          Hello, and welcome to what will be the longest ever 
scroll text to appear on ANY computer world wide. No loads of 
"....", no loads of "!!!!", no loads of spaces, no cheating, no 
shit. This will be a REAL RECORD LENGTH SCROLLER, a kind you've 
never seen anywhere in your life before - and a kind you'll 
probably never see again.   As I will not cheat (at least not 
much) I will get right down to the biz' right now.
          This demo contains entries by those jolly French chums 
of ST Connexion, Legacy, M-Coder, Naos, Vegetables (perhaps not - 
I don't know so far up front, really, so you'll have to see for 
yourself) and, of course, the Overlanders. It's the Last of the 
Great Demos, which therefore deserves the longest ever scroll 
text. They told me I should perhaps try to stick to less than 400 
Kb of text. I'll see what I can do. Now for the real text to 
start...
          A lot of people have joined the ST scene and some of 
them have left again. Some of them have helped significantly to 
make the ST to what it is today, to create the ST as a demo 
machine that was tough to program but that eventually gave back 
lots of satisfaction. What about the ST Great Sound Pioneer, Mad Max of 
The Exceptions? What about the first man to throw open the lower 
border, Alyssa? What about the man to do the first ever full 
screen, Ilja of Level 16? What about the man to discover that 
fabulous sync scrolling, Nic of The CareBears? And what about 
people the likes of ES (TEX), Gogo (TCB) and Tanis (TCB) who have 
shown later graphics artists what graphics can be all about? 
These are just a few of the most brilliant people that have been 
present on the ST demo scene so far, and it needs to be mentioned 
specifically that without these people the ST scene as it is 
today would be nothing like the way we know it. In this 'Last of 
the Great' demo efforts on the ST by those genuinely nice 
Frenchies of the Overlanders and ST Connexion (and more), I have been 
asked to write the longest scroll text ever. Honoured by the fact 
that they thought of me instead of many people who could probably 
do a far better job at it, I accepted gratefully. So what you're 
reading now will be the longest scroll ever to appear on any 
computer system. Furyo, the big graphics man of the Overlanders, 
told me I could basically do anything I wanted - including 
writing a scroll text that was bigger than the memory of a half 
meg Atari ST. Krazy Rex of ST Connexion (the guy who obviously 
has a big finger in the porridge, like we say in Holland) implied 
it should be a lot smaller. Anyway, don't ask me how they're 
gonna load text data while many things are happening on the 
screen - I don't know. I just hope, no, I pray, that the actual 
demo screen in which this scroll text will be put will be 
impressive enough to keep people interested all that time. As an 
incentive towards viewing this scroll text all the way, I have 
added the list of greetings at the end - but that list should 
include every single person who means (or has meant) something in 
the world of Atari ST computing from the end of 1985 on (and 
maybe some people who haven't meant anything from a demo making 
point of view but who are just terribly nice and deserve to be 
mentioned).
          First, however, I would like to thank extensively Furyo 
of the Overlanders who convinced people that I should do this 
last of the Great Scrolltexts. I am deeply indebted to him, and 
this obviously makes him one of my absolute favourite Frenchies 
(of which there are too few). In case you don't know who I am: I 
am Cronos of the near-legendary (and not very productive) Dutch 
ST group the Quartermass Experiment. Apart from many ideas in our 
heads we have not contributed much but we DO have lots of video 
nights and get together socially. We even made a home vid' once 
("QX - The Search For Inspiration"). Of course this does not 
interest you at all, so therefore I will attempt to get something 
more fascinating going.    This scroll text will be quite long 
and it will feature various parts written by guests (most notably 
by Stefan, co-writer of the disk magazine "ST NEWS" about which 
you will read quite a bit as well). Further guests will appear as 
well. At the moment that I am writing these words (a month or two 
before the deadline) I have reason to believe that Fury of 
Legacy, Lucifer (ex-SOD), The Nutty Snake of QX and Slime of the 
DBA will be some of them. We'll just see later, I suppose, 
whether or not they will actually appear.
          Now for the first guest appearance, right at the 
beginning of this scroll. It's a story about the history of demo 
programming on the ST by Stefan Posthuma (a.k.a. Digital Insanity 
of the Lost Boys Who Used To Be From London Who Were For A While 
From London And Germany And Oss And Who Are Now Just From London 
And Oss).
          Well, here's Stefan on the keys (who, unlike most 
people in the world, has NO problems whatsoever with Richard's 
German keyboard because he has one at home, too).
          It all started in the spring of 1986 when a couple of 
computer freaks from Germany came together. Erik Simon and Udo 
Fisher bought an ST and started exploring this hot, new machine. 
They fooled around a bit using BASIC (and noticed how bad "Atari 
ST BASIC" was), but soon ended up with a program called "Seka", 
coding their first assembly language programs. Soon after the 
first scrolling message appeared on their screens, they formed a 
group and called themselves The Exceptions or TEX. Erik Simon 
called himself ES, and dedicated himself to drawing the various 
graphics needed for their demos. Udo adapted the name -ME-, and 
three other people joined them: Michael (Daryl), Gunther (6719, 
after his ZIP code) and last but not least, Jochen Hippel (Mad 
Max), a young and very talented music programmer. There was a 
person named Alyssa associated with TEX for a while but he left 
after their first demo I believe. In the very beginning, they 
still did some cracking of games software, adding their demo 
screens to the loaders of these games. But soon they realized 
that programming demos only is a lot more fun and a bit less 
illegal so they stopped cracking and dedicated themselves to 
demos.
          The definitive breakthrough for TEX came with their 
"Little Colour Demo" in the fall of 1987. This was the first 
full-fledged demo with rasters, scrolling messages and music. 
They found out how to use the various timers in the ST to create 
special colour effects. Also, Mad Max had written a routine that 
was able to read Rob Hubbard's Commodore 64 sound files and play 
them on the ST. "LCD" was the first demo with full music, rasters 
and scrollers. The demo era had begun.
          After "LCD", Alyssa discovered how to fool the MMU into 
opening the lower border. TEX used this technique for the first 
time in their "NeoChrome Picture Slide Show" which had 
"NeoChrome" pictures occupying the whole screen, and a scrolling 
message in the lower border. This amazed quite a few people I can 
tell you. (Including myself, I was totally ignorant as to machine 
code programming on the ST at that time and still fooling around 
in Monochrome with "GfA Basic"). This demo also showed us by the 
way, that ES was quite a talented graphics man.
          Now TEX weren't the only ones at that time. More demo 
crews were forming, Michael Bittner started the TNT crew, the 
Delta Force was brought to life and a couple of Swedish 
enthusiasts became The CareBears. The TNT crew started bringing 
samples into the demos, the "Lovespy Demo" (September 1987) being 
an example of this.
          The ST scene was really shocked by the release of the 
"BIG Demo" (Best In Galaxy) by TEX in January 1988. It was huge, 
it was brilliant, it was insane. 113 different pieces of music 
(never equalled after this), five different screens and the first 
three-voice digital music ever. It actually had a main menu where 
you could choose your music or another demo screen, something 
unheard of before this. The three "Psych-O-Screens" all consisted 
of clever colour tricks, and the "Big Scroller" really showed 
what the ST was capable of (at that time of course). This 
established TEX as the undisputed masters of demo programming on 
the ST. Also, the massive amount of music and the presence of a 
"Digital Department" showed that Mad Max had a lot up his sleeve.
          By the way, around this time the first Bitmap Brothers 
game ("Xenon") was released by Melbourne House.
  By that time a disk magazine called "ST NEWS" started becoming 
more and more popular and the editor/founder (Richard Karsmakers) 
of this magazine who wrote the scrolltext for the demo had some 
good contacts with the people from TEX. This resulted in TEX 
visiting Holland in March 1988, when they finished the "Amiga 
Demo". This demo contained some four voice digitized musics 
ported from the Amiga by Mad Max. It also had an "Overscan 
Screen" that removed the lower border as well as the right 
border, something totally new then.
          I was there during this visit being a close friend of 
Richard and it was a very inspiring weekend for sure. It was the 
first real 'computer orgy' I  attended. All-night coding, pizza-
annihilation and the consumption of insane amounts of Coca-Cola. 
Loud music on the stereo and the deafening roars of frustrated 
programmers, pissed off by their STs crashing. It was quite a 
revelation to someone as innocent as I was at that time. I 
believe I had to leave early though, I had a girlfriend waiting 
for me. This also saw the creation of the first "Real Time" 
article ever for "ST NEWS" - an article in which the people 
present give random comments on the events, with the exact time 
of these comments, portraying a life-like and accurate report of 
what is going on.
          The next important demo to be released after the "Amiga 
Demo" was the "FNIL" (Fantastic New Interactive Largest) demo by 
the TNT Crew. This featured some great coding, full-screen 
scrolling, massive amounts of colours and rasters and a whopping 
seven different demo screens. Also at that time, the first Level 
16 demo saw the light of day, Level 16 being two highly talented 
programmers from Germany, friends of TEX.
          Things quieted down a little after this. I took over 
the editorship and programming of the "ST NEWS" disk magazine by 
the end of 1988, and "ST NEWS" Volume 3 Issue 4 saw the release 
of my first demo. A one-plane (ROXL) scrolline with  rasters  and 
a for-and background. The year 1988 also saw the release of Jeff 
Minter's "Trip-A-Tron" a truly cosmic experience.
          Then, in January 1989, one of the most impressive and 
amazing demos ever was released. "The Union demo". The Union was 
the result of a joining of demo crews. TEX teamed up with the TNT 
Crew, The CareBears, Level 16, the Replicants (a cracker crew 
from France, the first French crew to get well-known) and the 
Delta Force.
          "The Union Demo" had it all. Superb coding, the first 
ever no-border demo screen (called fullscreen) by Level 16, solid 
3D vectors by the TNT crew, digisounds and megascrollers by The 
CareBears, an interactive menu (move the man to different doors 
where the demos can be found), loader screens etc., etc. This was 
it. Everybody thought this to be the ultimate demo, something 
never to be equalled. Well, in a sense this is true. "The Union 
Demo" is a true classic, making a heavy impact on the demo world.
          "The Union Demo" contained a few screens by The 
CareBears, including the 3D-sinus-and-a-whollottamore-stuff (or 
something) scroller which is considered by most people to be the 
best demo screen ever written. With their screens the CareBears 
established themselves once and forever and their coder Nic 
(Niclas Thissel) was to become a living legend afterwards.
          In January 1989, the "Swedish New Year Demo" was 
released too, showing the world that there was more to Sweden 
than just the CareBears. Crews like Omega and Sync are also 
forces to be reckoned with.
          In the beginning of 1989,  another demo crew emerged 
from anonymity. They had produced some digi-demos and a demo 
called the "Power Demo", but the "DEF" (Definitive) demo was 
their first big demo. With this remarkable demo, the Lost Boys of 
London became quite famous. The most impressive thing about the 
Lost Boys were their ages: Spaz (Dave Moss, graphics man), Sprog 
(Marc Palmer, coder) and Sammy Joe (Michael Schussler - he is a 
German who at the time lived in England, their PR dude) were all 
15 when this demo was released. Their main coder called Manikin 
(Tim Moss, Dave's brother) was 18. The funny thing is that 
Manikin started coding 68000 on the ST after reading an article 
in "ST NEWS" about scrolling in machine code that I had written.
          That summer, Richard and myself travelled through 
England for three weeks, visiting most of the well-known games 
programmers and companies, gathering stories and interviews for 
our "ST NEWS" magazine. During these three weeks, we also visited 
the Lost Boys and had a most amusing time in London with them. It 
was there that Tim (Manikin) told me about his plans for their 
next Mega Demo and asked if I were interested to do some screens 
for it.
          But a lot of things were going on in Germany too, TEX 
was fed up with doing demos and wanted to program some games. 
This finally resulted in the founding of Thalion Software, a 
games company based around all the members of TEX plus their 
friends (TNT crew, Level 16). Hopes were high, never before had 
so many gifted programmers and graphics people been in the same 
company. They produced their first games, but due to marketing 
and management problems these games never became the success they 
could have become.
          But nevertheless, Thalion was a magic thing, every demo 
programmer dreamed of one day working for them and programming a 
game for them. Richard and I visited them around the end of the 
summer and I must say that the atmosphere in that office was 
indeed magical, and inspiration coursed through my veins as I sat 
there watching these people work. I even thought about leaving my 
job and joining them instead. In the end I decided against this, 
SPC being too interesting (and promising) a company to leave at 
that time.
          Back to The CareBears. They had not been sitting 
around, but had been programming like maniacs. An Cool, Jas, Nic 
(all coders) and Tanis (graphics) created the "Whattaheck" demo. 
This was actually a compilation of Swedish demo screens gathered 
at a large demo-party in Sweden. One of these screens was very 
amazing. A no-border screen with full-screen scrolling!! 
Everybody was quite stupefied until the news came through. Nic 
had found a way to make the hardware scroll the screen. 'Sync 
Scrolling' they called it. How it worked nobody knew, but it was 
to create quite a stir... It didn't last long before Thalion 
released their first game using this technique, "Leavin' 
Teramis", a vertical scrolling game. Richard quit his Biology 
studies to join Thalion to work as a games-designer/copywriter/PR 
person, and I believe he worked on this one too.
          In August of 1989, the first all-dutch demo was 
released. A group called "Aenigmatica" released their "Genysys" 
demo (I just mentioned this one to soothe my feelings of Dutch 
pride and joy...).
          The end of 1989 also saw the next 'super' demo. This 
was the first one to be compared to "The Union Demo", a true 
piece of wonderful programming. It were The CareBears again who 
did it with their "Cuddly Demos". In this they exploited their 
'Sync Scrolling' to the max, creating a full and smooth scrolling 
main menu that managed to baffle quite a few people. It also 
contained a record amount of demo screens, one more amazing than 
the other. All this by four people, a true achievement. Their 
"Spreadpoint" demo (taken from the Amiga though) with the many 
little scrollines inspired many demos to come, and the main menu 
of "Cuddly Demos" can be found in many varieties today. Also, the 
graphics in this one showed that Tanis wasn't without his talents 
either.
          The Swedes did one more thing after this, the "Swedish 
New Year Demo 1990", and another Dutch crew named Galtan Six 
released their "Mega Demo". If you boot this one in monochrome, 
you get a little screen by yours truly (I must have been the only 
person insane enough to write monochrome stuff. I did it for "ST 
NEWS", really).
          Then the attention was shifted to the Lost Boys when 
they released their "Mind Bomb" demo in April 1990. This was 
another memorable demo with a sync-scrolling main menu (much like 
"Cuddly Demos" I have to admit) and quite a few innovative 
screens. Like the "Red Sector" demo, after the famous 3D 
vectorballs from the Amiga (There was one demo before this that 
featured these vectorballs, I can't remember which one though, it 
was from Sweden). It also featured some screens written by 
myself, I was quite happy to get them in there. "Mind Bomb" was 
well-written with lots of great screens. Sprog left the Lost Boys 
soon after "DEF Demo" so Manikin had to do all the programming on 
this one. It also featured a screen by the British BBC (Bad Brew 
Crew).
          This demo also started a 'Bear Bashing' trend, one of 
the first things you see after booting this demo is a large 
boxing glove crushing a cute Care Bear. This was a friendly joke 
though, we have always been good friends with the CareBears.
          The summer of 1990 was very intense. Tim and Dave 
(Manikin and Spaz from the Lost Boys) came over to work for 
Thalion, programming their first game, designed by Richard, named 
"A Prehistoric Tale". During this time, Nic from the CareBears 
was also working there on a game called "Enchanted Land", a full 
and supersmooth scrolling platform game. Personally, I think this 
is the most technically complex game on the ST yet. This sync-
scrolling brings problems that many people don't think of like 
not being able to do screen-swapping thus having to work out 
complex sprite handlers if you want to keep things nice and 
smooth (The whole game runs in one VBL).
          "Enchanted Land" (named after a Sodom song, Richard 
came up with this one) was released just after the summer and "A 
Prehistoric Tale" was released that Christmas. But Thalion still 
had (and still has) management problems so both games didn't do 
very well I am afraid. Thalion became more and more unpopular, 
resulting in Richard quitting in the beginning of 1991, and one 
of their top programmers (Marc Rosocha, the one responsible for 
games like "Last Ninja" and "Wings of Death") left them to form 
his own company, Eclipse Software Design. One of their graphics 
people, Thorsten Mutchall, joined the CareBears as GoGo. He is 
one of the most talented graphics people around these days and he 
has done graphics for games like "Spherical" and is currently 
working on Thalion's "Amberstar II", a role-playing adventure 
game.
          At the end of his stay at Thalion, Manikin decided to 
do a little demo with all the friends he had there. A guy called 
Oxygene (he was working at Thalion on a version of "Galaga", a 
project that was never finished, and he had previously done the 
"ST NEWS" Volume 4 Issue 4 demo under the name In Flagranti) 
joined The Lost Boys - and so did I. Together with a guy from the 
Replicants, Daryl from TEX and Blue Devil from the Gigabyte crew 
(they had been around since the old days) and the new ULM 
(ULtimate Matricks) from Luxembourg we did "Life's a Bitch". Tim 
did a very fast (and very cheating) solid 3D screen just to annoy 
Nic (some talk was going on about the new CareBears demo, it 
would feature some amazing 3D and some more astonishing stuff) 
and the others contributed their screens. Mad Max made the now 
famous "Bittner Mix" and the demo was released at the 1990 Atari 
Dsseldorf Messe. I remember Tim finishing it right there with a 
lot of people waiting for their copy. Some people even asked us 
to sign disks, something we found quite amusing.
          During this time we also met The Respectables from 
Trier, Germany. A swell bunch of people who were to become very 
good friends of ours.
          After Nic went home, we had the 'Fax Wars' with TCB, 
sending faxes between Thalion and Sweden, with the most amazing 
drawings of Mutant CareBears slaughtering Lost Boys and Lost Boys 
sodomizing CareBears. This would reach its highlight in the last 
demo by the Lost Boys, "Ooh Crikey Wot a Scorcher".
          From Sweden came the "Sowatt" demo, another demo made 
after a large party in Sweden where people contributed their 
screens. It featured a lot of screens (including some from my 
good friends in Norway) and possibly the best one was the "Grodan 
and Kvack Kvack" demo by (who else) Nic from the CareBears. It 
was a very intense demo with lots of one-plane graphics flying 
around the place. Again, a conversion from an Amiga demo. This 
one-plane business resulted in a brief trend, but it quickly 
stopped for these demos weren't very pretty to look at.
          At that time, The Inner Circle from England released 
their "Decade Demo". Unfortunately, these people had taken up a 
grudge against the Lost Boys and found it necessary to spill 
forth lots of accusations and allegations against us. Apparently, 
we had stolen their source code and used it in our "Mind Bomb" 
screens. We had no idea and found the whole business a bit 
strange to say the least. But "Decade Demo" still was quite a 
good demo with some nice screens.
          During the summer of 1990 I got the idea to organize a 
large demo party in Holland somewhere. Holland is quite central 
here in Europe so everybody could come. So they did, and in the 
weekend before Christmas the office of SPC (the company I work 
for) was crammed full of over 120 computer freaks having a great 
time. Everybody attended (except Inner Circle...), and it was a 
great success. A massive 45 crates of Coca Cola were consumed and 
this four-day hacker party was one of the most intense 
experiences of my life. We made a video out of the whole thing, 
something I watch with mixed feelings of horror and amusement 
sometimes. We also did some competitions, a demo competition that 
was won by The Lost Boys, a graphics competition that was won by 
GoGo from the CareBears and a 3.5K "Remember VIC20" demo 
competition that was won by The Delta Force for their full 
working two-player version of "Archon". You have to see this to 
believe it.
          At this party, Delta Force released their "Syntax 
Terror" demo, another demo with a lot of screens from different 
crews. These screens were gathered at the ICC #1 (International 
Coding Conference #1) held in Stuttgart in the beginning of the 
summer of 1990. It took them quite a long time to finish it but 
they are forgiven for it is a good demo (Introducing the first 
'mini-games' to be included in a demo).
          ULM also released their brilliant "Dark Side of the 
Spoon". ULM are well-known for their technical abilities and 
their fullscreens. Nearly all the screens from this demo are 
fullscreens and it is very impressive indeed. I can still 
remember them locking themselves up in a little room somewhere in 
the office to finish the demo. A month after the convention the 
ceiling of this room collapsed. Whether or not there is any 
connection between their intense programming and this is not 
known...
          This "Dark Side of the Spoon" demo contained guest 
screens by The Respectables (their first screen to be published) 
and The Lost Boys, a screen finished at the convention by Manikin 
and Oxygene.
          The Overlanders from France also released their 
"European Demos" at the party. A two-disk demo with a massive 
amount of screens, and a main menu so big you can get lost in it. 
One of the best screens in this one is the amazing 3D screen by 
Ziggy Stardust and Mcoder.
          At the beginning of 1991, an ex-Aenigmatica member (as 
a matter of fact Jurie Horneman a.k.a. Relayer of the Quartermass 
Experiment, I'll have you know) joined Thalion to work on their 
"Amberstar" project. It also saw the release of the first game by 
Eclipse Software, "Monster Business", a game programmed by Lost 
Boys member Oxygene.
          The summer of 1991 was very busy once again. My fellow 
Lost Boys (Tim and Dave) came over once more and we all went to 
the home of one of the Respectables (Tyrem or Kimmi as we call 
him, his real name is Stefan Kimmlingen). We intended to do 
another game and sell it to Eclipse Software but we did another 
demo instead. "Ooh Crikey Wot a Scorcher" was born and this is 
the last demo of the Lost Boys. It featured an animation of a 
Lost Boy sawing a Care Bear in two with a chainsaw (with lots of 
samples from Bad Taste) which is left unanswered by TCB sofar. I 
also did a screen together with Oxygene, "Your mind is my 
Ashtray" with a large rotating scroller made out of rotated 
squares. This demo also has a quite unique main menu in which you 
fly through a fractal-landscape and land on various spots to get 
to the demo screens. "Ooh Crikey" contained one guest screen by 
The Respectables. This was the last TLB demo however, everybody 
is too busy doing games or working. Manikin has worked on a game 
that is loosely based on the main menu of "Ooh Crikey". It even 
got him to sign contracts with a very interesting software 
company but eventually the whole thing was put on ice due to 
recession (and possibly other reasons noone can fathom). He's 
currently doing a summer of programming for the company where I 
work. But I'm going too fast here!
          The summer of 1991 also had the second Delta Force 
convention, ICC #2. Again everybody attended and we had a great 
time over in Stuttgart. Another gigantic real time article was 
written here and published in "ST NEWS". At this convention, ULM 
and Elektra (a new demo crew from Sweden) joined the Union and 
they want to make a new Union Demo so I have heard (which has yet 
to be released).
          The summer ended with the Atari Dsseldorf Messe 
(almost a tradition), everybody getting together once more. After 
this we all went home, tired but very satisfied...
          The last big demo I received after this was "Punish 
Your Machine", another compilation of screens that people brought 
to the Delta Force ICC #2. It is a large two-disk demo with 
screens by many demo crews, including the new Elektra, a 'plasma' 
screen by the Overlanders, a screen by TEX (what?) and a lot 
more.
          Eclipse released their "Lethal XCess - Wings of Death 
II", another high-quality shoot-them-up with "Xenon II" ambitions 
that Richard was insanely enthusiastic about.
          Well, that about covers it. There is more though; what 
about the new CareBears demo that everybody is waiting for? How 
about Thalion? Or forthcoming Mega Parties in Europe? And what 
about this Froggy Demo in which this scroll will be?!       I've 
said enough for now, Ritch. I'll hand the keys back to your 
slightly capable digits....
          It's ME (not -ME-) back on the keyboard again. Enough 
so far from the master editor of "ST NEWS" (about which you might 
be able to read more later). Now, however, I'd like to get down 
to something that I have wanted to do for a very long time. As a 
matter of fact, the SOMETHING that will happen in a minute has a 
long and maybe not altogether uninteresting story behind it. The 
SOMETHING I mean is the creation of a list of many of the most 
beautiful females on this globe we lovingly call 'earth'. As most 
computer users are male, I suppose we have all at some time or 
another gathered inspiration from the female population of this 
planet. Therefore the entire ST demo scene must have had some 
benefit from their presence - enough to warrant listing some of 
the most gorgeous females to wander this earth in this scroll 
text just to pay back some of the grande inspiration they've 
given us. Actually, Stefan and myself had started compiling this 
list as far back as 1988, when we intended to do a project called 
"Synth Sample V" (which never actually happened and which would 
actually have featured over 70 Kb of scroll text). The list, in a 
shorter form, was later used in some hidden greetings in "ST 
NEWS". Hmm.... I seem to keep on mentioning "ST NEWS" here. I'll 
try to limit the mentioning of this disk magazine for a while 
now. Let's get down to the list of some of the most beautiful 
females (and most enticing bimbos) that roam this earth. They are 
(in an utterly random order): Paula Turbay Gomez (Miss Columbia 
1992), Vivian Janssen (Miss Netherlands 1992), Jill Whitlow, 
Trine Michelson, Chrissy Steele, Mariah Carey, Samanta Fox, 
Sabrina (Miss Big B. - what a bathing suit she has!), Heather 
Locklear, Heather Thomas, Brooke Shields, Jodie Foster, Cybill 
Shepherd, Lianne Verhoeven, Teri Weigel, Glynis Barber, Tanya 
Roberts, Koo Stark, the "Gypsy Queen" twins, Kathleen Turner, 
Corinne "Vixen" Russell, Morgan Fairchild, Courteney Cox, Claudia 
Cardinale, Carmen (Playmate of the Dutch Playboy June 1987) Berg, 
Bo Derek, Brigitte Nielsen (long legs!), Lena Ljung, Kim Wilde, 
the female members of the rock group Heart, Rowan Moore (ex-
Centerfold), Apollonia, Janet Jackson, Wendy from "Wendy and 
Lisa" (or was it Lisa?), Kirsty Alley, Kristina "Kelly Bundy" 
Applegate, Ally Sheedy, Kelly Lebrock, Saundra Santiago, 
Christine Brinkley, Kim Basinger, Sheena Easton, Priscilla 
Presley, Victoria Principal, the leading girl in the ZZ Top video 
"Legs", Michelle Pfeiffer, Kelly McGillis, Mia Nguyen, Leonie 
Sazias, Helen Slater, Linda Hamilton (though not the way she 
looked in "Terminator II"), Jacklyn Smith, Stacy Q., Goldie Hawn, 
Faye Grant, Jane Baxter, Dorothee Pesch, Linda de Mol, the girls 
from Rick James' video clips, Fiona, 'Gold' of the American 
Gladiators (TV series), Jane Seymour, the actress playing Marnie 
in "Twins" (if I only new her name), Melanie Griffith, the Real 
Roxanne, Elisabeth Shue, Geena Davis, Tracy Lords, Imogen Stubbs, 
Angela Visser (Miss Universe 1989?), Naomi Campbell, Akkemay, Pia 
Zadora, Charlene Tilton, Audrey Landers, Connie Selleca, Sharon 
Stone, Tracy (one of the background girls at the 1992 Guns n' 
Roses world tour), Marla Maples, Sally Kirkland, Shannen Doherty, 
Laura Dern, Susanna Hoffs, Belinda Carlisle, Isabelle Adjani, 
Monique Sluyter, Annette Benning, Ornella Muti, Nastassja Kinski, 
Lena Olin, Laura San Giacomo, Cindy Crawford, Julia Roberts, 
Rebecca de Mornay, Mdchen Amick, Emma Samms, Catherine Oxenberg, 
Meg Ryan, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Robin "The Bride" Wright, Laura 
Flynn Boyle, Tia Carrera, Joan Chen (particularly in her role as 
the emperor's wife in "The Last Emperor"), Nicole Kidman, the 
girl starring as 'Dream Girl' in "Wayne's World", Teri Polo, 
Sandra "Trillian" Dickinson, Sheryl Lee, Morgan Brittany, Linda 
Dubbeldeman, Audrey Landers, Amy Hathaway, Joana Pacula and 
Sherilyn Fenn. You're the stuff that makes our hearts leap, the 
persons who make our inspiration singe our nerves! Some of you, 
readers (guys), may not yet be into girls (booh boooh being 
called in the background). Don't worry. You'll find out one day. 
One day you will notice you get hairs on your...er...this is 
enough. Nothing more about the puberticent changes of your little 
bodies (puke!). Your voice gets lower too. But you're probably 
not interested in this. I will quit writing about this sort of 
stuff for otherwise this scroll text will be too base, too crude, 
too rude. And we don't want that, of course. People might 
disagree. Societies might be founded. Flipping out may be 
experienced.
          Enough about females and that stuff for now. In the 
mean time I have had the honour of receiving mail from Mr. Slimer 
from the completely and totally famous Disk Buster Association 
(no pun intended!), the people behind the disk 
magazine...guess..."DBA Magazine". Well...I'll just merge his 
addition to the scroll text here and leave the keys to him for a 
while (as it were).
          What's this then?...What am I doing in an Overlanders 
scrolltext? Who am I.....Ooohhh yes now I remember, I was invited 
by Richie Kaasmakers to write a scrolltext to put in a 
Overlanders screen. Well why not, here goes..... Hello this is 
Slimer of the Disk Busters Association, otherwise known as the 
DBA to most people.    Are you ready for some heavy crappy 
reading stuff? No? Me neither.....I don't know what Richard wrote 
already but it can't be as good as this is. Eehh enough of this 
dumb stuff, let's do the credits for this screen...all coding by 
Slimer, all gfx by Slimer, all music by Slimer, all text by 
Slimer, all braggin' by Slimer. You didn't really believe that I 
wrote this screen, did you? This Richard character must be really 
desperate to invite me to write a text here!  Okay, time for some 
serious stuff now, some greetings to some people I know and that 
sort of thing. It's not the complete DBA greetings list but only 
some personal greets by myself.......First of all to: Richard 
Karsmakers and Stefan of "ST NEWS" (one of the best magazines on 
the Atari ST, very good articles that's for sure, hope to hear 
from you soon, Richard ), the Overlanders (wait for our second 
GfA production, guys) and the rest of the DBA...Bonus (cool 
coding and gfx, you'r the best, man), KGE (really neat packing 
and scrolling routs in the new magazine, some super coding (esp. 
the intros)), Vigo, Ecto 1, OTM and the two women (cool swapping, 
writing, supporting and lotsa more ), all people who help us make 
our cool magazine (Cyberpunk of the Network, Flash, Imagina, THK 
and all other people who send us stuff (read the magazine 
greetings list), the Dutch ST scene (Senergy, Sewer Soft, FOD and 
the rest ), all my personal contacts (too many to mention) and 
you!  The full greetings list is too big for me to put in this 
text. The list grows with the day and we really begin to drown in 
contacts. We really need new swapping members to get hold of all 
those nice demos and other productions. Help us out, especially 
when you live in the Netherlands. The address is in the magazine 
and must be well known by now, I think.     Right on.  Now it's 
time for some heavy advertisment for our soon-to-be-released 
products... Around August there will be the just-funnier GfA 
Megademo by DBA and friends. This second disk of the "Just Fun 
demo part A" is then one year overdue. It should have been 
released last year August, but I promise you will get something 
worth watching in return for the long wait! Okay then something 
about our main product, the DBA Magazine series. I didn't know 
when this demo will be released when I wrote this scrolltext but 
the DBA Magazine six is soon to be released now and will feature 
all the things you've been bugging us about for a long time - 
like packed files and smoother scrolling. So all you guys must 
send more stuff to fill up the magazine with! Well that's all for 
the adverts. Over to some lame stuff... I can let Richard write 
more here but I'm afraid that you readers will all soon switch 
off the ST. So that leaves you all hooked up with me (ha ha ha 
hmmmm). Aaaahh maybe I can tell you folks a little story from one 
of my little sister's books. Let's see now, "Attack of the Mutant 
one bite Crackers"....Naaahh too soft. "The living Dog Food 
Can"...too spooky. Maybe "The Lives and Times of the Green 
Teenage Mutant Ninja Super Abnormal Man-eating Radioactive Hero 
Turtle Blob from the planet Krypton who lives in a 
Phonebooth"...nop, much too simple for those freaky ST owners! 
That leaves us with just one option left to try...Oh, by the way, 
there is a hidden screen in the main menu. You must type: "I'm so 
dumb that I do everything to see that hidden screen in this nice 
demo, so I will even type in this text to see it"...You must type 
it without any spaces between the words and then you must press 
the escape key to actually see it. You will see a very nice 
picture from Richard all dressed up like a Green Teenage Mutant 
Ninja Super Abnormal Man-eating Radioactive Hero Turtle Blob from 
the planet Krypton who lives in a Phone-boot. It's really cool, I 
have seen it, it's just fabulous. He was a little drunk (too much 
Plantiac) when I took that picture in that phoneboot on the 
planet Krypton. Just wait 'till you all see the motion picture. 
Well I decided that enough is enough and I will leave you poor 
folks all alone with that Plantiac-drinking maniac called Richie 
Kaasmakers. See ya in our productions, de mazzel...
          Well, so far Mr. "I used to be between the feet of a 
Mutant Turtle Thingy before It ate some Ooze" Slimer of the 
infernally superior DBA. By the way, all what he said about the 
phone-booth was a lie (of course). It is now on the evening of 
the day that I received Mr. Slimer's mail, and Lucifer (founder 
and now ex-member of the Spirits of Doom) is now at my home. 
We've just played Microprose's "Formula One Grand Prix" (an 
excellent game that everybody should buy, even though it's rather 
flippin' expensive). He wants to write something now, too, so I 
will turn over the keyboard to his nimble hands (you know, I'm 
not actually sure what 'nimble' hands are, but I couldn't care 
less as it sounds sortof fitting)...
          OK, so here I will try to type some serious shit on 
this fuckin' German keyboard of Richard's (...). The keys are 
quite smooth, it types pretty well. It's a quarter to ten in the 
evening now and I ought to be home to go to a school party to 
meet some people and generally have a great time. But I promised 
Richard that I would help him writing this scrolltext a bit - and 
I like to, so here I am still...   If Richard'll give me the kind 
permission, I'll take two cardridges back home to make my Gameboy 
a bit more profitable. The two games are "Hyper Lode Runner" and 
"Revenge of Gator" (a very nice and rather addictive pinball game 
of some kind). At least I won't have to buy those. The bloody 
cardridges cost about 70 Dutch guilders each, which is about 20 
pounds or 200 French francs. I have seen "Terminator II" for the 
Gameboy recently, by the by. It looked pretty wicked. Nice 
graphics'n'stuff. I don't think it's extremely playable or 
addictive though. I've played the first part of the game. You can 
play with the Gameboy in our local toy shop, but after several 
seconds it resets itself, so you can just have a quick peek of 
what the game is about. I won't buy it. OK, something else now. 
Miranda and Richard have told me all about how they met and how 
they became from disliking one another to living together. When 
Richard came to live in the same appartment building as Miranda, 
she didn't like him at first. She thought that Richard was a bit 
childish, a boy trying to prove himself. Later on they started 
talking to each other in the hallways and stuff and after a while 
they started drinking tea together (how incredibly romantic!). 
The conversations soon started to have other subjects than the 
wheather and it was only a matter of time when they started 
telling each other their love problems. Still, Miranda thought 
she disliked Richard, even though she intensely enjoyed their 
conversations together. I asked Miranda why she still didn't like 
Richard then. She answered she didn't know. Well, I guess that's 
just what I'd like to call "women-logic". I mean, if she doesn't 
understand it herself, how on earth does she want ME to 
understand. Anyway, after a while Richard left this clog country 
to embark on the "ST NEWS" England Quest with Stefan. In the two 
and a half weeks Richard was gone, Miranda took care of his 
beloved cactus. Then she suddenly realized that she missed 
Richard. Yes, she MISSED the "ST NEWS" ex-editor and current 
special master correspondent (as he likes to put it,  "En Stefan 
is alleen maar editor! Ha ha!" - Richard quote). Is that amazing 
or what? Like actually MISSING him. Ha, incredible. Wonder what 
he did to her. Anyway, they admitted to each other that they had 
special feelings and they went steady.       It lasted one day. 
Then Miranda made an end to it, but a week later they started 
again and it still lasts. Sorry if I bored you with this story, 
but I liked it personally. What next, oh yeah, there are two very 
nice hamsters in this room. One is called Bilbo and the other is 
called Cronos. Shit, I don't know what else to tell you without 
boring the hell out of you. Riiiichaaaarrrrrrddddd! Take over, 
will you?
          Erm...yes. Scroll texts seem to arrive at this stage 
several times, usually (i.e. the stage where inspiration is 
running low and all that stuff). I will strive hard to get this 
scroll text up from the depth in which Lucifer had it plunge. By 
the way, I seem to recall having forgotten to mention my REAL 
name. In case you were wondering, it's Richard. Well, that 
explains why good ol' Mr. Lucifer (whose real name, accidentally, 
is Martijn - of all things) kept on using that particular name. A 
bit of trivia to satiate all of you out there: My parents, in a 
fit of SOMETHING or other, called me this - after the somewhat 
infamous Richard the Lionheart who I believe is a person of some 
fame in English history (though not half as infamous as that 
Excalibur dude, but I'd hate to be called 'Arthur'). Just a sec. 
The CD (Mucky Pup's "Can't you take a Joke") has finished and 
we'll slam in another one. This particular Mucky Pup CD, though 
quite humorous and enjoyable, is a rip-off of anti-astronomic 
dimensions. It only features little more than half an hour of 
music at the price of a standard (ordinary) CD - the same price 
one'd pay for, say, Metallica's latest that has a whole lot more 
to offer (in terms of quantity as well as quality). Slayer's 
"Decade of Aggression" will do nicely, thank you. "Hell Awaits" 
is gingeredly obliterating the silence now (I don't know whether 
or not you can use the word 'gingeredly' here, but I don't care a 
leaping fart).  Anyway, upon me now rests the slightly incredible 
task of lifting up the interest level of you, dear reader, and 
therewith decreasing the boredom factor inflicted upon you by He 
Whom I Shall Not Mention Again (but who is named after the Dutch 
word for 'match').   Indeed it seems that Mr. Lucifer (I will 
call him 'Martijn' from now on) has listened carefully when a 
particular rather lovely female explained all about how we met, 
earlier this afternoon. Indeed, he seems to have remembered every 
flippin' word, and he elected to hurl those words against you in 
a relentless stream of characters that might be interesting to 
the odd human but certainly not to the fraternity of beings 
generally reading through every bleedin' scroll text in every 
flolloping demo.  Enough of the 'fuck' euphemisms now. You may 
have noticed that I have not used that particular word (you know: 
"FUCK") a lot so far. The reason for this is simple: All you need 
to completely and zealously flip out any given English computer 
magazine reporter is to either mention one of the words "RAPE", 
"FUCK" or "SHIT" or show them a picture in which they might 
conceivably recognize a male/female reproductive organ, or, 
indeed, the female milk dispenser. Have you, too, noticed that 
especially the British press seems to rave on all kinds of 
pornographic things in Public Domain software in a highly 
negative way? Whenever they encounter something they deem 'likely 
to corrupt our innocent youth' they yell "BANISH! EXPELL! 
EXPUTRIATE!" (well, I don't know about that latter word really). 
They are just a bunch of ultimately frustrated hypocrites, 
playing heavy metal records backwards and scanning Public Domain 
software with a disk editor to check whether or not the words 
"FUCK", "CUNT", "DICK", "RAPE" or, indeed, "DAMN" appear (sorry 
for me using these words, I used them strictly for referential 
purposes only). At home, of course, they rent porn videos and 
commit adultery (to name but a few of the possible offences). 
Good. I feel I have contributed enough to this scroll for a while 
again. Martijn, who is playing with his Gameboy in bad light with 
his tongue dangling from his mouth, at several occasions during 
my writing uttered the wish to write something again. As it's 
getting kinda late I think I'd better also turn down Slayer a bit 
so that I won't get into violent conflicts with the various 
people living to all sides of the particular appartment thing we 
live in. Yo, MARTIJN, it's your turn again. You'd better not 
screw up again!
          OK, I'll try. It's incredible how many CDs Richard 
owns. About three hundred, he estimates. That's ten times as much 
as I have. Slayer's "War Ensemble" is gently probing our ears. 
Great music indeed. You know, Richard is probably one of the few 
persons who eats fried potatoes with two frikandels when he is on 
a diet (sortof). If you don't know what a frikandel is: It's like 
a slim sausage and it is extremely fat. It contains about as much 
fat as four plates of fries. "I loose weight with it", he 
proclaimed when I mentioned this. Strangest things happen to you 
when you enter the ACC home. Miranda is not in right now; she is 
riding a horse at this very point in time, as I came to 
understand. Maybe she's finished now. Afterwards she said she 
would be having hors-d'oeuvres or something like that. Richard is 
flipping out with this marvellous music. He is studying the song 
lyrics and generaly being surprised about them (as well as about 
the Japanese versions that are also contained in the booklet).  
He told me he's finished his manuscript of his book about viruses 
on the Atari ST. I'd like to read it. He is waiting for the 
contract from his publisher now. Great... My Coliac is 
debubbling, so I'd better do something about that. I hope that 
Richard liked this part of my writing better than the previous 
stuff. If not, I'll throttle his throat and go on my way home. 
Let's see. RICHARD!!!!!!
          Yes, MARTIJN, I'm here alright. Perhaps, before I do 
anything else, I should familiarize all of our readers with the 
concepts of "Coliac" and "ACC" that you just happened to mention 
'between your nose and lips' (like we say in Dutch, erm). 
Actually, "Coliac" is a term conceived by one of my best friends 
who goes by the name of Kai Holst and who happens to live in a 
Northern country where Nutties live (in a town called vre rdal, 
which is altogether a really silly name to everybody BUT 
Norwegians, and which I'd like to mention just to harass the 
person who has to do the font for this scroller). The concept of 
"Coliac" refers to a combination of possibly the best two fluids 
ever to have been brewed by mankind: Plantiac and Coca Cola (no 
Pepsi, for heaven's sake!). Now all of you out there are probably 
familiar with the concept of Coca Cola, right? Perhaps 'Plantiac' 
is a little less known - and you are poor souls indeed for 
knowing naught about it! Plantiac is a typical Dutch drink which 
can be classified as 'Vieux' (Plantiac is Vieux just like 
Heineken is Beer, gettit?). Basically it's a cheap kind of Cognac 
but it's less aggressive, more soothing and infinitely more 
tantalizing to those tiny mushroom-like thingies on your tongue. 
The difference between Plantiac and other kinds of 'Vieux' (such 
as Henkes, Boots, Bols, Dujardin, etc.) is that you NEVER EVER 
get a hangover from abusing it, unless you have not eaten the 
entire day before you departed on your drinking bout. The next 
day (often legendarily referred to as 'the morning after') you 
get up out of bed without any feelings of knitting needles being 
pierced through your brain and without the feeling of the entire 
Japanese Sumo Wrestling league competing within your bowels. In 
other words it's FUCKING DIVINE (oops, I used the f-word there), 
hence why it's known in selected (rather elite) circles as THE 
DIVINE FLUID. Anybody who's tried it likes it (except for most 
females and a tiny, longhaired, moustached, sortof male 
headbanger by the name of Gard Eggesb Abrahamsen).  Now, what 
was the second 'concept' again? Er...right!   ACC.   Well, "ACC" is 
an acronym for "Amazing Cracking Conspiracy", which used to be 
the group to which I belonged until I joined the wholly 
magnanimous (and not quite Ozric) Quartermass Experiment. 
Technically I'm Cronos of ACC of QX, but I don't use the name as 
often as before. Actually, the Amazing Cracking Conspiracy was 
founded on June 13th 1985, on the Commodore 64 (just a 
nauseatingly uninteresting further bit of trivia there). So far 
the description of those two concepts (you know I really like the 
word 'concept' which I learned to abuse in the time I spent 
working for Thalion software).   OK. It's now almost eleven PM 
and Mr. Martijn the Lucifer is getting together his things to get 
the bus to the last train to his home town of Heerhugowaard (now 
that's a nice word for you foreigners to fracture your tongue 
over!). Slayer is still rather excellently vibrating the air - 
though I doubt whether the neighbours have the same opinions 
about the sounds that arise from my proud Magnat speakers (ex-
owned by Stefan who sold them to me at a bargain price, I might 
state). Maybe some last words of Lofty Lord Lucifer before he 
departs to join the stream of people in Dutch Public Traffic?
          Yeah! Martijn here again!  It's a good thing Richard 
and I had the idea of looking up at what time the last train to 
Heerhugowaard (the totally flabbergasting and unspeakable city - 
at least to foreigners) would depart. Gee, I could simply almost 
have missed it. Then I would be forced to sleep here at Richard's 
place ("No, NOOOO, DON'T LET THAT HAPPEN! Lord of Evil! Keep to 
thou faul domain! I implore thee!" - Richard quote). Richard is 
going to guide me to the bus station any minute now. I'll 
probably be back, just like Arnie. See you all. Bye...
          It is now about 10 past 11 PM and Martijn is gone, sad 
as it may seem (which actually it isn't quite, ahem). I am 
sitting here, rather lonely, thinking about time and the space 
continuum to which it is irrevokably linked. I happenstanced upon 
this train (or perhaps MONORAIL is more appropriate) of thought 
just when I walked back from the bus stop. I started thinking 
about the relativity of things - and the relativity of time in 
particular. After all, I am sitting here, writing in REAL TIME 
and you lot out there will experience it rather differently. I 
mean I have written bits that you have yet to read whereas, 
theoretically, these should occur later in time. Perhaps I should 
let this monorail crash and get on with the usual things one does 
in scroll texts, which is...er...what DO people do in scroll 
texts? I mean I'm sortof an undergraduate on this field as I 
usually only do those silly ROXL thingies for "ST NEWS" that get 
read by a couple of dozen people perhaps. THIS, on the other 
hand, is something totally different. THIS text will appear in 
the demo that proclaimed itself the Last Of The Great - therewith 
perhaps marking the end of an era, leaving the ST lying for the 
perfect lamers to take over (I hate that word, 'lamer', but I 
couldn't use anything else here). Perhaps things will get 
interesting again with the Falcon - when it gets here at 
an affordable price. More about the Falcon and its sortof 
flabbergastingly interesting specs later in this scroll. 
I have not felt so much inspired towards writing scroll texts for 
quite a long while. As a matter of fact (yes, another bit of 
gruesomely awe-aspiring trivia!) last time I had so much fun 
doing one was when Stefan was cooking food and I was writing the 
final bits of the scroll text for "ST NEWS" Volume 6 Issue 2. 
Sigh...those days of old... Will they ever return? Well, of 
course they will. They return about two or three times a year, 
each time when we get 'round to finishing a new issue of "ST 
NEWS".   I DO seem to be mentioning this magazine a lot, don't I? 
Well, I'm sorry, but I LIVE and BREATHE "ST NEWS" so it's sortof 
hard for me not to write and/or speak about it now and again. I 
will try, however, not to mention it for another couple of 
kilobytes. After all, this is an Overlanders demo (or at least a 
French-crew one) so I should perhaps stick to writing about them.    
I met Overlanders on the 1990 Salon de Micro (I think). At the 
time I was still working for Thalion software and I generally 
hung around the Ubisoft stand (they published Thalion software in 
France). Those terrifyingly nice chaps of the Overlanders visited 
the Thalion booth and turned out to be OK guys (unlike some other 
Frenchies I could mention, but that's besides the point). The 
night before I had been through a rather traumatic experience 
involving a crooked Parisian cab driver, a female employee at a 
brothel and a sturdy-looking bouncer - so I could be talked into doing 
ANYTHING and eventually I even went to the McDonald's with these 
guys. We talked about the "ST NEWS" International Christmas 
Coding Convention that was coming up in December of that year, 
and about the fastest ever vector graphics game that would ever 
be released - Thalion's "No Second Prize".   Interesting piece of 
trivia: This game still isn't finished, though I've heard that it 
will be soon. By my knowledge its programmer, Chris Jungen, has been 
working on it for three years now. End of (perhaps) interesting 
bit of trivia.  Too bad, really, for now the best racing game 
EVER on ANY machine has already been released (I am talking here 
of the Microprose game I mentioned earlier in this scroll text). 
Maybe "No Second Prize" will sell well because it's a motorcycle 
simulator and no Formula One thing. But I will also leave the 
subject of Thalion rest here.   Er...what to write now? It is now 
two minutes to midnight (no kiddin') and I am still sitting here, 
alone, behind my faithful ST. Maybe I should brag about my ST, 
about how many megabytes it has and about the excellence of my 
Dutch-made Arcade joysticks or about the Mouse Master - but I 
will do nothing of the sort. Instead I think I will go and play 
some more of that magnificent racing game and leave this scroll 
text be for now.
          Or perhaps I should not? I suddenly got it in my head 
to promote the two things I hold most dear.   No, you pervert, 
not ALCOHOL and SEX but "ST NEWS" and the "Ultimate Virus 
Killer".  First "ST NEWS". I surely hope you have heard of it 
already. "ST NEWS" is a Dutch disk magazine written in English 
that's been around since the summer of 1986. I have reason to 
believe that we're the first, but I've heard this claim refuted 
because someone said a Finnish disk magazine started around that 
time, too (this particular Finnish disk magazine, unfortunately, 
is also written IN FINNISH). So at least I guess we were the 
first international disk magazine - at least on the Atari ST (or 
any 16-bit computer for that matter).   So far we've done over 
thirty issues and we still cough up about two or three issues 
each year ("we" means Digital Insanity of The Lost Boys (a.k.a. 
Stefan) and me). I will keep this short, don't worry. "ST NEWS" 
features all the stuff you might want (and possibly less). 
Reviews, tricks, adventure solutions, literary stuff and 
interesting feature articles (at least WE think they're 
interesting).   A more or less interesting bit of trivia: "ST 
NEWS" was the first disk magazine to use 'REAL TIME' articles, 
and the first to do 'HIDDEN' articles and use 'HUMAN INTEREST'. 
We were also the first to do a 'HOME VIDEO' of sorts.      In 
case you're interested in obtaining an issue, please get pen and 
paper NOW so that you can write down the address when it will 
scroll by in a couple of moments. You should remember to send ONE 
DISK and THREE INTERNATIONAL REPLY COUPONS (little green pieces 
of paper you can get at the post office) to that address to get 
the most recent issue. If you live outside Europe, you should add 
FIVE of those little green pieces of paper instead of three. 
Well. Here it comes. The address is in Holland, so the spelling 
might be a bit awkward. It's LOOPLANTSOEN 50, NL-3523 GV, 
UTRECHT, THE NETHERLANDS. Of course you didn't get that the first 
time 'round so I'll do you (and myself) a favour and repeat it 
twice. First: It's LOOPLANTSOEN 50, NL-3523 GV, UTRECHT, THE 
NETHERLANDS. Second: It's LOOPLANTSOEN 50, NL-3523 GV, UTRECHT, 
THE NETHERLANDS. Now, that should really suffice even for those 
of you who are as daft as the proverbial painter's utensil. I 
think you won't regret sending that disk. "ST NEWS" is kinda nice 
and it's FOR FREE (GRATUIT! GRATIS! FR UMME! VOOR NIKS!) so that 
should lure all you out there into getting it.
          A full history of "ST NEWS" may (or may not) follow 
later in this scroller. It depends on whether I want my ego to be 
boosted. Or not.    Good.
          Finally I got that off my chest (did you notice I don't 
particularly mind talking about "ST NEWS"? You haven't? Well...). 
Now I'd like to get on with the second bit of promotion. It's 
kinda commercial, which perhaps doesn't fit in a demo like this, 
but what the heck. I'll be a brief as I can. For about five years 
I've been making a virus killer for the ST. It's now called the 
"Ultimate Virus Killer" (used to be "Virus Destruction Utility" 
and "Atari ST Virus Killer") and it's available at the laughingly 
cheap price of 10 squazoolies sterling (that's 'pound' for the 
non-British among you) at an address that will be mentioned 
within a minute (so keep those pens and papers ready!). I think 
it's pretty effective at doing its job and I also think that 
nobody should be without it. It recognizes more different 
bootsectors than ANY product on the market, it works on ALL ST 
systems and it's reliable (in the way a cubic yard of solid 
concrete is reliable with regard to not being portable). Now for 
the address: Douglas Communications (that's the company that 
sells it), P.O. Box 119, Stockport, Cheshire SK2 6HW, England. 
Remember, it's only 10 quid including postage and packaging. It's 
good, it's cheap...what more can you wish (besides a Falcon, a 
girlfriend, cheap sex, etc.)? The address again (I like that 
bit): Douglas Communications (that's the company that sells it), 
P.O. Box 119, Stockport, Cheshire SK2 6HW, England. Ten quid. 
Good. Reliable. Most impressive statistics to be found in ANY 
virus killer. So far the bit of promotion. I would now like to 
direct my attention to all you potential bootsector writers out 
there: Please send me your bootsectors so they can be recognized 
by a virus killer update! If you don't do it, some innocent (and, 
let's be frank, stupid-like-an-arse-) user will think it's a virus 
and let the program kill it, ensuring that your demo (or 
whatever) will completely cease working! Even better: Get the 
"Ultimate Virus Killer Book" (written by...er...yours truly), 
which should be available at 10 pound sterling from the highly 
renowned "ST Club" in England by the time you read this (GET IT 
NOW! YOU WILL NOT HAVE LIVED WITHOUT IT! WHAT?! YOU WILL *DIE* 
WITHOUT IT!). Enough of this, Commercial Monster Inside Of 
Me! Sometimes I think I'm schizophrenic. One side of me really 
wants to do everything for nothing, and the other side is hungry 
for dosh - huge amounts of it. It remains to be seen whether 
selling a virus killing at a mere 10 pounds will earn me insanely 
huge amounts of dosh, but that's not the question here. What IS 
the question then? I guess nobody really knows. So let's leave it 
at that.
          Well, what next? I would like to spill forth some 
pride, for I have had an experience (now some time ago) that I 
will probably tell me children and grandchildren about (if these 
little things will ever sprout forth from my loins, that is, 
which is not likely as I hate the brats in a loathsome way). This 
experience is that of having actually worked together, no, HAVING 
LIVED IN THE SAME HOUSE and the one and only Nic of TCB. I have 
lived and worked together with this living legend in the time 
when he was still SOMEBODY in the demo world (which, let's be 
honest, he isn't any more because he doesn't do a lot nowadays)! 
You can understand that I'm still quite proud of this, for I 
believe that he is probably the most gifted coder alive today 
(Manikin of The Boys coming a fairly close second). And he's 
awfully shy and modest as well (although the modesty bit is lost 
whenever he's around other demo coders or, worse, lamers). I just 
wanted to tell you this, for it is one of my most warmly kept 
memories. Never shall I forget the time when we both had to walk 
to work because my car's engine refused to start. Never shall I 
forget the familiar sound of him reading and humming on the other 
side of the wall. Never shall I forget his almost proverbial 
silence during the weekly visit to the Gtersloh swimming pool (a 
visit which was a bare necessity as we didn't have a proper 
shower where we lived for most of the time!). I just wanted to 
share this experience with all of you, scroll text readers out 
there. Also, it functioned to make this a somewhat longer 
scrolling message again - without making it totally crap (for I 
guess this Nic-related trivia bears some sort of interest to most 
of you).
          It might be interesting to note now, by the way, that 
this scroll text has already succeeded in beating the rather long 
scroller in the Exceptions' "BIG Demo" (that was 42 Kb in length, 
I seem to recall). I am not sure whether this all of a sudden 
makes THIS particular scroll text the longest ever (yet) - as I 
seem to recall a somewhat long scroller in "Punish Your Machine" 
that also features, among others, writing of Tyrem, Fury, Tanis 
and myself. I seem to recall that that one was rather long too. 
But I have all reason to believe that, eventually, the scroll 
text you're reading now will be the longest ever (at least the 
longest ever to use lower and upper case characters, umlauts, 
Norwegians characters and more of that stuff!).  I am now 
listening to Richard Wagner's "Ring der Nibelungen", which is a 
classical piece featuring some rather excellent music. Rather 
bombastic, loads of percussion and copper and low-tuned string 
instruments. I just lllurve it! The most famous piece is "Ride of 
the Valkyries" ("Ritt der Walkren") that you'd probably 
recognize (it's the music of the C-64 game "Satan's Hollow", 
which is also featured as background music in the films "The 
Blues Brothers" and "King Solomon's Mine").
          Next topic: Scroll texts contents. Have you also 
perhaps noticed that many, many scroll texts seem to consist of 
enormous amounts of "!"s and "."s? Many people seem to think 
that multiple exclamation marks somehow add to the general 
importance of the sentence they close down, but I believe none of 
this. I'd rather have a scroll text with only a couple of "!"s, 
which is exactly what you've been able to experience so far. Now 
be honest: Does that not seem a lot more readable to you? On top 
of that, Terry Pratchett (in "Eric") said: "Multiple exclamation 
marks are a sure sign of a diseased mind."   And then, of course, 
there's also the enormous amount of typical scroll phenomena like 
the word "lamer" and the "fucking greetings". Please let me react 
to these in respective order (which means that I'll start with 
the first and...erm...I guess you get it, no?). I hate "lamers". 
Not because they're bad programmers, but because they're called 
"lamers". I know this sounds odd and perhaps it is, but I think 
the word "lamer" is totally superfluous. It would be just as 
stupid as calling a piece of wood "wyx" or something. I mean you 
can already make yourself perfectly understandable by saying 
"hey, look, there's a piece of wood attached to that tree". 
Inventing new words is not useful here, not at all. Now I've been 
led to believe that a lamer is someone who can't code but 
nonetheless tries to make everybody believe that he can (this 
definition was given by my dear friend Relayer of QX upon me 
uttering the thought of the Nutty Snake and myself perhaps being 
lamers as we can't code shit). In other words, bad coders are not 
"lamers" by default. They are just bad coders, like myself and 
Mr. Le Loco Serpent. So, basically, people who say they can code 
better than others are lamers. Try replacing 'lamers' by 
'children', because that's basically what it gets down to - they 
are being childish. Most people who call other people lamers are 
being quite childish, too, so basically all those 'lamer' 
messages are very childish. I just wanted to make a point of 
this. I sincerely hope none of this 'lamer' stuff will occur in 
any demos that will be released after this one - no respectable 
coders will use the term in the future! If someone says he's a 
better coder than you while he isn't - just laugh softly and 
continue with whatever it was you were doing. Just not mentioning 
these 'lamers' will be much more effective!     Enough about the 
topic of 'lamers' or, as I'd like to call them, 'little 
children'.
          The next thing I object to, the "fucking greetings", 
are very closely related to the subject I've just told you about. 
REAL demo coders are respected by their fellow-REAL-coders. The 
CareBears respect The Lost Boys - and the other way around. Tanis 
and Dogue the Mauve are best of friends. In the demo world, 
basically, everybody is a member of a flippin' huge family of 
people who all have their talents. Some people can draw 
magnificently, others can code hell out of the 68000. Others can 
compose neat music, or chat the arse off a horse in some scroll 
text. There is no need for hostility, really - let's leave that 
in the realm of childish proceedings generally executed by 
crackers and that sort of people. We're just one big family. No 
need for "fucking greetings" because the people that are greeted 
this way are no members of the FAMILY anyway - and they'll surely 
never be!    No further lectures from me (at least not during 
this particular bit of the scroll text, but I'll try to steer 
clear of it for the rest of this text as well). Basically I don't 
care much about this and everybody who dislikes my ideas can take 
a running leap (you've got a right to).   Boy oh boy, this scroll 
text is becoming continuously more crap. Most of you are probably 
still around reading this just because you want to know whether 
or not your name is mentioned in the long list of greetings 
towards the end of this scroller.  I am afraid all of you have 
quite a further bit of reading ahead of you (maybe it's 
interesting, maybe it's not).
          If you've read so far, this means that you can perform 
some pretty interesting experiments with your eyes. Just try to 
look away to an object not too far away from your monitor now.                        
See?   It seems to move horizontally...           Try to do the 
same now while standing on one leg. You might drop.    This 
scroll text is getting to be progressively more crap, and that is 
something I'd rather not let happen. So I will close down all of 
this with the greetings list. You've waiting for it a rather long 
while so I feel you deserve it. This list is rather long, but I 
am fairly certain that you will find yourself mentioned (if 
you're someone who is SOMETHING in the Atari ST world of demo 
programming, that is, or if you're just someone whom I know 
personally).  Well.  Here goes....                           JUST 
KIDDIN'!  I had you all going there, hadn't I? All of you were 
sitting at the edge of your seats, waiting for your glorious 
names to scroll by for everybody to gaze at, weren't you?   I DO 
like practical jokes - and I bet you don't (at least not in this 
case).   Anyway, the greetings list will be QUITE a bit further 
down this scroll text.
          Right now I'd like to add a bit of scroll text (mind 
you, it's not very long) that I got sent by Mr. Wrobel, one of 
the members of a Polish ST crew (yes, NO KIDDIN'!).  Here it 
is....
          Here's MR WROBEL speaking! I'd just like to include 
some Polish words - use your Polish - English dictionary... 
Ojojojoj, co nie wierzycie, tak to po polsku! Pozdrowienia dla 
ludzi zwanych: RADEMENES, ROSOMAK, MARCHEW. Pierdol sie Robert S. 
(ERES, Jesus czy jak tam jeszcze)... I co? Zawsze mowilem... ST 
jest najlepsze! I would also like to greet all people in the ST 
scene. You should write some poems in machine code! See you 
soon...
          Well, thank you Mr. Wrobel. I am not sure about the 
"see you soon" bit but, then again, there's no telling, is there?   
Most of you, dear scroll text readers, will now have difficulty 
believing that Mr. Wrobel is an actual person and not just some 
kind of strange something my warped imagination came up with. 
Well, as a matter of fact, Mr. Wrobel DOES EXIST! He even TRULY 
lives in Poland, where he is one of the main honchos behind a 
magazine called "ST Professional" - probably the best Polish ST 
magazine. If you live in Poland and are lucky enough to get your 
hands on this demo, you can contact this chap in Lublin. Read the 
address in "ST NEWS" Volume 7 Issue 3. Mr. Wrobel is not the 
guy's REAL name, by the way - his real name is Krzystof 
Wroblewski, and Mr. Wrobel is just his coding name. Try to spot 
more Polish crew members in the long greetings list near the end 
of this scroll (I promise you it won't be too hard)!
          I seem to remember having mentioned the possibility of 
telling you the full history of "ST NEWS" (as you may know by 
now, this is the disk magazine I am associated with). I have 
decided upon telling you the whole story - and there's quite a 
bit of it.
          THE EARLY, VERY EARLY DAYS. That's where we start, at 
the beginning of it all (IT, the capital IT). When Frank Lemmen 
(a close friend of mine) and myself bought the Atari ST, back in 
the grey times of March 1986, the machine was still in its 
growing times. There was virtually no software, virtually 
everybody could do virtually nothing on it, virtually nobody knew 
virtually anything, and everybody was virtually bored to death.
          This was quite different from the scene on the 
Commodore 64 to which Frank and I had previously belonged (up to 
one day before we bought the ST, as a matter of fact - I sold my 
64 on a Friday and that Saturday evening I was already trying to 
code in the 5 Kb of free memory in "ST Basic" on a half meg 
machine with TOS to be loaded from disk).
          I had my first ST computing experiences with doing 
"Synth Sample I", a music'n'pictures demonstration program for 
monochrome monitors that I finished on May 20th 1986. I only had 
a single sided disk drive, a monochrome monitor, half a megabyte 
of memory and TOS on disk at the time (as I mentioned before), so 
it was quite poor working on the machine.
          It was on a hot summer's night of that same year when I 
suddenly startled and looked around quite annoyed as some light 
had mysteriously appeared above my poor and bored head. After 
looking around a bit, I eventually discovered that the light 
seemed to come forth from a little light bulb hanging above my 
head in a tiny, fluffy cartoon's cloud.
          I had seen the light: I had an idea!
          Next day, I sat down with a word processor and starting 
making a disk-based magazine document that I called "ST NEWS". 
Wasn't it a good idea to write a magazine document that could be 
spread on disk? This would cost the readers nothing more than a 
certain amount of disk space, thus producing the most perfect 
(and, as it would later turn out, the most underrated) medium on 
which to spread knowledge.
          In my enthusiasm I even went as far as thinking I was 
the first to do something like it in those days, but it turned 
out that some others had perhaps known the disk magazine 
principle a longer time already (on the Apple II, I seem to 
believe, and possibly already on the ST, in Finland).
          "ST NEWS" VOLUME 1 - GROWING PAINS AND ENTHUSIASM 
GALORE. Yeah. Enthusiasm. Plenty of it.
          Anyway, the first issue of "ST NEWS" saw the light of 
day on July 26th 1986. It was just a plain 34 Kb document to be 
loaded into "1st Word" or "1st Word Plus", and that was the way 
"ST NEWS" would appear throughout the first year after its birth. 
Back then, the ACC used to be 'an independent Public Relation 
section of the one and only Desaster Area', and the mag was 
highly illegal insofar that it offered lists of cracked/soon to 
be spread software, and even a greetings section in which all 
notorious hackers'n'crackers were greeted. Apart from that, of 
course, it also offered Software News, ST tips & tricks and even 
the first tips to the magnificent adventure "The Pawn". The first 
review was that of Activision's "Little Computer People" (what I 
nice game that was).
          The second issue, published on August 9th 1986, was no 
longer written solely by yours truly, but also contained some 
contributions by someone calling himself DSP - Jos Schilders - 
and my dear friend and earliest co-conspirator Antiware - Frank. 
The magazine still hadn't gotten rid of its highly illegal image, 
in spite of the fact that I had in the mean time been contacted 
by Data Becker for spreading one of their drawing programs with 
my phone number in it (which was very stupid, of course - but I 
learned from it). An article about "Hackers'n'crackers on the ST" 
completed this. Back then, it were times of considerable 
optimism. In the "Did you know that..." column, it could be read 
that we anticipated the launch of "Biggles", "Summer Games II" 
and "G.I. Joe" at around September or October of the same year. 
These were legendary games on the Commodore 64, but they have 
never appeared on the ST even up to now.
          The old (later to be called "Vintage") issues were 
mainly launched on the meetings of the SHN in Nijmegen, Holland. 
I used to go there regularly, and "ST NEWS" turned out to be 
quite popular soon. I got a lot of good friends there, and made a 
lot of enemies too, with my Anti-Amiga proverbs and sayings. Some 
of the guys back there have helped "ST NEWS" considerably: 
Nijmegen was the place where I met Mark "666" van den Boer (MC68000 
course), who would later also get me into touch with Lucas van 
den Berg (Crimson's Column). These two belong to some of our most 
celebrated authors, and Mark has been possibly of biggest 
influence on my musical taste (he brought me into contact with 
Rush, Queensrche, Joe Satriani and Yngwie Malmsteen).
          On August 16th 1986, a mere week after Volume 1 Issue 2 
had been launched, the next issue was published. Still, it was 
over 50 Kb long. This time, I had taken quite a radical decision: 
"ST NEWS" was to be become fully legal. The authors, including 
myself, still used pseudonyms, but we also featured a 
correspondence address through which people could send in 
articles for use in "ST NEWS", enquiries, PD orderings (we must 
have been one of the first FREE PD libraries) and lots more. We 
started right off with a "Synth Sample II" competition, and the 
same issue also saw the publication of our first adventure 
solution (to "Zork I"), though not yet written by our current 
adventure wizard Math Claessens (He Who Can Solve Two Adventures 
While Wiping His Nose). Further, we used to copy large parts of 
system documentation into "ST NEWS"; this particular issue 
featured all about the BIOS (taken from "The Hitchhiker's Guide 
To BIOS").
          We still receive mail at the correspondence address we 
invoked in that issue sometimes...
          Fitting neatly onto one disk with the three earlier 
issues with its 90 pages in size, "ST NEWS" Volume 1 Issue 4 was 
completed on September 7th. The project was now really beginning 
to look like a disk magazine, also featuring a 'list of contents' 
and the first "ST Software News" article in its original (and 
current) form. Some more columns and initiatives were also 
introduced that would, however, not last long: The "Hi to..." 
column and the "ST Userbase" initiative. The first "Computer 
Story" was also written, but no second part was ever to be seen 
since we later stumbled upon quite some more professional novels 
we decided to use instead. It was but a slight hint at the 
introductory novels that would appear over a year later, and even 
less than a glimpse as the introduction of novels and non-
computer related material that invaded "ST NEWS" about five years 
later.
          It was also on an SHN computergroup meeting, but this 
time in Venlo, Holland, that I met adventure guru Math Claessens. 
This man has by now proven himself to be one of the main sources 
of "ST NEWS"' success, solving adventures with the speed regular 
people use to drink a cup of tea (and, indeed, with the same 
frequency so it seems). In "ST NEWS" Volume 1 Issue 4 he wrote 
his first adventure solution - that of "Zork II".
          Around that time, we discovered "F.A.S.T.E.R." that had 
published two issues already, and that turned out to have been 
started only a little time after "ST NEWS" (so we still were the 
first on the ST probably - though quite closely followed by these 
Canadians). "F.A.S.T.E.R." was commercial, published once in two 
months, and looked extremely slick due to its own GEM environment 
and its incredible userfriendliness. Thus it came to be that I 
became rather dissatisfied with our own setup. And I slowly 
started working on "ST NEWS"' own GEM environment: A program that 
could load the separate articles and display them comfortably.
          By the way, the first ever "ST NEWS" programs, though 
still written in that ghastly old and clumsy "ST Basic", were 
added to this "ST NEWS" issue as well. One of them belonged to a 
new (and quite long) series we started: "GEM VDI Calls" by Manus 
(psuedonym of Herman de Vrees).
          The next two issues, of which the first one (Volume 1 
Issue 5) arrived at October 5th, 1986, were not yet to feature 
this GEM environment I was working on, and still had to be loaded 
into "1st Word", "1st Word Plus" or a compatible word processor. 
"ST NEWS" Volume 1 Issue 5 did, however, fill up an entire disk: 
Documents and programs, as well as other files were added. Around 
this time, I established contacts with Rastermouse in Amsterdam 
(later to become Commedia). This company was the first to give 
"ST NEWS" review status. They supported us a lot, and I think we 
owe them our early success.
          In this issue, Mark van den Boer also wrote his first 
article, "Something about Interrupts", that would lead to his 
MC68000 machine language course that he would start in Volume 1 
Issue 6 and end well ahead in Volume 2. The "Did you know 
that...." mentioned the fact that Commodore was said to be broke 
(Uugh! What a joke...), and the official PD service was 
introduced. Still free of any charge. Later, due to lack of time 
and the enormous amounts of work it brought with it, the PD 
service would turn out to be cast off to ST Club Eindhoven, which 
probably still maintains this service to date - though not free 
of charge (bummer).
          "ST NEWS" Volume 1 Issue 5 also saw the introduction of 
Rufus Camphausen's (Canopus Esoteric Research) writing. This 
director of an Amsterdam Meditation institute wrote articles 
about, let's say, 'less apparent computer use'. Sadly enough, 
Rufus would not write into the next Volume anymore, probably due 
to lack of time. One of the worst games ever, "Super Huey", was 
also crushed to death in a review that Antiware and Cronos (i.e. 
Frank and myself) wrote. Jos had also introduced an acquaintance 
of his to our working circle: Someone called Bitbuster (Paul "Oh 
Hell." Kolenbrander).
          A very ironical thing was the fact that Jos wrote a 
very humorous article about "Are you a good ST owner?" in this 
issue. He slagged off the Amiga really bad there. Not many months 
later he was to switch to that system, leaving the Atari 
community (together with Paul, actually). He was last reported to 
have nine disk drives connected to two Amigas, lots of meg, a 
couple of hard disks, and about twice as many bumfluff hairs on 
his chin (in other words, a fairly typical Amiga user). He's 
still very, very ugly.
          The boundaries to foreign readers were officially 
thrown wide open with our first official foreign distributor, 
Gerardo Greco from Italy, to be announced in "ST NEWS" Volume 1 
Issue 6 - the last document version of "ST NEWS" that was 
finished on November 15th 1986. This issue had a size that barely 
fitted into my half megabyte (with TOS on disk) system. Jos had 
now officially entered the "ST NEWS" editorial staff to join 
Frank and myself. Further, Mark van den Boer's machine language 
course started and good ol' Stefan wrote his first "ST NEWS" 
article: "How to write your own adventures". Stefan, who joined 
in because I had written about my hamster and he had one too, 
would soon turn out to become one of the most devoted writers - 
combining intellect, knowledge and humour into a sparkling 
waterfall of articles and all kinds of small contributions on the 
software side as well. Later, Stefan would turn out to do more 
and more, even rewriting much of "ST NEWS"' code into assembler; 
of course, I didn't know that then, nor did I anticipate it. 
Soon, he was to become one of my best friends. Bit of trivia: He 
called himself Unicorn at the time, which is not half as good a 
name as the one he now has (i.e. Digital Insanity).
          "ST NEWS" now wasn't the hackers' magazine of old any 
more. It was ripening into a true disk magazine, and I had fun 
doing it all along the way - and so had the other authors. Limits 
were beaten all the time: More people read "ST NEWS", more 
articles were written, and we got more satisfaction out of doing 
it. In this issue, we also used our own names for the first time. 
Gone were the times of Cronos and Antiware, Bitbuster and DSP.
          I spent more and more time programming the GEM setup. 
"GfA Basic" version 1 was still having child's diseases and that 
didn't particularly make things any easier for me...
          "ST NEWS" VOLUME 2 - THE YEAR OF OUR BREAKTHROUGH. And 
what a breakthrough it was!
          The way to international 'fame' was laid out when the 
first GEM-based "ST NEWS" version appeared: Volume 2 Issue 1, 
launched on January 3rd 1987. Heavily inspired by the Canadian 
"F.A.S.T.E.R." mag environment, a pull-down menu program was 
written using "GfA Basic" 1.0. Now the compiler was ready, 
nothing stood in its way. Each tiny bit of the program was fully 
written in Basic, and some things therefore were quite (or even VERY) 
slow. Jos never agreed with this setup, and editorial differences 
would be the main reason (as well as him buying an Amiga) that he 
was soon to leave the editorial staff.
          Together with the launch of this issue, I launched a 
world wide offensive, sending "ST NEWS" to many user groups and 
magazines abroad, thus e.g. laying down the basics for a good 
relationship with the English magazine "Page 6", that was later 
to become our English distributor (they still are). "ST NEWS" 
Volume 2 Issue 1 also featured a picture and some XBIOS 32 
"Popcorn" music. The presence of music in "ST NEWS", however, was 
to disappear until the fifth issue of that year.
          "ST NEWS" Volume 2 Issue 1, by the way, was the first 
to be mentioned in a foreign magazine: "68000'er" of June 1986 (a 
German magazine that later became "ST Magazine"). It was 
mentioned very favourably, actually. That was the kind of stuff 
that kept us going.
          Math also displayed some of his true potential now, 
offering the full solution to "The Pawn" - thereby giving "ST 
NEWS" a world wide exclusive! We even broadened our perspective 
to cover the beautiful world of video and music around Fairlight 
computers.
          But not all was fun. One of our authors who had started 
working with "ST NEWS" only a short while before, Rob de Swaan, 
died at the age of 34. A small "In Memoriam" was to put some 
seriousness in "ST NEWS", too. Frank and myself dedicated our 
other current product, "Synth Sample III", to his wife Debbie, 
and his little son Bruce who was too soon bereft of his father.
          Some days after Volume 2 Issue 1 was launched, I 
received a phonecall from the guys at Commedia. "Why not publish 
some of the best articles of 1986 in a separate issue with that 
new GEM setup of yours?"
          Thus, the idea for an "ST NEWS" Volume 1 Compendium was 
born, which was eventually brought out on January 18th 1987. It 
was one single sided disk filled to the brim (and the disk was 
formatted with 10 sectors per track, which was at the time sortof 
revolutionary).
          On February 28th, "ST NEWS" Volume 2 Issue 2 was 
completed. There were five official foreign distributors now, the 
first interview appeared (with Jeff Minter of Llamasoft) and the 
"1st Word Plus File Save" option was included in the pageview 
mode. The review of "Flightsimulator II" that would eventually 
lead to a full stop in the co-operation with Commedia (because 
they said it had looked too much like a manual) was also written 
for this issue.
          Things went to go smoothly from "ST NEWS" Volume 2 
Issue 3 on, which was published on April 11th 1987. Following 
Stefan's example (in his monochrome drawing program "The 
ArtiST"), I decided to dedicate this issue to a girl called 
Maryse, a girl on school that I was very interested in back then. 
The Forth course started, and Lucas van den Berg also started 
writing his "Crimson's Column" articles, which perpetually 
excelled among the other articles through use of brilliant 
English. The Forth course remained running for a very long time 
(although it was omitted twice due to health reasons of its 
author, Cees Janssen), and Lucas still shows no signs of getting 
tired of writing his exquisite 'Walkthrough' articles either.
          The hottest review in this issue was by our (ex-) 
Italian distributor Gerardo Greco, covering the expensive 
hardware "ADAP Sound Rack". In the "Did you know that...", Stefan 
announced the release of a new version of his monochrome drawing 
program, to be named "The ArtiST+" (and what an original name it 
was...).
          Around this time, someone called Rob Hubbard started 
programming music on the ST. Rob Hubbard was one of the very best 
sound programmers on the Commodore 64, and I was happy to find 
out he had done the music for Microdeal's ST game "Goldrunner". 
Therewith started the development of a new music programmer's 
talent in Germany that was later to increase the quality of "ST 
NEWS" and the entire demo/hacking world on the ST considerably: 
Mad Max (Jochen) of TEX.
          But that's another matter entirely (yet).
          A longer time than usual passed on until the next issue 
was launched, which happened on the second birthday of the ACC 
(June 13th 1987). Jos had, in the mean time, definitely quit. 
Paul was to follow in Jos' steps, too. Amigas. Puh.
          The concept of "human interest" was brought to its 
first height here, as I found it more and more necessary to tell 
people about which bands I liked and, more interesting, which 
girls I liked. But it was nothing compared with what soon was to 
be introduced to "ST NEWS": Willeke. But that's still an issue 
off, so let's not talk about that, yet.
          It turned out that people found some "human interest" 
very nice, although I am afraid that both Stefan and myself 
sometimes excelled to such enormous heights doing this that it 
sometimes went too far. But people even liked that. And I think 
that's our small secret in the formula of "ST NEWS" (so don't 
tell it to any other people that do disk magazines - and in case 
you do one yourself then please forget it!).
          Then it happened. I fell in love. Not just ordinary in 
love, but VERY MUCH in love. And the consequences for the "ST 
NEWS" reader were not to be underestimated: "ST NEWS" Volume 2 
Issue 5, launched on July 25th 1987 was dedicated to Willeke (as 
would be the four next issues), and I could not seem to resist 
writing about her ALL the time. How she looked. What I thought of 
her. How nice she was. Talking about 'overdoing' something: This 
was it.
          A stream of very nice, sometimes plain lovely reaction 
poured down the post. Obviously, people found this kind of human 
interest very nice, and they sympathized sometimes to an enormous 
extent.
          Stefan was doing some re-programming now, and had 
succeeded in speeding up the scroller (it was now smooth, too). 
And that was but his first thing he would do! Also, the picture 
returned (never to leave "ST NEWS" again, apart perhaps from the 
odd time), and some GREAT music was introduced: Jochen's "Monty 
on the Run" (that unfortunately only worked properly on color 
systems, and that competing disk magazine "News Channel" issue 1 
also used - over a year later...). The text files were now also 
compressed (about 25% off), so that more data could be stored on 
the precious disk space. The display and de-compression of the 
documents now took an awful long time therefore, since that was 
still done in GfA Basic. That wasn't very excellent altogether.
          The big companies (Microdeal, Psygnosis and British 
Telecom - the latter of which has been bought up by Microprose in 
the mean time) now started to be interested in awarding us review 
status. So we got more software to review.
          The "ST NEWS" program itself was getting to be more and 
more perfect, too. Suggestions of the readers were included, the 
user interface was improved, and Stefan did some more machine 
code programming, so that the document display routines were also 
getting faster and faster (faster than they became in Volume 3, 
however, is virtually impossible and surely not measurable).
          But let's not forget to mention some of the articles 
that were written in this issue. One of the people that regularly 
sent review software to us, the software wholesaler Harry van 
Horen of Homesoft Benelux, wrote an interesting article about the 
Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Chicago. As Rob Hubbard was 
active on the ST, we also published an interview with him.
          The first "ST NEWS" that I really considered quite 
'perfect' was to be released on September 12th 1987: Volume 2 
Issue 6. This issue did not only feature FAST machine code all 
over, music ("Chimera") and a gorgeous picture, but also included 
a bonus "pop-up" menu bar that Robert Heessels of STRIKE-a-LIGHT 
had programmed for us. Add to that the fact that Erik and Udo of 
TEX wrote some pretty exclusive stuff about Raster Interrupts and 
'vertical rasters', and what you have was what I then considered 
to be the best "ST NEWS" ever made. I even went so far as to 
think that it was impossible to get it better now, and that every 
issue after this one would be one more closer down to the drain. 
I also started writing real 'introductory novels' in this issue, 
of which I consider "Tracker" to be the first. I also wrote one 
called "The Story Behind Larry". Quite naughty, that one.
          The "Did you know that..." column also revealed some 
interesting bits: "Tempus Word" was announced, Rob Hubbard had 
gone to the States to work solely for Electronic Arts on MS-DOS 
machines, and RAM prices were dropping to less than DM 2000,- for 
4 Mb (!!).
          We had in the mean time been contacted by Canadian 
competition "F.A.S.T.E.R.". They thought we were great!
          And of course there was Willeke. Present in every alert 
box...
          "ST NEWS" Volume 2 Issue 6 was indeed a direct hit. 
Very positive reactions came from all over the globe, and it was 
very nice to know that people appreciated what we did. But then 
there was this fear: Could the next "ST NEWS" be equal in 
quality, or maybe even better?
          On October 31st 1987, precisely in between the 
birthdays of both Frank and myself, the answer came when "ST 
NEWS" Volume 2 Issue 7 became public. Although we had strained 
ourselves to maximum capacity, this issue was no real match for 
its predecessor. Some of the small things, however, were still 
improved: EVERY single time-consuming routine was now done in 
machine code, so that "ST NEWS" was now my skeleton with Stefan's 
organs, so to say. Even the scroller had improved now. And I 
got some  more experience thinking out plots for  introductory 
novelettes. "K-Roget" appeared just in time for me to describe 
Willeke as she deserved to be described. Through Page 6, we now 
also had distributors in Australia and New Zealand, thus adding 
to a total of seven distributors.
          The creation of the best demo program ever, TEX' "BIG 
Demo", was also announced and advertised in this issue - I took 
the whole advertisement and promotion campaign on my shoulders.
          The English magazine "ST World" would publish some very 
positive remarks about "ST NEWS" in November of that year, even 
going as far as to say that (quote) '"ST NEWS" is better than its 
rival, the Canadian disk magazine "F.A.S.T.E.R."'!
          At the time, that was the biggest compliment 
achievable.
          Other notable events in that issue: We got a reaction 
of a lovely man aged 62 who really liked "ST NEWS": Ken "Ancient 
STatarian" Butler. Claus Brod wrote a revolutionary article about 
"The Track 41 Protection", and we published a review of the MEGA 
ST by SAG boss Eli Maas.
          The last Volume 2 Issue (Issue 8) was to be launched on 
December 19th 1987. Something terrible had happened to the ST 
world, and "ST NEWS" was probably the first to cover the topic 
extensively (as well as to give the people something to fight 
this terrible thing): The computer virus phenomenon had appeared on the ST. I fear I 
really let myself go in an editorial article that would probably 
have had to be enormously censored when published in another 
magazine. Curses all over, hard-core anger. From then on, I 
started developing a revolutionary Virus Killer program, the 
"Virus Destruction Utility", that was to be my main activity next 
to "ST NEWS" (in the mean time the name of this program has 
changed, rights have been sold, etc. - you could have read all 
about it earlier in this scroll text).
          Finishing this issue had been more than hectic. Some of 
the deadline articles had only been supplied the day before. Eerk 
Hofmeester, who wrote the "Tune Up!" review, was one of the 
persons who came bringing his article that evening - and he 
locked himself out of his car!
          Ancient co-conspirator Frank Lemmen went into the army 
to perform national service as of December 1st. It was the 
beginning of a decline of his writing for "ST NEWS", even though 
he would continue well into Volume 3. Somewhere else in Holland, 
Amiga users started "Amiga News", inspired by us...
          Since the "ST NEWS" Volume 1 Compendium seemed to have 
been quite a success, it was obvious that a Volume 2 Compendium 
was also to appear. This one was completed at a user gathering at 
Elektronikaland in Den Bosch (which was in fact quite a hassle), 
and had to be put on a maxi-formatted, double-sided disk. All the 
best articles of Volume 2 were contained - the Magnetic Scrolls 
Adventure solutions, Crimson's Walkthroughs, the Forth-and 
MC68000 courses...and much, much more.
          Looking back at 1987, I think it is fair to assume that 
it has been the year of "ST NEWS"' breakthrough. The program was 
now quite perfect and quite a stable quality was maintained. 
Microdeal, Telecom Software and Psygnosis poured out review 
software and there was nothing much left to wish for.
          "ST NEWS" VOLUME 3 - AND THEN STEFAN TOOK OVER. And a 
great job he did there.
          The new year was entered with fresh energy, though it 
could be noticed that my inspiration was getting low. On February 
16th 1988, in fact quite late for a first issue, "ST NEWS" Volume 3 
Issue 1 was published. All my own articles had practically been 
written in four days' time - the most hectic issue so far. It 
featured pull-aside menu bars as a bonus (again programmed by our 
talented friend Robert Heessels of STRIKE-a-LIGHT), and one of 
the earliest reviews of the "B.I.G. Demo". I was at the time 
already desperately seeking for someone to replace me as I was 
about to start studying at Utrecht University in August and my 
activities had to be kept to a minimum then (at least that's what 
I told myself then).
          Volume 3 Issue 1 contained, by the way, one of Mad Max' 
most brilliant musical conversions ever: "W.A.R." from Rob 
Hubbard. We now also had distributors in France, the U.S. and 
Norway (Ynnor the Divine One!), thus adding up to eleven people. 
The German distributor was replaced by a friend of his when he 
switched to a PC.
          An acquaintance of ours at the ST Club Eindhoven 
prompted us to try and make some money with "ST NEWS" now, which 
lead to us trying to get 1 Dutch guilder per sold copy through 
the Dutch PD libraries. This ploy was not very successful and 
earned us only about 100 guilders in total - and started the 
historic event later to be known as "The SAG War" that was to 
lead to an article about the things the SAG (Foundation Atari 
Users, which went defunct not much later) done several issues 
later.
          The semi-commercialisation of "ST NEWS" was grudgingly 
maintained through all Volume 3 issues and then happily 
discarded.
          My follower-up had been found, and in "ST NEWS" Volume 
3 Issue 2 (launched on April 6th 1988, which was in the Easter 
holiday just before my final exams that were supposed to allow me 
to go to University) it was to be read that this would be Stefan 
Posthuma, which was no surprise really. He didn't hesitate a 
moment when I asked. This Volume 3 Issue 2 was in fact my last 
issue (sigh), which Frank and myself decided to dedicate to Jimi 
Hendrix. After five issues that had been dedicated to Willeke, it 
was about time for some change and we happened to have been very 
impressed with Jimi at the time (I still am, though Frank is now 
severely into hip-hop and house, the poor bugger).
          In this last ACC issue of "ST NEWS", the first 'real-
time article' was to be published: The article about TEX' visit 
to Holland. This was to become such an enormous success and was 
to arouse such stupefying reactions that we kept the thought in 
the back of our minds to write more of these articles at a later 
stage.
          In the mean time, the concept of 'real-time articles' 
has turned out to be very popular, as other disk magazines have 
done them now as well on numerous occassions.
          The "Did you know that..." announced the release of two 
new Atari systems, the Abaq (now ATW) and the TT. Even the 
Megafile 44 harddisk (then known as SR244) was announced at the 
time already.
          Mark van den Boer wrote the last part of his MC68000 
course. Less than half a year later, he would go to South America 
for a year - selling his ST (after that he spent half a year in 
Holland, only to leave for Australia again where he lives now, 
working for a thriving company involved with satellites and 
space).
          But this issue has also entered history as the issue 
that set the notorious Lost Boys going: Inspired by an article 
about scrolling in machine code by Stefan, Tim Moss (Manikin) 
started coding in assembler...
          So then Stefan took over in May 1988. With that, a new 
era started; an era filled with zany articles, fresh inspiration, 
and finishing of "ST NEWS" at his place as well (instead of at my 
stuffy, boring attic room).
          Stefan examined my source code and did some vicious 
recoding. As I said before, the program was already significantly 
enhanced by Stefan's 'organs', but now the thing also got a 
better, healthier 'skeleton'.
          The best thing he did for "ST NEWS" was the total 
reprogramming of the pageview mode. He did this in assembler, and 
the first version of it was already almost as fast as the 
"Tempus" editor - but WITH text styles and all that stuff.
          So when "ST NEWS" Volume 3 Issue 3 hit the street on 
May 16th 1988 (which was actually Willeke's birthday), is caused 
many positive reactions. Stefan was easily inspired by things 
like this, which was very good for his efforts to even further 
increase the quality of both the "ST NEWS" program and the 
articles.
          By the time we started working on that issue, we had 
turned out to be quite good friends not only with Jochen of TEX, 
but also with the other members. This resulted in -ME- (Udo) 
writing an article about border obliteration - together with 
source. That was, once again, a bit of an "ST NEWS" exclusive.
          "ST NEWS" Volume 3 Issue 3, by the way, was dedicated 
to Evelien, who was at that time Stefan's girlfriend (bit of 
trivia: This affair lasted about half a year).
          Some way or another, "ST NEWS" Volume 3 Issue 4 
(released on July 9th 1988) was to go down in history as the best 
and the most notorious issue ever to be created - well, at least 
up to the end of that year. It contained quite some rather brill 
introductory novels as well as the alternative background story 
to the game "Obliterator" (by Piper), which had been turned down 
by Psygnosis for reasons unfathomable.
          This issue was finished at Stefan's place, and was to 
lay the basis for a real-time article called "The Computer Orgy" 
that was to appear in the issue after that. It captured 
faithfully the atmosphere of the finishing of an "ST NEWS" issue. 
It featured the two of us and Stefan's whacky friend Peter. This 
orgy had us discover a delicious alcoholic beverage called 
'Vieux'. From that issue on, alcohol was a prerequisite at the 
finishing of an "ST NEWS" issue. At that time, "Lavaro" happened 
to be our favourite brand, which was later to be replaced by 
"Plantiac" - of which one could drink a litre on one night 
without having a hangover the next morning!
          Something that also happened in this issue: I wrote a 
review of Titus' game "Fire & Forget", featuring a rather 
talented but dim-witted mercenary annex hired gun that I choose 
to call Cronos Warchild (Cronos because of the bass player of 
Venom, and Warchild because of a song called "Lovechild" by Deep 
Purple).
          The issue as a whole was dedicated to Corinne "Vixen" 
Russell, with a competition where you had to guess her measures 
(five "Vixen" copies to be won, courtesy of Martech).
          Ah. This issue also formed the height (or should I say 
depth maybe?) of the "SAG Wars". This point was formed by the 
most controversial article ever, which caused many readers to 
spew criticism - including Lucas whom we nearly lost as writer 
and friend. It also caused me to get anonymous phone calls (the 
person didn't say anything and didn't hang up - I usually just 
left the horn in front of my speakers and had him listening to 
some pumped-up "Pleasure to Kill" by Kreator).
          Both Stefan and myself read J.R.R. Tolkien's brilliant 
epic "The Lord of the Rings" and were greatly inspired to write 
quite some articles with a lot of Tolkienish language. We decided 
to dedicate "ST NEWS" Volume 3 Issue 5 (which was released on 
October 16th 1988) to this Great Man. This was to be the first 
issue completely influenced by a writer. It contained the 
aforementioned 'Computer Orgy' article plus some special articles 
about J.R.R. Tolkien. In this issue, the tendency towards non-
computer related articles became noticable, which was to reach 
its temporary climax in the next issue.
          Stefan had been to the U.S., which clearly impressed 
him deeply and caused lots of human interest in this issue. I 
started studying, the freedom of which caused me to lose total 
control of myself with regard to girls, sleeping late, and all 
the stuff you do when you're not with your parents for the first 
time in 20 years.
          A new distributor was appointment: Andreas Ramos in 
Denmark (the guy that was to write "Your Second Manual"). We also 
published the first of a series of articles by TEX - "The 
Wizards".
          After reading the completely absurd books by Douglas 
Adams, we decided to dedicate "ST NEWS" Volume 3 Issue 6 
(released November 13th 1988) to this remarkable man. This "ST 
NEWS" issue was as absurd as Adams' writing. It contained a lot 
of non-computer articles like Stefan's extremely absurd "Piece of 
Mind", some articles about Douglas Adams himself, and some other 
stuff. Maybe we overdid it this time, but the result was funny. 
It was to be the most funny issue of "ST NEWS" ever so far, and 
probably triggered one of our foreign distributors (an 
inconspicuous Norwegian by the name of Ronny Hatlemark) to write 
a long and very strange letter. This would eventually lead to 
Nutty Norwegians, Crazy Letters and the Norway Quest, but that's 
not yet to be told.
          According to a remark Stefan wrote in the scroll text, 
the "Climax of non-computer related stuff was reached here". What 
a lie this turned out to be...
          There was not much to program on the "ST NEWS" program 
anymore and when, one night after some heavy nightlife, Stefan 
came home, he sat down behind his ST, had to control himself not 
to slam any Metallica on my CD player (it was 2 AM) and started 
programming. Some hours later (a lot of hours it was, actually) a 
deafening cry shook his parents' house on its foundations and a 
scrolling message plus some rasters were to be spotted on his 
greasy, sweat-stained monitor.
          He had done it. Finally, he had managed to write his 
first demo, containing some rasters and scrolling - the first 
ever demo to be contained in "ST NEWS", that was to be proudly 
featured in Volume 3 Issue 7, released on December 24th 1988. 
This issue was more serious than the previous ones, though good 
to our standards. It featured that what Stefan considered to be 
his best review so far, that of "Flying Shark". He wrote it in a 
dark mood, and it contains his only introductory novel where the 
main character dies.
          This issue was dedicated to a waitress in a Greek 
restaurant we had happened to be particularly impressed with. She 
was called Agapi, and she caused the height of our romanticism in 
the dedication article "The Greek Goddess".
          The most interesting part of the "Wizards" articles was 
published in this issue - the one featuring a source listing of 
one of Mad Max' synth routines. Further, it also contained a 
touching XMas story based on a PD demo that Microdeal had been 
spreading - called "The Snowman".
          Of course, after the Volume 1 and Volume 2 compendia, 
it was clear that an "ST NEWS" Volume 3 Compendium had to be 
made, too. So we did. As we thought there were quite a lot of 
decent articles contained in the Volume 3 issues, we had to 
resort to a double sided disk with 1 extra tracks and 11 sectors 
per track (!). It featured 924813 bytes of programs and documents 
(63 articles), and was launched on December 31st 1988. It even 
contained a new bit of music by Maed Maex: "Phantoms of the 
Asteroid".
          "ST NEWS" VOLUME 4 - TIME AND QUANTITY GROWS LESS AND 
LESS. The first decline.
          During Volume 4, it was to become apparent that we no 
longer had the abundance of time needed to more or less regularly 
publish "ST NEWS" - at least not whilst upholding our quality 
standards. Up to the summer, everything went very much like it 
should, but after the summer an important thing happened to me: I 
was taken on as employee at the growing software company Thalion 
in Germany. No longer did I have time aplenty to write for "ST 
NEWS", and in the weekends I rather wanted to be with my fresh 
girlfriend, Miranda, instead of finishing "ST NEWS". Stefan was 
also becoming increasingly involved with his work, so that didn't 
quite benefit the mag, either.
          Nonetheless, the first half of the year was spent 
making "ST NEWS" issues just like we originally intended - at a 
speed of about one issue per two months (which would now be 
unheard of).
          "ST NEWS" Volume 4 Issue 1 was released on February 
18th 1989. It was dedicated to Alida, the creatress of the Divine 
Dessert (Chocolate Mousse) and Stefan's lady of his heart at that 
time. Even the recipe of Chocolate Mousse (which tastes genuinely 
delicious - you should try it once) was given here.
          The most striking review was that of the best demo 
ever, the "Union Demo". I also reviewed the Cambridge Z80 
computer, and this issue already mentioned that Great Things 
would happen in "ST NEWS" Volume 4 Issue 4, whetting the people's 
appetites for more to come...
          The best thing of this issue, however, was the 
introduction of the monochrome demo. No demo programmer so far 
had bothered to do monochrome demos. It featured double swinging 
scrollers and such. Of course, the color demo was present as well 
- with bouncing rasters and logos, a scroller and Alida's 
signature superimposed on all of that.
          When we released "ST NEWS" 4 Volume 2, on April 1st 
1989, it became apparent that we had written a bit too much. 
Again, just like with the "ST NEWS" Volume 3 Compendium, a format 
of 11 sectors per track had to be applied - as we still wanted to 
remain single-sided for the sake of the English who were at the 
time still rather poor and who all seemed to have single-sided 
disk drives.
          This issue, which also featured the Unique Bootsector 
Scroll (or "UBS"), was dedicated to synth man Jean Michel Jarre.
          It contained an article about the Australian PC Show 
'89 by our Australian distributor, Norman Pearce. It also 
contained the real-time article of a visit to TEX, where the 
basis was laid for my forthcoming employment by German software 
company Thalion.
          On the demo front, Stefan had again sought to stun the 
world. The monochrome demo featured sloping, double sloping, 
wobbling, sinussing and baby-sinussing scrollers in an 
interactive scroll message. One of the best he ever did. The 
color demo was brill too, with tracking sprites and rasters and a 
parallax scroll.
          This issue also contained our first hidden article.
          May 20th 1989 saw the creation of "ST NEWS" Volume 4 
Issue 3, the reli-nut' issue, during which event Stefan and me 
also made the cult tape ""ST NEWS" Home Vid'" - made especially 
for the Nutty Norwegians to whom that particular issue was also 
dedicated. It came on another 11 sectors per track disk, which 
Stefan really hated as it was a bastard to copy. This was, to his 
great relief, never to be done again.
          Again, a bootsector scroller was written for this 
issue. This time, however, it did not get the text from the 
bootsector itself but from a separate file it loaded from disk 
instead. The actual issue saw some articles called "Who are we" 
where most of our authors (both past and present) wrote something 
about themselves. Piper was also to write for just about the last 
time. The Lost Boys wrote the first of what was supposed to 
become a long series of tips'n'tricks articles about demo 
programming - the first part that, some way or another, never got 
a sequel. Mad Max had really strained himself, and had made the 
music of the C-64 game "Comic Bakery" - an "ST NEWS" exclusive, 
actually.
          The demo screens had got even better. The colour 
version was alive with mass movement, with nodding and rotating 
Pacman graphics by yours truly! The monochrome one contained a 
custom font and a starfield with sinus and the whole lot (another 
monochrome demo to set standards!).
          Around this time, Stefan and me wrote our first true 
long Crazy Letters, and this also lead to this issue being known 
as the 'reli-nut' issue. Our Crazy Letters had featured strange 
adorers, worshippers and extollers, and this was bound to have 
its feedback on "ST NEWS". Stefan wrote an introductory novel for 
the review of the "Universal Item Selector II" featuring the 
first appearance of his spiritual child Korik Starchaser among a 
clan of fileselector return string worshippers. Hell, even the 
"ST Software News" column was invaded by hip-hop extollers of 
L.L. Cool J. (vomit!).
          Starting with "ST NEWS" Volume 4 Issue 4, we remained 
double-sided. This particular issue (our 25th), which was 
released on August 12th 1989, completely covered a holiday Stefan 
and me had spent in England, visiting all the major software 
houses and many programming legends: "The LateST NEWS Quest". It 
contained over half a megabyte of real-time articles, as well as 
other articles concerning The Quest.
          The issue itself was crammed with four demos (by 
Stefan, In Flagranti (now Oxygene of TLB) and two by John M. 
Phillips, author of "Nebulus" and "Eliminator") and four musical 
pieces (three by Mad Max and one by David Whittaker (!)). The 
Quest had taken up three weeks (excluding the preparations, that 
is), and it had taken 10 days of intense work to get all the 
experience down in word processor files.
          During the finishing of all those articles, I actually 
succeeded in really going steady for the first time in my life 
with the girl with whom I now live together, Miranda.
          Before finishing this issue, I had already mentioned 
the fact to Stefan that there would be no better occasion of 
saying 'goodbye' and quitting "ST NEWS" than this issue. We were 
surely never going to beat this...
          We continued, however. Be it not for long.
          We did not make an "ST NEWS" Volume 4 Compendium, as we 
felt that the entire issue 4 would have to be on there - which 
would be quite impossible. As a matter of fact, we would never do 
any one-year compendia any more.
          "ST NEWS" VOLUME 5 - "ST NEWS" IS DEAD, LONG LIVE "ST 
NEWS"! Indeed...
          It was a disgrace. More than half a year no issues of 
"ST NEWS" were launched. I had started to work for Thalion and 
the available amount of time decreased dramatically.
          "ST NEWS" Volume 5 Issue 1, released on the day Nelson 
Mandela was released, February 11th 1990, did become the biggest 
issue we ever made up to that time - with almost 770 Kb of 
articles. And our last one while we were 'alive'.
          Predominantly present was the real-time covering of the 
Norway Quest, when Stefan and me visited the Nutty Norwegians for 
10 days around new year 1989/1990. It made up for a massive 250 
Kb real-time reading experience of some rather strange 
proceedings. We stayed at Ronny Hatlemark's place (he was, as you 
may remember, our Norwegian distributor and the starter of the 
whole thing involving Nutties). As he must have had a hard time 
when we were making his house unsafe, we dedicated this 
particular "ST NEWS" issue to him.
          This issue was actually very much to our satisfaction, 
even though it was our last one. Introductory novels tended to 
get longer and I really felt good with that. The last decent 
piece of new Mad Max music was included here: "Scoop".
          We also featured a nice April fools' joke, a 'software 
68030 emulator'.
          The color demo in this issue was stylish as ever, and 
the monochrome one broke new ground as well. Shrinking and 
flopping and turning...there seemed no end to Stefan's ideas and 
capabilities.
          But there was sadness in this issue as well, as we knew 
it would be our last one.
          After "ST NEWS" Volume 5 Issue 1, we died. Or, rather, 
we decided it would be better to have "ST NEWS" depart. We were 
both very afraid that we would eventually not be able to make any 
more issues at all, so we decided to cast the towel in the ring 
before a quality decrease would set in. We wanted to prevent us 
possibly getting the same kind of status Elvis had the years 
before he died (if you'll allow for this comparison to be made).
          We did, however, deliver a finishing blow with the "ST 
NEWS" Final Compendium (published on March 11th 1990, and 
dedicated to Miranda), a collection of over 100 of what we felt 
to be the most interesting articles ever published in all issues 
of "ST NEWS" - including the full version of "ST NEWS" Volume 1 
Issue 1. It was two double-sided disks in size; 2 Mb of articles; 
massive by all standards. It also contained one or two new 
articles as well.
          In "New Atari User" (the new name of our English 
distributor's "Page 6" magazine), editor Les Ellingham wrote that 
it was "the end of an era". An unexpected and gratifying honour!
          To be honest, dying wasn't a lot of fun. The good thing 
was that we didn't have all those obligations any more, but there 
was also a bad thing: What to do now? What could we do to get rid 
of excessive inspiration once in a while?
          So even when our death had been official only for a 
couple of weeks, Stefan and myself considered a possible revival. 
"ST NEWS" had, after all, been lots of fun and neither of us had 
really felt happy about giving all of it up. It was a choking 
feeling to no longer have the Purpose of finishing an issue of "ST 
NEWS" in our lives.
          So we simply decided to arise from the grave as it 
were, and the undead issues of "ST NEWS" sprang to life. This was 
no surprise to the people who really knew us - they probably knew 
we would revive even before we did.
          We reorganised the distributors (some of the old ones 
used to be not too good, to put it mildly), started with a subtle 
change in layout, and wrote more about non-computer related 
stuff.
          So on November 24th 1990, we did the first 'undead' 
issue: "ST NEWS" Volume 5 Issue 2. We actually didn't like making 
this issue. The actual writing had been fun but the actual making 
of it lacked the old feeling as I really wanted to be with 
Miranda instead of finishing "ST NEWS". I still worked at Thalion 
at the time so I was only in Holland in the weekends.
          My work damn nearly killed off "ST NEWS".
          I am grateful that didn't happen.
          There was no decent demo in this issue, either. The 
color version was a scroll with a gorgeous picture by Tanis of 
TCB, but monochrome had nothing. The music was again by Mad Max, 
but it was clumsily prepared - obviously to him it no longer 
mattered whether we had good music or not. Reason enough to start 
looking for another musician.
          This issue contained yet again many reviews with longer 
intro novels, and the first issue of a 'new and thrilling' 
submagazine: "JournaLYNX". In this issue, we did not shun 
offering some more programs as well. After all, we were now 
permanently double-sided so we had twice as much space that we 
couldn't possibly fill with articles only (or at least so we 
thought at the time). Programs featured on this issue were e.g. 
"NEOChrome Master 2.19", "Pack Ice" and a swearing accessory 
written by me called "Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged".
          "ST NEWS" VOLUME 6 - WHY STOP WHEN WE'RE NOT HATING IT? 
Marvin had said it before, and now we found it curiously 
befitting our situation...
          On December 21st to 24th 1990, Stefan and myself 
organised the "ST NEWS" International Christmas Coding 
Convention. More than 120 people, all of them demo programmers of 
the highest order, joined together for a couple of days in the 
town of Oss in Holland. It was a monumental gathering that will 
probably never be equalled on such a level of friendliness. 
Simply everyone was there (with the exception of Foxx and -ME-).
          This gathering of likewise ST freaks was covered 
exclusively in "ST NEWS" Volume 6 Issue 1, published on April 
20th 1991. This was by no means a regular issue, as it omitted 
reviews and most of the regular columns in favour of the covering 
of this major event. Two pictures were contained in the program 
(the ones that had become second ex aequo in the Convention's 
Graphics Competition), and quite a lot of tiny 3.5 Kb demos were 
present on the disk (due to the 3.5 Kb "VIC TIMES REVISITED" 
contest that was also held at the Convention).
          Oddly enough, Volume 6 Issue 1 was the first issue of 
"ST NEWS" that worked on all ST's regardless of the resident 
programs they had in memory. After Volume 3 the program had been 
only illegal insofar that it used a fixed absolute address to 
load the music, and that it checked the write-protect the wrong 
way. The write-protect problem was discarded after Volume 4, but 
not until Volume 6 Issue 1 did we get the chance to load the 
music at any address we wanted instead of a fixed one. This was 
largely due to the fact that the music for this issue was done by 
another person: Laurens van der Klis (The Mind of the Quartermass 
Experiment). Laurens was a new music programming talent, and 
Jochen was really getting too lazy, sloppy and demanding for his 
music further to be included. The colour selector, that had so far 
only worked on TOS 1.0 due to a mysterious reason, was now also 
recoded so that it worked on all TOS versions.
          This issue also contained a nice demo again - a 3D line 
character rotato-scroller by Manikin of The Lost Boys. A brill 
screen by all means.
          Of course, the Gulf War that stunned (and abhorred) the 
world didn't leave us unaffected, either. Both Stefan and me had 
our say on the subject in some DEEP articles.
          The ST was selling less and less worldwide. It was 
dying, only to be partly replaced by machines like the (MEGA) STE 
and the TT.
          We kept on living - with renewed vigour, like someone 
barely having escaped a deadly accident.
          Originally, "ST NEWS" Volume 6 Issue 2 was to be 
released exactly five years after the start of the mag, on July 
26th 1991. Due to Stefan being awfully busy at that time this 
couldn't happen.
          Possibly thanks to that, this "ST NEWS" issue was the 
enter history as the biggest so far - 1032 Kb of uncompressed 
articles, 55 in total, made up the editorial contents of this 
issue that eventually came out on August 18th. It was dedicated 
to cult programmer Jeff Minter who had brought life to the 
shareware scene with his most excellent shareware game 
"Llamatron".
          Due to the delay, we had been able to include quite a 
huge real-time article that was written at the Delta Force I.C.C. 
#2, held from August 1st to August 4th in Leutenbach, West 
Germany - so the delay turned out to work out well in the end.
          The incredible amount of stuff put on this disk was 
possible because we started using a new packer - whereas the last 
three Volumes had been done using a relatively ancient packer 
obtained from the Lost Boys in times long forgotten, we now 
started using the remarkable "Pack Ice" packing algorithms.
          This issue also happened to enter history as the one 
with the worst demo since three years - as Stefan hadn't found 
the time to do a big one, he did a small scroll line, that didn't 
even wrap. "Better something than nothing" was all there was to 
say in favour of it.
          Contents of this issue were, among others, reviews of 
the excellent games "Gods" and "Lemmings", and the PROGRAMS 
folder contained the latest (and rather "ST NEWS"-exclusive) 
version of the excellent packer "Pack Ice" by Axe of Superior 
(and more, of course).
          This issue got widely spread and was promoted through 
small advertisements; renewed vigour in the spreading and PR 
activities. Five years of "ST NEWS" should not go by unnoticed 
after all!
          "ST NEWS" VOLUME 7 - THE STORY CONTINUES... And not 
just like ANY story.
          The first Volume 7 Issue (which was, predictably, Issue 
1) was released on January 11th 1992. Already well before we got 
down to actually putting the whole thing together, we knew this 
would be an ALL TIME record (again). In the end we turned out to 
have 75 articles, amounting to over 1300 Kb! Needless to say, we 
were very proud of that fact. It was dedicated to Jason Becker, 
guitar talent extraordinaire, who was struck down by a lethal 
muscle disease called the A.L.S. Lou Gehrig syndrome. The music, 
like in the previous two issues, was done by Laurens van der 
Klis.
          The most groovy thing about this issue, however, was 
the fact that Stefan had taken the trouble to recode it entirely 
in "GfA Basic" version 3.6TT. The program as such generally 
became better, and as a bonus he also included the D.I.P.D.M.S. - 
the Digital Insanity Pull-Down Menu System. This allowed for 
cascading menus like they can normally be seen only on the Apple 
MacIntosh and (grunt) the Commodore Amiga. The program looked 
slick, really.
          The weekend in which we finished it, which featured a 
thin layer of the only snow to fall in the 1991/1992 winter, was 
spent in the proper fashion of the days of old. We both went 
staggeringly drunk (although I was drunk most, I guess) and 
generally did everything we needed to do. Apart from the actual 
finishing of the issue, this 'everything' implied playing games, 
watching video, drinking lots, listening to music and eating some 
of Stefan's own micro-waved recipes.
          With regard to the editorial contents, the hottest 
article was probably the "Terminator II" film script. Awesome, 
really. On the field of computing, it offered the first ever 
reviews of "Lethal XCess", "Oh No! More Lemmings", "Revenge of 
the Mutant Camels" and "Barbarian II". We beat the entire 
official computer press there! There were quite a lot of non-
computer-related articles as well, mostly novels of some kind.
          Further, it contained the same crappy old scroll demo 
we had in the previous issue, but a record amount of nine hidden 
articles! The "READ.ME" was particularly silly (and rather long) 
too.
          We simply loved doing it.
          Relatively seen, "ST NEWS" Volume 7 Issue 2 was the 
easiest ever to finish - it took place on May 9th 1992. There 
was only one bug that occurred during the finishing, and we had 
lots of articles lined up - making it the "ST NEWS" issue with 
the most varying contents ever. Lots of fiction, though still 
accompanied with the usual computer-related stuff.
          And, yes, we still had the same crappy scroller.
          The issue was dedicated to the prime metal band, 
Metallica. The largest ever Metallica discography was included to 
support this.
          Among others, this issue contained a full shareware 
game ("Revenge of the Mutant Camels"), a report on the "LEIF Mega 
Convention" that had been held in Sweden, the penultimate disk 
magazine encyclopaedia, the ultimate cheat encyclopaedia (cheats 
of 300 games!) and the first of a new series (the Quest for the 
Purification of the English Language). Reviews included 
"Speedball II" (late, but better late than never), "Amberstar" 
and "Protext". The music, an original piece called "Judgment 
Day", was done by Big Alec of the Delta Force - the first of what 
will turn out to be a row of several.
          During the creation of this issue we made the first 
Crazy Audio Tape (CAT) since ages - aimed at our fellow writer 
and great friend Bryan Kennerley in England. Quite a load of fun 
we had doing it (including us singing along with Metallica's "The 
Unforgiven" and "So What").
          But that's an entirely different story. A story I do 
not wish to divulge here as it's none of your God damn business 
(oops...Victo-puritan attack pending!). So far the history of "ST 
NEWS" - the history will no doubt, in a more or less extended 
form, be featured in the second lustrum issue of this wholly (and 
slightly) awesome (ahem) disk magazine, but what you've read so 
far is all there is to know at the moment. You'll need for wait 
four years, up to that second lustrum that is, for more. I am 
listening to Gwar's "America must be Destroyed" now. Much better 
than their previous albums, I think (a bit more ripe), but I have 
to sit down and get rid of a humungous load of crap right now. I 
am not quite sure what sort it will be ("crack a John", "no 
trace" or whatever). I am just sure it will be a lot for I 
already feel it knocking at my back door. I will refrain from 
providing you with more details connected to my physical 
processes, as I suspect they abhor you so much you might not be 
convinced it's worth while reading this text any further. When I 
get back from the loo (which will be about half an hour to me, 
but only about 10 spaces to you) I will go and swear a bit. I've 
done it before in a scroll text, but this will be infinitely 
worse, I can promise you!
          Fukdupoopentraaitoflaai! Godverdomme kut kanker klote 
kolere wat een takkezooi paardelul afgetrokken pootaardappelstok 
anal butt sex (oops that was English...) hoer slet gore stoepsnol 
you're even grosser than 2 Live Crew (...erm....). Well, so far 
the bit of Dutch swearing. I will refrain from giving a 
translation as I can think of some people who, after having gone 
through all the trouble of reading through 100+ Kb of scroll 
text, will flip out utterly and put the name of this demo on the 
black list of software to be banished by the Victo-puritan 
Society of Christian Hypocrisy (the acronym of which, when you 
leave off a few letters and add a few, is "CUNT"). Sorry for the 
appearance of that rather rude word there but, again, I have used 
it strictly for referential purposes.
          Anyway. Time has progressed a little bit during the 
time that I'm writing this. As a matter of fact it is now just 
past midnight, and it's now early Monday morning. I am watching 
MTV, and all Europeans will now know that I'm watching 
"Headbangers Ball". I am very irritated about it because of two 
reasons. First of all I have noticed that in one hour there has 
been ONE decent quality video clip (Iron Maiden's "From Here To 
Eternity") and the rest was filled by pretty boys with long curly 
blond hair making heavy gestures during their video clips who 
constantly sing about tears and love and stuff like that. All 
this is chatted (or bull-SHITTED) together by prime bimbo Vanessa 
Warwick (who's probably ugly as FUCK when she gets rid of the 
long blonde hair and the fish-net-stockinged knee that she 
constantly pops up in the lowest bit of the screen (I keep on 
imagining her producer yelling "keep your knee in the picture, 
sweetheart" all the time, even when they're doing a closeup on 
her left ear)). Second, I have a blood blister on the ringfinger 
of my right hand (which, strangely enough, is the only finger I 
use on that right hand when typing - damn!). I have to use my 
middle finger now which is a lot less easy. Sometimes I switch 
back to the old habit which is immediately punished by a severe 
shot of pain as the bloody blood blister makes itself noted. 
Anyway, back the Headbangers Ball. Though this may seem strange 
to some of you who know that I'm into sortof heavy music, this is 
actually the first time I watch it (thanks, Kai, for advising me 
to watch). My first impression was OK. Vanessa might be a bimbo 
but she has long blonde hair and fishnet stockings. That sounds 
OK to me. The first video was Iron Maiden. Not my absolute 
favourite, but one can't expect the best all the time. As yet I 
am still waiting for news on Joe Satriani and a Carcass video 
clip which Ms. Bimbo (I am concinved 'Warwick' must mean 'slut' 
or something in SOME language) promised at the beginning. Most of 
Headbangers Ball, evidently, is made up solely of the 
aforementioned cute boys with sweet lips singing about desire, 
love, sex, and loads of other things that any decent heavy metal 
band would not touch with a barge pole. Anyway, Ms. Warwick has 
in the mean time (while I'm typing, that is) told the viewers the 
next bit will be about Satriani and some more. Was that a bit of 
Grieg in a commercial about some drink? Hm. Advertisement people 
don't seem to mind desecrating good classical music for 
commercial aims. Some of the advertisements are in German, for 
God's sake (God, by the way, in Whom I don't believe). Possibly 
I'll be back. Maybe not.
          So I'm back. The end of Headbangers Ball is nigh. My 
blister is still disabling me from typing as quickly as I might 
want. They're now playing Bon Jovi (of all things). Anyway, I am 
willing to partly withdraw my opinions stated earlier. Not my 
opinion about Vanessa Warwick, of course, but the stuff I said 
about the general quality of Headbangers Ball, the bit with 
pretty boys with long curly hair flailing in slow-motion, singing 
about love and other rather clich topics. As it turned out, the 
Joe Satriani thing was rather interesting (interview plus pieces 
of video clips with neat fretboard close-ups). As a matter of 
fact they showed one or two decent video clips as well - Carcass' 
"Corporal Jigsaw Quandory" (or something like that) and a song by 
Confessor (awesome drumming!). I also caught view of a female 
wonder guitarist by the name of Jennifer Batten (arpeggio 
galore!). All in all that just about improves the quality of the 
programme by several hundred percent (I mean it was really lousy 
to start with). Concluding: The total 2.5 hours are bound to 
contain about 15 to 30 minutes of quality material (and I DON'T 
mean the knee close-ups, people!). The last bit of Headbangers 
Ball seems to consist of someone's personal top 5, and 
unfortunately they've now opted for one by someone with a lack of 
taste (lots of spandex, love and the almost proverbial long hair 
and drummers that make drumming seem a whole lot more spectacular 
than the song actually indicates, and, of course, numerous slow-
motions: Bon Jovi, Poison, that sort of thing). Man, a programme 
like this really gets me to bed unsatisfied. They DID mention a 
Metallica special ("Rockumentary") coming up tomorrow (i.e., 
strictly taken, later today). It's now 2 AM (at least in the 
plane of space, time and reality I am now in - which, quite 
needless to say, is rather totally different from yours). I'll 
write more in future sessions, but not tonight.
          Later...
          Excuse me? This next writing session (a fairly short 
one) was started because Mr. Lucifer and a girl (i.e. Martijn and 
Famke) dropped in like the proverbial lightning from a rather 
pale blue sky (with no birds in it, nor the sound of air raid 
alarm). Anyway, I'll leave the keys to be touched delicately by 
their finger bones...
          Hi, this is Famke...who's very sorry to say that she 
doesn't have any inspiration at all. SAY WHAT?  My humble 
apologies for this. Martijn is playing with the local hamster, 
Cronos (dropping it all the time), and for some inexplicable 
reason the hamster seems to prefer Martijn over me (?).
          Quick change-over of the digits from female to male...
          This is Martijn again. The hamster has decided that he 
likes Fam as well. She is now infinitely happy with it, letting 
it run through her hands. Hope it crawls into her T-Shirt. Fun... 
I don't want to leave here too late, because I would very much 
like to see the Metallica special on MTV (yes, the one mentioned 
earlier in this text). Before I am going to write any non-
interesting stuff here, I'll quit and save the quality of this 
scrolltext. See you (probably). Bye!
          Well, it's the main writer back on the keys here (i.e. 
me (not -ME- (crappy joke (and an old one too (but not half as 
crappy (and as old) as the one with the many brackets))))). I 
would like to apologize for the previous bits. They just ran into 
my place, switched on the computer and started adding their bits. 
Right now Martijn is reading a Dutch heavy metal magazine 
("Meltdown") he found lying around my place, whereas the girls 
(i.e. Miranda and Famke) are reading a mail order clothes 
magazine (of all things!). Well, that's about it for this time. I 
have put on the Napalm Death "Peel Sessions" CD single which is 
unequalled in the field of annoying people who normally prefer 
soft-ish music. This will very likely be the last bit I write 
today. Then again, it might conceivably not.
          Back again, the day after. "Ominous Guitarists from the 
Unknown" vibrates the air. The Metallica "Rockumentary" was 
rather interesting but only lasted half an hour. Today I would 
like to talk about Dutch beer. Now all of you probably know 
Heineken, which is the best-selling Dutch beer in spite of the 
fact that it tastes like dog's piss (or, like a somewhat infamous 
Ynnor once said, "it's fucking close to water"). The stupid thing 
is that Heineken is rather famous outside Holland as well. I've 
heard people from the States about it - they pay exorbitant 
prices for a Heineken beer. Heineken is actually a bad kind of 
beer, as I said before. Possibly its huge success can partly be 
blamed on the fact that, about a decade ago, the boss of Heineken 
(Alfred Heineken) was kidnapped and released after a rather long 
stay in a rather small place (isn't it PATHETIC?). What I would 
like to do is bring you in touch (or at least in VERBAL touch) 
with a couple of Dutch beer brands that are rather good, MUCH 
better than Heineken or even Grolsch (another rather famous Dutch 
beer brand). The best Dutch beer is Dommelsch, with Oranjeboom 
and Gulpener coming a close second. They are less bitter and 
taste quite good (for beer, that is). There's also a kind of beer 
we call 'white beer' (just like 'white wine' or something). 
Although Hoegaarden is the most famous in the field of white 
beer, you should try De Raaf white beer. It tastes a bit more 
like lemon and is altogether pretty soothing. So far my little 
lecture about Dutch beer. To round it off, I'd like to vote 
against alcohol-free beer (Buckler, Bavaria Malt, Grolsch Malt, 
etc.) which is probably even closer to water than making love in 
a canoe. Even Shandy is better, no matter what Don Johnson and 
Lee Van Cleef (may he RIP) say in the Bavaria Malt commercials.
          Next subject to write about: The (fairly recent) raid 
on Martin Dryden's Public Domain library. I will be short about 
this as I am no authority on the field of this raid (refer to "ST 
Enthusiasts Newsletter" #10 for more in-depth info). Anyway, some 
people (cops plus someone of the Federation Against Software 
Theft) invaded Mr. Dryden's place to confiscate many Public 
Domain disks, primarily ones containing digital music demos and 
some containing demo versions of existing programs. News goes 
that by the time I write this Mr. Dryden has been charged on 60 
accounts or something. Many of them involve the fact that, 
allegedly, digital music demos would decrease the sales of the 
original CD from which they were sampled! Would you believe that? 
Just imagine that I sample one or two minutes of a CD and put it 
in a demo, would you really believe that that actual CD of which 
I took the sound will sell any less? With the noise in 8-bit 
digital music on the ST (often mono)? They must surely be fucking 
kiddin', but Mr. Dryden is actually being CHARGED for shit like 
that. And don't forget that EVERY Public Domain library in the 
world has the same stuff in their lists. If you ask me, Martin is 
being screwed severely, and I think the whole thing stinks like 
high heaven! But that's all I want to write about. This kind of 
stuff really make me get angry. VERY angry. Martin Dryden was 
providing the ST world with a GOOD service Public Domain library 
in the UK and see what he gets for thanks... In the mean time his 
PD library, the Southwest Library, has ceased business. It's a 
sad thing to happen. Sucks to me. Someone, somewhere, had better 
feel VERY GUILTY for setting Martin up.
          Next: "MacGyver". Don't you just HATE the prat (or is 
it praTT)? I saw an episode the other day and I was disgusted at 
how shallow and clich it was. I had seen another episode MONTHS 
before and I was shocked to see that they guy ALWAYS seems to do 
sortof impossible things - like fixing an engine with a paper 
clip and being able to take off with a busted plain with broken 
wheels in the middle of a forest. It's just too stupid to be 
taken seriously - as is the case with about 90% of all American 
action series (need I mention "The A Team" as a prime example?). 
I can't for the life of me guess what it is that GIRLS see in 
this MacGyver actor. They seem to be swept off their feet when 
seeing him, at least some girls I go to University with. I find 
this really strange. It's girls like that and actors that play 
"MacGyver" that really make me think about mankind.
          When I have this sort of opinions about the general 
stupidity of mankind (yes, I'm also referring to Hussein, Bush, 
Major, Kohl, Jetszin and 99% of all other heads-of-state here), I 
suddenly feel much more fond of my pet. You have probably already 
heard it (her) mentioned - a positively cute little two-inch 
hamster by the name of Cronos. I know this is all quite 
confusing, what with me being called Cronos of the Quartermass 
Experiment and my spiritual child in "ST NEWS" being named Cronos 
Jehannum Warchild as well. Anyway, the pet Cronos is a 
Roborovski, which is basically a non-tailed dwarf hamster. It's 
almost one year old and so far at hasn't bitten anything but food 
and cage bars in its life. Its very quick, highly agile and 
generally cute. I just thought I'd mention this remarkable little 
animal, as I think it's the cutest hamster to roam the world. 
Miranda's hamster is sortof nice too, but not as cute (it's 
called Bilbo, by the way - interesting bit of trivia again!). The 
only other two hamsters I know are Stefan's (Digital Insanity's) 
Nephilim and Natanga. The first of these is a black devil that 
I'd prefer never in my life having to touch. The other seems OK - 
but neither of 'em are as cute and adorable as li'l Croney-Woney.
          Good. You've had to wait long for it, but I DID promise 
to tell you something about the Falcon. This will happen now.
          The Falcon 030 (that is its full name) is to computers 
what "Terminator II" was to special effects, what the invention 
of the wheel was to transport, what the pyramids were to the 
Pharaohs, what Joe Satriani is to guitar playing, what Teri 
Weigel is to some Monaco prince and, to use Sam Tramiel's 
slightly less illustrative words, "what the ST was to computers 
in 1985".
          Of course you have also read various things about the 
Falcon in the computer press in the recent half year or so - 
you'd have to be pretty off the world and out of touch with Life 
(and the Universe, and Everything) if you hadn't. Some of the 
things have been true, some have been false. Let me therefore 
tell you all about the Falcon 030 (henceforth to be called simply 
Falcon) in a nutshell.
          The hardware.
          The Falcon boasts a 16 Mhz Motorola 68030, a Motorola 
DSP 56001 Signal Processor (running at a whoppin' 32 Mhz), all 
the ST custom chips in one (intergrated in a chip called Combel) 
and the Blitter (runs at 16 Mhz). It can have 1, 4 or 14 Mb RAM. 
It has an internal 3.5" 1.44 (HD) disk drive in its 1040-
lookalike casing, with a 65 Mb 2.5" IDE-interfaced internal hard 
disk optional (which will be standard in Holland and Germany 
though). Interfaces include SCC port (like in TT and MEGA STE, 
LAN), video (VGA), TV, MIDI (in/out), joysticks (just like STE), 
cartridge slot (identical to ST), internal expansion bus (like 
MEGA ST), Modem, Printer, SCSI-II (hard disk interface - you 
cannot connect old Megafile hard disks without an adapter), 
stereo headphones out, stereo microphone in, and a DSP Port 
(although it is quite unclear so far what you can do with it but 
it'd probably make you drool if it was).
          The video specs.
          I've heard it said that all video modes can be 
displayed on any TV or monitor, with only the picture quality 
getting better or worse depending on the bad-ness of your video 
device. This is a lie. Anyway, according to the specs, we have 
the following resolutions: VGA 640x480 with 256 colours from 
262.144, VGA 320x480 with 65.536 colours, VGA 320x480 with 32.768 
colours (with overlay bit), RGB/TV 768x480 with 256 colours from 
262.144 (interlaced), 768x480 with 65.536 colours (interlaces) 
and 768x480 with 32.768 colours (interlaced with overlay bit). 
'Overlay bit' means that, in addition to the computer picture, 
you can have any TV or video screen image on top of it or in the 
background by means of a Genlock device. Of course it also 
supports the ST video modi, including the monochrome modus. As 
the Falcon has a VGA connector you need a small plug to use old 
Atari monitors but this is supposed to be sold with the Falcon at 
no extra price. Hardware scrolling is supported for all modi 
(including ST mono?) and the border can be switched off (i.e. 
hardware overscan modus). The TT high resolution is not 
supported.
          The sound specs.
          You thought the video specs were sortof OK, well here's 
the sound specs. Of course the thing is ST compatible as well as 
STE compatible so that the thing starts off with the YM soundchip 
and the STE/TT030/MEGA STE stereo 8 bit PCM DMA sound. That's OK, 
of course, but wait until you get to know what the Motorola DSP 
56001 can do: 8 channel 50 Khz (i.e. better than CD quality) 16 
bit DMA sound! This means true quality music. Using the 
microphone input port you can just record it straight into the 
Falcon (which has a 16 bit AD converter built in) and you can 
play it back just like that (because, incidentally, it also has a 
16 bit DA converter built in as well). The nice thing, 
also, is that playing all that stuff costs ZERO processor time. 
For the non-technos among you: You still have the 68030 left for 
100% to do really interesting things with.
          Some more miscellaneous stuff.
          It has a real-time battery-backed clock. It has 512 Kb 
ROM ("MultiTOS" will not be on ROM though), a space is ready to 
plug in an MC68881/68882 math co-processor, an internal RAM bus 
and it has a new keyboard chip that can handle 300 DPI mice (the 
normal one you'd use is 100 DPI). Its TOS will be TOS 4.0.
          I've seen demos with amazing quality pictures being 
superimposed on each other and all that usual horny demonstration 
stuff. Whoa! I've heard this chap distort his voice without any 
hardware add-ons. I've heard CD-quality music being played by a 
Harddisk-Recording-and-Playback-System (only additional hardware 
required: A hard disk. It's all software). It was really (I'm 
really sorry for having to use the following word, but it really 
fits here in my humble opinion, so all your Victo-puritans can go 
and have a wank now) f@*king awesome.
          What about the software?
          Well, of course the thing is ST compatible to a certain 
extent (which is supposed to be fairly large, and in any case 
bigger than that of the TT). Of course, this instantly makes vast 
amounts of software available, and...
          Hey ho. Wait a minute. I'm sounding like an Atari sales 
brochure here. Let's revise this.
          At the moment only demos could be seen, together with 
the Harddisk-Recording/Playback program. Eclipse (yes!) are 
working on some Falcon games, however, and I've already seen a 
smooth looking Llamasoft release looking like an incredibly 
souped-up "Attack of the Mutant Camels". Also, a British company 
called Mirage is developing a Falcon-specific space adventure 
called "Space Junk" (due for release in 1993). Together with the 
Falcon you'll get some semi-business software as well as souped-
up versions of "Breakout" and another simple game. You'll also 
get an audio program that is said to make full use of the DSP. So 
far the certain bits. In the field of rumours I've heard that 
Hisoft should be developing a drawing program for the thing, 
whereas someone else (in Germany, I seem to recall) is developing 
a soundtracker for the machine. I've also heard that The 
Exceptions (TEX - or at least some of 'em) will work together 
with the Respectables on some first demos for the machine!
          And, with "ST NEWS" working on it, too, what more is 
there to wish (ahem)?
          Please take my word: The Falcon is a miracle machine. 
Sell your ST while you still can. Get a Falcon a.s.a.p. You won't 
regret it. I've heard a price of 2300 German marks (2700 Dutch 
guilders) for a 4 meg system with a built-in 65 Mb hard disk. The 
Falcon looks set for a decade of success - demo groups that left 
the ST are getting interested, software houses are developing 
stuff and yours truly will surely get one!
          So after all it looks as if the Atari family will still 
be quite happy and quite alive in another five or perhaps another 
ten years. The Falcon surely looks like one very powerful machine 
that you'd not be happy without. Oh...er...I've also heard some 
stuff about the Falcon 040. This machine will be available 
SOMEWHERE during 1993, will have a 68040 running at a whopping 
SIXTY Mhz, a full VME slot, a large system casing not unlike the 
TT, some better graphics and sound, and a price tag of about 
three times the price of a Falcon (so that would make it about 
7000 German marks or something thereabouts). The Falcon 040 
would, thus, be a very nice machine for people who work 
professionally with this kind of shit. For ordinary people, I am 
afraid it will be out of the question.
          SO LET'S ALL BUY A FALCON! PRAY THIS DEMO WORKS ON IT!
          Anyway.
          So far the normal scroll text. It will end here.   
Excuse me?  You thought it wasn't normal at all? Well, then I 
really can't do anything about it. Whether normal or not-quite-
so, I will now endeavour to end it, whatever it was, here. 
Therefore...
          Now for the crew/person greetings list. You've waited 
LONG for it, and I surely hope it will turn out to have been 
worth the trouble. It is kinda rather long but it has the 
disadvantage of having used sources that are old AND new - i.e. 
there will be some wrong greetings in there with people belonging 
to their old groups, other being mentioned twice....but I don't 
fucking care and that's why I'll start off right away (oops...I 
used an f-word again...the Victo-puritans will flip out fer sure 
now!).
          The crews are (in some sort of complex pseudo-
alphabetical order):
 007 *
 1001 Crew *
 2 Live Crew: Mega Cribb *
 42 Crew (the true hackers of old): Stephan and Martin *
 666 (Who now works for a satellite company in Australia and who 
is, thus, the luckiest git in the Western Hemisphere and Down 
Under) *
 A3 (The Dutch Muggers Association digitizing man of old times, 
who now has a most terribly respectable job) *
 Absurdly Crazy Fuckers / Alien Child Fornicators (ACF) (Actually 
I only want to 'greet' them because I can't otherwise abuse their 
acronym, and I don't believe in 'fucking greetings' as they're so 
obtuse!) *
 ADJ (the guy who convinced me to buy an ST!) *
 Admirables (ADM): Nirvana, Sonix, Sandman, Moksha, Tormentor, 
Sturm, Lucifer and Claff Moron (nice "Massive Mag") *
 Aenigmatica (including all ex-members): Digital, Quasar, Tracer 
and Zokathra *
 AFF *
 Aggression: Jackdaw and Xenit *
 Alcoholica: Genital Grinder, Toxic Foetus Eater and Coprophagic 
Necrocannibal Eviscerator (I never DID find out about this fourth 
member you had sortof recruited from the Watchmen or something) *
 The Alliance (French, German, Antarctican, all of 'em) *
 Altair (Great packer! But I packed stuff and it didn't work on 
TOS 1.2 and 3.xx....BAD! BAD! And why can't it pack accessories? 
"DC Squish" can do it...) *
 Alyssa (we will never forget you!) *
 Anarchy *
 Anima Dux: Dire (we miss you, Birgir!) *
 Animal Mine: Penguin, M.C. and Shadow Master *
 Armada (Finnish chaps!) *
 Astra: Astra One *
 Ator (or was it Arthur Dent?) *
 Automation *
 The Avengers *
 Awesome: Cyclone *
 Axaro Mey *
 Bad Brew Crew (BBC) *
 Bad Stars: Shadow *
 BAT: Kamikaze *
 Bitbuster *
 The Bitstoppers (Marcus, still alive?) *
 Black Byte: Dr. Diddle *
 Black Monolith Team: Bloody Mary, Ford Perfect, Jolly Raccoon, 
Thor, TLS and Jora *
 Blue Adept (the guy who did the first ever rasters) *
 Blues Boys: Acid *
 B.O.S.S. *
 BXC *
 Captain Hacks *
 Captain Hook *
 The Carebears (TCB): Nic, Tanis, Gogo, An Cool (?) and Jas *
 Chaos *
 Cheetah *
 Chronicle: Max *
 Cobra *
 Conan *
 The Conceptors *
 Condemned: Zerdex *
 Copy Service Stuttgart (CSS) *
 The Corporation *
 Delta Force (DF): New Mode, Sammy Joe (Great Maggie!), Lord 
HackBear (Hail!), Slime, Questlord, Karl-Anders, Flix, Big Alec 
(Great music!), Ray and Chaos Inc. (and probably some more 
members of this biggest living freakshow that I left out because 
I don't know them, nor the names they go by) *
 The Destroyer *
 Digital Vision: Headcoder *
 Disaster Area (which is severely dead, but nonetheless) *
 Disk Buster Association: Slimer, KGE, Vigo, Ecto 1 and OTM *
 Dixy Flatline *
 DNT Crew: Axiom, Bouldog, Djumbo Can, Flips & Pips (great "DNT 
Paper"!), Mick, Nullos and Samos *
 Double Dutch Crew: Homeboy and Flyguy *
 Dr. Freud *
 Dr. Mabuse *
 Dr. Typo *
 DSP (or should I say "System Z"?) *
 Dutch Muggers Association (DMA) (er...ahem...er...well...OK... 
I've heard they're back...) *
 Dynamic Duo: Hi Tech and Shadow *
 Dynamite Dynastie: Deel *
 Eclipse: Judge Dredd *
 Elektra: Abel and Icaruz *
 Elite *
 The Essence *
 Eternal Developments *
 The Exceptions (TEX): Daryl, ME, ES, 6719 and Mad Max *
 The Extravagent English (Ash, Mel and the rest) *
 Flash: Sandman *
 Flash Cracking Group: Mister X and Irata *
 Flatliners: Exorcist *
 Flexible Front *
 FOD: Quazar, Xray, Digital Coolness, Vampire and Fix *
 Foxx *
 Future Minds: Skyline *
 Fuzion *
 The Garlic Eaters: Acco *
 Gigabyte Crew: Blue Devil and Marc *
 GMC *
 HAC (hi Federico!) *
 Hack Pack *
 HCC *
 Hemoroids: Stranger, Paranolak, Mercure and Captain Jewels 
(thanks for the invitation to your Amiga Beach Party but thanks, 
no thanks) *
 H-Street *
 Hysteria: Flynn, IKI, Mopy and Psychoreal *
 Imagina: Coincidence and Drizzt *
 Impact: Toxic, Sunset, Ayaros (or Ayoros) and Dad(u?) *
 Inner Circle: Griff and Phantom *
 International Cracking Group (ICG) *
 The Invizibles (TIV): Dark Shadow, Virgin and Smogg *
 KRS *
 Legacy: Fury (The Man With The Infeasibly Smelly Feet, Whose 
Socks Are Registered As Lethal Weapons), Vulcan and DTX Sync *
 Level 16 (L16): Ilja and Don *
 Light: Dr. Death and Leviathan *
 The Lost Boys (TLB): Spaz, Sprog, Manikin and Digital Insanity 
(Yo! Stefan! Say "Hi" to your hamsters from me!) *
 Lucifer (Hi Mr. Strijkhoutje!) Eksod *
 Lyricist *
 Mad *
 The Mad Hackers (TMH) *
 Mad Vision: Def KLF, Spy 3 and Fantasia *
 Manus *
 M-Coder *
 Medway Boys *
 The Megabusters *
 Megabyte *
 Menacing Cracking Alliance (MCA; annex Micro Channel 
Architecture): Crush (of flush, or thrush, or hush...), Herman 
and Frans *
 The Mercenary Cracker *
 Mercs: X-Ray *
 Midway: Xelu and Werty *
 Mr. Atari *
 Mr. Badu *
 Mr. Cool *
 Mystic: Mr. Spirit and Quicksilver *
 Napalm Soldiers: Hawk *
 NASA: Ford Prefect *
 The Network: Cyberpunk *
 Next: Zae, STWARS, DBug II and Mit *
 NPG: FAA and Carnera *
 Offbase *
 Omega: Haq, Liesen, Red and The Flying Egg *
 OUCH: Zealot *
 The Overlanders (OVL): Dogue de Mauve, Mister Bee, Ziggy 
Stardust, Doclands, Adso, Humungus, Typhon and Furyo (Nice for 
asking me for this scrolltext, man!) *
 The Pangalactic Beings from Three: Maggie Thatcher, The 
Inquisition, Ray Charles and Eric (the only Virtual Demo group 
with Virtual People having Virtual Identities who Virtually Don't 
Exist) *
 Pater Becker (PBA) *
 Pendragons: Crystar, Nemrod, Silver and Terence *
 Persistence of Vision *
 Phalanx *
 Phoenix *
 The Pixel Twins *
 The Poltergeists *
 Polish Atari Liga (PAL): Mr. Wrobel (Thanks for the letter and 
magazine, man! I am now zealously trying to brush up my Polish!), 
Rosomak, Rademenes and Marchew *
 Pompey Pirates *
 Probyte (the guy who did the first ever intro on the ST) *
 Pulsar *
 Quartex: Cyclone *
 Rainbow Raiders *
 Ray *
 Reanimators *
 Red 5 *
 Renegade: Ogion *
 Replicants *
 The Respectables (TRB): Hawkmoon, Duke, Tyrem and their Female 
Member (of whom I know not the measures, unfortunately, but I 
heard she's before the age of consent so why should I be 
interested?) *
 RIP: Phygorax *
 Ripped Off: Bilbo and Stick (I hope your party will be an 
incredible success - my heart aches for not being able to 
attend!) *
 Rotten Baboon (Christ - in whom I don't believe - what a 
distinctly odd name!) *
 SBF: Mr. Bond *
 Scavenger *
 Scum Of The Earth (SOTE): Zork (Yeah! Naughty Mr. Yannikos!), 
Raphael, Lobo (as in 'lobotomy'?), Illegal Exception and Donald 
Fakk *
 Section 8 *
 Sector One: Jedi *
 Sentry: Eagle, Iso, Blaze and Toon *
 Sewer Soft: Scum and Lowlife *
 Silents: Cugel *
 Slaytanic Cult *
 Snoopy *
 Softrunner Group (SRG) *
 The Source: MUG UK *
 Spirits of Doom (SOD): Evil Testicle Shredder and Cthulu (and 
some members whose names I unfortunately lack the specifications 
of) *
 STAX: Zerdex *
 ST Connexion (STCNX): Ajrarn, Alien, Belzebub, Fishbone, Krazy 
Rex, Marlon, Vantage (the Red Dane), 2Stein and Ze Watsit *
 The ST Knights *
 The Storm Brothers (TSB) *
 ST Rebels *
 Stranger *
 Superior: Axe (what about the accessory packer?!) and Jabba *
 Superior: Wanderer (from Finland, who does not seem to belong to 
the other Superior - why do people keep on thinking up coding 
names that have already been in use for quite a while?) *
 Sync: Bluestar, Mr. Mac *
 Synergy: BAT, Zanac, Rapido, Chrome and Wingleader *
 The Techno Gangsters (TTG): Track Attacker, X-Static and Pioneer 
(All from Iceland) *
 Teknique: Zeus *
 Teleo *
 The Terrabyte Crew *
 TNS: Hawk *
 TNT: Chris *
 TNT Crew : Hexogen and Samplemaster *
 Tool 8: Dizzy *
 The TOS Crew: Mister Ni *
 Total Vision Inc.: Captain Headcrash and Leonardo *
 Tour de Force (HCC Division): Number 5, Ring-Pull and MC Miller 
*
 TriMate (Bomb Squad): Treble *
 TSC: Cosmo *
 Tsunoo Rhilty *
 The Quartermass Experiment (QX): The Nutty Snake, Apache, The 
Mind, Relayer and...er...myself (i.e. Cronos) *
 UDI: White Spirit *
 Universal Coders (UNC): Qwerty *
 Unlimited Matricks (ULM): Gunstick, Chris and The Fate *
 The Untouchables (UNT): Matt *
 Vector: The One *
 Vmax *
 The Watchmen: Ian and Chris *
 The Wild Boys (TWB) *
 WMS *
 Xenex *
 X-Tream: Mace *
 X-Trolls (I am still rather taken away by "Lethal XCess") *
 Ypsilon: Fox, Blitz, Nemo, Chrome and Wolf *
 Zodiac: Roadwarrior and MMU *
 Zuul: Perceval (He Who Shall Eternally Be Known As The Ultimate 
Burper but whose real name is Mike - which is a bit of an anti-
climaxial bummer, really), Exec-U and Ken *
          I surely hope I didn't mention too many 'children' 
(i.e. 'lamers'), because I don't quite know all of them.
          The separate people who would need to be mentioned are:
 Douglas Adams (would you mind ceasing to not answer my letter?) 
*
 Henrik "Sagrotan" Alt *
 Steve Bak *
 Mark van den Boer *
 Claus Brod *
 Ken "Ancient STatarian" Butler and his Kitchen Princess Wife *
 Rufus Camphausen (Canopus Esoteric Research) *
 Math Claessens *
 Richard "The Prophet" Clarkson *
 Tim "James Pond the Robocod" Coupe *
 Geoff "Formula One Grand Prix" Crammond *
 Ben Dalglish *
 Fam "the Cronos defeatress" van der Duin (do note that this 
addition was made by Lucifer Eksod who seemed to be rather keen 
on it being included for reasons of his own) *
 Les "New Atari User" Ellingham *
 Holger Gehrmann *
 Kai Holst (True Friend!) *
 Tor Egil Hovland *
 Rob Hubbard *
 Peter "Arkanoid" Johnson (and girlfriend!) *
 Bryan "Way Station" Joyce *
 Bryan Kennerley *
 Karsten "Amberstar" Kper *
 Ruud van de Kruisweg *
 Frank Lemmen *
 Filipe Martins *
 Mark Matts *
 Niall McKiernon *
 Jeff "Yak the No-Longer-Quite-So-Hairy" Minter *
 Dave "STEN" Mooney *
 Helmut "AntiVirus" Neukirchen *
 John M. Phillips (Great dude!) *
 Terry Pratchett *
 Jason "Disk Space" Reucassel *
 Timo "Maggie" Schmidt *
 Volker "Viren Detektor" Shnitz *
 Cyril "WCW" Whistler *
 David Whittaker *
 George "VKill" Woodside *
          As I have written all (well...most) of this text, I 
guess it's OK for me to write down a list of all prime bands 
world wide as well. These bands all have, at one stage or 
another, supported my inspiration whilst doing the many things I 
tend to do (ahem). By the way, this also comprises a list of 
bands you should check out one day yourself. The 
bands/artists/composers are the following (with my personal 
favourite album mentioned between brackets):
 Acid Reign (The Fear) *
 Annihilator (Alice in Hell) *
 Anthrax (Attack of the Killer Bees) *
 Jason Becker (Perpetual Burn) *
 Black Sabbath (Live Evil) *
 Kate Bush (Kite) *
 Cacophony (Speed Metal Symphony) *
 Carcass (Symphonies of Sickness) *
 Mariah Carey (MTV Unplugged EP) *
 David T. Chastain (Instrumental Variations) *
 Deep Purple (Made in Japan) *
 Destruction (Infernal Overkill) *
 Dire Straits (Alchemy) *
 Donor (Triangle of the Lost) *
 Entombed (Left Hand Path) *
 Mads Eriksen (Storyteller) *
 Faith no More (The Real Thing) *
 Fear of God (Within the Veil) *
 Fields of the Nephilim (Earth Inferno) *
 Flotsam and Jetsam (No Place For Disgrace) *
 Marty Friedman (Dragon's Kiss) *
 Gandalf (From Source to Sea) *
 Paul Gilbert (Tribute to Jimi Hendrix) *
 Gwar (America Must Be Destroyed) *
 Hellhammer (Apocalyptic Raids) *
 Stuart Hamm (Kings of Sleep) *
 Jimi Hendrix (Live at Winterland) *
 Gustav Holst (The Planets) *
 Iron Maiden (Live After Death) *
 Jean Michel Jarre (En Concert Houston/Lyon) *
 Kreator (Coma of Souls) *
 Led Zeppelin (Remasters) *
 Living Colour (Time's Up) *
 Yngwie J. Malmsteen (Rising Force) *
 Megadeth (Rust in Piece) *
 Mercyful Fate (Melissa) *
 Metal Church (Metal Church) *
 METALLICA (The Four Horsemen, a 3 CD bootleg) *
 Vinnie Moore (Mind's Eye) *
 Mucky Pup (A Boy In A Man's World) *
 My Dying Bride (As The Flower Withers) *
 Napalm Death (Harmony Corruption) *
 Obituary (Cause of Death) *
 Paradise Lost (Gothic) *
 Queen (Night At The Opera) *
 Queensrche (The Warning) *
 Racer X (Extreme Volume Live) *
 Rainbow (Germany 1976) *
 David Lee Roth (Eat 'Em And Smile) *
 Rush (Show of Hands) *
 Joe Satriani (Paris 1990, a bootleg) *
 Sepultura (Beneath The Remains) *
 Slayer (Decade of Aggression) *
 Sodom (Mortal Way Of Live) *
 Bernd Steidl (Psycho Acoustic Ouverture) *
 Igor Stravinsky (The Sacrificial Rite of Spring) *
 Peter Tchaikovsky (1812) *
 Steve Vai (Passion and Warfare) *
 Vangelis (China) *
 Van Halen (Van Halen) *
 Vendetta (Brain Damage) *
 Venom (At War With Satan) *
 Voivod (War And Pain) *
 Richard Wagner (The Ring Des Nebelungen) *
 Whistler Courbois Whistler (WCW) *
 ZZ Top (Eliminator) *
          And here we, finally, have IT. The proverbial "IT", the 
END of THINGS. In a matter of a few moments, relatively speaking, 
this scroll text will start anew (or won't - this depends on the 
capacities of He Who Did The Screen In Which This Text Scrolls). 
You will then have read the Last of the Great (or at least Long) 
Scroll Texts in the Last of the Great Demos. The world will be a 
barren place, ladies and gentlemen (and others), once you reset 
this demo and chuck it in your diskbox right next to the "BIG 
Demo" and the "California Beach Girls Demo", only to have a look 
at it again during a fleeting instance of melancholy that 
troubles your soul. The ST has had it, or perhaps not. Crackers 
will continue ruthlessly destroying the market. Or perhaps there 
will soon be no market left for them to destroy? I have 
deliberately left out most of the cracking crews in the 
greetings, for it is THEM who must be blamed for the ST's 
premature death throes. I know that they blame the software 
industry for keeping the prices high (which is indeed the case) 
but without piracy we would at least have more games - haven't 
you noticed the amount of games that only get developed on PC and 
Amiga in the last year (or even two)? Although it's basically 
half a month's work to do an ST version of a game of which an 
68000 version already exists, most software houses even don't 
consider THAT worth while. Perhaps "Formula One Grand Prix" was 
the Last of the Great Games. Perhaps the Falcon will change 
everything. Or perhaps it won't. It is pretty unknown so far what 
the Falcon can do to the Atari world, even though its prospects 
are looking good. One thing is certain, however: This is the end 
of this scroll text. It was a pleasure (and an HONOUR!) being 
allowed to write it. I hope you've enjoyed at least PART of it. I 
love you all. You were a wonderful audience (or perhaps not). I 
will return (or probably not). God bless you all (even though I 
doubt whether He exists at all).
                                                   Bye. The 
exclamation mark at the end of this line is the 169238th byte of 
the non-spaced out bit of this scroll (which means it didn't 
quite get to be 400 Kb but, hey, you don't look a gift horse in 
the mouth)!
                                                            
