Chapter 11 - Diskmags Digest..
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As I promised a little while ago, here's what a sample chapter of the (not
anytime soon) forthcoming history of the Atari demo scene might look like.
I decided to pick on a subject where I had a great familiarity and
affinity, namely the 'The history of disk-magazines on the Atari scene and
their effect from 1985 to the present.'
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The history of 'demo scene' and 'disk-magazine' is considered to have
started with the Dutch publication 'ST-News'. This didn't start off self-
consciously as a 'scene' publication, showing a young keen hobbyist
perspective in the early issues, courtesy of the two main editors, Frank
Lemmen and Richard Karsmakers.
It was out of the blocks very early on, in 1986. ST-News started as a
simple ascii newsletter.. It acquired more and more trappings of a diskmag
as we understand the medium. A GEM menu shell and text viewer was created,
and more and more features such as in-shell soundchip music were added. It
started off on a games and general interest ticket, but was picking up
more interest in the emerging Atari demo scene from 1987. Crucially, the
ST News team made contact and developed friendships with what would become
the not totally unknown 'Exceptions/TEX' demo crew, later to become the
core of Thalion Software.
The golden age of ST News commenced in 1987. It was almost the exclusive
club-house for the still emerging ST demoscene.. It acted as a mirror in
which the early sceners could polish and admire their latest efforts. A
function carried out by the succeeding diskmags too. ST-News was
appreciated and emulated for offering a friendly informal 'insider'
viewpoint and a relaxed atmosphere. ST News pioneered the practice of
providing useful information for many wannabe sceners to get themselves
started, for example, the UK-based 'Lost Boys' took notice of this and
started to stake their own claim to demoscene fame.
The style of ST News early reviews, party reports and done in realtime
'field trip' reports also carved a template for the other publications to
follow later on. Even gimmicky innovations like the hidden article quest
were started here too. Of course with an increasing involvement of the
eary demoscene with the magazine, there were small intro's made specially
for the magazine, again a feature that was followed more or less
faithfully by later publications. Of course, the whole idea of disk
magazines are only confined by the authors imagination (or serious lack
thereof!) Fortunately, with the combined talents of Mr Karsmakers and
Stefan Postuma that was never a problem, and ST-News started a trend to
diversify from strict scene coverage, and into some seriously off-topic
areas of the author's own interests. Anything from heavy metal concert
reviews to self-created fiction got in there, nothing was too implausible
to appear in ST-News.
The height of ST-News fame and power culminated in their grand tour around
the great and good of the Atari ST games and demo creators in the United
Kingdom. This appeared as a massive trip report in volume 4, issue 4.
After that, it seemed that they had done everything they had wanted to,
and there were no new horizons left. So in early 1990, ST News 'died' for
the first time.
This loss was felt keenly in many quarters, and a certain other person was
motivated to pick up where they left off, this person was Sammy Joe,
otherwise known as Mike Schussler in more respectable company, and the
fruits of his creation was called Maggie!
Maggie was launched in June 1990, and it sought to carry on the 'scene
insider' perspective pioneered by ST-News. it helped that Sammy Joe had
his own network of contacts within the expanding Atari demo scene. Being
part of the Lost Boys demo crew helped the cause a lot too. There was a
wider overview of parts of the demo scene, that the more 'Thalion-centric'
ST-News might not have quite picked up on. Physically, Maggie resembled
ST-News, with a menu shell in GEM almost identical to ST-News, apart from
a scary cartoonish four colour cover picture, where ST-News had been bare
of this. Maggie coverage was very much about the attitudes and views of
the emerging parts of the demoscene, less of the established players, and
it could be described as a 'younger' version of ST-News. We really got to
see people such as the French scene here properly for the first time. The
writing quality of much of Maggie could be charitably described as
'erratic', or less charitably described as accurately reflecting the ages
of the authors concerned, with a wide variety of unknown authors joining
in, but even in the early days, there were straws blowing in the wind that
indicated that this publication might have a long term future.
Meanwhile, ST-News somehow revived itself and became 'undead'. The grand
old king of diskmags was back, but it was never quite the same as before,
having surrendered some of its leading edge on the scene to Maggie.
Maggie became the motor for the scene, and developed its own distinctive
style, even managing to maintain itself after the initial burst of cult
popularity when it launched. The reactions to it n the wider Atari
community were mixed, and not all favourable, unlike the universally
establishment favoured ST-News. For issue four, it incorporated
'Diskmagazin', a short-lived German langauge production made by Timo
Schmidt, whose input disappeared shortly afterwards.
Maggie carried on happily through the rest of 1990 and 1991, but the first
big change came when the main editor, Sammy Joe, relocated back to
Germany, taking Maggie out of the loose control of the Lost Boys. Instead,
he affliated Maggie with the German demo group Delta Force, who had big
plans for Maggie. These saw fruition in the form of a brand-new demo-ish
and good looking custom menu and text displayer. This was intended to
update Maggie and keep it ahead of the growing competition from new rival
publications, many of which were going their own way, and abandoning the
staid GEM menu shell style made commonplace by earlier diskmags.
Maggie saw changes in other areas too, not all of them favourable. The
issue release frequency, never reliable from the start, dropped away to
less frequent releases, and Delta Force sought to build on Maggie's mildly
non-establishment nature by adding stronger content, and a "Lamers F*ck
off!" harder and crueller scener image. At some point, Sammy Joe severed
contact with Delta Force, and their interest culminated in the memorable
(for all the wrong reasons) issue ten.
After that, there was a prolonged silence. There hadn't been a formal
announcement about quitting, but it seemed that was on the cards. From a
personal perspective, other plans were being laid, and there is a story
about that a bit later in this chapter, then Sammy Joe introduced himself
back into the story in early 1993, with a copy of the Maggie source code.
A new team, comprising a couple of the UK-based writers CiH (Chris
Holland) and Felice (Richard Spowart) prodded it around for a while,
coming up with a cobbled-together and not totally perfect 'relaunch' issue
number 11 in the spring of 1993. There was a new focus for this old
diskmag, as Atari's final home computer, the Falcon '030 had not long been
released, and CiH especially was interested in increasing coverage in this
new machine, in an echo of Richard Karsmaker's early ST News inspiration
coming from the newness of the Atari ST in 1986.
After that early start, some basic quality control reasserted itself for
issue 12, including a patch for Maggie to work on the Falcon. A name which
had been involved in contributing some memorable articles came to have an
increasing role in Maggie evolution. That person was Leon O'Reilly, known
by a whole bunch of pseudonyms! Over the following 'Teenage' numbered
issues, other members of the crew 'Reservoir Gods' joined in. There was a
satisfactory growth in the Falcon demo scene in the mid-nineties, duly
covered by Maggie, and it started to look something like what it should
have been all along.
Maggie took a step beyond the role ordained for it, when it produced a
Falcon-specific separate edition in time for its 5th birthday. This was
not the first Falcon-specific menu shell, and honours may well go to the
Diskbusters magazine, of which we will consider in due course. This
cemented the involvement of the Reservoir Gods, and to a certain extent,
their interests and priorities were a major part of Maggie.
Maggie continued more or less in the same vein, with CiH firmly ensconsed
as the main editor. One trend, which Maggie started off, were the
specificially themed one-off special issues. The prototype for this, was
the early "Maggie Guide to a Videogaming Lifestyle", made by the cover
artist Kev Dempsey (known as SH3). This early look into the world of
retrogaming and collectormania, before Ebay was even mentioned, was well
received. Maggie also took an interest in the wider world, and the next
themed issue was a diskmag parody of mainstream computer magazines of the
day, "Maggie Eezi-PeeCee". For a hasty throw-together, it came off
remarkably well. Other themed one-off issues included the anti
conspiracist "Psycho-Babble Guide", and right at the end of Maggie's life,
the "Ascii-Nation" cartoon issue, which was probably the very last thing
to be created with the Maggie menu shell.
But to swing back to the optimistic mid-nineties, Maggie made an alliance
with the other big disk magazines of the day, namely ST news, and the
Diskbusters Magazine. This 'big three' team-up was known as 'Magnetic
Interlude', and a short period of mutual co-operation and article
exchanges followed. Magnetic Interlude never really got that far, as both
ST-News and eventually Diskbusters (DBA) flickered out. ST-News lasted
until 1996, having managed to hang on for the full decade. This made
everyone else pause for breath, as we thought we were doing well to make a
fifth birthday!
Even the 'humble' ST menu shell had a massive revamp, courtesy of Steve
'Tat' Tattersall', a massively talented coder on the UK atari scene. If
there was ever a 'best' issue of Maggie, I would narrowly place Maggie 21
ahead of the 5th birthday issue 18. This was organised in a massive hurry,
in time for the Goodmans Computer show in Birmingham, to a tight deadline,
and showed off the abilities of the combined team at its best.
With ST-News gone, and DBA not doing so much, Maggie was the diskmag
'establishment' now, so what of the many challengers and imitators?
The arrival of Maggie in 1990 seemed to stimulate others to take an
interest in producing disk magazines leaning towards the less formal parts
of the Atari scene. I think the prevailing logic must have been "If Sammy
Joe can make a diskmag, WE can!" In this light, such publications as the
prolifically appearing Ledgers magazine appeared. This might be considered
to be a bit of a Maggie follower, but it had lots of unique touches of its
own. One issue is fondly remembered (or possibly not) for a game or
megademo style interface, where opening a door led to a selection of
articles. My admittedly vague memory also recalls that there were many
articles, but a lot of short ones.
Another magazine with a short shelf-life but influential consequences for
the future, was 'HP Source'. This started in a fairly relaxed fashion as
the centre of growing interest in the UK-specific STOS demo coding scene,
many of whom had made contact recently. It fetured one Leon O'Reilly as
the man in charge. He was an early Maggie contributor who revealed a
formidable writing talent which grew as time went on. 'HP Source' was the
vehicle for the original plan to succeed Maggie, after Delta Force dropped
out. However events took their own path as Maggie came back from the dead,
and Leon diversified his many talents into new areas.
There was a diskmag for almost every area of interest in the Atari scene,
including some activities which could be described as rather "underground"
in nature. The self-depreciatingly titled "Pure Bollocks" diskmag was so
underground, you had to take a shovel and metal detector and dig up each
new issue from unconsecrated ground at midnight!. There were only three
made, but with an indefinite threat of a fourth appearing for some time
after. It was memorable for its minute-by-minute coverage of the goings-on
amongst the stallholders at the Glasgow Barrowlands market.
Another publication catering for the 'leet' scener was "Amazine", made by
Mad Vision. A copy was reputedly sent to the anti-piracy organisation FAST
or someone like that?
As we discussed in passing in several places earlier, another influential
disk magazine was the "Diskbusters magazine", or "DBA Mag". This was made
by some of the Dutch scene who came after the Karsmakers era. Diskbusters
had a considerable early history, had evolved a nice custom menu shell,
and became one of 'big three' during the Magnetic Interlude years in the
mid nineties. it was the first to arrive with a Falcon-specific custom
shell which was very impressive at the time. This managed to beat Maggie,
who had been thinking about it, but weren't ready to debut their effort
before the summer of 1995. Diskbusters took the unfortunate decision of
going for a Falcon 030 only issue, abandoning the still considerable ST
scene. After a couple of neat issues, and too many compilation issues, the
main editor, Sietze 'Slimer' Postma, lost interest. It wasn't quite the
end, as a long time later, in 1996, it went back into an uneasy half-life
as 'Fun-Mag', but unsupported by any writers, soon died again.
There were several other publications, over whose story I will
discracefully skim over, such as the French "DNT Papers", the Finnish-
based "Eye on the Scene", the follow-up to the Admirables 'Massive Mag'.
Eye on the Scene featured a better than average menu shell. K-Klass, aka
SH3, a not so obscure artist, drew some graphics for this when he was
taking time off from Maggie.
Then there was 'Toxic Mag'. This was a French language diskmag, slanted
towards francophile scene interests, and with quite a nice custom shell.
This started in 1991, lasted until double figure issue numbers, and
latterly became HTML based, one of the first regular diskmags to use the
Worldwide Web.
There were even one-off oddities such as the vey Falcon 030 specific "How
to Code". This was shareware with a vengeance, featuring a reasonable
shell, but massively restricted unless you coughed up 50FF to unlock the
better articles!
Undercover MagaScene, or "UCM" turned out to be another long-term player.
A relative latecomer in 1993, it experienced at least 2 or 3 deaths and
rebirths under the editor, Eric 'Moondog' Henschler. UCM became notable,
even notorious for some fairly sharp reviews. In the 1997-98 period, there
was a bit of a feud about with Maggie about some of the content of each
others publications. UCM was taken over by Sebastien "ST Survivor" Larnac
for several issues. The style calmed down, so much so that it then merged
with the remaining Maggie interests to make 'Alive' in 1999. But this was
not the end of that particular story. UCM was revived yet again by Eric,
and affiliated to the Sirius Cybernetics demo crew. The time spent away
from his baby seemed to benefit Eric, as the later UCM issues took a more
objective, controlled and less personal approach, and in those final
issues, really realised its potential as a pedigree diskmag.
Unfortunately, the strain as a one-man band was telling too much, so it
died for the final(?) time sometime in 2004.
But we've left the life-story of Maggie hanging in midair for far too
long! What happened next?
Maggie was able to carry on in a similar vein after issue 21. If anything,
the average issue size kept getting a bit larger, approaching the file
size of ST-News in its glory days. There were some major blips in that
happy time, such as the feud with Undercover Mag previously mentioned,
then all of a sudden, all sorts of outside time pressures closed in on the
lives of the Maggie team.
Maggie came under pressure from new work-related pressures affecting many
people, and even the time-destroying consequences of developing
relationships affecting others (cough!) The release rate, never prolific
in recent times, crashed to new lows. By the time the new millenium was
looming, Maggie was clinging on by its fingernails stubbornly to make it
to its 10th birthday, which it did, just, during the STNICCC 10th
Anniversary gathering, in the period before Xmas 2000. But did that mean
the end for CiH, the longstanding editor of Maggie? Sure it didn't!
There was a back-up plan, an entirely new diskmag, rising from the ruins
of both Maggie and Undercover. This was the happily named "Alive" Diskmag.
In fact it started a little bit before the officially planned ending of
Maggie. the groundwork had been laid in the summer of 1999. Alive has
continued to date, has survived one major editor change. (When ST Survivor
dropped out, Heinz "Cyclone" Rudolf took over. There must be some mystical
law that dictates that an Englishman and a German have to work together to
make a successful Atari diskmag? (The Englishman/Frenchman combination
also worked pretty well!) Alive, almost without realising, managed to pass
its 5th anniversary, and is the focus of the present day Atari scene. It
reflects the increasing role of the internet in the last few years, as it
also handily has all issues online in HTML virtual form, as well as the
traditional diskmag menu.
You might think that the story of diskmags and the Atari demo scene had
come to a stop at this point, but there is at least one other publication
going down the Falcon 030 specific trail blazed by the Diskbusters a
decade before. This is the Chosneck (Garlic) diskmag, a brilliant Polish
Falcon-specific diskmag. It seems to have taken things to the next stage
as it is strictly a hard-disk mag, as typically the file sizes are very
big, and certainly will not fit onto a floppy disk anymore. It most
closely resembles the DBA double-disk Falcon issues, but manages more in-
depth and better quality articles, and some brilliant awe-inspiring front-
ends with access to truecolour pics etc. Unfortunately, as for any other
publication these days, regardless of the hardware platform, the lowered
overall scene activity rate, and accompanying real-lie time pressures mean
that Chosneck is subject to irregular and infrequent issue release dates.
I might also mention that apart from those diskmags made with the Atari
demo scene in mind, there were a lot of other diskmags, catering for many
other areas of Ataridom, some reflecting specific interest groups like the
long-running 'Stosser', covering coding for the STOS language, even in
the case of STEN (ST Enthusiasts Newsletter), taking a distainful approach
to the more juvenile antics of certain demoscener publications. Others,
like Power Mag, successfully operated as a pre-internet forum for their
groups of admirers. One or two, like 'ST+' even managed to donate some new
writing talent to us on the way!
The internet has helped the cause of retro-computing and non-mainstream
hobbyist platforms in a lot of ways. Promoting the role of diskmags isn't
one of them! The World Wide Web has taken over as the main transmitter of
news, and community meeting place from the diskmags. However, if a diskmag
is well written and regarded, they can still be a cherished item in the
modern demo scene, and the Atari scene in particular.
So to sum up, diskmags in the early days of the demo scene were the mirror
and the motor of the general scene. This role has been lost to other more
omnipresent, faster and more influential media. However, whether we are
talking about the old scene, or the current situation, people are always
vain and like to see their name in print, and have nice things said about
them by their contemporaries. This factor remains constant right through
to the present day!
CiH - Dec '06 - Initial Chapter version for Alive Mag.
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