This is just a little something I've been thinking of alot lately.... This kinda ties in with my "younger gamers missing out" write up from a bit ago. I wander a bit, so quit reading at any time.

I have to admit, there hasn't been alot in the last few years in this industry that have gotten me really excited and kept me that way. Sure my GeForce and Voodoos got me all aroused for a brief period of time, and I still think they're nifty.. But I was talking about the "good old days" with Goshwin this evening and I was trying to think of the things that have lately gotten me all cranked. I couldn't really think of too many.

I'm not really sure if it's just the fact that I'm getting jaded in my old age or what's happening. I am convinced that computers, as they become more mainstream they also become less cool.

I remember the first time I saw a computer. A Comodore Pet. Complete POS, but I was entranced by this odd little box (I was in.. Hmmm. Grade 2 or 3 at the time I think) and spent as much time playing on the school's machines as I could. In older grades the new school got Comodore 64s. (One of the finest machines ever made, and certainly the best selling PC of all time.) Very cool again, but this time with sound and MUCH better graphics. Some of the things that guys could do with those machines was just amazing. Especially when you consider they had 64K of RAM, and a single low density 5.25" floppy drive to work with. But they could work magic with what little they had.

The number of hours I spent in my parent's basement on my C128 & on the school's C64s is well into the 4 digits over the years I imagine. Every waking moment I could get away with. Even now I can remember many of the games played, and particular moments that stuck with me forever. (Like my &^*(& sister Laurie turning off the C128 when I was on the last mission of ACE. Took me 8 hours to get there without dying once and she just wandered by and turned it off. I could have killed her happily that Christmas morning.) Anyhows, I was very impressed by the C64 and the things that could be done with it... I figured it for the be all, end all of gaming perfection. Right up untill the time I saw an Amiga........

A friend of mine, Livewire brought his shiny new Amiga 2000 to school. That machine just blew me away. It was a third generation Amiga, the original 1000 being built first in 1985. I'd talked to people about them, but I'd never actually seen one before. Wow. MGA 256 colour graphics, 4 channel stereo sound, a hard drive. Mouse. Graphic OS, with a command line for when you needed to get down and dirty. True mutitasking. All of this 10 years before the IBM could compete. It would be 1993 before I got my hands on an ancient (Built in 1986) but still perfectly working Amiga 1000 (Which I still have and still drag out to play games on occasionally.) I was simply blown away by this machine. The highschool then got a few of them in the AV department, and due to a project I was working on I was allowed to bascially sign one out to work on whenever I wasn't actually in class. So for a year and a bit, at lunch and after school I'd spend an hour locked in a room with this machine playing with art work, listening to mods (music) in the background and doing 3D rendering.

I was deeply in love with those machines, and it competely broke my heart when Commodore screwed the whole thing up and went bankrupt. (I'm really disgruntled that Mac managed to survive.) Argh! I honestly believed that the Amiga should have won out in the market place and beat the hell out of the IBM, at least for the gaming and consumer markets. It was superior to the IBM in all ways as far as I was concerned, the only real thing lacking was marketting and general acceptance by the computing public.

Regretably, Comodore's marketing of the machine, as well as their pricing on it killed it. An amazing and truly revolutionary machine, the Amiga was more expensive than an IBM. It could do one hell of a lot more, but businesses and most people just wanted an advanced typewriter. So it died. I'm sure there were other factors that contributed to it's demise, including it's proprietary parts but that's something I'll have to research when I have some time. Perhaps they were simply ahead of their time and most people couldn't see the potential. I'm not sure. The Amiga licence has been tossed around for the last few years, but not much has been happening with it. Looks like they're finally coming back, but frankly I don't know what they'll do that would make them as much of a revolution as they were in 1985-1995. I'm really not sure we'll ever see the like again.

Market development for computers these days seems more evolutionary than revolutionary. Economic demands and competition keeps companies on their toes and pumping out new techologies to the marketplace as fast as they can. It's now a huge market, and getting less personal I believe.

I think that computer shows lately show us how the market is moving. I used to attend computer shows whenever I could talk my father into taking me. They used to be exciting gatherings of people genuinely interested in the technology and where it was going. You used to get all the major vendors and many of the smaller ones all showing off their latest wares, newest toys and ideas. I used to run into people I knew from the local area as well as meet lots of interesting people from the city and surrounding areas. I used to stand around for hours just yacking about a new piece of software, or a new technology someone was playing with.

Not to sound like a snob here, but I'm not sure what's changed. Computer shows in the last three or four years have just been flea markets. Usually one doesn't see many manufacturers there at all, save the very large ones such as Dell and Compaq. The floor is filled with booths from computers stores and retailers, all hawking their wares. The places are generally wall to wall with people, and it's as I mentioned, like a flea market. The adds in the papers for the shows just go on about the prices. You usually don't see anything really new there, and as far as I'm concerned there's no reason to go. It's sorta like attending a red neck convention at the art gallery.

I really wonder if the computer becoming as main stream as it has is a good thing. It's nice to see that the people who make the things, and fix them (Heh. Ex. Me) can make a living at it, and that so many people are into gaming online, chatting etc.... But I dunno...... Most people are not really interested in computers for what they are... People are more interested in them for what they can do for them personally.

I'm not sure if that makes any sense or not. I talk to alot of people in my day to day job, and online at night as well.... And most of them don't know anything about computers, other than how to sort of use them. (Everyone of course has a friend who is a computer "expert"... I spend alot of time fixing the problems those guys cause.)

Anyhows, wandering here. It's good that it's such a huge industry now, but at the same time, alot of the good stuff has died. Software companies are masssive giants, rather than a few guys in it for the love of their craft. Games and hardware are released buggy, and no appologies are given. People seem to accept it as just "one of those things." There's no pride, no one's name is on the line with a prouct anymore.

Maybe it's just me, but in one way I'd like the "old days" back. Computers and the whole scene were just alot more exciting and cooler. (Well, cooler in a geeky sort of way.) I'm sure that most of the guys around during that time will agree with me. :)

- Marauder the arrogant sounding bastard out.