What became of your Amiga 'shop'?

[Starglider 2]

That’s wonderful. It never occurred to me the original sign to my own computer shop might still be there. I think I’ll reach out to the new shop and ask them to let me know if they ever replace it.

Can I feature your photo on my little YouTube channel? ??

[CCCP alert]

Two places used to get my 8bit games from were a record store and a small electronics shop selling hi-fi and VCR etc. That is a butchers now, or something else completely nothing to do with technology.

The other was a music shop that sold computer tapes along with music tapes and records, do physical music stores still exist today with most people going digital a while ago?

On a school day we would go to high street stores like Boots, W H Smith and Currys/Dixons/Comet (now Currys PC World). There was also a Laskys. Laskys became an online thing after being bought out.

There was a really awesome computer shop, no consoles at all and only Amstrad/Atari/Commodore 8088/8086 PCs. I used to go in there and get stuff at the weekend, they had Amiga quite early too, remember thinking "got to get Marble Madness when I get an Amiga". Was kind of old fashioned building/shop front with big bay windows with things like the new 520ST and Commodore 128D along with new games in the windows. That shop closed down, probably because PCs were on sale in almost all consumer electronics stores by the 1990s. You didn't really need a specialist shop to get a PC around the early 90s I guess.

Also any regular high street store that stocked them and then a few trips a year to the Virgin Mega Store when they had a sale on computer/console games.

For the Amiga 1200 it would have been maybe GAME or Electronic Boutique type shop. Don't think the Woolworth where I worked so I could only go to get games on Saturdays. By the time Sunday Trading law was passed in August 1994 I wasn't buying Amiga games.

[Paul_s]

Originally Posted by Starglider 2

That’s wonderful. It never occurred to me the original sign to my own computer shop might still be there. I think I’ll reach out to the new shop and ask them to let me know if they ever replace it.

Can I feature your photo on my little YouTube channel? ??

Sure no worries, I only wish I had a period photo of the original and updated signage!

[Macca]

We had a few. All of them gone now.

The main one I remember, as, on ocassions, I got the odd out of date game free from there went into a Carpet sales place, this is well over 15 years ago and is now demolished. It was the typical go into the basement type of place. Spent many a hour in there talking to the guys.

There are three others I remember, two have been knocked down (they were part of an old bus station and that's in the process of being demolished, it went to a Games Workshop after the computer sales shop for a while) and the last one I remember, again it was a 2-floor shop with Arcade Machines in the basement, is now a nail salon.

Crazy how quickly everything changes. I still prefer the big boxed games with instructions. It just got the imagination flowing.

[Captain_Planet]

The place where my dad got the A500 is now a hairdressers (in the centre of Newcastle), from what I can remember the A500 just appeared in the spare bedroom, he didn't tell us he was getting it and we hadn't asked for it so I have no idea to this day why he went and shelled out £500 or so in 1989 but I'm glad he did!
Perhaps it was to get me to start programming and become some kind of microcomputer millionaire but he didn't encourage me to do anything in particular with it but me and my sister loved it. We had the Astra pack which had 7 or 8 games including Sufflepuck Cafe, Tower of Babel, RVF Honda, Microprose soccer and a few others I think (just googling that now apparetnly it was Silica?). Also DPaint 2 which made me realise this was much more than just a games machine.
I just used the regular shops in Newcastle centre like Game, Electronics Boutique and often WHSmith.
But the one I'd say was my "Amiga shop" was Maughan Micro Computers in the Metrocentre (Gateshead). My mum would usually go into Newcastle centre for shopping so it was a treat if we went to the Metrocentre which had Metroland - an indoor theme park, yes really!
This shop was great, rather small but had a Commodore logo on the sign and had a good selection of Amiga games and even had PD stuff for £1 each!

I was listening to the Retro Hour Podcast and they were talking about your old shop, so I googled Maughan Micro Computers and they are still going! The shop went years ago but they went more into repairs and now repair modern consoles (under the name Console Doctor), and they are based literally 5 minutes walk from me. I got my Amiga recapped by Retropassion a couple of years ago but might have asked Console Doctor if they still worked on Amigas.

Made me smile knowing my fav Amiga shop is still on the go albeit not as a shop.

[gimbal]

I never had one

We got the Miggy second hand and the only time we went out to get games it was just in some other larger electronics store which also had a corner with Amiga games. I'm pretty sure I know which one it was because we had a single store we always went to for computer and music stuff (and later in life I also got PC games and household appliances there), but it's not there anymore unfortunately.

[Mick]

I found a photo of mine online, I guess it was taken during Commodore's glory years.



I'd totally forgot about the pet shop next door.

[gimbal]

Does that pet store sign also say "Canine Beauticians"?

[reassembler]

Still there, including the original sign!

Moved location some time in the early 90s, it was in Kingston Marketplace before and contained loads of cool arcade cabs, but even after the move it was still selling new Spectrum games.

[Mick]

Originally Posted by gimbal

Does that pet store sign also say "Canine Beauticians"?

Most likely I suppose, all I really remember is I would ask to go to Micro Fun so I could browse all of the Amiga games and we would sometimes go into the pet shop as well. It was so exciting as a kid.

Both have long since shut down, looking at the town centre today it might as well just be converted to residential housing as there's hardly anything decent left.

[RichL]

We had Mr Disk in Birmingham. Don’t know if anyone else remembers it?

[CyberSoftworks]

Lets See, I was not introduced to Amiga til 2020, That is when I purchased an Amiga 500 online at a shop called Retro8bitShop you can actually look them up here: retro8bitshop.com - So afterI purchased my A500 I went on to Purchase an Amiga 1200 From an All Out Amiga Group in Sacramento Called: Amiwest23 it was a ball i tell ya! Anyways from there I went to purchase my 2nd A1200 from Ebay both of them come with 2mb Gfx Mem and 10mb Othr Mem, the first one i bought has an hdd 256mb harddrive and A Cf Card in the other 2nd A1200 that has 4gb of Space. The A500 Has A TF536 + 4gb CF Card, and comes with a custom case and keyboard by ds retro garage. Besides what more could you ask for besides a 1.3 and 3.1 dual kickstart on the A500.

[acidbottle]

In late 1990s I think it got turned into a fuppin Games Workshop, more recently rebranded to "Warhammer" Ho hum.

I literally have not seen a computer shop in years, discounting Game/Cex and all that crap

[Stedy]

My last Amiga shop was Wizard Developments/Compute who had a shop in Blackfen. That closed around 2000 and is now a funeral directors!

Prior to that it was Silica Systems in Sidcup, which closed in 1995. That is now NSM services, an IT provider.

[PDrill]

For the most years our little town had really no computer stores at all. Supermarkets had their departments and a book store chain sold computers and accessories and that was about it. Got most of the stuff by mail order and my Amiga 500 was even smuggled (wasn't illegal but avoided taxes/customs) from Germany by a sailor :-D

Then, probably in 1990 a Amiga shop was put up in the town center but it was (IIRC) aimed more for business users (lol) so nothing much for kids. Did buy some hardware from there though, a Golden Image mouse and a used 30mb Supradrive HD (with separate controller+drive units) being the only ones I remember. In late 91 got my drivers license and interests shifted so don't really know how it went from then on. Probably like everything else Amiga. At the time the building was just 20 years old and it was a modern massive office building but a few years ago it was demolished and now there's nothing there.

Now when people order anything from anywhere and whine "tracking not progressing and it's been 3 days already!!" I always tell them the story how ordering anything in the 80's took at least 3 weeks and one day there just was a paper from the post office that you have something waiting :-)