Letters @~Unless letters are marked 'not for publication', I'll assume @~that any interesting adventure-related bits can be put in this @~section. If you specifically want something published, please @~mark it as such. @~This issue, PC vs Falcon from the Netherlands, comments on @~previous issues and Top Tens. ----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Alex van Kaam, The Netherlands A note for the Bitmap Kid: if Atari are taking such a long time to launch the Falcon, by the time it finally reaches the big public (and with the big public I mean that it reaches the popular computer stores) other computer firms have already started to develop new things for PC or other systems, just look at the CD-ROM and bundle that with the new Realmagic expansion card (maybe someone should tell Atari how handy a few expansion slots are), it can show you a 74 minute movie with CD sound on any PC, from 16 to 66 Mhz. But let's say you convinced me to buy a Falcon, I get it home and I look though my Special Reserve catalogue for games for my oh so great Falcon, and what do I see, nope, nothing, nade, niets, zero. So I go to my local and non local computer stores and I ask them if they have some Atari Falcon software, if I'm lucky they have some Atari software, but Falcon..... no way. So the salesman says to me, you can play almost all of the ST(E) software on it.....I didn't sell my old ST and buy a new Falcon to play the same old games..... Maybe if Atari had launched it a year earlier, with enough software for all kinds of user, then maybe it would have taken off (here in the Netherlands, yes, there are more countries with people that want to buy computers, the Amiga/PC developers know that, Atari don't, all they care about is the UK!) but now with all these new developments for the PC and a CD-ROM for the Amiga, I myself think that Atari have blown it again. I could be wrong about a few things, I haven't kept up to date with the Falcon, maybe it has a CD-ROM by now, I don't know. As for the answers of Daryl Still from Atari, If I have a Falcon I really wouldn't care who signed and who didn't to get one for development, I just want good software and I really don't care who made it. If it was someone from South Tasmanie and he signed with a finger print, I don't care, I just want good software and I want to be able to get it in my local computer store. And I can only get it in my LOCAL store if the computer is popular, and if you mention Atari around here people start pointing at you like you have some kind of disease. The important thing when you launch a new computer is that with it you also launch a lot of good software, but what does Atari do, they argue about a signature. Give the bloke his Falcon so he can develop some software, in the end it's only good for the Falcon. And then BMK says that, yes, Atari DID care only about itself and not about its customers, but it will change......... that's very nice for him to say, but what kind of guarantee do I have ???? I started with an old Atari 600 and worked my way up through a lot of new models to a ST mega 4 and every time the support from Atari Benelux was lousy or even non existent. I used to be a real Atari freak, and I would laugh at PC, but I have changed through the years of bad support from Atari and if there is one company I wouldn't even buy a calculator from then that's Atari. As for the TOS, that is so much better than Windows, well maybe you're right, but what if there is a bug in one of the ROMs, Atari wouldn't give me two new ones to fix it, but the chance that I would get a disk with a batch file for a bug in Windows is about 100% And don't tell me there isn't a bug, a bug in your computer is a trademark from Atari, even way back in my 800XL I had one!! But all this aside, the only thing that counts in the end is: CAN I GET THE SOFTWARE I WANT FOR THIS COMPUTER, and at the moment I can get the software I want better and easier for a PC.!!!!!!! I may be completely wrong and maybe the stores in the UK are packed with Falcon software, but I still have to see the first Falcon game around here, even though I can buy a Falcon. @~Even Silica, long known as THE Atari specialists, just up the @~road from me, don't push the Falcon. That says a lot, I think. @~I agree with Alex in that the acid test is being able to get the @~software we want to play - the PC has all the software I want. @~From BMK's list of Falcon software on the cards, there was @~little that would interest me. ----------------------------------------------------------------- @~Comments on an earlier issue from: Theo Clarke, London I seem to remember that 'emoticons' were first used on US academic DEC nets in the early seventies. Top Ten Adventures: 1. Loom 2. Humbug 3. Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy 4. Eek ... I think I have been out of circulation too long! 7th Guest does not run at all on my machine. It cannot get through the introduction but I expect that the problem lies somewhere in my set-up than in any inherent limitations of my 386/33/4MB system. I was introduced to adventure games by my father in the early seventies. He had a Tandy TRS-80 on which we would play Scott Adams adventures. Five years later I discovered Colossal Cave on an academic mainframe. Then I discovered Infocom. The rest is obvious. Simon Avery is wrong about no virus causing physical damage. Several years ago I saw (or rather I heard) a vicious creation called Woodpecker hammer the read/write head of a disk against the wall of the device repeatedly until it collapsed. I think it is pretty rare, however. Curiously, the thing that interested me most in this issue was the Quantum Leap material. Jean Childs' Who's Mad article ran it close, however. @~I THOUGHT emoticons dated back further than the article @~suggested - thanks for confirming it. ------------------------------------------------------------------ @~A Top Ten suggestion from: Simon Avery, Chudleigh I like the idea of starting a new Top Ten each year, it gives new adventures an equal start, without all those Infocom games cluttering the scene up. (Okay, they are good, but we all know that by now!). I would like to make a suggestion: why not keep the original Top Ten (of all time) going as well? Even if it's only published every other issue. @~Yes, good idea. I'll probably start that next issue (taking any @~changes in voting from this issue into account then - when I @~can cope with the maths!). ------------------------------------------------------------------ - o -