The Amiga Magic Pack took things a step further and Jonathan Anderson, who was in charge of the UK wing of Amiga Technologies was charged with putting together a bundle that would make the package so appealing to would-be Amiga owners that no-one would be able to resist it, or that Amiga enthusiasts considering upgrading would jump at the chance to buy an A1200 – or so Amiga Technologies hoped anyway…
When the bundle finally made it to stores, two versions of the Magic Pack were available – a standard edition for £399.99 plus an enhanced pack retailing for £499.99 with an internal 170Mb 2.5″ hard drive (in Amiga terms back then, that was ample space for many), and an extra piece of software which more than made up for the increase in price. As for the software and whether the package was worth buying?
The Amiga Magic Pack certainly had an impressive mix of software. Instead of a small handful of programs as we had been offered by previous bundles, this time new Amiga owners were treated to no less than nine pieces of software and on paper at least the Magic Pack looked as if it was a real corker of a bundle!
After Desktop Dynamite, Amiga’s relationship with Digita continued with no less than five applications being included. Wordworth 4SE, Turbocalc 3.5, DataStore 1.1, Organiser 1.1 and Print Manager. Supporting this was Personal Paint 6.4 from Cloanto, developers of Amiga Forever, the stunning image processing package Photogenics 1.2SE and two games – Pinball Mania and Whizz. Then, for those who purchased the hard drive version, the Amiga’s definitive multimedia package, Scala MM300…
Wordworth was the Amiga’s definitive word processor and the bundled version was no exception. A very powerful WYSIWYG editor, reasonably quick even on a basic A1200 and giving exceptional print results (in part thanks to Print Manager) got the bundle off to a great start. Turbocalc proved to be a first rate spreadsheet although I found DataStore to be rather lacklustre and somewhat primitive in terms of functionality compared to other databases available (SuperBase was always my package of choice on the Amiga) although it was a reasonable starter package for most users. Finishing the Digita suite was Organiser and it was a stunning electronic personal organiser and despite being an unusual choice for inclusion, turned out to be an incredibly useful addition to the pack.
With the art packages, while Personal Paint was never able to reach the standards set by Deluxe Paint IV it did an admirable job. However, when combined with the stunning 24-bit paint and image processing power of Photogenics which had taken the Amiga world by storm since its release, you really had the power to explore everything the Amiga could do with its graphics chip.
Then we came onto Scala MM300 which was included with the hard disk bundle. Despite the software requiring 4MB of RAM to run, it was well worth expanding your Amiga for. In return for this extra expense, you were rewarded with probably the best presentation software ever to grace the Amiga… or any other computer at the time. Forget Powerpoint, Scala could do everything that could do and much more – just several years earlier. Smoother scrolling and animation thanks to the Amiga’s hardware and even video titling capabilities with the use of an optional genlock. It was truly a remarkably powerful piece of software and incredibly easy to use. How powerful? Just using a combination of a trusty A1200 Magic Pack, a 4Mb RAM expansion and Scala MM300 I was able to produce promotional videos for local businesses and even for a local Council!
Sadly, as seemed to be the case with latter Amiga bundles, the games let the package down. Whizz was an average isometric 3D platform game and Pinball Mania – the fifth in the series from 21st Century Entertainment – was the most disappointing in their series and certainly didn’t meet the exceptional standards set by Pinball Dreams, Pinball Fantasies, Pinball Illusions or Slam Tilt.
continues…
Leave a Reply