From the Editor’s Desktop
News, Rumors, and Other Issues

About the Free Preview Edition: This edition of Inside Mac Games is a free “demo” version uploaded each month to America Online, CompuServe, GEnie, Internet FTP sites, and bulletin boards around the world. The following items do not appear in this free version but are available in the subscription edition:

• 10 color screen shots (including one of Andrew Welch jumping off a cliff :-)
• 2 QuickTime movies of Chuck Yeager’s Air Combat
• Chuck Yeager’s Air Combat Slide Show (12 screen shots with sounds from the game)
• Review of Super Mines
• Review of Harpoon Designers’ Series II
• Review of Lost Treasures of Infocom
• Review of Patriot Command
• Hints, Tips, & Tricks
• and a whole lot more.

If you are interested in getting the FULL version of IMG, please refer to “Subscriptions” in Chapter 2.

Contest Winners!
In last month’s contest, Troy Johnson of Indianapolis, Indiana won a free copy of Pax Imperia. In our game poll contest, Thomas Kephart of Cleveland, Ohio won a free copy of Spectre Supreme. Congratulations! Prizes compliments of Changeling Software and Velocity Development.

How To Enter This Month’s Contests.
This month you can win a free copy of Space Madness by sending in your IMG Game Poll. Also, by subscribing to IMG, you can win a Gravis GamePad. See this month’s “IMG Game Poll” and “Subscription Order Form” sections for more information. Prizes compliments of High Risk Ventures and Advanced Gravis.

History and Making of IMG
Over the years, as inexpensive modems have gradually worked their way into more and more homes and work places, the proliferation of electronic publications is quickly emerging. Arguably, paperless communication will become the next major step in communications. It’s cheaper to produce, safer for the environment, and you can read, index, search, reference, file, and trash all within seconds and with very little waste or effort. Along and perhaps somewhere near the pole position, IMG is slowly creeping up more and more telephone lines each month, and we hope to continue at the forefront of this expanding communication medium.

Every month, Inside Mac Games evolves from a blank sheet of white phosphors into a truly imaginative and fulfilling experience for our readers. This is no accident, but rather the fruits of the efforts of many talented individuals who happen to love games and perhaps even just the idea of a paperless magazine. This month I'd like to show you the people and processes which have made IMG come alive for over eight months now. So here's a short history, and an introduction to our talented staff of writer/game aficionados who span the entire known universe of cyberspace.

In December 1992, IMG co-founder Tuncer Deniz, as he had done a thousand times before, sent me some e-mail through our favorite online service, America Online (AOL). He asked me if I would be interested in forming an electronic gaming magazine. At the time it seemed an off-the-wall idea, and I remember asking: “Hasn’t that been done before?” After broadening my brain by taking a look at some existing electronic publications, I agreed it was a great idea. Besides—we were getting tired of just roaming around AOL harassing PC game developers into porting to the Mac!  Tuncer and I quickly set out to hammer out the details and find an initial staff of productivity experts (game enthusiasts) who were willing to work cheap (free) for only the satisfaction of knowing they would get to write about the games they loved, and in so doing contribute something valuable to the Macintosh community.

After rounding up several qualified AOL friends, our next task was to come up with a classy, descriptive name for the magazine. We tossed around a few names like “Tactical Matrix” (Tactical what?), “Tactical Mac Trix” (we didn’t want to sound like a space-breakfast cereal), and about a dozen others that never made it passed the first round of e-mail. Of course we finally settled on “Inside Mac Games” because we knew everyone would know exactly what we were about based on those three words alone. We wanted to offer more than reviews alone; we wanted to offer in-depth information that nobody else had or had bothered to find out. When was the last time you saw more than two game reviews (let alone an interview with a game programmer) in a mainstream printed Mac magazine? We wanted to change that.

After struggling with concepts for several days, we arrived at what we thought was a crisp, consistent, and easy-to-read format that would satisfy most users. We chose to wrap the magazine up using a shareware application called DOCMaker. DOCMaker creates simple, standalone applications that run on any Mac and require only a modest amount of RAM and disk space to maintain.

So now, time for a few quick bios of IMG's three principals:

Tuncer Deniz is IMG’s co-founder and Editor-in-Chief. Residing in Glenview, Illinois, Tuncer is responsible for obtaining evaluation copies of games, making contacts, taking orders, marketing, maintaining subscriber lists, online customer support, and contributing articles and reviews. Tuncer has been an avid Mac game player since 1986, and has a knack for finding information it would normally take an entire branch of the NSA a month to dig up. Tuncer’s favorite pastime is finding out the latest juicy rumors on new Mac games. He is also a Forum Consultant for Mac Games on America Online.

Jon Blum (er, me) is IMG’s other co-founder and holds the official title of Executive Editor and Art Director. Jon is primarily responsible for the unique look and layout of IMG. All of the custom graphics seen in IMG are created by Jon using a combination of Adobe PhotoShop and/or StrataVision 3D. Jon is an independent graphic artist specializing in 3D design. He’s been using computers since the first Apple II was introduced, and in 1984 immediately moved to the Mac for its superior graphic benefits. Jon’s interest in computer gaming has recently landed him work for Graphic Simulations Corp. as designer of  the static cockpit artwork as well as some graphic interface elements for F/A-18 Hornet. In addition to his other duties, Jon also contributes articles and reviews. 

Brian Thomas lives in Bellingham, Washington, just a stone’s throw from the San Juan Islands. When not trying to keep IMG under 1.4 megabytes compressed, he spends most of his time as manager of technical communications for a non-profit scientific society, SPIE — The International Society for Optical Engineering. He is also a flight and ground instructor for Cascade Flight Inc. Brian’s indispensable technical skills keep IMG free from defects in material or workmanship (for a period of 30 days), except perhaps during those times when we're so rushed that we forget to send him a really late piece :-) Brian is also a regular contributor, as well as the author of our quarterly “Right Seat” column.

All of the other IMG contributors every month are devoted Mac game enthusiasts who specialize in everything from board games to flight simulators. With brilliant contributions in strategy and tactics, hints & tips,  and fulfilling reviews, the IMG staff of writers are the best anywhere (in my opinion). Simply put, they’re the backbone of the magazine, and without them we’d be in BIG trouble.

Separated by thousands of miles from coast to coast, the IMG staff communicates through direct-connect modem, online service, voice, and good old US Snail. In fact, very few of us have ever met each other face to face. Yes, we’re truly an electronic publication! Many of us have high speed (14,400 baud or better) modems that can cram a megabyte of data through standard phone lines in less time than it takes to nuke a TV dinner.

Deciding on the content for each issue is no easy task; our primary goal is in finding an unreleased title for the focus of our exclusive sneak preview section that serves as our “cover story.” Relying on his vast contacts database, culled from years of harassing vendors to make more Mac games, Tuncer roams the farthest corners of cyberspace searching for that perfect little gem that nobody’s heard of — yet. Since we can’t possibly include every new game that hits the streets, we choose our reviews based on the popularity and freshness of the title. You may have noticed that a large portion of the games we review receive high ratings. This is not because we don’t like giving games bad ratings, but rather because we try to review the games that we feel people are most likely to buy and would like to see evaluated first. (This pretty much rules out a cover shot of Capitalist Pig :-)

Once the content for each issue is settled on, evaluation copies of games are sent to each reviewer, who in turn pass their finished material back to Tuncer for preliminary placement into the magazine shell. From there, it’s on to Brian, who reads all the material and ensures it meets the highest possible style,  grammar, and punctuation standards. In the process, reviews and articles are also checked for consistency, readability, and accuracy of facts. Brian then passes each issue along to Jon, who edits screen shots & captions, and creates all of IMG’s artwork. Jon then checks the text content as the third pair of eyes and finally passes the finished issue back to Tuncer. (Sound a bit like an electronic football game?)

Finally, we tackle disk duplication and mailing for our disk subscriptions. This is handled from Tuncer’s Chicago location and by Jon over in San Francisco. As long as we don’t blow a SuperDrive, subscribers will soon be enjoying the latest news and reviews fresh from IMG.  — Jon Blum 

Special Thanks
As always, the editors of IMG would like to thanks all our talented writers, as well as Craig Fryar, Hartley Lesser, Neil Shapiro, Ross Scott Rubin, Steven Lundin, Daniel Augustine, Rod Whitten, Bob Nordling, Mark Rubin, Trey Smith, Jeff Morgan, Ian Klimon, Rustle Laidman, Mark Wall, Andrew Welch, Mark Adams, Fiona Murphy at EA, and all of you who have given us your support.
 
A special thanks to Aladdin Systems for allowing us to use the StuffIt Installer.