First 2 Amiga games!
I don't know if I am bringing you fresh news or I am repeating something that
might have scrolled off. At any rate, it doesn't hurt me to make this
announcement even if it were made before: Hear this! Two new software packages
by Activision are out. They are Mindshadow and Hacker by Activision. I found
them at the software supermarket in WestLA yesterday, and they told me that
they had just received them. Even though I am not so much of an Activision fan,
I could resist but buy Mindshadow. (Note: I was told that I was their first
Amiga software buyer!!!) Here are my first impressions: The graphics are better
than the adventures on the 8-bitters, though they aren't what you would expect
on the Amiga. I attribute that to Activision trying to rush the product on the
market and be the first Amiga software publisher. More seriously, I encountered
a bug, and a design flaw: The bug occurs sometimes when you try to save your
position in the game. The system locks-up then when you reboot you find that
your $45 copy is down to $3 in value (i.e. the disk doesn't boot, it has been
trashed.) Fortunatly there are two ways around this: One, there is a QUICKSAVE
command (different from the bugged SAVE) that works fine. Two, although the
disk SOUNDS protected while loading, I was able to make a back-up using
DISKCOPY in CLI, which saved my day when I encountered the aforementioned bug!
Come the design flaw problem: The game boots up not well centered on the
screen, which is fine if you have a 1080 monitor, because all you do is adjust
the HOR POS knob. However, if you have some other type of monitor (eg. a 1070
like me) where these controls are only accessible with a screwdriver at the
back of the machine, then this IS a problem, especially because if you run
preferences and try to save the screen position to the game, and reboot, you
get ERROR VALIDATING DISK errors and other errors, too. The game itself though
seems nice, and nothing beats being the first! (I hope my message was
informative to some of you.) <Fadi>