They never even managed to properly capitalise on the success of the Amiga. While they obviously got a rewarding revenue stream from sales of the Amiga itself, they never succeeded in producing good software or peripherals for their own platform.

Their policy of 'official equals best' was irrevocably tarnished by their grossly oversized and over-priced memory expansion, woefully underperforming hard drives and for the most part, rather poor and outdated software. The only official Commodore product ever worth buying was the 1084 monitor (manufactured by Philips).

After a series of failures in various territories (Commodore Australia was the first to succumb) Commodore ended up broke. Unfortunately the internal finances of the company were so complex that it took well over a year before the regulators could sell off the rights to the Amiga, by which time much confidence had been lost.

New owners, Escom, similarly disappeared into a black hole following their gambit of opening loads of High Street stores in the UK to distribute their PCs. The Amiga market still continued, but without focus and direction, and without much confidence in its sustainability. The PC moved into the void, and all seemed bleak for Amiga aficionados.

But as of last year, the Amiga has an owner again, and not just one interested in the few choice patents that go along with it. Gateway2000 purchased the Amiga and its associated technology for an undisclosed sum, and although too slowly for many people, have begun to chart its future.

It will have a new operating system, a variant of the Canadian-developed QNX (currently being used by, among other people, NASA) - an astute choice. QNX is small, fast, powerful, efficient and friendly - you might say the modern equivalent of the original AmigaOS.

Hardware is also in development, based around a new processor and a completely new way of thinking about computers. The Amiga Classic, as it is now referred to, may have only limited time left, but if there is any sense left in the world, the ideas behind it will live on.

The new Amiga is due to start shipping just this side of the millennium. For the sake of games development, FG hopes it will be a success.