paone@aramis.rutgers.edu (Phil Paone) (11/22/88)
I have owned an Atari computer since 1979 when I bought my first computer. It was a 16k atari 800. Since then, I have worked with or played with just about every other computer (I even worked with a beta test Amiga and Mac). But, I stuck with Atari because it really was the power without the price. I bought my Atari 1040 back in early 1986 when they hit the stores in their first wave. I still think that the machines are among the best value for performance machines out there, and they still are. But, the support has been awful. As I said I worked with an early Amiga. It was the work with the Amiga the hastened me to buy an ST. The old Amiga operating system was buggy. The machine wouldn't stay up for more then a few minutes without going into the guru meditation and it was generally clumsy to use. At the same time, the ST had a mostly bug free operating system with a lot of potential. Alas, that potential is still mostly unexplored due to poor Atari support. Also, while Commodore has been fixing all the early bugs and making improvement, I am still waiting for the first bug fixes. You might wonder why I have finally started to reconize defeat. Well, I got my latest infocom Status Line today. They have three great new games coming out, and there is no mention of ST versions. In case you don't get the impact, Infocom was the first well known software company to jump on the ST bandwagon. They had most of their hit games ported right after the ST was released. I am not going to go out and buy another computer. The ST still suits my purpose, but it is no longer a computer on the rise. I finally believe that it is starting to fall. -- Phil Paone paone@topaz.rutgers.edu !rutgers.edu!topaz.edu!ppaone
c60a-2bn@web-2g.berkeley.edu (Lawrence Chiu) (11/23/88)
Infocom from now on will produce only games with graphics for the ST. All three new games mentioned in the Status Line will be released in ST format and all will have high-quality graphics. Lawrence Y. Chiu; University of California, Berkeley.
Xorg@cup.portal.com (Peter Ted Szymonik) (11/24/88)
InfoCom in fact *will* be releasing those titles for the ST but as with most game companies they are releasing the games in the big money IBM market first - wait a year and they will be out for the ST. When InfoCom dropped the text games for the ST they commented that their policy would be to hold off on new ST games until they could fully utilize the ST's graphic power. Also remember that a computer is not measured by games! If you want to play games get a Nintendo (opps - I mean Atari <grin>.) The past few months we have seen PageSTream, SuperBase Professional, DynaCadd, and other great programs that either match or FAR outclass anything on any MS-DOS machine. Atari is now pumping 50-75,000 Megas a MONTH!! Those machines are going somewhere. Atari UK has shown and may have released the laptop ST already, Atari Canada has been selling PC clones for months and West Germany has shown the 030 box and the EST. Things are finally getting *better* not worse! Hang in there! Pete