"Breast Feeding should not be attempted by fathers with hairy
chests, since they can make the baby sneeze and give it wind."
Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
THE SOLUTION TO ALL ST NEWS HIDDEN ARTICLES
by Richard Karsmakers
Ever since ST NEWS Volume 4 Issue 2, Stefan and myself have been
unable to suppress an urge to include some really strange
articles in ST NEWS. Most of the time, these articles included
strange song texts, declarations of love, ultimate drivel and
even worse stuff, so we decided to hide them, i.e. to make them
invisible or unselectable from the standard menu bar.
This principle, I suppose, was considered to be very challenging
by the readers.
As it is generally of no use for them never to be discovered,
we thought it was about time to reveal the ways through which
they can be accessed (as far as we were able to remember them,
that is).
We are confident that the stuff you will thus be able to read
will cause quite a bit of shock, laughter, horror and happiness.
ST NEWS Volume 4 Issue 2
This issue contained the very first hidden article ever produced
by a disk magazine. As it was pioneer work, we hand't yet found
out a thing like a 'hidden article quest', so really all you had
to do was press ALT+M in the main menu mode (the 'M' of
Metallica).
It was filled with lyrics to "Fade to Black" and "Master of
Puppets" (both of Metallica), greetings to a list of all the
beautiful females we had ever seen during our lives (and had been
able to remember), and some bragging about our page view mode
being very fast and capable of doing text styles.
ST NEWS Volume 4 Issue 3
The hidden article in this issue was already a lot more cleverly
hidden. As a matter of fact, it was so cleverly hidden that it's
only possible on color systems, preferably with TOS 1.0 in them.
The trick is that you had to 'adjust colours' to $444 and $333
(the number of the issue). Once having clicked on "OK", the
hidden article would be loaded.
Predictably, there were some song lyrics in it again:
Metallica's "One", to be more precise. It also contained a rather
risque joke about a stupid Belgian police officer and some people
f.cking.
ST NEWS Volume 4 Issue 4
The issue that was filled with what had happened on the LateST
NEWS Quest in England, the 25th issue in all.
This was the first hidden article quest, i.e. you kinda 'logged
in' something where you had to get through to get to the article.
You could only enter single words, or two words together (without
a space between them). We included about fifty words that
provoked some kind of reaction by the parser; mostly names of
bands and girls, and of course our own names and those of co-
authors. But the critical word was "HIDDENARTICLE".
Very simple. You just had to make sure there wasn't a space in
between them.
The hidden article contained a lot of rambling by yours truly
about Miranda (Stefan complained a bit about me about her as
well), and the lyrics to Metallica's "For Whom the Bell Tolls".
But, most interestingly, the article also contained the hidden
statistics to the LateST NEWS Quest - i.e. the number of burps
and farts we produced. Also, we published a top 5 of the most
gorgeous females met during the Quest.
ST NEWS Volume 5 Issue 1
The hidden article quest to this was already a lot more
difficult, and you almost had to be a personal friend of ours (or
a faithful and complete reader of ST NEWS)!
First, you were asked what your age was. Of course, your real
age didn't count here - only if you happened to be 42.
Then (and this was really devious) you had to type in the magic
word of the previous hidden article quest: "HIDDENARTICLE".
Next came a difficult one. You had to add our ages in February
1990 together (22+22=44), multiply that by the type of my car
(Peugeot 205, i.e. 205) and then divide the whole lot by the
total number of ST NEWS issue that occurred in Volume 3 (that
were 7). Then you had to take the lowest integer and add the type
of Stefan's car (an Alpha 33, so 33).
The answer was 1321.
But that wasn't yet the end. You had two more questions to go
through.
The question to the question how Cronos' foster mum calls him
could be read in the "Savage" review: "Bunny". The third song on
the Metallica "One" CD single had to be mentioned for the last
question: "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)".
That was it.
Your payment for your trouble consisted part I of quite a huge
real time article of a hypothetical visit of the Nutty Norwegians
to Holland, preluded by the song lyrics of Mucky Pup's "Fuck",
and ended by a nice remark of a band called "Blasphemer".
ST NEWS Final Compendium
There are three hidden article in this issue. The third one is
hidden behind a fairly massive 'Hidden Article Quest' - larger
than any before.
Hidden article #1: Not to be found.
When looking through source material of the old ST NEWS Final
Compendium, we were unable to find even a hint at this hidden
article. It doesn't seem to exist at all. Ain't that strange? The
second one is called 'second' and the third one the 'last', but
there ain't no first?!
Hidden article #2: Slightly funny.
Open the 'Help Screen' and you will notice a pixel in the bottom
right corner of the innermost rectangle. Click on it.
This article does not contain a lot of interesting stuff.
Basically, Stefan and myself wrote down some bull shit and added
some Chinese poetry to that.
Hidden article #3: Very insane.
As said before, this is hidden behind a massive quest with
multiple-choice questions. The answers are 2-3-1-2-2-4-1-2-2-3-2-
3-4-2-4-4-3-2-4-2-3-2-2-2-2-4-3-3-1-4-3-2-3-4-3-3-4-2-4-1-4.
This article contains some miscellaneous drivel as well as part
II of the real-time article around the hypothetical visit of the
Nutty Norwegians to Holland.
There's a bit of Carcass song lyrics in it as well.
ST NEWS Volume 5 Issue 2
There are three hidden articles in this issue, which are
moderately interesting (and one of them is very funny even if I
say so myself).
Hidden article #1: Extremely absurd.
There is a sub-menu called "Non computer-related stuff". Once
you have selected that sub-menu, you will find one pixel under
the leftmost bit of the topmost dotted line. Click on that pixel.
This article is quite impressive, and actually consists of a 79
Kb real-time article of a hypothetical visit to Norway
(originally, this was part of a crazy letter we sent to the Nutty
Norwegians prior to our Norway Quest).
Hidden article #2: Highly intoxicated.
When opening the "Help" screen in the ST NEWS main menu, and
pressing 'Undo' to exit it, you will enter the second hidden
article.
During the months that Spaz and Manikin of TLB were working with
me at Thalion, we got drunk regularly. So it happened on one
night (when Stefan and some more folx were there as well) that
Spaz (a.k.a. Dave) got very drunk. He sat down behind a computer
and wrote something down in which he particularly felt quite
unhappy with the world - saying so in blunt words. That's what
this hidden article is all about. It also contains some song
lyrics we received from Tanis of TCB, from a song he wrote called
"Necrobizarre Cannibalism". Gory!
Hidden article #3: Funny.
This is hidden behind the 'Hidden Article Quest' in the
'Options' menu. You get multiple-choice questions here, that you
have to answer correctly. The answers are 2-4-4-1-3-3-2-2.
This article is kind of a sequel to the "Oh Yeah" article in the
ST NEWS Final Compendium, where Stefan and myself tell Cronos
Warchild that he has been cheated. Generally, it's a lot of bull
because we both got very drunk during the later stages of
writing. This article also contains the first ever contribution
by the Spirits of Doom.
ST NEWS Volume 6 Issue 1
The last one in the row - for please don't expect us to reveal
already what the clues to this issue's hidden articles are!
There are three hidden articles in Volume 6 Issue 1 as well,
which are all three accessible through simple menu entries in the
pull-down menu. As you will have seen, however, they are light,
i.e. non-selectable.
Each entry will be selectable after you've done something
specifically.
Hidden article #1: Utter bollocks.
Was written by Stefan and me when we were very drunk (or at
least I was). It contains a lot of bullshit, not much more. It is
accessible by selecting the "ST NEWS Colofon" article 42 times in
a row, where you'll each time have to scroll to the bottom of it.
Hidden article #2: Quite normal, actually.
Written by TS of the Spirits of Doom, this is a little story
about a creature called Fluffy. There's nothing wrong or obscene
with this article, and it was hidden because we thought it didn't
really fit in the Convention set-up of that issue.
It is selectable after pressing ALT+M in the menu screen.
Hidden article #3: Downright disgusting. Undescribably much so.
This is definitely the worst article we ever published, and the
reason why it is hidden is obvious once you've read it. It
involves some very unusual things you can do with kids, animals,
dung, whips, babies, grandmothers and stuff like that. The author
is known by us, but we found it better not to mention his name
because he is a very popular person in the ST world that would
probably not benefit from this. All you need to know is that it
wasn't Stefan or me.
Because of the vulgarity of this article we are not going to
reveal how to get to it. We actually regret ever having published
it, and reading it would cause you all to get a very different
(i.e. utterly bad) opinion about us, and about ST NEWS.
So find it out by yourself!
Please be warned: It is terrible, and the least it will do is
put you off your dinner for the next couple of days.
ST NEWS Volume 6 Issue 2
This issue actually contained five hidden articles (totalling
some 120 Kb or thereabouts when uncompressed), as well as the
solution to all previous hidden articles.
Hidden article #1: Slightly sentimental.
Contains, among some deep thinking, the song lyrics to a song
called "Solitude" by Black Sabbath (and some more songs, amongst
which a song of the "Metallica" CD).
This article could be activated by pressing ALT+H in the main
menu.
Hidden article #2: Very weird in a strange way.
Never has Stefan gone this deep. Featuring in a Monty Python-
like piece of long prose, he talks about religion, guitars, Cola
and oak trees. All, of course, faithfully captured by yours
truly.
We were not on Plantiac when we did this, because the shop
around the corner didn't stock any. We were on De Kuyper Vieux.
This article is automatically activated in the pull-down menu if
you keep the ALTERNATE key pressed during loading until the first
alert box appears.
Hidden article #3: A look into the future.
This article was written by The Nutty Snake (i.e. Alex of QX).
It covers a hypothetical future of ST NEWS, and was so much
licking our heels that we considered it arrogant not to hide it.
So we hid it.
This was quite difficulty hidden. You had to enter the
nineteenth word you hear when playing the second track on the
"One" CD single by Metallica - the Japanese import version!
The track is called "Breadfan", and to make it easy the word is
"breadfan". This had to by typed in the menu, of course.
Hidden article #4: A SOD compilation.
Something very weird we got from some superficial acquaintances.
To get it, you had to boot ST NEWS. Wait until the menu appears,
then insert the "Mindbomb" demo disk (of The Lost Boys) in the
drive you loaded ST NEWS from (but only A or B!). Then try to
load any article. ST NEWS would load the bootsector, check if it
was the "Mindbomb" demo, and enable this hidden article if so.
Proper functioning of ST NEWS would continue after the ST NEWS
disk was inserted in that drive again.
Hidden article #5: Gore letter plus more.
The reply to the third hidden article of the previous issue,
which tells more than enough about what it is all about. It is
just as filthy, and it therefore hidden much in the same way as
the filthy one of the previous issue...
Because it is just as filthy, we will not give the solution
here. Tough shit! All I want to reveal is, however, that the
hiding is the same as that which we used on the filthy article in
ST NEWS Volume 6 Issue 1!
ST NEWS Volume 7 Issue 1
Yet another couple of hidden articles, amongst which yet another
(and intended to be the last) one of those filthy articles that
topped all previous ones. This issue comprised an all-time peak
both in the amount of hidden articles and the complexity involved
in how to get to some of them. If you ever tried to get to all of
them, you'll know what is meant. So let's get down to it.
Hidden article #1: The usual.
Pressing ALT+N or ALT+J was all that was needed. The usual easy
one, to get people going.
This article contained some of the rather usual song lyrics, but
now also feartured some poetry (some of which by yours truly). At
the time, I was impressed by autumn and wanted to show off what I
had learned at my first months at University studying English.
Hidden article #2: Arrogant interview.
In the previous issue, at a certain stage you had to insert the
"Mindbomb" demo into the drive when trying to load an article.
Now, we told you to insert whatever issue of ST NEWS that had the
"Rellorcstoobgnikcufecin" bootscroller demo on it - we didn't
reveal which issue that was. Actually, it was ST NEWS Volume 4
Issue 3 (yeah).
Something slightly arrogant: Me interviewing myself. Quite
revealing, actually, though maybe somewhat too good in the
formulation of the questions - when applied to music, this would
have been called 'over-produced'.
Hidden article #3: UCL Craziness Volume I.
This was really intensely difficult to get to. Basically, you
had to do the following: Take Stefan's age, add mine (both ages
at the beginning of 1992), multiply the result by the amount of
farts produced by the both of us during the "LateST NEWS Quest"
(see hidden article in ST NEWS Volume 4 Issue 4), divide that
total by the number contained in the type of Stefan's car, and
add the amount you get when dividing 42 by the answer to life,
the universe and everything. Then deduct the date of Miranda's
birthday (the day), the amount of years we went steady on August
31st 1991 and the number of the volume of ST NEWS in which Stefan
wrote his first article. Add the ASCII values of the characters
contained in the string variable "PLANTIAC AND COKE ARE QUITE
NICE" and deduct the result by the size ST NEWS tells you the
third hidden article in ST NEWS Volume 6 Issue 1 is divided by
the amount of droplets estimated to be present on the four loos
present in the fairytale castle during the ST NEWS International
Christmas Coding Convention. Divide the end result of this by the
value of the year in your system's current system date, then
multiply by the amount of light years Sucatraps (Cronos' home
planet) is distant of Earth (divided by 1 million). Last but not
least, add the local bit of the girl's phone number as supplied
in one of the real-time articles covering the ST NEWS
International Christmas Coding Convention (i.e. the numbers after
the dash) and that's all. In case you get a negative number, get
rid of the minus sign and enter all figures BEFORE the decimal
point at any time while you're in the main menu.
The numbers you needed to know were the following:
Stefan was 24, and so was I. The amount of farts produced during
the "LateST NEWS Quest" was 492, which could be found in the
hidden article's hidden logistical data of ST NEWS Volume 4 Issue
4. At the time Stefan had an Alfa 33, so the number you needed
was 33. Dividing 42 by the answer to life, the universe and
everything makes 42/42=1. Miranda's birthday is August 31st, so
the value of the day you needed was 31. On that date in 1991 we
went steady for 2 years. Stefan wrote his first article in ST
NEWS during Volume 1. The ASCII characters in the specified
string added up to 2144 (note that they all had to be capitals).
The third hidden article in ST NEWS Volume 6 Issue 1 had a size
of 30831 bytes, which had to be divided by the amount of droplets
found in the loos in the fairytale castle, which was 4950 (this
could be found in the real-time article covering the STNICCC in
that very same issue of ST NEWS). To get to know your system's
date, create a folder and check its date, or enter "PRINT DATE$"
in GfA Basic direct mode. The amount of light years distance
between earth and Sucatraps could be found in the "Savage" review
that appeared both in ST NEWS Volume 5 Issue 1 and in the Final
Compendium: 92.000.000 light years. This had to be divided by 1
million, so you'd get 92. The local bit of the phone number we
meant was 23461.
This would give the following formula:
VALUE%=ABS((((((((24+24)*492)/33)+1-31-2-1+2144)-(30831/4950))/
(VAL(RIGHT$(DATE$,4))))*92)+23461)
In the case of the year being 1991, for example, the value would
have been 28756.
Isn't this one mean mother? I'm a bit proud of it myself,
actually.
The actual article contained some rather witty bits taken from
the 845 Kb Ultimate Crazy Letter (UCL) from Norway.
Hidden article #4: UCL Craziness Volume I revisited.
This one involved almost exciting ST NEWS. All you had to do was
keep ALTERNATE depressed while selecting the NON-exit option in
an ST NEWS exit alert box. Then you had to type a long string
that consisted of three answers, typed together without any
spaces between them. The song "The Wait" that Metallica covered
was originally done by Killing Joke. The talented guitar hero
suffering from the muscle disease was Jason Becker, and the
University course I did was English.
So the string had to be "KILLINGJOKEBECKERENGLISH" (without the
quotes), followed by RETURN.
The actual hidden article contained some more rather witty bits
taken from the aforementioned 845 Kb UCL.
Hidden article #5: Thalion stuff.
A simple one. You just had to set the system date to September
13th 1991, which was the first 'Friday the 13th' in 1991. Then
you had to boot ST NEWS and the article was automatically
revealed.
The article itself contained all small introductory novels I
ever did for the German software company Thalion. They were
hidden to keep me out of possible trouble with them.
Hidden article #6: Black and White.
This one was very simple and therefore very hard, as nobody will
have taken this seriously. The solution meant that you had to
install a certain folder sequence on a harddisk or RAMdisk with
identifier E. Basically, if ST NEWS could find any file in a
folder with the name "E:\I\AM\AN\ARSEHOLE" it would enable this
article.
The hidden article contained some severe slagging off of the
image and the latest (at the time) video clip of Michael
Jackson's "Black and White". I really let myself go there. I am
not proud of it. It wasn't pretty reading material.
Hidden article #7: Carcass lyrics.
All you had to do was type in the word "Anti-social" (without
the quotes, but with the hyphen) at any time while in the main
menu.
At the time, Carcass had just released a new CD. This incited us
to copying down some of their typically sick (yet peculiarly cute
in a weird way) song lyrics.
Hidden article #8: A Swedish story.
This one needed the "Llamatron" game by Jeff Minter on drive E,
with a hiscore of 1,000,000 or more. Basically, it scanned for
the main file (called "TRON1MEG.PRG" or "TRON_512.PRG") as well
as the hiscore file ("SCORES.YAK") in the root directory. To get
the score of more than 1,000,000 you just have to play it a lot.
Don't forget to de-write-protect the "Llamatron" disk so that
hiscores can actually be saved to disk!
The actual article is probably only useful for people who know
Swedish. It was submitted by a Swede and we thought "what the
heck" and included it.
Hidden article #9: Utter, total, disgusting filth - to the
exponent of three!
This is another one of those article that we think would distort
your opinion about ST NEWS and its authors, and therefore once
again we will not divulge how to get it accessible. Once again,
however, it can be said that the way to get it selectable is the
same as the one used to get to the third hidden article in ST
NEWS Volume 6 Issue 1, or to the fifth in Volume 6 Issue 2.
The article contains virtually the same kind of filthiness you
could find in previous issue of ST NEWS, but a bit more detailed,
more psychological, more deranged. Really awful, actually. If you
can find a way around reading it (and this way is simple to find)
then please take the trouble.
ST NEWS Volume 7 Issue 2
Yet another collection of hideous hidings. The solutions for
these are as follows.
Hidden article #1: Some song lyrics (rather rude ones).
Well, basically you had to press ALT-A. That was all there was
to it.
Once selectable, you can read some Metallica, Anthrax and
Suicidal Tendencies song lyrics. Especially the first two are
rather rude.
Hidden article #2: Hypothetical real-time article.
You had to hold down ALTERNATE while booting. Pretty
straightforward, actually. I guess we were low in inspiration or
something. Oh yeah: There is a 1 in 2 chance of it working due to
a random factor we added.
The actual article (which is almost 70 Kb in size) is a huge
hypothetical real-time article of a visit Stefan and me brought
to the abode of a Norwegian called Kai Holst (who also wrote all
of the stuff). Very funny!
Hidden article #3: Dirty little true story.
The way to get to this was to read the "Colophon", scroll down,
exit, read the "Protext Review", scroll down, exit, and repeat
that whole thing seven times.
What you get is a true story written down by a physician who
once had to treat a man who had some severe things wrong with his
gonads...
Hidden article #4: Trex Warriors novel.
A rather tricky thing you had to do to get this. You had to
highlight some menu entries in a specific order without selecting
them and without hightlighting any other stuff except for menu
titles. These entries were: "ST Software News", "April Heavy
Metal Concerts", "Toggle Music", "Interleavings 3", "Did you know
that...", "Oh Yeah II" and "LIFE on the ST" (in that precise
order).
What you would get was the background novel to a Thalion game
called "Trex Warrior" written by Thalion employee and QX member
Jurie "Relayer" Horneman.
Hidden article #5: The Ultimate Language Doc.
To get this you had to insert one of the two Steve Bak games for
which Rob Hubbard wrote the music on the ST. These were "Jupiter
Probe" and "Goldrunner", both by Microdeal.
This thing was written by Bilbo of Ripped Off and basically
consists of a list of synonyms for some parts of the body
(er...).
Hidden article #6: Suicide Guide.
You had to do the same for this as what you had to do for the
last of the other previous issue's hidden articles.
What you'd get was a huge list of serious and quite less serious
means to commit suicide. The kind of stuff you'd always wanted to
read.
ST NEWS Volume 7 Issue 3
A couple more hidden articles. Slightly more difficult to find
than usual, so that's one of the reasons behind the existence of
this 'solution article' in the first place.
Hidden article #1: An 'in memoriam' of a good friend.
In spite of the fact that the 'hints' article tried to mislead
you, all you needed to do was press ALT-T (as the answer to "WHY
DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD" was "TO GET TO THE OTHER SIDE",
of which the first character was a "T").
At around the time that this was written I felt angry and sad at
the departure from life of a good friend of mine, Henk Heins. It
was hidden as I also lashed out rather unsubtlely against God,
which some people probably found insulting.
Hidden article #2: The definite shitlist.
Yep. This one had to make use of the 'highlight menu entries in
a specific order without highlighting any wrong ones in between'
method. Pieca cake, really, as long as your mouse and right hand
were reliable.
The actual article contained a rather funny article in which
several different kinds of shit were described. This article was
taken from the Untouchables' "Ledger" disk magazine, and then
extended somewhat. Thanks Matt.
Hidden article #3: Gwar song lyrics and assorted stuff.
All you had to do was enter the license plate number of the
Bluesmobile as it appears in the great film "The Blues Brothers"
while you're in the main menu. This is "BDR529" (without the
quotes).
Gwar had released a new album a while before Volume 7 Issue 3
was made. It had a songsheet with it that just begged to have
things copied off of. So that's what you can find here - some of
the juicier song lyrics present on Gwar's "America Must Be
Destroyed". Further, this article contains some various slightly
tasteless and/or insulting stuff taken from various Bulletin
Boards. Some about the history of music. Some about maggots. Some
about flies. Some about the latter two together. See for
yourself.
Hidden article #4: Rude jokes plus some depressing prose.
This could be made acessible, basically, by reading all other
aticles (including the other hidden ones).
Somewhat of a contrast, this one. It starts off in a truly
profane fashion and wraps itself up with a depressing bit I wrote
on Thursday, September 10th 1992, when I was not feeling
particularly happy.
ST NEWS Volume 8 Issue 1
Hidden article #1: Romeo and Juliette.
The first one's always rather simple - and this one was no
exception. As usual, you had to press ALTERNATE plus a certain
letter. In this case it has to be the first letter of a common
four-lettered synonym for the female reproductive organ (i.e.
"C*NT"). So you had to press ALT-C.
The article as such is sortof a persiflage of a rather popular
Shakespearean play, written by those awfully nice guys that did
"Perverts Monthly".
Hidden article #2: Satan Laughs.
This was somewhat more difficult. It required you to find out
the countries where Stefan Posthuma has spent New Year's day
1989-1990, 1991-1992 and 1992-1993. The countries had to be
separated by "-", and no spaces should be used. Of course, the
first of these was spent in Norway, during which the Norway Quest
article of ST NEWS Volume 5 Issue 1 was created. The second one
was spent, rather ordinarily, in The Netherlands. The last one
was spent in Guatemala. So basically you had to enter "NORWAY-
THENETHERLANDS-GUATEMALA" in the main menu.
The actual article was something I wrote when my dark side was
at the reign - virgin sacrifices and satan and that sort of
thing. Blame it on listening to too much Black Metal and too many
people finding it necessary to try and convert me to genuinely
believing in God (which I don't and probably never will).
Hidden article #3: Yahweh's Story Chapter One.
A little bootsector trick again. You had to insert a disk that
had been immunized with the "Ultimate Virus Killer" version 5.7
or higher and attempt to load an article. If necessary, you could
have immunized the ST NEWS disk yourself! Lower versions of the
virus killer would not have worked, as the immunization
bootsector text had changed a bit.
Quite a while before, Stefan had found some rather revolting
bits on a BBS involving some naughty stories written by a guy
whose handle is Jahweh. This is the first instalment of it.
Incidentally, this was the first issue that didn'd require you
to actually read all other articles (including the hidden ones)
to get to the last hidden article. Just a small deviation from
the norm, something everyone's got to do once in a while.
ST NEWS Volume 8 Issue 2
Hidden article #1: Some Selected Song Lyrics.
You had to keep ALTERNATE pressed and then press the first
letter of the name of the world's best virtual demo group, i.e.
the Quartermass Experiment. So you had to press ALTERNATE and
"Q".
The actual hidden article had some deep and some naughty song
lyrics. Nothing much unusual here.
Hidden article #2: Hot Jaguar Statistics.
The solution you wanted here was the one where you had to insert
the disk of the game you could win in one of the Volume 8 Issue 2
competitions. The game was Eclipse's "Stone Age", a quite
excellent game actually. You had to insert the disk, then attempt
to load an article. No article would be loaded but instead the
second hidden article would become selectable.
The hidden article contained a comparison of Jaguar statistics
with those of 3D0, SNES and Megadrive. This wasn't featured in a
regular article because too many disk magazines already make use
of articles directly reprinted from various sources on the
Internet (this particular bit was taken from an "Atari Explorer
Online" September 1993 Jaguar special).
Hidden article #3: The Second (And Last) Yahweh stories.
This was a really nasty one, and revolved around the 'hidden
explanation' article telling you to try one of the solutions on
offer in that previous issue's article. It was the one involving
the many numbers. A rather difficult calculation had to be done
here again. Not many parameters were needed, but they were sortof
difficult to find out (well, at least most of them). Here was the
actual calculation formula: We start off with the house number of
Fawlty Towers. Add the amount of stars in the heavens Terry
Pratchett claims to have been specified by Numbers Riktor's
clockwork Celestial Enumerator. Deduct the amount of bytes free
on a standard (9 sectors per track, 80 tracks) double-sided disk.
OK. You now have a certain negative value. Divide is by the type
number of the Sony CD Player I bought recently, and then multiply
the result by the amount of days in February 1892. You're almost
there. Now get rid of the negative sign and take the square root.
Get rid of any numbers after the decimal dot. Add the number that
I was at the time collecting practical occurrences of, as well as
the number that occurs in one of Tchaikovsky's best and most
popular ouvertures. Then deduct the amount of ST NEWS issues that
we reckon will appear this year after the one you're reading now.
Enter the resulting value at any time in the main menu.
The Fawlty Towers address is 16 Elmwood Avenue. The amount of
stars specified in Riktor's Enumerator is 49873 (as specified in
Terry Pratchett's Discworld novel "Moving Pictures", footnote
#21). The number of bytes free was 726016. The CD player was a
Sony CDP997, so the number required was "997". 1892 was a
leapyear, so the number of days in February was 29. When you
would take the square root of all that stuff after added/divided
and that sort of thing, you got 140 after removing the stuff
after the dot. The number I was at the time searching practical
occurrences of was, of course, 42. The ouverture is the "1812
Ouverture", and we reckoned 1 further issue would appear that
year (as indeed it did). In the end you got the number "1993"
(the year in which we were at the time), which you had to type
into the main menu at any time.
The actual hidden article contained some further gore by the
hand of the guy whose handle is Jahweh. Quite disgusting. We
didn't even read it ourselves, of course.
Just like the previous issue, one didn't need to read all other
articles in order to get to the last hidden article. Well, coming
up with all the above information was already hard enough, don't
you think?
ST NEWS Volume 9 Issue 1
Hidden article #1: Interesting Jaguar stuff.
You had to keep ALTERNATE pressed and then press the second
letter of the last word of the song "Out of Hand" on Entombed's
then recent "Wolverine Blues" CD. This word was "FUCK" (shouted
quite loudly one might add), so you had to press ALTERNATE and
"U".
The hidden article contained interesting material about the
Jaguar, all taken from other sources in such an unmistakably
blatant and plagiarizing way that it simply had to be hidden.
Hidden article #2: Spoof article.
The solution needed here was the one where you had to type in
the name of the continent that ex-ST NEWS co-conspirator Mark
van den Boer lived on. This was "australia", which is the place
where he went after having spent about half a year back in the
Netherlands after returning from South America.
The actual article was totally useless and contained nothing
much. It did contain one rather important number that you might
have wanted to use for a later hidden article solution (i.e. one
in a future issue of ST NEWS).
ST NEWS Volume 9 Issue 2
The solution was to enter the name of the house where Tracey and
Daryl Stubbs used to live in the British TV series "Birds of a
Feather". You would then have to type that name while in the main
menu. The name of the house, of course, was "DALENTRACE", like
every "Birds of a Feather" adept knew all along.
ST NEWS Volume 9 Issue 3
The solution was the one involving numbers again, no matter how
much I was tempted at the time to go for the "KARIN" one. The
following was the text of the key: Take the number of total
curses possible with "The Grandson of Wowbagger the Infinitely
Prolonged", divide it by the amount of articles present in this
issue of ST NEWS, substract the year of Karin's birth, divide the
result by house number of the Bundy family in "Married with
Children", substract 1, integer it, and enter that number at any
time in the main menu.
The total number of curses possible was 2,056,732,555,440. ST
NEWS Volume 9 Issue 3 had 73 articles. Karin was (and is) born in
1973. The Bundy's residence number in "Married with Children" is
9674. The following calculation needed to be made:
INT((((2056732555440/73)-1973)/9674)-1)
The result of that calculation was 2912384. Not the kind of
thing you'd be able to calculate successfully on one of them
buggy Intel Pentiums!
ST NEWS Volume 10 Issue 1
More than just one article in this issue. It just went with the
flow, really, and in the previous issues the flow had not been a
powerful one.
Hidden article #1: Excerpt from the Annotated Pratchett file.
You had to keep ALTERNATE pressed and then press "N".
The article contained an addendum to the Annotated Pratchett
file, a large gathering of humorous or otherwise interesting
quotations from Terry Pratchett's books.
Hidden article #2: Love, death and an American guitar.
The solution was the following: Enter the following text, all in
lower case and without any reading signs but with a space between
each word, directly after each other: The name of my favourite
Dutch band at the moment and the title of my number one favourite
CD of 1995 so far.
The solution was typing "the name of my favourite dutch band at
the moment and the title of my number one favourite cd of 1995 so
far", on the contrary to, say, "oblivion my dying bride". You had
to make sure there's one space between every two words, and no
reading signs.
The result was a bit of song text taken from Meat Loaf's "Wasted
Youth", to be found on "Bat Out of Hell II - Back Into Hell".
Hidden article #3: American Punk'n'Hardcore Coming on Strong.
Bootsector of BIG Demo.
An article by Lars Johansson containing song lyrics by the likes
of Green Day and Offspring. Hidden because, really, this kind of
stuff doesn't belong in ST NEWS.
Hidden article #4: Cheeses of the World Unite!
This is only accessible by using the "back door", a feature that
has been in every issue of ST NEWS starting at Volume 6 Issue 2.
Back doors are accessible by keeping both [SHIFT] keys pressed
during booting until the first ST NEWS alert box appears. After
that there is a special hidden password, which in this case was
"congratulations to maggie's first five years".
Each backdoor immediately makes accessible all hidden articles
for an issue.
The actual article contained something written by Chris "Maggie"
Holland, probably found somewhere else, about cheese. Quite
witty, and used previously in "DBA Magazine" issue 12 (the
"Maggie" + "DBA" + ST NEWS cooperation issue).
ST NEWS Volume 10 Issue 2
This issue had no hidden articles, not even a paltry one.
ST NEWS Volume 11 Issue 1
Wouldn't you just like to know? Well, superfluously, I'd like to
say that there might one day be a way to find out how they can be
solved, but it won't be in any issues of ST NEWS and most
certainly not in this one. Have a go at discovering them
yourself. C'mon, it can be done, you know!
Disclaimer
The text of the articles is identical to the originals like they appeared
in old ST NEWS issues. Please take into consideration that the author(s)
was (were) a lot younger and less responsible back then. So bad jokes,
bad English, youthful arrogance, insults, bravura, over-crediting and
tastelessness should be taken with at least a grain of salt. Any contact
and/or payment information, as well as deadlines/release dates of any
kind should be regarded as outdated. Due to the fact that these pages are
not actually contained in an Atari executable here, references to scroll
texts, featured demo screens and hidden articles may also be irrelevant.