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Nice one Andy, thanks for posting. I like collecting magazine PDF's to read on my MASSIVE TABLET (I kid you not, it's bloody big) and this looks like a very good read

 

It'll be a decent magazine to keep track of when I finally get a C64. Systems supported aside, it's still not quite the quality of publication as the fabulous Atari User (even if they were also multi format).

 

Thank you so much Bazza for the post about RMW. We put all our passion into the mag in the spirit well known here among the posts of Atari Owners Club.

As for covering the Atari in our mag, well it depends on the number of contributions we receive each month. Unfortunately A8 experts and gurus seem to be a little shy when it comes to write about their beloved machines... Look at the closing editorial where Francesco made a call for papers to all of the Atarians, 8 and 16 bit, so that they show up and put together some news and stuff to be published. We're always open to new authors and high-level contributions.

 

Thanks, Baz. In many back issues of RM/RMW, you can find columns about Atari 8-bit topics. They aren't so many as the platform would deserve, that's why we asked the community for contributions.

You can also have a look at the Columns Index and search for "Atari" (use CTRL+F).
http://www.retromagazine.net/indice_articoli.htm

Having read, Baker's posts here, I must add something:
We are always open to criticism, as long as it is constructive and based on facts.

I think our mutual friend Baker has totally misunderstood the spirit of RMW, which is a multi-platform (all 8 and 16-bit machines including consoles are our targets) and multi-genre magazine (we cover hardware, software, programming, game reviews, retro-events and interviews). It is not a single-platform magazine dedicated to Atari 8bit and it does not want to be. The comparison with Atari User is completely wrong and out of place.

As a matter of principle, we do not deliberately ignore a platform or a home computer. We have dealt with more than 70 systems and Atari 8-bit is among them, as home computer and as a console. In 27 issues released in Italian, we published some articles and game reviews, but they have not been translated into English yet.

We don't have a permanent expert on Atari systems in the editorial staff. I myself am trying to write interesting pieces on A8 and ST but for now, I am just a beginner. That is why we are waiting for someone better than us to send in his contribution to give this important brand of retro-computing the right space.

 

And yes, Baz, you featured in the two-parts special about Oric. A couple of your posts in AS, were the inspiration for my article about this lovely machine. Thanking you at the end of the article was the least I could do.

Same happened with many of other friends in the retrocomputing community. They inspired me to get interested in a home computer, a modern peripheral, a programming language, etc. So they have received my appreciation and thanks in the magazine.

 

I was just skimming through the magazine, it seems pretty nice, but I quickly noticed that there was NOTHING on ANY Atari machines and so my interest dropped to near zero, on top of that there was too much coverage of the N64 and Nintendo in general, and I don't like Nintendo, so there are more wasted pages...to me. I was jut about to close out the PDF and forget about it when I stumbled across this paragraph near the end:

Obviously these statistics are not an end in themselves, but they allowed us
to discover we have given little visibility to Atari machines* and especially to
Atari ST**. It was certainly not our intention to snub this computer***; unfortunately
nobody in the editorial staff is a true expert and we have never received
external contributions. We therefore publish an appeal:
Are you an expert on Atari 8-bit and Atari ST and would you like to collaborate
with us? Contact us, the editorial offices are open!
​

*don't you mean ZERO?!?
**uh...no...this should be "especially to Atari 8-bit!"
***well, you did and don't you guys know there is a much larger Atari 8-bit audience? Not even a mention of not intending to "snub" it?!? I'd like to see things from your point of view, Retromagazine, but I don't think my head would fit up your ass too!

Oh well, I might be willing to submit some stuff, but only so much of my time to go around and I'd rather submit stuff to Atari User first...anyone else interested in collaborating with them?

 

And I never said I was upset or sensitive. I just tried to confute your considerations that you seem to want to pass off as objective when clearly they are not and cannot be. I confirm to you that I am perfectly at ease and my head is always clear and ready to respond to criticism of the magazine or any other subject that I do not agree with. If you look at the FB posts you can see that many times I've agreed with people talking about weak points of the mag.

Also, what is it that you don't understand about "sorry if I don't get your humour", "thanks for your criticism", "we do respect your considerations"? In other words, I accept your thoughts, even if I don't share them. I'm not offended. I appreciate you not being politically correct, I am neither and I agree with you that it's gone too far these days. I'm just saying that logical arguments in support of an opinion must always be valid and sound.

 

Thanks, Baker. I appreciate your words.

 

You are very welcome, Dazza.

Always like to promote all aspects of retro computing and your publication is bright, informative, interesting to most folks over most formats/platforms and of course... constructive feedback is always welcome to try and add more to improve its output and interest by, for example, getting other micro fans onboard (I have Atarian and Oricians in mind) I think I once featured in an earlier Italian edition!?



David AKA AlexDrito did a feature on the Oric back in the Italian Retromag edition 10:



Matt might get some time in the future (he is already a very busy fella) and I'm willing to help on the Oric side in terms of contributions.
There may be other guys here who would also like to chip in and join the editorial team?
I think it's an eye-catching, polished publication and being FREE - well, it suits my "northern" pocket!!
Well done once more - my congratulations to the team who bring us this welcome addition to the retro computer scene.

PS. Previous Italian editions have featured Atari 8bit s/ware etc, ie:







ABOVE & BELOW: Get your Atari Conversational Italian translation software booted up - pronto, pronto...

 

I've had a little bit of time to look through the recent English language issues now, really nice magazine.
Hopefully you will get some Atari contributions (I wish I was up to the task) but even without them I'll be a regular reader now.

Full credit to yourself and all those involved, thank you

 

Apparently most Atarians must be contributing to the new Atari User or Pro(c) Atari, or ABBUC magazines, or doing their own thing with podcasts, etc. I was a regular contributor to EXCEL magazine for the 5 issues it was around (I actually made half a dozen review contributions to the 6th one too, which never got released). So it may not be shyness, just preferring to contribute to Atari only magazines. I may contribute myself in the future, but even though EXCEL is gone, I've been asked to contribute to Pro(c) Atari already, and have little time to do that anymore, so expanding to other magazines may be difficult for me. I've too many personal projects I need to catch up on too, along with dealing with everyday life.

But also, I've never seen RMW leave any posts on AA, the core of the community asking for contributions or even telling of the magazines existence. This seems to be true of Atari User magazine as well, as it's been in existence for YEARS and I didn't even know it existed, nor many other here either, until recently. I've only ever seen posts for Pro(c) Atari, ABBUC magazines and the apparently defunct EXCEL on Atari Age. RMW needs to reach out beyond just a closing editorial in a magazine that many Atarians may not even know exists, or are disinterested in reading it because there is no Atari content.

And my comparison to Atari User was strictly toward what I believe to be a slightly higher quality print and layout, and nothing to do with it being a multi-platform magazine, and had nothing to do with the "spirit" of the magazine. It's a good magazine, I just feel the publishing quality is slightly inferior, not the content. If that was wrong and completely out of place, I disagree. I always compare, even Atari only magazines with each other, too, and have said the same thing in the past with regards to Excel compared to Pro(c) Atari. It's MY review, and if everything is reviewed in an only positive light, then that defeats the purpose of reviews of anything in general and is very poor journalism.

Yes, I joked about the ending editorial and what they had to say about a lack of Atari substance, but that has nothing to do with if I think the magazine is good or not and in my second post I did say it was a decent magazine. So sorry if I rubbed you the wrong way just having a bit of a laugh about the "politically correct" way the editorial was worded about the lack of Atari coverage.

 

Hey @Baker, you don't seem to catch the global picture here.

1. Your own opinion about contributing or not to any magazine, well, of course it depends only on you. Given that your contributions are of great quality, it's up to you to select the magazine, blog or web site where you want to see them published. We didn't ask _you_ in particular to contribute to RMW. Your own opinions on RMW are of course important as any other one. We do respect them. And if you don't like it, that's ok, I understand it. Just saying that you don't like it because there are only a few articles about Atari, I don't think this is a motivation to judge the magazine badly. RMW is not a single-computer mag and it'll never be. Just think that MSX users, or QL users, or IBM 5150 users, can say the same thing. And it makes no sense to me, you could say that about old computer magazines like Popular Computing Weekly or Byte, or Compute's, or Your Computer, Input, Enter, Your Personal Computer, etc. etc.
https://commodore.bombjack.org/generic/generic-magazines.htm

2. We actually posted calls for articles and contributions publicly (Facebook groups) or privately to known Atari users. I, myself, have tried many times to involve Atari people from all over the world and sometimes I did have a good feedback (my friend Filippo Santellocco, Baktra from Atari Sector, Baz and many others). Their feedback (mostly because of lack of time) was not the one I expected. I mean, they would have been so happy to contribute but their lives' commitments didn't allow. That's why I say (ironically) that they're shy... And that's why we are trying to spread announcements looking for Atari-related stuff even with our closing editorial, because there are so many Atarians who actually download the magazine, especially the English version. If they don't see much material about A8 or ST machines, why don't they get a pen and start writing about their own experiences?

3. Quality print and layout? Seriously? Question: how much do you pay for Atari User subscription? Our staff works on Scribus (an open source DTP software) mainly because many of us just use Linux and so we need a common platform to work on. Most of all, no money involved in the RMW project, no one gets paid to collaborate, even graphicians, no cover price, no advertisements. Just passion. So far, we have registered more than 130K downloads, 2000 followers on FB, almost 1000 on Twitter. In 3 years of activity, I think we have received only a couple of critics about the graphic layout (no print of course, it's a digital and free magazine), including yours. On the other side, I can't count the compliments and praises we did receive at every release. There's no way to compare RMW to Atari User or other single-platform mag. Different costs, different format, different spirit, totally different contents.

4. Your joke about the editorial is not fun, in my opinion. because it includes bad expressions actually, or maybe because I don't get your American humour and that is my fault, sorry. But most of all it's out of place because of what I tried to communicate in points 1, 2 and 3.

All that said, I'd like to thank you for your criticism, it helps anyway to improve the mag and our commitment to make it even better.

 

I NEVER SAID I DIDN'T LIKE IT. But I'm certainly getting very disinterested with your ridiculous replies and attitude to me here about it. What you say above about your magazine is pretty much the same with all Atari oriented magazines these days too. But obviously you have become very upset with me and overblown my comments because you have a special bias to your magazine, so it's just time for us to stop talking about it I guess. I don't want your head to explode.

I'm sorry that I've upset you so much and if I'd known a member here was involved with it, especially one so sensitive, I would not have posted any joking comments about it or compared it to other magazines. But I'm not a politically correct person and never will be, it the great lie that is destroying our civilization and radicalizing people so there is no longer any political discourse or room for criticism any more without offending somebody. People need to grow thicker skins again.

I got plenty of criticism from reviews I did for EXCEL about ABBUC contest software because I called it like I saw it with the software and some I said was great, some mediocre and some terrible. I certainly didn't get upset over the criticism I received for my work like the authors did over the criticism I gave toward their work. I took it in stride, not everyone is going to like you or what you have to say, I have a thick skin and can accept it and move on.

But all that said, I apologize for my comments and upsetting you @AlexDrito , and I certainly have no hard feelings toward you for not liking what I had to say about RM/RMW. Besides, it was the first issue I ever read and my feelings about it are only based on the one issue. I'll look into some more back issues, especially those that have some Atari content. It is a good magazine (I said decent before, but that's about the same where I come from) and I look forward to checking into it more when I finally own some other 8-bit micros besides Atari. But I am a hands on type of guy, and I don't care to read about stuff that I don't own. I'll care about it when I do.

 

@AlexDrito I added another paragraph to my reply while you were replying to it, just to let you know.

I guess we both misunderstood each other in our replies, as we all know, it's easy to do when it's just texting and you don't have the benefit of tone of voice and expressions and demeanor that we have live and in person that helps us understand where the other is coming from better.

But again, you misunderstand me, as I never tried to pass my comments off as objective, they are my opinion and I guess your misinterpretation of that can be chalked up to what I just said in the previous paragraph. These are my OPINIONS. And I'm not trying to be or trying to pass any of them off as objective. Cannot the same be said for your comments?