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Hi. I'm RJ Mical, one of the people who
created the Amiga computer. Mark and Bcnn,
the editors of this magazine, have daringly
invited me to wax Amiga-esque for you folks.
The sane among you won't want to read this
article, and should stop now. To those of you
who intend on reading this article: well then,
wax I will, until your foreheads are shiny.
Ready?
As I understand it, the goal of Info magazine
is to get real information into the hands of its
readership. I thought about that, and decided
that I might best contribute to this noble effort
by revealing to you one of the least known,
most interesting facts about the Amiga: the
secret of how we created the Amiga computer.
You might be surprised to learn the truth
about this. Many people think that we worked
long and hard to create the Amiga, but that's
not so. Actually, it was very easy to create the
Amiga; we did it in one afternoon. Impossible,
you say? Well it's true. We were able to pull
off this fantastic feat because we had access to
an amazing device known as the Amiga
Joyboard. Let me tell you about it ... The
Joyboard was created in 1983 by a company
named Amiga Computer, Inc., a company
which ostensibly made computer game
peripherals such as joyboards and joysticks.
The joyboard was in fact a joystick designed to
be stood on. It was great fun to play skiing
and surfing games using the joyboard, and
seriously fun with Olympic sports games that
required a lot of running in place, though of
course these were usually more exhausting than
enjoyable.
HE TWnTlHITUT
uminTTTinini
by Robert J. Mical
Kids loved the Amiga joyboard. Suzy
Chaffce -- you might remember her as Suzy
Chapstick - loved the joyboard too. Suzy was
(and probably still is) an excellent skier. She
appeared on morning news programs and at toy
fairs playing a skiing game to demonstrate the
Amiga joyboard. She wore ski clothing,
carried poles, and had some fun pretending to
ski on the joyboard. We had some fun
watching her do this.
Somewhere in the Amiga building there still
floats a trophy that had been awarded to Suzy
but which she abandoned in our offices. The
last time I saw her I reminded her of this
trophy, but she shook her head no and that
statue has haunted us since. It looks like a
hood ornament from a 50's car on acid. I
thought I'd finally buried it for good when I
left Amiga, but it has craftily unearthed itself
since. I'd made the mistake of not burying it
with a joyboard at its side. But while the
public watched Suzy balance on a joyboard, in
the dark back rooms of Amiga's main building
the Amiga team used the joyboard for an
altogether different purpose. We used it to
play The Zen Meditation Game.
The object of this game was to sit completely
motionless on the joyboard for as long as
possible while contemplating the complete
nothingness of the vast emptiness of the
immaterial void, or something like that. If you
reached nirvana you got big bonus points. I've
known some people who played this game very
well, even without the benefit of a joyboard.
It was one of the greatest games ever made.
OK, so maybe it wasn't exactly one of the
greatest games ever made, but it had its
moments. We created the Amiga computer
while playing this game. Imagine this scene
from the early days of Amiga:
We sat motionless atop high chairs with eyes
closed and hands and fingers raised in
enlightened poses. Our legs were crossed, and
beneath our bottoms were Amiga joyboards.
There was a faint hum in the air, the thought
song of machine and man. It was our chant,
our mechanized mantra; we were all deep in
meditation. A nearby dog barked, and its