It's mostly the nature of the beast, it is still a computer. Since there were various different Amiga models with different Kickstart ROMs, graphics chipsets and memory configurations released (something that you rarely have on consoles, besides PAL vs NTSC maybe, and some small updates to their boot ROMs), at first you must educate yourself what were the most common Amiga configurations that most Amiga games were designed for.

For older pre-AGA (1991 or older I guess, which I feel is the bulk of) Amiga games, probably something like:

A500 + Kickstart ROM 1.3 + OCS chipset + 1MB chip memory

But as said, some games might have been finicky, e.g. about the memory configuration or whether or not you should have a second floppy disk drive (in the emulator you assign virtual floppy disk drives). If some Amiga 500-era game does not run on that aforementioned configuration, then you must try something else.

With a real Amiga, it is obviously quite a bit harder to change the machine configuration to suit the needs of individual games.

I don't recall having issues with that, it should work in full screen mode similarly like you play old 640x480 or 800x600 resolution games on modern PCs, the lower resolution is just scaled to the higher one. Try different display options with the emulator, it shouldn't be a problem.

Getting rid of the pesky copy protections usually make the games easier to run, also with emulators. I think e.g. the makers of Warhead space combat sim later endorsed the hacked Amiga version of the game, as apparently the original, copy protected, version was near impossible to run on emulators.

I recall there was also a project of archiving old Amiga game disk images including the copy protection, but I am unsure what was the actual point of that.

I just celebrated Amiga Day by playing some MegaLoMania. Still a great game. I'm off to bed now, but I think I need to play some Moonstone tomorrow.

I prefer what I thought this topic was.

There's... an... Amiga Day? What next? Tree planting day?

That has been done already

Well, they could do exactly what they are doing with DOS games, namely wrap the game in a freeware emulator. The problem is that they would need a license for the kickstart ROMs, and that is something they either haven't pursued yet, or just haven't been able to get a deal that makes sense economically. They do have to make money, and if whoever holds the rights to the kickstart ROMs want too much for a license, then selling "click'n'play" Amiga games is out of the question.

One thing that may have held them back previously is that the site wasn't geared to anything but standalone releases, meaning that each Amiga game they sold would have to come with its own kickstart ROM, which would of course necessitate a license for each of them. However, since they now sell DLC, which requires the base game to play, presumably they could sell an Amiga Starter Pack with an emulator and the necessary ROMs, and then sell games separately which require those ROMs.

Still, the two big unanswered questions are "Can they get a deal for the kickstart ROMs?" and "Are they even interested in selling Amiga games?"

They did ask the community a while back if we wanted them to expand to emulation, so the second is likely "yes, if the work is worth it financially".

Amiga deserves more attention but I don't think new console generation cares the history. But who cares? Amiga was great!

I still have mine in the basement. Haven't touched it in decades (other than packing it up from when I've moved) and have no idea whether it even works.

The weirdest memory I have is how its old dot matrix printer worked: it couldn't properly print letters with descenders (p's, q's, g's, etc.) so it "upshifted" them by two rows of dots instead. So whenever I printed out an essay or short story I'd written, the text wound up looking wonky: j's looked a lot like l's, and it was hard to tell whether a 'Y' was in upper case or lower.

Okay, are there three parts to this - emulator, game, and kickstart ROM? I thought ROM referred to the game. (Plus I'm used to thinking about DOSBox or ScummVM releases in two parts - game and emulator.)

I hope GOG is willing, to an extent, to look beyond profit (while still staying in business of course) and consider bringing great games not easily available elsewhere (don't get angry with me timppu, I still want to see great Steam games here ;), as well as better versions of the games we already have here (Superfrog and co.)

Yes, exactly, I meant just that: people having to download the emulator and buy the ROMs elsewhere, then turning to GOG for the games only, and finally putting it all together and making it work on their own. I see that you and I (and Wishbone) agree that the main problem here is that such an approach would be of appeal only to a small number of customers, it would go against GOG's "install and play old games on modern systems on-the-spot" philosophy, it could generate frustration among less "tech-savvy" customers. Yet, I wonder if GOG could simply offer some Amiga versions of games already in its catalogue, alongside the standalone, "meant-for-everyone" DOS ones bundled with DOSBox, clearly stating the difference. Of course, here I'm implying that distributing the Amiga version wouldn't be inconvenient if an agreement has already been reached with the copyright holder for the DOS one, but I'm speculating.


Yes, you have the emulator (WinUAE, for example), that is free to download, but to make it work (as opposed to other emulators, like WinVICE for the C64, for example) you need the kickstart roms, and these are copyrighted; the only way to acquire them legally (other than getting them from a real Amiga if you are skilled enough) is to buy the "Amiga Forever" package from Cloanto, which comes in different formats. And then, you have the games (or applications) that typically come in ADF (or "disk image") format, that is, each .adf file carries the content of an Amiga 3.5 original floppy disk (so, a game that came, for example, on 4 disks is split into 4 files, and you have to mount them in the emulator just like you did with the physical disks); many of them are free and can be legally downloaded from certain websites, but a great deal of the true Amiga classics obviously are not, and can be acquired only through piracy (or by copying to PC your original disks if you still happen to own them or buy them second-hand).
Talking about ROMs for Amiga games is common but probably uncorrect, since we're not dealing with cartridges as in the case of old consoles.