CRASH History

1985

- Issue 13
- Issue 14
- Issue 15
- Issue 16
- Issue 17
- Issue 18
- Issue 19
- Issue 20
- Issue 21
- Issue 22
- Issue 23
- Issue 24

February 1985, Issue No. 13

Released on January 24th

Generally known as ‘The Spectrum Kid’, this cover used colour more ambitiously than any of its predecessors. Oliver was keen on painting an almost abstract subject, the wondrous thrill of a newcomer to the Spectrum (there were always many more after Christmas), wide open to its magic and mystery. It’s a simple piece of symbolism, the Spectrum colours animating the otherwise grey, ethereal figure — yet the delicacy of the painting seems to illuminate the whole cover so that it adds up to more than the sum of the parts; there’s really nothing here tied to any game.

Even game maps had become the subject of exclusivity! Witness the cover flash for Psytraxx from The Edge. Exclusive maps were, and still are, a rather daft notion. But by this point magazines would slap ‘exclusive’ over anything that could be drawn within hours of a preview copy’s arrival to beat a rival magazine’s carefully negotiated ‘official’ map.

The good turn Elite unwittingly did CRASH, which I mentioned earlier in the CRASH History, was concerned with its game Airwolf. This was to be a TV tie-in in reverse. Elite sent the Birmingham-based Central TV news desk a press release about the youthfulness of Airwolf’s programmer (actually Richard Wilcox, young, but not quite the spring chicken the release made him out to be!). Central rang Roger Kean to double-check whether this was commonplace, and whether Airwolf actually was a hit game. Roger told the researcher that he would have to consult his school-age reviewing team, a statement calculated to arouse Central’s interest.

The thought that a bunch of mere schoolkids was passing judgement on games which would then affect large companies’ sales — and all this from the obscure town of Ludlow — was irresistible.

Next day, a four-man Central TV crew arrived in Ludlow to interview Matthew Uffindell, Ben Stone, Robin Candy and Roger Kean. The TV reporters wanted to have the CRASH reviewers playing Airwolf and chatting about it. Unfortunately it was left to Robin to say why he thought it was a hit, and because he was the only person on the team who really didn’t like the game much he was largely cut out from the edited programme, as was Airwolf. But CRASH appeared the following evening, December 19, on Central News in a five-minute piece.

Also that month Legend gave us The Great Space Race, leaving most reviewers undecided as to whether it was the biggest disappointment of all time or the biggest hoax. Large shipments hit the shelves before the reviews — and then the sales died. Sometimes, justice does prevail.

All magazine publishers were concerned that the Government would levy 15% VAT on magazines in the April Budget. Periodicals and books had always been zero-rated, and there were gloomy prognostications that such a tax would mean most magazines would have to increase their cover price to stay afloat financially, and thus lose readers. All this led Roger to predict in his editorial the death of some computer titles.

In the event magazines were left alone by VAT, but several titles would still close, as the computer-magazine market, safely sailing for three years, entered a period of great change in the wake of CRASH’s quirky success.

An early software casualty of 1985 was Fantasy, whose Backpacker’s Guide To The Universe had failed to hit the mark. Fantasy released Drive In, a reasonably-rated yet nevertheless disappointingly derivative game, and then, as everyone awaited news of the sequel to Backpacker’s, simply vanished from the face of Cheltenham, leaving debts and confusion.

On the brighter side, Hewson scored a Smash with Technician Ted, a surprise to many outsiders, who considered the game nothing more than a competent Jet Set Willy clone. The CRASH team just loved it, though. Of course there was also Airwolf (Candy excepted) and Firebird’s first full-price (Gold Range) game, Buggy Blast — a 3-D shoot-’em-up bettered since, but impressive then.

Derek had some thrills too: Doomdark’s Revenge proved to be even better than its predecessor, Lords Of Midnight, making programmer Mike Singleton one of the most praised people in the business.

And I shouldn’t avoid recalling that, to our shame, this issue also reviewed Jon Ritman’s Match Day, failing to Smash it — we’ve never been allowed to forget that! And Robin Candy’s never forgotten Issue 13 either, for this was his first as Playing Tipster, complete with cute little curly-haired photograph. He loved the fame, hated the photo and it has dogged him since — serves him right too.

March 1985, Issue No. 14

Released on February 28th

In most respects, Issue 14’s was the first CRASH cover to be absolutely tied to a particular game, Everyone’s A Wally. Though it’s not his favourite working style, once in a while Oliver likes to get away from the action-packed, atmospheric mode and do something a touch more comic, and the six characters in Micro-Gen’s arcade adventure offered the month’s best opportunity. The picture with its bright, brash colours is in complete contrast to the previous month’s. Then as now, Oliver always tried to keep readers guessing what the next issue’s cover surprise will be...

Secret negotiations had been taking place with Chris Anderson, Editor of publisher VNU’s Personal Computer Games, and at the start of February they came to fruition: he joined Newsfield to edit a new magazine for the Commodore 64 to be called Sprite & Sound. Shortly afterwards PCG ceased publication as part of VNU’s planned reduction in computer titles. And just weeks after a jingoistic blast in the press from Big K editor Tony Tyler about the qualities computer magazines needed to survive, IPC axed his magazine after not quite a year of existence.

The dramatic changes in the outside world were reflected in CRASH Towers. The earlier financial struggles during the lean times had eased as CRASH’s circulation rose, so the company could afford to hire some more staff to ease demands on Roger Kean’s time. In this issue, Graeme Kidd’s name first appeared as Assistant Editor, while shortly afterwards Jeremy Spencer joined CRASH to look after software and the reviews. The art department, too, expanded; Gordon Druce, now Art Director of CRASH, started as a humble paste-up artist to help David Western, who was still responsible for the photography — and had the added burden of the forthcoming Commodore magazine to cope with.

CRASH ended up on telly again, this time on TV South West’s Saturday Freeze Frame programme. TSW wanted Matthew Uffindell and Robin Candy to discuss how CRASH reviewed games. It meant a trip to the Plymouth studios, a nerve-racking wait of four hours and then 15 minutes before the cameras. The two lads carried it off admirably, able to be blasé now that TV appearances were becoming commonplace!

Giving us one of those exclusives, Firebird brought early copies of a game called Hedron to be reviewed. The only change Firebird made before releasing it was to the title: Hedron was renamed Gyron — a fortunate alteration when, many weeks later, a rival magazine quietly laid charges of piracy at CRASH’s door. Illegal copies of Gyron had found their way into the market before the game’s late-spring release date. Our security was understandably called into question by Firebird, but we were able to point to our early copy, still with its original Hedron loading screen; recovered pirate copies had a Gyron loading screen. The rival magazine made no further comment.

Gyron, a 3-D maze game of great originality, requiring fast thinking and joystick dexterity, received a well-deserved Smash, as did Mikro-Gen’s Everyone’s A Wally for improving yet again on the Wally Week saga. Adventure International caught a Smash in the sticky web of Spiderman, second in its Questprobe series from Marvel Comics and American adventure-programming whiz Scott Adams. Classic game themes earned Incentive and Bubble Bus Smashes too — Incentive for a licensed conversion of Moon Cresta, an unusual departure for the software house best known for its text adventures. But the shoot-’em-up was lovingly adapted for the Spectrum and proved that a well-implemented alien-zapper could still be a winner.

Previously Bubble Bus had only been a Commodore 64 house, but with Steve Crow’s Wizard’s Lair it had a Spectrum winner, and the game went on to be converted for the 64 where it became an early Sizzler in ZZAP! 64...

ZZAP! ... ? Well, no-one really liked Sprite & Sound. Newsfield was expected to come up with something as sharp-sounding and short as CRASH, so in the end we settled on ZZAP!, adding the 64 as an afterthought. But as events were soon to prove there was nothing ‘afterthought’ about ZZAP!

April 1985, Issue No. 15

Released on March 28th

After the Christmas cover and those of the two previous issues, Oliver wanted to get back to the feeling generated by Issue One’s picture, a strong, grotesque, large-face image. The impact of this technohorror is undeniable, working even more effectively when you compare its organic, slavering toothiness and the multifaceted, fly-like eyes. But a closer examination of the brilliant eyes reveals them to be illuminated Spectrum keyboards, the famous colours just picked out in a refracted flare at the bottom left. This painting was not related to any known game.

In March we had reviewed Richard Shepherd’s Ski Star 2000, a sports simulation by Pete Cooke, remarkable for having a downhill-course construction kit and its use of icons — it was the first game to really implement this new ‘user-friendly’ technique. Sadly, it was to be Shepherd’s last release. The text-adventure market had shrunk financially and Shepherd’s almost total dependence on the genre left the business vulnerable. Only those with powerful adventure product could hope to succeed: houses like Level 9, for instance.

In April stalwart Micromega came up with the disappointing Day In The Life, a spoof on Sir Clive Sinclair. It proved to be Micromega’s last game, and the label was absorbed into its commercial-programming parent company as quietly as a ship sliding under the waves.

April’s issue presented more features than had been possible before. Articles on Mizar, Scott Adams, pop/computer star Chris Sievey and the regular cover-artist slot showed clearly the effect of having more writers on the staff. Two new regular sections appeared: Tech Niche, soon to attract the talents of Simon N Goodwin, and my Merely Mangram preview column — recognition of the increasing importance to readers of early games news, and made possible by Robin taking over the Playing Tips.

But we effectively lost a reviewer at this point; after 15 months of unremitting critical game-playing, Matthew Uffindell felt he had burned out. He had borne the brunt, writing a comment on every game ever reviewed, and now he felt it was time to concentrate on his other CRASH job up in the art department, the technical side of making printers’ halftone pictures and the rudimentary film-planning techniques which he and Roger Kean were developing. Though Matthew remained on the masthead as a contributing writer for several more months, he handed over his function to the very capable Jeremy Spencer, coming down to editorial thereafter only on rare occasions.

For three years the magazine Leisure Electronics Trade had organised a computer-entertainment trade show, and at the start of this issue their biggest show yet was held at London’s Olympia. It was a huge success, though at the time no-one knew it would be the last and that before the year was out LET would cease publication. At the show a tall, bespectacled young man wearing an atrociously-coloured Hawaiian shirt under a dark jacket approached Roger Kean and announced himself to be a runner-up in the CRASH Reviewers’ Competition. It was John Minson, then setting out to break into journalism. What he wanted was an opportunity to write for CRASH, and soon enough he would do so.

Also at the LET Show, exhibiting for the first time, was System 3. Its cheerfully aggressive proprietor Mark Cale had his first Spectrum product almost ready and wanted a Smash for it. He got the game in just before the issue closed for press, and Death Star Interceptor was a Smash. So was US Gold’s Raid Over Moscow, the CRASH team happily oblivious to the controversy raging in both trade and consumer press about the game’s dubious political xenophobia.

An unusual hit came from a company better known for utilities than games: Romantic Robot, which produced Wriggler. Jeremy fell in love with the cute graphics, but it was Robin Candy’s favourable decision on playability that made it a Smash. Everyone, however, considered Alien 8 to be marvellous despite the climate of opinion on Ultimate’s releases and their continuing similarities. The Ultimate debate would dominate my letters pages for ages, but I still think Alien 8 deserved its accolade.

May 1985, Issue No. 16

Released on April 25th

It had been decided to run a sports-simulation feature in May’s issue for some time, so a topic for the cover wasn’t in question, but Oliver’s problem was how to portray the subject without using the trite picture-montage method. In the event, he turned the idea on its head, creating this startling montaged footballer, his body entirely made up of recognisable sporting equipment, booting a spaceship towards the onlooker. Perhaps what’s most remarkable is that the picture was painted in only three to four hours while Oliver fitted in his new commitment to ZZAP!.

After a few verbal run-ins with the rival publisher of Your Spectrum (now Your Sinclair) we had some innocent, esoteric fun on the cover by referring to the sports games article as: ‘Sports Scene — Last gasp of a dying genre?’ (The publisher of Your Spectrum was called Sportscene Publications.) A rather more virulent form of such fun was shortly to get CRASH into a lot of trouble, but more of that later...

Despite the time of year — start of the summer slump — software held up really well, and there was a lot of it about. The six Smashes were very varied: two from the arcades for US Gold, Bruce Lee (the first of the kick-’em-ups, except perhaps Bug-Byte’s Kung Fu) and Spy Hunter were great fun, Hewson’s Steve Turner repeated his successful 3-D adventure formula with a return to Avalon in Dragon Torc and made it even more fluent, Level 9 predictably delighted Derek Brewster with the unusual Emerald Isle, the name of Imagine reappeared under its new owners, Ocean, with the interesting simulation World Baseball, and Melbourne House offered a mixture of brain-teaser and 3-D action in Starion.

There’s a story attached to the last. Paula Byrne, then at Melbourne House, came up to Ludlow to show the CRASH team an early version of the game. Supposed to arrive for lunch, she finally appeared at four o’clock, worn out by the drive and having lost her way several times. As you can imagine, Paula wasn’t in the best of moods, but it worsened when she opened up the cassette case to find that the tape inside was not only an old Commodore 64 game, it wasn’t even by Melbourne House! We received Starion by post a few days later. The story has remained a secret till now, but, Paula, the statutory 30 years is too long to wait to reveal the truth!

It’s interesting to note that during 1985 the average price of Spectrum games had already risen to £6.95 and, in many cases, £7.95, an increase of some £2 over the two years 1983-85. Today’s prices reflect a further rise of £2, again over roughly two years. The major exceptions then were Ultimate at the top end of the scale with £9.99 games, and Mastertronic, Firebird and Atlantis at the lower end, all of which have maintained their budget structures of £1.99 and £2.99.

And at a budget price John Minson was given his first tentative try-out for CRASH, turning in some news items, while in the fledgling Tech Niche section another new contributor appeared: Jon Bates. Composer and computer musicologist, he reviewed nine music programs, further expanding the scope of CRASH.

After their TV tie-in deals Fall Guy, Dukes Of Hazzard and Airwolf, Elite popped up with one of the oddest endorsement deals of the day, the not unsuccessful horse-racing game Grand National. (Elite was about to go one better and produce a tyre tie-in with Dunlop for the appalling 911TS). Another, and less successful, tie-in was Quicksilva’s Fantastic Voyage based on the 20th Century Fox film. Computer games hadn’t quite matured enough to deal with the big boys of Hollywood, and Fantastic Voyage was an old hat film by some years. But this situation was changing; soon tied-in games would compete with their film sources for simultaneous release.

While we were working on CRASH, down in Yeovil, Somerset, where Chris Anderson lived and the ZZAP! 64 writers were based, the new magazine’s first issue was being completed. Newsfield was about to double its production base.

June 1985, Issue No. 17

Released on May 30th

Ocean’s Frankie Goes To Hollywood was the obvious cover choice for the month; the band members didn’t appear in the game, but Oliver was determined they would on the cover. For his departure point he picked the kitsch theme from the Power Of Love promo video where they all appear as gilded cherubs around an ornate picture frame. It was then a question of fitting in some of the elements of the game. This, perhaps the most unusual CRASH cover, was also the most accomplished representation of a particular game Oliver had done to date.

Once again, we took a little dig at Your Spectrum on the cover flash, this time in a reference to computer repair shops: ‘Is Your Spectrum fit for the Scrapheap?’ But the real issue of the month was Denton Designs, the talented group of programmers who had started at the old Imagine. Now, part-financed by Ocean and contractually supported by Beyond, they had formed a nucleus of games designers and programmers. Denton Designs was the most visible tip of a new development in the games-software industry.

The back-bedroom days were over; larger and more financially powerful companies like Ocean, US Gold, Argus and British Telecom were taking over smaller independents who had survived from the pioneering days. There was a more professional approach. Programmers no longer wanted to bother with marketing and distribution, programming was their strength, and so a number of development groups were springing up, people who didn’t want to spend time selling their work but who also didn’t want to be part of a large corporation. They were the new software contractors, and none received as much publicity as Denton Designs.

Gift From The Gods for Ocean was Denton Designs’s first released game; in this issue we extensively previewed Frankie Goes To Hollywood, but it was Shadowfire for Beyond, the game Denton Designs first contracted for, which was reviewed. Looking back, Shadowfire actually lacked content, but its shallow qualities were well disguised by the novel icon presentation. Pete Cooke’s Ski Star 2000 may have been the first game to use icons, but Shadowfire was the first to base the entire gameplay and control on these graphic devices.

In fact, Robin Candy found Shadowfire so easy he’d completed it on the second day after its arrival and was able to prove the point in this issue’s Playing Tips!

Much more enjoyably frustrating, though decidedly without the evident programming cleverness of Shadowfire, was US Gold’s Tapper, a beer-swilling experience of keeping bar customers satisfied that defied everyone’s arcade abilities. It just made a Smash because it was irresistible!

If there had been any doubt the month before about the demise of sports simulations as a genre (and history has certainly proved it to be an ill-founded doubt), then New Generation’s endorsed Jonah Barrington’s Squash helped put fears on the shelf, though few reviewers thought the presentation had advanced much on Psion’s Match Point.

What it did have was synthesized speech for the scoring (Death Star Interceptor had also had a go at that), which prompted Matthew, in a rare reappearance as a reviewer, to say it was difficult to hear without his ‘famdabidozy-super-blaster radio amplifier’ — a precursor of the 128, no doubt.

Derek had a couple of Smashes in Witch’s Cauldron from Mikro-Gen, an adventure using Wally Week-style graphics, and the excellent Runestone from Games Workshop, whose graphics showed it wasn’t only Mike Singleton who could provide ‘landscaping’ techniques.

At this moment a crisis arose. Though Newsfield’s new Commodore title ZZAP! 64 had taken off extremely well, production problems were emerging with its editorial base being far away in Yeovil. Chris Anderson had provided a marvellous product, but he didn’t want to move up to Ludlow, whereas Newsfield’s management wanted the magazine in its own premises. There was a head-on clash which resulted in Chris leaving the company and the ZZAP! team arriving in Ludlow in the middle of June as we started on the July issue. We all had to move round to make room...

July 1985, Issue No. 18

Released on June 27th

The Dun Darach cover painting caused a fair stir — some readers reported seeing the magazine on newsagents’ top shelves — though the subject matter is really only a fond reworking of many a pulp SF / sword-and-sorcery theme. As usual, Oliver did not move far away from the Spectrum references either; note the rainbow colouring of Skar’s cloak and the air round her. Perhaps the erotic connotations of having a man in bondage to a woman, even if a sorceress, were too much for some chauvinist CRASH readers, who would feel the same about Issue 31 with its Hannah Smith cover.

A dark month for the software business: confirmation arrived that Fantasy had definitely gone, and the financially ailing independent Micromania was being forced into liquidation, unable to withstand the loss of payments after its distributor, Tiger, collapsed. It seemed a shame; never a front-runner, Micromania had nevertheless produced a handful of interesting games, last but not least being Project Future, a Smash in Issue 14.

The biggest failure, however, was that of Bug-Byte, which went into receivership during June. Bug-Byte was founding father of the home-computer game and many well-known individuals and several software houses had sprung from the Liverpool company. To be fair, the quality of Bug-Byte’s products had dropped; still, it was a sad surprise to many causing almost as many fears that the end was nigh as had Imagine’s disintegration.

But, like Imagine, Bug-Byte would be resurrected: Argus, unable to confirm a merger deal before Bug-Byte went into receivership, later purchased it from the receiver to use as a budget label.

And, to paraphrase, in the midst of death there is life: up came Mirrorsoft. After a short and low-profile history of educational software, Mirrorsoft suddenly produced Dynamite Dan, the ever so attractive Jet Set Willy clone which because of its playability, clever map and fiendish difficulty well deserved the Smash it received.

It was a good month for quality games, in fact. Dun Darach left Cuchulainn fan Robin Candy in paroxysms of delight as he reviewed Gargoyle’s third game (and pleased Roger Kean, because he had a credit in the inlay for thinking up the idea of numbering all the houses, a suggestion he had offered Gargoyle’s Greg Follis during the LET Show). Only recently established on the 64, Palace Software converted its Commodore hit Cauldron to the Spectrum and had it Smashed, while Mikro-Gen revived familiar graphics and puzzles with Herbert’s Dummy Run, in which Wally Week took more of a back seat as his toddler son Smashed up the shop.

What these very different games had in common was that they were new neither in ideas nor in gameplay but their implementation was exemplary. Programmers were now concentrating on providing a long, complex game with large, densely detailed graphics and decent helpings of humour. None of these virtues applied to Domark’s big game, though. For the majors, fighting a battle for the best licences going, it must have been galling to see Domark pick up James Bond in A View To A Kill, especially as the multipart game proved a great disappointment.

How could I know that in another year, the CRASH enthusiast whose Forum heading I used in this issue — a ‘desperate art student’ who’d sent his drawing to the Bug Box — would be working for Newsfield? Was I to blame for Richard Eddy?

ZZAP! staff writers Gary Penn and Julian Rignall arrived in Ludlow during June, halfway through work on their issue. This was the moment when Roger Kean, perforce of necessity, took over editorship of ZZAP! and relinquished his role on CRASH. It seemed to many readers a traitorous act from the man who had become so firmly associated with the Spectrum, but in fact Roger continued to keep an eye on the magazine he had helped found a year and a half earlier, as Graeme Kidd moved up from Assistant Editor to Editor.

In the battle for circulation — and CRASH’s was rising fast, threatening the longer established titles — it seemed to be vital to be seen to be first with the reviews. CRASH staff were increasingly exercised over rival magazines getting to review some games before we did — one magazine, now defunct, appeared to rate on the basis of seeing unfinished copies. It was aggravating, and the situation was about to boil over spectacularly...

August 1985, Issue No. 19

Released on July 25th

The Spectrum surfer cover has some things in common with Issue Eight’s, the man diving into a pool: the cool blues of water, the surreal use of a computer as a surfboard. It heralded the arrival of the Spectrum+ at the height of summer. The primary task of a magazine cover is to stand out from the plethora of other titles on the newsagant’s shelves. When it came to using colour, strangely juxtaposed images and dynamic composition, Oliver Frey’s CRASH cover pictures were, and still are, among the best. They always make an immediate impact.

Surfers dice with danger in their sport; the cover was an apt symbol for the issue. In a fit of self-righteousness — which to be honest had always lain just under the surface of CRASH’s editorial stance, sometimes threatening to break out but usually contained — new Editor Graeme Kidd and his small team set aside four pages to lampoon rival magazine Sinclair User. And in a wave of what proved to be ill-judged enthusiasm for the project, everyone involved from editorial to art dived in to make it a perfect lampoon.

Events turned sour when Jeremy Spencer handed Sinclair User’s editor an advance copy of the issue. Within hours, Sinclair User’s publishing company, East Midland Allied Press, sought an injunction to prevent the issue being distributed. As many of the events which took place thereafter are still sub judice (going through the legal process), it is not possible to mention them here.

EMAP won its injunction and the issue had to be recalled, the four offending pages trimmed and a sticker placed on the cover stating briefly why they were missing before the magazines could be redistributed.

To avoid the possibility of a libel suit being filed against Graeme Kidd and Newsfield, the matter was settled out of court, and in the Christmas Special we printed an official apology.

Ironically, public feeling about all these goings-on appeared to run in CRASH’s favour and whether or not it had any bearing on the matter, from that moment on the magazine’s circulation spiralled rapidly upwards, from around 50,000 copies a month to over 100,000.

But before all this took place, while the edition was being prepared, the CRASH team treated themselves to some more innocent fun. Part Five of the Sinclair Story which we had been running dealt with Sinclair’s battery car, the C5. Seen as risible in many quarters, the C5 found an unlikely home in Ludlow when a local car-hire firm purchased several to act as sight-seeing buggies for the tourists who flock to the town every summer — strange when you consider how hilly Ludlow is, and therefore how much pedalling the tourists had to do to help the motor cope with the strain!

For the article several CRASH reviewers went down to the car-hire firm and took the C5s out for a reviewing trip. The resultant buggy wars on the market car park did a lot for the C5’s reputation among CRASH staff, but sadly failed to save it from its ultimate fate of obscurity.

More germane to the magazine, though, Ocean gave us the Spectrum version of Frankie Goes To Hollywood, all icons, windowing, spoof games, puzzles and highly creditable graphics; what with this and Beyond’s Spy Vs Spy with its simultaneous split-screen presentation, it looked like hit games from now on were going to have to be complex and sophisticated to succeed — though of the two other Smashes, Imagine’s Hypersports was really more of the same only better done, and Nodes Of Yesod was more of a different same only done superlatively by Odin.

A newcomer’s advert is likely to arouse curiosity and Odin’s was very classy. It ran for two months before the game’s release, but Odin wasn’t really as virgin as everyone thought, it was just another name for Thor, whose high-tech Liverpool offices were situated immediately opposite the sad-looking, derelict windows of Bug-Byte — in the midst of death, there’s life...

September 1985, Issue No. 20

Released on August 29th

It was time for another grotesque cover after three relatively calm ones, and with fangs and venomous saliva foremost in his mind Oliver sought a suitable subject. He found it in Level 9’s Red Moon adventure, which featured mythical beasts. It’s interesting to compare Oliver’s painting with that of the game’s packaging: Level 9 provided a sinuously elegant snake-dragon, vibrantly attractive and decorative, CRASH had this stark, violent monster, virtually bursting off the cover with its sheer ferocity. The startling impact is quite otherworldly and satisfyingly terrifying.

After a terse apology for the delay in putting Issue 19 on sale, the editorial speculated on Sinclair’s rumoured launch of a 128K Spectrum. Commodore had released a 128K machine, Amstrad was about to show its CPC 6128, it certainly seemed time that the Spectrum should be upgraded. Sources suggested Sinclair’s new computer was code-named The Derby, and speculated that it might appear at The PCW Show in September, only a month away. Prediction can be a dodgy game, and as we now know the wait would be far longer.

CRASH Software Editor Jeremy Spencer was part of the local landed gentry (so he claimed!), and on his several acres raised sheep who thought they were dogs, dogs who thought they were writers (a picture of one appeared at an Apricot keyboard) and horses who thought they were artists — well, one foal was named Oli. Oli became something of a mascot, with regular update pictures appearing as he grew up. This rural aspect of what was otherwise a technological entertainment magazine puzzled many of our rivals, and possibly some readers too. but it was all part of CRASH’s idiosyncratic style.

Visitors to the Ludlow offices could have been forgiven for thinking that eccentricity and not idiosyncrasy was the hallmark of CRASH staff, for the place was littered with flashing, whirring dinosaur monsters — Zoids. They were there because Martech had the licence to produce a Zoids game, there for reference because Martech wanted Oliver to do a cover, and there because Jeremy Spencer couldn’t resist them. He interviewed Martech’s Zoids development team, Electronic Pencil Company, a job made all the more satisfying since the team had also programmed Jeremy’s other favourite game, The Fourth Protocol, which Derek had Smashed the month before.

Icons had come a long way since Pete Cooke’s first tentative use of them and they were obviously here to stay. In The Fourth Protocol icons were more than just a useful device, they were the very essence of the game, helping to generate a nail-biting atmosphere in this unusual adventure. Electronic Pencil Company was, like Denton Designs, another example of the new spirit of professionalism in software writing which was making it easier for software houses to concentrate on sourcing ideas and marketing them.

This more forward-thinking approach, however, placed extra pressures on Roger Kean as the publisher of CRASH. Software houses had caught on to the power of having their game featured on a cover. At this stage Martech wanted a Zoids cover soon, Domark wanted one for its Friday The 13th licence, and Beyond wanted one for the much-hyped forthcoming Superman game. Of course, all these would appear at the same time, he was assured, so they all wanted their covers the same month! In the event, both Martech and Domark were satisfied and Superman turned into a debacle.

After a couple of disappointing Monty games, Gremlin Graphics put Monty’s creator, Peter Harrap, back into the hot seat and he turned up with the Smashed Monty On The Run. His original was barely revamped but the sequel was more difficult and had the novelty of a somersaulting mole, a device used many times since. Others were sprinting as well, for Design Design released On The Run, an elegant maze game with large graphics by Stuart Ruecroft, who had earlier been employed by Fantasy. Also among the month’s hits were Costa Panayi’s isometric Highway Encounter, Red Moon and the welcome return of veteran Spectrum programmer Don Priestly with Popeye, using the huge, animated characters that have since become his trademark.

October 1985, Issue No. 21

Released on September 26th

We hadn’t had a space shoot-’em-up picture on the cover of CRASH all year, and only the footballer from Issue 16 had managed to get above the stratosphere. Oliver looked around for a possible subject for this issue, settling on a game previewed in it: Hewson’s Astro Clone. In truth the cover could be referring to any number of games, or no game at all, but it’s a fascinating insight into an illustrator’s mind, showing that without some subject to hang the design on in the first place it’s hard to get going at all. The ends need a means to justify them.

The eighth PCW Show was over, giving an excuse to print lots of those pictures you cringe at years later — and people wonder why I hate being photographed! Oddly, the usual flurry of hasty releases just in time for the show failed to materialise, leaving the hordes milling around watching demos.

CRASH had little better to offer, for the real action took place in the featured previews, which gave the ever-space-grabbing Robin Candy a fine time: three previews only he could handle (according to him). A Gargoyle Games fan since Tir Na Nòg, he pestered Greg Follis daily till an early version of the next game was viewable at the company’s Dudley offices. Marsport followed in the footsteps of Dun Darach, but with a new hero and a different style of control from the familiar presentation.

A Steve Turner fan since Avalon, Robin was able to gurgle happily about Hewson’s Astro Clone, which weirdly enough resembled Marsport in some screens. And a dangerous Elite fan since Firebird released the Commodore version, he could finally get to grips with an early copy for the Spectrum.

Another preview — and it turned out to be far too early — was of Elite’s cartoon licence Scooby Doo. As outlined in this issue, the game sounded and looked marvellous, but alas it was not to be. Elite ran into programming problems which it couldn’t resolve, and dropped the game. Later it would be contracted out to Gargoyle Games to redesign and would appear in time for the next year’s PCW Show.

Actually in review, the Smashes included Nightshade from Ashby-based Ultimate with the confusing programming credit of Rare Ltd. Despite its high rating, there was a hint of disapproval in the critical comments, a note that no progress had been made since Alien 8. Speculation ran rife that perhaps the most successful software house ever had begun to lose its touch, not helped by further rumours that British Telecom, which was releasing converted Ultimate games on the 64 through Firebird, was in the market to buy the Leicestershire company.

Derek Brewster picked on an adventure with the Wild West-like title of The Touchstones Of Rhiannon to Smash — actually it was about Robin Of Sherwood — but down in arcade alley the joystick-wielders were struggling over the complex karate movements in Melbourne House’s genre-founding The Way Of The Exploding Fist. There was some disagreement over its playability, but its evident qualities made it a Smash.

The results of the 1985 CRASHtionnaire were published, revealing that at 17.2 years the average reader’s age was far higher than anyone had anticipated, and that Playing Tips was a clear winner as a section. Another result was a demand for a pay increase from Robin (it went to arbitration, but I can’t remember the outcome).

Three fresh names appeared: Simon N Goodwin’s Tech Tipster contributions started, answering those little problems that affect the technically-minded, and Ian Craig featured as On The Cover artist. Ian would later join Newsfield as an illustrator. The third was a new staff member, Sean Masterson, who took over Frontline after a two-month gap left by Angus Ryall’s departure from computer gaming.

This month saw the start of Newsfield’s Amstrad magazine AMTIX! in direct competition with Amstrad Action, which was launched at the same time. Jeremy Spencer became AMTIX! coeditor with Roger Kean, each of them doubling their existing roles. And Newsfield had spawned its first spin-off, for Amstrad Action’s publisher was Chris Anderson, ex-editor of ZZAP!.

November 1985, Issue No. 22

Released on October 24th

The Zoids cover almost failed to materialise. Martech suffered delays in development of the program, and would have preferred to put it off for a month. But the December cover was already promised to another. After much hesitation it was decided to go with the Zoids game preview at the very last moment; so here is another painting executed by Oliver with only a couple of hours to spare. As large figures on a monstrous scale, explosions and blasting beams of light have always been among his specialities, it was not a serious problem to produce something excellent in a short time.

Excitement! Sinclair had produced a 128K Spectrum! Well, not quite. He’d signed a deal with Investronica of Spain and the Spanish had a 128K machine. It was something of an insult, but to be fair, as the editorial stated, the City had given Sir Clive a hard time, no wonder he turned abroad for comfort. Would the new machine be made available in Britain? Not likely, not with the financial position of Sinclair, sitting on stocks of abortive QLs and yet-to-be-sold Spectrum+ machines in the high streets. CRASH did eventually get its hands on a Spanish 128 and discovered that it would have been of little relevance to the British market. We were still left waiting.

CRASH’s editorial masthead had expanded yet again, to credit Gary Penn, Julian Rignall and Gary Liddon as contributing writers. This was at a time when there was an all-hands-to-the-deck feeling about the small staff putting together three magazines. Penn and Rignall, however, only contributed a little to CRASH reviews, working mostly on ZZAP!.

Gary Liddon had originally applied in the previous year. He wasn’t taken on then, but had gone on to do reviews for Big K, and when that magazine closed he went to work for Domark. It was there that Jeremy Spencer met him during a preview for A View To A Kill and was impressed enough to suggest Newsfield hire him as a Staff Writer. At first Gary’s function was to rove between all three magazines, but eventually he settled down as a ZZAP! writer, remaining with the magazine till Newsfield appointed him to Thalamus, its software house.

Astro Clone and Marsport were two of the Smashes for the issue, hardly surprises. Neither was Elite a surprise. The Spectrum version lacked some of the Commodore’s qualities, but made up for them that in speed; it was undoubtedly a Smash. The Edge also earned its spurs with Bo Jangeborg’s Fairlight. It was superficially like recent Ultimate 3-D games, but CRASH reviewers saw it as knocking ‘Filmation’ into a cocked hat and providing a depth of game to go with the graphics. Bubble Bus scored again with Steve Crow and Starquake, a beautifully-designed game which led one reviewer to comment that it was the route Ultimate should have taken.

Melbourne House’s follow-up to The Way Of the Exploding Fist, another joystick-manipulating fight game called Fighting Warrior, struck a chord of discontent. It just didn’t work well enough. But Sean Masterson found himself satisfied interviewing a programmer working for CRL on a game called Tau Ceti. The programmer in question was Pete Cooke, veteran of Richard Shepherd adventure days (Urban Upstart for instance) and responsible for CRL’s modest Juggernaut. Sean was impressed by Pete’s good taste in science-fiction novels, but there seemed no doubt that Tau Ceti would be a success for CRL, a long-lived software house in search of a hit game.

After some 20 months of single-handedly photographing all game screens for the magazines, David Western got some help in the form of a young local photographer called Cameron Pound. It was to be some months before Cameron ceased to be a trainee and got his name on the masthead, but today Cameron and his assistant Michael Parkinson take and process hundreds of colour and monochrome pictures every month.

As we went to press, deals were being finalised for December’s cover for Domark. The idea seemed sound enough, but in several ways it was to be a severe problem...

December 1985, Issue No. 23

Released on November 21st

As this is a personal view, I’ll be honest and say that though this isn’t the worst CRASH cover it’s certainly Oliver’s poorest. There’s no doubting the visual impact created by the hand seen in close-up, bearing its blood-drenched dagger, but there’s also little doubt that this was a subject in which Oliver had little interest — or rather, he felt less out of sorts with the subject than with the way the Editor wanted it portrayed. To fans of the gore-a-minute film series, there was no need for a cover line to say ‘Jason’s back’ in Friday The 13th.

Some readers, newsagents and several readers’ parents were appalled by the cover, and extended their opprobrium to the Friday The 13th preview which showed Domark’s Mark Strachan and Dominic Wheatley posed in a particularly gruesome and bloody manner. One parent, so upset by what she saw, sent the whole caboodle to the Press Council. Nothing came of it, but clearly the affair was an unhappy one. I defended the cover in the Forum, but it was seen as unfortunate in the sense that the preview was a thin editorial excuse for forcing the cover idea on Oliver — especially thin when you consider that the game itself would not be reviewed till June 1986 and then would only receive 32%!

Roger Kean had expressed doubts about the subject, feeling that it would be better to do a humorous picture, more in the cartoon style of Mad, but he was away from Ludlow when the final decision was taken and the cover painted.

Two other previews struck a somewhat happier note. Robin Candy had been aware for some time that Gargoyle Games had in mind a ‘fun package’ for Christmas, so he was pleased that they revealed the new comic hero, Sweevo, to him first. The other game previewed had been gestating far longer, for over 18 months in fact. It was PSS’s Swords And Sorcery, programmed by Mike Simpson, who also devised the MIDAS adventure-writing system which Swords And Sorcery used. MIDAS was vaunted as a revolutionary piece of adventure/role-playing game graphics and control software from which would spring many games in the same vein as Swords And Sorcery. However, to date not much has been made of it.

An unusual event occurred: Mosaic’s The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole was reviewed twice, once in the ordinary game reviews, where it got 86%, and again in Derek’s Adventure Trail, where he gave it a Smash. That was no bad thing for the reader — but a damned nuisance for the index and historical database!

There were seven Smashes in all, reflecting the closeness of Christmas boom time. With only a few games to its credit — but very polished ones — Microsphere reprised Skool Daze with the improved Back To Skool. Melbourne House scored two with its Marble Madness-like Gyroscope, and the spoof adventure of foreign seaside silliness, Terrormolinos. Durell gave us Critical Mass, a game I never liked much, and the flight-simulation freaks at Digital Integration slammed in with Tomahawk — that military helicopter that positively reeks of danger.

The last Smash was for a new software house, Electric Dreams. Launched at The PCW Show, Rod Cousens’s Electric Dreams was an offshoot of Activision. Its first released game was I, Of The Mask, an elegantly contrived 3-D ‘tunnel’ experience by Sandy White, whose previous games were the revolutionary Ant Attack and its sequel Zombie Zombie.

Swallowing up existing software houses was by now an established practice, but creating offshoot labels like Electric Dreams was fairly new. It smacked of corporation tactics and echoed the music industry with its giant parent recording companies and their numerous labels each specialising in a different musical style. Ocean had done much the same with Imagine when it bought the title from the Receiver. To start with, Imagine specialised in sports games, but with its Konami licences Imagine’s game portfolio broadened out. No-one was quite clear what Electric Dreams would do that was different from Activision, but everyone agreed it would be interesting to wait and see.

Christmas 1985, Issue No. 24

Released on December 12th

Christmas comes but once a year... and so do friendly aliens, this time not bearing gifts but taking them back to a planet underprivileged enough not to have Spectrums, joysticks and Cub monitors. Perhaps that spacecraft glowing ET-like in the background is more used to descending aggressively in the face of fearsome Earth defence fire. This picture could easily have been mawkish if it weren’t for Oliver’s knack of adding the uneasy element; the visual gag is the Space Invaders cassette, but it is the alien’s dubious expression that makes it tautly funny.

Once again it was a giant special edition, and brought with it the now-familiar problems of a drastically shortened schedule because the issue would be on sale earlier in the month than usual. And the pressure wasn’t helped by the flurry of late-for-Christmas games to review.

Seven Smashes was a fair crop. Odin’s Robin Of The Wood with presentation reminiscent of Sabre Wulf scored because of the character interaction. Mastertronic’s sequel to Finders Keepers, Spellbound, found favour, as did the finished version of Durell’s Saboteur, which hadn’t looked quite as promising when seen at The PCW Show.

A new name, Insight, hit the mark with a shoot-’em-up called Vectron, whose ultrafast 3-D graphics impressed everyone. Derek pronounced Swords And Sorcery to be a Smash, justifying the 18 months that had gone into it. And Elite received two Smashes, one for an unusually playable platform game, Roller Coaster, and the other for the long-awaited Capcom Commando conversion.

Commando, already released on the 64, had been disappointing, but its Spectrum counterpart was much better. In reverse, however, System 3’s International Karate, a big 64 hit, missed the mark on the Spectrum and only got 68%.

In the year since the last Christmas Special, Newsfield’s offices in King Street had altered dramatically. What a year earlier had been spacious and under-occupied was now cramped a situation that was to get worse still, and one we’ve had to live with since. The editorial floor, which had been home to Roger Kean, Matthew Uffindell, myself on a few days and two part-timers after school hours, now had to support eight full-time staff, five part-timers and the increasingly complex photographic setup.

The middle floor was worse still, with nine staff whose tasks included mail order, subscriptions, advertisement administration, reception, accounts and mail order/subscription storage and packing.

With subscriptions running at several thousand per magazine, it was becoming obvious that King Street could no longer hold all the subscription copies, even for the few days it took to send them out. A solution would not be found till 1986, but in the meantime the entire company, including the five art-department staff, formed chain gangs once a week to transport magazine bundles from the street up the stairs to a room on the middle floor. The lorries delivering our subscription copies were frequently the juggernauts Pete Cooke had so vividly described in his CRL game, definitely not suited to Ludlow’s quaintly narrow streets. Newsfield unloading sessions became a fraught business, a battle against time and the inevitable intervention of the traffic warden.

Eventually a real fight did ensue with Ludlow’s solitary traffic warden, a moment of sublime looniness when the large ex-policeman warden, driven mad by our constant blockages, pinned Oliver Frey to Victoria Wine’s wall and threatened assault before several bemused Newsfield witnesses. Ludlow now has two traffic wardens — is this progress or retaliation?

As soon as the Christmas issues had gone to press, February’s had to be considered, for ZZAP! at least had to be at the printer before the Christmas break. It was a weary team that gathered at the Bull Hotel for the Newsfield Christmas Dinner a few days before the holiday, but no-one could fail to be pleased. CRASH’s circulation figures were among the highest ever achieved for a computer title in Britain, ZZAP! was doing splendidly and hopes for AMTIX! were running high. It seemed a good way to go into the New Year.