Back to the Amiga 500 Batman Pack 30 years later

[005AGIMA]

Ep5 - BARBARIAN is up
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I've also sped up the release dates to EVERY monday 4pm GMT as I've recorded them all so may as well just release them

[speshady]

Awesome read and great to hear the A500 purchase.
My story was similar to yours only i saved up little of the money and borrowed a huge chunk off my dad (which i paid pack with most of first monthly wage off my first job).

I ended up having an A500 with 512k expansion and an A1200 with HD fitted, and tonnes of accessories for both.

I too have now took the plunge back into the Amiga and am the proud owner of an A500, A1200 & CD32.

A500 has 512k expansion, Gotek fitted with the external sitcky out floppy disk extra (looks cool and requires no case modding), Optical USB mouse connected to a Jerry (joystick in other port on Jerry), 2x Zipsticks.

A1200 has 128Mb Blizzard 1230IV, 32Gb CF card partitioned, Indivision board, Optical USB mouse connected to a Jerry (joystick in other port on Jerry), 2x Zipsticks.

CD32 has USB keyboard via converter, Optical USB mouse connected to a Jerry (standard gamepad in other port on Jerry), Competition Pro Gamepad.

All 3 machines are hooked up via HDMI to monitors and also to my PC surround soound setup (5.1).

Everything runs like a dream and i love it!.

[005AGIMA]

Originally Posted by speshady

Awesome read and great to hear the A500 purchase.
My story was similar to yours only i saved up little of the money and borrowed a huge chunk off my dad (which i paid pack with most of first monthly wage off my first job).

I ended up having an A500 with 512k expansion and an A1200 with HD fitted, and tonnes of accessories for both.

I too have now took the plunge back into the Amiga and am the proud owner of an A500, A1200 & CD32.

A500 has 512k expansion, Gotek fitted with the external sticky out floppy disk extra (looks cool and requires no case modding), Optical USB mouse connected to a Jerry (joystick in other port on Jerry), 2x Zipsticks.

A1200 has 128Mb Blizzard 1230IV, 32Gb CF card partitioned, Indivision board, Optical USB mouse connected to a Jerry (joystick in other port on Jerry), 2x Zipsticks.

CD32 has USB keyboard via converter, Optical USB mouse connected to a Jerry (standard gamepad in other port on Jerry), Competition Pro Gamepad.

All 3 machines are hooked up via HDMI to monitors and also to my PC surround soound setup (5.1).

Everything runs like a dream and i love it!.

NICE collection ! Sounds awesome!

I'll be keeping this boxed amiga standard except I will add 512k upgrade as that's what I did back in the day.

From there, I want to "also" buy an A1200 which I'll add a CF Card to I think (seems to be the way to go), and I can see that becoming my "daily driver".

Of course now my memory of gaming days gone by has been jogged, I've also got some DOS PC Builds in mind.

There's already my old PII with TNT2 card waiting for me at my parents place with a "it wont boot" issue reported by my dad, so I'll take that and see what the go is.

So I'll either also build a dream 486DX (never had a good one), or maybe recreate my generic P200MMX with Banshee card. That may be fun.

I "need" to return to, and complete X-Wing among other games.

When will it stop?

[005AGIMA]

Buggy Boy published
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[005AGIMA]

Ikari Warriors published
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[005AGIMA]

Insanity Fight
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[005AGIMA]

Mercenary is up
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Oddly it's not playing in IE so I have done a quick "trim" to force it to re-process on YouTube in the hope that will fix the issue without needing to re-upload (as that changes the URL).

Stupid YouTube.

EDIT: Yep that did the trick. Will check through the other videos over time in case others have the error and I'm not aware.

[aeberbach]

That was a great story, thank you for writing it. I remember seeing my first Amiga 1000 - I quit the degree course I was in because I knew I had to be a programmer. That and I was seriously addicted to Hack 1.0.3d from the Fred Fish disk 62. SO many times that disk got corrupted and I had to bus down to the computer store and get another one.
Later I ended up at the same company as Bols Ewhac.
Today I have an Amiga 1200 with 68030/882. Just this morning received my OSSC so I can put it on a monitor more easily.
Might watch your videos now

[005AGIMA]

Originally Posted by aeberbach

That was a great story, thank you for writing it. I remember seeing my first Amiga 1000 - I quit the degree course I was in because I knew I had to be a programmer. That and I was seriously addicted to Hack 1.0.3d from the Fred Fish disk 62. SO many times that disk got corrupted and I had to bus down to the computer store and get another one.
Later I ended up at the same company as Bols Ewhac.
Today I have an Amiga 1200 with 68030/882. Just this morning received my OSSC so I can put it on a monitor more easily.
Might watch your videos now

Glad you liked it mate

So many amiga stories from us all and all unique.

[005AGIMA]

Terrorpods
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Playing up in IE despite me "cleaning" it in the YouPoo editor. Meh. Works in everything else.

[005AGIMA]

Thunder, Thunder, THUNDERCATS!!!! HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
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[005AGIMA]

Wizball
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Which is the last game in the Tenstar Games Pack.

Next week, we start looking at the Star Wars Trilogy which I also got along with my Batman pack.

[PatmanQC]

That was a great story, thank you for sharing.

I live in the states and i never heard of the Amiga but I walked into an independent computer shop and saw dragons lair Playing on a computer. I then heard the Wonderful sounds of sword of Sodan And I was hooked. This was probably 1989 and there is no other PACs just the Amiga 500. Unfortunately we did not have the money to purchase it so I borrowed the money from my parents and slowly paid it back
.

[005AGIMA]

Originally Posted by BBOWL

That was a great story, thank you for sharing.

I live in the states and i never heard of the Amiga but I walked into an independent computer shop and saw dragons lair Playing on a computer. I then heard the Wonderful sounds of sword of Sodan And I was hooked. This was probably 1989 and there is no other PACs just the Amiga 500. Unfortunately we did not have the money to purchase it so I borrowed the money from my parents and slowly paid it back
.

Ah the "paying the parents back" technique.

I recall a mountain bike being purchased on this premise once ...maybe twice.

Well actually they were from mail order, so my mum would pay the repayments, and I'd pay her. But same thing really.

[005AGIMA]

As said in the story, my brother also threw in some extra money so we could get the Star Wars Trilogy....

So before we finally get to look at the games in the Batman Pack, I thought I'd hit up the SW trilogy first.

Episode 13: SW Trilogy 01: Star Wars
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Enjoy.

[005AGIMA]

Continuing the Star Wars Trilogy with Empire Strikes Back
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[005AGIMA]

Final part of the Star Wars Trilogy, Return of the Jedi.
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[sean_sk]

Wow . How did I not encounter this thread earlier? That first post was a riveting read. Thanks for sharing!

The thing I share in regards to that period of time in late 1989 is how awesome it was!! I was finally free of the imprisonment of school and got my apprenticeship as a Watchmaker. Oh man I had such a good time with my friends.

At that time I loved Amiga's, since we had one at school since 1986 and my friend had an A500. But for the life of me, and to this day I have no idea why, but I never bothered to save up to get one. I was a massive waster of money because I loved going out with my friends so much. So on one hand, I regret not ever having bought an A500 but, on the other hand, the time I spent with my friends were the best years of my life and I wouldnt have changed anything for the world Nevertheless I still had the luxury on growing up on other peoples Amiga's and wasted many days on some great games including awesome 4 player Lotus 2 sessions.

005AGIMA, looking forward to reading a very detailed description of what you experience when you open that A500 package for the first time! Also please share a video.

[005AGIMA]

Originally Posted by sean_sk

Wow . How did I not encounter this thread earlier? That first post was a riveting read. Thanks for sharing!

The thing I share in regards to that period of time in late 1989 is how awesome it was!! I was finally free of the imprisonment of school and got my apprenticeship as a Watchmaker. Oh man I had such a good time with my friends.

At that time I loved Amiga's, since we had one at school since 1986 and my friend had an A500. But for the life of me, and to this day I have no idea why, but I never bothered to save up to get one. I was a massive waster of money because I loved going out with my friends so much. So on one hand, I regret not ever having bought an A500 but, on the other hand, the time I spent with my friends were the best years of my life and I wouldnt have changed anything for the world Nevertheless I still had the luxury on growing up on other peoples Amiga's and wasted many days on some great games including awesome 4 player Lotus 2 sessions.

005AGIMA, looking forward to reading a very detailed description of what you experience when you open that A500 package for the first time! Also please share a video.

Hey mate. Thanks for the kind words.

I was still at school during those times. Fast forward to "after school" and I was like you, going out and spending time with mates and money on drink.

In fact, while I was always into gaming and always had a computer and / or console around, I went through a period of trading in my SNES games, just so I could go play Laser Tag with my mates and girlfriend lol.

And yep, upon collection I will video the "unboxing" even though I despise unboxing's lol, this one is ....personal.

[d4rk3lf]

This is awesome story, I read it yesterday.
I guess, majority of us have similar stories, and we all share same impression when we first saw the best home comp ever.

I was pretty late introduced to Amiga world (maybe 1993-1994), and I had 2 friends, and one had Amiga 500 1MB, the other had 386 DX/40, 2MB Ram, B/W monitor, VGA.. etc. I had only C64, so I guess, I was somewhat objective.

I first met my friend with A500, that invites me at home and showed me exactly this games during few weeks:
- Mortal Kombat 2, Ruff'n'Tumble, Arabian Nights, Arcade pool, F18/Interceptor, Street Fighter 2, Shadow of the Beast 3, Fire and Ice...
Man, I was stunned.
After C64, these looked to me better then a dream. I knew about Amiga, of course, from magazines, and reviews of the games (Amiga was very popular in my country), but I never expected something awesome like that.
Not only look... the feel... when you played Arabian Nights, Or Ruff'n'Tumble, or MK2... that was it... it's arcade perfect feel. It was like you have arcade home, but not with just one game, but many games!

Several month later I met my pal with 386.
He showed me: Prehistoric 2, Street Fighter 2, Golden Axe, Monkey Island, and some ugly CGA or EGA racing game....
Can you imagine how disappointed I felt? It was UGLY, very slow, unresponsive, huge pixels, beeps instead of sound?
Man... Arabian nights or Ruff VS Prehistoric 2, that was like heaven and hell.... SF2... yes, the gameplay was better (wich I didn't realized then), but was much uglier.
I admit, I liked Golden Axe and Sleepwalker games, mainly because of nice gameplay, but then again, not near to a feel of many platformers, on the Amiga.
Later my friend bought another 2MB Ram, color monitor, sound blaster 16, and finaly he could play MK2 (that could be played on A500 with only 1MB Ram, and no expansions whatsoever), and I was again disappointed.
Framerate was not constant. It was slow... then fast... then slow, it ruined gameplay. New, bigger color monitor also showed a very pixelized picture. No Joysticks (they were very expensive for PC back then), so we had to play on keyboard, and if someone holds more then 3 keys, it blocks any other key pressed.
Many people when doing comparison today, forget about these, not so small things.

I was unaware, at that time, that Amiga was also low res, but TV kind of blurred pixels, and that is why it looked so much natural and blended, I thought for a real, that it was bigger res.
But nevermind that.... Even if I looked at the graphics on today monitors, my impression would be very similar, because of the color palette that Amiga use, the great arcade feel when you play the game, the sound... etc.

Sorry for the long post, but you haven't wrote much how disappointed you were, after changing A500 for the 386SX, and this needs to be pointed out.

Thanks for the nice story, we all looking forward to December.