1 - Commodore Is Awesome

38 Amiga Computing
Birthd7
imo
Launches to cater for the
from 25 to 35. But, strangely
enough, the Amiga purchaser seems
j growing Amiga community. younger, with the exception of those
uAnd
4,014 pages later you have people from the vertical markets
narrived
at this feature.
such as video production."
e The pages in between have seen Steve was certainly right to pin-
1 Amigo Computing cover virtually point video production as an area
9every
aspect of the Amiga.
8 We have carried everything from
where the Amiga would later establish
a foothold to be envied by other
8getting
started with the Amiga, computer manufacturers.
: through to making the
This can be credited more to the
A most of the machine
enthusiasm of third party peripheral
nwith
numerous soft-
manufacturers than any vision
eware
tutorials and
on the part of
w hardware projects.
Commodore.
m Then editor,
The parallel be-
aSimon
Rockman
tween our first and
gsummed
u p
/current issues contin-
aAmiga
Comues
with the Bards Tale
zputing's
pio-
adventure series from
i neering spirit
Electronic Arts providing
a link.
nwith
our/
Back in '88 we took a
eopening/
editorial in
look at the original in our
ItAgb
issue one:
first leisure software feature.
•
tal /
"Welcome- -------__ 1 Via/ / Now, three years and several
A
V i a / to Amigo Computing. A -_ thousand pages later, we are
1 ,
magazine produced by a staff looking at the latest in the series,
which lives and breathes the 1 Amiga - Bards Tale III, with equal commit-
from days of careful planning / with
ment and enthusiasm.
Superbase to long nights / playing
Phil South introduced the CLI to
Arkanoid. If you enjoy your / Amiga eager beginners in issue one. Again a
as much as we enjoy ours then this is parallel can be drawn. Stevie
/
the magazine for you."
Kennedy's "Beginners Guide to the
A flick through our 36 h back issues ar series continues in this issue,
reveals a community of " computer introducing a new batch of begin-
enthusiasts growing month " by
month with their machine. l
Over the last three years we have
i
witnessed the Amiga develop from
an enthusiast's machine tinto
a truly
affordable mass market ehome
comners
to the mysteries of the Amiga's
command line.
Forgetting the past for a moment,
here and now in 1991 the Amiga is
probably the most exciting hardware
platform to write about. We could
puter.
not hope for a more diverse range of
Amigo Computing has gone users, all trying to sway the maga-
through exactly the same evolution, zine in different directions.
widening our scope as the computer Amigo Computing receives letters
we serve continues to expand and daily from readers: some praise,
develop its diverse range of features some criticise, but all care passion-
and capabilities.
ately about their machines. That fact
A nostalgic focus on our first issue was only too clearly borne out when
reveals an uncanny number of paral- I dared to comment on the relative
lels between June 1988 and the pre- merits of the beloved Amiga 1000 in
sent day. Take for example our lead a previous article.
news story in issue one: "Amiga
catches up with ST."
The quantity and quality of arguments
from dedicated 1000 owners
In that piece, we published the defending their machine was truly
results of an ad-hoc survey of 100 breathtaking.
computer dealers. We were pleased The running theme through
to report that in the Midlands and every issue of Amigo Computing
South-East, the Amiga was outselling over the last three years has been
its arch rival, the Atari ST, two to progression. Virtually every expan-
one.
sion avenue from hard disks to local
One of the dealers surveyed, Steve area networking and modems has
Kingston from Bath Computer
Shack, offered an interesting insight
been explored.
Our features have focussed on
into the then Amiga market "The ST Amps in the classroom, on the race
buyer I regard as an XR3 type aged track and even in the tunnels of the
Back
to the
uture
What does a birthday, a magazine and
a potato have in common?
Eddie McKendrick blows the dust off
our back issues to find out
London Underground.
August 1989 saw the launch of
Britain's first Amiga dedicated
CoverDisk. Since then, our cover
mounted media has provided
megabyte upon megabyte of entertainment
and utility software.
The first disk featured two
playable game demos. Since then we
have responded to readers views and
shied away from making our disk an
advertising platform for software
houses.
Instead our Cover-
Disk has
•'::'. •
•••••••
•••
:
•::
„":-
become an integral part of the publication,
providing support programs
for articles and stand alone software
that really make the most of your
Amiga.
Other magazines have sinc
jumped e on the coverdisk bandwagon,
but none can claim to be as
diverse or truly useful as those affixed
to the front of Amigo Computing.
Over the months our disk has
been the source of numerous exclusives
including the excellent
SID directory utility, MED the
music editor and even an
official Commodore
Workbench upgrade. The
CoverDisk has proven its
worth with our readers
time and time again.
As an experiment
we withdrew the disk
in February 1990 and
reduced the price of
Amigo Computing by
E1.00 Reader response was over-