Boing Ball
The Amiga's icon
The bouncing checkered ball demo that became the Amiga's unofficial mascot, demonstrating the machine's graphics capabilities at its 1984 CES debut and symbolising the platform ever since.
Overview
The Boing Ball is a demo created for the Amiga’s debut at CES in January 1984, showing a red and white checkered ball bouncing around the screen with smooth animation and realistic physics. Created by Dale Luck and RJ Mical, it became the Amiga’s unofficial mascot—the image that symbolised what made this machine different. The Boing Ball proved the Amiga could do things no other home computer could match.
Fast Facts
- Created: January 1984
- Creators: Dale Luck, RJ Mical
- Event: Consumer Electronics Show
- Purpose: Demonstrate Amiga capabilities
- Status: Unofficial mascot
- Legacy: Still used in Amiga branding
The Demo
What the Boing Ball showed:
| Feature | Significance |
|---|---|
| Smooth animation | Hardware sprite capability |
| Rotation illusion | Palette cycling trick |
| Realistic bounce | Physics simulation |
| Audio | ”Boing” sound on impact |
| Full screen | No borders, no flickering |
Technical Cleverness
The rotation was an illusion:
- Ball didn’t actually rotate
- Colours cycled through palette
- Created appearance of spin
- Minimal CPU overhead
- Demonstrated custom chip power
CES Impact
At the 1984 Consumer Electronics Show:
- Attendees stopped to watch
- Nothing else looked like this
- IBM PCs showed CGA text
- Macs displayed black and white
- The Amiga bounced a ball
Cultural Significance
The Boing Ball represented:
- Technical superiority - “Your computer can’t do this”
- Playfulness - Not just serious computing
- Innovation - Genuinely new capabilities
- Identity - Instant Amiga recognition
Persistence
The Boing Ball endured:
- Amiga company logos
- User group imagery
- Retro computing references
- Emulator icons
- Community branding
Why It Mattered
In 1984, home computers displayed text and simple graphics. The Boing Ball showed something that looked like television—smooth, colourful, alive. It wasn’t a game or an application; it was pure demonstration that the Amiga was fundamentally different.
Legacy
Decades later, the Boing Ball remains the instant visual identifier for the Amiga platform. It represents not just a technical demo but a moment when home computing changed—when machines stopped being calculators with screens and started being multimedia devices.