Amiga Guru Meditation Error Screen Wallpaper

The Amiga’s famous crash-screen – The Guru-Meditation Error.

The original Amiga concept was for a video game console which could be turned into a computer.  Early in the development of the system, the engineering team constructed a controller called the “Joyboard”, similar to a Wii Balance Board, and a simple game which detected movement on the Joyboard.  This game involved the player sitting on the Joyboard, in a stereotypical cross-legged guru meditation position, and when the player did move, the game would announce their turn had ended on a ‘guru meditation error’.

Although the Joyboard was dropped when the Amiga concept moved towards a personal computer, this in-house joke survived, making it into the AmigaOS as a sort of easter egg. When early Amiga (Workbench 1.x) systems would suffer from a crash, and the flashing “Software Failure” screen would appear.  The numbers were helpful hints to developers as to why the software crashed.

The downloadable ZIP file contains the famous “Amiga Guru Meditation Error” screenshots in the original 640×480 format, as well as:  640×960 (great for phones), 1024×768 & 1280×800 (for iPads and tablets), 1440×900, 1600×1200, 720P and 1080P.

Download · File size = 264.4 KB · Download Count: 702

If you would like this as an animated GIF, you can find that here.

Be sure to check out the rest of our Amiga stuff.