I think C64 was more successful than Amiga in US. Not sure how successful, for some reason in the C64 era it felt more like US people still were mostly using Apple IIc and such (something that was quite rare in Europe, I think), but C64 was probably quite successful too.

Like someone suggested, I also think they were far more console-minded back then than the folks in Europe. Playing their games on 8-bit NES, and a bit later on Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo. After all, I think Amigas were primarily bought as gaming machines (even if it could certainly do much more), a bit like the consoles, and unlike e.g. Macs or IBM PCs.

I actually read about NES the first time _after_ Amiga had already established some kind of userbase in Europe. Maybe Nintendo's European release was much delayed from their US, and especially Japanese, launches? The local gaming magazine article described e.g. NES' graphics capabilities as "better than Commodore 64, but not as good as Amiga". I guess that was quite an accurate description after all.

I have to admit that I was one who had an Amiga 1000. Got it around 1986/87 or so.

They hadn't even fully finalized the ROM, so I recall having to boot the Kickstart disk first, in order to do anything. Started off with version 1.1 and moved through to 1.3.

It also had this strange little tune it would play when everything was OK, shortly after turning the machine on, and just before booting.

I have to say, in a way, I kind of miss those simpler days! :-)

Get a console. ;)

How come? I think Amiga versions usually had better music and sound effects that the Atari ST versions. I recall Atari ST struggled with sampled sounds, and its music capabilities were more like Adlib or Commodore 64, than Amiga. Ie. cheapo synthesized music, not sampled like Amiga music.

However, due to its built-in MIDI port (which made it easy to connect external MIDI synthesizers), Atari ST garnered support from MIDI sequencer software developers, and garnered interest from MIDI musicians. Kind of becoming a poor man's Mac for musicians.

A bit like Amiga piqued interest as a cheap animation studio tool.

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Amiga became the go-to machine for people who wanted to do graphics, Atari ST for those who wanted to dabble in sound.

Interesting.

Didn't quite mean it like that -- the games companies hadn't yet started to turn into evil empires, and the copy protection was still very simple, or non-existant most of the time.

Even my Electronic Arts manuals instructed me to make a backup copy of my games as a first step, and play from the backup! :-)

I recall Amiga 1000 people hated how Commodore transferred the Kickstart to ROM on Amiga 500, as it couldn't be replaced similarly as it could on Amiga 1000. I think there was a movement called "FaKiR" or something like that, standing for "Federation against Kickstarts in ROMs". They felt it was Amiga's undoing that KS would be not easily upgradeable/replaceable anymore.

In the end I feel their fears were not warranted. I guess by the time Kickstart reached versions 1.2 and 1.3, there wasn't that much reason to upgrade it anymore, at least if you didn't replace rest of the hardware at the same time.

I had an early Amiga 500 with Kickstart 1.2 in a ROM, and I don't recall ever feeling left out because newer Amiga 500s had Kickstart 1.3. Not even sure what the exact difference between those were, but at least they didn't seem to affect gaming. :)

I can recall having to do a bit of "Kickstart juggling" as time went on -- a number of my early games didn't like the later Kickstarts, so I had to switch the computer off, turn it back on, load an earlier Kickstart, and the game would be quite happy.

In a way, it was good that they finally standardized, for a good long while anyway, the 1.3 Kickstart in ROM, so that programmers knew what they were actually working with!

Of course, when the later versions came along, you had all those various utilities, ReloKick for example, that fooled the software into thinking you had a different Kickstart version.

The Amiga had much better in-game sound than the ST (there are many Youtube comparison videos) but the Midi ports made the ST popular with musicians and DJs.

Regarding the C64, the general consensus is that it sold 17 million units worldwide (there is no definite figure).
It mainly competed with Apple in the States and Spectrum in UK.

Well, the Amiga version of Gunship (from Microprose) gets my vote as the most horrendous example of copy-protection/DRM. It had several layers of trying to make sure you were the legit owner of the game:

1. I think it had some kind of "search the manual for the portrait of this tank" kind of verification, possibly in the beginning of the game.

2. I think there was also some secondary manual (keyword?) check, when you wanted to get back to your homebase after a successful mission.

3. It also had some kind of copy protection on the disks so that you wouldn't try to copy them. Special bootsector on the disk or something.

4. But the real kicker was: it demanded you to keep the game disk writable so that it could save the game progress there.

Due to #3 and #4, a simple and common Amiga bootsector virus, which would merely overwrite the disk bootsector, destroyed my legit Gunship (those viruses assumed your disks use normal bootsector, not some special one).

At that point I started to question, what good was it to buy Amiga games, if the legit version was a pain in the ass to play, and very vulnerable to getting corrupted. I was quite mad at Microprose at that point, but I guess I fixed my problem by getting hold on a fully cracked pirate version of Gunship.

When I became a PC gamer, I recall being positively surprised how much less copy-protection and even manual checks PC games had in general. If I recall right, e.g. Red Baron or Wing Commander 2 didn't have any copy protection or manual checks at all, which was quite unheard of on Amiga games. I think the first Wing Commander had a manual keyword check, but that was all.

I can't count Copy protection as FRM because while it accomplishes the same function, there is nothing from restricting you from installing your legitimate game years later and playing it since you should have all your documentation that you paid for. Basically, the game ships with everything it needs to run. It is annoying, but it isn't DRM any more than a disc check is.

DRM in my opinion is something that prevents you from installing because it digitally checks... something. Either downloads, phones a server, or something silly and even bad. It's just a shame that people discovered the means to share things they shouldn't share on such a wide-spread platform. If not for dishonest people, DRM wouldn't be such a bane to the paying customers.

Looks like I left off a comma!

I did say most of the time, and, yes, I had Gunship as well, but much of the stuff I bought was totally unprotected.

Interestingly enough, many of the early games I had to purchase from the U.S. because very few people had actually heard of the Amiga in the U.K. at the time. It's strange, but I only really started seeing more copy protection when many of the games started being produced on the European side of the pond.

All of my EA titles, for example, I was able to make backups of, and play from the backup -- as I said earlier, they actually *advised* you to do this in the manual.

Still, time moved on, and just about everything, or so it seems, got copy protection :-(

A virus on the Amiga? Never heard of that, and I played Amiga games from around 1985 - 1996. In the 80s 90 % of the games we had were pirated (we were young and had not much money) and I never saw a virus, not even one!

You were lucky then! There were loads of them around at the time -- mind you, just about all the virus scanners were free as well. Very few were payware.

EDIT: I believe two of the main ones, IIRC, were "Lamer Exterminator" and "Byte Bandit"