[        THE AUSTRALIAN SCENE

          Written by Effead
               of the
          Deviant Designers


]ARE WE DEAD YET?

The ST scene in the land down-under 
is not well. It is decidedly sick. It 
is not far from dying, but it may yet 
be resusitated to live a few more 
years yet.


]WHY DID THIS HAPPEN?

Simple.... Atari Australia stuffed up 
in selling the ST. The advertisement 
they used was minimal. No, that's not 
right, it was non-existant! The sales 
of STs has steadily declined where 
the sales of Amigas and IBMs have 
gone up.

A low number of machines around means 
a low number of coders, musicians, 
etc. A small market also means that 
importers will not bring in software. 
Any coders who wanted to crack would 
get software 2 months after it was 
already released and cracked in 
Europe. So what was the point of 
forming cracking groups.

This made Australia a breeding ground 
for swappers and pirates. Most of the 
Pirates have gone, and now we have a 
good swapping scene. Almost all 
cracks are brought in from Europe and 
swapped far and wide through the 
postage system.


]WHAT ABOUT NOW?

As far as I know, we are the only 
crew producing anything in Australia 
for the ST scene. There are a few 
coders producing the odd utility, 
game or demo, but that is all.


]AND THE PAST?

Australia's most significant input 
into the ST scene was with Sewer 
Soft's doc discs. It was their demise 
that encouraged us to produce our doc 
discs.

JamPacker was written by a couple of 
local lads, but I have not heard from 
them in a long time. Don't know what 
they are doing now.

A few coders have done some work on 
various European groups menus, but I 
have not seen an Ozzie mentioned in a 
long time.


]AND THE FUTURE?

Shit, how am I supposed to know that. 
I don't have a crystal ball.

My personal opinion is that the ST 
scene has maybe 12 months of life 
left in it. The release of the Falcon 
has many ST users planning to 
upgrade (I will have mine by this 
time next week, Oooohhhh!). The 
Deviant Designers will continue to 
suport the ST while we are still 
getting docs we can use. We also hope 
to produce Falcon compatible and 
Falcon specific doc discs.

There are many new ST users about 
since Atari reduced the ST's price. 
These users will want programs, and 
will probably look to the illegal 
market for them as legit stuff is 
still very hard to find.

Some of these new users may hold some 
potential as coders, but I can't see 
that they will have time to get 
experience before the scene dies. 
Hopefully they will learn enough to 
be competent coders on the Falcon 
when they decide to upgrade 
themselves.

Only time will tell, and until then I 
for one will be enjoying the ST - 
even with it sitting next to the 
Falcon.


       ...Long live the ST...

       "We are not dead yet!"