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 — the Foundations modules, our BASIC courses, Meet AMOS, or any language. New to programming entirely? Start with The Basics 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.