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Dedicated to our
“Father of the Amiga”
The Late Great Jay Miner
(31st May 1932 –
20th June 1994)
Aged 62 Years Old

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Welcome to The Amiga Boing Blog, Born on 11th November 2020, which started with the Review of Cave Runner and is dedicated to the life and memory of The Late Great Jay Miner, who is the one and only “Father of the Amiga”

This Blog aims to preserve Classic and even some Modern Games specifically on the Commodore Amiga, I am now on my way to creating the BIGGEST EVER Public Domain. Shareware and Freeware Collection the Amiga has seen, even bigger than The Assassins Collection (and that was HUGE at 260+ Disks)

My main aim is, and will always be, to bring the Amiga to the masses, by creating an simple, easy to use Click ‘N’ Load Games Collection (as in Select a Game from a Menu and it loads), for both WinUAE and Amiga Forever, currently as of April 2024, It looks like this:

As the Games Collection is done as Files/Folders on the PC-side, You can even copy the Games over to a Real Amiga, If you have a PCMCIA Adapter for the Amiga, it is as easy as Drag ‘N’ Drop to a CompactFlash Card, insert that into the Amiga, and copy the files off, ideally using something like SID or Directory Opus

If you do copy the Games to your Amiga, Please note all FONTS are inside the Game directory along with the Game, and remember to check the “Play” file in each directory, as that may include Assigns which allow the Game to work, and you can remove the “CD SYS:20xx/” line from the “Play” file so it will run correctly, since if you intend to run from Workbench, You do not need that “CD” line in there (as Workbench will CD into the directory before executing the “Play” script file

On real hardware you will not require the Kickstart ROMS unless it is a WHDLoad Game, which then requires the Kickstart ROM files in the SYS:DEVS/Kickstarts folder!

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I work pretty hard behind the scenes, I source the Games from Public Domain, Shareware, and Freeware Game Collections, Magazine Coverdisks, The Assassins Collection and many other Collections which were made for the Amiga back in the day

For those who own Amiga Forever I also create RP9 Files of all the Games I have reviewed so far, so you can easily copy them into Amiga Forever and play them instantly without even requiring any additional files as these are simply compressed ZIP files which mainly contains the Games on a HDF (Hard Disc) Image (which loads much faster than ADF images) and has several screenshots, and even Game Documentation, and if available, Links to the websites where you can find out more about the Game itself

NOTE: There are still a handful contained on ADF Images, usually because they hard lock to DF0: or refuse to load from a HDF Image, Generally this applies to Commercial Demos, such as the original Hoi Demo (not Hoi Remix) which reads the bootblock before the Demo loaded, and if tampered with the Demo would not load)

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The Amiga shaped the landscape of the 80’s and 90’s and is still today a very well loved machine, and still used by thousands of dedicated fans all around the world, There were many different models released

The most popular models were the Amiga 500, Amiga 600, and the Amiga 1200

I will remain heavily focused on Amiga-based Games and Commercial Demos which was written or made available on the Amiga Platform

The Games I review are not always Classics either, For example, I have reviewed Metal Gear (2021) and Crazy Columns (2021) which are now available for download in the Games Collection and Amiga Forever RP9 Files, as long as it is an Amiga game which is either Public Domain, Shareware, Freeware or a Demo of a Commercial Game (if available), it will be Reviewed and added to the Games Collection

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The Amiga for me, was a huge part of my life growing up, I used to get Games from a local store which no longer exists *sigh* and disk swap with friends, and yes, we all used X-Copy in those days to create backups of games, except my friend “Charlie” (not his real name to avoid his blushes) whos parents bought him an Atari ST *OH THE HORROR* so he could never Disk Swap with me and my friends, awwww….

My late Mother loved playing Mouth-Man, Deluxe Pacman and Flag Catcher and was always playing them when I came home from School, oh yes, Those were the days, when Games were not 3 billion pixels and needed a High End PC to run them, yes we had to wait while the Good ‘ol Amiga spinned up its Floppy Drive (remember those? – maybe not if you are under 30 heh) and you even had to Disk Swap in games such as Cannon Fodder if you only had 1 drive – Nowadays, There are thankfully GoTek drives which can Emulate a Real Amiga Floppy Drive, especially if the one you had now has Read Errors or will simply refuse to read any Amiga Floppy Disk

I truly love the Amiga, and now many more can also enjoy it today, with emulators like WinUAE (Windows), UAE (Linux), and even Raspberry PI ports of them, making the Amiga so portable, You can take it to a friends house, and play in Full HD on a Raspberry PI – Now thats Progress!

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Commercially the Amiga had some kick-ass Games, from International Karate by Archer Maclean (1962-2022) through to The Chaos Engine, and even games such as Shadow of the Beast, through to Another World, and sadly their were some flops too, like the absolutely horrid conversions, such as Rolling Thunder (I even prefer playing the C64 version, then Arcade versions before the slow, poor Amiga conversion)

As for PD/SW/FW Games, there are absolutely tons of them, likewise, there are some absolute gems, such as Richard Langford’s Games, such as Wally World, Cookie and The Pyramid, to Stuart Fisher’s The Matchstick Man, which is always fun to play, and Flag Catcher by Bryan Turnock, where you have to find the flag in a large area within a set number of moves, while there are again, some absolute flops, such as the really poor Les Dennis Hangman which was created in AMOS, But sadly the source code is not available (as it could have been improved if so), and it only includes one word from Les Dennis himself (“Yes”) which was probably ripped off UK Family Fortunes anyway, of course there are literally thousands of PD/SW/FW Games which fall below par, and proves that while AMOS allowed many to create Amiga Games, it also allowed some to create bad Games

Let’s not forget about Shoot ‘Em Up Construction Kit (SEUCK) which also allowed many to create some pretty decent Shooting Games, now there are not many I can frown upon with SEUCK, most of them are pretty decent, despite the limitations of the SEUCK Engine, and are well designed in most cases, certainly in the ones I have reviewed so far, I have to say Pee Bee is one of my all time favourites, followed by Smurf Hunt, while Godzilla had pretty poor graphics, but reasonable gameplay which draws me in for a quick blast now and again

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On 29th April 1994, Commodore International and Commodore Electronics Ltd declared bankruptcy before the Bahamian Supreme Court, thus ending the companies 40 year history as a leader in consumer products, electronics and one of the pioneers of personal computers, one of which is known as enjoyed as the Amiga.

The Amiga was designed by a small independant team of innovative people in Los Gatos, California, for which we own gratitude to Jay “Padre” Miner, R.J.Mical, Dale Luck and many others both before and after Commodore’s acquisition of the Amiga.

(The Above Text is from “The Game” which was written in Palace Software’s 1989 Shoot Em Up Construction Kit)