The Amiga Story
From a poker game with Atari in California to the modern Apollo Standalone — the Amiga's journey over 40 years. Not a linear one, but a fascinating one.
1982 — The Beginnings
Jay Miner and partners found Hi-Toro (later Amiga Corporation) in Santa Clara, California. The goal: the next generation of graphics and sound hardware. Initially conceived as a games console, then a computer.
1984 — Commodore Buys In
Amiga Corp. is on the verge of bankruptcy. Commodore buys the company for 24 million USD — obtaining the nearly finished custom chipset (Agnus, Denise, Paula) in the process. Atari (with shareholder Jack Tramiel) was the other interested party and lost.
23 July 1985 — Amiga 1000 Released
Launch in New York, Andy Warhol and Debbie Harry on stage. The A1000 has 256 KB RAM, Kickstart 1.0 from floppy disk (not yet in ROM!), and the then-unprecedented 4,096 colours. Price: $1,295. Target audience: creatives, scientists — not gamers.
1987 — A500 & A2000: Mass Market
The A500 becomes THE home computer of Europe. Kickstart 1.2, 512 KB, for ~800 DM. The A2000 arrives as the professional variant with expansion slots. Games developers discover the platform — 1987 marks the start of the golden Amiga era.
1990 — A3000 & AmigaOS 2.0
The A3000 with 68030, hi-res interlace and Kickstart 2.0 (in ROM). New Workbench look, finally a "grown-up" AmigaOS. Only: the A3000 was too expensive and sold poorly.
1992 — AGA Chipset: A1200 & A4000
The Advanced Graphics Architecture chipset arrives with the A1200 (home computer) and A4000 (professional). 262,144 colours simultaneously, HAM8, double bandwidth. AmigaOS 3.0. But: PC and SVGA are already pulling away — the gap is shrinking.
29 April 1994 — Commodore Bankruptcy
Commodore International files for insolvency. Mismanagement, missed opportunities, no strategy against Windows 95. The Amiga community is shocked. What remains: millions of devices in circulation, a huge fan base, and years of uncertainty.
1995-1998 — Years of Wandering
Escom buys the brand in 1995. Briefly produces the A1200 and A4000T. Goes bankrupt in 1996 as well. Gateway buys in 1997, sells in 1999 to Amiga Inc. Hardly any new devices, many promises, little substance.
2001 — AmigaOS 4 is Born
Hyperion Entertainment (Belgium) gets the contract to port AmigaOS to PowerPC. AmigaOS 4.0 appears in 2004 — only for very rare PPC hardware (AmigaOne). Market share: homeopathic. But: the project lives.
2004 — MorphOS & AROS
In parallel, two alternative Amiga OSes emerge: MorphOS (PowerPC, commercial) and AROS (Research OS, Open Source). Both exist to this day — AROS even runs as a ROM replacement in emulators.
2010s — The Retro Wave Begins
The retro scene explodes. WHDLoad becomes the standard. Emulators (WinUAE, FS-UAE) become production-ready. Apollo Accelerators bring the first FPGA turbo cards, later the Vampire cards.
2018 — AmigaOS 3.1.4 from Hyperion
Hyperion surprises: a modern AmigaOS 3.1.4 version for Classic Amigas (A500/A1200/A4000). First new OS since 1993 for the original devices. From there it keeps rolling — 3.2 (2021), 3.2.2 (2024), 3.2.2.1 (2025).
2020 — PiStorm Released
Claude Schwarz introduces PiStorm — a Raspberry Pi as an Amiga CPU emulator. Open source, affordable, extremely fast. With Emu68 (2022+), it becomes the new reference accelerator.
2023 — Apollo V4 Standalone
Apollo Accelerators brings the V4+ Standalone — a standalone Amiga system with 68080 core, SAGA chipset, HDMI, 1 GB RAM. Not an Amiga, but a fully compatible "reborn system".
Today 2026 — More Alive Than Ever
The Amiga scene in 2026 is more active than in the last 20 years combined: active forums, new hardware (Vampire, PiStorm, Gotek), active demo productions at Revision every year, new games (Tower 57, Inviyya, Wings of Death ports), open OS (AROS, AmigaOS 3.2), active developer community. The Amiga lives — because its fans never let go.