Guildhall Leisure in co-operation with Epic Marketing will be bringing Amiga CD-ROMs to the high streets for the first time since the heyday of the CD32. Guildhall leisure, the largest distributor of Amiga games in the country, have distributorship deals with HMV, Game and Electronics Boutique.
Persuading the high street stores to take CD software for the Amiga has traditionally been impossible, as the shops' ordering departments are under the impression that Amigas can't read CD-ROMS and CD32 ownership is too small to bother with. Guildhall have finally persuaded them to try it and see.
The list of titles to be released is very impressive. Over the next few months Guildhall will release CD-ROM versions of Microprose F1, Theme Park, Dune 2, Superskidmarks +, Civilization and others at £14.99, and Blitz and DPaint5 at £19.99. Also on the way are two previously unreleased titles, StreetRacer, a conversion of the Playstation hit, and Gloom 3, apparently a huge series of levels updates consisting of 200Mb of data put together by frequent CUCD contributor Gareth Murfin.
Guildhall leisure have told us that Game are planning on reducing the shelf space they give to Amiga titles. Guildhall will stick primarily to Electronics Boutique in the hope that concentrating Amiga software purchases in a single chain store will reduce the chances of that store dropping shelf space too.
The first release in this schedule is Civilisation CD. This contains the full ECS and AGA versions. Playable straight from CD, this eliminates the problems many have had with the extraordinarily buggy Microprose hard drive installer. This is an enormously absorbing strategy game which should be in anyone's collection.
CU Amiga advocates everyone throwing a spanner in the works and making the shop purchasing departments panic. If everyone who buys the CD edition of CU goes to their local branch of Electronic Boutique and buys CIV CD or if they don't want it one of the other titles, in the last week of August, it will force the shops top think again about their Amiga strategy. Save the Amiga games market - buy a game.
Guildhall leisure can be contacted on +44-(0)1302-890000.
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