
The PC Warez Magazine Review

Any warez magazine has permission to use this in their magazines as long
as they notify me before it's use.

(c) 1996 IPggi
17 August 1996

Email at ipggi@newton.dialix.com.au
Http:// (No WWW Page Yet)

Welcome to Issue #1

What is this magazine, The PC Warez Magazine Review?

This is a new magazine for the warez scene. This will not be about warez,
groups, couriers or releasing but about the magazines that cover the
scene in general. Currently there are four magazines in the scene including
Affinity, INQ, RCN and WAVE. My goal will be to give you the readers a review
on each magazine that comes out. I will be covering the good and bad points
of each magazine issue as well as giving details of what you can find inside
these magazines. My reviews will cover the magazine's quality, quantity of
reading material, presentation and weather I acttualy enjoy reading it. As
part of the review there will a section telling you the magazine's contact
Email Address, Web Page Address etc., as well as where you will be obtain
the latest issues.

Who is this person reviewing these magazines?

My nick is IPggi. I once was the editor of a magazine called Defacto. Defacto
lasted nine issues before we decided to call it quits. Defacto gave me alot
of expirence and incite to the electronic magazine scene (yes I call it a
scene of it's own). These reviews are my opinion and are no-way bias. I know
and have spoken to the editors of all the magazines reviewed here and i don't
favour one over another. If you don't agree with me well good for you, go and
do your own review if you care that much.


A NEW WAREZ MAGAZINE IS RELEASED.
Title: Affinity 1 (Bi-Weekly)
Released: 27th July
OS: DOS AND TEXT
First impressions always count for something and unfortunately for Affinity
they are bad. Upon loading up I am greeted with an uninspiring VGA logo and
some pretty depressing music. This can put some people off straight away.
The coding is not really terrible it's just not really good either. The
scrolling viewing screen slowly jerk downwards with the colors and design
being quite dull and boring.
Okay now we get to the nitty gritty stuff. Unfortunately is issue contains
no articles but does include six interviews which include SuperHacker
interviewing Druidkin and SuperHacker also talking to SMaster about the new
Standards Of Piracy Association which most of us know and have all read
somewhere before. The interviews here are your usual standard Q&A affair,
not very inspiring but I have seen worse. All in all this magazine does have
potential, but a lot of work is required.

1 out of 5.


POTENTIAL WAS NOT DISCOVERED
Title: Affinity 2 (Bi-Weekly)
Released: 10th Aug
OS: DOS AND TEXT
We after leeching this from Affinities Web Page I had some high expectations
for this second issue. First issues of magazines are never the best and
Affinity's was no exception but I was hoping this issue number 2 could change
that. Well as you can guess I was disappointed. Not only the graphics and
presentation went worse but the quality in some areas dropped to. In this
issue you will find 4 interviews, 8 articles, 2 game reviews and 1 special
section dedicated to coding.
Lets start off with the interviews. There is some quality here, with
interviews with people/groups such as ACID, DreamWeaver of PWA and COC BBS.
My favorite would have to be SuperHackers chat with DreamWeaver about peace,
love, harmony oh and PWA as well. If only all groups could be like DreamWeaver
describes. Unfortunately Mr. Mister's interview with Acid was quite long and
contained too many short one-line questions and replies. There was some
potential here but Mr. Mister blue it, maybe next time.
Articles, tell me is this a warez magazine or the Anarchist Cookbook?
Included are "Hacking BBS's", "Creating Anonymous Shells", etc. They happen
to be very short and where most likely copied. If you are going to include
HPAV make sure it's original and make sure it's good. But don't use it as a
way to fill up space, this is a very lame practice and hopefully wont be
repeated.
Now was come to the game reviews. This is great to see someone else reviewing
warez other then Ionizer, I mean the more reviews of a game the more
information we can use to decide if we really want to waist our precious
credits. The two reviews we detailed and informative, now if you guys at
Affinity could review some more games people may have a reason to download
your magazine.

Keep trying and you guys will get there.

1 1/2 out of 5.


REAL COMPETITION IS BACK?
Title: Inquisition 2 (Weekly ?)
Released: 16th August
OS: DOS and TEXT
Taken in #RCN on Friday Afternoon US Time
<Lurch> Last night the copy of inquisition #12 was intentionally infected
        with a virus by a major asshole. F-prot 2.32 should solve the problem.
        The actual size of inq-12.exe should be 24184, the .zip 37802.  
        The copy on INQ bot currently seems to be clean.  Most virus scanners
        will NOT pick up the virus in INQ-12.EXE.

        Note: This virus is not major, but it does infect MajorBBS software.
        But remove it anyway just in case.

Well hopefully you got the issue without the virus, if you are not sure delete
the INC-12.ZIP and INC-12.EXE and just read the text. 
INQ are back! What does this mean? Will we have those infamous RCN vs. INQ
wars? Only time will tell, but judging from this issue the fighting maybe
over. The only mention of any other magazines is in the Lurch's editorial. So
one must conclude INQ has mellowed out? Well it seems that way.
INQ 12 is quite, well empty. With only 4 articles, 2 game reviews, a rumors
section (Looks uncandingly like the one in Defacto 8) and intro./next issue
sections there is really nothing much here to keep you occupied longer then
10 minutes.
INQ still remains a ASCII magazine but issue 12 also contained it's own viewer
playing some mellow ambient FM (ad-lib) music in the background. Presentation
is nothing brilliant but it is adequate and their is mouse support for you
Windows addicted users. Personally I think viewing it via their WWW page is the
best.
Article wise their where a few here. Swamper makes some very good points
about groups who release utils with no experience. Silent Mobius believes
their are too many courier new groups starting up. And Lester talks about
group loyalty or the lack of it and groups stealing other groups resources.
There is nothing here that hasn't been done before but it's worth a read.
A common feature in magazines these days are game reviews and INQ have their
special dedication to this area too. Two games are reviewed in this issue, I'm
assuming future issues will contain a few more. INQ have two people reviewing
each game which is a very good idea, this way we can get varied opinions.
Unfortunatly these reviews lack a critical importance when it comes to reviews
and that is, descriptions. Each review contains a small paragraph from each
reviewer and 3 rating scales out of 10. One scale for each reviewer and then
an average of the two. Here is an example for you ...

                     Three Skulls of Toltecs     [o1/31]
                 _ ________________________  _____ ________ _
                  \\_____  \_____  \_____  \/  .  \\_____  \\
                 dZG/\   __//  _   |/  ____/.  |   \/\   __/
                  _/  \   \/   /_ _/   /_   |  !  _/  \   \
                  \____\   \______\_________|_____\____\   \_
                 =======\___/===1911CDDIVISION ======\___/

                                  Jag-o's Review
                                 ----------------
First of all this is a cartoon like game, which i usually like! This just SUCKS
though!  Its like those old King's Quest games but it takes place  in  the  old
west. You just walk around in the desert looking for clues. This game should be
dead just like the old west.
                                 VenToR's Review
                                -----------------
This game is  geared  more  towards  kids.  The  animation's  and  graphics  are
cartoons. It is like a kids king quest, although some of the text may be funny,
it gets pretty boring pretty quick.  A must get for parents with children.  But
if you are over 10 dont bother with the download.

   Jag-o's Rating     |        Overall Rating        |    VenToR's Rating     |
 XXXXX                |     XXXXXXX                  |  XXXXXXXXX             |
 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10 |     1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10     |  1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10  |


Well INQ is back, for how long that depends. INQ should take a good look long
look at themselves, I know it is only their first issue for a long time but 
they will need to re-earn their respect, and this issue, plus a virus doesn't
help their cause.

2 out of 5


ANOTHER RCN, WHEN WILL THEY END?
Title: Reality Check Network 24 (Bi-Weekly)
Released: 4th August
OS: DOS and TEXT
Ahhh another RCN. I wonder what new title screen and welcome speech they will
have this time? Ewwwwk! What's this? This is the most ugliest of title screens
I've seen since Defacto issue 7. This looks like someone's abstract version of
the intestines of a Alien.
Well now we come to the traditional RCN main menu. This is has in been the
same style since RCN #5. When will they change it, and I don't just mean the
colours either. Well enough of the boring, dull, usual presentation lets get
to what really counts, the articles/interviews/features and letters. I'm not
going to list them here, as usual there are too way many to list or count.
There is an interesting letter from Twitz who complains about a IRCOP who
K-Lines him because he is taking over channels. This is quite humorous as here
we have an idiot trying to take over peoples/groups channels and then when
he gets what he deserves he doesn't understand why.
The cover story of is weeks RCN is Amnesia Vs Rise In Superior Couriering.
I didn't find anything to interesting here, just the usual site takeovers.
If you are a member of any of these groups or you enjoy this type of news
give it look, otherwise go straight to interviews.
RCN talks to HolyBeast (Prestige) about the changing of the scene. This is
worth a read if you are a typical RCN reader, a new-bee to the scene. RCN
also talks to CoreDump Senior Ravan about Razors so-called dupe on Quake.
Does anyone really care? One came out on the Internet first, the other on
BBS, I would call it a tie. Also included is Pussy, a guy killing anonymous
sites, AOD+LGT merge, CCA (This is your usual boring new group interview)
and finally NGT vs. CORE. Is NGT always getting into trouble with other groups
or is it just me?
The main article for RCN 24 would have to be Akira Busted, I would have liked
an interview with Pharaoh myself. Well you can't have everything now can you?
There is an interesting article about a University student stealing a copy
of Windows NT and releasing it only to have Microsoft case him down. Roadman
writes about the demise of BBS in the past few years and don't forget to
check out Multiple Articles where all the rejects are hidden.
Ionizer issue #33 and #34 are both here and both are in colour. Don't forget
the Top Ten Couriers from the top BBS and Sites in the world. I would like to
see what they list as their top BBS and Sites, how about it RCN?
I forgot the password to MAD-RCN so I can't comment on that this issue. Why
didn't I just play MarioBros (I wonder what Nintento will do to RCN ? :) you
may ask, well the collision detection is down right terrible. I hope this is
improved on issue 25.
Don't forget, before you press that ESCAPE key, to take a look at Road Rebel's
page about EFFNET VS DALnet. Taiji Hide's letter is all you really need to
read, he nearly covers everything on this topic.

Anything special for issue 25? A new look maybe ?

3 out of 5

HOW DO I CONTACT THESE MAGAZINES REVIEWED?
Affinity:    an475399@anon.penet.fi
INQ:         apd@openix.com
RCN:         an385476@anon.penet.fi
WAVE:        

WHAT ARE THE MAGAZINES WWW PAGES?
Affinity:    http://206.245.196.81/affinity/affinity.html
INQ:         http://www.openix.com/~apd/inq
RCN:         http://www.rcn.org
WAVE:        http://www.????

WHAT ARE THE MAGAZINES IRC CHANNELS (EFFNET)?
Affinity:    #AFT  (someone is normally there to help)
INQ:         #INQ  (usually only Lurch and a Bot in the channel)
RCN:         #RCN  (there can be a conversation going)
WAVE:        #WAVE (usually empty though)

WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO GET A MAGAZINE?
Affinity:    Join #AFT and type !AFT<Issue Number> or try their Web page.
INQ:         Try INQ's WWW page.   
RCN:         Join #RCN and type !RCN <Issue Number>
WAVE:        Hope that it is uploaded to a site or BBS you are on.
             Wave is extremely difficult to find.

WHEN ARE THE NEXT ISSUES DUE?
Affinity Issue 3 due 7am sometime this week. Editor waiting on articles.    
INQ Issue 13 does not have a set date or time.
RCN Issue 25 is due 8pm Pacific Standed Time US. on Sunday 18th.
WAVE Issue 9 is due next month.

WHAT CAN I FIND ON THE MAGAZINES WEB PAGES?
Affinity: This web page is still under-construction. Nothing fancy here but you
          will find all the issues of Affinity as well as a group NFO and an
          online application.
INQ:      INQ's page is simple yet bold. I like this page as you can read
          the latest INQ online. INQ claims back issues are available but
          I couldn't seem to find anything.
RCN:      This site is currently closed down. Refurbishment, thanks to some
          suggestions from yours truly. :)
WAVE:     Wave doesn't have a WWW page at the moment. Their reason is they
          were almost busted a few months back.


Well that's it for this issue. Next issue will come out when I have a few
more magazines to review. Hopefully that wont be too long.

PS. Look out for my interview in Affinity Issue 3.
