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		            THE YEAR OF THE AMIGA
		    (or - this is the year, that was 1997)

There we go then, another year over and done with, and what it year it
has been huh?  1997 won't exactly go down in the anals..erm, annals of
time as being the best year for the Amiga, but it has had some improvements
over 1996, that's for sure.

This year saw the purchase of Amiga Technologies by Gateway 2000, a big
billion dollar PC manufacturing company, but so far we haven't seen anything
from them.  This is understandable, Amiga International have only been running
since the start of the summer, and to bring a computer that is in the
state that the current Amiga is in, and bring it back to the regular market
place is no easy job.

We also saw some sad times.  The long standing, and well respected Amiga
magazine, "Amiga Shopper" died in January of 1997. By the end, what started
as a 200 page 99p serious blackand white printed Amiga magazine in 1991, 
ended up a think 45 page, staple bound, glossy full colour magazine with
cover disk for £4.50... it wasn't really worth it for most Amiga users, but
Shopper will always be remembered.  When the Amiga comes back, if it makes
it big time again, who knows, a return of Amiga Shopper wouldn't seem out
of the question.

In April we saw the shocking loss of top serious magazine Amiga User
International.  At least AS went out with a bang, and said goodbye.  AUI
just seemed to vanish, as the final issue never made it to the shelves of
the shops.  So we were left with a nice April issue, with a printer
round-up, and promises for a next issue, and subscriptions and advertising
space still being offered... then only to find nothing appeared the next
month.  It just vanished!

August came, and we saw the loss of one of the oldest Amiga mags around.
Amiga Computing said it's final good-byes and abandoned its web site in
August, and a nice closing issue, to say thanks for all the good times,
and well done for the last 10 years of Amiga Computing magazine.
Along with Amiga Computing, the ghost of Amiga Action was also laid to
rest.

Now we're only left with two paper magazines for the Amiga, CU Amiga and
once-market leader, Amiga Format.  Which one is the best?  Find out in
our head to head match else-where in this issue.

Web sites have been springing up all over the place.  The Amiga Web Directory
has been constantly improving, with new additions almost every week, and
the excellent Aminet site still is receiving hundreds of new programs each
week.  

Towards the end of October, the long promised web site for long running
Amiga diskmag "Page" finally appeared.  But since the web site was starting
up and we were going to get lots more readers, we may as well smarted the
mag up.  So we got our dusters out and changed almost EVERYTHING, from the
way the disk is set out, to the article writing style (see we're a lot more
informal and professional these days, don't you think? ... yeah right), and 
even a name change to top it all off (yes it's this mag doofus!).

October 31st is supposed to be the day when all these spooky ghosts come back
from the dead isn't it?  Well, it doesn't only apply to ghosts, ancient
Amiga diskzine "RipMag" saw it's re-birth on October 31st of this year,
and now owned by that wonderful Amiga group "Point-Productions" (we are 
modest aren't we?).

3D freaks were pleased with October, when we saw the launch of the latest
big Amiga title "Alladin 4D", taking rendering into the 4th dimension...
or something.  

The Amiga's operating system hasn't been updated since 1993, so Amiga
users took it upon themselves to create an independant late 90s operating
system, with the lauch of AROS, the new Amiga operating system, which
is growing in popularity all the time, along with the infamous Unix 
Amiga operating system.

Programmer saw the release of Storn C version 3 in November, which now
has been updated so you can harness even more of your Amigas power, with
the addition of POWER PC support!  Expect to see new programs cropping up
that support those Phase 5 beauties soon.

Shape Shifter, the Amiga Mac emulator, was looking a bit dated, but that
all changed with the release of "Fusion", the massive new Amiga emulator
that gives your Amiga apple munching capabilities, and it works very well.

CU Amiga please a lot of Amiga games players in the summer when they finally
work out a deal to release top flight sim "TFX" on their cover CD.  Miggy
owners flock in their droves to grab a copy of this issue... sadly the CD
is screwed so owners of Commodore CD-ROMs can't use it, and we're still
waiting for replacements...  hmph.

Meanwhile, Amiga Format are no slouches either.  "Best of Page" is released
every other month onto the Amiga Format cover CDs, and we receive many
nice comments and new readers from the thousands of Amiga Format readers
that checked out our first compilation.  It did so well we went on to release
volume 2 and 3, with volume 4 on the way very soon.

At the start of the year, there is still a big fuss over the Siamese system
that lets you link your Amiga with one of those nasty PC thingies, and use
them both like one machine.  By the end of the year, they seem to be all
but forgotten, ah well.

Of course there's been a lot more, with regular Aminet CD releases every
other month, and they continue to sell very well, especially with recent
price cuts.

The Amiga games scene is maturing.  After a bland 1996 of hardly any
games, 1997 sees loads of new games that harness the power of expanded
Amigas.  New games that feature full 3D graphics.  Myst even appeared
at one point, but was only a developer version that never saw a full release
due to copyright problems, which is a shame because it looked very
promising.

Click Boom are the company behind many of the top new Amiga conversions,
they were even hoping to do an Amiga version of the excellent Monkey Island
3, but nothing has been heard of it yet.

Flashback finally sees a sequel (sort of) with the excellently atmospheric
"On Escapee", a game we haven't been able to check out as yet, but are
despereately seeking a copy.  Along with an update for Dan's favourite
CD32 game "Gloom", version 3 is on sale now, and it's excellent.

Over all, the year hasn't been too bad at all.  It hasn't been the best
year for the Amiga, and the product releases haven't been absolutely
massive, but there have been quite a lot of excellent products released
for a machine that's currently supposedly "dead" as a market machine.  
Hopefully next year as now, we'll be back on top.  Thanks to all readers
for sticking with us in 1997, merry xmas, and a happy new year and we'll
see you all back here, safe and sound in 1998.

Best Wishes!

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