Overview

• On its 40th anniversary, retrospectives celebrate the Amiga as a multimedia pioneer whose innovations influenced subsequent PC graphics and audio standards.
• At its July 23, 1985 debut in New York’s Lincoln Center, Commodore showcased the Amiga’s capabilities with demonstrations by Andy Warhol and Debbie Harry.
• The Amiga’s custom chipset delivered 4096-colour graphics, four-voice stereo sound, integrated video outputs and the Amiga Workbench GUI with robust preemptive multitasking.
• After a slow start at 5,595 D-Mark, the 1987 launch of the 1,100 D-Mark Amiga 500 drove widespread adoption and fostered games like Lemmings.
• Commodore’s unclear product policies and weak marketing preceded its April 1994 insolvency, but the Amiga’s technical breakthroughs left a lasting legacy in multimedia computing.