The CD32

Though Commodore's CD-based 32-bit console wasn't in itself a Bad Thing (Guardian, its Defender-in-3D game stayed in the AP Top 100 at Number 3 for three years), everything else about it was.

From the horrible Prisoner-telephone joypad to the notorious five-years-out-of-date Shock-Haired White-Coated Scientist Watching Robot Assistant Exploding From Sheer Excitement Of Testing CD32 Instead Of, For Example, Showing Any Of The Games You Could Buy television advertisement, every decision regarding the machine was tackled with the sense of a hammer-stunned rooster.

Taking advantage of its A1200-in-a-biscuit-caddy design, games companies shovelled any old A1200-compatible crap onto the console, often - incredibly - not bothering to use any of its six buttons so you still had to use "up" to jump. Those who understood that they needed to add new levels or features to their any old A1200-compatible crap or - no! But yes! - make new games, instead largely elected to stick on a FMV intro and look pleased with themselves. Magazines gave these games high marks anyway and recommended their readers invest in a CD32 unhesitatingly, which, thanks to Commodore's astonishingly useless grasp of the console market, cost £300.

AMIGA POWER's response was the regular-until-the-games-ran-out Hi Ho Silver Lining and occasional full-size reviews when the games were substantially more than any old A1200-compatible crap with FMV intros stuck on.

One of our longer-running jokes was the "we-haven't-got-a-CD32-and-so-had-to-review-this-CD32-game-by- sneaking-into-Dixons-at- the-dead-of-night-and-using-theirs" one which ran for about a year after the release of the ill-fated machine.

As with all AP's best gags, this one was based in truth. Despite calling every other day for months and returning God knows how many in-triplicate request forms, we couldn't get Commodore to send the world's best-selling Amiga games magazine one of their new Amiga-based game consoles for love nor money. (Actually, to be fair, those were the two approaches we didn't actually try.) They really were the most useless, cretinous morons you could ever hope to find in charge of a company.

Much to Colin The Publisher's chagrin (he didn't want us to admit this 'weakness' and appear fallible in the eyes of the readers, but we figured since they already knew perfectly well how fallible we were, we might as well get some laughs out of it), we made the most out of the situation, comically flagging our lack of a CD32 in competition pages, Hi Ho Silver Lining, news stories and anywhere else we could think of.

The truth of the matter, though, was that we did actually have a CD32. Stuart stole one.