[radicalbyte]

Buy a MiSTer FPGA and run Amiga Vision on it. You can plug in a proper keyboard and joystick and you can map jump to a button instead of up as it traditionally is on Amiga.

I have to admit that it's better than using my A500/A1200s.

[erwincoumans]

Thanks, your comment made me buy the icode prebuilt preloaded MiSTer FPGA, 128mb ram, hope that is sufficient for Amiga Vision. I used to own an Amiga 500 with internal HDD, long ago. Guru meditations still exist?

https://www.icode.com/product/mister-fpga-kit-terasic-de10-n...

[radicalbyte]

Nice, congrats!

Even the most basic models (the $99 + shipping + tax from China) can handle the Amiga. You get more bells whistles plus a better package with a MiSTer stack but I would recommend most people to either grab the Multisystem II or the Mister Pi (Turbo Pack) from RetroRemake. If you want to run Saturn fighters then getting a second stick of RAM is a must as it allows everything to run at full speed.

I have the Ultimate Mister kit with USB + AV boards but only a single stick of RAM (also 128MB) and a Honeywell PSU and it's awesome especially for the Amiga and C64 :)

[erwincoumans]

Yeah the Mister Pi makes more sense, financially. On the C64 side, there is the upcoming C64 Ultimate https://www.commodore.net, that looks almost identical to the original one

[crims0n]

Oh wow, AmigaVision even runs on an Analogue Pocket - going to have to give this a try.

[actionfromafar]

For a software version, try WinUAE. (Win/Mac/Linux builds available.)

[abrugsch]

getting the hardware is only half the battle. Hard agree with going for a MiSTer setup however it's quite an expense for someone dipping a toe in.

ultimately it's hard to prescribe the "definitive" amiga experience in 2025 to a total newbie. At a surface level, for many people, amiga ownership was simply a console like experience -> Buy an amiga 500, and shovel game disks into it, play game, turn it off. Replicating that is super easy with either just a raspberry pi and the PiMiga distro (see the Chris Edwards youtube channel for details) or even retropie comes with support for amiga OOTB however it comes with the caveat of having a little background knowledge of the hardware combinations available. The ABSOLUTE easiest way of getting a taste of amiga is to get hold of a "The A500" mini console which comes with pre-packaged games (but also lets you run your own once you've got to the end of enjoying the 30 or so pack-ins).

There is the WinUAE emulator for windows that's excellent (so good, you can use it to prep real-world Hard drives for actual physical amigas) but it's complicated without prior knowledge of the OG hardware combinations.

The most common setup back in the day (for UKers playing games at least) was an OG Amiga 500 with OCS (Original Chip Set) with 0.5MB RAM(ChipRAM - essentially shared system and graphics memory) and maybe an optional extra 0.5 MB upgrade (FastRAM - CPU only memory, though often known now as SlowRAM because it was directly accessable by the CPU only but had to share the bus with the chip RAM) and 1.3 Kickstart ROM.

This was later upgraded by the A500+ which came with ECS (Enhanced Chip Set) which gave a few added graphical modes, 1MB of Chip RAM (typically upgradable to +1MB fast RAM) and kickstart 2.0. it broke compatibility with some games and was a min spec for others.

This was replaced directly by the A1200 which came with an upgraded CPU (68020ec at 14 MHz) AGA chipset (16.7 mil colour palette, 256 on screen), internal IDE interface and kickstart 3.0 with 2MB ChipRAM out of the box.

The A500+ was also indirectly replaced with the A600. Essentially a A500+ mini - they updated the manuafcturing to surface mount, reduced the PCB size significantly and removed the numberpad from the keyboard and added the IDE interface from the A1200. it was supposed to be a cost reduced version but initially cost more to make than the outgoing A500+. It was hated at the time because it cost more at retail and had less features (lack of keypad broke a lot of software, IDE interface wasn't seen as beneficial at the time and the side expansion port was replaced by a PCMCIA port which again only had much more expensive peripherals at the time) The rest are the "Big Box" amigas - computers with a separate keyboard from the main box case: A1000 (the OG or just "Amiga" when it launched)

A2000 - The workhorse version of thw A500 with expansion, processor,video upgrade slots.

A1500 - a UK specific cut down version of the A2000 just launched to inflict trademark damage to a sole trader startup making aftermarket cases for the A500.

A3000 - the first fully 32-bit platform - ECS and 32-bit 680x0 CPUs available (IIRC both 68020 and 68030 though might be wrong about the '020)

A4000 - a big box equivalent to the A1200 - AGA and expansion

A4000T - towerized version of A4000 - the holy grail for collectors and rare as hens teeth.

However in 2025 getting involved with the amiga scene is a huge rabbit hole as the community is so large there are always wonderful projects (such as PiStorm) for enhancing and extending the life of these now very aged machines.

Sorry, this ended up a bit of an essay on what was only supposed to be a quick note...

[1313ed01]

> "The A500" mini console which comes with pre-packaged games (but also lets you run your own once you've got to the end of enjoying the 30 or so pack-ins).

https://retrogames.biz/games/thea500-mini/

I count to 26, plus one free download they provide for testing out the USB feature.

Amiga Forever in Windows (or in WINE) is about as easy to run, plus it comes with nice pre-configured system images to boot into Workbench. Not having much real Amiga experience I struggle a bit with making use of those. I tried to install some freeware Amiga applications (trackers and such) but not much success.

[radicalbyte]

I spent less on getting my MiSTer up and running than I did getting my A500+ and a lot less than getting my A1200 setup running. And I have the original Ultimate MiSTer setup.

With the RetroRemake and QMTech setup you're up and running for the 8/16-bits for under $200 all-in which for most people in tech in the US isn't a big ask. The experience is also much better than emulation IMHO.