Dave Needle - co-founder of the Amiga computer & co-inventor of Atari Lynx and 3DO

[MiddlemanOne]

Dave Needle, one of the most legendary hardware engineers of his time, has passed away on 20th February 2016.

 

Dave was instrumental in the creation and completion of the Amiga 1000 (Lorraine) introduced in 1985, an incredibly revolutionary computer for its time. Especially regarding its custom chip set which he helped engineer, which could produce 12-bit 4096 RGB graphics and 16-bit 4-channel PCM based polymorphic sound which digitised sound sampled from real instruments. Apart from this, he also co-invented the Atari Lynx handheld and with fellow ex-Amiga engineer RJ Mical at Epyx helped developed 3DO's Interactive Multiplayer system. He was also VP of The 3DO Company for several years.

 

Indie Retro News: Dave Needle - Amiga Co-Founder & Atari Lynx Co-Inventor has passed away

[baddog]

Though I never got to own one, I always wanted an Amiga, very cool machine in it's day. RIP Dave. However old you might have been, it was far too soon.

[Paul R]

Aw- that just purely sucks.

[Audio_ELF]

Now that brings back memories ... the geek cliques ... were you with the Amiga group ... or the Atari ST group ... or perhaps you were a bookish geek and went with an Archimedes instead.

 

My memories of using Amiga were mostly around playing the occasional games ... Populous ... Sim City ... Lemmings!

[YashN]

Now that brings back memories ... the geek cliques ... were you with the Amiga group ... or the Atari ST group ... or perhaps you were a bookish geek and went with an Archimedes instead.

 

My memories of using Amiga were mostly around playing the occasional games ... Populous ... Sim City ... Lemmings!

 

My first console was the original Atari 2600. And that was after playing some hand-held LCD 'game-and-watches' and some arcade games for a while, all offered as gifts from one of my father's best friend.

 

I had discovered a hidden function in Space Invaders and the hardware and so I had the biggest scores in that game. I also had Pole Position and Pac-Man or Ms-Pacman I think.

 

Waited to get the BASIC cartridge, to no avail, was very frustrated as a kid at that time because of that.

 

Finally got an Oric Atmos (48K, integrated BASIC, 4 colours) at 13 and taught myself to code with it. My first large program was a paint program which used interleaving to simulate more colours than the Oric had.

 

My next one was a Commodore 64, that I won at around 14 as the best pupil in a coding school that I went to on my bike after normal school hours (CS wasn't yet in the curriculum at that time), in competition with people much older than me since they were all adults. I wanted to do that course because of an ad in the newspapers saying you could win a C64 if you placed first. So I told my parents to register me to the course because I was going to win this C64. The exam was about coding an accounting/payroll software on a PC. I finished that exam much earlier than all the other adults and went back home.

 

One day my mother fetched me at school, asking the teacher to release me early. Usually, this was because of serious events, like death in the family or something like that. In fact, it was the award ceremony, and I went home with the C64!

 

This was fun as all my classmates had a C64, so then I could borrow their games. The Oric wasn't as popular but I remember Spooky Mansion (hardest game ever! harder than Aigle d'Or!), Rat Splat and Mr. Wimpy, but the best was 'Aigle d'Or' which I actually finished on my own (people found it hard to believe).

 

So many games on the C64! Karateka, Ghosts n' Goblins, Green Beret, you name it.

 

Had to battle hard to get an Amiga A500 instead of a PC. Spent may hours playing Lotus Esprit Turbo II and Kick Off II with my younger brother even on nights before his exams. Psygnosis had big hits, yes I remember Lemmings, Eloise, much fun, as was Cannon Fodder! Turrican II, Xenon II, Bubble Bobble. I was a big fan of games like 'The Pawn'. Another World was great.

 

Then came the PC era. My interest in gaming on desktops had decreased a little with Systems Engineering study, so we did play some networked games a little but no much. One of the games that kept my interest for a while was Far Cry, but I mostly played Scrabble online, which was great fun. I also installed a small network at home to play Bomberman against my girlfriend at the time.

 

At Engineering school though, I did have a Playstation (thus, I had missed a whole generation or two of consoles), so we played a lot of Tekken II with classmates. I usually won all of these. There were great titles on the PS too.

 

I got a little boost in interest when I found MAME and knowing I could emulate all the games that I loved in the arcades pre-Atari 2600, like Gyruss, Galaxians, Defender, Xevious! These are strong memories.

 

Nowadays, I rarely play computer games. Interest in them really cratered when I was working in the Forex industry and started trading right after that.

 

About the only game I play online is NLHE Poker.