Nyquist at 22:50, 17 January 2011

2011-01-17T22:50:11Z

Nyquist at 22:51, 16 February 2010

2010-02-16T22:51:13Z

New page

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+__________________________________ __+
| XX IN REVIEW: x-dome #09 |
| XX IN REVIEW: x-dome #09 |
| __________ |
| |
| _ released by: ROLE |
| _ releasedate: 99-07-01 |
| _ runs under : YES |
| emulator? |
+________________________________ __+

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Arman/Role recently released the second
issue of his mag X-DOME in English
language and as the old X-DOME fanatic
I still am I couldn't hold myself back
from taking a closer look at this issue
of course. So let's start!
........................................

_ TECHNICAL REMARKS
___________________
Hm, does X-DOME work together with
cartridges or not? Good question!
Sometimes it indeed does and sometimes
it does not! But in order to read
through the whole magazine in one flash
without reseting your c64 all the time
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you really should follow Arman's hint
mentioned in the directory and turn off
all your cartridges, REU expansions,
SCPU's and so on.
The magsystem features a quite fast
build in software speeder however.

In contrast to former (german) issues,
both the keyboard- and joystick controls
are now working 100%.

_ THE INTRO
___________
There is no intro this time, so nothing
more to tell here.

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_ THE INTERFACE
_______________
The main menu picture pixeled by VIP/
ROLE looks a bit strange in my eyes,
it seems to me, gold old VIP mixed up
a bit too many different styles this
time. However the big "X D" Logo
underlayed by a stone-like background
pattern looks quite great, the contrast
in colours was well chosen.
The really "strange" part of VIP's
picture are the icons representing the
four main groups of chapters the mag
is divided in, because you really can't
recognize which icon is representing
what! Of course you can find it out
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quite easily with one single click,
but I guess creating some maybe a bit
more suitable icons wouldn't have been
such a great afford, would it?
Would you e.g. imagine a girl with a
vibrator standing for the "Editorial"?
I guess not!

The text viewer comes with a huge and
colourful "X-Dome" logo in great shapes
pixeled by TMR/ONSLAUGHT/COSINE, its
background is kept in dark gray, the
chars in light grey, so a rather good
reading comfort is guaranted.
The status bar placed directly under
the logo is rather useless I'd say,
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but of course my opinion must not always
be right! Just see for yourself.

All in all the outfit deserves a rating
of 06/15 points, I'd say.

_ THE CHAPTERS
______________
These are naturally the most important
part of every discmag, so let's take
a closer look at them:

As already mentioned some lines above
the chapters are divided in four main
cathegories.
Let us call them "Editorial", "Demoscene
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Forum", "Miscellaneous" and last but not
least "Party Tales".

The EDITORIAL Section comes up with a
long Leading Article written by Arman,
in which he mainly tries giving people
some more or less important tips in how
enjoying reading almighty X-DOME and so
on. Yeah, very intereresting...
The second part of this text deals with
gerneral information about the X-DOME
Staff, Credits and so on.
Altogether this is not what I would call
a good preface for a c64 magazine,
unless you're a ROLE-Member of course!

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Reactions contains two individual
reactions on issue #8 by RORSCHACH/
PADUA/NO-NAME and a guy called TUISKO
STEINHOFF (never heard of him) and
several answers on general questions
to the editors. Nothing special here,
just a chapter nearly every mag nowadays
has, I believe.

The Adress List has become quite a small
one this time, this surely depends on
the low annount of snail sheets that got
spread with issue #8.

OK, so much for the EDITORIAL.

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The DEMOSCENE FORUM covers a large
annount of different kinds of
information about the latest happenings
in our scene.

The News Part has become quite a big
one this time, most of the really
actual and varied news on the latest
incidents in nearly all active nowadays
scene groups got supplied by MacGyver/
DMAGIC, a name that stands for nothing
than quality for sure.

Next is Charts, with just 17 votesheet
fillers this time, due to some mistake
the staff made by spreading the sheets.
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Yeah, things can only get better...
No further comment here.

This issues Scene Poll deals with the
situation of todays mag scene.
It got spread by Arman via E-Mail to
some chosen guys (what about making
public scene polls, dude?) and the
majority of its fillers still regard
the mag scene as mega-active and are
more than satisfied with the annount
of mags getting released these days.
Well, I guess you don't have to be
Albert Einstein to realize that this
cannot be the case, but if you look at
the fillers names you might understand.
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What the heck do people like MR. SEX,
FUNGUS, FANGORN, etc., whose only
activity seems to be hanging around
in #C-64 IRC know about the situation
of todays mag scene? Nothing, because
they're simply not involved in this
field! Sorry Arman, but you asked the
wrong guys about the wrong topic!
You can't just surf through #C-64
picking some guys you think are known
enough for you and your mag profiling
yourself and leaving the entirely
topic behind! It really seems to me
that Arman just wanted to have some
popular names in his magazine, his
attitude should be clear...
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The Profile of Nastiness, Inc. I guess,
there nobody who does not know the name
of the former main editor of the
legendary Tribune Magazine. Although I
really cannot see much sense in
interviewing persons who left scene long
time ago and have no connection to
todays scene any more, this interview
really contains some very interesting
thoughts not only about scene business.
So it's really worth reading after all.

Magreview Number 1 starts with a list of
all(?) magazines that got released from
November of '98 till July of '99. Quite
an unusual way to start such a chapter,
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why not simply putting this list into
the Newsflash? At least one mag, namely
Dimension Issue#2 with the releasdate
of June 29th 1999 is missing in this
list, so be careful with the phrase of
"all". After Arman is finally finished
with his blabla about active mailscene
(yeah, maybe back in 1998, but...) once
again, he decides that it's now time for
starting with the first review of non
other mag than Dimension Issue#1 by
Tempest.
The review itself could have been a bit
more detailed in some ways, also style
and use of language cannot be classified
as originla or brilliant.
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Just look at phrases like "(...)under
the lead of the maineditor Floyd(...)"
or "(...)during the whole magazine a
nice Dimension Logo by JB is filling the
right side of the screen (...)" which
are neither grammatically correct nor do
they represent a good piece of
journalistic style.
Objectivity is surely given in this
review, but it's quality and style that
are missing!

Magreview Number 2 deals with Xenoglossy
Issue #2 by Banshee. No further comment
here, just look at my remarks above,
because here it's just the same...
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Mags Today happenes to be some sort of
"Arman's Guide to Magazine Galaxy".
It comes up with a list of all magazines
"alive" today. Well, I don't think you
can call mags like "Driven", "Nitro",
"Propaganda", "Relax" (hahahaha!),
"Vandalism News", etc. "alive" any more
better phrases would be "delayed like
hell" or even "dead" (in case of
"Driven" and "Relax" (which got NOT
released under the label of Oxyron, dear
Arman, but PHUTURE) this one surely is
the right choise.
However the guide also features a second
list with so-called "important" mags
that died in the course of the last
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couple of years. Hm, the question is,
do magazines like "Adwarp English" or
"Necropsy" really fit in here?
I and also many other people do not
think they ever played such an important
role in the mag scene after all!

The last article in this forum is called
The Party 8-Music Review (hm, was there
just one tune released in Aars?) and
it's supplied by ABBADON/DAMAGE.
All in all his reviews are nothing
special. The only critical remarks that
could be mentioned here are that he in
some (not all!) of his reviews could
have gotten a bit more into detail,
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also it would have been a rather nice
idea playing the tunes both on old and
new SID in order to point out the
differences in quality, e.g. concerning
RAYDEN's tune! These things meanwhile
should be standard in every party music
reviews, shouldn't they?

MISCELLANEOUS features articles dealing
with topics from in- and outside the
scene.

The C64 XXX Report is supposed to be
some kind of "review" of several C64
Erotics GFX Collections. This article
is simply pure trash with no sense in it
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at all and a pure catastrophe both in
language and style! It reminds the
reader of the good old XDOME german
times immediately, when such articles
were published in every single issue!

#C64 Everyday Life just contains a
(platin old) logfile from #C-64.
Well, better check out the IRC yourself!
But anyway you get here some really
good tips on what you should definately
NOT do in #C-64, unless you'd like to
be kicked and banned of course!
Arman however seems to have confounded
#C-64 with #Erotic somehow, hasn't he?

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Role Diaries is surely one of the
biggest articles in the entire mag,
telling the complete group history of
the known belgium crew from its very
beginning till today, written in the
form of a diary. It's really interesting
to read such a detailed profile of one
of the oldest and still active groups
in our scene. The article would have
been even more perfect without the
catastrophal English in some passages
and the strange change of point of views
(although it is supposed to be a diary,
there are several passages written in
the third person point of view and then
suddenly COMMANDER, the author, suddenly
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becomes a first person narrator again.
There are also several remarks by
OCHRANA placed in brackets in the course
of whole article which are are little
bit disturbing, I'd say.

Next is an Advertisement on the new
SID COLLECTION CD by XENOX/AFL'70, taken
from the internet, followed by
an article by OCHRANA dealing with
different aspects of the Millennium
problem. Although the article itself is
quite detailed, it does not bring any
new aspects the majority of the readers
did not know so before already anyway!
The article (or at least parts of it)
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are seemingly copied from some computer
magazine, at least there are a few
indicators for this supposition.

In the second edition of his column
Taxes or what? COMMANDER compares car
taxes in different european countries,
coming to the conclusion that car
drivers from the Benelux States should
better move to Luxemburg.
Does this article really feature
anything new? Well, that's also the
question here!

OK, so much about this section.

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PARTY TALES! Yeah, this one is really
great! It features loads of party
results, reports and of course
invitations. Party on!
Hopefully the staff will keep on their
good work with this section in further
issues.
The only funny thing here is (of course)
COMMANDER's Mekka+Symposium 2k-1 party
report in really "perfect and brilliant"
English. Well Serge, I really cannot
remember myself having taken an airplane
to get home (as you mentioned in your
report). Always remember: It's not
"to flee, flight, flight" but "to flee,
fled, fled", dude!
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If you haven't found out already, a
click on the grey and sick looking
lady in the middle of the right border
leads you into the music menu,
featuring four exclusive tunes by
AGEMIXER, GLENN RUNE GALLEFOS and DA
BLONDIE and some three additonal ones
by TRIDENT and TAKI.

Well, it's surely not easy judging the
chapter's quality of the entire mag.
On the one hand we have the brilliant
News Part and Party Coverage, but on
the other hand there is the rest of the
articles, whose quality differs from
rather good (Role Diaries), average
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(Music Reviews) down to lowest pieces
of crap (Commodore XXX Report, #C-64
Everyday life e.g.).

One aspect which was disturbing me most
while reading through the different
chapters was the lack of affort the
maineditors ARMAN and COMMANDER put on
style and language. OK, you judge X-DOME
as a second XENOGLOSSY (the mag by
Banshee) with spelling mistakes in
every second line, BUT if there is one
thing that needs to be improved in
furher issues than it is definately the
use of the English language!

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The annount of crap texts also could be
reduced a bit, replacing these by
quality articles dealing with topics
the sceners are really interested in!

Sorry dudes, but any rating of more than
07/15 would have been a rather bad joke!

_ TEXT LAYOUT
_____________
The mag features a 1x1 characterset done
by my old buddy SHRI SADHU/EX-WILLOW.
Everyone who knows Michael's charsets
knows that they stand for quality and
readable chars and lots of special
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characters and so does this one.
Although it's surely not the best one
Michael ever did and the fact that
(especially in the bold mode) some
letters are sometimes a bit hard to
read due to the fact that the chars
are maybe a bit too small, it is still
absolutely readable and fits into the
whole magazine (which is quite an
important aspect in my mind).

The quality of the layout itself differs
from chapter to chapter. On the one
hand we've got well structured and
sorted News and Party Coverages, but on
the other hand also very unstructured
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articles with loads of layout errors in
it such as some of the reviews or the
Mekka+Symposium 2k-1 partyreport by
Commander/Role for example.

All in all I think that the editors made
much too less use of all the special
characters their character set offers
them in order to pop up the whole layout
a bit.
Sumed up you can say that the text
layout surely is not bad but also
nothing special indeed.
So just an average rating of 07/15.

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_ SO WHAT...?
_____________
X-DOME #9 features some highlights but
also lots of crap that better should
have been left out.
Also the mag is a bit too much Internet-
orientated in my eyes. Leaving the
snailmail scene out nearly completely,
time will show how long this is gonna
work properly (I guess you all remember
the spreading mistake in connection with
with the last issue, don't you??)

Talking about Internet, that's also
the source most of the quality chapters
in this issue came from! The editors
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afford of writing quality articles by
themselves at least can't be rated as
extremely high after all.

To put it in simple words, X-DOME on
this level is an average mag, mainly
ment to be a forum for #C-64 Visitors
and other Netsurfers who like strange
textstyles and giving not more than a
cent on quality language and style, as
these two things definately cannot be
found in this mag, at least not in the
two english issues that got released so
far. The future however is open for
everything of course!

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_ FINAL RATING
______________
Intro..............................+++++
Interface..........................06/15
Chapters...........................07/15
Text Layout........................07/15
OVERALL............................07/15
========================================

_______________________________SCORPE___
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DT 01 en 15 - Revision history

Nyquist at 22:50, 17 January 2011

Nyquist at 22:51, 16 February 2010