ANALOG Computing Magazine
ANALOG Computing Magazine
Atari Newsletter and Lots of Games
In the US, the two main Atari (8-bit) Magazines were ANALOG Computing and Antic. I also liked Compute!, because it covered lots of computers and allowed me to see non-Atari stuff. Still, ANALOG was easily my favorite as it had the most in-depth articles and usually better game listings. Since there was no internet back then and I didn’t use a modem at this point, my only source of Atari news was the magazines.
I loved the day each magazine arrived in the mail. I would grab it and read it cover-to-cover, often multiple times. I used to have to type in programs I wanted, but eventually we split a disk subscription with a friend so that we could get everything on a floppy disk. No more typing!
I also have a special place in my heart because ANALOG was the first magazine to send me a rejection letter!
I still re-read ANALOG from time to time because I have a complete set of all 79 issues! Until recently, I only had 78 issues as Issue #6 was eluding me. But then out of the blue it showed up on eBay in a group with some other issues. I snapped it up to complete my collection.
ANALOG was the first Atari-specific magazine in the US and its early issues had a short production run so are quite rare. Here is the first issue:
Since we got our first Atari computer in 1983 or so, the first issue I remember getting was #13:
Shortly after the Atari ST appeared in 1985, ANALOG added ST-Log as an insert in the magazine. It was split out into its own separate magazine in 1987.
At some point in 1988, ANALOG was sold to LFP, Inc. (Larry Flynt Publications, yes that Larry Flynt) and after a several month hiatus started publishing again. At this point, the magazine started getting glossy with a fancier “design”, but I found it became harder to read. Plus the state of the 8-bit Ataris meant the glory days of ANALOG were behind it.
In the US the Atari market started dwindling in the late 80s and by 1989, it was decided to merge ANALOG and ST-Log back into a single magazine. This only lasted for two issues until it stopped publishing with issue #79 in December 1989.
I think ANALOG is what first instilled my love of magazines. In 1994 I became the final ST editor for Current Notes magazine and I’ve been writing a column for Xdev Magazine since 2002.
You can find digital versions of ANALOG at several places on the internet:
Also check out More About ANALOG Computing.
Don’t miss A Brief History of Atari Part 1 starting next week! Subscribe now to be notified when it is posted.
ANALOG accepted our game entry "Slither" and it was published in issue 51 page 23.
https://archive.org/details/analog-computing-magazine-51/page/n23/mode/2up
About a year before publication, Steve and I were at the bowling alley playing a coin based snake game and we both backhandedly said we could write this easily. Over a couple days we had a sort of working "clone" written in Atari Basic. Initial problem was about a 5 second delay between when the controller was pressed to it being updated on screen. By chance, Steve had been in CS learning about Boolean algebra and he implemented a new algorithm, this resulted in delays of less than a second.
The logic for the snake code fits on about an 8 1/2" x 11" dot matrix print of Atari Basic.
Soon after we decided to port the program to Atari 6502 assembly and it took more than 3 months to complete. Stomping on video memory was the first and biggest hurdle we had to overcome, everything was "so fast" that just tapping the JS controller would cause video and system memory writes and system crashes. Guarding against these writes was a huge win for us.
For the ANALOG entry we added a couple extra design levels and submitted. We had about 25 pages of assembly code and with 3 columns each in print and we thought we were going to make bank. Unfortunately they compressed it to Atari Basic Bytecode which eliminated our code comments.
Steve went on to be a Boeing Engineer and really never coded again.
I continue to code to this day, you can find me on Github.
Peace
Cool article but I can't believe you didn't mention one of the most important bits of the magazine! This being the pre-internet era and all, you could pay extra and get a *cassette or later floppy in the mail with all the software and source code*!
If me using screen star caps seems extreme, you have NO EARTHLY IDEA how excited I would get waiting for that tape to come in.
They had SO many amazing original games! Plus all the incredible clones, written in pure assembler.
All these years later and I'm still boggling at the amazing quality.