News

 

Issue 22

Jul/Aug 86

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Magnetic Scrolls, whose first Adventure The Pawn set a new standard for Adventures on the ST, have reached a distribution agreement with British Telecom's Rainbird Software and promise to follow up The Pawn with six new products commencing with The Guild of Thieves this autumn. ST owning Adventure addicts are in for a good time as Rainbird will also be releasing titles for Level 9, commencing with a trilogy comprising of a rewritten set of Colossal Adventure, Dungeon Adventure and Adventure Quest. Improvements will include the addition of graphics and the implementation of Level 9's latest parser. Other similar releases are planned for later in the year and Level 9 will continue to release other adventures on their own label.

Metacomco have re-launched their ST products with upgraded versions of Lattice C, Pascal and Assembler which will include a new GEM based command shell called Menu+ which is available in its own right. Menu+ allows programmers to use pull down menus and the mouse to control programs without complicated command lines and allows single programs or batches to be run. Price is just £19.95.

Hippo Software of California continue to bring forth a multitude of software and peripherals for the ST all of which are mentioned in an excellent newsletter released to the trade called HippoNews. Hippo have a Black and White digitiser priced at $139.95 with a colour version planned. For the same price you can have an EPROM burner or for a little extra you can have a computer controlled robot. New software includes HippoConcept, an 'idea processor' that allows you to organise your thinking and updated versions are available for earlier Hippo software. Altogether Hippo have 14 software products and 6 pieces of hardware for the ST. Availability in the U.K. is not known at present but if you contact any of the ST advertisers in this issue they may be able to let you know.

Snippets from Atari include ... a PC/MS DOS emulator as an add on cartridge for the 520ST,1040ST and 2080ST(!) and a BBC emulator which is claimed to run BBC software as fast as the BBC machine. What with the famed Macintosh emulator developed by a third party it looks like the ST is the machine to buy if you can't make up your mind!

Mirrorsoft have announced ST ART a new painting package developed by Andromeda Software which can handle both graphics and text, allow A4 print-outs for leaflets etc. and allow animation through colour cycling. Scheduled for release in July, the provisional price is £29.95.

Haba Systems say they plan to introduce a new title for the ST every month and May saw the release of Haba Spelling Checker designed to work with HabaWriter. Also released is a new database called Habaview which uses the GEM environment and has 'powerful sorting and selection capabilities' optimised by the large memory available on the ST. Price is £74.95.

Prospero Software have added to their range of languages with Pro-Pascal, a full and complete standard Pascal compiler that will allow all kinds of applications to be written for the ST. Dr. Mike Oakes of Prospero states that there is a new breed of computer owner in purchasers of the ST, professional people who want to have the machine do useful things. Prospero's Pascal will allow software authors to take advantage of that new market with applications, utilities, expert systems and more.

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