This one takes a look at what you, our readers, feel have been the high and low points in the Atari Scene in the past 12 months. This issue Mattias Jaap tells us what he thinks...
An Atari magazine which existed for over ten years (The ST Computer) made its last issue and only one German magazine was left (The situation may be similar to other countries). Another piece of bad news was of course Atari/JTS - although they survived. There were over fourty Jag games in development but where are they now?
That leads us to the good news: Telegames. Without them games like Iron Soldier 2 and Worms would never see the light of day.
Another positive aspect was the development of Internet software - CAB, Webspace, STiK, NEWSie... and my programs which I could release after I got the GFA basic compiler. I still only miss two programs: A Java interpreter and a C64 emulator.
On the hardware side there was the Hades which is much too expensive - but it is an awesome machine! And the Hades is only the first in a line of PCI Atari-clones: ST-Milan and Phenix are announced.
To summarize my thoughts I would say that the Atari scene has a bright future: There are lots of interesting software and hardware projects in development.
Matthias Jaap