French ST Mag, En Anglais

Shiuming Lai checks out a new English language magazine from across the channel

When the last of the major printed English Atari periodicals left the press, many people mourned their passing and talked of the desperate need for a replacement, but not a lot happened, with respect to another printed publication being launched. Even after the German st-computer magazine declared its content as free for translation, to help us along, nothing happened. Now, almost a decade later, it's taken the French to show us how it's done!

I've always viewed the French scene with interest. It never enjoyed the dominant high-profile of Germany as far as we could see in our own press, and perhaps they keep themselves to themselves, too, yet a little research shows some really interesting stuff happening. Nowadays it's more widely known, with the majority of accelerated Falcons currently in service most probably powered by a French product, namely any of the CENTurbo series, and programs like Aniplayer keeping us abreast of modern digital media formats.

I caught my first glimpse of the French ST Magazine back in 1995 at a show in London, but it wasn't until one of the Atari Computing shows up north in 1997 that I bought my first and only copy. A Frenchman had come over with a suitcase full of this interesting colour magazine, produced on Atari hardware and software, and complete with cover disk (whose label was supplied separately and I had to stick it on myself). Inserted in each copy was a subscription form asking £45 for a year's supply, not an unreasonable proposition, if you could understand French!

The original ST Magazine actually closed its doors once already. However, a small fanzine by the name of AtTOS (not to be confused with the old German ATOS), run by Cyril Denis since September 2001, was re-branded as the new generation ST Magazine a year ago.

For the benefit of English-speaking users, the authors have responded to demand by launching a trial edition of number 132 (October 2003), doing all the translation themselves. Extra points are due just for the effort.

Cyril asked me what I thought of his team's standard of English. Is he joking? I'd be over the moon if I could make a magazine in French. Yes, there are (very few) parts that I don't understand but it would be churlish to nit-pick here, indeed, I like the fact it isn't in native standard English. The sprinklings of Gallic flavour definitely adds refreshing style and colour in my book. Get to know and love terms like Falconist and graphismes.

So what of the content? Bearing in mind its roots, it comes as no surprise that this new ST Magazine is aimed mainly at the 16/32-bit platforms. If it were to include the consoles and 8-bits, the page count would have to increase, and so would the price, probably. Inside issue 132 there's a range of interesting and original articles, showing that a paper magazine in a niche market can still hold its own, without borrowing articles from the internet. The cover feature is the CT60 Falcon accelerator, which gets a five-page review, and there are sections on games, GFA programming, demos, news, Cubase Lite tips and an interview with MyMail author, Erik Häll, to name a few. Oddly, the demo review section prompted me to download a demo for the first time in a long time, whereas the constant new demo announcements on the major scene sites generally goes over my head. Thanks to this, I'm playing the 96 KB Echos intro continuously and enjoying the cool ACE music right now, via my Falcon's external DACs (you can bet Thomas of New Beat had something to do with it whenever the sound also comes out of the DSP port!), as I type.

Overall presentation is easy on the eye - it uses are dual column layout, with consistent page style throughout. The cover is in colour, it looks like laser copy and the colours are somewhat washed out, this could be improved, while the inside pages are mono laser.

I see great potential in this English edition and the editorial staff have done a very good job in this trial publication, it will go from strength to strength, with the English-speaking world's support. At this stage, the team is thinking about offering a reader disk service, depending on feedback. If sufficient interest is shown, the English editions will continue, and they will start accepting subscriptions, so, what are you waiting for?!

shiuming@myatari.net

MyAtari magazine - Review #2, May 2004