226 lines
12 KiB
Plaintext
226 lines
12 KiB
Plaintext
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The July '95 Ware Report, by The Renegade Chemist
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Explanations
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Game Name - This is self-explanatory.
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Disks - The number of disks in a given game.
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Rated - The release's point rating, based on major-ness of the release,
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publisher, platform, etc. For example, Elite 3 is a long-awaited
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title from a major publisher (Gametek) so it earns the maximum of
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9 points, while USA Scenery West/East are upgrades to data disks
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for a flight sim that nobody plays from a publisher that is not
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noteworthy, earning only 3 points.
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Rel. Size - Actual byte size of the release.
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Bytes
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Awarded - Number of ware report bytes awarded. Normally, this will be
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the same size as the release size, but if a group puts out an
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update, it only gets 1/2 credit (if I even choose to recognize
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the release of the update). If a group puts out a game badly
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cracked or not cracked and someone else fixes it before the
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original group, the group gets 1/2 credit and the fixing group
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gets the other half, etc. I try to be fair.
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Group
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Score - Group Score = (Release Quality Average) X (Bytes Awarded)
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-------------------------------------------
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1,000,000 (The number of bytes in a meg, roughly)
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Ware Report :
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Game Name Disks Rated Release Size Bytes Awarded
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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Eclipse
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~~~~~~~~~
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Fantasy Football '95 2/2 4 2,707,784 2,707,784
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Simon the Sorceror 2 8/8 8 11,542,582 11,542,582
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Solitaire Deluxe for Windows 2/2 6 2,848,465 2,848,465
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~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~
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12/12 18.00 17,098,831 17,098,831
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Number of Monthly Rel. : 3
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Release Quality Average : 6.00
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Eclipse Group Score : 102.59
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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Tyranny
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~~~~~~~~~
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Art Apart Coll Ed. for Win 4/4 3 3,271,177 3,271,177
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DarkStrike : ATF 5/5 4 6,720,962 6,720,962
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Entertainment Digest for Win 3/3 3 4,519,965 4,519,965
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Laser Light 1/1 4 613,496 613,496
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Microleague Baseball '94 Exp. 1/1 3 19,043 19,043
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Overdrive 2/2 7 2,351,666 2,351,666
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Ricochet for Windows 2/2 3 1,751,075 1,751,075
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Time Hunters 2/2 4 2,747,704 2,747,704
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~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~
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20/20 31.00 21,995,088 21,995,088
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Number of Monthly Rel. : 8
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Release Quality Average : 3.88
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Tyranny Group Score : 85.34
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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Razor 1911
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~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Atari 2600 Action Pack 2 3/3 5 2,992,267 2,992,267
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Hyper Cyles 2/2 3 1,612,543 1,612,543
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Kingspoint for Windows 8/8 4 10,574,796 10,574,796
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Flight Lite Plus 2/2 5 1,688,117 1,688,117
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Scrabble for Windows 1/1 5 785,485 490,572
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* Simon the Sorceror 2 8/8 - 11,542,582 A BIG FAT 0!
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~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~
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24/24 22.00 29,195,790 17,358,295
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Number of Monthly Rel. : 5
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Release Quality Average : 4.40
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Razor 1911 Group Score : 76.38
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* I didn't figure Simon into the above 3 figures.
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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Really Biased Commentary
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Ahh, now we get to the FUN part!
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For starters - the reasons that only Eclipse got credit for the game
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are as follows (duh .. don't even say 'WHAT GAME!?') ..
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1. I figured that if I was going to be called biased in my
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report, hell, I might as well make DAMN sure that the insult
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holds some water!
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2. Nexus really ticked me off on this one, spreading a vicious
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rumor that the Eclipse version wasn't cracked, or wasn't
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cracked properly. Crap, crap, crap. Poor sportsmanship
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like they display does not earn them credit for a release!
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3. We beat them on Park Central. We beat them on one of
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their OWN HQ's, IN THE STATES! Is that unbelievable or
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what? And it was the Sysop of OUR WHQ who uploaded it -
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meaning that he must have had it way before they did,
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otherwise they could have done the same thing, no?
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4. Since I didn't do a report last month (I'm a lazy ass, I
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know it!), I figured I'd have to have something really
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controversial in this one in order to retain my readers!
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5. OBVIOUSLY, they named their files 'simon2-*.zip' because
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they had already USED 'sim2-*.zip' and discovered that
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we'd already used those filenames <snicker> .. more to
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come on this topic later.
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First off, I want to say a few things about Razor. I could start by bagging
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on them for their incredibly poor sportsmanship when they got creamed on the
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best game of the month, Simon 2. I could also talk about the great job they
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did botching an inside original, Scrabble, only to re-release half the game
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later, after they bothered to check for protection. Note that they were
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able to play the game enough to give it an inflated rating, but not enough
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to notice the doc check early in the game. Pretty slick work you guys do!
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But, I won't. I'll start by talking about the asinine remarks they made in
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a release from AUGUST, which I probably shouldn't do, but I'd like to have
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a little fun in this report, in case you couldn't tell from the above ..
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It took over a week for Razor to FINALLY come up with some kind of a reason
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why you should believe that they were somehow wronged by Eclipse when they
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double released us on Simon 2. Now that they have, I feel that I have every
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right to place it under scrutiny - after all, they DID spend a week coming
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up with such a SOLID argument <snicker> ..
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Razor makes the allegation that Eclipse 'must have' duped them since we
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didn't pick the same filenames that they did. Wow, that's pretty brilliant
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thinking on their part. However, they couldn't possibly know what reasons
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prompted our selection of 'sim2*.zip' rather than 'simon2*.zip', any more
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than I could know why they chose to name Cyberbykes 'cybyke*.zip' rather
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than 'cyberb*.zip' (the name I would have chosen). What's in a name? I
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hate to sound cliche, but absolutely friggin' nothing. We picked a
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different filename than they did, and that's the bottom line. Besides,
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there would have been no way to tell if we were 'duping' them or not at
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the time, as only one board had one disk of their version, nobody was
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uploading the rest of their disks (though Ustasa seemed thrilled to send
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me lots of olm's about how he was 'about to') on Park Central, and every
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time I logged into God's Realm to put up OUR disks personally I myteriously
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lost carrier. Sure, it could be because I have a crappy v.fc modem, but it
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could also be because they have a crappy sense of sportsmanship. Which
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brings me to an earlier point, now that I have invalidated their comment ..
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Sportsmanship. What is it? Sportsmanship is behaving in an acceptable way
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even in the face of indignity, loss, you name it. Sportsmanship means that
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even though you may bag on someone for supposedly 'duping' you, and you may
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tell people how lame such-and-such group is, you DONT generate false press
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about ANYONE's cracks. If a crack works, and you were beaten ANYWHERE -
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take it like a man, and insult the other group the old-fashioned way.
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Generating lies about the ability of one cracker or another never helped
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anyone - in fact all it does is increase the amount of hype around Gods
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like Randall Flagg, who's name is already a legend.
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Anyway. Besides Simon the Sorceror 2, Razor didn't release dick worth
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mentioning, unless you are making fun of it. Okay, so there WAS that
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sexy Action Pack 2 from Activision - we all know how terrible the first
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one was - of course we can't forget Flight Light Plus <hurl>, and the
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other GREAT titles they released <cough>. I guess I gotta give 'em a
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little credit. They DID one-up Tyranny and took the credit for
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'worst release of the month', with Hyper Cycles from Aclypse. Scrabble
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was from a DECENT company, which is why it earned some decent points.
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I figured that since they were too cheesy to crack it properly, I
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would take the total size of the game, subtract the size of the crack
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patch from it, and add that into their total. I plan to do this in
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the future for everyone. I also did it for the serial number on one
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of those lame Tyranny releases, Entertainment Digest I think.
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Chainsaw Massacre just pointed out that I forgot to mention Razor's
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lame release of Kingspoint for Windows. Thanks for reminding me, Al.
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Let's do talk about this release. Genesis (back when they were
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building their reputation as kings of the budget scene) released the
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DOS version of this fine dungeon designer program non-game thingie
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last year, when I was in Razor 1911, back before it was Nexus. Anyway,
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Gecko and Eos and Speed Racer made just as much fun of that release as
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I did (and trust me, I *DID* make asses of those GNS guys - do you
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think the moniker Budgetsis would have stuck around as long as it did
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without some truth behind it?), and we all know that DOS versions are
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far more acceptable/preferable than Windows versions. So now Razor
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cranks out the Windows version, gives it an inflated rating, and makes
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it out to be some kind of big game. Yeah, right. I'm sure a lot of
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users felt fucked on that one - that's why you don't find that type
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of stuff with an Eclipse DIZ on it, even though we've still got a
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couple of similar programs from England - Dungeon Designer and Campaign
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Cartographer. Perhaps Razor would like them?
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Which brings me to Tyranny. Have you ever seen a group that released
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MORE shit than they do? INC did a good job of it, but at least INC
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had a lot of great titles to back it up with as well. Tyranny seems
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to be synonymous with 'pure 100% grade a steaming shit', and as much
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as I like Cyber Angel and his attitude, I can't really respect a
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group that builds its reputation on dung. Overdrive from Team 17
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was a nice change, perhaps this indicates an upward trend for the
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upstarts from New York.
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As for Hoodlum, TDU-Jam, and Twilight - Hoodlum & Twilight both put out
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major stuff, uncracked. TDU-Jam cracked the Hoodlum release, but they
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put out the whole thing AGAIN, DAYS after Hoodlum's copy was on all of the
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boards, so, in the same spirit which prompted Fanfan to nuke our upload of
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Simon 2 from TDU for 3x credits even though we were there first, I will
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ignore them in this report. Maybe that'll straighten 'em out <yeah,
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right> ..
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Let's now talk about Eclipse. Besides the fact that Fantasy Football
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was a total pile of shit, albeit a full price one, there's not much to say,
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except for the first time this year we've won on more UK titles than anyone
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else. We'll have to see if that holds up, but I expect it probably
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will, as we're in the process of making some key additions to our fun
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little crew. Simon the Sorceror 2 works just fine, contrary to
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Razor's opinions. Mad Turnip really IS a person, and he and his buds
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really are some fast UK suppliers. You don't have to believe it, in
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fact we don't really care either way. Its just fun and games for the
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Eclipse posse, as usual, and with our brother group Hybrid, we're
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really rockin' and rolling now. As Hoson would say, the quote for
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the month is 'Money, Girls, and TRC's famous biased ware report!' ..
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See you next time, maybe.
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The Renegade Chemist
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5 August 1995 - Up Way Too Late, Again
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