The Amiga CD32, aka the Amiga CD32, is a CD-based 32-bit video game system developed by Commodore and released in Europe, Canada, Australia, and Brazil in late 1993. It's one of the last machines Commodore released before going bankrupt in 1994, and also one of the company's few attempts to break into the home video game console business. A somewhat obscure piece of gaming hardware due to its limited rollout, the CD32 is probably most infamous for only lasting on the market for 8 months before being discontinued and indirectly causing Commodore's downfall.
The Amiga CD32's architecture was extremely similar to Commodore's home computers at the time, and can actually be upgraded to something along the lines of an Amiga 1200 via accessories such as a hard drive and floppy disk drive. The console is able to play games made for some older Commodore hardware, such as the CDTV, while keyboard and mouse compatibility is programmed into many of the native titles. This compatibility did lead to the odd quirk of platform games being designed with Up on the D-pad as the default jump button, however. The ability to play the Amiga library didn't extend the other way, as games designed specifically for the CD32 require a special chip not found in standard Amiga computers.
Commodore was not in good shape when they released the Amiga CD32, having been on the decline in the home PC market due to the emergence of IBM and Apple. They hoped their home console would somehow save them, but it ended up killing them off. Commodore planned on releasing the CD32 in the U.S. after its moderately successful launch in Europe (it went up against the Sega CD during its first holiday season and outsold it by a fair margin), but then disaster struck. Commodore received a legal injunction to pay $10 million due to patent infringement and were not allowed to sell anything in the U.S. until they coughed up the dough, but they couldn't afford to and had already manufactured CD32 stock for the region. Stuck with a bunch of useless machines they couldn't sellnote , Commodore ended up declaring bankruptcy and discontinuing the console on April 29, 1994.
While the demise of Commodore should have also been the end of the Amiga CD32, the console continued to receive game releases for a couple years. It had managed to sell about 100,000 units in Europe, leaving a lingering install base that was conceded large enough for developers to consider porting their games. The CD32 would thus up with it a solidly sized, if unremarkable, library of nearly 150 titles.
Amiga CD32 Games:
- The AKIRA licensed Amiga game
- Alfred Chicken
- Alien Breed series
- Alien Breed 3D
- Alien Breed: Tower Assault
- Battle Chess
- Battletoads
- Beneath a Steel Sky
- Brutal: Paws of Fury
- Bubba N Stix
- Bubble and Squeak
- Cannon Fodder
- The Chaos Engine
- Chuck Rock
- Chuck Rock II: Son of Chuck
- Dangerous Streets
- Dark Seed
- Death Mask
- Dennis
- Diggers
- Gloom (Amiga)
- James Pond 2: Codename RoboCod
- James Pond 3: Operation Starfish
- Jungle Strike
- Kang Fu
- The Labyrinth of Time
- Lemmings
- The Lost Vikings
- Microcosm
- Oscar
- Pinball Fantasies
- Putty
- Rise of the Robots
- Super Street Fighter II Turbo
- Super Methane Bros
- Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends Pinball
- Total Carnage
- Simon the Sorcerer
- Ultimate Body Blows
- Worms
- Zool
