Amiga Power
Encyclopedia
Amiga Power was a monthly magazine about Amiga
computer games
. It was published in the United Kingdom
by Future Publishing
, and ran for 65 issues, from May 1991 to September 1996.
It was in many ways the spiritual successor to Your Sinclair
, which shared many of the same staff and had a similar sense of humour, amassing a loyal body of fans, some of whom still reminisce about the magazine and attempt to keep its spirit alive.
in the final issue of the magazine:
Amiga magazines at the time (as with most games magazines right up to the present day) tended to give "average" games marks of around 70%, and rarely below 50% except for very poor games. Because most people - including game publishers - were used to this method of grading, AP gained a reputation among publishers for being harsh and unfair. AP occasionally hinted that game reviewers were being given incentives by game PR divisions to mark games highly.
In fact, fairness was a central part of their philosophy. They despised cheating, and frequently berated their own readers for using cheats to gain advantages in games. (They also believed that this applied in reverse; that games should not be allowed to cheat the player, either.)
They also believed that above anything else, games should be fun to play, and that if this criterion could be met, other factors such as graphical quality, age or heritage were unimportant.
AP reviews were written in a very personal, informal manner, as though the reviewer were casually talking to the reader. Writers would sometimes even embark on anecdotes of recent happenings in the AP office, or of their interactions with the other AP staff. This contributed to AP's reputation for self-indulgence, but it also created a sense of familiarity that most of its readers enjoyed.
and Stuart Campbell used it as a first step in their career. Gillen was one of several writers who started off as an AP reader and letter-writer (under the name "C-Monster") before being employed by the magazine as a freelance contributor (retaining the "C-Monster" name even in his professional capacity). Another was Mil Millington
(known to AP readers as "Reader Millington"), who would go on to become a successful novelist, selling over 100,000 copies of his debut Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About
.
Throughout its 65 issues, AP went through several editors. The editors, roughly ordered by time, were:Mark Ramshaw (issues 16-24)
Linda Barker, APs only female editor (issues 25-26; issues 27-36 were edited by Stuart Campbell after Linda fell sick, although he never held the title of editor)
Jonathan Davies (issues 37-50)
Cam Winstanley (issues 51-55)
Tim Norris (issues 59-62)
Steve Faragher (issues 63-65)
Issues 56-58 were published with no designated editor, and subsequently referred to as "the anarchic collective era".
An Ed Comment is intended to be an interjection from the editor, inserted into a body of text as if spoken in real-time. The comment is italicised and bracketed, and the suffix - Ed is attached to the comment to show that it is from the editor. For example, the comment "This is a comment." would appear as (This is a comment. - Ed).
To include a comment from anyone else, the "Ed" can be replaced with the name of that person; however, this was rarely done. In actuality, most Ed Comments were never from the editor at all, but merely presented as such.
After the Apocalypse review (see Concept reviews below), the Ed Comment particularly came to be used as a device for humorous or ironic censorship
. To censor a word or phrase, the offending word can be replaced by an Ed Comment, which usually provides a non-offensive alternative enclosed in quotes. For example, the word "bastards" could be replaced with ("Bus stops" - Ed).
As well as censoring violence and profanity, the Ed Comment also provided AP with a means of referring to rival magazines, by incorporating a rhyming pseudonym into the comment. For example, mentions of The One
became ("Currant Bun" - Ed) and mentions of Amiga Action
became ("Michael Jackson
" - Ed).
While capitalisation in text is usually interpreted as shouting (and indeed AP did shout on occasion), the tone of this style of emphasis was meant to be more booming and sinister, judging by the contexts in which it was used. Capital letters were also separately used to represent the words of regular contributor Rich Pelley, who wrote the magazine's tips section for a long time and apparently had a very loud voice.
captions with ", yesterday", for example: "Quik dying of thirst, yesterday", using traditional sub-editor parlance as an expression of dry indifference towards the goings on in the game.
From issue one, another word, natch, was often introduced to the bewilderment of the readership. For example: "It seems that Dynablaster
doesn't run on the A500+ or A600, natch." Various readers sent in letters guessing what the word natch meant, until one finally got it right: it's simply a contraction
of the word naturally.
, who made occasional Ed Comments in an attempt to erase Stuart Campbell from history; The Four Cyclists of the Apocalypse, the only minor deities committed to rigorous consumer testing; Doris Stokes
, who returned from the dead as an even worse medium than before, and several others besides.
One "character" who actually did exist in real life was Bob the Hamster, whose owner - one David Ripley - asked AP to wish Bob well, as he was ill at the time. This resulted in issue 44 of Amiga Power having the words "BOB IS A HAMSTER" printed down the spine. Bob made a full recovery, during which a vet
discovered that "he" was actually a "she". The story was immortalised in the magazine's letters page, "Do The Write Thing", and Bob became a minor celebrity overnight. There followed numerous letters, including one from another hamster named Sparky. Bob died before the publication of issue 55, leading to that issue's spine reading "BYE-BYE BOB. YOU WERE A GIRL HAMSTER".
David Ripley later purchased New Bob.
(often a screenplay
) which indirectly reviews the game through allegory
. Amiga Power featured concept reviews on a regular basis. The term itself (never actually used in the magazine) was an ironic play on the "concept albums" released by prog rock bands of the 1970s.
Examples of Amiga Power concept review themes include:
The final issue was composed entirely of concept reviews and articles, with the author of each one dying gruesomely. The final page of the issue was a script which revealed that they were all now in Heaven, with the exception of editor Steve Faragher and art editor Sue Huntley, who were shown on the back cover attempting a Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
-style shootout with The Four Cyclists of the Apocalypse.
Shadow Fighter
. When announcing the results, they seemed a little disappointed by the lack of creativity in the responses: "What is it with you people? Do you think that because you've drawn a chef's hat and an apron on your character we won't notice he's been traced from a picture of Ken?". They proceeded to mock several of the entries, before announcing the winners. "Design a spy trap" competition (AP41): Another popular competition, readers were asked to design a trap of the kind used by evil geniuses
on heroes such as James Bond
, with the important addition that, as in James Bond films, the hero had to have an unlikely or ingenious way to escape. The winning entry was a particularly complicated plot spanning several countries, consisting of over 30 successive events which mostly depended on someone just happening to be in the right place at the right time.
"Sack of cack": This competition, run by AP itself, was more a thinly disguised plot to rid the AP office of rubbish by offering it as a competition prize.
s with slippery, ice-covered floors, thus making progress haphazard. (The phrase "slippy-slidey ice worlds" was adopted by many of its sister magazines and appeared long after APs death.) Another pet hate was the habit some game designers had of including a power-up
that reversed the player's controls.
To address these, AP began a regular feature called Kangaroo Court, which presents the so-called gameplay "crime", followed by the "case for the prosecution", which is a section illustrating why the crime is a bad thing.
Finally there was "the penalty", which was usually an execution that evolved into something increasingly bizarre over several months.
In reflection of the nature of a real kangaroo court
, there is no "case for the defence".
Readers could send in floppy disk
s containing their In The Style Of drawn in Deluxe Paint
, and every month Amiga Power would select the one they liked best and feature it in the magazine. They would also award the picture a score out of ten, and send the contributor £20 worth of Amiga games for every point scored. As a running gag
, they nearly always found a contrived excuse to halve the point score.
Perhaps the most unusual entry was It's a skull
, a dance
-style music track with all the vocals taken from the Amiga game Valhalla
.
AP hoped that by doing this they could perhaps highlight "disturbing trends" in the scores awarded by other magazines (usually the competitors reviewing unfinished versions of games - or even, on some occasions, versions from other platforms - in order to obtain the 'exclusive').
The Disseminator also contained annotations on some of the games, such as which magazine covers they had featured on, or if they had even been released at all.
") to introduce their reviewers, Amiga Power dedicated a full page to their staff, with photographs and short sections for each member. Sometimes a topical subject (for example, football) would be put to each of them to offer their opinions.
This page saw many variations and mutations over the months, becoming such things as "Who Do We Think We're Going To Be?", or "Who Drew We Think We Are?" (in which the team members drew cartoons of each other). A few times it was turned into a story featuring the AP staff in various guises.
Latterly the section would feature at least one "guest" reviewer - usually a recently deceased celebrity or political figure, whose comments would inevitably culminate in the feature's standard disclaimer "Haven't played it".
) was the magazine's letters page. One distinguishing feature of the letters page was that the magazine gave the letters titles by taking excerpts of the letters' contents out of context, often by going across sentence boundaries or cutting in the middle of a clause. The most celebrated example of this was when a reader wrote in humorously bemoaning the lack of national media attention given to APs then-editor Linda Barker being seriously ill (she'd suffered a brain haemorrhage and was absent from the mag for over a year, but went on to recover) compared to the blanket coverage of the trivial ailments of the Queen Mother
. "Are the newspapers concerned [about Barker]?", queried the reader rhetorically. "No! But the Queen Mother swallows a fishbone and we get three days of media panic.". Naturally, AP headlined the letter with the quote "THE QUEEN MOTHER SWALLOWS". Another example was the headline "Commander/Dangerous Knob, er, sorry", derived from a letter criticising two games Commodore
bundled with the CD32
, Wing Commander and Dangerous Streets
.
The letters, and the magazine's replies to them, started out fairly normal in style, but later became more and more bizarre. Readers even started writing in about things that had nothing to do with computer games, to the point that the magazine once had to specifically ask for letters on appropriate topics. APphilosophy was that a magazine's letters pages defined both its character and its relationship with the readers, and it therefore devoted more space and attention to the letters pages than most magazines, often in the form of lengthy responses to more serious letters, explaining and justifying issues of policy.
Amiga Power was avowedly a magazine for games only, unconcerned with the Amiga's productivity uses, and it frequently advertised this fact on the letters page. If a reader wrote in with a question about hardware or productivity software, the magazine staff replied either by flaunting their ignorance, employing sarcastic mockery, or supplying blatantly false information. These letters would commonly be saved up and used as the bulk of a special irregular round-up section called Ask Amiga Power.
A well-known contributor to the letters page was Isabelle Rees, a British woman who first started writing letters to the magazine at the age of 15 years. Her letters, which were usually fairly long, had a cheerful tone about them, and many other readers took a liking to them.
Rees signed her letters as "Isabelle, L'Elf", and sometimes prefixed the signature with "hugs". Another of her trademarks was excessive use of exclamation mark
s. One reader pointed out that he had seen Isabelle having been 15 years old for more than two years, and thus suspected her of being a pseudonym
. Another reader jocularily compared her to Bob, a female hamster
(despite the name), who was also a famous character on the magazine's letters page.
Midway into APs run, the Back Page tended toward articles that blurred the boundary between Amiga games and real life. For example, there were a series of "Wish You Were Here" articles, which were written as holiday guides to famous Amiga game locations (such as the Rainbow Islands
, or SimCity
). These articles often lampooned games and mixed them other culture, for example, one issue contained the classic opening scenes of light-hearted comedy Monkey Island
done in the style of a Jon Woo
film, complete with excessive violence.
Toward the end, the Back Page became increasingly bizarre, sometimes lacking any apparent context or relevance whatsoever. It has been implied that this is largely the result of Jonathan Nash having taken over doing them.
Notable examples of bizarre Back Pages include Hoi hup la! from issue #58, advertising a fictional fitness exercise treatment, and the Bexhill theatre playbill from issue #60, advertising a fictional circus show, including such "famous" performers as Miss Kempley Toog, Disturbo, Hettie O'Jings and The Amazing Sweffo. Both of these advertisements were drawn to imitate real-life advertisements in 19th century Britain. Neither, of course, has anything to do with computer games.
Other Back Pages have dealt with T-shirt slogans, cows, and the mystery of the "Ed".
This enabled them to have a running joke for several months regarding the game Hired Guns
. For several months, the game failed to arrive for review, as the publishers kept moving the release date back. In response, Amiga Power put the same screenshot of the game on their Next Month Strip every month for about six months, with repeated humble reassurances to the reader that they might, possibly, have it by next month.
When the game did finally arrive, they used the screenshot again on that issue, to illustrate their relief at having finally been able to review the game.
The next month, the screenshot was still there, because AP claimed it was stuck and they couldn't get rid of it.
), and later appeared approximately in every issue whose number was divisible by 12, plus 1.
APATTOH, true to the Amiga Power philosophy, ranked games depending on how the staff liked them, not on how well they were selling or how much advertising spend the publisher lavished on them. This meant that games which were massively hyped at the time when they came out could end up very low in (or entirely absent from) the list. A notable example is Frontier, which every other magazine touted as the greatest space flight game ever, but Amiga Power ranked #100 in their top 100 list (emphasising the point by placing it one place below a public-domain version of Pong
).
There were two games which held an iron grip on the #1 spot in the list. The first was Rainbow Islands, a coin-op
conversion platform game
which the magazine controversially deemed the Amiga's finest game for the first two years of its existence. The second was Sensible Soccer
, which took over the top position in the first AP Top 100 after its release (the game came out too late for the 1992 chart), and never relinquished it (except to its own sequel Sensible World Of Soccer
) for the rest of the magazine's existence.
A notorious example was Whatever Happened To... Game Reviews?, in which AP suggested that there might be a correlation between incentives given by game publishers to game reviewers, and the score subsequently given to the company's latest game. They suggested, if this was the case, that 73% was the lowest mark a reviewer could give to a game without falling out of favour with the game's publishers, effectively making this the mark of an "average" game in other magazines.
Spodland
: The winner of APs earlier "Design A Game" competition, where readers were asked to send in concept ideas for a new game, with the winning idea actually getting implemented as a real game by a programming group called The Hidden
. The game reached a semi-playable prototype stage, but was never finished and never released. Cannon Fodder
: This became the best-rated (although not best-ranked) game ever reviewed in AP and was a huge success.
Sensible Golf
: This was a golf game based on the Cannon Fodder engine.
, an Amiga Power branded game developed by Jon Hibbins
on the September 1993.
Amiga
The Amiga is a family of personal computers that was sold by Commodore in the 1980s and 1990s. The first model was launched in 1985 as a high-end home computer and became popular for its graphical, audio and multi-tasking abilities...
computer games
Computer Games
"Computer Games" is a single by New Zealand group, Mi-Sex released in 1979 in Australia and New Zealand and in 1981 throughout Europe. It was the single that launched the band, and was hugely popular, particularly in Australia and New Zealand...
. It was published in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
by Future Publishing
Future Publishing
Future plc is a media company; in 2006, it was the sixth-largest in the United Kingdom. It publishes more than 150 magazines in fields such as video games, technology, automotive, cycling, films and photography. Future is the official magazine company of all three major games console manufacturers...
, and ran for 65 issues, from May 1991 to September 1996.
It was in many ways the spiritual successor to Your Sinclair
Your Sinclair
Your Sinclair or YS as it was commonly abbreviated, was a British computer magazine for the Sinclair range of computers, mainly the ZX Spectrum.-History:...
, which shared many of the same staff and had a similar sense of humour, amassing a loyal body of fans, some of whom still reminisce about the magazine and attempt to keep its spirit alive.
Philosophy
Amiga Power had a number of principles which comprised its philosophy regarding games. Like almost all Amiga magazines of the time, they marked games according to a percentage scale. However, Amiga Power firmly believed that the full range of this scale should be used when reviewing games. A completely average game, neither overly good nor bad, on this scale would therefore be awarded 50%. Stuart Campbell offered some rationale for this in his review of Kick Off '96Kick Off
The Kick Off franchise is a series of football simulation computer games which was highly popular in the early 1990s. The series is renowned for its fast-paced action and delicate ball control scheme....
in the final issue of the magazine:
Amiga magazines at the time (as with most games magazines right up to the present day) tended to give "average" games marks of around 70%, and rarely below 50% except for very poor games. Because most people - including game publishers - were used to this method of grading, AP gained a reputation among publishers for being harsh and unfair. AP occasionally hinted that game reviewers were being given incentives by game PR divisions to mark games highly.
In fact, fairness was a central part of their philosophy. They despised cheating, and frequently berated their own readers for using cheats to gain advantages in games. (They also believed that this applied in reverse; that games should not be allowed to cheat the player, either.)
They also believed that above anything else, games should be fun to play, and that if this criterion could be met, other factors such as graphical quality, age or heritage were unimportant.
Style
Amiga Power developed and maintained a familiar style throughout its six-year run. The writers were very fond of in-jokes, obscure references and running gags, and popular phrases or literary devices would become absorbed into APs culture (such as, for example, using capital letters for dramatic emphasis).AP reviews were written in a very personal, informal manner, as though the reviewer were casually talking to the reader. Writers would sometimes even embark on anecdotes of recent happenings in the AP office, or of their interactions with the other AP staff. This contributed to AP's reputation for self-indulgence, but it also created a sense of familiarity that most of its readers enjoyed.
Writers
Unlike many games magazines, AP policy was to hire people on the basis of their writing skills, rather than their aptitude for or knowledge of games (although most of its staff were also very knowledgeable), on the premise that it was easier to learn about games than to learn to write. Many video game journalists like Kieron GillenKieron Gillen
Kieron Gillen is a British computer games and music journalist, as well as a comic book author. Gillen has worked for many years as a video game journalist and has, more recently, worked on various comics. He is perhaps best known for his creator-owned comic Phonogram, created with artist Jamie...
and Stuart Campbell used it as a first step in their career. Gillen was one of several writers who started off as an AP reader and letter-writer (under the name "C-Monster") before being employed by the magazine as a freelance contributor (retaining the "C-Monster" name even in his professional capacity). Another was Mil Millington
Mil Millington
Mil Millington is a British author of humorous books.-History:Millington first came to public prominence as a writer when he created a web-site entitled Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About, describing arguments and misunderstandings between Millington and his German girlfriend Margret,...
(known to AP readers as "Reader Millington"), who would go on to become a successful novelist, selling over 100,000 copies of his debut Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About
Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About
Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About is the name of a web site, a column in The Guardian, and a novel written by English writer Mil Millington...
.
Throughout its 65 issues, AP went through several editors. The editors, roughly ordered by time, were:
- Matt BielbyMatt BielbyMatt Bielby is the managing director and proprietor of Blackfish Publishing, a specialist magazine and internet publishing company based in Bath, UK. He is best known as a magazine editor, launching many successful titles in assorted markets during the 1990s, mostly on the subjects of computer and...
,
Issues 56-58 were published with no designated editor, and subsequently referred to as "the anarchic collective era".
Ed Comment
One of the most recognisable AP devices was the Ed Comment, which, although not invented by them nor indeed used exclusively by them, was employed extensively and inventively. Over time it evolved into a multi-purpose review device.An Ed Comment is intended to be an interjection from the editor, inserted into a body of text as if spoken in real-time. The comment is italicised and bracketed, and the suffix - Ed is attached to the comment to show that it is from the editor. For example, the comment "This is a comment." would appear as (This is a comment. - Ed).
To include a comment from anyone else, the "Ed" can be replaced with the name of that person; however, this was rarely done. In actuality, most Ed Comments were never from the editor at all, but merely presented as such.
After the Apocalypse review (see Concept reviews below), the Ed Comment particularly came to be used as a device for humorous or ironic censorship
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
. To censor a word or phrase, the offending word can be replaced by an Ed Comment, which usually provides a non-offensive alternative enclosed in quotes. For example, the word "bastards" could be replaced with ("Bus stops" - Ed).
As well as censoring violence and profanity, the Ed Comment also provided AP with a means of referring to rival magazines, by incorporating a rhyming pseudonym into the comment. For example, mentions of The One
The One (magazine)
The One was a video game magazine in the United Kingdom which covered 16-bit home gaming during the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was first published by EMAP in October 1988 and initially covered computer games aimed at the Atari ST, Commodore Amiga, and IBM PC markets.Like many similar magazines,...
became ("Currant Bun" - Ed) and mentions of Amiga Action
Amiga Action
Amiga Action was a monthly magazine about Amiga computer games. It was published in the United Kingdom by Europress and ran for 89 full issues, from October 1989 to December 1996, making it the longest running UK Amiga games magazine. After its closure, it was merged into sister publication Amiga...
became ("Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson
Michael Joseph Jackson was an American recording artist, entertainer, and businessman. Referred to as the King of Pop, or by his initials MJ, Jackson is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records...
" - Ed).
Capital letters
Approximately halfway through the magazine's life, the practice of using capital letters for dramatic emphasis became increasingly common. An example of this would be a sentence such as "You must ELIMINATE DISSONANT ELEMENTS". Capitalisation was always used for the magazine's catchphrase, "DISSEMINATE ESSENTIAL INFORMATION".While capitalisation in text is usually interpreted as shouting (and indeed AP did shout on occasion), the tone of this style of emphasis was meant to be more booming and sinister, judging by the contexts in which it was used. Capital letters were also separately used to represent the words of regular contributor Rich Pelley, who wrote the magazine's tips section for a long time and apparently had a very loud voice.
"Yesterday" and "natch"
Among Amiga Powers running gags were ending screenshotScreenshot
A screenshot , screen capture , screen dump, screengrab , or print screen is an image taken by a computer to record the visible items displayed on the monitor, television, or another visual output device...
captions with ", yesterday", for example: "Quik dying of thirst, yesterday", using traditional sub-editor parlance as an expression of dry indifference towards the goings on in the game.
From issue one, another word, natch, was often introduced to the bewilderment of the readership. For example: "It seems that Dynablaster
Bomberman (TG-16)
is a 1990 video game developed by Hudson Soft for the TurboGrafx-16. Belonging to the Bomberman franchise, it is a greatly expanded re-imagining of the first game in the series....
doesn't run on the A500+ or A600, natch." Various readers sent in letters guessing what the word natch meant, until one finally got it right: it's simply a contraction
Contraction
Contraction may refer to:In physiology:* Muscle contraction, one that occurs when a muscle fiber lengthens or shortens** Uterine contraction, contraction of the uterus, such as during childbirth* Contraction, a stage in wound healing...
of the word naturally.
Characters
Like its spiritual predecessor, Your Sinclair, Amiga Power had several joke characters who would make irregular appearances in reviews and features. These included Uncle Joe StalinJoseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
, who made occasional Ed Comments in an attempt to erase Stuart Campbell from history; The Four Cyclists of the Apocalypse, the only minor deities committed to rigorous consumer testing; Doris Stokes
Doris Stokes
Doris May Fisher Stokes , born Doris Sutton, was a British spiritualist and psychic medium.She was a controversial figure, with some believing her to possess psychic abilities, while sceptics stated that her performances amounted to nothing more than cold reading, a technique used to create the...
, who returned from the dead as an even worse medium than before, and several others besides.
One "character" who actually did exist in real life was Bob the Hamster, whose owner - one David Ripley - asked AP to wish Bob well, as he was ill at the time. This resulted in issue 44 of Amiga Power having the words "BOB IS A HAMSTER" printed down the spine. Bob made a full recovery, during which a vet
Vet
Vet may refer to:* Vet or veterinarian, a professional who treats disease, disorder and injury in animals* Veteran, a person with long experience in a particular area, most often in military service during wartime...
discovered that "he" was actually a "she". The story was immortalised in the magazine's letters page, "Do The Write Thing", and Bob became a minor celebrity overnight. There followed numerous letters, including one from another hamster named Sparky. Bob died before the publication of issue 55, leading to that issue's spine reading "BYE-BYE BOB. YOU WERE A GIRL HAMSTER".
David Ripley later purchased New Bob.
Concept reviews
A concept review is a review conducted in an abstract manner - basically, any review which deviates significantly from the usual practice of describing a game and analysing its strengths and weaknesses. Usually it takes the form of a work of fictionFiction
Fiction is the form of any narrative or informative work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary—that is, invented by the author. Although fiction describes a major branch of literary work, it may also refer to theatrical,...
(often a screenplay
Screenplay
A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...
) which indirectly reviews the game through allegory
Allegory
Allegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...
. Amiga Power featured concept reviews on a regular basis. The term itself (never actually used in the magazine) was an ironic play on the "concept albums" released by prog rock bands of the 1970s.
Examples of Amiga Power concept review themes include:
- A movie shown at half past ten on a Saturday night on ITVITVITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...
, and therefore excessively censored (Apocalypse). - An episode of Have I Got News For YouHave I Got News for YouHave I Got News for You is a British television panel show produced by Hat Trick Productions for the BBC. It is based loosely on the BBC Radio 4 show The News Quiz, and has been broadcast since 1990, currently the BBC's longest-ever running television panel show...
(Impossible Mission 2025Impossible Mission 2025Impossible Mission 2025 is a side scrolling platform and action game for the Amiga computer system. It was released by MicroProse in 1994 as 2 different versions. One for the Amiga 500 and 600 systems, and a version for the AGA enhanced Amiga 1200, 4000 and CD32 systems.-Characters:The player can...
) - A chat show hosted by Michael AspelMichael AspelMichael Terence Aspel, OBE is an English television presenter, known for his reserved demeanour and rich speaking voice. He has been a high-profile TV personality in the United Kingdom since the 1960s, presenting programmes such as Crackerjack, Aspel and Company, This is Your Life, Strange But...
, interviewing a game's protagonist (Woody's World). - A science fictionScience fictionScience fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
scenario (possibly based on an episode of The Twilight ZoneThe Twilight Zone (1959 TV series)The Twilight Zone is an American anthology television series created by Rod Serling, which ran for five seasons on CBS from 1959 to 1964. The series consisted of unrelated episodes depicting paranormal, futuristic, dystopian, or simply disturbing events; each show typically featured a surprising...
) in which the game's main character has to convince an interviewer that his game is so good that he should be given passage on a colony ship away from the doomed Earth. If his game is poor, however, he will be executed with a shotgun. In the end he is deemed merely mediocre and is left on Earth to perish (Quik the Thunder Rabbit) - A review composed almost entirely of long, rambling "Ed Comments", with the supposed writer being only allowed the briefest of interjections (Dizzy's Excellent AdventuresDizzyDizzy may refer to:* Dizziness, the state of being off balance-Nickname:* Dizzy Gillespie, American jazz trumpet player and composer* Johnny Moore , American rhythm and blues singer* Dizzy Reed, Guns N' Roses keyboardist...
). - A loosely-relevant science fiction story about a mysterious "Darren", with "Ed Comments" used to include the actual critical comment (TransarcticaTransarcticaTransarctica is a 1993 computer game made by the French company Silmarils for the Amiga and ported to the PC, Atari ST, MAC and Atari Falcon...
) - A review composed of sarcastic multiple-choice questions, at the end of which the reader would arrive at a personalised mark depending on their responses to the game's attempted humour (WormsWorms (computer game)Worms is a series of turn-based computer games developed by British company Team17 Software. Players control a small platoon of earthworms across a deformable landscape, battling other computer- or player-controlled teams...
) - A courtroom drama in which the magazine is charged with murdering the Amiga (Kick Off '96Kick OffThe Kick Off franchise is a series of football simulation computer games which was highly popular in the early 1990s. The series is renowned for its fast-paced action and delicate ball control scheme....
)
The final issue was composed entirely of concept reviews and articles, with the author of each one dying gruesomely. The final page of the issue was a script which revealed that they were all now in Heaven, with the exception of editor Steve Faragher and art editor Sue Huntley, who were shown on the back cover attempting a Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is a 1969 American Western film directed by George Roy Hill and written by William Goldman...
-style shootout with The Four Cyclists of the Apocalypse.
House ads
Like most magazines, AP was required to put advertisements in its sister publications. Unlike most magazines, it eschewed the traditional, half-hearted splash page with pictures of video game characters. Instead, it came up with bizarre, sometimes interactive, ads that were rarely to do with the Amiga itself. The most memorable of these was the O.J. Simpson guilt game, which allowed readers to select OJ's verdict at random.Competitions
Competitions, a regular feature in practically all games magazines, were also run in APs distinctive style, often challenging the readers' wit or creativity. AP also frequently provided strange additions to the normal competition rules, such as making peculiar threats to people who were ineligible to enter the competition if they tried to, or specifically disallowing reader Stuart N. Hardy from entering the competition.Example competitions
- "Design a fighter" competition: Apparently one of
Fighting game
Fighting game is a video game genre where the player controls an on-screen character and engages in close combat with an opponent. These characters tend to be of equal power and fight matches consisting of several rounds, which take place in an arena. Players must master techniques such as...
Shadow Fighter
Shadow Fighter (computer game)
Shadow Fighter is a computer game for the Commodore Amiga, and Amiga CD32 developed by NA.P.S. team and published by Gremlin Interactive in 1994, and became one of the Amiga's best beat 'em up offerings during its final years, competing at the time with the likes of Acclaim's impressive home...
. When announcing the results, they seemed a little disappointed by the lack of creativity in the responses: "What is it with you people? Do you think that because you've drawn a chef's hat and an apron on your character we won't notice he's been traced from a picture of Ken?". They proceeded to mock several of the entries, before announcing the winners.
Villain
A villain is an "evil" character in a story, whether a historical narrative or, especially, a work of fiction. The villain usually is the antagonist, the character who tends to have a negative effect on other characters...
on heroes such as James Bond
James Bond
James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been a six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis,...
, with the important addition that, as in James Bond films, the hero had to have an unlikely or ingenious way to escape. The winning entry was a particularly complicated plot spanning several countries, consisting of over 30 successive events which mostly depended on someone just happening to be in the right place at the right time.
Oh Dear
One of the earliest Amiga Power features which appeared in True Stories was Oh Dear, a small monthly feature showcasing truly terrible Amiga games. Oh Dear was removed very early on in the Amiga Power series.Kangaroo Court
Through their long computer gaming experience, the AP reviewers had developed a number of pet hates about computer games. One of the more frequently mentioned ones, for example, was "slippy-slidey ice worlds" - levels in platform gamePlatform game
A platform game is a video game characterized by requiring the player to jump to and from suspended platforms or over obstacles . It must be possible to control these jumps and to fall from platforms or miss jumps...
s with slippery, ice-covered floors, thus making progress haphazard. (The phrase "slippy-slidey ice worlds" was adopted by many of its sister magazines and appeared long after APs death.) Another pet hate was the habit some game designers had of including a power-up
Power-up
In computer and video games, power-ups are objects that instantly benefit or add extra abilities to the game character as a game mechanic. This is in contrast to an item, which may or may not have a benefit and can be used at a time chosen by the player...
that reversed the player's controls.
To address these, AP began a regular feature called Kangaroo Court, which presents the so-called gameplay "crime", followed by the "case for the prosecution", which is a section illustrating why the crime is a bad thing.
Finally there was "the penalty", which was usually an execution that evolved into something increasingly bizarre over several months.
In reflection of the nature of a real kangaroo court
Kangaroo court
A kangaroo court is "a mock court in which the principles of law and justice are disregarded or perverted".The outcome of a trial by kangaroo court is essentially determined in advance, usually for the purpose of ensuring conviction, either by going through the motions of manipulated procedure or...
, there is no "case for the defence".
In The Style Of
An "In The Style Of" is, as the name implies, a depiction of a game in the style of something else; most often another game. It started out as a Back Page feature, but was soon thrown open to readers as a kind of competition, and moved to the news section.Readers could send in floppy disk
Floppy disk
A floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric that removes dust particles...
s containing their In The Style Of drawn in Deluxe Paint
Deluxe Paint
Deluxe Paint is a bitmap graphics editor series originally created by Dan Silva for Electronic Arts .The original version was created for the Commodore Amiga and was released in November 1985...
, and every month Amiga Power would select the one they liked best and feature it in the magazine. They would also award the picture a score out of ten, and send the contributor £20 worth of Amiga games for every point scored. As a running gag
Running gag
A running gag, or running joke, is a literary device that takes the form of an amusing joke or a comical reference and appears repeatedly throughout a work of literature or other form of storytelling....
, they nearly always found a contrived excuse to halve the point score.
Perhaps the most unusual entry was It's a skull
It's a skull
It's a skull is a 1995 dance-style computer music track. The track was created by Paul Hamilton of Exeter, UK, with OctaMED on an Amiga computer. The track's vocals consist entirely of speech samples from Vulcan Software's famous adventure game Valhalla and the Lord of Infinity, taken out of...
, a dance
Dance music
Dance music is music composed specifically to facilitate or accompany dancing. It can be either a whole musical piece or part of a larger musical arrangement...
-style music track with all the vocals taken from the Amiga game Valhalla
Valhalla (computer game)
Valhalla was a ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 adventure game published in 1983 by Legend.-History:The publishing house Legend had earlier published titles under the Microl label. Legend's chairman and founder was John Peel. The developers were Richard Edwards, Graham Asher, Charles Goodwin, James...
.
The Disseminator
This feature appeared toward the end of APs life. It was simply a table of recent games, and the percentage scores that they received from Amiga Power and the two main competing Amiga games magazines of the time: The One Amiga and Amiga Action.AP hoped that by doing this they could perhaps highlight "disturbing trends" in the scores awarded by other magazines (usually the competitors reviewing unfinished versions of games - or even, on some occasions, versions from other platforms - in order to obtain the 'exclusive').
The Disseminator also contained annotations on some of the games, such as which magazine covers they had featured on, or if they had even been released at all.
Just Who Do We Think We Are?
While other magazines used at most a modest box (the "flannel panelFlannel panel
Flannel panel is a humorous term for a magazine masthead panel that lists publisher and staff details.The origin of the term is unknown, but according to the Oxford English Dictionary, one definition of "flannel" is: "Nonsense, ‘hot air’; flattery, unnecessary ostentation." Thus, the origin of the...
") to introduce their reviewers, Amiga Power dedicated a full page to their staff, with photographs and short sections for each member. Sometimes a topical subject (for example, football) would be put to each of them to offer their opinions.
This page saw many variations and mutations over the months, becoming such things as "Who Do We Think We're Going To Be?", or "Who Drew We Think We Are?" (in which the team members drew cartoons of each other). A few times it was turned into a story featuring the AP staff in various guises.
Points of View
Points of View was a table summarising each AP reviewer's opinion of the main games reviewed that month, if they had played them. The reviewers had room to make a short comment and give their personal score from one to five stars.Latterly the section would feature at least one "guest" reviewer - usually a recently deceased celebrity or political figure, whose comments would inevitably culminate in the feature's standard disclaimer "Haven't played it".
Do the Write Thing
"Do the Write Thing" (an obvious pun on the movie Do the Right ThingDo the Right Thing
Do the Right Thing is a 1989 American dramedy produced, written, and directed by Spike Lee, who is also a featured actor in the film. Other members of the cast include Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Richard Edson, Giancarlo Esposito, Bill Nunn, and John Turturro. It is also notably the...
) was the magazine's letters page. One distinguishing feature of the letters page was that the magazine gave the letters titles by taking excerpts of the letters' contents out of context, often by going across sentence boundaries or cutting in the middle of a clause. The most celebrated example of this was when a reader wrote in humorously bemoaning the lack of national media attention given to APs then-editor Linda Barker being seriously ill (she'd suffered a brain haemorrhage and was absent from the mag for over a year, but went on to recover) compared to the blanket coverage of the trivial ailments of the Queen Mother
Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon
Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon was the queen consort of King George VI from 1936 until her husband's death in 1952, after which she was known as Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, to avoid confusion with her daughter, Queen Elizabeth II...
. "Are the newspapers concerned [about Barker]?", queried the reader rhetorically. "No! But the Queen Mother swallows a fishbone and we get three days of media panic.". Naturally, AP headlined the letter with the quote "THE QUEEN MOTHER SWALLOWS". Another example was the headline "Commander/Dangerous Knob, er, sorry", derived from a letter criticising two games Commodore
Commodore International
Commodore is the commonly used name for Commodore Business Machines , the U.S.-based home computer manufacturer and electronics manufacturer headquartered in West Chester, Pennsylvania, which also housed Commodore's corporate parent company, Commodore International Limited...
bundled with the CD32
Amiga CD32
The Amiga CD32, styled "CD32" , was the first 32-bit CD-ROM based video game console released in western Europe, Australia, Canada and Brazil. It was first announced at the Science Museum in London, United Kingdom on 16 July 1993, and was released in September of the same year...
, Wing Commander and Dangerous Streets
Dangerous Streets
Dangerous Streets is a video game for Commodore's Amiga CD32 game console in 1994. It was developed by Micromania and licenced by Flair. The game was universally derided with Amiga Power giving it a rating of 3%, describing it as the worst game for the CD32 and one of the worst games ever.-External...
.
The letters, and the magazine's replies to them, started out fairly normal in style, but later became more and more bizarre. Readers even started writing in about things that had nothing to do with computer games, to the point that the magazine once had to specifically ask for letters on appropriate topics. APphilosophy was that a magazine's letters pages defined both its character and its relationship with the readers, and it therefore devoted more space and attention to the letters pages than most magazines, often in the form of lengthy responses to more serious letters, explaining and justifying issues of policy.
Amiga Power was avowedly a magazine for games only, unconcerned with the Amiga's productivity uses, and it frequently advertised this fact on the letters page. If a reader wrote in with a question about hardware or productivity software, the magazine staff replied either by flaunting their ignorance, employing sarcastic mockery, or supplying blatantly false information. These letters would commonly be saved up and used as the bulk of a special irregular round-up section called Ask Amiga Power.
A well-known contributor to the letters page was Isabelle Rees, a British woman who first started writing letters to the magazine at the age of 15 years. Her letters, which were usually fairly long, had a cheerful tone about them, and many other readers took a liking to them.
Rees signed her letters as "Isabelle, L'Elf", and sometimes prefixed the signature with "hugs". Another of her trademarks was excessive use of exclamation mark
Exclamation mark
The exclamation mark, exclamation point, or bang, or "dembanger" is a punctuation mark usually used after an interjection or exclamation to indicate strong feelings or high volume , and often marks the end of a sentence. Example: “Watch out!” The character is encoded in Unicode at...
s. One reader pointed out that he had seen Isabelle having been 15 years old for more than two years, and thus suspected her of being a pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
. Another reader jocularily compared her to Bob, a female hamster
Hamster
Hamsters are rodents belonging to the subfamily Cricetinae. The subfamily contains about 25 species, classified in six or seven genera....
(despite the name), who was also a famous character on the magazine's letters page.
The Back Page
The back page was traditionally reserved for something fun and irreverent, or at least, less reverent than all the preceding pages. In the first third of the magazine's life it featured profiles of Amiga game characters, interviews with people in the Amiga games industry, In The Style Ofs and other random articles of interest.Midway into APs run, the Back Page tended toward articles that blurred the boundary between Amiga games and real life. For example, there were a series of "Wish You Were Here" articles, which were written as holiday guides to famous Amiga game locations (such as the Rainbow Islands
Rainbow Islands
is a 1987 arcade game developed and published by Taito. The game is subtitled "The Story of Bubble Bobble 2" and is the sequel to Taito's hit game Bubble Bobble from the previous year...
, or SimCity
SimCity
SimCity is a critically acclaimed city-building simulation video game, first released in 1989, and designed by Will Wright. SimCity was Maxis' first product, which has since been ported into various personal computers and game consoles, and spawned several sequels including SimCity 2000 in 1994,...
). These articles often lampooned games and mixed them other culture, for example, one issue contained the classic opening scenes of light-hearted comedy Monkey Island
The Secret of Monkey Island
The Secret of Monkey Island is a graphic adventure game developed by Lucasfilm Games and published by the same company after its name was changed to LucasArts. The game spawned a number of sequels, collectively known as the Monkey Island series...
done in the style of a Jon Woo
John Woo
John Woo Yu-Sen SBS is a Hong Kong-based film director and producer. Recognized for his stylised films of highly choreographed action sequences, Mexican standoffs, and use of slow-motion, Woo has directed several notable Hong Kong action films, among them, A Better Tomorrow, The Killer, Hard...
film, complete with excessive violence.
Toward the end, the Back Page became increasingly bizarre, sometimes lacking any apparent context or relevance whatsoever. It has been implied that this is largely the result of Jonathan Nash having taken over doing them.
Notable examples of bizarre Back Pages include Hoi hup la! from issue #58, advertising a fictional fitness exercise treatment, and the Bexhill theatre playbill from issue #60, advertising a fictional circus show, including such "famous" performers as Miss Kempley Toog, Disturbo, Hettie O'Jings and The Amazing Sweffo. Both of these advertisements were drawn to imitate real-life advertisements in 19th century Britain. Neither, of course, has anything to do with computer games.
Other Back Pages have dealt with T-shirt slogans, cows, and the mystery of the "Ed".
Next Month Strip
Nearly all games magazines, AP included, have a Next Month page, which offers a brief insight into the contents of next month's issue. However, for APs first 30 issues or so, they had a thin strip on the back cover upon which they wrote a few lines on next month's issue, and included a very small screenshot of an upcoming game.This enabled them to have a running joke for several months regarding the game Hired Guns
Hired Guns
Hired Guns is a role-playing video game produced by DMA Design for the Amiga and the PC in 1993.The game is set in the year 2712, in which the player controls four mercenaries selected from a pool of twelve...
. For several months, the game failed to arrive for review, as the publishers kept moving the release date back. In response, Amiga Power put the same screenshot of the game on their Next Month Strip every month for about six months, with repeated humble reassurances to the reader that they might, possibly, have it by next month.
When the game did finally arrive, they used the screenshot again on that issue, to illustrate their relief at having finally been able to review the game.
The next month, the screenshot was still there, because AP claimed it was stuck and they couldn't get rid of it.
APATTOH
APATTOH, meaning Amiga Power All Time Top One Hundred, was a yearly rather than a monthly feature. It originally started in AP issue No. 0 (a special "preview issue" of Amiga Power given away as an addition to an issue of Amiga FormatAmiga Format
Amiga Format was a British computer magazine for Amiga computers, published by Future Publishing. The magazine lasted 136 issues from 1989 to 2000. The magazine was formed when, in the wake of selling ACE to EMAP, Future split the dual-format title ST/Amiga Format into two separate publications...
), and later appeared approximately in every issue whose number was divisible by 12, plus 1.
APATTOH, true to the Amiga Power philosophy, ranked games depending on how the staff liked them, not on how well they were selling or how much advertising spend the publisher lavished on them. This meant that games which were massively hyped at the time when they came out could end up very low in (or entirely absent from) the list. A notable example is Frontier, which every other magazine touted as the greatest space flight game ever, but Amiga Power ranked #100 in their top 100 list (emphasising the point by placing it one place below a public-domain version of Pong
Pong
Pong is one of the earliest arcade video games, and is a tennis sports game featuring simple two-dimensional graphics. While other arcade video games such as Computer Space came before it, Pong was one of the first video games to reach mainstream popularity...
).
There were two games which held an iron grip on the #1 spot in the list. The first was Rainbow Islands, a coin-op
Arcade game
An arcade game is a coin-operated entertainment machine, usually installed in public businesses such as restaurants, bars, and amusement arcades. Most arcade games are video games, pinball machines, electro-mechanical games, redemption games, and merchandisers...
conversion platform game
Platform game
A platform game is a video game characterized by requiring the player to jump to and from suspended platforms or over obstacles . It must be possible to control these jumps and to fall from platforms or miss jumps...
which the magazine controversially deemed the Amiga's finest game for the first two years of its existence. The second was Sensible Soccer
Sensible Soccer
Sensible Soccer, often affectionately known as Sensi, is an association football video game series which was highly popular in the early 1990s and which still retains a cult following...
, which took over the top position in the first AP Top 100 after its release (the game came out too late for the 1992 chart), and never relinquished it (except to its own sequel Sensible World Of Soccer
Sensible World of Soccer
Sensible World of Soccer was designed and developed by Sensible Software as the 1994 sequel to their 1992 hit game Sensible Soccer which combined a 2D football game with a comprehensive manager mode...
) for the rest of the magazine's existence.
Whatever Happened To...
Usually a two-page feature printed on black pages, which discussed something that was in one state in the past and is now in a different one. The subject would vary, but it was not always about computer games.A notorious example was Whatever Happened To... Game Reviews?, in which AP suggested that there might be a correlation between incentives given by game publishers to game reviewers, and the score subsequently given to the company's latest game. They suggested, if this was the case, that 73% was the lowest mark a reviewer could give to a game without falling out of favour with the game's publishers, effectively making this the mark of an "average" game in other magazines.
Diary Of A Game
There were four instances where a series of consecutive issues of AP had a feature called Diary Of A Game, where the development of a new game in progress was monitored in the form of a diary, written by the game's programmers. The games were:Spodland
Spodland was a computer game for the Amiga computer, designed by the British group The Hidden.The history of Spodland originally started when the British home computer magazine Amiga Power held a competition in co-operation with The Hidden, where the readers were asked to design new computer games,...
: The winner of APs earlier "Design A Game" competition, where readers were asked to send in concept ideas for a new game, with the winning idea actually getting implemented as a real game by a programming group called The Hidden
The Hidden (game developer)
The Hidden was a British game developer for the Amiga that became famous for their platforming game Donk!: Samurai Duck. The group consisted of Craig Howard, among others. They were also working on an action/puzzle game called Spodland, but the game was cancelled before it was released....
. The game reached a semi-playable prototype stage, but was never finished and never released.
Cannon Fodder
Cannon Fodder is a short series of war themed action video games developed by Sensible Software, initially released for the Commodore Amiga. Only two games in the series were released, but were converted to most active systems at the time of release...
: This became the best-rated (although not best-ranked) game ever reviewed in AP and was a huge success.
Sensible Golf
Sensible Golf was a 2D golf game released by Sensible Software in 1994 for the Amiga.The game featured the same pin-like characters that had previously been used with great success in Sensible Soccer and Cannon Fodder, although upon release it was deemed a commercial failure and received lacklustre...
: This was a golf game based on the Cannon Fodder engine.
F-Max
In its later years, Amiga Power started advertising a fictional refreshment beverage called F-Max, the lightly sparkling fish drink, with the slogan an ocean of refreshment.Cover disks
Coverdisk 29: SquigsSquigs
Squigs is a puzzle computer game like Columns and Tetris. It was first created in 1993 by Jon Hibbins on the Amiga. More recently Squigs has appeared on iOS devices....
, an Amiga Power branded game developed by Jon Hibbins
Jon Hibbins
Jonathan Haydon Hibbins born in 1975 also known as Jon Hibbins.He currently lives in United Kingdom. In 1993 his first published game - Squigs - appeared in Amiga Power Magazine on the September 1993 coverdisk, with a review inside the magazine....
on the September 1993.
External links
- AP2 - An Amiga Power information site created by AP writers Jonathan Nash and Stuart Campbell, with a wealth of behind-the-scenes stories about the magazine.
- World Of Stuart - Stuart Campbell's extensive website, which includes an archive of Amiga Power and other articles, ongoing original features and a popular forum.
- House of Nash - Jonathan Nash's website, which included a selection of Amiga Power and other articles, now taken down, but which may put back up in the future.
- Digiworld - Short-lived attempt at reviving DigitiserDigitiserDigitiser was a video games magazine that was broadcast on the Teletext service on Channel 4 in the UK from 1993 to 2003, and was updated from Monday to Saturday...
on the Internet, with Stuart, Jonathan Nash and "Mr Popular", aka Kieron Gillen. - Need to Know - The fortnightly tech update for the UK, co-written by AP Production Editor, Dave Green.
- Games Press - A one-stop PR resource for the games industry run by AP's Gentlemanly Editor, Jonathan Davies.
- The Weekly - Created by Jonathan Nash and Mil Millington. Now ceased, though a return is promised.
- Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About - The website which would later give its name to Millington's first novel.
- Kieron Gillen's workblog - By AP's Walking Tips Machine, C-Monster, which previously existed here
- Amiga History Guide: Amiga Power - an alternative history of the magazine.
- "It's a skull", a famous OctaMEDOctaMEDOctaMED is a popular sound tracker for the Commodore Amiga, written by Teijo Kinnunen. The first version, 1.12, was released in 1989 under the name MED, which stands for Music EDitor. In April 1990, version 2.00 was released with MIDI support as the main improvement...
music file sent to the magazine by a reader