(no subject)

[egypturnash]

Realizing I just don't care any more about the fate of the Amiga left me strangely unmoored this morning. It's a little, simple thing, but the breaking of this one little half-forgotten link to who I once was seems to have immense symbolic significance.

We all like to think that we're the same person from day to day. Or at least I do. But the truth is that we're all slowly changing, too slowly to notice until it's long since done. Today, I feel like I'm someone completely different from who I tell myself I am, with goals and urges I don't know, with some mysterious future I have no clue to. It's not a pleasant feeling. It's pretty fucking scary, in fact.

Maybe it's just the overcast skies of the past few days having an effect on me, and I'll feel reconnected with my past, and my self, once I see the sun again. I rather hope so. Because the alternative is that my soul has decided to go for a walk, leaving mind and body whirring away in the same patterns, with a definite sense of loss.

Comments

[barberio.livejournal.com]

Place various Amiga memorabelia in a paper boat, and give your fond memories of it a viking funeral?

[nigel.livejournal.com]

Viking funeral, eh? It's been done... (http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MjAw)

[prickvixen.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's only mildly toxic.

[turbinerocks.livejournal.com]

I'm more concerned about the fate of old Amiga and Atari ST game developers.

Though I hear at least one of them is doing okay, thanks to a funny little game where you steal cars and stuff. ;-)

[hydra-velsen.livejournal.com]

Atari seems to be doing quite well, itself, as its moved into PC game development. Real turnabout there, huh?

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Atari died a while back. The "Atari" name was bought and has been used as a general retrogaming brand. I think Infogrames owns it now. It's just a label; there's no continuity with the old arcade games, consoles, or computers.

[nigel.livejournal.com]

From what I hear, Infogrames bought the name, then officially changed their name to Atari. I don't think it even has anything to do with a specific product line anymore, though that was probably the original plan.

[turbinerocks.livejournal.com]

That's not really Atari. ;-) Infogrames bought the rights to the name, and made it one of their imprints. Atari Games was bought out by Midway, and Atari Corp. was bought out by a hard drive manufacturer.

[hydra-velsen.livejournal.com]

Best I remember, Atari died with a whimper with the failure of its Jaguar gaming console to cheap foreign import systems. Then that hard drive manufacturer bought them for 1 million dollars, and cannibalized their assets, mismanaged what was left and dissolved it around 1990, leaving only the name.

[zrath.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much true.
Hasbro then bought the rights to a bunch of old Atari games after that and started releasing things like Pong on the PlayStation and PC.
As a long-time Atari user (since 1983), I was kinda hoping Hasbro (who also owned Tiger Electronics) would resurrect the Lynx II portable, tweak it, and launch it against Nintendo (who finally got around to putting a friggin' light into the Gameboy! Gee, it only took you 15 years!!).
But Nintendo is pretty much The Unstoppable Juggernaut on portable gaming, so I wasn't too surprised when nothing happened.

So yeah, now Infogrames owns the Atari name and the Atari library (at least, the part of the library that predates the Tramiel division of Atari: games and computers for Tramiel, coin-ops for Warner Bros, then for Bally-Midway, which had already bought Williams by then).
So for a while, you had Bally/Midway, Williams, and Atari, the three major American coin-op makers, all part of the same company.

But I digress...
I stopped using my Atari ST computer in 1999.
That's when I bought a PC.
I was Atari all the way up to that point.
Atari 800 in 1983, XEGS in 1986, 520STm in 1987, Mega ST2 in 1992.
Also Lynx, Lynx II, even a Jaguar and a Jag-CD!
Until the PlayStation came out, the Jaguar was the most advanced console on the US market. Once I got my PSX, the Jag went dormant, save for the occasional games of Alien VS Predator and Tempest 2000. I sold my Jag and Jag-CD on eBay recently.

Urrrr, I think I'll shut up now...

[mcgroarty.livejournal.com]

That you think you don't care about the Amiga anymore means you grew up not to have a soul. Plus, you don't know how to love. :(

It's not too late to get it back, not too late to learn? Pitch in and help out (http://www.discreetfx.com/AmiZilla.html)!

[mcgroarty.livejournal.com]

p.s. -- I'm reading newest-to-oldest. That's my excuse.

For what it's worth, The Monsters earlier agreed that the mascot pretty much looks like a thin Divine (http://www.allposters.com/GetPoster.asp?CID=4EC135035F1F44D7BEDFACCC20D03DFB&APNum=307049&f=t&P=1&PP=1). Divine would have loved the entire ongoing Amiga movement, actually.

Thumbs up!

[prickvixen.livejournal.com]

Why can't Divine be the new Amiga-Mozilla mascot?

[mcgroarty.livejournal.com]

Actually, a John Waters treatment of the entire Amiga movement would be a natural next step. That amazing and off-kilter fanaticism would turn into something -beautiful- through his lens eye.

[prickvixen.livejournal.com]

Or maybe the guys who did American Movie.

Eh, just another milestone in your life...

[doctorpinkerton.livejournal.com]

Hey, at least you moved on before it became too large a millstone. In the end, a computer is a tool, and you're making art, not running a museum (like I am, heh.)

Think of it not so much as a big thing that you were a part of that became lost, but just another deserving channel for your creative energy, with a built in geek coolness filter!

[laturner.livejournal.com]

I had a coworker who had an Amiga 4000(I think, I'm not familiar with the line, so forgive me if that's not a valid number). He sold it to Pixar in the mid-90s for about twice what he paid for it. They were using Amigas to render, and Amigas were becoming in short supply.

[ultraken.livejournal.com]

I recall the Amiga with fond memories, but that's all that's left--the memories. I do miss those days, but the Amiga I knew and enjoyed died years ago. On occasion, I can relive a few of the memories with WinUAE and a pile of ADF files, but it's not the same. It would be better if I could get files off my A3000's hard drive, I suppose, but I still wouldn't use it for much beyond the occasional old game.

The last time I booted my real A3000, I realized how plain (and in some ways ugly) the interface was--even if the window gadgets are in the right place. I always thought my Amiga was snappy, but it didn't seem so snappy any more. My PC must be a hundred times more powerful than my A3000, so there's not much use in clinging to the past.

That "New Amiga" thing is an Amiga in name only, as it was the synergy between the operating system and the hardware that made the Amiga work. In a way, the Playstation 2 gets the closest to the classic Amiga of any system I know--it has a modest CPU, along with several powerful custom chips to get the real work done. Unlike the Amiga, however, I don't particularly enjoy working with the PS2--but I digress.