Also of particular interest is the Amiga demo scene: a community of hobbyists who created software demonstrations of artistic, musical and programming skill. There is a fair argument that Deluxe Paint is the real beginning of professional graphic art and design on a home computer – the Mac was still monochrome at this point.
Many of the seminal games of the era were coded for the Amiga first, while other platforms received a port of lesser quality. It was originally designed purely as a gaming machine, although it didn’t take long to become a full computer. The common reason to revisit it is to play the games. Eventually, the much more open ecosystem of the x86 PC meant the Amiga couldn’t compete on price, performance, or market share and software support.īut for a moment there, the Amiga was the ultimate home computer, with thousands of colours, 4 channels of sound, and a powerful Motorola 68000 CPU backed by 3 custom-built co-processors. The Acorn Archimedes might have outclassed the Amiga in raw power, but the software library was very limited. In a time of beeps and boops and screens with 16 colors, it brought jaw dropping graphics and sound. In the late 80s and early 90s, the Commodore Amiga was the dream computer.
