CU AMIGA NOVEMBER 1993,
'And about time too!'
CD32 IS THE BELLE OF THE BALL AT LIVE '93
Britain's biggest-ever consumer electronics show, Live'93, was staged
at London's Olympia on the 16-20th September. The event lasted for five
days and was so populair that many people were turned away.
Hundreds of exhibitors ensured that the show was a huge success, and none
put on a more impressive showing than Commodore who were plugging the CD32
for all it was worth.
Their stand occupied more space than any other and was immediately visible
from anywhere in the vast arena. The stand was a mixture of display
screens, banners, CD32 stands and various other bits and bobs. There were
at least two dozen CD32 consoles on display, some running
impressive-looking demos of upcoming titles, whilst others were running
games that people could play. At the centre of the stand was an Alienesque
robotic model and Commodore were offering CD32s to people who could come
up with a name for the metallic wonder.
Tucked away at the back of the stand was a row of A4000's demostrating
some of the hottest new gear around. Andy Bishop from Blue Ribbon was
doing a very impressive demo of Bars and Pipes Pro 2, using a drum pad to
play interactively over the top of a music track he'd recorded earlier.
Every time he started playing, the crowds just flocked in from nowhere to
see what was probably the liveliest demo at the show. Beside him, Barry
Thurston was demonstrating Scala MM300, and although his demo was less
flashy, business users seemed impressed by the power and simplicity of the
program. Next up, was a trio of graphics boards being distributed by SDL.
The first two were standard 24-bit cards. The third board, an MPEG card
called Peggy, enables an A4000 to replay MPEG standard 1 animation which
was receiving its European launch at the show.
The CD32 was also running with an MPEG module plugged in and Commodore's
Sanjay Majid was demostrating the unit which was running a number of pop
videos, complete with CD audio tracks.
At one point during the show a number of Apple's staff came over to have a
look at the CD32. After taking a cursory glance at the games that were
running they declared the console to be 'nothing special'. Then Sanjay
showed them the full motion video demo... their jaws just dropped! Judging
by other people's reactions at the show the CD32 looks like its going to
have a bright future.
EXPERTDRAW
We've pulled out all the stops to bring you a completely stunnig graphics/DTP package that's second to none!
ExpertDraw is a superb structered drwaing tool that you can use to create complex images for use to create complex images for use with your favourite desktop publishing program. It lets you import rescalable images in a variety of formats including Aegis Drwa and Pro Drwa clips. Alternatively you can use the built in Trace program to convert standard bit-mapped IFF pictures into structured ones which easily can be rescaled with absolutely no drop in quality. With its flexible printer support you can output razor sharp images even on the humblest of nine-pin printers, and with a 300-600 DPI device the program's output is good enough to use commercially!
FRONTIER ELITE II
Frontier is probably the finest game ever made. In fact, if you check out our review you'll see it's the highest scoring game we've ever featured in CU AMIGA. If you want to see what all the fuss is about load up this superb demo.
Coded by David Braben, this game has been in the works for five whole years and it shows. Super smooth, finely detailed and action packed Frontier will stun you into insanity, This exclusive non-playable demo is taken from the loading sequence to the game and shows off the graphic engine a treat.
MAGIC BOY
Poor old Magic Boy is not much of a wizard's apprentice. He's always
forgetting to do the really important things like making sure the monsters
his master has collected don't escape! Luckily for Magic Boy this latest
accident happens when the wizard's away. So, it's up to you to guide him
as he collects the escapees across four levels of Sand Land.
QWAK
Those Team 17 boys have gone back with this frightenly addictive
classicstyle platformer. Out on budget now, Qwak has no silly story, no
false hype and no frills - just one very playable game. And we've secured
four levels of action for you. You can even ask a mate to join in for some
two-player simultaneous leaping!
