by bithunch
In 1993, in Baghdad, three students made a video game.
Rabah Shihab wrote it in pure 68000 assembly on a single Amiga 500 — 512KB of RAM, no hard drive, plugged into a TV. Murtadha Salman painted the palaces of Assyria pixel by pixel. Mahir AlSalman composed the music, sampling real Iraqi instruments for the soundtrack. They worked under sanctions: no internet, no Amiga manuals — just one copy of the Amiga Hardware Reference Manual, which Rabah used to program the hardware directly — electricity a few hours a day. The 50°C summers killed the disk drive three times.
They finished it. It was the first commercial video game made in Iraq — and then Commodore collapsed, sanctions scared off every publisher, and a completed game had nowhere to go.
In 2008, the English Amiga Board found gameplay footage on YouTube and asked the question that became a 24-page thread: "Babylonian Twins — An Amiga game?!" They tracked down the team. A playable demo followed, downloaded in over 70 countries. One forum member wrote:
"Hail for the whole team behind that game. Extreme circumstances, and still they are creating somewhat special. Respect."
This page is the ending of that story. The full original game — the real disks, finally. Free. For the community that never stopped asking.
What you get
- The authentic full game on its two original disks — Disk 1 boots, insert Disk 2 when the game asks.
.ADFimages for FS-UAE / WinUAE, or real hardware (A500, 512KB chip + 512KB slow recommended) - The 1993 playable demo ADF — downloaded from over 70 countries after the 2008 rediscovery; kept here as history
- Manual & design-note scans are coming as a free devlog update
If you want more
- The story & press archive: babyloniantwins.com/1993
- Babylonian Twins: Definitive Edition — the game rebuilt for today, with the original 1993 game included as a playable second launch option — wishlist on Steam · live now on iOS and Android
- The 2006 footage that started the rediscovery: the original Amiga gameplay
- The 2008 rediscovery thread: English Amiga Board
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