A Maggie 25th Anniversary guide to the fates and fortunes of their contributors.

(As many as we can get our hands on, anyway.) For the most part, I'm identifying and writing up people that were 'Maggie Team' in some form during my editorship. It tends to leave out most of the other people that were from the era before (up to issue 10.) Apologies for this, and if anyone wants to add to this record, then a future amended version may be possible.

Hi there, ho there, this time we're making enquiries about the current dispositions of as many people who contributed to the awesomeness that was the Maggie diskmag, to see what they are doing these days, fifteen years later after that final issue. We are focusing on at least semi-regular contributors, and even more so on those folk who were part of a regular 'Maggie Team' at one time or other.

An uneasy and unscientific mixture will now follow, as some people are defined by their stellar career path post-Maggie, and will have little input into the current Atari scene. Whereas others may well have made a welcome return, fondly commemorating the glories of days past, or even hopefully making one or two nuggets of fun to take us into the future.

We start with our former deputy editor for the later issues and co- conspirator, Mr Pink - He's been gently nudged back into the daylight and is in touch again. He's alive and well and appears to be prospering. Here he is in his own words. "Yeah, I've been out in Toronto for 3 years now. Moved to Ubisoft to be lead programmer on Splinter Cell, have since worked on FarCry and the new Rainbow Six (where everything blows up)."

"I have still have Atari's (in cupboards). Mainly tinker around with STEEM/Hatari these days. I do have some Atari projects that I work on in my (very limited) free time. Who knows, maybe I will finish something someday!"

If we're lucky, we may get something from him for this special issue of Maggie.

Ripley, who's close proximity as a sister of Mr Pink dragged her into the Atari scene. A productive and enjoyable scene career ensued - After graduating from Cambridge, she's now a proper journalist! Clearly her exposure to Maggie did no lasting damage. Having freelanced for the Guardian and BBC, she's mainly writing on business and mobile tech matters for 'TechCrunch', the successor organisation to silicon.com. When contacted about this revival, she suddenly rediscovered an urge to revisit the past.

"Do you still have all the content from the old Maggies? Would be fun to re read some of the classics. I still remember a few scathing reviews Leon wrote. And God knows what horrors lurk in the old poetry corners I penned."

Tat, our demon coder, ST Maggie shell modifier and coding article contributor - He's still discreetly in view. He's working at the Sony Computer Entertainment Advanced Technology Group as Principal Programmer, working on the GPU Debugging and Profiling tools for Playstation 4 and PS Vita. He has popped up very quietly on Atari Forum dot com recently. He is even going to the STNICCC event.

In a recent comment, he considers that the Falcon is still a very interesting machine, and there is still scope to push it further. Don't hold your breath for any revival here though! He has got in touch with reference to this special issue of Maggie, there will be textual contributions from him for this special issue, which is cool.

Kevin 'sh3' Dempsey, our former cover artist and sometimes writing for us too - As a family man with a busy working life, I guess he only has so much spare time to go around now. Kev's very much active on the Jaguar side of things these days. He's a member of Reboot and spent time doing graphics, and latterly, some cool code for them. He now apparently has a thousand yard PTSD stare from spending too much time on the Atari Age forum?

Malcolm 'MSG' Grant is in Singapore. He's currently a course coordinator for Game Design and Development diploma's. He's teaching subjects such as an introduction to computer games, game design at various levels including advanced level and game engine scripting. He also supervises students final year projects. He's been a mentor for Gamefounders in Malaysia. His non- educational work includes working on a tech demo with a new 'Stingray' engine with Autodesk and Fatashark (Sweden.)

As for more Atarian activities, he is still doing music and using the STeem emulator to do this. Although he has less time than he used to for this.

Neo (Matt Smith) - After Maggie finished, he didn't stop doing Atari stuff. He's still pushing packages through people's doors in his day to day life. He's got married and in the family way as well. He's also still active on the Jaguar scene doing stuff with the Reboot team.

Jody Smith, of Blue Monkey infamy, went on to do things with the Big Brother television programme, even whilst he was still writing for Maggie. His career has gone from strength to strength. He is currently working for Channel 4 (UK TV) as a commissioning editor for the online side of things. I've been in contact recently. In the meantime, Something very like Jody is on Twitter under the name Jody Smith@ToastMaster. A quick chat via email reveals that it is indeed him! If we're really lucky, we might see something of him in here.

"I'd be very happy to contribute in some way. I don't think I have anything I didn't release and my ST is in the attic and I have no means to link it to a monitor, so I couldn't find it anyway (out of all my past computers and consoles that I sold on ebay, I still have the ST and all the disks - couldn't lose those). I wonder if I have a cassette tape of me doing one of the Blue Monkey prank calls - I could actually digitise the audio for the first time, rather than transcribe it. I highly doubt I do though. No idea what happened to all my cassettes."

Kev Davies, is one of our long term friends and contributors - He has kept intermittently in touch by email. After some time away, he's back on the retro nostalgia wave with his 'Atari Staffroom' channel on Youtube. "Watch Kev play games really badly". A couple of weddings got in there at some point as well.

Mike Noyce - After an absence of many years, he responded to hails and a separate text on his whereabouts is also in this issue, as it was a bit too long to go in this article.

Tronic, who came to our notice around issue 18 - He's self-employed and making quite a decent go of things. After doing the marriage, kids and house thing, he's very much returned to the Atari scene with the Effect label, and is intending to go to STNICCC with something, or a couple of somethings for the occasion.

Rich Davey, aka 'Requiem' - He's very active in the entertainment software industry, currently at Photon Storm, according to Twitter. Here's a neat encapsulating description cribbed from there. "Full time HTML5 Game Developer and creator of Phaser, Atari otaku, Retro Gaming Geek, child of the 80s, demoscener, anime and pixel art fan."

Ed Cleveland? aka 'Eddies Cat' I don't think a question mark was part of his surname, as I put it there. He was one of our best writers, cover picture contributors (Eezi- PeeCee Maggie!) and coder/artist for such delights such as Donkey Island. He is really missing in action and has been for a long time. His input in various forms was very much enjoyed. It would be nice to get back in touch with him, but I don't think that's going to happen.

Jon Hayward, a sometimes contributor and sharer of our earlier travelling adventures abroad. He's scaled up his ambitions from demo parties in Central Europe and has been around and about in the Holy Land. He's currently back in the UK and can be described as sort of semi-active.

Mike Schussler (Sammy Joe) - He was the founder and first editor of Maggie. He's very much around. He can be found on Facebook. He kindly responded to my request for an update. Here he is in quite a businesslike summary of his life to date.

Work:
1997 2013 Regional Head Office Manager, German Building society
2014 enjoying life (not working)
Now: Trying to start up a business with drones – Airial Videos and Pictures
www.schwotte.de

Family:
Wife and a 17 year old son, both are coming along to Holland (STNICCC).
Still living near Stuttgart at Hemmingen Germany.

Hobbies:

PC, Riding my Harley, Photography/Videography, going out, listening to metal(!)

Of the second Maggie editor, New Mode formerly of Delta Force, there's no word.

Felice, aka Rich Spowart. He was the deputy editor during the earlier part of my editorship - He's stayed very much in touch, following me into various post- Maggie Atari scene enterprises and parties, especially parties. Somewhere during the past decade and a half, he learned about drinking and got married to the lovely Paula. The two may be related? I can confirm the latter definitely happened, as we went to New York to witness this take place. Currently, he is around, when he's not busily relocating missing transplant donor organs in Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge. He has a small stock of textual things ready to go into this issue.

And finally, me, the CiH ex-editor person. A modest person with much to be modest about. Of life in general, nothing much. Managed to bail out of working for a talkative internet service provider, approximately three years before hackers ran off with all their data. Has somehow currently persuaded HM Govt to provide a salary to maintain his Atari menagerie and twisted metaphor collection. Is still friends with an ex-girlfriend. Is strangely attractive to cats. Of the Atari scene, after Maggie, co-collaborated with various people for quite a long time on the 'Alive' Diskmag, then a few issues of the 'Lo- Res' blogzine. Latterly some self-produced stuff ('Mag') Has attended more demo parties than is really advisable. Is currently putting in ninety percent of the material for this 25th Anniversary special Maggie.

Also I'd love to share whatever news I've got of some fellow diskmag editors.

Richard Karsmakers. The man who made the whole idea of 'disk magazines' work on the Atari, and work brilliantly. He provided the inspiration for Maggie to exist in the first place - Well his movements are easy to track down. After hobnobbing with the shining stars of the early Atari scene, he's settled down as a teacher of English at the GsG Leo Vroman High school in Gouda. He's married to the lovely Ruth, and providing the excuse/reminder/inspiration to get off our backsides and do something with our 25th anniversary.

James "We've got the power, but no decent sense of direction away from Taunton" Mathews - He always was a bit of an entrepreneur. He was last seen anywhere a few years ago, flogging dodgy *ahem* 'enhancement' pills on eBay!

Alexander de Vries, aka Bonus of the Diskbusters (DBA) Magazine - He is around and still coding on his Falcon occasionally. He may even finish and release something one day.

Slimer, the other half of the Diskbusters Magazine editorial team. I gather that Bonus is still in touch, but he disappeared off the scene some time ago. I remember he stated that his 'last words' were written on the Maggie 10th Anniversary issue intro text. He's not down for the 25th Anniversary STNICCC.

BIG UPDATE! He's back, he reappeared at STNICCC. It was great to see him again. And it didn't stop there, as he had some significant donations of old unseen texts for the Maggie 25th Issue. There is a chance he may be back more generally. Let's hope so.

Sebastien 'ST Survivor' Larnac - He got in touch via email and is back on the scene after some time away. He was the original co-editor of the 'Alive' diskmag, before Cyclone 'CXT' took over. He is running a blog, the 'Democyclopedie' about common and less common demo effects seen on the Atari ST, not to mention some renewed interest in graphics stuff.

Missing in action - Are CXT and Moondog. - 'Cxt or 'Cyclone', aka Heinz Rudolf has dropped off the planet completely. Erik 'Moondog' Heschler appears to have done the same, but we still get ghostly echoes of him posting comments on ST demo's on Pouet.net, so I guess he's still keeping an eye on the rest of us?

CiH - Various in 2015 for Maggie 25th Anniversary.

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