Issue No. 12 Christmas Special 1984/85

FEATURES

LLOYD’S LOOK BACK AT 1984
Will 84 get the thumbs-up or the thumbs-down?
READY STEADY GO!
What have Romik got in store for 85?
THE BIGGEST COMMERCIAL BREAK
An in-depth analysis of Imagine’s collapse
SABRE WULF’S JUNGLE ADVENTURE
A short story by Charles Cohen
CRASH READERS AWARDS 1984
The charts — as they stand
1985 CALENDAR
Oli Frey artwork
SPECTRUM+ KEYBOARD

LOOK FORWARD TO 1985
We look at hardware for 85
ROBIN CANDY’S POKES CORNER
Robin sifts through some pokes
INSIDE CRASH
Exclusive look at how the mag is made

REGULARS

EDITORIAL
And indexes plus ACG winners
CRASH ADVENTURE TRAIL
Derek Brewster’s Victorian Chip
ADVENTURES OF JETMAN
Further frolics of our hero
CRASH HOTLINE

SIGNPOST

FRONTLINE
Angus Ryall soaks up the gin
PLAYING TIPS

NEWS INPUT

THE TERMINAL MAN

CRASH FORUM
Readers air their views

DIY

SILVERSOFT
Win a Unicom modem
FIREBIRD
One Microdrive expansion kit to be won
REALTIME
100 Starstrikes up for grabs!
INCENTIVE
The Ket Trilogy could be yours
ULTIMATE
Will you get the trophy? A new 2 in one!
C.C.S.
100 of their games to be won
CREATIVE SPARKS
Graphic prizes galore!
FREL
5 Comcons; will you win one?
HEWSON CONSULTANTS
Map competition for Avalon
BUG BYTE
100 copies of Turmoil
GILSOFT
The Hollow, Madcap Manor, The Illustrator
OCEAN
Score with Match Day

REVIEWS

CRASH SMASHES
Underwurlde, Knight Lore, The Runes of Zendos, Boulder Dash

- ASTRONUT, Software Projects
- ATRAM, Websters Software
- BACKPACKERS GUIDE TO THE UNIVERSE, Fantasy
- BLUE RIBAND, C.C.S
- BOULDER DASH, Front Runner
- COUNTRY COTTAGES, Sterling Software
- CYCLONE, Vortex
- COUNTRY COTTAGES, Sterling Software
- EUREKA!, Domark
- THE FALL GUY, Elite
- FRED’S FAN FACTORY, Software Super Savers
- INSURGENCY, C.C.S
- THE KEY TO TIME, Lumpsoft
- KNIGHT LORE, Ultimate
- LODE RUNNER, Software Projects
- LOONY LANDER, Software Super Savers
- MAFIA CONTRACT, Atlantis
- MAGIC ROUNDABOUT, CRL
- MOON LIGHTER, Software Super Savers
- NEW CYLON ATTACK, New Generation
- PLUMMET!, Interceptor
- POLE POSITION, Atarisoft
- POTTY PIGEON, Gremlin Graphics
- THE PRINCE, C.C.S
- RACING PREDICTIONS, Buffer Micros
- THE RUNES OF ZENDOS, Dorcas
- SKYRANGER, Microsphere
- SORCEROR OF CLAYMORGUE CASTLE, Adventure International
- THE STAFF OF ZARANOL, C.C.S.
- STEVE DAVIS SNOOKER, C.D.S.
- THERBO, Arcade Software
- UNDERWURLDE, Ultimate
- VOLCANO, Computer Magic
- WAR ZONE, C.C.S
- WORLD GLOBE, Eclipse

NEXT ISSUE OUT 24th JANUARY at 85p

Editor

Roger Kean
Consultant editor

Franco Frey

Assistant Editor

Kevin Foster

Production designer

David Western

Art editor

Oliver Frey

Adventure editor

Derek Brewster

Staff Writer

Lloyd Mangram

Contributing writers

Matthew Uffindell, Chris Passey, Robin Candy

Client liaison

John Edwards

Subscription manager

Denise Roberts

Cover by

Oliver Frey

Transcriptions

Matthew Wilson, Chris Wild, and Dave Foreman, http://www.crashonline.org.uk/, Chris Wild

Additional review transcriptions

Chris Bourne, http://www.zxspectrumreviews.co.uk/

Lloyd Mangram LOOKS BACK

It seems amazing that a year has gone by since I was last handed the job of writing an article which looked at the happenings of a past year, for what was then an embryonic magazine with the peculiar name of CRASH. In looking back, I’m tempted to say 1984 was probably the year of CRASH, but I can’t really concern myself entirely with this publication, as it’s the software I’m supposed to deal with here! One thing I will say, is that it has been a hectic and eventful year for CRASH, with the magazine going from strength to strength, often threatening to outstrip the resources of the small team that puts it together, but it’s been fun. Actually, I’m at a slight disadvantage, because my ever-ready CRASH Binder is missing issue one as someone nicked my copy before the binders came along, and then the issue sold out entirely! Anyway, here goes...

Spotting trends and commenting on them with hindsight is the main forte of journalists, possibly because it gives us a feeling of superiority linked to a sense that ‘we were not responsible’. On the other hand, trend-spotting is not only fun, it can also be truly informative. If I had to sum up 1984 very quickly I would point to the rise of the adventure, the death of the arcade shoot-’em-up, the software slump, the dramatic improvement in software and programming, the rise of the TV/film/game link up and the mingling of arcade with adventure.

The year is going out, significantly, the way it came in. Ultimate gave us Atic Atac and pointed the way to arcade/adventures, a trend they have pursued relentlessly through a mere handful of four games to the excellence of Knight Lore. Ultimate have steadfastly refused to ‘talk’ to the computer press, never appear at shows, have avoided all software house link-ups that seem to have been the way of life through 84 and have released very little, but very select, product. Obviously the public love it.

Atic Atac was pointing the way towards a new concept in arcade games, and suggested that arcade players didn’t just want mindless zap games. Other software houses were to provide more such entertainment, but looking at the reviews in the March issue (many of which appeared at the end of January and during February), there wasn’t much sign of it yet. Imagine seemed to be trying with Alchemist, but in truth the game was a lot of hot air and Stonkers kept crashing, though it did prove that a better looking wargame was a distinct possibility.

Throughout 84, an obvious trend from 83 is apparent. In 83 everyone was copying arcade originals, in 84 they started copying each other, or is it just synchronicity at work? The March issue carried reviews for Ocean’s Hunchback (a licenced arcade copy) and Mr. Micro’s Punchy. Generally we preferred the latter, although sales of Hunchback indicated disagreement here. I’ll call this the ‘self-copy’ trend, as it crops up again and again.

If arcade copies were on the wane, arcade high scoring games were not. A&F had their enduringly popular Chuckie Egg out, and Fantasy were climbing the charts with Doomsday Castle featuring super hero Ziggy who, appropriately enough, has emerged again for the end of the year in Backpackers Guide to the Universe. Chuckie Egg has gone into the annals of history along with Lunar Jetman as one of the ace hi-score games. Bug-Byte modestly released Birds and the Bees on which Matthew Smith had worked and followed it up with the much better Antics on which Matthew Smith did not work. But Matthew’s name was on everyone’s lips with the news that Manic Miner follow up Jet Set Willy was imminent. It wasn’t though. Two outstanding programs also appeared then, Fighter Pilot from Digital Integration and Wheelie from Microsphere. The former showed just how far the Spectrum could go (it’s gone further still) and how exciting a simulation could be, the latter was just a damned good, original game with super graphics. Add to this the smart 3D graphics of Android 2 by Vortex, and at times Space Invaders never looked further away. Not so, however, 84 has produced some real crock games too.

Quite a few crocks appeared in a self-copy battle to be the first with a real ‘Pole Position’ game. Ones that come to mind are Grand Prix Driver, Britannia, a bit unplayable but novel graphics; Speed Duel, DK’Tronics, completely unplayable and rather boring graphics; Psion’s excellent Chequered Flag, which differed from the others by being more of a simulation; there was the scandal over rip offs from Spirit Software and their steering wheel version called Formula One, which when it finally turned up was a very damp squib indeed; Activision recently had a go with the novel Enduro; the best was probably Micromega’s great Full Throttle; and last, not entirely least, the one that spawned the whole thing, Atarisoft have managed to limp out with Pole Position.

Back to the earlier months. Durell joined another self-copy with Scuba Dive, abandoning outer space for what scientists like to call inner space. The underwater theme was also picked up by Bug-Byte in Aquarius, which wasn’t so good, by Richard Shepherd in the awful Devils of the Deep and later by CRL in their lightweight but fun Glug-Glug. Of all, Scuba Dive was the best and most playable.

Moving on a month, the crop of the crocks was improving as the Christmas 83 boom receded into the slough of despond. CRL offered two completely pathetic games, Caveman and Lunar Lander. Music publisher K-Tel graced us with abominations called ‘double-siders’ and proved that music for pleasure is one thing but MFP also stands for More Failed Programs. It’s a sign of the times that K-Tel took stock during the year, gave themselves a new marketing image in Front Runner and have just released the excellent Boulder Dash, which is so good it absolves them of their earlier horrors. March and April was also the time when that other publisher of music Virgin, who like K-Tel had never found a game worthy of the name, brought out Dr. Franky and showed there was hope for them. They too have improved their position enormously, releasing the odd but good Strangeloop a couple of months back.

Digital Integration proved that Fighter Pilot wasn’t a flash in the pan by releasing Night Gunner, more a game than a simulation, and Artic pulled themselves together on the arcade front with Bear Bovver. The uneven R&R started another self-copy theme in helicopters with Chopper X-1, a rather second rate game which paved the way for Richard Wilcox and Blue Thunder. Loath to leave a flying idea, the altered Wilcox as Elite is about to release Airwolf based on the current telly series. Just recently Durell have continued the theme with their excellent simulation/strategy game Combat Lynx and somewhat belated, we still await Digital Integration’s game based on a helicopter.

Going onto the May issue we were treated to a real mix of good and bad. Ignoring the bad, April/May saw the release of some excellent programs, among them Derek Brewster’s amazing Code Name Mat released by Micromega. 84 could well be called the Year of Micromega, having started off well with the 3D Deathchase, CNM added to their lustre, Full Throttle polished it to a shine and the last three releases Braxx Bluff, Kentilla and Jasper have shown a willingness to go for the unusual and the best. Hewson Consultants also went from strength to strength, releasing the third in Steve Turner’s Seiddab trilogy, 3D Lunattack. The experience gained with these games finally led to Steve turning in the advanced 3D adventure Legend of Avalon.

We had been treated to a special preview of Software Projects’ monster release Jet Set Willy and took screen shots of it which later caused much confusion because they didn’t match with the actually released game. One writer even accused us of faking as the preview shots showed screens all with capital letters for the under titles on some and a mixture of capitals and lower case on others, Matthew Smith would never do this we were told. But he did. There’s no doubt that the release of JSW was the biggest event for ages. It wasn’t long, however before the ace hackers started complaining — something was wrong with the program, and so it seemed. But the Attic bug doesn’t seem to have put anyone seriously off enjoying the most torn apart game in history. You could almost say that Jet Set Willy was poked to death.

It was also the month that a new company called Gargoyle Games delighted us with an old fashioned shoot em up with modern 3D graphics called Ad Astra. We were all rather pleased with ourselves at CRASH because we were the first to spot the game and push it. Our faith has not been misplaced as Gargoyle’s latest mammoth graphic adventure Tir Na Nog proves.

Insignificant at the time, was a game called Space Station Zebra, which we didn’t think much of, from another new company calling themselves Beyond Software. Little were we to know (as they say in good adventure stories...)

After a long pause Imagine threw out the disappointing Pedro and prepared to nose dive into bankruptcy. Summer was approaching.

The June issue looked a bit thin on good games, the crocks predominating. Hewson’s Fantasia Diamond gave adventurers a lot to think about, as did the second in Incentive’s Ket Trilogy — Temple of Vran. Otherwise the only bright light really was Beyond’s Psytron, a game which has led many into argument over its merits. We liked it a lot. At the launch in London we also got to see a glimpse of a new type of adventure/strategy wargame called Lords of Midnight.

June/July brought the summer slump into brighter focus — hardly anything to report, but wait! Ultimate to the rescue! Sabre Wulf caused controversy over the almost doubling in price, but few argued with the game’s graphics. We liked Ocean’s Moon Alert, also a subject of a self-copy theme, with the Visions Moon Buggy and Anirog’s game of the same name all out. Rabbit had also promised a Spectrum version of their C64 hit on the theme called Troopa Truck, but the company’s demise quashed that.

Sinclair gave us a sudden spate of releases, mostly average to mediocre with the exception of the excellent Stop the Express, and Imagine continued down the slippery slope with the execrable Cosmic Cruiser. Melbourne House, now very late with the long awaited Sherlock, diverted our attention from their problems with Philip Mitchell’s graphic entertainment Mugsy, while Silversoft, very quiet of late, slipped out with the highly original Worse Things Happen at Sea.

July/August saw the release and instant pedestal placing of Beyond’s Lords of Midnight. One software house who always seemed to have just missed was Mikro-Gen, but with the creation of Wally Week in Automania, they changed all that, managing to follow it up with the more recent and better still Pyjamarama. Other high spots were Rapscallion from Bug-Byte and TLL from Vortex both boasting strikingly different graphics. Micromania made a bid for the hi-score stakes with Kosmic Kanga, and the month saw another brand new software house emerge with the capacity for fine programming — Realtime with their definitive Battlezone type game 3D Tank Duel. Once again the CRASH team felt they were helping to create a software house, by pushing something they believed in, and once again the faith was not misplaced as Realtime worked on their latest release, Starstrike, now out.

July/August proved to be about as dead as it could get with only a furious shoot-’em up from Creative Sparks to enliven proceedings. Black Hawk was curiously old fashioned, but fun to play. For adventurers the long-awaited release of The Hulk proved that graphics make adventures look good, but that more is sometimes required to make them good to play. CRL take the credit for being the first software house out with the self-copy theme of the year — the Olympics. Their aptly named Olympics had been a gross disappointment, and Automata’s Olympimania was the usual load of anarchic fun, but Database, publishers of Micro User, were the first with a serious treatment in Micro Olympics. Buffer also did a program, and Melbourne House have continued the theme with Sports Hero as have Hill MacGibbon with Run for Gold (reviewed in the next issue), but the best liked is from Ocean with Daley Thompson’s Decathlon.

Just to prove that although Spectrum games seemed to be improving in technique all the while a real crock could get through, Mastertronic got their adventure for all time reviewed after a reader wrote in saying we hadn’t done it, and why not as it was fab. Voyage into the Unknown got, I think, the lowest rating ever from CRASH at that time. It was only beaten by Elephant’s stupendously bad Kosmik Pirate.

With September/October, things looked as though they should brighten up with the pre-Christmas rush to look forward to. And in some respects things did. The October issue saw Micromega out with Braxx Bluff and Kentilla by Derek Brewster; Frank N. Stein from PSS, which proved to be quite a good platform game, while Silversoft were busy proving that old themes could be reworked to provide a tight new game in Hyperaction. Sherlock finally arrived, one year late and catching trains from the wrong station, and a new company called Gremlin Graphics introduced us to the dusty wanderings of Monty Mole, possibly the first game to really look like it could steal the laurels from the as-much-maligned-as-hacked-and-played Jet Set Willy. CRL started the trend of producing the game of the film by releasing the slightly disappointing Terrahawks, which was nevertheless a better experiment than their game of the music version of War of the Worlds. The competition for securing licences from Hollywood and Shepherds Bush is hotting up with Ocean and Elite fighting over Airwolf (Elite won this one), CRL releasing the game of megahit Magic Roundabout, Activision scooping on the super hit film Ghostbusters, DK’Tronics securing Minder and Popeye, and now Elite have Fall Guy out and so on.

Which more or less brings us up to date, as the Christmas software fights it out to be top of the chart. Amongst the recent releases I have a few personal favourites that I would like to see do well, and oddly one of those is Deus Ex Machina from Automata. I think it’s over priced, but I can see that it must have cost quite a bit to produce. I think Micromega’s Jasper is very good but I fear it will be, or already has been, overshadowed by games like Jet Set Willy and Monty Mole. It’s different in many respects, however, and deserves to do well. Another favourite is the remarkable Skool Daze from Microsphere, which I like because it is realistic, anarchistic, and puts school where it belongs — in perspective. Most of my other current faves have already been mentioned in passing.

Company trends over this year have been all over the place. We have witnessed the disappearance of Imagine, Rabbit and Carnell to name some of the bigger ones. Rabbit, like Imagine, seemed in retrospect to survive more on hype than product, although Rabbit’s hype was aimed more at the trade than the public, which was their huge mistake — they just couldn’t see that no one wanted the rubbish they produced for most of the time. We have also seen big business move in with names like Thorn EMI (Creative Sparks) who, like Virgin and K-Tel, made a reassessment of what they were doing earlier this year. Now Busby has a rival in British Telecom’s Firebird, the overweight and sluggish Atari have tried hard to break in with over-priced versions of their arcade originals, but it all seems to be a case of too little too late.

A software house from the earliest days who went quiet during the year is Quicksilva. Their Fred and Snowman made some impact but not as much as the earlier Ant Attack or Bugaboo. Concentrating rather more on conversions to the C64, they were bought out by Argus Press in the middle of the year, and I can’t help wondering whether the loss of independence to a corporate giant won’t lead to a greater sense of apathy. I hope not. The Ant Attack follow up from Sandy White, Zombie Zombie was, I thought, a bit of a disappointment.

One of the biggest successes has to be Ocean who started out as Spectrum Software, but through clever marketing policies, linking themselves to a distributor, buying in American software for conversion and careful control of product, have made themselves the true successors to the image Imagine tried to create. As if to seal that image, Ocean recently acquired the Imagine title. But what has also been most encouraging is that throughout 84, new and often small software houses have emerged, fighting hard and with often excellent product. They still form the backbone of this business and help make it all worthwhile.

READY, STEADY GO!!

KEVIN FOSTER TALKS TO MIKE ANDEREISZ OF ROMIK

Romik are back — that’s the message for Spectrum owners everywhere. The Slough-based software company, whose headquarters are a dingy converted warehouse on an industrial estate, have recently begun producing games for the Spectrum again after a dry spell of almost two years. During that time they were not idle: development of the Commodore 64 and Amstrad computers, and the Touchmaster graphic pad are just a few of the projects undertaken by this ambitious young company. As an indication of their growing stature, Thorn EMI recently agreed to handle Romik’s distribution network — a not inconsiderable scoop for a software house.

Romik came into existence in the middle of 1982, founded by two ex-members of Rabbit, Mike Barton and Steve Clark. With a fiercely independent spirit, the company survived mainly on freelance commission work. Games to their credit for the Spectrum 48K include 3D Monster Chase, Shark Attack, Colour Clash and Spectra Smash. They now possess a full-time programming team for the first time, and the indications from Romik’s Publicity Manager Mike Anderiesz are that the company is all set to go. The emphasis is on making 1985 their year, using the Spectrum as a launching pad.

The first and most obvious question is why were Romik out of the Spectrum market for so long?

In the first instance, ours was a conscious decision to leave the Spectrum market. We felt that it was in a very healthy position indeed and was producing software of a very high standard. It didn’t really need another software house. The Commodore market, however, did, and that’s why we went there. We felt that the Commodore was lacking in imaginative, high quality software. Basically what Romik were looking for was somewhere to make an impact, and we found in the Commodore our best opportunity.

You believe then that the Spectrum market is now in a position where it’s ripe for the picking?

Yes, in my opinion the Spectrum gets a superior quantity of advanced software.

Exactly when will Romik be releasing its new range of software for the Spectrum?

In the Spring of 1985. If they are successful then there will be more games to follow. It depends on the reaction they receive from the market. Obviously, if the games-buying public are impressed by them we will know that the market is ready for more.

How will Romik games differ from all the other games that are currently available to the home computer owner?

We are trying hard to take the computer game away from the arcade clone — the predictable 3D style, etc. Our games will be much more to do with role-playing, multi-player, arcade fantasies. But at the same time they will still be a lot of fun to play. Romik games will also be accurate, with less ferocious big-claims.

What do you mean by that last statement?

Well, look how many products claim to have the best 3D graphics, or title themselves ‘epic arcade adventure games’. Megagames is a term that has been blown out of all proportion. I’m personally very worried by the amount of misrepresentation that goes on in the advertising and packaging of cassettes. I don’t think this is a conscious effort to mislead people, more of a bad habit that packagers and producers seem to have fallen into. When games make these sort of claims for themselves and then fail to live up to them, they are letting standards down quite drastically.

What do you think will be the likely outcome of all this?

I think the market is heading for a few unpleasant surprises. Come next year, for example, when the Christmas boom has died, home computer owners will suddenly find that they need to be a lot more discerning about the games they buy. And advertisers will have to learn to be a lot more particular about the terms they use to describe games. Frankly I’m surprised that the advertising standards authority hasn’t stepped in sooner. All I’m saying is that people are going to be disappointed because some of the things they have been promised will simply not be delivered.

How does Romik intend to avoid the pitfall of misrepresenting games?

Romik will tell the truth about their games. We will be as objective as possible and expect to be crucified if we are wrong. We want to be sure that we deliver what we promise. Romik has a good name to live up to.

Will the games you release next year do justice to that reputation?

Yes, I think so. At the moment we are in the 3rd generation of software games. The 1st generation was typified by games such as Pac Man, the 2nd by Time Gate (for Quicksilva), and the 3rd by Manic Miner, which started a whole stream of amusing and imaginative games. Despite all the promises and all the claims, we’re still in that 3rd generation today. Romik intend to be the first company to bring out 4th generation games, and these will be a considerable extension. I can tell you now that they will be something very special for the Spectrum owner. And while we are softening up the market, our in-house team will be developing the 5th generation of games for most of the major microcomputers. These will be released in the Autumn of 1985, preceded by a big advertising campaign.

You talk of a 4th and now a 5th generation of games. Isn’t there the danger that people will see this as an example of the sort of cheap publicity stunt that you criticised earlier?

Yes, there is, but I hope no one sees this as a cheap publicity stunt. We have the expertise now to produce the sort of games I’ve mentioned, and we’re not confined by the sort of commercial demands that hamper other software houses. Nor are we under any pressure to release games, simply because we’re not totally reliant on them for our survival. We’ve survived this far to date while other companies have gone under, by having a diverse range of activities to be involved in — consumer accounts, development of the Amstrad, and several other business projects that should see us well into next year. It’s a very restricted market and most software houses are milking it dry, but Romik don’t need to do that.

What then is your overall New Year message?

We want to tell Spectrum owners that we haven’t forgotten them and we will not let them down. We could afford to lie low until we were ready to release our products. Now that the time has come, I’m convinced it was well worth waiting for.

THE BIGGEST COMMERCIAL BREAK OF THEM ALL

A look at the crash of Imagine Software as seen through the eyes of a film crew.

Depending on when you read this article, you may be about to see, have seen or maybe missed, a fascinating programme on BBC2 television (December 13th at 8.00pm) in the Commercial Breaks series about Imagine Software Limited. The Liverpool software giant crashed out during the summer after a life of a little over 18 months, during which time it produced more hype than any other software house before. The company appeared to bask in self-created publicity, much of which was very clever, and so it seems appropriate that its death should also have been as well recorded for posterity by the media it sought for its promotion, as had its successes in life. As things turned out, the BBC film crew got a rather different story to the one they had conceived but much of the material shot for Commercial Breaks cannot appear in the finished programme, because it falls outside the scope of the series format.

Roger Kean spoke to BBC director Paul Andersen as he was busy putting the finishing touches to the programme.

GIVE US A BREAK

Early in the new year of 1984 BBC Television director Paul Andersen, who among other things was about to direct some of the programmes for the Commercial Breaks series, witnessed the enthusiasm surrounding some of the new generation of computer games that were beginning to appear in the shops, and appreciated that the emerging software houses were pioneering a new market. Commercial Breaks is a series which broadly examines the struggles of individuals and companies who are trying to ‘break’ a new product into the market place. To Andersen the new computer game software ‘moguls’ seemed like a good subject for a programme and he began researching, looking for a suitable company to feature.

An obvious place to look was in computer magazines, and it rapidly became apparent that Imagine was a strong contender because of the spate of clever advertising that was then appearing which was designed for Imagine by Stephen Blower of Studio Sting, an offshoot company of Imagine, coupled with the fact that Andersen, like so many people in Britain, was reading the national press publicity about Imagine’s teenage programmer Eugene Evans, who was said to be earning £35,000 a year and could afford a fabulously expensive car when he was still too young to be able to drive it. There was obviously a story here for Commercial Breaks.

The next step was to approach Imagine and ask the owners whether they would mind being featured. So Andersen travailed to Liverpool and spoke to the young bosses of the new company, Mark Butler and David Lawson. Lawson had written Arcadia, Imagine’s biggest hit at the time, and Butler had sold it into shops starved of software over the 82 Christmas. At first they seemed a bit reluctant, and Imagine’s Operations Manager, Bruce Everiss, explained that there were too many things under wraps to allow in the prying eves of television. On the other hand the publicity-eager Everiss must have been able to see the promotional capital that could be made out of having BBC TV hanging around for some weeks making a film about them. Dave Lawson saw another angle altogether, and to appreciate this it’s worth remembering what put Liverpool on the map in the early sixties.

BIRTH OF AN INDUSTRY

The Beatles transformed British (and then world) pop music in the early sixties, and created a modern myth about Liverpool, their home city. Over the years Liverpool has come to see itself as a possibly undernourished and underprivileged city, but one bursting at the seams with imagination and guts. With the eighties something similar to the Beatles seemed to be happening, only in computer software this time, and Dave Lawson must have seen Imagine as being at its very centre. Stephen Blower says that, ‘Lawson had some greater vision of what could be produced in software than anyone else I’ve ever met.’

At the time when Paul Andersen approached them, Imagine was working on the concept of the megagames, having exhausted the possibilities of the home computer’s limited memory. Lawson, who was largely responsible for overseeing their development, saw that the BBC would be able to record for posterity the concept, development and creative effort of a dedicated team in bringing these new super games out. In a way, the Imagine team, and especially the men who ran the company, would be seen to be ushering in a new Beatles era, but in software rather than in music. For the TV director the megagames also offered an essential linch pin on which to hang his programme. It all seemed ideal and, at the time neither party knew how dramatically different things would turn out.

Stephen Blower — still stuck with some of the Imagine debt — is now a director of Ocean Software.

When the BBC film crew went in to start shooting material for the programme they realised that Imagine made good visual material; huge, luxurious offices, acres of carpet, computer terminals by the ton load, lots of young programmers, secretaries in abundance, young ‘gophers’ acting as runners for the management and a company garage packed with a fleet of Ferrari Boxers, BMWs for the lesser executives and the famous Mark Butler custom hand-built Harris motorbike. At the time Imagine was employing 103 members of staff. Andersen had a funny feeling that it all looked too good to be true — and it was.

He noted that beneath the energy and bustle there were inconsistencies. Principal of these was an apparent split in the senior management which meant factions were working against each other. But the first noted discrepancy in the outward bravado was that Eugene Evans had obviously never received anything like the £35,000 a year quoted in the PR story. But what seemed more surprising to Andersen, was that Evans had never really written any programs either — certainly nothing that Imagine cared to publish. This might not have surprised some of his contemporary Liverpudlian programmers who were working for other software houses, however, who knew much better.

THE GROWING SPLIT

Eugene Evans, like Mark Butler had worked at Microdigital, one of the first ever British computer stores, situated in Liverpool. Bruce Everiss was also associated with Microdigital, and so were many of the programmers who were later to become the bedrock of the Liverpool software business. They all knew each other pretty well. It was the sort of in-bred atmosphere which leads to personality clashes, and soon enough the BBC team began to see evidence of them.

The disparity between the publicity hype and the reality became increasingly apparent during the summer months. Central to the problems was the fact that both Mark Butler and Dave Lawson had catapulted to fame and fortune within a few months. They would have been super-human if they had not come to believe a little in their own publicity and both in their different ways appear to have failed in coping with the fortune. Mark Butler’s background after leaving Microdigital was as Sales Manager for Bug-Byte where Lawson also worked as a programmer. They both left to set up Imagine in a small front room after several disagreements with the Bug-Byte management. The money that sales of Arcadia made over the Christmas of 82, was reinvested in bigger premises, personnel and in new programs, which also sold well. Naturally, the two young moguls needed staff and management to help administrate the in-pouring fortune, a classic situation which encourages the development of court chamberlains. One of the first such was Bruce Everiss, who seems to have naturally attached himself more to Mark than to Dave. Everiss was responsible for the day to day running of the company, but the responsibility for financial control and a directorship was put in the hands of Ian Hetherington. Hetherington attached himself to Lawson. The factions had begun.

One of Mark’s hobbies is fast motorbikes. He created the Imagine racing team and himself rode on the track. In fact Paul Andersen and the BBC crew were at the Isle of Man TT races in June filming at a time when Imagine was already in serious trouble and teetering on the brink of a crash. Mark did suffer a crash. Ironically, he was driven to the dismemberment of his empire swathed in bandages.

According to Andersen (a view backed up by many other observers), the two bosses thought that because of their success in the field of games production, it meant they could handle all sorts of other businesses as well. Almost at the outset they founded Studio Sting, together with Stephen Blower, the designer whose art work helped sell the company’s image and which adorned Imagine covers. Studio Sting was to act as a design centre and Advertising Agency for Imagine, which meant the company would be entitled to an discount on ad space booked in magazines. In return Stephen Blower received a 10% share of Imagine (which wasn’t worth all too much when the share was gladly handed over). Within a few months this situation had changed and the 10% was worth a lot on paper. The triad of Butler, Lawson and Hetherington wanted things rationalised — i.e. they wanted the 10% back. There are many rumours attached to the goings on at this time, in-fighting appears to have been rife, but whatever actually took place, the outcome was that Studio Sting was left holding huge magazine advertising debts (which have remained unpaid) but Stephen held onto his 10%, although he lost any executive post within Imagine. He therefore lost control over his own destiny when management decisions led to its downfall, and is still undergoing legal wrangles between himself and Butler/Lawson as to his financial responsibilities in the matter of Imagine’s vast debt.

In a telephone conversation with CRASH’s Kevin Foster, Blower said, ‘Imagine tried to accuse me of certain things that I didn’t do. For instance they said I was detrimental to the company’s image and that I was booking advertising space that wasn’t wanted. I was accused of stealing, or misappropriating £10,000, and my wife was accused of being incapable of keeping the books at Studio Sting. All this was later disproved in court.’

He went on to say, ‘They were obviously after my 10%. Imagine owed Studio Sting £89,000, so the way I see it is that they attempted to brush that debt under the carpet. The allegations were just an attempt to condone their own actions. I was probably the only one at Imagine who stuck to what he was best at doing.’

THE MEGAGAMES

Late in 83 Imagine had set up a deal to produce games for publishers Marshall Cavendish which may have been worth as much as £11 million to Imagine. Early in 84 the contracts were signed, but even before Andersen had received the co-operation of Imagine to start shooting there were signs that all was not well with the deal. By the time the BBC crew was installed it was clear that things were going badly wrong. The megagames had intervened. Dave Lawson who, according to Bruce Everiss, always insisted that the programmers be left strictly alone, free to create without management interference, wanted to concentrate on the development of the megagames. Marshall Cavendish became disenchanted by the lack of progress on their games. They had already paid out a lot of money and seem to have been unhappy with the quality of what was ready. They pulled out and wanted their money back. But Imagine had taken on more people to cope, programmers, artists, musicians, gophers. None of these was laid off, the overheads went up alarmingly.

Meanwhile the megagames were not progressing as well as it was originally hoped they would. Andersen noted that John Gibson was working hard at Bandersnatch with Ian Weatherburn, but Psyclapse was nowhere, nothing more than a paper idea. Yet at this stage the artist Roger Dean (famous for his record album sleeves and mythological books) had already designed the boxes and the ads which were beginning to appear. Dean reputedly asked for £6,000 for this job, and Andersen thought he was ‘smart enough’ to have demanded it up front.

Photo courtesy of the BBC

An important problem with the megagames was that they required a hardware add-on which was to be made in the East. To get the price right, enormous quantities would have to be manufactured. Imagine did not possess the money any more, and anyway could not have sensibly decided how many games would eventually sell. There was indecision all round. Bruce Everiss was to say later, ‘One option that we have is to sell the company as a whole to Sinclair Research, and I’ve been speaking to Sinclair Research, and they’re not interested. They’re saying that they want to keep programming of that nature outside their company.’

It transpired that Sinclair Research was only interested in buying finished product and that the megagames would have to be designed to work on the micro-drive, because they would not undertake the production of masses of hardware add-ons. In the event Sinclair Research did buy an option on Bandersnatch for the QL computer to go on micro-drive.

Another interesting rumour that Paul Andersen’s film team were able to verify, was what occurred over the Christmas period of 83. In 1982 there had been a software shortage in the shops. 1983 was to be a boom time, and Imagine decided on a clever ploy to foil the duplication of their rivals’ tapes. Ahead of time they booked the entire duplicating capacity of Kiltdale, one of the biggest duplicators for the software business. The idea, obviously, was to make it impossible for other major companies to get enough tapes duplicated for the Christmas rush. On paper it looked like an elegant piece of industrial sabotage. In practice it backfired. Imagine ended up hiring a warehouse for the storage of the hundreds of thousands of cassettes that they ended up with. After Christmas the bottom fell out of the market, and there was no way they could shift the games. This was a principal reason behind the strange move to lower the price of Imagine software. It also backfired because they flooded the shops with non-selling tapes, and then expected everyone to like the fact that the tapes would have to be sold at a price lower than the wholesale price the shopkeepers had bought the tapes in for in the first place.

THE SCRIPT CHANGES

So in the middle of shooting a TV programme about a company that was going places fast, Paul Andersen found himself filming one with a huge staff it no longer needed nor could afford, sitting on a vast stock of product it could not sell, with programmers left to their own devices much of the time and producing games that were increasingly unplayable and usually released with bugs still in them (remember Stonkers), run by a management team that was beginning to fall apart at the seams. Andersen recalls filming a meeting where the bosses sat around discussing how large the megagame boxes should be, whether they should be huge to entice punters to fork out £30 to £40, or whether the large size would put buyers off on the grounds that everyone knows model kit boxes are usually full of air. And this at a time when their empire was literally falling apart through lack of money and mounting debts. Lawson was buried in his megagames, Butler was acting out the role of playboy in his Ferrari and at the bike tracks. Everiss was trying to keep the offices running, while the rest of the ‘top management team’ struggled to cope with the increasing bitterness that was developing between the triad at the top. Some of the effects of what was happening were apparent to outsiders as well. I recall visiting Imagine for a meeting with Dave Lawson and Bruce Everiss sometime in late April. Lawson never turned up and Mark Butler appeared for a few moments, having just popped into the building to pick up some petty cash. It seemed a bit odd. The resulting article which appeared in CRASH naturally quoted Everiss the most. When the issue was published Butler rang me to complain that the emphasis was wrong — it made it sound like Everiss ran the company, he told me, when in fact he and Dave were still in charge.

As early as 16th April 1984, a petition was presented to the High Court by Cornhill Publications Ltd., to have Imagine Software Ltd. wound-up for non-payment of debts. At the time of writing I have been unable to establish what these debts were, or how they were incurred. The matter was ‘heard’ on the 11th June, three or four days before the TT races. On Monday 9th July at the High Court of Justice (Chancery Division) a further petition to wind-up Imagine on behalf of VNU Business Press (publishers of Personal Computer Games among others) went unopposed. Imagine was finished.

But what was happening back in Liverpool? The BBC crew were filming right up to the last moment, and witnessed the apathy and confusion that attended the last days. A memorable scene is the man from Kiltdale the duplicators, walking up and down Imagine’s offices trying to get to see either Butler, Lawson or Hetherington, the only people who could pay him the £60,000 owed by Imagine, much of it for the mass duplication done over Christmas in an attempt to prevent other software houses having games ready. He was in despair. But Mark Butler was not available, and the Lawson/Hetherington faction had disappeared.

According to Bruce Everiss they had already made their plans well beforehand, and events would appear to back him up. What he told Paul Andersen, is substantially the same as what he told me over the phone back in July. ‘I’m not a signatory on the bank, or anything, but I’ve had a look at the financial records of the company and there has never been a VAT return (Imagine had been running for 18 months and should therefore have made at least 6 VAT returns by law), never a bank conciliation, never a creditor’s ledger control account, never any budgeting, never any cash flow forecasting, no cost centres, not even an invoice authorisation procedure. Just no financial control at all.’

All these financial aspects were supposedly the responsibility of Ian Hetherington. Paul Andersen recalls that Hetherington was usually unapproachable during filming and had little if anything to say to the film crew.

Is it possible that Hetherington had already sussed out the true financial position of Imagine right at the start of his tenure? It would be odd if he hadn’t, since the cracks were there even before Christmas 83. What must surely have occurred to him is that Imagine was capable of making a lot of money, and that the megagames were going to make them all very rich. A lot of Imagine was now defunct and wasting money. Debts were getting to be astronomical, various attempts to raise money in the City had failed or been abandoned. If the company went, so would the investment in the megagames, so too would their personal finances.

Everiss again: ‘Dave has become anxious about losing his big house in Coldy and about his kids at expensive schools and Ian has become greedy and wants to become a millionaire overnight. So Ian has presented this Finchspeed plan to Dave. Dave, grasping at straws, has taken it on board — which means that only 20 people will be employed.’

THE RESCUE PLAN

Finchspeed. The name first hit the press after the Imagine collapse. Finchspeed was the new company founded by Dave Lawson and Ian Hetherington for what appears to be the express purpose of acquiring all the Imagine assets. As a result of canvassing opinion and currying favour with those programmers whom Lawson and Hetherington considered ‘sympathetic’ to them (rather than the Butler/Everiss faction), jobs were offered in the new company to approximately 20 people — in fact those needed to continue work on and complete the megagames.

At the time the Finchspeed documents were drawn up very few people knew about the Lawson/Hetherington plans. It seems Mark Butler had no idea and Bruce Everiss certainly didn’t. ‘They didn’t tell Mark about this until the very last minute when they let him in on a third of Finchspeed, ‘ Everiss told Paul Andersen later. It seems incredible that the duo thought they could get away with transferring assets from a company part-owned by Butler, without his knowledge. Stephen Blower was also in the dark. Later, he was to be held jointly responsible in law for Imagine’s debts. He told us, ‘I’m still liable for the overdraft, which was £112,000 at the last count. If it came to court I think I would have a good case against them, as has been shown last time I took them to court.’ Blower appears to have maintained that Butler and Lawson should have protected his interests better, and the Courts have agreed. Butler and Lawson were ordered to pay Blower back the £89,000, but failed to do so. At a later hearing the Judge said that he ought to send Butler and Lawson to jail, for refusing a court order to pay, but they were let off on the grounds that in jail they would be unable to put matters right and that it was in the best interests of both parties if they were allowed to continue their present work to be enabled to pay Blower.

Although the Finchspeed arrangements were made in secrecy, it did not quite escape the notice of the BBC 1 team, who actually filmed Dave Lawson signing a legal document relating to some aspect of Finchspeed. This shot appeared in the ‘rough cut’ of the programme (at the time of writing it is not known whether it remains), but because this deal was largely outside the scope of the programme, the shot is just there as visual background.

On a later occasion the film crew were also present when Dave Lawson’s wife came into his office to get papers signed for a passport shortly before he left for America with Hetherington. With the winding-up orders going through the courts unopposed, Lawson and Butler prepared to disappear from the scene.

On the telephone, Hetherington told us, ‘I didn’t run away anywhere. I spent four weeks, day and night writing a business report. I was in America for fund-raising, and we were damn near successful, but we had to have our trip cut short because of the goings-on at Imagine.’ He added, ‘I’m sick to death of people insinuating that anything untoward happened at Imagine.’

In retrospect it seems incredible that they should leave the country at such a time, unless one supposes that they felt unable to face the imminent disaster. Protests that the trip was a realistic fund-raising exercise for Imagine seem undermined in the face of the writs going unopposed through the courts before and during the trip. As soon as the two men had gone, numerous creditors, trying for weeks to get some reply to their demands for overdue payment, were stumped because with Lawson and Hetherington gone, there was no one able to cope with the financial problems. It’s hard to accept Hetherington’s comments to us at face value when (whether intended or not) his absence put a total block on payments. Yet equally it must have been clear to him that payments could not be met.

WINDING DOWN

With knowledge that VNU had successfully issued a winding-up order on Imagine, the rest of the company’s creditors began jamming the switchboard to find out what was going on. CRASH was one of them. The official line was that things were quite normal. But no one knew where Lawson, Hetherington and Butler were. Everiss told Paul Andersen, ‘Mark didn’t know where they’d gone. The only person they told was Andrew Sinclair, who basically’s just David’s gopher, and Andrew has been spying on Mark and myself and reporting on a daily basis to them in San Francisco.’

One press mention did suggest that the two directors were in the States trying to raise venture capital in Silicon Chip Valley to save Imagine, but this would appear to be out of character with their recent actions in moving assets from Imagine to Finchspeed, and gives strength to Bruce Everiss who said, ‘All they’re trying to do is finance Finchspeed with capital from San Francisco.’

The significance of the passport signing became more apparent when it was realised that both men had taken their wives with them on the trip to America at a cost estimated by Everiss to be possibly as high as £10,000, and that at a time when creditors were crawling all over the building trying to get paid.

On the day Mark returned from the races, wrapped in bandages and driven by someone else, he arrived at Imagine headquarters to find the bailiffs were in. One of the items they impounded was his pride and joy, the Ferarri Boxer. Paul Andersen recalls that he seemed stunned and totally out of his depth. He didn’t know what to do or who to blame; it seemed he was genuinely unaware that things had reached such a state or that his co-directors had fled the country and were in hiding (as everyone said) incommunicado. So closely did the TV crew follow the proceedings that they almost had their camera gear locked into the building by the bailiffs!

Mark went off, to return two or three days later before the assembled staff and told them in a brief speech that it was over, that he hoped they would get paid what they were owed if it was possible, and that he would try to find alternative employment for as many as possible. During the period between Lawson and Hetherington vanishing and the bailiffs arriving, life in the Imagine HQ appears to have been as disorganised and dream-like as it was in Hitler’s Berlin bunker. In reply to Paul Andersen’s question about what had been happening, Everiss replied: ‘Well, there was a whole pile of people just playing games there and they’re hiding from the camera. If you go round the corner here, by the exit, you’ll find there’s a big pile of empty fire extinguishers because there’s been fire extinguisher fights all week. That’s been the main event.’

As far as the BBC team could see, the staff were mostly sitting around, watching videos and waiting for the end. Everiss was left with trying to find jobs for about 60 staff, those left behind by the new Finchspeed crew, and in the end he felt morally obliged to resign. ‘Dave and Ian, being too much of cowards to face up to me, have told Mark that they wouldn’t want me here when they returned,’ he said.

That was largely it for Imagine Software Limited, but not for the people involved. Finchspeed has gone on to develop the megagame Bandersnatch for Sinclair Research to bring out on the QL in the New Year, with a royalty from each unit sold going back to the Imagine liquidators to help pay back the company’s debts. It is a critical time for its directors, Dave Lawson and Ian Hetherington, who are naturally afraid of any adverse publicity. Even as I was in London seeing the rough cut of the TV programme, Ian Hetherington was on the phone trying to get hold of Paul Andersen. When I returned to Ludlow that Friday evening, I was greeted with a message that Hetherington had rung me to find out the same thing, having heard that we were writing about the story. Unfortunately for him he spoke to our Financial Director, and was told that as he still owed us £5,825, it wasn’t sound sense to bother us!

We phoned him on the following Monday morning, when he spoke to Kevin Foster and gave him the quotes used in this article. He also implied that if we printed anything he didn’t like, we would be making him a rich man. Implications of libel actions are all very well. The fact remains that CRASH along with other publications, had been promised payments by both Imagine’s promotional department and (in our case) by Hetherington personally. These never arrived. But at the time, he and Lawson were assigning assets out of Imagine into another company which they both part-owned at a time when Imagine was hopelessly in debt, and desperately required those assets if it was to have a hope of staying alive. Recognition of this fact can be seen in that a royalty on every copy of Bandersnatch sold by Sinclair will be going back to Imagine’s liquidators.

Some of the programmers are now working freelance on games for Ocean, and others including John Gibson have founded a new Liverpool company with partial backing from Ocean called Denton Designs and their first game, an adventure entitled Gift From the Gods should be released through Ocean shortly. Mark Butler is working with his father in another software company called Voyager. Stephen Blower worked for the year as a freelance and is now at Ocean, where he has recently been made a director. Of the collapse of Imagine he had this to say, ‘Through greed, or little boys playing at big business, or whatever it was that carried it all they ruined something that was worthwhile carrying on with.’

Hetherington added, ‘My attitude has always been that it’s all over now, and what we’ll do is quickly get our lives back together again. I don’t want people bringing back something that happened six or seven months ago. What we’re doing now, Dave and I, is improving on megagames to produce something quite startling. We want to bow out at the top.’

In summing up his unique experience in watching the death of the software giant BBC director Paul Andersen said, ‘It was a fascinating time in a city at the focus of the software business. It’s a shame it all fell apart — there were a lot of talented people there who were let down. It’s a bit like a movie that never got made, all the technicians and all the energy, but the producers failed. It’s going to be interesting to see what will come of them all.’

With the finish of Imagine the TV programme may have looked as though it was over too. However Ocean bought a major portion of Imagine’s assets and so Paul Andersen had a finale thrown in his lap. Filming continued at Ocean’s offices in Manchester, as they worked on Hunchback II. The BBC may not have got the story of the Imagine megagames, but at least they managed to follow the development of computer games from concept to release, and in the process they saw a fascinating slice of corporate life.

SABRE MAN IN HIS FIRST ADVENTURE

THE stench of the jungle finally reached my nose. It came as such a shock that it took several seconds to realise its significance. My eyeballs rolled to behold the view. In a flicker of Neurons my previously incapacitated brain oriented itself to my whereabouts. The Jungle — a clearing of some magnitude. Trees, plants, black things with holes in the middle, bristling with bristles and coloured with colours.

Within me, something stirred. Lunch, I reckoned, but no, it was only my heart beating fast. Fear swept through my body, and out of my feet, as a voice, low and fearsome, rumbled through the trees.

‘Welcome, mortal, to the stench filled jungle of ACG.’

It sounded like Terry Wogan — perhaps this is Alton Towers.

‘I am the guardian of the Jungle and its air freshener. You have been selected to carry out the task of collecting the four parts of the Amulet of ACG. If you complete the task beset you, the Amulet, cast in gold, will be awarded to the best mapper of the Jungle.’

‘What do I get?’ I retorted respectfully.

‘The air freshener, infidel. However, I may also consider releasing you. So, morsel of Swiss Cheese, prepare to be spewed into the Jungle.’

I did not like the idea of being spewed anywhere, but replied cordially, ‘Thank you, Terry.’

As I was transported, or whatever, I am sure I could hear him sobbing. I can’t think why — I didn’t insult him — whoever he was.

EVERY muscle in my body seized up as I was spewed into the Jungle. Soon, however, my legs unknotted themselves and I became aware of my surroundings.

I was in a similar clearing to the last one, but with one major difference. I was wearing some really ludicrous clothes.

Upon my head was a pith helmet, and I was clad in khaki. My instincts told me I was mad, but the label on the shorts read C&A 100% Cotton. Figures. Only C&A could produce something like this.

Next came another major revelation. Hanging loosely on my back was an elongated letter opener. Perhaps Mr. Wogan isn’t so evil after all — this will be useful for opening coconuts and passion fruit.

At that time I was still in a daze, but as sure as eggs are eggs, I was not alone. The ground in front of me heaved and a small hole appeared. From it emanated a nasty-looking creature, resembling a spider. Without thinking I drew my letter opener. Stab, stab, swipe, schylik! It disappeared. This was not the last time I would see the thing, as more appeared all the while, and suffered the same fate.

I noticed something in an alcove on the other side of the clearing. It looked remarkably like a pith helmet of the sort I had on, sitting on a pile of wood.

Gadzooks! — a grave! Another unfortunate had also ventured here and been reaped. In a mark of respect I crossed it, but as I picked it up — splat — it had gone.

At that same moment another fiend appeared. This time a very vicious looking bush fire, sweeping across the clearing at me. Seeking a way out, I dashed blatantly through a gap in the trees...

UPON leaving the clearing I met another fellow human person. I first caught sight of him running from the East, waving frantically with spear and shield. I reasoned that he may have been in peril. As he approached, a snake-like something appeared directly in his path. Being the civil and public spirited person that I am, I called to him to look out. He seemed to take no notice, and then had the audacity to walk unharmed over the creature.

Assuming that he understood the Queen’s English, I exclaimed, ‘That’s good. How do you do it?’

There came no reply. He just ran at me. Again, letting my instincts take over, I drew my weapon and stabbed at him. Too far away. I inadvertently returned my sword to its sheath. As I did all went black, I was thrust backwards and slammed into a wall of trees. He was still advancing. I stood up, drew my swordly thing and... The bounder just waddled off in the other direction.

‘Um Bongo,’ it uttered just as a Hippo passed it.

Hippopotamus — a big, purple, hairy lump of an animal, bounding towards me like a sloppy puppy. It looked too cute to stab, but maintaining my stiff upper lip attitude, I poked it just for good measure. As it raced by, I felt a twinge of guilt.

Presently I reached a corner, and took it to be faced by yet another corner. As I rounded the latter, more nasties appeared, this time a scorpion and a rather moronic looking parrot. A short slaughter later, I found myself headed North, around several disorienting passages and into a clearing not unlike the one from which I started.

Similar, that is, except for one thing. In the corner, glimmering in sunlight, was a quarter piece of the extraordinary Amulet. I hastened towards it.

THE air was filled with a dulcet tune, and the voice of the guardian reappeared.

‘One piece is all that you have found,
collect three more and outward bound.’

‘Very nice, Terry,’ I whispered, sarcastically.

‘Shut up, and get on with your impossible task, crouton features.’

At that I was returned to my normal insane condition and dwardled off, by now feeling rather fatigued.

So my travels continued, for a short time anyway, because I came across an extremely odd oddment, in the shape of a very odd bottle. This bottle was in the shape of a man, and about the size of an Action Man. Bravely, I unscrewed the head. Why, I don't know, I mean I’m not getting paid for this (you sure aren’t — Ed). Within the bottle lay a liquid. Goodo — I thought — perhaps it’s tea. So I drank some.

‘Extra Life!’ bellowed Terry Wogan.

‘Spot on!’ I replied, not quite knowing what he meant.

After that brief, but very poignant encounter, I trotted off again, slaughtering innocent animals, prodding hippos and and generally savaging the savages.

Soon I stumbled over something new. A monstrous flower in the middle of the path. When I first saw it, it was only an iddy little thing, but as I approached it burst into flower, a big yellow obtrusion onto which I trod.

That I regretted. For as soon as I squashed it, I was left immobilised for an uncomfortable period of time (— so what's new)?

Still, after my bout of immobilitis, I was back on my blistered feet, flying along at a cracking pace, until...

‘GADZOOKS!’ was my first word. The shock was so great I nearly fainted.

As I passed yet another corner, I waltzed straight into an enormous wolfy thing, spurring and gleeping and running with great power. With nowhere to turn, I drew my letter opener in a pathetic last stand. An Englishman should go down fighting. I did too.

As I cascaded across the undergrowth, I half expected to see Terry Wogan descending from the trees, releasing upon the foul creature the wrath of ten thousand mutant space invaders. To the contrary, however, he just laughed and commented to the effect that I was incompetent. What a liberty! I shall never listen to his program again! Sabre Wulf indeed!

When I had got over that minor trauma, I meebled off again and eventually reached a forbidding mountain range. How I managed to reach there, I don't know — the Jungle is more confusing than the Barbican.

After obtaining another potion thingy, I clambered along the side of the mountains, hoping for a way out. Sure enough, there was one, but before I took it, I ran into another triffidy thing, this time a blue one.

Whizzo! — I became super fast and invulnerable! Double Whizzo!

I sped off at double speed, all over the place, and presently arrived at a nasty’s hut. The door was open, but on trying, it appeared I could not get in! I decided to wait for tea time, when I was sure they would return. However, none appeared, so I thought it better to depart.

IT is now along time since I wrote last. Since then I have obtained a further two parts of the Amulet.

Each time I get a new piece, Terry Wogan cuts in with his tune and piece of insane poetry. I never knew he had it in him. Come to think of it, I wish I’d never found out.

I’ve found plenty of things around here. Little ponds are all over the place, but I don’t have any swimming shorts, so am unable to bathe. Objects of all sorts are in abundance.

As regards food, I've been really disappointed by the lack of exotic fruits, and women are in short supply too. On that account I wouldn’t wish this place to my mother-in-law. For some (Percy Throwup) this place is paradise. Being an avid watcher of his spot on Blue Peter, I’ve been able to identify many plants.

I have discovered three different triffid variants. One, a vile mauve, causes wholesale de-orientation. It takes a real mental effort to do anything in this state. There are red ones too, which slow one down and make one invulnerable for a short time. This is all very well but, as a matter of patriotism, I’d rather be dead than red.

The final triffid plant is the most boring. It returns one to one’s normal useless mode. In my opinion that’s not on. It never happened to Tarzan.

My present position is in a corner bordered on one side by a stone wall. Perhaps it is the lair of Wogan. If I get there with all four pieces of his wotsit, perhaps he will lend me his air freshener.

EUREKA! — I’ve found it! The final quarter of the Amul-wotsit! Now to find the keeper chappie — the final chapter, the end, finis etc. I’ll soon be free to go back to my modest flat in Islington and read the Financial Times with my slippers on! Spiffing — what?

I’m nigh certain that Terry is situated in the cave to my left. I can see it now — the front page of the Daily Telegraph — Islington Business Man Escapes Stench Filled Jungle of ACG.

Perhaps an O.B.E. is in order. Me — an O.B.E. — perhaps even a Knightlorehood. Here it is. The cave. The Guardian’s lair! Nearly there. Oooh.

‘Who are you?’

‘I’m the Guardian of the air freshener of the gate. ’

‘You’re not Terry Wogan?’

‘Terry who? I see you have the whole of the Amulet. Good. You may advance. ’

‘Does this mean I can go home to my wife, overdraft and O.B.E.?’

‘Certainly not. ’

‘I say, that’s not cricket — I'm a British citizen, I command certain rights. I — ‘

‘Shut up you posh twerp. I don’t care it you’re the Queen’s uncle. You’re going on.’

‘Where to?’

‘The Underwurlde. ’

‘Is Terry Wogan there?’

‘English cretin. What’s he got against the Irish?’

And so ended the last page of the Charles P Cohen diaries, which were found lying outside the cave of the Guardian by another poor fool had had passed through the Jungle on his way to the Underwurlde. He managed to Data Post it to us before so going.

Where are they now, these heroes? Hopping around in their suits of armour, no doubt, mapping books and diaries in hand...

IT SEEMS SUITABLE to announce the results of the CRASH READERS’ AWARDS 1984 in this issue of CRASH because it marks the end of our first year of existence. Unlike most other computer magazines CRASH started life as a mail order catalogue which reviewed games as a part of its service, leaving customers to make up their own minds about actually buying. Because of this earlier background, some of that philosophy carried over into the magazine. The idea was to act as a service not only to readers, but also to the software industry — a means of bringing both sides together. All too often, people ‘suppose’ what others want and magazines go along with it regardless. Only time will tell whether or not CRASH has had any significant effect on either software producers or software buyers, but it seems logical to let readers say their piece on what software and hardware they have liked best during the past year. These are the results of the 1984 CRASH READERS’ AWARDS...

BEST PLATFORM GAME

MONTY MOLE
by GREMLIN GRAPHICS

One argument about the ‘Oscars’ is that it is the films towards the end of the ‘Oscar’ year that tend to win the awards, with the earlier ones tending to be forgotten. That’s as may be, but Gremlin’s Monty Mole won by a comfortable margin over Jet Set Willy, taking over 40% of the total vote. Third in line was Frank N. Stein from P.S.S.

Written by Peter Harrap, Monty Mole sprang to fame via the TV news, with its timely caricature of Miners’ leader Arthur Scargill, but it was the complexity of playing the platform style game that gave it appeal, along with its lively graphics. One reviewer said, ‘The graphics, design and animation of all the moving characters is excellent, amusing and attractive, and that adds quite a bit to the playability of the game.’

BEST MAZE GAME

SABRE WULF
by ULTIMATE

There could hardly be any doubt as to the outcome in this category and Ultimate’s Sabre Wulf won hands down, getting 49% of the vote, with the next being Cavelon from Ocean with 11% and then Antics from Bug-Byte.

Despite arguments about Ultimate’s steep price increase and whether Sabre Wulf was merely an Atic Atic with leaves on, the game has caused more praising mail than any other game we can think of this year. The graphics were excellent, and the game a tough one to play, though perhaps not quite as hard as Atic Atac. The sort of excitement that a new Ultimate game can produce is summed up neatly by one reviewer who said, ‘After waiting a week in a state of extreme anxiety for the phone call to say IT’S HERE! I almost fainted when it came!’ The same reviewer has recently been in a state suitable for hospitalisation with the wait for Underwurlde and Knight Lore!

BEST SHOOT EM UP

AD ASTRA
by GARGOYLE GAMES

The extraordinary solid 3D graphics of Ad Astra launched Gargoyle Games, and CRASH was proud to be the first to spot it in the May issue, when we said things like, ‘The stunning graphics are the first thing to hit you in the eye...’

‘With its superb graphics, speed and mass of alien weaponry, Ad Astra is a difficult and addictive game to play.’

It was a comfortable win over Micromega’s Code Name Mat and Black Hawk from Creative Sparks. We have to admit some puzzlement that Micromega’s Death Chase didn’t crop up near the top of this category, but Gargoyle’s win is well deserved, and the Birmingham-based software house is set to give us more surprises in 1985 with their unique graphics.

BEST (OVERALL) ARCADE GAME

DALEY THOMPSON’S DECATHLON
by OCEAN

This was a pretty tight fought category, as you might imagine. Decathlon took it with 17% of the total vote, closely followed by Jet Set Willy with 15% of the total vote and Sabre Wulf with 12%.

Being the year of the Olympics, 1984 saw a spate of ‘Track and Field’ type games appearing in the early summer — some are still appearing even now, but clearly Ocean’s glamorous tie up with British star decathlete Daley Thompson, was set for the top. At CRASH we had a good chance to play the game as it was used to test the joysticks for the ‘Battlefield’ article. The reviewers liked it, even after seeing the CBM64 version, with the only gripe being that Daley looked as though he had been washed in Bold!

BEST TEXT/GRAPHICAL ADVENTURE

LORDS OF MIDNIGHT
by BEYOND SOFTWARE

One of the most firm wins in any category goes to Beyond’s Lords of Midnight, which received 51% of the vote, way ahead of Sherlock from Melbourne House with 10% and Adventure International’s The Hulk. Perhaps the surprising point is that Lords of Midnight is more of a strategy wargame than an adventure, but clearly, the way it has combined all the various elements within its framework has impressed enormously, and no one could possibly argue that it isn’t loaded with graphics of a very high standard indeed. Derek Brewster kicked off his review with the words, ‘Beyond have produced a game of immense complexity that transcends the simple word-matching of the mainstream adventure and in many respects more resembles a strategy wargame.’

BEST SIMULATION

FIGHTER PILOT
by DIGITAL INTEGRATION

Few would deny Digital Integration’s right to take the category with their superb program Fighter Pilot, which has remained consistently high in the CRASH Hotline chart for some time — a proof of its high popularity. It wins comfortably with a high 35% of the vote from Psion’s Match Point which received 18% and Micromega’s Full Throttle with 14%. Written by Digital’s co-owner Dave Marshall, himself a fighter pilot, this sophisticated program was the main attention grabber at the ZX Microfair where it has first launched in February. Much was due to the fact that before Fighter Pilot flight simulations always seemed a bit slow, this was the first to offer arcade games something to get their teeth into.

BEST STRATEGY/SIMULATION

MUGSY
by MELBOURNE HOUSE

A rather peculiar category this one — hard to describe accurately, but everyone seems to have got the idea. Outright winner with 18% of the total vote is Melbourne House with their superbly graphic Mugsy, another popular CRASH charter. Not too far behind was Incentive with their look at the software business called Millionaire, and just behind that comes the ubiquitous Beyond with Lords of Midnight again. It would be fair to add that Football Manager received a very high vote, but as the program dates from 83 it isn’t eligible.

Mugsy scores so heavily with its tremendous comic style graphics, suited to a game set in the roaring twenties when hoods were really hoods, and people were assets to be squeezed.

BEST WARGAME

STONKERS
by IMAGINE

There was a fair selection of wargames voted for which means that the percentages gained by the top three are fairly low. Imagine’s colourful Stonkers came out ahead with 25% of the overall vote, very closely followed by Lords of Midnight. Further back was Red Shift’s elegant Rebel Star Raiders. CRASH was only medium impressed by Stonkers, but admitted that the game was different to any wargame before it, one reviewer saying, ‘The game appealed to me much more than most of the other wargames due to its higher quality of graphics, large scale and simple controls.’ The bug which causes the program to crash was noted, but to our knowledge Imagine never corrected it before they crashed themselves.

BEST BOARD/CARD/PUZZLE GAME

EIGHTS
by ATLANTIS SOFTWARE

The budget priced game from Atlantis was a clear winner in this category, although there were masses of votes for games like Scrabble and Cyrus IS Chess, both of which pre-date 84. Eights is an elegantly written program based on a clever and playable card game, and certainly at its price is excellent value. Not far behind came Artic’s Death Chess 5000 and DK’Tronics’ Jumbly.

STATE OF THE ART AWARD

LORDS OF MIDNIGHT
by BEYOND SOFTWARE

Beyond’s supremacy in this category is undoubted with 34% of the total vote. Second is Ultimate with Sabre Wulf with 12% and Jet Set Willy coming in third from Software Projects. Lords of Midnight author, Mike Singleton, deserves the award for the development of this popular game, which seems to occupy the time and imagination of so many people. Derek Brewster said, ‘Many features of the game are new or are developed to an elaborate degree setting new high standards in Spectrum software.’

BEST TEXT-ONLY ADVENTURE

SNOWBALL
by LEVEL 9 COMPUTING

Text-only adventures still represent a large chunk of the market, with Level 9 one of the most respected (although they too have turned to graphics with their latest release). Snowball won this category hands down, with Dennis through the Drinking Glass by Applications coming in second and Incentive’s Mountains of Ket following close behind. There were many votes in this category for games which were not copyrighted in 1984, and were thus ineligible.

In adventures it is usual to boast of the number of locations, but Snowball probably takes the biscuit with over 7,000. Of the game, Derek Brewster said, ‘This is very much my idea of an adventure and is set to become a classic.’

BEST UTILITY PROGRAM

THE QUILL
by GILSOFT

This was a very hard fought category with Gilsoft just pipping Oasis to the finishing line by one vote! So the machine code adventure writing utility The Quill, another long stayer in the CRASH Hotline chart, takes the award from the graphics designer White Lightning. Third was Melbourne Draw from Melbourne House. Certainly Gilsoft have made an appreciable dent in adventuring consciousness with The Quill, not only by offering BASIC programmers the opportunity to write complex machine code adventures, but also in spawning a plethora of commercially marketed adventure games from numerous software houses, many of which have been excellent. To complement The Quill, there is now The Illustrator, a graphics designer specially created to work in conjunction with The Quill.

BUMMER OF THE YEAR

KOSMIC PIRATE
by ELEPHANT SOFTWARE

The top contenders in this category were numerous! That the winner received only 17% of the total vote goes to show that most of you have your favourite bummers, and they are often quite varied. Following very closely on the heels of Kosmik Pirate comes the megadventure Voyage Into the Unknown from Mastertronic, and trailing in as a sad third Formula One from Spirit Software.

BEST HARDWARE ADD-ON

COMCON JOYSTICK INTERFACE
by FREL LIMITED

It would only be fair to point out that the winner by votes was the Currah Microspeech unit, but this is not eligible as the unit was released in 83 and not 84. But Frel were not so far behind in votes, as this essentially simple plug-in joystick interface has proved enormously popular and within a fairly short space of time too. The second most voted for add-on was the Ram Electronics Ram Turbo interface. Perhaps the significant factor in the popularity of the Comcon interface is its simplicity and flexibility, working as it does with virtually any game, and programmable in seconds as the game loads. Also, because of its simple construction, the price is among the lowest on the market — an added advantage.

BEST LOOKING ADVERT TO APPEAR IN A MAGAZINE

SABRE WULF
from ULTIMATE

This category certainly aroused a lot of interest, and a wide spread of choices too, reflected in the low percentage scored by the winner, Ultimate’s Sabre Wulf ad with 11% of the total vote. A fairly close second was the Software Projects’ ad for Jet Set Willy, followed by the strikingly simple ad from Mikro-Gen for Pyjamarama. While no one could really argue that all three adverts are not well designed and attractive, we wonder how much opinions have been swayed by the games themselves!?

SPECTRUM PLUS KEYBOARD

Newcomers to the Spectrum will be faced with a difficult choice. To Spectrum or to Spectrum+, that is the question here.

The ZX 81 membrane keyboard complaints had not even faded, when the Spectrum rubber keys were already getting the full treatment from not too happy users. Given the fact that most competitors have a typewriter style keyboard, there was no way that this situation could continue. True enough, Sir Clive has had to give in to the complaints and provide the Spectrum with a better input facility. His main objective obviously is to bring the Spectrum in line with the likes of Commodore and MSX. By doing this he has eliminated one of the major arguments against the purchase of the Spectrum, but at a cost. The price of the Spectrum+ has nearly reached the Commodore level, and the question is whether the extra fifty pounds are wisely invested. Anybody expecting to have got away from the membrane style keyboard will very soon be disillusioned. A look at the construction of the keyboard will soon verify, why the action of the new keyboard does not live up to the cosmetic improvements. Hidden beneath the excellent double injection moulded keys is a modified version of the rubber mat which is responsible for the soggy return force of the keys. The collapsible domes are actuated by a nylon plunger, which provides guidance for the long travel. The early complaints of keytop losses is due to an error in tooling, which does not provide a pressfit between the plunger and the keytop. There should be no problem in correcting this problem on further production. The new key lay-out with the extra keys has increased the layers in the membrane. The extra keys improve program input tremendously. Of significance are especially the extended mode, the edit and delete and the punctuation keys. The special cursor keys are especially useful for the edit mode. Anybody considering upgrading the standard Spectrum with an add-on keyboard will find that for the same extra cost the quality of the key action will definitely be better, but that very few add-on keyboards will offer the extra key facilities provided with the Spectrum+ and if so, at a higher cost. The annotation of the keys is excellent and the doubleshot technique guarantees unlimited life and no fading of the lettering. None of the add-on keyboards can match the Sinclair version. Criticism has been raised for the lack of colour coding as with the original Spectrum keyboard, but the various modes are clearly defined by the positioning of the legends.

In conclusion, it will be very difficult to make an outright decision as to whether to go for an add-on keyboard or to go for the official Sinclair version. Touch typists won’t have trouble in reaching a fast decision, but I suspect 99% of Spectrum owners don’t fall into this category. For these it will be a matter of personal choice.

MODEM 85?

FRANCO FREY PEERS AHEAD AT A NEW HARDWARE YEAR

1985 could well be the year of the modems. Several companies have developed low-cost units which enable Spectrums to communicate via the telephone lines. The technology is there, but what about the need for this device? An obvious plus is the access to Teletext services such as Prestel, Ceefax, Oracle, Micronet 800 etc. Whether these services offer enough in 1985 to warrant the capital investment of a modem remains to be seen. How many households have a TV set with Teletext facilities which, after the initial few days of curiosity, never get used again? Electronic mailbox services may prove too expensive for private users, but who knows what the postal rates will be like next year. The modem may link-up computers between friends, but many will be put off by the enormous telephone bills. Still, perhaps this is a new way of transmitting love letters, or copies of pirated games, or just generally making new penfriends (microfriends, in this case).

A fair number of Spectrum owners will by now have acquired the long awaited microdrives. 1985 will probably see the new waferdrives take off. Whether the extra reliability is worth the extra price will depend on the individual. (The price of the waferdrive cartridges certainly exceeds the Sinclair versions.) Personally I see more use in a low cost floppy disk drive system. Just to prove the point, Timex have launched a 3-inch disk system which also incorporates a communications device with two serial ports. Basically it is an interface/microdrive replacement providing superior speed and reliability to the microdrive unit. This could be the real small business user upgrade for 1985, especially with the promise of a cpm upgrade.

If you are looking for a hard copy system, the situation has improved drastically. The Alphacom 32 printer is the lowest entry point perhaps, but nevertheless it is very reliable. Anything more serious requires either a Centronics interface or the Interface 1 serial communications facility. Either way there are a large number of professional, low cost matrix and daisy wheel printers or even low colour plotters which have come within the reach of most home users, and next year will see the prices drop even more.

TV manufacturers have realised the potential of TV monitor combos, and the home user will combine the purchase of a computer monitor with that of a second TV set (at a normal television set price). The improvement on the picture quality is well worth the expense — that’s if you can afford it, of course. After the lightpen and the digital tracer it is the turn of the touchtablet; this is certainly the best drawing input device to use, but with a price tag higher than the Spectrum itself it has a somewhat limited appeal. Robotics suffers from the same illness. Although there is a lot of interest in this new technology, the products suffer from a far too high entry level as regards pricing. This is the reason why 1985 will not be the year of R2D2. But perhaps it will be the year to switch to an improved computer. Sinclair has indicated the launch of a new portable computer with CMOS power requirements and flat screen technology. Microdrives will be included in the package. Better still would be the inclusion of the expected hard disk-like wafer memory. Whether the flat screen display will be a colour version or not has not been indicated (the Japanese have a brilliant colour LCD screen for their portable TV production), so it is uncertain whether this is a games machine or not. Let’s hope that the Polaroid battery gets left behind, as anyone who as been using the Sinclair flat screen television could inform you of the diabolical costs of the same.

Looking forward to a new year can sometimes be as tricky as making pools’ predictions. Either one gets it right and joins the self-congratulatory ‘I told you so’ prophets, or one gets it entirely wrong and admits as much by keeping a distinctly low profile. On the other hand, one can play it safe and give away broad, vague predictions and alter their interpretation as time goes by.

I will leave the doomsday prophecies to the more pessimistic onlookers, who have predicted the collapse of the computer games industry before Sinclair became a household name. Computer games are here to stay. In some way or another they will continue to capture the interest of the game-loving crowds. Although the games software has travelled light years and reached an unrecognisable level in comparison with late 1983, the peripherals history still seems to be in its infancy. Apart from the various peripherals which are essential and convert the Spectrum into a minimum configuration games machine (joystick interface and sound amplifiers), very little has yet to make an impact in the add-ons market. The Currah Microspeech unit, which seemed to be the success story of yesterday, has not managed to make a sufficient impact on the software houses, and very few games provide an incentive to splash out on a speech synthesiser. The much-loved Track Ball still hasn’t appeared in large numbers, but this could easily change in 1985 if the price drops to a reasonable level. But if the real advantage of the Track Ball — which is undoubtedly the proportional speed or position control — is to be felt, a special interface will be required, and this in turn will have to be written. The Track Ball will face an even greater problem than the speech synthesiser. The Stack Light Rifle suffered a similar fate, and even today only a handful of programs have been written for this excellent games peripheral. The buyers felt cheated by the sheer lack of software support.

MSX?

1985 should see the make or break of MSX in this country. Several MSX extensions will be launched late next year. Anyone who has been to the computer trade shows in the Far East will recognise the hardware potential behind MSX. Probably the most exceptional facility is the link-up of the video disc system for the arcade-style, random access video backup. With video disc system prices falling to an acceptable level, this means that highly complex arcade games will be made available to you in the living room. Several systems will be seen where the MSX home computer will be part of the Hi-Fi tower and fully integrated with the other home leisure equipment, such as music centre, TV etc. In this context the computer could be seen as controller or organiser of home activities. Your evenings could well be pre-programmed (what a thought!) and your centre would provide you with dim lights, 50 minutes of Dallas, the news, then a spot of relaxing music, an hour or so of arcade adventure, half an hour communications time with your modern associates and friends, and then finally switch itself off, making sure that when you leave the room the lights and heating go off as well. Not really my cup of tea, but who knows, I could have a different outlook altogether at the end of 1985. In the meantime I’ll stick to my Spectrum and hang on more and more peripherals until the power supply packs up....

There is a staggering number of monthly and weekly magazines in existence. In the computer field alone, W. H. Smith shops may well have to find shelf space for as many as 80 titles. Each title has its own style and its own ‘look’. Readers may well be forgiven for thinking that a magazine just ‘happens’ every month, but behind the style and the look a lot of effort goes into it throughout many stages. This article doesn’t set out to show how every magazine arrives at your newsagent every month, we’re just looking at CRASH...

CRASH is perhaps a little unusual compared with most other computer magazines. For a start off it is not produced by one of the major publishing houses which include EMAP (Computer & Video Games, Sinclair User), Argus Specialist Publications (Home Computing), VNU Business Publications (Personal Computer -Weekly, -World and -Games) and the giant IPC (Big K, and through its Business Press section, Your Computer). All of these organisations have their headquarters in or around London. CRASH is published by Newsfield Limited, based in the small Shropshire town of Ludlow — about as far away from computers as you could imagine. But that’s one of the wonders of the home computer — they’re everywhere!

It was one of the major points in the concept of CRASH when it started a little over a year ago, that reader input would be an important aspect of the magazine, and in the light of that we have always tried to be straightforward with any comments on the contents of the publication. I doubt, for instance, that any other title in existence has had such a strong two-way dialogue with its readers over magazine aspects like spelling or setting errors, as we have had over this year! Continuing that policy of openness, we felt it would be interesting to give readers a brief insight into how the magazine is actually produced, starting from the moment one issue has ‘gone to bed.’

‘Going to bed’ might be a good place to start — it’s what most CRASH staff feel like doing when an issue is finished! But the phrase goes back to the earliest days of printing, when pages were impressed with their contents on huge machines where the text was etched onto blocks of copper laid on a solid ‘bed’ and the paper was pressed onto the inked plates by a heavy roller. Things have changed quite a bit, as we shall see...

A daily production meeting taking place around the editor’s desk. Present are Roger Kean (editor), Oliver Frey (art editor), David Western (production design), Matthew Uffindell (software reviews), and Kevin Foster (assistant editor.)

THE FUNCTIONS

As in most things, there are departments to CRASH which each have their own responsibilities. Broadly these are Editorial, Production, Advertisement, Administration and Finance. Finance falls outside the scope of this article. Editorial organises the written material, Production designs and lays out the issues, Advertisement secures advertisers and their ads, and Administration (naturally) largely cocks up everyone else’s work!

Editorial, Production and Advertisement are very often kept quite separate in most organisations, but not so with CRASH. Each issue is planned at the time of working on it, and it is important to keep all departments closely in touch with each other, often complementing each others’ efforts. It is also worth bearing in mind that although this article may make it appear that things happen in clear-cut stages, usually all the processes are going on at once — it’s chaos at times, or, as the favourite phrase would have it, ‘it’s a nightmare!’

PLANNING

The first thing to be decided is of how many pages will the issue consist? This is dependent on several factors like, how many advertisers are there, how many games are expected to be reviewed, how many competitions will there be, and so on. Advertising is a very important factor, because it governs the number of pages it is economical to print. In the 60s paper was only a fraction of the total production cost of a magazine. As a result it was news stand sales that made the publisher his operating costs and some of his profit. Today, paper costs make up almost two-thirds of the production cost — as a result news stand sales only account for a part of the operating costs and ad revenue has to make up the rest and hopefully end up with some profit.

Once these items have been clarified and the pages decided upon, the planning really starts. The function of the Editor (Roger Kean) is to oversee the general scope of the written material. He also writes quite a chunk of it, helping with reviews, articles and competitions. Kevin Foster is the Assistant Editor. He is responsible for incoming news items, organising competitions with software houses and making sure the details are all written up ready for typesetting. Roger liaises with outside contributors like Derek Brewster and Angus Ryall, ensuring that their material arrives on time.

Each morning there is a production meeting. This sometimes only lasts for a few minutes and involves both the editorial and the production people. It helps to keep everyone informed as to what is going on. During the first week of an issue at these daily production meetings the issue is planned out. By the end of the week the Tick Off sheet can be drawn up — we’ll look at that under the Production heading later.

With the outside reviewer’s reports in, Matthew and Roger collate and write up the review, Spectrum and monitor sit cheek by jowl with the Apricot computer into which all the material is typed ready to go to typesetting.

EDITORIAL

One of the most important aspects of CRASH editorial is the games reviews. The process of reviewing games goes on all the while. 18 year-old Matthew Uffindell is the in-house reviewer and as such organises the other reviewers. This entails logging cassettes as they arrive from software houses and seeing that the review team get them in good time to be able to report back. CRASH has six regular reviewers ranging in age from 14 to 30 who tackle the arcade games. They come in from day to day, collect games and review report forms, returning everything when they have finished. It is a policy that at least three of them get to see every game.

When the reviews are being written up for typesetting, the introductory pieces are usually written by either Roger Kean or Lloyd Mangram aided by Matthew, who plays the game as the review is being written to double check on the stated facts given by the various reviewers.

Meanwhile, Kevin checks press releases for news material and calls back anyone if he wants more detail. He also pre-sorts incoming letters to ensure that Derek Brewster receives his Adventure Trail letters and Lloyd Mangram gets his Forum mail. The pre-sorting is a big job as many letters contain playing tips and hi-scores as well as general Forum information.

Gradually, during the three weeks of an issue, all the material comes together and is typed into an Apricot computer using a word processor program called Superwriter. The resulting floppy discs are sent to London where the typesetters do the rest.

TYPESETTING

In the early days of mass printing typesetting meant exactly what it said. From a written manuscript a typesetter actually cast the printing letters in metal (usually lead), or he already had stacks of pre-cast letters, rather like the ones you get in a John Bull printing kit. These were arranged in trays as a ‘make-up’ from which the page would eventually be printed. In fact he actually set the type. Similarly any pictures, photographic or drawn, would be engraved onto plates and set flush in with the type. Today it’s all done with computers, but the old words remain. A typeface (ours is called Helvetica) is called a font (or fount, from the word metal foundry). Adding a larger space between lines of type is called ‘adding lead’, because that’s what you did, add blank lead.

Now the information is typed into a computer and a floppy disc is slotted into a typesetter photo unit, which contains numerous different type faces, and the result is photographed onto a roll of bromide paper, which is processed like an ordinary photograph. But the typesetter needs to know certain vital things from the editorial department. These include factors like how wide will the printed column be (the column you are looking at now is a quarter column — four to the page), will it be justified (this column is justified — those in the Forum for example are unjustified, as they are ragged on the right), what point size will the type be in (this is 9 point), what type face (this is Helvetica Roman, Helvetica Bold looks like this and Italic like this. The sub-headings on these pages, for instance are in 12 point Helvetica bold condensed which looks like this). (Note: this doesn’t necessarily apply to the Kindle version.) All this information is included with the floppy disc and the typesetter machine does it automatically. The resulting bromides are returned to CRASH for the production department. It is an early example of where editorial and production must work together, since it’s no use editorial getting a piece typeset across a quarter column if the production plan calls for a third column or half page.

Game screens being photographed off the Microvitec Cub Monitor. Recently, some magazines have taken to using screen dumps made on colour ink printers, but at CRASH we still think that the ‘feel’ of a photograph is better. The camera is usually set to a shutter speed of [?] or a second to take account of the TV roll bar. That’s why freeze frame facilities are essential for a still picture, and that’s where the Cambridge Slomo device comes in handy.

SCREEN PHOTOGRAPHY

As the reviews are being written up, the games must also be photographed. This is done by Production Designer David Western. It’s quite a simple process, but time consuming, and involves the use of the excellent Microvitec Cub Monitor with a camera pointed at the screen at a set distance. Here, Matthew usually divides his time between review writing and helping with the photography, since it requires someone to play the game to a certain point, while David photographs. The Cambridge Slomo has also proved invaluable in getting good freeze frames.

The colour screens are the first to be taken because the colour work in CRASH takes the longest to prepare for printing and must be ready at least a week before the rest. It is equally important, therefore, that the editorial side gets those reviews and articles written first.

Once the photographs have been taken, processed and contact printed (all done in-house), the captions can be written for them. The black and white screen pictures are then enlarged ready for layout.

This is the ‘Tick Off’ sheet for the Christmas Special issue which you are reading. It details the pages, where colour falls, and what will happen on every page. The tick off sheet mutates as the issue progresses and alterations are made to the plan, but without it, layout would be impossible.

PRODUCTION

The heart of CRASH lies in the writing and in the layout, or design, of the magazine. It is a long and complicated business. As we have seen, it starts with the daily Production meetings, from which emerges a plan for the issue. The plan is shown as a ‘Tick Off’ sheet, basically a list of all the pages which shows where the our pages fall, and what goes on each page. It’s called a ‘Tick Off’ sheet, because when a page is totally finished ready for printing, it gets ticked off and forgotten — well, almost forgotten!

Juggling with the tick off sheet is a work of art. First of all the advertisers who have booked space have to be slotted in, bearing in mind their requirements. They all want to be on right hand pages at the front of the magazine, for instance! CRASH is printed in several sections of pages comprising of 32 pages per section. In those 32 pages there will be 16 which can be in full colour, and they fall in very specific places, which makes the juggling act even harder. It’s all too easy to end up with too many adverts one after the other, which doesn’t look good. With the tick off sheet planned reasonably well (it changes daily in minor ways due to alterations in design, or because an article ends up being longer than originally planned for), layout can start.

CRASH is laid out on grid sheets. These sheets, slightly larger than A3 size, contain two pages side by side, pre-printed with pale blue lines which denote the maximum page size (A4), text area (so that there is a neat margin all round) and other details like the vertical quarter, third and half page columns for lining up the text.

You may think that the pictures on these pages are photographs. In fact they are not, because a photograph is made up of a range of greys. These pictures are made up of black dots. In this example, the circle area of the picture has been blown up to show the black and white dot structure. All photographs in magazines and newspapers are done in this way. The dots are created photographically in the process camera by using a plastic screen made of very fine, regular dots. It is called ‘screening’ and the result (which is a PMT) is usually called a half tone, whereas the original photograph is called a continuous tone.

The bromides which have arrived from the typesetters containing all the written material, are trimmed and stuck down on the sheets. It is here that the real skill comes in, because the typesetting must be cut up and arranged on the page in an orderly and pleasing manner, leaving room for pictures and captions. At the same time the photographs must be slotted in. A photograph is referred to as a contone or continuous tone, meaning it is made up of every element of grey, from black through to white. The printing press won’t be able to cope with this, as all mono printing is literally only black and white. Before it can be stuck into position on the grid sheet, the photograph must be converted into a PMT which stands for Photo Mechanical Tint (a tint is lots of regular dots). This is done on the Process Camera, a machine which can reduce or enlarge a photograph through a fine optical screen of tiny dots. The resulting bromide looks like the original. but is actually made up of thousands of black dots of varying size (see picture). This may then be stuck down in position to complete the page.

A set of advertiser’s film separations on the light table. The four pieces of film carry information to be printed in Magenta, Cyan, Yellow and Black. The production department only has to ‘tag’ these with a piece of paper bearing the page number on which the ad is to appear, and send them on to the printer.

ADVERTISEMENTS

Another function of the production department is to ensure that advertisers’ material arrives on time, in the correct state, and goes off to the printer. In the main there is little production work to be done on ads, as the advertisers should have already done it all. It merely remains to attach a piece of paper to the film containing the ad and write on it the page it should appear on so that the printer knows. But in some cases additional work is required. This may be minor, like the alteration of the advertisers’ colour code which tells him what issue of which magazine the coupon came from. Sometimes it may mean doing quite complex process work on the process camera to get the ad into a fit state for printing.

We do some of the more simple editorial work in-house, but most of it has to be sent to London, to a specialist house. Pages with colour have the text stuck down and are marked up to show whore the colour transparencies should go. Modern high speed colour printing is done using only four colours — Magenta, Cyan, Yellow and Black. Any colour photograph must be scanned and separated so that film is produced for each of the four colours. The film is, of course, in black and white, and contains the photograph in the form of a PMT, i.e. thousands of dots. A set of four pieces of film containing the page is known as a set of separations, because the four colours have been separated from each other. When each of these four layers is printed one on top of the other in register in its proper colour, the result looks as if it is in full colour just like the original. It is in this form that advertisers’ film should arrive.

Eventually all the grid sheets are laid out, complete with their headings, text, captions, pictures in PMT form, page numbers and any illustrations and they are almost ready for the printer. The artwork in CRASH is done by Oliver Frey. While the issue is being laid out, he will be painting the cover, the comic strip Terminal Man, any other colour work that is required, and adding small black and white illustrations where David has left room for them. His colour work also gets sent off to the specialists in London to be scanned and screened and planned together with any text.

The Process Camera. Artwork or photographs to be processed are placed on the copy board at the bottom, under a plate of glass. A vacuum is applied to keep everything absolutely flat. Powerful lights either side illuminate the artwork. On top is another vacuum head. Here the bromide paper or film is placed onto which the artwork is to be photographed. Sometimes the bromide paper onto which the image will be projected is placed face down on top of a plastic optical screen of dots to make a PMT or ‘half tone’.

PRINTING

Most magazines today are printed on high speed Web Offset machines, which are enormous. The web refers to a vast, continuous roll of paper, big enough to print 8 or 16 pages simultaneously on either side. Offset refers to the fact that the image on the printing plate is inked, makes contact with a roller, the image is transferred to this roller, which then contacts with the paper — in other words the plate and paper never actually make contact, they are offset from each other.

The plates, which are strapped into the printing press, have been made from film.

CRASH shoots its own mono film. This simply means that the grid sheets containing two completed pages are placed under the process onto a similar sized sheet of photo film. The result is a black and white negative. The process camera does not ‘see’ pale blue, so any of the grid sheets’ lines used for layout, do not photograph through. Colour is done similarly, except there are the four-colour film sheets for each page, and these are usually contacted back to make a positive image on the film (which is easier for the printers when it comes to lining up all those dots in register between the four layers).

All this film, including the advertisers’ film is sent to the printer, in our case Carlisle Web Offset in Cumbria. There they take the film and stick together pages in blocks of 8. The 8 film plates then get laid on top of specially photo-sensitised plates and exposed to ultra violet light. The film image is transferred to the plate, and whether it is from negative or positive film, the image on the plate comes out as a positive. These flat plates are then carefully positioned on the printing press and rolled into a drum. The Harris presses are capable of printing about 30,000 copies an hour, and the pages come off the press already folded, so that several sections can be slipped one inside the other ready for stapling and final trimming.

From the printer the bundles of CRASH are delivered to carriers under instruction from Comag, the distributors of CRASH. Before the issue is printed Comag, will have done all the work necessary to ensure that news trade wholesalers have got their orders in. This is what decides the actual print run.

This is one of the Harris-Marinoni Web Offset Presses at Carlisle’s plant in Cumbria. Left foreground is the paper tower which carries the rolls of paper (some of which can be seen on the right). Beyond the paper tower you can see the five ‘heads’. Each ‘head’ carries two drums around which the plates are wrapped and the offset rollers which transfer the inked image to the paper. Thus both sides of the paper are printed with 8 pages on either side. The first four ‘heads’ are for the colour pages, the first one prints the Cyan, second prints the Magenta, third prints the Yellow and the fourth prints the Black. The fifth ‘head’ prints the mono only pages. Beyond the five printing units you can just see the oven through which the paper passes. This bakes the ink dry before the roll passes into the folding station (not visible) where the roll is automatically collated (16 pages of colour and 16 of mono), folded into a finished section and roughly trimmed. Later the other printed sections will be added, stitched and trimmed to the finished A4 size, bundled in 50s and delivered to Comag, distributors of CRASH.

ADMINISTRATION

As you can see, there is quite a lot that goes into producing an issue of CRASH every month, and this is only scratching at the surface. An important administrative area is liaising between printer and distributor to get the print run right. Put simply, magazines sell through news agents. The news agent is stocked by his local wholesaler, the wholesaler gets his copies from the distributor, who organises the whole machinery. To keep track of everything Comag uses computers extensively, not only for accounting purposes, but also for collating information relating to demand, so that publishers like CRASH can see where sales are good and where they are not so good.

But another important administrative area is internally seeing that everything happens when it should, and this includes dealing with the Hotline and competition results.

Administration also has to look that we get paid for advertising, and don’t get burned fingers from companies like Imagine, who can run up enormous bills without paying them. It’s a fine balance.

BACK TO BED

In only another few days this issue will be going to bed, and a new year will be arriving. There is always a rush at Christmas time to get magazines through printers who are packed to capacity, and this one has been quite a big issue. By the and of this week, as it comes to shooting the film, most CRASH staff will be repeating the old phase ‘It’s a nightmare!’ But a few days after that, they’ll be knuckling down to the first issue for 1985 — it never stops!

SEASONAL GOODWILL

Welcome to the CRASH CHRISTMAS SPECIAL! It’s quite a special issue for us as well, because this is the twelfth issue and so marks a year of publishing. This somewhat expanded issue of CRASH is slightly unusual in that there are a few less reviews than normal, but that is made up for with the other odds and ends, especially the twelve competitions which I believe total up to over £7,000 worth in prizes. There is also the 1985 Calendar, a 16 page full colour pull out with six months on either side, complete with two giant pictures by Oliver Frey. On top of that we have Lloyd Mangram’s Look Back, a personal view of this year’s software from the man who thinks he knows it all (I have to get my own back sometimes), Derek Brewster has produced a longer than usual article on the state of adventure software as part of the Adventure Trail and Angus Ryall has gone and got tipsy somewhere and picked another fight with an advertiser. As you can see, it’s business as usual! As part of the extended Playing Tips, this month, Robin Candy, Ludlow’s answer to P. Hacker, has been pressganged into doing a Pokes Corner, a bundle of cheats for the lazy arcade player. And if producing a calendar wasn’t enough, there’s a double helping of the Terminal Man from Oliver Frey. Luny Jetman has a couple of pages to himself too. And then there’s the special article which explains how CRASH gets put together every month, which might give you an insight into why most magazine people are a little nutty at times; and there’s a piece about what it was like for the BBC TV crew to film Imagine as the Liverpool software house headed towards its nervous breakdown. So I think there’s plenty to keep you occupied gainfully over the long dark days of the Christmas holiday and we hope you enjoy the contents.

FREEDOM TO SPEAK

It wouldn’t be quite right, season of goodwill notwithstanding, to have an editorial without some serious content, and on this, our twelfth issue I felt like saying something relating to the magazine’s first year of existence. Being a totally independent outfit has meant having a lot more freedom to speak minds than is often possible in a publication owned and operated by a large corporation. In CRASH we have tried to offer writers the freedom to say what they want, and although this can sometimes lead to the risk of libel (for all sorts of odd things), responsible writers can make good use of it. There is a computer magazine (no names but it has a big letter) that claimed to be outspoken, irreverent and newsy — in fact just what young computer owners wanted. But being irreverent isn’t what people really want, I suspect. You can be subversive in attitude, certainly light-hearted, but all these attitudes must be underlain with a core of seriousness, otherwise the comments made aren’t worth the paper they are printed on. In other words, it’s one thing to have fun and quite another to be redundant.

Any magazine that relies on advertising revenue for much of its monthly income is obviously put in an invidious position when it comes to taking money from an advertiser who later discovers that his product has been heavily and negatively criticised. I have often had the impression that more pressure gets put on CRASH than on others along the lines of, ‘no good review, no ad booking,’ and whilst one can’t exactly blame an advertiser for the attitude, it seems odd that the same advertiser will still take space in other magazines when they either ignore his product or treat it just as we may have done, i.e. say that the game is rubbish. Perhaps it underlines the fact that CRASH would seem to have become, as several people in the business have said, the trade buying guide for Spectrum software. Trade papers, on the whole, steer clear of making personal comment on product, their job being to help sell it. I’m not saying that we have felt too much of this (unfair?) pressure over the year, but it has been there.

On the other hand we have probably laid ourselves open to this pressure because software houses often ring to see if a game has been reviewed and how it did. If we know, we tend to tell them. My experience from the other side of the fence has been that if you try that with most other computer publications they will tell you that they cannot tell you anything because they are not allowed to. Their advertisement manager, however, is very likely (if he knows) to ring you up and offer you a select choice of bits of the review — naturally the bits that make the review sound like a happy one. The truth is, that the British software scene is really quite small, quite close knit, magazine personnel get to know their advertisers quite well, it can hurt to have to say to someone you know and like that their game is a load of rubbish. But without the freedom to say so, if it’s true, a magazine like CRASH loses all credibility. The real answer is that software houses should just produce the very best. But that’s utopian!

One thing I have noticed during this year, and am thankful for, is that if we slip up over a review in any way, you are all very quick to say so. At the end of the day, whether the accolade of being also a trade guide is true or not, CRASH is here for the buyers of software as well as for the producers of software.

On a slightly different aspect of the same subject, we are carrying an article this issue about Imagine and its demise, as seen (largely) through the eyes of the BBC film crew who worked with Imagine right up to the end. This is a touchy subject because much of what is known or has been said by people involved, is personal. Normally a publication is expected to take a very impartial view of anything on which it reports, and I hope what is written (by me in fact) is at least balanced. To be impartial in this case is not easy because Imagine owed CRASH a lot of money at a time when we desperately needed it. There has been a suggestion by a person connected with the Imagine business that if we say anything he does not like that we will be running the risk of a libel suit. It seems ironical that CRASH should lose a lot of money in what can only be seen as morally dubious circumstances and then risk losing more to the very people to whom we first lost it and who benefited in some small way by it. I mention all this because I don’t want anyone to think that the article is written in any vengeful sense because it isn’t. And to those who have said to me that it all happened six months ago, why bring it up again, I can only reply that the story has not been fully told (Bruce Everiss has had a long piece published in Your Computer, but it’s by no means the whole of it) and a function of CRASH is to inform on more than just the games. I don’t claim that this is the entire story either — for that we will probably have to wait a long while, by which time we really may not care — but it certainly includes material that hasn’t been mentioned before.

PSYTRAXX MAP

As a rather good illustration of what I was saying earlier in the piece above, we will be carrying a pretty extensive map of Psytraxx the game from The Edge, in next month’s issue. I say it’s an illustration because The Edge did come in for a bit of sniping from our News Input pages a couple of months back and the review of the game, while not bad, was not over enthusiastic. Nevertheless, there are a lot of people out there playing it and getting hopelessly lost in the thousands of rooms while doing so. Showing there are no hard feelings over a few remarks, The Edge have given CRASH the exclusive right to print the map of Psytraxx which I hope will give a helping hand to the many stranded deep in the PCBs and chips!.

Incidentally, we are looking forward to seeing the next release from The Edge, called Brian Bloodaxe. It’s been described as an ‘incredibly complex game’ which features the hero battling his way through an unfriendly platform environment. There are 104 screens and a lot of clues and objects to be found along the way. Ultimately, the aim is to find the valuable hidden treasure, but everything possible happens to make this an extremely difficult task. We’ll be reviewing Brian Bloodaxe next month, when it’s business back to usual and Christmas out of the way!

Have a happy holiday, and enter every competition, the prizes are well worth it!

ROGER KEAN

N·E·W·S   I·N·P·U·T

THE 14TH ZX MICROFAIR

THE 14TH ZX MICROFAIR was held at Ally Pally on the weekend of 17/18th November.

There was initially a threat of it being overshadowed by the MICROMARKET which originally was scheduled to be held at Ally Pally, but was then moved to the Wembley Conference Centre. The result was a very poor attendance in Wembley and the usual crowd gathering at the ZX FAIR — old habits die slowly (which should please Mike Johnston the organiser). Less positive was the line-up of software houses. Very few of the biggies showed up, most stands being occupied by high street dealers and smaller software houses. Amongst the noteworthy exceptions were DK’tronics with their usual 5th Avenue stand, Automata with their entertaining fairground activities, Fantasy, Microsphere and CCS. Fantasy were displaying their latest hit Backpackers Guide to the Universe, priced at £7.50, which has generated hefty sales figures within the first week of its launch, as Fantasy boss Paul Dyer told me with pleasure. Also just recently out is Drive In, which is another shoot’em up space arcade game selling at £5.50. CCS have no less than 12 new titles lined up. The Prince is a role playing strategy game which has won the Cambridge Award. It costs £7.95. Other strategy games all priced at £5.95 are War Zone, Superpower, Air Defence and Insurgency. Blue Riband is an arcade style strategy game, while Barrow Quest and Mission 1942 cater for the adventure players, again at £5.95 each. Tomb of Akhenaten and Nuke Lear are further games in the ‘Charlie Charlie Sugar’ budget range and are both arcade games costing £2.99 each. Realtime Softwares stand was being run over by arcade freaks trying to get a go at Starstrike, the ultimate Star War game with excellent 3D graphics (price £5.95). ‘We are being flooded with mail orders and distributor enquiries’ Realtime Softwares Andrew Onions said elated. Softstone was making itself heard above the din of the crowd with the excellent tune of Fahrenheit 3000 written by Perfection Softwares Timothy Williams. A sequel is already in preparation. Odyssey 1, Force Fighter and Turtle Timewarp are now being marketed as budget games for £2.99 each. Also available from Softstone is American Football at £6.95 and Word Seeker and Super Bandit as a combo for £2.99.

Softstones Tony Knight told me that two further Spectrum arcade/strategy games are being developed. One is based on the Milk Tray TV ad and the other on the Dune novel and soon to be released film, with the player being able to choose more arcade or strategy content during play. At Red Shifts stand I met Chris Shafte, who has moved away from Microdealer UK to become Sales and Marketing Director of Red Shift and seems to be doing an excellent job of it. Just released is City of Dead, a role playing adventure game, and in preparation is the release of The Tripods based on the popular BBC series. It would appear more and more games players are turning to more intelligent and demanding strategy games and Red Shift has an interesting range. Apocalypse is now available as a complete set with 14 different scenarios. Stardreams appeared in force and were displaying their new adventure game The Sandman Cometh priced at £10.95, the presentation including a video ad of the game — a novel approach in this market. After their excellent adventure Waydor (price £7.50) IMS Software are already releasing Ghoulies (nothing to do with football), which hopefully will send you shivers down your spine (price £7.50). William Stuart was demonstrating his speech recognition unit with a lovely Meccano bridge crane, controlling it solely with speech commands and this above the roar of the crowd. The unit will recognise up to ten different commands at any one time, but the library of words can be extended and stored. His new product is Lifeline, a self analysis career counselling program, an interesting piece of software which no doubt CRASH will be reviewing shortly. The price is £14.95. Microsphere were dressed for the occasion in proper school fashion for their excellent Skooldaze (price £5.95). On display was also Skyranger, which is definitely not school material, but should nonetheless tax your intellect (price £5.95). Seeing an Act Apricot Xi at the ZX Fair is rather unusual, but upon investigation the reason becomes apparent. Steve Betts Software offers Crass 80, a Z80 assembler for the Act Apricot to produce machine code to run on the Spectrum with a ZX Interface 1 and Microdrive or any other Z80 system with an RS 232 port. Serious machine code programmers will agree on the many advantages of assembling the code on a separate computer such as the Apricot, but required is obviously a lot of capital with an Apricot and Crass 80, which includes a 3.5 inch floppy disc, a microdrive cartridge and a User Manual and is priced at £95. Among the many add-on keyboards appearing on the market is the MO184 from Mancomp Ltd. Costing £54.95 it has very legible keys, includes extended mode, delete and cursor keys and a numeric pad and provides space for the fully housed ZX Interface 1 and the ZX power supply. Despite the emergence of the Spectrum Plus the market for add-on keyboards should continue for all the many existing Spectrum owners and for those not too keen on the soggy Spectrum Plus key action. Several floppy disc interfaces are already in existence for the Spectrum, but none as complete as the surprise Timex FDD System displayed by Micromatic. It offers a complete operating system with disc and communications facility for the Spectrum and at £225.00 + VAT is competitively priced. The CP/M upgrade option should make it an interesting proposition for small business owners. On display was also a Spectrum keyboard upgrade from Timex with excellent key travel and feel. For the assembly it is necessary to remove the glued metal keyboard mask and the rubber membrane pad from the Spectrum. The new keyboard mechanism is fitted in place and secured with screws. At £14.95 this must be the most cost effective way to improve the standard Spectrum keyboard.

I’M AFRAID OF NO GHOSTS...

The Ghostbusters prepare to zap a slimy greenie — from the C64 version.

No doubt one of the main attractions of the Christmas holidays will be a visit to the cinema to see the new movie Ghostbusters — and if it isn’t on your list, write it down! It opened on the 7th December at 200 cinemas, so there should be one near you. Ghostbusters has become one of the all time top grossers in the States, where it has even beaten the whizz kid Stephen Spielberg at the box office. The film tells the story of three off-beat parasychologists in New York who are thrown out of the university where they teach and so set up a lunatic business to fight paranormal occurrences which are plaguing the city. The hosts come in all shapes, colours and sizes. Fortunately for business, the city is suffering a veritable plague of slimy, food-gobbling greenies, but bigger and fowler things are on the wing. The film culminates in a hysterical showdown with forces from another plane which threaten the very existence of the world.

What makes Ghostbusters a great film is the sense of humour and the special effects.

But more unusually, this is the first time that the movie has been preceded by the computer game. Activision acquired the exclusive worldwide rights to develop and market the game version of Ghostbusters from Columbia Pictures. David Crane of Pitfall I (and II) and Decathlon fame, has been responsible for the design of the game.

The computer game follows the story line of the film quite closely. The object is to avert a ghost invasion of New York and make sure your Ghostbusters survive long enough for the final dramatic showdown at the ‘Temple of Zuul’.

You have all sorts of amazing and sophisticated gadgets to help your task like Image Intensifiers, Energy Detectors, Marshmallow Sensor (The Marshmallow man is 100 feet high), Ghost Vacuum, Ghost Traps and a Laser Confinement System. It’s up to you to search for, catch and store the ‘slimers’ and ‘roamers’ through the streets and buildings of New York.

Ghostbusters for the 48K Spectrum retails at £9.99 and is also available for the CBM64.

MacGIBBON’S QUEST

Two further adventure games have been launched by Hill MacGibbon, the company with the ‘Games to stretch the mind’ (sounds painful!) slogan. Both are on sale for £7.95 each. Aztec — Hunt for the Sun God is a mystical and complex game which challenges the adventurer to interpret a strange and disturbing dream. You wander through a South American landscape of forests, cities and volcanic mountains, encountering both problems and clues along the way. The adventurer’s task is to make for an unpredictable volcanic mountain, there to contend with the gods and find out what has happened to his village and strangely enough, the sun. Aztec comes complete with a full colour poster and instruction booklet.

In King Arthur’s Quest the player assumes the role of King Arthur, striving to free his country from the realm of an icy mist, issued by the Ice Dragon. The dragon is manipulated by the evil Morgana Le Fey, and the mist is slowly bringing the entire land to its feet in a lingering, frozen despair.

King Arthur lives up to his reputation by hacking his way past dragons, witches and unicorns and skirting over frozen lakes. There are also magic books to be ploughed through and secrets to overcome — all in the name of seeking clues to the location of Lancelot and Merlin. Once these two have been found Arthur can set about liberating the land from Morgana’s evil spell, thus fulfilling the quest. The game includes a full-colour poster and detailed instruction booklet.

DOOMDARKS REVENGE

Slightly later than expected Beyond Software’s follow up to their spectacularly successful Lords of Midnight has just been released at the time of writing. Doomdark’s Revenge is as lavishly packaged in an almost identical box to its to predecessor. Much too late to be able to review in this issue, a copy has been rushed to Derek Brewster, who will be giving his comments next month. Meanwhile, for those who have not yet seen it (can there be any), here is the cover to gaze upon. Doomdark’s Revenge retails for £9.95 and is for the 48K Spectrum.

THE SOFT TOUCH

Softstone Ltd are looking to add yet another boost to their up and coming reputation with the release of several new games over Christmas and the New Year.

With offerings like Turtle Timewarp, Odyssey 1 and Fire Fighter under their belts (originally marketed by Perfection Software), Softstone have every reason to be confident. This London-based company, originally begun in Wales, only came into operation earlier this year, but already they have progressed to become a contender in the field of micro games creating and marketing, with growing operations both at home and abroad.

Perfection Software were one of the first companies to be taken under the Softstone wing, and since then the amalgamation has gone from strength to strength.

This Christmas sees the release of Super Bandit and Word Seeker, while over the next few months several new, more sophisticated games will be prepared for general release. These will include a graphic adventure for the Commodore 64 and an arcade game based around a much-loved TV advertising sequence.

Banned from driving, Wally Week and the Mikro-Gen rally team prepare for fisticuffs with Kokotoni Wilf and his band of time travellers.

KOKOTONI WALLY

Wally Week, star of Mikro-Gen’s Automania and Pyjamarama is upset by reports that he’s been overtaken in the popularity stakes by arch rival Kokotoni Wilf. Elite Software has announced that Kokotoni Wilf has taken the title of best ever adventure arcade game from SP’s Jet Set Willy. But a defiant Wally Week claims that Pyjamarama is better than either of these two programs and he is willing to go to the polls to prove his point. He has issued a direct challenge to Wilf by inviting CRASH readers to send in their votes and determine who is really the public’s favourite.

Yawn, that’s if anyone is really bothered.

Meanwhile, the ever-active Wally has moved into the field of motor-racing sponsorship following his rise to computer fame. Mikro-Gen Cars are featuring Wally as their logo, so don’t be surprised if you see him whizzing past at 100 mph in the Grand Prix at Brand’s Hatch this month. But Wally hasn’t got it all his own way: ‘I really wanted to drive,’ he laments. ‘But it was felt that for the health and safety of the other drivers I should only appear in a sponsorship and advertising capacity.’ Never mind, perhaps Mikro-Gen will come up with a new game featuring Wally Week on wheels.

PRESENTING THE KET TRILOGY

Just in time for Christmas, Incentive Software are distributing a presentation gift set of the popular Ket Trilogy adventure classic.

The Ket Trilogy is a fantasy adventure in which you have to fulfill the quest and liberate Ket from Vran and his evil followers. The game gets harder the more stages you complete. Should you succeed in completing the entire mission, Incentive will label you Britain’s Best Adventurer as well as allowing you a video recorder of their choice to the value of £400.

The cost for the gift pack containing The Mountains of Ket, The Temple of Vran and The Final Mission is £12.95, a considerable saving on purchasing the games individually. Naturally, the only way to win is by scoring 100 on each game, thus revealing the three parts of Ket’s secret message. An explanatory booklet on how to play is included with each game.

Andrew Hewson (left) presents programmer Mike Male with the gold cassette for sales of 100,000 copies of his flight and air traffic control simulations.

FLYING GOLD FOR HEWSON

Hewson Consultants have rewarded the talents of their microcomputer writer Mike Male with a gold cassette after sales of his two programs topped the 100,000 mark.

Mike, author of Heathrow ATC and Night Flite 2, received the award from Hewson’s Managing Director Andrew Hewson. Mike is himself an air traffic controller at London’s Heathrow Airport, as well as a keen amateur pilot, and it was this experience which enabled him to bring such a convincing element of realism to his highly popular programs. It’s obviously paid off too, for he has just bought a Rallye Tampico single engine light aircraft from the proceeds of his sales, which makes a change from the ubiquitous Porsche that most software people seem to drive.

A revised version of Heathrow ATC has been released for the 48K Spectrum featuring a Concorde landing route, enhanced graphics and help pages. On the B side is a less demanding version of the game based on landing patterns at Amsterdam’s international airport.

Hewson Consultants’ award-winning adventure game Fantasia Diamond is going Dutch. Author Topley is engaged in the complicated task of rewriting the game almost from scratch before it’s available for distribution in Holland.

In the July issue of CRASH we reported that Fantasia Diamond had won the esteemed Le prix du Meilleur Scenario in France. If the game takes off in the land of tulips and Edam there could be yet more acclaim awaiting Kim Topley (and yet more money for Hewson’s).

NEW FAST REPAIR SERVICE!

Mending a broken down computer after the guarantee has expired can be quite a headache. That’s why a company called Computer-fix of Camberley, Surrey, has stepped in to ease worry.

Computer-fix has set up a considerable network of 500 dealers around the country, each of whom guarantees that your computer will be mended and on the go again within 48 hours of receipt.

The quick fire service is all down to ACUMEN (Advanced Computer Memory Tester), which can spotlight malfunctions far quicker than a skilled computer engineer, thus saving both time and money.

A spokesman for Computer-fix said that he was very pleased with the way the repair scheme was going. He described the response as ‘Terrific’ with hundreds of computers being brought in to servicing daily.

Computer-fix are at Camberley, Surrey.

CRASH will be publishing a list of the main Computer-fix dealers in the next issue.

TIME FOR BED...

Good news for all you Zebedee fans out there who have never quite forgiven Auntie Beeb for taking Magic Roundabout off the air. C.R.L. have issued a computer version of the popular childrens’ TV programme for the Spectrum 48K.

The Magic Roundabout retails at £6.95 and features all the usual familiar characters that we know and love so well. The game revolves around the attempts of Dougal to construct a sugar house, while the other characters do their best to eat up the sugar cubes he requires. In the game, as in life, sugar equals energy. But don’t worry folks — nobody gets killed in this game, and of course those reassuring words appear at the end: Time for bed!

BIG C.C.S. CHRISTMAS LAUNCH

C.C.S. have released another four games for the Spectrum 48K. Air Defence is a wargame in which the player takes the role of Commander of Air Defences with 14 squadrons under his command. The aim is to fend off the successive waves of attack from enemy aircraft who attempt to demolish your industries and HQ. But watch out; the enemy have fighter escorts!

Superpower is a strategy game for 1-6 players, each of them running the affairs of the Intelligence Agency of a major world power. Players possess various assets in a nine-country Third World continent, and must double-deal with each other in an attempt to increase their profits from these assets using that most veritable of all weapons, political interference. The familiar ingredients of warmongering, assassination and engineering coups are at the hands of each player.

Barrowquest is an adventure game written by John Sherry before he came to fame with The Prince. The player is in a large terrain inhabited by monsters who insist on attacking him from all sides without reprieve. The only escape is when burrows appear (marked with skulls). The player can enter these burrows, which form a maze of tunnels, also inhabited by monsters. The object of the game is to locate the power gem ‘Sartrak’s Stone’ and destroy the Black Wizard ‘Grimblast’.

The Staff of Zaranol is an adventure game where the player becomes the Sorcerer’s apprentice and releases an evil demon in his master’s absence. The demon has to be banished before the master returns, and this can only be achieved by properly interpreting a series of clues. They are located in 45 different locations and each object has a specific purpose. Mistakes can be fatal, so you’ll need to tread carefully, but there are times when speed is essential and you’ll have to keep your wits about you.

All four games are on sale for £5.95 each.

C.C.S. have also released a further two games in their ‘Charlie Charlie Sugar’ budget range for the Spectrum 48K.

Nuke Lear is a high-speed arcade game in which you have to ensure that ‘Nuke’ (manager of the Radioactive Waste Depository) directs the incoming drums of radioactive waste into their allocated positions at the end of the blue roads. Nuke can change the direction of the rolling drums by climbing to one of the upper floors and standing in the way, thus illegally positioning the drum. If too many drums are illegally positioned then the radioactivity accumulates and — BANG!

Tomb of Akhenaten is an arcade action game where the player has to search the labyrinth of tunnels within a pyramid for Akhenaten’s tomb. The tomb was believed to be desecrated soon after his burial, but according to the local inhabitants it’s still intact and just waiting to be discovered. Spiders, poisonous asps and the ‘Spirit of the Labyrinth’ conspire to make your search a less than pleasant one.

Both games are available for £2.99 each.

PROTOCOL 4s RECALLED
A.G.F. Hardware have an important massage for customers who may have purchased a Protocol 4 joystick interface: some of these have sub-specification pre-production units, which means that they have an erratic or unreliable Kempston operation mode.
If you possess a copy of the Protocol 4 Interface the way to check its reliability is to type in the following program line with the interface attached to the Spectrum. Make sure the mode switch is in the ‘down’ position and that you have inserted the ‘Kempston’ card. Then print: IN 31 and press ENTER. If anything other than 0 is printed A.G.F. will personally replace the unit free of charge.

PLUS HITS THE SHOPS

The new Spectrum+ has arrived on the shelves of T.B.D. Computers, the second only official distributors of Sinclair software and hardware in the country.

T.B.D. is part of one of the biggest and best record, cassette and video distributors Terry Blood Distribution Ltd. The Stoke-on-Trent based company is ready and waiting to deliver the Spectrum+ anywhere in Britain within 24 hours. ‘We are ready to go!’ comments T.B.D.’s Sales and Marketing Director Joe Woods enthusiastically.

The Spectrum+ (with 48K RAM) accommodates all the usual Spectrum software and peripherals and features the full function ‘QL type’ keyboard. Like the 48K it comes complete with a free software six-pack.

PREPARE TO DIVE!

Megasub Command is the latest release from N.T.D. Software, on sale for just £2.99. This is the newest in a series of popular games for the Spectrum, and features over 300 levels of machine code action.

The player assumes the role of the captain of the world’s most advanced submarine — the Megasub — and the nerve-wracking object is to fend off attacks on the North Atlantic frontiers by enemy fighters and bombers. The submarine is equipped with the latest Neutron laser, but it’s one of the hazards of the game that (like its deep space counterparts) the laser is prone to overheating, and it requires a cool and level-headed captain to put matters right. (That’s where you come in!) Of course, if you can’t stand the heat and the going gets too tough you can always crash-dive — provided there’s sufficient air supply.

Megasub Command can be played via the keyboard or on any Kempston compatible joystick.

Our Adventure Trail columnist, DEREK BREWSTER, sums up his feelings about the state of Spectrum adventures as we prepare to enter a new year...

THE VICTORIAN CHIP

ADVENTURING, as so many have come to know it, began with a mainframe and a copy of Colossal Cavern which even now is available for the home micro. Why should this be so when the technical improvements in the writing and implementation of adventure has increased markedly since that time? The reason gives a clue to the special attributes every popular adventure possesses, namely, a plot in which an adventurer can lose himself. The problems must be pitched somewhere in that narrow band where they are difficult and thought-provoking but, hopefully, entirely logical. But where an adventure really shows its class is when it often has the explorer preoccupied with two or more problems at the same time and can enable progress by more than one solution.

In an editorial some months ago I commented on how it is unwise for a company to release too many games on a modular basis. It would seem this advice to some extent is unnecessary as market forces have forced more selective releases from both adventure and arcade camps alike. CRASH was criticised some time ago for reviewing all games released instead of just those that merit distinction and yet the irony is, of the plethora of publications that line the newsagents’ shelves, CRASH is now the one, with its CRASH SMASH awards, to distinguish and more overtly praise those games of the highest calibre every month. These pick of the bunch, considering how far software has come in the last year, are great games — indeed a trip to the arcades is positively dull when compared to the choice and quality now available in millions of homes. Games playing has come a long way and will go much further.

People’s expectations of game software is much higher than when microcomputing was a fresh and novel pastime. Everyone tried their hand at programming because they thought that’s what micros were for — to learn all about programming, and the standard of software was initially low enough to encourage imitation and even improvement. However, people were soon glad to see their computers do anything following their own fruitless struggles. Now the scene is different; many see their computers for what they are — games machines.

Take the Spectrum’s main rival, the Commodore 64. When first marketed, it was as a business computer to the incredible extent that it was only to be had in business shops. The inference was you couldn’t have it for anything as frivolous as playing games. Hindsight, and in particular two important factors, made things clearer. One, the arrival of a small business computer on the scene with the likes of the Advance lined up with the Spectrum and the C64, which gave the lie to the idea that a business system could cost anything less than £1000. Two, playing games isn’t quite the frivolous nonentity some might have had us to believe. At a time when enforced leisure is the order of the day, playing computer games is a much better recreation than watching feeble-minded quiz shows on TV (Channel 4 made a brave attempt to keep television alive but alas their resolve faded with their fortunes). Computer games are sophisticated enough to be intellectually demanding; adventures are used in education as they are better, certainly more entertaining, than the prescribed medicine while the arcade side has given birth to genuinely instructive simulation programs. Speaking as one who is suspicious of the very word education, I think it unlikely that much good will come of educational software marketed as such; better for games to become more entertaining, thought-provoking and informative. A return to Victorian Values is one thing, being bored to brain-death is quite another.

Colossal Cavern spawned many text-only adventures in the early days of home computing but some luminaries of the computing press fall woefully short of their roles to inform of the differences between a knocked-off job and the program of several months incubation. This puzzled me enough (brought to a head having read a guide-book to adventures which was the most partisan load of drivel) to encourage my own entry onto the scene and the views which follow.

The modern equivalent of the original, good, mostly Basic, text-only adventure is the Ket Trilogy, a series of adventures marked by their sensibly cheap price, super atmosphere, easy and logical problems, and user-friendliness. A company that had machine code games right from the start was Artic Computing, who produced highly competent adventures with problems that lent themselves well to a new magazine phenomenon, the adventure help page, since they were very difficult and had but one solution. The early games were clinical by today’s standards, needing the methodical approach of the crossword devotee with little attention paid to building up a consistent atmosphere. The early Artic software clearly had some appeal beyond that of its competitors but had one distinction which was to prove decisive in the struggle for survival in a very competitive market — the software was in your local computer shop and you could actually hand over your money and buy it.

Graphics were the next obvious improvement but alas many early efforts resulted in poor graphics or slow response times. However, one game stood out like no other. Based upon one of the most famous works of fantasy fiction, it marked a new era in book/computer program tie-ins, but more tellingly, in big finance and high pressure salesmanship. A cottage industry now seemed on the brink of renting out office space throughout the land but no one was complaining over the new commercialism because it had produced a computer program every bit as good as the advertisement suggested. It was, of course, The Hobbit from Melbourne House. Years ahead of its time with super graphics and the first game to attempt true character interaction. Later a similar game to The Hobbit provided an option for those who had mastered its complexity. Fantasia Diamond from Hewson Consultants had an interesting storyline and endearing characters.

Character interaction was visibly demonstrated in another megagame of 1983, Valhalla, which introduced animation to adventuring, but Basic was too slow for the project and it is doubtful whether the interactions were ever truly intelligent. Unlike The Hobbit, the game didn’t quite live up to the adverts. Animation may well prove a redundant offshoot for the unmodified Spectrum since it adds little to the intelligence of an adventure but consumes a vast amount of memory — memory better used increasing interaction with the computer. Character interaction has recently reached a new level of intelligence with a further breakthrough from Melbourne House. The worthy successor to The Hobbit, Sherlock in the end proved too ambitious but nonetheless is a significant milestone on the road to intelligent characters. Perhaps with the removal of the inadequate graphics (a concession to market forces) the game could have struck out more decisively along the path of meaningful character interaction with this becoming the sole selling point. Whatever, Sherlock will become a memorable milestone.

The Quill has given the chance to many who haven’t got the time or inclination to program a machine code game from scratch, and who can blame them, it is debatable whether any 40K adventure needs to be 100% machine code. Gilsoft’s creation has lead to a great surge of adventure releases but most, sadly, do not acknowledge the need to give the customer a much greater depth in theme and plot in return for the limitations imposed by The Quill. However, notable exceptions are classics in their own right: Denis Through the Drinking Glass, Hampstead and Tower of Despair. The Quill is just the most public face of a good number of utilities employed by many adventure software houses. Level 9 make no secret of their own ‘a code’ used to devise Snowball and boast an ever-increasing library of compression techniques used to instigate the likes of Return to Eden. These games are twice the length you might expect of a well-written game and are, in addition, user-friendly, highly intelligent and imaginative, with good descriptions producing a rich atmosphere.

Just as some people look with suspicion toward a Quilled game (has it just been knocked-off?) so they might well be wary of the five or six part megagame. Domark’s Eureka! is composed of many parts, like Mastervision’s Wrath of Magra, but it is my view that such games are overly involved and convoluted, and this apparent complexity is to smokescreen what is a shortfall in programming skills; size is simply not an important factor, anyone can write 200K of gobbledegook.

Some journalists are forever going on about the great American Software invasion from across the Atlantic but perhaps it has dissipated against our shores and I am sure even a flight out to the States would only confirm that which I have long suspected — there’s precious little to shout about above the razzmatazz.

One game released this summer was so original and outstandingly brilliant it caught many on the hop just as they were about to forget of software innovation until the autumn. Lords of Midnight represented a significant leap in programming skills used to develop an entirely new theme. The Land of Midnight is an extraordinary invention and anyone who has not yet seen it has not seen half of what the Spectrum has to offer. The game is the crowning jewel in microcomputer games respectability.

So what can we expect from the future? Well, graphics of a consistently high standard are on the menu, but more than this, they will become an integral part of the adventure and not just a decorative appendage tacked on to brighten up proceedings. Graphics will broaden out from just pictures to diagrams, charts and even to the map that at the moment is painstakingly committed to paper. The pictures will carry clues and figures showing which characters are present. These characters will be larger than life as they realistically go about their everyday lives cementing a greater belief in the whole adventure. The microdrive will finally be exploited for what it is, a refined fast storage device with immense possibilities, and the days of solitary computing may seem a thing of the past as the Spectrum’s networking capabilities string along the thoughts of many minds.

EUREKA!

Producer: Domark Ltd
Author: Andromeda Software Ltd
Price: £14.95

Eureka! is a game that follows in the footsteps of some local authorities, large American States and daily newspapers in bringing the lottery into the lives of the many so that they may have a crack at that all-too-elusive prize. The unlikelihood of winning the prize is made up in part by its sheer size. In this case Domark have judged £25,000 to be an ample sum to tempt enough punters to pay the game’s way.

If no one wins the prize by 31st December 1985, Domark will share out the prize equally. One can’t help thinking up an analogy with British Telecom Shares. And here lies the rub: I can’t really judge the issue because it all depends upon the view you take on a game where the intellectual unravelling of a string of riddles and puzzles may gain you a considerable sum of money, much like a Financial Editor of a newspaper can only draw your attention to shares that may prove a sound investment — whether they are a sound investment depends on how the market fares.

The game comes in a large box containing five adventures on the one tape and a thin, but lavish, booklet. Of the five adventures, the first four can be played in any order, the fifth only on giving the correct answer to a series of questions on the previous four. Each of the adventures contains clues to the mystery code. The answers to the riddles in the accompanying booklet lie within the programs, and you decipher the code into a UK telephone number using chapter six in the booklet. You ring the number and if you can correctly answer the question by the closing date you win the prize. A hotline will tell you whether the prize has gone already.

The Temporal Talisman, an ancient artefact found on the Moon by the Apollo XVII mission, shattered into many pieces when subjected to the intense beams of the SHIVA Fusion Project lasers. A Dr. Majid has convinced NASA that he knows where the missing pieces are to be found. Each piece was catapulted onto Time and has been traced thus:- one in Prehistoric Europe, Roman Italy, Arthurian Britain, Wartime Germany and the Modern Caribbean. An experimental device, The Chonetran, will send you back in time to retrieve the pieces.

A short arcade game precedes each adventure and must be attempted as it helps to increase your vigour in the adventure if you score over 25,000 points (a magic number for this game)! Every 500 points beyond this gives you one extra vigour point up to a maximum of 100 points. An automatic vigour level of 50 can be taken over to the adventure but only on finishing the arcade game. The object of the arcade game is to collect the flashing objects and dropping them by pressing the fire button. Each time this is done a flashing exit sign appears on the screen. Theoretically you can choose to leave or stay on to score more points but in practice, due to the sluggish response, pressing the fire button just a fraction too long sees you stay for another round whether you wanted to or not. Considering how mind-stupefyingly boring this game is this can make you see red. You begin to think that you really have to work for the £25,000 — no playing around here.

On to the adventure itself. Since I could load Arthurian Britain straight away I started with this followed by Roman Italy. I say ‘could load’ because if you should find any difficulty, like myself, in loading any part you could well be in trouble. All five games are contained on the one cassette and the search, rewind and fast forward when trying to locate the start of a section may result in a damaged tape. Domark may worry at the possibility of many tapes being returned.

There is no save facility underlining the fact that this product sees itself as little more than a competition with none of the usual courtesies afforded adventurers. This omission is compounded by the irritation involved in having to start at the beginning when killed whereupon a 35 second wait is necessary before recommencing. The Roman Italy section is made difficult by the use of Latin throughout but in another part one problem is a giveaway to Star Trek fans (can you believe it — I’m still watching the repeats of the repeats of the...) A hollow log, flint, diamonds, sulphur, saltpetre and coal are indelibly linked in the minds of the space adventure’s fans.

Eureka! offers a prize of £25,000 to the person tenacious and skilled enough to solve this puzzle. The game does feature graphics but these vary considerably in quality from the quite good, through passable to downright expedient, eg. using mirror images to complete the picture. If you never see any part of the vast sum on offer I think it unlikely you would return to the game for its own sake.

COMMENTS

Difficulty: very difficult
Graphics: on every location but are rather poor
Presentation: background changes colour abruptly and exits and objects are not usually given
Input facility: good
Response: reasonably fast
Special features: arcade game at start, real time, 5 separate adventures, £25,000 prize
General Rating: Should be good value but has several annoying features like lack of SAVE facility.

Atmosphere

7/10

Vocabulary

7/10

Logic

7/10

Debugging

10/10

Overall

7/10

THE KEY TO TIME

Producer: Lumpsoft
Author: P.J.R. Harkin
Price: £5.95

The Key To Time is Lumpsoft’s first adventure and is all about a time traveller who was all the rage when people used to watch television. The loading screen shows a picture of a police box and funny little robots with a bad case of metallic pimples and tunnel vision compounded by the position of their only eye on the end of a stalk.

Apparently it is a bad time for time travellers what with time storms distorting travel coordinates which might lead anywhere and it proves imperative that someone recovers the object that can dispel the storms for good. At a meeting of the High Council of Time Lords one senior member asked, ‘Who can dispel the time storms?’ But this was taken as a command by the others and so you, The Doctor, ended up with the job.

On your first attempt at the game it’s better to ask for HELP rather than STARTing straight off so you can gather some useful information. ‘In this adventure you must guide your earlier persona by sending him messages through this Time Lord telepathic controller, cunningly disguised as a Sinclair Spectrum.’ Here you are told of the game’s intricacies including a timely list of recommended verbs including a general HELP, a more specific HELP (TIMESCANNER) and WAIT. The HELP is not as useful as it could be because it only results in a random selection from three or four phrases, one of which reads ‘Never eat anything bigger than your head,’ a saying reminiscent of the work parodied by Lumpsoft’s next program to be released, Malice in Wonderland. The other, more specific help command is very useful in that constructions like HELP (DALEK) give encyclopaedic information information concerning a certain object or creature, eg. cybermen are allergic to gold. I really do like this kind of encyclopaedic reference material as it was what we all thought computers were about, indeed what they are good at, until the limitations of micro memory become apparent. In this respect, I can’t wait to see what adventure games the QL can produce. The WAIT command begins mimicking The Hobbit but soon departs with an amusingly prolonged diversion.

The vocabulary is very friendly with constructions such as GO (TARDIS) and ENTER (CRACK) equally helpful and the plot is similarly responsive; everything can be examined and if you look at the screen you find ‘The Tardis materialised. Atmosphere: breathable.’ Swearing will bring the wrath of Mary Whitehouse down upon your head leaving you to regenerate into your next persona, perhaps this time the chap who is a trifle absent-minded and plays a pipe.

Time travel is the core of the game and if you find play relatively easy as I did, then you will proceed quite quickly through the five time zones, although you may well use up a few of the Doctor’s characters. Moving through the likes of Daleks and Cybermen you arrive at Gallifrey where you enter, presumably, the final stages around the president’s office. If the game’s tricky moments hinder progress then you may have time to ponder on the difficulty of getting any score higher than 0 or how to travel from one time zone to another in the Tardis, an operation which involves a tricky combination of lever pulling and button pressing. The Key To Time is a very worthy effort from Lumpsoft combining a friendly response with an Interesting plot and amusing interludes. A text-only Quilled game with a familiar theme but very well executed.

COMMENTS

Difficulty: mostly easy
Graphics: none
Presentation: very good
Input facility: verb/noun, pretends to be more complex but other words are ignored
Response: very fast
General Rating: Good.

Atmosphere

7/10

Vocabulary

7/10

Logic

8/10

Debugging

10/10

Overall Value

7/10

THE MAFIA CONTRACT

Producer: Atlantis Software Ltd
Author: Neil Smyth
Price: £1.99

Atlantis are one of a growing number of new companies who have endeavoured to bring the public what it wants at a price it can afford. If this game is typical of their range all I can say is they are doing a very good job as Mafia Contract is not a bad effort and yet can be purchased with only one week’s pocket money. If you have read that marvellous book, The Godfather, then you’ll know what to expect from this game — a compelling mixture of criminal persuasion and dastardly double-dealing.

Like in the famous book you are in the most lucrative blackmail market outside of Chicago, amongst the familiar pattern of intersecting streets and avenues of New York. You find yourself, a hitman for Don Capolla, in a sleazy hotel trying to lie low but ending up in the thick of it. You answer the phone in trepidation since silence is only broken for important news, and in this business that’s always bad news. Last night Capolla’s son was assassinated and the gang has got a list of possible traitors down to a tidy number — and one of the names is yours. Don Capolla wants to see you now at Mario’s Bar, or else. Leaving your room and descending in the lift to the lobby you notice the first graphics which are very simple but quickly and effectively drawn. The program is friendly and responsive allowing you many diversions from the mainstream of the plot. For example, ring the bell at reception and you meet the drunken manager whereupon GIVE KEY and KILL MANAGER both evoke different responses.

Wandering around the streets, avenues and alleys you soon pick up on how to act streetwise if you are gonna make yourself into a feared and respected hood. Sadly, inevitably as you’ll soon discover playing the game, there is one of the most infuriating random killings I’ve ever met. ‘Suddenly you hear the screech of tyres and a black Cadillac pulls up. 3 men jump out and fire continuously at you. The bullets rip into you. Within seconds you are dead.’ This passage comes up flashing glaringly at inopportune moments and you soon dread turning into a new location in case the program has vouched your time is up.

Maria Contract is very much worth the meagre investment of £1.99 and compares favourably with games three times the price. Responses are fast and friendly, the graphics are very simple but neat and well presented and good descriptions add to a super, despicable plot.

COMMENTS

Difficulty: easy
Graphics: some, simple but well drawn
Presentation: good
Input facility: verb/noun
Response: very fast
Special Features:
General Rating: Good value.

Atmosphere

7/10

Vocabulary

6/10

Logic

7/10

Debugging

10/10

Overall Value

7/10

THE RUNES OF ZENDOS

Producer: Dorcas Software
Memory required: 48K
Retail price: £7.95
Language: machine code
Author: Chris Dorell

Dorcasia was a pleasant fertile land until the wizard Zendos cast the spell of darkness, plunging the country into perpetual gloom, forcing all the citizens of the tiny principality to pledge allegiance to him. A hero must take on the twelve different adventures and find and destroy the twelve runic hour glasses hidden deep within his magical castle, releasing the months and returning Dorcasia to the natural forces of the seasons. To protect the hour glasses and keep their runic inscriptions secret, Zendos has placed them in twelve separate rooms, each linked to an exterior gateway by a devious route. Each adventure has unique spells and problems to ensure a new challenge is provided on each occasion. The game features full animation, sentence input, sound effects and save game facilities to tape and microdrive.

When the game loads you are at the start of adventure one. At any time you can switch to the start of a different adventure by entering, for example, ‘adventure eight’. Status (or ?) gives information regarding the adventure you are in; e.g. Adventure 1, Strength 25, Provisions 25, Luck 10, Performance 80 (how much of the adventure you have completed). Further information regarding what you are carrying, the spells you know and what you are wearing is also detailed. You can wear one item on your head and one on your body; if you remove something you will then be carrying it. You begin each adventure with a supply of provisions eaten in quantities from 1–12 to increase your strength, e.g. EAT THREE items of food along the way replenishes strength depleted during fighting and running.

Vocabulary is surprisingly particular as you must type in the exact letters to make up the required words with only a few stock abbreviations for left (l), right (r), up (u), down (d), passage (p) and quickly (q). However, editing makes full use of the Spectrum cursor movement and delete functions which greatly facilitates entry. ENTER repeats the last command even after starting to type something else if this is first deleted. Input can be, and often must be, quite lengthy and involved, e.g. ATTACK THE GUARD WITH THE MIGHTY AXE and UNLOCK THE DOOR WITH THE GOLDEN KEY. The program will accept all words it has displayed.

Whenever you meet a creature its strength and yours are displayed in a pennant at the top left of the screen. If a creature is very strong you will need more than your bare hands. Fighting is seldom the only option; often befriending a creature or casting an appropriate spell marks the way forward. To cast a spell you must have found it first and which therefore will appear in your knowledge list in the current adventure. Using charms and lucky items may improve your luck.

The Runes of Zendos is a very graphically entertaining adventure with smooth, scrolling animation sending your character left and right through passageways, up and down steps of ladders and striking blows in battle with the various zombies, skeletons, werewolves and all manner of exotic assailants. Much of the language is atypical of the arcade-adventure scene with l and r keys chosen for movement and TAKE with no GET option. The problems are logical, more so than in many text adventures, and the game is certain to take some time to complete as three hours were needed for the first of twelve sections. Although the game stands up as an adventure in its own right it is the superb animation which will be the more immediate attraction of what is a very fine game.

COMMENTS

Difficulty: quite easy
Graphics: scrolling graphics with character animation
Presentation: good
Input facility: allows sentences. Vocabulary small and a little unorthodox
Response: reasonable, scrolling graphics appear a bit slow when in a hurry
General rating: good, I liked it a lot.

Atmosphere

8

Vocabulary

5

Logic

8

Debugging

10

Overall value

8

SORCERER OF CLAYMORGUE CASTLE

Producer: Adventure International
Author: Brian Howarth, Teoman Irmak, Scott Adams
Price: £9.95

Sorcerer of Claymorgue Castle is adventure 13 by Scott Adams, marketed by Adventure International. It follows in the footsteps of The Hulk featuring superlative graphics at every scene.

Solon the Master Wizard and owner of the Secret Coat long ago lost the 13 stars of Power. The evil Vileroth, believing the stars to be the only source of Solon’s power, acquired these magical prizes when in fact it was the cloak that controlled the stars. Unable to master the magical stars, Vileroth’s strength slipped away leaving him with no option but to conceal the Stars of Power within Claymorgue Castle so no one else could possess them. You are Beanwick, Solon’s faithful young apprentice, and your task is to retrieve the 13 stars armed with a few spells and with a few more to be found in the castle, but the problem is, how do you use them?

The first location is a super graphic showing fine detail of the turrets and battlements comprising a compact, but nonetheless imposing, fortress. If I were to describe a picture of a moat, surrounding a castle with a drawbridge, being a highly skilled and cynical explorer, you will immediately imagine a tidy graphic of a drawbridge which is, of course, raised. If you should ever meet an adventure where a drawbridge is not raised, knowing the deviousness of many adventure authors, I would tread warily. This first problem is tackled, like so many in the adventure, by making use of the magic bestowed upon you from the start or to be found in the various nooks and crannies along the way.

Getting the drawbridge down (the noun needs the first five letters DRAWS), you look up to see it down in the picture — a nice touch. Moving east onto the drawbridge you are met with a curious sight where you are contemplating your feet upon the bridge overlooking the moat, but it would be wise to resist the temptation to take the plunge as it may just harbour one of those nasty sleeping moat monsters. On the east side of the drawbridge you see a lever set in the western wall and you’d need to be half-baked or inappropriately impulsive to fail to appreciate the consequences of pulling it. Better to move further east into the interior of the castle and a courtyard with a highly decorative fountain set at its middle. Enter the magic fountain now and it could signal your first meeting with the horrific and very graphic depiction of a sneering skull which makes you shudder the first time you see it. If instead you content yourself for the time being with collecting the goodies here, you’ll notice that the program follows what is fast becoming a trend. The fact that you have gained an object is not acknowledged as such. The only indication that you have indeed picked up an object is that object’s removal from the list of visible items, this coupled with the knowledge that had you failed to pick up an object a report would draw your attention to your lack of success.

By this stage you will have already worked out the use of one spell (at the drawbridge), now let’s look at another two. Well, Lycanthorpe in psychiatry as a person who believes that he is a wolf, so what use the Lycanthorpe spell is I’ll leave you to decide. As for the Yoho spell it sounds like yoyo and yoyos spring back to your hand when spun. Indeed, the Yoho spell takes you back to the first location; unfortunately, if you were dying on using it, you’ll still die at or near the first scene. Also, surprisingly, you are told the Yoho spell works on the second occasion of its use, but on the second attempt nothing seems to happen.

Further east you meet one of those situations which you just know will become a classic since it is both devious and difficult. In the ballroom is a giant chandelier secured to a wall by way of a rope. You discover the deviousness of the problem if you attempt the obvious, leading to an annoyingly obvious conclusion. The assumption is you’d be stupid enough to stand under the chandelier while untying it! Should you have had the foresight to fetch the crate from the kitchen you would be spared, presumably because the chandelier has less of a distance to fall before crashing onto your head.

Incidentally, GET OFF will not see you off the chandelier, but GO BALLROOM will, rather strange when the former does work when getting off the crate.

I wonder if this game has enough to keep me interested until the seventh or eighth star, never mind the thirteenth, since clearly so much effort for this adventure has been invested in producing the ultimate graphics. The vocabulary is friendly, though restricted to verb/noun such as GO (FOUNTAIN) and ENTER (COURTYARD) both accepted, and it is reasonably easy to get around until the problems become more pedantic and intractable.

Sorcerer of Claymorgue Castle is an offering from a highly regarded force in adventure publishing, Scott Adam’s Adventure International. Commercially it is as slick, polished and viably marketed as only American software can be. Superb graphics and a racy response give the game the edge. However, you can’t help but get the feeling that beneath the razzmatazz the plot is a shade dull and uninspiring. As was said during a hamburger commercial and the US Presidential Election, where’s the meat?

COMMENTS

Difficulty: very difficult
Graphics: excellent and very fast
Presentation: well laid out
Input facility: verb/noun
Response: very fast
General Rating: Good.

Atmosphere

6/10

Vocabulary

8/10

Logic

7/10

Debugging

10/10

Overall

7/10

STAFF OF ZARANOL

Producer: CCS
Author: M.J. Gearing
Price: £5.95

You are the apprentice of Zaranol, the Master Wizard, who stumbles upon one of the old Master’s spell books while he is away at an annual general meeting. Calling Lan, your friend and helper, you decide to try one of the spells. Unfortunately all does not go well. During the spell a demon appears and none of your spells of banishment work.

Eventually it speaks, ‘I curse you weakling,’ and with those few words it is gone. Mortified, you look to Lan for reassurance. Lan chuckles and says first you must find the demon’s name and the nature of the curse. Then in order to banish the demon you must use the great staff of Zaranol and the tooth of a dragon. Finally, and most difficult of all, find the Master’s secret room because only there can you create the spell needed. Promising to help if called, Lan disappears.

The challenge of this game does not lie in the small number of locations (45) but in the complexity of interpreting the trail of the various clues available. It is well worth setting off with I for Inventory as you will find the object that gets you out of your first predicament does not lie in or about the table, chair or old chest. As is suggested in the blurb it will pay to call Lan to help when your own attempts come to nought. If you are doing well you should soon be greeted with the ‘Arthame... with this safely in your hand, draw a circle where’er you stand!’ And you would be wise to do exactly as instructed. Hence, ‘the room shudders, your vision wavers...’ and it’s by way of magic and not by stealth as such that you escape the confines of the first location. This method of advance is repeated often throughout the adventure, magic used with craft imparted by the books, scrolls, robes and staffs providing your means of progress and thereby reducing the parts played by lengthy, involved reasoning which is typical of, say, an Artic adventure. Indeed it is difficult to recall any great number of real problems posed throughout the entire adventure; progress is mostly assured by simple exploration and examination of everything about you.

The Staff of Zaranol is easily mapped, has magical problems that are quite easy and creates a good atmosphere as you move around the Master’s Castle. The dictionary of recommended verbs and special verbs provided at the very beginning are very useful and this along with the game’s fundamental simplicity will introduce a beginner to the delights of adventuring and perhaps show, once again, just what a great program The Quill has turned out to be.

COMMENTS

Difficulty: quite easy
Graphics: none
Presentation: location descriptions in capitals and a little difficult to read
Input facility: as all Quill games
General Rating: One of C.C.S.’s better games.

Atmosphere

6/10

Vocabulary

6/10

Logic

7/10

Debugging

10/10

Overall Value

6/10

Direct response! I’ve finally done it! Two issues ago I bemoaned the fact that the software industry was so complacent — it seemed that no matter what I wrote or said, I couldn’t get through the thick skins of the people who need to buck their ideas up. But — over the last month it seems to have worked.

First of all John Merry (of Reichswald fame — now of Scorpio Gamesworld) rang up to say that not only was Reichswald a brilliant game (a point which I obviously missed when reviewing it) but that my remarks about his girth were totally unfounded and libellous. Quoth he: ‘This kind of petty slander makes my blood BOIL!’

Me: ‘Sorry John, I was only trying to liven up a really tedious subject.’

I was hoping that John would send in a couple of ‘before and after’ pics as irrefutable proof, but instead he burbled on about withdrawing all Scorpio’s advertising from CRASH (ho-hum, here we go again) which is probably why Roger is refusing to pay me.

My apologies also go out to Argus Specialist Press, whose representatives threatened me with legal action and/or severe bodily dismemberment — I didn’t really mean to say anything horrible about your wonderful magazines chaps, I was of course talking about EMAP (at this point the editor grasps me firmly round the windpipe. As I feel the life-force draining from my limbs I manage to scrawl ONLY JOKING PEOPLE, I LOVE YOU ALL)!

THE CRASH SANDINISTAS STRIKE A BLOW IN THE CITADEL OF CAPITALISM

Or, to put it another way, this month’s report comes to you direct from the Ritz Hotel in Piccadilly, London. Unfortunately this does not mean that CRASH has seen the light and started treating its reviewers with the respect they deserve — we’d be lucky to get a room in the Red Cow in Ludlow. It means that I went along to the ‘most prestigious award for amateur programmers’ ceremony, the Cambridge Award. Funnily enough, I’ve only recently reviewed last year’s winner and runner-up, Battle 1917 and War 70, so I thought I had an idea of what to expect; but in the event I was pleasantly surprised. There were four ‘finalist’ games, which I’ve reviewed below. They can all be loosely described as ‘strategy’ games. But first I must tell you a little about the actual event itself, since I feel morally obliged under the freeloaders’ code of honour.

As I entered the Ritz in my rainbow-striped jumper and my hardware jeans, I sensed that something was not quite right — why wasn’t I being thrown out on my ear for not wearing a tie? Well, apparently if you are going to a private function then you don’t have to. Great, I thought; let’s just head straight for the bar in my usual manner. Having located the ‘Marie Antoinette’ suite, I made the mistake of asking the barman for a drink. I say mistake because the man was fairly well blasted by the time I arrived and he could only understand the kind of ‘tourist’ French that the waiters oll heff to spik. (Was he on a percentage from Beefeater?) Anyway, I got a gin big enough to farm salmon in, topped up with about two millimetres of tonic water. Now I’m not actually that keen on neat gin, so I asked one of the floating French penguins to fetch me a bitter lemon so that I could mix it with the half-pint of gin. A minute later he returned with a slice of lemon on a stick: ‘Your beet urv limon monsieur,’ he said!

Things went from bad to worse. Russell and Carol from White Dwarf arrived, already half cut, and pounced on a QL chap, hoping to have a meaningful discussion about artificial intelligence. The man was so scared he ran away. The waiters wrested our half-empty glasses from our hands and topped them up with yet more neat gin. By now I had started to acquire a taste for neat gin, and when I was accosted by the Argus heavies I was able to fend them off with a bottle of (yes, you guessed it) gin. Julian Fuller from Micronet got very earnest with a man from Telecom about Multi-User Dungeon. I think that if ever a nuclear war is imminent I shall book myself into the Ritz, because it’s the only place I know where you can get drunk in under eight minutes without even trying!

Then the buffet lunch arrived, consisting of a load of raw, minced meat on what looked like pieces of Ryvita (I have since learned that this is in fact a great delicacy known as ‘Steak Diane’) and some kind of Scampi — or was it Pork Balls? (The kind you get at a Chinese take-away, I mean!) Then the speeches began, greeted with thunderous applause. The sponsors of the awards were C.C.S., Sinclair User magazine and Sinclair Research Ltd. I think that most of us who’d managed to stay sober were hoping to have a word with Sir Clive about his plans for world domination and whether we’d be able to buy shares in Sinclair in 1985 (ha-ha). But alas, it was not to be because he didn’t show up. Instead we had to make do with Nigel Searle who is (only) the Managing Director. He spoke about how Sinclair had been responsible for getting computing off the ground in the U.K., and how pleased they all were to be British and all that sort of thing. My associates Russell and Carol kept making distinctly negative comments at particularly high volume, which made one feel slightly conspicuous. The Chairman of C.C.S. made a rather rambling speech and seemed a little overwhelmed by the whole situation; but then, if he had drunk as much as I had then I wouldn’t be at all surprised. John Gilbert of Sinclair User made a punchy but totally vacuous speech about what a brilliant magazine he works for. John Sherry from Keele received the award from Nigel Searle for his program The Prince, and looked understandably pleased with himself since he’d just won £2,000.

Okay, now I know that you lot out there aren’t going to be particularly worried about this, but all that stuff above was in fact written for the last issue — do I hear a collective sigh of relief from all my fans? You thought that Roger had finally staggered in from the Gay Caballero in Ludlow High Street and dismissed this pathetic excuse for a Gonzo Journalist — but how wrong you were! (Don’t talk too soon, Gonzo — Ed) All that happened was that in my unhinged state of mind (brought on by an overdose of gin) I missed the deadline. The reason I mention this is because I very nearly missed the deadline for this issue too, on account of a close encounter with death.

As I drove into my day job (even we famous journalists have day jobs — hyperactive Derek Brewster’s got about eight!) the other day, my motorbike and I parted company on the rear wing of a black Cadillac limousine (this bit’s not entirely true — it was an Austin Allegro really) which I could have sworn was being driven by one of the Argus heavies — or was it someone from Domark? Anyway, your heroic correspondent flew through the air for some distance, crash landed on a cat’s eye and only narrowly missed death at the hands of at least 34 juggernauts. Meanwhile my bike was elsewhere, battered and bent. Shaken, but not stirred, I crawled over to the side of the road and duly collapsed. I awake in hospital with the thought that I had only another twelve hours to meet the CRASH deadline, so you’ll have to forgive me if some of these reviews are a little less thoughtful and caring than usual; but you know how it is — better read than dead.

ATRAM

Producer: Websters Software
Author: Miles Bozeat
Price: £19.95

Atram is billed as the ‘first in a series of unique computer-aided board games’ and it comes in a massive boardgame type box. Atram stands for Advanced Tactical Reconnaissance and Attack Mission. The idea behind it is that it’s a simulation of a military exercise carried out by the Royal Navy and US Marine Corps using exactly the same weapons — Carrier Harriers (or AV 8B’s as the Yanks call ’em).

That’s the author’s first mistake: who wants to play a simulation of an exercise? Anyone in the games business will tell you that what the consumer wants is slaughter, blood and guts, torture, napalm, and Black Magic, with a little bit of kinky sex thrown in for the older ones. So the whole idea of the game is suspect from the start. I suspect that Miles Bozeat has done this precisely to achieve equality of forces. But any wargamer will tell you how unnecessary that is. The objectives of the game should be changed.

For example, in a standard Avalon-Hill type board wargame which is simulating a historic campaign, the result of the game overall may be a foregone conclusion, but the objective for the players is simply for their side to do better than actually happened in history. So, in Russian Campaign the Germans win if they are still holding Smolensk by June 1944. The two players’ sides of the board in Atram are exactly the same, which again is intended to create a more equal starting position in the game; but it tends rather to increase the feeling of unreality and pointlessness still further.

The board itself is very large and beautifully produced. It contains a thin metal sheet and the pieces are made out of that sort of magnetic plastic that used to be on the back of L-plates. This strikes me as a strange presentation decision in view of the fact that magnets and tapes don’t mix too well. Thus, if my Atram is older than a few weeks it will very likely have no program left.

When the pieces are laid out on the board the appearance is very impressive. Each side has three airfields, two carriers, five bombers, twenty fighters, five anti-aircraft batteries and five strategic targets to defend. But once you get into the actual mechanics of the game it becomes ludicrous. The computer program keeps track of the amount of fuel and weapons each unit has left, and other aspects of the unit’s status. But the inputs required for each unit’s movements are incredible; for example, a bombing run over an enemy airfield might require the following input to the computer: 16S4E13R2M1S2F24 ENTER.

The trouble is, that as the game progresses you find yourself having to make this kind of entry for every aircraft, and if that’s 15 or more characters the amount of time it takes to make sure your fingers are correctly positioned doesn’t bear thinking about. Of course, if your inputs turn out to be wrong you can find that what you’re doing on the board breaks away from what’s on the computer, in which case the whole game system becomes unplayable. A 10-move game of Atram can take upwards of five hours to play, and, frankly, I don’t think that the enjoyment from the game is at all worthy of that sort of time. It’s a shame really, because I like the idea of computer-aided board games, but this is definitely not one to break the mould. I understand that Websters (distributors of Boots’ software) put money into this game, in which case you’ll probably see it on the shelves at Boots, if nowhere else. It’s the kind of game that your Dad would probably buy you for Christmas; if I were you I’d demand the money instead.

Verdict: Nice box, shame about the game.

BLUE RIBAND

Producer: CCS
Author: David L. Bark
Price: £5.95

Blue Riband after The Prince is going from the sublime to the ridiculous. In the game you have to pilot a large sea ferry around a number of islands in the shortest possible time without getting sunk. To assist you, you have radar, engine-room telegraph and wheel. Sounds tedious? It is.

INSURGENCY

Producer: CCS
Author: Nicholas Holgate
Price: £5.95

I must confess that I really do not know how C.C.S. do it. One minute they put out a truly enthralling games such as The Prince, the next they try to foist the most awful garbage on us, like Blue Riband. Then they bounce back again with an excellent offering like Insurgency. I must confess to being totally baffled. Insurgency is a two-player game of guerrilla warfare in which one player is the Sandinistas, or the VC’s, while the other is the usual fascist oppressor. There is a selection of 100 maps to play on and each contains a number of villages connected by roads, several areas of jungle (accessible to guerrillas and army helicopters) and mountains (accessible to all). In each map the guerrillas are being supplied from the North and the army from the South. Supplies arrive by air through the game, but you have to be able to collect them. The army has a wider choice of units, with armour, aircraft, artillery, trucks and medics, but the guerrillas have an advantage of being able to move faster through the jungle, thus remaining out of reach.

As the game progresses each side builds up a picture of the other’s position by means of intelligence reports, and then they attempt to take over villages, block roads with mines and so on. The guerrillas can recruit villagers and provide them with food and arms. But the army medics can improve their health, which helps to bring them back into the government fold.

The number of options available at any one time is amazingly high and I got really involved in running my Mujaheddin campaign. As with The Prince, though, the drawback is that only one player is supposed to be at the screen at any time, which strikes me as something of a contradiction when you consider that multi-player games are supposed to bring increased sociability. The graphics also leave something to be desired (although they are well up to the usual strategy game standard — which isn’t very high). All in all, however, a very impressive game, and the author one to watch for the future.

Verdict: At £5.95 may be even better value than The Prince.

THE PRINCE

Producer: CCS
Author: John Sherry
Price: £7.95

The 1984 Cambridge Award Winner: This is a very complex program for four players which actually demands quite a lot of thought from the participants. It is reminiscent of the board game ‘Diplomacy’ in that it provides a vast amount of scope for inter-player negotiations. The game is based on Machiavelli’s classic chronicle of Renaissance intrigue (‘The Prince’) and the task is to retrieve a secret object and word and present them to the Prince in order to become his chief adviser. Each of the players has a character on the screen who holds a certain measure of power; for example, Porcus the Merchant can lend money to other characters, while Brother Ambrose can dispense grace. The Prince will refuse to see anyone who has too many sins outstanding, and it’s well nigh impossible to avoid committing the occasional sin along the way, such as sending out your henchman to ‘hit’ another player, or even stealing the objects themselves. Each player has a spy and a thug to help him collect information and hamper his rivals’ efforts, but as there is only an initial selection of six of each two, the chances of your men being double agents is very high.

The other players are required to leave the room while you take your turn on the keyboard, and you can leave phony messages around the castle for them, steal their ladders as well as all sorts of other devious tricks. Also, the opportunities for off-screen disinformation are enormous. But one of the problems with the game is that I feel it’s unreasonable to expect the players to maintain the pretence and secrecy for the amount of time it takes to play. One feature of the game, for instance, is being rendered ‘incommunicado’ at certain points, which means that you can’t talk to the other players off-screen. I have my doubts as to whether this is particularly practical. Also, the command structure is only likely to be understood by hardened adventure freaks.

But these are only minor quibbles. The graphics and character set are very neat and very fast, and the basic strength of the game as a multi-player experience should not be missed. I haven’t really had time to get to grips with The Prince as yet because of its great complexity, not to mention the difficulty of getting four players together at the same time. But saying that, I think this one should see me through most of the winter.

Verdict: A real step forward in computer games. Makes Sabre Wulf look like Atic Atac.

WARZONE

Producer: CCS
Author: Steve P. Thomas
Price: £5.95

This is an impressive game, certainly the best wargame that C.C.S. have released so far. Even my girlfriend liked it, so it must be good! Warzone is a straight battle between the blue and red armies (the computer controlling the red armies of course) over a sectored map measuring thirty units square. The player has a choice of infantry, artillery and tank units and can choose up to one hundred and fifty units in total — which is matched by the computer’s side. The computer generates a new landscape for each game and deploys the units automatically.

The physical features of the map are a little on the simple side, but incorporate some nice touches such as giving longer range when firing from a hilltop. The map does not scroll, but is selected by sector — this causes some problems, as you cannot look at a sector where you do not have pieces (I suppose this may echo real-life military intelligence, but it can be very frustrating) and you also cannot fire from one sector into another, which is definitely not realistic. The program is all machine code, and responds fast, though I greatly prefer the cursor selection type of piece movement to the ‘J3 to H6’ type of input as found in Warzone.

Verdict: The second best computer wargame I’ve ever seen.

ASTRONUT

Producer: Software Projects Ltd
Author: Patrick Richmond
Price: £5.95

Underneath one more of Software Projects lively inlay covers is a colour entry code card and THE STORY: After weeks of waiting the Space Freighter has nearly reached your settlement on Planet CS — but disaster…

A sudden meteor shower has devastated the ship, and its cargo of Resource Blocks has been scattered over the planet. The people have elected you to journey outside the settlement and round up the Blocks. Unfortunately this is unexplored terrain and there are many dangers — naturally.

In fact there are 15 varying screens in what is basically a novel platform game with very simple control keys. At the base there is the flashing transporter base onto which the Resource Blocks (three per screen) must be pushed. These blocks appear in awkward places on the screen and Astronut moves them by pushing against them until they fall from one level to the next one down and so on until they can be pushed onto the transporter block, at which point the next one appears somewhere. Volcanoes or stairs automatically whisk Astronut upwards and he may jump down from any height. Various aliens waft about causing mayhem, but Astronut may leave behind bombs to destroy them, although the bombs have a time delay on them.

Any of the 15 screens may be entered at the start of a game by the select menu, and each of these is quite different from any of the others, with its own distinct problems.

CRITICISM

‘Astronut lives up to Software Projects’ standards. It has some excellent graphics (and imaginative ones). The game itself is very playable and has that magical addictive quality about it. Not MM or JSW but it is still excellent (in some ways even better, like bigger more colourful graphics) Another winner from Software Projects. (It’s a pity the screens don’t have names — a competition perhaps?)’

‘Astronut is one of those magical games that looks simple to play and indeed is simple to play but difficult to get through! The combination of volcanoes which whoosh you up but only at a given second, and the opening/closing platforms that get in the way, often stopping you half way up when you wanted to go all the way up, makes for a very jolly game with plenty of addictivity. It’s a pity that Software Projects forgot all the instructions to tell you the keys, they’re neither on screen nor the inlay. The level select menu says to use Z and X, which indicates those keys for left and right, but I spent a while looking for up and down before realising they weren’t needed, and did a lot of dying before I realised you could drop bombs. Still, an excellent game.’

‘The first thing that really strikes you about Astronut is the lack of instruction. Well, after sorting out the key problem I could start playing Astronut which is similar in appearance to JSW but plays in a way similar to a ‘Pengo’ game. I quite enjoyed playing this one which is both challenging and fun and has quite a few screens to keep you happy for a while. Overall Astronut is a standard platform game, graphically very good and a good game generally.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: not stated anywhere, but they are Z/X left/right and ENTER to drop time bomb
Joystick: Kempston
Keyboard play: very simple, and responsive
Use of colour: excellent
Graphics: very good, varied and detailed
Sound: continuous, but with on/off facility (0)
Skill levels: only 1 but each screen has a different problem
Lives: 3
Screens: 15
General Rating: Very good to excellent, addictive and playable.

Use of Computer

80%

Graphics

87%

Playability

84%

Getting Started

66%

Addictive Qualities

83%

Value For Money

84%

Overall

81%

BACKPACKERS GUIDE TO THE UNIVERSE

Producer: Fantasy Software
Author: Bob Hamilton, Darren Hamilton, Stuart Ruecroft
Price: £7.50

In collating this review the office was full of odd sounding comments like, ‘What’s a Googly Bird like to do?’ Reply: ‘Sleep mostly — with it, because Fluffels lick everything to death.’

There was a time when army commanders were cautioned to make sure their men looked after their feet properly and everything else would be okay. That was in the days when men marched everywhere. The old caution is a good pointer to playing Backpackers Guide to the Universe, because in Part 1, your main task is to collect a hit squad of wierd aliens who have been isolated in cages on the Planet of Exile, in order to go up against the egregious Scarthax who is threatening to pull the Great Plug of the Universe.

Fantasy’s favourite hero Ziggy is back in the saddle — or to be more accurate — in the harness of his backpack. The backpack is quite a marvellous invention (see the October issue of CRASH for more details!), which is capable of holding all the various wierdos that Ziggy frees. The problem is knowing what also to collect to both feed them and keep them happy so that they won’t die of heartbreak or become a meal for some other creature.

To help you in your nurse-maiding task is the Backpackers Guide which is located on the reverse side of the cassette from the actual game. This colourful device will introduce you to the creatures and their needs. Ziggy’s backpack also allows him to fly about, but it uses up more energy than walking, as does use of the flamethrower which deflects the wraiths that flit about the planet’s caverns. Contact with the wraiths also depletes energy. When the energy runs too low you will be beamed back to the main capsule and repair time is added onto your overall playing time. This is the interesting facet of Backpackers. The three projected parts must add up to only the 24 hours Scarthax has given the Universe before he pulls the plug. To have any hope of getting through to complete all three parts you must complete part one in under 12 hours (real time), which is why something like backpack repair time is important.

At any time during play you can press SYM SHIFT and a blue status box appears with scrolling information. This informs you of amount of backpack damage and interesting details like how your creatures are doing.

Backpackers Guide to the Universe Part One is played in a giant complex of caverns, a large maze, in which keys and useful objects constitute a large adventure and strategy element.

CRITICISM

‘Having previously seen a preview of the program I had high expectations of the game. Now, at this present moment, playing the game it gradually became apparent that my expectations were set too high. Graphics are very bright, detailed and imaginative, but nothing really seems to move other than the wraiths, which is a great pity for this game. As time goes by it would have been more fun if the wraiths had developed into more evil and deadly enemies and changed from their fluffy look to a more aggressive look. As it stands Backpackers seems to lack in ‘action content’. Saying this, the game does not lack content — a vast amount of strategy is needed to collect all the creatures out of this huge maze of caverns and to keep them all alive. This is where the marvellous Backpackers Guide comes into its own and provides many hours of enjoyment just reading what creatures are, what they like and what they dislike. Ziggy, my favourite super hero since Pyramid was brought out, now has this wonderful backpack — it’s marvellous what this device is capable of doing. When Ziggy flies, he moves very quickly, accurately and it’s fun to control him when he’s doing so. Walking is a different matter — why has my favourite super hero got such spindly insignificant legs? They don’t seem to be very well animated either. I’m sure his thin pegs are the reason why he doesn’t walk very quickly (probably because they are so weak). This game has many good points and will probably provide many hours of enjoyment in strategically capturing, feeding and nursing this planet’s wierd but wonderful creatures and taking them back to your space capsule. Other than this though, there doesn’t seem to be a great deal of addictive qualities.’

‘At last Backpackers has arrived, and with it the even longer awaited return of Ziggy. When you see Backpackers you will see that it has truly amazing graphics which would benefit just about any game! Backpackers has the ingredients for a really great game, graphics (no sound though), Ziggy, a brilliant plot and not forgetting the wierd and wonderful creatures which inhabit the Caverns of Exile. But sadly, the game didn’t really grab me. I don’t know why but I just didn’t find enough action in the game to keep me compelled for long. But with that said, it’s still an enjoyable program which I’m sure many will like. On the B side of the tape is the Guide which I must say is a delight to read and it provides vital information on the conservation of your animals after you have freed them from their cages. I mean how else would you know that you feed Urks on teabags and that the Flufelump is a blood sucker (it looks quite cute actually). Overall Backpackers is a fun program but it had limited appeal for me.’

‘Here is a game that will appeal to those who enjoy adventure and strategy games and want an arcade game that isn’t too demanding on reaction skills. It’s true that you have to be able to avoid the wraiths, but the real skill in Backpackers lies in collecting the creatures from their cages and discovering the useful items that help to keep them alive, as well as coping with the other useful objects that help you in your quest. These include keys which allow you to withdraw some of the stalactites and stalagmites and shortcuts. All this is done to a background of wit and humour and marvellous graphics. Ziggy flies very well, although the animation on his walking about is a little thin. With the second and third parts yet to come, Backpackers should prove to be a big hit and a very involving game.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: O/P left/right, Q/A up/down, bottom row to fire (when flying) and to pick up (when walking), BREAK to beam back to capsule, SYM SHIFT for status report
Joystick: Sinclair 2, Protek, AGE, Kempston
Keyboard play: responsive and well laid out
Use of colour: excellent
Graphics: excellent, imaginative and varied
Sound: none
Skill levels: 1
Lives: N/A
Screens: not known, but loads
Special features: game on Side 1, guide on side 2 of the tape
General Rating: perhaps lacking on the action side, otherwise an original and excellent program.

Use of Computer

82%

Graphics

87%

Playability

81%

Getting Started

90%

Addictive Qualities

78%

Value For Money

80%

Overall

83%

BOULDER DASH

Producer: Front Runner
Memory required: 48K
Retail price: £7.95
Language: machine code

Rocks and Rocks for Rockford

Front Runner, the software marketing organisation of K-Tel, has here released an American program which has been converted for the Spectrum. It was originally a big hit in the States for First Star for the Atari. It is also a very unusual game, that relies on a simple concept with complex ramifications.

You play the starring role of Rockford, a gem collector in a series of 16 underground caverns, lettered A to P. You can elect to play from caves A, E, I or M on difficulty levels 1 to 3, or from A only on levels 4 and 5. Difficulty reflects on the number of jewels to be collected and the time limit allowed.

The basic game play is not unlike those ‘Digger’ games where you burrow through the earth dropping boulders on nasties, but that puts it all too simply. There are a great many combinations available between all the screens which uses elements of boulders, earth which can be removed, gems and several types of nasty which chase you. Removing the earth from under a boulder will cause it to fall down, but one boulder stacked on top of another will also topple off, so you must take great care, and of course this immediately adds a strategic element to the game. On one screen you have to create space for an amoeba to grow, then release a load of butterflies from a lower portion of the cave which turn to gem stones when they meet the amoebae — the problem being that the butterflies kill Rockford. This gives a simple example of what the game is like.

Each cave is several times larger than the screen playing area and the screen automatically scrolls to keep pace with Rockford as he moves about, shovelling earth and moving boulders. Additionally there are four short interactive puzzles which you are entitled to play after completing caves D, H, L and P.

Rockford makes bold dash!

CRITICISM

‘What a strange game this is at first, with no obvious connection to anything else I’ve ever seen. The idea is totally and completely original — a weird sense of strategy, forward planning and arcade skill are the qualities needed to play this game. If you don’t possess one of these skills, then forget it. I found Boulder Dash immensely enjoyable, not because of its originality and weird sense of humour, but because of its compulsive playing ideas. It’s a long time since I’ve played a game as absorbing as this. You tend to get obsessed with it. Graphics are different, to say the least, bright and detailed. Sound is continuous, with plenty of spot effects. An incredibly addictive game and well worth buying. Brill!’

‘Boulder Dash is aptly named! At first sight it looks like a number of other digging games and the graphics don’t immediately strike you as extra special. Playing the game convinces otherwise. Within minutes I was sucked into it and hours went by. Boulder Dash is a brilliant program with a mean streak a mile wide in it. There is one particular room (“I” I think) which had me working for almost two hours without a break to beat its cruel sense of humour. Basically you release a piece of earth from a hole on top of a large chamber and for the next few seconds gems and boulders cascade down in a very realistic fashion. It is then a case of picking your way round to get at the gems without being squashed by a boulder. Very clever, amazingly, dangerously addictive, Boulder Dash should keep everyone going for ages and ages.’

‘This amazing game is so simple, it’s ridiculous! Yet once started it’s impossible to leave it. Rockford is amusingly animated, tapping his foot in boredom if you keep him standing still for too long, eyes flicking nervously, as well they might with all that weight of stone above his head! The movement of boulders and gems is so logical, when huge stacks of them fall that it can be a joy to watch. With the five skill levels and 16 screens to play through, this game represents value even for the slightly high price, and I can recommend it to anyone. It’s excellent and tremendously compelling to play.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: E, O/F, K up/down, M, X/SYM, C left/right, N, V or B to fire, or use the cursors and 0
Joystick: Kempston, Sinclair 2, Protek, AGF, Fuller
Keyboard play: responsive, plenty of options
Use of colour: excellent, very unusual combinations
Graphics: unusual, generally excellent
Sound: excellent
Skill levels: 5
Lives: 3
Screens: 16
General rating: highly addictive and playable, original and good value, highly recommended.

Use of computer

91%

Graphics

90%

Playability

98%

Getting started

89%

Addictive qualities

98%

Value for money

90%

Overall

93%

COUNTRY COTTAGES

Producer: Sterling Software
Author: Brian James
Price: £5.95

This is a charming strategy game for two players which brings a whiff of the countryside to your screen. The object is to buy country cottages on a bank overdraft and make money from them by renting them out to a stream of oddball characters.

Each player starts off with an overdraft facility of £100,000, and each player takes it in turn, with a turn representing a month. The screen display shows your bank balance, value of assets, increase in assets (as land prices rise) and interest owed to the bank. It also shows what properties (if any) the players own, what tennants are in and what they are paying in rent.

With each turn a player may opt to have a look at offered properties, advertise for a tennant, raise the rent or sell an empty property. Opting to look at something, the screen cuts to a rapidly drawn graphic of the cottage in question. There are several types in a wide price range. If the player can afford it, it goes to auction and there is a scramble between the players to secure it, with the steps going up in £200 between bids. Once a cottage is owned, it may be advertised, with the rent wanted being input. If the asking price is not too steep a tennant may arrive, usually with some other impedmenta like monkeys or cats. During a turn the rent may be raised or lowered, although putting it up too often or too much may well result in the tennant pushing off in disgust. If a property is sold, the player receives its original asking price plus the appreciation factor per month of ownership.

After a year’s play, if a year’s bank balance is satisfactory, the bank manager may increase the overdraft facility to £200,000 and so on. The winner is the first player whose total assets first reach the pre-set target figure for a short or long game.

CRITICISM

‘It seems quite a while since we have had one of these property buying/selling strategy games in to review. Instructions seemed to make the game quite complex, and involving to play, something which I like. Initially the game was playable, and choosing beautiful cottages seemed to be quite a task within a £100,000 budget, given by my kind bank manager (mean, isn’t he)? With my £100,000 I was able to buy two country cottages in reasonable condition. My next task was to find tennants to occupy them — couldn’t be easier, put an advert up in the local paper and suddenly two tennants came forward. What do I do now? Well, nothing really, just slowly increase the rent, and wart — yawn, boring. Ah! My kind manager has now given me £200,000! Instantly I sprang back to life from the darkest depths of sleep and bought two more cottages, found tennants, sat and waited. Is life really so easy and uncomplicated in the buying, renting and selling market as this game portrays? I’ve heard about making games uncomplicated and easy to play, but Sterling Software have seemingly gone over the top and totally spoiled the playability of this one. I don’t realty think there’s enough to keep anybody interested for any amount of time, and besides, being a two player game is already a major drawback. Lack of achievement and encouragement really does stop me from telling people to go out and buy this game.’

‘The nicest thing about Country Cottages is the graphics of the stately residences themselves. From mean, broken down hovels to four window lakeside bungalows, they are all neatly and colourfully drawn. The random elements which make up the names and characters of the tennants who come to view them are also at work on the cottages, because although the price always matches the condition and appearance, the fine print often gives rise to mild hysteria and the feeling that an accomplished estate agent wrote it. Who, after all, would put burglar proof locks on a cottage so run down the burglar could climb through the holes in the walls!? In fact the humour and the graphics are about it, because otherwise Country Cottages is rather limited in content and action, even with two players. I get the feeling that there’s a much better game to come from Sterling along these lines and using (rare in such games) these lovely graphics.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: 8 keys for input with one for each player at auction time
Joystick: N/A
Keyboard play: input routine uses ENTER or Y and is very fast
Use of colour: very good on the cottages, sensible on the balance sheets
Graphics: excellent, and drawn very quickly
Sound: used usefully
Skill levels: 9, increasing hazards to property
Lives: N/A
Screens: random landscape creation
Special features:
General Rating: Delightful to watch, but lacking in content.

Use of Computer

72%

Graphics

79%

Getting Started

64%

Playability

70%

Addictive Qualities

38%

Value For Money

46%

Overall

62%

CYCLONE

Producer: Vortex Software
Author: Costa Panayi
Price: £6.99

Sequels are all the rage, and why not if they work well? Vortex here are following up their jet fighter 3D game TLL, but there are a few important differences to the former game. For a start off Cyclone features a helicopter (also the rage at the moment?) and you are not zapping round dots, but more usefully rescuing people from outlying islands and collecting valuable boxes by using the winch and cable from the helicopter.

As in TLL the playing area is quite large and a map is provided, which shows the Base island set in the middle of a sea dotted with groups of small islands. Once again, author Costa Panayi has drawn in the detail with a blocky shaded 3D which describes the islands, the relief on them, the buildings, and the shadow of the machine itself on the ground.

Apart from the view of the playing area (which can be seen from the North or the South point of view as the player desires), there are the essential instruments done as bar codes which are an altitude indicator, speedometer, fuel and time left. There are also two other important indicators, one for aircraft and one for wind force. In Cyclone you will encounter low flying Jets (hanging around from the base in TLL no doubt) with which you may well collide. On the map a red cyclone can be seen weaving around the area. In its proximity the disturbance will affect handling of the helicopter and may cause you to crash. Winching up crates or people is done by centring the machine over the object and descending to a low level, whereupon the winch will automatically lower the cable and automatically collect the object.

CRITICISM

‘Cyclone sports many of TLL’s features such as the fab graphics but the main difference this time is that you fly a helicopter instead of a jet. The style of play is very similar to that of TLL. As sequels go I felt there wasn’t enough difference between the two games to warrant your getting Cyclone if you’ve already got TLL, though Cyclone is still a good game within its own right. It’s got all the makings of a fab game but in my opinion it is just not exciting enough — maybe the introduction of a fire button would have helped (I’m a sadist you see). Overall, a good game but lacks real advances over TLL.’

‘After TLL my expectations were none too high for this latest release Cyclone, because I was one of those who thought that the former game lacked in content and things to do. I was proved to be wrong — Cyclone has much more content with plenty to keep you busy and interested for quite a while. Graphics seem to be an improvement over TLL with more 3D depth and shadowing. Normal and bright functions on the computer were hardly used to give the illusion of 3D, instead ink shadowing has been used and seems to work far better. The helicopter is well drawn and detailed. Rotor blades whizz round and give an excellent impression of rotating movement. One thing that I must say that has worked exceptionally well is the cyclone effect, giving your helicopter a rough ride. I like the addition of jets whizzing past you on occasion, although it can be confusing to know which way to go to avoid them. Colour and sound have been used realistically. Overall a far better game than TLL with much more content and playability — a distinct improvement.’

‘The helicopter is very good, the way the rotors go, and it’s very detailed, in particular the shadow on the surface of the sea or ground is excellent. I also like the way you have to wrestle with the controls when you are near the cyclone — very realistic. The use of the North and South views is useful, especially when boxes are hidden on a beach under a cliff, and this forces you to search for them a bit more. The graphics are very good and make playing the game more interesting. Collecting refugees and crates is actually more exciting than zapping dots was in TLL, but generally I don’t think it is very addictive because there isn’t enough action involved.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: 1/Q up/down, O/P left/right, X for forward, M for map
Joystick: Kempston, Sinclair 2, AGF, Protek
Keyboard play: very responsive, well positioned
Use of colour: excellent
Graphics: excellent
Sound: very good
Skill levels: progressive difficulty
Lives: 3
Screens: scrolling
Special features:
General Rating: Considered to be more fun than TLL and very playable, but perhaps lacking a little in lasting appeal.

Use of Computer

81%

Graphics

84%

Playability

76%

Getting Started

79%

Addictive Qualities

73%

Value For Money

81%

Overall

79%

THE FALL GUY

Producer: Elite Systems Ltd
Author: Andy Williams, Rory Green
Price: £6.95

Anyone who ever saw the oddball movie starting Peter O’Toole called Stuntman will have guessed that a film stuntman’s life is neither safe nor easy. Elite’s Fall Guy, the officially licenced version of the Warner Brothers TV series of the same name, could actually be regarded as a truer reflection of stunting than the series on which it is based.

You play Lee Majors playing Colt Seavers in a series of stunt situations. The scenario is simple enough. The film has a limited budget, and every second wasted means more money lost. You get five lives, or ‘takes’ to put it in film parlance, and on each screen you must complete a set amount of shot ‘footage’. As all the scenes incorporate the act of jumping from one thing to another, this means that enough footage is in the can when you have leapt 15 times. Should you fail, and have to go for another ‘take’, you pick up ‘footage-wise’ (as they say in Burbank) where you left off.

The action opens with the famous ‘jumping from a bridge onto a fast moving train’ scene, which Colt Seavers can do with both arms tied behind his back and his eyes closed. Usually, when this is done, the train is exiting the tunnel/bridge when you jump onto it. What makes life tricky in Fall Guy is that the action is reversed, so as soon as you have successfully landed on the roof of a carriage, you must start to run like hell to keep from being smashed into the bridge. To make life more difficult there is a bird flapping around by the bridge, which gets in the way of the leaps. Once 15 carriages have been successfully leapt, the scene dissolves to the next. A sort of repeat except that the goods train carriages are going the other way, so you must run towards the jumping position to stay on screen. Further scenes include leaping onto moving boats, tanks etc.

CRITICISM

‘You may wonder, well is it anything like the TV series — the answer is yes, in a way. The idea couldn’t have been simpler, just jump and land in the right places while avoiding flying objects (I think they’re ducks)! That may sound easy but on each screen a different technique for jumping/timing is required. Graphics are all large, cheerful in colour and detailed. All the moving graphics do so in a smooth, flicker-free action, and not at any slow pace either. Great tunes. Fall Guy seems to have plenty of playability in it, but I thought just jumping, timing and jumping again isn’t very compulsive content for me. More likely to be a success with younger games players.’

‘Elite have certainly worked very hard with the graphics in Fall Guy, because there are 30 screens, all varied, all animated with large, detailed pictures. Your man is a massive leaper too. A sophisticated degree of jumping control is possible, as the longer you keep the key pressed, the further he jumps. In play, the game is very simple really. It is one of those that requires a rhythmic memory, since repeated timing is of the essence. This means that completing a screen can become quite easy, but moving onto the next is another matter, since all your rhythms are thrown out. Despite its simplicity, and because of the great graphics, I found Fall Guy fun to play and remarkably addictive. Pity it has to be £1 too much, and I wonder if all these licenced games are having to add so much to afford the royalties for the licence?’

‘I never thought very much of the TV series, because I can’t stand Lee Majors, which puts you at a disadvantage in reviewing a game based on the series. However, your man looks nothing like him, thank goodness, so that got that out of the way! There’s not much to the game content, but what there is, is clever stuff, and difficult. Marvellous, detailed and often humourous graphics make for high playability, and I enjoyed the game very much. However I don’t think it has that much lasting appeal because of the lack of content. It’s true that you have to be able to change pace and jumping style from screen to screen, and there are a lot of them, but in the end the fun palls with the repetition of ideas. Good but not great, and a trifle expensive too.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: Z or M/X or SYM SHIFT left/right, 0 or 1 = jump
Joystick: Kempston, Sinclair 2, Cursor type
Keyboard play: responsive, simple operation and well laid out for left or right hands
Use of colour: excellent, very varied
Graphics: excellent, large, smooth and detailed
Sound: very good tunes with on/off facility
Skill levels: 1
Lives: 5
Screens: 30
General Rating: A game with good playability, but lacking in addictivity.

Use of Computer

75%

Graphics

80%

Playability

81%

Getting Started

75%

Addictive Qualities

72%

Value For Money

74%

Overall

76%

FRED’S FAN FACTORY

Producer: Software Super Savers Ltd
Author: Pat W. Norris
Price: £2.99

Another in the new Software Projects’ budget range — Software Super Savers, Fred’s Fan Factory is an interesting idea. It’s a pity nothing could be said about playing the game either on the inlay or on the screen, because although the immediate requirement is pretty obvious, the long term objectives are not.

Fred runs left and right along the bottom of the screen, while above him there are four ‘corridors’ with offset holes leading upwards from one to the other. In the roof of the corridors there are sharp green spikes at intervals, and at opposed ends of each corridor there are large electric style fans, magenta fans on the first level, green on the second, blue on the third and yellow on the top. On Fred’s level there are eight handles set into the roof in four colours, each handle corresponding to one of the fans. By dashing from one handle to the other and activating it, Fred can make the appropriate fans work.

From the lowest level at the left, a balloon man appears, wafting down the corridor until he reaches the first upward hole. The balloon then rises and will burst on a spike unless Fred can reach the right fan and waft the balloon safely on down the corridor. By judicious use of alternating fans, it is possible to make the balloons waft from left to right, picking up yellow blocks set on the roofs here and there. As soon as the first balloon is under way another will emerge from the right and so on. The object is to collect all the yellow blocks before running out of balloon men.

CRITICISM

‘Fred’s Fan Factory is a rather original game to say the least, the graphics are good enough to match the game. This game is challenging and strategic in an ‘arcade’ sort of way. I enjoyed it! I also found it a little difficult because the type of skill required is an ability to concentrate on several things at once, rather like juggling. No easy task!’

‘The object is to guide balloons through a factory using the fans on either side. At first the game is confusing because you are not told what to do. The keys are awkwardly placed and the game depends heavily on your having a colour TV.’

‘Fred’s Fan Factory would have been a really good game if it had been a bit more playable. The idea is novel but there are two serious failings; the first is that the level of difficulty has been twisted up just that bit too much to make the game enjoyable to play, and the second is that it is very hard to position Fred properly to activate a fan switch. This just makes the level of frustration too high to continue being bothered with the game. A pity, because the idea is good and the sort of skill needed is interesting.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: Q/P left/right, M for fan control
Joystick: Kempston
Keyboard play: with only three keys it would have been better to have them positioned closer together
Use of colour: good
Graphics: quite good although pretty simple
Sound: only the balloon bursting effect
Skill levels:
Lives: 6 balloon men
Screens:
Special features:
General Rating: Mixed feelings from reviewers ranging from waste of money to above average.

Use of Computer

58%

Graphics

48%

Playability

43%

Getting Started

25%

Addictive Qualities

38%

Value For Money

51%

Overall

44%

KNIGHT LORE

Producer: Ultimate
Memory required: 48K
Retail price: £9.95
Language: machine code
Author: The ACG team

Daytime Human explorer...

It must be Christmas! You can tell by the fact that Ultimate has released two games simultaneously. Underwurlde is the follow up to Sabre Wulf and Knight Lore is the follow up to Underwurlde. Ultimate have been clever enough to ensure that both new releases are very different from each other in playing style and game design. Whereas Atic Atac, Sabre Wulf and Underwurlde all played with 3D Knight Lore uses a very solid 3D perspective in which the 3D plays an important part spatially.

Our brave hero, Sabreman, is back again, pith helmet still firmly in place, but now roving the torturous rooms and passageways of Knight Lore castle to seek the old dying wizard, who is the only person who can free him from the deadly curse (appearing in a pith helmet all day perhaps)? The old wizard, whose name is Melkhior, is like many another game wizard — he sets traps and tests to ensure that all who reach him are worthy.

Knight Lore is played over forty days and forty nights. At the base of the screen a moon and sun symbol indicate the time. By day Sabreman is himself, but at night he changes into a werewulf. In either condition he is vulnerable to sudden death. The rooms are populated with all manner of spiky death and large stone blocks. In some respects Knight Lore resembles a 3D platform game, where the trick in each room is to discover the route and the methods by which you can reach the various charms which must be collected without being impaled on a spike, crushed by a failing ball chain or zapped by a poltergeist. Sometimes the ghosties are useful in helping you to move about, but panic sets in as the days run out, for after the fortieth day, Sabreman, if he fails in his quest, will forever become a werewulf.

Scoring is by time taken, percentage of quest completed and charms collected with an overall rating offered. As in Underwurlde there is no Hall of Fame, largely due to the size of the program.

...turns night prowling Werewulf

CRITICISM

‘Sabreman is back, but this time he’s back in glorious 3D. Knight Lore is similar in appearance to Avalon, but the graphics are bolder. With that said Knight Lore resembles nothing I’ve played before. It is fun, addictive, but to sum up in one word it’s Brilliant! From what I can gather from the rhyming instructions you’ve got to put together a potion to stop yourself from turning into a werewulf — and one of the excellent touches in the game is the transformation from man to beast and back again. After a while I think I preferred the werewulf. The people at Ultimate obviously have devious minds because you only have to look at some of the rooms to see how wicked they are. On the whole I found Knight Lore slightly more pleasing than Underwurlde for two reasons; it’s slightly easier and it’s not as frustrating. Once again Ultimate have come up with the goods, Knight Lore is sheer perfection, get this for Christmas — you definitely won’t regret it.’

‘It’s nice to see Ultimate depart from the Sabreman theme in Knight Lore. This game is totally different and original from anything they’ve done before — in my opinion it’s the best game they have yet produced. Graphics are in 3D and use the new technique of masking, so that the moving characters do not flicker at all when they pass in front of other objects, and only one colour is used per screen which avoids any attribute problems. This does not mean that the game is lacking in colour however, since each screen has its own colour. Some of the graphics are distinctly original, quite different to anything produced on the Spectrum before. The graphics are so detailed, imaginative, large and well drawn, it is impossible to complain about them. There is just such a lot to see and to explore, it’s incredible and a joy to play. This game is full of mystery in the sense of why do you turn into a werewulf at night!? What do any of the objects do, is a question I keep asking myself — just fun collecting them. Good use of sound has been made with some nice tunes. To sum this game up I do think that this is probably the best game yet produced for the Spectrum and it seems to me to be perfect in every sense. I honestly can’t see how any real improvement can be made on this — well worth the £10.’

‘Any Ultimate game is a thrill to unpack and load, but with Knight Lore they have surpassed themselves. The 3D graphics are so exciting to see that the fingers are instantly itching to get at the keys. A novel innovation here is the option to select what is called directional control as well as the keys or joystick functions. This adds eight directional movement to Sabreman, which is very useful in the tight confines of the 3D screen. The 3D itself is excellent, with marvellous drawing of the walls and characters, and Ultimate have used the hidden view idea very cruelly, so that a hint may be given of something nasty crouching behind a stairway — but you’re never sure until it’s too late. The most has been wrung from the situation, for example, blocks may move on their own, sometimes they are carried by ghosts, sometimes they sink when you land on them, sometimes they vanish to reveal deadly spikes beneath. The animation is terrific from the smallest detail right through to Sabrewulfman himself. Knight Lore has that magical ingredient which makes it exciting to play and watch, and keeps you on the edge of your seat with anxiety. IT’S SIMPLY A GREAT GAME.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: alternate keys on the bottom row for left/right, any keys on the second row for forward, any key on the third row for jump, any key on the top row for pick up/drop
Joystick: Kempston, AGF, Protek, Sinclair 2
Keyboard play: very responsive, plenty of options for simple control
Use of colour: excellent
Graphics: excellent 3D, marvellous design and imagination
Sound: terrific
Skill levels: 1
Lives: 4
Screens: not known, but loads
Special features: filmation, which allows you to do almost anything with the objects in the game
General rating: an outstanding game at the price.

Use of computer

93%

Graphics

97%

Playability

97%

Getting started

90%

Addictive qualities

96%

Value for money

93%

Overall

94%

LODE RUNNER

Producer: Software Projects Ltd
Author: Platinum Productions (David J. Anderson, Ian Morrison)
Price: £5.95

You are a highly trained Galactic Commando deep in enemy territory. Power hungry leaders of the repressive Bungeling Empire have stolen a fortune in gold from the peace loving people, and you have just discovered their underground treasury. Your aim in life is to recover every single ingot.

So Software Proj describe this manic arcade game with over 150 different screens, and a customising facility for you to design your own screens and save them to tape.

In fact, what we have here is a mammoth ‘Panic’ style game where the traditional digging function is actually an important part of the overall strategy. The screens are made up of numerous variations on the theme of brick blocks, ladders and bars, with the gold stacked here and there, often in seemingly inaccessible places. The Bungeling agents swarm all over the place after you, with one disadvantage — they can’t leap up large blocks — but then, neither can you. What you can do is dig holes for them to fall into, out of which they spring after a few seconds. You can dig holes to get at the inaccessible gold too, and the longest possible fall does not kill you off.

A nasty touch is that the holes heal themselves after a while, and as you can’t jump out of them like the nasties, you get concretised in! This factor is important on screens where the gold is deeply buried under brick, as you can only dig a hole through a layer if there is more than one block missing on the layer above it. This means having to dig out several blocks length in order to have the room to dig downwards for three or four blocks. Meanwhile they are filling in above you and the nasties are leaping down on top of you.

Because of the huge number of screens, there are 75 on one side of the tape and 75 on the second side. Access to any playing screen is available — they don’t expect you to wade through all of them to complete the game!

CRITICISM

‘Lode Runner is evidence that you don’t need mega graphics to make a great game, just a good idea. All of the graphics in this game are small, one character size, and don’t have all sorts of decoration. But the game is great fun to play. It has a high strategic element in determining the best way to get the goodies and escape. I found it both playable and addictive. The men, although smooth, moved nicely, running, jumping, climbing and swinging in true commando style. An edit and save facility is provided so you can invent your own situations when you are fed up with the 150 screens already there.’

‘A game to be dismissed, is a proabable first thought on seeing Lode Runner, because the graphics look small and old fashioned. But don’t be misled. A closer examination reveals that the one character-sized men are beautifully animated and extremely characterful as well. This is another of those ‘modern’ arcade oldies given a new lease of life with clever thinking, which piles incident on top of incident until a completely new game emerges from it. It’s a simple game in playing concept, but difficult and challenging in execution. Fun and highly addictive, especially with so many screens to play, Lode Runner is a great game. Get it!’

‘First impressions of this game is that it is going to be a crummy platform game, because the size of the characters is tiny. One then realises that each individual character, though only 8 pixels high, is quite detailed and fairly well animated, quite neat indeed. Screen layout is big, to say the least, mind you, it is an assault course. Usage of the screen space is excellent. While playing the game, it becomes apparent that collecting gold ingots isn’t as easy as it seems. A considerable amount of forward planning is needed, especially on the higher screens when there seem to be hundreds of storm troopers after you — amazing! There is something, I don’t quite know what it is, that attracted me to this game and I think it will have a long lasting appeal. Whilst you progress through the many screens, a useful item (known as spare lives) is incremented with every screen you clear, so that on level 5 you have 9 lives, and I can assure you, you really do need 9 lives. A much more complex game than first meets the eye, but usually these are the types that attract people into buying them, because they will have such a long lasting appeal. Another original idea that uses some previously tested graphics, ie. platforms.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: user definable, preset are: Q/Z up/down, I/P left/right, N to dig holes
Joystick: Kempston, Cursor, Sinclair 2
Keyboard play: highly responsive
Use of colour: simple on the whole, but very good
Graphics: small, mean as hell and well animated
Sound: not much, but doesn’t spoil the game
Skill levels: 1, but it seems to get more difficult as you go along
Lives: 4 to kick off with
Screens: 150
Special features: you can design your own screens via the editor and save them to tape
General Rating: A very good game, with plenty of playability and addictive qualities.

Use of Computer

81%

Graphics

68%

Playability

83%

Getting Started

84%

Addictive Qualities

80%

Value For Money

87%

Overall

81%

LOONY LANDER

Producer: Software Super Savers Ltd
Author: Robert Maynard, Nicholas Williams
Price: £2.99

Loony Lander is a title that describes the game type quite well — indeed a ‘Lunar Lander’ game. What makes this one different is that each screen is different graphically and has different hazards for the shuttle craft to descend through. Eleven screens in all, each with a different title. On the first — The Research station, layers of clouds bar the route down to the landing pad. Then there’s the Subway, with tube trains crossing from tunnels, The Oasis, Underwater Scenario, Park, Arcade Machine, Cassandra Crossing, Hell, The Worm’s Hide Out, Pacman’s Revenge and the Cloning factory — all make an appearance.

In every other respect, the game plays quite traditionally, with you guiding the shuttle down through the transverse hazards to land softly on a pad.

CRITICISM

‘This is the hardest ‘Lander’ type game I have ever played. The ship has so much ‘inertia’ that control is really difficult. A challenge up to a point, but this one goes a bit beyond the point. Generally this game is average, but if you are a ‘Lander’ expert then try it!’

‘The thing that makes this game fail is that you cannot respond quickly enough to the directing instructions. I’m sure that with hours of practice one could, perhaps, become quite good. The only sound is an apologetic burp when you die. Colours are bright and cheerful. The keys don’t respond very well, though, and this makes navigation almost impossible.’

‘This game is one of the cheapies on the market produced by SSS (really Software Projects), but being cheap won’t be able to sell it because the game is of extremely low quality. WHAT’S SURPRISING (and rather sad) is that the graphics in this (and some of the other SSS games) are designed to a high standard, usually smooth and quite fast with plenty of detail. But the real problem seems to me to be the lack of playability. It’s as though the games haven’t been really thought through property. In the case of Loony Lander, it is almost impossible to get through the hazards — nice, therefore, to have a demo of the screens — at least you get your money’s worth there.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: 1/2 accelerate up/down, 2/9 hover vertically/horizontally, 8/0 accelerate left/right
Joystick: none
Keyboard play: totally unresponsive, although well laid out — too many keys, though.
Use of colour: above average to good
Graphics: smooth, small but effective and varied
Sound: poor
Skill levels: 1
Lives: 5
Screens: 11
General Rating: Waste of money in the opinion of two of the reviewers and below average from the third.

Use of Computer

40%

Graphics

48%

Getting Started

34%

Playability

56%

Addictive Qualities

20%

Value For Money

32%

Overall

38%

THE MAGIC ROUNDABOUT

Producer: CRL Group PLC
Author: Paul Andrew Stoddart, Jay Derrett, Jared Derrett
Price: £6.95

There was a time when Serge Danot’s ‘Magic Roundabout’ was almost compulsory viewing on BBC in the late afternoon. The simple stories told in that quiet, matter of fact voice just worked. With computer game versions of telly series all the rage at the moment, it comes as no surprise to see Magic Roundabout appearing. The title screen contains all the well known figures from the series like Brian the snail, Mr. McHenry, Basil, Florence, Zebedee and of course the hero of the piece, Dougal.

The object is to guide Dougal in his task of building a house of sugar cubes before it’s time for bed. The sugar cubes dot the landscape, but the house must be built by pushing the cubes to the magic toadstool. Sugar also forms his diet (dentists take note!), and to keep his energy from falling too low, he must continually top it up with a lump. The screen only shows a small part of the total playing area, and scrolls to keep Dougal in the middle. Apart from sugar lumps, there are the familiar red trees, and of course Dougal’s other friends from the enchanted garden. If he bumps into any of his friends, however, he loses a life, and after three, it’s time for bed.

CRITICISM

‘This is a simple collect and avoid the nasties game (yes, Florence, Brian and even old Zebedee are in the category of nasties)! The game is simple in layout, the graphics are nothing special, but young Roundabout fans will like them. Magic Roundabout should be in the 11’s and under category.’

‘How long was it since I’d last seen these characters I asked myself? It’s nice to hear about them again. The task is fairly simple in this game — just build a house from sugar lumps at the toadstool. Sounds easy enough, doesn’t it? Well I searched and searched and could I find the toadstool before (and very quickly) all three lives had gone? All graphics are large and colourful, with the characteristic red trees planted around, and all the great names like Brian, Dylan, Ermintrude, Zebedee and Florence, who float effortlessly around the screen. Sound — well the Magic Roundabout theme is there, although a little broken up. Quite a child’s game. I enjoyed it, but still only an average game.’

‘The graphics are nice enough, but the game fails to recall the real atmosphere of the TV series. Magic Roundabout is obviously intended to appeal to children, and no doubt it will, although I think there isn’t enough playability in the game. Children who use computers are remarkably sophisticated in their needs when it comes to interactive games. I also found the inlay instructions misleading, because I failed to find a toadstool or a train anywhere — a child might give up more quickly.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: A/Z up/down, N/M left/right, SPACE bark/eat sugar
Joystick: Kempston, AGF, Protek
Keyboard play: responsive, well laid out, but positioning Dougal can be fussy
Use of colour: reasonable
Graphics: average, but characteristic of the original
Sound: very little, poor attempt at tune
Skill levels: 1
Lives: 3
Screens: scrolling
General Rating: May prove popular with young children, lacks content for older people.

Use of Computer

58%

Graphics

57%

Getting Started

52%

Playability

54%

Addictive Qualities

38%

Value For Money

45%

Overall

51%

MOONLIGHTER

Producer: Software Super Savers Ltd
Author: R. Macfarquhar
Price: £2.99

In these hard times you have decided to supplement your meagre income — you have taken a night job as watchman at Capital City’s Space Terminal cargo warehouse. You have been assigned to the R block (radiation contaminated shipments). Why is the pay for this four times the normal rate? Why is the last man’s gear still in his locker? Why did they ask for your next of kin? Still, your buggy should stand up to anything…

So say the instructions to this new budget game from a wing of Software Projects. The radiation, of course, has caused creatures in the warehouse to mutate, and you must go around in your ‘zappodozer’ zappodozing them by shoving the crated goods at them and squashing them before they get you.

From this brief description it is easy to see that what we have here is really a ‘Pengo’ type game where crates replace ice blocks. Each level is enlivened by the fact that the goods are changed. As each screen starts one of the crates will be flashing and a creature will emerge from it after a second or two. More crates flash as more creatures come to the attack, becoming more intelligent as they go along. Crates may be pushed along or melted (except the yellow ones which may be pushed only). At the base of the screen is an energy bar — there is also a time counter which affects the bonus score.

CRITICISM

‘I didn’t think Moonlighter was very playable because the dozer is too sluggish while the nasties are quick. Also the fact that there are quite a few keys does not help very much. The most exciting bit of the game is the ‘zippy’ noise that occurs when all the lives are lost!’

‘Another attempt at an ice age game — ‘Pengo’. The screen is laid out on quite a large grid of ‘ice’ — but in this game crates of ‘Dunlot’ tennis balls. And it is this load of balls that keep on hanging about trying to get you! The mutated balls seem to be very eager to try and squash you and move very fast in comparison to ‘you’. I found on the very first screen that killing off five balls was a nightmare — on the second screen with ten balls after me it seemed impossible. Colour has been used very well in this game, graphics are clear detailed and move well. There are many tunes, all quite jolly and pleasing. At £2.99 this does represent good value for this type of game.’

‘The graphics in Moonlighter are smooth and quite fast, and although they are actually quite detailed, they don’t really appear to be so, which is a bit odd. It’s a fairly standard ‘Pengo’ game and a pretty hard one — perhaps too hard. Good value though for the price. Nothing amazing — just reasonable as a game.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: Q/A up/down, O/P left/right, M to fire, N to push
Joystick: Kempston
Keyboard play: responsive, but melt and push are the wrong way round for comfortable play
Use of colour: above average
Graphics: only average
Sound: good tunes, some nice spot effects
Skill levels: progressive (more jumps, leaps and bounds!)
Lives: 5
Screens:
Special features:
General Rating: Average game, which represents reasonable value for money.

Use of Computer

48%

Graphics

52%

Playability

47%

Getting Started

50%

Addictive Qualities

36%

Value For Money

54%

Overall

48%

NEW CYLON ATTACK

Producer: A’n’F Software
Price: £5.75

A&F are probably most famous in Spectrum games for their hi-scorer platform game Chuckie Egg which still sits in the CRASH chart even now. It’s been quite a while since that came out and the latest release, New Cylon Attack, is a conversion from the BBC and Electron micros. The game was said to have set new standards for space games on the Beeb, and one critic went as far as to say that the only problem with it was that there was nothing to criticise (thereby reinforcing the fallacy that criticism implies bad comments).

New Cylon Attack is a 3D space battle in which you must defend civilisation from the attacking Cylon ships. The aliens have discovered the route of your mother ship and are out to destroy it. As an interceptor pilot you are launched from the mother ship to fight them with your laser guns.

The screen display is largely filled with the 3D view of space. Centred in the view is a squared gun sight with vertical and lateral moving bars for fine sighting. The sights move with ship movement. Laser bolts are seen as round blobs hurtling out from either side of the screen towards the large and solid aliens.

Other screen information shown indicates status of shields, lasers and fuel. The lasers use energy and take time to recharge, failing to fire until replenished. Fuel and shields are replenished by docking with the yellow coloured mothership — an automatic process if you line the sights on it. Although fuel may be replenished by docking during an attack wave, shields are only replenished when a wave is defeated. But during the docking aliens may attack the mother ship.

Apart from the multifarious alien craft there are other celestial bodies about, planets with moons, signposts pointing to Mars, comets and many stars. A radar above the viewscreen indicates the positions of attacking aliens which are just out of visual range, while the mother ship is a yellow flashing dot. Well they thought it was great on the Beeb — how about the Spectrum?

CRITICISM

‘A&F’s New Cylon Attack is a 3D cockpit game using graphics which are more solid than the type used by some similar and recent games. The game is very playable but it only involves shooting Cylons — unlike other recent 3D space games like Dark Star and Starstrike, which have more things to do. But Cylon Attack is not exactly like them in the truest sense — it’s basically a cockpit shoot em up, and it’s a good one at that.’

‘It’s nice to be able to get away from the 3D wireframe that so many recent games have been specialising on and have solids for a change. I must say, I still prefer solid graphics, and these are nice big and detailed graphics that work well in perspective. This is not just a space shoot em game with your task to eliminate every alien in sight — this game contains more things such as rotating planets with rotating moons circling them, meteorites and asteroids as well as other various classes of space ships which cannot be shot — one of the most recognisable being the USS Enterprise! I am pleased to see A&F keeping on the Spectrum scene as they don’t seem to have produced anything for the last six months. Good sound on this game is also a welcome feature. I found the game very playable, but maybe a little wearing on the addictive qualities.’

‘There’s something a bit old fashioned about New Cylon Attack, not surprising perhaps, as this is an older game from another machine converted to the Spectrum. Not that the old fashioned quality is a drawback, because the graphics and speed are very much up to date, and what you get is a good, zappy shoot em up in the Timegate tradition. Good sound effects add to the atmosphere as well as dashes of visual humour in some of the debris occupying space with you. I did find that the game had a limited appeal after a while, which affects its addictivity a little, but definitely one for the shoot em up brigade.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: user definable, needs four directional and one for fire
Joystick: Kempston catered for, others via UDK
Keyboard play: responsive — watch out for ‘inertia’ effect
Use of colour: playing area is black and white, simple usage around
Graphics: good, fast moving, large and work well in perspective
Sound: very good
Skill levels: 1
Lives: 3 fuel lives and percentage of shield damage
Screens: many attack waves
Special features:
General Rating: Good.

Use of Computer

80%

Graphics

79%

Playability

77%

Getting Started

78%

Addictive Qualities

73%

Value For Money

78%

Overall

78%

PERCY THE POTTY PIGEON

Producer: Gremlin Graphics Software Ltd
Author: Shaun Hollingworth, R. Vessey, P. Jackson
Price: £6.95

This is Gremlin Graphic’s Spectrum follow up to Monty Mole. Originally released first on the CBM64, Potty Pigeon on the Spectrum is quite a different game and in a way more complex. The pigeon owns a nest in a tree with three ever-hungry chicks in it. What they want is worms and loads of them. Here and there across the linked screens there are wiggly worms sticking their silly heads up above ground. Potty has to go around and collect them, one at a time, and fly them back to the nest. This costs him a lot of energy, which is replenished by catching the mayflies, not an easy task as they dart about. Although if he walks his energy level also goes up.

Life would be just too easy for Potty if it weren’t for those little hazards that make life interesting. In this case these include a busy helicopter, snap dragons, frogs, angry red birds, spiders and cars on the road in some screens (it was the cars that made up all of the CBM64 version). The landscape itself also poses problems as objects cut up the playing space, forcing Potty to fly dangerously close to some hazards. His sole means of defence is a natural function which pigeons have a habit of using all the while. It stuns the nasty for a few moments!

CRITICISM

‘Monty Mole was hard to follow, Potty Pigeon is a good game but not in the super league! Generally the graphics are good, but are not all that exciting. The collecting theme here is not a new idea — it is alright but not very addictive. Potty Pigeon will not be remembered as much as Monty Mole, once a standard is set it has to be kept up to. Good but uninspiring.’

‘Potty Pigeon is similar to the CBM64 version in name only. Feeding your chicks is no easy feat. The first load of screens are simple but on later levels it really gets hard. The graphics are good, though some of them are a bit small. The game itself is extreme fun to play and produces many thoughts such as, ‘I’ve got to do better next time.’ Potty Pigeon is a worthy successor to Monty Mole and I’m sure many people will like it enormously. Overall, it offers a good challenge to games players of all sorts and it’s worth having in your Christmas stocking.’

‘Potty Pigeon is a novel but simple idea, just collecting worms. It couldn’t be easier could it, except for avoiding the odd helicopter, hawks, triffids and cars — even frogs are dangerous, but then again, it’s all in the every day life of Potty the pigeon. Sounds thrilling, well I can assure you it gets very tiresome, repetitive and boring, and quite often frustrating. Frustrating for the simple fact that for no reason whatsoever, every now and again, you lose your hard-earned worm. Graphics are quite pretty, colourful and detailed, but I can’t really say that there is a terrible amount actually moving and going on to keep you interested. They say it’s the early bird that gets the worm, but sometimes it’s the early bird that gets the bullet — in the back.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: Q/W left/right, P/L up/down, N to SYM SHIFT to fire
Joystick: Kempston, Sinclair 2
Keyboard play: responsive, well laid out
Use of colour: good
Graphics: quite good, smooth and detailed
Sound: above average
Skill levels: 1
Lives: 3
Screens: 11
General Rating: Good, but varied opinions from reviewers.

Use of Computer

72%

Graphics

77%

Playability

69%

Getting Started

73%

Addictive Qualities

63%

Value For Money

63%

Overall

70%

PLUMMET!

Producer: Interceptor Micros Software
Author: Stephen N. Curtis
Price: £7.00

Maiden voyages of almost anything seem to attract drama. There was the sinking of the Titanic, Paul Newman’s beautiful glass tower burnt down in Towering Inferno, and now, during the opening of New York’s newest skyscraper, the Mayor has got stuck between floors in the lift and the chain holding the lift is slowly breaking. The hero of the piece is not Robert Redford but Orson who has been summoned to rescue the Mayor before death sets in. Orson must get enough ropes from the building to tie the lift to the steel beams to prevent its plummet. The skyscraper is seen as three screens (this isn’t exactly a TOWERING inferno) or floors, and you can move between them by using the many relevant staircases, whilst avoiding being crushed by concrete blocks, grabbed by a zombie doorman or mutant revolving door or falling dust (they did say this was a NEW skyscraper?) and collecting the ropes necessary for the task. Fire doors on the second screen are shut and can’t be opened unless you fire at them.

CRITICISM

‘Plummet! is an above average game with good graphics. The game is playable but a task reduced only to getting ropes does not help the addictive qualities very much. Perhaps the imagination should have been used more in game creation than on variants of well trod themes. Fair enough, the game has not been brought out before but it seemed to have those properties of so many other games which make it feel familiar. For example, after seeing a few episodes of American TV series (no names!), the plots wear a little thin, and although this is an above average game, it is made up from the same old material. A little more imagination and originality please!’

‘Plummet! is on the whole one of the most infuriating games I have played. Once you get to the top of the screen, shoot the doormen and dodge the failing dust and put a rope in the lift, your fire button stops working. I thought the graphics were very good but the sound, what there was of it, wasn’t. I generally enjoyed playing it, even though it is infuriating.’

‘Interceptor are probably better known for their CBM64 games where the graphics are great but the game content is often lacking. This seems to be the case with Plummet!. Graphically, the screens are very good, the player and the Zombie Doormen are well animated and even the sound is good; but the game’s challenge will be gone within a week even for people who find ‘Breakout’ games mystifying. Especially when priced this high, good graphics are not enough. We Spectrum owners are not averse to games being complex and mean, so a three-screen cousin of Manic Miner is hardly likely to set the Hotline Chart ablaze.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: Q/A up/down, O/P left/right, SPACE to fire
Joystick: Kempston, Protek, AGF, Sinclair 2
Keyboard play: sensible positions and responsive
Use of colour: good
Graphics: smooth, with some nice animation, generally simple looking
Sound: poor
Skill levels: 1
Screens: 3
Special features:
General Rating: Lacks addictivity and scope, only average at a steep price.

Use of Computer

69%

Graphics

68%

Playability

70%

Getting Started

66%

Addictive Qualities

49%

Value For Money

45%

Overall

61%

POLE POSITION

Producer: Atarisoft
Price: £7.99

At last, the long-awaited Spectrum version of one of the most famous arcade originals ever — Atari’s ‘Pole Position’. There were rumours earlier in the year that Atarisoft had released the game. It was seen at the Earls Court Computer Fair in September and almost immediately withdrawn after unfavourable comment from critics present.

The track picture is recognisably that of the arcade original, with the alternating red and white stripes on the road side, striped centre line, moving hills in the background and a long perspective which has the road moving from side to side depending on the car’s position on it. Road signs also echo the original and provide a danger to those who go off the road.

You’re up against lots of other racers on the road. The game commences from the start grid with a countdown. First you must qualify — 90 seconds in which you must achieve a lap time of better than 73 seconds to get onto the real race. If you hit another car or a hazard you explode and this loses you precious time. No matter how many times you crash you receive another car until the qualifying time has run out. Control includes left and right, brake and change of gears between hi and low. Scoring is by lap speed and 50 points per car passed.

CRITICISM

‘It seems ironical that the original game that has inspired so many versions on the Spectrum should be the last to appear (at least I expect it’s the last — there may be more sophisticated versions to arrive yet)! It also means that Atarisoft have a big job on their hands because a few of the versions have been excellent (Full Throttle for instance). Pole Position has managed to look very like the arcade original, which is good, but it doesn’t play anything like as well. Perhaps this isn’t surprising, but I thought the control of the car, overall, was a bit rough. The inlay has strategy tips on how to use gears, brakes and the inside lane wherever possible, but this isn’t reflected in what you see on the screen. The road, for instance, scrolls past at the same speed, whatever speed your car is doing, which isn’t very realistic; and I thought the car handling was a bit sluggish, whereas in the original it was very skittish, and therefore more exciting. The graphics are of a high standard, especially your vehicle, and generally Pole Position is enjoyable.’

‘At last, it’s arrived! Since spring I’ve been waiting to see this game when it was first advertised — nearly eleven months later, I’m actually playing it. Was it worth it, you might say? Well, it’s the first racing game I’ve seen with multicoloured graphics that work and decent sized computer controlled cars to race against. 3D prospective is pretty good, I like the way the colours of the race track alternate from red to white to give an impression of movement. I’d hardly call this game ‘Pole Position’ though, because it is only a race track and doesn’t go through the various scenarios as arcade ‘Pole Position’ does. I can’t see the point of having a speedometer in this game because no matter how high your speed is, the ground progresses at the same speed that you started at the only difference being that you slide further on corners. I don’t really think it was worth the eleven month wait, as in that time several other racing games have appeared that are equally good, if not better, and besides, it is totally over-priced.’

‘The 3D effect in Pole Position is quite pleasing with the multicoloured mountains in the background creating a sense of space, and the road disappears satisfactorily. But the 3D animation of the other cars is a little bit jerky — signposts seem to hang around rather a long while before finally flashing past. On the other hand they are all very detailed, which makes it difficult to animate fully. Car control is not over-responsive — or perhaps it would be more fair to say that the track doesn’t seem to respond as well as your car movement! It also seems a shame that it takes so long to accelerate — surely this vehicle would never qualify on a real track? More could have been made of the use of gears for speed and control than has been. Overall, quite a good race track game, but spoiled by the exceptionally high price tag — still, at least it isn’t the £15 we originally feared it would be.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: O/P left/right, Q to brake, A to change gear, or use the cursor keys
Joystick: Kempston, AGF, Protek, Sinclair 2
Keyboard play: very good, attribute problems kept to a minimum
Use of colour: good 3D effect, detailed and large
Graphics: bit clicky, nothing special, nice tune
Sound: progressive difficulty
Skill levels: N/A
Lives: 1
Special features: above average, but pricey.
General Rating: Above average, but pricey.

Use of Computer

80%

Graphics

80%

Playability

71%

Getting Started

75%

Addictive Qualities

52%

Value For Money

49%

Overall

68%

RACING PREDICTIONS

Producer: Buffer Micro Ltd
Author: Alan Pritchard
Price: £9.95

Chris ‘The Tipster’ Passey takes a look at a program to help you win lots of money on the gee-gees...

I’ve just about lost count of the number of times that people have asked if my computer will ‘pick horses’. Well here’s a program that claims to do just that.

The program makes its predictions from SPEED FIGURE DATA (SFD), published by Sporting Life. Basically, this is what the required inputs are: First enter the name of the course and the going, ie. Soft, Hard etc. The courses are graded which is significant as different grades attract different classes of horse.

Next, the distance in furlongs is entered. After this each horse running is entered with its age, weight and SFD. The Speed Figure Data is information about the horse’s best performance in the current season, taking into account the course, ground conditions and distance behind the winner. An example of SFD is shown below:

Horse’s name: Crash Smash

speed figure: 97

course (eg. Ludlow): LUD

distance: 25f

going, eg. Good: G

date (not input): Dec 10

And before anyone says anything — yes, there is a race course at Ludlow as all serious punters know!

After all the information has been entered, the program sorts the list. It then produces a list, with numbers alongside the entries representing a horse’s chance of winning. Typical values would be between 1 and 300. I tried quite a few races, but I could only use the ‘flat’ program because at the time of reviewing, the National Hunt (jumps) season was not sufficiently established to give any reasonably reliable SFD.

I personally feel that speed in general has a greater bearing on the flat because compared to NH, it is more of a sprint. NH, which is over longer distances, may have any sort of pace until the last few furlongs.

Enough digressions, back to the results. On average I found that when correctly interpreted, the results were rather useful. Interpretation is required because the program does not take into account recent positions (form) or the betting. A horse with good SFD may have gone off the boil, and if a horse gets, say, 25 points above the others in the field but is at 50-1, then it’s not to be recommended for betting on. Some rather unexpected outcomes and ratings lead me to doubt the program’s abilities, but on average over quite a few races the horses in the highest finishing positions did have significantly higher ratings given.

The system has its limitations, but if used sensibly as an aid to a decision, is useful. Consider the ratings as another factor when picking a horse. This program (or any other) is not able to pick winners like magic. And it’s worth remembering that horse racing is hardly logical. Accept Racing Predictions for what it is, with its limitations, and you may keep your shirt on!

SKY RANGER

Producer: Microsphere
Price: £5.95

There is a graffiti artist in Microsphere’s Skool Daze who writes on the blackboard something to the effect that ‘Sky Ranger is great’ — a neat piece of pre-publicity for their second release. Sky Ranger is a helicopter. We’ve remarked before in CRASH how odd it is that software companies tend to have similar ideas at the same time, and there are a few helicopter scenarios around or in the pipeline.

Sky Ranger is situated in a large city full of skyscrapers, which allows for plenty of wire frame 3D. The 3D used here, however, is rather more complex than in most previous games of the type, and generally, the graphics are quite different from other Microsphere games.

The scenario plays heavily on old computer names, somewhat bastardised over the intervening years. It seems there will be a time when ‘Watchers’ will be placed in the skies of the city, servants, friends in the fight to make the city safe. The people will even give them nicknames, calling them after the primitive 20th century computers that delighted the children so much in the museums.

But soon the Rics and the Drags, the Dores and the Trums will have enforced crime so successfully that they will turn to enforcing the lesser offences. Then they will discover the city archives — still packed with ancient and never-repealed laws. The ‘Watchers’ have been programmed to enforce the law — and the city lives in fear... Your mission is to seek out and destroy the Watchers using your electronic pulse generator.

The screen contains a view from the helicopter of the city streets. To the left and below the viewscreen are the instruments. These include the ubiquitous fuel gauge, and the machine uses it quite quickly. There are five fuel dumps in the city which can be visited once each during a game. As the city is near the sea and fogs swirl in rapidly, a ceiling gauge shows the height of the cloud level. There is also an altitude meter and a speedo. Centrally placed is the all important compass and close range radar on which the Watchers appear. A five letter band indicates your proximity to a fuel dump, with the appropriate letter flashing. Destroying Watchers is done by firing when they are in the centre of the vid screen and the target indicator flashes red.

There are various skill levels which are accessed as in Wheelie through codes gained by completing a level. One aspect which makes the game harder is that the viewscreen is vulnerable to contact with buildings or watchers, and easily becomes cracked. These cracks remain with you during a game, making it increasingly harder to see where you are flying.

CRITICISM

‘Sky Ranger takes 3D perspective down to a land’s eye view as opposed to a bird’s eye view. Flying through and over and around skyscrapers of varying heights is quite fun, seeing the well drawn line graphics whizz past you, and mastering the skills of flying round tight corners and reacting instantaneously to what you might find round them. I was a little surprised to find a game produced by Microsphere that had a lack of content. Flying around a city trying to locate and destroy the Watchers, is not my idea of fantastic fun. Okay, you have to refuel now and again, but that’s not such a big deal. If you collide with a watcher, part of your screen cracks and shatters like a cobweb, very realistic indeed. But if you crash into the ground or into a skyscraper, you get one or two whacking big zig zag lines from the top to the bottom of the screen, and this makes life quite disconcerting, trying to seek and destroy with these huge lines down the centre of the screen. I would have thought it would have been quite adequate to just have the shattered cobweb effect, as this doesn’t really destroy your vision but gives a nice effect. Not one of Microsphere’s most entertaining games, I think they should stick to original ideas with wonderful graphics.’

‘While first playing this game I was amazed to see an unthoughtful layout of the screen — it was cluttered and untidy, and difficult to make out what various instruments were and what they were used for. One thing Microsphere have always managed is to have a tidy looking screen. There’s no doubting the quality of the 3D graphics — the black line on a yellow ground with hidden lines masked out makes for a very realistic effect, and instead of the usual few scattered towers, here we have the feeling of flying through a real city. The real problem is that the game starts to pall after a while. Once the novelty of the graphics has become familiar you start to long for more action, and it is here that the game lacks somewhat. The ‘Watchers’ are not all that frequent, and although they will dash at you, they do not fire or protect themselves. Great graphics, but a bit thin on plot — surprising for Microshere.’

‘This is the first game that Microsphere have produced that has line graphics. As one would expect, the line graphics are drawn efficiently and quickly to produce skyscraper style trenches and 3D perspective. The known features of this game are night flying, fog, which blanks out the details and descends quite rapidly at times (usually when you could well do without it). It is quite fun to fly about through the skyscraper corridors trying to track down ‘Watchers’ and destroy them. On the higher levels, ‘Watchers’ become more intelligent and more abundant. A high degree of skill is needed to get rid of them. I like the way that your windscreen is cobwebbed with cracks if you should hit a ‘Watcher’, but I found the large cracks that appear if you hit the ground too hard, or a building, begin to get in the way of the game. Overall quite a good flying game that maybe requires a bit more content to make it top notch.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: user definable, preset are: CAPS to V/B to SPACE left/right, Y to P/H to ENTER up/down, Q to T/A to G faster/slower, 1 to 0 to fire
Joystick: almost any via UDK
Keyboard play: responsive
Use of colour: sensible and avoids attribute problems
Graphics: excellent 3D detail, oddly untidy on the instruments
Sound: not much, mostly a sound for the helicopter speed
Skill levels: progressive with access codes
Lives: percentage of damage
Screens: 1
Special Features:
General Rating: Above average for content, very good for graphics, perhaps a disappointment coming from Microsphere, but still a good flying game.

Use of Computer

81%

Graphics

79%

Playability

65%

Getting Started

73%

Addictive Qualities

58%

Value For Money

69%

Overall

71%

STEVE DAVIS SNOOKER

Producer: CDS Microsystems
Author: Mike Lamb
Price: £6.95

On the inlay card C.D.S. say that after the success of their Pool, they have spent considerable time and money in researching and developing the ultimate successor — and this is it — approved by the great man himself. They also add that they genuinely believe that their true to the ball movement is unmatchable.

Steve Davis Snooker is certainly a user-friendly program. Setting up shots and executing them has been made as fast and simple as possible, whilst still allowing a great sophistication in shot. The table size on screen is quite large, with the peripheral information kept to a minimum. Above the table, there are; points scored, fouls, and table visits. Below you will see a bar code for strength of shot, break score, spin required and colour required. In order of taking a shot, the cursor is moved to the ball at which the cue ball will be aimed. If you have just pocketed a red then nothing will happen until you have selected a colour by its score value. Once the cursor has been satisfactorily positioned and entered, the directional keys may be used to select the strength of shot. Once that has been entered, the keys are again used to position a cursor on a large white ball below the screen — the point at which the cue will hit the cue ball and cause any spin. Entering this, also takes the shot.

The game is accessed via a large menu which allows for one or two-player games, long or short game, cursor sound on or off, Curran Speech on or off. Normal snooker rules apply, with the colours being potted in correct order after removing the last red from the table.

CRITICISM

‘Steve Davis Snooker is, as far as features go, probably the best snooker game about. It’s also very playable with speed and spin easily controlled. My only criticism is that the coloured balls do not stand out too well. Overall, an excellent adaption of the popular game, and a worthy sequel to the C.D.S. Pool.’

‘Where does Steve Davis come into this game? Did he program it? I must say that the game seems to be very realistic in the way that balls react. Some quite tricky shots can be played, only because it is realistic. The balls are of a nice size, so that there isn’t too much confusion; they also move proportionately fast. Positioning of the cursor is easy and quick, often a let down in these type of games. Is it fun, you may ask? Well it will be if you’re into snooker. Saying this though, I found the game enjoyable to play and I don’t like snooker at all. If you want a snooker game, then I can recommend this version — a well planned game.’

‘Pool from C.D.S. was, in my opinion, the best version made for the Spectrum. Steve Davis Snooker is a great follow up and the very best snooker simulation you can get. The inlay card’s little boast is well justified. Hard work has gone into refining the process of setting up shots and the result is a joy to use. They have repeated the ‘air raid’ siren sound with cursor movement that was used on Pool, which is useful if a bit alarming (!), but it can be turned off if it gets you down. I also like the fact that the cursor doesn’t move around the edge of the table, but all over it, which makes for very accurate positioning. The game plays realistically, and is generally great fun.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: Q/A up/down, O/P left/right and ENTER
Joystick: Kempston, Sinclair 2, AGF, Protek
Keyboard play: very responsive, simple to use
Use of colour: on the whole, very good, but yellow and green balls are a bit dubious
Graphics: excellent ball movement, generally clean and bright
Sound: useful
Skill levels: depends on opponent!
Lives: N/A
Screens: 1
Special features: Currah compatible
General Rating: A very good, user-friendly simulation, which (possibly for the first time) really calls on skill.

Use of Computer

81%

Graphics

73%

Getting Started

73%

Playability

80%

Addictive Qualities

73%

Value For Money

80%

Overall

77%

THERBO

Producer: Arcade Software
Author: Bruce Rutherford
Price: £5.95

Therbo (an alternative to war) is the name of a game, as is ‘cricket’ or ‘football’. In fact ‘Therbo’ stands for thermal ballistic object with which the game is played, as a football is used in soccer. Consequently can claim to be the first computer simulation of a fantasy game — although being a fictional game, this does not look anything like a simulation in normal terms, but is in fact a genuine arcade oddity.

The scenario is set in the latter part of the 21st century, when America and Russia initially proposed the concept and finalised the rules governing the playing of the game. It was agreed that the winners of the conflict gain control of the opponent’s land and that the game should be played, for safety reasons, on the moon. Whilst the track was cut on the lunar surface, the design of the weapons was perfected.

Your opponent is the computer, and is designated as the home team. The Therbo track in some senses resembles one of those huge particle accelerators. The screen display looks down from on top and shows both walls of the track, scrolling left or right (depending on which team has control of the therbo) from the start point to the goal mouth. The therbo basically travels down the centre of the track and to gain control of it, it must be knocked into ‘touch’, or the side walls of the track. This is done by firing thrusters.

These are situated at regular intervals along the sides of the track and they fire a bolt diagonally upwards or downwards. When a bolt hits, it knocks it one nudge in the direction of fire. Each team has control of its own thrusters. The team in possession of the therbo may use their thrusters to keep the therbo in play, while the opponents use theirs to knock it out of play.

Another weapon is the Mesmo, which destroys the therbo outright, but this function may only be used three times in an game. THERE ARE ALSO Polarity Missiles, which home in on the therbo and will destroy it after a set period of time. But it is possible for the therbo to fire charges at the missiles, either negative or positive, and if you guess the polarity of the missile and send out a charge of the opposite polarity, then the missile will be destroyed.

There are two stages to each game. In the first stage the team controlling the therbo also have a tank which travels along with the therbo. The tank is used to destroy shapes that move across the screen by firing at them. The tank uses up fuel, but there is a large circular refuelling ship which moves randomly abut the screen. Running the tank over it will replenish fuel. In the second stage it is a straight run for the goal and everything except the therbo disappears. But the goal will be disallowed if your tank has not destroyed a set amount of shapes thus scoring the necessary points to enter the second stage.

The game lasts for nine minutes initially, but if you want more time you can select an extra thee minutes once, and only within the last three minutes of the game.

CRITICISM

‘Therbo (no I haven’t caught a cold), is the first thing I’ve seen from Arcade for some time. AT FIRST I thought it was just a confusing mixed up sort of game. After a lot of playing I proved myself very wrong indeed. Galactic football best describes it, with you trying to protect the ball, sorry thermal ballistic object, and score. This alternative to war is a refreshingly original game which becomes addictive after practice. The graphics are smooth and ‘practical’, any more complex and they may have swamped this game. If you gave it a quick play in the shops you would probably leave it there; it is the sort of game that grows on you as your skills improve — a factor which is reflected in my ‘getting started’ rating.’

‘This game took me ages to get the hang of. It is very difficult to grasp the ideal objectives. The instructions do try to make everything clear but just don’t really cope with it at all. The graphics are clear and move very quickly about the screen. Colour is well used with no apparent attribute problems, with the sound being mainly spot effects, but at least meaningful ones. I think Therbo may appeal to quite a few people and although it is difficult to grasp the idea initially, it is well worth the effort. A good game that lacks a little for me in addictive qualities — strange and different.’

‘I suppose if you had to describe cricket or football in about 500 words to people who had never heard of either game, you would also have difficulty getting all the subtleties across. A pity, because many people might put Therbo down before giving it a chance. It is a simple idea that is rich in playability once the objectives have been thoroughly understood. There are a daunting number of keys to play with, but not all of them are needed at the same time. The first stage of each goal run is quite challenging with a four directional tank to control and fire from, keeping an eye on the targets, the last depleted fuel supply and the essential fuel tanker (which darts about all over the place) and watching out that the computer doesn’t knock your therbo out of play while all this is going on. The graphics are ‘different’ looking, effective and fast, and the result is an original, playable and ultimately addictive game which I enjoyed and will come back to.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: Q/A tank up/down, O/P tank left/right and 0 to fire. W/S fires thrusters up/down, I fires polarity missiles, M for Mesmo destruct, and 1/2 fires positive/negative charge
Joystick: Kempston, AGF, Protek
Keyboard play: a lot of keys, but sensibly laid out and responsive
Use of colour: not a lot, but very well used
Graphics: smooth, fast and different
Sound: poor to fair, mostly spot effects
Skill levels: 3
Lives: N/A
Screens: scrolling
General Rating: A good original game.

Use of Computer

67%

Graphics

70%

Playability

79%

Getting Started

58%

Addictive Qualities

74%

Value For Money

75%

Overall

71%

UNDERWURLDE

Producer: Ultimate
Memory required: 48K
Retail price: £9.95
Language: machine code
Author: The ACG team

Swinging in the Underwurlde

Ultimate have an uncanny knack of releasing games just too late to be able to do them justice in a review because the issue is usually on its way to ‘bed’. But with Underwurlde and Knight Lore they were late enough that they missed the last issue altogether and thus gave enough time for this one! As is well known by Sabre Wulfers, Underwurlde is the second ‘Sabreman’ game, but arguments that Sabre Wulf was Atic Atac with greenery, hold little water with the new game. The perspective is different for a start — you view the game from the audiences’ view of a stage (which makes mapping rather harder), although all the locations do logically connect to make a massive maze, seemingly bigger even than the one in Sabre Wulf. But one of the principal changes, and the first time that Ultimate have employed the device, is that the nasties do not kill you off — they just get in the way. It is possible to die however! We’ve become quite accustomed by now to Ultimate’s oblique inlay cards which give the flavour but no playing hints for the game. Once again it’s a question of sorting out the hows, wheres and what fors. Sabreman, recognisably the same intrepid hero from the previous game, pith helmet intact from his encounters in the jungle, has entered the Underwurlde, to seek the Devil in his Lair and, of course, the way out... As with Sabre Wulf, scoring is by percentage of locations visited and a score accumulated by nasties killed and objects collected.

CRITICISM

‘It looks as if the hyper load is here to stay because even Ultimate is using one now. Is the normal Spectrum loading system dead? Underwurlde is certainly no Atic Atac part three — it’s a totally original game that will keep you enthralled for ages. From what I can make out from the usual Ultimate instructions all you have to do is find your way out — simple enough, no! There are quite a few things to hinder and help you, such as the plethora of Ultimate nasties. But these don’t kill, they just make you bounce about all over the place and the only way I’ve found to die is to fall a long way. This is a mixed blessing because when you seem to be doing well, you seem to fall a lot. Sometimes it seems practically impossible to finish a game when you want to. Underwurlde must take up every available byte because the maze is so huge and complex, something that became apparent after playing for twenty minutes and only scoring a paltry 10! Ultimate’s graphics need no explanation, but an obvious item missing is the Hall of Fame (but I’m sure the spare bytes from this went to a good cause). Ultimate have come up with another excellent game featuring the walking, dancing and now jumping Sabreman (all the nasties in the underwurlde seem to have scared him so much he’s shrunk — or has he just had a wash to get rid of the jungle stink)? Underwurlde is more worthy of the 10 quid price tag than was Sabre Wulf so there shouldn’t be any complaints about that. I especially liked the volcanic bubbles on which you can stand and ride, and the eagles which carry you all over the place. This is more of an adventure than Sabre Wulf ever was, so you will have to pick up certain objects to get past certain creatures. If you don’t like the QWERT layout, then you will be disappointed to learn that it’s been used again on this game, but I found it easier to use than a joystick because you don’t need down much and the up key is also used for jump. You just can’t fail with this game, and if piracy means an end to games like this, then piracy’s not really worth it, is it?’

Sabreman takes a tumble

‘Underwurlde is definitely Ultimate’s best game yet. It has super sound and graphics, as you would expect from ACG, plus (as far as I can tell at this stage) an even more complex playing area than SW. Moving around from level to level by skilfully jumping up and down the screen is made even harder by the various Gremlins and Harpies knocking you flying in mid jump. Sabreman has lost his sword but instead he can use various different weapons for several different purposes such as getting past the guardians. I really enjoyed playing Underwurlde and highly recommend it to everyone, although it’s a shame about the high price.’

‘At a first glance, Sabreman resembles Bugaboo the flea. It’s that athletic leap that does it. This huge jump combined with the fact that the nasties don’t kill but do hinder, makes playing Underwurlde quite a different experience from anything Ultimate have done before — and it looks as though it should lead to some staggeringly high scores since killing the gremlins is essential if you are to keep your precarious balance! As usual, the graphics, movement and detail is superb — so is the sound. It is important to get a weapon as soon as you start, fortunately there is the red bubble gun, otherwise you can get hemmed something terrible by the nasties. The frustration level in this game is pitched about right, and there is always plenty going on. I liked the ropes and the large gaseous bubbles — it’s playing details like this that keep Ultimate well ahead in the arcade stakes.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: Q/W left/right, R/E up and jump/down, T to fire a possessed weapon, CAPS to V drop from rope, B to SPACE pick up/drop a weapon
Joystick: Kempston, AGF, Protek, Sinclair 2
Keyboard play: very responsive, although the QWERT combination is awkward, all three reviewers agreed that they work quite well in this particular game
Use of colour: excellent
Graphics: large, smooth, fast and detailed — excellent
Sound: very good, although it is restricted mostly to ‘contact’ noises
Skill levels: 1
Lives: 6
Screens: unknown at this time, but loads!
Special features: hyper load
General rating: excellent.

Use of computer

89%

Graphics

95%

Playability

96%

Getting started

90%

Addictive qualities

96%

Value for money

86%

Overall

92%

VOLCANO

Producer: Computer Magic
Author: V.K. Hiam
Price: £7.95

The object of Volcano is to escape from an erupting — well, volcano. The game is quite different because it involves many different elements across forty screens above ground and 290 below.

In a sense it is a giant graphic adventure, where you control your man, guiding him around the streets of the threatened town, seeking useful objects from the buildings. Falling molten rocks are shown as red blobs which appear on the map scapes, while rivers of red lava slowly engulf the roadways, making your task increasingly difficult. Generally you must escape to reach a boat and flee the natural wrath behind you. There are several maps of the town, with an animated character which you control. There is the medieval city with its various precincts, the commercial section and shopping section; below the city there exists a maze of underground passages which are shown in wire frame 3D. Back above ground, your route to freedom is blocked by dangerous marshes and jungles, and even before leaving the city you may encounter riots and get killed.

Useful objects are things like dynamite for blowing rocks out of the way or matches which will enable you to see your way underground. Food is also essential to keep up strength, which wanes rapidly. Movement control is by left/right rotation and forwards below ground, with four way movement above ground. Whilst perambulating below the surface, it is well to remember that above ground the volcano is still erupting, blocking the town’s streets with debris.

Volcano has a random element built into the program so that, except for the first three screens, dynamite, lava, rocks, food and ropes will rarely appear in the same place twice. Scoring is done by time alive.

CRITICISM

‘Volcano is a totally different type of game. I can honestly say I haven’t played anything like it before. As a game it isn’t mega-brill, but it isn’t mega-asterisks either. The graphics are simple but serve their purpose. The attraction of this game is that there is a lot to it, there are numerous screens to be discovered. Volcano is quite fun to play, but I did find it a bit repetitive after a while. It has some nice features such as when you die it tells you how long you’ve been playing, while playing a catchy tune. The 3D underground maze looks uncannily like those 3D mazes you used to get from ZX81 games and some early Spectrum games, but this stage becomes very repetitive and boring after a while. Overall quite a good game but I think it’s got limited appeal.’

‘The main appeal of Volcano lies in its sheer size, because the graphics are not the sort that make you want to play compulsively. Again, despite its size, you are confronted quite quickly by the inescapable fact that it’s all been seen before on a smaller scale. The linked screens of the town make a large maze, where you waste time by going off the screen on a road only to find that it’s a dead end on the next one. Herein lies the meat of the game, getting around fast enough before the ways are blocked to get all the things you need to survive. I found Volcano was quite playable but not addictive. Sheer size of a program isn’t what makes a winner, and when you get down to it there isn’t enough going on in the game to offer lasting appeal.’

‘Strange game this. It seems to have a mixture of adventure and strategy and a good memory is required. The game seems to be of a very old type, according to the graphics, although essentially they are adequate. Many points of this game are unfair; one major example is when you fall down a hole into the underground passageways. If you are lucky, you will get three matches to enable you to see the map that you collect when you fall down the hole. This map shows you the way to the exit and also the starting position, but unfortunately, and unfairly, it doesn’t show you your present position, so in many cases it is totally useless. Lighting a match enables you to see the map for approximately five seconds — hardly enough time to focus on the map, sum up where the start and finish are, and then guess where you are. I’m sure this part of the game requires you to have a photographic memory, not very helpful for 99.99 of the players. If you have unfortunately fallen down one of these holes you seemingly need no food, which now means unless you find your way out of this impossible maze of tunnels, you’ll be doomed to stay there for the rest of your life (unless you turn the computer off). Perhaps this over-priced game should be re-written to allow for the novice player to have much more fun while playing this game — a quit key would be most useful.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: Q/A up/down, O/P left/right (above ground), 6/8 rotate left/right, 7 move forwards (below ground), C = collect, E = eat, X = explode dynamite, r = swing on rope
Joystick: not stated
Keyboard play: not over responsive, but well laid out
Use of colour: average
Graphics: small, simple, below average
Sound: good tune
Skill levels: 1
Lives: 5
Screens: 330 plus
General Rating: A very large game, but generally below average, especially at the price.

Use of Computer

54%

Graphics

44%

Playability

49%

Getting Started

60%

Addictive Qualities

46%

Value For Money

33%

Overall

45%

WORLD GLOBE

Producer: Eclipse Software
Author: J.M. Weightman
Price: £7.45

A few issues back we reviewed Space Art by Eclipse Software, and received a number of enquiries about it. This new program uses hires graphics to draw a 3D image of the world globe as seen from outer space.

Rotation may be in any direction east/west or north/south using the cursor keys in incremental steps of 1 degree (slow), 15 degrees (Normal) or 45 degrees (Fast). The screen display shows the current latitude and longitude of the centre of the globe which is indicated by a flashing yellow box, the direction and speed of rotation and the starting point.

The program may be used in two ways by going through the Pick option to choose a start point either by latitude and longitude references, or by choosing the features list which then displays four options — Cities, Countries, Islands or Features. These four pages contain 240 locations. Choosing a location will result in the flashing cursor square being placed centrally on the chosen location, such as a country or an island, or on the discharge point of a river. The inlay card contains a print out of the pages with all the locations listed together with their reference points.

CRITICISM

World Globe should make an interesting program in connection with school Geography work. The hi-res drawings are of necessity a little on the crude side, but they do reflect the shapes of the countries well, and show the 3D foreshortening effect as continents disappear over the planet’s rim quite well. Each rotational scan is redrawn, which lends a flickery aspect to it, and it would have been much nicer to have a continuous, smooth animation, but probably too expensive on memory with all the continuous line calculations being done.