Now that Commodore has arisen from the depths of obscurity like Cthulhu awoken from R’lyeh, the question on every shoggoth’s squamose lips is this: “Will there be a new Commodore Amiga?” The New Commodore is reportedly interested, but as [The Retro Shack] reports in the video embedded below, it might be some time before the stars align.
He follows the tortured history of the Amiga brand from its origins with Hi-Toro, the Commodore acquisition and subsequent Atari lawsuit, and the post-Commodore afterlife of the Amiga trademark. Yes, Amiga had a life after Commodore, and that’s the tl;dr here: Commodore might be back, but it does not own the Amiga IP.
If you’re wondering who does, you’re not the only one. Cloanto now claims the name and most of Amiga’s IP, though it remains at loggerheads with Hyperion, the distributors of AmigaOS 4. If you haven’t heard of them, Cloanto is not an elder god, but in fact the group behind Amiga Forever. They have been great stewards of the Amiga heritage over the decades. Any “new” Amiga is going to need the people at Cloanto on board, one way or another. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible– the new Commodore might be able to seduce Cloanto into a merger, or even just a licensing agreement to use the name on reproduction or new hardware.
While a replica C=64 was a no-brainer for the revived Commodore brand, it’s not quite so clear what they should do with the Amiga name. An FPGA reproduction of the popular A500 or A1200? Would anyone want newly-made 68000-based machines, or to follow Hyperion and MorphOS to now-outdated generations of PowerPC? All of these have been proposed and argued over for years.
We’d love to see something fully new that captures the spirit of the bouncing ball, but it’s hard to imagine bottling magic like that in the twenty-first century. For now, Amiga lies dreaming– but that is not dead which can eternally lie, and we hold out hope this Great Old One can return when the stars are right.
There are a lot of new Amiga HW, both in PowerPC and FPGA`s
I don’t understand the nostalgia trend. I loved my Amigas and I learned a heap of stuff about software development on them as a teenager. I have fond memories of making incredible stuff with them.
And also, I have moved on, grieved, and grown.
I’m tired of seeing old familiar names of my childhood dredged up and repackaged again and again. If someone wants to build replica hardware or an emulator in a box, that’s cool, but let’s not kid ourselves with promises of a grand revival of dubious purpose.
Make something new! Remember the ways these classic systems sparked joy for you and express them in a new form. Create something delightfully quirky for the next generation to fall in love with.
I don’t need a new Amiga. Not when there are so many other possibilities to explore.
this!!
Plus its’s still the old copyright crap about , using the C- logo to generate $$$$, I congratulate efforts like from Olimex ! Not only modern-rertro systems like AgonLight, but also affordable (that was the spirit of ol’ Commodore , remember??) and the most important Open Source Hardware !!! SO far copyright only harm done to the Amiga – sorry I wont pay a damn dime to the new commodore to ask permission to use their ‘roms’ whatever in order to feed their lifestyle.
I agree, those of us that had those systems when they first came out mostly have fond memories of them, but the reality is technology has moved on so much that you can’t recapture that time. It isn’t possible to develop a new system based on an old one that is able to compete with the capabilities of today’s computers.
The majority of these revivals end up being a fun distraction for a brief period, then put in the closet to be forgotten about.
back then the amiga was cutting edge for the price point, and you could do things no other computer could at the time. Thus why it was so good.
But I don’t know why anyone wants to go back, our pc’s today are so much MORE usable than amiga was then. If you want that small system programming fun – I agree it is – boot up your c++ compiler and write programs for the esp32 or something else with an embedded RTOS..
Commodore died in the 90’s and it’s mostly the fond memory of the related period that remains, many people cherish that, it’s called retro computing.
I own several C64 computers, good old cool retro stuff. But now that Commodore is in the process of being resurrected and new “official” C64’s are about to be released. My good old official Commodore retro C64 will suddenly be nothing more than just another “old” C64.
The fun thing of retro computing was that that old stuff from the 80’s and 90’s has reached a steady state of oldness, now suddenly, old things are getting older.