differences between uk/us/european amiga scenes

[swoslover]

I just wondered what the differences between the scenes have been.

I would suggest the UK amiga scene had a mainstream presence until 2000 when Amiga Format was last published and that big companies stopped developing games around 97.

I may be wrong if so correct me.

I just wondered in particular if the us mirrored this or if things were different.

[Flashlab]

Did AF stop in 2000? I thought earlier. Anyway the Amiga scene in Holland stopped around '95 I guess; you couldn't buy them anymore in mainstream shops and it faded away.

[cpfuture]

Kinda depends on what your definition of 'scene' is, but I can confirm around '95 things were pretty much over for the Amiga in the Netherlands. It happens to be the same year I finally retired my trusty old A500 and bought my very first PC. A 75MHz ESCOM (oh the irony) and the -what I lovingly refer to as my- computing dark ages began.

Yes, Amiga Format stayed faithful to the Amiga until 2000 (March IIRC)! CU Amiga said goodbye in October 1998.

The thing with the US was, that the Amiga was never so much embraced like Commodore's earlier machine, the C64. Europeans (and yes, I'm counting the UK as a European country ;-) ) loved the Amiga. In the US Commodore had a 'games machine' reputation, which is probably what drove buyers to more expensive (and technically inferior) alternatives.

[JimS]

In the US, by the time the Amiga came around, the business market had already gone to the pc and it's clones.  The home market was shifting from hobbyist machines like the C64 & Atari 800 to the next level up. Those buyers wanted something that would be compatible with their work machines. Unfortunately, that wasn't the Amiga. :-(  It was a marketplace thing...kind of like VHS vs Beta. Beta was better, but the 2hr vs 4 he play time was a big deal when blank tapes were $20 *each*. So over time, Beta had less to offer, even though it was the better format originally. Same with Amiga. About the only place Amiga did make it in the US was the desktop video market. There were lots of those folks... so it's probably telling that the last US Amiga magazine was "Video Toaster User" ;-)

[swoslover]

cpfuture wrote:
(and yes, I'm counting the UK as a European country ;-).

lol

I know we are but I just figured that since we are so isolated the patterns may be different.