What is this?
Welcome to a special section inside Hugi #36. This section is called "International Diskmag Encyclopedia". It contains reviews of many PC demoscene-related diskmags that were either published fully in the English language or at least had an English corner. I introduce the mags, give you the basic facts such as release period, editing team and numbers of downloads, then I review all relevant issues one by one. Note: I don't review magazines that are related only to the ANSI, VGA, music, hacker or warez scenes without any connection to the demoscene.
The reason why I made this special section is simple: Such a thing didn't exist in the scene yet. I myself would have been very interested in such an encyclopedia though. And I guess I'm not the only one who likes to read about old diskmags.
Why care?
But some of you will perhaps ask why one should care about old diskmags at all. For these people I want to quote a statement by Seven, which was published in Static Line #21 (May 2000):
"As a writer for Static line and the former version of DemoJournal, I can assure you that a diskmag DEFINITELY is a contribution to the demoscene
My first contact with the scene was via the 'PC underground' book, which came with a CD with demos and one issue of Imphobia. The demos blew me away, but reading Imphobia 7 really showed me the community of sceners behind the demos. When I got the Hornet CD, I read all 122 issues of DemoNews on it, and that way I learned the major trends and events that happened years before. For example, everyone knows that Future Crew made the fantastic Second Reality demo, that won Assembly 93. But how many people know that Future Crew, as the PC organizers of Assembly'93, changed the compo-machine to a more powerful CPU, presumably because Second Reality needed it? And that there was a problem with the SoundBlaster Pro, playing only in mono, except for the last demo (Second Reality) which used a lot of stereo effects? I know that articles are not always 100% true, so you have to be careful about what you believe, but now I understand why some people think so negatively about Future Crew. For a newbie, this kind of knowledge is near to impossible to get just by reading newsgroups or chatting on IRC. The only way is to read old diskmags, something that I encourage everyone to do
"Why both parts in one issue?
The first part of this series was already published in Hugi #35. I decided to publish it again so that you have all reviews in one issue and can easily search for keywords in all reviews. For example, if you want to find out what diskmags contained interviews with Darkness - press F7 and enter "Darkness". In addition, the final, second part is included in this issue of Hugi.