FutureDisks added to downloads

Back in the 90's, our MSX scene witnessed a number of 'me too' trends. It all started with the music revolution by way of FAC Soundtracker. Suddenly lots of people wanted to make a new tracker, partly because Soundtracker lacked a few essential features, but partly because it was just fun to do. Music disks followed and suddenly everyone was making a music disk. Later in the decade there was a new trend going on: disk magazines and paper magazines. Some of these paper magazines were small, more like club magazines, printed with a matrix printer and multiplied at the local copy shop. Other magazines were professional looking magazines, you may recall the Spanish Hnostar with its stylish artwork. Meanwhile, disk magazines popped up everywhere. It was almost like there was a new disk magazine available at every major MSX fair. The two most successful disk magazines however came from Sunrise and from MSX Club Limburg.

MCL started FutureDisk in 1992. In July 1994, a selection of MCL members started a new group to publish the FutureDisk: S.T.U.F.F. The FutureDisk legacy boosts a large volume of magazines: a total of 54 disks were published. The last issue was the software FD with the game Nash. FD#44 was supposed to be the last disk magazine, but was lost due to a disk crash and will never be published.

By merging with the Golden Power Disk and Quasar, FD became the biggest (Dutch) disk magazine with hundreds of subscribers. The crew had plans to at least make 50 issues even though there was little to write about during the silent years, a dark reality that caused other magazines to pull the plug. The magical 50 was never reached, but instead the group released software FutureDisks, containing titles such as Almost Real, Sir Dan and Nash.

In the seven years in which the FutureDisks were published, the magazines distinguished themselves from the more formal and serious tone of the Sunrise magazines with witty and sometimes even harsh language. Because foreigners got interested in FutureDisk, the magazine eventually also featured English content. But there is more trivia to mention! FutureDisk had a habit of weird numbering; the magazine started with issue 0, magazine 25 was numbered 25 1/3 and came with a bonus disk numbered 25 2/3, whereas issue 26 was a re-release of both FD0 and FD2. Special FutureDisk 7.5 was released because team member Patrick Smeets (from Parallax fame) went to study abroad for a year. The issue after this was named FD#10 since it was the tenth disk released.

Most of the FutureDisks contained software (mostly games) that were made especially for the magazine. These games were bundled in a Konami Collection, featuring games like Street Snatch (fighting game between Gillian Seed and a snatcher) and Junker Squad (shooting range style game). Other games like BetonVraete (Eating Concrete) and Black Jack were bundled on the FD Games Collection. Quite a few special editions were released; a Story disk that contained storyline transcripts from several popular Japanese games (Xak, Snatcher, Burai, Illusion City), a Bert & Ernie edition, a Metal Gear edition with a bundled mini game, a Final Fantasy edition and a Star Wars issue.

And with all that trivia behind us, it's about time to dig up the seven years of essential MSX-scene history that has been archived in these magazines. They're all in our freeware downloads database now. Have fun reading all the wit!

Relevant link: FutureDisks