Fantastic Doug, I enjoyed chatting to the chaps but the journey never ends, there's always more to learn and I'm loving hearing these extra insights.

Great subject! One thing to point out: The economics of Europe in the 80s was hugely different than in NA. Two additional factors to consider: As the much of the world is often impacted by NA economic health, there were several years between the recovery experienced in the 80s in NA before the European economy recovered. The "malaise" of the 70s saw the booming economy of the 80s in NA. The wake effects of that took longer to reach the shoreline-and European working classes were more concerned with "kitchen table" economics when the Amiga came out. Liquidators of US stock often saw the East as an opportunity to dump products that were no longer competitive in the NA market. The more expensive and lower volume north American market essentially was the underwriter for the NRE and manufacturing costs to enable this economies of scale. The fall of the Berlin Wall and opening of the East to Western markets (with less discretionary income). This gave companies who had mastered economies of scale in the west a new target market to offer at much lower price points. When I attended the WoC in Cologne (1991), I was stunned to see C64s everywhere still. To me, it felt like ancient tech-but the Euros were still cultivating a very healthy ecosystem. The situation with the Amiga was not much different. From there, the Euros and Brits also had the fortune of better visionaries who understood that market better than executives at CBM. The Amiga had already run its course in NA. But, while the Amiga was made here, it was the Euro scene where a lot of that creativity exploded. IMHO.

Bought my first A1000 in August of '86 while serving in Lackland AFB TX, actually purchased from the bases' computer shop for $1399 with the 1080 monitor. Computing was a dream after that! Took it with me in 88 when i was stationed in Athens Greece, and it still wowed local fans, because, although the Amiga had reached Europe, the A1000 was on a rather forbidding price tag for most. Still have it, still works! Thanks for the video.

Awesome video, Doug (and Intric8!) I am sure it will be a bit controversial but thanks for dispelling the rumors. As there are plenty of KZfaq videos that state the Amiga was unknown and barely had any sales in NA, this is a good recollection. Glad you guys set the record straight. In my home town of less than 50k (now 82k) people there were 3 stores in our local mall that sold Amiga hardware and Software including, EB, Babbages/Software Etc, Video Concepts and in our town there was also a Toys R Us, a couple camera stores, a dedicated computer store that sold Amiga and Macintosh and your local Kmart, Best products and Gemco. No less then 10 stores within 10 miles! Within 45 miles (including SF and bay area there were many more. No shortage of places to buy games and hardware. I am a bit older then you and I remember it well because of having plenty of people to trade software with and I helped out at a local Software Etc when I was younger that sold A500 bundles. They sold well. For a time they were hard to keep in stock. I also remember it because most of my friends were getting into it as well, especially by the early 90's, which was a tad too late, even some that bought Atari STs and Macs first. But I stayed with it through the A1200 but not much longer than that. By 1993 I had switched to DOS/WFW3.11 partly because of the CD-ROM games like Monkey's Island and Fate of Atlantis! By 1996 I had switched to Power Mac.

I live in the UK, I've never heard this 'not popular in the US' thing. I knew big box Amigas where more popular in the US, apparently due to people having more disposable cash (I've no idea if that's true). I hadn't even seen a big box Amiga until last year at Amiga Ireland.

I bought my first Amiga (A1000) back in 1985. I upgraded to the A2000 when the Video Toaster was announced and then later an A4000D. It was around 1995/96 that I "regrettably" sold my systems and went PC. Funny that all these years later I have an A4000D and an A4000T that I enjoy tinkering with.

Years ago in our small city of Owen Sound, Ontario we had an Amiga club where we would meet at the local Library to talk about Amigas. Some called it a copy club. We used to travel down to The World of Amiga in Mississauga, Canada once a year to purchase Amiga stuff. It was billed as the largest Amiga show in the world. Was so much fun. Treasured memories.

Totally agree! I got my C64 for Xmas 1983 and was in love with it. But the moment I learned about the Amiga from Compute! and Compute’s Gazzette I had to have one! Alas mom and dad said no (they didn’t understand the difference). My cousin who also had a 64 managed to get an A500 and then later an A2000. I finally sold my C64 in summer of 1991 and bought my cousin’s A500 to take to college. When I arrived at Georgia Tech (Go Jackets!!) I found several good friends to this day who were also big Amiga enthusiasts. We attended the Atlanta Amiga User’s Group which met one the GT campus - at least 250 people would attend. The campus tv station used video toasters... it was a blast. By 1993 the writing was on the wall. It was becoming harder and harder to find software in stores. Even the specialty dealers like Showcase Atlanta has cut back on Amiga offerings. I realized the Amiga wasn’t going to make it and as a CS major if I wanted tog we a job after college I was going to need some marketable skills. I ended up selling my A500 to build a 386DX40 machine to run OS/2 (dont laugh; it got me a good job at IBM after college!) Never lost the love of Amiga. But I was certainly one of the later joiners. Amiga had a HUGE following in the USA in 87-91. What’s really sad is that now I live only 20 miles from West Chester and it’s almost impossible to find Amiga gear around here. Too many people just tossed them back in the day after moving to other platforms. :(

Eric summed it up well. The Amiga was squeezed out of the bottom end of the market by the consoles at the same time it was squeezed out of the top end by the PC. I loved my Amiga for the abundance of flight sims, point n click adventures and D.Paint none of which were available on console. I remember that by 1993/4 with Doom, Pacific Air War 1942, and TFX I wanted a PC more than anything, at least Frontier and Wing Commander were playable on an A1200 with fast RAM!

I’m in the L.A area on the west coast and I remember that there were a handful of commodore/Amiga stores within reasonable driving distance from me. I received a 64c for X-mas in 87 and used it until it died early in 92 (service tech couldn’t fix it). I received a 500 for X-mas later that year and used it for school. In 93, I went to a classmate’s house and his dad had a Mac Se with a desktop publishing software and laser printer and I was shocked. I sold my working c64 peripherals, worked with my dad and used the money to buy a GVP530 Turbo and prowrite in late 93, just in time for college. The drive worked for 1 week before my A500 started powering off on its own. It was early 94 and all the Amiga shops started closing down and others were liquidating their Amiga stock. I bought a used A500 in April, after Grapevine Group in New York Stole my money meant for a new A500 mb, only to find out that the GVP 530 SCSI controller had crapped out. It was too late to get warranty on it. Now In college(late 93), working in a lab, I got a student loan to buy a computer. I could afford a 4000 but by that time it was obvious Commodore was no more and it didn’t have the science software I needed. I bought a Performa 575. Cost me $600 just to upgrade the ram to the max 36 MB. Was a Mac person for the next 8 years. Long story- now that I collect Amiga’s, went back to my original A500 and found the problem was a loose Gary chip.

I've personally never doubted the popularity of the Amiga in the States. Never heard anyone that did TBH. Mind you I'm 55!!

Well done Mark! I grew in the 80's and was fortunate enough to live in Santa Clara California most of my childhood. We were the epicenter for computing here in the US. I can assure you all that the Amiga was huge here and was far from a failure. The only failure was in the management. the machines couldnt stay in stock at most of the shops that sold them. I even had my first real job in a local Amiga dealership and saw no less than 5 to 10 a day sold the entire time I was working there.

Great Summary. I always wondered about you guys and the Amiga. Funnily enough your story is very similar to mine despite me being in the UK. I was an early adopter of my beloved machine having been saving up all of my paper round money, originally for a Spectrum +3, I shifted my goal to the Atari ST and by the time I had saved enough the Amiga A500 came out and was within my grasp. I therefore had an early 1.2 Amiga. So I don't really fit the trend of the UK so much. The coffin nail for me was the A300 ... I mean A600, when I saw that with the same specs as the humble A500 with now rather underspec'd 7 mhz processor and PCs having what seemed to be much much more... Well the grass looked greener elsewhere.

Feeling Avenged, might pull out my Amiga in the USA later.

This came up on my feed for some reason. Great video about the Amiga in the North American market. I never owned one until an Amiga 500 was second handed to me in 97/98 (which I didn't use and gave away a few years later) but my first real personal computer use was an Amiga 1000 that my suite mate owned in school (for about a year I got to work and play with one). Before that I just had an 8-bit computer. I did move on to the Macintosh in the early 90's (form the Sinclair QL) and I think Apple did a pretty sound job marketing. I did occasionally buy Amiga magazines in the mid 90's (Amiga Computing) and remember excitedly reading about how possibly the Amiga was going to make a comeback. But yes, the Amiga platform was definitely big in the US from 85 to 91 and I remember wanting one to be my upgrade from my QL but it just never happened...now of course I finally got my hands on an Amiga 600.

A friend of mine was an early adopter of the Amiga aka A1000 and when he showed me Battle Chess it royally blew my mind and I am not into games. Was not long before I had my own A1000 but I used it to run a BBS with an Expansion Systems DataFlyer HD with 8mb DataFlyer RAM Board. I moved that DataFlier to the A500 and later A2000HD which had a 7 port serial board and AMAX II so I could also run MAC System 7 when System 7 was still in use. I did install a CD-ROM in the A2000HD which was very cool at the time. Unlike most people I used my Amiga's for Productivity & BBS Applications. What I was doing with an Amiga back then a PC would struggle with and it was easier to run a Multiline BBS with a single Amiga where on a PC you basically needed a PC for each line you ran. I did not start migrating over to a PC until the mid 1990's because what I needed to do mostly for work was all PC Related. I ran my BBS until 1997 when interest for calling a BBS faded because everyone was focused on using the Internet. By 2000 my focus was totally PC because of work and software I needed to run simply was not available for the Amiga and more important I needed portability because I was using Notebooks to troubleshoot Industrial Controllers something that an Amiga even with an old Bridgeboard could not do because you needed processing power to get the software to work so the Amiga for me became no longer viable for my needs. Of all the Amiga's I owned at the time the only one I kept was the A2000HD because it was special to me it was the Amiga I loved the most and still do. When I got bit by the retro bug I started buying Amiga's again. I never fell out of love for the Amiga but by the time Commodore came out with the AGA Machines it was too little to late for me and Commodore as a company was falling apart. Back in the day I knew many people who used and loved their Amiga's some ventured off to the MAC world others the PC World. I had friends who saw what I could do with my A2000 that could not understand why their PC's could not do half what I was doing which really changed with Win95 came out and those same people would call me and tell me they were now able to do what I was doing and I would just say what took so long the Amiga was able to multitask on day one but it was this time frame when other systems were surpassing the Amiga which was an aging platform that could not keep up. Very sad Commodore never invested more into the platform because had they really done so I think history would be very different today. Commodore was always popular in Europe for low cost products going back to the calculator days possibly even before.

So glad you made this video. I was an Amiga user exclusively until 1999, long after most folks had moved on. But some of the best software didn’t come out until the end of the computer’s lifespan: Final Writer 97, DPaint V AGA. Others.

Wow, memory floods! I was about 23 when "The Amiga" showed up in Fairfield, OH, USA at a computer/electronics store called Microwave Magic. I was looking around to see all the new stuff that was coming out, and decided that the Amiga was the best "bang" for the buck. I was mainly interested in the 4-channel stereo since I was planning to compose/write music scores. It was a few months later that the computer magazines started calling it the Amiga 1000, so I waited a couple of years to see what new thing would come out, as well as hardware...

I had... VIC in 1983. C64 in 1984-1989. Then A500, A3000 from 1990-1996. There were four major Amiga dealers in my little mid-west corner of the USA in Michigan even. Including a rather large and popular user-group; which was at Slipped Disk. The other three, Tristate Computers, Ye Olde Computer Shoppe, and Computer Link. Also, major retailers like Toys'R'Us, Babbages, Electronics Boutique, Sears, K-Mart sold them. Mostly the more popular A500s though. Nearly every local "cable access" provider used Amigas and Scala to run their crawls for years. Finally, all the major Art Colleges in the states offered 3D animation classes that all used "big box" Amigas for many years. Cal Arts, Full Sail, etc.

Thanks for a great video with in-depth explanation. I live in Norway and I am 43 years old. I got my first C64 in late 80s. I think it must have been 1988 or 89. And I believe I got my Amiga 500 in 1991. I also heard stories about the Amiga not being very popular in the states. So now I know the truth. The Americans had just moved on.. And after that it started to catch up here in Europe. Makes alot of sense considering the Amiga was invented in the United States. I wonder if maybe part of the reason for this misconception is the fact that there was no real internet in those days. So everything was more based on rumors. Not like today where everything is on the internet. Very, very nice video with some very good information which has cleared up the misconception for me at least. Eric also spoke with true feelings about the matter. Almost brought tears to my eyes aswell. I have no reason to doubt any of this information. Makes a lot of sense. And as you said, there is nothing wrong with the truth. People need to understand that it makes alot of sense because Amiga came from the United states. And people should instead be thankful that Europa was late to the table because it made the Amiga live even longer. Thank you for your quality content

Man I hear this rumour that Amiga wasnt known about in USA on Twitch ALL THE TIME! Thanks for setting the record straight! great vid.

About time someone set this straight! I've heard it so many times ,esp on youtube,that Amiga was as scarce as hens teeth in the USA! Electronics Botique & Software Etc was the main local place for Amiga software.I actually talked my local Cable Company's owner into getting the Amiga 2000 & Video Toaster,as they were starting their local cable channel.They used it for many years. And maybe a little known fact is that most all Cable operators used the A2000 for their Guide & Weather Channel Data/Display!

In Canada (I'm in Nova Scotia), the A500 was sold in places like Kmart, Zellers and Canadian Tire, but when they went to the A1200 I heard they restricted them to the dealer network. When I got my A1200 there were maybe a half dozen others in the user group that got it at the same time (out of 30-40 members), so they did sell a few in Canada. One interesting statistic I remember seeing in one of the Amiga magazines was that there were roughly the same number of Amiga's sold in Canada as there was in the US (despite the US having 10 times the population). I'm not sure what year that was, but definitely after 1990. They seemed to hang on in Canada until D-Day in 1994, I didn't get a PC until 1999, when I needed one for my job. I believe the Canadian division was one of the few (along with UK, Germany??) that was still profitable at the fall of Commodore.

Here in Athens Greece we first bought Amiga 500 in 1987 , Awesome video , greetings from Athens Greece

Great vid, I completely agree on CD-rom, points absolutely spot on! A600 project & Mehdi Ali helped nail the coffin on Amiga for all of us back in the day!

Doug and Eric, great video! I agree with both of your segments. And I had a good laugh at the comment about the C64 user groups thinking the Amiga was no more powerful than a C64 plus GEOS. 😂😂😂

There is a lot of merit to this video and it pretty much matches up with my own Amiga experience of the time (being a Canadian Commodore 8-bit user since 1980 and an Amiga user since 1987). One thing that never gets stated though, is that Canada was a bit of a different scene than either the USA or the UK - like in almost every other way, it's a sort of "in between" place between the two countries. Even in the 8-bit era (prior to the Amiga), Commodore was dominant here. There were many more Commodore machines in schools as compared with the USA, where Apple seemed to the be the leading "educational computer" (Oregon Trail wasn't even a thing in Canada). I think because Commodore had such a great relationship with our school system via the PET computer line, many Canadian children asked their parents for a Commodore when it came time to buy a computer for the home. Once "hooked", we naturally migrated through the VIC-20 and C64 to then (some of us) to the Amiga. It's true that in office situations the plain old MS-DOS PC still dominated in Canada, but at a home level the Amiga made a respectable showing (alas, never the majority). I grew up just north-west of Toronto, and the Amiga did perform decently there. Several of my close friends had Amiga 500s, as did I - and my extended network of acquaintances contained even more Amiga users. I worked in a local K-Mart store where the Amiga 500 and software was sold. In fact, I remember one year the K-Mart where I worked had touch screen kiosks to advertise products for sale, and they were run with an A3000 inside. I could go to the local mall and pick out an Amiga, purchase software at a couple local computer stores, and even have my choice of two or three Amiga/Commodore magazines at the local bookstore. If I drove into the nearby big city of Toronto then my choice of retailers increased tenfold. Every year in Mississauga, Ontario (near where I lived) the large trade show "The World of Commodore" was held (at the International Centre, to be exact). Gold Disk, the publisher of Pagesetter, Moviesetter and other popular software was headquartered in that town as well. It's true, that by the AGA era, the Amiga's star was waning in this country, but it was still not an unheard of computer. We were a different market than the USA - and Canada did even get the CD32 in time for the Christmas season of its release, whereas it was never released in the USA to my knowledge (or too late).

Great video Doug, love hearing your experiences and views

Thanks for clearing that up Doug and Eric. From a UK fan. Interesting to see in more detail what was happening over there. Saw many 500s here but ive never seen a big box amiga to this day unfortunately, Seems like the universal problem for Commodore in all countries was advertising. I and a lot of my friends knew about the games angle. the first time I saw the megadrive and strider around 90 i knew the amiga was screwed as far as arcade games were concerned. Shortly after i brought an import super famicom. Commodore failed to catch up in so many ways. Before that i saw tie fighter and dune on the pc in the shops. The writing was on the wall for a long time without the demise of commodore. Still.. i loved the machine and the last games i brought were SOTB3 and Shadow Fighter.

USA Commodore user here: I used my first C64/C128 until 1988. I wanted an Amiga 1000, but could not afford it. (My best friend had one since 1986 IIRC.) In 1988 I sold my Commodore gear and used the money for an IBM XT Clone. (more affordable to me than the Amiga at that time.) I was big into the telecommunications/BBS scene at the time and the idea of 80 column ANSI seemed to be an upgrade from 40 column PETSCII.

I owe a lot of my positive Amiga experience with Fred Fish PD that was cultivated and distributed from the U.S. When I got the A570 I got CD with like 800+ Fish disks giving me heaps of great software. A ton of software on the first few hundred disks all came out of the U.S. too.

The Amiga 500,maybe others was sold through Sears & other Dept stores.That's where i bought mine!

I am from the United States. I graduated high school in 1987. I knew about the Amiga in 1986, but I wasn't working yet so I didn't have the money for it, so I stuck with my Atari 800 XL until I could afford it and in July 1991 I decided to use the $3000 that I had saved up to buy a PC. Was happy that I did. It was because of my professor that told me buy a PC instead. That being said, the Marketing for the Amiga was confusing. Today we have PC's that can play the latest and best video games, but you can use it for doing productivity apps as well, but back then Commodore didn't know if they wanted to compete against consoles or IBM PC's. Amiga's was big in the USA for the video toaster and games, but it's just that Commodore made some huge marketing mistakes.

Thank you for setting the record straight Doug😁👍🏻 Listening to AmigaLove allmost made me cry am Amiga tear

VERY ACCURATE ASSESMENT - nice Job. I worked in a computer store selling Amigas components and software (as well as C64/128's and PC Clones). We always tried to steer new computer buyers towards the Amiga. I wanted an A1000 when it came out, but couldn't afford one. I was ecstatic when the A500 came out and used it until I bought my A1200 in 1992, which I quickly accelerated with a GVP 50Mhz, 8 MB ram, 80 MG internal HD. I ran a recording studio off of that A1200 until 1996 - long after Commodore went out of business. I regret ever selling the A1200.

I had a comadore 64 in the early 80's and ran a bbs. in the late 80's I change to the amiga 500 and ran a bbs on it until the day of the internet. I still have my amiga and love it very much.

Spot on.. During those years, I worked in computer retail sales (software and hardware) and while everything you guys highlighted on is very true, what really pushed the PC sales (at least in the north east/Boston area) (perhaps more than the CD ROM thing) was the simple fact that many people bought x86 PC's for home simply because they had them at the office and they wanted to be able to do work at home they could transport back and forth to/from the office. In the late 80s it wasn't so much about games on the PC so much as it could run the same software as the office, while it was a nice benefit that the "kids" could play games and there were some educational titles and such for x86 PC it was initially about being compatible with what the office had. That was a huge selling point and we moved a heck of a lot of units due to that simple fact.. but totally 100% agree with your timelines and the console aspects.. As the graphics and sounds boards for the PC got better and less expensive then yes, it certainly was about games.. more so DOOM and its kin .. Quake, wolfenstein .. etc. The other thing that hit about that time like a nuclear bomb was the internet, Amigas simply couldnt easily cope with browsing the web unless you added a lot of expensive boards, accelerator cards, etc.. while cheap PCs could out of the box, and those machines cost as much or less than an Amiga accelerator card would.. I cant tell you how many people bought machines so they could "surf" the net.

The reality is somewhere in between. The reality is that the Amiga in America was obscure, but so was the home computing market. But I can remember the day that the Amiga came out. The Andy Warhol/Debbie Harry demonstration was talked about everywhere. In my tiny high school, out in the sticks, I knew many with Amigas. I had a couple friends that used 1000s to make music. I had a bunch of friends playing Amiga 500 games at a time when people were playing the NES. In our video department, we had Amigas for video, and I made video and animation. There were numerous Amiga shops with a short drive. I worked for a couple companies out of HS, running on A2000s and A4000s. When I went to college, it was all Video Toasters. I could get Amiga magazines at the book stores, to was around.... but it was still obscure.

Great video and history lesson Sir....much appreciated and keep up the great quality videos

I never doubted the Amiga was big in the US back in the late eighties and early nineties. Although I'm based in Australia with European connections, I still recall the Amiga hardware brand GVP, which I drooled over to expand my Amiga 500, and consequently I eventually did!. Amiga World was my favorite Amiga magazine at the time, because there was so much more content on programming, design, and hardware. Furthermore, I think one just has to look at where most of the big box Amigas being sold on eBay come from: North America. Good video.

Very nice video :) it was interesting and easy to follow.

This was amazing. Thank you, Doug and Eric!

I downloaded AC's Guide from archive.org and counted about 70 vendors in the Los Angeles/San Diego/Ventura county area alone (that's where I lived). In the early 1990's (89-91 or so) I had a friend who was really into the Amiga and we used to go to the LA Amiga User's Group meetings. At the time, I was an Atari user (please don't sue me; my buddy would go with me to Atari events), but I would've loved to have gotten my hands on an Amiga 3000 at the time. As Eric says, we were all in the same boat. Commodore and Atari made some stupid blunders, the biggest one being not adopting the CD-ROM quickly enough. Instead of drives for the 3000/4000 and the ST/TT/Falcon, Amigans were given the CDTV and Atarians got the Jaguar. If you look in your AC's Guide on page 122, you'll see four listings for optical drives, all of them erasable, the lowest price being $3,800. Apparently, the big deal in removable media back them was hard drive cartridges as on the same page, there are a plethora of listings for SyQuest and Bernoulli drives (?), and they weren't inexpensive either. My friend and I both saw the handwriting on the wall; I had just gotten a job as a reports editor and I used QuarkXpress and Word 5.1 on a Mac IIcx. My work Mac had an external CD-ROM and could output to a Laserwriter IINT. Eventually, I bought my first Mac and I've been using them ever since. I would've liked to keep using my ST, and my friend his Amiga, but we, like many others, had to move on. I like all kinds of classic computers now, Amigas included and I have enjoyed all of your videos. The one thing I wish you'd do is make a video for those of us on a budget who want to get into the Amiga on real hardware. Seems like a sellers market right now. Cheers!

Thanks for the insightful story Doug. A bit "Us vs. Them", but I guess you had a reason for that (I haven't watched the video, that inspired this one). As a guy born in '83, in Finland. I fall squarely in the demographic you described here. Too young to know anything about Amiga in America. I think it was about '91 when I got my own Amiga 500 (It was launched here in '87), and it was the world to me for a few years. It was as you said, almost purely a gaming machine here. I knew you could do more with an Amiga, and I too had software like Deluxe Paint etc. but still, it was 95% of the time playing games. I guess the "European Amiga pride" if you will, comes from the fact that the 500 was SUCH a generation defining machine here. I know UK was hugely in the 600 and 1200 too. Back then it felt like a European thing, because we (or I at least) had no access to other than Finnish or British Amiga magazines. Many of my friends had an A500, but we didn't know Commodore existed outside of the games we played on the C64 and A500. It's hard for me to explain it any other way, and some of my peers might have a differing opinion but this is mine. I've just gotten back to Amigas, and now I'm really interested in the history of the Amiga and Commodore in general. It was really interesting to hear the story of Amiga in the USA, as it cleared up a lot of misconceptions.

Being in latin america, where technollogy arrived late speciallly in the 80s, i remember I had my c64 in 1986.

I wonder if its presence was regional within the U.S. I would've loved to have owned an Amiga - if I could have afforded it. I tried to convince my dad to get an Amiga 3000 when he was looking to buy his first computer for his business. Had a subscription to Amiga World for the first 3-4 years. However, I don't recall ever seeing an Amiga in person until I bought on in 2015.

Loved this video, fantastic insights. Definitely a different perspective and for sure computing in the 80's / 90's was so divergent on the two sides of the pond. I think differing economics had a lot to do with it as well as Commodore's incompetence. Subbing to Eric as well, can't understand why I hadn't already! 👍

Im 48 doug i remember , it was well known and loved

I can still remember ditching my Amiga for a Compaq DX486 computer and then installing a Soundblaster board with cd drive because of all the games coming out in cd format.

I still have my supra 500xp and my supraturbo28 and in the 1980's and 90's or cable tv here in canada used the amiga for its channel menu system. I still remember one day it went down and I saw the 1.3 workbench screen haha

Excellent video. You and Eric got the history down about the history of the Amiga, how popular it was in the US, and how it fell behind PCs and Macs.

Great episode ! Very informative 😄👍

Well put together Doug. Eric absolutely nailed it.

Great video Doug, in AU we were a mixed bag lots of little Amiga's and lots of Big box Amiga's. I tend to purchase the small Amiga's from the UK and the Big box ones from the US. While there are still lots of Amiga's in AU not many of the big box ones come up for sale. Having said that I did purchase the A3000 and A1000 from AU, the A2500 and A4000#2 came from the US and the other A4K#1 from Hungary. Cheers BBA

Very interesting video. Some of the stats and facts might be a little off (e.g. dates) but I get your general point. I was based in Cape Town, South Africa at that time, so Amiga was a specialty product primarily used for professional video work. We tended to get an even feed from the States and Europe with mags and my view on the subject is that the U.S.A definitely was focused on the professional side of things, while the U.K. and Europe had a larger home user base. Looking at a per capita installed base, the U.S.A. Amigas would have a smaller share of the pie compared to Europe. I remember going to computer stores in Reno, New York and Sarnia (In Canada) in 1990/91 (did a job in a ski resort for the winter) and there was Amiga stuff in the shops, but it was hard to find and maybe 10% of what was available to the PC and Mac stuff. The bigger issue that the States has, is companies like Apple and Microsoft re-writing the history books. They, as home grown companies that still exist, have the media and general populations ear.

Honestly, I went to Egg Head Software in St. Louis, Missouri (Not to be confused with New Egg) around 1991 and I didn't see hardly any Amiga software, just mainly PC games and software and very tiny corner for Mac stuff. I picked up the original Wing Commander there. Amazing Game by the way!

Yes, Yes, facts and timing are correct. I opened an hobby shop in a small town in Northern Italy in 1989. Commodore 64 was already popular, but we decided to start with Amiga only. I sold many, many Amigas 500, 500+ 600 and lately 1200 mainly as game machines and school computers (and very few CD32 and CDTV). I remember that some laboratories started producing custom memory expansions and changekick (1.2/1.3/2.04) locally, reasonably priced. At some point, in 1993-1994 suddently distributors cold not find machines any more. Only years later I learned of Commodore mistakes and problems. These were the years of the videogame comeback, but growing sales of Nes, SNes, SEGA machines and the like were not affecting Amiga sales. Gamers played with both. Me and some friend are still enthusiastic users....

Interesting topic guys! As a man in my early 40, I still remember everything being US first, then bigger cities.. and then even later for us small town people. Really nice to get some more perspective on this matter. How would you say the interest is today in the US? Is the scene big over there?

Nice work Eric and Doug, great insights.

.info magazine was my favorite back in the day, because the whole thing was produced with Amiga computers and off-the-shelf software. It really stood out on the news stands and made a great showcase of what the Amiga could accomplish back then, and the personalities of Mark Brown and Benn Dunnington showed through in every issue.

I lived through those years as a teenager here in Australia and just as you described it was exactly the same here. Buying my C64 early 2014 and then moving on to buying an Amiga 1000 in 1987. The issue with the Amiga 1000 was that it was n between system where it was to expensive for the home user and just wasn't considered a business machine and that is why they later on produced the Amiga 500 and 2000 to cater for both. Sorry about going the topic but basically it was the same here in Australia just as you are describing.

I was a C= repair tech in the 90's, i know that it was popular here too. On the Newtek Video Toaster.?.yeah... i don't ever recall it being released in PAL... 30:25 love it LOL muhahahahahahaha (evil laugh)

That was a really interesting video, thanks. I disagree about the Amiga really taking off in Europe around 1991, though, strictly speaking from my experience. I bought my A500 at 16 by mid 1989, and I was by no means an early adopter nor well-off - it cost me a lot of work to afford it. In fact, I already knew quite a lot of people with it in my small hometown near Barcelona, Spain - they did use it for games, mostly. 1992, when I was using an A2000 at my local TV network, was actually the time I began to realize about a certain decline in its popularity, sadly.

Hey Doug, I believe its a very fair perspective of the popularity of the Amiga in North America during that era. I like to add that New Zealand and Australia followed closely with Europe on the Amiga wave. 👍

In 1985 I worked in a computer retailer in the U.K., by that time we didn't even sell the 8-bit machines. It was Atari ST and Amstrad PC's and then Amigas. To suggest we were all using Commodore 64's and Spectrums using tape drives is simply wrong. I personally used an Atari 800XL in 1983 with disk drives and moved to the ST in 1985

forgot to mention my local cable company used the Amiga and Toaster for public information. Right now I am sitting on a very nice gift of big box amigas and toaster cards etc. All from a man in the early 90s who ran a videography business for many years with it. Probably $20,000 in hardware and accessories, not to shabby.

Well, you had your Tandy 1000 over there , quite a nice machine which they didn´t sell in europe. So lots of people in the US just slipped the Amiga and were already ready for MSDOS-compatibles, whereas here in europe, IBM-compatibles were considered to be "boring beige business busters" for home users...As for commodore´s final demise I think one reason is that they already had lost lots of money due to wrong decisions like the A600 - plus Mehdi Ali had arranged loads of cost cutting measures which really hindered the company to move on in development in a really sensible, i.e. faster way. They really stuck to the A500 for way too long. All this together led to the fact that they simple could not ship enough A1200 models for christmas 1992 - in my eyes that was the final nail in the coffin. Many possible costumers (like I was way back then) were disappointed and looked out for alternatives after that.

duuuuude.... I dunno if i agree with you on the us market. I lived in socal at the time, near Creative Computers (now macmall). The largest Amiga reseller in the country and that place was NEVER busy. For about 6 months I was there almost every weekend and I never saw more than 3 people in there as I opened the door and at least one of them were employees. Millions of users? dude, I just don't see it. I didn't know anyone else with an Amiga when I was growing up in a very upper middle class area of Orange County. I honestly think you're looking at the past through rose colored glasses. I knew way more peole with C128's than I knew people with Amigas. In fact, the ONLY person I knew with an Amiga back then was Harv Laser and that's because he owned and ran Amigazone off of his boat in Long Beach.

I've always found US Amiga mags such as Amiga World to be clinical in design and content compared to UK magazines. It's a good contrast to have that reflects the appeal to more professional use of Amiga in the US.

Very nice video Doug, and I am totally agree with Eric about the Cdrom.

I thought I might add some numbers: Estimated Amiga sales figures: www.amigahistory.plus.com/sales.html North America: 700,000 (total population 1990 250 million) UK: 1.5 million (total population 1990: 57 million) Germany: 1.4 million, 1 million Amiga 500s (total population 62 million)

Great video guys, I enjoyed a lot. Commodore does not what to do with Amiga computers, because for example, they should bundle a 3 fire buttons pad with A1000, A2000 and A500 (instead of the use of the stupid 1 button joysticks) and, with the A1200, the computer should support lots of 16 colours hardware sprites on screen, bundle with CDrom, small Hard Drive, fast memory and 030 CPU minimum, but other of the most important thing on the video system, if should have added a chunky mode. The prize may be high, but PCs with CDrom, Hard drive, fast VGA card and sound card where expensive too.

I do not believe that the failure of the Amiga was totally about not adopting CD-Rom support, One thing I noticed was that clone based PC with MS Office were starting to appear in Schools and Universities, from memory Microsoft were doing amazing deals for them. What would happen is people would graduate using these Pc's and software and then would go out in to the workforce and use them. Just to paint a picture on what it was like back then, I started working as a technical support office at university supporting students in the computer lab and two most common questions asked where how do I print or save a file.

The amiga is the closest organic computer that the other formats are trying to emulate

Just been thinking about this vid. How popular do u think the amiga was generally in America? I mean big box amigas and the toaster were always more prevelant in the states compared to Europe but wasn't it just a thing for the well off? I mean these things weren't cheap. Wheres a lot of working class kids here in the UK could afford an a500. Only asking coz when I lived in the states when I mentioned the amiga all I got was looks of puzzlement but u could talk about the mac all day long.

Thanks Marc , you opened my eyes on the Amiga popularity in the US! From a Swiss/Europe Perspective! BTW is it possible to meet one of you guys when I am traveling the states, maybe this year! Cheers RetroPanic!

I think commentators here in Europe forget just how big the U.S. market is/was. Yes, relatively the Amiga was more successful in Europe but our market was nowhere near as developed as in the U.S.

No doubt the Europeans made it a gaming machine. Fair enough if that is what it took to keep it alive. In the 80's with my 1000 and subsequent 500s it was all creative and productivity until I had to migrate to the pc. In Michigan I influenced at least half a dozen people to purchase Amigas. Two Amiga themed stores down the street from me at the time. You might say our early support made in affordable later on for others.

20:55 The 11 disks were no problem at all. Me and my brother installed Indiana Jones on our HDD.

Regarding PCs in work environments: Flickering or the lack of it at decent resolutions.. Colors didn't matter for word processing/cad/spread sheets etc.

I can cite two people that won lot of contests and were in US: Bill Graham and Eric Schwarz (the latter i had the honor of compete and lose at Bit.Movie in italy)

Hi Doug. Love this video..many topics of discussion. CDRom strategy was critical. Video Toaster for PAL countries would have changed the gaming attitude in Europe? another topic of discussion. America Amigans seems more OS4 ppc oriented. Here in Europe we are Vampire-crazy.

29:14 Probably the Atari 520ST. I actually did the same thing! I sold my 520ST and the bought the Amiga 1000 with 1080 monitor and 1050 256k ram card!

I could be wrong but i thought 1989 was the turning point for Amiga UK with the a500 and the marketing packs. Not 2 to 3 years later? I guess we need to research sales data?

Enjoyed that, but a couple of points from a UK perspective. Amiga Format was a pretty serious mag, and yes, we had Amiga World too, and Amazing Computing. The C64 wasn't "just catching on" in '86, it was beginning to fade. The Atari ST was the new contender and the A500 was rumoured to be on the way, few people could afford the A1000. I think you're confusing the Amiga boom in 1990 with the beginning of the Amiga in the UK/Europe. I got mine in '87 a couple of friends already had them. We were using them at work in the eighties for video production. Did you ever hear of the chart show? Broadcasting Amiga from '86. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chart_Show

Amen! The lack of CD technology is why I left the Amiga.

Cool.

One thing of note too.. I had looked at the total sales of "WORLD WIDE" Amiga computers recently and I was shocked to only see less then 5 million sold! It was 4.8 Million and that's across the entire lifetime of the Amiga (from 1985 to 1997). That's not good to be honest, way smaller than expected. The Commodore 64 at least sold 12 million units realistically. I know Commodore themselves said 35 million, but I believe that is a fabricated number. To give you an example of how small this is, the PS4, sold well over 112 million Units and only 5 Million PSVR units. Microsoft Sold like 35 million Kinect Units. So, that's pretty poor sales from Commodore over all on the Amiga. Commodore only sold 700,000 Amiga in the USA at a much cheaper price than anything else. Wow! Not good. Better than my Atari 8-bit machine, but wow, that's pretty poor sales overall for that price and that hardware.

Have to admit always thought it was a total failure over in the US mainly because of the lack of games that Europe got.

Dang why hasn’t anyone interviewed me...grrrrr

I think the issue was that home computers had not yet seen widespread adoption in the USA by the mid-80s. Yes, computer enthusiasts, developers, and people who used them for work had computers, but most Americans just had a video game console at home if anything. Computers were seen as an expensive luxury in the USA. There wasn't a sub-$100 computer that gained mass traction in America like the Spectrum had in the UK, for instance. People couldn't afford thousands of dollars for an Apple or an IBM. But they also didn't want a crippled system like the Timex Sinclair 1000 when they had Apples at school, IBMs at work, and Nintendos with much better graphics and games at home. But if you listen to the UK retrogamers it sounds like every home in England had either a Spectrum or an Amstrad, every young lad (and many girls) were bedroom coders, and then they graduated to the Amiga 500 or Atari ST when those became available. And they were marketed not as high-end graphic and sound workstations, like they were in the US, but as games machines first and foremost. The Amiga and Atari ST were Europe's Nintendo, but in the US you mostly found them in TV stations or music studios. By the time the killer app for computers emerged--the Internet--Commodore was already dead and gone and Microsoft had its Wintel monopoly pretty much locked tight. Maybe I have a skewed perspective being that I was a child during the Amiga years, my family was quite poor, and few of my friends had computers other than video game consoles, PC clones, or the occasional Commodore 64 gathering dust--but I just wanted to give an explanation as to why the Amiga was not as fondly remembered in the US as it was elsewhere.

I enjoy watching your videos a lot - however there are some things which are not entirely true especially in the beginning of this video. Although I think you are right concerning the fact that we used tapes a longer time than the US, a lot of what you said about when the Europeans took to computers is just not true and that we were a couple of years behind the US. We quickly took to the ZX Spectrum and the Commodore 64 in the early eighties - before that, BBC, Vic 20 - also the Amiga did not "take off" in the 90's - we had them from 1987 and the numbers grew quickly (we did have the A1000 earlier but it did not get much attention) - immediately the Amiga 500 came, we were (most of us :-) all in for the Amiga at an early stage. I think one thing that does separate us from the US was something like having or using an Apple computer in those days - that was extremely rare and probably a lot more common in the US.Also you are probably right concerning the magazines - although I think we could easily match the numbers and variety of magazines, a lot of our magazines did focus on games.

You have it somewhat wrong. Europe... atleast Scandinavia, UK and Germany were into the Amiga way earlier than you claim. To get a healthy perspective just have a look at demos and intro created during that time. That stuff was no business but pure Amiga love manifested in productions realeased for kids by kids. Either the European playground was more active or more creative. Bear in mind that Amigas were off limits for Eastern Europe at that time due to politics. Btw, Nice European demo from 1989 by the Rebels you are running there in the background. One of maaaaaany well established demogroups at that time. I totally agree the estetics for this particular demo is influenced from Subways in New York. :)

Hmmm. This is supposed to be about how popular the Amiga was in the US, but huge portions of it are about why you all ditched it for something else! ‘We had moved on by 1990’ etc.....Super Nintendo etc....well, you moved on too early, and hence in Europe we got to see the legendary games.....and as a 13-16 year old, I couldn’t give a fudge about peripherals and productivity and creative packages! So 1) I’d say we understand the machine differently.....give me magazines like Amiga Power any day to those held up in this video.....we liked it for games, games, and games. 2) higher sales in the UK, a place with a way way lower population so if you translate this to sales per capita, and then sorry, but it was way way wha more popular in the UK, but so what? Why take umbridge with that? Glad you liked it, but if I say Amiga to a Brit 35 and over, they know it , and know it for games, I’ve never met an American who knows what I’m talking about when I bring it up! But all your points aside......who cares how many vendors there are, it’s how many units were sold and that is all! Dig out those figures! Be proud you liked an awesome machine that others didn’t know about. ‘Many of us in the United States had already given up our commodore 64s and Amigas’ is how the vid finishes....ok, you’re very cool for moving on, but we didn’t , and therefore we have a deeper love and saw a lot of the best stuff come out for it (chaos engine 2 was like, 94? 95?) Simples! This fact of the Amiga popularity....show sales figure, not vendors! We have thousands of newspaper shops, but nobody buys them any more!

23:14 No, just no. The Amiga is capable of so much more and more beautiful games, than the Mega Drive or SNES could deliver. I love F-Zero, Axelay, Super Ghouls'n Ghosts, Contra III, Castlevania IV, I love Thunderforce IV & III, MUSHA Aleste, Hellfire, Elemental Master and Aeroblasters but if I had to decide back then for just one gaming system, I would have chosen my Amiga. P.S.: Regarding availibility. Every serious gamer here in Germany had monthly magazibes like the "Power Play" and knew therefore, that you had to import video game cnsoles, if you didn't want to wait for unneccessary PAL versions (games too slow and in the wrong aspet ratio) of Mega Drive and SNES and so I did import the japanese Sega Mega Drive model 1 and the american SNES right from their respective starts - with RGB Scart of course. P.S.S.: Not true at all. Even OCS/ECS games did look better as a whole than the ones on the Mega Drive with its ugly color palette or the SNES with its limitied memory and low resolution! As you said: use your eyes! P.S.S.S.: No, I will stop the video now. Donkey Kong Country hasn't aged well at all graphically. I play the more beautiful Amiga platformers, thank you very much!

Well, obviously the Amiga was successful in USA, it started there. But I think you don't understand quite how big the Amiga was in the UK. The UK was the only profitable sector in the end, as mentioned by David Pleasance in his later interviews. To put in comparison total sales (rough population at early 90's) North America (250 Million people) - 700,000 Sales UK (57 Million people) - 1,500,000 million Sales Just think about that per head count. I used to buy EVERY single magazine at the time. At one point I think we had around 6 national Amiga magazines plus the international ones. Amiga Format was selling 162k copies in the UK every month. A ridiculous amount. The Amiga was definitely used in a more professional capacity at the time in the US, the Toaster never made it into the pro graphics sector like it did over in the US which was a real shame as it would have helped the UK professional market which is where the real money comes from. It relied too much on the domestic market and games, The Amiga was huge across the whole of the UK. I think America had pockets of popularity but not so universal. although more professional sector penetration. (hence Babylon 5) Commodore really messed up with 2 things - CD-ROM and 3D acceleration. HD's should have been included as standard too from the A1200...don't get me started. Great interview.

22:40 Eric "by the time the 1200 came out it couldn't play Doom" nor could any system because Doom was released 14 months later in mid December 1993.... at least get basic facts correct. And no way to fix it? it has been proven that the A1200 with a decent 030 and fast ram can run Doom no problem. Yes you needed to spend more money on a processor upgrade but show me any 2mb 14mhz PC that can run Doom. The idiots at id software refused to do an Amiga version for systems capable of running it, when they released the source code many programmers released ports of it running on the Amiga on the same day for free. How can it take people in their bedrooms a few hours to make it work but id software said it can't be done? The Amiga can't do Doom is and always was a malicious myth.