Greetinz all! My name is Jeff aka¢Alias Maximus, and I thought I would¢take my turn to do a 'Your Page' as I'm¢sure that very soon John will be¢swamped by all the Y.P's you avid TGR¢fans will be sending in, and I would¢have to wait absolutely ages for mine¢to be included (ahem).¢ Well here we go. I have only been a¢member of the Atari 8-bit elite for¢about eight months, but my first¢encounters with this computer date back¢about six years, when a friend of¢mine at school found out that I owned¢a Spectrum and I was a keen adventure¢buff. This person was no other than the¢infamous John E. (TEBSF), who soon¢began to beg me for hints on the Scott¢Adams adventure 'Spiderman', to which¢of course I kindly obliged. This¢'friendship' (I use the word with¢reservation) resulted in John inviting¢me back to his house so that I could¢see all the adventures he had for his¢Atari. These were mainly 'Mysterious¢Adventurers' and also, if my memory¢serves me correctly he had a copy of¢'Lords of Time'. (He also showed me a¢rather strange game called 'The School¢of Death' which he had written himself.¢I shall say nothing about that game as¢I'm sure he will only edit it out!!!).¢Anyway, my story takes a break there¢and doesn't begin again until a few¢years later when John somehow acquired¢a 1050 disk drive (complete with Zork¢II) and I was impressed.¢ Over the next few years John's¢collection of adventures grew and grew,¢and every time he got hold of a new¢Infocom game I would travel the weary¢path to his house and he would let me¢play on one for about fifteen minutes,¢before telling me his disk drive needed¢a rest. Finally this grew too much for¢me and I decided to buy an Atari for¢myself.¢ It was around this time that John and¢I came up with the idea of forming an¢Atari users group. We spent the better¢part of a day trying to come up with a¢suitably impressive name, until finally¢I was struck by a sizzling bolt of¢inspiration.¢ 'Hey John! What about AURA? Sounds¢great huh?'¢ 'Yeah,' says he. 'but what does it¢mean?'¢ 'Well it means err.."The Atari Union¢of R something A something"' said I.¢ So a legend was born. 'The Atari¢Union of R something A something' and¢a few hours later we came up with¢'Rabid Apostles' (Well you try thinking¢of something). All we needed now was a¢few more members. First we asked one of¢JOHN'S friends 'El Diablo' to join (our¢first mistake). Then we asked the one¢and only Spite Ripsoft to join...¢ 'Nar!' he said, but came around the¢next day with a rather natty AURA logo.¢The result of this can be seen in the¢AURA intro demo and on John's AURA¢menus. Then he begged to join us, and¢who were we to turn him down? (I mean I¢didn't even own an Atari at the time)¢ A few days later John 'acquired' a¢copy of 'Moonmist' by Infocom, this¢made me take the final step and off I¢went to buy an Atari.¢ John and I went off to get hold of an¢Atari and disk drive. Unfortunately the¢first person we visited only had an 810¢disk drive (in fact when we went round¢to his house his family had thrown a¢tea towel over it and were using it as¢a camp bed in the guestroom). I decided¢not to buy this because you can't get¢enhanced density on an 810 and that¢means I wouldn't be able to play 'The¢Pawn'.¢ But anyway, a few days later I bought¢an 800XL, 1050 disk drive with doubler¢chips, a 822 printer(???) and lots of¢disks, all for 100 quid. So here I am¢eight months later, proud owner of an¢Atari 8-bit.¢ And I lived happily ever after...¢*¢ED: I would like to point our that Jeff¢was hit by his 'sizzling bolt of¢inspiration' whilst looking through a¢dictionary.¢
