Aurora Works

Reassuring signs of life in the Amiga community

By Michael Webb, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief, MikeWebb@CompuServe.COM

In an era when we're accustomed to wondering, "How many Amiga companies have either gone out of business or quit the platform THIS month?", it's very uncommon to see a new company entering the Amiga market. Recently, however, a company by the name of Aurora Works appeared, and announced its intentions to the Amiga community.

To summarize, Aurora Works intends to produce high-quality games for the Amiga, with a general emphasis on higher-powered systems such as those with 68060's and graphics boards (using CyberGraphx). They intend to make the software system-friendly, something that has improved significantly over the years, but still has been lacking among Amiga games as a whole.

We eagerly await new developments from Aurora Works. Rather than say more, I will include here a press release which was intended to be included in the December 1996 issue of The Amiga Monitor. Due to e-mail congestion, the information was temporarily lost. My apologies for any inconvenience that caused.

The following is a press release for Aurora Works Inc.
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We would like to announce the launch of a new Amiga software company, Aurora Works Inc. AW's primary focus is to create quality games for Amiga computers, especially the higher-end Amiga machines. Our first commercial release, _Zone 99_ , is scheduled for release in March, 1997 with our main project, Betrayed, to be released in time for Christmas next year. Demo and shareware versions of each title will be available sooner so check our website at http://www.auroraworks.com for more details. Aurora Works' purpose is to support the future of the Amiga computer and the new technologies that are being created to bring that bright future to light!

For more information contact us at the following mailing address or email us at info@auroraworks.com

Aurora Works Inc.
358-114 Queen Mary Rd.
Kingston, ON K7M 7E8
Canada

Phone: +1 (613) 549-0204

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Because we were a bit late in getting this information "to press," some facts relevant to Aurora Works have been changed and updated. The following, taken from correspondence with Aurora Works, is very recent, and should be used in conjunction with the above press release.

"If you have already visited our site, I would encourage you to revisit again...A few points that have changed in the game structure for instance is the 640x480 screen for Cybergraphics users will no longer be 8 bit but 16, and due to the large amount of sound and graphic data, 'Zone 99' (which is the working title) will only be a cdrom release. There were too many animations, mods and other data to fit the game we wanted to create onto DD disks. The data for one zone alone (uncompressed) is over 3 megs. With the expanded scope of the project, the release has moved to late spring from the original end of March time frame. We are excited about the progress that has been made and we look forward to sending demos for review to Amiga magazines in the not too distant future."

I'd personally like to welcome Aurora Works to the Amiga community. From what I've seen so far, we can expect many fascinating things to be forthcoming from them.

The Aurora Works web site is being updated frequently, so if you want to see the latest, you might want to stop by there. Again, the address is http://www.auroraworks.com

It shall be interesting to see what happens next!