store2@ihuxi.UUCP (01/16/87)
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ANTIC PUBLISHING INC., COPYRIGHT 1987.
REPRINTED BY PERMISSION.
Atari at the Winter 1987 CES
Wrap-up, Part II -- Errant thoughts.
By Jon A. Bell
Editor
START
13-JAN-87: Those readers who have never been to a Winter Consumer
Electronics Show have little conception of the actual work involved in covering
the events. The show is sprawled across the enormous Las Vegas Convention
Center (several huge buildings the size of, say, dirigible hangers), the
surrounding hotels' convention rooms and hotel suites. Readers should be
aware that CES CAN be a lot of fun -- the only drawback is time and your
personal stamina. For the businesses involved (including Antic), CES is a
great deal of handshaking, talking, meeting with advertisers, computer
dealers and retailers, giving out business cards, handing out magazines,
soliciting articles for those magazines, business lunches, and writing
articles for ANTIC ONLINE (to the best of our ability). It's not a pleasure
trip. Finding the time, after work commitments, to see the latest compact
disk player or car stereo is difficult. After you've been on your feet for
12 hours a day, you don't want to do anything but tear off your too-tight
tie, go back to your hotel room and collapse, or else look in the Yellow
Pages under "foot transplants." (Actually, to some extent this weariness
is to your advantage. You're too tired to throw away money on gambling,
although I found the time to improve Las Vegas's roads and school system to
the tune of $10 at the craps tables. I would've been better off putting that
money towards a pair of sensible shoes for the show. I wore black leather
shoes the first day. I wore Hush Puppies and bandages the next three.)
A great deal of Antic's handshaking and elbow-rubbing (both figuratively
and literally) was at the always-crowded Atari "booth." Atari's display at
the Consumer Electronics show was a huge assemblage of black plexiglass
panels, right at the entrance of the West Hall. Atari's location was
terrific -- their display was the first thing you saw when you walked into
the building. (We've avoided pointless Commodore-bashing, but for those
interested in the competition, Commodore DID attend, and had an impressive
two-story booth in the middle of the building. They were showing their PC 10
and 11, IBM clones to retail for slightly under $1000. They also, of course,
were promoting the Amiga. I breezed through the booth during set-up day
[Wednesday], and didn't return. My conclusions? Commodore now has to
compete with Jack's Atari -- and his prices -- on both the ST/Amiga front
and now the IBM PC front. The only negative thing I'll say about Commodore is
that Atari's booth position was much better.)
The black Atari panels were festooned with the specifications of
their new products (such as the Atari PC and the Mega STs), the names of ST
software developers, and housed many color monitors showing various demos.
(Funny note: One of the public domain DEGAS screens flashing by on the
monitors depicted a PC with the caption, "How do you spell boring? I - B - M."
Guess that one slipped by the new PC-promoting Atari.)
In all, there were about 20 STs, mainly 520s, which were shared by
software developers. Many of the developers demonstrated their products
in shifts. Atari had 2 of the new Mega STs (both 2 megabyte versions -- Mega
ST2s); one sitting next to Antic Software's StereoTek glasses display,
the other connected to the Atari laser printer. Half-a-dozen XEs were on
display; XLENT software, LCD Inc., and Zobian showed off their new wares.
XLENT had Typesetter Elite (soon to be reviewed in The ST Resource), and
Miniature Golf, by Dave Plotkin. XLENT's Jennifer Brabson showed me an
amusing book of her own cartoons, which you might be seeing in one of our
magazines or in computer graphics form in the not-too-distant future. One of
her caricatures depicted Tom Hudson, wearing a plaid shirt and slacks
(accurate observation: Tom hates suits), sitting at his CES ST keyboard
demonstrating DEGAS Elite.
Atari also showed their new 1200 baud Hayes-compatible modem, a sleek
beige box approximately 6" wide, 10" long and a little over 1" high, which
they introduced at Comdex. Retail is around $99. An odd piece of Atari XE
hardware was their cassette program recorder -- the XC 11. Although some
people on a VERY tight budget might want to buy it, statistically speaking,
the majority of 8-bit owners have disk drives, and cassette-based software
might be difficult to find.
One (intentionally) funny aspect of the Atari show was a new 30-second XE
commercial, which ran over one of the monitors in the XE section. (Atari also
showed the commercial during the videotape presentation at their Thursday
morning press conference.) The commercial shows two young boys sitting
at two computers -- an Atari XE and a Commodore 64. As they type away, the
Commodore boy looks over at the Atari boy, smiles smugly, and -- no kidding --
his head expands. It rises up (an inflatable makeup appliance) right under
his beanie. The Atari boy looks over at him, and HIS head expands, slightly
larger. Then there is a voice-over saying that the XE has better graphics,
sound and games than the 64, while both boys play musical head expansion.
Finally, as the voice concludes, "The Atari blows the Commodore out of the
water," the Commodore boy's beanie flies off, and his head -- and ego --
deflates. This must be a new trend in the computer industry, for Epyx Software
has a commercial where a kid is playing a videogame and becomes so excited his
head EXPLODES, then re-integrates itself. Who's the head of these
advertising agencies -- David Cronenberg?
We now come to normal kids. Back to back with one wall of the ST display
out of view was an open-ended room with Atari's reworked 2600 and 7800 game
machines, these also hooked up to monitors, showing Crystal Castles, Pole
Position, Centipede, Joust, Battlezone (!) and other Atari classics. A
charming touch was the presence of local children, dressed in Atari warm-up
suits, who were demonstrating the videogames for the benefit of us
repressed, three-piece-suited adults. (Note: General attendance to CES is
limited to those 18 and over. The children were there by special
permission.) I walked up to a game playing on a 7800 system and idly picked
up a joystick. An angelic blond 9-year-old boy, who should've been out
playing with June Lockhart and Lassie, picked up the other joystick and
politely asked me if I would like to play against him. "Sure," I said,
smiling indulgently. Five minutes later, the lad's razor-honed videogame
reflexes had blown me away. My smile faded and I stomped off, grumbling.
Some final software news: Psion Chess will be distributed by Atari. No
price has been set. Electronic Arts is putting the finishing touches on their
Chessmaster 2000, a fantastic ST chess game they are porting over from -- you
guessed it -- the Amiga. I had the opportunity to play it during an
Electronic Arts party, and it was very colorful, very fun, and VERY difficult.
Retail should be under $50. (A review of ST chess programs will be appearing in
an upcoming issue of START.)
Thanks for bearing with us. We've tried, despite various technical
gremlins, to give the Atari community as much information as quickly as
possible. Among other features, we hope to present DIGITIZED PHOTOS on
ANTIC ONLINE which you can view. Our goal is to become one of the fastest
sources of Atari information (including visuals) short of a business report
on CNN.
Again, thank you, and keep watching ANTIC ONLINE for programming tips,
graphics demos, and late-breaking news reports from the Atari community.
****************************************************************************
[I'd like to personally thank Wayne Wilcox for downloading these CES reports
from CompuServe so I could post them here]
Kit Kimes
AT&T--Information Systems Labs
1100 E. Warrenville Rd.
Naperville, IL 60566
...ihnp4!iwvae!kimesholloway@drivax.UUCP (01/20/87)
In article <1477@ihuxi.UUCP> store2@ihuxi.UUCP (Wilcox) writes: > Electronic Arts is putting the finishing touches on their >Chessmaster 2000, a fantastic ST chess game they are porting over from -- you >guessed it -- the Amiga. Thought Electronic Arts said they weren't going to do any programs for the Atari ST? (And this after a massive letter campaign to get them to keep on supporting the Atari 800 line...) ### Junk line ### -- ....!ucbvax!hplabs!amdahl!drivax!holloway My balogna has a first name, it's Jimbob. My balogna has a second name, it's Boltwangle. But it prefers to be called Jim.