> A new user downloads a copy of SimCoupe. If he's not impressed, he'll throw > away SimCoupe after about half an hour and we'll never see him again? So > what programs do you show him? What are the "essential" programs that > anyone with a passing interest must see once?
Another scenario: A user downlaods Simcoupe and runs a demo, then his mate comes around with some cover CD and he has a play with a demo of some software on that which takes full advantage of the hardware [ okay, okay, I'm falling in to the "everyone runs on a PC" trap here ;-) ] which impresses him most. What are the essential programs - to be honest I don't think there are any, at least not for anyone who is running SimCoupe. Demos look pretty but not as pretty as something written for the host platform. Utilities have no point, they are either Sam Specific (MasterDOS), or something a lot more powerful is already available for the machine (ie SamC). That leaves games - most 8bit emulators have the advantage of a very large collection of games, and a lot of people run them because they remember them from their youth. (The games also don't rely on people just going "ooh-pretty" which seems to sell too much games these days - but my mind wanders). The Sam unfortunately doesn't have this base. Which means I'm going to play devils advocate and say there isn't any. The people I see using SimCoupe are those who own a Sam, the "hobbyist" type people who should have owned a Sam, and the odd people wondering what all the fuss is about. People who are interested in the emulator becaues they are interested in the machine. I don't think it has that much opportunity to gain the attention of people off the street. One CD will hold what, 0.6Gb, that's over 600 DSK files. I'd like to see a CD with every Sam Disk every released as a DSK image on it (in standard formats before protection and fancy disk formats were added if possible). You sell that, and include SimCoupe on it, and you have a large slice of history and a potential market. Of course, it'll never happen. Too much personality conflict for a start. > Most users, I guess, would be most interested in games. But we haven't got > many of those available for download... I doubt that utilities, even good > ones, are likely to hold his attention for long either. Quite/ > I think you underestimate the influence of m/c demos on the Sam's > environment... No, I'm happy to be outside the Coders Horseshow rather than within it. I appreciate that Demos helped the development of "real" software for the sam. I just don't think they are interesting. ....@/
