TCD magazine finds

[TCD]

ASM 1/1994:

Another new console? Sony is working on a CD based console.

[Gerry]

Originally Posted by TCD

Thalion in trouble by the end of 1990:

A counter statement by Holger Flöttmann was published in ASM issue 1/1991:

• Gegendarstellung:
  In der Ausgabe 11 vom November 1990 der Zeitschrift "ASM Aktueller Software Markt" sind in dem Artikel "Neue CES in London. Test bestanden. Aber: Quiet, please..." auf S. 117 am Ende Tatsachenbehauptungen über mich aufgestellt, die nicht der Wahrheit entsprechen.

1. Ich werde hinsichtlich meiner Arbeit für die Firma "Thalion Software GmbH" mit der Aussage zitiert, ich hätte das "sinkende Schiff verlassen, um ein neues Label zu planen". Dieses Zitat ist unrichtig. Richtig ist, dass ich hinsichtlich der Firma "Thalion Software GmbH" weder von einem "sinkenden Schiff" gesprochen noch in sonstiger Weise eine Einschätzung der Prosperität der Firma zum Ausdruck gebracht und keinen Zusammenhang zwischen meinem Ausscheiden aus der Firma "Thalion Software GmbH" und deren geschäftlichen Belangen hergestellt habe. Auch habe ich weder erklärt, noch plane ich ein "neues Label".
2. Weiter wird als meine Information wiedergegeben, es säße bei der Firma "Thalion Software GmbH" "nur noch Erik Simon (Grafiker) im Büro". Auch diese Behauptung ist falsch. Richtig ist, dass ich zu keiner Zeit die Erklärung abgegeben habe, bei der Firma "Thalion Software GmbH" säße nur noch Erik Simon (Grafiker) im Büro. Dies entspricht im Übrigen auch nicht den Tatsachen.

Gütersloh, den 05.11.1990, gez. H. Flöttmann

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by TCD

I mentioned it before, but you would really have been a stellar fit for the Commodore management back then

Not really. I'd have told them to stop making PC's, forget about the high end and nip the A3000 and CDTV in the bud, and concentrate on making the Amiga more attractive to users and developers. I would get the A600 and A1200 out in 1991 and the CD32 in 1992, giving it 3D in 1993 to beat Sony and others to the punch. I would pay all bills owed including the XOR troll. I would pay developers to port selected 'hot' titles to the Amiga, and get involved in developing hardware and software standards. I would tell Gould to stay in Canada while we handled it. I would promote the hell out of the Amiga by getting it on TV shows and into mainstream magazines (every time you saw a computer it would be an Amiga). I would send out regular press reports on projects in development, and get feedback from dealers and fans on what the market wanted.

There are so many things Commodore could have done to raise the Amiga's profile and make it more attractive without spending a lot of money, and so many ways they could have saved money by not chasing dead ends. Development of the A500 and A2000 was the one thing they got right. If only they had continued developing those lines without distractions they could have done a lot better.

[TCD]

I think most people know this photo of id software from the Doom times:


Today I found this photo in ASM 9/1994 which was taken the same day:

[TCD]

Found this letter to the editor in ASM 10/1994:


A reader complaining that news about Commodore are very sparse in German games magazines. The answer is that Commodore Germany is still doing fine, it's 'just' Commodore International that went into liquidation.

[oscar_ates]

John Romero gained too much weight after Doom

[TCD]

Found in ASM 1/1995 (second to last issue of that magazine):


DeepL translation:

Quo Vadis, Amiga?
The big question for the many Amiga owners was firmly formulated at the Cologne trade fair: What's next? To be honest: There was no answer by the end of the event. Even the dealers we visited are slowly having to face the fact that production is at a standstill and that neither Amiga computers nor spare parts are being supplied at the moment. The Commodore rumor mill has been churning for months. The fact is that since September the German branch has also filed for bankruptcy and the Commodore story in Germany will end in January. Computer '94, which has been the meeting point for Amiga owners for years under the name "World of Commodore", could turn into a PC trade fair in the short term, but the interest of PC suppliers is concentrated on trade fairs such as CeBIT. The situation is different for games. If many games companies realize that they have a good opportunity to present something new in Cologne, then sooner or later a pure games fair could also establish itself in Cologne. However, Amiga owners must be clear about one thing: Even a good bargain at the "Computer '94" cannot hide the fact that the "girlfriend" is doing very, very badly. And as long as the Englishmen around David Pleasence and Colin Proudfoot, who according to as yet unconfirmed rumors are bidding heavily in the "buyout" of Commodore, do not produce and sell anything that somehow looks like a technically improved Amiga (keywords RTG, Triple-A, DSP, RISC), the first real multimedia computer will become a discontinued model even faster than it already is now. Every day that passes unused is a good day for other computer systems. And here I am looking in particular towards Acorn, which presented itself at the trade fair with an exceptionally large stand and an already amazing RISC computer system. The games sector also has its new favorite child, and that is the PC with CD-ROM. The amount of resources "burned" here, the flood of programs on offer, only goes to show where the companies will secure their future income. Although there are still enough Amiga productions appearing, the majority are conversions from the PC. In short: If nothing happens in the Amiga sector in the next few weeks (it's now mid-November) then the Christmas business is over - and with it an era in computer history. Which I personally would be damn sorry about!

[TCD]

"Amiga: The Dream Machine" found in Computer Gaming World 5.4 (9-10/1985)

[TCD]

"Why Electronic Arts is committed to the Amiga" found in Computer Gaming World 5.5 (11-12/1985)

[dreadnought]

This sexy pic of Trip leaning on the ol'girl was everywhere at the time, and the mission statement rather promising. But if you look at the line up it's mostly ports of old games, and without that much improvement on Amiga, so not really "games like you've never seen before".

[TCD]

"Hobby & Industry News" excerpt found in Computer Gaming World 28 5/1986:

[TCD]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

But if you look at the line up it's mostly ports of old games, and without that much improvement on Amiga, so not really "games like you've never seen before".

This article found in Computer Gaming World 30 (August 1986) is quite interesting:

A year after the launch event and the available software (read games) is/are not that impressive. The 'big-one' as mentioned by the article is Marble Madness by EA though.

[Megalomaniac]

$800 for an Amiga with a monitor was starting to get towards commercially-viable pricing, though still probably $2500 in today's money, but the software range was still poor. EA aside, not much had been made for the Amiga by even late 1986 - https://www.lemonamiga.com/games/lis...&lineoffset=28 there's only really Defender of the Crown, Marble Madness and Faery Tale Adventure which outdo what was available on the much-cheaper-and-a-lot-more-software-out-there ST, and very little else that bettered what was already on the C64 (Shanghai is about all that jumps out). A glance at AtariMania shows that the ST was definitely ahead at this early stage. On the serious side there's Deluxe Paint and Deluxe Video, but what else?

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

$800 for an Amiga with a monitor was starting to get towards commercially-viable pricing, though still probably $2500 in today's money,

$2,245 to be precise. For context, the average price of a new car in the US today is $48,000, 20 times higher.

Average price for an A1000 with 1084 monitor on eBay right now is ~US$1,400, so it's held its value pretty well for a 38 year old technology!

but the software range was still poor. EA aside, not much had been made for the Amiga by even late 1986 - https://www.lemonamiga.com/games/lis...&lineoffset=28 there's only really Defender of the Crown, Marble Madness and Faery Tale Adventure which outdo what was available on the much-cheaper-and-a-lot-more-software-out-there ST, and very little else that bettered what was already on the C64 (Shanghai is about all that jumps out). A glance at AtariMania shows that the ST was definitely ahead at this early stage. On the serious side there's Deluxe Paint and Deluxe Video, but what else?

The quality of those titles alone was worth it.

For many of us the problem was that in 1986 we couldn't buy an Amiga that suited our region. So the lack of software wasn't an issue for us.

The Amiga was clearly superior to the ST, and the C64 was a joke in comparison. In 1985 I read about the A1000 in Byte magazine, and it seemed to be the ultimate home computer that would never be bettered. I was right! I will never forget the first time I turned on my brand new A1000 in 1987 - pure magic.

I played that Faery Tale Adventure for countless hours, eventually finishing it without cheating (one of the very few games I have completed without 'help'). Did you know that on release it had by far the largest game world in history? Over 17,000 screens, real-time loading from disk, gorgeous graphics and sound, an engaging storyline and gameplay that was challenging but fair. Nothing else compared, and only the Amiga made it possible. What else did you need?

I would take a half dozen games like that (and a few awesome apps like Deluxe Paint) over the piles of trash produced for the C64 and ST any day. Quality always beats quantity.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

On the serious side there's Deluxe Paint and Deluxe Video, but what else?

Here's three pages from Computer Gaming World Issue 31 September/October 1986 about non gaming software on the Amiga:

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

I would take a half dozen games like that (and a few awesome apps like Deluxe Paint) over the piles of trash produced for the C64 and ST any day. Quality always beats quantity.

Hey man, did you ever consider stating an opinion without insulting other platforms/software (and subsequently millions of their users)?

That could make your posts a bit more palatable, though we'd still have to consider the sheer ignorance of somebody who describes the trailblazing library of C64 as "piles of trash" (not that it could be ascribed to ST either, which had numerous great games in the early years too).

[TCD]

Found in Computer Gaming World Issue 35 (March 1987):

Atari and Commodore both launching MS-Dos machines.

[TCD]

Found in Computer Gaming World 38 (June/July 1987):

"Amiga prospects still bright!" EA talking about their 'commitment to the Amiga'.

[alexh]

I don't know if you're managing AMR but someone has dumped PDFs of Amiga World (an American Amiga Magazine partially missing from AMR) on archive.org

https://archive.org/details/amiga-world?page=2

I'm collecting all the Thalion reviews from all magazines in all languages and stumbled across these on my travels.

[TCD]

I'm not. Maybe post in the AMR subforum too so that somebody from the AMR team can include them. I might grab the lot and add it to the file server though. Thank you for the info

Edit: Turns out it is the TOSEC-PIX collection found on the file server in 'TOSEC-PIX/Commodore Amiga - Magazines - Amiga World' and related folders.