So, I only ever got a small hand full of issues of Amiga Power. Usually I was either drawn to the coverdisk or a specific game review, but sometimes it was because I had some extra money to afford a second magazine that month, in which case I would get what I could get, depending on what was still in stock
For this issue, there was only one coverdisk, which didn't have the best games on it, but, I was drawn to one of them and found one of the others to also be quite entertaining
There's quite a few decent reviews here, although a lot of them were CD32 and AGA titles, and I was only a mere A500+ owner, meaning I was really catered for with quite a few of these, but there was also some reviews of some of the Kixx re-releases too, especially Street Fighter II, which was a favourite of mine on the SNES, however, we all know how bad the Amiga version was.
There's 3 games (all requiring 1MB) and 1 "patch" for Xmas Dizzy
Arcade Pool: I wasn't much of a fan of this demo, from what I remember, it's time limited and didn't really last long enough for you to play a complete frame, so I was quite disappointed - it wasn't as enjoyable as "Steve Davis Snooker" that I had on my old Commodore 16
Tetris Pro: now this is what I wanted this disk for, and it didn't disappoint at all. It's a great version of the classic Tetris puzzler and I really enjoyed this one. It's presented well, I like the way the background picture builds up as you get more lines until you've completed the background picture, and to top it off, it's the full game (it's a PD title anyway) - the only downside is it doesn't have the original tune from the Gameboy version, but I'm sure copyright issues wouldn't have allowed that anyway.
Statix: Now, when I fired this up I didn't know what it was, but once I got in to it, I realised how good this puzzle game is - it's like Tetris or Columns but on a see-saw, which adds quite the challenge in to it. I played the crap out of this for quite a while and it's up there as a decent puzzler, even now. This is an underrated gem.
Christmas Dizzy Patch: This is a patch for the Christmas Dizzy demo given away on Issue 33 to allow it to play on an expanded A500. I didn't own this, so had no need to even start this one.
This was quite a bit later in my collection of mags and disks - despite not having an A1200 (or any AGA machine), there was a review of Gloom (which is AGA exclusive) but there's also a review of Super Street Fighter II, and I was obsessed with Street Fighter.
The reviews for the games were pretty decent, although, I couldn't help but notice that the magazine was getting thinner these days. There's no "previews" of new titles, only reviews of games and they were all a mixed bag. But, it was nice to read about Super SF2 and see what Gloom was like (being as I didn't have a 1200)
I couldn't help but feel this game was somewhat incomplete. The title says Tennis Champs in some places and Super Tennis Champs in other places. Apparently it's not a demo, it's a PD game. Now, I wasn't a huge fan of sports games, but this was ok for a Tennis game, and I did enjoy playing this, but I got curious and browsed the disk contents, only to find something rather interesting.
Upon browsing the contents of the disk, I discovered that there's an AMOS_System folder and RAMOS1.3 on the disk (the "run time" version of AMOS allowing one to run AMOS programs outside of the interpreter, but not compiled) - so, I got curious, I opened the AutoExec.AMOS file in AMOS Pro, only to discover it's a compiled program in to an AMOS program (not compiled as a CLI or WB executable) which kind seemed pointless to me. But, these are the signs to me that it was somewhat incomplete.
Gloom: well, I couldn't play this, it's A1200 only, it needs AGA, and I didn't have a compatible Amiga, so this went unplayed.
Air Taxi: what a fun little game, I love this one. It's not my "go to" that I revisit, but it's still really good for a quick blast. It's a shareware version of Space Taxi but supports 4 players via the 4-player joystick adapter in the parallel port. Yeah, this has a lot of replayability value that'll keep you coming back for more.
One of the later mags that I got, towards the latter end of the Amiga's commercial lifespan, and it shows
Let's be honest, I bought this because F1 World Championship Edition was give away on the cover, for free, and it's the full game.
There was only 4 reviews and 2 previews, and the mag was quite thin on the ground for content.
If you wanted this mag for anything other than the included coverdisk, this was not a good spend of £4.50
This game is superb. Even on a stock A500+, this ran very well. The graphics are superb for the time, it zips along at a good pace, all the tracks are included, as are the drivers and teams of the time. There's a two-player mode for split screen action.
Me and my brother played this a lot. Before this game came along to my collection, we spanked the Lotus games, but once I got this, this is what we played instead.
So, what do I think of my limited time with Amiga Power? Well, I got some good games on the coverdisks, but this was never my favourite mag. Their reviews were a bit all over the place, and they had a lot of beef with Team 17 as it was thought they were quite unfair to the company (and tbh, I love Team 17 games).
The mag felt like it was running out of things to write about by 1996, and it really didn't live up to it's £4.50 price tag, with the only redeeming feature being if you really wanted the included coverdisk.