Hello to everyone on the board. I caught wind of this board through a comment on a video I made from the sites Admin. I'd like to thank him for telling me about it. I haven't been a member of any type of forum for many years, though I have been known as a prominent member of several in the past. Sadly, there was never an Amiga group in that list. Looks like we're pretty small at the moment, but that's okay, gives everyone a chance to keep up with things.
Shot has been my internet name since 1997 and I came up with the name a couple years earlier at the start of the game Wing Commander. It asks you for your callsign and last name... Wanting something fresh (the previous one was gifted by my father - He was Big Daddy - I was Little Daddy) I sat at the computer typing in name after name until I wrote Shot. It's always been a variation of that since.
My dad was a big nerd, who was into photography long before computers and got a Commodore 64 in the early 80's. My uncle and him would go to various groups and "trade" games. His C64 library was so vast I'm still going through them all. I'm pretty sure a lot of people have never heard of so many of these ones. I was born in 1985 and I really only have two memories of our C64 back then... The first: Me begging my sister to let me play a game... She put up a Barbie game. I remember driving in the town (big sprites) and shopping in it. The 2nd memory, I kind of accidentally knocked it off the desk and it fell...
It was 1987 and my father used this as an excuse to get the brand new Amiga 500. It came with a Commodore monitor, the tank mouse (later upgraded), a C64 joystick (later upgraded), an extra disk drive (replaced later), and a dot-matrix printer. A couple grand at the time I'm sure. That remained our main computer until he reluctantly went PC in 1995, as Windows 95 was finally impressive enough (he was not a fan of DOS). At that point the Amiga was put in my room and it saw great use during the rest of the 90's.
So many memories... I won't write them all here at the moment. Let's just say nothing touched my childhood more than the Amiga. I feel I was given a unique perspective on the Amiga, given how into it my father was. He was a hobbyist. Unlike the C64, where much of his stuff was "borrowed" he was now in his 30's and had some disposable income. Much of our Amiga library was the real deal. Not only games, but fine utilities like word processors and paint programs. I feel he was the primary market for computers back then. At least in America. Overseas it was a very different beast. But I feel much of the love my father and the real users in America had for these quite intricate and big games has been forgotten, as the people his age are not your typical YouTuber. Not only those big games but the facts about the Amiga in this country have been grossly misrepresented by the younger budget title buying Europeans. I love them for their love of the computer, but they don't know crap about the Amiga in this country. The misinformation is furthered by younger DOS users who were into shareware games - Because their parents had no clue how to use a computer - They never saw an Amiga, thus it must not have existed... There were 3 Amiga stores very close to me... It most certainly existed.
My dad died young. He was 45 when that occurred in 2001. I think a lot of people think my retro leanings have a lot to do with his dying. I wouldn't agree. When we got our Windows 95 PC I was longing for certain games on the Amiga... I made my dad hook up our NES to another TV when we got a Genesis. I would get my dad to buy old Amiga games for DOS (like Pirates, Gold Box Games Etc) only to play them and see they were not the same thing... They almost always disappointed me when thinking of the Amiga... In 1999 my dad bought another PC, giving me the 1997 model. I started using DOSUAE, Fellow, WinUAE, Nesticle... Started playing these games how I remembered... I was in love again. I would talk to my dad about beating Death Knights of Kyrnn (a game I remembered him playing and me failing at) - He responded with "oh yeah? That one was easy... Try Pools of Radiance - haha. I always had the love of this older stuff.
Anyway, I have a small channel on YouTube, and my main goal there is to give unscripted memories and reviews of these games (as well as many other retro things) from back in the day. Trust me, if I can remember breaking a C64 at two years of age, I've got a lot of crap to cover... Not only those memories, but I do my best to speak of these games and whatever as an adult would have back then. As I imagine my dad, a computer nerd hobbyist, would have spoken of them back then. As magazines I remember reading from America spoke of them. I'm telling you it's much different than what you currently hear from both a European dominated Amiga voice on YouTube, as well as child (at the time) dominated PC/NES/Genesis American voice on YouTube. There just is not that older voice here on the web. I feel it's a sad thing because, at least in America, the adult (25-45) group was the most important part of computer sales. These were not people who bought a DOS machine so they could get Lotus and do their work stuff at home. Those people bought very expensive PCs and Lotus, never another thing. It was not parents who bought their children a PC so they could "learn" instead of just playing video games. I feel this is the dominate voice on the web these days, and I'm telling you magazines and adults did not give two shits about Commander Keen or Duke Nukum. They played Civilization, Railroad Tycoon, Might and Magic, Gateway to the Savage Frontier, F-18, Pirates, Ports of Call, Defender of the Crown, The Secret Of Monkey Island - To name but a few. Some of those, based on their overwhelming history, do get some respect, but quite a few are almost forgotten about, like Lost Dutchman Mine. It is my goal to present these games from the eyes of an adult nerd from back then, a position I do my best to be true to, given my unique position of being from the seed of a nerd (not too many of us).
So yeah, I'm Shot97, I think the official YouTube name is MrShot97 if you want to look me up. But now that I'm here, I think I like it. Written word has always been a love of mine and I was thinking of once in awhile maybe doing a write up of some of these games I feature on YouTube. I'll try one soonish, and I'll see if anyone is interested. Again, thanks for inviting me over, looking forward to digging into some of the topics and contributing.