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M A G A Z I N E
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Naked Truth Magazine - issue #06
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Magazine Personel:
Lurch .............[ Organisation ]...................... [Editor] [+]
MindBender ........[ Organisation/Articles/Interviews ].. [Editor] [+]
Everclear .........[ Articles ].......................... [Writer] [-]
Falconer ..........[ Articles ].......................... [Writer] [-]
Genocide ..........[ Articles/Interviews ]............... [Writer] [-]
Lord of Darkness ..[ Articles/Interviews ]............... [Writer] [-]
Manhunter .........[ Interviews ]........................ [Writer] [-]
Mr ZigZag .........[ Articles ].......................... [Writer] [-]
Operator ..........[ Articles ].......................... [Writer] [-]
Shatter ...........[ Articles ].......................... [Writer] [-]
[Apply Now !] .....[ The Games Report ].................. [Writer] [-]
Jimmy Jamez .......[ The Utils Report ].................. [Writer] [-]
Judge Dread .......[ The Trade Report ].................. [Writer] [-]
===============================================================================
Introduction by the Editors
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Welcome to Naked Truth Magazine, a text-based magazine made to give a report
on todays pirate-world. This here is the sixth issue so be on the lookout for
more magazines coming from us shortly. We're dancing...
* notice *
this issue is a bit short on some subjects. The reason is that I've been too
busy with some other projects + a 4 day party, all cleaning excluded in my
house. This is both the reason for the shortage of material and the delayed
release of this copy.
'Naked Truth Magazine' is a label that's been standing for quality all from
the start. This is the one standard we would never compromize on, EVER !
As the Inquisition team we're succesfully merged into our system the whole
magazine started suffering from a idle descease. Noone seemed to want to do
anything anymore. Not long after the merger, Raptor who was assigned editor
together with myself, suddenly discovered himself too busy to even have the
slightest time for the magazine. From this point on I tried to run the show
until someone with a little bit more willpower than Raptor came along...
I finally did talk Lurch into helping me out as the editor position. As I felt
myself having too much work with Hybrid, I gave him full control of the zine
running which I now realize was wrong. Naked Truth was something I started up
long time ago and it would be a mistake just to leave it be. Therefor I now
return to the editor position helping Lurch to run the magazine...
Special thanks to MachOne who made me realize that the magazine was needed...
So here we are, once again... with a new fresh copy.. let's hope you like it
Greetings to: HOSON, Jimmy Jamez, The Renegade Chemist, Wayward, Mach One,
Cyber Angel, Bluewater, The GEcko, Replicator, Sector9, Hula,
Mikeysoft, D-Eagle, Prophet, Raptor, Mad Turnip, The Outlaws,
Rom Racer, The Speed Racer & Eagle 1
Extra Special Greeting out to 'The Reservoir Dogs'
-- MindBender
===============================================================================
Contents of the Magazine
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. The Mailbox - Staff answering letters...
2. Articles - The Hybridian Breaking - written by MindBender
- (U)ncopyrighted ? - written by Cyber Angel
- Quickview of the scene - written by Falconer
3. Games Team Review - written by MindBender
4. Utils Team Review - written by Jimmy Jamez
5. Trade Team Review - written by Judge Dredd
6. Interviews - Grifter / TYRANNY - interview by MindBender
7. Repotage -
8. Final words - Rounding up...
===============================================================================
[01] - THE MAILBOX
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This month, we have not recieved anything interesting at all, we therefor will
not publish anything in this part of the magazine until next issue.
===============================================================================
[02] - ARTICLES
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Story of the Hybridian breaking (c) MindBender
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There's been a few weeks since one of the better groups in quality, Hybrid, did
a surprising turn and split up. Many have wondered what caused this and why the
breaking happened at this time. Here's some of the answers...
All since the Hybrid CD division was created in 1995, the group has been doing
a great job on the major titles. With leadership of Bluewater, Celestial Wizard
and HOSON, the group soon earned respect from the fellow pirates... as TDU-JAM
decided to quit the scene in early december, Hybrid was the only force left to
fight RAZOR 1911 in the christmas rush... <PAUSE>
Did someone blow out the candle? Why did everything suddenly become quite?
People talked about financial depths and internal splits in the leadership...
Suddenly, in the middle of January, Hybrid came back with another release, not
to fancy but still.. they once again started the machinery... things went slow
and the quality factor was decreased. After releasing fixes to five games in a
row it was decided something had to be done... Hybrid declared the new era,
"Quality before Speed", the motto now was to make all releases right from the
very beginning, with nice ripping and working cracks. Sorry to say, because
of alot of dis-organisation this failed... HOSON was tired of it all and told
me either it's time for a change, or he was going to leave the scene...
So, me and HOSON had a chat about it, looked into some brand-new ideas on how
to organize the group. Which people we really needed and why...
We decided we wanted to change ourselves into a 21:th century group, based
truly on the Internet with no boards or couriers taking space in our
NFO-files... Let's say we were tired of the complaints from Crackpot always
wanted to have the releases on his board first... I mean, who cares about the
lame boards anyways ?
When we presented the new ideas to the US people (in a rather harsh way),
they were shocked as they had always been interested in the speed of the warez
and were conservative enough to claim boards back into the NFO. The major
reason behind this was that the US section was runned by the RISC leader
Crackpot, who wanted to promote the RISC couriers to Hybrid couriers if they
did well uploading to his board. Mainly I believe he got the US people to agree
with him and so they decided to leave the group, re-create Dynamix that were
earlier one of the forces uniting under the Hybrid label.
I was asked many times to join the Dynamix forces to show HOSON that whatever
actions he took were wrong. Well ofcourse I stayed in Hybrid. Not only because
I was a friend of HOSON but also cause I highly believe in the new concept...
Well there you have it! The european side decided to go with HOSON's new
concept and sofar Hybrid's been doing pretty good by themselves... on the other
hand Crackpot seems very pissed off and told friends of mine I was a looser
behind my back. This caused me leaving RISC which was replied by Crackpot that
I was kicked out anyways... nice touch, dont you think?
I must say I feel sorry for Crackpot loosing all his power in such a small
amount of time. Hybrid kicked him out, so he decided to try and take revenge...
now he putted so much energy into it that RISC is loosing grounds... it cant be
all easy being a major scene-star <g>...
Anyways, that's it for me... hope everything works out fine for both sides,
what we do need is a few more groups to fight over the releases... with the
current scene-situation of Razor 1911, Hybrid, Dynamix, Napalm, Tyranny and
Prestige we're back in the harmony of competition we once had..
Sincerely ... MindBender - Hybrid PC Spokesman
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Uncopyrighted ? (u) Cyber Angel
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rummaging through the NAPALM.NFO last night, I noticed yet ANOTHER extremely
lame thing about them. While they have no idea how to properly rip CDs, they
sure can rip NFO files. At the bottom of their current NFO there is a line
stating Uncopyright (u) Napalm '96. Wow. Have not all of us seen this for over
two years now, first on the bottom of PHOENIX.NFO, than on the bottom of
TYRANNY.NFO ever since? That line has been my personal trademark for a very
long time now, and I do not appreciate upstart newbie groups using it without
my consent. Now this may not seem a big deal to many of you, but I seriously
cannot think of a dumber thing to do than "pirate" someone else's line. This
shows exactly how much imagination runs in the Napalm "family".
To Prophet/Hannibal or whoever else had the brilliant idea of adding that line
on the bottom of NAPALM.NFO and thus disgracing my work - I will flame incess-
antly on your pathetic little group until such time as the said line is
removed. This has been a public announcement brought to you by the founder of
TYRANNY, still the proud and ONLY holder of trademark:
Uncopyright (u) 1994-96 by the Tyranny team
- Cyber Angel / TYRANNY founder.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Quickview of the Scene (c) Falconer
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hi! I think it's time for me to write another piece about the scene this time
not the just dutch scene but the entire scene!
In the past months I've noticed many releases that should'nt have been released
the way we recieved them. More and more groups seem to find releasing the game
fast more important than the way they release it. What I'm saying here is
nothing new because lots of better known people on the scene have said these
things before... still no change!
(Un)identified Problems of the third kind:
1) Rip or re-rip?
Rips are too big and other/smaller groups tend to re-rip the game to a much
smaller number of disks. Example: the Razor release of Rise and Rule of ancient
empires origionally counted about 22 disks I believe... Some other group did a
re-rip to 11 disks or so ! I don't know about you guys but I rather download 11
disks than 22...
2) State your name, rank and number!
Another problem is the speed at which it has to hit the scene. Games are
ripped, dizzed, nfo-ed and rushed on to the boards in 2 minutes I guess....
Example: Again the release of Rise and Rule (sorry guys) the actual name of the
game is Rise and RULE of ancient empires... The DIZ told us it was named Rise
and FALL etc. Some other people thought it was named Rise of the Rulers! See
what I mean????? Play the damn game to see if it works and write down the name
to put it in the DIZ for gods sake!!!!!
3) Wha.. Wha... What? make a DIZ??? No way, let me sleep!
Lazy, lazy, lazy! That's what we've become! We don't even take the time to
write a proper DIZ (xx/40!!!?????? come on guys!), a proper NFO (it's a cool
shoot 'm up game form ID, that's all, many groups come up with!) or good
installation instruction (just unarj and play and if it does'nt work then throw
it away!) Just to remind you all, it's no fun if you have to have to try to
figure out how a game works for hours before you can play it. Most of the time,
if it does'nt work in 5 minutes it won't work at all!
4) Installation? WHATS THAT?
Once we had a group called TDU-jam.. They introduced installation menu's to the
scene.... Then came Hybrid with a menu... Things were jamming! Then Hybrid
found it no longer nescesary to use the menu.... And then came Razor! They also
used a menu.... (in ehm... maybe 2 releases) but they did'nt think it was
useful (!?)
5) A rip is just like a car! When it starts it works!!!!!
NO WAY!!!!!!!!! I really HATE! when games seem to work and then after some time
they remind me of the quality of the person who ripped it! Remember Space
Bucks???? It was cool... For two game-years at least... After that it stopped..
And this is something that's becoming more and more common on the scene.... Why
don't you guys at least play the game for.. lets say 45 minutes.. Is that too
much to ask?
When TDU left the scene.. many tried to jump in the enormous hole they left.
Razor decided to go CD-ROM but I must say that your performance is way beneath
your former status guys.... I still have an immense respect for Razor because I
feel that there was a time that Razor WAS the scene.... Don't give in to speed
people... Do what you always did best... Quality releases only!
Hybrid already had set foot on the tricky path of ripping... You guys made a
fabulous start. Excellent quality, good installation utility and hard work gave
you guys name and respect on the scene. But if you guys want to keep this
respect you cannot continue the way you have been releasing lately... The
installation utility is gone, rips tend to be big and the quality is less than
before....
ROR.. a relative new group on the scene... MANY (not to say most) of your
earlier rips where VERY bad... Dupes, bad rips, no install notes and about
everything else that can go wrong went wrong. Up to the point that I had no
wish to download ANY of your releases... But the quality has improved
enormously over the past months... (almost) All rips work and only the small
things remain to be improved.... Keep up the good work guys!
The Legacy... Seemed VERY promising but the number of their releases is small.
Hope to see more of you!
Napalm! Many members of dissapeared groups I believe... And some of groups
still on the scene. If you guys play your cards right you will be the great
"equalizers" of the scene... The number of releases is a little low though...
But this has something to do with the time of year I guess!
What I mean to say is this: QUALITY, QUALITY, QUALITY!!!!!
My vision on being a release group is this: (guidelines to release a game)
Everyone on the scene is my customer and I have got to keep them happy.
A product that has a flaw has to be replaced or repaired. Either way, it's my
problem and I have to fix it. I deliver a product and I have to ask myself some
questions about the product that I'm about to release...
1) Do my customers want this product (you can't release CGA TETRIS these days)
2) Is the product of high quality (did I rip the SOB the right way?)
3) Is it clear what the product is (DIZ, NFO okay?)
4) Is my product easy to apply (installation notes/program really works?)
5) Did I do everything in my power to ensure the quality of my product
(did I remove the try-out rip from my system and use my own rip wich
I'm about to release to see if it works?)
I know some of you might think that I should mind my own business, (Falconer?
who's he!... PIC???? WHATS THAT?) but I know many people feel things the same
way and I believe most of the groups feel it too! Most new groups are formed
with in the back of the founders heads "it must be quality only!" and that
thought melting away in the sun the moment they wanna compete! Well DON'T
compete then! Just like Hybrid used to do! Give the scene a better product then
"the other group" released by re-releasing it the way it should.. Don't mind it
being 4 or 5 days after "they" did! Don't mind it being 3 months after they
did! RE-RIP SPACE BUCKS!!!!!
Signing off;
Falconer, Partners In Crime....
===============================================================================
[03] - GAMES TEAM REVIEW
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
April month was not as good in releases as the previous month. No really big
titles were out but still most of the groups survived... The following part
will rate the groups about the way they released their games but mention not
anything at all about the game itself. You can read a review of the game
whereever but where would you go to read about the group that cracked it ?
Tyranny finally made it's comeback but at the same time, groups like CELEBRE,
INC, DYNAMIX and ENERGY did not put out one single game...