Well, I have a double feeling about that period. There were still quite a few releases, but everyone knew the Amiga was dying. This meant there was hardly anyone interested in "investing" into this scene ; the result was a sort of monopoly by a few selected groups. Prestige is the best example of that and their Consoles-section Cream had a similar impact. (Especially for JAP-releases) Prestige had the resources and hardly any (real) competition. In the rare event they did have some competition, the talent of their members (Mok!) made the difference.
But 1996 was also the year when all BBS started to hit their all-time records ; especially in Europe. This was thanks to Telnet-access and the fact that with a relative low investment, you could run a lot of nodes. All of a sudden, it no longer mattered where a BBS was located and speeds up to 2000 or 3000 CPS were an incredible thing. Quite a few BBS’s ran Amiga / Consoles / PC (Games only) sections.
Next, 4 things happened:
1. Nobody wanted calling cards anymore, as they became scarce, unreliable and expensive. The downside was that the scene became global and was no longer a closed user group.
2. The ‘normal’ BBS-nodes were hardly ever used and sysops started decomissioning them to the point BBS were "Telnet-only"
3. The Amiga section started cluttering up with Aminet and PD-stuff and the rare ‘real’ release.
4. Since people had to be on the internet anyway to get access to BBS, they started looking at different ways of getting their stuff. (Webpages, IRC, FTP’s)
In the end, BBS were only used by die-hard fans & nostalgia-freaks. And a new type of scene emerged: FTP-sites ; and we all know how the story went from there.
Come to think of it, even the scene is a cycle