Show reports

Show report: World of Amiga 1999 (by Markus Tillmann)

»Since 1994 I regularily visit the annual Amiga show in Cologne, but this year I wanted to visit the World of Amiga in London, UK, for the first time.

The many anonouncements, especially from AMIGA as well as the numerous messages, which appeared during the last weeks (QNX/Linux; Corel, Technology Brief...) made me hope, that there were news about the Amiga and to get decisions directly, e.g. about the processor.

So I went by bus for about 9 hours and after some searching (there were no signs to the show, if you ignore the small ones in front of the Kensington Hall) I arraived around 9.00 a.m. at the show area.

At this time (the show was opened at 9.45 a.m., with a delay of 15 minutes, because there was no change at the cash desk), so someone nicely explained, that we had to keep the change ready and that those, who have it, could enter first! - this doesn't show, that the show was very professional and well prepared -) there weren't many people, but when the gate was opened, there was a line of people and later the show was well visited, so I had to push my way through a several times.

The visitors came from a lot of countries, so that there were a number of German, Swiss or Italian people in addition to the local Enlishmen. Well, it semms, that this is a feature of the Amiga user, that no way is to long for them to watch anything new...

The hall itself was divided this way: Just after you entered the hall you stood next to the Amiga booth. Next to that there were four more boothes in this "entrance hall".

In the lower area there were several Amiga clubs, in addition the Games Arena, that was sponsored by clickBOOM, as well as a small snack booth.

On the gigher levels there were also several clubs and Photogenics 4.1 was presented, but this area was visited not very well, because there weren't very interesting things, maybe the second snack area should be mentioned, because it is important, that someone knows where to get something to eat and drink... In the main hall, most manufacturers were present. I can hardly give an exact number, because quite often various companiers shared one booth, but over all there were too little Amiga companies present, so no one got euphoric or thought, that the new computer revolution already had begun! In a little more than one hour it was possible to visit all the boothes and to learn all about the most important news, but at least there was a quite large stage in the main hall, from which Petro Tyschtschenko opened the show a few minutes to 10 a.m.

This was, where e.g. the Annex shows was, as well as the awarding of the AAA awards, which were given to Ben Vast and Marcel Beck (Yam), but Marcel himself wasn't present so a recorded telephone call was played back after the awarding.

The applause showed, that the present people agreed with the choice.

What could be seen?

My first walk led me, of course, to the Amiga booth and resulted in a disappointment! In my honest opinion, I first thought, that this couldn't be all, what Amiga showed, but it is likely, that this happened to be that way: A videowall, which continously introduced into products as the new OS 3.5, Wildfire 7 or Photogenics 4.1 and that were very popular, a number of shelves, which presented the package of OS 3.5 as well as the marketing products like e.g. Amiga-socks or shorts or the AmiCola, which tasted to my surprise quite good!

(Just a questioN: What do you think about the whole range of Amiga marketing products? Will there be an end or do you think, that this is the most important money source of Amiga?)

Then there was a booth, that selled the marketing products: well and then the design of the AmigaMCC in a glass box and some additional sketches...

That's it! No Amiga, that showed anything, no companies like on the Computer 98 in Cologne, which were around the Amiga booth, nothing! Wow, that's how to start a new computer revolution, not bad!

So, move on quickly, maybe I could find something interesting the other boothes...

Game show?

It was conspicous, how many games were introduced, either as demo version are as already available full version.

So companies like Epic or alive were present on a quite large area, to show their complete software ranges.

One word regarding the prices: Last year I heard, that the prices for software and hardware in England partly were higher than in Germany. I can confirm, that the prices are higher than in Germany - so I paid for T-zer0 e.g. £ 28 (approx. 85 DEM), which is usually a normal price for clickBOOM games, but unfortunately this game is not available form German dealers today (29.07.99), so there is nos comparison value available. But Wasted Dreams costed as many and this is sold from most dealers in Germany for about approx. 69 DEM! Also the Picasso 4 was offered by nearly any dealer for between £ 239 and £ 269 (more than 700 DEM), here it can be purchased for 649 DEM!

But let's continue with the new games: Alive didn't show a demo of Goald 2000, but announced this as well as Puttyl Squad for August and even for the game The Haunted, the graphic adventure, which was introduced in the (German) Amiga Magazin edition 2/97(!!!), there was a release date, which is the end of the year! That's a good one! In addition Alive advertised with the slogan, that any made money will be put into the development of games.

Two positive things of Alive have to be mentioned: For each purchase you got a joystick or one of two books for free and I found the catalogue of Alive very interesting, which was spreaded for free, is named The Pulse and offers in addition to the available games some tests of the new games, but also of OS 3.5, the IOBlix interface board or other hardware extensions.

Here someone really got the impreesion, that this company is completely for the Amiga!

At Epic there was mostly the demo of Virtual Grand Prix, that was extensively watched and hasn't been available yet, but will definitely be shipped one week after the show. Furthermore there were screens showing both the Darkage projects Tales from Heavan and Alive, that weren't looking worse than T-zer0, in my opinion!

Digital Images showed, as promissed, a demo of Wipeout 2097, on an 1200 with 200 MHz-PPC board and a B-Vision, but unfortunately crashed quite often, on the booth of the new English Amiga mag AmigActive. According to DI this was due to the extreme temperatures with the show hall, so the graphics board got problems... Well, agreed it was really hot and stuffy in the main hall! However, the demo made a good impreesion! As well as the intro of Space Station 3000, that ran all the time and really looked impressive! On the same booth someone couuld also take a look on FUBAR, that is supposed most interesting for any strategy fans and that's rightly so, if you base it on the presented pictures!

There were also interesting things at Titan Computer. In addition to the well-known programs, like e.g. Candy Factory, NCoder or Shadow of the 3rd Moon, which all were offered for cheap money, nearly anything was marked by new games:

• Evil's Doom S.E., an RPG, which really looks nice, but this was also true two years ago!

The targeted release date is october 99, maybe it can be done to the Home Electronics World 99...

They also showewd demos of Shogo, the 3D shooter, Heretic 2 and Joyride, a racing sim, which is liked also due the sound and it makes hopes for a nice game.

A bit surprising was a poster of Phoenix on the Titan booth... To explain it: Titan makes the Mac port!

Unfortunately there was nothing new about Claws of the Devil and an Amiga version seems very unlike, that's what I was told. At Titan they were a bit disappointed (as I am) about that, AMIGA showed on the show (comment:"... I can seta cardset box also in a showcase!") and wanted to wait for the end of the show before they could give final informations about Claws. In addition they waited for the announcement of the processor and further informations to port programs for the NG-Amigas.

It also wasn't precluded, that Claws will only be released for the NG-Amigas, but the primary target was the PlayStation and the Mac version!

So, the game freak could be quites satisfied, because there were shown interesting and mostly demos, which which are nearly ready and could mostly convince! But there was more for the gamer: In the Game Arena there was a T-zer0 fight, a Sensible Soccer tournament and many more.

And what else was there to see?

For example there was IBrowse 2, that was favourized a lot, Voyager 3, both with JavaScript support, PFS 3, Power Computing presented Punchinello, a PC keyboard adaptor as well as RedMars, a new strategy game, Ateo Concepts announced the Pixel 64 ZIII, a new graphics board and two interface cards, AteoSCSI and AteaoIDE, both will be available from September and Coyote Flux presented a program, that makes it possible to convert 680x0 source codes to PPC source codes, so the PPC prgramming will be much easier.

Well, I don't think, that I mentioned everything, but I didn't find anything special on the show.

I mostly tried to kill time resp. to wait for the Annex shows, which was appreciated by the audience very much.

Jim Collas watched the first show obviously quite satisfied when taking a close look...

I also noticed, that many clubs edited an own magazine, which are very interesting and maybe they were a test for becoming a regular magazine, later.

Around 5.30 p.m. the show officially ended and it was invited to a meeting after the show, but not all the prople could take part, so you had to fill in your name into a list while there were free seats... solange denn noch Plätze frei waren...

Did someone, who wasn't there, miss anything???

Well, all in all I was very disappointed from the World of Amiga 99, from AMIGA themselves, from the whole organisatioan and also from the number of exhibitors.

Well, what does disappointed mean? Someone felt approx. like the last years...

Let's hope, that there will be more to see on the show in Cologne (Germany) and AMIGA will show us more than just a case.

Markus Tillmann <golz@online-club.de>«