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Maggie One-off Special issues!
We've been through all the highs and lows of the regular Maggie issues. Now it's the turn of the 'special' issues, the ones which were made completely outside of the normal flow of Atari scene news and happenings. Each had their own unique contribution to make to the Maggie universe and arose for very diverse reasons.
This is their story. It is told in chronological order.
Best of Issues 1 to 11 compilation issue..
The only regular compilation issue, this was mostly collected by Felice over a long time, and finally bolted together by me at the end of 1995.
Maggie 1 - 11 was originally supposed to be the best of issues 1 to 10 but it got slightly extended with material from issue 11. The pre-release version managed somehow to get all of Felice's articles in it! I made some changes to give other contributors more of a chance to breathe.
With reference to the contents, not too bad a job there. Certainly it's got a reasonable selection for the games, with Rainbow Islands, Sim City and Turrican in there. The demos column pretty much nails it with the Lost Boys stuff in there, and other landmark demos such as the European Demos, Punish your Machine and Inner Circle getting in.
There's a bit of a tendency to lurk too close to home with the event reports, as most of these are things that the later generation Maggie Team attended. There is nothing of any of the early demo parties that Sammy Joe and friends attended. In fact, apart from some reviews and a Cebit report, there are only fleeting glimpses of the first editor in there?
We do get an edition of Mutant Monthly, and a whole parade of celebrities set in the Felician version of Hollywood. The interviews have a nice spread of classic demo crews and scene personalities from the era.
To look at, the menu shell is grey, but functional. The cover picture being 'borrowed' as the regular artist was not available at that time.
This has been only compilation issue to date. I personally feel that this idea is slightly pointless, when you can load up and read the same articles in their original context. Some other publications like the Diskbusters magazine tended to flog this concept past the point of deadness, with one compilation issue recycling the two most recent issues in one case as I recall. No other compilation issues for Maggie have been contemplated.
Best bit: Errm, well ALL of it, surely, as it's "The Best of" the early issues! (C) Alan Partridge.
Runner-up: There are no runners up here! I told you before, it's ALL the best!
The Maggie Guide to a Videogaming lifestyle..
This was the only Maggie production, apart from issue one, made with no involvement or input from me (apart from the initial "Hell yeah, go for it!" when first asked.) We have our sometime cover picture artist and lately, Jaguar Console wrangler, Kev D, aka 'sh3', to thank for this one.
Firstly, this is a very very pretty issue indeed. The cover picture is gorgeous, dripping with retro gaming goodness, making the best use of the sixteen available colours to draw the reader in. The 'dezign' extends to the menu system, as this is the first Maggie of any sort to show off a rejigged menu selector. The next regular Maggie, issue seventeen had a version of these modifications.
The Videgaming Lifestyle was a very early 'net grab' issue. Kev had found a lot of interesting material from various internet sources on old first and second generation consoles. His original idea was to feature this in a regular Maggie issue, but he went that extra step further, with a whole special issue, dedicated to this ancient but still interesting hardware. This Maggie special is eerily ahead of the curve by quite a margin, of the whole retrocomputing internet based nostalgia, which really properly didn't get going until the 21st century. These old machines were still 'junk' to most people back then, but not all.
The menu bars are split into individual consoles, starting with the Atari VCS 2600, including the Atari 8-bit computers, and moving swiftly through Colecovision, Vectrex, Intellivision, and a 'misc' section to cover outliers such as the Mattel Aquarius and very early consoles like the Channel F and Odyssey.
Some of the material is pure data-dump, with lists of games and suchlike, as well and tips and tricks and frequently asked questions. There are also some genuinely useful things like a programming guide to the VCS, which is interesting to consider, now there's a healthy catalogue of homebrew releases and even demos for that machine?
In the Colecovision section, we get a bit more of the story behind the console, as well as the other things. Here also lies the sad story of the Telegames 'Personal Arcade', which appears to be massively flawed, with the sad sequel that the entire stock was destroyed by a tornado in April 1994. A current search around the internet suggests that it does exist under the name of 'Dina'. It was also featuring Sega SG1000 compatibility, and was still massively flawed.
We get a selection of hardware and programming information for the Vectrex. There are some projects to build new hardware, with ascii diagrams. This was from a time when geeks were proper ubergeeks and not merely mainstream people pretending and hiding behind fashion labels.
The Intellivison has a slightly sparser textual selection, but the main points are still covered.
The miscellaneous part tends to skate through their subject matter. These less popular or even older machines having left much less of a digital footprint on the 1995 era internet than the established classics such as the VCS 2600.
Omissions? There are no Japanese consoles in there. But then again, this was early days for the retro collecting craze. If sh3 were to issue an update to this, it would include most brands of Nintendo and Sega, and quite a bit of the rarer far eastern hardware too.
Apart from a few comments by the acting editor in chief, this stands solely, but stands quite well on the material lifted from some of the slowest bulletin boards in 1995. The 'Classic Guide to a Videogaming Lifestyle' both looking forward and backwards at the same time, is a definite hit.
Best bit: The cover picture and menu. The nicest looking of the special issues.
Runner up: The Odyssey 2 manual provided some unintended amusement with their agonised and over-extended definition of 'plug and play' - "If your VHF antenna cable is round with a screw type connector (75 ohm), you will need to purchase a 75 ohm Balum to permit connection of your TV antenna to the Odyssey 2 TV antenna connection."
"If you are using a 75 ohm round cable, your television will probably have a set of jumper plates or a switch which must be removed to select VHF-300 ohm terminals. Your television instruction manual will be of help." (Help!)
Eezi-PC Maggie..
We must have been at a loose end at the beginning of 1997. Plus I seem to recall the this one only took about five minutes to make, or that's what it felt like? Anyway, the 'Eezi-PC Maggie was directly inspired by strong Maggie team loathing of everything coming from the hands of Bill Gates.
The process that created this was aided and abetted by the saturation media coverage in the 1996 pre-Xmas period. Specifically, the world was patronised by the "Learn how to switch on your PC in collectible weekly instalments" 'Easy PC' magazine. As this publication represented a polar opposite in values, tone and hardware platform of choice to the Maggie Team, it only seemed to be fair to rip the piss from it without mercy.
With the further revamped menu system, this one is a good looker. Ed Cleveland provides his best cover picture with a Dwane Dibbly themed 'Eezi-PC Maggie' picture. "Week by week. Builds into a total guide to spending stupid amounts of money on your Wintel bodge-box."
The editorial reveals that an anti-PC theme was considered for the next regular issue of Maggie, but then we took a look at the accumulated anti- PeeCee scribblings we'd added over the years, then thought, hey, compilation issue time! So yes, there is a decent helping of past material. At the same time, there is some new and specially written material, some of it clocking in at around fifteen words per article. Other contributors, specifically Mr Pink, made more of an effort with their stuff.
That is not to say that we've got some serious outside talent to take care of the editorial side of things. There's Derek Windcheater, a guest editor with a maggot fetish! Nickie Girlie, the token female, 'Bez', who only has an internet nickname, and Dr Dubrovnik, who takes the Jerry Pournelle slot.
We probably had the most fun making this one. Mixed in with real reviews of Doom and Rebel Assault culled from past Maggie's, are some blatantly fake ones, such as 'Horace goes Nose-ski-ing'. With the articles from Ed Cleveland, I'm not sure if all of these were lifted from previous Maggie issues or not? We've recycled from regular parts of Maggie such as the 'Dirk' column, and there's even some fiction, such as 'Intel Trek' that got in.
To give the impression that there is more than there actually was, we've gone for fake exception error messages in place of some articles. (The article called 'free sex' may not be what it promises.) Even a fake art gallery of fake art gets in the 'multi-tedia section'.
Was it worth it at the end? Well I heard, sort of anecdotally, that someone was considering getting a PeeCee in its mid-nineties classic bodge box configuration, read this, and then didn't! So if we saved just one person for a while, that's a small victory at least.
Best bit: A lot of choice, at least with the original fresh bits. I'm going for Mr Pink's press release from Future Publishing. (shurely he means Vulture Publishing? - Ed note) We are treated to hot news on such delights as 'PC Dad' - 'For anyone with a love of brown corduroy, facial hair, golf and Phil Collins.' Not to mention sister titles such as 'Amiga Deluded' - 'You believe that if you can only convince people to stop buying ST's. the Amiga will take over the world. Unfortunately, you also still believe the year is 1990.'
Runner up: Ed Cleveland is 'PC Brilliant!' it nicely takes a pop at the level of user intelligence catered for in the real 'Easy PC' magazine. "When playing a game, try moving the joystick about. Many games contain special features that can only be accessed by moving the joystick about and pressing the fire buttons.'
The Psychobabble Project..
It had an initial release or 'escape' at the Error in Line party at Easter 1999.
This one came about as a reaction to the wave of minor diskmags endlessly plugging the same old UFO.alt.conspiracy posts as though they were fresh and original and new and exciting. After reading pretty much the same thing for the tenth time, I concluded that they weren't.
Like the 'Maggie Guide to a Classic Videogaming Lifestyle', this special issue was a conscious effort to explore the wealth of the internet. For this issue, it was to search for resources supporting the sceptical viewpoint. I was gratified to find plenty of it about.
There's at least a few recyclings from past Maggie issues, including a fake horoscope. It's not just about the UFO's anymore, but a whole raft of topics gets swept in, including astrology, spiritualists, psychic predictions, the Bermuda Triangle and more. There are some sections which might actually be properly useful, such as the one dealing with the fraudulent end of alternative medicine. There's even a spot for a few laughs.
The overall look is fairly cheap and workmanlike. The cover picture was borrowed, the menus reflect that too. The original version, released at Error in Line 1999 to a few people is not compatible with the Atari ST due to the wrong sound chip replayer being used in compiling. In fact, it is a Falcon only production! This was replaced with a later release using the correct sound chip replay. I have a horrible sinking feeling that the 'wrong' version is the one currently hosted on Demozoo!
It's interesting to read back on this years later and consider what has changed since 1999. The Psycho Babble Project harked back to an innocent time before September 11th 2001 and politicians coming up with flimsy excuses and dodgy dossiers to attack parts of the Middle East. There's no discussion of the 'Illuminati' in here, even from a sceptical viewpoint, which might mean that they are successfully suppressing any criticism, comment or mere implication that they exist?
(Authors take on 9-11:- That rustling sound you heard back then, was the sound of thousands of lower and mid-level officials covering their arses in unison to protect their job, not covering up. It would be a rare individual who would feel able to offer to stand up and take the blame for a tragedy of that nature. That person would have to be mentally ill and have no family or dependants.)
On the other hand, there is a welcome backlash from the online community against some of the worst aspects of pseudo medicine, such as the anti-vaccine movement. Also homeopathy has turned into a fertile grow bag for throwaway jokes.
Best bit: The article describing the Quackwatch home page. It's still out there and a properly useful resource.
Runner up: A short story called 'Condemned to repeat it'. What happens when the Salem Witch trials are updated to the Age of Aquarius.
Ascii-Nation..
We're finally looking at something that is strictly an 'after-Maggie' production. It uses the structure of Maggie to make an unrelated project from it, but what the hell, I'll include it here as well. This was made in the period after STNICCC 2000, and before Error in Line 2001, to be released there.
Ascii-Nation can be best described as a reasonably successful, we hope, attempt to utilise the Maggie shell to make a sort of ASCII art graphic novel, which ripped off Star Wars and a lot of other things .
I've not looked at this for a long time, and the execution of the ascii-styled adventures of Ham YumYum, Princess Oranjeboom and the evil Clive Sinclairomorph hang together with the slightly enhanced text displaying abilities of the Maggie shell, quite well. There was even a little bit of mono GEM graphics creeping in, (including chapter titles) which was missing from the plain ascii textile version. It looks like I paid careful attention to the limits of the Maggie text displayer as well. I managed to get the text displayer to choose a 'black text on white paper' display, as the ASCII art best suited this style.
_______ .----------------------
En Garde! ( ) | \\
Squirt! | _____) . . | //
\ | ( |_.| ~ \\ // Fzzz | Up yours, you \\
| > ~ \\/ ~ SMAK! . Bespectacled Mensa //
\ ## ~ //\ | loving thug! \\
| # ~ // \\ ' / //
.'..__## // \\ \\\\\\ \\
/| (///)\ // \\ a) ) //
/ | |---| \ // \\ c ) \\
\ | | | | / // \\ (__) ) //
\ \| | '----''-//. .\\/___'....' \\
\\ /~\________||___| |__|_______\\ //
\\\ \ | | ## # | | \\
\\\\ \ | | # # | | //
\\\\ | | | |____| \\
\\\\ | | | | . | //
---\\\\________/ / |________________________/ /| |-----------------\\
/\ /._|__ / / | |
/ \/ | \ _/~/ _|~|
\ \ '-----' / __\/ __|
They fight! At first, Dirk and the Sinclairomorph seem to be fairly
evenly matched!
This made it out for Error in Line 2001. It got upgraded to a wild compo
entry. It even got a second place.
Trivia item:- This is the only Maggie that could fit on a single sided disk. The total file size comes in at 188535 bytes, including the readme.txt. The main files, like in all the other Maggies, were compressed of course.
Unanswered question that should really remain that way:- What was in the 'Corridor of Evil Level One - Rectal Prolapse room'!?
And that is all of the Maggie Special issues covered. Will there ever be another 'Maggie' again? Well we'll see how this one goes!
CiH - Sept 2015 for Maggie 25th Anniversary Issue.