AmiBlitz: The Amiga Nostalgia Trip Nobody Asked For – But Here We Are

Hello everyone. Let’s talk about the Amiga, blitzed BASICs, nostalgia-induced hallucinations, and why some people will spend 2025 coding pixel cows when the rest of the world is running Unreal Engine 5. Yes, this is about Neil from The Retro Collective, who decided to dust off the cobwebbed coffin of the Amiga and its BlitzBasic language – because apparently nothing says “time well spent” like pretending it’s still 1993 and you’re shipping Skidmarks instead of wondering why your crypto miner is eating 50% CPU.

The Ghost of BlitzBasic Past

Neil’s haunted by BlitzBasic 2, a compiled Amiga-specific programming language that, shockingly, wasn’t the molasses-dripping mess most people imagined when they heard the word “BASIC.” This little oddity was once considered the next best thing to C for the Amiga, used on notable titles like the legendary, cow-infused racing game Skidmarks. You know, back when graphics were chunky, sound chips squealed for mercy, and you weren’t being harassed by 27 Steam notifications while trying to code.

The thing is, BlitzBasic never really died. Some madman named Sven, also known as honitas, still maintains a modernized version called AmiBlitz, complete with an improved IDE. Neil thoughtfully provides a historical walkthrough in his video, along with pointers for actually getting started with this relic. The pitch? Picking up AmiBlitz in 2025 is like taking up medieval blacksmithing – absurdly impractical, but undeniably cool if you’re the type who enjoys the smell of molten iron. Or in this case, warm floppy drives.

LLMs and Pixel Puzzles

One particularly interesting angle: Neil recommends using LLMs like ChatGPT for learning niche languages like AmiBlitz. Not to spit out full code – because surprise, garbage in means garbage out – but to assist with generating pseudocode and coding techniques. It’s like having an apprentice who’s 80% useful but occasionally suggests you build your game entirely in Comic Sans. For Neil, it even helped in an Excel-based pixel art workflow, which has to be one of the most masochistic sentences I’ve ever typed.

Why Bother? Because Madness

Neil compares writing an Amiga game in 2025 to doing a crossword: it’s a purely personal mental exercise. Except his crossword is coded in an archaic language for a computer that most high schoolers today would assume is an air fryer. For the more occult-minded, it’s also apparently a way to “keep the dreams at bay” – because clearly we’ve fallen fully into the Lovecraftian undertones here. Frankly, I believe it; stare at enough low-colour sprites and bitplane graphics, and reality itself starts to render improperly.

The Opinions War: Amiga vs. The Universe

The rest of the chatter is exactly what you’d expect: a nostalgia-fuelled CPU fan war about whether the Amiga was killed by PC hardware superiority, Commodore incompetence, piracy culture, high costs, lack of business adoption, or all of the above. Some brag about upgrading their A1200 into a Linux-running Frankenstein. Others shun modern 3D shooters for point-and-click adventures and text games. One lone soul laments the loss of the “Langoliers” vibe from early 3D – the eerie loneliness of wandering through a world with no one in it. These are my kind of people; they still think game design is about atmosphere, not how many puddles ray-traced reflections you can count in a corridor.

The Medical Opinion

As a doctor, I can diagnose this phenomenon: terminal nostalgia with severe retro-computing syndrome. Side effects include hoarding yellowing keyboards, uncontrollable desire to use RS-232 cables, and spontaneous chanting of “Ia! Ia! Commodore f’thagan” under a full moon. Prognosis? There’s no cure – only high doses of AmiBlitz manuals and a steady diet of 68000 assembly language.

The Gaming Angle

Let’s face it – coding an Amiga game in 2025 is like choosing to speedrun a game with busted controllers on hardcore mode. There’s absolutely no reason to do it unless you enjoy the suffering. But that suffering is pure: no DLC scams, no cash shop cosmetics, just you, the machine, and your ability to bend it to your will until the screen finally coughs up the pixels you demanded. It’s gaming at its most raw, uncut form – the original Dark Souls of dev work, minus the parries but with way more compile errors.

Verdict

So where do I land on this nostalgia odyssey? Honestly, it’s magnificent nonsense. Nobody needs to write Amiga games in 2025. Which is exactly why people should do it. It’s impractical, eccentric, fraught with technical hassles, and absolutely dripping with soul – something conspicuously missing from much of tech culture today. If you want pure joy from wrestling a machine into doing your bidding, go fire up AmiBlitz. Just don’t be surprised if you start dreaming in copperlists and palette swaps.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is entirely my opinion.

Article source: Amiga Programming in 2025 with AmiBlitz, https://hackaday.com/2025/08/10/amiga-programming-in-2025-with-amiblitz/