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Commodore Free Magazine
http://www.commodorefree.com/
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Issue 69

Free to download magazine
dedicated to Commodore computers
Available as PDF, ePUB, MOBI, HTML,
TXT, SEQ and D64 disk image

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CONTENTS
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* Editorial
* NEWS
- VCF E Was Cancelled This Year
- Retro Innovations: New Products
- QuadPortIEC
- MUIbase v3.0 Released
- AmiWest 2013 Announced
- UNP64 2.28 Released
- VIC20 C16 Game/Compilation
- Amigula v1.6.1 Available
- ffmpeg 1.1.3 Ported To AmigaOS4
- C128 Mentioned in History of
Computers (Croation)
- Asteroids Emulator for SuperCPU
- New Articles on Obligement
- Revival Studios Press Update
- Revival Studios News
- Turbo Chameleon Minimig Joysticks
- Vampire A600 FPGA Accelerator
Project
* Review: Down! for the PET
* Review: The Hype Game
* The Hype Game Reflected
* Review: Little Sara Sister

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EDITOR
Nigel Parker

SPELL CHECKING
Peter Badrick

TXT, HTML & EBOOKS
Paul Davis

D64 DISK IMAGE
Al Jackson

PDF DESIGN
Nigel Parker

WEBSITE
www.commodorefree.com

EMAIL ADDRESS
commodorefree@commodorefree.com

SUBMISSIONS

Articles are always wanted for the magazine. Contact us for details. We can't pay you for your efforts but you are safe in the knowledge that you have
passed on details that will interest other Commodore enthusiasts.

NOTICES

All materials in this magazine are the property of Commodore Free unless otherwise stated. All copyrights, trademarks, trade names, internet domain names or other similar rights are acknowledged. No part of this magazine may
be reproduced without permission. The appearance of an advert in the magazine does not necessarily mean that the goods/services advertised are associated with or endorsed by Commodore Free Magazine.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) 2013
Commodore Free Magazine
All Rights Reserved.

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EDITORIAL
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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!

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 commissioned to
write about Windows 2012 server. Now this guy doesn't know the first thing about the Windows operating 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 Directory is. All he said was "Easy. I just Googled the comments of other users and then averaged out their experiences into a review!"

While this isn't exactly something you could call a 'full review', 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 review in a magazine to this day. Even some of the screen shots he received were 'mock-ups' because he was writing so far in advance of the finished games!

Cutting back to the present, he said he "had reviewed printers 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!

Well personally, I can't comment about which magazines work like this, but I can tell you that in this one, every review is of an actual game that is physically loaded onto a machine 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 hardware reviewed has been plugged in and tested. So while other 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

Onto this issue then.

--- CrashWrite 2.0
* Origin: --:)-- Dragon's Lair BBS --(:- (39:901/281)