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Gareth Knight
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The first Amiga Inc- creators of a dream

The first Amiga owner: 1982 - 1984
Like the ghost of Christmas past the first Amiga Corporation reveals itself. The 1982-94 is often romanticised as a period when the "true" Amiga ideals were founded, before Commodore butchered it and sold it as a gaming machine. Little is known about this period of the Amiga history apart from a few documents. Famous interviews from the likes of Jay Miner and RJ Mical only wet the appetite with stories of "Joe Pillow" and long bouts of meditation. This page presents a few of the items that remain.

The computer that would become known as Amiga was conceived by Jay Miner while he was working at Atari. He envisioned it as a next generation product that would utilise the Motorola 68000 CPU to produce unparalleled graphic displays. When he approached Atari with the idea it was rejected as to expensive to create and Jay Miner left.

In 1982 he was convinced by Dave Morris to join the newly setup video game company, Hi-Toro. The company, funded by three Florida dentists, combined the talents of a motley group whose eccentricity was well known- Miner himself refused to go to work without Mitchie his dog. The Amiga team included Carl Sassenrath (creator of the Amiga EXEC), R.J. Mical, (Amiga Intuition), Dale Luck, and a number of other hardware & software developers. For the next two years the group would develop the project in absolute secrecy, hiding behind their Atari 2600 joystick & games business.

Hardware

- Amiga Joyboard
- Joyboard Box & Instructions
- Power Module
- Power Stick

Hardware Adverts

- Joyboard advert from the October 1983 issue of Enter(86.4k)
- Another ad for the Joyboard against a black background (88.6k)
- Joyboard catalogue ad showing the retail price. (10k)
- PowerStick advert from the October 1983 issue of Enter(94.3k)

Atari 2600 Cartridges

While Amiga Corp. were developing the Lorraine they attempted to gain a reputation in the video game market by developing games for the popular Atari 2600 system. Many of these games were not released to the public but were instead picked up by collectors and video game fanatics. Here is a complete list of the games that were produced during 1982-1983.

Power Module 3-D Ghost Attack/Depth Charge
Power Module Scavenger Hunt
Power Module SAC Alert
Power Module 3-D Havoc
Power Module Strafe
Power Module Mogul Maniac
Power Module Surf's Up
Power Module Off Your Rocker
Power Play Arcade 1
Power Play Arcade 2
Power Play Arcade 3

Apart from Mogul Maniac, Surf's Up and Off Your Rocker these games were never released. The three games mentioned were developed in very small numbers and are extremely rare. For example, there are only two "Surf's Up" cartridges that are known to be in existence. James L. Boyd has written a brief review and rated the games that were produced or licensed by Amiga. The archive also contains ROM images for use with an emulator. Amiga users are recommended to use Stella or v2600. Non-Amiga retrogamers will have to find their own emulator ;)

Download Amiga 2600 Games (49.4k)

Miscellaneous

- What is the spiritual ancestor to the Amiga?
- Unsolved Mysteries: Who currently owns the rights to the Atari 2600 games by Amiga?
- Bouncing Back- The origins of the Boing Ball
- The Atari-Amiga agreement
- The history of the Amiga and Atari
- The Lorraine prototype
- Who was Joe Pillow?
- Amiga Corp. Photo Album

Historical Documents

- Commodore to buy Amiga (24th August 1984)
- Amiga Patent
- Jay Miner Interview Pasadena, September 1992.
- RJ Mical on the Amiga, Commodore and everything in between
- Amiga business card - Greg Lee

BACK

Last Update: 11/03/2003


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Latest updates to the Amiga History Guide. (more)


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· Amiga Hardware
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· Amiga World
· AmigaOS 4.0
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· Dave Haynie archive
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· morphos-news.de

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