Latest news with #Amiga
Metro
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Metro
The Nintendo Switch 2 is the closest thing to a modern day Commodore Amiga
A reader celebrates the 40th anniversary of the Commodore Amiga and suggests that the Switch 2 is its closest current equivalent. It's been a lot of fun to see the love for the Commodore Amiga this week, which I had no idea was 40 years old. As has been pointed out, probably nobody outside of Europe either knows or cares about it now but to me it was the most important games format when I was kid. Which is to say it's what I had, and I couldn't afford a Mega Drive or SNES. Or rather I couldn't afford their games. Amiga games were a lot cheaper (and, well, you know) and they also seemed a lot more varied. To my eyes the vast majority of console games were just platformers of one kind or another. I never even heard of Zelda or Final Fantasy until the PlayStation era and while we never got anything as good as Sonic the Hedgehog on the Amiga I can honestly say I wasn't that bothered. On the Amiga we had all kinds of crazy things, and lots of 3D games and games made in Europe and the UK which never appeared anywhere else. But as soon as consoles took over everything was made in Japan or the US and we've never really gone back from that, even with modern indie gaming on the PC. PlayStation and Xbox aren't interested in anything but a small number of games from a small number of publishers. Heck, the whole point of Xbox is Microsoft wanted to make American companies dominate the games industry, so I can't say I'm too upset that didn't work out. Thinking about what the modern equivalent of the Amiga is I guess you'd have to say it's the PC, but it doesn't feel that way to me. It's too unfocused and you have to use Steam to get anything out of it, which is very American focused. Weirdly it's the Nintendo Switch 2 which feels the closest to the Amiga to me, assuming it works out similar to the original Switch. Although the fact that it has a mouse by default already increases the comparisons, so I hope it makes good use of that. Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. But it's really just how strange and varied all the games are, with no first person shooters or sad dad story games so far, just the crazy Mario Kart and Donkey Kong games and the promise that future games will be as weird as the Switch line-up was. Especially as Drag X Drive even looks a bit like Speedball 2. It's not just Nintendo though but all the other, smaller Japanese developers that they encourage. Companies I'm sure probably wouldn't still be going if it wasn't for the Switch. Games are too expensive to make on PlayStation and Xbox now, for small companies, but the Switch is low-powered enough that it's still possible. I'm not saying these sort of games aren't on the PlayStation as well, but there's not as many and they're certainly not as high profile. You'd never get Sony highlighting them in their equivalent of a Nintendo Direct. I guess what I'm getting at is that gaming seemed a lot less corporate and more unpredictable in the Amiga days and now that I'm older I can see why things like where the games are made and how much they cost to make (and so how much risk they can afford to take) affect that. More Trending There's no point dwelling too much on the past but it is useful to look back and see that not everything has changed for the better. By reader Lester The reader's features do not necessarily represent the views of GameCentral or Metro. You can submit your own 500 to 600-word reader feature at any time, which if used will be published in the next appropriate weekend slot. Just contact us at gamecentral@ or use our Submit Stuff page and you won't need to send an email. MORE: Star Wars Outlaws is Ubisoft's best game and you should get it now it's cheap - Reader's Feature MORE: It is madness that Konami still hasn't made a new Castlevania - Reader's Feature MORE: I had a Commodore Amiga as a kid and this is not the gaming future I imagined - Reader's Feature
The Star
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Star
Celebrate 40 years of the Amiga by playing the classic games here
Commodore started in 1985 with the expensive Amiga 1000. In 1987, the cheaper Amiga 500 (pictured) was also introduced. — Photo: Andrea Warnecke/dpa BERLIN: On July 23, 1985, a legendary gaming computer was born. Four decades on since the original Amiga 1000, anyone feeling nostalgic at the thought of their old Commodore game collection doesn't need to dust off a machine to celebrate. Today, it's far easier to play classics like Emerald Mine , Speedball 2 , Tie Break , King's Quest , Battle Chess , Stunt Car Racer and Test Drive – all right from your web browser. This is made possible by the Internet Archive in San Francisco. The foundation collects virtually all types of digital data imaginable on its servers to preserve them for posterity: music, films, software, websites and, of course, games. The Amiga software library contains more than 13,000 titles. Many of these can be played for free directly in the browser, controlled via keyboard and sometimes also with a mouse. It plays best in full-screen mode: To do this, click on the fullscreen view icon in the top right corner and remember to enable sound below it. Unfortunately, gaming with the archive's collection does not always work reliably. Some games may not start at all. But anyone with a little patience and interest will likely not regret a visit to the Amiga section of the Internet Archive. One major advantage of playing there is that there is no need to constantly swap floppy disks, as was required with the original computer – something most Amiga owners won't miss. For Amiga fans with a television at home, there is also a retro version of the old computer in a smaller format: the A500 Mini. Unlike the free Internet Archive, the mini console comes with a price tag, currently around US$135 or €130 (around RM569). – dpa
Metro
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Metro
I had a Commodore Amiga as a kid and this is not the gaming future I imagined
A reader compares his childhood dreams of what the Amiga era of video games would evolve into with the current day and its very different priorities. There were two things that depressed me in the news this week (the gaming news – there's far more than two in the actual news) and the first was the proof that I'm old, since the Commodore Amiga has turned 40 this month. The other was that the average age of gamers is getting older and older, so that even most Nintendo players are in their 30s. Apparently younger people just aren't playing 'traditional' video games anymore, just free mobile games and live service stuff like Fortnite and Minecraft. Video games don't seem to be of any special interest to them and as companies, most obviously Sony, rush to try and appeal to them… well, you've all seen the release schedules the last few years. This generation has been a disaster, as far as I'm concerned, for PlayStation and Xbox, and as we reach the end of it I'm seriously wondering whether video gaming as I know and love them will even survive for much longer. Suffice to say this is not how I imagined things back when I was playing my Amiga as a wee lad. Back then, when the whole idea of video games was still new, it was hard to imagine what they'd become but I definitely remember talking to a friend about a game in which you could do anything and go anywhere. I think we imagined it as being all our favourite games combined into one, with driving and flying and so on. Little did I know we were basically describing GTA. I'm not sure we had any more specific ideas beyond that, other than the graphics would get more and more realistic and things like Starglider 2 and Frontier: Elite 2 would be expanded upon to a point beyond our imagination. Little did I realise at the time that these games would basically die on the Amiga and never be made again. Looking through GC's list of the 20 best games there were plenty of others I would've added, like James Pond 2: RoboCod, Turrican, Pinball Fantasies, The Chaos Engine, and Superfrog. But overall it was a good list and none of my picks change the point I'm about to make: almost all the games on the list were British. Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. The tragedy is that the only two American games on the list (Civilization and Monkey Island) are also the only two franchises that are still going today. All the other ones are gone or on life support (I think Elite Dangerous is still going on PC, but they stopped updating it on console) and not only are they unlikely to come back but there's nothing like them to take their place. The only thing similar to Elite is the dreadful Starfield, which genuinely feels like a bad Amiga game in terms of its lack of originality and ambition. And there's been nothing else like that for years anyway, so its failure is going to guarantee that doesn't happen again. I haven't got anything against American games but one of the great things about the Amiga was you got games from all over. There were American imports, Japanese imports (although a lot of the arcade conversions were done by British developers), and European games. Nowadays European games either don't exist or are indistinguishable from American ones. Would you know Ubisoft were French if someone hadn't told you? The lack of variety in the types of games that are being made, and the people making them, is truly depressing and it's only going to get worse, as the more games cost the less risks and the less big budget games in general. A lot of games on the Amiga weren't very good but there was always something weird and unexpected round the corner. I'm not sure you even get that with indie games today, which always seem to be just Soulslikes or Metroidvanias. More Trending The dream of ultra realistic graphics has come true but at such a terrible cost that it's just not worth it. All the franchise I used to love are dead and most of the companies making them are too. Worst of all their imagination and ingenuity is dead too, where today more effort is put into cosmetic DLC than the actual games. By reader Johnson The reader's features do not necessarily represent the views of GameCentral or Metro. You can submit your own 500 to 600-word reader feature at any time, which if used will be published in the next appropriate weekend slot. Just contact us at gamecentral@ or use our Submit Stuff page and you won't need to send an email. MORE: The biggest problem with the Nintendo Switch 2 is that it's too big – Reader's Feature MORE: Donkey Kong Bananza is Nintendo and gaming at its best - Reader's Feature MORE: The best thing the PS6 can do is be less powerful than PS5 – Reader's Feature
Stuff.tv
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Stuff.tv
The Atari ST hits 40: we remember Atari's 16-bit micro and six of its best games
Break out the birthday cake and your MIDI cables, because the Atari ST turned 40 this summer. Launched in 1985 as Atari's answer to what was next in home computing, the 16-bit micro was part games machine, part serious workhorse, and part accidental rave enabler. Wait, the Atari ST? Isn't that what people had when they couldn't afford an Amiga? Oh, that's what Amiga owners wanted you to think. But while Commodore's machine beat Atari's on specs, the ST was no slouch. The GEM interface set it up for work as well as play, there were loads of top games that blazed far beyond anything anyone had seen before on a home micro, and built-in MIDI ports made the ST a synth player's dream machine. If you spent the late '80s dancing in warehouses, a lot of those songs were made on the Atari ST. Hang on… you're telling me Atari's beige box invented techno? Well, not the machine itself – the artists did have to do some of the work themselves. But this is where Cubase and Creator (which later evolved into Logic) were born. Because of these apps and the ST's rock-solid MIDI implementation, everyone from Depeche Mode and the Pet Shop Boys to Fatboy Slim used it to smash out hits – and all without sacrificing their bank accounts to the Apple gods. Those MIDI ports took things even further too, being responsible for the rise of deathmatch gaming. Huh? Is there some oddball musical version of Quake I don't know about? Not quite. The pioneering MIDI Maze used those ports for its 16-player mode, so you could play with all your ST-owning friends. It wasn't Quake, just a simple maze game where you blasted 3D smileys that looked like Pac-Man rejects – fitting for the acid house era. Sadly, it couldn't last: the ST was soon eclipsed by PCs. But it's nice to imagine that, every now and then, Fatboy Slim gets his Atari down from the loft and murmurs into its MIDI input: 'I have to celebrate you, baby. I have to praise you like I should.' Six of the best: Atari ST games The ST arrived before the Amiga hit the mainstream. Its games initially bridged 8- and 16-bit fare, before quickly becoming far more ambitious. Although the ST lacked the Amiga's muscle, it kept pace until piracy kicked Atari's ambitions in the MIDI port. But for those initial glorious years, the ST pumped out hit after hit. Our six slots are geared towards what really gave the ST its swagger. That means exclusives and firsts rather than cloning our Amiga list. (But all those games were great on the ST too.) Play Oids (1987) mashed up Thrust, Choplifter and Asteroids, and had you juggle gravity, inertia and laser fire while rescuing hapless slave droids. This tense, twitchy arcade game was also an ST exclusive until some scallywag reversed engineered it for the Amiga decades later. Tsk. Play Starglider 2 (1988) was sold on a disk designed to work on the ST and Amiga. Sometimes it even did. Fortunately, the game itself was reliably amazing, providing hours of gobsmacking shooty space action that held up pretty well when compared to the Amiga version. Play Llamatron 2112 (1991) was an early shareware title that found seminal games creator Jeff Minter revelling in the power of a 16-bit machine, reimagining Robotron in his own inimitable style. Cue: noisy levels packed full of very silly foes and numerous furry beasties to rescue. Play Dungeon Master (1987) was a flagship title that became the ST's best-selling game, along with laying the groundwork for all manner of 3D dungeon crawlers. It lacks the Amiga port's sampled sound, but, hey, you can always make those noises yourself. Play Vroom (1991) started life on the Sinclair QL but roared on to the ST in fine form. Blisteringly fast and fun to play, it wrenched Pole Position into the modern day, leaving other ST racers in its dust. (Well, apart from Stunt Car Racer. We still love you, SCR!) Play Speedball II (1990) didn't start out on the ST, but its futuristic punchy take on handball held its own on the Atari. It even managed to smoothly scroll that massive metal pitch in a way that made ST footie games seethe with envy – until they got a metal ball to the face.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Children's Shoe Retailer Amiga Shoes In Liquidation Mode
A shoe retailer in Industry, Calif., has called it quits. Amiga Shoes Factory Inc. at 17766 Rowland St. in the Rowland Heights neighborhood filed a Chapter 7 liquidation petition in a California bankruptcy court in Los Angeles on Wednesday. More from WWD Former Amazon Employee Arrested for Allegedly Stealing 2,000 Pairs of Shoes From Timberland, New Balance + More RH Opens Second Design Gallery in Canada EXCLUSIVE: Nanushka Pops Up in Paris, Eyes Experiential Retail Expansion Not much is known about Amiga Shoes, although a MapQuest listing that was based on a now-defunct company website said Amiga offered a wide range of children's footwear for infants, kids and teens. The listing said the collection had included flats, school shoes, dress footwear, sandals and boots. The petition listed one unsecured creditor, a service center connected to a small business administration loan in the amount of $150,000. The petition, which listed Woon Hung Leung as the owner, indicates that the SBA loan was its only debt. Total assets were $8,635, comprised of $7,438 in a checking account and $1,197 in a savings account. The debtor owes its legal counsel $4,500 for the bankruptcy oversight, and said that after any administrative expenses are paid, there won't be anything left over for its unsecured creditor. The petition also said the company didn't own any real estate nor did it have any lease interests. It wasn't immediately clear when the business shut down, but at the time of the Chapter 7 filing, Amiga Shoes also said it no longer had any inventory in its possession. There wasn't much detail about the business in the filing. But it did state that the business had gross revenue before deductions and exclusions of $1.4 million for the year ended Feb. 29, 2024. For the year ended Feb. 28, 2025, gross revenue was listed at $454,781. And for the five months from March 1, 2025 to the July 23, 2025 Chapter 7 filing date, the petition said the operation generated zero revenue. Amiga is not the only shoe operation that has seen financial distress. In March, sneaker reseller Soleply filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy court protection. The company said high-interest, short-term debt to fund store expansions had resulted in a cycle of inventory shortages and cash flow instability. And overseas, Swedish footwear brand Eytys that's known for its chunky shoes filed for bankruptcy at the start of 2025 in a Stockholm District Court. There's concern across retail and apparel that U.S. President Donald Trump's global reciprocal tariffs will add new pressures to the sector, particularly for retailers and brands that sell primarily to lower-income consumers. The U.S. operation of tween accessories chain Claire's, which also sells socks and slippers, is said to be under financial distress from a high debt load and added costs from higher tariffs. The business relies heavily on a supply chain based in China. Word surfaced earlier this month that one option is for the business to be sold via a bankruptcy process. The retailer previously exited bankruptcy in 2018, a process that allowed it to shed $1.9 billion in debt. Creditsafe's head of brand and company spokesperson Ragini Bhalla said the company faces 'fierce competition from ultra-low cost online retailers like Shein and Temu.' She also said the retailer's payment history shows clear signs of cash-flow strain, noting that Claire's growing late payments are getting worse. Bhalla said the percentage of outstanding bills up to 30 days past due has 'increased significantly' from 9.5 percent in August 2024 to 12.7 percent in September 2024 and then more than doubling to 26.4 percent in October 2024. By May and June of this year, upwards of 50 percent to 67 percent of its outstanding bills were already in the 1-30 days past due category, she said. And it isn't just the low end that's facing pressures. Handmade boot specialist Freebird earlier this year shuttered 14 store locations. The Colorado-based firm, whose boots are priced between $200 and $400 a pair, is looking for a buyer and could close more stores. Freebird is not in bankruptcy proceedings, but it has been operating under a court-appointed receiver since May following a lawsuit by KeyBank after it failed to repay a $15.4 million debt obligation. The company reportedly owes $6 million in unpaid invoices to a Mexican boot manufacturer that supplied 85 percent of its inventory, a company that has since shut-down operations. In addition, department store retailer Kohl's shut 27 retail doors earlier this year. The downsizing will leave fewer shoe shopping options for consumers in the areas where the stores have closed. Those doors are primarily located in California, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Texas, and in other states. Best of WWD All the Retailers That Nike Left and Then Went Back Mikey Madison's Elegant Red Carpet Shoe Style [PHOTOS] Julia Fox's Sleekest and Boldest Shoe Looks Over the Years [Photos] Sign in to access your portfolio
