Commodore Amiga Retro

Amiga Format

AMIGA FORMAT: Issue 66 Dec 1994
THE WORLDS BIGGEST KICK-ASS AMIGA MAGAZINE:

MORTAL KOMBAT II: Exclusive world`s first review.

COVER DISKS: Tiger Club and Zeewolf

POWER COMPUTING: Advert - Featuring:
The Viper 68030 Series - 4Mb 50MHz FPU £395
3.5" SCSI hard drive 2GB £1099
Overdrive CD-ROM £199
Overdrive HD 360Mb £259

THIS MONTH IN VIEW: Steve Jarratt - Reader Survey

Hardware - around half of you own A1200`s,
with another 30% tinkering with A500`s
19% of you possess A600`s, while the remaining
19% have A3000s, A4000s,CD32 and CDTVs. I know
it doesn’t add up but a lot of you have the luxury
of being a two machine family. That means that
over three quarters of you are running at least
Workbench 2.0.

AMIGA COVER DISKS:

TIGER CUB: Turn on, tune up and make sweet music
on your Amiga with our fantastic Tiger Cub sequencer

ZEEWOLF: Fly around in a helicopter and shoot
things in our exclusive and fiendishly difficult
Zeewolf demo.

AMIGA FORMAT COVERDISK EXTRA:

Pixel 3D Pro Fix - Last month we had a bit of an
accident with the coverdisk, as many of you have
probably noticed, Pixel 3D Pro wont under any
circumstances work with only 1MB of memory.

Provector AF58 - There is nothing wrong with this
Music-X AF58 - A600 and anyone with just chip RAM..
Pagesetter 2 AF63 - .. difficulty with fonts.
Theme Park AF64 .. cheat. Press the C key during loading.

SHOW AND TELL FOR THE AMIGA:

A telling time for the Amiga, but it was business
as usual at the Future Entertainment Show.

With a suprise attendance at the Future Entertainment
Show, Commodore - under the guise of ` Amiga ` -
showed the first signs of its pheonix-like rise
from the ashes of liquidation. The Amiga stand was
small but impressive. Boasting shiny new A1200`s
and A4000`s running demos of new games and
high-end software such as Lightwave anyone unsure
of the technical prowess of the Amiga line were
left in no doubt.

There will be very few new Amigas in circulation
over Christmas, apart from a handful of CD32`s.

The Amiga took a central stand at FES but of
Commodore and the recognisable `chickenhead`
logo there was no sign.

As exclusively reported in AF63, Amiga production
will restart in the now defunct Timex plant in
Dundee .. With regard to new machines Pleasance
said that it is their intention to continue
with R&D - and even stated that one of the first
items on the new company’s agenda is to treble
the size of the current research team in the
States. No new technology will be available next
year apart from the CD1200 CD-ROM drive which
will be appearing in the spring.

David Pleasance also used his stage appearance
to plug the World of Amiga Show, which is again
being organised by the management of Commodore
UK - obviously in an effort to display their
continued support of the Amiga.

CHELSEA FOOTBALL CLUB VERSUS COMMODORE. One-Nil?:

Chelsea are about to issue a writ against
Commodore over what they claim is a bonus owed
to them for reaching the FA Cup Final last
season. Unless Commodore cough up a rumoured
£114,000, Chelsea have stated they will have
the company wound up ( as if Commodore aren’t
wound up enough at the moment ) - effectively
shut down.

AMIGA GRAPHICS GO 64-BIT:

If you thought that 32-bit was the ultimate in
Amiga technology then think again, Blittersoft,
the UK distributor of the leading edge hardware
and software products for the Amiga, have announced
the launch of their Piccolo SD64 graphics card,
a zorro II/III card for big box Amigas based around
the new 64-bit Alpine graphics chip set.

TIM SMITH COLUMN: Frankly I was annoyed -

And once you get to know me, you’ll realise
that me being annoyed means me saying " Pish
and tosh. Lets agree to differ on that point"

SILICA UNLEASH CD32 BUNDLE:

Silica have stepped in to offer console fans a
brand new CD32 bundle, bailing out Commodore`s
Christmas hopes in the process. Costing just £299
Silica`s new AmiTek Critical Zone pack contains
a CD32 console plus seven chart topping CD32 titles.

RISC:

A new generation of super fast, super sexy and
super everything else Amigas are destined to rise
from the ashes of Commodore`s smouldering empire
and put the Amiga back where it belongs as the
leading contender in the home computer market. The
technology that is set to revolutionise the Amiga
and the computer world in general is RISC .. or
Reduced Instruction Set Computing.

CLOCK CARTRIDGE:

The clock cartridge will enable your Amiga to
continuously store the correct time and date.

WORLD OF AMIGA: Wembley 9-11th December 1994

GAMES REVIEW: Mortal Combat II by Acclaim
Deathly: The fluidity of the animation.
The ease of pulling off the special moves.
And the max hurtage.
Deathly Dull: The amount of disk swapping
that’s required when new characters are selected.

CANNON FODDER 2: Surrounded by blood and bodies,
shot at and shell shocked, Steve Bradley is
convinced that war is hell. However, he
reckons Cannon Fodder 2 is really rather good.

PREMIER MANAGER 3: Excellent matchplay interface
and a mind-numbing amount of detail packed in.

ALIEN BREED 2: TOWER ASSAULT: Tall bloke
Steve McGill bloodthirsty guns down aliens
in Team 17`s latest in the Alien Breed series
of games. And he discovers that it`s not one
for the squeamish.

PINBALL ILLUSIONS: Flippin heck its the fantastic
new pinball spectacular from 21st Century.

SIM CITY 2000: A city is more than a collection
of buildings and people, its a living, breathing
animal. Nick Veitch prowls the streets and
tames the beast that is Sim City 2000.

Gordon Harwood: Advert - Blizzard 1230 Turbo and
at 68030/50 MMU and 8Mb its £559

GAMES REVIEW:

Overlord - Virgin 85%
Zeewolf - Binary Asylum 90%
Fields of Glory - Microprose 44%
Aladdin - Virgin 90%
Embryo - Black Legend 69%
Voyages of Discovery - Black Legend 80%

GAME BUSTERS: If at first you don`t succeed,
you can always cheat.

Clockwiser - The Settlers - Putty Squad

SERIOUSLY AMIGA: Jason Holborn
As the more observant among you will have noticed,
Nick`s mug has been replaced by my grotesque
boat race.

REVIEWS:

Wordworth 3.1 VS Final Writer 3
Easy Ledgers 2
3D Products Round-up
Video Options Card

CD SENSATIONS:

Zappo CD-ROM - Indi Direct £199
Gasteiner CD1200 - £65
Tandem Controller - £65

CBM CD1200 - The CD1200 drive should be on
sale shortly after the buy-out of Commodore
is completed... the drive does provide a slot
for a single 72-pin SIMM module.

A570 - It may be single speed and not PhotoCD
compatible but Commodores A570 is still a great
way of getting hold of PD software on CD-ROM.

DEMO COLLECTION: On CD -
Demo I/Demo II Collection Almathera Systems 72%
17Bit Collection Continuation - Almathera Systems 82%
Euroscene - 17Bit Software 90%
Lock`n`Load - 17Bit Software 84%
Gifs Galore - 17Bit Software 84%
Sounds Terrific - 17Bit Software 80%
AMOS PD CD - 17Bit Software 92%
Multimedia Toolkit - Almathera Systems 86%

PD UPDATE: Every month Amiga Format subscribers
get an extra disk packed with the very best
Public Domain programs.

TOP 10 GAMES AND UTILITIES:

1: MUI V2.2
2: BacMan ( AGA )
3: StarWoids
4: Magic Workbench
5: Virus Workshop 4
6: Wrestling
7: Solo Assault
8: Image Studio V1.0.1
9: AGA Spectrum Emulator
10: Rokets ( AGA )

EPIC SOFTWARE: Advert - 2 pages of CD Titles

WORKBENCH: With Nick Veitch

Question regarding Imagine... Answer The Anim
format used in Imagine 2 is not the same as
DPaint`s (Anim 5). If you want to be able to
play around with anim in DPaint, the best thing
to do is get Imagine to render all the frames
and then load the in to DPaint as single frames.

A570 Upgrade: According to the manual for the
A570 there is a Commodore memory module which
adds a further 2Mb of FastRAM...... as far as
anyone can tell me, it takes DRAM DIL chips,
the same as the A590.

PC DOWNLOADS: Is there a way of downloading
Amiga software through the PC... after you have
downloaded it you can transfer it via a PC
formatted floppy disk and use CrossDOS or a
similar program such as Public Domain MessyDOS
to transfer your files across to the Amiga.

BETTER BY DESIGN: Part 3 of the Pagesetter2
Tutorials by Marcus Dyson.

PAINT TUTORIAL: By Jason Holburn

OCTAMED TUTORIAL: By Ed Wiles

BLITZ BASIC TUTORIAL: By Roy Ferguson
How to create a sprite... Draw your image in Dpaint
Load the Image into Blitz
Use GetaSprite
Clear from memory with FreeShape...
LISTING:
;Blitzone
;Allow game to be run from Workbench.
WBStartup

MAILBAG: With Steve Jarratt

WHAT`S GOING ON: I recently upgraded to an A1200
and wondered if you could answer the following
questions: 1) Approximately how many A1200`s and
CD32`s have been sold ? 2) What effect has the
new Zappo CD-ROM drive for the A1200 had on the
sale of CD32 software. 3) Why do the CD software
charts consist mainly of PC CD-ROM titles.
ANSWER: 1) No idea. Commodore are tight lipped
about sales , although 100,000 CD32`s are
rumoured to have been sold worldwide. The figure
for the A1200 is considerably higher than that.
2) Its still too early to tell, but it can`t
have hurt it. Hopefully we`ll have a better
idea after the Christmas season. 3) Yes it
sells - Amiga CD titles are continually appearing
in the CD-ROM charts - but there are a damn site
more PC owners buying CD titles than there are
CD32 owners.

Everyone goes on about the cheapness of the
A1200... it`s not cheap:
A1200 £300
2Mb expansion £110
120Mb hard drive £190
Monitor ( multi-sync ) £300
TOTAL £900

THE MAN AT THE TOP: David Pleasance

.. You are among many owners who have contacted me
recently requesting various machines with all manner
of specifications. Although I can`t tell you the
exact price or specification at the present time,
there are new machines in development planned for
release some time next year and during 1996.
What I can tell you is that they are higher spec
and some will be substantially more powerful
than anything which is currently planned by
our competitors.

The year the CD kicked in big time.
Commodore ran seriously into trouble.
Much talk of a UK Commodore buy-out
Lots of promises... little substance.
And the clouds rumbled in...
Still, there were lots of games titles.

So that was that for Amiga Format Dec 94

Amiga Format Issue 66 for December 1994
was brought to you buy

Editor - Steve Jarratt
Deputy Editor - Sue Grant
Consultant Editor - Nick Veitch
Production Editor - Richard Jones
Games Editor - Stephen Bradley
Staff Writer - Steve McGill
Staff Writer - Jason Holburn
Art Editor - Sue White
Designer - Frank Bartucca

Amiga Format was produced and published
by Future Publishing.