HUNGARIAN HISTORY
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HUNGARIAN HISTORY

Believe it or not, Hungary has an Atari scene too!
In the time of the Commodore 64s and the Sinclair ZX Spectrums there
were also a few Atari 800XL owners, but the real change has started at
the end of the 80's when the first Atari ST computers appeared in the
country (the Motorola processors were banned in this area, these were
on the COCOM list). At first, mostly musicians bought these machines
(for the Cubase, the Notator, etc.) but later more and more people
became Atari freaks because of the relatively low prices.

In 1987 my brother and I (Daniel & Greg) got our first computer, which
was a ZX Spectrum. Next year our best friend (Chris) also started 
dealing with computers, first with a C64. In those days we founded the
CGD Software Team in spite of we having not too many great ideas.
At the end of 1990 we became happy ST owners by the impression of my
godfather (Karoli), but we had a lack of programs and knowledge till we
came across an Atari club called 'Csoki' by chance. This is residing
officially in a community centre sponsored by the former Hungarian
Atari Trading Center. There you can find 6 1 MB STs with colour
monitors and different kinds of people e.g. student, actor, musician
and mathematician owners as well.
In the beginning this club was the place of huge copy parties (in
this country the program piracy wasn't illegal until now...) but
step by step these events turned into just 'talkshows' and now most of
the joystick-killers and demo-maniacs are interested in GFA and
assembly programming.

The very first Hungarian Atari ST diskmag was the short-lived BOMBA.
In the spring of 1992 we were in its editorial team but after some
conflicts we planned an other magazine. That was (and that is!) the
COMA (COmputer MAgazine), which is the one and only Atari mag in our
country nowadays. The 1st issue was published in September of 1992.
Our rivalry was very good for the readers because of the two magazines
always raised the level and the quality. The contents of our COMA is
quite colourful: games, utilities, news, humour, graphics and later
coding & MIDI. Most of these articles were written by us (unfortunately
just in Hungarian). Last year we decided to make a common BOMBA-COMA
diskmag with a close friend and a gifted ST/Falcon asm-programmer, Lord
Chaos (but it's still just a dream...).

Now we're working on volume 3 issue 2 otherwise the 8th and maybe the
first Falcon-version of COMA because now our team has an Amiga 1200,
an Atari 1040ST, an Atari Falcon030.
Previously more Hungarian paper magazines had Atari columns but now
just only one, the GURU is dealing with our machine.
Of course the main focus of the Atari scene is in the capital
(Budapest) but there are also a few cities with some users as Miskolc
or Szeged. According to different estimates the number of the Atari
owners is about some hundred or perhaps one thousand of people in the
country.
In spite of that now the PCs and consoles have increased in popularity,
the domestic state of the Atari would be stronger because of a new
Roland-Atari Shop where you can buy Falcon workstations and later
perhaps Jaguar too.
I have to tell you that the members of the COMA Team (CGD ST) aren't
just diskmag creators because we're currently working on some games, as
the STimes tetris, the Steps logical game or the WWF Championship
Tournament.

We got the 9th issue of the D.B.A. Magazine from a German friend this
spring. We've never seen a foreign Atari mag before. Our team was
quite surprised when we found a lot of things in common, like the mini
pictures in the articles, the graphics slideshow or the Monty Python
sketches in the humour column...
We would like to know better and to join in the European Atari demo &
other scenes and being international. Yeah!

Greg