Guide Best Amiga Games Of All Time

Some of these hold up very well, some of them look a bit too "Amiga". The strategy, simulation and point & click adventures really seemed to be the system's strength.

Could easily add to the list but this does a great job at giving a wide overview of genres and every game here is a certified banger.

Worth pointing out that while the 500 was obviously the best selling model, I'd hazard a guess that almost all of them were upgraded to 1mb making them 500 Plus in all but name and case badge. Growing up, it seemed more of my friends owned 600 and 1200 but that's probably just because of our exact age and the models that were being pushed at the time. People with older siblings often had a 500. All 3 of those systems are wonderful.

This list demonstrates why the Amiga was so good. Ports of Amiga games on consoles are just not the same,
Due to the sound quality (playing Xenon 2 without Bomb the Bass. No Ice Cream man in Speed Ball 2), colour pallet, and some cases no mouse (playing Cannon Fodder without a mouse just doesn’t work for me)

A personal favourite ‘North & South’ is missing though. The updated version just isn’t the same, losing all of its original charm

@RetroGames Well, it was predominantly a system designed around a keyboard and mouse, in the early 80s where single button Atari style joysticks were the norm.

There were a huge variety of more console/arcade like experiences, many of them excellent and the hardware easily kept up with the Megadrive and SNES, sometimes surpassing what they oculd do... but that darn single button joystick really held them back. This often meant "up to jump" in platformers, and ruined 1v1 fighting games, arguably the 2 most popular genres of the early 90s.

The "up to jump" thing is nowadays entirely fixed by emulation, or even joysticks for real hardware that include a second button that doubles as "up" such as the solutions from Monster joysticks - hashtag not sponsored. [edit] And yes, I know Amiga could technically support more than one button on controllers, adn some games utilise it. Its just that most people didn't have controllers to support that, so devs didn't tend to include the option or design around it.

Didn't necessarily play all of these on the Amiga, but a pretty solid list. Sometimes hard to separate some standout games that make an impact, but weren't really good enough to make a Best Of list. Sometimes fun to revisit these from time-to-time. A lot of it was just the complete newness of it all. First time to see graphics and have audio like that. First time a genre was established, or realized with that kind of presentation, etc.

One thing I loved about Worms was the ability to design your own levels in Deluxe Paint 3 and import them in to the game.

Turrican II FTW! Really one of the greatest Amiga games!

I never actually owned an Amiga, but Flashback and Lemmings were two of my favourite Mega Drive games growing up

Wow- I had Lotus on my Atari ST and never got to see the amiga version until now. It pains me to say it but I think the commodore had me beat!

Some great choices there and as the list has to stop somewhere, a good few of my favourites were missed, eg UFO: Enemy Unknown (rebranded as XCOM), Alien Breed 3D, Gloom (two Doom - but on the Amiga - clones), Slamtilt (arguably the best Amiga pinball game), Shadow Fighter (a great BEU hampered by only using one button), Apidya (japan-inspired horizontal SEU with a wasp controlled by the player). Plenty more to go on!

It’s worth noting whilst you reference Chip RAM, the Amiga - all models - had the option of adding additional memory, called Fast RAM, usually up to 8 Megs, unless an accelerator card was used. My own A1200 has 2Mbs CHIP and 32Mbs Fast RAM, as I had a 68040 accelerator card, bumping up the processing speed as well as RAM.

More Amiga articles, please! 😊

The Amiga had some outstanding games the games that were ported to consoles like speedball 2 and the chaos engine were always better on Amiga I would recommend slam tilt if you like pinball and stunt car racer is still awesome even today

One thing the Amiga unfortunately suffered from was the fact most joysticks available only used one button despite it being capable of using two button ones. As a result most action games really suffered especially any games that used up to jump as it always felt to me as the jumping was often made too floaty to compensate for the poor joysticks at the time. I even would question if games like Zool, James Pond 2 and Superfrog should be considered among the best since much like any of the one on one fighting games on it they were only considered good due to how average or bad the majority was. I may have also included Syndicate on this list too but that's just because I spent too long playing it over one summer perhaps.

@Zenszulu That's an interesting observation — and now you mention it, Robocod and Zool did indeed have very floaty jumping in them.

@Andee it's one thing I have noticed when going back and playing games on both the Amiga and C64 recently with the option of using a controller and many of the better regarded platformers were like this. It was a smart design choice for sure.

The Amiga still lives!
In the Philippines, sound mixing for their local TV shows are made using old Amiga computers, even to this day.
I am not kidding with this.

Had a great time with Silkworm back in the day.

I really liked the pseudo-sequel, SWIV, as well, but I never got far in that one. Having done a complete playthrough more recently (only with the help of infinite lives), I now see how horrendous the game actually is. Oh, well. The first few minutes are still fun.

While I didn't really get into it back then, I'd like to do a full playthrough of Bubba & Stix one of these days/years.

Really nissing Apidya here (with swiv and banshee the best shooter) Swos easily the best game overall