21:21:57
16-BIT. 100 % HERZ // KICKSTART 3.1 // WORKBENCH LOADED
The Amiga was a shoot-'em-up platform par excellence — Paula sound, 50 Hz smooth scrolling and massive explosions. These 15 belong in every collection, sorted by year of release.
First Amiga shmup highlight, Scoopex-style firepower, enormously difficult. Predecessor to Battle Squadron.
David Jones' (later GTA creator) debut. R-Type-inspired with Psygnosis aesthetic and soundtrack by David Whittaker.
Successor to Hybris, 2-player co-op, insane scrolling speed, brilliant Ron Klaren soundtrack. A reference for many.
Bomb the Bass as soundtrack. Shop upgrades, insect inspiration, industrial look — Bitmap Brothers style at its best.
Silkworm successor. Player 1 flies helicopter, Player 2 drives jeep. 2-player co-op classic.
A dragon shmup with fantasy setting. Parallax scrolling in OCS quality that is hard to beat.
Cult status. You are a bee. Chris Huelsbeck soundtrack. Graphics by Frank Matzke. Level design like a work of art, hard to top. Outstanding.
X-Out successor, uncompromising R-Type clone with its own twist. Hard, precise, stylish.
Team17's AAA shmup — large parallax backgrounds, huge end bosses, multiline firepower. The Special Edition is the playable version (the original was brutally hard).
Very polished late-era shmup with multiple weapons and detailed graphics. Underrated.
You are an owl. Graphically one of the most beautiful Amiga shmups ever — Tim Wright soundtrack, watercolour-style backgrounds.
Pure AGA showcase: 256 colours simultaneously, three parallax layers, multiple weapons systems. WWI aviation setting, one of the most technically impressive A1200 shmups.
DMA Design stroke of genius (pre-GTA era). Buy weapons, crack safes, 2-player co-op. Too easy? Try making it to the end.
Not a classic shmup but a run-and-gun, but shoots just as furiously. Dreamlike sprites, cartoon visuals, outstanding.
Homebrew from 2017 — a brand new commercial Amiga development. Looks like the best 1991 shmup you never played. Proves: the Amiga is not dead.
From a poker game with Atari in California to the modern Apollo Standalone — the Amiga's journey over 40 years. Not a linear one, but a fascinating one.
Jay Miner and partners found Hi-Toro (later Amiga Corporation) in Santa Clara, California. The goal: the next generation of graphics and sound hardware. Initially conceived as a games console, then a computer.
Amiga Corp. is on the verge of bankruptcy. Commodore buys the company for 24 million USD — obtaining the nearly finished custom chipset (Agnus, Denise, Paula) in the process. Atari (with shareholder Jack Tramiel) was the other interested party and lost.
Launch in New York, Andy Warhol and Debbie Harry on stage. The A1000 has 256 KB RAM, Kickstart 1.0 from floppy disk (not yet in ROM!), and the then-unprecedented 4,096 colours. Price: $1,295. Target audience: creatives, scientists — not gamers.
The A500 becomes THE home computer of Europe. Kickstart 1.2, 512 KB, for ~800 DM. The A2000 arrives as the professional variant with expansion slots. Games developers discover the platform — 1987 marks the start of the golden Amiga era.
The A3000 with 68030, hi-res interlace and Kickstart 2.0 (in ROM). New Workbench look, finally a "grown-up" AmigaOS. Only: the A3000 was too expensive and sold poorly.
The Advanced Graphics Architecture chipset arrives with the A1200 (home computer) and A4000 (professional). 262,144 colours simultaneously, HAM8, double bandwidth. AmigaOS 3.0. But: PC and SVGA are already pulling away — the gap is shrinking.
Commodore International files for insolvency. Mismanagement, missed opportunities, no strategy against Windows 95. The Amiga community is shocked. What remains: millions of devices in circulation, a huge fan base, and years of uncertainty.
Escom buys the brand in 1995. Briefly produces the A1200 and A4000T. Goes bankrupt in 1996 as well. Gateway buys in 1997, sells in 1999 to Amiga Inc. Hardly any new devices, many promises, little substance.
Hyperion Entertainment (Belgium) gets the contract to port AmigaOS to PowerPC. AmigaOS 4.0 appears in 2004 — only for very rare PPC hardware (AmigaOne). Market share: homeopathic. But: the project lives.
In parallel, two alternative Amiga OSes emerge: MorphOS (PowerPC, commercial) and AROS (Research OS, Open Source). Both exist to this day — AROS even runs as a ROM replacement in emulators.
The retro scene explodes. WHDLoad becomes the standard. Emulators (WinUAE, FS-UAE) become production-ready. Apollo Accelerators bring the first FPGA turbo cards, later the Vampire cards.
Hyperion surprises: a modern AmigaOS 3.1.4 version for Classic Amigas (A500/A1200/A4000). First new OS since 1993 for the original devices. From there it keeps rolling — 3.2 (2021), 3.2.2 (2024), 3.2.2.1 (2025).
Claude Schwarz introduces PiStorm — a Raspberry Pi as an Amiga CPU emulator. Open source, affordable, extremely fast. With Emu68 (2022+), it becomes the new reference accelerator.
Apollo Accelerators brings the V4+ Standalone — a standalone Amiga system with 68080 core, SAGA chipset, HDMI, 1 GB RAM. Not an Amiga, but a fully compatible "reborn system".
The Amiga scene in 2026 is more active than in the last 20 years combined: active forums, new hardware (Vampire, PiStorm, Gotek), active demo productions at Revision every year, new games (Tower 57, Inviyya, Wings of Death ports), open OS (AROS, AmigaOS 3.2), active developer community. The Amiga lives — because its fans never let go.
Your A500 outputs 15-kHz RGB, your new 4K monitor wants HDMI or DisplayPort. This is the household retro problem. Here are the five common solutions — from "10 euros and it works" to "500 euros and perfect".
The Amiga outputs an analogue RGB signal with 15 kHz horizontal frequency on its DB23 port (A500/600/1200 OCS/ECS; AGA can also do 31 kHz). Modern monitors require 31 kHz upwards. Between the two lies a scaler/converter. The picture quality depends heavily on how well the scaler works.
Raspberry Pi-based digital capture. Open Source. Reads the RGB signal pixel-perfect (no analogue re-sampling), outputs HDMI. Exactly what the Amiga community has established as the standard for 2024+.
FPGA-based line-doubler (not a scaler!) — multiplies the 15 kHz lines to 31/60/120 kHz, but without interpolation. Result: razor sharp, but not all TVs/monitors accept the signal. Very popular with console enthusiasts.
The ~20 € cheap Chinese scaler GBS-8200 + ESP8266 with GBS-Control firmware makes for a surprisingly passable RGB-to-VGA converter. No HDMI out directly — you still need a VGA-to-HDMI adapter (5-10 €) behind it.
Individual Computers' internal flicker fixer — plugs directly onto the Denise/Lisa chip. Outputs a DVI/HDMI signal internally from the Amiga. No external box, no cable clutter.
The legendary Micomsoft Framemeister (Japan) — was the reference for years, no longer manufactured. Used on eBay ~400-600 €. Only worth it for collectors now, RGB2HDMI has functionally surpassed it.
| Solution | Price | Quality | Installation |
|---|---|---|---|
| RGB2HDMI | 35-90 € | Very good | External, plug and play |
| OSSC | 130-160 € | Very good (line-doubler) | External, plug and play |
| GBS-Control | ~40 € | OK | External, but soldering for ESP |
| Indivision MK3 | 190-240 € | Very good | Internal, chip socket |
| Framemeister | 400-600 € (used) | Premium | External |
Write a game? Tinker with a tool? Assembler power or rather BASIC? The Amiga probably has the most diverse language landscape of the 8/16-bit era. Here is the guide — and our Amigo AI Assistant helps you with most of them.
BASIC dialect by François Lionet (1990), specifically for Amiga game development. Built-in commands for sprites, bobs, screens, maps, music. Immediately productive — in 2 hours you have your first playable prototype.
BASIC compiler with inline assembler — generates native 68k code. Considerably faster than AMOS, access to all Amiga hardware registers. Many commercial Amiga games of the 90s were written with it (Skidmarks, T-Zero).
The language of AmigaOS itself. All libraries are written in C, the official NDK (Native Developer Kit) is C-based. For serious application programming, system tools, AmigaOS extensions.
Every demo of the Amiga Demoscene is written in 68k-ASM. Absolute control over Copper, Blitter, Paula, chip RAM timing. Devpac 3 on the Amiga, vasm cross-platform.
Wouter van Oortmerssen's object-oriented language, syntactically between C and Modula. Very fast compiler, integrated GUI libraries. Could have become big, but came too late for the Amiga commercial era.
Commercial, Airsoft Softwair (Andreas Falkenhahn). Multimedia scripting language, builds cross-platform apps from a single source for AmigaOS 3/4, MorphOS, AROS, Windows, macOS, Linux, Android. Actively developed (Version 10 from 2024).
IBM's REXX on the Amiga. Inter-process communication, scripting, application automation. Many classic Amiga programs (GoldED, Directory Opus, IBrowse) have ARexx ports — you control them via script.
| Your goal | Recommendation |
|---|---|
| First small game, quick result | AMOS Professional |
| Commercial Amiga game, speed is important | Blitz BASIC 2 or C + ASM |
| System tool, AmigaOS integration | C (SAS/C or VBCC) |
| Demoscene, Copper/Blitter magic | 68k-Assembler |
| Cross-platform (also Windows/Android) | Hollywood |
| Connect tools via script | ARexx |
| Develop modern cross-compile on PC | GCC (Bebbo) or vasm |
7.09 MHz no longer enough? Three ways to beam your Amiga into the modern age: Vampire (FPGA magic), PiStorm (Raspberry Pi as CPU) and TerribleFire (real 68k silicon power). Here is the showdown.
An original Amiga is cultural heritage — but also a bottleneck. The 68000 in the A500 runs at 7.09 MHz, WHDLoad games stutter, AmigaOS 3.2 crawls. An accelerator swaps the CPU for a faster variant, often brings Fast RAM, CF/IDE storage and sometimes even RTG graphics with HDMI. Three approaches dominate 2026.
FPGA-based "Reborn Amiga" from the Apollo team. The Apollo 68080 core is a standalone 68k-compatible processor with 64-bit AMMX unit, superscalar pipeline and SAGA chipset (SuperAGA) incl. Maggie 3D unit, 32-bit RTG and digital video output.
Current models:
Performance: ~160 MIPS / 80 MFLOPS — factor of ~230 compared to 68000 @ 7 MHz. Roughly PowerPC 750 @ 800 MHz with AMMX.
Price: V4+ Standalone base ~535 € gross (shop.apollo-computer.com). Fully equipped up to 700-800 €.
Open-source project (captain-amygdala/GitHub). A Raspberry Pi replaces the 68k socket and emulates the CPU via software. Emu68 (bare-metal JIT, Michal Schulz) is today the standard software stack.
Variants 2026:
Performance: Pi 4 / CM4 @ 1.8 GHz delivers ~2,050 MIPS with Emu68 v1.1 — faster than any real 68060. 256-512 MB emulated Fast RAM, 2 GB limit (AmigaOS).
Price: PiStorm board only ~58 €, complete package with Pi 3A+ ~120-190 €. PiStorm32-Lite ~85-90 € board, complete ~130-170 €.
Buy: AMIGAstore, AmigaKit, RetroPassion, Ultimate MiSTer — all with assembly completed.
Completely open-source hardware (KiCad + firmware on GitHub). Classic approach: real Motorola 68030 / 68060 CPUs on own PCB. No FPGA magic, no Pi.
Current cards:
Performance: 68030 @ 50 = 8-12 MIPS, 68060 @ 100 = ~110 MIPS. Less than Vampire/PiStorm — but native CPU with maximum software compatibility.
Buy: AMIGAstore, RetroPassion, AmiBay, occasionally Tindie.
| Criterion | Vampire V4+ | PiStorm32-Lite | TF1260 |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPU equivalent | 68080 @ 100 MHz (FPGA) | 68040-2000 MIPS (emul.) | 68060 @ 50-100 MHz (real) |
| Speedup vs 68000 | ~230x | ~280x | ~100-150x |
| RAM | 512 MB / 1 GB DDR3 | up to 2 GB (Pi RAM) | 128 MB Fast RAM |
| Storage | 128 GB CF + microSD | microSD (Pi) | 2.5" IDE |
| HDMI / Digital | yes, up to 1080p | yes (Pi HDMI) | no |
| RTG | SAGA 32-bit | via Emu68 | no |
| Price | 535-800 € | 85-170 € | 250-350 € |
| Target Amiga | Standalone | A500-A2000-A1200-A600 | A500/A1200/A2000 |
| Installation | none (standalone) | plug and play | plug and play to soldering |
| Future viability | core updates active | Emu68 ongoing | stable, finished |
PiStorm (DIP) + Pi 3A+. Under 120 € complete. Kickstart 3.2 + WHDLoad + HDMI RTG = almost everything runs. Price-performance winner.
PiStorm32-Lite with Pi 4B or CM4. Real AGA remains, ~2,000 MIPS, HDMI RTG. Or Vampire V4 Standalone for "Reborn Amiga" without original chipset.
PiStorm DIY (GitHub, PCB at JLCPCB, Pi 3A+) — ~50-70 €. Or TF534 DIY if you can solder.
Quite clearly: PiStorm / PiStorm32-Lite. No other accelerator delivers so many MIPS per euro, plus open source, active development, huge dealer base.
TF1260 for A1200, TF534 for A500. Real 68k — no emulation quirks with timing-critical demos.
Vampire V4+ Standalone. Ready-made system in CDTV black case, 2 W fanless, ApolloOS from factory. Premium experience.
