The Atari Falcon 20th Anniversary - So did anyone notice?

The year 2012 came and went quietly, whispering promises as it did so. One of the messages that spouted from our garbled sponsor included the helpful maths that 2012 was precisely twenty years from anno 1992. This was the year that an obscure company called Atari Corp made much hullabaloo about a fabulous new computer called the Falcon that they were offering 'real soon'.

I'm personally inclined to take 1993 as my starting-point, as far as I'm aware, there were very few Falcon's in 1992 that weren't developer hardware for most of us.

During 2012, there seemed to be some vague awareness of the anniversary, but not enough for most people to do anything much about it. This could be for a number of reasons.

1. Most of the dedicated Falcon people have moved right away from the platform of their youth, preoccupied with real life, families, prestigious and time consuming careers and suchlike. These same factors have also affected the more numerous original ST scene, but a sufficiency of these people have remained, or perhaps seem to be better at time managing to include something for cherished hobbies?

2. There is a fragmentation of the remaining Falcon people with the availability of seriously high end hardware. This splits people from the 'holy 4MB and 16 MHz' fan base from those who would be happier wrestling with the possibilities offered by accelerator, fastRAM and new graphics cards. As a result, you may end up with too few interested people in either camp. There is a much greater diversity of hardware modifications from the more standardised platform of the ST and STE.

3. The lower-hanging and easy(ish) to reach fruit has already been picked. All the interesting possibilities that don't involve a fiendish mastery over the 56001 DSP have all been done now. (Compared with the ST Atarian's refocusing on the STE over the last few years, a previously neglected platform with possibilities still begging to be explored there.

4. "Twentieth Anniversary in 2012?! It took me most of 1993 to get one!" - A point of view I'd sympathise with. But I'd probably be delusional to expect a 20th anniversary reboot of Sono' or Lost Blubb to turn up in 2013!

5. "I'd love to get hold of one of those Falcon 030's to try a spot of coding on it. They seem a really cool machine but they're very rare and too damn expensive when the do turn up!" Emulation is of course available, but not complete still. Of course, there is still that 'bargain' Falcon hanging around the UK section of eBay for a mere 799.00 ukp if you're really desperate!

6. There's the rather sad "I've got a Falcon, but it died some time ago, and is just a bag of cold and dusty circuits!" At least I know a few people who could do something about that.

So if we're taking the 2012 Sillyventure as a benchmark for the state of overall health, it isn't looking too clever right now. The ever-faithful Paradox fitted the commemorative theme perfectly, with their screenshot photo-gallery. Unfortunately, it brutally emphasised the view that the Falcon's greatest days were firmly in the past, with the paucity of screenshots for more recent years throwing the lack of activity into stark relief. There were a couple of other little 'lifesign' or taster productions from Extream and 505, but nothing else.

And I'm not even saying anything about the brooding silence from the higher end side of things!

So it looks like that the Falcon has being terminally neglected, without even any commemorative words or deeds from its past exponents. Nary a single glimmer of interest from those who were most passionate back in the day.

On the other hand, hold those gloomy thoughts!

Some people *have* cared enough to breathe new life into an old bird. They've just not focused on the specific area of demo's.

There's Orion, with a complete new game in 2012, Elansar, an adventure in the 'Mysts' of time on CD-ROM! (Did you like that pun? No!? Ah well..)

We've got a gentleman called Anima, who turns out to be the former 'Percy' of 'Light', a real throwback to the early Falcon scene, porting exotic games such as Galaga 88 from an even more obscure 68000 platform, the Sharp X68000.

Then there's Thadoss of Dune, who surprised everyone with a console quality beat-em-up game, Beats of Rage. That one was the gaming highlight of the Sillyventure 2012 party. He's apparently working on something else for this year!

There was also Color Runner from Paradize, a cool little game which was over too quickly on the SV2013 competitions.

One of my favourite stories is that Doug Little has returned in 2012. He muttered something about "Demo" and "CT60" at some point in the future, but right now, he's busy bringing Bad Mood, the Doom engine for the Falcon back to life. He's getting damn close to a fully playable game engine here!

At Outline 2013, it turned out that the celebrations were only delayed for demo fans, with the release of the brilliant Falcon CT60 port of the Amiga 2012 Revision party winner demo, 'Kioea'. The release date for May 2013 fits in rather better to my personal 20 year timeline with the Falcon, as around that time two decades ago, I'd be freshly thrilled with the arrival of the 'Termfin' demo.

So now, the life signs for the 20th anniversary are lit and bustling in a crazy disco fashion. Falcon 030 is not dead and forgotten after all!

CiH - For Mag! - Various in 2013.

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