by Gentry

You  may  have  noticed over the past few months that new Amiga software
has become very thin on the ground.  You could probably count the number
of  (semi-decent) monthly releases on one hand.  Even PD has slowed to a
snail-like pace.  What is going on?

  I bought my 1200 a year and a half ago in what seemed like the dawning
of  a new age in computer entertainment and 'multi-media'.  Oops.  Since
then,  there  has  been  an  influx in crap A500->A1200 conversion and a
couple  of  utils  that  take advantage of the new AGA chipset (very few
take  advantage  of  new  OS  features).   I may be looking in the wrong
places,  but  I don't think so...  Ask your self one question.  When was
the  last  time  you  played  a  really good Amiga game and what was it?
Frontier:  Elite II ?  Perhaps.  Syndicate?  Maybe.  But thats about it.
The  latest  stuff  has  been  shite.   Now  take a look at the PC games
market.   Good games?  Yup.  Doom, Day of the Tenticle, Sam and Max, UFO
etc.   etc.   (and those are just games a saw yesterday!).  The Amiga is
truely going down the pan.

 'Ah yes', I here you cry,' what about all those PD utilities written by
Amiga users the world over - you don't get those on a PC'.  Yes, but the
majority  of  later  has  been a bit crap (with the exception of DirView
:)).   Most  you  wouldn't run more than once anyway.  Besides there are
some damn good PD/Shareware packages for the PC ( Fractint for example -
do that on an Amiga ]

 'Okay, okay, the new AAA chipset.  That'll show those poxxy PC owners'.
Not  this  year it won't, and even next year it'll cost an arm and a leg
for a machine with it in.  Oh dear.

 It  recently  has  also  come  to  my  attention  that suprise, suprise
Commodore  have  gone  in to liquidation and Amstrad look to be about to
buy out the Amiga/CD32 but.  Opps.

 Yup  the  Amiga  truely  is  shagged.  Do yourself a favour - flog your
Amiga and buy a 486DX50 PC.  They're good and they ain't half cheap...

Having  said all that I do like the Amiga.  Having programmed the OS for
several  months now and written my A-Level course work under in in SAS C
I  have found it to be very pleasurable to program.  But whats the point
of program if nobody can use the end product, even yourself?  [

 Most Amiga owners are lame anyway.

 They  bought  the Amiga for games, completely wasting any use the OS is
any way.  Half the people I know who have Amigas can't even put together
a bootable floppy disk.

 Look  on  the letters page in AUI for true lameness.  The extraction of
archives  from  the coverdisk is VERY easy using LHA anyway, but the AUI
team have bothered to use installer to allow not so experienced people (
not  lamers - just beginners ) to extract to archives.  But lamers STILL
write  in  to  the magazine ( usually two a month ) with problems.  What
use are the utilities with in the archives going to be to them anyway???
Sheesh ]