Software Update: Amiga Forever 2009

Regular visitors to the Meuktracker are probably familiar with WinUAE, an Amiga emulator for Windows. However, it is delivered without kickstart, say the bios/firmware of an Amiga, and without software, simply because this is still copyrighted. However, Amiga Forever has been available since 1997, a collection of emulators for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X, among others, kickstarts, Amiga software and additional drivers. Amiga Explorer is also part of Amiga Forever, which makes it possible to communicate with an Amiga on a Windows PC over a serial connection or a network connection.

Amiga Forever is available in three different versions. The Value Edition costs only €9.95, but you only get version 1.3 of the kickstart and Workbench plus fifty games for that. The Plus version has kickstart and Workbench versions 1.0 through 3.1 for €29.95, a wider range of software and emulators for platforms other than just the Windows platform. For ten euros extra there is also the Premium Editionthose two DVD videos with a total of five hours of nostalgic video contains. Cloanto recently released version 2009 of Amiga Forever and its changelog looks like this:

New features in Amiga Forever 2009:

• all included games and demo scene productions are now in RP2 format (uses less disk space and makes it very easy to add or remove files)
• RP2 Manager to scan for and import/export content
• Built-in RetroPlatform Library (to recognize and configure games, etc.) with live updates
• Seamless, one click integration or AmiKit and AmigaSYS add-ons lets you experience a broader variety of Amiga perspectives*
• New system ROMs (eg the 0.7 Kickstart required to run the software used by Andy Warhol in the 1985 Launch of Amiga demo)*
• Improved documentation and help (new Tip of The Day balloon, new documentation in Windows Help format)
• Emphasis on usability: interface and settings are improved, but remain consistent with the previous 2008 version and with C64 Forever (also see Tips for Upgraders)
• Tested to comply with “Compatible with Windows 7” requirements, with full support for Windows Vista and Windows 7, both x86 and x64 (possibly still the first and only Windows software with custom-shaped glass-enabled skin)

Additional new and improved features:

• Content more than quadrupled (disk images are now compressed in the new RP2 format, and also used directly by the installer)
• New “Amiga Forever Game Pack I” (more than 100 games)
• More than 100 beautiful demoscene productions
• New Gallery items: original Tripos article, “top secret” Amiga-Atari documents, and much more
• New system HDFs: complete Amiga OS 1.3, 2.1 and 3.1 installations with only a minimum of add-ons (eg Y2K fixes, RTG update for 3.1), but otherwise identical to the original (including file attributes as intended by Commodore, which were lost in later distributions)
• New ADFs (1.3 Extras, complete 3.1 install set, etc.)
• New ROMs (Amiga 1000, A590 and A4091 boot ROMs, system-specific ROMs required for added compatibility, etc.)
• Preinstalled WHDLoad “kickemu” support
• New KX Light, bootable from CD and with HD installation option (now featuring live updates) and extended hardware support

Additional details about the player for Windows:

• Revolutionary new and intuitive player interface for Windows, for easy selection and playback of games and other content
• Professional skin design with familiar “media player” interface
• Buttons and other visual controls provide intuitive access to content and emulation features (pause, resume, disk change, reboot, joystick vs. keyboard selection, window size selection, full screen, Amiga screen capture, etc.)
• The new Amiga Forever player makes it possible to double-click or drag-and-drop downloaded disk images (eg RP2, 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 (can use secondary display for full-screen Amiga) 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 session is up and running again in an instant)
• It is also possible to undo the changes from the last session and revert to a previous saved state
• Full undo of RP2, ADF, ADZ, HDF and HDZ disk writes (disk changes may be committed or discarded when exiting the emulation)
• Windowed mode visualizes games and demoscene productions as they were meant to be displayed, without large unused overscan areas
• Helpful visualization of additional details (Amiga mouse options, device status with green/red read/write LEDs, context-specific help tips, Tip of the Day balloons, etc.)
• Integrated video playback (requires MPEG-2 support by the operating system, otherwise the Amiga Forever videos can be read by any DVD player)

Amiga Forever 2009 screenshot; Click on the image for a larger version.