In the start of a new feature here at CHANNEL Z, we have invited Amiga Artist Paul Horton to have his say in things to do with the Amiga scene...... Over to you Paul... HI! Commodore have the most faithful and dedicated customers around. We have supported them through their rough patch, when we could so easily have abandoned them. So how do they repay us? By continually blowing hot and cold on the subject of the A1200 CD Drive. First they are, then they cannot, through technical problems, now they say they are bringing one out! Please Mr. Commodore make a statement, stating whether or not you are going ahead with the CD Drive, put all the rumours to rest, once and for all! You have said that the reason the CD32 didn't sell as well as you expected was because A1200 owners are waiting for the CD Drive. Well! there's your answer, RELEASE THE BLOODY A1200 CD ROM DRIVE! Maybe a third party developer is working on such a device at this very moment, maybe they will release it, maybe they sell thousands and thousands of units and make Phenomenal profits! Take note Commodore, you could be the one making the profit, all you have to do is pull you finger out! 'MICROCOSM' has finally been released. Could this game do for the CD32 what 'Defender of the Crown' and 'Shadow of the Beast' did for the A500! i.e. sell thousands of machines? Only time will tell! I see the FMV cartridge was finally released, then after all the hassle of releasing it to the shops and outlets, they had to recall them all because they were "bugged". Commodore now say they have remedied the problem and have shipped a new batch out. I'm all for advertising in Computer Magazines, and realize magazines need advertising for there main income, but 'Amiga Format' took their advertising within there pages a bit far recently. In March's Issue, out of 185 pages a staggering 102 pages were advertisements, leaving just 83 pages of Articles. This is ridiculous, there were MORE pages of advertising than actual Articles. There is just no justification for this amount of advertising. (Maybe it's just Greed!) They have the cheek to charge nearly £4.00 for a magazine, a magazine in which I expect VALUE for money, interesting articles and good reviews. They cannot use the poor excuse of "Yes, but look what's on the coverdisks", because other magazines covering the Amiga have coverdisks that are just as good as those found on AF's Covers, and don't go over the top with advertising. Mr. Amiga Format, your readers expect VALUE for money, stop treating us like fools and start giving us a better value Magazine, otherwise you may find your readers moving on to better value Mag's! Incidentally in April's 'CU Amiga', out of 179 pages, only 77 were advertisements, leaving a satisfying 100 pages of readable text (17 more than Amiga Format), together with Two excellent cover disks. If 'CU Amiga' can do it, why can't you! With the imminent release of 'TFX' from Ocean, a couple of points spring to mind. I gather there are going to be two versions, a CD32 and a A1200 Hard disk version. The screenshots I have seen, do look promising, but those of you who read 'CU Amiga',a few month's back may have read the article they did on the Game mentioned. They stated that the screenshots were from the PC version, and that the A1200 version would only use 128 colours instead of the PC's 256, but would look identical to the PC version. Er! Excuse me! CU Amiga but there is no way a 128 colour game can look identical to a 256 colour one! You also stated that the A1200 version was in development, it turned out that DID (The Authors) had not even started the A1200 version yet! Not a very good idea to print LIES! in a magazine, is it! Your so called EXCLUSIVE article was just a poor and sloppy effort on your part to try and convince your readers that you had somehow got inside information on a new A1200 game, when in reality it was just an article about a PC game! The person responsible for writing the article probably got paid by a PC magazine instead of CU Amiga! I have read numerous reviews of the PC version of 'TFX', and none of them have been to favourable. You need at least a 486 (Top of the range PC) to make it the least playable. I know this is a A1200 magazine but I am sick of the term 'PC' being used, as most people think that games released nowadays run as well on a 286 as they do on a 486. The only PC that most software houses are catering for now is the 486, the 286 is dead, the 386 is dying, that just leaves the 486. This is the only 'PC' that is capable of running a decent game, anything less and things start to get very 'Jerky!' Take 'DOOM' for instance, a stunning game, but only stunning and only playable on a 486 and only 'Smooth' on a 66mhz machine! I know, I use PC's at college and even when its running on a 486 33mhz its jerky! What ever there reputation, 'PC's are not as good as people make out. As for PC's being 'Multitasking' machines, well, they can multitask, but they need massive amounts of memory and they slow down considerably when asked to do more than one thing. Speaking of 'DOOM', numerous magazines, including CU Amiga, have stated that both the A1200 and the CD32 are incapable of playing such a game. They say that texture mapping can not be done fast enough on the A1200/CD32! What a load of crap! I have seen numerous Pd. Demo's on the A1200 that demonstrate excellent use of scrolling 3d texture mapping. OK, they may not be full screen, but its a start. It could be only a matter of time before someone releases a 3D texture mapped game on the Amiga (Excluding Legends of Valour, that was excruciatingly awful!) Only time will tell. VISTA-LITE has recently been released, it is a cut down version of VISTA-PRO 3.0, a fractal landscape generator. VISTA-PRO 3.0 required a ridiculous 6MB of RAM to use it on an AGA machine. I adored VISTA- PRO but the thought of shelling out £200 on a RAM expansion, just to use VISTA-PRO 3.0 put me off a bit! VISTA-LITE only requires 2MB of RAM but you need a HARD-DRIVE, but as fellow hard drive owners will know, you are only left with about 1.7MB of RAM when you boot up. So you still need to buy a RAM expansion! The reason for the reduced RAM usage is the use of some clever programming technics, that fool you machine into thinking that your HARD-DRIVE is in fact RAM. Very Clever Eh! I went to the recent CAD/CAM show at the NEC Birmingham recently. I was ready to have my mind blown away with fantastic 3D rendered images, Animated fly by's of buildings, 3D journey's over computer generated cities, all demonstrating the true power of the PC! Boy!, what a disappointment! It must have been the most boring show I have ever visited. The Mighty 'Silicon Graphics' had a stand at the show, so I was expecting big things from them! First of all the stand was tiny, and all they were showing were simple wire frame cars spinning around in a circle! Very disappointing! There were a couple of interesting stands, one was a 'Virtual Reality' Exercise Bike where you could cycle around a car park, It was a home made unit but was still quit affective! The design team from Mclaren Honda were there together with a F1 Car. LearJet were there together with a full size Lear Jet. I was honestly expecting a lot more, and between you and me, if there had been a Video Toaster there, it would have cleaned up no problem! If there was ever a reason why the Video Toaster is chosen over the PC the CAD/CAM show 94 was it! I made a visit to the 'All Formats Computer Fair' in Birmingham as well recently. You have all probably heard about these shows, the organisers travel around the country, going to different venue's, letting local Company's run a stall (At a Price) allowing them to sell off there merchandise to the public at cheap prices. Its a great place to pick up both Hardware and Software bargains. There were a couple of Pd. houses at the show, both CYNOSTIC and Magnetic Fields made an appearance and were both doing great business. Commercial games were going cheap, and I picked up 'Skidmarks' (No Underwear jokes thankyou!) for £15, so I saved £10, not bad eh! I was going to get 'Walker' for £8, but this little brat beat me to it! I tried to get him to part with it by banging his head on the edge of a table, but his father made an appearance, so I made a quick exit. F1 Grand Prix was running of a Fast PC. It looked stunning as the frame rate was running in real time! I want an accelerator, I want an accelerator! There were Commodore Monitors been sold for £100, loads of cheap games, IDE Hard Drives, in fact, there was a lot there. If the show comes to a town near you, pop along, its only £4 to get in. If you see a small boy with a lump on his head and a black eye, ask him if he wants to sell 'Walker' for a Fiver! It looks as though 'Virtual Racing' for the Mega Drive is going to cost £100. To you and me it is a ridiculous amount of money for a game, in fact I would go so far as saying NO game is worth that much. But the sad fact of the matter is, that people ARE going to pay £100 for it! Its the Parents who are going to end up paying for it, there children are going to just keep nagging and nagging until their parents finally give in and go out and buy it! SEGA know it! We know it! Yet Parents all over the country still cannot say no to their kids! You have to hand it to SEGA, they seem to be the only ones who realise Parents of console owners are stupid enough to pay £100 for a game, a game that the child will probably get bored of within a week! That's it this month, I can leave the rest of the Mag, in the capable hands (or is it hand!) of the resident Editor. See you next Time. Paul. ** The opinions expressed here are not necessarily those of CHANNEL Z **