Amiga Format: Issue 31 (February 1992)

This was my first Amiga Format magazine, and I bought it off the strength of Knightmare being on the disk, but it didn't work on my A500+

The Magazine

Apart from the coverdisk, there was also a guide to Workbench and the Startup-Sequence in this mag, which was much appreciated as I'd only got my Amiga for the Christmas in 1991, so this was a good way to learn about the Amiga Workbench. There's quite a lot of reviews in here for many games, and some PD stuff too, and some more serious articles as well - this was a pretty decent introduction to Amiga Format.

The Coverdisk

Well, the headline demo didn't work on my Amiga 500+ and I didn't yet have Relokick, so I was limited to the other demos and tools. Doody was pretty good, and the other tools were useful. All round not a bad disk, would've been better had Knightmare worked.

Amiga Format: Issue 42 (January 1993)

So, I never actually owned this mag nor the coverdisks, I did borrow the Lemmings 2 disk off a friend which I promptly copied.

I never really got on with Lemmings 2 like I did the original Lemmings, but it was good to have this in the collection

Amiga Format: Issue 52 (November 1993)

I really wanted a copy of Blitz Basic, as I heard it was good

The Magazine

Quite a lot of decent game reviews in this one, which game me a good idea on what was around for the Amiga, other than that, the coverdisk was the prize for me here

Amiga Format: Issue 53 (Xmas 1993)

What an awesome mag and coverdisk bundle for Xmas

The Mag

A lot of nice reviews in this one, including Turrican 3, Body Blow Galactic, Frontier Elite II, Magic Boy and Cannon Fodder - damn this was a good mag.

The Coverdisk

Disk 1 had SuperJam (music software), Xap and Caffeine Free and Disk 2 had "Cannon Soccer", an exclusive Cannon Fodder meets Sensible Soccer crossover

Both disks were great, the games were fun (all of them) and so was SuperJam.

This was definitely value for money.

Amiga Format: Issue 67 (January 1995)

This was a good mag, quite a few reviews, and the funny review of seeing Rise Of The Robots get 19% which was hilarious

Amiga Format were also running a competition to get people to make games with the included AMOS Pro, which was cool, but I never managed to come up with something good enough in time for the deadline

Coverdisk 1: AMOS Professional

This unpacked to two floppies, AMOS Pro System and AMOS Pro Accessories, only 2 of the 6 disks the full package contains, but, this version was completely unrestricted and was the full AMOS Pro (missing just the examples programs and tutorial disks)

I spent a LOT of time with this, making some rubbish games and a couple of small applications that I used on a regular basis - this was the prize for me, and I loved it.

Coverdisk 2: ATR & SWOS

ATR: now I don't normally like top-down racing games, but this one is awesome. The first track is a little festive (and has a nice festive piece of music with it) but the second track is just one from the full game itself - I enjoyed this, even it if I was crap at it

SWOS: To me, this was just Sensible Soccer with a new coat of paint (well, new teams anyway) so it did nothing for me

Coverdisk 3: The Lion King

Well, this is an AGA only disk, and not having a 1200 (being a 500+ owner) this did not work on my machine.

Hearing about this demo nowadays, it sounds like it was a bit buggy and crashy anyway, and would probably just frustrate me, so I'm kind of glad I didn't experience it

It's a shame, I wanted to play it, I'd not long seen the film, and The Lion King was still prevent in my mind at the time.

Amiga Format: Issue 71 (May 1995)

Whilst there's a few reviews in this mag, there wasn't anything I was specifically looking forward to reading, but there was a good round of Amiga CD-ROM drives and a look at the upcoming Dpaint V

There was also a preview of Virocop, something that later became one of my favourite games.

Coverdisk 1: Bars & Pipes

A really good bit of music software, and, a great follow up from the previous SuperJAM that I'd also acquired.

Granted, I never really made anything ground breaking with this, but it was nice to mess with.

Coverdisk 2: Alien Breed 3D & Death Mask

Alien Breed 3D: this one is AGA only, so I never experienced it back in the day.

Death Mask: a nice little FPS (sort of) game - yeah, it's a little janky, you don't get full pinpoint control and have to line up your character just right etc., but, it's a nice little "Doom Clone" as they were called back then, and, it runs on a 1MB A500

Amiga Format: Issue 72 (June 1995)

Now this was a good mag, there's a few good game reviews here (the re-release of Cannon Fodder, CD32 version of Shadow Fighter and CD32 version of Speedball 2 were highlights here) - then, there was a good feature about compressors and crunchers, but the big one, was the article about Escom buying Amiga, and that the "Amiga is saved" (well, we all know what happened there)

Coverdisk 1: Pegger & Magic Storybook

Magic Storybook: is a sort of children's story book/colouring book kind of game, wasn't my sort of thing, but it did look like it would have been fun for the right audience.

Pegger: This was an automated image conversion program, however, because DPaint, SpectraColour and Aegis Images were all I ever used, they all loaded/saved in IFF ILBM format, which was natively supported on the Amiga anyway, so this was sort of surplus at the time, as I had no 24-bit images in GIF or PNG or whatever it used.

Coverdisk 2: Virocop

This was a FANTASTIC demo - I played the crap out of this one.

This has become one of my favourite Amiga games now, but this is where it started for me. The gameplay is easily console level, and even supports 2-button controllers if you have one (I did)

I highly recommend everyone play this.

Amiga Format: Issue 75 (September 1995)

This was a decent read, with reviews for Super Street Fighter II, Gloom AGA and Brutal Paws Of Fury, I was well entertained.

There was also an article about the new offices of Amiga UK and a look at the new Amiga logo (spoiler: it's shit)

Coverdisk 1: Maxon Magic, F1GP Editor & other utilities

I never really played with Maxon Magic, it didn't strike me as something I cared about at the time, and I didn't own F1GP, but I did look at the F1GP disk archive, and discovered it had Degrader tucked away on it, which isn't even mentioned anywhere in the mag or on the disk label, but this was low key a useful application for me, so I appreciated gaining Degrader from the disk.

Coverdisk 2: Odyssey

I don't have much memories of playing this one, it does look good, but I'm starting to wonder why I can't remember it too well - I'm wondering if my disk was knackered and that's why (it did happen with floppies sometimes)

Amiga Format: Issue 76 (December 1995)

• New order: just who are the new suits at Amiga Technologies? How can they resurrect the Amiga?

• Alien Breed 3D: best Doom-clone yet

Not as many reviews in this issue, but still enough to read - I'm shocked at the low score for Tactical Manager 2, it's definitely one of the most realistic football management sims regarding it's algorithm, even if it's not the prettiest looking game.

Final Calc, Final Data and Final Writer are all reviewed in this issue, which is great.

Coverdisk 1

• Absolute Beginners' Guide to Workbench 3

• Minimorph

• Snap Maps

• Text Engine v5.0

The beginners guide to WB3, I'm sure I had that on another Amiga Shopper disk iirc, Snap Maps I didn't use, I didn't use Minimorph either

However, Text Engine was a great text editor which I used a lot.

Coverdisk 2

• Blitz Bombers

• Blob Kombat

• Master Blaster

• Thinkamania

Blitz Bombers was AGA only so never got to play it, Blob Kombat was the same - however, Master Blaster was decent and I enjoyed that, but wasn't into Thinkamania

Amiga Format: Issue 81 (February 1996)

Love the "Pulp Fiction" style cover of this mag, very 90s

• Video addiction: unleash your creative potential with the definitive guide to Amiga video

• Get totally blitzed with our fantastic coverdisk and a new series of tutorials

• Sort your life out!: Digita come to the rescue withg the new Organiser 2

• Flight of the Amazon Queen: formulaic or just tremendous fun

• Imagine: is it easy if you try?: Version 4 falls under scrutiny inside

Coverdisk 1: Blitz Basic 2 v2.15 & other utilities

• Blitz Basic v2.15

• Icon Deluxe v1.13

• LaunchPad

• MFormat v1.8

I was looking forward to the updated version of Blitz Basic, but I'm quite sure this is only a demo version and from what I can tell, I don't think you can compile stand alone executables - my memory could be a bit fuzzy on this one though, but I remember still using the older coverdisk (AF52a)

Coverdisk 2: Zeewolf 2

Now this game kicked ass - I played this a lot.

Granted, it's a bit sluggish on a 1MB A500 (or A500+) but it was a lot of fun, and those graphics 👌

Yeah, I wish I had the full game at the time, but never got round to getting it.