A weekend with Amiga Forever 2008: retrogaming without the hassle
British gamers raised in the 1980s will doubtless have imagined playing old Amiga games on their 50" plasma TV sets. Such plans, however, rarely survive contact with the difficulties surrounding emulation of this powerful and weird old machine.
Though the technical side's taken care of by the Unversal Amiga Emulator, the myriad of different configurations, spread over the system's decade in the sun, makes it a giant pain in the ass to get games running.
Moreoever, the post-Commodore IP snarl makes getting hold the needed ROM files and system software a trip into murky legal waters.
What you need, then, is Amiga Forever 2008, Cloanto's compilation of emulators, games, demos, ROM files, and system disk images, all plugged into a simple, Media Player-like launcher. It plays Amiga games without fuss, and can even figure out just what sort of Amiga config any given title expects to see.
If you're an Amiga nut and want to do more than just play old games, this review won't be of much use to you. The online chatter suggests that its ease of use, expanded selection of ROM files (and the Linux-based "boot into an Amiga" CD-ROM option) represent the best experience yet for hardcore fans.
For the rest of us, though, it suffices to say that Amiga Forever 2008 hits the spot. The new "Player" is a friendly, simple, attractive way to explore your Amiga stuff. You choose what you want to do and it usually Just Works.
The included selection of games is interesting, but not exhaustive. Anco's Kick Off and Player Manager series are there, Exile, Hybris, Lure of the Temptress and a few others, but you'll not be safe from torrent temptation.
There's improved support for gamepads, and options such as keyboard mapping are easy to muck around with.
Especially useful is being able to double click Amiga disk images on the desktop: it'll launch itself and try to generate a working config based on a heuristic scan of the image's contents.
Another new feature is save states. This means you can save a game at any point whatsoever, and resume immediately from that point without booting the Amiga or waiting for the game to load. Remember the original Action Replay? Like that!
Also included is software for OSX and Linux, though Hi-Toro, the freeware GUI front-end for Macs, is not the equal of the Windows browser developed by Cloanto.
Amiga Forever Premium edition, with 100 games and 100 demos and a DVD full of features and documentaries about the Amiga and its history, is $50 from the online store. The same content, minus the DVD, is a $40 download. A $30 Value edition includes the essential Workbench editions needed for gaming, but doesn't include the Linux-based boot option and only comes with 50 titles.
It comes down to this: if you had an Amiga but could never get your head around emulating it, you should get a copy of Amiga Forever. And even if you could, it'll make life easier.
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I knew a guy that was raiding a bubble'd office (he claimed he had legal right but I'm not so sure) and he got ONE chair that I think was a knock off into his car and got busted by the cops. Well a little while later all charges were dropped because the evidence went "missing", along with the other chairs in the office (and only the chairs).
And I thought the Amiga posts were going to be less common? Not that I mind either way...
I love tinkering, so WinUAE is fun for me...
I couldn't afford a Mac back in the day (plus, I needed games, goshdarnit!) so I settled with an Amiga 500. Totally amazing. Interesting that "modern" computers are so closely following the Amiga's multi-processor unit design.
Good post.