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Amiga Active Award Winners
This section of the Amiga Active web site contains a
record of products which have been reviewed in the magazine
and won one of our two prestigious awards - either the coveted
Amiga Active Gold Award or the highly sought-after
Editor's Choice Award. Below you will find some information
on our reviews policy and details of the awards. At the bottom
of the page (you're supposed to read this one first so that
you understand what the awards actually mean, you see)
you'll find links to the pages detailing the award winners.
Amiga Active's Review Policy
You're a consumer. You want to be sure when you're buying
a product - be it a piece of hardware or software - that you're
getting a good quality piece of kit, and one that best suits
your own individual requirements. Of course you do!
We've always known this fact, and our reviews reflect it.
Not only do we get the best, most knowledgeable people in
the Amiga market to review the products you're interested
in, we also try to give you a sense of the product
being reviewed: explaining how to fit a piece of hardware,
showing you what a piece of software is like to use, or demonstrating
what it's like to immerse yourself in the latest game, for
example. These things are all aspects of an Amiga Active
review - independent, informed opinion written by experienced
professionals.
Product scoring. Does it tell you anything?
 Amiga
Active started life with an 'out of ten' scoring policy
which, if we're being totally honest here, always niggled
us. In putting together the magazine, we had initially decided
against an 'out of 100' percentage scale given that the value
of all products is still a matter of personal taste and scores
should only be taken as a reflection of a product's overall
review.
So, after much consideration and arguments for and against,
we changed our scoring system to an 'out of four' scale in
AA6, for two reasons. First, we hoped it would minimise the
risk of people complaining about not getting an extra mark
(a moot point for the reasons outlined above). Second, what
we termed the 'AmiYinYang' score blobs looked a lot nicer
than a simple 'out of ten' mark.
The problem with scoring any product on any kind of linear
scale, however, is that to make it worthwhile, you have to
use all of it. Thus average products get an average 5 out
of 10 or, with our AmiYinYang system, 2 out of 4. Anything
above two, therefore, denotes 'above average'. Not a lot of
people seem to understand this fact. "Two out of four?"
glass-is-half-empty people exclaim. "Cripes! It
must be a really bad product." Nonsense. It's only
half bad. The other half of it is perfectly good. Hence a
halfway score.
 At
this point, our regular readers may accuse Amiga Active
itself of not utilising the whole AmiYinYang scale, and therefore
defeating the point of using it for the reasons we've just
given you. But, whilst it is indeed true that we've hardly
ever used the bottom half of our AmiYinYang scale, there's
a good reason for this apparent contradiction; and no, it's
not that we're biased! Have you been paying attention?
In the months since we started life back in October 1999,
most products which have been released in the Amiga market
have been of a high quality - because Amiga products that
are still being developed absolutely have to be of
a high standard given the size of the market. Thus, poor products
just aren't released. Well, okay, some people may have a pop
occasionally, but in such rare cases we're more likely to
decline the opportunity of a review on the grounds that our
readers don't want to pay good money to hear about bad products.
Well, you don't, do you? True, you may say that it's our responsibility
to warn you of bad products, but not at the expense of giving
less publicity to good ones. We only have so many pages, after
all.
Amiga Active's Awards - They Mean Something!
 With
the above points in mind, then, we come to the matter in hand
- awards, and the products that have been found deserving
of them. The fact that most products released in the Amiga
market today are of a high standard doesn't mean there aren't
some that are better than others. Of course there are. Most
products are good, but some are excellent. One or two, even,
are breathtakingly wonderful. These are the products deserving
of further praise. These are the products that achieve Amiga
Active Gold or Editor's Choice status, respectively.
Amiga Active's awards, however, are not firmly tied
to product scores. The best way to think about it is this:
Scores indicate a product's completeness. Awards indicate
a product's excellence - (see our Editor's Choice award?
It says "award for excellence" on it) - and
excellence, when all's said and done, is a much more subjective
assessment, given that there may - or may not - be several
similar products in existance at any one time.
 Hence,
a competent, well-rounded product which does exactly what
you expect of it and gets four out of four doesn't necessarily
get an award. Likewise, a product which isn't quite complete
in itself, but is an excellent product compared to its competition
(or lack of it, in the case of revolutionary products), may
only get 3 out of 4, but will also get an award.
 Amiga
Active's Gold Award represents a great quality
product. It may have some flaws (like an incomplete, sketchy
manual or an over-complicated control system), but it can
be considered one of the best at what it does when seen in
context.
 Amiga
Active's Editor's Choice Award, meanwhile, is given
out sparingly to only the most revolutionary or awe-inspiring
products. To have this award bestowed upon it means that a
product pushes the boundaries of excellence seen on the Amiga
to date.
With these points in mind, then, feel free to browse our
electronic hall of fame:
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