Just in time for the weekend the very first issue of a brand new Amiga CD32 magazine; ‘CD32 Scene’ arrived in the post, complete with a Cover CD and a cool fridge magnet. The cover CD features the full game ‘Lumberjack Reloaded’, demos of ‘Heroes of Gorluth’ and ‘Zerosphere’ plus some PD games and a video from the former editor of Amiga CD! magazine.
The magazine along with the cover CD and fridge magnet
According to the blurb on the cover this is the first new physical CD32 magazine there has been in the past 22 years! I don’t even have a CD32 yet but felt an endeavour like this needed to be supported so bought a copy. Besides there is a massive overlap between the Amiga and CD32 – the CD32 basically being a stripped down A1200 with a CD-ROM drive. It’s a system I would like to add to my retro collection at some point in the near future anyway.
Worthy Review
Inside the A5 sized magazine there’s plenty to read such as reviews of brand new Amiga games including Worthy, Reshoot and Lumberjack Reloaded. There’s also a look at several Public Domain demos that have been released recently.
Article looking into the troubles Commodore experienced before the launch of the CD32
There are plenty of articles about the history of the CD32 itself too alongside an interview with Martyn Brown, co-founder of Team 17 about his experience of making games for the system. There’s also current news and previews of upcoming games and more to get stuck into.
A-Z of CD32 Games
Of particular interest to me was the A-Z of CD32 Games. Given that I don’t currently have any games for the system at all this will be a great reference source for me when I inevitably start to build up a collection 😉
The content of the cover CD is actually the best part of this new CD32 mag, and the quality of the printing itself is a close second. Sadly, the writing itself by the editor (AmigaJay?) is quite ordinary if you compare it to something like the old CD32 Gamer, or even the English version of Amiga Future produced these days. Lots of grammatical/spelling mistakes, single sentences that go on for whole paragraphs with lots of commas and a fair bit of waffle. Worse still, the writing itself is what you expect to read on many Amiga forums or blogs these days (i.e. written in a hurry without too much thought or care because it’s on the net rather than in a professional print magazine that people pay money for!!!).
Seriously, if it wasn’t for the cover CD – you simply wouldn’t pay good money for this new CD32 mag. I doubt that the standard of writing will pick up either if the editor is going to write every issue by himself. If only Amiga Future would bring out a dedicated CD32 mag, or perhaps more realistically, spare 5-6 pages for a regular CD32 column in each issue. One can only dream……
Considering, as you said, it was basically a ‘one man band’ production I don’t think it was a bad first effort.
However I do agree that the writing ‘style’ spoilt my enjoyment somewhat. Having to constantly re-read sentences to make sense of things is never fun. For the next issue he really does need to get someone else to proof-read the content and weed out those grammatical mistakes.
At the end of the day it’s a fan made magazine – the days of professionally produced and edited Amiga magazines are, sadly, long gone. Even Amiga Future often suffers from some ‘lost in translation’ moments.
With some words of encouragement and perhaps a few suggestions as to how he might improve things (he does ask for feedback) I think it can definitely improve in future.