Over the centuries, the map of the world (and especially that of Europe) has been in a constant state of flux, as bloody wars and empire-building took their various tolls of the young manhood of respective generations.
Never, though, has such havoc been wreaked by massed armies as that brought about by AP's Incredible World Of The Amiga feature in issue 46. Purporting to show the whereabouts of all those involved with Amiga games across the globe, the map central to the feature instead achieved that which had eluded Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, the entire Hapsburg family and all the rest - the wholesale redrawing of national boundaries on a colossally unimaginable scale.
Among the more impressive feats were the repositioning of France to encompass Germany, Switzerland and Austria, and the shifting of parts of Sweden and Germany to entire new continents. Full details? Here:
THOSE IN QUESTION | ACTUALLY LOCATED | AP's NEW WORLD ORDER |
Jens and Jan (Programmers of Gravity Power) | Ronneby, Sweden | Riga, Latvia |
Ascon (On The Ball) | Gutersloh, Germany | Gdansk, Poland |
Coktel Vision (Gobliiins) | "Somewhere in... France" | Berlin, Germany |
Silmarils (Ishar) | Lognes, France | Basle, Switzerland |
Kalisto (Fury Of The Furries) | Bordeaux, France | Klagenfurt, Austria |
Naps Team (Shadow Fighter) | Milan, Italy | Tirgu Mures, Romania |
Black Legend (Tower Of Souls) | Warsaw, Poland | Minsk, Belorussia |
Cro Team (Embryo) | Zagreb, Croatia | Nikolajev, Ukraine |
Thalion (No Second Prize) | "Somewhere in... Germany" | Moscow, Russia |
Blue Byte (The Settlers) | Mulheim, Germany | Kosice, Slovakia |
Bloodhouse (Super Stardust) | Helsinki, Finland | Cerepovec, Russia |
Ian Ritch (Famous AP reader) | Trnava, Slovakia | Sibiu, Romania |
Sierra (King's Quest 6) | California, USA | British Columbia, Canada |
Commodore | Pennsylvania, USA | Port George, Canada |
Commodore (Their factory) | The Phillippines | Vietnam |
As you can see, AP failed to accurately denote a single country in the Northern Hemisphere, coming within 600 kilometres on only two occasions. It did, however, only narrowly misplace New Zealand (home of Acid and Vision), dropping it in the South Pacific Ocean somewhere between the Kiwi motherland and Australia.
The worst performance of all is probably the relocation of Sierra and CBM to Canada, given that AP's map quite clearly states the country the arrows point to as being Canada, going so far as to depict it in a different colour for extra clarity. A special mention is also deserved for the labelling of Vietnam as the Phillippines, regardless of the fact that island states (like, say, the Phillippines) are traditionally surrounded by water. Unlike, say, Vietnam, a conspicuous part of the enormous Asian landmass which covers around a quarter of the world's entire land surface.
Overall, though, the best results (militarily speaking), are Kalisto's (the city limits of Bordeaux extending some 1,700km across three national borders into Austria), and Thalion's spectacular gain of at least 1,854km eastwards (measuring from the nearest possible part of the German border to Moscow, so the real discrepancy is probably in excess of 2,000km, or 1/20th of the world's entire maximum circumference), in a one-month blitzkrieg that would have kept the Luftwaffe in schnitzels for a decade.
(AP2 readers attempting to recreate these achievements should note that a fast modern tank battalion can cover approximately 200km in a day across favourable terrain. So good luck.)