Yahoo

Yahoo was one of the old PC diskmags from 1994/1995 that was published in the English language and reached an international audience. It placed 2nd in the Splash #1 charts from October 1995, just after Imphobia. Despite a few good ideas, Yahoo died quite early after just five issues. Somebody uploaded all issues to scene.org in 2003, and until April 2008, each issue was downloaded about 400 to 600 times.

Yahoo was released by the groups Topaz Beerline (issues 1-3) and @ (issues 4-5). All issues can be downloaded from scene.org (400 - 700 downloads per issue). Most of them work using the latest DOSBox emulator.

Yahoo #1

Yahoo #1 was released on June 5th, 1994. After starting the mag, the intro appears: On a blue background, a Bart-Simpson-with-skateboard picture scrolls from the left to the right and the headline "YAHOO" appears. Then comes a message about how the mag was delayed for five days and that some people probably wouldn't have expected that the mag would ever be released. Pressing Escape makes Bart scroll away, and the title picture appears for a short time, showing a stopwatch, until it fades out and we enter the main menu.

It's all in white on pink ground. The selection bar is blue-ish. You can move it line-wise by pressing the cursor keys up/down. Entering or leaving an article, a nice fading effect is done as the transition. Inside the articles, you also move with the cursor keys, but not line-wise - you move pixel-wise. Cursor left/right is the same as cursor up/down, but it's twice as fast, taking twice as many pixels per unit of time. Pressing left and up or right and down at the same time is even another bit faster. The font is pretty big so that only 20 rows and 40 columns have space on the screen.

The editorial is called "Addictorial" because the main editor of Yahoo (of all issues) is Addict of Topaz, later Addict of @. He is from Finland, but he writes in English (as you might have guessed), and his English is good. We learn in the editorial that Yahoo is his fourth attempt at making a diskmag, the first one having been back in 1991. The idea behind Yahoo was to release a regular magazine that would issue every two months, as Addict was fed up with the magazines which were released as soon as the editors felt that they had enough contents.

In the credits we learn that Doom of Cascada coded the mag engine. Addict turns out to be a multi-talent: He made the interface graphics and the font, as well as the tune of the intro and one of the two tunes in the magazine, the other being by Abuse of Tribal. (And as we can learn in the Advertisements corner, he was also the sysop of a BBS.) The intro gfx is from Tint of Digital.

About the charts: The voting system is a bit unusual: Instead of writing an ordered list of your favourite demos, intros, etc., you can write down as many names per category as you want and assign each of them a score between 1 and 10. "This way you can give your honest opinion about every single group in the scene." For entering the charts, a certain (low) number of points was needed, depending on the category. For example, in the demo group category it was three points, in the coder category five points. Thus a lot of names appear in the charts. The last category, the "Billboard chart", is a collection of quotes from sceners.

The next section is the reviews. Each review contains a rather short introduction consisting of release date and credits for code, graphics and music, plus a short text. Then come commented ratings for code, graphics, music, design and overall, given in percent. Two of the three productions reviewed got bad ratings as they were bad productions, which makes me wonder why they were reviewed at all.

The Scene Encylopedia is something really interesting: it's a database of demo effects, ordered alphabetically, featuring abbreviations, aliases, the first appearance on C64, Amiga and PC, world records on these platforms and descriptions what these effects are all about. In this edition, 23 effects are reviewed.

About the miscellaneous stuff: In "Complaining won't get us anywhere", Addict mostly reacts on an article by Sam of Imphobia from Imphobia #7 in which Sam predicted that the C64 scene would die within a year, while in reality it continued to stay alive. Addict states that the real development of a scene starts only as soon as a computer isn't manufactured any more since then the limits will be explored and optimization will occur. PC sceners, on the other hand, are lazy with optimizing; they upgrade their systems and then write their demos only so that they run fast on their current system. The other two articles in this section are a party invitation and news about Formula One, written by Tint.

Yahoo #2

Released on August 14th, 1994, it starts with an intro coded by Doom, with gfx by Razorback and music by Addict. After the intro we automatically enter the main menu, this time without having to press Escape. It's a blue-ish colour set in this issue. Nothing has changed in the controls of the mag.

The editorial reveals that this issue's graphics were made by Razorback. In the credits we learn that the first tune inside the mag was made by Tonedeaf of Extreme, and the second tune is the same as the intro tune. The news corner among other things reports about the 50th issue of the Hungarian diskmag Terror News. In the reactions, Unreal complains about the font used in this diskmag - in my opinion it's not the worst font ever, it's still pretty readable compared to the fonts used in some other old diskmags (e.g. "What"), and it doesn't hurt my eyes.

Next comes the special part of this issue: the Assembly '94 special. The party report is written from a subjective perspective. Addict writes about his trip to Assembly and what he experienced there. As usual with these reports, it's a slightly dull read. On the other hand, the "facts" article is interesting. We learn about mistakes that occured at the party, like playing the wrong version of an intro, and that the rumour was spread that Lemming of Jeskola! Productions had been either in jail or at hospital, neither of which was true according to Yahoo. The "feedback" article reports about a survey conducted in an online network. Four questions were asked (what people did on the day Assembly '94 ended, how they felt on the next morning, what really ruled and what really sucked at the party), and they were answered by Drow of Tribal, Lunatic, Vulture of Wild Light and Lemming of Jeskola! Productions. The last article in this section is the compo results, which were cut and pasted from various sources as the party organizers had not released a full results file yet.

Many of the productions in the demo reviews section are 4k intros, and the reviewers have given only an overall rating without judging code, graphics and music separately.

The Scene Encyclopedia contains 26 effects this time, three more than in the previous issue.

In the Miscellaneous stuff we find a sorting algorithm by Unreal and a party invitation.

Yahoo #3 - The flower power issue

This issue is from October 18th, 1994. The engine, which now uses the Super VGA mode 640x480x256, doesn't work correctly on my PC, but at least the headlines can be read - and the articles can be read by opening the file flowerpo.wer in a text editor.

The corner "Lemming's whacky interviews" features an interview with Peak, coder of Anarchy PC, who was 16 years old back then.

There are no charts, no demo reviews and no scene encyclopedia because of lack of voters and lack of time. However, there are couple of scene-related articles this time.

Inside flowerpo.wer, we can also find an article which is not listed in the table of contents. It's called "Some funny stories from Poland".

Yahoo #4 - The hang over issue

Fortunately, this one works again. It was released on January 27th, 1995. There's no intro, it starts right with the menu screen. We see that the magazine now supports pictures inside the texts - there is the back of a nude person, and on the right it's written: "When your stomach goes upside down / When your eyes are red / When your bottle is empty" - it's the hang over issue after all!

The mag can be controlled by the keyboard or by the mouse. A combination of the two is most comfortable: cursor keys for page-flipping (left/right) and mouse for clicking the headlines. For exiting an article, you have to press Escape or click the Exit button - pressing the right mouse button won't do it. Inside the articles most of the time there's a two-column layout like in Imphobia, but some articles are contiguous texts. What's negative: The font used is far less legible than the font from older issues, it's quite painful to read the texts.

The engine was coded by Addict. The music in this issue, as mentioned in the credits, is from Scorpik and Mellow-D. Razorback made most of the graphics. Lemming this time interviews RaTT of gRif. The new #coders column features two interviews with people who were active on the #coders IRC channel back then, Otto Chrons and Pit_Bull. The Scene Encyclopedia hasn't grown much, it's only 27 effects.

In "What? 1994?", Addict and Lemming present their choices for the best things that have appeared in 1994. The Juhla '95 party report is in the same style as the Assembly '94 report two issues before. gRif file documentation is nothing but an info-file of the group gRif. In "Some advice for coders", Zed of ReMaL recommends aligning variables to DWORD as this saves some clock cycles.

There are no demo reviews in this issue, only the review of a CD by DJ Sven Väth. The Chill Out Zone is mostly about music, too.

Yahoo #5 - The Party Issue

This final issue of Yahoo came out on April 29th, 1995. It starts with yet another simple intro - code by Addict, music by Welti, featuring a big @ and text displayed on the right. The graphics inside the actual magazine are very much like in the previous issue, except that the issue number has changed and instead of a @ sign, there's now a clickable "save to disk" icon.

Tune 1 is by Sulphur of Orange, and tune 2 is by Addict. The #coders corner features interviews with Jsa and Simm. The Scene Encyclopedia now features 28 effects, and there is new party section - this time featuring five parties (three Assemblies and two Gatherings). Articles include party invitations and reports, the story of Legend Design, sorting algorithms, interview with Basehead, and there's one review, of Dope by Complex.

Adok/Hugi