North Star

North Star (NS)
SWE&gt; Atom (05/89), Crab (code, 05/89), Dragon (sysop 'DRAGON'S LAIR', later    Dual Crew, 10/90), Foetus (editor,  05/89), Germ (late89), GlueMaster (Lars Malmborg, code music, 90), Kaktus (Anders Berkeman, code, 05/89), Mahoney (Per Tufvesson, code, 89), Odie (Magnus Persson, code music,    late89), Omega (code editor, 05/89), Starfire (Johan Nilsson, code     editor, 88-05/89), Titan (music, later Uncle Tom/Scoopex),  Virus, Zymox (late89).

North Star was an exclusively Swedish demo group, perhaps best known for their early diskmag "Exceller 8" and their two members Kaktus and Mahoney - authors of the origina NoiseTracker and some truly wild musicdisks! =) Starfire coded a couple of antivirus bootblocks that acted in a way the writers of the viruskillers didn't appreciate... They were therefore - to this day, even - classified as viruses. There's little doubt that Starfire never meant for this.  1988 - The first issue of their pioneering diskmag Exceller 8 was released in cooperation with Fairlight. Coder Celebrandil joined.  1989 - Three more issues of Exceller 8 were released, one more with Fairlight and finally two more with The Silents. They lost Celebrandil (code) to Fairlight. Swedish musician Titan contributed music to the demo "Big" by the Swedish division of Scoopex. He would later join Scoopex himself, under the handle Uncle Tom.  1990 - French section was formed around the middle of the year by members of Brain Wave. They all finally left for Agile in 1991.

His Masters Noise (ECS Musicdisk). code: GlueMaster, gfx: n/a, music: n/a.

Interpol (ECS Demo).

Exceller 8 issue #1 (1988, ECS Multifile Diskmag). code: Omega, gfx: n/a, music: n/a. Cooperation with Fairlight. review: Unfortunately this mag cannot be reviewed as of right now, since it quite simply refuses to work. No amount of reconfiguration of my system can get the blasted mag to boot properly, the best I could do was get the mag to boot and start playing some music, though with a completely green screen. :( [glenn] GLE tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 16mb fast/3.1 -- see review.

Exceller 8 issue #2 (1989, .02, ECS Multifile Diskmag). INT - code: n/a, gfx: n/a, music: n/a. MAG - code: Omega, gfx: n/a, music: n/a. Cooperation with Fairlight. review: The very nice intro for this mag loads and runs fine, but then gurus as you press the left mousebutton :( The mag itself shows about the same level of compatibility as last time. [glenn]  GLE tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 16mb fast/3.1 -- see review.

Exceller 8 #3 (1989, apr-may, ECS Multifile Diskmag). code: Omega, gfx: n/a, music: n/a, editors: Foetus, Starfire. Cooperation with The Silents. review: The third issue of X8 is a very good example of an early amiga diskmag, with code certainly the superior of its rivals like Cracker Journal. There is a good amount of articles, though far from all are scene related - there's also a lot about games, movies and music. This is not really a criticism, since all mags were full of this kind of thing back then... Speaking of the code: X8 was almost certainly the first mag ever to feature clipart in the articles! Graphics are mostly good, with a special nod to the cool EXCELLER 8 logo in the editorial article. Article selection are done like in Crack Journal and Hack-Mag, with each page being assigned a number, and the reader just thumbing through them. This was their first issue in cooperation with The Silents, after two issues with Fairlight. This mag totally refused to work on my system, so I was finally forced to succumb to WinUAE to be able to read it! Sacrilege, I know... =) It worked satisfactorily under a KS 2.0 configuration. [glenn]  GLE tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 16mb fast/3.1 -- Note: See review!

Exceller 8 #4 (1989, jun-jul, ECS Multifile Diskmag). GLE tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 16mb fast/3.1 -- Note: See review!