classicamiga.com was founded by me, Harrison, a graphic/web/multimedia developer from the UK. Originally started in 2001, it was much smaller in scope and designed as a small helpful place for those seeking advice on Amiga emulation.
Over the following years my ideas and dreams for the site grew until finally in 2006 I decided to redeveloped the site from the ground up with the goal being to create an interactive and high quality site dedicated to the Amiga, combining the friendly community from the long running classicamiga forum. Of which many members had expressed interest in the future of classicamiga and had all shared their own ideas on what they wanted classicamiga to become.
The main aim of the new site has been to create a site that brings together all aspects of the Amiga, not just gaming as is the case with most other Amiga based sites. The Amiga was the first platform to really spark the creativity of it's users beyond just gaming and we want to show this and offer more to our visitors.
First and foremost we want every Amiga fan to take part and become a part of the classicamiga community by offering all visitors the ability to post their own comments on all site content, as well as being able to rate and review all entries in our game and demo scene directories.
One area often missed is the great Amiga demo scene. Some demo scene directories exist to give access to release lists and downloads of the demos, but none have offered the ability to explore them in detail. We hope to have changed this with the demoscene section of classicamiga, which offers the ability to explore the demo scene through screenshots, audio clips and downloads, while also offering extensive data about each production and the ability for visitors to review and comment them all.
I still have much work ahead of me to bring my complete vision for the site to fruition. It will take a lot of time and effort on my part to continue creating the site, along with the classicamiga members who work on the actual site content alongside me.
Special Thanks
First I would like to thank a few special people who have directly helped the site out in exceptional ways.
- First and foremost to the classicamiga forum community. The regular members of the forum have been with classicamiga since the start and have always supported and helped out where ever they can. With the development of the new site it has finally allowed them to create and edit content themselves directly on the site. Making it as much their site as mine. Most importantly we have all become great friends over the years.
- Special thanks has to go to a few key classicamiga members who have worked on site more than any others.
- Demon Cleaner for his dedication to the News and Games sections of the site, as well as extensive testing whenever anything is changed or introduced. Without his time consuming help entering data into the site database we would not have the extensive games section we now enjoy.
- P G for his dedication to the Amiga demo scene. His help in creating the site's demo scene section was invaluable, as the other members knowledge of the demo scene pales in comparison.
- Teho for all of his work with the content of the Demo Scene section.
- Neongod for allowing classicamiga to use the content from his now discontinued Amiga site Ancient Toys. Plus for coming on board to help classicamiga with continued development.
- And finally to Alexj, Buleste, Tiago and Submeg who have all been working hard on the continued updating of the games section information, and the ongoing creation of screenshots and supporting artwork scans.
- The classicamiga staff and VIP members, some of which I've already mentioned above. The moderators of the site and forum for helping keep classicamiga a nice place to be. Without all of you classicamiga would not be the place we enjoy today.
- And to all the regular classicamiga members who help out when they can.
Thanks goes to...
As a project classicamiga.com owes thanks to a lot of different individuals and projects over the years:
- All the contributors that have helped expand classicamiga with submissions of information, screenshots, scans (boxart, disks, magazines, manuals etc...) information and data.
- To the following for their work scanning and submitting scans to the site: Jacob42, Mist, JLPedro.
- All the members of classicamiga (past and present) for their help with site content and site testing.
- All the visitors to classicamiga who have sent files to us to help out, and especially to those who have donated Amiga hardware and software.
- The Amiga Docs Disk Preservation Project - For converting the large range of Amiga Doc Disks from their original pp compressed format into one we can use online saved us a lot of time. And also for allowing others to use their project on their own websites.
- The TOSEC project and the retro gaming collectors, without which we would not have such a complete collection of Amiga files to reference.
- BuZz for giving classicamiga permission to use the content from Exotica. Most importantly the boxart scans.
- Josh for giving classicamiga permission to use the scanned manuals, documention and reference books from his Amiga Manuals Website. Plus to all of the people who scanned/sent manuals into that project.
- Bernd Gmeineder for permission to use the content from his original AMI Sector One website (development discontinued in 2001).
- NeoGod for permission to use the content from his now discontinued Ancient Toys website.
- Pleasuredome and Underground Gamer. Two great retro resources.
- Rom Burner and Eggman. Two great sources of rare retro files.
- To Obligement, who we cross referenced for data accuracy.
- To Lemon Amiga for their great Lemonade frontend. We spent many years manually configuring WinUAE for site visitors who couldn't get games to run. Lemonade makes it so much easier. Lemonade was also a valuabe source of factual information about Amiga games that we cross referenced for data accuracy.
- Arcadia Flyers sourced from http://www.arcadeflyers.com/
- Cubo CD32 information and CD discscans sourced from http://www.toseciso.org/
- Arcadia Rom information taken from MAME and related Arcade sites including http://www.mameworld.net/
- Also to Lemon Amiga as we are currently using some game screenshots sourced from their site. These were used during site development for code testing purposes. These screenshots are slowly being replaced with our own screenshots as we get time to create them.
- Special thanks to the creators of UAE (Bernd Schmidt) and WinUAE (Toni Wilen), without which Amiga emulation would not be. And especially to Toni Wilen for his amazing ongoing work on WinUAE.
- And last but not least, to Jay Miner, Dale Luck, R.J. Micel and all of the others who without which the Amiga would not have existed.
Site Development thanks and credits
In addition to the site's content, many others are owed thanks for creating projects that have made classicamiga possible.
- Joomla! - First and foremost has to be this great open source CMS project. Classicamiga is built on this Content Management System Framework, which has greatly speeded up development and the site would not be as dynamic or as interactive without it.
- The Joomla Community - One of the greatest open source communities I've ever encountered. Very open and eager to help with any questions or problems relating to any aspect of Joomla. Emailing most open source developers within the community gets you quick and helpful advice and solutions to most problems. And being a part of the community, as you become more advanced in the inner workings of Joomla it makes you want to share your own knowledge and advice with others.
- Alejandro, the creator of the commercial jReviews Joomla component. This is used extensively on the site to help build our game and demo scene directories. jReviews is feature rich and very easy to use to create a powerful and easy to manage directory and review system. But special mention also has to go to Alejandro's after sales support which is the best I've ever encountered. Instant personal replies to problems, containing suggestions and fixes, along with instant bug fixes for any problems found in the component.
- To all of the other developers of Joomla components, modules and bots I've utilised to make the site. Including the creators of Community Builder, Jom Comment, DocMan, Flash Chat, JCE, joomap, uddeim, Zoom, lightbox and the Coppermine Image gallery software.
- vBulletin - The greatest forum software in existence. More features than any other board, great support and an even greater open source mod community.
- And finally to all the developers of the vBulletin mods I'm using on the forum.
Sorry if I've missed anyone from this page. Thank you to everyone directly or indirectly involved in the creation of classicamiga.
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