Cloanto has released Amiga Forever 2008, the latest version of their emulation package. Amiga Forever allows you to launch various instances of different AmigaOS versions, as well as various old Amiga games. The operating systems’ ROM files are provided on the disk.Amiga Forever 2008 is rewritten from scratch, and includes, among other things, the following new and improved features:
- The new Amiga Forever player makes it possible to double-click or drag-and-drop downloaded disk images (e.g. ADF, ADZ, IPF, etc.) to play them, using heuristic content analysis to preset a suitable Amiga hardware configuration
- The player has built-in support for dual screens and multiple emulation sessions
- Rather than closing an emulation session, it is possible to save its state, for example to resume a game at a later time (the experience can be amazing, because the session is up and running again in an instant)
- Full undo of ADF, ADZ, HDF and HDZ disk writes (disk changes may be committed or discarded when exiting the emulation)
- Full support for Windows Vista x86 and x64
Amiga Forever 2008, like its predecessors, comes in three editions, and there is upgrade pricing too.
The new features sound very useful to me. It’s nice to see this product steadily moving forward.
I have a previous version, but I am definitely going to upgrade.
Yeah, especially the professional skin design with familiar “media player” interface and probably the first and only Windows software with custom-shaped glass-enabled skin. Afterall, it’s nice to have a user interface I can jerk off to.
Generation iPod strikes again.
With all due respect, you don’t even have to RTFM to see several valuable features. The ones Thom highlighted in the article summary are the very useful.
The ability to save and restart the state of a session is really good. Undo of disk writes could also be useful. The actual article says they have also included more software, and added support for running directly from compressed images.
FWIW, I am an old-school, die-hard Amigan (A1000 – 1986), and I don’t own an iPod. Like you, I couldn’t care less what the skin of the player looks like. But I greatly appreciate the real features they have added.
how about a version for mac os x?
You already can:
http://www.amigaforever.com/mac/
I own an older version of this product.
This is a good thing. I wish other companies offered similar configurations for their older operating environments. This means you can actually acquire good ROM images and games without having to resort to the grey areas of the Internet.
Amiga is one of those platforms that actually works well in emulation thanks to Cloanto.
hahaha yeah, thanks to cloanto… i do see them mentioned SOOO often in uae/winuae’s changelogs…
give credit where credit is due.
I picked up Amiga Forever last year because I use original hardware and wanted to have Amiga Explorer because it makes life so much easier. I went for Amiga Forever instead because they have some cool videos on top of that.
Now I understand that most people buy Amiga Forever because they want to emulate the Amiga, but as someone who is interested in using real hardware and learning a bit more about Amiga history, I find the upgrade to be somewhat less than compelling.
Give us more history and give up more software to use on real hardware, in addition to all of those emulator tweaks, and they can satisfy almost everyone. But until then I’ll keep waiting and hoping.
Edit: buying Amiga Explorer instead of Amiga Explorer made no sense.
Edited 2008-05-31 18:34 UTC
I should point out that the version of AmigaOS that they are distributing is an unofficial, crippled, and dare I say it broken, version of the official AmigaOS 3.9 which was developed by Haage & Partner under contract to Amiga Inc.
And, has been pointed out, they have contributed bugger-all to the development of UAE and Fellow.
Should also mention that the ROM files are also crippled, you can’t use them without a keyfile, and even then only in certain emulators, they are useless for eg. patching. f–king DRM shit again.
Don’t waste your money, these lamers don’t deserve it.