Any self-respecting treasure hunter knows about the Golden Key and the curse that is connected to it: Legend has it that any man who lays eyes on the mystical door opener will have his countenance changed to that of Indiana Jones. However, that does not mean he'll become a Harrison Ford look-alike, no. Instead, he will morph into the unpleasant proportions of an off-brand Chinese-manufactured Indy action figure. His face will forever be marred by lopsided, sloppily painted-on eyes, a nose that looks unfit for breathing, and a mouth completely devoid of an upper lip. He will eternally wield an oversized knife and a whip, without knowing why, and he will be damned to replicate famous poses from the movie posters.
On the plus side, he'll make it onto the cover of Magic Disk 64 03/90.
Not everybody can have an Oli Frey to do the artwork for their magazine, but deary me, this is quite the car crash. I like to imagine that the first draft of the cover was such a perfect rendition of Harrison Ford's features that somebody at CP Verlag strongly suggested changing the face in order to avoid a potential lawsuit. At that point, the original artist was unavailable, so the alterations were hastily done by a hapless staff member who barely knew how to hold a pencil. That's not what happened, but I like to speculate.
Aside from the dodgy art, the subject matter is also a bit strange, especially if you're familiar with Keyfinders, the game this picture is trying to represent. There is no golden key in the game. The protagonist does not use a whip or a knife. He is wearing a hat in the game, true, but it is purple, and so is the rest of his outfit. Ok, the color discrepancy can probably be forgiven. I wouldn't expect the cover to depict a guy dressed completely in purple unless it is a Prince album. On the other hand, that'd probably make for an epic image, if done right.
The rest of the picture is actually fairly decent, and I remember, as a kid, I found the combination of warm and cool colors on the pillars quite striking. It sort of reminds me that orange/blue would become a very popular color scheme for game box art (and movie posters) decades later, at least for a while.
I know it's hard to take one's eyes off the disastrous cover image, but it should not go unnoticed that the magazine's logo, the disk image, and the spiky price tag underwent some alterations. They now look a bit more stylish and less like they were drawn on an Amiga.
Cover Lines
I'm starting to feel sorry for whoever had to write these lines. They are either painfully generic or outright wrong, which suggests to me that they had to be devised before anyone could actually take a look at the software.
- Helden is a fantastic action game. Oh, good! I was already afraid they'd pack a mediocre or even a terrible action game on the disk.
- Designer 3.0 and MCM's Creator are both labelled as demo designers, but the former is a sprite/character editor. The latter is indeed a tool to make a very simple demo with several editable scroll texts.
- Datei Construction Set lets you be in control of your data, whatever that means. It's a dull database program that makes me drowsy just by thinking about it.
- Keyfinders is subtitled by "In search of the golden key". Again, there is no golden key in the game. It is not about finding one specific key.
- The pink bottom strip mentions that the third part of the giant space poster is included in this issue. This was indeed a large poster/calendar consisting of four DIN A3 sheets (resulting in an A1). I liked it well enough that my parents plastered it on the wall for me. I remember it featured spaceships, aliens, and lots of lasers, but I never took a photo of it, and so far I haven't found any scans of the thing online.
Magazine
It seems the Grim Reaper got bored of wearing black and decided to spruce up his, uh, non-life with a fashionably red robe that also comes with a built-in face filter. He probably grew tired of the recently deceased screaming in terror when they got to see his bony face, so now he's showing them a bit of space instead. If they react by exclaiming that it's full of stars, they already get some afterlife points in classic movie knowledge.
There is something I like about the complete disconnect between the intro picture and the associated article. Nowadays, nobody in their right mind would start a software magazine with a picture of Death. But back then, showing off a nicely done picture was the main point, and the subject matter was secondary. Of all the intro pictures I've seen so far on this blog, this is certainly one of my favorites, despite the rather grim (heh) theme.
Articles
The introduction article points out how a lot of companies are dropping support for the C64 and then boasts how CP Verlag is doing the exact opposite by investing even more into their disk magazines. This culminates in the announcement of a software contest with 500,000 DM in total rewards. The ten best games that are submitted until the end of March 1991 get 50,000 DM each. Since I'm looking at the mags in chronological order, it'll be a while until we get to see the winners.
Notable Games
Helden
Keyfinders
Spacefighter
Other Notable Software
Among this month's utilities are a sprite/font editor, a simple demo maker, a database tool, and, probably the oddest of the bunch, a program that allows you to enter and save high scores of games that don't save them. Unfortunately, none of these are interesting enough to warrant a separate blog post.
Summary
After the disappointment that was the previous issue, this one is a drastic improvement. Keyfinders and Spacefighter are both games I played to completion back in 1990, and I think they hold up pretty well even today. Helden's difficulty is too harsh, but with a bit of patience and perseverance, I still could get some enjoyment out of it. The game has a built-in editor, which is a nice bonus.
All in all, I remember this issue quite fondly, for the games as well as for the nightmare-inducing cover art. Let's hope they can keep up this level of quality for the following months (spoiler: they can't).
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