Amiga Phase V blizzard 1220/4

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Today was a good day! I managed to score myself a PhaseV blizzard 1220/4 Amiga A1200 RAM Module on eBay. It’s a 68020 (same chip that comes in the Amiga a1200) but it runs at 28Mhz and includes 4Mb of FastRAM which frees up the blitter wait states, thus, speeds up the amiga.

I must admit, after installing the card, there is a noticeable difference in load speed. Of course, this is largely helped along by the fact I also installed a 8GB CF solid state hard drive into my Amiga as well. The boot up speed into Workbench is impressive … Really impressive.

The other thing I really like about the CF hard drive is there is absolutely zero noise. It’s even been programmed to stop the disc drive from ‘clicking’ when the drive is sitting idle. If you ever owned a Amiga, you know the noise I’m talking about.

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C64 : A Visual Commpendium

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Today, the postman really did deliver. I received my copy of C64 : A Visual Commpendium by Bitmap Books.

This book celebrates the visual side of the Commodore 64, starting from the early days with games such as Jupiter landing and working it’s way through to classics such as Mayhem in Monsterland and Lemmings. I absolutely love this book, the design, layout and print quality is astounding.

From the moment I turned the first page I was flooded with memories of my childhood. The endless amount of hours I spent playing most of the games featured in this book. The real treat though, was realising the games you had completely forgot all about. Seeing the images again just jogs your memory and takes you back to the last time you played them.

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One for the 56th!

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One of my favourite games of all time is Wings by Cinemaware on the Commodore Amiga. I have fond memories as a 15 year old teenager, locked away in my bedroom playing this game for hours.

Eventually, after what felt like an eternity, I beat the Hun and helped win the war for the Allies. I’ve never forgotten that day because something was different, something felt different. I’d never felt this way about completing a computer game before, Wings was different …

By the time I was 15 I had played a lot of games on a lot of different platforms. It all started with Pong then went something like the ZX81, Acorn Electron, Dragon 32, Commodore 64, Commodore 128 and Amiga. I am in no way claiming I am a force to be reckoned with when it comes to gaming (I’m not), I am merely pointing out that I was no stranger to either computers or gaming at this point. I had played a lot of games and I had beaten some of them.

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