If not an Amiga, what was your 1st system, and how did it influence you?

[ImmortalA1000]

I had a VCS for about 3 and a half years before I got my C64. Nothing wrong with the VCS 1980-83 but when I had my C64 I would come home from playing arcade games in various shops and try and do screen mockups on my C64, then later try coding up some sprites etc.

[Megalomaniac]

The VCS was a lovely system for its day, even as someone born after its heyday I still feel a certain charm from it. No wonder its best games continued to be influential at least into the Amiga era. I don't even mindthe much-derided VCS Pacman, though later attempts show that the VCS could do much better technically (VCS Defender is another story though, the disappearing flickering sprites make that unplayable. And as for VCS Double Dragon....)

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Keops/Equinox

It would be nice to add Atari ST to that poll

The what?
never heard of it ....

[oscar_ates]

I had C64 first. Then I bought an Amiga 500+. Next was A1200 and few years later bought HD and 1230/50 accelerator card with 8mb ram. Around 1998 no new good games coming then jumped ship to PS1. Around 2000 got my first PC with GeForce 256. Was good times with all. I loved Myth and Creatures on c64. Superfrog and team17 games were best on Amiga. Played all 3d fps games on A1200. Playstation had Castlevenia, tomb raider etc. 2000s were PC times, half-life, call of duty, metal of honor, red alert series etc.

[ImmortalA1000]

Originally Posted by Gorf

The what?
never heard of it ....

I had a 520STM Spring 1986 because the dumdums at C= engineering took forever to get a PAL Amiga 1000 made and then another 3 months after Germany to release it in my country never mind the massive rip-off price so scumbag Gould could keep writing his 1 million dollar personal bonus cheques LOL

[aeberbach]

An Atari 400, to this day I have nightmares about horrible keyboards and now the worst I can tolerate is Cherry MX Brown switches. Topre for preference. $2000 was just far too much for an Apple II, though I used them at the local library and really wanted one.

[Megalomaniac]

Were the A1000 and ST really seen as rivals, with such a huge price difference? Even the A500 cost nearly twice as much as an STFM on launch.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Were the A1000 and ST really seen as rivals, with such a huge price difference? Even the A500 cost nearly twice as much as an STFM on launch.

My schoolyard experience would say yes (more A500 vs ST(FM) then A1000 though)

[BigD]

Originally Posted by TCD

My schoolyard experience would say yes (more A500 vs ST(FM) then A1000 though)

If the A500 had been released in 1985 then yes, but since it took until 1987 to get the Amiga into that form factor then really no. My family bought an Atari ST 1040FM because it was the first sub $1000 1Mb home computer and in 1988 it was awesome and for much less money than the A500 (which was playing catch up).

Why did the Amiga get ST ports of games until 1990? Because Tramiel was a driven son of a gun and a shrewd businessman and saw that the Mac could be taken down a peg! He got the right product out, at the right time and at the right price point! The Amiga was a potential source of chips to achieve that aim! C= were out of ideas and needed an "off the peg" widget to replace the C64 but mainly Gould just wanted to give Tramiel the finger! No strategy, no massive R&D budget, just an intention to pull the rug on Tramiel!! Crazy!!

In retrospect, would we have sacrificed the Amiga so that the ST could have succeeded against the Mac? No, I think we lived the best version of the timeline where we got to experience Jay Miner/Dave Morse's vision as it was meant to be, but with the cost reduction know how of C= to save us all some money and thereby making it affordable for "the masses not the classes".

[stylon]

My first system was a Radofin Telesports which was just a games console with very, very rudimentary block graphics and sound. My first proper computer was a VIC 20 which was amazing and is the machine I first learned to program on. I stuck with Commodore from that point onwards getting a C64 then A500, A1200 and finally an A4000 which I kept as my daily driver well into the late 1990's. (Could kick myself for selling it now).

[zipper]

Pong clone...

[PDrill]

Oh, answered 64 right away but after reading the comments noticed there were consoles on the list too. The first was a Radofin 1392 but all the influence it had (??) is/was that just as the Mirrorsoft Tetris (C64) is THE Tetris for me, the Radofin 1392 Space Invaders is THE Space Invaders.

Naturally I have one of these also today.

[Retro1234]

Seems to be a lot of Atari 2600, C64 and ZXs

[UberFreak]

Never had a games console, I usually played on friends' Atari VCS, Philips G7000 and even a V-Tech Creativision.

Had a Spectrum on loan from a family member for a few months, but didn't really like it since it used to overheat and crash a lot and messing around with tapes was a pain.

The first computer I owned was a Commodore 128D (used mostly in C64 mode).
Changed my life in every aspect, from life-long friends to my career.
Can't imagine my life without it.

I got into Amiga long after Commodore was gone, in the early 00's, with an A2000 I was given by a friend.
Later came other models, expansions, etc.

[Megalomaniac]

Originally Posted by TCD

My schoolyard experience would say yes (more A500 vs ST(FM) then A1000 though)

Precisely the distinction I was making, that in 1986 they weren't rivals because the A1000 was so much more expensive than even the 1040STF, but obviously by maybe 1989 A500 versus 520STFM or STE was (by the time the A500+ came out the Amiga was the clear winner). But the fact is, the ST was the first affordable WIMP (windows, icons, mice, pointers) computer as we'd understand them today. The only reason I didn't include it was that I only had so many options, and assumed that not many people switched from ST to Amiga, and most of those people will have previously started with 8-bits.

[ImmortalA1000]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Were the A1000 and ST really seen as rivals, with such a huge price difference? Even the A500 cost nearly twice as much as an STFM on launch.

The STFM was £399.99 until around second half of 1987 when it had a price drop to £299.99 but I believe the mouse was removed as a bundled item. Never mind the Amiga 500 the 520STFM in 1987 made a mockery of the 128k 8bit computer retail prices, the Acorn Master 512 series cost more than the 520STFM and the Amstrad 6128 cost the same more or less with an RF modulator or green screen monitor.

I never said the 520STFM and Amiga 1000 were rivals as such, but let's not forget all the other 16bit computers cost more than the Atari, even the horrendous Amstrad 8086 CGA & beeper sound based PC 1512 and were far inferior anyway. In 1986 your options boiled down to whether you needed an Amiga 1000 and whether you could afford said Amiga 1000, if not you got a 520ST or nothing.

The Archimedes came out around the time of the A500 and cost a bit more but it was more advanced in many ways, the software wasn't quite as good generally speaking and there was hardly any support for converting well know/licensed games to the Acorn 32bit computers retailing around £700 or so when the A500 came on the scene. Apart from Zarch there was bugger all reason to own an Archimedes for gamers upgrading from things like a C64 in 1987.

[Pfloyd]

I enjoyed the EACA Video Genie I, which was a TRS-80 Model I clone with some enhancements: 48 k RAM, monochrome (green) Zenith display, integrated tape recorder with volume control, integrated amplifier and speaker, lowercase mod, Star LC-10 dot matrix printer, two 5,25" single sided, single density (or double?) floppy disk drives. It had a 64 x 25 text display and a 128 x 48 monochrome graphics. Despite the weak graphics, there were some addictive games. Meteor Mission II, Robot Attack, Sea Dragon, Donkey Kong, Scott Adams Adventure Series... I learned BASIC and Z80 assembly language.

I never had a game console, VC-20 or Commodore 64. When I saw the Amiga Computer with its stunning graphics and sound capabilities, I fell in love... so my Video Genie had to go. I got an Amiga 500 with 512 k, Kickstart 1.2 and a RGB colour monitor... had several sleepless nights :-) What a huge difference! The LC-10 dot matrix printer was working flawlessly with the Amiga, so I kept it. My A 500 was soon expanded by 512 k RAM expansion and a second floppy disk drive, which made file and disk handling much more convenient. AmigaBASIC was terrible slow and bugged, so I went with Seka and Devpac Assembler.

[A500]

First, an obscure console whose brand I can't remember but which had reasonably fun action games. Then, the almighty C64. Then, the even more almighty A500. The 80s were full of magic!

[Higgy]

I think I've mentioned before but first was ZX Spectrum+ around 1984, had that until around 1989 when it broke.

We were going to buy a Sam Coupe to use all our old games but when we went to the computer shop they had an A500 running Drakken and it was just mind blown!

Best thing back in the day was not knowing everything like now and being genuinely surprised visiting a shop.

Ended up getting a Batman pack.

[Megalomaniac]

Funnily enough the first I knew of the SAM was after MGT had folded and they managed to set up SAMCo as a kind of legacy support company. It was only later that I found that it was intended as an unofficial Spectrum successor. A shame it failed as a British rival to the Amiga and ST might have been nice, but it was a long way behind the times for when it was released. Lots of puzzle games but not much else, from what I've read. I doubt you ever regretted choosing an A500 instead, even if you lost your old games?