Tag Archives: magazines

Illegal #21

Thanks to the preservation efforts of AVH/Radwar, we present another lost issue of the legendary Illegal magazine. Issue 21, released in September 1987, is mostly written in German and features news and gossip from the C64 cracking scene alongside with game reviews. Due to the fact that the scanned original consists of unnumbered A4 sheets folded in half, we cannot be certain that the order of the pages is correct. Also, the copy quality is rather bad, but it’s probably the only copy left.

Enjoy this 29-year-old piece of scene history! You can download the PDF and the metadata sheet here.

Commodore Tribune

In the mid-1990s, the C64 market was basically dead, yet there were enough enthusiastic users left who were coding demos and software, and were interested in exchange. With all big commercial magazine being defunct, some of these enthusiasts tried to set up their own C64 periodicals – like Eagleware International from the Netherlands, a small C64 PD company. Their photocopied paper magazine, Commodore Tribune, sold for 10 guilders and featured the latest news on the shrinking C64 software market as well as about the demoscene on the beloved hardware platform, alongside with a cover disk. Very little is known about the magazine which left almost no traces on the internet. Thanks to Goat (who also rescued the coverdisks and uploaded them to CSDb), we are able to present you with scans of the first (and only?) two issues from late 1996 and early 1997. The first issue features, among other things, a report on the C64 scene in Yugoslavia!

• Commodore Tribune #1 (November/December 1996) | [scan/metadata] | [cover disk]
• Commodore Tribune #2 (January/February 1997) | [scan/metadata] | [cover disk]

Illegal #20 & Paradise Island #1

At last year’s Radwar Party, a cozy get-together of old C64 and Amiga sceners, AVH/Radwar mentioned that he might have some old paper stuff somewhere. And indeed, a few months later he provided us with an excellent collection of 1980s papermags, many of which were previously considered lost. Today, we present the first two gems – both produce by legendary German C64 scener and papermag editor Jeff Smart. First, there is issue #20 of Illegal, one of the first cracking scene magazines (see our old post here). This issue, published around September 1987, was one of the last German-only numbers before Illegal turned into the international C64 zine. In this issue, one can still feel the original intention behind Illegal – to review games, but one can also find random scene news and gossip inside, as well as a brief report on the Danish Gold Copyparty 1987, a crucial event for the history of the C64 scene. The second scan is a papermag which has been surrounded by mystery for years and is a top item on our partner site mags.c64.org‘s “wanted list”. Paradise Island was a papermag produced by Jeff Smart somewhen between May 1989, when he was busted by the police, and 1991, when he released the final issue of Illegal. When I asked Jeff Smart about Paradise Island last year, he vaguely remembered having done something like that (and naming the mag after a t-shirt he wore back then), but could recall neither when it was released nor what was inside. Indeed, the contents are not particularly memorable – apart from the great cover by Hobbit/Fairlight, who later pursued a career as a professional comic artist.

Enjoy these two rarities, and keep in mind that it’s just about 1/10 of AVH’s collection. You can browse the mags in the gallery below, or download the high resolution scans here (Illegal) and here (Paradise Island).

Better Papermag Scans

As another update from the vast collection of Goat/Laxity, we present you today with a bunch of C64 papermags, namely the German mags Brainfart and Milestone. These issues are already available on the net, but the new scans are of better quality:

• Brainfart 3 (1995) [metadata]
• Brainfart 6 (1996) [metadata]
• Milestone 11-12/1991 [metadata]
• Milestone 1-2/1992 [metadata]
• Milestone 1-2/1993 [metadata]
• Milestone 2-3/1994 [metadata]
• Milestone 3-4/1995 [metadata]

Also included in today’s update:

• Audio Visual promo sheet, 1990s [metadata]
• Commodore Scene 13 flyer, 1990s [metadata]
• The Pulse subscription postcard, 1990s [metadata]