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The Atari market may well be changing, with stories of doom and gloom abounding in the Atari press. There still remains the fact that some companies just seem to keep going, and refuse to lie down and die. One such is 16/32, and David Howell spoke to its proprietor Nick Harlow at his shop in the High Street in Strood.
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Although games cover most of the shelf space, Atari hardware can also be seen displayed throughout the shop. I began the interview by asking Nick to cast his mind back to the beginning of this venture and tell me about how it all got started.
"I have always been involved with comms. It has always been one of my great interests ever since I had a Spectrum. When I got the Spectrum I got this free membership to Prestel. I got hooked, I still am hooked. I know some of the guys from Micronet. It just went from there.
"In between having my Spectrum and my Atari kit, I had gone through an apprenticeship, in working controls. I worked for a company called ITT based in south London. I got my HND. I'm a good engineer, but it's not really my stock-in-trade. I tried out different jobs, even becoming a manager for McDonalds. I'll tell you what, it is a really good learning experience for sales. I then spent a couple of years travelling. This is about the time I got hooked with the Atari. Also at this time I had migrated to a job with BT. I then got made redundant from BT. After that I got a job with a computer company called SDL. And I also worked on the Atari help line, which further fed my interest in the Atari.
"Then still doing comms I bought my first Atari. I sold all of my Spectrum equipment: the 128, the disk drives and hundreds of games. I just managed to scrape together enough to buy this £499 computer. My parents couldn't believe it. They thought I was mad. It was one of the first that came into the country.
"At this time I also got a modem. There weren't a lot of Atari users at that time. I was playing a thing called Starnet. I played this game, and this area called 16/32 started up. There were all of ten users. This was the very beginning. We were all saying, ooh we've got these STs, what do we do with them. We couldn't even download software from Prestel because it's this archaic way of downloading stuff that no one had ever heard of before. So I said, I know we could start a library. We all said who are we going to get to do that. Muggins here put his hand up. That's how the library started, just for ten users. I have now a mailing list of over five thousand. The actual area closed when Micronet died about three years ago.
"I then started selling via mail order. I opened the shop, but I nearly tried to find a bridge to jump off as we had just taken our very first major loss — it nearly finished me actually. It has taken just under two years to recover from that, that was how bad it was. Now we're relatively stable. A lot of good people have helped us in the past. The person that deserves most mention for that is Neal Onions (Compo UK). We're here and we're staying.
"I look back at it, I could have waited for the 520STFM or the 520 FM, but I went out and did the whole thing. I have never regretted it. Atari has always been a pet of mine, a favourite. I have used other computers, I am reasonably good with most types of computer. I can certainly find my way around them, fault-find them and repair them if necessary. I know when I haven't got the equipment or expertise and farm it out. But Ataris have always had that little corner. I have met some real characters since I starting with Atari. Most of the decent people are still in the game."
We then talked about the news that there would be an Atari emulator for the Macintosh and the fact that a lot of Atari users are moving to Apple as the obvious upgrade for them.
"I have a Mac, not a tremendously powerful one. I will be buying a new Mac — I am looking at the Quadra series. I think for anyone who is leaving the Atari, the Mac is the obvious upgrade route. OK, so what's in front of me? A bloody big powerful PC, does the job, I hate it. I could not run my business without it. It runs my accounts. If there was a package on the Atari, I would use it. My TT would then be in front of me, as it was, up until about a year ago."
I asked Nick about the Atari bashing that has gone on for years. As he had worked for the Atari help line for a time, I wondered what his thoughts were on this subject.
"My honest opinion is that Atari couldn't have done it any differently. I think Atari could work at their PR a bit, but considering they are here and Commodore aren't, I don't see how they could have done it any differently.
"They are a commercial company that have produced a mass market machine, one that has sold very well and still has a hardcore user base. The machine is years old. They have to move on. They cannot keep pumping money into a technology that is dead, in terms of the technology that it is based on. It has had a bloody good life span. The machines that we have to be looking to now are: TTs, Falcons, Eagles and the Medusa. If this is the new Atari route, fine. It is up to third parties now to support the machine and keep the public interested. That is really all we can do. What Atari could do is make it easier to get hold of Atari machines. But personally I can't see how Atari could have done it any differently. I don't think Atari have done that badly considering we have been through the worst world recession since the 20s.
"The best route to have taken would have been for Atari to have reaffirmed their presence with the Falcon. The Falcon is a bloody nice machine. It's got a couple of major failings, but overall it's a really nice machine. I think that if Atari had taken some of the money from the Jaguar and used it to push the Falcon better, then it may have been seen as the natural successor to the ST.
"Atari could make it easier for third parties to support their machines in some cases. I'm thinking that it has taken a long time for products such as Ease to hit the market. If Atari had licensed their architecture a little earlier, we could have had a few more clones on the market. It would have been nice to have a really portable ST. Imagine that!
"The fact is that Atari are not going to produce any more STs or Falcons unless they have some money up front. If the Jaguar proves to be a success, and everyone who has an Atari, even if they don't get one, should be hoping that it is a great success. That is going to be the major money spinner for the next five years. If Atari can make a success of the Jaguar, then there will be more money that should go into development of Falcon, whatever. But if anyone expects it to be in the next six to eighteen months, forget it. It won't be for five years at least."
Atari in the end didn't push the Falcon as hard as they could have. I asked Nick if he felt its relative price was its Achilles heel, that and the fact that there are so few programs that take full advantage of its features.