Infinite Frontiers - Helping Keep The Amiga Alive
by Simon Plumbe

Many of you reading this may have heard of Infinite Frontiers at one time or another. We are a non-profit making organization specializing in sci-fi and fantasy and computing/gaming and we have been active in the Amiga scene since 1991 releasing a range of freeware titles, working on commercial releases, plus our latest initiative, which is proving to be quite popular.

Humble Beginnings

I formed Infinite Frontiers back in 1989 (which is now run jointly by myself and Sven Harvey) as a small local sci-fi group running a local Doctor Who fan club (don't laugh!) and producing paper fanzines. We changed the focus after a while to cover all forms of sci-fi and fantasy with a strong emphasis on Star Trek. However, we closed the door on this in early 1990. However, we were still enthusiastic about being involved in sci-fi fandom and fanzine publishing and it was with the arrival of my first Amiga (an A2000) that we started to look towards more ambitions fanzine production.

The Amiga Connection

We had the idea of producing an A4 magazine every couple of months, produced on a small budget and sold locally through comic shops and at sci-fi conventions. We didn't really get the support we needed to do this with our team at the time, and my interest in the Amiga was growing. I was quite interested in the Amiga demo scene, including disk magazines and in September 1990 I decided to mix my love of Star Trek with the Amiga and I started work on what was to become our biggest Amiga hit. "The Final Frontier".

September 1991 saw the launch of the first issue of The Final Frontier, and it held the honor of being the first ever Amiga disk magazine to cover a non-Amiga related subject. This Star Trek fanzine was a little different to most in that it featured not only text, but also artwork from the legendary Tobias Richter (one of the artists behind Star Wars: Rogue Leader on the Nintendo Gamecube!) and eventually from our own newly found talent of Mark Platts, and Gary Moffat. In addition, the magazine featured music from the likes of Bjorn Lynne (in house musician at Team 17 software) and Allister Brimble.

We continued releasing The Final Frontier until 1996 having released 10 issues spanning over 30 disks! We also released a number of other Amiga titles during that time including the Holodeck series of Star Trek slideshows (10 2-disk slideshows), the Illusions series of sci-fi and fantasy slideshows (another 5 slideshows!), and CD World - a disk magazine for CD32, CDTV and CD-ROM enthusiasts.

Once again we were innovating in the Amiga field with Holodeck - the first two slideshows were released in two forms - the standard two-disk edition plus an enhanced version on a single 1.76Mb high-density disk, which featured bonus artwork. To this day, we believe that we are still the only people who have ever released anything for high-density disk drives!

CD Gold

We also had the opportunity to work on a commercial Amiga release - CD Gold. This was an interactive magazine on CD-ROM that was packed with all the usual articles and reviews that you would expect from a traditional magazine, along with audio tracks, video interviews, game demos, free software and much more. I took on the role of editor, and Sven was also involved in a number of areas. It wasn't really a huge success commercially, but it was fun to be able to be involved in a project like that - I guess it was just a little too ahead of its time.

Back To Print.

While we were doing this, we were producing a number of paper-based fanzines including titles dedicated to Star Trek, sci-fi and fantasy, Transformers (a fanzine that is still going today), plus our regular Amiga publication, Amiga Energy which featured a range of interviews, articles, reviews, a cover disk, and much more. We released Amiga Energy at a time when most traditional Amiga magazines were being closed and we helped to fill the void left by our commercial counterparts.

Other Activities

We have never been quiet as an organization since we launched. August 1996 saw a resurgence in our sci-fi activities with the running of a 3-day Star Trek convention in Birmingham which saw the Amiga involved in every step of the way from the design and editing of the convention magazines, the 3D rendered title sequence we produced, and providing a running video display during the convention's discos.

That weekend also saw our Star Trek fan club, Alpha Quadrant, being launched and the Amiga was instrumental in the clubs success, handling the production of all our club magazines as well as all of the behind the scenes admin work.

Infinite Frontiers Online

We have had a website for several years now, but we have experience problems. Our former webmaster left us last year and we were left unable to close our old site down, and in need of starting a new site from scratch - hence the launch in June 2002 of Infinite Frontiers Online - our new official website.

The new site was launched to compliment our existing work areas and to replace our old website. Since it's launch, we have 18 main sections of content ranging from gaming to sci-fi, wrestling to disability issues, music and much more. At present, there is well over 550Mb of files, articles, videos, downloads, music, artwork, games, and an interactive visitor forum spanning over 1,300 files!

The design of the Infinite Frontiers Online site has been kept intentionally simple, and this is something we have been praised for by our visitors. It is our aim to make the site as accessible as possible, quick to load, easy on the eye, and compatible with as many browsers as possible across all formats. We believe that this site is one of the few on the Internet with this level of content that will work on pretty much any web browser in use today on any format.

The Amiga And Our Website

So, what are we up to now, and does the Amiga still feature in our plans in any way? In a word, yes. As I said, our current focus is on our online activities and our website, and we are using this to not only promote the Amiga and publish a range of reviews and articles in our dedicated Amiga section, but also offering several download areas containing free Amiga software for downloading.

There are three main areas to this. The first is our own archive containing most of the issues of The Final Frontier plus all of our slideshows. We have about 60% of our range online at the moment, and we will be adding the rest shortly. We also have the range of Agatron animation disks and slideshows from Tobias Richter. These are again appearing slowly, but there are approximately 90 disks in total, which will all be available freely.

The area we are most proud of is our commercial downloads area. Here we have a vast range of titles across a number of platforms - current and retro - that we have been given permission to give away freely on the site. Unlike many "abandonware" websites, everything on Infinite Frontiers Online has been included with the backing of the original authors and/or publishers and as such, the downloads are completely legal.

At the moment, we have a large selection of well over 100 classic games ranging from the superb Anco range (including Kick Off), Genetic Species, XTreme Racing, Lure Of The Temptress, and many more.

All of these games will work happily on most Amiga systems once converted back down to floppy, as well as on PCs running a suitable Amiga emulator such as Cloanto's officially licensed Amiga Forever package, or WinUAE. We have games spanning 9 different formats at the moment, and with a suitable emulator, the Amiga should be able to run most of these quite happily.

We are adding more titles to the site all the time (with many being added on a daily basis), and we are approaching a large number of companies and authors to seek clearance for their work. We have already been working with a number of companies and we have permission from all of the following already: - 3D Realms (aka Apogee) Anco CDV Cloanto Distant Suns Emurasoft Llamasoft Mutation Software Revolution Software Robinson Technologies Mark Sibly Tuna Technologies and Vulcan Software.

Many people remember these old classics fondly, and we wanted to bring these games and applications back to a new audience without the need for people to resort to piracy. All of these titles were deleted years ago, and they have now become rare items to source the originals. For many people, they are left with little choice but to scour auction sites online to find these classics, and even then there is no guarantee that they can find what they are looking for.

For a number of reasons (which we won't go into here), we've undergone some major changes in the last 12 months, and we have moved our focus towards online activities. All of our events (with the exception of our annual Transformers event, Auto Assembly) have been put on hold while we focus our efforts where they will have the most impact. We will be considering a return to holding events and club meetings in the future, but for now, we feel that the best way we can continue to offer the same level of service to people is through our website.

The Future

We still intend to be active in the Amiga scene for as long as possible. We will continue to support the Amiga online through both the general Amiga content and our downloads section, offering advice and support to anyone wanting help with the Amiga, and we will be only too happy to help any companies out there with any Amiga-related projects.

We are looking at the possibility of developing some original games for downloading from our website and although commercial reality dictates that we will need to produce these for the PC first, we will make sure that anything we release will also be seen on the Amiga under OS4.

We want to make sure that we can play a big a part as possible in the Amiga's future whether it is through promoting the Amiga to non-Amiga enthusiasts, helping out with any Amiga organization, or using our industry contacts and resources to help put Amiga developers in touch with larger games companies to try to get big titles converted for future Amiga users.

The Amiga has a bright future ahead of it. and Infinite Frontiers is determined to be a part of it.

Contact Us

You can visit our websites at the following addresses: www.infinitefrontiers.org and www.autoassembly.org.uk. Alternatively, you can email us at: InfiniteFrontier@aol.com or AutoAssembly@aol.com. Finally, you can write to us at: Infinite Frontiers, PO Box 8966, Great Barr, Birmingham, B43 5ST, United Kingdom

Final Words

As I said, Infinite Frontiers is a non-profit making organization, so how can we afford to run all these services? Well, we usually have small admission charges for our events that help cover costs, but the website is the most expensive area for us to run. This is totally dependent on donations from visitors, advertising and sponsors. If you like what you see on the site and you make use of the downloads section, please consider helping us out!

Thanks.