Sep-Nov '12 Game Book Discussion Group:"The Future Was Here"

[brunoafh]

My copy shipped today.

[retrosportsgamer]

Got mine today!

[noiseredux]

Me too.

[J T]

I read the free Kindle sample, which includes the intro and the first two chapters.

The Amiga was a pretty impressive machine in its day. I never quite realized how important it was for the development of commercial "multimedia" machines. I remember the Amiga largely for being able to play reasonably good port of Dragon's Lair and for having the best looking version of Defenders of the Crown. I never owned one, but one of my neighbor's did and I was green with envy.

Here are links to a few of the websites and things mentioned in the text:
Ultimate Amiga Emulator
Video of the Boing tech demo
Amiga Addicts Sanctuary

[retrosportsgamer]

Was looking around for Amiga titles and really like www.lemonamiga.com . Are old Amiga roms pretty easy to find online? I'd like to put together a piece eventually.

[Nemoide]

My copy arrived today. I can't wait to start!

[Menegrothx]

Are old Amiga roms pretty easy to find online? I'd like to put together a piece eventually.

Emuparadise has at the moment almost 2600 Amiga ROMs. I've found some fairly rare and obscure Atari ST and Amiga game ROMs just by googling the [game name] download.

[dsheinem]

So who has started into the book?

My copy arrived some time ago, but I FINALLY got to read a little bit today. So far I am intrigued by the kinds of claims made in the first chapter and interested to see how they bear out in future chapters.

Two questions to get us going in this thread:

1) What was the first time you remember having an experience with what you considered to be a "multimedia" system?

2) What experience do you have with the Amiga and/or Amiga emulators?

Also, a reminder: our first online chat about the book will take place in two weeks on Sunday, September 30th at 8:30pm EST! Hope to see most of you there

[noiseredux]

I'm in the middle of the 2nd chapter. I feel like the book is slightly more technical than Racing The Beam was, but that makes sense as the Amiga is a more advanced piece of hardware with more complex programs. I'm glad that there's companion material on the author's website as well.

1. I guess my first "multimedia" experience would have been on PC, though I can't pinpoint what. I think that I kind of more vividly remember the experience from the launch of the Sega CD, even though I had experienced CD media prior.

2. My experience with Amiga software is tiny. I found a version of UAE for Dreamcast which I'll probably muck around with a bit, for no real reason than I feel like giving myself an excuse to grab DC mouse and keyboard. Hmm and maybe an SDCard adapter too... sorry going slight off-topic here.

[retrosportsgamer]

I'm on chapter 2 and like how the author has handled things so far. I thought the first chapter was excellent in setting out the structure of the book and its arguments. I liked acknowledging the common Amiga die-hard cry of "Commodore ruined the Amiga" by pointing out hardware short-comings and laying out that there would be little bias in the book.

1. We had Commodore 64s and an Apple IIGS but I would say the first "multimedia" system would be Windows 3.11 and programs like Microsoft Encarta circa '95. I remember having the Windows 95 beta on our home computer (Pretty brazen for being 16 - I designed and picked out our first PC) and that started everything for me. This makes the Amiga's claims pretty interesting considering when it was released!

2. My Amiga experience is nill outside of knowing it was a step up from the Commodore 64 and that many of the AD&D games for the C64 were also available on the Amiga. I also had the impression growing up that it was only available in Europe.