Cloanto’s Amiga Forever 7 (2017 Edition) – Still The Best

Workbench 3.x running on Cloanto’s Amiga Forever 7.

Note – Amiga Forever 10 R2 (2024 edition) is out, and you can read about that here.

2017 marks the twentieth anniversary of Cloanto’s Amiga Forever series. Over that time, Cloanto has continued to, release after release, create the finest Amiga emulation package for Windows. Amiga Forever 7 certainly continues that tradition.

Amiga Forever 7 Install Screen

Visually, little has changed with Amiga Forever, and most of this releases improvements are under-the-hood. From a user-perspective, probably the most important addition is the ability to create software/game-specific controller setups for your X-Arcade, X-Box, and other controllers. Other upgrades included support for left-handed users, and customizable auto-fire timing. Cloanto has also tweaked output for high-DPI monitors, so things look a bit better on your 4k screen.

Amiga Forever 7

Updates for Amiga Forever 7 have moved to HTTPS, and that is a welcome boost in security. Cloanto claims they’ve made a lot of improvements to PowerPC emulation. Unfortunately, I don’t have a PowerPC-ready Amiga OS handy, so I was not able to test these features. But, one of the more interesting additions to Amiga Forever 7 is their Autostart-Playlist feature. Using this, users can build custom Amiga configurations that the PC will boot into. Now you can finally have an Amiga laptop, just not one from Commodore.

Workbench 1.3, running on Amiga Forever 7.

I’ve been playing with Amiga Forever 7 for about a week now, and it has been great fun¹. The software is extremely well tuned, and is the easiest and cheapest way for Windows users – and Amiga fans – to relive the Amiga-experience from their youth. Cloanto continues to do great work on behalf the Amiga community, and quite generously too. The Value Edition of Amiga Forever is only $10, which nets you every thing you need to emulate Workbench 1.3 systems. Hard core fans, such as myself, will be drawn to the $30 Plus Edition.  It includes every Workbench from version 0.7 though the 3.x family, and with Kickstart’s from version 1, up to 3.1. The $20 upgrade program for the Plus Edition is one of the widest ranging in the industry, going back to include 1997’s edition of Amiga Forever.

UPDATE – March 9, 2018:  Cloanto has updated Amiga Forever 7 with the “R2” upgrade.  It is available for free to owners of Amiga Forever 7, and offers a slew of bug fixes as well as tweaks, optimizations and new features.  The full list is here.

Amiga Forever 7 –

Pros:

• Still the best legal Amiga emulation system.
• Simple to set up and use.

Cons:

• Windows-only installer. There are online instructions for using the licensed software and ROM code with Amiga emulators for Mac OS, Linux, etc.

Verdict = Recommended!

If you would like some Amiga icons, sounds, mouse pointers, and wallpapers for your Windows, Mac, tablet or smartphone, check our Amiga Memories for Modern Systems page.