Open request for review material or possible interview on AA and Retromags

[triverse]

After the success of my review of Classic Video Gamer Magazine and the popularity of the interview with Bill "The Game Doctor" Kunkel I have decided to ask the community here on Atari Age about future reviews or interviews, specifically, what do you want to see? I am open to pretty much anything that garners enough interest from members (obviously I cannot review or interview everyting or everyone that gets a mention).

I do have some ground rules that I will follow and expect anyone wishing to participate to follow also:

 

1) I am not available for contact by phone (if I was making a living from this stuff then I could attribute time for phone conversations). If I feel a need for phone contact, I will ask for it but it is an extremely rare occasion to say the least.

 

2a) Reviews: I will need a copy of whatever you are wanting reviewed. If it is a magazine or a book then please be ready to provide a copy of it. I understand the costs involved with hard copy so digital is fine (this is what I did with the ClassicVGM review, I will not be able to comment on the quality as far as the print goes, if one is available unless that version is made available).

 

2b) Interviews: Since we are in the digital age, and everyone has things they need to do and places they need to go, I request that all interviews be either done through PM's or e-mail, this keeps everything available for you and me to read and provides proof if there is a misprint in my final copy. I usually do interviews over several e-mails that can be answered when you have time. I am open to the fact that certain things may not be available for comment in an interview, that is your right. I reserve the right to pull the interview and or stop it at any time for any reason, for the most part it is nothing personal.

 

I will provide a proof copy to you and will make sure that you are OK with all aspects prior to publishing (the review of ClassicVGM went through approximately 9 layout revisions, the best of which were discussed with Mike, the publisher and the best one was chosen). Some things that are not available for edit in a review will be the content. If there is a mistake of some sort that is different. I am not doing this trying to start, cause or carry on any controversy. The reviews and interviews are being done to help get word about about publications and people that deserve more people to be aware of them.

 

3) The views I express in the interviews or reviews are mine and mine alone. They are not to be taken as official points of view for whatever site they are posted on.

 

Fairly simple guidelines that I hope aren't over worded too much. I am simply putting them here in the open because I want everyone to see them. I look forward to reveiwing more stuff for people and interviewing others and hope that it is as much fun for everyone else as it is for me.

[kevincal]

Interview - Dave Halverson, Sam Tramiel, Eric Mylonas, Steve Harris, Tim Lindquist, Joe Santulli, Trip Hawkins, Shigeru Miyamoto, Jason Smith, whoever created RF Generation, creator of Chase the Chuckwagon, or Albert (AA) .

 

Review - hmm.. Hardcore Gamer or Play magazine?

[triverse]

Interview - Dave Halverson, Sam Tramiel, Eric Mylonas, Steve Harris, Tim Lindquist, Joe Santulli, Trip Hawkins, Shigeru Miyamoto, Jason Smith, whoever created RF Generation, creator of Chase the Chuckwagon, or Albert (AA) .

 

Review - hmm.. Hardcore Gamer or Play magazine?

Thank you for the reply there Kevincal, but I meant the original post (I wish we could edit our own posts) to read as, if you are a person involved in the gaming industry or magazine publishing industry then I would like to extend an offer of an interview with you. I do believe that fans will be pleasantly surprised at some of the upcoming interviews I have been fortunate enough to write though.

While those are some interesting people you listed there, I can not say either way as to whether any of them have made themselves available for an interview. I can say, that when my next interview is made available, the announcement will be made here on Atari Age along with other sites (none of that-only on this site is this offer available, then posting it all over the place type stuff from me).

As far as the publications for review, I mean, if you are an author of some work that is gaming related and you would like to see it reviewed and promoted then I am making myself available, within reason, to write a review of it for you and to help promote your work.

[kevincal]

Ah jeez. My bad.

[hhwolfman]

I am way to busy, sorry. HHW

[carmel_andrews]

Perhaps instead of interviewing people what you could do instead is draw up a list of well known hardware designers (less Jay miner ofcourse, as he is no longer with us) and well known games designers ansd ask them to do a review of what they created (hardware or games) but in the modern context (i.e. as if it were a quad core pc or intel mac or xbox ps3 etc...or games equivalent)

 

A monthly hi score competition (multi format, but focusing on particular games) and the 3 highest scores in ea. format game goes forward to an end of year final where the winner gets a subsidized subscription, or just a bunch of free games for their system)

 

A multi format 'guess the game' competition in each edition, where you only get shown a small part of that game's screen and it's heavily pixellated and after the 12 edition whoever has guessed the most correct games wins some prize

 

A review of the popular classic gaming/ retroputing w/s or forums like ctcw/aa/digitalpress etc

 

A multi format remake/adapted game challenge, where you invite people to submit games they are working on that are remakes or adapted games ported from other platforms (the code they are working the game on must be their own though) and every quarterly issue you put the games up on the w/s for people to see and play and vote on, the best remake/adapted game per platform goes forward to an end of year challenge where they will compete with other games for the right to be called that years best classic remake or adapted game which will be featured on the site for the next 3 monthly issues

 

Classic games programmers 'hi score' competition (with a twist)...instead of that classic programmer just playing something that they programmed, you get them to play a game programmed by a rival software houses programmer that they were no good at playing and visa versa...and the best scores go forward to an end of year challenge and the winner gets to win some original sealed in box games that his/her favourite programmer programmed/designed

 

International Console group/computer user group round up..... that is if those things still exist (i still fondly remember going south of the river to the regular monthly meetings of LACE/London Atari computer enthusiasts)

 

If you have a computer section, you should think about getting people to submit type in programming listings (like they used to do in compute!, antic analog etc) or byte sized (geddit) tutorials in various formats/flavours of basic, assembler or C etc

 

A technical section... for repair tips, or upgrading/modding or expanding your computer or console system

 

A classic console/computer book review section....but only for those books that are fairly easy to get on places like amazon,ebay etc etc (or if those books are now replicated online, like atariarchives dot org or whatever it was called)