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- 0660103030571
- 9[........................................................]
-
-
- à S T a m p e d e
- ä Is it STill crap??à
- Ç (Yep!)
- à
- ÇQuite a few years ago, something came along that was a unique one-off,
- never to be repeated diskmag sensation.. That became known as Maggie,
- and its story is very well known in here.. A bit earlier on, there was
- something else that turned up, something *not quite* as good, one of my
- earliest experiences with the wacky world of diskmags, and that is the
- subject of this article..
-
- STampede first came to my notice at an Atari show, I think, the '89
- Spring Computer Shopper Show at Alexandra Palace.. It was really the
- sort of purchase that came about as a result of that last twenty quid
- or so with nothing to do, and burning a hole in my pocket.. They were
- giving away free games with a subscription, so I ended up with Hard
- Drivin' and a subscription for twelve issues of this mag..
-
- As a diskmag, it failed to hit the spot.. None of the writing was
- brilliant or inspired, and it concentrated on promotion and advertising
- rather than good reviewing practice.. In its favour, it did come with
- several game demos, some of these playable, and often a free game on
- the disk as well.. Later issues also got a "demo" style intro as well..
- Who can forget the famous 'shattering disk' effect right at the start
- that turned up about issue four.. I certainly can!
-
- It was quite a colourful production, one of the first attempts at a
- non-GEM based custom shell, and I suppose a faint whiff of praise to go
- their way is due for that small achievement.. Again, there were several
- variations on the basic theme as time wore on..
-
- They were commercial, even got as far as appearing in the newsagents in
- a fancy binder thing, and spawned a parallel Amiga version.. However,
- things did not go at all well, and this illuminating extract from
- Maggie issue 4 fills us in at this point..
-
- \ /
- -- A r c h i v e E x t r a c t t o F o l l o w --
- / \
-
-
- OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
- O O
- O DEAD NONENTITIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! O
- O O
- OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
-
- Well, there's STAMPEDE Disk magazine for starters...
-
- A sad loss, we don't think!!! Simply put, Stampede overestimated
- the number of copies being sold, and ran out of money, the
- Official Receiver being called in, as the November issue hit the
- streets.. In fact Jengrove Enterprises were formally wound-up on
- the 8th November 1990, their accountants Grant Thornton being
- appointed to deal with things from there under the provisions of
- the Insolvency Act (1986) (Phew! heavy stuff..)
-
- At this point I feel I have to disclose a terrible secret...
-
- ************Chris's Terrible Secret!!!!!!!!!*******************
-
- I HAD A SUBSCRIPTION TO STAMPEDE!!!!!!!!!
-
- Well I thought it wouldn't do any harm at the time, a bit of a
- laugh and that, and with my mates going on at me, I just gave in
- (sob sob...) It was at the Shopper Show '89, and I only paid about
- twenty quid or so anyway, and got a free game as well.... They
- wound up with only one issue on the current year to go, and in
- spite of all thats been said about them, they have at least kept
- me in 'blank' disks....
-
- I had to tell you this, otherwise you would have been wondering
- where I got my detailed info, giving names and dates from...
-
- The official reason for Stampedes demise was given as circulation
- being too low to cover costs, we would also suggest (AND have
- indeed said so in earlier Maggies..) that the general quality and
- interest was lacking a bit, the quality of writing was none too
- brilliant, and it seemed to lack 'something'...
-
- N.B. 'Something' that indefinable quality that makes anything
- stand out from the crowd, be it a publication, or game...
-
- I am sorry to say, but reading it left you with the feeling,
- 'where's the rest of it?..' Apparently things were not well at
- Jengrove for some time, as their writers were late in being paid
- (Or not being paid at all!) One writer considering himself "Lucky"
- he lost a few hundred pounds, this is pretty serious, in our view,
- if you are undertaking a career in computer journalism, and expect
- to eat on the basis of said career! Our sympathies go out to these
- people, at least on Maggie, you KNOW from the start that you are
- working for fame, if not fortune!
- _______________________________________________________________________
- ä(I can't let myself write like that now, these days I've got to put a
- calm, sort of authoritative 'Man in charge' style on these pages.. I
- often miss the days when I could use as many exclamation marks in an
- article as the text displayer could cope with.. (Wistful sigh..)
- Ç
- -- End of old style Maggie thing --
-
- I was pretty lucky with this, having received eleven of my twelve
- issues, which meant in practice, a commercial game and twenty to thirty
- 'blank' disks extra.. I was invited to the creditors meeting, but I was
- not really that tempted to travel up to Leeds to claim back my missing
- £1.50 worth somehow..
-
- By that time, I was becoming a hardened Maggie veteran and STampede
- faded out of my life as quickly as I could get the sticky labels to
- peel off (never an easy job, those Atari BASIC language disks I got at
- Birmingham are tenacious little buggers!)
-
- -- If you must point the finger anywhere, blame Martin Wilson!! --
-
- Now I'd forgotten all about STampede until two things made me
- concentrate more closely on what had been.. Firstly, my recent update
- of the ex-ST News Diskmag Encyclopaedia made me want to enhance the
- entry for STampede, a publication that Richard Karsmakers did not have
- first hand experience of, whereas I did.. Secondly, Martin Wilson, the
- ST+ Falcon guru told me that he had a few issues in his collection!!
- Fascinated, I asked to see them again, so here we are..
-
- (Retrospective Review)
-
- The issue I got from Marty was the specimen issue two, which came on
- three disks, one of which was a copy-protected game, and absent from
- this assessment.. The file and directory structure was very open and
- visible, no attempt at link-filing, and certainly no attempt at
- compression, as the text and picture files could be viewed without the
- menu program.. The normal mode of operation would have been autoboot
- from a standard ST, and it was to 'Backward' on the Falcon, that we
- turned to at this point..
-
- It performed flawlessly, loading in the main options menu which
- consisted of about five 'disk' icons on a black background.. Clicking
- on one of these took you to a sub-menu, there was a 'gateway' or exit
- icon to let you get out of the sub-menu, or ultimately the menu shell
- itself.. A fancy sprite mouse cursor is your sole means of
- communicating with the magazine..
-
- As it is a magazine, you first look for some text-based action, and are
- immediately disappointed with the sparseness of what is available.. An
- 'editorial' that tells you little, a 'news' piece which is equally
- bland, and a competition.. The writing, both in this issue, and
- subesquent ones is very reminiscent of the Channel Four 'Digitiser'
- teletext pages in style and article length, but thankfully lacking the
- useless and irritating pre-pubescent 'humour' of the Man with the Chin
- etc.. This issue is notable for a scarcity of text which is frankly
- astounding.. Later issues did have more in the way of text, but you
- still got this same featureless chewing of woodpulp to no good effect
- as an end result..
-
- There were some abbreviated 'reviews' which were not regular texts, but
- based around a title picture or screengrab of the game with the
- 'review' being scrolled underneath in a pseudo-border text scroller.. A
- bit like the demo screens of the time, but without the technical skill
- to make it *really* go in the bottom border.. Picking the textfiles out
- of the disk, these are very short and uninspiring, even more so than
- the couple of regular texts on the disk.. The text displayer itself is
- a very basic affair, with 'up' and 'down' represented, and that is it.
- No fancy font, page move options, any bells or whistles whatsover, as
- the lines of text judder uncertainly down the screen..
-
- Next up is the 'pictures' icon, which is a slideshow of several title
- screens and screengrabs of current games, with the odd crudely painted
- advertisement for a boxshifter to display his wares.. Ho hum..
-
- The first interesting bit is the 'demos' icon, which translates to a
- loading system for three or four commercial games demos.. Interphase,
- the rather good 3-D Cyberspace simulator by Image Works loads in, and
- we are slickly taken through a run-only demo of the first level.. All
- this on the Falcon as well, even if the sound is a bit crackly.. The
- other two game demos I tried simply reset my Falcon.. Should still be
- okay on any ST though..
-
- The final icon is a question mark, leading you to click on it to reveal
- its mystery.. It is probably the giveaway game, as it asks for the
- missing disk 'C', and sits in a permanent sulk until you tell it to go
- away..
-
- And that is it!!
-
- Issue two, not impressive at all, and worth reading again to remind
- ourselves how bad things once were.. Later issues did have more to
- them, but people only collected these for the free software that was on
- offer, not for anything the writers did within the pages of STampede..
-
- STampede could have worked, but for the fact that they were sold
- commercially and bound tightly to commercial interests.. Probably not a
- coincidence that there were no really critical reviews, and a constant
- supply of free games and demo versions.. STampede could have optimised
- the magazine more and wasted less disk space, written more text, and
- punched up the writing style to produce the odd, dare I say,
- objectively critical review of some of the software they received??
-
- STampede fell into the UK software industry trap, which was to sharply
- underestimate their readers intelligence, and to rely on surface gloss
- and wall-to-wall hype to cover over any real deficiencies.. STampede
- simply just did not cut it, caught between the conventional mainstream
- magazines, which demanded at least a decent minimum standard of
- journalistic effort, and the independent diskmags like ST News and
- Maggie which had a lot more to offer from the amateurs point of view..
-
- They are remembered, but remembered as being bloody awful..
-
- (C) CiH, Dec '96
-
-
