CRASH

THE NEW MACHINE

‘FOLLOWING the recent development of the Spectrum +3 computer US Gold are continuing their reputation as market leading by fully supporting the machine with an impressive release schedule,’ blah, blah, blah.

It’s the usual overenthusiasm of press announcements; but it landed on my desk (literally — thanks Richard) on the day this CRASH went to the printers (literally), and it’s further evidence that the +3 is gaining more and more credibility, supported by more and more releases.

When the +3 was announced this summer, retailers and software houses alike played the game of wait-and-see: wait and see if it sells before you produce games for it, wait and see if the high £249 price comes down before you put it on the high-street shelves.

Now the price has dropped to £199 — Amstrad boss Alan Sugar admits he’d planned it all along — where it’s not competing against the Atari ST and Amiga (not to mention the cost of living). And the software houses are producing games for the +3: there’s even Martech’s insipidly-titled Four Top Games compilation, which effectively offers the new 2000AD license Sláine at £3.75, rather less than its advertised cassete price of £8.99.

There’s significant support from utilities and hardware manufacturers, too; in this month’s PCW Show report Simon N Goodwin writes of +3 compilers and assemblers, and Romantic Robot’s Multiface 3 adds a new dimension to the new machine — with it you can put cassette software onto disk.

In August, CRASH wrote ‘the +3 is given only an outside chance’. But is the new Spectrum coming in from the cold this winter?

HEALTHY AND WISE

There’s constant grumbling from stick-in-the-mud readers about the changing CRASH staff, so presumably no gnus is good news; and to satisfy the CRASH old-timers here’s a returning writer from the magazine’s early days, Bym Welthy. Bym, another ultracool Ludlow College type, first contributed comments to CRASH in Issue Three and reappeared on the doorstep as Issue 46 began.

BARNABY PAGE