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What is AMC-Soft / AMC-Verlag?


k1w1

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I am doing a bit of work in my spare time to update GameBase Atari 800 v.12. At present I am focusing on all of the PD game software made available through magazines. My goal with the magazine entries is to provide more information about month, year, volume and issue # as attached picture shows.

 

I have just completed and added significantly to the entries for Antic (251), ANALOG (170), Compute! (115) & SoftSide (121) and am about to start on some of the European magazines. I try to verify all entries against the magazines they have come from thanks to TOSEC Pix collection and other sources.

 

I am struggling however to find much information on the dozen or so games released by AMC-Soft / AMC-Verlag. Atarimania says these are from magazines but I cannot find them anywhere. Where these paper based magazines or disk based magazines? Many of these appear to have been developed by commercial companies and released under AMC-Soft / AMC-Verlag.

 

Atraimania also gives the information I am seeking for month, year, issue# but they don't seem to make much sense unless there is a volume # as well And of course I would like to verify these against the original source.

 

Any help would be appreciated.

 

k1w1

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The AMC Verlag was a software publisher in Germany. The founder of AMC was Armin Stuermer, who was popular in Germany because of his VCS League in the early 80ies. He was also a freelancer for Atari Germany. AMC was founded in 1984, I think.

 

Some of the great games published by AMC were:

 

Herbert 1 and 2

Bilbo

Tales of dragon and cavemen (This is one of my favorite A8 games)

 

AMC made a lot of software magazines like AMC Soft, AMC intern....

 

AMC made also some hardware.

 

 

In 1998 Armin died much to early, everyone in the A8 scene in Germany was shocked.

Since 2003 all AMC software is freeware, thanks to Andreas Magenheimer.

More about AMC you can read here, just use an translator german - english:

 

http://www.strotmann.de/~highland/amc/amc.html

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Well,

 

AMC started around 1981 or 1982 with the "VCS Bundesliga", this was a highscore-club where everyone could participate and win small prizes by sending in screenshots/photos of his/her highest score of a VCS game. Armin Stuermer started the VCS Bundesliga with a few printed (loose) pages, but soon these pages got more and more and so he had his own paper-magazine. Atari Deutschland became aware of this and hired Armin to work for them as "Captain Atari". They used a chauffeur and a big limousine to drive him from Wiesbaden to Frankfurt airport and then he flew first class to Hamburg, where again a chauffeur was waiting for him to drive him to the german Atari headquarter. His job as "Captain Atari" was to write short promo-articles and answer reader letters for the german Atari Club Magazine.

 

When Atari closed their headquarter in Hamburg in 1984 Armin continued with his Atari hobby, but he focussed on the A8 then and began publishing a magazine on diskette, named AMC-Soft. He also started as a publisher under the name AMC-Verlag (afaik, AMC was originally an abbreviation for Atari Micro Club, later it stood for Atari Micro Computers) with his friends and programmers Rolf Kothe, Rainer Kothe and Holger Kurth, known as the AMC team. All programs that were written by these programmers (the AMC team) were published under AMC-Verlag, while programs by other authors were published under the label Secret Games.

 

Armin lived in Wiesbaden for many years, only a few months before his death he had to move to Mainz-Amoeneburg and he was buried near Heidelberg. In Germany there was a well-known tv series named "Ein Fall fuer Zwei" with Claus-Theo Gaertner acting as private detective Matula. The actor CTG also had an appartment in Wiesbaden and thus several parts of the tv series were filmed in Wiesbaden. In fact, four episodes of this tv series did take place in and around the house where Armin lived ! Since the house where Armin lived was old and in very bad shape, this was always the place where the bad guys / the gangsters did hide... ;-)

 

In 1996 I began studying in Mainz and so I visited Armin in Wiesbaden, since this was only a few kilometers away (maybe 10km over the rhine). From a single visit this turned into a visit every two weeks, then every week, then as often as I wanted to and we became friends. In early 1997 he required a new lung and I was very happy, when I heard that a lung transplantation was under way. Only a few months after the transplantation he did visit several Atari meetings again (e.g. in Hanau) and everything seemed to be fine. In november 1997 we had an Atari meeting at his new home with several Atarians and there he told us, that they found something in his new lung and he has to meet the hospital in december again. He died in the hospital on Feb 5, 1998, just a few hours after my grandmother had died...

 

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So,

 

here is the (complete?) set of AMC-Soft magazines I have, including:

 

1) the "Oldie-series" from 1984 and 1985, partially published on paper (with VCS and A8 content) and later put onto diskette (with only A8 content) by Armin...

 

2) the "AMC-Soft" magazine from 1986 to 1993, which includes dozens of software reviews and tests, as well as a bonus game on diskside b. (Many AMC games did come from the AMC-Soft magazine, diskside b.)

 

3) the other "AMC magazines" given away for free for promotional (advertizing) purposes, as well as the "AMC Intern" that was very short-lived (just two issues; issue two with content mainly written by me)...

 

All magazines were originally copy-protected, the copy-protection has been removed since then, but you still have to slow down Happy and Speedy (and other ultraspeed) drives to normal speed (unhappy mode, slow mode, etc.) to make the magazines boot correctly. Many magazines have to be booted with Basic enabled, but some have to be booted with Basic disabled... and errm, of course all magazines do use german language...

 

AMC_SOFT_Oldies_1984_1985.zip

AMC_SOFT_1986_1993.zip

AMC_Mags_other.zip

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Well,

 

at one time Armin wanted me to continue his AMC magazine, but since I was and still am no programmer, I could not do that. Many things of his magazine are programmed in Assembler and the disk magazine pages use a special format or layout (and no standard ASCII / ATASCII text) which was quite awkward to generate with a special editor...

 

In 1999 (one year after Armin had died) I therefore began publishing the XLE-Mag, a german disk-magazine with mainly texts (reviews, tests, special-themes, etc.). I was very active and productive with that magazine, writing texts, converting pictures / screenshots (e.g. from Lynx and Jaguar games that had been reviewed into 256-colour A8 pictures) and whatnot. But alas, the interest was not there, I started with approx. 10 subscriptions in the first year, then 20 subscriptions in the second year and in the third and last year I reached 10 subscriptions again... so I gave up and ended the magazine.

 

Attached you can find all 12 issues of the XLE-Mag. from 1999-2001, which originally should have been the continuation of the AMC magazine. But as you can see, the XLE-Mag has abolutely nothing in common with the AMC magazine ! The magazine uses SS/DD (180k) or DOS 2.0d format, thus it requires a floppy-drive that can read DD/180k, it can be booted with or without Basic... and it uses german language...

 

Nowadays, I am preparing the disks for the P.A.M. (Proc Atari Magazine), as well as the german Return-Magazin...

 

 

XLEMAG.zip

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