Anne Summers

We only had one arcade machine at a time at our swimming pool (the sports centre in Colchester, before it became Leisure World) but to this day I remember they were Gauntlet, then Quartet, then Afterburner, then Hard Drivin (standup versions), then Golden Axe. Then it became Leisure World and they didn't have arcade games any more.

Not allowed to open it. The owner (who shall remain nameless) waltzed in with it one day last week and said we could open it and play it the next day. Then promptly buggered off and no-one's seen him since. We think he's gone to Japan. We don't want to open it without him (he was planning some grand unveiling I think). So it's just been sitting there in its shrink-wrap teasing us all. I think the owner will be back soon and I'll be sure to post some impressions when I've had a go.

Amiga Power launched just before the "agreement" - or whatever it was - that stopped magazines from giving away full games came into force. I seem to remember reading/watching something (may have been one of @Kim Justice's videos) explaining a bit about what happened ... the mags glossed over it at the time, with just a quick mention that they'd been disallowed from giving the games away by ELSPA or something - But actually I think it was an agreement they entered into voluntarily. Hopefully someone who remembers the details better can tell this story properly ... So from then on it was just demos and PD games - some of my favourites were Bip (or Biplanes) , Extreme Violence and Gravity Force 2. Someone at work today reminded me of Hemorrhoids, the brilliant Asteroids clone. Anyway, I'm still more than willing to have a scrap with anyone who wants to argue that the Amiga was shit, or inferior to the consoles, to this day. My-machine-is-better-than-yours arguments were a highlight of the school day, some of my best friendships were built around them. They're still fun now, even though we know they're stupid. One thing to remember is that by the time the 16-bit consoles were widely available over here, PC gaming was starting to be a thing, and the real cool kids were rocking VGA 286 or 386 machines. Yes the SNES and Megadrive kids would wave magazine screenshots in front of the Amiga kids and ask them what their computers could do that compared with Sonic or Street Fighter 2. But I was more jealous of the ones whose dads had a decent PC in the home office, and were playing Ultima Underworld, Wolfenstein 3D and Wing Commander 2. (as well as prettier versions of games I had on the Amiga like Eye of the Beholder, Monkey Island, Dune 2 etc). I guess, as a few others have said already, that it really came down to what sort of games you liked playing most.

Think I've posted this before but Shed Seven's Change Giver album is indelibly linked to Doom 2 for me (no soundcard on our PC at the time), and it's harder to think of a more unsuitable combination of game and music.

Another mistake was getting a second disk drive rather than a hard drive - the Amiga (particularly 1200) was transformed into an entirely different beast once it has a hard drive attached.

As well as running in hardware which was 5 years more advanced, I think a big part of the reason top-flight Mega Drive and SNES games looked more impressive than Amiga ones was because the Japanese and American developers put a lot more resources into creating them than UK ones did. Look at the credits list of people involved in making Sonic or Mario Kart. The biggest Amiga games from back then would probably be considered indie games in comparison, taking into account the budgets and size of the teams. Also - go and play Dungeon Master on the Amiga and SNES, and I then try telling me that the SNES was better at playing games. If you really want to persuade me, do it in 1987

This appeared in the office today ...

From about 1986 to 1990, it most definitely could. Later on, as you say, it got by on the strength of its original games - Cannon Fodder, Sensible Soccer, Mega Lo Mania, Populous 2, Wizkid - quirky US PC conversions such as Monkey Island with its Chris Hülsbeck soundtrack and Dune 2 which did a good job of emulating the experience you'd get on a top-end PC for a fraction of the price. And of course a library of thousands of games, most of which were free thanks to the extent of the piracy on the machine.

Wrong. Moonstone is great fun to play.

Awesome issue - am up to the Atari stuff at the moment, which is very useful as I'm currently doing the prep work for getting Atari games running on Antstream, and I didn't really know a lot about the platform before as it's slightly before my time. Some really interesting looking 7800 stuff that I'm looking forward to checking out.

Where are you all watching this? Don't see it on iPlayer?

So playing MI again got me wondering about all the different optional paths you can take through it which influence what happens in some way. I used to know them all back to front and think I have seen every bit of content in the game ... Now I've been reminded the dog portrait doesn't actually exist, anyway. But off the top of my head what I can remember is (massive spoilers coming if you havent played of course): Not escaping from Fester /LeChuck throwing you into the dock, for 10 minutes, is the only way to die. Doing the Three Tasks in a particular order gives you an extra scene between Guybrush and Elaine at the dock. You just have to not do the mansion task last, I seem to remember. Whether or not you sink your ship using the rock and catapult on Monkey Island influence how you get back to Melee Island, I seem to remember. Although I can't remember the exact details. Any others? I feel sure there are some Easter eggs or optional scenes in part 4 but I can't remember them right now.

I think the Spectrum IP is owned by Sky which is owned by Comcast.

Yes I believe they do.

I actually justify everything in pints of beer. As I mainly drink in London, it means any subscription service that costs less than a tenner gets an automatic green light, as it's "two less pints of beer a month". Of course I don't actually drink two less pints of beer a month, so it's not a great method, really.