Grapevine (disk magazine)

Grapevine was a disk magazine for the Commodore Amiga^[1] published by the demo scene group LSD. The first eight issues each came on a single floppy disk, but as the magazine became more popular and more articles were submitted by its readers, it required two to three disks per issue after that point. The editor of Grapevine was known as Parasite, later PaZZa/LSD. The magazine was originally coded by Monty Python, and then re-coded with a mouse driven interface later in the series by Shagratt.

Grapevine existed at a time when Internet use was not widespread in its native UK or abroad, and hence editions of the magazine were hotly traded amongst the demo scene. LSD sent out hundreds of floppy disk copies on each release, and most PD libraries at the time were keen to include the latest issues as soon as they were released. As a result of this, 17Bit PD library cut a deal with PaZZa to ensure distribution at a fair price, they were "paid" a box of 50 floppy disks per issue for this, which were used by LSD for file distribution (the days before modems for many people).

Breadth of topics

Grapevine accepted articles not only about the demo scene itself, as most scene disk magazines did, but on a diverse range of subjects including gaming, music, sports, humour, comics, and even pieces of original fiction and poetry.

Secret articles

Several issues of the magazine contained "secret" articles. To access them, press Esc and type in the corresponding password, followed by Enter:

• 08 – "recoded"
• 09 – "party"
• 10 – "bust"
• 11 – "quartz"
• 12 – "bastard"
• 13 – "ho ho ho"
• 14 – "late"
• 15 – "secretmenu"
• 16 – "wombatateam"
• 17 – "party"
• 18 – "xmas"
• 19 – None (by looking at the data files with a hex editor, "HI ROMBUST, THERES NO SECTRET ARTICLE!" [sic] appears in the code, where the password should be)

Revival

An attempt was made in 2005 to revive Grapevine, in the form of a web-based magazine. However, this was done unofficially by a group not connected to the original, known as Ellesdee.

The usage of the original disk magazine's name, as well as Ellesdee being a corruption of the original creator's name (LSD), brought strong criticism from other members of the demo scene, including the original team. Some original LSD members were approached for permission to start the revival project and the first issues contained submissions from KenD/LSD.

The revival web site, as well as that of Ellesdee, was subsequently shut down. The exact reasons for this are in dispute.

Controversy

Later issues of Grapevine allowed readers to vote for their favourite demo-coder, graphics artist etc. It was generally believed these charts were artificially weighted in favour of LSD members and their friends. LSD members were subsequently excluded from the charts.

References

External links

• Picture in the Sky – Contains various Grapevine downloads
• Grapevine controversy
• LSD Docs Disks in Amiga Guide and Html version