500 and knew several others who had one too. We still had lots of software to choose from and could even rent games from a few places. Very fond memories of that computer.

[@TheDavo10001]

Ah memories. I got an Amiga 500 for Christmas in 1988 and used it almost every day. Loved the games and demoscenes. Such a shame it didn't continue. The Amiga was very popular among my high school friends in Australia so there was no shortage of "free" (ha!) software around.

[@rjday753]

Yup, I've still got an A1200 with and 030 :) Fun days...

[@jamesragsdale3069]

Good documentary. How does this not have more love? Being from the US my exposure to Amiga was incredibly limited, so I find these kinds of videos great. Thanks for keeping it professional and succinct and not spending tons of time camera hogging.

[@CyberUK]

Wow, awesome videos. The amount of work you have put into these two are incredible. Also love that you end on my favourite game of all time (Frontier : Elite 2 - god that was awesome)

[@Spudcore]

That's quite the star-studded voice cast! Great work, I really enjoyed this epic tale. **pat on back**

[@Barry-vn6uq]

This is a very professional looking docu. Thanks for your hard work you obviously put into this. Unbelievably good content. I tip my hat to you sir.

[@SeverityOne]

For years, my e-mail signature contained an Irving Gould quote, which I think says it all: "I don't use computers." Still have my A500 somewhere in a box, and my CDTV close to my two Sun Blade 100 workstations. The Amiga was instrumental in my development as a software developer, nowadays working on back-end systems in Java. I've always believed in sticking to the rules set by Commodore, and still have the official development books ("Reading legal mush can turn your brain to guacamole!" - found that on my own). Developers (using the term loosely) accessing the hardware directly were just lazy, in my view, because the libraries were just as fast. I've spent ages decompiling the Kickstart ROM, and could see which parts were written in assembler (Exec) and which in C (Intuition). My hat off to you, for creating a TWO HOUR documentary. This must have taken you months.

[@jediblanco]

I brought me a lot of good memories thanks for compiling all this info in a single report

[@dessertstorm7476]

loved my old amiga, things like deluxe paint were so ahead of their time. i remember there was a text to speech application hidden away on workbench somewhere that seemed like something from the future when I first found it. also love the xenon 2 theme on outtro

[@wielku]

Awesome video, and I love seeing youtubers work together :D

[@robjeeves]

superb 2 part series. Thanks for making. so many memories

[@BrySkye]

Really well done. One of the things I appreciate about these series of yours is while they do come with a pretty heavy British tilt, which is going to be natural in the case of the Amiga anyway, they still acknowledge events and performance throughout the world for a more complete picture of the history. Superbly *Professional*

[@MikeAldred]

I regret selling my A3000, never regretted selling a PC.

[@Docwiz2]

Mike Aldred You still probably own a PC today and can still run the Amiga emulator WinUAE. At least that's something. I honestly think that Atari should have had the Amiga instead of commodore and they should have integrated into their own PC clone back in the day, that would have been better and they could have offered the tech on cards before EGA/VGA was on the market.

[@Docwiz2]

@BrackynMor I thought about buying one today, but why? It would take up too much room and I have an emulator on my PC that is just as good almost in every way and takes up no room at all. I can put the games all on a storage device and play all of it and use all of it without any issue. Emulation is just better because you can do more with it. I would rather see some tutorials for emulation and how you can maximize your use out of WinUAE.

[@Docwiz2]

@BrackynMor Yeah, I know what you mean. It would be attractive to have one right in front of you, but you have go back to the days of floppies and I like to have all mine in one location. I think a lot of this is the nostalgic feel of fond remembrance of the past. That's how I feel about my Atari 8-bit computers. I don' t own them anymore, but I still love playing with the Atari 8-bit emulator and remembering the times that I played this game or used this word processor. I never owned an Amiga, I wanted one, but it was too expensive at the time and I was in school back then. Actually, a lot of the kids in my class wanted an Amiga too, this would be around 1986 or so. Things are interesting though, I still can't believe the PC with hardly anything comes from behind and basically using that bus ends up destroying everything in it's path. From Zero to hero basically. Weird huh?

[@OldManTheseDays]

TRUE THAT.

[@nebularain3338]

I had 2 Amigas and sold them. I just use Winuae for anything amiga related whether that be gaming or 68k programming, and I actually prefer the customisation options which come with it. I do like hardware, but in this day and age I prefer the convenience.

[@ianviljoen9036]

Nothing short of a spectacular documentary. Thanks!

[@faunoram]

Amazing job ! Really complete info and excellent video presentation, it bring back so many memories of my childhood !!

[@iainjmclaren]

I was one of the few people to buy an Amiga 1500, which was a huge jump from the (sloooooow-loading, cassette-based, 8-bit) Amstrad CPC464 I had before. It was my first serious computer which I used for MIDI music production, word processing and also gaming. I maxed out the RAM (3MB) to increase audio sampling capacity for application such as Octamed, fitted a 52Mb SCSI hard drive and bought a printer for my university homework. The twin floppy drives, the ability to fit an HD and the fact that some retail outlets were offering discounts to shift models with poor sales, persuaded me to pick up the 1500 rather than the 500. I spent many hours playing classic titles such as Lemmings, Monkey Island, Populous, Alien Breed 1 & 2 and Speedball 2 and still feel waves of nostalgia when I see the computer and software that I used being shown on nostalgia tech channels. I was very saddened by the mis-management that caused the Amiga's demise despite broad support in both the leisure sector (popularity due to great games) and productivity (e.g. Video-Toaster being used for high-profile productions such as Babylon 5).

[@eval_is_evil]

Amiga 500+ ftw ! Loved that thing back in the day. I had the original CRT monitor for it too. Turrican II, New Zealand Story,Wing Commander and Birds of Prey were my most played games.

[@Tech-geeky]

and now we can re-live the experience on emulators :) Joy ..

[@jameslewis2635]

The Amiga was killed off not by lack of interest from consumers, the competition or any other more normal reasoning. It was killed off by moronic management, misguided marketing and a lack of any kind of business plan within Commodore. The CDTV could have been a great success if they had kept the price down and marketed it as an alternative to swapping floppies every few minutes. The A500+ was a decent cost cutting exercise which should have simply been kept as a budget system supporting the A1200 and A4000 while the A600 should never have been released while the A1200 and A4000 were delayed by Commodores unfocused R & D department. Another issue is that Commodore was losing money hand over fist because their IBM compatible business was failing badly. While the Amiga line was still making money, Commodore used these funds to shore up the PC business nullifying any profits and in effect dooming the company.

[@TheSpiT4201]

But aren't we glad today that the A600 WAS released. Back then it sucked hard, but today it is SO moddable that you can turn it into a powerhouse :)

[@edism]

@@TheSpiT4201 Nope, it's useless.

[@TheSpiT4201]

@@edism Can't argue with that reasoning

[@edism]

@@TheSpiT4201 lol, well what made it so moddable in comparison to other AMIGAs? I had one and it was the worst AMIGA I ever had.

[@TheSpiT4201]

@@edism Ok, the community has made so many mods & boards for the A600, that it's not a bad Amiga system to own today. I'm not saying it's the best Amiga ever, but at least today, largely thanks to the community, it's not a bad one either, that's all. You don't like it, that's fine. I love all Amigas. Including the A600.

[@ThroughYourWindow]

Great job, just getting involved with the MiSTer and really looking forward to exploring the Amiga since I went down the Tandy path in the 80's. Think I'll watch this two 'parter' again and delve into some of your other projects.

[@AGL57]

This might be the most compete documentary I’ve ever seen on youtube! This should be aired on tv!

[@Juanguar]

YEEES I've been waiting for this video for quite a while

[@JomasterTheSecond]

HOLY SHIT, THANK YOU for showing off some nice-ass footage of The Town With No Name. That game cracks me up all the time.

[@keithminter]

Got my 500+ for Christmas 91 before the official release date, as they had run out of 500 models here in UK. Still have it. Still love it. Great doc.

[@perfectfutures]

Thanks for this amazing documentary. Along with all your other ones, I've learned a lot.

[@NavJack27gaming]

never grew up with the Amiga but I always wanted to mess with one when I was little. loved watching this series.

[@paulolameiras861]

Amiga 500...the best gaming platform of all time!

[@cristylivefr]

the ps4 aint shit compared to the amiga 500

[@005AGIMA]

@@cristylivefr My PS4's job is to play original Shadow of the Beast.

[@BillAnt]

I think the most stunning game on the Amiga was Shadow of the Beast at least at the time.There was nothing like up till then with that amazing parallax scrolling effect. :)

[@edism]

It was the CD32, if the world had realised we'd probably still have AMIGA consoles at least, lol

[@GTSN38]

You must not play games much

[@felipepaez2556]

First of all, hats off for your excellent videos. I'm 42 now and I experienced a great deal of the technological changes of computers that you describe. I think that the Amiga and Atari ST were doomed when the PC compatibles started to be affordable and Windows 3.x began its widespread adoption. The consoles such as Super Nintendo and Genesis also offered a quite instant gaming experience, with very smooth and colorful graphics. So, suddenly, the Atari and the Amiga weren't used much for "serious" productivity (you could use a PC for that) and the games were much better on consoles. A lot of people lost interest on programming as the 90's began and just wanted to play games. So these computers were in a limbo and slowly died.

[@deljohn]

Very well done... Bravo! Sadly, I sold my Amiga 500 back in the day for a PC but recently I’ve unboxed a late model Amiga 500 and I am looking forward to performing some upgrades and reacquainting my self with the system...

[@Dragonblaster1]

Someone said that if the Amiga management team had taken a KFC franchise, they'd have marketed it as Warm Dead Bird.

[@BrendonGreenNZL]

I would have thought the PepsiCo exec would have known a thing or two about marketing and been able to turn the company around; but history has proved otherwise. 🤷‍♂️

[@ParadiseDecay]

To think... I've gone from playing Elite in wire-frame mode to now playing it in AMAZING VR. God I still love gaming!

[@gotsteem]

Same here except I'm not sporting VR.

[@tehf00n]

I keep meaning to buy it as I have had VR kits since dk1 days but I keep wondering how well it will work on a joypad.

[@claudeprince6724]

I remember this being the reason I never really enjoyed doom in the 90s and consequently, didn't play it more than 3 times. Keyboard + Me = SUCK! Fast-forward 20-something years...L-analog : strafe and move R-analog: mouselook L/R 1: fire L/R 2: weapon scroll. Finally I see what all the fuss was about and I actually became addicted for a while...lol 90's doom in 2017. I think I am going to play it again right now. I miss it.

[@syrus3k]

Brilliant as always. Nice one NN!! Great choice of background music throughout too... probably my fave thing about Amiga was the incredible music in the games for it. SWIV, Pinball dreams/fantasies, Leander.. amazing music.

[@MrStarchild3001]

I gotta say it was a glorious time to own an Amiga between 1989-1993. Best multimedia machine at the time. With a full suite of applications from gaming to programming to music making to graphics. Amiga 500 was the biggest hit that made it possible. Too bad that Commodore couldn't retain the visionary streak they had for over 15 yrs with PET, VIC20, C64, A500... beyond the Amiga. Despite all the shortcomings of their business, Commodore was *the* system to own during those years (almost all of 1980ies and early 90ies). I think your documentary dwells a bit more on the failed attempts vs the massive hits. The latter is what changed the lives of kids and teens of all ages. 5M units sold, over 5M lives changed.

[@electricmiragemedia]

Thanks for this! I really enjoyed both halves. I will do an article for this.

[@Nostalgianerd]

MASCULINE MCGAINS many thanks

[@robmuzz]

I had many years of fun with my heavily upgraded Amiga 500. Until 1992 when I got a 486DX (about £3000) if I remember correctly.

[@cvr4FT]

Exact same story here!

[@chrisloughnane4592]

Absolutely brilliant trip down memory lane! I was there for it from VIC20 to Amiga until I jumped ship to PC in 1995.

[@JoeMuc2008]

This was such a pleasure to watch. Learned a lot from your video. Good work, really well done!

[@Michirin9801]

Great guest voices for a great video, how fitting!

[@evilmadness8052]

CLASSIC BATMAN... nice intro bro... in my opinion the best Batman, especially compared to what we have Ben dealing with lately as far as who plays Batman 😓.

[@JoeBetro]

Revisiting this and loving it; you put a lot of heart into your documentaries and hope to see more! (if you get the urge)

[@timster046]

This is the type of Doco that should be Netflix. Well done Nostalgia Nerd.

[@sirkastic]

1:02:03 Totally glad I watched the whole vid for this bit

[@FortunateSon999]

Doom and Gloom, i see what you did there

[@fredrikjohansson8083]

Fantastic documentary, so many memories and so much I didn't know about the Amiga, thank you for making this :)

[@owenp9060]

Amazingly five of those A1200 games featured in my final few years' software purchases, games that I thought no one else remembered: Shadow Fighter, Xtreme Racing, Gloom, Worms, Gravity Force... I was one of the late adopters and clung on as it died a slow death. Probably one of the best computing periods for me, as it wasn't just the games but the programs like DPaintIV, Scala and Imagine that gave it identity. I love the language in the narration, very eloquent and expressive, doesn't ramble, and you manage to capture the wistful attitude many of us have looking back at that time. Despite being technically being an American machine, I'd say 90s Amiga productivity is certainly one of British computing's proudest entries.

[@tsuyuasui407]

Good times,in my house i have an Amiga 4000/040 with Teenage mutant "hero" turtles(by Ultra in 1988,not a port of the arcade game)without the impossible jump,Popeye 2,Simcity and few CD-Rom games

[@davidlewis967]

Still have my Working A1200 with extra disk drives, amazing machine, almost traded it in for a Sam Coupe machine, glad I did not.

[@benbaselet2026]

Yup, I still have my original machine and the 50 MHz 68030 accelerator. The slimline disk drives all have failed caps but I've repaired some from the dumpster. It feels like this machine will never die :)

[@SynthoidSounds]

Many thanks for creating and posting this excellent history of the Amiga, and yes, I was one of those early fanatics who stuck with the platform well into the mid90s. Like so many others had recognized, though, it became glaringly obvious at a certain point that the new "management' (I use that term lightly here) was fixated on making short term gains and profits for themselves, with no real comprehension or care for what Amiga was or could be . . . and eventually, it faded away into the mist of uncertainty, and eventually, irrelevance.