GOODY TWO SHOWS

Two Atari shows, sponsored by Goodman International, took place on Saturday 28th September in Birmingham and Sunday 29th in London.
Back when we were planning the launch of Atari Computing we saw these shows as the last best hope of securing a future for the magazine and we're delighted to report we completely sold out our stock at both shows!
For the first time in many years the show had an upbeat feel to it, attendences were up with over 400 attendences in Birmingham and over 300 in London. Almost every company with an interest in the Atari marketplace took a stand.
Mike Goodman, MD of Goodman International, put in many months hard work to make the shows a reality. I asked Mike for his thoughts after the event "Apart from raiding the restaurant for extra tables in London, there were no unforeseen problems - much to my surprise and relief. After requests from all quarters, I can honestly say I would do it again so I'll see you all at the next show, OK?"
Mike's own stand did a roaring trade in PD/Shareware disks and end of line commercial software. Copies of the excellent CAD program Technobox Drafter were on sale for £24.95 (originally £199 from Silica). If you fancy a Doom style 3D action game on an ST/STe machine Destruction imminent at £9.99 is well worth a look (reviewed in this issue - Ed).
Out went the formal seminars to be replaced by the massed ranks of the user groups - power without the price to the people!
Scotland was represented by Scotland's TOS/Atari Group (STAG). Most of the committee, and many of the members of this prominent Scottish user group, made the long haul south to Birmingham and a few even continued down to London Show. They manned the UKAAUG stand and collected a few new members. Many on-line friendships were cemented "face to face".
Al Goold, STAG chairman said, "The attendance at these shows goes to prove there is still a lot of life left in the Atari community. I am really glad I made the effort to attend both shows, and I hope rumours of a Scottish show next spring materialise".
The Wessex Atari User Group (WAG) were kept really busy demonstrating the joys of being on-line to skeptical off-liners using their 'Virtual Website' and 'Virtual BBS'. The entire on-line community have benefited from their efforts and people have already started popping up on-line since the show.

There were a remarkable number of new products released along with the usual raft of 'near misses' to drool over and place orders for.
The System Solutions stand provided plenty of staff and machines and were showing off their product range to good advantage. MagiC PC was available for the first time in the UK and copies of MagiC v5 and NVDI 4 were flying off the stand. Texel was publically demonstrated, version 6 of HD Driver was available and a lot of people tried out new products like Photoline, the Infopedia 2, the DTP graphics CD-ROMs and the Ultimate Cubase CD-ROM. Karl Brandt, co-owner of System Solutions was grinning like the Cheshire Cat, showing all and sundry his new baby, the Hades Super-Atari.
HiSoft (yes they made the shows this time) finally had Papyrus 4 on sale for £120.00 with upgrades from Papyrus Gold costing £39 in exchange for which you get an A5 20 page manual addendum, update disk and free Bitstream CD containing 500 TrueType and PostScript fonts.
Titan Designs and Black Scorpion Software were demonstrating APEX Alpha, Nemesis and APEX Audio publicly for the first time. The awesome Afterburner040 accelerator was seen running in conjunction with Nemesis running APEX Alpha faster than ever before. Titan has added UK distribution of Gribnif software to its ever expanding range of products. David Encill reported (apart from Nemesis orders) 14MB Falcon memory upgrades were their most popular product and they ran out of stock on Saturday at Birmingham which meant resorting to accepting back orders in London on Sunday. He added "Overall the shows were a great success which proved the Atari platform is alive and kicking!".
The Upgrade Shop (TUS) were shifting hardware off their stand at an impressive rate - they ran out of hard drives at London.
The FaST Club, who attended the Birmingham show, took the opportunity to promote Gemulator for laptops enabling Atari emulation on any PC, running Windows 95, without additional hardware. The latest Imagecopy version was selling well along with a new Calamus font catalogue produced by Dave Howell, Nexus Publishing, which looks great but is probably several years too late to make any real impact. Copies of ST Applications, our UK rival magazine were...
*** well were they for sale or not?
Floppyshop launched Positive Image, an affordable image editing package for £49.95 (introductory price £65, normally £75). The stand was well stocked with colourfully packaged copies of their other commercial products and were giving away copies of their catalogue on recycled disks.
16/32 had the most comprehensive selection of games for all Atari machines. Show specials included Robinson's Requium at £25 (normally £30), Lynx machines for £29 and Jaguar consoles including Alien Predator for £59.
The Console Centre sold more hardware than expected and the Portfolio club sold out around 3pm in Birmingham.
Merlin have teamed up with Libris Internet Services to offer Atariphiles a cosy way onto the Internet from 38p a day. The deal includes pre-configured atari Software (PC/Mac support also available) along with Atari support during office hours.
It was good to see Sunrise Electronics offer something to treat seasoned musicians and newcomers to the delights of using Atari hardware to [do something very interesting but I've no idea what here thanks :-]
Flying in from the states Brad Koda of Best Electronics performed his usual trick of turning his tardis suitcase into a stand full of weird and wunnerful accessories everyone would buy if only they knew what half of them did!
And finally after returning to Atari Computing towers we're left pondering how best to promote the magazine for the benefit of all the dedicated people still actively enjoying the Atari scene, thanks for your support!