Magazine Menagerie Redux

The latest issues of two Amiga mags landed on my doorstep last week and both are worthy of comment.

Amiga Addict issue 5 continues the great work of previous editions and provides an informative and entertaining read for Amiga fans past and present. The highlight of this month was the focus on UFO: Enemy Unknown, a sci-fi strategy title that was released in 1994. Also called X-COM: UFO Defense in America, this became an instant classic upon release and still has a major following today. A recent crowd-funding drive by author David L Craddock for a "making of" book was extremely successful and it was great to see a bit more coverage in Amiga Addict. 

The piece on Vista Pro was also a great read. A 3D terrain generator, it was most famously known in the early 1990's for creating the Mars-scapes for Arthur C Clark's The Snows of Olympus. Not a package I could afford back then, nor the Amiga capable of getting the best out of it, Vista Pro disappeared a few years later. However, modern day users can get hold of Terragen 4 by Planetside Software. Whilst the full package costs $299 for a perpetual licence, you can pay a subscription fee (ranging from $12 p/m, $33 per quarter and $120 per annum for the Creative version) or download a free version with limited features but enough to get you into the package and maybe spend some cash. That's something I shall be looking at soon.

The greatest thing, however, about this issue was the cover disk! Yes, they have had a disk lineout on the front cover since issue 1 but this time, there is actually a demo cover disk image to go with it! No, not a physical disk, after all, not sure how many people would be able to use that, but a quick download of a three-disk set of ADF files and you get a demo of Bean verses The Animator. A fun shooter with a great soundtrack, the full game is due for release in July. It also supports lightguns to really take you back to the 90's! Hopefully, the publishers will be able to include more "cover disks" in future issues. 

The other magazine that landed was issue 150 of Amiga Future, which was also the first issue of my subscription. I bit the bullet and subbed for a year because I enjoyed the copy of issue 149 that I'd bought as a one off and they are having a drive to increase the page count of the magazine. To do that, they need additional subscribers. At present, they are 13 new subscribers away from adding four additional pages per month. 

Published bi-monthly, the latest issue had some cracking articles in it, including a good review of the Raspberry Pi 400, Amiga Forever 9 (you can read my thoughts about that here) and Apollo OS. There was, of course, the regular column by Trevor Dickinson and the usual high number of news articles. A good range of games reviews were also included and the overall package is very much worth the €7 cover price. There is also a cover CD available if you wish to pay more (the cover price per issue goes up to €9.90) and this caters for the multiple OS options Amiga currently supports - AmigaOS4, AROS, MorphOS and Classic. 

Amiga Addict and Amiga Future offer different takes on the existing Amiga market and that is a good thing for both them and the market in general. Much like the Amiga magazine scene of the early 1990's, where there were multiple titles appealing to a wide range of users, these two magazines compliment each other and should, in my humble opinion, be subscription options for every fan of the Amiga. As it stands at the moment, I would not hesitate to renew these subscriptions when the current ones run out. 

You can find out more about Amiga Addict here, and Amiga Future here.

Magazine Menagerie - Part Three - Amiga Addict

The third and final part of the Magazine Menagerie and we come to a review that I had said I wouldn't do. When reviewing the second issue of Amiga Addict, I'd said I wouldn't post another review of the magazine unless there was something to say. With my post on the latest issue of Amiga Future here, I decided that it would be worth adding a few comments about the latest Amiga Addict. If you're expecting a face off between the two, sorry, you're not going to get that. Spoiler alert: if you can afford to get both English print Amiga magazines, do it. They have different approaches and styles and, as I said yesterday, are great companion pieces.

The overview - another great issue. The new Across the Pond column was intriguing and should offer some good tales in future episodes. The Amiga Ireland 2021 report was interesting and gave rise to thoughts of attending next year (maybe, who knows, what with costs, travel and COVID). The first part of a series on the legacy of Commodore promises much and I hope it delivers in future instalments. There's an amusing tale of attending the World of Amiga show in 1994 and believe me, war games shows can be kinda similar, especially the Sunday ones after say 1.30pm... though we never leave kit behind. The second part of the Memories of Dave Needle was suitably funny and poignant, and the multi-page feature on the Amiga and the Jungle music scene was both eye opening and bewildering - it's not my favourite music genre by any means but it was an interesting read. Two pages are dedicated to AOZ Studio may be of interest from a developer's point of view, though I would check out the subscription costs before deciding anything - the free version contains adverts, the monthly sub is €9 and a two year license is €89 - not extravagant by any means but something to be wary of. The games reviews were varied (I remember playing Transarctica and, from vague recollections, think the review is spot on), and I particularly liked the review of Flink, a CD32 title that had previously escaped my attention. The interview with the designer/graphics artist was icing on the cake. Naturally, the regular sections were also worth reading.

I did get a huge dose of nostalgia reading about Games-X. Although short lived, it was a regular pick up from the post office/newsagents my mates and I passed on the way to school. After all, what else was dinner money for??? The magazine, as I recall, was a fun read and more akin to a comic than a traditional games magazine in its price and paper quality, though it was 30 years ago, so I could very well be wrong here. A good magazine at the time, and one that should be remembered for doing something a bit different. 

The highlight of this issue for me was the long awaited Unamiga review. After unforeseen postal delays, here was a take on a piece of hardware that I had no idea existed back when I did my Alternative Computing, but at what cost post a few months back. Basically, an FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) recreation board, the Unamiga can be one of several computers depending upon the "core" selected. From an Amiga point of view, it is equivalent to a Motorola 68020 with 2MB of Chip RAM and 20MB of Fast RAM - a pimped out A500/A2000 is you like. Other "cores" can include the Spectrum NEXT, the original Spectrum, the C64 and the MSX amongst others. This, for the princely sum of €152 (about £131) for the A500/Checkmate 1500 case compatible board. Sounds great, doesn't it? The review is gushing, which it has every right to be - I have seen enough on the Unamiga elsewhere to consider it a lovely piece of kit, though if you're not in possession of an A500 case or suitable peripherals (keyboard, monitor, case, power supply etc) then you're going to spend a tad more than €152. Still, cheaper than a Vampire and anything available or promised by A-Eon. Sadly, getting hold of one is likely to be be a probable as a lottery win, as these are produced in small batches on an as and when basis. After all, a hobbyist group in a niche market. Such is the way of things. 

Anyway, cracking work and more of the same for next issue please! You can order a copy (or subscribe) at the Amiga Addict website. As for me and my ideas of running the Amiga Classic OS, there's always Amiga Forever.

Amiga Addict - Issue Two Review

The latest issue of Amiga Addict landed through the letter box at the beginning of the week and it was something I'd really been looking forward to. When it was announced this issue was for sale, I took the opportunity to subscribe for 12 issues, which not only gets me a physical copy in the post but also a pdf copy on the day of publication. Although I downloaded that copy, I resisted the temptation to read it as the whole point of subscribing to enjoy the physical mag itself. Still, it's nice to have an electronic copy I can transfer to a tablet for future reference. So was issue 2 worth waiting for? Oh, yes!

But before we get into that, a quick note. This will be the last "review" of Amiga Addict from me. By that, I mean I won't be putting up identikit posts every month as that will just get a tad monotonous. However, when there is something to talk about, maybe an article that has caught my attention, or something I have followed up on after reading about it in the magazine, then I'll put out a post that references the mag. As it stands, my final comments at the bottom of page should be taken as writ until such time as I tell you otherwise. You'll also note, by the way, that I've only put one picture in this post, and that's of the cover. If you want to see more, go visit the Amiga Addict website and buy a copy. 

For the magazine itself, it begins with the usual regular sections (News, Keyboard Warriors, Back in the Day and Demoscene), which are entertaining and informative as before. However, the bulk of the magazine is made up of articles that definitely made me think subscribing was a good idea and these are divided into four sections: Amiga Focus, Amiga Insight, On Screen and Testbench.

The Amiga Focus section is comprised of five pieces: a photo montage of Amiga Addict in the hands of the public, the Amiga on the high street, UK user groups and meets, memoirs of an Amiga gamer and  Amiga magazines. I particularly liked the one on UK user groups, though sadly there isn't one in the north-east of England.

Amiga Insight contains the meat of the magazine, the four pages making up the first part of Memories of Dave Needle being both funny and poignant, with part two following next month. The six pages on DMA Design brought new insights of the famous software developer, whilst A day in the life of Amiga Action was a lovely little nostalgia trip to the 1990's. Finally, we have a two page article on Demoparties containing an interview with organiser Ruairi Fullam. Each of the articles is well written, no fluff, no filler, and all very interesting.

On Screen gives us games, from opinion piece Six of the Best, to a game guide for Moonstone and reviews of The Addams Family, Jim Power in 'Mutant Planet' (never heard of it but I do want to play it now after reading the review), No Second Prize and Super Sprint DRS. I quite like the retro reviews, especially as it brings titles that I knew nothing about to my notice. That's part of the reasoning behind my slowly growing collection of 3DO reviews for Retrovideogamer.co.uk, to bring attention to a format and its games that might have passed gamers by at the time and may be unknown to younger folk today. Just don't keep track of the average review score for these though, this was not a system blessed with classics...

Back to the magazine and we have a piece on the CD32, a machine I really wanted to get hold of back in the day but one that I never found the money for. Maybe one day, if the price is right... I hope this series continues for many issues to come and I thoroughly enjoyed the reviews of CD32 titles Bubba and Stix, and Cannon Fodder.

Testbench gives us news on the latest OS4.1 update, a review of Amiga Power, a soundtrack album that I think may be making it's way onto a wish list soon and a brilliant two-pager on the CDTV, another seemingly forgotten and vastly underappreciated Commodore product, and one that, if my student loan hadn't been hammered by an N64, I should have picked up from a second-hand shop in Kingston-upon-Thames way back in 1997, but didn't. What can I say, I was young and foolish... How to adapt a light gun for your Amiga and the piece on DJ-ing with the PT-1210 software both get two pages a piece and add a bit of variety - not my cup of tea but well worth reading out of interest anyway. The best article, for me, was the Amiga Tech tree, an easy to understand single page guide to what hardware/software options you have if you want to enjoy the Amiga. Hopefully, there will be some more in-depth pieces in future focusing on this topic. The editorial notes there was a planned review of the UnAmiga board but the hardware remained stuck in postal hell at the time of publication so maybe next month...

It's nice to see a couple more advertisers this month as well, both from a consumer point of view and a revenue one for the magazine, and the announcement on Discord that over 1000 copies of the first issue were sold bodes well for the future.

There we have it then, the second issue of Amiga Addict and one that continues the quality, in both writing and production, of the first. A brilliant issue and I'm more than happy with the decision to have subscribed. You can check out the magazine website here, and purchase either a single issue to give it a try or start a subscription from the currently available issue. 

Amiga Addict - Issue One Review

Amiga Addict is a new monthly magazine aimed at the Amiga market. Now, stop laughing at the back, such a thing still exists and, given a quick check online, keeps more than a few companies in business, as well as quite a few lawyers but that's way out of scope for this post. As a former Amiga user and someone who still has a passing interest in the format, when I saw this magazine mentioned on Twitter, I thought I would give it a go.

What we have then is a 56 page glossy A4 format magazine in full colour. Nominally priced at £4.99, you'll need to factor in P&P which, for the UK consumer, means one issue will set you back £6.49 whilst overseas customers will pay £9.28. There are subscription options available, UK prices for 6 and 12 month subs are £37.99 and £73.99 respectively. Overseas subs are £52.00 and £101.00 for the same periods, whilst a 12 month online only sub will set you back £51.30. 

First impressions are good. A high quality cover which is glossy and sturdy, and a cheeky coverdisk message as well! Inside, similarly high quality paper is used for the pages and it is clear that nothing has been skimped on the physical side of the magazine.

As for the contents, the production team have done a good job here too. The first issue is divided into five sections, as you can see from the screenshot below.

What is good to see is the mix of topics - you have interviews, articles, reviews and productivity pieces, with the ratio about right in my opinion and there is a great balance here. Everything is well written and informative - the efforts of combat piracy on the Amiga especially so given how blatantly rampant it was just from what I remember when I was at school. Every article is of interest too, the interviews well thought out and the reviews fun to read. Even the adverts are interesting, with a good range of advertisers covering hardware, software, merchandise and repair services. Nothing on a par with Silica Systems but those were the days, my friend...

I also applaud the production team on the layout of the magazine. It has been a thing for quite a while now (especially in wargaming publications but they are not the only ones) for magazines to have a lot of white space (doesn't have to be white but a lot of empty space nonetheless). Personally, I hate that. Fortunately here, the layout is really good - well-spaced text and suitable illustrations, but no honking great white spaces that do nothing to add to the content. 

It's great to see a new print magazine for the Amiga, one that the publishers themselves see as complimenting existing magazines. Much like Archive and Drag 'n' Drop magazines for RISC OS, it's comforting to see that the market for publications still exists in hobbyist computing circles and with such high production values.

As first issues go, this is a brilliant start and I shall definitely be subscribing when issue 2 is announced in January. If you're an Amiga fan or just someone interested in the format, I heartily recommend it. You can find out more about the magazine here.