Deatomization: MacAddict 1998

Ah 1998. The end of the clones, the return of Steve as iCEO, the arrival of the G3 processor (or more correctly, the iMac). There’s a lot to love in 1998. And that doesn’t even include the release of Civilization II Gold, and the days I’ve lost to it even to this day.

Issue 17, the January 1998 issue, was my second issue ever. And what an amazing issue- a cover with Steve Jobs, a fantastic article on his return and the state of Apple, an exciting intro the the G3 machines, and all the way in the back, an article that wowed me and introduced me to retro gaming.

Emulation-Header

Emulation.net and old computer/console emulators were an amazing thing to play with back then (and really, still today). You couldn’t complain about lack of games when you had the NES and SNES library mostly playable on your machine (and stay tuned, Connectix’s Virtual Game Station launches down the line for PS1).

Emulation-net-categories

I still love emulation and follow the scene, though nowadays it’s not as exciting. Emulation.net long since left us, but you can follow MacScene for emulation news on the Mac.

Some of the names stick with me until today –

John Stiles, porter of emulators, maintainer of Emulation.net, and eventually moved on to being a programmer for Blizzard.

Aaron Giles, author of the old JPEGView app, the brains behind a lot of the work Connectix did in Virtual PC/Virtual Game Station, big-wig for the MAME project, and Microsoft employee

Richard Bannister, who was the main source of emulator ports for pretty much the lifespan of Mac OS 8 to Mac OS X 10.6 and still hosts a forum where you can see some news on MAME/MESS. I’m happy to say I was able to help by registering his Blitter Library, Emulator Enhancer, and Rom Info Bundle.

1998 is when things start to change, when being a Mac user starts being less odd, more “fashionable”, and more profitable.

Good old OWC gets 4 pages of products, MacZone has a contest to win the then-8000$ plus Twentieth Anniversary Mac. I guess the one thing to not like about 1998 was the prices (though the TAM certainly wasn’t a normally priced Mac on release).

TAM-Contest

I highly suggest also reading the fantastic “Nitro Burning Funny Macs” article in March 1998’s issue. I loved the idea of making these machines more powerful back in the day- I used to be a big fan of G3 and later G4 upgrades, video cards, and of course the standard Hard Drive/RAM upgrades.

LC-475-Charger

 

Anyway, rather than tell you about the content, feel free to peruse them yourself!

MacAddict-017-199801-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 135.5 MB
MacAddict-018-199802-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 122.2 MB
MacAddict-019-199803-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 121.8 MB
MacAddict-020-199804-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 103.8 MB
MacAddict-021-199805-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 106.4 MB
MacAddict-022-199806-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 106.1 MB
MacAddict-023-199807-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 104.5 MB
MacAddict-024-199808-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 120.2 MB
MacAddict-025-199809-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 110.2 MB
MacAddict-026-199810-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 111.6 MB
MacAddict-027-199811-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 127.9 MB
MacAddict-028-199812-BobKiwi-v1.pdf 136.5 MB

2 thoughts on “Deatomization: MacAddict 1998

  1. Aww… I didn’t even get a mention 🙂

    I guess that’s what happens when you hide behind a pseudonym.

    I always found it neat that MacAddict kept highlighting projects I was involved in… emulation.net and Hotline being the most famous.

    Oh yes, and emulation.net long since expired; MacScene absorbed the content after a stint at victoly.com. The problem was that emulation.net pointed to komkon.org, and when that site went down (it eventually came back up) John realized that he no longer had the email address needed to point the domain elsewhere. Nowadays, all our old updates are still archived on web.archive.org, komkon.org has an archive of the latest version of the site they hosted, and emuscene, which became macscene, continues on, albeit in a much muted form.

    Thanks for keeping this bit of history alive!

    -Em

    1. Hey thanks Em, I still check MacScene almost weekly. And I know you, but I’ll be honest, I’ve always thought of you as the “Stoplight” guy cause I’ve seen your icon there and on places like emaculation.

      I’ve followed all the changes to what is now MacScene as well, though I’m only at 10 posts after all these years!

      I really appreciate your work and your comment, I was really pleased to see it.

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