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U C M I S B A C K W H E N N O ON E D R E A M T O F I T !
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Arghhhhhhhh................
Just as I had renounced to see another issue of UCM, Moondog took us all by
surprise ! This release was kinda last-minute-surprise as I heard that Moondog
endured a nasty harddrive crash ! Call it fate or what but he had luckily sent
a preview to some people ! That move saved all the work Eric has put in another
issue and - god ! - I'm so happy for that luck !!
So that I was a bit puzzled when Earx offered to send me UCM24 while it was
not officially released. I was even more stunned when I noticed that the mag
was about 1.4Mb big ! I had to split the archive on my peecee (using evil's
instructions as can be found on dhs.atari.org) and reassemble it on my STe.
Except for that extra process, the mag ran smoothly from my harddrive later.
No intro this time :( We get straight to the cover pic done by hyper active
gfxman C-rem but have look at it yourself (or better said an earlier version :)
What ? It reads UCM Xmass ? You sure ? Maybe UCM got delayed ???
The shell gfx was done by EDO and his brother HIDE (and not NITE as written
in the credits). There are nice tunes done by Tao, 505 and Lotek Style (formely
known as MC Laser) while the module was done by Frequent (haven't heard it yet
to be honest). I really like * all * of them indeed ! Besides there are cool
banners here and there used sections headlines, really stylish and once again
ALIVE! looks kinda poor compared to this.
Let's have a look at the content now : first thing is that only 5 or 6
people wrote stuff, sometimes not more than a single article. Anyway I'm happy
to read another issue of UCM ! Still this issue offers almost 10 articles less
than UCM23 that was released almost 8 months ago :( Here I want to congratulate
Moondog for the HEAVY time consuming work he's done almost alone ! Above all
you should confuse quantity and quality :)
Is it any good then ?
Yeah I know the question is so stupid that I could call myself James :)
Indeed completing another issue of ALIVE! seems to take more time than planned
partly because of that damn UCM ! Yeah I just can't help quitting Everest and
run UCM24 again ! Somebody saaaaaaaaaaave me (oh my sounds like the soundtrack
of that stupid 'Smalville' TV soap :)
Btw before I forget : I was a bit sad - tho not surprised - to see that
only 16 people replied to Moondog's opinion poll ! C'mon you had almost 8
months and here's the respect you show to surviving mags ? Bah that really
sucks :(
You'll find the usual sections here, namely regulars, tSCc self promotion,
lots of reviews and a mixer corner. Here I'd like to point out that the tSCc
propaganda finds me kinda bored fast with every issue as it seems to read
"hurray, we rule, we rule" or something :) Anyway you will be able to enjoy a
very pleasant collection of Ascii art by Lotek who is definitely a great Ascii
artist !
The regulars give us not only the usual info about the birth of this issue
but of course Moondog's views on the diskmag slowdown and lack of support :(
further explanations can also be found in two other articles right under other
diskmags reviews. Tho I partly share his beliefs, I don't think the internet is
killing diskmags (expect for daily news issues of course). I guess you can
easily see the core of that problem and sum it up to : "do you use an Atari or
only fool around with an emulator ?". If you belong to the first category then
you must have loads of floppies under your desk and your Atari harddrive must
be filled with small wonders. If not, I see no point enjoying ATARI stuff under
Steem (tho this is a great piece of code !). Atari stuff is meant to be run on
natural Ataris and mags are part of this imho. Anyway let's refocus on UCM24.
Only three interviews then with Deez/Evolution, Felix/Dune and our beloved
Gods ! Good stuff of course tho I somehow expected more exclusive news :( Still
Moondog is a great interviewer who always knows * A LOT * about the people he
tortures :)
The main part of UCM24 is of course made of EIL3 releases as you can find
all of them here, even before ALIVE! has had a chance to do it :) As usual it's
cool to read different views tho I don't agree with all of them : oki I also
think HALLUCINATIONS looks too oldschool, but I really LOVE Grimey and Moving
into Darkness. Anyway Moondog does his job with the usual amount of skills,
describing stuff, showing a lot of snapshots and of course telling us why he
liked or disliked stuff and I like his style a lot.
Talking about EIL3, you'll be happy to be able to read not only a report
but also the realtime article UCM has always been so faithful to ! To speak the
truth I didn't care about setting one for ALIVE! knowing that I would have to
be patient and read UCM instead !
UCM24 also offers a wide range of games reviews but haven't read all of
them I had to reckon that most of these games were of very little interest :(
Also I'd like to point out that some of them were quite old, I'm thinking of
BATTLEZONE which is a nice WORMS convertion that's been on my harddrive for
quite a long time already...
Last but not least some articles managed to get me really entertained esp
the fake Scene Corner (the usual Scene news mostly reads stuff we all know),
also a retro on the JAGUAR or the celebrities deathmatch (moan, this guy is a
complete moron and he can mail me anytime at survivor@atari.org :)
Last Words :
This issue leaves me with balanced feelings : oh content is good for sure
and it covers all latest releases, not only from EIL3 but also demos like DELTA
or intros by MJJ, but UCM stills misses different flavours :( This is easily
explained by Moondog's heavy work in almost every parts ! Besides Moondog seems
to have lost his bitterness (gosh am I missing it now ?) and does a wonderful
job ! Do you need to read UCM24 then ? OF COURSE YOU DO DUMBASS !! Hehe I like
to be violent sometimes :) It brings some air to a dying domain, diskmags,
shows the usual qualities with cool gfx, msx and great written articles. More
of the latters could only improve the issue but we already know the problem :(
I sincerely hope we can read another issue of UCM someday and that some of you
come to HATE Alive! and decide to write for UCM instead ! :) Another great
issue then tgo a bit slim imho but this time closer to current events !
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