Amiga Addict issue 5 continues the great work of previous editions and provides an informative and entertaining read for Amiga fans past and present. The highlight of this month was the focus on UFO: Enemy Unknown, a sci-fi strategy title that was released in 1994. Also called X-COM: UFO Defense in America, this became an instant classic upon release and still has a major following today. A recent crowd-funding drive by author David L Craddock for a "making of" book was extremely successful and it was great to see a bit more coverage in Amiga Addict.
The piece on Vista Pro was also a great read. A 3D terrain generator, it was most famously known in the early 1990's for creating the Mars-scapes for Arthur C Clark's The Snows of Olympus. Not a package I could afford back then, nor the Amiga capable of getting the best out of it, Vista Pro disappeared a few years later. However, modern day users can get hold of Terragen 4 by Planetside Software. Whilst the full package costs $299 for a perpetual licence, you can pay a subscription fee (ranging from $12 p/m, $33 per quarter and $120 per annum for the Creative version) or download a free version with limited features but enough to get you into the package and maybe spend some cash. That's something I shall be looking at soon.
The greatest thing, however, about this issue was the cover disk! Yes, they have had a disk lineout on the front cover since issue 1 but this time, there is actually a demo cover disk image to go with it! No, not a physical disk, after all, not sure how many people would be able to use that, but a quick download of a three-disk set of ADF files and you get a demo of Bean verses The Animator. A fun shooter with a great soundtrack, the full game is due for release in July. It also supports lightguns to really take you back to the 90's! Hopefully, the publishers will be able to include more "cover disks" in future issues.
The other magazine that landed was issue 150 of Amiga Future, which was also the first issue of my subscription. I bit the bullet and subbed for a year because I enjoyed the copy of issue 149 that I'd bought as a one off and they are having a drive to increase the page count of the magazine. To do that, they need additional subscribers. At present, they are 13 new subscribers away from adding four additional pages per month.
Published bi-monthly, the latest issue had some cracking articles in it, including a good review of the Raspberry Pi 400, Amiga Forever 9 (you can read my thoughts about that here) and Apollo OS. There was, of course, the regular column by Trevor Dickinson and the usual high number of news articles. A good range of games reviews were also included and the overall package is very much worth the €7 cover price. There is also a cover CD available if you wish to pay more (the cover price per issue goes up to €9.90) and this caters for the multiple OS options Amiga currently supports - AmigaOS4, AROS, MorphOS and Classic.
Amiga Addict and Amiga Future offer different takes on the existing Amiga market and that is a good thing for both them and the market in general. Much like the Amiga magazine scene of the early 1990's, where there were multiple titles appealing to a wide range of users, these two magazines compliment each other and should, in my humble opinion, be subscription options for every fan of the Amiga. As it stands at the moment, I would not hesitate to renew these subscriptions when the current ones run out.
No comments:
Post a Comment