A600 wb 2.05 : YES.%Multi-tasks : NO - Auto-boots only.
Display : PAL.& This new mag kicks off with an&intro copied straight from RAW five,&namely huge, rotating vector text.&It's not as accomplished as RAW's&version though, so it shouldn't have
been included eh?& After the intro you have a well&drawn loading screen and then you're&into the magazine proper. Happily it's&a very clean looking interface that&works well. It's even programmable!&Just like a CD player. You can select&a list of articles for reading in&sequence so there's no need to return&to the menu. I'm not sure of the&usefulness of this but it's an
inventive touch anyway.& There's no clip art for this issue&so it's the articles that have to&carry the magazine. Which, for issue&one anyway, means the editor. This&from the editorial - "I've written&more than 90% of all the articles in&issue 1 (a new world record?)." Nope.&And as the (probably joint) holder I&would suggest nobody bothers to try&equalling it either. Other writers, as&I'm finding out with this issue, make&the job more enjoyable and help to&stimulate the brain cells as well.&Only novels and poems should be&written alone. And diaries too I&suppose. And also - ahh - lets forget
it.& So with more than 90% of the&articles written by Dolphin the&Editor, the first issue will stand or&fall on his writing ability which, at&least in English, is not that strong.&His writings are understandable and he&has a good range of opinions but&they're not expressed too well. No&matter, it's much better than silence.& As I said he has opinions and one&of them is on "Why The World Loves&Whales", Norway being one of the&countries that still wishes to hunt&them. Did you know for instance&that... "The C.I.A in U.S.A is running&Greenpeace - thus making a lot of&cash. When they have won their war&against whales, they will try to make&a war to protect some other animal."&Come to think of it, it wouldn't&surprise me if the CIA were running&Greenpeace. I read description&somewhere of World Vision as the&spiritual arm of the CIA so why not&Greenpeace as it's conservation corps?&As conspiracy theories go I'm sure lots can be found to back it up.& There's movie reviews here as well&and once more the Editor's prose makes&for interesting reading. "Even though&the producer doesn't succeed in&showing what the people felt&inside..." This written straight about&a movie describing plane-crash victims&who resort to cannibalism to stay"alive. (Rugby players, of course.)& There's quite a few interviews with&scene people however which contain&some of the more interesting reading.&One, with Chaos of Sanity, covers the&now common topic of design in demos&and whether it's a good or bad thing.&He states that the difference between&the Atari scene and the Amiga scene is&the presence of huge numbers of&swappers on the Amiga side of things.&These it seems are driving the push&towards design on the Amiga with lots&of swappers meaning lots of votes for&the good looking (as apposed to just&clever-coded) demos. On the Atari it's&apparently the coders who are still&calling the shots with even menu-"driven demos still being produced.& If this is true then more power to&the swappers. I like to see clever&code too, hence 242 and the stellar&intro getting the five star treatment&this issue, but design has given demos&a new lease of life and is dragging&them out of the coding for coding&sakes mentality that makes them so&boring for the non-programmer. If&Chaos wants to watch the same routines&for hours on end, (and he says he&does), then he's welcome too but most&others want something more from their&computers I suspect. An audience&driven art form is not always a bad&thing as it helps to stop the artists&getting too inward looking. So kids,&swap till you drop, but not the boring
stuff.& And on the subject of swapping,&Dolphin's also written an article on&the touchy subject of "Am I A Disk&Stealer?" He thinks not, despite not&having replied to a swag of people for&months. For those of you out there&still waiting and wondering, well he's&kept your letters. What that signifies&I'm not sure, but he's thinking of you
anyway.& So a well designed interface, nice&intro and loading screen, but only&so-so articles. I get the feeling that&the producers decided to make a mag&and then thought about the content&afterwards. There's no focus here that&I can discern which is a pity as with&the addition of clip-art and it's well&made interface the magazine could have&a good look and feel to it. But it'll&be an also ran unless articles are&chosen that start to give it it's own
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