commodore_free_69.pdf

A free to download Magazine dedicated to Commodore computers.

Issue 69

www.commodorefree.com

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

PAGE 3

NEWS

VCF E WAS CANCELLED THIS YEAR

PAGE 6

ASTEROIDS EMULATOR TO WORK

PAGE 12

AMIWEST 2013 ANNOUNCED

AMIGULA V1.6.1 AVAILABLE

WITH THE SUPERCPU

New articles on Obligement

Turbo Chameleon - Minimig Joysticks

Revival Studios PRESS UPDATE

PAGE 13

RETRO INNOVATIONS: NEW PRODUCTS

PAGE 8

MUIBASE V3.0 RELEASED

FOR AMIGAOS, MORPHOS

MUIBASE V3.0 RELEASED

PAGE 9

VAMPIRE A600 FPGA

PAGE 14

FOR AMIGAOS, MORPHOS

ACCELERATOR PROJECT

SPECIAL VIC20 C16 GAME/COMPILATION Page 10

FFMPEG 1.1.3 HAS BEEN PORTED TO AMIGAOS4.

C128 mentioned in History of Computers (Croation)

COMMODORE FREE GAME REVIEW

PAGE 16

DOWN FOR THE PET

COMMOODRE FREE BOOK REVIEW

PAGE 17

THE HYPE GAME

by MARWOOD PACKARD

REMEMBERING the PAST

PAGE 20

THE HYPE GAME REFLECTED

COMMODORE FREE REVIEW

PAGE 23

LITTLE SARA SISTER FROM FLIMSOFT

Commodore Free Magazine

Page 2

www.commodorefree.com

Editorial

I was recently lucky enough to be in contact with someone I

hadn’t seen for a long, long time. We used to work together,

and before that he was a reviewer for some of the well-

known computer magazines of the time. I won’t mention the

name: let’s just say we all know who he is. I don’t want to

name him in case it damages his laughable career. Sorry

buddy!

Cutting back to the present, he said he “had reviewed print-

ers and input devices recently” and that the magazines he

worked for “really liked” what he had done. So how or why

read a review even today? How he installed the drivers for

the hardware with his limited PC skills is a mystery, unless,

as I suspect (and the cheeky grin suggested this), he hadn’t

even unboxed the items!

I was walking down the street in my usual dazed bubble of

confusion, when I heard a familiar voice calling me; “Hey,

Nigel” (or something similar, though in stronger language).

So we exchanged niceties and caught up. It turns out he is

still working as a freelance writer, and had just been com-

missioned to write about Windows 2012 server. Now this

guy doesn’t know the first thing about the Windows operat-

ing system, so I was curious about how he would write such

a review, also bearing in mind he hasn’t a clue how to install

or configure windows, and doesn’t know what Active Direc-

tory is. All he said was “Easy. I just Googled the comments of

other users and then averaged out their experiences into a

review!”

Well personally, I can’t comment about which magazines

work like this, but I can tell you that in this one, every re-

view is of an actual game that is physically loaded onto a ma-

chine and then extensively play tested. I may not be the best

‘games player’, and the game may not have been tested to

death, but it has been lived with for at least a month. Any

book that is reviewed has really been read. And any hard-

ware reviewed has been plugged in and tested. So while oth-

er magazines may have nicely laid-out, wordy explanations

of products that are typeset by semi-professionals:

Commodore Free has real reviews and real facts about

real products

While this isn’t exactly something you could call a ‘full re-

view’, it did remind me of when he was reviewing some

games; at a time when we worked together in a computer

shop. He didn’t actually have copies of the games! To write

the reviews, all he did was phone up the software house for

the press notes about the software, add some comments

from the programmer (sometimes they would put him

through to a programmer), and then request some screen-

shots of the game! When these arrived, he would sit at his

computer and re-work his notes, read the programmer’s

comments and the software house’s Hype, and then create

some sort of half made-up ‘review’. When I asked him about

this, he said that he didn’t “have time to review the actual

game because the

deadline for the

magazine article

was tomorrow”

and he “had to

write X amount of

words to fit in the

space left for him

in the magazine”.

“Chill out!” he

would add, as if

this is the way all

reviews are done. I

never trust a re-

view in a magazine

to this day. Even

some of the screen

shots he received

were ‘mock-ups’

because he was

writing so far in ad-

vance of the fin-

ished games!

Onto this issue then.

More news and reviews about some of the latest titles to en-

ter the Commodore world, and by the time you have read to

this line you may be feeling I should just “get on with it” so

............

Regards

Nigel (EDITOR) N other stuff for

www.commodorefree.com

Commodore Free Magazine

Page 3

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