Meet Blitz

What this is

Not a game — a bridge. Blitz BASIC 2 is a compiled language: you write something that reads like BASIC, press a key, and Blitz turns it into a native Amiga program that runs at full speed. That one fact — compiled, not interpreted — is what let bedroom coders ship games that sold in boxes. Meet Blitz walks you into it one small idea at a time, so that by the end you can open a display, throw fast-moving graphics at it, and feel why the scene reached for Blitz when it got serious.

This primer leans into what makes Blitz Blitz: the edit-compile-run loop, its two modes, and Blitz mode's closeness to the Amiga's chips — Slices, Shapes, the Blitter, smooth scrolling. Where a higher-level language hands you a finished verb, Blitz hands you the fast, sharp tools and trusts you to wield them.

Who it's for

You've met variables, loops, conditionals and procedures somewhere — General Programming, our BASIC courses, Meet AMOS, or any language. New to programming entirely? Start with General Programming first, then come back.

You don't need to have done Meet AMOS — Blitz stands on its own. If you have, you'll feel the contrast straight away: AMOS hands you game verbs and runs them interpreted; Blitz hands you faster, lower-level tools and compiles them to the metal. Neither is "better" — they're different trades, and the Amiga is the rare machine that lets you feel both.

The shape

• Compile and run — the Ted editor, the edit-compile-run loop, Blitz's two modes, and its machine-flavoured typed variables.
• Speed you can see — decisions and loops the compiled way, the frame loop, and the headline trick: many things moving at once, fast.
• Blitz graphics — Slices to build a display, Shapes to draw, and the Blitter to move pixels in bulk.
• Make it a game — move a shape every frame, read the joystick, and detect collisions.
• Toward the metal — smooth hardware scrolling, reaching into the Amiga's chips, hardware sprites, and a look back at the Blitz way and how it compares with AMOS.

You won't have built a whole game yet — that's the point. You'll have the speed, the tools, and the feel that a Blitz game is built from.