The big event of the month has
to be the PCW show at Olympia. The club organised a coach trip to
London on the Sunday to see what had been described as 'the ATARI
show' and, especially when you compare it to the episode we had
two years ago, it was a great success. A few saw fit to have a lie
in and miss the departure, but we went down with a full coach and
returned happy and content. I’m sure the rest of the magazine has
the show well documented but a little more shouldn't hurt. The exhibitors
had obviously had a very hard week because they looked well and
truly wacked. Atari had three large stands, one of which appeared
to be coffee tables and another was full of ST’s lying idle. It'
s a great idea having thirty or so machines for visitors to try
out but something a little more interesting than the OS would have
been appreciated. There was Kennedy Approach on one, but nobody
seemed to know how to play it and somebody had swiped the instructions!
There was even one stand selling its software package but didn't
have one to demo, and the pretty lady promoter didn't even know
the price of the machine. I was looking forward to the Colourscape
demo mentioned in the last PAGE 6 but it was on a screen so large
that you needed to go to the other side of the hall to see it, where
you couldn't hear the music through the constant beeping of games
and Rambo videos.
But I don't really want to sound
so negative, it was a great day out and I enjoyed myself immensely.
It was also nice to see a bit of the competition which I have always
ignored in Laskeys and Smiths. There was one demo on the ST that
was really quite stunning. It was a file of high res colour pictures
(well actually it was the lowest resolution on the ST) which could
all be called from the disk and displayed on the screen at the same
time, on top of each other, and then moved and cropped and altered
and have the colour changed and it doesn't sound half as impressive
as it looked. It is some machine.
Anyway, what else is new? C.B.A.B.B.S.
{the Central Birmingham Atari Bulletin Board Service) is now up
and running. So, if you have a modem you can get in touch with it,
and BUG, by dialling 021 430 3761. During the first week on the
air, it was contacted by 20 users, one of which was from Norway!
It is running 24 hours a day except on Thursday evenings when the
hardware is used at the club.
In the last few months there have
been quite a number of new software releases and we must thank Software
Express International for letting us preview them at club meetings
as they have become available. It's good to be able to spend a night
on them before splashing out. That's one advantage all you users
who have refrained from joining the club are missing out on.
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