The humid heat of late June has obviously got to everyone, tempers flare, words are spoken. The tone of this FORUM is characterised by the outrage caused by Oliver Frey’s cover for the June CRASH — the Barbarian picture. Another prime topic is the inclusion of video reviews within CRASH — and there’s a points of view debate on the subject. Meanwhile, back to letters on other subjects. My choice for this month’s prizewinning letter looks at reviewing budget games...

JUDGING BY PRICE

Dear Lloyd
A word on budget games. Their quality has improved lately, but essentially most are not worth the money. Many readers will burst out at this point, ‘What about Feud, Zub and Amaurote?’ They satisfy in depth, but do you really want to trudge around 2500 screens as in Amaurote?

Budget games usually have frills to attract the buyer, but bore after a few plays, then the buyer considers £1.99 was not much wasted and just dismisses the purchase as a small mistake.

If all budget games were raised to £2.99, a higher standard both in packaging and game would be demanded, and eventually produced. I think that many budget games get high reviews because their price is taken into account. If a game is good, it should be compared on the level of full-price games, giving a more realistic idea of its gameplay. Don’t judge games by their prices.

Many would be interested to know that I own a Sega System, as I study in England and live in Hong Kong where it’s available. I’ve got games such as Hang On, Quartet and Choplifter, with Enduro Racer, Wonder Boy and Space Harrier to come soon. The cartridges and cards are expensive, around £20, but I think it is a better bet than the Nintendo for the memory, graphics and sophistication.
Alex Kaung

You’ll have noticed, Alex, that CRASH has taken price into account (or rather lost it). £1.99 really doesn’t leave much for the development of reasonable and original games, and I will be surprised if we continue to see £1.99 games for much longer, unless they’re old ones or real rubbish. Still, you have a choice of £30 worth of software for Letter of the Month, so let me know what you would like to receive!
LM

ON SPEED AND COLOUR

Dear Lloyd
Breaking the tradition set by my friend and prime fool Tom Evans in the Christmas issue, I have several points to discuss.

Firstly, what exactly does Shashy Dass mean by a Speccy running at 50m/s? If, as I suspect, he means frm/s then the actual processor runs at a far higher speed than this. It is merely the screen update that is so slow. Also, what is so difficult about reading a single byte joystick input, rather that several blocks (of half a row each) of key input? It seems to me that he knows a little about a lot, but not enough about anything, as the cliche goes.

Secondly, on to a letter by D Charles in the June issue (by the way it’s nice to see the covers returning to Oli’s usual standard), the 64 also has a white noise facility, and it’s often used brilliantly (opening sequence of Uridium). Also the Commodore has 16 colours, including five greys, four blues and three reds. I’m sure it matches up to anything the Sega has to offer. As for variety of games, I don’t think you’ll get much variety with each game costing 25 quid.

If you compare the Sega or Nintendo to the Amiga or ST (especially with the new prices) it’s obvious the latter win on all counts (the Amiga’s 4096 colours, four-channel sound and its fantastic speed), and these are the way forward for computers in general.
Robert Hayden

I don’t think games consoles are seen as a ‘way forward’, more as an additional means of playing games. Whether computer owners will also want a console is going to be interesting to observe. But in the end, it’s going to be the attitudes of Atari, Sega, Mattel and Konix to third-party software producers that will make the machines popular or consigned to the fad bin. Presently none of them seems to be making the market truly available for mass games production to back the potential hardware sales.
LM

SELLING UP

Dear Lloyd
This is being written on an Amstrad CPC6128 using Protext, and is probably the last letter I will ever write on this machine. The reason... selling up. I’m very disillusioned with Amstrad as a company and the whole scene, so I’m deserting Sugar and Co for the lofty heights of the Atari 520 ST, which I happened to see three pages of advertising for in the current CRASH. However, I will always be a Speccy fan through thick and thin and hope the two will keep each other company.

I believe quite firmly that the ST will become the next Speccy. It’s an ideal games machine, and has all the qualities that the Spectrum presented us with when it first came out: the beet colour, graphics, sound, memory and (most importantly) the best price of any machine around.

I don’t believe that Alan Sugar’s ‘enhanced’ Spectrums will hold any water with anyone, they’ll just become dead ducks like the CPC464.

I read a leading Atari magazine the other day, listings filled convenient gaps, there were only three games reviews in the whole thing and a couple of hardware articles, reams and reams about the General Election and not a great deal else. Would it not be possible to create a Newsfield Atari ST magazine, either separately or lumped on the back of CRASH? This may sound crazy, but from what the grapevine tells me, vast numbers of Speccy owners are upgrading to the ST. The fact that Atari have chosen to advertise in CRASH is evidence of their own faith in the fact.

Although at present the Speccy market looks as healthy as it was in 1985, it’s unlikely to be the same way in 1989... seven years must be the limit of any machine’s earthly endurance.

Anyway, to sum up, please keep CRASH going even if you do have to drop every other title! It’s really developed a cult following.

Richard Harrison

There’s little doubt in my mind that Amstrad’s high-street sales techniques have undone confidence in their machines and created an unstable base. Computers aren’t hi-fl stacks or high-tech fridges. The pricing of the plus three is all wrong and the disk it’s based around (same for the Amstrad CPC range) is the wrong one — too expensive for realistic software prices. So it remains to be seen whether the Spectrum’s life has been extended by the new machine.

As for the Atari ST, well it won’t be CRASH, but our new magazine, out in September (see ad in this issue), called THE GAMES MACHINE, will be catering for Atari as well as Amiga, and all the popular 8-bit machines as well. Perhaps it will answer your prayers. In the meantime, CRASH is ploughing happily ahead, and for many years yet.
LM

AND ULTIMATELY — COLOUR

Dear Lloyd
Wow! What is this! CRASH? All in colour! Great! I think the all-colour June ish is really good! It was about time — keep it up! All in all I think that CRASH is getting better and better.

One thing annoys me though — every time Ultimate releases a game reviewers jump down their throats saying ‘Ultimate was great once blah, but now their games are crap, unplayable, blah...’

Will you stop comparing Ultimate games? I’m really sick of hearing Ultimate was and isn’t any more. Why don’t you just lay off and judge the games on their own merits?

I did read a normal unbiased review in the June ish and I must give credit to Ben who wrote it without crying over Ultimate’s past success.
Paul Favero

Ben is such a cool guy, he just can’t help being wonderful and unbiased... Ultimate, surely, are victims of their past successes. And that past isn’t so long ago that on a purely informational level people are bound to compare and pass judgement. However, I think you’re right that the games should be assessed on their merits and not on how they compare to previous Ultimate hits.
LM

THE CHANGING CRASH

TERMINAL VIDEOS, MAN

Dear Lloyd
I think CRASH has changed during its 3½ years. I wouldn’t say it’s changing for the worse, more... maturing, yes, into an established magazine.

I remember when CRASH had a fresh and vital approach to the new, fast-growing industry. That’s why it was so exciting, it was all happening so fast, and everyone was so naive.

Nobody’s fault though, the same things happen to rock bands. After some time of success with a cult following, CRASH seemed to do a U2, a Simple Minds. Then the mag took on a more glossy feel, more commercialised, it... ‘sold out’. Now I’m sure newcomers to CRASH, Simple Minds and U2 are happy with things as they are, but spare a thought for early fans, who yearn for the ‘raw’ days of LIFE IN A DAY, and the LIVING GUIDE.

It may not be the mag that’s lost its feel, maybe it is I who have aged, losing touch with computers etc, but I know I certainly don’t get the kicks I used to when playing today’s hits. How can the days of The Hobbit, Manic Miner, Jetman and Match Point ever be equalled?

Still, that’s not to say that CRASH isn’t still by far the best computer magazine available. It just seems to have lost its original appeal — and please keep video reviews out of CRASH. It is after all a computer mag.
C Stafford, Grimsby, South Humberside

I think we would all have become very bored if CRASH hadn’t changed over the years. Everyone strives to improve, and sometimes the changes are for the better, sometimes not so much (or not so appreciated). Some of the newer features in CRASH recently have resulted in letters on the subject, mostly about video reviews...

I think that (reviewing videos) is a great idea,

... writes Alan Wardle, but adds...

although it would be better if you could just review computer tie-ins such as Cobra, Highlander, Aliens, Back to the Future and also Short Circuit and Top Gun when they are released. This way it would still concern computers and everybody would be happy. You could also award a Smash for the most outstanding video reviewed.

That’s a positive reaction from Alan — unlike that from Mark Neumann, Cleethorpes, who gasps...

Arrgh! Video reviews in a computer mag, what a bummer!

Oh dear Mark, why so?

If people, especially CRASH readers, want video reviews all they have to do is buy a mag in the newsagents. Enough said, I hope the video review on page 130 was your first and last.

Sorry, Mark, it wasn’t. Fair to say, though, that the rest of CRASH was great according to Mark.

Other negatives include Andrew Rimmer who is sad to see LM go, but thinks we shouldn’t...

spoil CRASH (or ZZAP!) with LM mutations, CRASH is a Spectrum software magazine as you have striven to keep it for years — there is no room for ANYTHING ELSE!

And then there’s Ashley Barnett from Otley, West Yorks, who reckons it’s...

a dumb idea and I hope it is stopped. Whilst I’m in a mad mood I’ll tell you that TERMINAL MAN and TAMARA KNIGHT are the biggest set of naff, pathetic reading I have ever seen in CRASH and for the sake of life itself, please get rid of them. Before you tell me to go for slagging you off (which is why you won’t print this letter) I’m not all bad, for I love the cool colour splashes everywhere and the logos.

Nice to know we can please! Stephen Hibbert agrees when he comes to the short point...

Yours, hoping you’ll drop the videos and Tamara boredom.

Well, pausing the video for a moment, Tamara hasn’t fared too well to be honest (sorry Mel) although some have enjoyed it, but feelings on THE TERMINAL MAN tend to be violently opposed...

Wow! Mega! Coo! Great! (What’s this guy blabbering on about? I hear you cry). TERMINAL MAN. That’s what. I have never read anything as enthralling as this. (I am now reading it for the ninth time!). it is just pure brilliance (Oli Frey deserves a pay rise for his efforts!).

... writes Richard Davy, adding...

Some people obviously do not know what a good story is. And if, as they say, CRASH is about computer gaming, then why is JETMAN printed? The difference between the two strips is humour but NEITHER has anything to do with computer gaming, they are included to make the mag more interesting.

Right in one, Richard. I subscribe to the view that a magazine ought to stick primarily to the subject it purports to cover, but it can also create a ghetto mentality, if (often) related subjects are thrown out because they’re not directly concerned with the prime subject. Richard returns forcefully to the video argument...

You’ve probably received a lot of hate mail concerning your experiment to review latest videos. Well, I am all FOR it. I am now awaiting my local video shop to get The Monster Club. since it’s once in a blue moon I hire a video, I may not have known about TMC and so would miss something special!

Video reviews make a great change from reading the usual stuff. No-one wants to play games all day, people need to relax you know, and what better way than to watch a video? Instead of just going out and getting a video you don’t know whether you’ll like or not, it’s easier to read a review of a video and then get it. That way you won’t waste your money. Without a review you may not want to take a chance, and be bored stiff for the night watching the usual drivel.

As Mark Neumann said, you can buy video mags which contain reviews, but then you have to buy all of the mag for just a page or two, and without sounding condescending (he said patronisingly), most dedicated video mags I’ve read are more interested in hardware and soft pornography ads, giving only a few lines to reviews. Still, just a couple more points; Alan Wardle would like...

a video computer chart every month to see how the film is doing in the video world alongside its computer game counterpart.

and Alex Kaung says...

If you want to include film reviews, please can you print some stills of the reviewed film?

Absolutely, Alex. That first try-out page was a bit lacking, we’ll get more pictures together in future. Thank you everyone who took part in the debate. No doubt there’ll be more letters yet, and a clearer picture may emerge, but I would judge video reviews in CRASH are more popular than less, by a nudge at the moment.
LM

OLI-SHIRTS

Dear Lloyd
I was wondering if any of Oliver Frey’s amazing CRASH covers could be printed on T-shirts and sold through your brilliant magazine. I think covers such as Friday 13th, Red Moon, Heavy On The Magick and Barbarian would look excellent emblazoned on a T-shirt.

I agree (although perhaps not Barbarian — see elsewhere in the FORUM!) But the cost of four-colour printing on T-shirts is very high. Still, there’s a plan afoot for some new T-shirts soon... maybe they will be based on covers.
LM

STRIKE FOR ART

Dear Sir
I’ve been moved to write over Robin Candy’s fine article on the software industry’s state. I, too, have noticed the decline of the industry, as it moves from a backroom cottage affair to the million pound market it is today. And may I say it’s pretty awful at present.

In the good old days, when people thought that digital watches were pretty neat, and 16K was large, the software industry was exciting, dynamic and full of people exploring a field of art entertainment never before seen. As Candy’s article shows, independent companies fought for your cash, and only survived if the product was good enough. A company’s existence relied on its next release, That is why the design flair and ingenuity was so apparent.

However, as more morons started buying computers for games alone individual development declined and the smaller more adventurous companies went under. Behind the scenes mergers and takeover deals became commonplace. How can six or seven companies control such a vibrant marketplace?

Now is the time for action. Here’s my proposal. No CRASH reader should buy any software for one month. Hopefully this should hit the profit margins and cause the large companies to think again. With unity it could be done. We have the power to bring the software companies to their knees, if we act as one.

Think it over. Soon there may only be ONE software house controlling all the others. Then what?
Stephen Hibber

This simply isn’t the way to go about it, Stephen. If your family was denied their source of income for one month, you would all die of starvation, unless your reserves were strong enough. Profit margins can be tight and it doesn’t take much to damage them irreparably. It’s also extremely unlikely that a single software conglomerate will ever control all software production. No, you must purchase selectively (and this happens anyway) so that poor games fail.

All software houses are keen to succeed, so don’t think they turn a blind eye to the market place — they know as well as what you do what are poor games. Okay, now and then they put out a piece of rubbish in the cynical knowledge that it will sell for a while, because they spent money doing the game and want to get something back, but they learn from that. It’s in their own interests that games are good, do well and make more money. Striking for better games won’t achieve anything (if it could ever be arranged in the first place), other than the potential death of the industry altogether.
LM

BARBARITY IN BARBARIAN

Dear Sirs and Oliver Frey
I’m writing about the front cover and the majority of the visual contents of CRASH, June issue.

Do you realise that nine- and ten-year-olds and even younger children see this mag? Do you realise what you are doing to their subconscious, in fact their conscience direct. You are dealing with EVIL. There is nothing, absolutely nothing good about any of these pictures, or even games. They are kill, kill, kill, fear and more fear, hatred and immorality of every kind.

Computers were meant for computing. I know these games are a very profitable side line, but moral responsibility is more important than money. We know that the Devil is the prince of this world although his time is limited, but unfortunately he is very clever and uses many people to his gain, especially those in the media. Crime has risen appallingly in recent years, with a horrific rise in 13-to-15-year-olds involved in VIOLENT crimes. They feed off this kind of stuff.

I ask you as a very concerned parent and christian, clean up your mag, refuse to print foul pictures and games, such things are noted in heaven and God will finally bring them into judgement.

Please help bring back LOVE. Make a stand, be different and you’ll be rewarded.
Mrs Angela Cook

Yes, the Barbarian backlash got off to a flying start. I hadn’t actually realised that we were dealing with the prince of this world, but that Oliver Frey’s cover would raise some eyebrows seemed inevitable. P S Eilds who says he’s 16 and not easily disturbed or offended, was compelled to write...

... what I saw absolutely disgusted me — so much so that I have withdrawn my regular order for your magazine. I consider (the cover) to be absolutely horrific, barbaric, over the top and totally unnecessary.

A view held by many of the letters I received...

It was a disgusting, bloodthirsty picture of two men plastered in blood, one looking very proud, stabbing another man. For the life of me I cannot understand why you had such a barbaric picture as that on what is supposed to be a computer mag...

wrote Ashley Bennet, echoing the sentiments of an age-old argument as to what constitutes computing...

I’m sure that Oli Frey can find better things to draw. A nice picture illustrating the only Smash (you never seem to illustrate adventure Smashes do you?) Hydrofool would have been appreciated...

suggested Gerard Callaghan. Actually there have been adventure covers, Hobbit and HURG, Red Moon and some Gargoyle Games-related pictures, but meanwhile, the tirade continues...

The pictures vividly advertising Barbarian is particularly distasteful and violent. The fact that it was inflicted on any of your readers that like your magazine for its content is almost obscene.
Mike Bear

I was horrified by this month’s gory cover! What a revolting, obscene picture to put in full colour on the front of such a popular mag, read by so many youngsters. It made me feel sick!
Mrs P D Crick

I am cancelling my order with my newsagent for your magazine. I tolerated the previous depiction of overproportioned females and read, with some amusement, the reports of other people and their reactions. However, enough is enough and I am not prepared to subsidise sick artists employed by sick magazines. I will not even buy the next issue to see if this letter is printed.
Philip Raymond Baker

We were shocked and appalled by your complete lack of taste and can hardly comprehend the total absence of morality and judgement which must have led you to consider it a fitting cover picture for such a magazine. CRASH will no longer be on our shopping list and hopefully many other people will feel the same, so that people like you, who apparently seek to degrade young minds, will be put out of business.
Elizabeth Fox

It becomes obvious that most letters have been written by concerned parents, and after the initial attack on morals, judgement and taste, most correspondents turned to the inevitable ‘warping of innocent minds’. P S Eilds is a...

... firm believer in the theory that continual exposure to realistic violence creates a passive attitude towards it. This does not mean that watching Tom and Jerry become excessively violent, for even the youngest child is able to realise that a cat which is squashed by a steam roller cannot inflate itself by sticking a thumb in its mouth and blowing. However, continual exposure to scenes involving two bloody men, one of whom is skewering the other through the chest with a knife, will — sooner or later — make its viewer come to accept such intolerable circumstances; maybe even to the level where they are capable of committing the act themselves.

Actually, the picture does not depict anyone being ‘skewered’ — the artist didn’t go that far at all, but it is the implication that seems to worry the most. M K Cherrill buys CRASH for himself, but has an eight-year-old son, and daughter of five...

Did you consider what effect it would have on my daughter? Look also at the picture on page 74, did you consider what this could do to a five-year-old’s vivid imagination? You may say ‘keep it away from them’ but how? It’s on the shelves of every newsagent. What about the younger brothers and sisters of all the kids that buy your magazine?

I cannot accept, in my own mind, that older children and teenagers go unaffected. Obviously it won’t make them dash out and plunge a sword into someone’s throat, but, could it be that with continual exposure to violence their acceptance of it becomes more likely?

According to Mrs P D Crick, even older boys need...

...to be protected from such an obscene picture. My son (13) started buying CRASH on a regular basis from day one of its publication, so he was not even a teenager then — I would have banned it for ever had it such a cover picture on it then!

Please show some responsibility to your younger readers, don’t glory in the obscene which upholds blood and gore as normal. Please, on behalf of the many innocent kids who read the magazine, please be more careful.

I’ve always found kids to be far from innocent, though I’m aware from my own childhood that a morbid interest can be generated by some pictures, although what holds terrors for one may be completely disregarded by another. P S Eilds is in...

...no doubt that you will receive hundreds of letters from irate 13-year-olds who claim they are totally unaffected by such things, and that they are exposed to similar scenes nearly every day of their lives.

Perhaps we will, but that will be after this column has appeared. Meanwhile, it wasn’t only Oliver Frey’s cover that attracted irate flak, as Elizabeth Fox suggests when she says...

Perhaps the game, Barbarian, is meant to be a spoof on violence, but in no way is that apparent in the cover picture, nor in the semipornographic picture advertising the game inside the magazine.

Palace’s advert has also caused several raised eyebrows within the industry (and raised again the point about the nature of computing itself and the suitability or relevance of imagery used). But Mike Bear went further, and did the obvious — have a look at the game...

If (the cover) was not bad enough I decided to see what type of game you were choosing to promote. I found the picture repeated, WITHOUT COMMENT on page 7, and the review tucked away on page 114. Obviously not the main feature! So why the picture?

You’re suggesting it was cynical exploitation of an image. Not really, it just seemed like the most exciting cover image for that issue, and CRASH often covers a feature that isn’t top of the contents list. When Daddy Bear got to the review itself, he found that...

... sadly, what I had expected. That what was on the whole an objective and reasonably written article had been ‘coloured’ by one of your three commentators in a particularly disturbing way. Paul, a 21-year-old I believe, openly thrived on the ‘convincing and proper movement’ of the figures in the game (like heads coming off!). ‘Games like this really bring out the animal in me,’ he eagerly reports, ‘Barbarian is easy to escape in and hard to get away from’, is his pronouncement.

Is this the sort of reaction that should be encouraged among 13- to 18- year-olds which comprise your main readership age group? I suppose I could be grateful that Ben & Ricky, the two younger commentators, were not as ‘turned on’.

Leaping to his defence, I have to say that of all the CRASH reviewers, Paul is probably the most responsible in his personal attitude. It’s vital to recognise that these games, even the most violent, are only an extension of what has constituted children’s fare for generations, and their reactions to them are as individual as there are persons viewing them.

The outrage occasioned by Oliver Frey’s Barbarian cover gave an opportunity to expand some readers’ feelings into other areas. Having noted that...

...your covers are always the same big butch chap sticking a sword into some unfortunate creature with blood all over the place...

John Hynes goes on to add...

THE TERMINAL MAN is just the same, blood, blood and more blood. Please tell Oliver Frey to do something different. I think your mag is brill apart from Oliver Frey’s love of blood.

That’s a bit of an exaggeration, John. The covers hardly ever have blood on them, and certainly aren’t the same chap killing someone. P S Eilds goes further though...

I would also like to question the suitability of relevance of some of Oliver’s artwork which accompanies ADVENTURE TRAIL. I know of very few adventure games (come to think of it, none) which involve men decapitating each other, or women sacrificing men shackled to stone tables, or any of the other gruesome scenes which can be seen by flipping through some back issues. In fact, I would bring into question Oliver Frey’s overall suitability for a computer magazine. He seems to take some kind of morbid pleasure in creating the most horrific or sinister pictures he can imagine.

Again, a bit exaggerated. Like many commercial (and uncommercial) artists, Oliver enjoys the dynamics of action. Some, like Ashley Barnett, however, see Oliver less as some sinister force behind the airbrush and more...

a very child-minded art editor who insists on doodling space age pictures that belong in 2000 AD comic. I am referring to the chart page of course. But the June cover does nothing for the image of CRASH. Your art editor must have some kind of warped mind to come up with a picture of such bad taste.

But Ashley offered another complaint...

As well as being a bloody sight to look at, it is embarrassing to buy. It did not look like a computer mag at all and to show it at the counter before paying for it is an embarrassing experience, for it makes the buyer look like a gruesome minded person.

Nonetheless, indications are that the issue sold very well, although I have to be fair to everyone’s views here printed, and add that representatives of W H Smith have requested that we don’t use a cover quite like it again. I think it is largely a matter of personal taste — I certainly reject that the cover is any indication of Satan working his ways through us, I’d like to feel we’re much more free than that — but I accept that if you work with sensitive images, then you’re going to upset some people. A last word M K Cherrill...

This world is not quite the nice place it used to be. Children will be subjected, soon enough, to what ever horror awaits them. What right have we to subject them, in their most fragile and informative moments, to this type of picture?

Don’t think I’m splitting hairs, but I would reckon this world is about as nice as it has ever been. Was it better when ten-year-olds were sent down the mines as slave labour, rather than attending school and playing computer games in their spare time? I doubt it.
LM

NO JOY

Dear Lloyd
I recently purchased a Spectravideo Joyball, but I’m having trouble finding a compatible interface. I’ve already tried a Bud interface and a Kempston one, both work, but only with certain games. Are there any interfaces which are compatible?
David Dewar

We’ve used a Kempston too, which seemed to work with all the games tried last month. However, the interface which does work all the time is the Frel Comcon. You will note that the fire function LEDs do not operate properly on the Joyball used with an interface into the Spectrum, but this doesn’t make any difference to the controller’s proper directional and firing functions.
LM

128 APPRECIATE

Dear Lloyd
What the hell’s going on in your review section? You start a box for 128 features, then after only a month — zap! it vanishes. Now I think I’ve a reasonable solution to the 128 problem — simply go back to the 16/48K solution of putting a little heading between retail price and author.

I hope you take this into consideration as there are still the rare games which don’t load on a 128.
J A Morrison

Part of the problem has been that Ben Stone, responsible for the 128 boxes, has been absent for two issues due to one thing and after only another. We said that 128 boxes would appear on major reviews, but where sound or extra features have been present on 128 versions, we’ve said so in the comments at the end of the review. In most cases where there’s no reference to 128 it’s because either there isn’t a 128 version or there’s no appreciable difference between it and the 48K.
LM

BOUNCED OUT

Dear Lloyd
Where’s Thing’s review (Issue 41)? According to the Thing competition on page 81, there’s a review of Thing Bounces Back on page 14. Yet on page 14 is a review of Hydrofool! In MERELY MANGRAM, you state that Howard the Duck arrived too late review. Are you sure it wasn’t Thing that was late. Howard is reviewed on page 110 — strange.

Your review of Krakout a few issues ago priced the game at £4.99, yet the advertisements price it at £7.99! Who is right? Boots are also overpricing on Leaderboard (£9.99).
Richard (Loony) Davy
PS About a year ago, there was a bit in your news about a game that was to emerge from that brilliant group Sigue Sigue Sputnik! Since then, I have heard nothing. Am I ever going to see their computer game?

I guess not Richard — will we ever hear another single from them? But back to bouncing Thing. These Things happen occasionally, you see when the comp was written we were expecting the game for review any second, but it turned out to be not quite ready, so Hydrofool got its slot — and Howard arrived on the last day of schedule, a few hours after my MERELY MANGRAM piece had winged its way printerwards. Some days you just can’t win. The Krakout review got the price wrong, but I believe there was a price change at the last moment.
LM

What a lot of work that was! You don’t believe me perhaps, but it takes ages compiling the bits and pieces from so many letters into a (hopefully) coherent whole. On the other hand, a vibrant CRASH FORUM is what I want. Next month there will be some correspondence from those who thought the Barbarian cover was great, fulfilling and wholesome — perhaps...