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Saxonia Issue 03 Part 022
Cows'n Snakefights 5 review
By Rumrunner/VOID
l
These days, there are not half as many magreleases as I would like to see,
so whenever a mag hits the streets, it's a pleasure to grab it.
When looking at 1 jpv.wmhost.com/releases0 which has a lot of nice stuff,
I found Cows'n Snakefights issue five. I have barely heard of this mag
before, I have never read any previuos issue.
Right, when loading the mag, you first get a requester asking what
resolution you want to run in. Then the more or less compulsory startup-
pictures are displayed before you are sent to the menu.
Now, the first thing you will notice is that the mag isn't ordered in the
regular manner. Instead of using the textscreen for menu, the menu is always
at hand in the left part of the screen. Pointing the mouse over the
different articles, the articlenames (the longer ones which doesn't fit
into the part of screen reserved) scroll, to let you see the whole name of
the article in question. It reminds me a little of the scrollfunction that
Balance had in Upstream, mostly used in the adverts section. By the way, I
think that this scroller was also present back when the mag was named
Magbox, but that's another issue. Ofcourse the scroller in Cns is not meant
to present long scrollers to the reader, only to let you see the whole
article name, but I think that it gives the mag a smooth appearance.
The textscreen doen's cover the whole width of the screen because of the
aforementioned menu. I think that this doesn't matter and I didn't get
bothered by too little text on screen at once. I rather think that it's a
fine idea to split it up more, to give a better overview. That's also why I
use the spacing between the lines that you can see here in Saxonia.
The music is mostly pleasant to listen to. Among others, there's a
coverversion of Martin Galway's Comic Bakery, done by a fellow named
Sleipner. The general feel of the music brings back memories from old times
gone by, and everybody who has read my earlier articles must know that I
like those days very much.
Now, before going into the articles there's one little effect that I have
to mention. The mag has a socalled "autumn"-effect snow or raindrops across
the screen, that is. Usually I don't like moving backgrounds and the likes
in diskmags, it takes the attention away from the most important part,
namely the articles. However, this effects blends nicely in, and it's a
fine idea to use this as a regocnition to when the mag was released. Those
of you who know our background in the scene will most likely remember the
opening-pictures and the menupanels in LSD's Grapevine, where they too used
some most christmas-alike pictures and icons during this season. It's a nice
connection to the life outside the computer room, I think.
Right, then, onto the most important part of a diskmag, the articles. There
are not many articles in this mag, but the ones to be found is of a rather
high quality, I think. Especially the interview with Cerebrandil/Phenomena
was interesting, as I like to read about the heroes of yesterdays's scene,
where they are now, and background-information they never told about when
they were active. Many people will perhaps comment in a negative way that
there are also partyreports present all the way back to 1993, but I like it.
I don't care when something has happened as long as it's interesting to read.
My review of Fesk/Pulse^Movement^Phenomena in the last issue of Saxonia
should prove that. Also expect more of this from me.
Right, all in all I think that this was a very fine magazine, perhaps there
were few articles, but as an editor myself, I know how it is to try to write
each day when perhaps there's no inspiration. Also, most editors these days
are already working for the existing mags and may be hard to get to do some
work for yet another mag. Anyway, I think that Nukleus has come up with a
very interesting read, and I hope to see more from them soon.
