This documentary film starts off by covering the story, briefly, from the inception of the first videogame and everything up to the founding of Hi-Toro just as the videogame crash in the USA started.

From there, the film gets on to the development of what we now know as the Amiga 1000 from a simple 68000 board with a serial port, with emulation of the chips the company was designing. Through interviews with the then-surviving members of the original Hi-Toro Amiga team (Hi-Toro became Amiga Corp, and the Amiga machine became the Amiga Lorraine prior to Commodore), it takes you through the basics of the development and the urgency of getting things ready for the make-or-break CES show in 1984.

The shenanigans between Commodore and Atari are covered, as well as the launch of the Commodore Amiga in New York up to the launch of the Amiga 500, with the A2000 getting a few frames on screen too.

The focus of the documentary then pretty much shifts to the UK and European game developers (with pauses to bring in Cinemaware and Deluxe Paint), and their explanation of what a massive difference the Amiga made to the development market (Deluxe Paint and the soundtrackers perhaps being as big an influence as the platform). With a section on the Demo Scene and a little on Newtek's Video Toaster and Lightwave, the two and a half hours appear to fly by. But it leaves you with a lot of questions and with only half the story of the Amiga told. Surely a sequel will follow... Yes, but it's all about the PlayStation.

The documentary and extras are all well produced, and though the focus of the documentary is the Amiga (or rather the earlier Commodore Amiga platform) it's amazing quite how... well, generic, the presentation is. Even the opening sequence is devoid of anything specifically Amiga releated, making you wonder if you're even watching the right thing, with all the Apple and Atari logos thrust at you!

Like some other recent Amiga-related releases, the reinforcement of the perception that the Amiga ended with Commodore is duly present, and, if anything, the main feature suggests the Amiga ended with the Amiga 500.

The original Commodore Amiga (the A1000) and the A500 are well represented, and there's one glance at the A2000, but apart from an extra covering the launch of the CD32, everything else is ignored. The film essentially ends the hardware story at 1987, unforgivably missing out the story of the A300/600, and there's no mention of the second best-selling Amiga model, the A1200. Even the story of the UK-exclusive A1500 is missing, and there's barely a mention of the A3000, A4000 or even the CDTV!

There is, however, a deluxe edition coming, with a second disc with another three hours of footage, doubling the documentary up essentially (the main feature being 2.5 hours and the extras being approximately 30 minutes on the normal release). I can only hope this ends up telling the full story. It will cost £40 for the DVD edition and £45 for the Blu-ray edition.

As this release is, it's simply incomplete, and that's a massive shame; the title should have been The Early Commodore Amiga Years. However, what is here is pretty much gold, and a must see, hence the score. Just don't expect AGA support!