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Rebellion – FROM BEDROOMS TO BILLIONS: THE AMIGA YEARS

Started by Banners, 20 May, 2016, 01:33:43 PM

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Banners

This Amiga documentary which I backed via KickStarter has just been released, and I just took a quick peek over lunch and Rebellion are behind it, which I never knew before. Honestly, how bloomin' cool are these Rebellion guys...?!? Awesome.

GordonR

More accurately, shouldn't it be 'From Bedrooms to Billions....and then Bankruptcy and Bust'? 

There's a reason why you haven't seen an Amiga computer in a long time...

Banners

That's the tragedy. The Amiga was an amazing machine for its time. If it had been better managed and able to develop and still be around today to rival the PC and Mac, things might have been even more advanced than they are now.

The title is from the original film which was about the scene in general. This is something of an Amiga-specific sequel.

Steve Green

Yeah I remember being on an IT training scheme back in the mid-late 80s and everything was pretty much PC, and the odd Mac Plus - the Amiga was way ahead of everything else graphically unless you started chucking very expensive graphics cards in there.

You've reminded me of those early digital comics that popped up around then as well as mainstream artists starting to play with the technology.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shatter_(digital_comic)

Rately

Quote from: Banners on 20 May, 2016, 01:53:36 PM
That's the tragedy. The Amiga was an amazing machine for its time. If it had been better managed and able to develop and still be around today to rival the PC and Mac, things might have been even more advanced than they are now.

The title is from the original film which was about the scene in general. This is something of an Amiga-specific sequel.

Amazing machine. So many fond childhood memories, the hours spent playing SWOS, Lemmings, Syndicate and so many more great games.

Pretty sure my Amiga 500 is in my parents attic, so may have to pay a visit and see if its still about.

Pyroxian

Quote from: Rately on 20 May, 2016, 02:28:17 PM
Amazing machine. So many fond childhood memories, the hours spent playing SWOS, Lemmings, Syndicate and so many more great games.

Pretty sure my Amiga 500 is in my parents attic, so may have to pay a visit and see if its still about.

Still got both of mine (500 and 1200) - so many good memories, both of the games, and of just mucking about with DPaint, ProTracker and AMOS (and later DevPac2 when we got into assembly coding).

Mardroid

I had the 500+.

I really wanted the 1200, but it wasn't to be. Fond memories of the Amiga...

Rately

Quote from: Pyroxian on 20 May, 2016, 04:15:30 PM
Quote from: Rately on 20 May, 2016, 02:28:17 PM
Amazing machine. So many fond childhood memories, the hours spent playing SWOS, Lemmings, Syndicate and so many more great games.

Pretty sure my Amiga 500 is in my parents attic, so may have to pay a visit and see if its still about.

Still got both of mine (500 and 1200) - so many good memories, both of the games, and of just mucking about with DPaint, ProTracker and AMOS (and later DevPac2 when we got into assembly coding).

Happier times. I'm sure the number of people who went from mucking about to creating games and billion dollar franchises is quite high.

Would love to be able to play the likes of Swos, Syndicate etc. On my phone. They'd make a fortune off me.

Well, I can't wait to get an opportunity to see the documentary.

Banners

Watched this last night.

There's some brilliant insight into how the Amiga came to be from some of the key engineers who clearly loved the machine utterly and whole-heartedly. It really was stirring stuff, and I was strangely emotional when I remembered how the A500 opened up possibilities to me in both creativity and IT. RJ Mical in particular was superb.

However, after the brilliant history was retold and the Amiga 500 came to market, the film went on in a somewhat perfunctory way to cover gaming, graphics, music and the demo scene, meaning it was too long and lost focus. Whilst it was nice to hear the thoughts of some big players and big fans (our beloved Kingsleys amongst them) – and in particular Shahid Ahmad who was quite captivating – there were way too many people introduced (albeit no journalists for some reason) and any sense of narrative propulsion was lost.

The film lined up the vox pops instead of examining anything about what went wrong with the Amiga. Whether you consider the machine or the team of engineers to be the 'protagonist', the piece could have become a very effective tragedy if it had explored how Commodore screwed up, how the Amiga was wiped out, and how the film's hero ultimately died. And it would have been good to discuss a present day where the Amiga had survived within the mainstream, either instead of or alongside the PC and Mac.

But because the film didn't do any of this, and merely turned into a series of reminiscences, the story was incomplete – and as such became something of an indulgence for me.

Ultimately, it was a heartfelt, decent, worthwhile and enjoyable document. But as a film its narrative fizzled out and it fell short, becoming not much more than fan service. A shame given how much love and effort had clearly gone into it, and how wonderful and truly beguiling the opening 'act' was.

IndigoPrime

Commodore really was run by idiots. They knifed the C64 before its time and never fully understood what they had in the Amiga. But even at the end, there could have been hope, had Commodore UK successfully bought the Commodore IP that has instead since floated around from owner to owner, resulting mainly in rubbish hardware with Commodore badges, and a small number of lawsuits.

That all said, it's hard to know where Commodore would have fitted in a late- and post-1990s computing landscape. Apple had by that point grabbed chunks of the creative sector and almost all of publishing. It survived because at the time people had no choice. Could Commodore have taken Apple's market? It certainly doesn't feel likely it could have made many inroads on the PC's unless it had become a PC itself. (Even Apple's survival, in hindsight, is astonishingly unlikely—perhaps almost as much so as its subsequent rise into the giant that exists today.)

Pyroxian

Quote from: IndigoPrime on 10 June, 2016, 04:31:59 PM
Commodore really was run by idiots. They knifed the C64 before its time and never fully understood what they had in the Amiga. But even at the end, there could have been hope, had Commodore UK successfully bought the Commodore IP that has instead since floated around from owner to owner, resulting mainly in rubbish hardware with Commodore badges, and a small number of lawsuits.

That all said, it's hard to know where Commodore would have fitted in a late- and post-1990s computing landscape. Apple had by that point grabbed chunks of the creative sector and almost all of publishing. It survived because at the time people had no choice. Could Commodore have taken Apple's market? It certainly doesn't feel likely it could have made many inroads on the PC's unless it had become a PC itself. (Even Apple's survival, in hindsight, is astonishingly unlikely—perhaps almost as much so as its subsequent rise into the giant that exists today.)

The Amiga sat nicely between a console and a PC though, which was great for us teenagers / students. It was inexpensive (compared to a PC), had a decent selection of the latest games, but also had a decent amount of non-games apps.

A lot of PC publishers abandoning it didn't help, but that was understandable once PCs could do games like Wolfenstein / X-Wing etc., which the Amiga struggled with due to its aging hardware.

Steve Green

I guess it was the 3D side where the PC took over.

The Amiga from what I remember had the hardware to do smooth scrolling (blitter? I was never a coder) but once 3D became fashionable that didn't help, PCs had a ramping up of CPU speed, then Voodoo cards.

Michael Knight

Thanks for the heads up about this. Will check it out. The Commodore 64 was my first ever computer/games console and was a big fan of the amiga too (even though I never owned one) Luckily best mate did!  :)

Michael Knight

ps. Speedball 2 Brutal deluxe! It all about speedball 2 brutal deluxe on the amiga! Rollerbowl the game  :)