The best thing about New Year, though, (or 'Hogmanay' as they prefer to call it where Eden McNulty comes from) is, of course, all the tradition. Black bun, shortie, whisky, coal, Scotch And Wry on the telly, first-footing and The Bells, all rooted in folklore as old as the hills. And it's no different for computer trade folk - Christmas is a time for retrospection, a mull on the year gone by, an awarding of accolades and so on, but New Year is for looking forward. What's coming our way in the world of the Amiga in the next 12 months is what we all want to know, and to help us find out, we take a look in the crystal ball of well-known seer and sage, Mr B.B. Moore.

JANUARY

Commodore slice £100 off the price of the A1200, prompting a flood of complaint letters to the Amiga press from angry punters who'd bought one the day before. Kelly Sumner replies in an open letter to the press, saying that the company hadn't been planning the move in advance, he'd just lost a game of Truth Or Dare and had to do it for a forfeit. A600 and A500P owners form a user support group called The Mothers Of The Disappeared. Street Fighter II 'slightly delayed due to minor programming tweaks', but due next month 'for sure'. WWF European Rampage, the Christmas No.1, drops out of the Gallup/Penguin Top 100.

FEBRUARY

Commodore announce the A700, a keyboardless Amiga console with 32-bit architecture, built-in sprite scaling and rotation, disk, smart card and cartridge ports, 3 megs of on-board memory and a 64 million-colour palette. The machine will run 50% of existing Amiga software, and will sell for £250. The Mothers Of The Disappeared take on some disgruntled A1200 owners, and mount a small protest at the trade launch of the A700. Street Fighter II is reviewed in several Amiga mags, racking up 97%-plus scores, but the street date is put back a month to 'allow the post-Christmas market to settle'. Acclaim release the long-awaited Alien 3, which turns out to be a platform-based shoot-'em-up where you guide Ripley through several scrolling levels blasting away at millions of little Alien sprites. Actually, come to think of it, it looks a lot like Lethal Weapon. The game goes straight to No.1. Amiga Force closes.

MARCH

In a shock move, Commodore drop the price of the A700 to £199, in an attempt to put pressure on the rocketing sales of the Super NES, while simultaneously announcing a new, 'serious' Amiga, the A5000. The new machine boasts all the features of the A700, but with a keyboard, built-in colour monitor, built-in 200 meg hard drive, and complete compatability with the IBM PC. The asking price of £599 also includes a year's free subscription to Sky Movies, for no obvious reason. System 3 team up with Gremlin to release The Last Lotus, a driving game with a difference - it looks exactly like Lotus 2 and 3, but you move the joystick left to accelerate, hit fire to turn right, push the mouse forward to brake, and press space on the keyboard to spin round and round in confused circles until your time runs out. The keyboard requirement makes the game A700-incompatible, and hundreds of owners rush to join the swelling ranks The Mothers Of The Disappeared, who organise a protest march on Gremlin's Sheffield HQ. Street Fighter II held back on account of 'the wrong kind of snow'.

APRIL

Psygnosis follow up the huge post-Christmas success of Lemmings 2 with plans for a third game. Boss Ian Hetherington says 'It's going to be a whole new kettle of fish - there'll still be lemmings in it, of course, but it's going to be centred around a scrolling arcade beat-'em-up sequence, with driving and shoot-'em-up subgames and a heavy RPG element. Actually, we probably shouldn't call it Lemmings 3 at all.' In a technical breakthrough, US Gold claim to have developed a six-button joystick which will make the Amiga version of Street Fighter II completely identical in play to the coin-op. The game's release is delayed for a month so that the programmers can cater for the new hardware. Commodore, for no obvious reason, tie up a promotional deal with Rowntree Mackintosh, whereby collecting the lids from 100 tubes of Smarties enables you to claim a free A5000. The Mothers Of The Disappeared, now thousands-strong, picket sweet shops nationwide. Ocean release Batman Returns. It looks a lot like Alien 3.

MAY

The scheduled launch of Street Fighter II at the Spring ECTS fails to materialise. US Gold say the game is 'completely finished', but manufacturing difficulties with the new six-button joystick have forced them to wait until they can get sufficent numbers into the shops. After a quiet period, Commodore announce the A900, an enhanced version of the A700 which also features a TV tuner and CB radio, and sells for £229.99 (reduced to £129.99 if you do a part-exchange with your old VIC-20). There are teething troubles, though, as it is revealed over the following weeks that the machine will only run 30% of existing A700 software. Furious purchasers join The Mothers Of The Disappeared's mass campaign of civil disobedience, culminating in a huge rally in Trafalgar Square which ends in ugly scenes as Kelly Sumner, attempting to placate the crowd, is pelted with eggs and copies of incompatible games in enormous boxes.

JUNE

Entertainment International release Space Ace 3 - Borf Miraculously Returns, Despite Having Clearly And Unambiguously Died In The Last One. 'This time, we've combined the traditional stunning graphics and animation with gripping, interactive gameplay', says the press release. 'It's exactly the same useless old crap as before', say the reviews. The game's packaging, a 2ft-by-3ft laminated cardboard box with a free model Ace made of ivory, attracts criticism from several environmental bodies, but EI counter that 'It's all about perceived value', a theory undermined by the fact that the game only sells 16 copies. US Gold shock everyone by declaring that Street Fighter II will not now be released at all! Instead, it will be solely available as part of a software bundle supplied with Commodore's new A950, a revolutionary machine like the A900, but featuring a 128-channel sound chip with 10 megs of dedicated sample memory, three billion colours all on screen at once, 2048x2048 screen resolution, Super NES and Mega Drive emulator modes, Full Motion Video capability, built-in CD-ROM drive and cuddly toy. The machine is to be sold at an astounding £149, but, for no obvious reason, it's only compatible with 10% of existing Amiga software. The Mothers Of The Disappeared detonate a small explosive device in Islington to register their annoyance.

JULY

Virgin return triumphantly to the games scene after a few months lying dormant, with Archer Maclean's Billiards. Utilising a revolutionary 3D game engine, Billiards takes the successful formula previously seen in Jimmy White's Whirlwind Snooker and Archer Maclean's Pool and, er, releases it again, to tumultuous acclaim. Kick Off 3 finally appears and earns rave reviews everywhere, except in Amiga Action, who complain that it's 'not as good as Kick Off 2' and give it 62%, although this is mysteriously revised to 95% in the next issue's 'Action Guide'. Code Masters continue their new pricing policy, with Couldn't Resist The Temptation Any Longer Dizzy going out at £45 on all formats, except the 8-bit NES version which is £70. US Gold unexpectedly withdraw Street Fighter II from the A950 bundle, deciding that it's 'So good it deserves to stand on its own, as everyone will see when we release it next month.'

AUGUST

Commodore bounce back from the A950 Street Fighter II disappointment with the announcement of a new bundle including the machine, two six-button infra-red joysticks, a high-resolution 25-inch monitor, a pair of 100-watt speakers and a complete set of Genesis albums on picture CD, selling at a special recession-beating summer promotional price of £99.99 and two coupons from the top of Kellogs Corn Flakes boxes. Sadly, slight ROM changes mean that the machine will now only run 5% of existing software. The Mothers Of The Disappeared assassinate John Major in protest. Dominik Diamond receives an OBE in the Queen's Abdication Honours List, and joyfully shows off his gong (oo-er!) to the waiting press, remarking 'Ooh, isn't it a big shiny one! I'll be going home to my bedroom and giving it a good rub later on!' US Gold decide to delay Street Fighter II for 'just one more month, until the traditional summer slump is over'.

SEPTEMBER

Nothing EVER happens in September. According, that is, to US Gold, in a press release explaining the non-appearance of Street Fighter II.

OCTOBER

Future Publishing's MD Sir Chris Anderson announces plans for a major show in the winter, to be held at Wembley Stadium during the whole of the next month and entitled The Biggest Thing In The Galaxy Ever Show. Special events are to include the live coronation of King Charles III, a seminar featuring the editors of all of Future's magazines (for no obvious reason, since nobody really cares what any of them think about anything) and the entire Cabinet, including Prime Minister Dominik Diamond, and the world launch of Street Fighter II, which has been specially held back for the occasion. Heady rumours circulate within the industry that Commodore also plan to use the occasion to not release any new Amigas whatsoever.

NOVEMBER

Despite nine inches (Oo-er! - Dominik Diamond) of snow, the Biggest Thing In The World Ever Show is a roaring success, with attendance figures larger than the entire population of Europe (ABC estimate). Ocean set up a giant ski slope inside the stadium (although strangely, they neglect to actually show any new games), which does massive trade, with only Storm's launch party for their Daily Sport 'Lots Of Totally Naked Girls Dancing Around Suggestively With Bananas' licence boasting longer queues. Disappointment reigns, however, when the astonishing traffic congestion around the stadium prevents the car bringing the completed version of Street Fighter II from reaching the show. Allegedly.

DECEMBER

US Gold finally release Street Fighter II! AMIGA POWER gives it 10%, continuing the transparently-obvious vendetta against the Birmingham software giants that's been apparent all year in the face of the continued lack of advertising since 1991 (and they thought nobody noticed...) Everyone else reviews it again and hopes that nobody remembers them doing it 10 months previously. In a bizarre marketing tie-up, though, the game only runs on the new A999 Amiga, a state-of-the-art update of the A950 capable of independent intelligent thought, displaying graphics indistinguishable from real life, producing orchestra-quality sound, abolishing world poverty and making a really excellent spaghetti bolognese with just the right amount of Parmesan cheese. The world-beating new machine is actually to be given away free with copies of Street Fighter II, but unfortunately won't run any other Amiga software at all. The 9 million members of The Mothers Of The Disappeared rise up en masse, overthrow the entire world, and instal Sir Clive Sinclair as President Of The Universe. Lemmings 3 comes out. It's exactly the same as Lemmings 2. Everyone, for no obvious reason, lives happily ever after.