THE AMIGA 500 STORY
The Commodore Amiga 500 Story is a feature film documentary that tells the story of the development and release of the Amiga 500 computer.
About the Film
When the A500 computer was released in 1987 it went onto be the most successful of the Amiga line and played a significant role in the video games industry due to the number of fantastic games created either for it or because of it.Â
This project will focus on why the Amiga 1000 struggled and why the Amiga 500 with it's simpler manufacturing and cheaper retail price finally saw the Amiga name really catch fire and combined with a fantastic line-up of games and other software is still so loved today, some 35 years later!
The Story
We will pick up the story in 1985, just after the recently launched Commodore Amiga 1000 has been released, however within a short space of time sales are disappointing and there are real concerns within Commodore that they need to find a way to reduce the manufacturing costs of the Amiga 1000 computer and to make it more like the Commodore 64, as in a single, simpler computer, in a box that can be sold in the same stores the C64 was selling in and not just the serious computer shops required to demonstrate and sell the advanced but expensive Amiga 1000.
On the West Coast of the US the original Amiga team led by Jay Miner start work on their next updated version of the Amiga project called 'Ranger', however shortly after on the other side of the country a team based at Commodore's West Chester offices are tasked with their own Amiga project, nick named 'Rock Lobster', a cost reduction assignment to get the expensive Amiga 1000 and all it's innovative and brilliantly designed chips and components down into simpler components in a single smaller case.Â
The Rock Lobster project led directly to the amazing Amiga 500 home computer, which when released in 1987 at a price far cheaper than the A1000 crucially saw it receive far wider distribution as it was positioned more as a games machine than a serious computer and it worked in securing millions of sales.
This project will cover the hardware story of the Commodore Amiga 500 and the later Amiga's in the line including the CD32 as well as what actually happened to Commodore which eventually went under in 1994.
In addition this project will look at how influential the Amiga line went onto be in the fields of Non-Linear video editing thanks to the Video Toaster system and innovations in graphic and audio design.Â
And finally this project will cover games, a lot of games as we feature interviews from some of the Amiga's greatest game designers who go into details on why specifically the Amiga 500 allowed them to either get into the industry or advance their own career from the 8-bit era which had dominated the early 1980's and why the Amiga allowed them to develop true next level video game ideas and the popularity of the Amiga 500 computer gave them the platform and user base to get those innovative game titles out there.
THE AMIGA 500 STORY
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