A new youtube channel for retro Amiga graphic demos and games, feedback please :)

First of all, I know there are new rules about youtube videos without commentary but when I explain you'll understand. The purpose of this post is to share a new youtube channel I set up to document the Amiga gaming and Demo Scene, I plan to add "lets play" style commentary to the gaming videos when I have the right equipment and setup to do that, but for now I don't have that and most of the content I've been uploading are retro demo scene videos that showcase the power of the awesome Amiga series of computers. My own Amiga was an A500 that I got when I was 13 years old! I was blown away by the power of that thing and I eventually ran a BBS system running CNet BBS for a number of years, I eventually shut it down in the late 90s when I started a full time job after Hischool and a few college classes. I don't have the A500 anymore but I still have an A2000 I later upgraded to before I shut it down.

Now my Amiga exists in the form of an image of the old SCSI drive converted to a WinUAE Emulator image which runs WAY faster now, obviously, than my original equipment

So what I wanted to do was just share the link and see if there are any other former or current Amiga enthusiasts? What kind of content would you like to see if so? .. I want to also gather up some clips/interviews from the people behind the creation and assemble my own little mini-documentary at some point.

I beg mercy from the mods to not slap me for having videos without commentary in the content but commentary would sincerely detract from the content. The Channel is mostly demo videos which are essentially graphic capability demos with some amazing original music that goes with it. There is only one gaming video at this point and I don't have a proper mic to offer commentary on it. Below is a link to the channel if you're interested in the platform, and also an example of what's there.. Keep in mind it's a brand new thing I'm doing as a hobby project.

Link to the channel: Amiga Demos and Games

And this is the very first demo I ever saw on an Amiga when I was at my cousin's house, so I knew I had to get one of these computers.. my A500 was made in 1985 and I didn't discover it until later, when I had my A500 PC's were still running Dos or Windows 3.1

This video is by a scene group called "Spaceballs" and was released in 1992.. I hope you enjoy! One bit of warning however, there is a couple of small sections that flashes black and white for about 2 seconds or so with words popping on the screen, keep in mind.. I don't think there's more than that but it's just a heads up for anyone sensitive to it. It shouldn't be enough to be an issue, several of my friends who are epileptic have seen it and had no issues whatsoever because it's so brief. The demo also has two different parts to it, so the first half evolves into something else later on.



For those that ARE sensitive to flashing, this second video has none of that.. it's one of my favorites, but it's longer .. the music is fantastic, the demo is fantastic but it has at least two minor glitches with collision detection and bounds .. but the rest of it is flawless.. This is by the notorious scene group "Kefrens" called Desert Dream

a reply to: miniatus

Ahhhh, the glorious Amiga days.

Many many happy hours watching/swapping demos .

One of my faves was 9 Fingers .....

m.youtube.com...

And a rarity for those times, a short "making of" video ....

m.youtube.com...

I wonder what those chaps went on to do with coding skills like that?

a reply to: miniatus

I have an Atari ST with a tonne of games, demos and magazines, I've been meaning to dig it all out.

I'm looking forward to some games being shown off, my ST is the most fun I ever had in terms of gaming and I was gifted it after I owned a Megadrive, N64 and a PS1.

Awesome console.

An interesting thing to note is that these demos ran on Amiga floppy disks which were 880kb a piece, I got it wrong in the description.. this demo, the music, the graphics and everything you see fits on two 880kb floppy disks.. that blows my mind even to this day

That was part of the point of these demos, to see just how far they could push the hardware to it's limits, both in terms of limited capacity and in terms of graphics and sound for hardware developed in 1985-1987 ( Amiga 500 & Amiga 1000 )

The Amiga is one of the first fully multi-tasking computers, it had 24 bit graphics and full 16 bit stereo sound, Mac was WAY behind the Amiga, as was the PC. Amiga was owned by Commodore but they failed to market it properly to the general public so it eventually died, only ONE commercial existed and instead of marketing to gamers, they marketed it to the business customers with office software.

Amiga found it's niche in broadcast tv and movies, it was used for the stargate tv series, it was used in jurrasic park to create the dinos the Lightwave 3d rendering software by Newtek was strongly aimed at the Amiga platform... It's extreme potential to be the number 1 system was lost because of Commodore who still pushed it's older system ( C64/C128 ) for home users.

The A4000T was the last official Amiga which was a beefy power PC based system in a tower case, AGA graphics which are far better than what you see in the videos above.. but it was too late, Commodore missed the boat.

Amiga still exists, but they exist in multiple forms, owned by multiple groups for various things. New Amigas did come out but it never took off since it was based on traditional hardware rather than the custom hardware that actually made the Amiga what it was..

originally posted by: Cymru
a reply to: miniatus

Ahhhh, the glorious Amiga days.

Many many happy hours watching/swapping demos .

One of my faves was 9 Fingers .....

m.youtube.com...

And a rarity for those times, a short "making of" video ....

m.youtube.com...

I wonder what those chaps went on to do with coding skills like that?

I have 9-Fingers, I've not recorded it for the channel yet. I'm trying to record these demos in full 1080p so it looks better on HD displays than it normally would. I've not seen the making of video! but I know MANY of the groups still exist in some form .. laxity from Kefrens is still bouncing around, he's the one who did the music on Desert Dream, him and one other member of Kefrens are back together and plan to do some new demos made specifically for the Amiga At least that's what I read.

There's a website, which I can't think of right now, but it has a BUNCH of the demo scene content available as WinUAE disk images ( free emulator ) .. and there's a TON ... even in 2016, many in July and August which really surprised me. But I admit, much of it is crap.. it's hard to top the legends like fairlight, kefrens, spaceballs and others.

originally posted by: RAY1990
a reply to: miniatus

I have an Atari ST with a tonne of games, demos and magazines, I've been meaning to dig it all out.

I'm looking forward to some games being shown off, my ST is the most fun I ever had in terms of gaming and I was gifted it after I owned a Megadrive, N64 and a PS1.

Awesome console.

I didn't have an ST, but before I got my A500 I had an Atari 800XL which was my first "official" computer .. I also had a beta copy of a new pacman game that never made it to light, the label was handwritten .. I wish to god I had kept it because that would probably have been worth a pretty penny by now.. I got onto my first BBS back then too, had a 300bps modem... loading a screen of text took forever, I could type faster than it took to load it over the phone line .. pre-popularity of the internet! the internet was a distant thing you had to have Compuserve to use back then.. and there wasn't much to it.

a reply to: miniatus

Theres many demo archives out on the interwebs, some better than others .

Back in the day I swapped with the Guys from Slipstream. Got my name in a few scrolltexts as well

I need a few quiet hours to watch them and screenshot my moment of fame .

www.pouet.net...

a reply to: miniatus

That Pacman game would be worth a bit now, the guy I got the ST off was a bit of a geek and had all sorts of stuff I couldn't work out. it literally came with 1500-2000 disks and pretty much every piece of equipment you can think of.

It blew my mind the detail in the games, I still find myself trying to find replacements to those classics like Populous, Deuteros and Utopia.

I was 8 or so at the time, I think a revisit would still fill me with wonder. I'd be able to understand half of it now lol.

Just to add, to my young mind the Atari kept up with consoles 10 year ahead of it in terms of enjoyment. Those were the days Final Fantasy 7-9 and the likes of Command & Conquer and Sim City... No small feat.

originally posted by: Cymru
a reply to: miniatus

Theres many demo archives out on the interwebs, some better than others .

Back in the day I swapped with the Guys from Slipstream. Got my name in a few scrolltexts as well

I need a few quiet hours to watch them and screenshot my moment of fame .

www.pouet.net...

There certainly is, some are alright.. some are doing HD now but many of them are outdated at this point.. What I'm trying to do is scale them all up to the highest resolution I can, when I tested the first few videos before I started this channel I was amazed how they looked on my HD tv after I scaled them up, most of these demos are in 640x480 and many people upload them in that resolution. The emulator I use does D3D scaling so it looks pretty great .. especially since the output IS 1080p rather than my TV having to stretch a 640x480 video which makes it horribly blocky ..

But my other goal is to having a gaming list where I hope to add some commentary, the only game I have up there now is one of the first games I got hooked on which was Scorched Tanks.. I'd like to get stunt car race up there, another world and some others.. But I'm also not going to limit it to Amiga 100% I have some other retro games I really loved that could become episodic play through style games.. "Uninvited" was an NES game and was one of the first horror games I ever played.. terrified me! so I will probably have a Misc. section for other platforms.

I did see that site, there was another site I saw too that was a wiki style site that had about 400 pages of demos on it, sortable by group, video output ( AGA, RTG .. etc ) .. I certainly don't plan to make my channel be an archive of all of it, but I would like to have some HD quality video of some of the best..

I'm actually pretty surprised to get this much attention in the thread .. for me it's 4am in the US, I think the Amiga / Demoscene phenomena was much huge over seas at the time.. Laxity, who's one of my favorite midi artists is from Denmark

originally posted by: RAY1990
a reply to: miniatus

That Pacman game would be worth a bit now, the guy I got the ST off was a bit of a geek and had all sorts of stuff I couldn't work out. it literally came with 1500-2000 disks and pretty much every piece of equipment you can think of.

It blew my mind the detail in the games, I still find myself trying to find replacements to those classics like Populous, Deuteros and Utopia.

I was 8 or so at the time, I think a revisit would still fill me with wonder. I'd be able to understand half of it now lol.

Just to add, to my young mind the Atari kept up with consoles 10 year ahead of it in terms of enjoyment. Those were the days Final Fantasy 7-9 and the likes of Command & Conquer and Sim City... No small feat.

Ah yeah some of those titles existed on the Amiga as well .. some of the final fantasy games for sure, Populous, Sim City for sure... I'm sure there's an Atari ST emulator out there in fact there's a ton of them

www.zophar.net...

You'd just need to find the rom files to play them on your computer.. I have tons of emulators, Amiga, MAME, NES, SNES, N64, Playstation 1 & 2 ..

Amiga 1000 , 500 and other + Toaster
Ctrl Amiga Amiga
Bringing back memories of Star Command

originally posted by: Gothmog
Amiga 1000 , 500 and other + Toaster
Ctrl Amiga Amiga
Bringing back memories of Star Command

hehe .. my friend Brad had a toaster, he's also one of the guys who was involved in VFX on Stargate SG1, iRobot, the first incredible hulk film, a stephen king mini-series which eludes me by name at the moment and countless other projects... I'm happy for him! but he was training me in Lightwave ( on the PC by then ) years back before he got the job offer to do iRobot with Will Smith... I believe he did previs in that one, but it launched him into the world of hollywood.. he did a bunch of stuff for the syfy network as well .. I nearly got to do some music work for Syfy myself, which is much easier for me than VFX ..

My cousin introduced me to the Amiga, Brad introduced me to 3d rendering.. he had a raptor and a toaster at one point, he used to live near the AFB locally and also did a lot of renderings of F16s and stealth fighters for the base as a visualization.. he worked for the local cable company too for promotional videos back then.. I was never that great because I didn't get enough exposure, I did do an impressive rendering of a picnic table that is very realistic .. it was modeled exactly after the one behind our office.. it's for sale lol .. it's been purchased WAY more than I thought, but that's my extent of 3d rendering outside of a neat domino video I did.. but who doesn't do that when they start?

Music is more my thing.. ( oneduality by my music name )

I owned a 500, 2000 and 3000 .. the 3000 was brief, my cousin borrowed it and I never saw it again.. a decade later he said he sold it at a garage sale, forgetting he borrowed it and thought it was his... Believable to a point I guess since he's the one who introduced me to the Amiga to start... but c'mon.. how could you forget owning an A3000 .. that was an odd one in the bunch..

a reply to: miniatus

Oh I've got a few emulators kicking about and copies of the classics, I've really been meaning to dig the old Atari out but haven't had much of an excuse. I'm not sure how I'd go about it but I'm sure I could upload all the demos etc onto the net somehow, I know a lot of the demos and games are for the Atari 2000 and some do go back to the one you have I'm sure of it.

A lot of the magazines too, with the code on the back

I'm a complete idiot when it comes to computers (happily ignorant) though I'd be more than happy to get some life out of what's basically a goldmine in the loft. Someone might as well get use out of it.

originally posted by: RAY1990
a reply to: miniatus

Oh I've got a few emulators kicking about and copies of the classics, I've really been meaning to dig the old Atari out but haven't had much of an excuse. I'm not sure how I'd go about it but I'm sure I could upload all the demos etc onto the net somehow, I know a lot of the demos and games are for the Atari 2000 and some do go back to the one you have I'm sure of it.

A lot of the magazines too, with the code on the back

I'm a complete idiot when it comes to computers (happily ignorant) though I'd be more than happy to get some life out of what's basically a goldmine in the loft. Someone might as well get use out of it.

OMG you reminded me of my brother's old TRS-80 micro when you mentioned the magazines with code... that's actually my first real experience and I completely forgot about it.. I was probably 10-11 when I learned basic.. my brother fished a TRS-80 micro from the trash and got it working again .. he even rigged up a reset button which it didn't have I guess? .. but it had a cassette tape thing.. so once you typed in all the code you could record it to tape and play it back later.. he used to have ME type it all in as the little brother.. the first one I did was a star trek game.. it took me forever to do it.

But I realize it's the same principle as modems at the time.. I spent so much time typing in the code from these weekly magazines and all he had to do was play them when I was done lol .. but that no doubt sparked my interest in programming that I have to this day..

a reply to: RAY1990

By the way... with your collection be SUPER careful who you trust .. I'd love to offer you to send it my way so I could some how get it online but that would be a bad idea for you to trust someone you don't know.. I've made that mistake.

Keep what you have, find someone who can appraise it and then you get a baseline.. then see if you can find something from there, maybe find someone you want to sell to or someone you think is compassionate about it... this hardware is very important because it's too easily lost in time.. I wish I had kept my old turbo graphics 16 ... I got a lot of crap from people for hording that type of tech and in the end it would have been best had I not listened.. I do still have my A2000 and my original monitor I had with my A500 .. I have the original seagate HD .. the keyboard, mouse.. I curse my cousin for selling my A3000 .. and I do kind of regret trading my A500 for a PC so long ago, the 500 was much better than what I got at the time..

Cool page. Subscribed.

Speaking of the Compute and Run magazines , I blame them for where I am today...

a reply to: miniatus

I'd have to get round to finding it all first haha, I have an old friend who is an expert on such things (early game designer) so I'll ask him about it. I'm keen on it going to a good home rather than making anything from it, it's a genuine snapshot of history I suppose and has a huge nostalgia factor for some.

I'll see if I can get a hand rummaging through the loft, if I can I'll upload some pics.

originally posted by: miniatus

originally posted by: RAY1990
a reply to: miniatus

That Pacman game would be worth a bit now, the guy I got the ST off was a bit of a geek and had all sorts of stuff I couldn't work out. it literally came with 1500-2000 disks and pretty much every piece of equipment you can think of.

It blew my mind the detail in the games, I still find myself trying to find replacements to those classics like Populous, Deuteros and Utopia.

I was 8 or so at the time, I think a revisit would still fill me with wonder. I'd be able to understand half of it now lol.

Just to add, to my young mind the Atari kept up with consoles 10 year ahead of it in terms of enjoyment. Those were the days Final Fantasy 7-9 and the likes of Command & Conquer and Sim City... No small feat.

Ah yeah some of those titles existed on the Amiga as well .. some of the final fantasy games for sure, Populous, Sim City for sure... I'm sure there's an Atari ST emulator out there

in fact there's a ton of them

www.zophar.net...

You'd just need to find the rom files to play them on your computer.. I have tons of emulators, Amiga, MAME, NES, SNES, N64, Playstation 1 & 2 ..

Still got my old
Timex 1000 with 16Kb ram plug-in module
TRS-80 - CC 2 with tape recorder
Amiga 500 was thinking off powering it up the other day lol

a reply to: miniatus

Nice! Watchnig the Scorched Tanks in HD. Subscribed.