Conference hydra::amiga_v1

    I haven't found any pinball games for the Amiga so far.  Maybe
    soon, the Memory Location had a bunch of games from Germany.
    One was an Asteroids clone, another looked a little like Xevious.
    
    I guess the German market is finally getting Amigas.  I've seen
    lots of great games from there on the ST.
    
    You might want to check with Electronic Arts to find out when they
    are porting Pinball Construction Set to the Amiga.
    
    -dave

    What do you mean "German market finally getting Amigas"? The stores
    are bursting full of 500's and 2000's. It's just that nobody seems
    to buy them...    :-)
    
    Seriously, the 500 seems to be selling rather well.
    
    There's a SW house called (I think) Kingsoft that has dozens of
    games for the Amiga; relatively cheap also, around DM 30-40 (~$16-$24).
    Don't know if they have a pinball game, though.
    
    

    re: .2
    the "finally" meant - I've been reading the Atari magazines about
    how the German market really liked the ST.  Read in Antic or Analog
    about them "discovering" all these great programs that they were
    going to help bring to the US market (both UK and German programs).
    
    Commodore did the exact opposite of Atari.  They started selling
    in the US first, instead of Germany.  Hopefully one advantage
    to that scheme is that the German Amiga games will directly benefit
    from the 68000 programming skill developed on the ST (i really
    don't like direct ports of 8-bit software)
    
    -dave
    

    I'm sure the Atari magazines are the best unbiased source to read
    about Atari's success in Germany...   :-)
    

    Haven't seen too many unbiased Amiga magazines lately :-)  You
    just have to consider the source of the rumors of success. 
    No source listed.... interesting rumor
    Atari..... might be partially true
    Tramiels.... hot air
    third party company.... vaporware till it ships
    Jerry Pournelle.... personal opinion, couldn't boot an Amiga if
                        his life depended on it :-)
    Industry reporters/analysts.... they generate and consume vast 
                                    quantities of hot air
    
    I love reading interviews with the Tramiels, makes me glad i
    bought an Amiga.  Still hoping CBM competition makes them keep
    the 8-bit line alive a while longer (my 400 needs some new games).
    
    -Dave
    

    re .5
    About Jerry Pournelle
    
    That pompous windbag is lucky to have his position. He should have
    stuck to sf, which he did a lot better. I hate his style, and most
    of all, his sh*tty attitude. He was saying that IBM PC's were a
    fad and that S-100 was the way to go 5 years ago -- no, not an 8086,
    he was saying Z-80's were faster and better! Now he kneels before
    the gods of IBM and Mac and says the Atari is a nice machine to
    play with because it is cheap. I guess that sums up his acumen.
    I could, of course, go into his lineage and sexual habits but that
    probably belongs on a different notesfile....
    
    dov

Re: .6 (About Jerry Pournelle)

Pournelle occasionally upsets the Mac people as well.  One Mac group
wrote something to the effect, "Why does Pournelle insist on writing
about the Mac when it is obvious that he doesn't know what he is talking
about?"

Anyone that reads his column quickly realizes that he uses IBM Compatibles
to do 99% of his personal computing.  He fires up on the the speciality
machines (ST or Amiga) when he gets a interesting looking game in the
mail.  Evidently, he only turns on his Mac once a year when he wants to
use MacTaxman (or whatever it is called) to do his income taxes.

From reading current columns, it is hard to remember that Byte hired
Pournelle to write the naive user column.  The idea was that they would
hire someone intelligent, who could write, and would bring to the magazine
the perspective of someone who really was trying to use a pc as just
another appliance to make his life easier.  Pournelle has forgotten he
doesn't really know very much, and so now presents himself as an expert.

    One of the more irksome of Pournelle's gaffs was an early one in
    which he complained that the Amiga needed to be completely reset
    after a hang.  He did not even bother to read the docs to discover
    that Ctrl-Amiga-Amiga performed a warm restart.  I wondered how
    many sales were lost because of his laziness?
    
    

    Gentelmen,
    
         This note was supposed to be devoted to finding me a good pinball
    game.  So far I have read 8 replies and only one of them has had
    anything to do with games, never mind pinball games !!  If you wish
    to bad mouth countries, machines, and writers please open another
    notes and leave this one to pinball games.  I am afraid now that
    no one will respond to this note because it is so full of replies
    that at a first glance you would be convinced that I would have
    had to get a valid answer with so much traffic.  I am going to open
    another note with the same question in the hope that I can find
    what I need please do not fill it with other than information on
    it's topic.  I read this every day to find a game and it wastes
    much of my time to read non-essential information.
    
                        Thank You For Your Support
                                THE AUTHOR OF THIS NOTE
    

    hard as it is to believe, there currently isn't a pinball game
    available for the Amiga.  I haven't even seen a public domain/shareware
    version of one.  I'd love to see one; the two button mouse seems
    ideal for the flippers.
    
    Maybe someday soon?  (the A500 is targeted for the game/home market)
    
    -Dave

    re .9:
    Alright, alright.. sorry for that. I'll promise to have a look in
    my 68000er's at home - lots of ads for games by German companies.
    Maybe there's one.