Why did you buy your first Amiga?

[Cobe]

Beacause it had 16 milions colours. And I had only 16.

[Paul_s]

I remember quite well going to a friends house when I was around 12/13 years old and playing a demo of Turrican II on his new Atari ST FM (was from an issue of The One when it was a ST/Amiga combined magazine). He also had Carrier Command running at one point.

We used to walk home from school talking about the Atari and the fact his Uncle had an Amiga 500 (Batman pack) which perked my interest in the Amiga.

That Christmas (1990) I got an A500 - even to that point in time I'd never laid my hands on any Amiga.

But Amiga is the best computer I've ever used (you can keep all the fancy modern video cards, CPU's and game consoles - nothing will ever match the feeling I had with the Amiga - I still can't figure out what it is (no, not nostalgia either).

[Hercules]

Whilst on an IT course in 1990 I had met Smurf of Cryptic demogroup who was adapt at writing music with Protracker. Hearing the amazing music capabilities of the machine I scrimped and scrapped £25 a week to save up and buy my first Amiga... It was an A500 with 1.3 kickstart. After that I was hooked and as well as using the machine for games I also discovered it was like the ultimate artists tool for unleashing your creativity with its amazing sound and graphic capabilities.

Happy times - BBS boards and mailtrading introduced me to a whole new world as well as the sheer excitement of getting the latest warez in the post from your disk swapping contacts.

My first encounter with the Amiga however was back in 1989. My art teacher used an A500 for her art. Seeing Workbench for the first time had me in awe and typing swear words into the speech program was a good laugh. Lol.. I had only used the Sinclair Spectrum prior to that moment.

[Bruce Abbott]

I first had a play with an A1000 in 1985, and I knew then that I had to have one. The architecture was so much more advanced than any other home computer, the graphics and sound blew me away (I still remember being raptured by that awesome stereo boot-up sound), and the development documentation was fantastic. But the design was not finished and they were not available for sale in New Zealand at the time, so I stuck with my Amstrad CPC664 and waited.

In 1987 the A500 was released, but I bought an A1000 because I preferred the case design. The next model I got was the A3000, partly for the same reason. Then the A600 and A1200 came out, and I had to have those too. And thinking back on it, even the first PC I had (an IBM JX) also had a compact slimline case, as did subsequent 386DX and 486 PCs that I built. So it seems the case design was one of the main things that attracted me to the A1000.

[sandruzzo]

I had c-16, c-64, and i was hit very hard by Amiga power! I wanted explore its'potential by programming it!

[nobody]

Around 1990 i had a CPC 6128 color, well you know, average-to-good games, slow as hell etc.. also going on the coin ops frequently. When the Amiga took off around that time, seeing the screens on magazines i knew i should get one. That happened in 1991, A500 with 1084S. It was expensive at the time like lets say 2.000+ € today. Loading the first game Rainbow Islands (original) felt like i had a coin op at home. Didn't have another computer up to 1996-97 i got a PS1. Although the Amiga was dead by 1995 i had a friend (that we played the Amiga as kids) that was supplying me disks from Manchester (bought from the strets! lol) whenever he came back home, that's how i got Cannon fodder

[SquawkBox]

Originally Posted by nobody

Around 1990 i had a CPC 6128 color, well you know, average-to-good games, slow as hell etc.. also going on the coin ops frequently. When the Amiga took off around that time, seeing the screens on magazines i knew i should get one. That happened in 1991, A500 with 1084S.

Same here, CPC 6128 then Amiga 500 owner, was amazed by the digitized pictures shown in the magazines, got my mum to buy me an Amiga 500 (earlier than 1991, was it in 1988 ? Memory is a bit fuzzy), then got myself a second floppy disk drive after a while. In the light of all this, it makes no doubt that nobody is definitely someone . In retrospective, had more fun with the CPC, in terms of being served with "new games" at least.

reading a preview for F1GP in an"ahem" Atari ST magazine, lost count how many times i read that preview , and evetually got enough to buy a brand new A500+ and a copy of F1GP, been hooked ever since

[22dave66]

I saw the El Gato demo running on an A500 in Dixons in Manchester (April 1988), that was all i needed to see! Sold my off my C64 collection and brought one a few weeks later.

[phx]

It was unavoidable. Being on the typical Commodore upgrade path (VIC-20 in 1983 and C-64 in 1984) I was fascinated by the first reports about the Amiga 1000 in magazines. Then I saw it for the first time live at the end of 1986. Friends showed me Mindwalker, Marble Madness, Winter Games, Defender of the Crown. Then, in spring 1987, my brother and me put together all our saved money we could find and bought an A1000 with A1081 monitor.

There was no day without Amiga for me since then.

[lmimmfn]

Beware, a big rant
I had a CPC 464, i loved some of its games( Op Wolf, Chase HQ, Gauntlet etc. ) and hated the speccy ports.
I was a regular C&VG reader and always looked in awe at the Amiga graphics, i wanted it so much but it was extremely expensive.
I was also interested in paint programs, the CPC was quite good at that but the Amiga was on another level and i started buying non gaming computer magazines and just being stunned by what was possible on the Amiga.

So i started saving for an Amiga in early 90, i was so tempted to get and ST with all those games( the ads with IK ) but kept going until i got the money for an Amiga.
Incredibly I never actually saw and Amiga in real life before i got one even though i would have loved to see one.
I had a tonne of games for the CPC and sold for for 60% of the cost of the Amiga, and bought my A500 in October, Screen Gems pack, i actually wanted Flights of Fantasy, but luckily Deluxe Paint 2 was still included. It was only a 512 A500 and didn't have any expansion that's supposed to come with the Screen Gems pack( from reading online ).

My parents said i had to save it for Christmas time, sigh, but i used to sneak it out a few times a week to game on it for 30 mins when no-one was around. Shadow of the beast 2 looked and sounded amazing but sucked gameplay wise, the rest of the games were absolutely awful( spent a lot of time trying to find some depth in Days Of Thunder lol ).

I found out the baker that was supplying our school had an Amiga and I'd ask him when he was delivering for some games and excitedly wait for him to bring them then next day( which in fairness he mostly did, was a very nice chap ), cant remember all the games he gave me but before Christmas and officially getting my A500 he gave me Turrican, wow, i can remember to this day just being in awe at the gfx, sound and gameplay and having only 30 mins sessions of it, that is the game that made me realise how truly amazing the Amiga is.

Christmas day came and i had gathered so many 'dodgy' games( Turrican, Rick Dangerous, Switch blade and a few others ) that made up for the crap ones in the Screen Gems pack( SotB2 was a great showcase though ) that i just gamed on the Amiga non stop over the holidays.
Deluxe Paint 2 was sublime, wow, i was stunned at how good that was compared to anything possible on the 8 bits.

I got Deluxe Paint 3 at some stage, cant remember, it was a legit copy with manual etc. so i had to upgrade my A500 for it so got a 2Mb expansion for it in '91.
Also ended up acquiring( non intentionally for free but had to do some work on it ) an A2000 in '91 with 286 bridgeboard, 10MB harddrive and wonderful multisync monitor( which like an idiot i dumped ~6 years ago due to the size of it, grrr ). Also my brother dumped the A2000 when i was at uni in the late '90s,

Sadly i sold my A500 in the summer of '92 and picked up an A1200, which i have to this day and love it. I still miss my old A500 though, and have always loved Amiga's since that A500.

[aeberbach]

Hack 1.0.1E from Fred Fish disk 25.

I was in a degree course, came back one weekend to find a friend had bought this computer and as soon as I played Hack that was it, had to have one. Quit the degree, bought the computer, now am a programmer. Hack and the Amiga 1000 changed my life!

[sandruzzo]

What was Impressive above all, back in the day as now, is Sounds.

[Retro_71]

I had a C64 i loved it and was very happy, then i went to my friends house and saw him playing wrath of the demon and the making music mods on his Amiga 500, it was at that point that i had to have an Amiga so sold all my C64 stuff to finance my A500 purchase.

[Berethrof]

I was an avid reader of Computer Gaming World, Compute!'s Gazzette, and started seeing ads for games for the Amiga. We had a C128, and when I started seeing ads for the Cinemaware games... that's when I decided I had to have one. It was an arduous process to somehow guilt my parents into ordering an Amiga 2000.

To this day I wish I had instead gotten an A500, because some games just didn't work well on an A2000.

At the time I used the Commodore monitor we had for the C128, but we could only get it to show in black and white.

Eventually, I convinced my parents (again) to let me buy a monitor for the Amiga. The first game I tried was Rocket Ranger... to my anger and surprise, I couldn't believe it was still showing it in black and white! Until I saw it turn to full color during the intro... and was blown away. To this day, that moment is carved in my mind.

[Daishi]

I wanted one before it was released, after reading some technical details in a magazine. I had to wait until the A500 was released before I got one, but it was a system that did not fail to impress.

[alanwall]

bought first computer for son in 1981,a Vic 20 that was solar powered as I lived
in the hills of Mendocino County, California.Next was a 500 bought in Santa Rosa,California and by then I lived where there was power poles.From there I went to a 3000 and by the time of the first AmiWest-I am the founder of the show-the 3000 has 144 megs of ram/an 060-ppc 204e/g card/toccata/and miami.Went to work for Carl S. after he saw my 3000 and had me upgrade his
3000.Now I use AmiKit but still miss the "real" thing

[vbgd]

I wanted that machine for years because all my friends in school had an Amiga. As i got one for my church confirmation at the age of 14 in 1992 the Amiga began its descent. But I loved the machine till I got my first 386 PC around 1994 or 1995.

[RichL]

Always wanted one since Zzap 64 started to introduce Amiga coverage and it just grew from there.

[OldAmigan]

Bought my son an Amiga 600 for Christmas one year and we both enjoyed using it.

He eventually decided to go PC - I still have his old A600 - plus another A600, an A500, 2 x A1200 and an Amiga One XE.

I'm waiting for the A1222, for which I've bought one of Steve Jones A1500Plus cases.

Guess you could say I got hooked!