Amiga Belfast First Meetup

03 November 2024

The first meeting of Amiga Belfast took place yesterday in the MayWe centre, 2 Royal Avenue (Bank Buildings, or "The Old Tesco") in Belfast city centre.

=> Amiga Belfast Promo Video (YouTube)

MayWe is an arts and cultural space that hosts a variety of events and was a good spot for an innaugural meetup and low-key retro event. We were able to get the space for free(!) and had a number of Amiga-filled trestle tables set up to one side, while other events like kids' crafting, popup cinema (I think) and some kind of photography sessions were going on in other areas. There is a central coffee bar and cafe, as well as breakout spaces and seats to take a break from whatever action is going on.

The initial idea behind this event was to find and tease out any lurking local Amiga users, with a view to starting a regular(ish) schedule of meetups. With this in mind, I took my "Monochrome A500++" along with my new game for Christmas 2024, some new(ish) release boxed games, and a few magazines to show off what's currently happening in the Amiga scene. CRG brought a number of machines including an impressive PiStorm-equipped A2000 EATX remake board in a modern PC case. Several others brought A1200s and other bits and pieces.

The most interesting bit of hardware though was an A1200-based pub game system presented by the developer of the famous(?) Amiga Format coverdisk game Charlie Chimp. Sometime around the late 90s, had written a number of multiplayer games in AMOS, connected an infrared controller and/or two large pedestal buttons to an A1200's controller ports, put the A1200 in a rugged steel box, and sold the complete system into pubs. It was quite popular as I understand it! The "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" variant was certainly popular on the day.

=> [IMG: Buzzin game system brochure] | [IMG: Buzzin game system brochure] | [IMG: Buzzin game system in action] | [IMG: Buzzin ruggedised A1200]

Brian was intrigued by the boxed games I had to show and, I think, went away to consider making boxes for his own games. Charlie Chimp physical edition, anyone?

An unreleased puzzle game "Hoopz" (a clone of Loopz) was also on show. It's another that started life in the 90s and has languished unseen since. It's a tricky one! Keep an eye out, I think I persuaded the developer to release it on itch.io soon...

There was a steady stream of visitors throughout the day. New folk, Amiga Ireland regulars who had made the trip up to Belfast, and even some some walk-ins (MayWe is a public space) who were just curious as to what was going on. I barely managed to "escape" from my table at all with people constantly coming over to chat and see what was going on!

As always, the day passed very quickly and we were soon packing up the machines to head out into Belfast for burgers and drinks. I came away with an Amiga BASIC reference manual and a large box of floppy disks too.

A positive start to Amiga Belfast!

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=> [IMG: Amiga Belfast] | [IMG: Amiga Belfast] | [IMG: Amiga Belfast] | [IMG: Amiga Belfast]

Amiga Belfast First Meetup

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