400 words





Aura,
Squirrel
photogenics
Graphics cards
68060s
cdroms
escom
zip
ab3d
shapeshifter





What an astonishing year!  It may have seemed that the Amiga
was dead and everyone should have moved to a PC, but we all
know that Amiga owners are made of sterner stuff than that!

And we were richly rewarded for out patience, because 1995
was a stunningly good year.  Software got better, hardware
improved and all this in a period when the Amiga wasn't even
being manufactured.  What other playform ever had the same
kind of support?

Without a doubt, 1995 was the year in which CDROM really
happened.  The CD32 clearly wasn't the hit everyone was
hoping for, and it took HiSoft and their Squirrel to do it
by allowing A1200 owners to use standard SCSI drives.  Even
CU Amiga had a shiny disk on the cover.

For those lusting after high-tech bits and pieces things
were going very well indeed.  Not one, but two high speed
video cards appeared and even better, the first tests of the
ultimate processor, the 68060.  This was the year that the
Amiga went faster than ever before.

Amiga software simply gets better and better.  ShapeShifter
brought high-quality Apple Mac emulation at a shareware
price, and Fears, Gloom and AlienBreed 3D proved that the
Doom clone was possible.

As for the future, after the frightening price of the new AT
Amigas, things are starting to look a little brighter.  The
new owners have made interesting noises about PowerPC
platforms, and certainly an Amiga based on this technology
would keep us in MIPs for the next few years. Whether they
can capture that special Amiga spirit remains to be seen...