Favourite Amiga magazine

[Tim Janssen]

Throughout the years I have bought many magazines covering Amiga games like Amiga Computing, Zzap and Amiga Format. Although they all were very nice to read I have a soft spot for one magazine: CU Amiga. This mag always had great coverdiscs mounted and in-depth (game) reviews.

What I would like to know is if you bought (Amiga) gamesmagazines and which are your favourite. Somehow I guess Amiga Power will rank very high in your favourite mag lists.

[Tim Janssen]

Damn. I really have to learn how to create a poll. Anyway, one can choose CU Amiga by selecting 'Other Magazines'

Tim -I'm so stupid- Janssen

Fixed by your friendly Administrator.

[CodyJarrett]

I enjoyed Amiga Format and CU Amiga alot, but I felt that Amiga Power was the only magazine that I could truly rely on when buying original games.

If you only had cracked copies of games, then it probably didn't matter much if magazines like CU Amiga gave rubbish games like Rise Of The Robots and Epic very high marks or that magazines like Amiga Action reviewed the PC version of Colonization.

Amiga Power didn't use up half a review with the plot for a game ("Once again, the evil King Buttface has seized control of the crystal shards of blah blah blah"), like Games X. It actually used the full percentage scoring system, from 0-100%, instead of giving most games scores between 60 and 100%, like Amiga Computing.

And it definitely didn't have an unwritten agreement with publishers to make their games out to be better than they were - US Gold and Team 17 stopped speaking to Amiga Power because they gave SOME of their games very low marks (Pools Of Darkness got 22%, but then something like Cybercon 3 got 88%. For Team 17, Overdrive got 46%, but Alien Breed 3D got 91%).

Amiga Power had a strict scoring system, great articles, a superb top 100 games every year and was well written and funny. What more could you ask for?

[Malc]

That poll look ALMOST like the one at:

www.commodore-ale.com

Nice one.

It has to be Amiga Power.

Okay so they didn't do much about applications or hardware but I was 11 when I first got my Amiga and I was about 16 or 17 when it finally broke, I wasn't very interested in anything other than playing the games. For that reason Amiga Power was THE best.

I used to be able to say I had every copy of the magazine. I subscribed for 4 of the 5 years it was available - I got some good games for free out of those subscriptions: Mega-lo-Mania and Wizkid to name a couple.

There was humour in their magazine, it was enjoyable to read. Their reviews were spot on and it was spooky cos I nearly always agreed with the reviews. If I was really looking forward to a game coming out and Amiga Power gave it a poor mark then I didn't buy it. They were the reason I bought Formula One Grand Prix and the reason I didn't buy Rise of the Robots.

Amiga Power provided the first Sensi Soccer demo that I got me hands on, I was hooked from then on. They also provided the first Cannon Fodder demo I played. Plus their first two issues had full games on the cover. Bombuzal and Kid Gloves, which were half decent games.

They even did a Top 100 every year and after the first year they also asked the readers for their Top 100 which was nice to see.

All in all it was the perfect magazine for Gamers. It didn't bore you with stuff that you didn't want (or need) to know, it simply told you what was good and what wasn't.

It was a sad day when Amiga Power died. I remember that as the time I knew the Amiga was dead............

thank god for emulators.

[RCK]

Moderator are there to correct this kind of mistake on the board.
I've just add CU Amiga in the list.

LOL that Malc have the same poll on ALE
(Don't be angry for that, I don't think Tim did it against ALE)

[Tim Janssen]

Malc,

Sorry for posting a poll which is very familiar to yours at ALE. It wasn't my intention to virtually copy 'n' paste your poll to this discussion board. It seems we just had the same idea at the same time.

This has happened to me before with a homepage of mine. I have a Zzap! Bible, covering a description of all 4500+ C64 games reviewed by gamesmagazine Zzap! between 1985 and 1994. Pity an other person, Mr I. Black, had the same idea on his site. We almost started a flame-war but kept the peace.

[CodyJarrett]

I've done a similar index for every issue of Amiga Power, so it'll hopefully be on a website soon.

[Malc]

Originally posted by Tim Janssen
Malc,

Sorry for posting a poll which is very familiar to yours at ALE. It wasn't my intention to virtually copy 'n' paste your poll to this discussion board. It seems we just had the same idea at the same time.

Absolutely no problem mate!!

You are free to make any poll you wish I just couldn't believe that it was so similar, must have been having a bad day when I posted that

[Tim Janssen]

Looking at the responses most people seem to like Amiga Power. I have never bought this magazine but often took a sneak peek into it when I was at the Newsagent. They really slagged of games. I remember that they awarded a game called 'Time Gate' with a score of 0% This cannot be serious, can it?

Somehow I never switched to other magazines.
I used to buy Zzap! (THE most legendary gamesmagazine -ever) until they made the unwise decision to go C64 only.
I bought CU Amiga now and then mainly for the awesome coverdisks and for the fact I was buying this magazine since late 1986.
I also bought German magazine Amiga Joker mainly for the reviews. If any game was published, it got a review here. This mag was also notorious for slagging off games.
Last and certainly least there was a Dutch magazine called Amiga Magazine which covered the whole Amiga scene in The Netherlands. It had really bad reviews, extremely stupid screenshots (loading screen, highscore screen, credits screen) but it only cost 2 Euro.

[CodyJarrett]

Amiga Power NEVER gave any game 0%. You are probably thinking of their review of Final Gate CD32, which got 20% in May 1996.

Okay, forgive me for being anal here, but:

Of the 1463 percentage scores awarded by Amiga Power, the number of games from:

01-09% = 39
10-19% = 55
20-29% = 67
30-39% = 85
40-49% = 89
50-59% = 181
60-69% = 229
70-79% = 263
80-89% = 354
90-96% = 101

The average score was 63.53%. No game was awarded 0, 97, 98, 99 or 100%.

I hardly think that the above results show Amiga Power to be excessively harsh.

Of course, one can prove anything with statistics, and this is just a numerical analysis. Reviews are supposed to be read and by reading old issues, you will usually find that there were good reasons for giving low marks to games.

"They really slagged of games." could also be seen as constructive criticism and not misusing the percentage system by giving everything above 60%!

[Twistin'Ghost]

I am gonna have to echo Cody's sentiments on this issue. If you were buying software, Amiga Power took stringent steps to insure they were pretty much the only magazine you could trust when it came to parting with your hard-earned dosh. And at the same time they also managed to do their thing with humour, camp and smug irreverence. To use their description, "attitude".

I doubt I will ever part with my AP collection...

[Tim Janssen]

Final Gate CD32 scoring 20%? Ooops. I really seem to have a fuzzy memory. My apologies.

By the way, I just discovered a site that hasn't been updated for a while. It is called Amiga Power 2. I guess most of you have visited it already. The site has such a cynical atmosphere -Very funny.

If you can get me some ..then please email me at godflesh@dds.nl.

You would help me out a lot...

[Tim Janssen]

For those people on EAB who ever had the fortunate experience to read Zzap!, the best gamesmagazine ever (IMHO), here is a little link to Iian Black's Magazine Scans. These are full scans of complete Zzap! issues. Issues 45, 46, 48, 49 and 50 cover also reviews of ancient Amiga games like Speedball, Joan of Arc, Bio Challenge, Dungeon Master and many more.
For me things cannot get anymore nostalgic than this.

[Tim Janssen]

This is a bit off-topic: For almost a year now I am working on my 'soon-to-be-announced' Amiga homepage. It will not be the ultimate ADF source nor an Amiga schrine but it will cover reviews of games that originally appeared on paper many moons ago.

From 1989 to 1994 I have bought many Amiga magazines like
CU Amiga, Amiga Format, Amiga Joker and Amiga Computing. So you can expect to get multiple reviews of the same game. This can give interesting results.
When converting the original reviews to HTML I will not copy the original page-layout but pictures, scoreboxes and other details will be included. Currently I have 140 'paper'-reviews OCR'ed and converted to HTML.
It is going to look very impressive by now but I can not show you the results because:
a My pc does not have a connection to the Internet and
b My discdrive is broken. -Honest!

Anyway, my question is whether someone would be interested in reading old reviews of Amiga games or that I am just wasting my time.

[CodyJarrett]

I'd definitely be interested!

Any Amiga Power reviews?

[LaundroMat]

Well, I for one admire the patience and perseverance you show in trying to accomplish this feat of truly heroic proportions. And I'm not being sarcastic.
Anyways, would I be interested in reading these reviews? You bet I would.
If you want, I could have a look at old Amiga mags that are lying around at home, and tell you what issues I still have. Maybe I could then send them to you? (As you're living in Holland, it shouldn't cost a lot). You won't get my stack of Amiga Power's though .

This board is truly inspirational, as I am just thinking of something now. Maybe it would be interesting - dare I say very interesting? - to compare games journalism of then with what is happening now. I bet there could be some fascinating conclusions to be drawn there. Especially now that gaming journalism is becoming a more and more accepted profession.(Anyone still looking for a final paper subject?).

I urge you to include Amiga Power in your reviews. In fact, I urge you to put all of the content of that mag online

Side note: I don't think anyone cares, but could there be copyright problems?

Edit:
:eek Oops, I didn't see the AP2 site had all of the paper counterpart content online. Forget about my AP remark then.

:eek :eek Double oops: it's the site itself that can be downloaded. So please re-read my AP remark

[Tim Janssen]

Hi Cody,

A couple of posts ago I wrote in this thread:

(...) most people seem to like Amiga Power. I have never bought this magazine (...)

I must confess I have not any single magazine of
Amiga Power in my posession (shock! Horror!).
The Amiga magazines I own are Zzap! (1989-1991), CU Amiga (1989-1994), Amiga Joker (1991-1993), Dutch Amiga Magazine (1992-1994, and a 2 issues in 1996), Amiga Format (4 copies), Amiga Computing (3 copies) and Zero (2 copies).
From these magazines I have scanned the reviews and scores.

I think an Amiga Power review could be a welcome addition. They viewed and reviewed a game in a different manner. -Comparing different reviews for the same game could be really interesting then. For example CU Amiga awarding a game with 95% when Amiga Power slags it off giving it a score of 45%.

[CodyJarrett]

And no-one is getting my complete collection of Amiga Powers!

I had always wanted to scan in all the issues of AP and maybe turn the text into HTML, but I never got round to it.

What do you mean about AP2 having all of the paper counterpart content online Laundromat?

[CodyJarrett]

I've got all the Amiga Powers, loads of Amiga Formats, loads of CU Amigas, some Amiga User International, Amiga Action, Amiga Computing etc.

I did create an index of all Amiga Power scores and I was going to try one for Amiga Format, but they included one on their CDs. However, this was full of errors and spelling mistakes!

AND I HATE ERRORS!

[Tim Janssen]

Hi LaundroMat,

The time it takes for scanning the game picture & logo and scanning & converting the review to HTML is approx. three hours. I know it sounds a long time but hey, I am working for a year now on my homepage
For some days now I am trying to convert the 6-page CU Amiga- review of Elite 2 to HTML. Because the black text is written on a dark background OCR is impossible so I am afraid I have to type over the text. *Gulp*

Any Amiga magazine covering games is welcome (as long as I don't have it in posession). If you could send me a list of Amiga issues you currently own I would be eternally grateful.

Gaming journalism has certainly changed. Reviews are nowadays more in-depth, covering almost every single detail of a game. The humour is also lost.

About copyright problems: I am aware of that. I think I will use the same system as the guy of the Crash magazine-site. He mentions the names of the authors and has tried to contact them. If an author has problems with it I will remove his review from the site.

[LaundroMat]

What do you mean about AP2 having all of the paper counterpart content online Laundromat?

Well, read my edit. In all my enthusiasm I misread what the caption said and downloaded but a copy of the AP2 site. Imagine my disappointment (which was even clear to my co-workers here, to my horror ).

3 HOURS per game review?! :eek You are one crazy mofo! But, hey, someone's gotta do it. I'm glad you're sacrificing your life to such a worthy cause. My recommendation for making you a saint has been filed to the Pope already.

[Tim Janssen]

When I said I spent 3 hours to convert a gamereview to HTML it was an average estimation.
Some reviews only take up half a page with plain text and no special graphics -these are easily scanned and converted to HTML. On the other hand, some magazines (mainly CU Amiga) spend many pages to a review including many trivia boxes, gamemaps, Characterphotos & descriptions. To convert these extra details to HTML it takes up lots of time.

Here are the details of my holy work:
- Finding & scanning original game_logo, resizing logo and adding transparant backgrounds to it (0,5 hours)
- Scanning ingame_picture & resizing (0,5 hours)
- OCR original game review (0,5 hours)
- Importing scanned game review in Word97 (spellcheck on) (1 hour)
- Exporting Word 97 document to HTML (few seconds)
- HTML fiddling (creating tables, importing pictures, META TAGS) (0,5 hours)
TOTAL: Plus minus 3 hours

Hey!
The best one was the Amiga Joker. CU Amiga was very fond of giving high ratings to games that didn't merit it, e.g. Captive or Liberation. OK there were some games that were hyped by the Joker as well, like Rise of the Robots - I found that somehow funny that they rated it 91%. This also goes for Capital Punishment which was rated 91%, too. But I loved these Comics and the cool staff, who really got a cult-status in the German Amiga-scene.

Greetz

[Djay]

Amiga power

the humour was great!

"kick nick faldos face off"

classic stuff!

[Tim Janssen]

Ah, finally someone here who mentions Amiga Joker. As Random_H mentioned, this magazine was very special indeed.

Amiga Joker reviewed every single game that was released on Amiga in Germany. Virtually forgotten titles like Fireteam 2200, No Buddies Land, Digital Dungeon and Zozoom got a review in this mag.
The game-scores in reviews were fair. In the magazines I own they never awarded a game higher than 93%.
What makes this magazine special is the artwork. Every cover of the magazine had beautyful paintings. (Check out Kultpower). Every review also had a scorepanel featuring the Amiga Joker (the magazine's Mascot) in a certain mood depending on the game score E.g. ecstatic, happy, dizzy, vomitting.
I am not convinced about the quality of reviews, though. I often had the idea the reviews had not enough 'depth'. I often thought the reviewers played the game for a few minutes, wrote a review and then threw the game away. But then again, they had to write many reviews every month.

Amiga Joker was only sold from August 1991 until August 1993 at my Newsagents in the Netherlands. It seems I was the only buyer of the mag for these two years. It was a huge loss when I later found out it was not sold in The Netherlands anymore..

[Muzkat]

I remember that one of the reasons why I loved reading Amiga mags was simply for the sarcasm-laden, over the top humour. It just made me laugh so much. Occassionally I pull out an old mag (like CU) that I have stored somewhere and the jokes still crack me up!

I agree that today's mags have lost this vital element- or perhaps the humour has changed.

I'm just wondering- do people read today's Amiga mags?

[CodyJarrett]

I read Amiga Active...

[Tim Janssen]

Todays' gamesmags are much too serious. They cover multiple pages to a single game which happens to be the zillionth Quake or Dune 2 clone. I think the reviews look more professional but are written by games-journalists, not games-enthusiasts. Finally, the mags are geared towards a more 'general' audience nowadays. -There is no room for sarcasm and extreme humour anymore.

By the way: the last Amiga mag I have bought was the final issue of Amiga Format in May 2000. It cost me a bloody fortune but it is a real collectors item.

[RCK]

I think the reviews look more professional but are written by games-journalists, not games-enthusiasts. Finally, the mags are geared towards a more 'general' audience nowadays. -There is no room for sarcasm and extreme humour anymore.

In France, there is always one mag written by games-enthusiasts, full of joke and completly delirious !
his name is: " Joystick ".


Removed picture

[Tim Janssen]

Hi RCK,
I have just visited the Joystick-site. Pity my French isn't what it used to be so it was a hard read. But looking at the pictures (with those strange drawn penguins/creatures) it seems to be a funny gamesmag indeed! Never thought this would be possible nowadays.

Do you know for how many years Joystick exists? This because I remember a German magazine also called Joystick way back in the Eighties. Maybe they are in some way related?

[Akira]

The only mag I Really know, that it's still done BY and FOR game enthusiasts, is the new GameGo!, who is being done by the people who used toform Gamefan (best mag tehre was IMO)

You can reach their website at www.gamegomagazine.com

[RCK]

I don't really think there is a relation between all the "joystick" magazines all over the world
It is a pretty common name for a game magazine.

Every month, we have cool comics with our crazy penguins
(computer related stories of course)


Removed picture

I've got Amiga Format from issue 49 through to near the end. I never got the habit of subscirption & now regretting missing the odd issue. Including the last

I've aslo got a few years of Amiga Computing and Amiga Action.; but the AF & Ac library stashed in boxes I have now was all the reference I'll probably ever need

And it was funny to spot amiga enthusiast editor Nick Vietch popping up in Linux Format.

[Puzzle]

There were two quite good Scandinavian Amiga-magazines that I used to enjoy. The first one was called DatorMagazin. It was a Swedish Amiga and C64-mag. It was well-written and quite interesting to read. And the writers and editors had a few in-house jokes going [really? -Ed] in the text as well.

The other one was AmigaForum. It was Amiga-only, as the name implies.
The mag had the usual reviews, the usual letters-section and other things. It wasn't too games-oriented, which was good.
There were some articles about what Amiga's were used for in Norway, and other things.
And, there were coverdisks with the mag.

I also liked Amiga Format and CU Amiga. Bought both of them a lot back in 1993.

I have a few plastic bags with Amiga-magazines here. Most of it is in good condition, and some of it is in a terrible condition.
I rarely read any of it, except when I get a nostalgi-kick.

[Tim Janssen]

There is one common thing that becomes more and more obvious with current (PC)-magazines: The amount of previewed games outnumbers the amount of normal reviews. In the end most previewed games will not get a review or get cancelled.

Here is an example of the last edition of a Dutch PC-magazine I regularly buy:
- Regulars, Contents, adverts: 10 pages
- Game reviews: 32 pages
- Game previews: 58 pages!
Are people really willing to pay for a magazine which has games they cannot buy (at least for the next couple of months)?

Apparently so, since everyone still buys these magazines

Towards the end of Amiga Format/CU Amiga, they too had more previews than reviews

[7-Zark-7]

Hi guys,
Just adding my two cents worth. For all round Commodore coverage,(of both C64/Amiga), I definitely had to say Zzap was the best magazine out there, but as Tim said it was a shame they went back to 64 only.

I'm surprised noone has really mentioned "The One". I started buying it regulary around the time they "relaunched" themselves. The reviews & playguides etc. were all pretty well layed out. I do add though that when David Upchurch left as editor The One fell inot a hole,(much like Commodore at the same time!)

[Akira]

Hah, I thought I posted on this thread, seems like not!

My favorite IS The One. Excellent layout, content and very hilarious, spcially in the Upchurch days!

It has always been my fave, and I've got a lot of numbers of it.