Iain 'Friar85' Sell Twitter/X:@Friar1985 Itch.io: friar85.itch.io Top 3 Games 1. SWOS 2. Lemmings 3. F1GP

Amiga History

Like most of us, I had a stock A500 as a kid and enjoyed playing games, trying my hand at Dpaint, the usual stuff a kid would do. I always wanted an A1200 like some of my friends had, and I'm glad to have finally acquired one, albeit a few decades later!

What Does The Hobby Mean To Me?

I love playing games, new and old, but these days I spend more time tinkering with stuff and learning about the hardware. I have also been learning to code, initially in Blitz Basic 2.1. I find the buzz I get from creative projects extremely addictive and it's really what I enjoy most about this Amiga lark, and indeed retro in general. I've also found, through needing some graphics for game projects, that I quite enjoy pixelling in Dpaint (other paint software packages are available). I am, however, terrible at it, but it's good fun all the same.

I'm also a big fan and supporter of new homebrew games, for Amiga and a host of other retro platforms. Whilst I'm not really into buying boxed Amiga games from back in the day - I have most installed on my Hard Drive, I will happily spend money buying new homebrew releases, and I believe it's really important to support hobbyist devs working on our beloved platform!

And finally, community. Being able to meet up with like minded folk and chat about our shared interest is such a fantastic thing. The community both within NAG and further afield is incredible and long may it continue to be so.

Projects

Having mentioned that I've been learning to code, I've got a few projects I can share: I participated in the Amiga Blitz Basic Game Jam in 2022, the result of which is a half-finished work in progress called 'Megafrog', which can be found in the Downloads section. I have an article published in Amiga Addict Magazine, Issue 22 in which I recount my experiences learning to code and entering the jam. Alongside that I have a couple of other WIP games, mostly proof of concept level stuff, and a horse racing betting simulation that functioned as an exercise I set to myself in order to learn the (blitz) basics of coding. This can also be found in Downloads. It was NAG inspired - initially it was going to be an F1 manager sim (very basic) but once I decided to name all the drivers after NAG members, I had to call it NAG Racing. At which point, well, it really has to be horses, not cars right?

My Amiga Systems

• Amiga 500+ - stock, with trapdoor RAM expansion
• Amiga 600 - 9.5mb Fast RAM card, sd card HDD
• Amiga 1200 - Tf1230 Accelerator card, a314cp clockport pi0 interface, sd card HDD
• Amiga 2000(1500) - Matze M68030-TK Accelerator, GBAPII++ RTG card, Microway "AGA2000E" flickerfixer card, sd card HDD