Man kann viel schreiben über diesen wunderbaren Computer, dieses fast schon magische System, das uns so viele innovative Features brachte, die inzwischen längst selbstverständlich sind … doch wahrscheinlich am besten ausgedrückt hat es in der Tat der dieser Tage wieder viel gelobte und zitierte BYTE-Artikel aus dem Jahre 1994, den ich hier auszugsweise und kommentiert wiedergeben möchte:
„Commodore’s high point was the Amiga 1000 (1985). The Amiga was so far ahead of its time that almost nobody – including Commodore’s marketing department – could fully articulate what it was all about. Today, it is obvious the Amiga was the first multimedia computer, but in those days it was derided as a game machine because few people grasped the importance of advanced graphics, sound, and video. Nine years later, vendors are still struggling to make systems that work like 1985 Amigas.“
So großartig und bedeutend die Erfolge von Apple, Nintendo und Co. heute auch sein mögen – der Autor hat recht, wenn er darauf hinweist, wie sehr man Commodore diesbezüglich huldigen muß. Denn …
„At a time when PC users thought 16-color EGA was hot stuff, the Amiga could display 4096 colors and had custom chips to acclerate video. It had built-in video outputs for tv’s and VCRs, still a pricey option on most of today’s systems. It had four-voice, sampled stereo sound and was the first computer with built-in speech synthesis and text-to-speech conversion. And it’s still the only system that can display multiple screen at different
resolutions on a single monitor.“
… und …
„Even more amazing was the Amiga’s operating system, which was designed by Carl Sassenrath. From the outset, it had preemptive multitasking, messaging, scripting, a GUI, and multitasking command-line concoles. Today’s Windows and Mac users are still waiting for some of those features. On top of that, it ran on a $1200 machine with only 256 KB of RAM.“
… was letztlich zu der Schlußfolgerung führt:
„We may never see another breakthrough computer like the Amiga.“
Stimmt. Es war eine einzigartige Zeit mit einem einzigartigen, selbst vom eigenen Hersteller dramatisch unterschätzten System. Alles andere – und hier werde ich jetzt ausnahmsweise mal knallhart subjektiv – ist eben einfach alles andere. Happy birthday, Amiga, und: danke dafür!
ZZap! 64 was the magazine that every 64 owner went to for honest, frank reviews of the games to buy for the system as well in-depth features and „cutting-edge“ humour from the likes of Gary Penn and Julian Rignall. The icing on the already calorie rich cake was Oliver Frey’s stunning covers, depicting aliens, space and military scenes and some ladies. Last year we ran a Kickstarter campaign to fund the production of a ZZap! 64 Annual – the campaign was successful and the final product was very well received in the Commodore 64 scene and beyond.
