Which Amiga would you recommend to people to buy?
 

I was watching Pixel Vixens #2 spot of '12 days of Amiga' which she placed the OCS A500 at. This would make the A1200 here #1 Amiga on balance.

This isn't about technically the best, most expandable, or cheapest but a combination of the three I guess along with what you would do with the machine.

So if somebody just wanted to play Amiga games on a CRT TV with a Zipstik etc I would actually put the OCS A500 as number 1 as it easily runs more games than any other machines and you can add extra drives and some extra RAM for all but the 1mb Chip RAM requiring games. It's the cheapest option too. There really isn't that many AGA must have games at all, can't think of an AGA exclusive game either apart from Gloom for a stock A1200/CD32 that I would like or having Lotus III with the superb frame rates of Lotus II.

If you want to do more on the productivity/creative side an A1200 is better as not only do you have the built in IDE port but you also get to play around with AGA graphics for pixel art and animation. The 2mb Chip RAM is also very useful for having high quality samples for your music projects. Before things like PiStorm CPU socket accelerators for A500 I would have said easier to get a small speed boost via something like a 1220/4 (with the option of another 4mb daughterboard) but perhaps that's not really part of it.

Obviously I have all sorts of machines, well all of them except an A3000, and if you want to play polygon games an A4000/040 is a nice place to start but this is not really what the topic is about. I can't think of any must have CD32 or CDTV games either come to think it. So personally I would say for Joe Public just wanting to relive their computer gaming youth I think a 1mb A500 with an external drive and a decent CRT TV is a good place to start, an A1200 is a good step up from that if you need AGA or want to play around with things like Wordsworth (there was an Amiga Format coverdisk for 2mb A1200 I seem to remember finding a few days ago in my stash of disks).

How about you?

Agreed, OCS A500 remains king if it is purely for playing old games. If I would get a physical Amiga again, that's what I would get no questions asked.

If you want to play all the new games that have been coming out though or are currently in the process of being made possible by some technical wizards, you might want to have at least an A1200.

I'd say obviously an A1200, because with WHDLoad it runs more games (and better! )than a basic A500, and I don't imagine playing on an Amiga by 2023 without using WhdLoad.
But for someone that doesn't want to invest too much I'd say an A500mini.

A1200 with extra ram and a compact flash
AS A HDD. Another in the PCMCIA for transfer. Will run the majoriry of A500 games and Demos, any ocs 3D game that uses the processor gets a boost. You'll miss out on a few later 3D games, and most post 94 demos running well.
Problrm with disk drives, is the fact many disks are fubar...as i found when switching from A1200 TO A500. Actually an A600 is good choice as well.

If the Amiga maxi comes out, my opinion could change though.

At least in the US, the hiccup with the A500 is video output.
There is composite, but it is monochrome, not color.
There is RGB output, but it is 15khz, which not every RGB device supports here.
So not only would you need a special cable, but also a special monitor, or an adapter (RGBtoHDMI type)...
All of that is doable, but not just as simple as a cable with SCART adapter...
Advantage of a 1200 is that the composite output is color.
And you also have the IDE (lots of cheap/easy IDE/CF or SD adapters available) and PCMCIA which has some nice options...
Of course, the drawback is that 1200s are expensive... Very compared to the A500 here.
So I'm torn...
It's probably still an A500, but with the caveat that you also want to include an Amiga to HDMI solution... (Which would probably still be less expensive than a 1200..)
Also, a Gotek preflashed for an A500 is pretty easy to get and would work well for casual retrogamers...

That said, no... You can't have my 1200... ;-)

It can be quite feasible to use an A500 with Gotek drive and USB if you refer to being dependent on floppy disks.

It would have to be my first one. An A500 Plus. The few updates make it a much nicer all rounder IMO. If you don't mind straying from it being period correct it also has plenty of expansion possibilities.

Of course, if you want to stay true to the times an A1200 offers a lot more options.

A1200 all the way. It's simply the best and compatibility problems with very old games have usually been fixed with WHDload. If somebody feels nostalgic about a certain model, then it would have to be that one. However, such a person wouldn't need a recommendation, right?

Perfect answer. :great

I think for anyone asking the answer is none, use emulation!

If they're really into it, they'll come to their own conclusions soon enough, and I guess it'll either be an A500 if they're into gaming/living the heydays or A1200/A400-like setup for more advanced use (it covers most of the uses for A500 but requires more knowledge to do so).

I appreciate my A1200+060 setup, but really the only thing I can't do with emulation is validation, which is something the normal user would not care about.

I vote for Vampire V4, older Amigas are starting to wear out and becoming unreliable. I think the ReAmiga efforts are cool too, if everything is new.

Yeah but that was an ECS machine no, so certain games wouldn't work on it.

A1200. the most accessible one.

Maybe once - they are going for 500EUR these days on eBay Italy.

Looking at the crazy prices I would say “none” - don’t fuel the speculation bubble!

Just emulate and if (big if) the prices come down then maybe think of getting either an A500 or A1200. But honestly I would never pay more than 50EUR for an A500 and 100EUR or so for an A1200 - sadly these prices are long gone.

It's going to depend on what aspects of the Amiga the person wants to create/recreate, and their budget. I wouldn't discount a model just because I didn't grow up with it. If someone grew up with a CD32 they'll have their own favourites, and it'll be my job to help them determine if they need a CD32 to experience them the way they'd like.

There was a time when an A500 ran more games than other machines, but that's probably passed thanks to WHDLoad and all the newer games that have come out since the 2000s. Depending on definitions of what constitutes an Amiga (for the person, not for us), Amiberry, an A500 Mini or even a Mac Mini with MorphOS could be cheaper. For some, an A500 Mini might fit like a glove. I'd rather drink my own puke, but if it's the right tool for them they should go for it.

As someone who does a lot more productivity on the Amiga than most it's really going to depend on what the person wants to do. An A500 with a Pistorm or Vampire will outperform an A1200 without one for almost any productivity task. It's only for edge cases needing specific chips or software are needed that the A1200 wins out. FWIW I do a lot of writing, coding, graphics, even ham radio and astronomy on my CDTV, with more heavy work on my A4000.

Ultimately I'd ask the person what they grew up with, what they loved, and what they'd want to do. I'd then ask some questions above and below what I know about the capabilities of their preferred machine to see if they bite, and point them at what would cover their bases in budget for the core stuff with an expansion roadmap, and tell them to use emulation for the rest.

Relokick made almost all of them work though, and I think Relokick plus extra memory eliminated just about all problems. A lot of originals won't work on the A1200 whatever you do, though most have WHDLoad versions nowadays you'll still get a lot more joy with boxed originals on a Plus or 600 than on a 1200. There'll still be really early stuff that only works on 1.2 or earlier though.

On a wider basis it definitely depends what you want to, what you had back-in-the-day and how vital it is to use original disks and original upgrades - and how much you can justify paying. An A1200 is probably the most versatile system, but they cost a lot more than a standard A500, which (provided you have 1Mb or more) can run most things, and an A500 can be accelerated and can take hard drives, either old or new solutions. I disliked the A600 at the time, partly because it's limited by the missing keypad, but at least it's compact and kinda stylish.

A500 mini for least hassle with video output.
Otherwise A500 with an ACA500+
A1200 with a 030 card + whdl if youre ok with the cost

Whichever you can get your hands on (including the new mini).

That was my thoughts, get a faulty external drive for a small cost and fit a Gotek drive in there. That allows you to write out any modern homebrew ADFs to real disks and to use the Gotek as a second drive too. Very few games support more than 1 external drive in my experience. Cracks are useful even if you want to buy the original boxed games for nostalgia/full instructions in a physical form as they have useful trainer options.....like going straight to the driving level of Batman the Movie for racing game fans like me.

I'm sure we all have our favourite setups personally, as you can imagine the A1000 was love at first site for me when it was shown at the PCW 1985 Computer Show in the UK but on balance just to play the iconic games an A500 with 512+512 RAM is going to tick 99% of the boxes I thought. This leaves you with extra cash to spend on a lovely 24-28" high quality CRT. The quality of the CRT is really important, and playing these old games on a large CRT is just so decadent and luxurious I think. Added advantage is that most large CRTs have S-video input, useful for other machines like the C64 or even a PS2 for DVD playback on a CRT if you are a movie buff.

I had actually completely forgotten about the lack of SCART on US TVs, in the UK a simple SCART cable has you covered. Then again with quite a few games having a lot of dithering you might actually prefer a simple A520 and composite video to reduce the sharpness of the dithering on some game's pixel art.

I am guessing the WHDload archive has all the AGA incompatibilities from OCS games like Lotus II removed? I also presume a 2mb A600 runs WHDload 1mb OCS games just fine too? But if people want to buy original games in boxes that doesn't help, Lotus II just crashed on my A1200 back then. There are some interesting AGA only things on itch.io of course and you could play a smoother version of Tinyus of course so no arguments from me, but an A1200 and CF adaptor inside etc is going to cost more so I thought if people aren't sure it's going to be for them it's worth thinking about the extra up front investment. You could always sell the A500 and get an A1200 and keep the external drive with a Gotek fitted as a stop gap if you're on a budget was my thinking.

There's not really a right or wrong answer, was just interested in what other people felt.

500+