The Amiga was set up to do both at the same time without compromise. Yamauchi had wanted to, as David Schaef notes in his book, “Game Over”, introduce a “Trojan Horse” into homes with a low-cost box that could be later expanded into PC-like functions. The difference, however, was that this would be a machine that could play awesome games and be a part of the office at the same time. Gareth Knight, who maintains the Amiga History Guide, quotes the “Father of the Amiga”, Jay Miner, as saying that he wanted “…to build a super personal computer based around the Motorola sixty-eight thousand micro processor.” Back in the early 80s, he wanted to take a bite out of the then-highly lucrative market of video gaming with a machine that would dominate the space…much like what Nintendo’s Hiroshi Yamauchi had in mind with the Famicom. Compared to the puny graphics capabilities of the Apple II at the time or IBM PCs, the Amiga seemed to have landed from the future. The most iconic one is probably the Tutankhamen mask render on the cover of EA’s Deluxe Paint II.

One thing that always stood out for me from many of the ads featuring Amiga entertainment and art-based software were amazingly detailed, eye-opening screenshots. The Commodore Amiga was a machine that was, in many ways, far ahead of its time. Why couldn’t the Apple II do it? Why did those Cinemaware games look so great on the Amiga? I never had an Amiga growing up, but I had always wondered at what kind of machine could create such incredible graphics. And doing it all in vibrant, state-of-the-art color and sound thanks to cutting edge hardware adding in the kind of pizazz that made an easy target of IBM’s monolithic reputation. This ad from Amiga World in 1986 (the system came out the year before in 1985) doesn’t mince a lot of words to sell itself as the one-stop system for anything a user might have in mind.

Defender of the crown amiga 500