CTRL - Essays on Video Games - edited by Dean Fee - Book Review

It's been a while, but work's been more than a tad hectic the last couple of months, and I've had little spare time. Fortunately, the bus trips to work have meant at least some time for reading, and I do love a good essay on the subject of video games. It so happens that, thanks to this fine tome from The Lilliput Press of Dublin, there's a lovely collection of them in CTRL. 

From John Patrick McHugh's 'Name Your Character' opener, which delves into the deeply personal significance video games can hold, to Brenda Romero's unique take on a house in 'Chasing Lilacs', a great deal of thought has been given to each contribution. 'Tip Of My Joystick' is possibly the most off the wall example in the book, but there is distinctiveness in each author's work. Every chapter brings something new to the reader's attention, and in the couple of weeks since I finished reading it, I still find the occasional realisation popping into my head.

With fourteen authors covering titles from Urban Chaos to Wanderstop, via classics such as Doom, Tomb Raider and Disco Elysium, the variety on display brooks no criticism either. I have read essay collections in the past on a variety of topics where the quality varies as much as the subject matter, but I can honestly say that in CTRL, editor Dean Fee has curated a faultless selection. 

Apologies for this being a short review. Spare time is still rather limited, but if you're a fan of video games and fancy delving into some truly intriguing and thought provoking essays on the matter, then CTRL is a highly recommended read.

You can pick up a copy of CTRL direct from The Lilliput Press' website here. 

Super Nintendo by Keza MacDonald - Book Review

It's exceedingly easy to view the video games industry with a cynical eye these days, where late stage capitalism and the general crappiness of the real world have combined to certainly leave your humble scribe more than a little jaded with the whole concept of gaming. So to avoid spiralling further down that particularly dark path, how about reading a book focused a company that is both synonymous with the industry and still, more than forty years after its first home console, striking out on new, inventive, and more importantly, fun directions? As luck would have it, Super Nintendo by Keza MacDonald is just the tonic. 

Coming in at nearly three hundred pages, the reader is taken on a historical tour of the Kyoto-based company via a dozen of its best know products and game series (I am not using the f-word here, that's too corporate and we're not talking about spreading fast food joints around the country!). Beginning with the Ultra Hand and ending with Splatoon, each chapter fuses the history of Nintendo and key individuals within a narrative that weaves in facts, amusing morsels and all out love for a company that remains as inventive today as it was when the Famicom landed in Japanese stores. 

Along the way, you will learn how Nintendo has managed to not only create genre defining video games, but also inspire others to celebrate that achievement in their own way. It's not just about video games either. I salute the level of collectorship of a certain gentleman in Alsace!

It has to be said that this is not an overly critical appraisal of the Japanese gaming giant. They have deserved criticism in the past (one does recall writing a missive to Edge back in the day - issue 97, the one with the Galleon cover - questioning their GameCube release strategy for the UK... I was a sarcastic so and so even then!), and yes, their legal teams make even Games Workshop's look like talented amateurs, but when it comes to delivering fun to gamers and non-gamers alike, they're among the best at what they do without behaving like many of the other large corporations that inhabit the video games world these days, as I'll note below.

What this book is, however, is a study Nintendo and its creations delivered with warmth and a genuine appreciation from an author who has decades of experience in reporting about the company and meeting its employees. This close connection shines through the text and as you discover more, you realise that by following its own path and indeed thinking like games players Nintendo has managed to thrive to this day, despite the odd mis-step and setback. This includes the Wii-U, the only Nintendo home console I have never owned, and the failure of which (alongside a tepid start to the 3DS's life) led then President of Nintendo, the late and sorely missed Satoru Iwata, to halve his salary and cut director payouts due to low sales figures, rather than let developers go. Then you have, as just one recent example, Microsoft's chainsaw approach to their gaming ambitions over the last couple of years. 

Anyhoo, gentle reader, you are not here to read about my deeply rooted cynicism of all things C-suite and AI related. 

Super Nintendo is a fantastic tome about a company that has made having fun the key reason to play video games, and one that should restore your faith in video games as a whole. Illuminating and uplifting, it is very much a reminder that gaming can, and indeed should, be joyous. Even if you're not a fan of Nintendo's vast array of gaming greats, I can still heartily recommend that you pick up a copy of Super Nintendo from the usual online and physical book stores.

You can follow the author on BlueSky: @mackeza.bsky.social, and you can read more of her work at the Guardian where she is the video games editor - that publication's weekly gaming newsletter is well worth signing up for too. 

Frenzy by Jamie Lendino - Book Review

Has it really been two years? Yep, I had to check but it was indeed March of 2024 that I last reviewed a tome from the keyboard of Jamie Lendino, and it really hadn't feel like that long ago. But here we are with his seventh book: Frenzy.

The ColecoVision was but a minor player in a small game as far as the UK, as home consoles were kind of lost in the home computer scrum of the early 1980's, but it is a machine that was part of my collection back in the day. And one that I do have fond memories of playing Donkey Kong on, but these days, RetroArch scratches the Coleco itch. Genuine hardware is lovely, but so is having space to swing a cat (so to speak).

Anyhoo, Mr Lendino is back to talk us through the history of the ColecoVision, the hardware it spawned, and the software that endeared the format to millions of fans. Regulars will know what to expect, but for the newbie, we have a well put together paperback of some 240-plus pages. This is a little more svelte than previous volumes, but not by a great deal, and this is determined by the subject matter anyway.

The book is divided into ten sections: the ColecoVision story and the hardware take up the first two, with the following four concentrating on the arcade conversions the system was renowned for. Console exclusives/conversions make up the seventh, whilst computer conversions are the eighth section's highlight. The Coleco situation today makes for an extremely interesting ninth category, before the final part details the rather active homebrew scene of the format. An epilogue ties everything together before the as-always comprehensive bibliography and notes list. 

This is an excellently written guide to one of the stand out formats of the original console era, and one that certainly had me pining for some spare time to re-visit more than a few games. There are a fair few photographs and screenshots, albeit in mono, and as with the author's previous tomes, this will remain part of my library for years to come as a go-to reference on the subject. 

What really caught my interest was the acknowledgements, and the casual comment of further books to come. The editor of the series wants a TI-99/4A entry, but there are ten more to come before that! Tongue in cheek maybe, but since Scullion hasn't agreed to do an Amstrad GX4000 Encyclopaedia yet, maybe Lendino will??? I mean, 250 pages, only 20-ish released games - that's got to be a winning ratio, surely??? No? Just me? Bugger!

Yeah, I'm being silly, but what isn't silly is Frenzy, and once again, the author has delivered a high quality history about a classic gaming format. I only hope that it won't be two years until the next book. In the meantime, you can pick up a copy from Amazon here, and check out his previous titles here. These are the UK links but you get the idea. You can also follow the author on BlueSky here. 

P.S. Although only briefly mentioned in the text, if you'd like to know more about the absolute dumpster fire that was the Coleco Chameleon, then check out my review of Smoke and Mirrors here. 

Psygnosis - Games People Play - Tome One - Book Review

For a company synonymous with the 16-bit gaming era and beyond, it may perhaps surprise you that there hasn't already been a book covering the history of Psygnosis. However, thanks to the efforts of Christophe Boucourt, ably assisted by Andrew Fisher and Mark Hellewell, as well as publisher Editions64K, here we have the first of a two volume set that examines the founding, history and software of that pivotal developer and publisher.

Tome One comes in at just over 430 pages and covers the period of 1980 to 1993. Although not founded until 1984, the history rightly covers the events that led to the company's creation, as well as the state of the contemporary UK 8-bit software scene. Combining narrative and oral history, the book takes the reader through the many stages that led to the company delivering their first game in 1986, and from then on, through a mixture of internally developed titles and externally sourced games as a publisher, creating a software catalogue that (mostly) still stands up to this day. Sorry, Air Support, I wanted to love you, but it was not to be.

Demos and cancelled efforts also received fair coverage, as do the studios that had titles published by the company: Traveller's Tales, Reflections, and Bizarre Creations to name three. 

Those familiar with the period will know of the attraction of CD-ROM's as the 90's really got into gear, and Psygnosis were at the forefront of that technology. From the CD-i to the FM-Towns and CD32, it is evident that pushing the boundaries of what was possible was very much a company mantra. Even without such shiny kit, your humble scribe remembers well loading up Armour-Geddon and experiencing that pre-rendered intro for the first time! The game itself was pretty good too. And yes, after perusing the vast array of titles covered here, I'd be lying if I said I didn't fire up an emulator or two and slip back thirty plus years. Sigh... 

Anyhoo...

Psygnosis' acquisition by Sony forms a neat break in the narrative that will be continued in Tome Two, and if that holds up to the quality of the first book, readers will be in for a treat. I know I'll be pre-ordering as soon as it is announced!

There are a wide variety of publications catering to the history of videogames - from Chris Scullion's fantastic, continuing encyclopaedic efforts, to individual memoirs from the likes of Sid Meier and Walt Williams. Mr Boucourt and co's efforts are a perfect combination of the two approaches - the games are given their due praise and attention (the imagery pops off the pages!), while the people involved get to tell their own stories in their own words. 

Given the progression of the art form that is video gaming, this book is a timely reminder of how the industry has developed, grown, and changed. In your humble scribe's opinion, in some ways for the better, yet in many more ways for much worse, but what cannot, and should not, be forgotten is the journey to where we are today. Psygnosis - Games People Play is a heartfelt celebration of just a small part of that history, and one that any who love video games should most definitely read. 

You can pick up a copy of Psygnosis - Games People Play - Tome One direct from the publisher's website, as well as view their other offerings, here.

Hurt Me Plenty by Stuart Maine - Book Review

After a stellar first volume (I'm Too Young To Die, reviewed all the way back in February 2023), Stuart Maine is back with a follow up tackling the years 2003 to 2010 inclusive, the period that truly cemented the first person shooter as a key genre in gaming. 

After a brief introduction, proceedings begin with a foreword from Harvey Smith (lead designer of Deus Ex), before the reader is given a quick reminder of what a first person shooter is (and is not), a timeline of notable titles, the anatomy of an FPS, and a glossary of important terms. Oh, and the first is several interviews with notable figures within the industry. These are always informative and highly interesting, so even if you're here only for the games, don't skip these, I beseech thee. 

It is at page 50 that we get to the first year covered by the volume, and if 2003 feels like a long time ago, well, yes, it was. Hell, so was 2010, but within that period, some three hundred shooters hit the market. Some were instant classics, others more of an acquired taste, and a few where you just had to wonder what the hell were they putting in the drinking water. Yet despite this tome's hefty dimensions, there is only room for just over 200 entries. This isn't as bad as you'd think, as whilst PS2 "classic" Secret Service gets a write up, America's 10 Most Wanted is excluded. The former is a by the numbers effort that really suffers in its PlayStation 2 guise (see issue 70 of Fusion Magazine for a Fusion Fail), but is possibly redeemed by its Xbox 360 release - if you really feel the need to play it. The latter, well, there was definitely something in the water when they developed that "game", and if you fancy a laugh, I believe the a future issue of Fusion magazine will see you right...

Needless to say, the usual suspects are present and correct, and even though the world and its cousin has lost count as to how many times someone has written about Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, the author's style, approach and enthusiasm shine through, making every entry a true joy to read. 

As you'd expect, there are plenty of screenshots, and although I was a tad waspish about the physical format of the first book, I apologise profusely now - it's the perfect way to present the history of shooters - allowing those widescreen visuals to truly shine - and once again proving that Bitmap Books really know their stuff when it comes to showing off the eye candy.

Hurt Me Plenty is a fantastic follow up from Mr Maine, and will be another go to reference on the subject for years to come, for games both good and bad. Especially the bad ones, as in a very weird way, they are often more "interesting" to play than stone cold classics - even/especially/because of Rogue Warrior. Once again, my "to play... eventually" list has ballooned to ludicrous levels, but hey, at least the list exists. One day... one day. I also said in the my review of the first book that I hoped there would be a follow up from 2003 onwards, and well, here we are. Would it be too much to hope for a 2011 and onwards volume? Pretty please???

You can pick up a copy of Hurt Me Plenty from the Bitmap Books website here, and order from the usual online and physical bookshops if that's your thing.

Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment by Jason Schreier - Book Review

This review should have been published a couple of weeks ago, but stuff got in the way so here we are now, and lo, hasn't the real world really been at it! Microsoft's announcement of games cancellations and job cuts (all reportedly to fuel some fuckwitted belief in AI) has placed a really sour cherry on top of this review given the subject matter. As it is, here is the original piece as written prior to that news. I was going to add my sixpence worth about the cuts at the end of the post, but everything I had to say has already been said in many ways much more elegantly by others.

It took me a few minutes to check, but I've never reviewed Jason Schreier's previous two books on the blog - and that surprised me as I'm looking at my copies of them on the shelf now. You really should check out Blood, Sweat, and Pixels, and Press Reset, as they're both cracking behind the scenes looks at how videogames are, and in some cases are not, made. But it is with his latest tome that we're concerned with today, and a history/expose of the machinations of Blizzard, from its initial founding to Microsoft's purchase of Activision Blizzard. 

I've never played Blizzard's releases. Never really gotten into the that style of RPG, and I'm not an online player whatsoever. However, since I have more than a passing interest in the nature of the videogames industry, that detachment from the subject matter could be seen as a bonus - no emotional baggage to consider when talking about specific titles. 

Anyhoo, over some 350 plus pages, Mr Schreier writes lucidly on the subject at hand - the history of Blizzard, the titles released (and those cancelled along the way), the company culture, the associated corporate culture (some may consider that an oxymoron, but we'll get to that later), and how the company changed along with its ownership. There is an even hand given to those named within, and a definite sense of clarity, especially when discussing some of the highly disturbing allegations and behaviours which have been widely detailed elsewhere.

The author's reporting is factual, leaving the reader to draw their own conclusions as to how and why things went wrong. That extends from the personal behaviours of staff to the corporate approach adopted as the company changed hands. And it's here that, yep, you guessed it, high horse time has arrived.

I have never been a corporate cheerleader. Never will be, either. Via a combination of reading about such cases and near thirty years personal experience, I believe that certain types of individuals climb the corporate/management ladder to the point where their actual contribution to the success of a company is vastly minimised by their (possibly, nay probably self aggrandised) emphasis towards "leadership" - and by that, I mean knowing naff all about what the company/organisation that employs them does, but being able to spaff word salads sprinkled with bullshit dressing with ease. This might appear to be professional management, but again, there is a great deal of truth in saying that if your job is to simply make numbers become bigger on a quarterly/half year/annual basis, then you're not a practical part of the solution to achieve that, you're often part of the drag preventing it. And thus we come to Bobby Kotick...  

Look, there are times when those who, at heart, are consummate sales people will be in the right. And when they are, they can be fantastically successful - I give you Alan Sugar for one - in the 1980's, he made the right decisions to grow Amstrad from primarily a hi-fi builder to one of Europe's most valuable computer companies. Then the market, processes and appetites changed (not helped by dodgy hard drive controllers), and the company faded from that area and evolved into something else. But from what I understand and have read, Alan, later Sir Alan, now Lord Sugar, was never the massive thundertwat in the same vein that Kotick and co. were. And, by the way, their actions aren't unique - read the corporate history of Commodore and it's 1980's shenanigans... absolute clueless were the corporate types towards their staff. It also has to be noted that the effect that MBA's have on companies seems to garner the most negative of headlines - looking once again at you, Boeing...

Back to Bobby. He knew what could sell, and ensure it would sell he did, but by doing so gutted the golden goose that created that success. Annual releases, constant crunch, and absolutely no fucking clue whatsoever that videogames are an art form (and as such, that creativity needs nurturing). Sure, mistakes were made at the lower levels: poor management decisions within teams being a regular occurrence, but the never ending push for higher numbers is at the heart of this tale, the core reason why Activision Blizzard and the wider modern videogames industry is, to put it mildly, fucked sideways. This subject was satirised brilliantly in the highly recommended Who Hunts The Whale by Laura Kate Dale and Jane Aerith Magnet, so grab a copy of that if you can.

What Play Nice shows in excruciating detail is the corrosive effect of late stage capitalism on the videogames industry. If you're not C-suite, you're nobody, and if that means screwing people over for rightly deserved bonuses, or waiting until you lose key staff before realising that, shit, maybe you should have treat them more fairly, then so be it. I'm not pushing for some workplace utopia, just that Play Nice reinforces my long held belief that there are those who directly contribute to success, and those who feed off it - and it's always the feedees that benefit the most. The tone deaf approach of some execs also hits the offensive button like a sledgehammer. 

Is Play Nice a great book? Yes, absolutely, and one that you should read to understand how passionate people can deliver wonders, but have also been (and no doubt will continue to be) treat like shit by those who do the corporate ladder thing, and as such, it's rather an emotive one for me - especially so when a key individual left the absolute shit show with a golden parachute worth hundreds of millions of dollars. This expose on one of the largest videogames companies in the world has once again proven that there should, nay, needs be a rebalancing, a move away from the current hellscape that is the corporate videogames industry, and the wider corporate world at large. I doubt that will ever happen, but one should never lose hope.

As for Mr Schreier, by all means, good sir, keep 'em coming if you can, as your third tome will remain on my shelves for many years to come, and it also deserves to be on yours as well. 

You can pick up a copy of Play Nice from the usual online stores, and you might be able to order it in from your local physical book shop too. 

The Games of a Lifetime by Julian "Jaz" Rignall - Book Review

To say that I have been looking forward to this book since it was announced would be an understatement. I have read, and reviewed, many histories focused on video games, but this one held the promise of being truly special because of who the author is and his role in the UK games magazine industry of the 1980's and 90's. Was The Games of a Lifetime worthy of such anticipation?

As someone whose childhood years spanned the 1980's, reading about the author's early life resonated greatly with me. Growing up around Stanley and Consett after the latter's steel works were shuttered in 1980 defined the period known as "Thatcher's Britain" very differently from the more economically protected areas of the UK, and it's this socio-economic framing that makes the Jaz's journey from rural Wales to the US all the more interesting. 

But as we continue through the years in this highly polished 400-plus page tome, there is much more than just the "wasn't it grim?" trope that people who have never actually experienced the horrors of the that government (and I'm not just talking about those who could afford a Beeb either - joke, btw) trot out. No, we're here for the games, as well as to find out just how good this guy's taste in music and books actually is. Oh, and the curse of micro-management. Yeah, right with you there...

Told chronologically, each chapter zeroes in on a particular title to which is given a whole page for a frankly glorious screenshot. What follows is a mix of detail about the selected games, anecdotes on the gaming industry, the author's personal life and career, rumination's on games that didn't quite make the author's grade but are still worth mentioning, and any other topic of interest whose inclusion is more than justified. 

From the glory days of the arcades, via the then cutting edge 8- and 16-bit computers, to the mass market home console scene, the man's love for gaming is never in doubt, and the enthusiasm and passion I remember so well from reading Computer and Video Games, and Mean Machines/Mean Machines Sega is still obvious in the text here. His style is easy to follow and packed with humour too, and where he does voice his thoughts and opinions, it's done so confidently yet with care. Well, mostly, because when fuckwits are gonna fuckwit, you got to call them out (and maybe ask some why they became politicians in the first place...). 

There is much to learn about the early games media industry too, as well as some links that, whilst I was hazily aware of them, had never actually clicked before - Chris Anderson for one, whose attempt at a magazine business (Amstrad Action, how I loved thee back in the day) and it's "future" successes, you may have heard of. That and some website called IGN... I loved the behind the scenes details of ZZAP! 64 (NEC PC-8021's indeed), as well as the fast and furious days of the later EMAP titles. As an aside, ZZAP!  64 is still a going concern, now published as part of the range of magazines from Fusion Retro Books, and whose sister publication, Fusion Magazine,  your humble scribe contributes to. Look, if I can't get a plug in my own blog post, what's the point???!!! Also, Battletech!!! 

The Games of a Lifetime is the finest autobiography/games history book I have ever read. The tone is pitched perfectly between the personal and the career aspects of Jaz's life, and I cannot stress enough how refreshing it was to see a different voice to the growing repository of the videogames history texts. It would also be highly remiss of me if I didn't highlight the touching foreword by Richard Leadbetter, the sublime artwork from Wil Overton and Gary (from Army of Trolls), as well as the efforts of those who helped with the screenshots and other imagery within. 

The Games of a Lifetime is one of those tomes that should appeal to everyone with an interest in videogames - for those who lived through those times, it's a pure nostalgia trip as well as a reminder of how bad things really were if you happened to live anywhere not in the Home Counties. For those too young to have had the "joys" of secondhand smoke, three (later four, oooohhhhhh!) TV channels, and a fascination with the colour brown, it will entertain and inform as to how the games and associated media industries developed from a particular UK perspective during their early years and beyond. I loved it, and this will remain a fixture in my gaming-related library for years to come. Bravo to Mr Rignall, those who contributed in delivering the final result, and to Bitmap Books for publishing yet another corker. 

You can pick up a copy of The Games of a Lifetime from the usual physical and online bookstores, as well as the likes of Forbidden Planet in the UK, and direct from the publisher's website here, where you'll get to experience the frankly nuts quality of their packaging. 

You can also follow the author on X/Bluesky via the following handles: @JazRignall and @jazrignall.bsky.social, and the publisher via @bitmap_books and @bitmapbooks.com respectively. 

A Tale of Two Adverts - The advent of the PC in 1992

Following on from my last post, at what point did it appear likely, nay, apparent, that the PC would surpass the Amiga and ST in the UK to become the home computer of choice (if you could afford one)? 

I'll use these two adverts from Dan Technology Plc from the March and September 1992 issues of What Micro? to put forward my thoughts. There are plenty of other advertisers that could have been used, and while Dan were never the cheapest, nor were they the priciest either. A note on the prices, by the way: where accompanied by a figure in brackets, the first amount is excluding VAT, the second is inclusive at the going rate. Where a figure is quoted without a corresponding bracketed figure, that is VAT inclusive. 

Dan Technology ad - What Micro? March 1992

Dan Technology ad - What Micro? September 1992

The first advert is typical of its contemporaries: lots of numbers and quite a few hidden items (£50 extra for DOS and £57 for Windows added to those headline prices, for example), but I want you to check out the "bundle" price for that 12MHz 286 and the 386 above it, a cheeky little 25MHz SX number. 

That 286, packing 1Mb of RAM and a 40Mb hard drive with a 14" VGA display and MS-DOS 5.0 comes in at £588 ex VAT (so £690-ish for the average punter). The 1Mb 386 with a 125Mb hard drive and a SVGA display rocks in at £947 ex (£1,112). That also comes with DOS but Windows would bump the total to £1.004 (£1,183).

Now we fast forward six months, and that 286 is still... £588 ex. Not that surprising, monitors and hard drives hadn't dropped that much in price. The 386 though, that is something else. Although the hard drive is down to 100Mb, you get 2Mb of RAM, DOS and Windows for £774 (£910). And that, gentle reader, is an example (and 200 of Her Majesty's golden beer tokens) as to why the PC was becoming more popular in 1992. They were getting cheaper and becoming better value. 

As for the then-current machine of choice, the Commodore Amiga, it seemed almost untouchable. It was long established, had plenty of support, and pretty much offered what it had (barring a half meg memory upgrade) since 1987, except now for a cheaper price and some bundled software. The ST was a decent second place, but had lost momentum against good ol'chicken lips, and Atari's focus was switching to the potentially more lucrative console market. 

In that combination lay the problem. Your basic Amiga in 1987 was the Amiga 500, and Atari had the STFM. Fast forward five years and your STE still ran the same 68000 albeit with a blitter for display shenanigans, and the A500 was phasing out for the A600 (to many, a retrograde step), but neither Commodore nor Atari had done much to advance the tech in their low-end systems. The likely 1987 DOS machine you'd have bought would have been an Amstrad PC1512 mono display with a single floppy, and you'd maybe have change from £500. Yet if you wanted a hard drive for your PC, the mono model was priced by dealers at around £869 (£1,000) for a 20Mb offering, and CGA colour lofted that to £1.029 (£1,184).

Computer Express (for ST and Amstrad prices) - ad - Practical Computing July 1987

You could, of course add a hard drive for an ST, which would have been seen as an expensive luxury unless you had a specific reason for it, but as you can see from the dealer price, that would have put your single floppy STFM bundle up to £784 (£901). The Amiga had not yet graduated to hard drive storage yet, and to be fair, it didn't matter at this stage in our story. Yet my point, such as it is, remains: for a general home computer in 1987, the Amiga and ST were better value and more capable than the DOS PC. In 1992, much less so. 

News section - What Micro? March 1992

In the PC world, scale of economy (particularly in the US, where neither Commodore nor Atari really cracked it with their 16-bit offerings) and competition (unlike having a single company supplying you with hardware) played a part in forcing prices lower, nowhere more obvious than in the CPU arena. The history is a little complicated (and rather lawsuit heavy), but basically by 1992, Intel was competing with AMD in supplying 386 chips to PC manufacturers. AMD had been selling a 25MHz version since early 1991 and Intel only responded in early '92. As you can see from the bar charts, the expectation was that the 486 would soon hit the mainstream, and since Intel would have a brief monopoly on that generation too, it made sense for them to push faster and more lucrative chips on to the market. It also helped that the 386 was a genuine technological improvement over the 286, thus aiding its popularity, especially with the release of Windows 3, and the 486 was faster again (very simplistically speaking). 

March 1992 - remember to add £57 onto that price for Windows.

September for the whole kit and caboodle.

As an aside, check out the difference in 486 systems between March and September 1992. That 486SX 20MHz with 4Mb of RAM and a 125Mb hard drive with Windows for £1,381 (£1,622), compared to 25MHz chip but with practically the same spec otherwise for £923 (£1,085). Let me be clear, that was still a ton of money back then - the BoE inflation calculator puts those inc VAT amounts at £3,500 and £2,350 respectively, but prices were dropping and dropping in a serious way. Indeed, whereas the 8086/8088 seemed to stick around forever since the days of the original IBM XT (and Amstrad were still trying to hawk such machines even in early '92, some nine(!) years after the grandaddy of all DOS PC's landed in Blighty), the 286's position as the de facto entry-level CPU was relatively brief, and as noted above, Intel's defensive measures against competitors made the 386's time in the sun seem similarly fleeting. 

First Computer Centre ad - Amiga Format Feb 1993

Let's go back the then-extant 16-bit home computers. Whilst 1992 would see spec increases announced for both formats, only Commodore managed to get any serious numbers into the hands of consumers, and even then, the new machines were more expensive than their predecessors. The A500 had dropped to around £299 before being discontinued, and its replacement, the A600, debuted at £399, or £449 with a hard drive. The A1200 retook the £399 price point, but getting an HD-equipped version took the price to over £600 for 40Mb of storage. The AGA display capabilities were a step up, but still lagging behind the PC. 256 colours were great and all that, but even a barely above basic spec PC equipped with 512kb of VRAM enabled the Super VGA resolution (800x600) at 256 colours. Not many games utilised this yet, but for productivity work, having that in Windows (albeit rather slowly for many users), was something the Miggy could never match out of the box. If you did want to include a dedicated display for your A1200, adding a Philips CM8833 Mk2 monitor took the A1200 HD put another £225 on the bill, so for a total of £825 or thereabouts, you had your Amiga set up. (The prices from the ad above are slightly later than the two PC magazines used for this article, but this adds confirmation to my point - PC prices did not suddenly go up over the 1992 festive period, thus making the value comparison even more valid). 

Silica Systems ad - ST Format December 1992

As for Atari, the Falcon, although a cracking machine, began at £499 minus a hard drive, and to properly spec it out with extra memory and some storage would, at least in its early days, set you back £899 (4Mb/65Mb), yet still no monitor. Now look back at the 386 from the September issue. £910. 

Of course, the Amiga and ST were facing other competition as well. Sega and Nintendo had delivered 16-bit console gaming to the UK masses (the 8-bitters were around in the late 1980's, just nowhere near as popular as the corresponding 8-bit computers, which to their credit were still selling software units in decent numbers well into 1992), and by the time Christmas of that year arrived, you could get a Mega Drive or a SNES for under £130 a piece. 

Special Reserve ad - Mean Machines Sega December 1992

Special Reserve ad - Computer and Video Games November 1992

The PC had reached a point where, spec for spec (excluding a sound card for gamers), it was better value than the comparable Amiga or ST spec, and the overall proposition of the PC had improved immensely. And since the PC had been a much stronger platform in the US for home users, there were many more titles from that market designed for the PC that the Amiga and ST just couldn't handle (looking at you, Wolfenstein 3D, never mind Doom the following year). Or, if they could, the ports were heavily constrained. The PC could now display more colours (until AGA), had a greater capacity floppy drive format, but also came with a hard drive as standard. I can't be the only former Amiga owner who begrudged swapping up to 10 disks in some adventure games. There again, even if you could afford a hard drive for your Miggy (and I certainly couldn't), you had to rely on the developers permitting hard drive installation, and that wasn't a given either. Justifiably, by 1992, a hard drive was becoming an essential purchase for any home machine, rather than just a nice quality of life improvement option.

One must not forget the effect of Windows 3.0 either. It worked, mostly (you had to be there!), and gave PC owners the option of a graphical user interface for the serious stuff, with DOS underpinning it for games. Personally, I think Win 3.0 looks terrible, and ran like a sloth on anything other than a very speedy 386 with at least 4Mb of RAM, but there again I also think the aesthetic of RISC OS trumps any other OS of the time (and kinda still does, but what do I know?), but compared to what the ST or Amiga desktops looked like, Windows in 800x600 could arguably be described as the more seemly way to operate a computer. There again, pretty is as pretty does... but that didn't matter as Microsoft were well on their way to cementing their DOS dominance with control of the PC GUI-based OS market too. 

I.S.C ad - Personal Computer World November 1987 - last item in Specials. 

On the whole, both the ST and Amiga had been left too long at their 1987 specs. It made them cheaper than a corresponding PC, but they lacked standardised hard drove support and, both a blessing and curse, the lack of requirement for a dedicated monitor. Both of these requirements were expensive add-ons in the 1980's. For example, in 1987, adding just an EGA card and monitor to an existing PC was more than the ST cost! But as '92 rolled in though, EGA had gone the way of the dodo, 256kb VGA was your very basic display adaptor, and hard drives didn't cost a small internal organ. Meanwhile, good luck word processing on your Amiga and that 14" Alba TV...

I know, I know, the Amiga and ST in the UK were predominantly games machines for that generation, but considering the low-cost home computer market was being squeezed from one side by dedicated games consoles that could, in some cases, perform wonders the computers couldn't, and by the PC from the other which could do more technologically advanced gaming than consoles and perform the traditional role of a home computer much more ably than the 16-bitters, there was little room for manoeuvre by either Commodore or Atari. 

This isn't a dig at any particular format, merely just highlighting that whilst Commodore and, to a lesser degree, Atari made bank on their most successful products, they failed to develop them any further than strictly necessary, seemingly too focussed on each other. In the background, the DOS PC evolved, improved and, most importantly, became relatively cheaper at an increasingly blistering pace. It was here, in 1992, that if you included a hard drive and monitor across all three options, a PC could go toe to toe value-wise against the established home machines. 

Then we get to the fact that neither Commodore nor Atari had the resources to fight this battle much longer. Atari pivoted (back) to consoles first but it was too knackered at this point to fight off either Sega or Nintendo, never mind the new 3DO and Commodore's own CD32. Not that Commodore's console was a saviour either. A decent machine, no doubt, but the established players in the 16-bit world had mass and inertia on their side. Newer entrants, such as Atari and 3DO, were banking on their "next-gen" offerings, and sure, for a time, they looked tempting. However, by 1994, Sony's PlayStation became a known quantity and, well, we know how that ended... And no, at the risk of repeating myself, I do not think Commodore UK would have had a snowball's chance if they'd acquired the remnants of Commodore International in 1994. Just keeping the existing A1200/A4000/CD32 machines going would have taken a lot of their funding, and developing custom hardware would have been a huge gamble at the very least. Consider this point: the AGA chipset was already two years old (from a consumer point of view) when Commodore Int went bust. Say another year to get a new chipset out of the door (at an unknown cost to the end user), all the while maintaining the platform on increasingly dated 680x0 processors. The nascent PowerPC chips would have been the perfect "next-gen" option, but that would have been very pricey. Meanwhile, the Windows PC moves through the 486 generation towards the Pentium, adding Windows accelerator cards to ensure users could experience a smooth, high resolution desktop, Apple begin their move to the aforementioned PowerPC, and the console war becomes blindingly simple as Sony takes the market by storm, even, eventually, in Japan, where the Saturn put up a good fight. There was no room for a player like "successor to Commodore" outside of a slowly decreasing number of adherents. Consumers had moved on, and that's before we get to the PC's mass-market moment, Windows 95. Say what you like, but Microsoft made sure everybody knew it had arrived, and there was nothing to stop that bandwagon. 

The tipping point for the PC over other home computer formats in the UK can be defined by many things: graphics, sound, processing capabilities, yet here I've hopefully given some justification that 1992 was the year everything aligned for DOS/Windows powered desktops. It would take time, but I consider that year to be the fulcrumt at which the general consumer could peek into an issue of What Micro? or Computer Shopper (amongst many other computing magazines the UK had back then), and decide that the PC had more to offer, for both immediate needs as well as those in the future, and once on that path, there was little reason to go back. No matter what Commodore, Atari (or Acorn) released, it could never have been "better enough" (a contentious term if ever there was one) to move the needle in the UK, never mind the other mass markets, and certainly not in the US. What these two adverts demonstrate is that the PC's price/value ratio was improving beyond the ability of other formats to compete, a gap that would only widen as time passed. It would be a long while before a bare bones useable PC would reach the price point of what the Amiga and ST had retailed at, but by then, it didn't matter. The split between a home console and a reasonably priced home computer had been set and would remain so for years to come.