Scouting, Volume 74, Number 4, September 1986 Page: 19
90, E1-E24, [16] p. : ill. ; 28 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Head to Head:
Commodore's Amiga
vs. Atari's 520 ST
BY SCOTT MACE
Illustration by Randall Enos
he world first discovered the
Amiga and Atari ST during the sum-
mer of 1985. Rarely had two personal
computers caused so much anticipa-
tion. For less than the cost of an IBM
PC, buyers were going to get the latest
in computer graphics, sound, and pro-
cessing power.
Reporters crammed into crowded
rooms at press briefings for a peek;
everyone wanted to try one. New mag-
azines started up trumpeting each
computer's every feature. The only
trouble was there wasn't much soft-
ware available, so how could you
know which one to buy?
Now a year has come and gone and
software is here at last. The swarming
crowds have turned into a steady
stream of would-be buyers, eyeing the
Amiga and Atari ST the way a high
school senior checks out the latest
Corvette. What are they finding out
one year later?
Atari's slogan is "Power Without the
Price." Amiga is billed as "The Cre-
ative Edge." Both slogans are correct.
At $399.95, the Atari 520 ST is defi-
nitely the cheaper machine, says Trip
Hawkins, president of Electronic Arts.
But users really need to buy the com-
puter with a 3.5-inch disk drive (in-
cluded with the Amiga), mouse, and
color monitor to get good use out of the
520 ST, and that brings the price to
$999.95.
With this set up the Atari ST brings
together a startling amount of technol-
ogy for less than $1,000. The ST's
processor and memory are plenty to
handle software as sophisticated as
anything you can buy for the Macin-
tosh or IBM PC.
Though the Amiga is a more expen-
sive machine, its hardware is capable
of supporting whole new areas. For in-
stance, in June, Electronic Arts intro-
duced an Amiga program called
Deluxe Video. Among other things,
you can use it to create graphic ani-
mation sequences that can be re-
corded onto your VCR. The Amiga
comes with a built-in Video Out con-
nector. In addition, an add-on offered
by Commodore called GenLock lets
you paste computer graphics into
your home videotapes. So far, the
Atari ST offers none of these features.
Video Games
Many of the games coming out for
both machines require 512K RAM; the
520 ST comes with 512K built-in, and
the Amiga can be upgraded to 512K
for about $100 through mail-order
companies.
If you don't plan on buying games
that need color graphics, Atari will sell
you a $799.95 system with a mono-
crome monitor. Remember, though,
color is an essential part of most of
today's hot new games. Also keep in
mind that all prices listed here are
"suggested retail," and you can al-
most always do better if you shop
around.
Editor Russell Sipe of Computer
Gaming World says nearly 50 games
will be introduced this year for the
Amiga and Atari ST. There is some
overlap, because many game compa-
nies normally adapt a single game to
various pieces of hardware. But Sipe
says the Atari ST has a slight edge
over the Amiga in the number of
games available.
The top computer game publishers
approach the Amiga and Atari in dif-
ferent ways. One of them, Infocom, is
known for text-adventure games that
don't involve graphics. Translating
graphic images from one computer to
another has traditionally been the
most time-consuming job for game
publishers, so Infocom has been able
to easily convert its games to either
the Atari ST or the Amiga. A dead heat
there.
Electronic Arts (EA) of San Mateo,
Calif., publisher of such hits as Pinball
Construction Set and Skyfox, has sup-
ported the Amiga since its birth, and
only lately has begyn to produce Atari
ST software. EA president Trip Haw-
kins believes that as of June, 80,000
Amigas had been sold. A lot of those
sales took place last spring, when
Commodore lowered the price of the
Amiga with 256K random-access
memory and monitor from $1,795 to
$ 1,295. (As of July, the price was back
to $1,795, but some dealers still have
some lower-priced machines in stock.)
EA has converted a number of its
bestsellers to the Amiga. Some, such
as One on One, a basketball game fea-
turing Larry Bird and Julius Irving,
has been remarkably enhanced with
crowd noises that are "digitized"; that
means sounds are recorded in stereo
and then compressed. Only the
Amiga's sound chip can reproduce di-
gitized sounds in such detail, Haw-
kins said.
Also coming for the Amiga from EA
is Marble Madness, a complete recre-
ation of the popular arcade game with
3-D graphics and animation, a prod-
uct developed specifically for the
Amiga.
At the June Consumer Electronics
Show, Activision of Mountain View,
Calif., seemed to favor the Atari ST
more than the Amiga. "We haven't
backed off our commitment to either
machine," said Activision president
James Levy. One product available on
both computers, The Music Studio,
which lets novices compose music
and learn notation, is selling out on
the Amiga, and on the Atari it is out-
selling the ST hardware in some
stores, Levy said. Another hit product,
Gamemaker, which lets users create
games from libraries of game ideas, is
already available on the Amiga and
will be available on the ST this Au-
E19
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Boy Scouts of America. Scouting, Volume 74, Number 4, September 1986, periodical, September 1986; Irving, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth353661/m1/65/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Boy Scouts of America National Scouting Museum.