NiallOK’s Blog

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Imagine my joy on Christmas Day 1989 when I woke up to find Santa had left this under the tree:

It was one of the most successful computer bundles of all time - the Commodore Amiga Batman Pack - featuring an Amiga 500 computer (European Computer of the Year, 1991!), a TV modulator, plus the game of Batman the Movie, the incredibly successful platform game, the New Zealand Story, flight simulator Interceptor, and paint package Deluxe Paint 2. This single Christmas present (along with my later purchasing of programming language "AMOS Professional" - which I used to write a little known game named “BANG!”) was definitely solely responsible for getting me into computer gaming, graphic design and subsequently computer programming - and it was no surprise to me to find out later in life that "Amiga" is the Spanish word for "girlfriend".

To put it into context, less than 20 years later, computers are over 500 times as fast (processor speed wise anyway) and come with 2,000 times as much memory as standard! Still, though - this machine was top-of-the-range at the time and nothing could beat it for graphics, sound or game playability! Not everything that it fostered in me stuck with me - the programming (in the form of web development) and the graphic design were the only ones that really lasted. I lost most of my interest in computer gaming and the writing of computer games a good while ago, although I still fire up my old XBox for a quick game of FIFA from time to time. I guess I just grew up.

Anyway… way back then (well - from 1991 to 1996) there was a magazine called Amiga Power. Not only was it my primary source of Amiga fuelled goodness, plus - when the coverdisks came along, my primary source of new playable games for the Amiga, it was also, by a clear margin, the funniest, best written and most honest computer games magazine on the market.

Here was a magazine that believed in using the full range of the percentage scale when awarding points to games in reviews, while most (OTHER) Amiga magazines at the time skewed the scale in a way that ‘average’ games saw marks of around 70%, and rarely was a mark given below 50% except for exceptionally poor games. Most people were were used to these percentages being skewed in this way, and expected ‘average’ games to still score in the seventies - and therefore Amiga Power had an undeserved reputation among publishers for being harsh and unfair.

I’ve been reminiscing a bit as I was definitely a fan of the magazine, their editorial style and their sense of humour. I’ve been looking through various web sites, including the Wikipedia page dedicated to it, the page on Amiga History and the AP2 web site - which is a site dedicated to DISSEMINATING ESSENTIAL INFORMATION about the magazine and the people that created it.

OH! and, of course, the World of Stuart - web site of former AP writer and editor Stuart Campbell, (great writer, hates the moon apparently) who wrote some of their best stuff (including ‘pioneering’ the “Ed” comments) before going on to work for Sensible Software. One example of his writing is a review he wrote of the game “Wiz’n'Liz” in which he seemed dis-interested in writing the review (”if you’re the kind of person who likes this kind of thing, then this is the kind of thing you’ll like…”) and more up for talking about other stuff instead (”like Whoopi bloody Goldberg for a start, or that appalling, appalling Scottish prat who used to present Gimme 5 on Saturday mornings - don’t you just hate it when…”) forcing the “Editor” (in the form of the “Ed” comments) to take over. Here’s the end of the review:

And another thing - women drivers, right? ("Where’s that large housebrick?" - Ed) I wouldn’t say my wife’s fat - I’m not married! ("I know I left it around here somewhere." - Ed) I know what you think, you punks - you think I’m just padding this review out with a few crap gags at the end to cover up the fact that I’ve run out of things to say about the game, as usual. And you’re right! Ha ha! ("Aha, here it is." - Ed) I’m great and you’re not! And I get paid for this too! ("THWACK!" - Ed)

Ow. (Bleeds.) This review was brought to you by an experimental prototype of the Eezi-Write Generic Auto-Reviewing Engine, a product of the Redundancy Inducement Corporation of Miyamoto, Japan.

("You’re fired." - Ed)

Ta-da!

Brilliant, eh? Brings me back, anyway… as does talk of the Four Cyclists of the Apocalypse, smartarsed picture captions, Do The Write Thing (and the occasionally hilariously out-of-context letter captions), the use of CAPITAL LETTERS FOR DRAMATIC EFFECT, and the magazines general fond, witty and broad use of the English language without fear for their readers level of understanding of potentially difficult and complicated vocabulary or … eh… verbiage. AP wasn’t without it’s controversy and it came to an end after 5 and a half years with (fittingly) a viking funeral.

Great mag. Think I still have piles of old issues in the attic of my parents house. Could spend a whole day (two possibly) reading through them. I could go on. I won’t, though. Now I want to go try out an Amiga emulator and fiddle about with Workbench or play Cannon Fodder 2 in DOS Box and reminisce some more. Ah the memories! *sniff*… ("Snip!" - Ed)