Babylonian Twins (1993, Amiga)

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. .ADF images 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