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If I had time for a project of no consequence I would write an Amiga game in 68000 assembly, just to say I finally did it. I loved the Amiga as a teenager, but I couldn't afford all the books and development tools I needed. I had a frustrating time trying to piece together everything from magazines, coverdisks and half-baked public domain tools and consequently didn't make much progress as a programmer.

I always had a feeling of unfinished business about it, that if things had been different I could have started a game development career in the 90's rather than trying to make a name as an indie dev today.

I sometimes mess around in 68000 or in Blitz Basic on an emulator and it always strikes me how different it feels to code on an Amiga and how things have changed. When I'm coding on the Amiga, I can focus. Everything I need to know is in a few books that are ready to hand.

And because I can talk to the hardware directly in such an elegant language as 68000, I feel like I am engaging with the machine in a much more solid, craftsmanlike sense than when I'm coding at my day job, teetering at the top of a great tangled pile of platform layers that I must negotiate like a harassed digital bureaucrat.

It makes me think of how I thought computers would progress back then. As a teen I thought the computers of the future would be more profound, rather than merely more complex, as they are today. That they'd still be comprehensible to a single person but require more from them, like an expert martial artist or meditator or something.

That's the Amiga for you. It's the dreamer's computer:)

I almost feel a tear coming to my eye =) I miss the Amiga - the community was amazing.
I had an Atari ST growing up, and there was the friendly bickering with buddies who had Amigas. Then one of them showed me Deluxe Paint in HAM mode, and I walked away in silent awe.
Not only on pouet: http://aminet.net/recent
My childhood love.

I wish I still had my old Amiga 600, although in truth I wouldn't have the patience to change disks while going from one scene to another. Beneath a Steel Sky had an outrageous number of disks.

You can still play BASS - it's released as freeware and ScummVM plays it. http://www.scummvm.org/games

The news for other old Amiga games is probably less good. :/

You can always use FS-UAE/WinUAE

http://fs-uae.net http://www.winuae.net

You have to get a kickstart rom ... somewhere.

And then you can google for the game you like + abandonware and download the ADF files.

I recommend getting your ROMs from Cloanto's Amiga Forever.

Cloanto is one of the oldest Amiga companies; for many years, Michael Battilana has been the Amiga's most energetic curator. He's met the luminaries, collected histories, and presented them in a classy, polished package.

I bought a (very expensive) second drive just to play Rocket Ranger and Moonstone.
With WHDLoad (http://whdload.de/) and a compact flash card disk swaps are a thing of the past.