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Defender of the Crown, 1986, by CINEMAWARE. A fabulous Action/Strategy hybrid that really exhibited the graphic and sound capabilities of the Amiga. Like most CINEMAWARE games, it was ported to many systems, which only proved the Amiga's A/V superiority . "Amiga," a Spanish word for female friend. Commodore kept the name when they bought the Amiga computer company, which was a stroke of genius since this is the one thing most young male computer geeks (like myself) always sought but could never obtain -- a girlfriend. Seriously, it was the mouth-watering graphics and sound the Amiga produced that kept the male-dominated computer gaming demographic of the 80's glued to their keyboard and not out on dates. This is my theory of why the Amiga fans eventually died out -- they couldn't reproduce. That sad note aside, the Amiga was the pinnacle of computer gaming before it was eventually crushed under the continuing evolution of the Intel-based PC. When the original Amiga was released in 1985, its palette of 4096 colors completely blew away the four shades of blue and purple produced by its CGA graphics-based competition. Also, its four-voice stereo sound drowned out the one voice "bleeps" produced by the IBM clones of the day. It literally took seven years to surpass the gaming power of the Amiga. For those relatively few who owned an Amiga from 1986 - 1991, you were experiencing the best the world had to offer a gamer. By 1987, publishers and games were plentiful on the Amiga. However, the newest trend in the U.S. gaming industry was the influx of European publishers. Some of the best games for the new 16-bit platforms was coming from across the pond. Current stars of the U.S. market, including Bullfrog (Populous, Magic Carpet, Dungeon Keeper, etc.), Infogrames (Captain Blood, Alone in the Dark, EF2000, etc.) and Psygnosis (Barbarian, Lemmings, Destruction Derby, etc.), made names for themselves with their work on the Amiga and Atari ST.
Hardware Resources:
The Museum
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