/     .    __             __          /     .
     / |___/|   /_/    _       /_/         / |___/|
    /       |   __    / |__    __         /       |   _____    _____ 
   /   /  / |  '  |  /     \  '  |  ==   /   /  / |  ' __  |  ' __  '
  /   /  /  ' /   ' /  .   / /   '      /   /  /  ' / /    ' / /    |
 /___/__/__/ '___/ /__//__/ '___/      /___/__/__/ '_____.| '____  / 
                                                            .  /  /
                                                             -___' 

Hip hoopla, it's an overdue in every sense of the word return of the mighty Minimag! The random collection of thoughts and words "inspired" by various random happenings on the Atariscene, demoscene, and the wider world.

Editorialy speeking, tannoy ahoy annoy!

"Good morning ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, this is the editorial team of MiniMag speaking, in a slightly camp air steward manner, you know the guy with the excessively pleasant demeanour, crisp neat uniform jacket, and plucked eyebrows, who ushers you into your zero legroom dwarf-seats on the Torture-FlyMed charter flight to your boozorama holiday."

"Please fasten your seat-belts, easy to follow pictograms are available for the functionally illiterate, and prepare to enjoy another thrilling MiniMag take-off!"

Scene Niewes! (some of which was lazily tweaked from 2008, ho-hum!)

Grazey of PHF got married and had a stag party beforehand, lots of tasers and screaming were involved. Well this is Manchester after all. A semi-sober Mini-Mag editor spotted Felice successfully impersonating a wine puddle in the notorious Canal Street party district!

SH3 of Reboot has been kept busy with his new game, this is called "Teething baby". This has a special feature where it randomly boots up and compels the player to join in at odd times in the middle of the night. An upgrade to 'Curious toddler' has been successfully carried out and should be followed by 'Reluctant schoolchild v1.2' in due course.

Mr Coke is back, he is drinking some coke! Then he might jolly well code something for us!

Garfield vs the Scene, a late result is just in - "Garfield 1 - Scene Nil!"

World Niewes!

News guaranteed to brighten the day of all beleaguered tech support operatives, everywhere in the world, as the mythical "any key" has finally been located by a French team. Doubts are being cast on their preliminary findings though, as it is thought they may have got this confused with AZERTY, which actually involves pressing several keys at once.

With Commodore International founder Jack Tramiel's recent passing away, a number of precious objects and keepsakes belonging to the senior Tramiel have been revealed for public viewing for the first time in many years. There was something said about "a ring" which could apparently "bind them all". However, the most interest has been expressed in an early proof of concept prototype of the Commodore Pet. This was constructed out of nothing more substantial than grit, determination and the sweet fresh smell of a summer meadow!

Gaimes!

"Rowley Birkin's Days of Rage" - A mild-mannered Havoc inflates his cheeks in anger at the futility of humanity as viewed through a pouet-framed distorting lens and he sort of floats in a balloon-like fashion through a series of platform levels. (Available for Amiga 600 with numeric keypad.)

"Pukey Egg" - A surprise hit written by GrabbyWasp, with a new take on the classic platformer 'Upchuckie Egg'. Featuring a selection of new and classic levels, ducks, vomiting, bleach, sawdust and lots of tissues. (Atari 'Jagwar' (NTSC version) with add-on blue plastic bucket).

"Bob's Snuff" - Coded for a mythical Sinclair ZX81 with a colour character set. Bob Bobbison, the popular coder of 8-bit zany things, has released his new nose powder inhalation entertainment module for this pretend machine! Best news of all, it works completely from the Atari ST's CP/M disks, that were supplied along with the very early machines! (Yeah whatever, with 48k RAM.)

Demmos!

'STreet Tart' Demo - (BlueBlue - ST) A classic and affectionate look of all your favourite red light districts featuring revolutionary highcolor routines which bring 4096 shades of high earning single ladies to the humble ST. Coming soon, the 'Japan troubles and chargeable by the hour beauties' add-on disk!

'Antiques Roadshow' Demo - by Dune and other blockbusting sci-fi and fantasy concept books - A classic and affectionate look back at the long history of the Atari STE, through a series of rediscovered household objects and heirlooms, culminating in the "For insurance purposes, you should value this at $500.00" screen, whilst a slightly drooling old lady watches the presenter very very intently.

'Crop Rotation' 4ktro - (By Checkpoint - STE) A classic and affectionate look at the practice of growing a series of dissimilar/different types of crops in the same area in sequential seasons. This includes references to three field and four field systems. The intro also discusses the merits of letting part of the land lie fallow, against keeping all the land in continuous cultivation. Nitrogen fixing into the soil by leguminous roots has never been so much fun!

Utlis!

'Colour Gayness Measuring Utility' (by the Reservoir Clogs) - So is Fuscia more gay than pink? Find out with this fantastic proggy!

Pouetard Cleansing Utility v.0.7 (by Weliveinhope Software) - Useful brain cache cleaner, removes 99% of all known Moredhels from your system! (But what about the remaining 1% ?! Answer me that, eh, EH!?)

Fresh from playing with his PeNes for an extended period, PeP has ported the Stephen Hawking Emulator to the Falcon 060, well the voicebox bit anyway, from code nicked from a ZX Spectrum 128 speech synth!

Hardwear!

Macrosoft Submerge, the tablet form factor that is predicted by them to drop Apple into the dust, and not just any old dust, but the extra thick and claggy dust that comes out of hoover bags!

The Submerge tablet is Macrosoft's smallest and neatest form factor yet, only needing two stout fellows to manoeuvre it awkwardly through any normal sized house doors that they encounter.

The Apple iBacon iSlicer, this is the new ultra-thin doobrie wotsit from Apple, inspired by the iiiiPad to go those several crazy steps further. It is so thin, the edges are razor-sharp. I am so pleased that I am the first reviewer from any publication who has managed to keep all of their fingers attached to their hands, in the course of writing this review!

Multitedia!

And after all the other retro-themed Bitfellas Podcast specials, we literally scrape past the bottom and sides of the musical barrel, chunking into the rotting timbers to leave no track unheard, as Bitfellas are proud to give a decent early warning of the forthcoming Ed Bogas chiptunes special!

BITS greatest hits!! It's all of the BITS demos, available, bit by bit, on a pay-per-view satellite channel! Sounds like it's going to be the PITS!

Gwimey Blimey! gwEm is back! He is bursting into song, with tales of disappointing love affairs, stolen goods stored hastily in insecure lock-up garages and discreet disposals of the body parts of dismembered killer cyborgs that got all lippy with him and paid the price!

Hav yur sai!

We thrown open the letters section of Minimag to the 'great British public' in the form of a discussion forum, like the 'Have your say' thing on the BBC. Rather than dredge up real people to spew up their reactionary misspelt bile in a dog-whistle fashion, we found a program that could do it all for us! Meet the 'Twat-o-Tron' random comment generator!

Lies damn lies and stistics!... does anyone realise that knife gangs are preaching hate... The only solution is to Send them all back were they came from... Diana was murdered!!!!!

Shameful_UK Blighty

stupid question. here come the pc brigade and the nanny state! the pc nazis are building moskes on every corner because of nu-liar-bore incompetence. when will gordon stand up and be counted. what a mess!!!

My country is being betrayed Leeds

IS THIS WHAT THE BBC LICENCE TAX GETS SPENT ON??. DOES ANYONE REALISE THAT DAILY MAIL READERS ARE BETRAYING OUR FREEDOMS. A WISE MAN ONCE SAID ABOLISH TAX. SHAME ON YOU BBC!?!

[Storm_Saxon] Nottingham

whites being descriminated against again i heard this week that sandal-wering liberals are promoting pedofilia because they hate the british epople mar my words vote bp

EU_bunglers_are_ruining_UK England

And that's quite enough Twat-o-Tron for now, it gets sort of addictive after a while, like reading a copy of the Daily Mail with its pages made purely from crack cocaine, and printed with heroin ink!

Storie!

Latawyna the Naughty Horse, learns to say 'no' to drugs, as re-imagined by SoLo2!

Giddyap thar SoLo2!

"WIBBLY LINES ON PAGE, HORSE PLAYS IN WOODS WITH SISTERS, OTHER HORSES ARRIVE FROM TOWN, OFFER DRINK AND DRUGS, LATAWYNA GETS POORLY, IS TAKEN HOME FOR BOLLOCKING BY MUM AND DAD HORSE, LATAWYNA SAYS "NO" TO DRUGS, EVERYONE HAS A BIG HUG AT THE END!"

"BYE! SoLo2"

Intervue!

Mag - "Hello, is that you, Senator Per-per-Palpatine?"

Emperor - "Indeed it is I..

Mag - "Now you've gathered the media here for a very important announcement, so I gather?"

Emperor - "That is correct. I wish to publicly announce that I no longer wish to be known as Senator Palpatine, for the Empir-erm Republic has been overtaken by a force more terrifying and powerful than even we can begin to imagine.

Mag - "That is very interesting, no doubt you will be telling us all about your new Galactic scene nick in a moment."

Emperor - "Yes yes, I'm TRYING to get there you trivial fool! Further interruptions will displease me mightily. I no longer wish to be known as Senator Palpatine, as I feel I have outgrown the purpose of that original name. In view of the recent merger with an even greater and darker power than our own, I henceforth shall be known as MICKEY MOUSE!"

Mag - "Wow, that's quite a change from your previous nick! Do you see yourself in a new relationship to the Galactic demo scene now?"

Emperor - "Indeed I do worm. My future role within that scene will feature much more overt displaying of dark Jedi powers than before, terrified grovelling from doubting underlings being strangled by invisible hands, random planetary destruction for shits and giggles, and a new zik disk, the 'Darkside Rap' will be released after my first complete planetary annihilation! If the rebel scum get completely out of line, then a Donald Duck and JarJar Binks crossover movie will become a distinct possibility!

Mag - "Well that is all excellent news, and as an added bonus for the likes of us, Mickey Mouse is much easier to spell right in party reports and realtime articles anyway."

Emperor - "You had better believe it, insignificant scum!"

Mag - "Thank you, your majestic dark holiness and goodnight!"

When the Pouet sings?

"KILLL HIIIM! KILLL HIMMM! BURN THE ADOKKK!

Oh dear, the mob is howling nicely, so time to leave the building by the back exit, perhaps forever! Byee!

CiH originally for Alive Mag, July '08 - Rebooted for Mag in Nov 2012..

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