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                              ALIVE - ISSUE 5
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system.... ST, STe, Falcon, 1 MB RAM, RGB, VGA

credits... intro for ST ...... ray/nemo/havoc/sts
           intro for Falcon .. deez/toodeloo
           grafix ............ edo/exocet
           musix ............. toodeloo/tao/nemo/5o5
           articles .......... sts, cih, paranoid, felice, marss, deez, exocet,
                               evl, dma sc, strider, havoc, stcooper

release... o6/2k2

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Since ALIVE has found some regular steps for releasing new issues it wasn't that
promising that  a new issue would hit  the street before the summer was going to
burn us down. After some starting problems  STS and his team matched it to bring
us another  full blown  issue in the end and I just  want to say  it right here,
that surely is setting another top of the issues...

A thing that makes this  issue very interesting  is the fact that it comes along
with two intros, one by RAY with help of NEMO, HAVOC and STS and one by DEEZ who
included a music by TOODELOO in his one. Ofcourse RAY did ST bits while DEEZ was
cleaning up his harddisk for a Falcon intro. RAY's intro is a truly rocking thing
btw...

But this brought us some  problems as  well since the  big DATA files blows away
any disk frontiers. Not only that no goodies or  anything else was included, no,
also Falcon and ST version came separate out, including the special intros each.

Unfortunately here I have to bring on a small point of criticism since the Fo3o-
version didn't  contains  the ST intro (that runs  on Falcon too). I  think a ST
version  without  the Falcon intro but a  Falcon version with  both intros would
have done  the job a bit better here  since so you  needed to leech both version
just because of the intros then if you're a Falcon owner...

Anyway... The big data file is giving me dripping teeth since it shows that this
issue is damn big  packed. After loading the magazine a nice far east styled pic
by EDO comes up, saying ALIVE... Take a look at it here...



Typical EDO style, eh?! ;)

Then a funny tracking music comes up, made  by TOODELOO (since I was running the
Falcon version) and the menu  was loading. It shows  some quite clean styled gfx
by EXOCET, using some wooden textures and a few bugs to fill it up with colours.
Btw... You surely know  the possibility to  listen to the ST musix on the Falcon
as well while switching off the Falcon sound. But where the hell was the "Music"
button? Damn... like an  idiot I thought STS has taken  the "Falcon version" too
much on the word and skipped the ST musix in this version... but I recovered the
ST musix by hint ;)



You have to click onto the bug below to change the musix... :)

The range of the ST musix is filled up by the same team that has done the musics
for this issue  of UCM as well and  the names TAO, 5o5 and NEMO are standing for
themselves: cool chipsounds without compromises.
A little drawback is the fact that TOODELOO's music seems to be bugged out since
after  short playing time it  slows down  giving just  one tone  by another away
without melody or something.

Ok, back to  the magazine. A short scroll  down of the menu  offers a content of
about 7o articles, covering, ALIVE-a-like a lot of Atari and scene related stuff
as well as it contains a big  non computer oriented part  that was mainly filled
up by CIH who's besides STS the main man behind ALIVE. Besides  those two guys a
lot of other writers are  on board, many  with just one  article, but this gives
some more colours too. After  all it is  nice to see FELICE  back on the writers
area, even if he didn't brought in as much stuff as he  did for MAGGIE, but he's
up and writing again and that is what counts. Also PARANOID and MARSS are teamed
up again and on PARANOIDs hand his  articles are the only  lifesigns of PARANOIA
on Atari since long time at all.

So let's  go for a  closer look  onto the contents... After the  regulars with a
splitted editorial by the two main editors credits and stuff STS is giving  away
some  personal views  onto the  things  that  were  going on  in France  for the
election of the premier minister  as it was no secret  for non froggies that the
ultra right wing  politician (semi facistic) LePen popped  up again to  get this
job and with Chirac no  better choice was around since he's a quite conservative
guy as well... But let's skip the politics (even if  it's a must  to express the
own meaning if you have a possibility) and go on for the real interesting stuff,
Atari stuff.

The scene corner is quite small, covering a few news  snippets that don't reveal
too much  as there isn't  much happening  on the scene, a  party calendar (where
have I seen  that before?! Hint, hint!) for  Atari  events, some  reports of the
MEKKA party including a funny CIH original, the MEKKA MINIMAG... Always nice for
a laugh :)

Later on the reason  for the small scene  corner came up in  form of an separate
interview corner, featuring interviews with CYCLONE of  XTROLL (the maker of the
LETHAL XCESS 2oo2 project), NERVE from  EPHIDRENA (or  Creators, or Effect or...
something else), FEL'X who claims to be  founder and leader of MJJ PROD and also
with MORGAN of FANTASY, another  oldschooler from the  golden ST demo days. It's
all in one a quite interesting read, only MARSS' collection of  interview snipps
with the Jaguar developpers JDC wont match to the part really.

The final snippets of that part are a hardware test by EVIL who reviews the IDE-
SCSI adapter and a demo tutorial  by DEEZ who explains  things about FPU, Videl,
memory and so on.

The magazine goes on  with a review of the latest scene productions, such as the
demos from  the MEKKA and some later released stuffs, like STAX' intro and MJJ's
slideshow. Not  much to  tell you here, just  that STS  was swinging  an axe and
kicked some of them into the trashcan... yau, I like that :)
Urg... then I saw that  UCM 22 was reviewed as well, this time by CIH and he did
a fairly in deepth job and after  reading through it, I was  quite pleased and I
saw that the way I'm moving on seems  to be more stable  now :) Being the badass
of the scene all  times isn't that cool, but after all truth has to be truth and
shit is shit and we have freedom of free speech and meaning...

Back  to the  ALIVE front... STS is  gathering  some  reasons  for "Why I didn't
managed to sent in my article"ð that is a quite  funny one too, followed  by some
mixed  articles, just  reviews of "ACE" and  a short  snipped  about  the latest
version of "SAINT", a review (!) of the EIL'99 video and some homepage infos.

The games area is filled with  a review of  GODPEY written by DMA SC that offers
several  faked screens (hehehe) since I  doubt that  he has reached  such a high
level  in the puzzle area ;)  The "latest" GODPEY scores  were included  as well
but here  I think it's useless  esp. since in  that early  stage the scores were
changing nearly every day.

Furthermore  you can find  besides a review of  the RES GODS Juggling game and a
review  of "HEARTLAND" and the Game & Watch  thingies, also  articles  about the
latest developments on the Jaguar sector as well as reviews of some Lynx things,
just as AVP again (this time in  comparison to my article in UCM # 22 with a few
nice screenshots). This  section is  rounded up with  an outbreak from the Atari
scene, since also ALIVE is going to leave the way from  Atari only reporting, so
we can find articles about  the GAMECUBE and the DREAMCAST (where PARANOID seems
to be hard addicted to). Furthermore  PARANOID is  taking  a look  at videogames
that were  ahead of their time  and so we can  read interesting  stuff about the
ColecoVision, Lynx, Jaguar and Dreamcast, who all failed in the end...

The magazine closes down with the usual miscellaneous section that is quite full
this time, gathering about one third  of the contents  of the whole magazine. So
you will find DVD and movie  reviews (Tron, The Cell, Starwars Episode 2) and as
always a lot of mind melting thoughts  and funny articles by CIH who is going to
create his own mag within ALIVE here since  he ports all the  things that he was
doing in MAGGIE to ALIVE here and in several parts it's a good laugh.

And so the topics  are just something  like that: "Cooking For Idiots", Starwars
in CIH's unbeatable ASCII version and to feed the hype at all, with CIH's latest
minimag, this time dedicated  to the death of Queen Mum that really rocks :) The
ideas CIH is  bringing in here are so  funny, just like the "Heart-O-Meter" that
shows the popularity of Queen Mum, Margarete and Di(e)... yawn. I think CIH must
stay anonymous or it could be that some royals will kill him for that...

Yo, so I stepped through it in the end and so it's time for the usual...

final words... ALIVE 5 is another  good issue that matched  it to top the former
               one quite  tight. The  contents  are again  very interesting  and
               since many other people gave their  hand, even if the  result was
               mostly just one or two  articles  quite various. This  time there
               weren't as much Internet ripps included and this brightens up the
               whole thing a  bit more since we  aren't reading  ST OFFLINE here
               but the  number one contender :) Drawbacks are  just the  strange
               packs of the Falcon version (without ST intro) and the small demo
               and game areas but since the scene  is quite  silent since longer
               time now, it isn't ALIVE's fault and wont be rated here.
               Really rocking is  the fact of  two included  intros (check their
               separate reviews!) that wont be beaten in the next time I think.

_ratings________________________________________________________________________
contents........  85 % - again a nice read, some really interesting articles...
shell........... ------- what to say, the same as ours ;) no rating!
shell grafix....  8o % - nice idea by Exocet
shell musix.....  9o % - good (but buggy?) module and rocking chip noises
loader pic......  8o % - and another Edo pixel stuff... nice one as always (?!)
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overall.........  84 % - at least 1% better than ALIVE 4 :)
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Since UCM and CHOSNECK  still didn't  found a real regular way of release times,
ALIVE is the most regular output of the nowadays  ATARI (demo) scene and I think
CIH and STS have still something left for us this year ;)

_.tSCc.__________________________________________________________moondog_o8/2k2_