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CU Amiga Super CD-ROM 19
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CU Amiga Magazine's Super CD-ROM 19 (1998)(EMAP Images)(GB)[!][issue 1998-02].iso
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Golden_Days.ASC
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1995-12-30
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6KB
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143 lines
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Data/Golden_Intro
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The Golden Days
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û
Remember the good 'ol days before the Amiga stepped into the
limelight in the way it has today, and the larger Sega and Nintento
companies had hardly ever been heard of in this country, and the old
8-bit machines such as the Spectrum and Commodore 64 dominized this
country's game markets.
I used to own both machines, with a +2 and a +3 Spectrum, which I
remember swapping for a hi-fi system. I also used to own the Amstrad
CPC 464 machine, and I knew a guy who had a TRS-80 and the Commodore
16, as well as a VIC 20.
As I glare hesitantly into my past thoughts of the old Commodore
days, thinking nowadays "Why?", I can see myself running home as fast
as I could to load and play top games such as Commando and Aztec
Challenge, which nowadays don't even register against some of the
modern games we can buy in the shops. I can even remember when our
local library used to rent out Commodore 64 games, and I used to spend
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loads on renting, and on blank tapes to save onto with my Action
Replay cartridge.
Looking back on it, I still think that the Commodore 64 was the
best home computer ever to be invented. I would gladly like to shake
the hand of the guy or gals that invented it, as it contained some of
the best things that a computer could ever possibly have. For
starters, the SID chip was a revolution of it's own, providing us for
the first time with quality chip music, using hardly any memory at
all. Even on my Amiga today, I have C64 SID emulators to listen to
some of the amazing C64 music that was out at the time, and no modern
music makers or players can EVER take away that true and original SID
sound !
Another amazing inclusion in the commodore package was the fact
that you could now have colour sprites, whereas on the Spectrum and
Amstrad machines, you could only use 1 ink colour. Sprites however,
were rather complicated to program in if you did not have a sprite
editor, and I gave up loads of times after designing my images on
paper. As well as the colour sprites, the home computer could now
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display FULL colour images, instead of the pathetic Spectrum system,
which kept colour-crashing the screen when certain colour combinations
clashed with each other. Gamesmakers and demomakers took this to the
advantages, creating some stunning graphical scenes for games like
Robocop, Midnight Resistence, and many others. The full effect of the
C64 had not come into full effect yet.
Several years ago, there was one man who made the world stop and
look at the C64 with a totally different view. His name was Jeff
Minter, and he created some of the most outrageous games like Attack
of the Mutant Camels, and the ultimate in gaming - Hovver Bovver,
which was so outrageous and entertaining to play. The long-haired hippy
turned the games industry for the 64 into what it was a few years ago,
as he inspired many more programmers to work at home on their systems
just like he did. All of his programs were featured on the cassettes of
Commodore Format, a magazine for the C64.
Then came the PD scene for the 64 in a massive way. This brought
us graphics and chip music so spectacular, you would not have thought
it possible on the 64 at all. Demo companies from all round the world
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began releasing demo's with amazing scroll routines, graphics, and
genarally just anything that the 64 was capable of doing, they did it
with brass bells on. Me and a friend of mine, Mike Wilcock began
collecting these for a while until the numbers of demo's available
were too many to even begin counting.
Some of the demo coders went on to produce games. One example was
a Tetris clone, which was so unbelivably fast, and had graphics which
made it look as though it was done in Amiga HAM mode. We also began
seeing games suddenly change into multiplex combinations of graphics
and sounds, and they were now beginning to stray from the traditional
beat-em-up's, to new and untried ideas. One of these ideas was the
"Creatures" series, an excellent game in which you had to save these
creatures from torture. They added a humourous look to the game, with
the sprites dancing along to the music, and the bosses for the game
were silly things like worms on bicycles, controlling huge mechanisms
which kept killing them off, yet look amazing graphics wise.
Although the Amiga nowadays is overpowering to the 64, it just
goes to show what could be done on a home computer several years ago,
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before the Amiga had really been released. I personally don't think
that the 64 era will ever be beaten by the Amiga, at least not for a
few more years, and the dedicated 64 user will NEVER forget the system
he/she used to own !!
Thank-you for taking the time to read this document. I hope that
you had some good memories of your old computer systems whilst reading
it. I am now going to leave you with some screenshots taken from some
Commodore 64 demos. Hope you enjoy them !!!
ú
[Andrew "Mushroom" Kellett]
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