The Death Of Chicken Lips 20th Anniversary – Commodore Is Dead
It is official, i am a very old man who seems to still think he is in the 20’s…, i simply can’t believe that it’s 20 years now since the day Commodore went bust, 29th of April, a few weeks before that i visited Commodore Norway and around the same time i went to The Gathering 1994 which was a blast and seeing the mass of people and all that Commodore Hardware (C64 and Amiga) was the last time and i also got to see some of the new Consoles (especially the 3DO) introduction by David Pleasance.
The End of an era was close and if i had not been so ignorant and a fanboy then i would have realized it at The Gathering that the PC scene was slowly taking over but the Amiga was also at a high where it more or less busted everyone’s balls in the Demo and game competitions and that kept going for many years.
Everything felt like it would have gone uphill from then but the closure of Commodore basically destroyed everything, people and devs dropping out of the scene and while the Amiga had a huge following for the next upcoming years it was still evident that the new owners (Escom etc) had no clue what possibilities they had with the Amiga.
When Escom filed for bankruptcy no one cared really as the magic was gone and too many users and devs had already left the Amiga.
A few years ago Brian Bagnell wrote a book about The early Commodore Years (up to 1984), a really good book which uncovered a lot of things that have been secret and not known to the public and to some this book destroyed a lot of their love to Commodore.
Right after the release of the book Brian Announced that he is about to start a book about the Amiga years, sadly this book was canceled in November 2013, why it was canceled is a little bit diffuse but he hopes to continue the project at one point…
It is no secret that i have and still is an Amiga fanatic, fanboy, zealot but for the last 6-8 years i have basically given up and these days i hardly ever use my Classic Amiga (a1200,cd32 etc) and only use my AmigaOS4 machines, sad really but at least i still use AmigaOS, the OS i love and can’t live without and while my A1200Bppc etc system have OS4 i still don’t use it, i simply can’t find the magic anymore.
The Amiga users who stayed for several years after the demise of Commodore was very loyal and more and more users tried to rescue the scene by doing games and programs but many of the games/programs was very bad and it gave the wrong impression to the general user base, buying a new game in 1997-98 was either a really bad game or an awesome one but in most cases it was a horrible one.
I am really surprised that there haven’t been more about this anniversary in the news, a decade ago there was next to nothing either, people seem to forget that the Amiga and Commodore C64 was and still is one of the most important reasons to why we are using computers and games today like we do, i do not know if the Commodore or the Amiga team had a gettogether yesterday but i have a feeling that they did not do that.
I spent last night watching the Deathbed Vigil movie by David Haynie which was recorded inside the Amiga Factory a month or so after the bankruptcy and the video basically shows a lot of hoarding and a insight from the engineers perspective on it all, a really emotional video.
The Commodore IP name has been bought and used for many things the last 20 years but i rather not talk about it all as it will just ruin my day and yours too because if you guys think that the Amiga IP has had a rough time, well the CBM name simply ain’t worth writing about anymore.
This October it will be 30 years since i first touched an Amiga computer, it is 19 years since i bought my A1200 and it is 11 years since i bought my A1XE G4, i am getting old and fast, luckily i have the possibility to affect the Amiga future as i am part of the AmigaOS team and i am also lucky to know so many great people from both old and new times in the Amiga circles, its like a huge family and while i do not have many friends from Commodore i still have a few although not met them in person in many, many years.
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