Demos, games, utilities, images, music and more were all available for free, or at least for the price of a floppy disk and postage & packing (remember, this was before the internet crept into homes up and down the country).
The great thing is that the Amiga still plays host to a public domain scene to this very day. Although this is a far cry from the days when the Amiga was still being sold in the shops and through mail order, there's still a steady stream of demos, utilities and the odd game seeing the light of day.
Some truly wonderful games were released into the public domain, and one of my all-time favourites is Top Hat Willy, which I still wheel out to play on my trusty Amiga 1200 on a fairly regular basis.
For those of you not familiar with the game, it's basically an Amiga rip-off of Matthew Smith's Spectrum classic, Jet Set Willy. Yes, it's a rip-off, but it's been done so well, that it easily stands alongside the 1984 title it's clearly influenced by.
So, why am I waffling on about this ancient Amiga platform game? Well, earlier this week, Christian Clarke, maintainer of the excellent AmigaPD.com web site, (a site devoted to not only highlighting the best PD games the Amiga has to offer, but also features interviews with many of the programmers of those games) revealed that he'd just published an interview with Top Hat Willy Programmer Tero Heikkinen.
It's a fantastic little interview, where Tero reveals how the game came together, subsequent projects, and even some background info and screenshots on the sadly cancelled Top Hat Willy 2.
If you've not played Top Hat Willy, I urge you to give it a go. It's such a cracking little game.
You can find the AmigaPD.com interview with Tero, HERE.
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