UNDERCOVER 21
Yep you're not dreaming, UCM is back ! First I need to recollect a few
things : I started UCM from issue 15 to 20, taking back after Moondog's long
years of work and activity. He wanted to go on with his new mag inSTabil as he
wasn't happy with the way I ran UCM... Since I went on with aLiVe instead
Moondog decided to get back to UCM that's why we have another issue fully
released under Moondog's responsibility.
First noticable thing about this UCM is the overall design : the cover pic
looks nice (tho clearly converted from a much more coloured pic), the shell by
Moondog is just great and instead of ascii headers, Moondog chose to add
painted bars for the section headings and they all just neat ! Last but not
least Moondog clearly spent hours adding spaces so that every line would be the
same width. Damm I wouldn't do that myself (and surely you have noticed that
already :) but it also means hours of work which isn't much if you consider
that Moondog has been working on this single issue over the last 12 months or
so...
Back to the core of a magazine : the one thing I regret about UCM 21 is
that about 90% of its articles were written by Moondog. Actually the only extra
writers were MC Laser and Ray both members of tSCc. So this is really a 100%
tSCc productions if you see what I mean :)
You'll find the usual sections with tSCc news and projects, ST and Falcon
demos and games reviews, even some gfx turorial and the mixer items. They're
all well written but after a while I suddenly remembered about Moondog's UCM.
Before I forget, you'll enjoy three nice chippies done by MC Laser. They're
cool but I still prefer the variety given by an issue of aLiVe...
Not much to add regarding the content of these articles : they are neatly
written and cover as many topics as could be with some LYNX reviews for
instance. You'll also hear about famous CRUOR crew and other German crews which
have been quite discreet lately. All in one this issue doesn't differ from the
old and good issues of UCM under Moondog's direction.
And this is where the problem lies ! I didn't remember Moondog using so
many pejorative terms when he worked full time on UCM but that's when you know
you shouldn't trust your memory anymore :) Whenever you come to read one of his
articles (which everytime you run an article or so :) You find him using bad
words to describe other people's work. And here I just DON'T agree ! Former UCM
issues may be too thin and their intros kind of sucky but at least some people
moved their butts to get things done and I'll be grateful to them for these
efforts, tho not always state of the art ! I don't want to spend too much time
on personal views on UCM 21 (maybe I'm too drunk already :) but above all I
have to admit I was deeply saddened by Moondog's negative attitude. Okay we're
not ruling this digital world anymore, we're not as numerous as before but the
few of us who still do things are the friendliest guys in the world and that's
why we still cling to our forsaken realm !
Time to end up this painful diskmag review : design and msx are of great
quality and there are plenty of articles to read through. Unfortunately this is
- in my eyes - almost entirely spoilt by Moondog's lame attitude who likes to
judge people as if they were some slaves but I'm afraid he forgot that this was
all about passion and nothing more : there isn't much competition these days
which doesn't mean releases are of low quality (you won't get me telling you
such crap after the great EIL2 !) so I see no reason to slash people this way !
Bottom Line : not a bad issue of back-from-the-dead UCM but surely another
issue spoilt by Moondog's neagtive comments. Ok, these are my views and you
don't have to agree with me, still I'm disappointed by this first issue of UCM
undead... Let's see what the next issue will offer us.
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