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                     REMEMBERING THE HUNGARIAN ATARI SCENE
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As I was on IRC lately I stumbled over a guy called TOMCAT and as we spoke a bit
together I checked  out that he was  from Hungaria and I started to crawl around
in my mind, trying to remember  something precious concerning  ATARI and Hungary
since the  only point I  found over  the last years was  the ATARAXIA page, that
offered one single issue of a hungarian diskmag for download.

Yes, that was it! COMA and I remembered  that those guys  got in touch  with the
DBA magazine  in the middle  nineties but  somehow nothing  was heard again from
them... So I asked TOMCAT for people that are still using their Atari in Hungary
and he brought me in touch with SCINNY, or better SCINTILLATION and since we had
some round ups of several scenes so far  the idea was born  to create some small
history/round up of the things that happened in Hungary on the Atari...

So SCINNY supplied some  interesting facts about  the Atari scene in Hungary and
I wont to leave out of those informations now... Read what he wrote...

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I'd like to try to summarize the history of the Hungarian Atari Scene, as far as
I know:

Officially Atari first  appeared at the end of 1990 because of the COCOM trading
restrictions. In  the  beginning  there were  only a  few people  interested  in
cracking ST games.

In 1992 there  were two  Atari clubs in our country, one of them is known as the
citadel of microcomputing: Csokonai Culture House, the 'Csoki' - Chocolate.
In this institute you can find computer clubs and scene parties nowadays too.

The well-known  diskmag on  Amiga called 'GURU' (which  became a 'real' magazine
later) gave the  inspiration  for the  Atarians to  create  their own electronic
medium, similar to  the 'GURU'. That was 'BOMBA', and  the creators were  a team
called CET (Central European Team) thats members were MeGa, OMD and anAlfaBeta.

Because our team (CGD ST) was member of the Csoki's Atari club, they asked us to
write articles for  the diskmag. But we had problems  regarding the construction
and edition of the magazine - that was unacceptable for them.

In summer  1992 we created  the 'COMA' and we (CGD ST) wanted  to  publish it as
soon as possible. In  September, on an  ordinary club day  the  second hungarian
disk magazine was presented for the public.

That time was the golden age of Atari in Hungary. Unfortunately it didn't lasted
long. One year after the colonization of the wintel PCs was sensable, the amount
of active Atarians decreased in this country, we could only write articles about
fewer programs, and finally the idea of a common COMA-BOMBA issue appeared.

The things  got even  worse - you  could hear and  see  the wintel  mind-bending
propaganda everywhere.

From autumn  1995 we  published in the columns of 'GURU'  for a half year and we
contributed to D.B.A. Magazine as well.
In 1996 the domestic Atari scene  died, however there were some Falcon owners in
Hungary.

In 1996 and in 2002 a friend of mine and I visited Mekka-Symposium.

Hungarian Software and hardware activities:

- BOMBA (5+1 issues, 1992-1993, ST)
- COMA (8+3 issues, 1992-1995, ST)
- DEE (Doom Emulator Engine, 1995, F030)
- some pictures and modules for Hungarian scene parties and I have an unfinished
  intro for the ST :(
- ZHDI IDE hard disk controller (1995, ST, http://www.anteus.hu)

IMHO, that's all...

Regards,
Scintillation
(Krisztian Varga)

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Happily the  storie didn't ended up here. But  later for  this. As it is and was
always with such very local oriented  scenes for the foreign  users it is always
hard to get the  software that was created in those countries. Often it vanished
from the screen and nothing  than rumours and memories are left since the people
in those countries  and local scenes  quitted their work and  often never got in
touch with foreign people as well, esp. with one they shared their software with
and this seemed to be happened with the hungarian scene too.

Not so with the hungarian scene since SCINNY is still around and he even is able
to offer more or less the whole output of the hungarian Atari scene for download
on an own server, even if I didn't found it before he dragged my noose onto it.

Unfortunately  the server  seems to be  unstable and  all download  tries didn't
succeded  so far but I'm still  in touch with him and I hope the problem will be
solved somewhen. It makes me  just happy  at first that  the software  from this
small scene didn't  vanished at all, esp. since those diskmags offering in parts
some goodies too, such as the only (?) commercial Atari game from Hungary at all
for example.

But we're  still not  on the end... What? No, at last SCINNY  told me  that he's
still working on his intro for the ST and he hopes to get it finished somewhen.

I wouldn't knee down  now and praise to  God or Satan to see a new born scene on
the screen, no that train has left the station, but in times as the local scenes
are shrinking they're more and more holding  contact to  foreign scenes, working
together and holding contact via internet. That maybe could save some people and
hold them  back from  leaving  the Atari  scene... We  have only  a few  guys in
Slowenia, Switzerland, Norway or Greece, so  what about  one more single fighter
in Hungary? Maybe  he's a single activist  in Hungary, but an activist on Atari,
joining our forces and blowing life into this machine...

So take care and stay Atari!

Thanx to SCINNY for his support!

_.tSCc.__________________________________________________________moondog_1o/2k2_