CRASH History

- Introduction

1984

- Issue 1
- Issue 2
- Issue 3
- Issue 4
- Issue 5
- Issue 6
- Issue 7
- Issue 8
- Issue 9
- Issue 10
- Issue 11
- Issue 12

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

1986

- Issue 25
- Issue 26
- Issue 27
- Issue 28
- Issue 29
- Issue 30
- Issue 31
- Issue 32
- Issue 33
- Issue 34
- Issue 35
- Issue 36

1987

- Issue 37
- Issue 38
- Issue 39
- Issue 40
- Issue 41
- Issue 42
- Issue 43
- Issue 44
- Issue 45
- Issue 46
- Issue 47
- Issue 48

Lookbacks

- 1983 Lookback
- 1984 Lookback
- 1985 Lookback
- 1986 Lookback
- 1987 Lookback

DADDY, WHERE WERE YOU WHEN

STARTED?

The CRASH & Spectrum Software History

A four-part series

On the facing page starts the first in a series of four 24-page pull-out supplements, which will build into a history of Spectrum software over the past four years.

Each month’s supplement consists of 12 CRASH covers, presented as they were originally printed (or as nearly as we can recreate one or two of the earlier ones), backed by a short article written by Lloyd Mangram, detailing events in the month of the cover.

He talks about the games reviewed, the software houses involved and reactions to the software, all set against a background of how CRASH happened. Intimate stories, many never before revealed, illustrate the problems besetting the small team which launched CRASH and explan how it grew to be the magazine it is today.

It may seem self-indulgent publishing our own history after only four years, but these have been a frenzied 1,460 days — and it isn’t only our own history, but also that of the Spectrum computer and the enormous number of people who because of their interest, faith and imagination made it the most successful of machines.

This is a retrospective, not a funeral, a celebration and not a wake. The four years’ worth of covers are concluded in the Christmas Special, Issue 48.

And now over to Lloyd...

February 1984, Issue No. 1

Released on January 13th

The ‘Chairman’, as he’s now known, hangs in the Newsfield boardroom. This first cover of CRASH was not based on any particular game, but took its inspiration from the chrome-teethed, machine-oil-dripping alien from the film Alien. It’s really a simple gag — an alien playing Space Invaders, the screen reflected in his eyes. The object was to provide a striking and ferocious image to leap off the news shelves, and to declare to the world that CRASH was very different to existing computer magazines with their reliance on photographed hardware.

Work started on the first issue of CRASH well before Christmas 1983. The editorial team, which was to remain unchanged for three months, consisted of Roger Kean, Oliver Frey, Lloyd Mangram and Matthew Uffindell, a 17-year-old who had been buying software from Crash Micro Games Action mail order. As he lived nearby, he popped in to purchase games and somehow never quite left. Many of CRASH’s early reviewers were recruited in this fashion. Matthew now works in Newsfield’s art department as a senior film planner — one of the people who put the images on film, ready for the printers.

At the 1983 PCW Show, held at the Barbican that year, Roger Kean and CRASH financial director Franco Frey roved around the stands trying to convince software houses that a really new magazine was about to arrive. Interest was generally luke warm, but nevertheless, by mid-December when the issue had to be ready, 27 pages of advertising had been sold — enough to provide CRASH with the funds to print!

The original concept behind CRASH had been to provide a low-key, low-cost magazine, mostly in monochrome, to attract the numerous software houses who couldn’t afford the advertising rates of the existing glossies, so several of the first issues were printed on cheap newsprint with a heavier colour section wrapped around. As it turned out, most advertisers opted for colour advertisements and so gradually CRASH became as glossy (and as expensive to advertise in) as the rest. It was while Roger was driving to Milton Keynes to watch the first colour coming off the press that he was stopped by the police for speeding — at 3.30 in the morning. On explaining to the officers that he was rushing to a birth, he was let off with a caution. He’s never broken a speed limit since...

Issue One had lots to offer, including an amazing 60 reviews, the first time ever so much space had been devoted to Spectrum games. Among them were notables like Zaxxan from Starzone, a bunch of youngsters who later got into a legal wrangle with US Gold when the official version of Zaxxon was released, Bugaboo (The Flea) from Quicksilva, which got 92% and would have been a Smash had there been Smashes in those days, and of course the Game of the Month, Micromega’s 3-D Deathchase — still a great thrill to play. Programming innovations were still largely a thing of the future, but Sandy White’s Ant Attack (Quicksilva) raised some eyebrows, although I remember Matthew and I feeling that it lacked something in the gameplay.

Then there was the fabled Living Guide, which was to run for the first four issues before it became too unwieldy to cope with. It listed every game you could lay your hands on under classified headings like ‘Platformers’, ‘Maze Games’ and so on. Matthew and another young reviewer, Chris Passey, provided a comparison of Invader/Galaxian games in Run It Again, Franco reviewed and compared joystick interfaces, we launched the first ever readers’ hotline chart, and offered readers the chance to become a CRASH reviewer in a competition. Interestingly, one of its runners-up was a young man by the name of John Minson, but more of him much later ...

We also profiled Rabbit Software, Blaby Games and Carnell, who were finishing their much-heralded Wrath of Magra. And to round off, I did my first ever look back at the software year. The weakest spot in that first CRASH (and for several issues) was the lack of a proper adventure reviewer. Buried deep in the Living Guide were mini reviews of Star Trek and Velnor’s Lair, two games from a tiny outfit called Neptune, operated by one Derek Brewster ...

March 1984, Issue No. 2

Released on February 16th

Coming from a film-making background, Oliver Frey loves powerful images and classic Thirties and Forties monochrome movies, interests never better reflected than in the second CRASH cover. It celebrated the proliferation of Donkey Kong clones on the Spectrum at the time, and related it to the Run It Again article in the issue comparing Mario’s many attempts to rescue his girl from the overgrown ape’s clutches. Note Kong’s cavalier treatment of the Spectrum itself — Oliver is to use the computer repeatedly in cover illustrations as a player in the drama, quite revolutionary in 1984.

It was a bit of a conceit to state on the cover ‘Over 400 Games Reviewed’ (345 were in the Guide), but the gung-ho exclamation ideally indicates the small CRASH team’s euphoria at public reaction to Issue One — we wanted everyone to know that we were the biggest and the best!

Attitudes within the trade were equally invigorating; several specialist shops acclaimed CRASH as the long-awaited Spectrum Bible. Even Computer & Video Games sent us a congratulations card, but I fear they saw us as no competition, merely a local fanzine to be encouraged; few people at the time realised that as many as 50,000 copies of Issue One sold nationally. It was a heady figure and one not to be repeated for quite some time.

February’s weather, however, brought CRASH down to earth. The schedule ran late. Oliver worked for 30 hours nonstop to complete Terminal Man, while John Edwards, newly-recruited advertisement manager, stood anxiously by, waiting to take the layout boards down to the London printer who wanted to start at 9.30am. John had to catch the 6am train from Birmingham New Street. At 4am on a freezing winter morning Oliver finished, but Roger Kean (who was still working on the Living Guide) did not.

At 5am, the boards still four pages incomplete, Roger drove John the 40 miles to Birmingham through a heavy snow storm. After ten minutes they were stuck on a steep hill outside Ludlow. Turning back to try another route, they came across a skidded lorry with its nose in a ditch. The unfortunate driver turned out to be a local news trade wholesaler, delivering magazines to Ludlow. Seeing the CRASH boards, as they gave him a lift back into town, the driver exclaimed excitedly. He owned a Spectrum and had loved the first issue. So there they were, John frustrated, Roger struggling with the terrible conditions, and a mad lorry driver who wanted nothing more than to talk about high scores on Lunar Jetman!

They got through in the end, the printer did the job in time, and Issue Two did arrive. To many people’s horror, there were five Games Of The Month (‘confusing to have so many,’ wrote one reader), and in their very different ways they indicated that Spectrum games were improving rapidly and almost beyond belief. Top was Ultimate’s classic Atic Atac, but Android 2 showed Costa Panayi flexing his muscles for Vortex with the best 3-D effects yet seen. Like the first two, Krakatoa (Abbex) offered large graphics which were a novelty in early 84, combined with complex gameplay and a wicked sense of humour (also a rare commodity). Scuba Dive (Durell) also boasted large and effectively fishy graphics with interestingly different game objectives, while Microsphere’s Wheelie was to prove one of the most addictive games of the year.

We also ran our first ‘real’ competition, for Fantasy, promoting Doomsday Castle. It was so successful that it set the pattern for an increasing number of competitions thereafter.

Because of their oddly unergonomic arrangement, games only offering the cursors for control lost percentage points badly in those days! But we praised small-company inventiveness in an article examining some joysticks which were actually attached to the Spectrum to physically manipulate the cursed cursors. Franco had a good listen to Currah’s ahead-of-its-time speech unit, and Hewson’s Steve Turner was interviewed as well as the four lads from Starzone.

I also had quite a few letters to print and answer — among them was a complaint that at five pounds, the price of software was far too high. Things never change...

April 1984, Issue No. 3

Released on March 22nd

This cover first demonstrated Oliver Frey’s ability to combine several disparate elements into one picture. It related to an article on Melbourne House and Australian Philip Mitchell, who programmed The Hobbit and was working on the very delayed Sherlock Holmes. Melbourne’s H.U.R.G. (High Level User-Friendly Real Time Games Designer) had nothing to do with Philip, but was reviewed in the issue, so Oliver melded the two ideas by having Sherlock peer through his magnifying glass in which is reflected (backwards) a clue to H.U.R.G.

With monthly pressures getting tough, we all welcomed the arrival in Ludlow of David Western, a one-time colleague of Roger Kean. David lent a valued hand to the artwork layout, allowing Roger to concentrate more on the writing and planning. The stress is plainly seen in the cover, which had no issue number, and on the contents page, where Roger happily but, erroneously stated it was Issue Four! David, now Newsfield’s Production Controller, was, (and still is) an excellent photographer, and the marked improvement in our screen shots was noted.

Taking pictures from a monitor is no simple matter, and all CRASH had at the time was a rented 14-inch telly! I can remember getting in the engineer to look at it because all the colour was being pulled into one corner leaving the rest black-and-white. The bemused man took it away and brought another, shaking his head, saying only a strong magnet could produce such an effect. I refrained from telling him that David had been waving his very powerful light meter over the screen — it contained a massive magnetic field!

Further improvements in picture quality had to wait until the wonderful Microvitec Cub monitor arrived for review, but with David’s ministrations, people everywhere began praising our colour screen shots, at least (they appear so fuzzy now).

CRASH was, unwittingly, about to unleash a media war. We regarded ourselves a specialist enthusiasts, and so news of any program in progress excited us, and we wanted to convey that feeling to the readers. We were also very chatty with software houses, so it came as no surprise that we were easily able to get very advanced screen shots of Matthew Smith’s unfinished Jet Set Willy, possibly the most eagerly awaited game of all time. As a result, CRASH was the first to print pictures, despite plenty of interest in the project from other magazines.

On top of that, through close and friendly relations with Micromega, we were also the first to spot the potential of Code Name Mat by Derek Brewster. When it was first shown to us, it had no name, and the joke became current that Mat referred to Matthew Uffindell, the CRASH reviewer who was the first player in the country to get his hands on it — and who knows, it may be true ...

All this frenzied previewing activity put CRASH markedly ahead of the other magazines at the time, but they soon started fighting back and the scrabble for advance information was on in earnest. The trick, however, was not only to be first with words and pictures, but also to spot the real winners. We weren’t always right ...

Issue Three showed another improvement — the paper. The printer was changed and CRASH went fully glossy. Games Of The Month were given a logo on the review page instead of being bunched up at the start, the first of these being Blue Thunder (Richard Wilcox, soon to be absorbed by his family into Elite Systems), Cavern Fighter from Bug-Byte, and Night Gunner by Digital Integration. Although Matthew, Roger and I liked Blue Thunder, there was an adverse reaction from some readers, but everyone seemed agreed that the graphically uninspiring Cavern Fighter was a damned good ‘Scramble’ game.

Hardware novelty object was Stack’s Light Rifle, which caused battles between Matthew and Chris Passey to use it. It was fun but hardly earthshatteringly good, and it’s amusing now to see the games consoles bringing the idea back — with somewhat more accurate results.

Oh, and we did the first ever CRASHtionnaire to find out how well readers thought the magazine was doing.

May 1984, Issue No. 4

Released on April 26th

Still relying principally on the dynamics of a large, powerful face for a cover image, Oliver turned his attention to the adventure market. He’d done many illustrations for books dealing with mystery and horror subjects, and since so many adventures featured evil wizards and sorcerers, the character on this cover sprang easily enough to mind. Discussion, however, revealed that Oliver was unhappy with the finished picture because it didn’t seem to have any computer relevance. Roger suggested adding the ‘what now’ cursor to the eye and the visual gag was complete.

Reflecting the cover, and probably because he felt guilty at not covering adventure games as much as he should have done, Roger Kean spent many hours writing an adventure with Gilsoft’s new machine code utility, The Quill. As I can testify, the result was quite unpublishable, but the time wasn’t wasted because he managed to write a fulsome article on the use of The Quill, as well as reviewing several Gilsoft Quilled adventures.

This was a time when young hopeful programmers expected to get their games accepted for publishing for the simple reason that they had written them. To some professional programmers The Quill seemed a frightening idea, a means of making adventure-writing simple, so anyone could do it and take away their living. But The Quill was a tool, not a source of inspiration, and it proved that there can never be any substitute for imagination.

Still with adventures, Issue Four saw the modest beginning of Derek Brewster’s Adventure Trail. For some weeks, Derek had been persuading Roger that CRASH desperately needed someone who understood the genre to write a proper column. Politically, appointing Derek to the chair was a good move, for he had a pedigree both with adventure and arcade games (his Code Name Mat was one of the CRASH Smashes, which made their first appearance in this issue too). There were a lot of points to be earned for the still-struggling magazine by having notable like Derek write for it — and it was a nice one in the eye for the more established titles!

In addition to Code Name Mat, with its complexity of 3-D space gameplay, others in the new Smash breed included two from Software Projects, Jet Set Willy (about to cause havoc by being both immensely exciting to play and containing the famous ‘Attic Bug’ that stopped you from completing the game!) and the appealing but difficult Tribble Trouble. Steve Turner finally got his reward for long service with a Smash for Hewson’s 3-D Lunattack, and for further pushing forward the barriers of his major interest, realistic-perspective games.

It was also a time when large concerns not normally involved in computer games tried testing the water. One of the biggest, Thorn EMI, launched some games through its label, Creative Sparks, and Orc Attack became a Smash, not so much for its graphics, which were amusing, but for its fiendishly difficult gameplay. Creative Sparks was to have a roller-coaster existence, finally ending up as Creative Sparks Distribution, which recently went into receivership.

But one small, as yet unknown, software house made its first appearance in CRASH month with a game we really liked, one largely ignored by other magazines. It was Ad Astra and the programmers had thought, perhaps, of calling themselves Gargoyle Games ...

This was the issue where we revealed the CRASH Reviewers competition results. The blurb noted that the winner had won by a faint margin. One of the runners-up was a certain John Minson. To think, had the margin been a touch fainter he could have been writing for CRASH a fraction of the exorbitant fee he now commands! Well, we all make mistakes. Looking at his entry, there’s little to suggest that this man will one day turn into a voracious ligger of vituperative prose and metamorphose into the Hunter S Minson we all know and ...

May’s Living Guide dealt with board games, simulations, strategies and adventures. At the end it said ‘Next Month: Arcade Games’, but the Guide had become too huge to fit in, and too much effort for the overworked team — it was destined never to return.

June 1984, Issue No. 5

Released on May 24th

Having had his fill of page-compressed faces of alien monsters, giant apes, famous detectives and evil warlocks, Oliver broke out with this space action cover. No particular game was in mind apart from the Defender / Scramble concept, but the idea for a canyon constructed of game cassettes was Roger Kean’s. It was a typical situation in the early days for Oliver to think up an idea, for Roger, David or Matthew to rework it as a visual gag, which Oliver would then implement so interestingly. And this picture long remained a favourite with readers.

The cover slogan, The ONE BIG Spectrum Software MAG, wasn’t merely bombast, it was actually an aggressive parody of Big K’s logo. Big K was another example of a large corporation (IPC) testing the software waters, in this case with a magazine, but though it was a multiuser title, Big K’s prelaunch blurb strode across preserves we at CRASH regarded as peculiarly our own at the time, namely being irreverent about software (though of course we also thought we were the only really serious ones — that’s called having your cake and eating it).

When I look at the contents page of Issue Five, the thing that strikes me now is that of all the sections competitions was actually the biggest — seven DIYs — proving the point that we recognised their popularity. But one of those competitions stands out markedly, the Atic Atac map. Game maps were unheard of in publications in 1984 — it simply hadn’t occurred to anyone that mapping a game was relevant, but there was no doubt that some games being produced were actually made up from maps in the programmers’ minds. Atic Atac was one such, and certainly one where having a map before you helped playing it. There was also the fear that printing a game map might upset the software house, for games stayed upon the shop shelves far longer then than they do today. It was definitely a feather in the CRASH cap to sign a competition deal with Ultimate, for the magically successful software house was traditionally uncommunicative with both public and press. Later, C&VG editor Tim Metcalf even complained good-naturedly to Roger Kean about the secret CRASH pipeline to Ultimate affection.

Maps were the latest thing; Issue Five saw the inaugural edition of the Playing Tips. My desk was expanded and I began regurgitating the erudite scribblings of readers who added helpful hints to their letters. Among those had been primitive Atic Atac maps, and one or two reasonable versions of Jet Set Willy’s terrifying mansion. The best, by Kenneth Kyle from Notts, was avidly pored over by Roger Kean (who got A level geography at school). He spent an entire weekend checking it out against the game, using a handy infinite lives cheat supplied by an embryonic hacker, and drawing up his own map which then appeared in the issue, thanking Kenneth for his inspiring version.

It started a trend; from this point on CRASH would have to have maps whenever possible, and before long every other computer mag dealing with games would follow suit. Otherwise the Playing Tips seem pretty tame now, along the, ‘from levels 17-24 of Chuckie Egg, both the robot hens and the yellow hen are after you. This increases the excitement and makes it much harder’ line. Thrilling.

This June issue was the real launch of Beyond, a powerful new software house put together by EMAP, publishers of C&VG and Sinclair User. Beyond’s try-out game, Space Station Zebra, had proved a dud, but Psytron was a Smash, largely because of the complex, interlinked game elements and its use of crosshatched graphics. The technique wasn’t exactly new, but this was the first time monochromatic line drawings had been used so extensively on a plain-coloured background, providing a tremendously detailed effect.

Meanwhile, Derek’s new Adventure Trail had also found a Smash in Hewson’s Fantasia Diamond. But at Psytron’s release, Beyond hinted that a revolutionary new adventure game, Lords Of Midnight, was almost ready ...

July 1984, Issue No. 6

Released on June 28th

This cover is unique, for to date it is the only one that is actually a photograph, albeit one of Oliver’s artwork. Relating to an article about 3-D games, the picture’s theme was taken from the newly released film Raiders Of The Lost Ark. ‘Indie’ is seen threatening a statue bearing a Spectrum, ravaged to form the characters 3D. The foreground and background were also painted artwork, but when the three layers were set up one behind the other rather like a cardboard stage set, the soft focus created a three-dimensional effect.

CRASH was rapidly expanding, both in scope and in the people who worked for it, at least on a casual basis. As Kean, Frey and Western fiddled around in the ‘studio’ (in reality Roger’s bedroom) setting up the various bits and pieces for the cover shot and getting the lighting and focus just right, downstairs another mail-order-buying youngster tried his hand at writing a test review (of Rabbit’s dreadful Deathstar, if my memory serves). He was 13-year-old Robin Candy, who, to his eternal embarrassment, appeared in a photograph sitting cross-legged on a Spectrum wearing a CRASH T-shirt as part of the Hotline spread.

Roger reckoned the test was satisfactory, and Robin joined the reviewing team along with Matthew Uffindell, Chris Passey and one or two other Ludlow locals.

Three other newcomers made their first appearance, Signpost in the Adventure Trail, Ultimate’s enduring Lunar Jetman comic strip drawn by John Richardson, and at the end of the Playing Tips, my Hall Of Slime, which lasted up until recently when I thought it had finally had its day. Nearly every other magazine ran high-score tables for readers, usually called Hall Of Fame or Roll Of Honour. When asked to do the same in CRASH I thought it would be boring to repeat the formula, and since none of the scores printed elsewhere seemed to be checked out for truthfulness (and how can you all too often?), and the whole high-scoring ethos seemed reminiscent of ‘creeping’ at school, I opted for the Hall Of Slime — a special home for high-scoring creepie-crawlies. It worked a treat!

The centre spread saw our first ever colour map, part one of the Atic Atac plan, done with the help of competition entries. But the amazing feature of this issue was the mammoth article Roger prepared on 3-D games to date. 14 pages long, it examined the nature of 3-D perspective and then showed how each form had been implemented on the Spectrum through some 60 games. Once again, in many respects it was a ‘first’; no other entertainment computer magazine had ever attempted such an exhaustive, or long, feature before. And it went against the traditionalist grain — publications aimed at a teenage market were supposed to present short, snappy articles in recognition of the short attention span of young people. It was an outmoded concept CRASH threw away, we all believed our readers capable of reading long, detailed and intelligent pieces (even when we were often forced to listen to some surprisingly fluent obscenities on the Hotline answering machine!).

Despite the onset of the summer months, software was holding up well. Five games were Smashed, the oddly-named Worse Things Happen At Sea from Silversoft, which was maddeningly addictive and funny, Bug Byte’s Antics, the very playable high-scoring game Moon Alert from Ocean, an adventure Smash in Level 9’s Snowball — first of the famous trilogy — and the dubiously-acclaimed Sabre Wulf from Ultimate. There’s no doubt it should have been a Smash — it’s just that it arrived so late in the month we hardly had time to play it enough, and copped out by not rating it at all!

Up until this moment, CRASH had been produced from a house, really from just two small rooms, but the company’s finances had improved sufficiently to afford proper offices. As Issue Six came towards completion, Newsfield leased three floors of a building in Ludlow. We were all looking forward to being able to stretch out a bit, to be able to write and do the artwork in less cramped quarters.

August 1984, Issue No. 7

Released on July 26th

Right from the start Oliver had been illustrating CRASH with a mixture of action-packed comic-strip pictures and gentler, more humorous cartoons of variously-shaped alien beings. The latter became very popular with readers, who dubbed them ‘Oli-bugs’. They can still be seen at the top of the editorial page today. To mark the holiday season, Oliver gave dynamic game themes a rest — and the bugs a cover. A typical CRASH reader relaxes with friends on the sands of some far off planet, complete with all the luggage he needs — a monitor, joystick and his Spectrum.

During July, as the August issue was being written, Newsfield moved into its new premises in King Street — in spirit if not in fact. Hold ups over the lease meant that we were still crammed like sprats in a pickling jar in Roger’s house where we had started out.

Space wasn’t the only concern, the need for more professional equipment to produce the magazine’s black-and-white pictures had led to the procurement of a large, computer-operated process camera. It was important to have it, and it had been thought that there would be space to put it. The machine arrived in July with no home, but the directors took the risk of installing it in the new offices hoping that the lease problems would be sorted out quickly. Fortunately they were, although not in time for this edition. The camera went on the third floor and weighed a ton; it would have been awful to have had to carry it all the way down again!

Out in the wide world, a terrible event had taken place: the great British software hope, Imagine, had collapsed owing fortunes, including several thousand pounds of advertising revenue to CRASH. At the time, it seemed to be the most visible tip of an iceberg of financial strains for the software industry, and directly led to the notion of the summer software Slump, a concept that’s stayed with us ever since.

And yet this issue provided some excellent games. The three arcade Smashes were from Micro-something-or-others. There was Micromega’s marvellous bike road-racer, Full Throttle, Micromania’s Kosmic Kanga and Mikro-Gen’s Automania. Of the last, the review kicked off saying ‘Meet a new hero ... Wally Week is destined for big things...’ It wasn’t a psychic prediction but a reference to the pay rise he hoped to get from working hard in a car factory. Now, it’s a matter of history that Mr Week was indeed destined to become very big. The other biggie was Beyond’s Lords Of Midnight, which had finally arrived and sent Derek into paroxysms of delight. It set ‘new high standards in Spectrum software,’ he declared.

Among those that just missed being a Smash were Ocean’s Cavelon, another Panayi 3-D game from Vortex, TLL and 3-D Tank Duel, this last from a new software house called Realtime, now developers of many Spectrum games for large companies. One of the three programmers, Andrew Onions, was originally from Ludlow. His parents lived five doors away from Roger Kean (incidentally, the house is now rented by Richard Eddy and some others from Newsfield). Everyone loved Tank Duel, the best-ever implementation of that old arcade original, Battlezone. But we were also aware that the review could be called biased if the Ludlow connection became recognised, so Matthew Uffindell and Chris Passey were kept in the dark as to who Andrew Onions was!

Advertising was becoming increasingly more professional, better images, better designs and more impact. Along with the improvement, however, came an additional helping of hype — classier boasting doesn’t necessarily mean a classier product. The more pre-release exposure a game received, the harder it could fall — companies too. One such game, well advertised and eagerly awaited, was also one of the earliest ‘big’ licences, CRL’s War Of The Worlds. Based on HG Wells’s famous novel and with a helping hand from Jeff Wayne’s equally famous music, the game proved only too well that a good idea and loads of hype aren’t set for success unless there’s also good game design and a decent program in there somewhere. Soon enough, the established companies would be able to employ the talents of individuals and teams, but in 1984 the best of those people were struggling to make their names as independent outfits, like Realtime.

September 1984, Issue No. 8

Released on August 30th

Again we have a summery cover to suit the season, and one that isn’t related to any game. This is a splendid example of the Spectrum device being used in a surreal manner to create effect. The distributor voiced a worry that readers wouldn’t be able to tell from the painting that it was a computer magazine. But one glimpse of that P-quotes-PRINT key was like a neon sign to any rubber-keyed Spectrum owner — and they were all rubber keys then. In order not to distract from the picture, the cover lines were kept, for CRASH, to a modest minimum.

The King Street offices are situated on three floors above a Victoria Wine shop in the very centre of Ludlow. In August, when CRASH moved in, only the top two floors were used, and they looked empty enough when we were all installed! The first floor was occupied by a subtenant who astonishingly enough was also in the computer business, a programmer of educational software.

Reception, mail order, subscriptions and administration went on the second floor, run by Franco Frey and Denise Roberts. Denise had joined Newsfield only a month or two after Matthew, to take over his mail order responsibilities when he was moved across to do CRASH reviews back in December 83.

Of the four rooms on the top floor, one became an art room for layout and one a writing room with two desks and typewriters, one held the process cameras and the other was used for photographing screens and as a photographic darkroom. It was great luxury to have all that breathing room, and at last a proper set up existed for receiving visits from software houses. Our first two such were notable. Graham Stafford and Simon Brattel of Crystal Computing came to tell the world that they were henceforth to be known as Design Design, and to give the reviewers a preview of Dark Star, just about the fastest 3-D vector graphics game ever written. And Gargoyle Games, in the form of Greg Follis, Ted Heathcote and Roy Carter, nipped over from Dudley to show us a game in a revolutionary new style for which Gargoyle was to become celebrated. It was Tir Na Nòg.

We were doing well for previews, for a day later Andrew Hewson appeared bearing gifts in the form of Steve Turner’s latest game, The Legend Of Avalon. This graphical adventure marked a distinct change of pace and 3-D style for Steve, and even in an unfinished form it looked very exciting. These early previews made CRASH’s manifesto of being first with new games, new software houses and innovations a reality. The ‘exclusives’ war was beginning to hot up, but we felt well satisfied with August!

When not hard at work looking after the business end of CRASH or reviewing utilities, Franco Frey wore his other hat as an engineer. For some months he’d been developing a hardware programmable interface for the Spectrum, and suddenly it was ready to market. We had tried out several prototypes in the office, and they made setting up joysticks much easier. It was the Frel Comcon, which was to become a huge success. Our preview was a rather easy scoop to make!

Hot games were more in the news than the reviews, although Creative Sparks’s Black Hawk was Smashed for its addictivity (certainly not its graphics whatever the ratings said), and of course there was the state-of-the-art sports simulation from Psion, Match Point. Derek provided the third: Adventure International’s The Hulk with its pretty graphics.

Legend provided us with hype when they announced The Great Space Race. The campaign relied heavily on the reputation of their Valhalla, although many suggested that Legend was busily recreating an aura of success around the earlier game greater than it really deserved in order to justify claims for The Great Space Race. ‘A spectacular futuristic romp ...’ said our News page hopefully, but there was to be a five-month wait to find out whether or not the hype would justify the hope.

October 1984, Issue No. 9

Released on September 27th

Oliver’s Ziggy cover was amongst the most popular he produced. It was really the first CRASH cover definitely promoting a specific game, Fantasy’s Backpacker’s Guide To The Universe. Here was an opportunity to use his imagination to bring to life objects, characters and weird aliens involved in a game that no-one had yet seen, all from written details offered in the prerelease description. The result is a powerful picture which, ironically, probably informed more readers of what hero Ziggy was like than anything Fantasy themselves put out.

By its ninth edition, the effect CRASH was beginning to have on the software industry was, in turn, being reapplied to its staff. Roger Kean had already been horrified a couple of months earlier at Micromania’s concern when they were informed by the most powerful software distributor of the time that unless a game achieved better than 65% in CRASH it wouldn’t be accepted for distribution. Now, proof sheets of CRASH reviews were being requested by retail chains to see whether a game was worthy of shelf space.

It put pressure on the reviewing team — Matthew, Chris Passey and Robin Candy — because software houses wanted to present unfinished games to discover what the reviewers would like to see improved, so that the game had a chance of becoming a CRASH Smash. Some may have considered that a visit with the personal touch would influence the team by putting it on the spot when it came to making an impartial judgement. If so, as many were to be disappointed by Matthew’s outspoken opinions and Robin’s downright stubbornness. Now another young reviewer had appeared (and undergone the ritual photograph pushing CRASH T-shirts on the Hotline page). He was Ben Stone, from nearby Tenbury, and he was as daunting in his opinions as the others, despite his newcomer status.

The Ziggy cover did little to help. That kind of coverage was eagerly sought by companies desperate to convince shops that their game was about to sell in its tens of thousands, and since it seemed that Fantasy got a cover with apparently no trouble, Roger found himself inundated with calls suggesting ideas that would have kept CRASH in covers until the 1990s! As a consequence, for the remainder of the year Oliver avoided game-linked cover paintings.

One of the questing visitors was Angus Ryall of Games Workshop, but he stayed longer than most, becoming our strategy columnist for the new Frontline. Another was Steve Wilcox of newly-formed Elite, who brought with him the oddly-named Kokotoni Wilf. Over several days both Matthew and Robin debated with Elite’s programmers on minor improvements before pronouncing themselves satisfied, but Steve may have been disappointed that Kokotoni Wilf still missed being a Smash.

In fact Smashes were a bit thin — the pre-Christmas period was looming and software houses were holding back, apart from Gremlin Graphics. They’d scored quite a coup with TV news coverage of their ‘mining’ game which caricatured Arthur Scargill, then very much in the news because of the national miners’ strike. Wanted: Monty Mole was a surefire Smash, capturing all the addictivity of Jet Set Willy and offering loads of new puzzling problems to solve.

Within days we achieved a cheat mode for Monty Mole and began preparing the map for a future issue. It was a typical late-afternoon situation: Ben (school over for the day) playing the game to reach every screen one by one, Roger sitting sketchpad in hand roughing out the screens for Oliver to fill in the detail later, Matthew in another corner alternating between reviewing and making halftone pictures for David Western in the layout room, Robin sorting through mail ready for me to start the Forum. The jokes about Robin taking over my desk were no jokes!

If this paints a suspiciously cosy picture of contentment and smacks of nostalgia for its own sake, don’t be fooled — it was hard work for the small team. Within a few short months a massive expansion was about to take place and the coming changes would sunder the simpler comforts we then enjoyed.

The first indication of change was the arrival of a black Apricot xi computer. For Roger Kean, at least, the days of typewriters, paper and Tipp-Ex were over.

November 1984, Issue No. 10

Released on October 25th

Sometimes cover ideas arrive without trouble, but there were always issues when nothing suggested itself. Normally Oliver prefers to work one-and-a-half times up on finished size to allow for crisper detail, but when he’s running late the repro house would rather have the painting same size. This cover was the first done at printed size because the decision to go with the joystick-comparison article was made at the last moment. In some ways it’s my personal favourite — you could cut the atmosphere with a knife — and yet it was done in three hours flat!

I can remember Roger and Oliver being rather proud of having raised as much as £4,000 in prizes, possibly because it indicated how far CRASH had come from that first issue when C&VG regarded us as a local fanzine with potential. Now, without a lot of effort, we had software houses eager to participate in competitions and put up real money in value. Once again, the DIY section was the biggest in the contents.

And talking of the contents page ... another development was taking place, almost wit bout anyone noticing it. The page’s basic shape had remained the same for a while, using rainbow colours when we had time to put them in. Originally this complicated procedure was undertaken by our repro house in London, but after CRASH moved into its new offices, a film-processing machine was purchased to shoot finished artwork to negatives for the printer, thus cutting overhead costs considerably. Matthew and Roger, who looked after the technical end of layout as well as writing reviews and articles, began to experiment with preparing colour for the printer. For several months to come, they were to do the contents page in-house. which explains why it was more or less ambitious, depending on how much time they had.

From this small beginning Newsfield began to do more film planning, adding colour to many pages that otherwise would have been monochrome. Today the process requires an entire department of its own, managed by Matthew Uffindell.

The big feature was a comparison of joysticks, which was pretty exhaustive — and exhausting — The team were thrashing the damned things for weeks, using Ocean’s Daley Thompson’s Decathlon as the wrecking game. And that came on top of several tiring days at The PCW Show, held at Olympia. CRASH didn’t have a stand because of the cost, but Roger, Oliver and Matthew waded round talking to as many exhibitors as they could, Wearing specially-made CRASH badges, they were frequently stopped by visitors who wanted to meet anyone from the magazine.

As usual the show prompted massive releases of games and there were seven Smashes. Pyjamarama was the second Wally Week game from Mikro-Gen, a massive leap forward with its arcade and adventure combinations. Delta Wing (Creative Sparks) was a sort of forerunner of mercenary. There was Hewson’s Legend Of Avalon, the complex helicopter simulation from Durell called Combat Lynx, and two games from our own Derek Brewster, the arcade Jasper and the enduring adventure Kentilla. Jasper just made it by a spot, but the tragedy is that although Derek had it ready before Jet Set Willy, contractual complications delayed its release; had it been released then, it would have been a real eye-opener, but advances in software were being made fast and it was almost out of date.

There was one other Smash, Booty, our first budget hit from newly-created Firebird.

This was our first issue composed on a computer. Learning to use a word processor and then all the complications involved with getting the typesetting back for layout meant it was quite fraught at times, and for most things I still preferred my typewriter. However, the length of POKE routines was increasing, and dealing with them was never my strongest point, so I was secretly pleased to discover Robin Candy entering them happily for me on the Apricot when Roger wasn’t around. It was the thin end of the wedge of course — discontented with providing review comments and sorting mail, Robin wanted to get to do ‘some serious’ writing, and for me, the writing was on the wall as far as Playing Tips was concerned.

December 1984, Issue No. 11

Released on November 15th

There were moments when people glibly assumed Oliver Frey loathed Spectrums owing to the number he destroyed in CRASH cover illustrations, but the opposite was the truth. As he remarked when ZZAP! came along, the old Spectrum was one of the friendliest objects which simply lent itself to painting, unlike the brown Commodore 64 which merely resembled a piece of fudge. Here’s another cover unrelated to any game, excepting perhaps Mizar’s Out Of The Shadows, and one that was actually a reworking of an old mail order catalogue cover, featuring a hero bursting forth from a TV screen.

The promise Realtime had shown in 3-D Tank Duel was well and truly realised in their second release, Starstrike, which recreated all the thrills of the popular coin-op Star Wars. It was in a bit of a race with Design Design’s Dark Star, a similar game in principle. But both Smashes showed how a closely related concept can be very differently implemented. In their own ways, they were state-of-the-art software.

Equally excellent and very different from either ‘Star’ game and from each other were the Smashes Tir Na Nòg and Skool Daze. Gargoyle Games gave us Cuchulainn, Sidhe and Greg Follis’s Grego-Celtic mythology, giant animated characters, mental 3-D and a game hard to distinguish between pure adventure and arcade/explorer. Microsphere’s characters were smaller, but beautifully animated against authentic school backgrounds, providing another sort of adventure game but with properly crude schoolboy humour as its theme. These two were also state-of-the-art. Bug-Byte’s Turmoil and Melbourne’s Sir Lancelot were not, but were still highly playable and addictive games of sufficient quality to make them stand out from the rest of the crowd.

Deep down in the Adventure Trail (or rather up in Newcastle-upon-Tyne where he lives) Derek was telling everyone who had packed away their Spectrums to get them out and fill the boxes with straw and tortoises, for ‘when it comes to Spectrum software, you’ve never had it so good.’ He was excited by Level 9’s Return To Eden, Bug-Byte’s Twin Kingdom Valley, Games Workshop’s Tower Of Despair and the ebulliently, wickedly funny Valkyrie 17 from the anarchic Ram Jam Corporation (through Palace Software).

To cap it off Out Of The Shadows from unknown Mizar was a Smash, and thereby hangs a tale — and a CRASH failure. If anyone at CRASH felt unhappy about the reliance distributors and retailers were putting on CRASH reviews for stocking, then they were probably equally happy at being able to employ this unasked for power on the behalf of new or very small software houses. Some were finding it harder to get a look in with the increasingly professional and hard-nosed market place. Our record in their favour had been encouraging. But with Mizar, we drew a blank. No distributor would accept the game, having failed to spot its marketability, despite its CRASH Smash status. It was galling. And it showed more clearly than ever that the world was changing with blinding speed. At the beginning of 1984, an advertisement helped sales, by the end of the year even a full-scale marketing campaign was capable of failing to attract the distributors’ attention. For the small independent software house, it looked like the beginning of the end.

Up until this time much of CRASH editorial was written without travelling the country visiting software houses, most being done over the phone. More recently we had been happy to see how many people would actually trek up to Ludlow to visit us, a mark indeed of acceptance. But two pleasant occasions forced first Roger and Oliver to visit London, and then Matthew and Roger. The first was a trip to see a preview of the film The Last Starfighter (about which Roger wrote an article on its use of computer graphics), and the second was to see a preview of Ghostbusters, set to be the first real big film tie-in. But for the game from conquering American company Activision we had to wait ...

Christmas 1984, Issue No. 12

Released on December 13th

Well, what do you do for a Christmassy cover illustration? It isn’t a time for taut statements on the nature of violent life and sudden death. The painting was intended as a strong contrast to the first cover, which set the tone for CRASH, and Oliver opted for a gentle picture depicting Santa handing out Spectrums to the deprived natives of a distant planet. He employed a technique which he uses occasionally, that of spraying the background colours over lightly drawn figures, then picking them out gently in colours which blend with the background.

The Christmas Special was going to be a nightmare, everyone knew it. Only two-and-a-half weeks to write and produce it due to the schedule being compressed, and it was intended to have 196 pages, bigger than anything we had tackled before.

On top of that, the first floor of King Street had become vacant with the educational software company moving on, and it was felt sensible to move editorial down there, giving art more room upstairs. The evidence is there to see in the issue, because Roger put together a feature about how CRASH happens, and there’s a photograph of himself sitting at an L-shaped desk with Matthew, ostensibly reviewing a game. How empty and tidy the place looks compared to now! This move further delayed the writing however.

And what were we looking at? The original plan had been to do an issue full of competitions, special features and few reviews, on the grounds that everyone would already have released everything for Christmas. It didn’t work out that way of course, for so many software houses were late, and there were still over 30 games in. Among them was the double bill from Ultimate, Underwurlde and Knight Lore, which continued the Sabreman saga started in Sabre Wulf and at the same time undid everyone’s hopes that the Midland company would return to a sensible price level from the earlier game’s, then-outrageous £9.95. Still, there was no doubting their quality, and they were Smashes. The better of the two, Knight Lore, was to initiate an entire genre, the isometric perspective 3-D exploring game.

Derek’s Smash was for The Runes Of Zendos from Dorcas (formerly Doric). It was their second game, but despite its Smash, here again was an adventure game that failed to find the market it deserved. A different tune entirely for Boulder Dash and its hero Rockford, who would soon be adopted as a mascot by Newsfield’s second title, ZZAP! 64. If its graphics weren’t outstanding, that hardly mattered. This was a maddeningly addictive mind-game and its strength lay in the idea more than in its appearance.

After all the interest, Fantasy’s Backpackers Guide To The Universe was a little disappointing, though a genuinely unusual game. Somehow the market generally thought so too, because after good starting sales, it slumped, eventually taking Fantasy with it.

Ghostbusters was still under wraps, so it fell to Elite to come up with a major TV tie-in, The Fall Guy. However the game was hardly major although I recall it having some good points. Perhaps more effort went into setting up the licence deal than into the design and programming, a feeling which would persist for a long time when it came to big licences. Elite were going for TV tie-ins in a big way, and the issue also carried a preview of their next intended game, Airwolf, and mentioned its follow up, Dukes Of Hazzard. Airwolf was unwittingly to do CRASH a big favour, but more of that in the appropriate month.

I still retained my Playing Tips, but only by a hair’s breadth as Robin Candy waded in with three pages of POKEs specially compiled for Christmas. It was to be my last month on the Tips for many a moon, Robin would take over in the New Year.

As my first job for Issue One had been to write the Look Back, it seemed only fitting that it was also my last task for Issue 12 — to complete the first Year of CRASH.

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.

February 1986, Issue No. 25

Released on January 24th

Inspiration for a cover image was lacking, so everyone was pleased when Imagine’s Mikie became a Smash since it gave Oliver a subject suitable for his particular talents — a figure seen in action within a dynamic composition. The character of Mikie is so energetic he’s simply burst through the cover paper, scattering hearts in his wake — the cover and the game neatly tied in with Saint Valentine’s Day. In a way it also acted as a symbol for the new year beginning; CRASH was crashing through again...

The cover’s bounciness could also have been taken as a symbol for a new face on the CRASH team. For the first time the reviewing team figured in the masthead, and among the names was one Mike Dunn. As they had been wont to do since CRASH started, Ludlow lads with Spectrums dropped in after school hours to see what was happening, and some of them were dragooned into writing review comments. Mike was one such. Robin Candy told everyone that Mike’s school nickname was Skippy because he skipped wherever he went, and this information was soon confirmed when Roger Kean reported that he had almost been knocked flying in the street as Mike skipped violently past him on the way down a Ludlow hill. Skippy is a now a respectable bespectacled college student with a far more sedate gait, but the nickname still sticks.

On a more serious note February marked the start of a run of cover paintings with which Oliver was less than satisfied, though in retrospect some of them are outstanding. It wasn’t so much that they were poorly executed, more that he felt uninspired by the subject matter. An illustrator requires a brief for his work and previously he and Roger Kean had worked on the ideas themselves. Naturally, the chosen subject was therefore always one which Oliver enjoyed and the sort of thing he excelled at. Now, with three magazines going, he had to rely far more on the editors for their ideas and briefs, and in the case of CRASH Graeme Kidd seemed to prefer humorous subjects — Mikie was one and Jack The Nipper notoriously so.

Still, this is no reflection on Mikie the game, which got its Smash, the first of two that month for Imagine. The other, also a Konami conversion, was the onomatopoeiac Yie Ar Kung Fu, which received praise for its ‘arcade style playability’, one reviewer commenting that Imagine was fast becoming one of the best development houses in the country. As you can tell from the enthusiasm, these were still the heady days of coin-op conversions: a moment of freshness before the tedium of overkill which would all too soon set in.

Four other games merited Smashes. Martech’s Zoids finally made it through; Electronic Pencil Co. had done a fine job, maintaining a high standard of graphics and providing an engrossing game. Their innovative approach made mincemeat of the notion that a licence from something as childish as a series of toy monsters means a thinly-disguised piece of marketing schlock. Zoids is Martech’s monument for posterity. Ultimate looked back on form with Gunfright, an entertaining advance on their Nightshade, while Gargoyle Games proved they had more in them than complex graphic adventures of the Dun Darach type. Sweevo’s World had something in common with Ultimate’s Knight Lore and Alien 8 style of presentation, but took it further to provide a game both compelling to play and very funny. In fact it was to be the precursor of a genre which would reach fulfilment in Head Over Heels. Derek, meanwhile, was praising Activision’s adventure Mindshadow while berating their lack of marketing for it — an omission the company was not usually noted for...

After its recent run of successes — Critical Mass and Saboteur — we featured Durell. Robert White’s company had been with us since the earliest Spectrum days and had always strived to be both good and different. It seems sad, as I write this, to reflect that Durell no longer exists in its previous form, sold, as it was at the 1987 PCW Show, to Elite...

March 1986, Issue No. 26

Released on February 27th

The March cover was, and still is, only the second CRASH cover to feature a photograph as its main element (the first was Issue Six’s, a photo of several assembled pieces of Oliver’s artwork). Max Headroom had become something of a cult on TV, and for the subsidiary pictures Oliver drew on images from the specially-made feature film about how Max came into being. The trouble was that as Max was already a created image, Oliver thought painting him ran the danger of making him less than instantly recognisable, hence the photo.

Good software was still catching up with us in March, though Max Headroom had to wait another two months. There were seven Smashes and a lot of near misses. It had to be Mikro-Gen’s month, two Smashes and Battle Of The Planets, which got 77%. Three Weeks In Paradise was yet another Wally Week extravaganza which showed that the formula had not quite worn thin yet, while Sir Fred was a fairy tale of damsels in distress and bold, rather well-animated, knights off to their rescue.

US Gold provided cold comfort with the excellent conversion of Winter Games — good enough to get over the multiload problem; Ocean scored with the unusual M.O.V.I.E. — forced perspective, icon control and a good detective story from a new Yugoslavian programmer of an unpronounceable name (later identified as Dusko Dimitrijevic); Mirrorsoft came up with one of the best flight simulations ever in Spitfire 40; and Derek fairly revelled in the conclusion of Level 9’s Silicon Dreams Trilogy, Worm In Paradise, and Melbourne House’s long-awaited Lord Of The Rings.

Among the near misses was Design Design’s Forbidden Planet, another ultrahigh-speed 3-D vector from their famous ‘Basil’ and Simon Brattell, but despite its playability we wondered whether it was different enough from Dark Star to warrant being Smashed. They also had a different type of game out: 2112 was an arcade-adventure in similar style to Dun Darach featuring a mechanoid dog called Poddy. Programmer Graham Stafford took the name from Jeremy Spencer’s pet dog, which was often seen in the offices — it was nice to know that some Newsfield personnel appeared in games!

Licensed tie-ins were by now established. Rambo was a good example, Benny Hill’s Madcap Chase by Don Priestley for DK’Tronics a rather odd one, Zorro from US Gold a somewhat poorer one, and hovering uneasily somewhere between the brilliant and the banal there was Quicksilva’s Fred Flintstone tie-in Yabba Dabba Doo!.

On the Playing Tips pages, a new-look Robin Candy peered out. After several complaints in print, the Newsfield art department gave the playing tips a new page heading, and Robin’s very outdated photo-graphic was replaced by an Oliver Frey drawing. Robin was pleased by the fact of a revamp, less thrilled by the picture; he wanted no picture at all. The argument became acrimonious, especially when Robin realised it was likely to be used on the following month’s Playing Tips Supplement cover. In the end he agreed to the new heading with grave misgivings. It was a shame — though few people inside the company, and no readers, realised it at the time, the argument had caused a serious rift between Robin on one side and Roger Kean and Oliver Frey on the other. The rift was to grow wider...

Till this time software houses had usually put out games under their own name. I have already mentioned Electric Dreams being one of the first attached labels (to Activision), and now CRL — an often uneven producer of software and sometimes a company in search of an identity — launched a new side label called Nu Wave with I-D. I-D was to be the first of a series of new ‘conundrum’ games for people fed up of blasting and maze-walking. As Automata had found with Deus Ex Machina, however, CRL was to discover that the money really lay with blasting, and Nu Wave would disappear beneath the old attack waves.

April 1986, Issue No. 27

Released on March 27th

After the cosiness of February’s Mikie cover and the intricate interweaving of Max Headroom elements on the March cover, Oliver felt it was time again for an out-and-out shoot-’em-up picture. The arrival of the British 128K Spectrum gave him his opportunity for another surreal space painting, with the new machine figuring as a giant craft like something out of Star Wars. As with so many illustrations during this year, it was painted fractionally smaller than you see it reproduced, because it had to be done in a hurry.

What was life like in CRASH Towers as 1986 began to speed up? ‘Crammed’ is the answer. The art department had expanded to cope with three magazines. Dick Shiner, a freelance designer whose background was London advertising agencies but who had been living in Ludlow for some years, had helped out over the busy Christmas period... and stayed on as Art Director, relieving Oliver Frey of some workload. This also let David Western become Production Controller full-time. Then there were the two layout artists, Gordon Druce and Tony Lorton, and Matthew Uffindell looking after picture reproduction and film planning.

Next floor down, life had become a joke. The administration of accounts, advertising, mail order and subscriptions for three magazines meant every spare inch was used. And on the lowest floor the three titles fought for editorial space to write and room to photograph the screenshots. CRASH had been moved into the smallest of the three main rooms and housed its editor, newcomer Hannah Smith (she arrived near the end of this month’s schedule) and the regular coterie of reviewers. I floated to land wherever space opened up for me. It would be nice to say that despite the cramped conditions we were all a jolly bunch, and for the most part that was the case, but tight schedules, sometimes missed, led to friction and patches of bad feeling here and there.

The arrival of the 128K Spectrum was a diversion though, and it was well and truly dissected through several articles, not least one written by ZZAP! Staff Writer Julian Rignall, which investigated games upgraded to take account of the new machine’s capabilities. These included Robin Of The Wood, Nodes Of Yesod, Three Weeks In Paradise and the engagingly renamed Sweevo’s Whirled.

Sweevo’s came in for the heavy treatment in Robin Candy’s Playing Tips Supplement, 24 pages of tips and maps, and the massive listing by Phil Churchyard that created a Sweevo’s World screen editor. The value of this unique program has since been underlined by the number of mappable 3-D games that now offer game designers as a matter of course. And the success of this screen editor’s cassette version, then available from CRASH, was one of the first sparks that led to thoughts about a Newsfield software house — but realisation of that particular dream would take some time.

I had a busy time with the Forum, what with the many letters about the Friday The 13th cover (December) and Tony Bridge, adventure columnist with Popular Computing Weekly, complaining bitterly about how he had been ripped off by the CRASH Christmas Special edition. His comments were to lead to a massive vote of confidence for that issue in later Forums.

Less confidence was apparent with tie-ins. We were entering the period where software houses would grab anything licensable whether it was suitable for a game or not, often rushing out the result to capitalise on the licensed character’s popularity in other media. Elite came off best with a Smash for the venerable arcade original Bombjack, but Ocean’s Transformers was disappointing from Denton Designs, CRL’s Blade Runner was a sad affair and Britannia’s Play Your Cards Right, based on the Bruce Forsyth TV game, was dreadful. There was a warning here, but few took heed, rushing madly into more licences, while letters began suggesting that the very idea of a tie-in meant a poor product. Originality would soon become a keyword, and in the CRASH Readers’ Awards announcement that was made plain — it was Firebird’s Elite that swept the board.

May 1986, Issue No. 28

Released on April 24th

The editorial brief was simple enough: make something out of Samantha Fox Strip Poker and Starstrike II. It was an inhibiting notion, and one which Oliver left till he could no longer avoid doing the illustration. With this cover, a very popular one, it is the strength and dynamism of Oliver’s composition that makes it work at all. He was pleased with the effect, but in general he hated the illustration and felt it was rather like a poorly-licensed game — the subject was unsuitable for an exciting picture.

The month’s two big bits of news were of a very different nature. Most important was the announcement, as the issue went to press, that Alan Michael Sugar’s Amstrad had bought out Sir Clive Sinclair’s Sinclair Research, and thus the ZX Spectrum would from then on belong to Amstrad. There were very mixed feelings about this move at the time, and few people today could honestly say that many of their doubts have been removed since.

The other was that the Audit Bureau Of Circulations had declared CRASH the biggest-selling computer title in Britain, overtaking both Sinclair User and Computer & Video Games (though the latter had a marginally higher figure when foreign sales were taken into account). It was a triumph for everyone, but especially for the original tiny team that had dared to challenge the entrenched positions of so many established titles. W H Smith, before the launch of Issue 1, had said that CRASH could never really succeed as a games-only, single-user magazine; two years later we had proved them wrong.

It was a happy moment for the whole company, but before the issue was completed, something quite sad occurred. The rumbling arguments between Robin Candy and Roger Kean, which had flared up over Roger’s insistence that there should be a picture of Robin on the new Playing Tips heading because there had always been one of him there, suddenly reached flashpoint. There was an argument in the middle of the office and as a result it was decided not to use Robin any more. He was able to take a last look at his Playing Tips being laid out in the art department before leaving. However, as every CRASH reader knows, it may have been the last of Robin Candy’s Playing Tips, but it was by no means the end of Robin, though a year was to go by before his reappearance.

Max Headroom finally arrived, and though it rated fairly well (85%) it was something of a disappointment. Not so Realtime’s Starstrike II, however, with its filled-in vector graphics pushing the Spectrum beyond limits already set by pundits, sitting atop a fast and complex shoot-’em-up game. We also Smashed Ultimate’s Cyberun, often forgotten since but more of a follow-on from Lunar Jetman than anything to do with the isometrics of Knight Lore etc.

After the huge success of the film the game version of Back To The Future from Electric Dreams came as a damp squib, a mishmash plot based on the film’s action but with no game behind it. There was far more fun to be had with Imagine’s excellent implementation of Konami’s Ping Pong and Gremlin’s karate-book tie-in The Way Of The Tiger. But the game which caused most excitement was Ocean’s Batman from Jon Ritman and Bernie Drummond, who had gone out of their way to make the most densely detailed isometric graphics yet seen. And the game was good too.

Near the end of April as the May issue concluded, the three Newsfield directors, the brothers Frey and Roger Kean, took a week off in Cornwall to work out the details for a new magazine they were planning. It was to have a broad subject base and be aimed at the so-called youth market. No-one could think of what to call it, so for the time being they jokingly gave it the working title of LM — Lloyd Mangram’s Leisure Monthly. It stuck.

June 1986, Issue No. 29

Released on May 29th

This cover was tied to Heavy On The Magick, the latest from Gargoyle Games. In the past Oliver has been happy to work with their games as cover themes, but he had little chance to see this one. However, the other options for the month’s cover had already been used for ZZAP! and AMTIX! (notably Redhawk, on AMTIX!). The editorial decision was postponed till the last moment, as was increasingly the practice, leaving only hours for the illustration to be done. Again, composition turned what could have been a weak cover into a powerful image.

CRASH was continually adding new sections. In this month John Minson went solo as his Fear & Loathing page was detached from the news, freeing him to be even more irreverent (or should that be irrelevant?) about the software industry. John had earlier done a piece about play-by-mail games, and now Brendon Kavanagh arrived to start a regular column devoted to the subject. Then there was the Art Gallery — or On The Screen, as it became known — a page of readers’ Spectrum art sponsored by Rainbird, producers of the Art Studio graphics utilities. And to top that off, we began the first of a long series (Genesis) aimed at finding the CRASH reader who could design a complete game worthy of being programmed by Design Design and marketed properly by Domark.

Domark were in need of a lift too, for after an age Friday The 13th had arrived. We were kinder than ZZAP! (they gave it an appropriate 13%), but it was still pretty dire. So was much else on the tie-in front: Ocean’s TV licence V was poorly thought-out and boring, TV’s The Young Ones fared hardly better from Orpheus, and in an attempt at a really obscure tie-in Firebird gave us The Comet Game to coincide with the arrival of Halley’s interplanetary body in our skies. The natural phenomenon was magnificent, the game was silly.

Derek had been quiet for some months, with nothing very inspiring to review, but he got Heavy On The Magick and delightedly Smashed it. Meanwhile Gary Liddon was given the task of solo reviewing — a departure from the norm — for Red Hawk, a comic tie-in from Melbourne House. That was a Smash too. So was the excellent Spindizzy, which restored Electric Dreams to some of its former glory. The Spectrum version was by Paul Shirley (aided by Phil Churchyard, who had done the Sweevo’s World screen editor for Robin Candy’s Playing Tips Supplement).

It was a great game month, because there was also the first ever 128K Smash (Knight Tyme from M.A.D.), one for Sean Masterson’s Frontline (the CCS Desert Rats), a marvellous conversion of the Commodore 64 hit Bounder (Gremlin Graphics), another for Ultimate in Pentagram, and Quazatron, an extremely clever conversion that was almost a rewrite of Hewson’s huge Commodore 64 hit Paradroid. That was by Andrew Braybrook, but Steve Turner’s Spectrum Quazatron borrowed from it and reinvented it, making it a wholly new and interesting product.

The big problem, of course, was the Playing Tips, now rudderless without Robin. The answer lay with Hannah Smith, and though she might seem in retrospect to have been an obvious choice, a lot of soul-searching went into the decision. Would a predominantly male teenage readership accept a ‘girlie tipster’ stepping into the shoes of Robin "Very Popular" Candy? We thought they just might. They did. Promoting Hannah as the ‘computer world’s first and only female tipster’ would lead to a veritable war with Computer & Video Games who claimed that their Melissa Ravenflame held that pre-eminent position. But at least readers could ring Hannah and speak with her, whereas doing the same with C&VG led to long silences. It was to lead to an attempted confrontation at the 1986 PCW Show when Melissa Ravenflame stickers running down Hannah were plastered over everything, including the Newsfield stand. Hannah issued a head-to-head challenge, which, not unsurprisingly, ‘Melissa’ declined.

July 1986, Issue No. 30

Released on June 26th

It’s not a reflection on the game it portrays, Gremlin Graphics’s Jack The Nipper — but of all the covers he has painted, this remains the one Oliver hates the most. Its subject matter runs counter to everything he enjoys illustrating. His strength lies in action, strong composition and powerful figure work. For days he was despondent at the thought of a benappied infant on a CRASH cover, and how he was going to do it. Under protest, at the last hour, he penned and coloured it, and it was a creditable effort.

It was an indication of how ‘professional’ the organisation was becoming when, in the middle of June, the management sat down to design the Newsfield stand for the forthcoming PCW Show. Previously, the magazines’ attendance had been a case either of wandering round or of restriction to something resembling a long table with hand-lettered signs. This year, we were told, there would be a proper stand built by a contractor. Gosh, were we excited. But that was ages away, so who cared?

Rather more to the point was the argument about the spelling of ‘magic’. Gargoyle Games had insisted on Heavy On The Magick, now Level 9 gave us The Price of Magik. Derek Brewster did not enter into the discussion, preferring instead to award Level 9 a Smash. He must have been pleased, not so much because good adventures had been a little thin on the ground, but because there were fewer and fewer full-price adventures appearing. The trend would continue, and today the majority of 8-bit adventures are provided through mall order from committed individual programmers.

Besides The Price Of Magik we had Jack The Nipper, which created yet another cute character for Gremlin Graphics’s repertory company of cute characters and got its Smash for being highly playable, entertaining and having ‘masterful graphics’. Then there was Ghosts ’N Goblins, awaited with bated breath — would the popular Capcom coin-op be a success or a flop for Elite? They pulled it off, and Ghosts ’N Goblins was one of the best conversions from an arcade original yet seen. And finally, just to prove they could do it, Domark came up with Splitting Images, not a TV tie-in, but a block puzzle based on caricatures of the famous. It was irresistible and gave Domark their first ever Smash.

Licences were in the doldrums again, apart from Ghosts ’N Goblins, for Mirrorsoft’s game version of the film of Biggles was very disappointing, not very innovative and consisted of three poorly-implemented subgames — it was rather like the film, in fact. And US Gold got themselves into terrible trouble with mistimed World Cup fever. It was almost instantly clear to us that the much-hyped World Cup Carnival was a minutely modified version of Artic’s two-year-old and forgettable World Cup Soccer. It cost £9.95, though remaindered versions of Artic’s original were to be had for £1.99. Retailers, distributors and buyers reacted as one in an outcry. Later, US Gold was forced to admit that they had planned a far better game, but programming delays and marketing problems had overtaken them. Timing was of the essence and in the end a decision was taken to buy and repackage the Artic game instead. In a way it provided a perfect example of what, at the worst, was so wrong with licensed and endorsed games. At best it was misguided, at worst it was seen by the public as a cynical attempt to pretend an old game was something new and get everyone to buy it all over again for the sake of a few bits of added packaging.

Quietly, in the midst of this, veteran software house New Generation pushed out the Spectrum version of Cliff Hanger, a sort of cowboy forerunner of Road Runner. It was a moderately enjoyable game, notable most of all for the fact that the advert told a story; cheques and postal orders were to be made payable to Virgin Games. It was to be New Generation’s last fling before quietly disappearing.

August 1986, Issue No. 31

Released on July 31st

Hannah Smith’s claim to unique girlie tipsterdom and the backlash from C&VG’s ‘Melissa Ravenflame’ led directly to this cover — basically an advertising campaign for Hannah. The original brief — Hannah mud-wrestling with Melissa — was deemed too inflammatory, so Oliver substituted an alien for the Ravenflame. More in his element than for several issues, Oliver turned in what became the most popular cover of the year, atmospheric, amusing and provocative by turns. CRASH always seems at its best with its back to the wall fighting for a belief...

Three new names appeared on this issue’s masthead. lan Craig was a well-known commercial illustrator, and some of his computer-related work had appeared the previous year in the Issue 21 On The Cover feature. The object was to have someone to help with the massive workload of illustrations, which up till then had all been on Oliver’s shoulders. Tony Flanagan was a college lecturer from near Telford who wanted to move into journalism. He became the third Staff Writer for CRASH, but his time at the Towers turned out to be short. The third name had a familiar ring about it, especially to ZZAP! readers, for it was Julian’s brother, Jonathan Rignall. The increasingly complex film-planning work we were undertaking in-house meant that Matthew Uffindell had less and less time to spare in the process camera room making halftone pictures. So Jonathan was brought into the department as a process-camera operator.

The month of July saw much activity on the new magazine, too — LM had become a reality, a launch date was set for a free copy with the Christmas Specials of the three computer titles, and Roger Kean was beginning interviews for the large new editorial team that would be required for this ambitious project. It was also clear that the King Street offices could no longer cope. Newsfield had been searching for over a year for premises big enough for expansion, but there was nowhere available in Ludlow. So a large semidetached house similar in size to the King Street headquarters was purchased and converted to offices for administration and LM editorial. This was on Gravel Hill, Ludlow (once misspelled ‘Grovel Hill’, and it would soon be nicknamed ‘The Grovelry’ since it was where the pay cheques were issued... ). But the move was still over a month away as the August issue started.

In the meantime, the tiny CRASH office was even more cramped, so Tony Flanagan was dispatched to Liverpool to interview Software Projects about their forthcoming conversion of Dragon’s Lair. Interest ran high, partly because of Dragon’s Lair arcade fame, partly because no-one could see how Coleco’s complex, interactive game would come out on a home micro. It was hoped they would do better with it than US Gold did with the conversion of Kung Fu Master, a flaccid beat-’em-up which got 56% — the same as Subterranean Nightmare, but the latter was a £2.99 budget game under US Gold’s new Americana label. Americana worked well enough for them on the Commodore 64, where golden oldies imported direct from the States offered good value for money, but of course in converting most lost their original qualities on the Spectrum and proved to be no more than low-value games like so many other budget products of the period.

Still, Firebird scored a budget Smash, Rebel Star, with Sean Masterson in Frontline, and a full-price one with Heartland. This arcade adventure was programmed by Odin, who had ceased marketing their own product to become Telecomsoft developers... the absorption of independents by larger software houses continued. The Edge had a hit on their hands as the Marble Madness clone Bobby Bearing found CRASH favour; and so did Palace with the follow-up Cauldron II, successful because though it was a sequel in name, in gameplay it was entirely different from the first Cauldron, a very polished platform game. Hewson brought out Pyracurse, an isometrically 3-D scrolling adventure in the mould of Dragontorc, but the peculiar problems it presented made it special.

Our peculiar problems were about to start — school holidays and nowhere to seat anyone...

September 1986, Issue No. 32

Released on August 28th

Of all the covers in 1986, Oliver most looked forward to doing September’s. He had been an avid Dan Dare/Eagle fan as a boy, admired Frank Hampson (Dare’s creator) and Frank Bellamy, who both had drawn some of the original strips, and finally got to draw Dan Dare himself when Eagle was relaunched in the Eighties. But Oliver never rated the relaunched Eagle, so the notion of recreating an original Fifties-style Eagle front page for Virgin’s acclaimed Dan Dare was close to his heart — as was having a comic as a CRASH cover.

The long-running Genesis — Birth Of A Game competition had reached midway point by September’s issue. The judges, Domark and Design Design, had finally whittled the enormous amount of entries down to John Eggleton and Kat Trap. The rest of the series would now deal with the programming, packaging and marketing.

Programming, packaging and marketing was a problem Beyond were just about to walk headlong into as the company blithely announced to John Minson exciting plans for the official Star Trek game, little knowing that production of the game would take almost as long as a voyage of the starship Enterprise. Minson had another laugh up his sleeve: Gary Liddon and Andrew Wright had managed to crash their company car a week after getting it. The accident took place in a Manchester one-way street (they were going the wrong way, of course) and the car belonged to Thalamus. Yes, Newsfield had taken the plunge and created its own software house.

Thalamus really started at the July Commodore Show when a young man from Finland introduced himself in halting English as Stavros Fasoulas and showed Roger Kean a Commodore 64 game called Rainbow Warrior. Roger was so impressed with it that he persuaded the other directors to start a label and market the game. Stavros signed up, Gary Liddon was moved from Newsfield’s magazines to look after programming technicalities, and Andrew Wright of Activision was appointed to head Thalamus (a name which he and Gary Liddon devised). Rainbow Warrior changed name to Sanxion and the rest, as they say, would be history — at least for the 64. Thalamus has yet to produce a Spectrum game.

Tie-in time looked pretty good for a change. Virgin’s Dan Dare proved to be addictive, playable and quite original. It was also clever of them to make the game different on each of the main 8-bit machines, avoiding the inevitable, and often invidious, comparisons. Going from one Dan to another, Mirrorsoft repeated a success with Dynamite Dan II, improving elements of the original to make an entirely new game. Mikro-Gen just missed a Smash by a hair’s breadth with Stainless Steel, a shoot-em-up based loosely on Harry Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat character as re-envisaged by 2000AD, while CRL found themselves in Derek Brewster’s good books with Fergus McNeill’s lampoon The Boggit. Incidentally, The Hobbit was still at Number 7 in the CRASH Charts!

Another near-Smash was ACE, one of the best flight simulations on the Spectrum at the time, and it came from Cascade — one of the earliest Spectrum houses, but usually known for their classified ads for cheap compilations.

Upstairs was beginning to resemble the moment before the Great Flood, when the ark was incomplete and rain threatened. The administrative move to Gravel Hill was held up by decorating, but the new LM team was getting busy writing and designing a dummy of the magazine to be presented to potential advertisers at a launch party set for mid-September. To add to the problems, the art department needed more people to cope with a fourth magazine. The solution seemed to be to move Matthew Uffindell and his huge light table down a floor, but only once the administrative people and LM had moved off to Gravel Hill. Somehow we packed the animals in two by two — and it rained chaos.

October 1986, Issue No. 33

Released on September 25th

October’s cover marked a departure from the previous 32 covers; for the first time in the CRASH history it was painted by a hand other than Oliver Frey’s, that of Ian Craig. It was not designed with any particular game in mind, but did have a passing resemblance to (and was a visual pun on) Oliver’s very first CRASH cover. For the savage face, Ian used a photograph of a friend, though the pointed ears and sharp fangs were invented. As Oliver does with many pictures, Ian used an airbrush and then overpainted with an ordinary brush.

Early in September most of the editorial and mail-order staff decamped to London’s Olympia for the ninth PCW Show. It was the year of the infamous sticker campaign, when C&VG plastered the Newsfield stand with Melissa Ravenflame adhesive labels, and Newsfield retaliated with some Hannah Smith stickers printed at the last moment. At one point, Commodore User editor Eugene Lacy returned to the EMAP stand’s office and could no longer find the door — Mike Dunn and Ben Stone had hidden it under literally hundreds of stickers.

It was also the moment when Gargoyle Games underwent a metamorphosis and became Faster Than Light. Apart from the excitement of their own two games, Lightforce and Shockway Rider, they had a hit on their hands for Elite with the much-delayed Scooby Doo. Elite were riding high: after a disappointing Commodore 64 conversion of the coin-op Paper Boy, it only just missed a CRASH Smash on the Spectrum, though the Capcom conversion 1941 did far less well. Domark followed up the puzzles of Splitting Images with the official version of Trivial Pursuit. Despite the many trivia clones already out, the qualities of Domark’s version shone out, and it too received a Smash. We also thought highly of Costa Panayi’s Revolution, a 3-D puzzle-solving game which earned Vortex yet another in their long line of Smashes.

The biggest disappointment, though hardly a surprise, came with Ocean’s ludicrously delayed Knight Rider. Rumours from within Ocean’s offices had said it was a poor effort, and it was.

Internally there were some sweeping changes. The new offices opened, admin moved out, film planning moved down, LM moved across for two weeks from its small room into what had been advertising before finally departing to Gravel Hill, CRASH moved upstairs to where LM had been and Cameron Pound’s photographic empire gained the room CRASH had just vacated. It was a bit like playing Splitting Images.

Graeme Kidd waved a goodbye of sorts. At the very end of August, shortly after CRASH’s new Staff Writer Tony Flanagan had decided to leave, Graeme himself resigned over administrative problems. It was a difficult moment, with CRASH short-staffed and LM starting up, so Graeme was offered a new job as Publishing Executive in overall charge of the three computer magazines — which he accepted. However, he would remain titular editor of CRASH for a while yet. Meanwhile, Roger Kean had finally relinquished the editorship of ZZAP! to Gary Penn, and moved with the rest of LM to their new home in Gravel Hill. It was a busy month.

And on top of that came news from the Audit Bureau Of Circulations that CRASH was still the biggest-selling computer title in Britain, outstripping all others at over 100,000 copies a month. Roger Kean recalled a meeting in April 1984 with several top people from the old Imagine in Liverpool, when someone prophetically told him that CRASH was so different that it was bound to sell over 100,000 a month soon. He had been pleased, but seriously doubted CRASH would ever reach those sorts of figures. Doing better than 50,000 would have been a thrill for us in those early months.

At about the moment the October edition reached the printers, LM was officially launched at a big party in London, where the dummy was introduced to potential advertisers and Roger Kean made a speech he had rehearsed for days. I hate parties, I didn’t go.

November 1986, Issue No. 34

Released on October 23rd

For me this is probably the least interesting CRASH cover, and certainly a disappointment from Ian Craig after the previous month’s. The dynamics work well enough but the definition of both craft and explosion is poor; it is hard to see where you are or what is happening. The illustration, of course, relates to FTL’s game Lightforce.

With the departure of Tony Flanagan there was another shuffle as Lee Paddon moved over from AMTIX! to CRASH. Lee had joined Newsfield some months earlier from the magazine Your Computer to act as the AMTIX! Software Editor — not that there was a lot of good software to be concerned about. We seemed to have moved into that strange post-PCW Show period when there ought to be lots of games released but software houses are still fighting to get their product completed.

Gargoyle Games’s new FTL label kicked off well, however, with Lightforce (right), bemusing everyone with the fact that it was a hard and fast shoot-’em-up in the Xevious vein rather than a complex scrolling graphic adventure. ‘A chance,’ said the Smash review, for ‘mainstream arcade entertainment,’ unfortunately forgetting that that was exactly how Gargoyle Games had started out three years earlier, with the 3-D shoot-’em-up Ad Astra. And Lightforce’s graphics strongly resembled Ad Astra.

Quicksilva’s Glider Rider was an odd case; the 48K version of this 3-D forced-perspective road game got 80%, but the 128K version soared to 92%. The real difference seemed to be the sound. And sound was only one of the problems faced by Digital Integration’s TT Racer. It lost favour for being too much of a simulation and being too difficult to play.

But there were two more Smashes. Napoleon At War from CCS excited Sean Masterson, and the game with the silliest name ever — Fat Worm Blows A Sparky — earned Durell some extravagant praise for the ‘stunningly original’ solid 3-D graphics and its wormy animation.

There were enough disappointments for several issues, mostly in the budget range, where there was hardly anything of quality (apart from a few games on Mastertronic’s M.A.D. label). Following on from the previous month’s release of Knight Rider came another Ocean game 18 months late — Street Hawk. Again the difficulties of developing the game shone through, though it did slightly better with 68%. Another tie-in proved a letdown: Asterix And The Magic Cauldron from Melbourne House. Heavily pushed as their big Christmas game, it was so bug-ridden that playability was irrelevant. The big arcade conversion was Dragon’s Lair, but Software Projects’s problem in reproducing anything of the original’s video-disk graphics — largely regarded as the only really interesting element of the arcade machine — let it down dismally on the Spectrum.

Gremlin Graphics fared far better with their Spectrum version of the Commodore 64 hit Trailblazer and it was a creditable and addictive game which just missed being a Smash at 88%.

We featured an interview with programmer Don Priestley, a man with possibly the longest Spectrum track record; but from a historical point of view it was the interviewer rather than the interviewee who was noteworthy. Bill Scolding had been the editor of Sinclair User and taken that magazine from a strong position to the leading place till CRASH overtook its sales. Bill never seemed to have borne CRASH any hard feelings over the previous year’s verbal war — so when he resigned from Sinclair User earlier in 1986 he had come to Ludlow to help out for a few weeks with editorial, leading to his ex-colleagues ringing him at home with a cheery ‘Morning Judas’. Sticks and stones etc...

December 1986, Issue No. 35

Released on November 20th

After the letdown of the Lightforce cover illustration, Oliver Frey steamed back in with a large close-up monster picture. The excuse for it was Ocean’s Cobra, and rather than slavishly devise some illustration based on the game Oliver chose to interpret the title literally. The serpent is very much in Frey/CRASH style: chromium-plated needle fangs, slavering jaws agape dripping what could be alien machine oil. Its impact is undeniable, and I think it was the strongest image of the year.

As if to make up for the November issue, December’s provided seven Smashes. Denton Designs struck back after some indeterminate games with The Great Escape for Ocean, displaying yet another form of isometric perspective to describe the World War II POW castle from which the player hoped to escape. And Hewson must have been pleased; Steve Crow, with three previous Smashes for other software houses to his name, programmed his fourth for them. Firelord was a game of chivalry set to Steve’s characteristically attractive graphics. Then there was the risky conversion of Andrew Braybrook’s monster Commodore 64 hit Uridium. The risk paid off — much credit to Dominic Robinson, who recreated the original fast-scrolling bas-relief graphics very well.

Durell clocked up another Smash with their dragon story Thanatos, and Mosaic’s adaptation of a Dick Francis novel gave Derek a pre-Christmas treat in the Adventure Trail. Ocean hit big film tie-in time when Cobra — cynically expected to be a terrible disaster — turned out to be a fast, addictive and playable winner.

One of the year’s big coin-op successes had been Gauntlet, an obvious case for conversion. US Gold had the official rights, but clones were a-cloning and it was a close race between Firebird, who got a Smash for Druid, and Electric Dreams, who just didn’t for Dandy. But what was interesting was Dandy’s claim to originality, for the coin-op Gauntlet was a conversion of the original Atari game called Dandy written by student John Palevich!

There were some close misses, too; Palace’s The Sacred Armour Of Antiriad, for example. But if Ocean’s tie-in gamble with Cobra had paid off, US Gold’s big gamble with The Goonies did not — it was a dispiriting mishmash of a game.

December was also notable for the first time budget-game reviews were grouped together; this ‘budget ghetto’ had (and has since) often been considered for CRASH, but rarely repeated.

Kat Trap was coming along well, and after the previous month’s preview December’s issue included an article about how Oliver was painting the game’s packaging — and the ad appeared too, though it wasn’t included in Bill Scolding’s wry look at software advertising, a funny article which reviewed some recent ads and rated them in traditional CRASH style.

The first issue (Issue Zero) of LM was almost ready for printing; to reach as many readers as possible, it was to be included free in the Christmas Specials of CRASH, ZZAP! and AMTIX! rather than go on the newsagents’ shelves on its own. Up in the art department life was frenzied, as they would soon be working on four magazines simultaneously. Still, two new paste-up artists appeared to help out: Sebastian Clare and Tim Croton. Sebastian’s father had once owned a company called Small School Software, whose premises had been the first floor of the King Street Offices before CRASH editorial moved down there late in 1984... circles within circles.

And there were two other new staff members; in film planning Newsfield took on Nick Orchard, a school-leaver, for Matthew Uffindell to train as a colour film planner (he was bearing in mind the extra work involved on the all-colour LM). And downstairs in the photographic department, Cameron Pound received some help from Michael Parkinson, a YTS trainee from nearby Tenbury Wells.

Newsfield’s first office Christmas do, held at a restaurant outside Ludlow, had been for ten people. The second had been for 40 (staff and family) and was held at the Bull Inn (home of the fictitious Old Flatulence Bitter). This year’s was to be for some 64 staff and many invitees — we were getting bigger...

Christmas Special 1986/1987, Issue No. 36

Released on December 10th

The nature of CRASH Christmas issue covers was established, but this year Oliver had a problem; CDS had been promised a cover based around their Brian Clough’s Football Fortunes. He resolved it by setting loads of Olibugs round a table playing the board/computer game, while Clough, dressed as Santa Claus, peered on. It was unusual because it was entirely monochrome — but this suited Oliver, who had three other covers to do at the same time. Yet the vigorous line drawing makes its own impact, and it remains one of the best-taken risks in his CRASH career.

CRASH readers got their first chance to see Newsfield’s biggest gamble to date with a free 80-page issue of LM. There was also an article inside CRASH showing a picture of the LM editorial team taken at the London office (LM had two offices!). I wasn’t present, which was just as well, because the picture was very dark. A staggering 296,000 copies of LM Issue Zero were printed, and the investment then, and in later months, would very nearly cripple the company.

Where to hold the Christmas ‘do’ was settled by booking Ludlow’s biggest disco (out of two), the Starline Club. In the event, some 150 people turned up, some software houses travelling right across the country to be there. It pleased us a lot that they made the effort.

Yet another new face turned up in the art department, that of Markie Kendrick, who applied for the job because he knew the magazines and had once even drawn a Sabreman cartoon strip. Markie was a good find, quick at layout and fast on the draw — it was his comic inventiveness that led to King Grub in LM (and later in CRASH).

The games were less exciting, though Realtime gave us their very best Smash yet in Starglider — good on the 48K version, extraordinary on the 128K — for Rainbird, and Rainbird also received Derek’s accolade for their Jewels Of Darkness compilation of Level 9’s older adventures. But Derek was less than pleased with the ‘Class Of ’86’ overall, thinking it a generally lacklustre year for adventures games.

Design Design had been busy; two for Piranha included the Smashed 3-D Dracula story Nosferatu and the less than Smashed 2000AD licence Rogue Trooper; and then there was Domark’s Kat Trap. At last the Genesis comp had given birth. It was a bit hard for the CRASH reviewers because they were all aware of the danger of bias, or at least being accused of it, so extra care was taken: however, Kat Trap still did well at 84%.

The remaining Smashes went to CRL for Pete Cooke’s stunning follow-up to Tau Ceti, Academy, and to veterans Microsphere for their brilliant detective arcade adventure Contact Sam Cruise.

The big fun event for all the magazines was the Reviewers’ Challenge, which starred Gary Penn and Julian Rignall representing ZZAP!, Richard Eddy and Massimo Valducci representing AMTIX! and Ben Stone and Mike ‘Skippy’ Dunn representing CRASH. Massimo was a young man from Shrewsbury who had been given a job earlier as a trainee subeditor, but had drifted into the role of AMTIX! reviewer. His Italian good looks made him popular with the female members of Newsfield staff, and their bets were on him to win. Everyone else’s were on Julian Rignall as supposedly the company’s ace arcadester, but in the event it was Ben Stone who won for CRASH... much to his surprise.

Just before the Christmas rush really began, the magazines got themselves a real live subeditor in mad Irishman Ciarán Brennan (a sub’s job is to go through articles checking the spelling, grammar and sense of the piece, rewriting if necessary). During the early days much fun was made of typographical errors in CRASH (though they were as apparent in other magazines). Now there was no excuse...

February 1987, Issue No. 37

Released on January 22nd

Ian Craig returned to the cover for the New Year with Ocean’s Top Gun. It proved quite a popular illustration with readers, though I thought it suffered from problems similar to those of the Lightforce painting three issues earlier — doubtful definition of areas and a very rough finish which prevented the machine from looking like polished silver. And it was a single-minded image, lacking the visual gag which had become so much the hallmark of CRASH cover paintings.

We now enter a very difficult year for Newsfield, for CRASH, and for me to describe. I shall linger less on the software, which is dealt with in my 1987 Lookback, and concentrate more on the internal affairs of the magazine. As we entered 1987 no-one had any idea the turmoil that lay ahead.

People tend to regard a company as a smooth-working entity, but that’s very misleading. It would be far better to compare a company to an individual, or even at times to a family. When you meet someone you know slightly in the street and they wave hello to you, you never stop to think of the problems they may have — just like you do. And a company, however familiar and successful, has problems too. At times Newsfield has been like a large family, with all the members heading in much the same direction, yet split by family rifts, arguments, even feuds. The first upset of 1987 came when Sean Masterson resigned before Christmas to devote himself to his love of fantasy gaming; on Frontline he was replaced by Philippa Irving. But it was far from being the last change.

LM had been launched successfully, yet there were thunderclouds. It looked like it was going to be a struggle to get the essential advertising in to support the very expensive publication, with its large editorial staff and many contributors adding to the usual costs of typesetting, repro and printing. Against this worrying background were set the computer magazines’ problems, few of which the public saw.

The biggest concerned CRASH. It was really a magazine without an editor, which is a bit like a ship without a captain, with no-one to guide it. Graeme Kidd’s time was shared among all three computer magazines, and CRASH seemed to lose some of its direction. The spelling mistakes and the typos were slipping back in, despite Ciarán Brennan’s valiant efforts to stem them. But he was working on ZZAP! and AMTIX! as well, so there was too much subbing for him to do alone. For the February issue, Roger Kean was called back from LM’s Gravel Hill office to help sort it out; otherwise the issue would never even have made it to the printer on time.

In the Art Department, where Oliver was busy designing LM, there was also a serious problem. Both lan Craig and Dick Shiner had found they preferred being freelance to suffering the punishing regular schedules of magazine work, and as this issue went to press both of them resigned their jobs (though Dick, who still lives in Ludlow, continued doing some freelance work for Newsfield). Oliver was faced once again with having to do all the covers, but for the rest there were four layout artists, and Gordon Druce became art director of the three computer titles — it was sufficient.

Discussions about the CRASH reviews had been popular for quite some time, and as early as August 1986 a straw poll of the regular reviewers revealed that they would not mind having their names with their comments. To protect them, this hadn’t been done before; CRASH is unlike most other computer magazines because most of the reviewers are not professional writers or critics, but local school and college people. The anonymity was beginning to irritate readers, however, and so with the New Year, we changed the system. Ben Stone, Mike Dunn and Paul Sumner became real names, and to go with it a mild revamp of the ratings took place, with Use Of Computer and Getting Started both being replaced by Presentation. It was to be the first of several changes in the three-year-old rating system.

March 1987, Issue No. 38

Released on February 26th

The March cover was a masterpiece of magical atmosphere, a theme in blue mist. As usual time was a problem. The subject was to be a composite image to suit the month’s two Smashes, Feud and Ranarama. Oliver opted for lightly painting vague outlines, then airbrushing blue and black over the surface, leaving himself with the task of picking out highlights and the lightning with a brush in white. The accuracy of the line is hard to achieve but Oliver makes it look easy — and that is his wizardry.

Some of the big software houses seemed to be coming unstuck with the new year; US Gold faltered with their licensed Masters Of The Universe (Gremlin is making another attempt now) which received only 28%. Melbourne House did little better with Bazooka Bill (42%) and just as badly with 2000AD’s Judge Dredd — they were working on Inspector Gadget too, but that would never see the light of day; Konami’s Jail Break was disastrous (47%); Electric Dreams’s ancient zapper Tempest raised only an average flicker at 62%; US Gold tried ten-pin bowling, but Tenth Frame only knocked down 56% of its skittles; Leisure Genius finally made it out with Scalextric, and that got 57%. It was left to Steve Turner’s Ranarama for Hewson and a £1.99 budget game, Feud, on Mastertronic’s Bulldog label to win the Smashes.

What was going wrong? Hard to say, but the failed games had a few things in common: a rushed appearance, little content and often very poor graphics. We wondered whether Christmas had knocked the stuffing out of everyone.

Things were little better in Ludlow. For several months it had become clear that advertising revenue in the Amstrad CPC field had almost dried up because the sales of games simply didn’t warrant software houses spending money to promote them. So AMTIX! was badly hit financially, and during early February it became obvious the magazine could no longer survive the way it was. An attempt was made to change its nature dramatically, but forecasts showed that wouldn’t work either. Newsfield’s management decided to close AMTIX! down, and its editorial team of five was told the bad news — they would become redundant after their April issue went to press in mid-March. Only Richard Eddy would be retained to work on CRASH.

But meanwhile CRASH had its problems too. The experiences of February’s issue were repeated, with Roger Kean being hauled away from LM to help put together the reviews at the last moment. He was alarmed at the way they were being written: this was not the fault of the reviewing team — the reviewers’ sole responsibility was to play the games and write a short critical comment on each — but derived from the lack of editorial control. Roger and Ciarán spent a fraught weekend furiously rewriting just about everything, and then Roger spent the next two days in film planning, helping finish off the very late issue.

It seemed like the last straw, and once CRASH had gone to press, Newsfield reluctantly decided some rearrangement was essential. The financial problem of LM was another story, but editorially it was running very smoothly, so Roger Kean returned to King Street and once again took up editorship of CRASH, the magazine he had helped found. Lee and Hannah left in the reshuffle, and Graeme Kidd was moved to Gravel Hill to edit LM.

The full-time team Roger now inherited included myself (also doing other jobs), Ciarán Brennan, who became Assistant Editor, Richard Eddy and Ben Stone. For three days a week Ian Phillipson came in to write ‘intros’, the long descriptive sections of the reviews. He had been hired just before Roger took over and was still uncertain how the reviews should be tackled, but it wouldn’t be long before Ian became an essential part of the new CRASH. The young part-timers included Mike Dunn and Paul Sumner, but there were a few others waiting to try their hands as well. We all got ready for a revitalised CRASH.

April 1987, Issue No. 39

Released on March 26th

A new spirit swept CRASH; for the first time in ages Oliver and Roger were able to work together on ideas for the cover. The general opinion was to put Ocean’s Head Over Heels on the cover, but Oliver was alarmed that this could lead to yet another ‘cutesy’ picture. He wanted something tougher. Roger suggested basing the painting on the Evil Emperor instead, and using the idea of the space between the planets in the game’s scenario. That did the trick, and Oliver turned in one of the best pictures yet.

There was a new spirit indeed. It had already been suggested just after Christmas that CRASH was falling behind on colour content, that our rivals were providing more colour screenshots than we were. One of Roger Kean’s first jobs was to assess whether Newsfield’s increasingly experienced film-planners; already adept at putting tinted boxes, coloured text and so on into pages, could tackle the complexities of planning pages which included the laser-scanned four-colour separations from which full-colour photos are printed. This job would normally be undertaken by a professional repro house.

Cost had been the prohibiting factor. Normally it costs approximately £60 for every colour picture to be scanned by a laser scanner (the equipment is too expensive for Newsfield to have in-house): 30 reviews each getting two colour pictures would therefore cost around £3,600, far more than affordable. But if all the photographs taken from the monitor could be exactly the same size as each other, then whole batches of transparencies could be stitched together and scanned at the same time. (They’d have to be the same size so that when the pictures were all enlarged together by the same percentage they’d fit the magazine’s column widths precisely.)

When these sets of separations returned from the London company which does Newsfield’s scanning, the film-planning department could fit them into pages already laid out by our Art Department. Using this method, Roger and Cameron managed to trim the cost of screenshots down to about £10 per picture, enabling CRASH to go almost full-colour.

We tried the new system out with the April issue, though not with every screen, and it worked well. From now on CRASH would be colour throughout, whenever feasible. And because we now kept the separations, CRASH would always be able to reuse any picture whenever required at no extra cost for features like Playing Tips.

Lee Paddon’s interview with Australian programmer Steve Taylor went into the issue, but before it was printed it required an update. Steve worked for Melbourne House, but news arrived that Melbourne House UK had been sold to budget giants Mastertronic. It may have been a surprise to the public, but the deal, it seemed, had been under discussion for some time.

Mastertronic had come a long way since the days when their budget range was really cheap rubbish. But with labels like M.A.D. and Bulldog they were often putting out quality games at still very low prices, and now they owned one of the industry’s oldest and most respected full-price software houses — though it has to be said that Melbourne House had been going through a poor patch for some six months.

And here again was a second consecutive month where there were only two Smashes, and one was a budget game — in this case Firebird’s I, Ball. The other was, of course, Ocean’s Head Over Heels, widely regarded as the best game Jon Ritman and Bernie Drummond had written. It was hardly apparent at the time, but Head Over Heels was part of a new pattern for Ocean who, like the rest of us, realised that full-price games were fighting for their lives in the 8-bit marketplace. 1986 had been an uneven year for them and, because of the volume Ocean put out, they were as much to blame as anyone for the low profile licensed games had achieved in the public’s mind. And the budget houses were profiting from that.

An insight, one of rare honesty from a software publisher, was offered by Ocean’s Gary Bracey when he told CRASH that Ocean’s recent record had not been as good as it should have been, both for the quality of product and for the accuracy of advertised delivery time. It was this open recognition of past failings that would now motivate Ocean for the coming year; they would do their very best to offer value for money.

May 1987, Issue No. 40

Released on April 30th

The Enduro Racer cover is a very straightforward one, and it was chosen largely for the opportunity it offered Oliver to produce an exciting action picture. The main figure is smaller than it might have been because there had to be a strap announcing the Playing Tips Supplement, which was nicely tied in: the biker looks like he has just leapt over it. Never one to miss a light-hearted dig when the occasion arises, Oliver made the crashing biker wear a helmet adorned with the letters CVG.

For the April issue, Roger Kean had become CRASH Editor halfway through its production schedule. With May’s issue he felt he could really get to grips with some of the problems that had been ailing the magazine.

The reviews were first. Several previous issues had failed to cover anything like the volume of games released in the month, and it had always been CRASH’s boast that we did cover everything. The problem was that since the early days the number of pages devoted to features and specialist sections like Frontline, Tech Niche and Adventure Trail had expanded dramatically. Increasing the number of review pages would mean expanding the magazine beyond its economic size. Much tighter writing would be required from now on, so that a review would take up less space and more would fit in.

Roger and Ciarán looked closely at recent reviews and decided that many were heavily padded without providing sensible information. One result of the new attitude was that the issue packed in 37 reviews (more than for ages, excluding February’s issue) and still left space for the other features, including the 32-page Playing Tips Supplement. The reviews were also split into three categories. each with a different design style: Smashes, those above 50% Overall and those below, allowing us more freedom to give short reviews to games that hardly deserved a full page to themselves.

Then there was the extra colour: in May’s issue virtually every game was featured in colour (apart from some latecomers and the adventures), even in the Playing Tips and Frontline. Readers seemed to approve of the colour, but not every letter was so kind about the shorter reviews — the shortness of the Krakout review was especially resented by some.

The number of reviewers also came under consideration. Ben, Paul, Mike and Richard were doing a sterling job, but it was felt that some fresh blood was required, and over the next few months that would arrive. The first new face in was that of Gareth Adams, another Ludlow local studying at the College, and a CRASH reader from the start.

A casualty of the new broom was my Hall Of Slime. To be honest it had outgrown its usefulness and there was a thought of axing it to make way for something new, though no-one knew quite what at that time.

While the dust appeared to be settling at the King Street offices after six months of unrest. Newsfield was facing a serious problem with LM. Despite its obvious popularity with readers, LM was in financial difficulties. Circulation was increasing nicely, but advertisers were still too wary of the ‘youth market’ and thus the magazine’s revenue was almost non-existent and it lost nearly £20,000 each issue. The gamble had not paid off. It was like AMTIX! all over again, only on a spectacularly larger scale. Emergency management meetings were held to see if anything could be done, but to no avail. A few days before Issue 5 was due to go to press at the end of April an announcement was made to the company that LM would have to close down.

For the second time within two months, the management were faced with making staff redundant. It was a terrible blow, personally, in terms of prestige and financially. Trade papers, including Computer Trade Weekly, erroneously suggested that Newsfield had lost half a million on LM. The real figure was nothing like that, but it was a heavy enough loss. The leave-taking a few days later was sad — but on the bright side, all the LM staffers found themselves other publishing work within a few weeks.

June 1987, Issue No. 41

Released on May 28th

What can I say about this cover that hasn’t already been said in detail in the Forum? It did cause CRASH trouble with WH Smith, who at one point considered withdrawing the issue from sale, but then contented themselves with extracting a written promise from Newsfield to be more careful in future. The moral issue apart, it remains a powerfully painted image which suits the game ideally. It also caused C&VG to hiccup, because apparently Palace had given them the ‘exclusive cover’, unaware we were doing one. C&VG evidently withdrew theirs.

Not everyone on the LM team was made redundant. Graeme Kidd remained in place as an editor without portfolio and Publishing Executive, and Barnaby Page, LM’s Subeditor, came to CRASH to become its Assistant Editor. Ciarán Brennan moved over to ZZAP! full-time.

And LM’s closure was an ill wind which blew some good for the casual reviewers because more work stations were created as more Amstrad PCW8256 ‘Joyces’, used for writing, came to CRASH from the defunct magazine. CRASH itself had moved again, returning from the middle to the lower floor.

And another new-old face (re)appeared. While Roger Kean was editing LM at Gravel Hill, Robin Candy started turning up for the odd chat. The strains of the previous year were exorcised, and with Roger’s return to King Street and CRASH, Robin indicated he would like to start writing again, largely because he needed finance for his band, Ad Lib To Fade, and because he had recently taken up skiing in Switzerland, which is an expensive pursuit! His first task was an article on the history of software houses and the changes in attitudes over the past four years. Robin’s return seemed to complete the feeling that the old CRASH spirit was back in force.

The new spirit ushered in video reviews, well aware that there would be catcalls from some readers crying ‘LM!’. To be truthful, those first few were written for LM, but the reasoning behind including them had not been lost (in reverse) on the fantasy film magazine Star Burst, which every month reviewed computer games. CRASH readers, we argued, are likely to be heavily into video-watching, so it makes sense. And despite several mutters of protest, the experiment seems to have worked well for most readers.

Recent independent market research has shown that we were right — of a range of magazines aimed at the ‘youth market’, including Smash Hits and the weekly music papers, CRASH and ZZAP! readers came out as the most avid hirers of videos. You are also, it transpires from the same research, the biggest purchasers of blank audio tapes — though that’s probably a subject we shouldn’t touch upon... !

Not to be outdone by my Playing Tips Supplement in the May issue, Derek Brewster provided a special supplement for adventurers, which included two Smashes for The Pawn and Shadows Of Mordor.

Robin Candy became involved in an interesting project almost immediately upon his return to the fold. As work on this issue began, Roger and Richard Eddy had visited programmer Pete Cooke at his home in Leicester to have a look at the part-completed Micronaut One, his first game for Nexus. At that time Pete had only designed three of the game’s four tunnel networks with a special utility he’d devised. Everyone thought it would be a good idea if someone from CRASH designed the fourth and hardest. Richard volunteered. However, he was due to attend a journalism course in London which cut across tunnel-designing, so Robin took the utility home and designed a network himself. He was never credited in the game, but to avoid any accusations of hidden bias Roger and Barnaby mentioned Robin’s involvement in the next month’s editorial. And fortunately, when Micronaut One arrived it was quite good enough to speak for itself without any personal partiality to boost its rating.

July 1987, Issue No. 42

Released on June 25th

After Dan Dare and the original Hulton Eagle comic, the greatest inspiration to the younger Oliver Frey had been the films of James Bond (he has them all, except the subject of this cover, on video). So it was no hardship for Oliver to do a Bond illustration for Domark’s The Living Daylights. It was good timing, too, because this issue hit the streets several days before the film opened in London, making CRASH one of the first magazines of any type to carry the image.

Synchronicity is a bit like déjà vu in reverse: if you hear or read a strange word you have never heard before, and then, over the next few days, several times you happen to see or hear that word used, that is synchronicity. Early in the month of June, Roger Kean attended a software fling on a Thames boat given by MicroProse. Mingling with the massed computer journalists, he was bemused to be confronted by someone from Computer & Video Games who informed him that they knew Newsfield was planning to break with its machine-specific tradition and publish a multicomputer magazine rather like C&VG. It was certainly news to Roger, though, he said, he kept a ‘poker face’.

Two days later Newsfield’s advertising department offered up a plan for a multicomputer entertainment magazine to cover all popular 8-bit and 16-bit computers, not to outdo CRASH or ZZAP! but to complement them. A few hours later, when no-one outside Newsfield’s management had been told of the proposal, someone rang up from a software house to ask how long it would be before the new magazine would happen. It seemed like an omen!

A few days later THE GAMES MACHINE was born, in concept at least, aimed to publish its first issue in time for The PCW Show in late September. A fortnight later we first heard that Future Publishing intended launching Ace — now that’s synchronicity!

Meanwhile CRASH was settling in nicely. Three more reviewers joined the stable: Robin Candy, now doing comments, Mark Rothwell, a friend of the brothers Rignall, and then Nick Roberts. Nick lived in Ludlow, had read CRASH for three years and felt he could take the Tips off my shoulders. To try him out, Roger asked him to do review comments, and so he too started coming in after school hours. His quiet, no-nonsense attitude quickly earned him everyone’s respect, and it was clear that it would not be long before my temporary Playing Tips stint ended.

And in fact there was a fourth reviewer. Dominic Handy had been a regular visitor to the Towers over three years, usually to buy games from the mail-order department — though his views on some games occasionally found their way into print via one or other of the reviewers — but also to undertake the odd writing job. As a film buff he was a natural for the new video section, and he started coming in more and more often.

The scope of CRASH continued to expand, with features on special effects in The Living Daylights and on the Nintendo console adding more reading matter to the magazine’s Spectrum core.

And an unusual aspect of this CRASH was the OINK! Supplement. This had been arranged two months earlier in conjunction with the anarchic comic’s publishers, IPC, and CRL, who were producing a game based on its piggy antics. To my knowledge, this was the first time anything like this had been tried in a computer magazine, and we were interested to see the reaction. Predictably, it was mixed! Many thought it insulting to have a young children’s comic in CRASH, yet newsagents had been moving it out of reach, considering OINK!’s contents to be of a nature more adult than was suitable for youngsters.

We saw an early version of the game on the Commodore, were given a rather useless Spectrum screenshot (the background only), and to date, that’s been that...

At the very moment when it seemed the year’s earlier troubles had become a memory, an earthquake shock hit us. Without warning Gary Penn, ZZAP! Editor, resigned, saying he was worn out. As he had some holiday owed, he left at the end of the week, and everyone held their breaths to see what would happen...

August 1987, Issue No. 43

Released on July 30th

Another favourite Frey subject — Fred Astaire films. Plans for a lavish and largely monochrome Astaire cover had been formulated ages before but never carried out. When the great Hollywood star died Oliver insisted on dedicating the issue of CRASH to him, and featuring him with his most famous partner, Ginger Rogers, on the cover. The other elements, dancing on a newly-arrived Spectrum +3, were the issue’s lead games: Tai-Pan, Micronaut One, Exolon and The Big Sleaze. It was another compilation cover, a style for which Oliver has become justifiably celebrated.

The Fred Astaire cover found an echo on page 63, detailing the results of the 1987 CRASHtionnaire, where his face (and Ginger Rogers’s) appeared at the foot of a reproduced Radio Times page. That was to illustrate the CRASHtionnaire’s findings on your TV viewing habits, but it was a good example of the kind of detail the art department has to consider when laying out. In recent months everyone on the team had become more aware of the value of cross-referencing items within an issue, and even a tiny item like the Astaire picture can add to the enjoyment of reading a magazine.

Our big thrill (well, there were two really) was the new Spectrum +3 with its Amstrad-style disk drive. The reviewers weren’t particularly impressed, largely because it was nothing more than a 128K with a disk drive instead of a datacorder, and also because there were no really good games available on the disks yet. Simon N Goodwin wasn’t raving either, though he considered the machine professionally-made and well-documented, because he felt you could upgrade with better disk systems than the one Amstrad provided. Software houses were cautious about releasing disk games for a machine which nobody had bought yet, too, as one of CRASH’s increasingly common in-depth news features reported. And there was the price — £249 was far too high. We all suspected Amstrad of hiking it so as not to ruin +2 high-street sales — a cynical supposition which would be proved all too true within a few months.

The other thrill was the arrival of Hewson’s Uzi pump-action water pistols — prizes for the Exolon competition. Naturally they had to be tried out, and anyway, we needed photographs for the competition page. Richard, Roger, Robin and Skippy went out dry and came back soaked. Fortunately, as the picture showed, it was a hot day. Several innocent bystanders got squirted, including Markie Kendrick from art. His David Sylvian-style hairdo was ruined, so he sulked, which resulted in the little remark from the comps minion. But we all forgot; art always has the last laugh...

Tie-ins fared pretty badly; The Living Daylights, Challenge Of The Gobots, Road Runner, Flash Gordon, all did from bad to average, only Ocean’s delayed Tai-Pan — and then only on the 128 — got anywhere, and that was a Smash.

Meanwhile, another of those news features focused on The Bug and its arguments with the software industry — the first sign of CRASH’s reborn interest in fanzines, that was to show itself in a renovated Fanzine File.

During the latter part of the schedule, THE GAMES MACHINE got under way, and Graeme Kidd got his portfolio back as its Co-Editor. His other half turned out to be none other than Gary Penn, who had decided that he would like to work on the new magazine (Ciarán Brennan had taken over ZZAP!). They set themselves up in Gravel Hill, using the offices not long before vacated by LM. TGM — as it became known — was going to cover more than just computers, and one of the first articles written was a comparison of laser-tag systems. Suddenly the water pistols had a rival as numerous different electronic guns began to appear. It was not, of course, very conducive to hard work in the CRASH offices to know others were zapping each other (or ‘testing’) nearby, but somehow we managed to keep our reviewers’ minds on their own games.

September 1987, Issue No. 44

Released on August 27th

When he saw the preview copy of Ocean’s Renegade, Oliver immediately said he wanted to do a cover of it when the review copy arrived. It was back to the single, powerful image, not unlike the notorious Barbarian cover, but with more restraint! It was rumoured that Roger Kean posed for Polaroid shots from which Oliver modelled the figure, and while Roger’s undoubtedly something of a hunk, no-one believed that Oliver hadn’t added considerably to the street fighter’s physique to make it one of the best figure pictures he had done.

In two respects, this was a momentous issue. Once again the CRASH reviews underwent a change after much discussion. We had dropped the Value For Money rating with the July issue, largely because of the plethora of budget games. It had seemed to us impossible to continue calculating value for money in any meaningful way when games at £2 and £10 were considered as the same product. Also, some readers had more money than others, making an arbitrary measure of value for money meaningless. Actually, this move brought the CRASH ratings more into line with Roger Kean’s original concept for reviews — that the reader should make the decision about the worth of a game after having read everything the reviewers had to say about it.

Now the Comments box was tweaked: Control Keys was dropped (the days when they made a significant difference to playability were over with universal joysticks and definable-keys options), Skill Levels was dropped in favour of a new Options line which also included details on definable keys, two-player modes and so on, Use Of Colour was merged with Graphics to make the comment more logical; but perhaps the most notable addition was that of each reviewer’s Overall percentage, which explained more clearly how a game’s Overall rating was arrived at.

And then there was the very first ever CRASH Challenge. ZZAP! had run reader/reviewer challenges since it started, and while they were fun to do, they were always a beast to organise. AMTIX! also had a challenge, so the pressure to include one in CRASH had been there for some time. We resisted the temptation easily enough seeing the other magazines struggling to get theirs sorted out each month. But the recent CRASHtionnaire had forced our hands without doubt. Too many readers wanted a CRASH Challenge for the magazine to refuse it.

In addition to the organisational problems (finding the time, inevitably a Saturday; getting the challenger to Ludlow; finding someone to take photos), there was always that nagging feeling in the reviewers’ minds that they didn’t want to make prats of themselves by losing to a mere reader. However, by dint of moral pressure, Barnaby persuaded Paul Sumner to go first — he’s such a natural leader of men, it was argued, that if he did it, the others would feel bound to — and duly he met Mark Turford from Wednesbury on a Saturday afternoon, and just as duly, he lost. They played Mikie as Nick Roberts sat with pad and pen in hand to record this historic defeat. It was ignominy after the ZZAP! Challenge, where Julian Rignall won month after month till people began to think he was Jeff Minter.

Perhaps not quite so earthshattering, but much sillier still, was the arrival in CRASH of Markie Kendrick’s King Grub, star of LM, T-shirts and... now the strip. Mark had created the character for LM, but when the magazine closed he refused to stop drawing the darned thing and eventually Roger was forced to give way and make room.

Advance planning for THE GAMES MACHINE resulted in a brochure for would-be advertisers, and in slightly modified form it appeared in the centre of this issue. Historically speaking, the most interesting aspect is the two serious-looking figures in the middle wielding laser guns. The man on the left was, of course, ZZAP!’s Julian Rignall, but few realised that the lass on the right was Glenys Powell, CRASH and ZZAP!’s Editorial Assistant, and, more importantly, Julian’s fiancée.

And THE GAMES MACHINE was about to make history itself, with its press date shortly after this CRASH.

October 1987, Issue No. 45

Released on September 24th

This cover bore the CRASH Sampler cassette. Often cover mounts simply obscure the artwork underneath, but Oliver had always argued that if we did one, the mounted object would have to blend in as much as possible. The image itself could be anything, but there wasn’t room for a full-blown painting based on the issue’s contents; it was Roger who suggested returning to the monster that adorned the cover of Issue 1, only closer up, and have it hold the cassette in its claws. Oliver obliged with actinic light and machine-oiled fangs. It is fascinating to hold up the two covers and compare them.

The reference to CRASHes past on the cover was not entirely inadvertent. It already seems an age of its own now, but this was the first issue in which I began recalling the CRASH History of four years. And once again Roger Kean was on the move — well, almost, for he became Editorial Director of the three computer titles, while Barnaby Page became Managing Editor of CRASH. It wasn’t much change for CRASH, where Barnaby had been running large sections of the magazine for some months anyway, but the simple change in titles was a sign of the year’s third upheaval at Newsfield.

It would be wrong to publish many of the confidential details, so suffice it to say that there were serious problems with the way THE GAMES MACHINE was run by its two editors (fortunately they didn’t show in the finished product), and shortly after the completion of its first issue Graeme Kidd and Gary Penn were asked to leave the company. That didn’t cause any catastrophes itself, but when ZZAP! Editor Ciarán Brennan decided a few days later to leave Ludlow and return to London a reshuffle was essential. Roger Kean assumed Graeme Kidd’s role of general overseer, which job he had been effectively doing for several months at King Street anyway; Barnaby took over CRASH,. Julian Rignall became Managing Editor of ZZAP!; and Dominic Handy became a full-time Staff Writer at CRASH.

A few weeks after all these changes, Newsfield left for the annual shebang at Olympia, the tenth PCW Show, where all the company’s upheavals were soon subsumed under the chaos of meeting software houses, signing autographs, selling CRASH T-shirts and fighting a spirited sticker war against Your Sinclair. In fact the only long-term casualty of Newsfield’s internal changes was Fear & Loathing; John Minson, who had been a personal friend of the dismissed Graeme Kidd, was no longer happy with writing for CRASH.

However, a new writer and a new section arrived. Paul Evans, a CRASH reader from Liverpool, had written to Barnaby asking if he might try doing a column for CRASH on modem communications. The magazine’s policy had always been to give anyone a try — and it had often had useful results — so Paul’s column started in this issue, and soon became a regular feature.

Et Al also made its debut, the video section having transformed itself into this motley collection of videos, books, games and offbeat little snippets.

And as for the games... given the general mood at the time, one could be forgiven for thinking that Virgin’s How To Be A Complete Bastard might have been made a Smash, but in fact the real problem with it was describing it in the magazine, given the language used in the game. I thought the review was as tasteful as could be, but we still got letters complaining, and even a notification from the Press Council about parental complaints. Sometimes you can’t even call a spade a trowel.

November 1987, Issue No. 46

Released on October 29th

The CRASH History created echoes everywhere. Issue 1’s cover had seen its latter-day counterpart in October, and now in November the King Kong cover of Issue 2 rebounded in the illustration for Activision’s Rampage, previewed that month (and indeed the painting from Issue 2 was used in the competition inside). The vision of gigantic destruction was reminiscent of the covers for the Fleetway War Picture Library series that Oliver used to paint in the Seventies. Note how the angle of the skyscraper leads the eye straight to the announcement of the 3-D section, just as intended.

The hectic days of The PCW Show were over — for everyone except the writers, still working on a seven-page news section which took stock of the software world as seen at Olympia. And back in Ludlow, the show went on. Barnaby’s editorial informed us of yet another Ludlow College reviewer joining the ranks, which made up for the loss of Gareth Adams, who had moved away. Bym Welthy (an unlikely name), Barnaby told us, had first contributed to CRASH around the end of 1984 (the mention of Issue 3 was an error), having turned up then as a friend of Ben Stone’s — to the inevitable greeting of ‘Bym and Ben, the flowerpot men’. Back in those days he’d undergone the CRASH initiation ordeal, being photographed for CRASH T-shirt ads. And though it was a long gap till this month when his familiar red head of hair reappeared, he was excused modelling T-shirts again.

This was our special 3-D issue, the one with the free red-and-green glasses inside, and what fun it had been for the Art Department. When the 3-D special was first conceived two months earlier, the notion had been to do what all magazines do: buy the spectacles from the specialist company that made them, and send the artwork to be turned into 3-D to one of the two repro houses in Britain which specialise in 3-D techniques. It was only afterwards, when plans to have loads of illustrations and text in 3-D were well under way, that it was discovered that the cost of three-dimensionalising was approximately £400 per drawing!

Roger Kean decided we could do the work in-house. All we had to do, apparently (!), was discover what it was the specialists did. Roger and Markie Kendrick pored over 3-D comics (of which Markie has a big collection), and figured it out. The problem, though, was being able to proof the result so it could be looked at through the spectacles to see if it had worked properly. This was achieved through use of a special colour proofing system used in film planning to cheek complicated colour pages. The proofed drawings came out in process magenta and process yellow/cyan (to make green), and were not quite the colours used to print the pages, but close enough.

A scream of ‘Eureka!’ from film planning brought the entire building crowding into the room to peer through the spectacles in wonder. Throughout the following days it became a habit to leap up or downstairs as each new masterpiece was proofed, each getting more ambitious. The CRASH Charts, for instance, had eleven planes of depth to them, and the whole issue represented weeks of painstaking cutting, repasting and adjusting to get the effects right.

In the room next to film planning, Oliver Frey was setting up his new editorial department for THE GAMES MACHINE. It had been moved from Gravel Hill because of problems with screen photography, and also to keep all the editorial staff together. Downstairs in the CRASH room, Nick Roberts got the job he had originally written in for, compiling the Playing Tips; and another new face slipped quietly in to join Barnaby, Dominic and Ian Phillipson. David Peters was to meet the urgent need for a Subeditor to plough through the dozens of thousands of words which each CRASH contains, correcting and trimming where necessary. Meanwhile, Ben Stone moved to continue his training at another magazine in the area, What’s On In Shropshire, though he continued to come into CRASH several times a week to write reviews and features.

December 1987

Issue 47

When you’re wandering around a newsagent’s, what grabs the attention is a cover with a striking design or image. In taking Incentive’s Freescape game Driller as a cover theme, Oliver gave himself a problem: to make it obvious what the painting was about, it had to contain recognisable elements from the game or the adverts, yet those were not action-packer, Driller being a more cerebral game. And of course much of Driller’s power came from its peculiar 3-D graphics, which would be hard to recreate without straight copying. So he opted for the fish-eye lens image, a neat notion which wraps virtually 360° of view into one picture.

Judge Death also appeared on the cover, drawing attention to the 16-page supplement inside the issue. This had been set up in conjunction with Piranha, to tie in with their Judge Death licensed game, after their interest in the OINK! supplement.

It was generally agreed that something from 2000AD would be even more likely to involve CRASH and ZZAP!’s readers than OINK!. 2000AD’s publishers were unwilling to participate — the title had just been bought by Robert Maxwell’s BMPC group — but Titan Books, who held rights not to the 2000AD characters themselves but to all the printed stories and artwork, were about to launch a Judge Anderson reprint series and were liaising with Piranha on the game of Judge Death. Titan were persuaded to contribute the supplement artwork, in colour.

The 2000AD stories were in black and white, so the supplement in colour in CRASH and ZZAP! was something of a novelty. Titan’s artist took the original pages, shot them to film to make a black-and-white image, then photocopied each page by a special process which rendered the image in a very pale blue. This gave him a design which he could colour in, the blue photocopy barely registering. The coloured pages were then sent to us together with the monochrome film, and we had the colour laser-scanned to provide the necessary four-colour separations. We combined them with the Titan’s monochrome film, and suddenly, there was Judge Death in full colour.

Apart from the supplement — which prevented the third part of this CRASH History going in the issue, because there weren’t enough pages to fit them both in as well as all the usual content of CRASH — and the background feature on 2000AD and Titan Books, this CRASH had the first half of Robin Candy’s huge feature on tie-ins. It was an appropriate time to examine the growth of tie-ins over four years; licences seemed to be growing ever more important, and CRASH was in retrospective mood anyway.

January 1988, Issue 48

Released on December 17th

This was our fourth Christmas cover, and the conflict between a seasonal picture and the decision to feature a particular game was a problem. On the other hand, in a year of violent games, Pac-Land at least offered a more peaceful theme. I confess a disadvantage: as I write this, the painting hasn’t be done, but the idea is to have loads of Pacs playing about in the snow, and so you, as well as I, can be the judge of the result when we see it.

It is now almost exactly four years to the day that Roger Kean, Matthew Uffindell and myself sat around the only two typewriters we possessed, staring at blank sheets of paper, wondering what it was Spectrum-owners wanted to read, trying to conceive of the first edition of CRASH. I am not sure whether the three of us harboured ambitions of seeing the company grow; probably, but magazines are organic things, and somehow they grow of their own accord.

Newsfield was six people then: Roger, Oliver and Franco Frey, Matthew, Denise Roberts and myself part-time. At the moment of greatest growth (in terms of personnel), when LM was launched, it employed 60 full-time staff, also using eight college-age reviewers and some 30 regular contributors. Today there are just 34 full-time staff. It is a much slimmer operation, but also a much more streamlined and effective one.

We have seen Sir Clive Sinclair’s ‘toy’ computer become the best seller in Britain, enjoying unrivalled software support from games which have ranged from utter drivel to demonstrations of the kind of skills that even mainframe programmers would envy. Recently we saw the 8-bit market start to falter as budget-priced games took hold and unit sales fell; this has particularly hit the Spectrum, yet the games are still being produced and we are always capable of being surprised by some new piece of cleverness. And despite the much discussed fall-off of sales generally, Spectrum magazines continue to ride high. The ‘Shropshire fanzine’ of early 1984 attained the highest sales in Britain of any computer magazine — and at one point the highest world-wide sales of any British computer magazine and is still the market leader, along with its sister publication ZZAP!

It is difficult to predict what the next four years will bring, but you can be sure that CRASH will aim to be the best, whatever the incidental difficulties; as I write this, upstairs in the Art Department Markie Kendrick and his fellow designer Wayne Allen are laying out the Christmas Specials of CRASH and ZZAP!. We thought it would be a tough task for three, but unexpectedly just two people are doing it, because Art Director Gordon Druce has recently decided to leave. By the time you read this, however, you will know they succeeded nonetheless.

Have an enjoyable Christmas and see you next year.

At the conclusion of this history, I thought it would be appropriate to give a credit to some of the people who, either in the limelight or behind the scenes, have helped make CRASH through the years. In alphabetical order:

Gareth Adams, Wayne Allen, Kim Andersen, Jon Bates, Michael Baxter, Ciarán Brennan, Derek Brewster, Robin Candy, Sebastian Clare, Sue Colet, Ian Craig, Tim Croton, Mel Croucher, Karl Cowdale, Gordon Druce, Richard Eddy, Paul Evans, Tony Flanagan, Franco Frey, Oliver Frey, Kelvin Gosnell, Simon N Goodwin, Dominic Handy, Dave Hawkes, Philippa Irving, Brendon Kavanagh, Roger Kean, Markie Kendrick, Graeme Kidd, Carol Kinsey, David Lester, Gary Liddon, Tony Lorton, Fran Mable, Rosetta Macleod, Sean Masterson, John Minson, Sally Newman, Nick Orchard, Lee Paddon, Barnaby Page, Michael Parkinson, Chris Passey, Denise Roberts, Nick Roberts, Mark Rothwell, Angus Ryall, Bill Scolding, Dick Shiner, Hannah Smith, Jeremy Spencer, Ben Stone, Paul Sumner, Gareth Sumpter, Matthew Uffindell, Massimo Valducci, Bym Welthy, David Western, Nik Wild; plus all the guys at Scan Studios, Neil Townley and everyone at Carlisle, and John and Jo at Tortoise Shell.

And John Edwards, who got in all those adverts at the start that paid for it.

December 1987, Issue No. 47

Released on November 26th

When you’re wandering around a newsagent’s, what grabs the attention is a cover with a striking design or image. In taking Incentive’s Freescape game Driller as a cover theme, Oliver gave himself a problem: to make it obvious what the painting was about, it had to contain recognisable elements from the game or the adverts, yet those were not action-packer, Driller being a more cerebral game. And of course much of Driller’s power came from its peculiar 3-D graphics, which would be hard to recreate without straight copying. So he opted for the fish-eye lens image, a neat notion which wraps virtually 360° of view into one picture.

Judge Death also appeared on the cover, drawing attention to the 16-page supplement inside the issue. This had been set up in conjunction with Piranha, to tie in with their Judge Death licensed game, after their interest in the OINK! supplement.

It was generally agreed that something from 2000AD would be even more likely to involve CRASH and ZZAP!’s readers than OINK!. 2000AD’s publishers were unwilling to participate — the title had just been bought by Robert Maxwell’s BMPC group — but Titan Books, who held rights not to the 2000AD characters themselves but to all the printed stories and artwork, were about to launch a Judge Anderson reprint series and were liaising with Piranha on the game of Judge Death. Titan were persuaded to contribute the supplement artwork, in colour.

The 2000AD stories were in black and white, so the supplement in colour in CRASH and ZZAP! was something of a novelty. Titan’s artist took the original pages, shot them to film to make a black-and-white image, then photocopied each page by a special process which rendered the image in a very pale blue. This gave him a design which he could colour in, the blue photocopy barely registering. The coloured pages were then sent to us together with the monochrome film, and we had the colour laser-scanned to provide the necessary four-colour separations. We combined them with the Titan’s monochrome film, and suddenly, there was Judge Death in full colour.

Apart from the supplement — which prevented the third part of this CRASH History going in the issue, because there weren’t enough pages to fit them both in as well as all the usual content of CRASH — and the background feature on 2000AD and Titan Books, this CRASH had the first half of Robin Candy’s huge feature on tie-ins. It was an appropriate time to examine the growth of tie-ins over four years; licences seemed to be growing ever more important, and CRASH was in retrospective mood anyway.

January 1988, Issue No. 48

Released on December 17th

This was our fourth Christmas cover, and the conflict between a seasonal picture and the decision to feature a particular game was a problem. On the other hand, in a year of violent games, Pac-Land at least offered a more peaceful theme. I confess a disadvantage: as I write this, the painting hasn’t be done, but the idea is to have loads of Pacs playing about in the snow, and so you, as well as I, can be the judge of the result when we see it.

It is now almost exactly four years to the day that Roger Kean, Matthew Uffindell and myself sat around the only two typewriters we possessed, staring at blank sheets of paper, wondering what it was Spectrum-owners wanted to read, trying to conceive of the first edition of CRASH. I am not sure whether the three of us harboured ambitions of seeing the company grow; probably, but magazines are organic things, and somehow they grow of their own accord.

Newsfield was six people then: Roger, Oliver and Franco Frey, Matthew, Denise Roberts and myself part-time. At the moment of greatest growth (in terms of personnel), when LM was launched, it employed 60 full-time staff, also using eight college-age reviewers and some 30 regular contributors. Today there are just 34 full-time staff. It is a much slimmer operation, but also a much more streamlined and effective one.

We have seen Sir Clive Sinclair’s ‘toy’ computer become the best seller in Britain, enjoying unrivalled software support from games which have ranged from utter drivel to demonstrations of the kind of skills that even mainframe programmers would envy. Recently we saw the 8-bit market start to falter as budget-priced games took hold and unit sales fell; this has particularly hit the Spectrum, yet the games are still being produced and we are always capable of being surprised by some new piece of cleverness. And despite the much discussed fall-off of sales generally, Spectrum magazines continue to ride high. The ‘Shropshire fanzine’ of early 1984 attained the highest sales in Britain of any computer magazine — and at one point the highest world-wide sales of any British computer magazine and is still the market leader, along with its sister publication ZZAP!

It is difficult to predict what the next four years will bring, but you can be sure that CRASH will aim to be the best, whatever the incidental difficulties; as I write this, upstairs in the Art Department Markie Kendrick and his fellow designer Wayne Allen are laying out the Christmas Specials of CRASH and ZZAP!. We thought it would be a tough task for three, but unexpectedly just two people are doing it, because Art Director Gordon Druce has recently decided to leave. By the time you read this, however, you will know they succeeded nonetheless.

Have an enjoyable Christmas and see you next year.

At the conclusion of this history, I thought it would be appropriate to give a credit to some of the people who, either in the limelight or behind the scenes, have helped make CRASH through the years. In alphabetical order:

Gareth Adams, Wayne Allen, Kim Andersen, Jon Bates, Michael Baxter, Ciarán Brennan, Derek Brewster, Robin Candy, Sebastian Clare, Sue Colet, Ian Craig, Tim Croton, Mel Croucher, Karl Cowdale, Gordon Druce, Richard Eddy, Paul Evans, Tony Flanagan, Franco Frey, Oliver Frey, Kelvin Gosnell, Simon N Goodwin, Dominic Handy, Dave Hawkes, Philippa Irving, Brendon Kavanagh, Roger Kean, Markie Kendrick, Graeme Kidd, Carol Kinsey, David Lester, Gary Liddon, Tony Lorton, Fran Mable, Rosetta Macleod, Sean Masterson, John Minson, Sally Newman, Nick Orchard, Lee Paddon, Barnaby Page, Michael Parkinson, Chris Passey, Denise Roberts, Nick Roberts, Mark Rothwell, Angus Ryall, Bill Scolding, Dick Shiner, Hannah Smith, Jeremy Spencer, Ben Stone, Paul Sumner, Gareth Sumpter, Matthew Uffindell, Massimo Valducci, Bym Welthy, David Western, Nik Wild; plus all the guys at Scan Studios, Neil Townley and everyone at Carlisle, and John and Jo at Tortoise Shell.

And John Edwards, who got in all those adverts at the start that paid for it.

LOOKBACK — 1983

1983 was an astoundingly good year for the ZX Spectrum. We are told that there are now well over half a million units in our homes, and that figure must have taken a leap upwards before your Christmas turkey got carved. Success for the Spectrum has had a lot to do with its price, but a computer is only as good as its software, and the Spectrum has been well served throughout 1983.

The start of a new year is traditionally a time to take stock, so let’s take a brief look back.

Barely established on the market this time last year there were only a handful of companies producing software for Sir Clive’s new colour Spectrum, among them, of course, Sinclair itself. It is quite astonishing to see just now many software producers have appeared during the last ten months to tempt us with games for the Spectrum. Looking through my December 1981 copy of Computer & Video Games (yes, they were going back then) I noted that a company in Liverpool were offering a Star Trek game for the ZX81 — they were called BugByte. Silversoft were in the same issue with another ZX81 game of, oddly enough, Star Trek. I also spotted a small ad in the classified section for Volcanic Dungeon (make cheques payable to R Carnell), but of the big names with whom we have recently become so familiar, there was no sign, and the mag was filled with details of Atari, Intelevision and arcade news.

By April 82 Silversoft are indulging in much bigger ads with more ZX81 games available, and other names have appeared. The end of the month will see the third ZX Microfair in London and the new companies are taking advantage, dk’tronics, Kayde, a new outfit calling themselves Micro Gen Quality Products, Bug-Byte have double page ads, C-Tech has a full page, and a lorry profile bearing the letters RTIC announces the arrival of Artic on the scene. Other names in the issue which have since become familiar are Abacus, (for the Acorn Atom though), Macronics, Hewson Consultants, Addictive Games with a programme called Football Manager (which goes to show how long a game can last!) and last but most interestingly, a small ad from a company claiming to have the ‘finest machine code fast moving graphics arcade games available’ — Quicksilva.

A year later and it’s April 83. The Spectrum is well on its way to becoming the top selling personal computer and the amazing software revolution is just beginning. Opening my April issue of C&VG I first notice a blasting full page ad for Hobbit and Penetrator from Melbourne House, two games that have steadily remained in the top selling charts for all year. A spokesperson for Melbourne told me at the Personal Computer World Show that they were hoping the Hobbit would die off soon, but it shows no sign of doing so. (I’m sure they’re pleased really).

A quick flip through the issue reveals a few names who at the time were not doing any Spectrum games, like Anirog and Rabbit, but Softek has appeared and Bug-Byte are now in full glowing colour advertising Spectres, dk’tronics already have 3D Tanx out and the bully from Ritimba is Dictator, Romik have a full page, New Generation, R&R and Micromania are visible, M C Lothlorien is wargaming, Martech is buzzing, and an exciting new company has splashed out on no less than five colour pages to inform us that THE INVASION HAS BEGUN! At the time they coined the phrase Imagine probably had little idea of just how right they were. So much seems to have happened between then and now that you could be forgiven for thinking that April was really years ago.

Standing in the crowded aisles of the PCW show at the Barbican in September I had to marvel at the progress Spectrum software had made, at the quantity and the quality of the games available. It is difficult to pick out highlights from the year, and inevitably unfair on those who get left out, but at the risk of being shouted down I’ll have a go.

Certainly the early high spot was the success of Hobbit and Penetrator. Hobbit was described by one critic at the time as ‘a game by which future games will be judged’, and it sets the scene for so many Go-West-Young-Man adventures which were to follow shortly. Penetrator is still reckoned by many to be the finest Scramble game of the lot although comparing its graphics to present day standards, it looks pretty primitive. At the time, however, I remember thinking that if you could do this at home then the arcades must be dead.

Both these programs stood out at the time against the flurry of activity that took place in the invading galaxian asteroid belt. Almost every one of the newly emerging companies has had a go at these favourite arcade games, many programs being uprated versions of earlier ZX81 games. Imagine’s Arcadia comes instantly to mind as one of the better galaxian style games, Quicksilva’s Space Intruders is also worth a mention, Softek’s Firebirds was one of the better Phoenix types, and I always had a sneaky liking for Mikrogen’s quaint Space Zombies with its colourful trainload of aliens buzzing erratically around the sky. No one seems to have done all too well with asteroidal games however (though they probably sold like hot rocks). All the versions suffer from poor graphics, uninteresting colours and miscalculated attack speeds. Of the type my vote goes to Abacus with Sentinel, a game with enough complexity to make it exciting to play and watch.

Despite this concentration on the obvious, Spring resulted in a number of original games which indicated a serious attitude to the abilities of the Spectrum. Quicksilva’s Timegate by John Hollis gave a new lease of life to the Star Trek theme and introduced us to the highly realistic moving star backgrounds. From the same company Ian Andrew’s Mined-Out deserves a special mention for its nailbiting qualities and the fact that it gave Quicksilva’s copywriters the opportunity to come up with the most ludicrously obscure blurb ever written, for a game. (Something they’ve hardly looked back on either). At the same time Imagine were busy introducing us to Schizoids which relieved us of the responsibility of zapping aliens and allowed us to bulldoze them to death instead. The game was well received by critics, but I found it unplayable. They were to make up for that shortly by bringing out Molar Maul and Ah Diddums, certainly two among the most original games to emerge this year.

Leaving the asteroid belt behind and returning to earth — well almost — Psion’s Flight Simulation proved that computer games didn’t have to be all zap and Hewson’s Nightflite provided a creditable alternative for 16K users as well. Of course, as spring turned to summer you could have turned the nose of your aircraft round to buzz the Empire State Building, where another favourite was turning his back on the Vics, Orics and Beebs of this world to haunt Spectrum owners. Kong games may have been a rave in the arcades but some early Spectrum versions turned out less than wonderful. Blaby’s Killer Kong and Ocean’s Kong were among the best, but the Blaby version has the most exciting sound. Away from the heady heights of New York, Slippery Sid from Silversoft and Bozy Boa from CDS were slithering around an English Country Garden eating frogs and snails and avoiding toads and flowers, whilst their nastier cousins, the centipedes, were attacking mankind in alarming quantities. Just about everyone had a supermegasprectripede on the rampage, and I don’t think we’ve seen the last of them yet. Among the better versions were Rabbit’s recent Centropods and Silversoft’s much older Cyber Rats (okay, so a rat ain’t a centipede, but what’s a few hundred legs between friends?). Softek, C-Tech, Hewson, dk’tronics, Ocean, Macronics, CDS, R&R and Protek to name a few, all released centipedal monsters upon us during the year.

Such a host of creepie-crawlies doubtless explains why the frog population also increased drastically. My favourite was DJL’s version, Froggy, with its cute graphics and abominably smug frogs (those that didn’t get smudged, that is). Oddest frogger of the year award goes to Virgin Games for their disappointing Yomp, which swapped Paras for hoppers and then mined-them-out once they were across the road.

Leaping neatly from frogspawn to dots, the dreaded pacmania showed little signs of dying out during the year. I must say that I find it difficult to distinguish between the numerous versions, all of which have the usual features and work pretty much as well as another. Perhaps the silliest was Lasersound’s Egg Farm with its easily outwitted hens. If clearing the screen is the object of ghost-gobbling games, covering it with colour is the aim of painters. There were quite a few of those suddenly sprang up mid-year, somewhat more variable in quality than their pacman cousins. CDS promised a 3D Painter that turned out very one-dimensional, Romik gave us the most complicated and interesting with Colour Clash. A&F came out with the most classic, simply called Painter, but my best for all round goes to Blaby and their High Rise Harry. Quicksilva/Salamander’s Traxx, just released, is also an interesting and frustrating variation on the theme.

Of the host of maze and maze-oriented games it is hard to pick out any for special mention. I liked Maze Death Race by PSS, Sunshine Book’s Androids, Abersoft’s Wizard’s Warriors, and for its delightful graphics combined with hyper-panic quality, New Generation’s Escape. The monsters in this last could easily have been designed by Walt Disney himself. Most frustrating in the worst sense was ETX by Abbex, though nice to hear him talking.

On the adventure scene, I have to confess that I tend to lose patience with the interminable waiting for responses so I’m inclined to prefer programs that are good in this respect. One which wasn’t so quick but still won me over was Mikrogen’s Mad Martha, almost a verbal maze game and perhaps the most original of the lot this year. I have heard some players complaining about the arcade inserts which prevent you from getting on with the game proper, so they may not have liked Rushton’s quirky Spectrum Safari with its university-educated wildlife and greedy natives, but I did. Apart from the Hobbit, I liked Derek Brewster’s Velnor’s Lair, now marketed by Quicksilva, because of its sense of humour. Quicksilva can also boast the fastest response times yet in Smuggler’s Cove, but the game suffers from being ridiculously hard to get through.

Arcaventures made an appearance too. Quicksilva’s Xadom and Phipps Associate’s Black Planet deserve a mention, but Crystal’s Halls Of The Things was one of the most difficult, and their do-it-yourself adventure game Dungeon Master proved too daunting for me though I’m sure it’s triff really.

On a more strategical note we saw CCS with Dallas and Corn Cropper games with perhaps a little too much of the random to really imitate life. Dictator from dk’tronics did well, and of course the ubiquitous Richard Shepherd gave us Transylvanian Tower, Everest Ascent and now Devils of the Deep and Invincible Island. I’m afraid I found Superspy a little tediously mysterious. Lothlorien’s wargames came on strongly after a weak start with rather paltry updates of ZX81 games, but the later Johnny Reb and Redweed certainly gave value for money.

Coping with airliners that had grown tired of flying seemed popular too. Following on from Psion’s Flight Simulation, the Scottish company Protek gave us Airliner, where we landed a BAC 1-11 at Edinburgh — at least that was the idea, but perhaps my talents were more intended for the ground, so I followed Hewson’s advice and gave up flying for Heathrow, Air Traffic Control, an amazing program that packed everything in to 16K. Protek too, abandon the air in their newest venture, as you take to your periscope in Hunter Killer, a submarine game which could well be the first ever two-handed Spectrum game on the market.

Sports simulation programs have proliferated and even been rewarding. Addictive’s long-lived Football Manager with its edited ‘game highlights’ and strategy overtones is a definite winner. Watson has updated his Star Soccer, CRL gave us Test Match and Derby Day, but probably the oddest game was Championship Darts from Shadow, actually an effective little program, but darts is one of those games that needs the effort of the throw to work. Sitting at home behind your Spectrum keyboard doesn’t seem right. It’s funny how companies producing software all seem to get the same idea at the same time, and CDS is challenging BugByte’s market leadership with Pool, while a brand new company called Abrasco also brought out a version in time for the PCW show. In fact I think all three are better than the pub/arcade versions, but the baize could do with mowing as the balls stop so suddenly.

Beyond the obvious, we’ve been presented with some very original games, but no company has made such an auspicious start as Ultimate who put the Zouch into Ashby and Zest into the Spectrum with Jetpac, Pssst, Cookie and Tranz Am, four excellent and playable games that astonished everyone by how much they managed to pack into 16K. Ultimate are set for the battle to be the best, but their work is cut out. The latter part of the year has seen all the old favourites reasserting their position. Bug-Byte, well ahead at the beginning of the year, slipped and failed to bring out many Spectrum games, something which they have definitely put right with the incredible Manic Miner. Imagine have maintained their lead, and proved to be among the most original games’ producers. Design and packaging delays turned Zzoom into the most awaited game of the year.

We’ve seen Spectrum Games turn into Ocean and Quest into Fantasy. J K Greye makes a comeback from the long distant past and Kayde vanished without trace despite all the colour ads. Rabbit and Anirog have seen potential in the Spectrum and turned out half a dozen games in the past two months; Romik’s ‘honesty’s the best policy’ seems to have kept them well ahead too, and Psion/Sinclair are in a strong position. We saw the biggest ever launch hype with Virgin Games who limped onto the market in the summer with some of the worst games ever; and 3D has been the most misused word in the business although Artic’s 3D Combat Zone was wonderful and watch out for Quicksilva’s Ant Attack.

At this year’s PCW show it was gratifying to see how games software has asserted itself in what has traditionally been a business show and how much of it was for the Spectrum. At the start of the year probably only 15 companies catered for the Spectrum, today there are well over 80. Whichever of them does well next year, we can be pretty sure that Spectrum owners are going to benefit by having some of the best games software around.

LOOKBACK — 1984

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 (Part I). 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, the follow-up to 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 3-D 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 from 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 we still await Digital Integration’s somewhat belated 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 3-D 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 3-D adventure Legend of Avalon.

We had been treated to a special preview of Software Projects’s 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 undertitles 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 3-D 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 ‘Battle Zone’ 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. C.R.L. 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 P.S.S., 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. C.R.L. 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), C.R.L. 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 on 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.

LOOKBACK — 1985

Last year I was able to spot some trends — the death of the arcade shoot em up, the software slump, the dramatic improvement in software programming and the rise of the TV/Film/Game link up.

During 85 I think it would be fair to say that the arcade shoot em up made a significant come back, the software slump continued with many big and small companies vanishing, software programming techniques continued to improve and the TV/Film/Game tie-ins added books and commercial enterprise endorsements to become the most important aspect in games marketing. I’ll be looking at all these trends as they appear month by month, starting with the 84/85 Christmas issue, which was really our January 85 edition.

JANUARY

It’s becoming a tradition that the year should begin with the end ie Ultimately. Play The Game dashed out with the dual release of Underwurlde and Knight Lore. It was a bit ‘controversial’ in the sense that the high price tag remained and there were those who said Underwurlde was too similar to Sabrewulf despite the former being turned upright. Knight Lore was a different matter with its spanking new 3D interactive graphics (‘filmation’) which got around the fact that the game itself wasn’t so big.

Fantasy had good pre-sales of their trilogy first part, Backpackers Guide to the Universe (Part I) partly thanks to early publicity in CRASH, but the review wasn’t that hot because, despite very pretty graphics by Stewart Ruecroft and some amusing ideas from Bob Hamilton, the action content seemed to be lacking and the zoo-strategical element wasn’t sufficient. However, it looked like a promising start to what would eventually build into a gigantic three part game — but it was never realised. In the February issue we coolly reviewed Drive In and shortly afterwards Fantasy ceased to exist.

Software Projects had been a bit quiet, but in January had two games on the go, Astronut and Lode Runner, both reasonably well received critically but under-advertised and neither seemed to seriously grab the public’s attention. Instead, the Soft Proj ad budget went on their Software Super Savers, latest in the growing line of low-cost games. Despite good sales, budget games were still a bit of a joke (apart from one or two of Firebird’s), and with games like Fred’s Fan Factory and Moon Lighter among the six released, Software Super Savers didn’t seem to be breaking the tradition very much, but at least some of them were quite difficult to play.

Wanted: Monty Mole (CRASH readers’ Best Platform Game from 84) had put Gremlin Graphics right on top, but their Spectrum Potty Pigeon was a bit of a disappointment in the New Year, although it was an original re-working of Crowther’s already weak CBM64 version. Throughout the year, Gremlin would try to recapture the fresh spirit of Monty without complete success until Peter Harrap’s true follow up Monty on the Run.

Not unlike Ultimate, Vortex is another software company whose reputation rests on few and usually good games written by Costa Panayi. Their follow-up to TLL was Cyclone. It employed very similar 3D graphics to the former game with the addition of a slight strategical element, but generally we felt there was no significant advance made and it seemed to lack the lustre of excitement needed to make it a big game.

ZZAP! 64’s hero Rockford made his first appearance on the Spectrum in Boulder Dash, a game I thought absolutely marvellous despite its initially primitive-looking graphics. To play it was to become instantly addicted. It came from State Soft but was marketed by Front Runner, K-Tel’s re-named and somewhat short-lived software company.

Two big releases this month were (finally) Atarisoft’s Pole Position and Domark’s Eureka! Atari had a difficult task to beat the many previous releases all based on their road-racing arcade hit, and in fact they didn’t really manage — the game was reasonable but too late. They did try an abortive earlier release at the 84 PCW Show, but criticism was so heavy it was withdrawn for improvements to be made. Eureka!, the multi-part adventure with a £25,000 prize for the first to complete it, was described as a real game despite the hype, but Derek Brewster didn’t agree. However he did like the second ever release from Dorcas (formerly Doric), Runes of Zendos, but sadly the distribution network failed to see eye to eye with CRASH and the adventure never received the exposure and sales it deserved — very like Mizar’s Out of the Shadows.

Two other games are worth a mention — Steve Davis Snooker from CDS and The Prince from CCS. The snooker game was a typical example of endorsement games, using a well known personality to help sell a product, in this case one of the best ever snooker/pool simulations. The Prince went some way to prove that sponsorship (The Cambridge Awards) can result in good programs.

The only other item of note is that this issue saw the first column from Robin Candy, an enlarged edition of Pokes. Robin was to become a fixture if not exactly a fitting from this point on, and the bane of my life (but that’s another story).

FEBRUARY

February saw a few major releases, four from Ocean, still chasing that seemingly elusive CRASH Smash. The worthiest was probably Gift From the Gods, the first game from a new team called Denton Designs, who were all ex-lmagine programmers, partly financed by Ocean and soon to delight with several more games. The best was Match Day, the football simulation to beat them all, and a game many readers felt we dismissed unfairly without it being a Smash. The third was Hunchback II, not perhaps as delightful graphically as Hunchback, but a better game to play and at least it didn’t earn the nickname Hunchbug like the first one did. The fourth was another comeback in the form of Kong Strikes Back, an interesting but slightly indifferent game that lacked content but proved fairly tough.

Hewson Consultants came out with Technician Ted and proved that platform games could be tougher and better than Jet Set Willy. The public seemed to like it as well and it made the charts in a big way, upsetting those software houses who had turned the programmers down on the grounds that the game was merely a Willy clone. Firebird proved they could release non-budget games in Buggy Blast and made a move towards reinstating the shoot-’em-up with knobs on. Elite did the same with their next TV tie-in Airwolf and sparked some controversy — CRASH liked the game because it was tough (though not very big), whereas some other mags slated it as absolute rubbish. It did pretty well in the charts though.

But the two biggest releases in the sense of expectancy were Legend’s The Great Space Race and Beyond’s Doomdark’s Revenge. Alas, the former turned out to be the grandest flop in games software history — for once every magazine critic and virtually every reader was in agreement, the box was fine, the contents amazingly poor. Beyond, of course, fared much better and Mike Singleton’s follow up to state-of-the-art Lords of Midnight was an even better program (though some readers disagreed). The other big hype release was the Spectrum version of Ghostbusters. This Activision ‘mega tie-in’ has been claimed as the biggest seller of all time — perhaps however we felt that the great CBM64 sound track covered a lack of real game, and this was more strongly highlighted on the Spectrum with a flat and inadequate rendering of the disco hit song.

On the budget front, Mastertronic came of age with an excellent platform/maze/adventure game called Finders Keepers, upsetting some cherished beliefs (including some of ours) that budget software couldn’t crack it, while a relatively new house, Dynavision chased the definitely elusive Zaxxon game with a similar rendition called Havoc — we felt it was pretty poor.

A quiet behind-the-scenes battle for the TV quiz series Blockbusters came into the open when Macsen released a game of the same name, properly licensed, and forced Compusound to change their earlier version to something else. This turned out to be Wender Bender, marketed by Ranks High. They bullied us for some time to re-review Wender Bender on the grounds that they had had a raw deal, having received permission to do Blockbusters in the first place. Eventually we did re-review it, only to find that Ranks High suddenly weren’t answering the phone.

Another battle loomed within the pages of CRASH as a result of Derek’s dismissive review of Interceptor’s adventure Jewels of Babylon. One of the directors of the company rang and became quite insulting on the phone about both the review CRASH and Derek Brewster. Roger Kean, as is his wont, replied stingingly in the following issue.

MARCH

March saw six major games with widely differing appeal. Firebird kicked off with another large game in their ‘Gold’ range. After some frenzied last minute name changing, it emerged as Gyron, a mega-maze game with a Porsche as a prize to the first completion. Although reviewed in March, readers had to wait some time for its actual release. Shoot-’em-ups hit the vogue in a big way with Moon Cresta from Incentive, the first time this venerable and difficult arcade original had turned up on a home computer.

Micromania hit gold with their maze shoot-’em-up Project Future, but sadly it was to be Micromania’s last appearance and within another two months they were gone, owed a fortune by the collapsing distributor Tiger. Mikro-Gen’s fortunes however, never looked better with the release of another Wally Week program, the multi-character graphic adventure Everyone’s a Wally. The game was reckoned to be good enough not to need the song of the same name by Mike Berry, and if Mikro-Gen had hoped it might make the pop charts they were to be disappointed — however it did for a while become a regular musical catchphrase on the Steve Wright Show on Radio 1.

A company better known for their CBM64 games was Bubble Bus who, with their second ever Spectrum release Wizard’s Lair made a Smash. Despite the game’s visual similarity to Atic Atac and Sabrewulf, in play it was sufficiently exciting and difficult to earn its own spurs.

For adventurers, Derek thought Spiderman from Adventure International was a worthy hit from the Scott Adams stable. Sadly, the Steve Jackson games promised from Ad Int and reported in the previous issue have never materialised (although they are still being worked on). Another adventure (one from a time previous) well regarded was Castle Blackstar, slightly rewritten from its original marketing, and put out by CDS.

US Gold, riding high with their rash of American Commodore games, were not doing quite so well with the Spectrum conversions. This month saw the release of Blue Max and (finally) the real Zaxxon. Both were disappointing, the latter proving that Zaxxon was still to be done properly on the Spectrum.

Melbourne House offered us an oddity in Hellfire, a three-part game with good graphics but some strange gameplay — it didn’t really hit home. Another game that didn’t hit (probably because it simply wasn’t different enough) was Artic’s Mutant Monty, and the lack of advertising to back it up seemed to point up Artic’s continuing decline as a software house. Virgin Games was another house in some decline (at least on the Spectrum although Strangeloop for the CBM64 and Sorcery for the Amstrad did very well), but their strategy/simulation based on the evil doings of the pop business and called The Biz was well received. Evil doings were responsible for netting Monty Mole into prison but Gremlin Graphics still hadn’t recaptured the right form for their hero in Chris Kerry’s Monty is Innocent — it looked as though it required an escape to get things moving again.

Ski Star 2000 was one interesting program we reviewed, one of the first to start using icons to help the player, in this case to redesign the ski slopes. It was from Richard Shepherd — an unusual departure for them. But the news everyone wanted was the password to access the very carefully protected second program on Design Design’s 84 hit Dark Star. I was able to ‘exclusively’ reveal that to see Spectacle you had to type in ‘Everyone’s a nervous wreck’. I was thrilled — my first ever scoop.

APRIL

April was an interesting month not so much for the volume of software produced, which was actually quite low, but because Ultimate released the well advertised and eagerly awaited Alien 8 — and within days, the letters began to flow. ‘It’s a rip off’, ‘Knight Lore in space with no improvements’ were typical of some of the comments. But many thought otherwise, the CRASH team included, and decided that Alien 8 was an improvement. Besides which, a fair person might have realised that after spending so long developing the 3D graphics used in Knight Lore, Ultimate was bound to employ them again. In fact within a few months many other software houses were to have a go at similar interactive 3D graphics, proving, if nothing else, that the industry believed Ultimate were right.

Gremlin Graphics gave us a new hero in Sam Stoat (Safebreaker), related in theory to Monty Mole, but again it didn’t quite hit the spot. Mastertronic also dipped a bit with Chiller, a game that had done reasonably well on the 64 but translated poorly to the Spectrum. Ocean’s offering was the intriguing Pud Pud, a game that was definitely odd odd.

TV tie-ins continued unabated with the masters Elite and their Dukes of Hazzard and the less-often-heard-of Red Shift and a strategical adventure based on the BBC’s Tripods. Dukes of Hazzard seemed typical of Elite’s recent games, pretty good graphically but lacking in content. Both Derek Brewster and Angus Ryall slammed Tripods into the ground. Strategy and tie-ins turned out to be a winner, however, for Argus Press Software with the release of their tense adventure based on the movie Alien — the first CRASH Smash from Angus.

US Gold finally struck pay dirt and a Smash with Raid Over Moscow, a game that finally presented a reasonable Zaxxon style screen among others and was successfully hyped by the press as ‘controversial’ because of its Kremlin-attacking scenario. The ‘new look’ shoot-’em-up was given a boost by System 3’s Death Star Interceptor, which we thought was pretty good, especially the space sequence, but which some other mags regarded as utter rubbish. Romantic Robot, better known for utilities, surprised everyone by releasing Wriggler and getting a CRASH Smash, while Micromega surprised us by releasing A Day in the Life (of Sir Clive) and disappointing us for the first time. Addictive Games had lived successfully off Football Manager for an eternity, so the release of a similar game based on the software business and called Software Star was greeted with some interest, but it failed to live up to the more exciting world of soccer.

One of the other ‘majors’ Bug-Byte gave us a completely indifferent game called Stay Kool, but perhaps they were lacking heart. At the LET Show rumours suggested Argus press was taking a hand in the Liverpool company’s affairs, but nothing seemed to materialise and within weeks Bug Byte, one of the oldest software houses in the market, flopped into receivership. It wasn’t the end of the story though...

Oddity of the month, odder even than Pud Pud, was Llamasoft’s Psychadelia, not really a game, hardly a utility, just a divertissement for the eyes, and whilst marginally interesting it did seem a little pointless.

Taking of ‘majors’ April’s CRASHback looked at, among others, Ocean’s only CRASH Smash to date, Moon Alert — they still hadn’t managed another; and we looked at Worse Things Happen At Sea from Silversoft, another of the early software houses that seemed unable to repeat the previous year’s success and pull out of its doldrums...

MAY

Quicksilva, who had been quiet for some time, came out with two very different games, Fantastic Voyage and Mighty Magus, but although they were both quite good in their own ways, neither really made much impact and it looked as though another established and major house was in search of the right product. Unlike Melbourne House who released Starion and for a while looked as though they might have beaten Firebird onto the market with an Elite-like game. The 3D vector graphics were just about the fastest and smoothest yet seen on the Spectrum, and the addition of historical puzzle games made it quite unique.

In fact May was a pretty good month. Hewson Consultants came out with Steve Turner’s follow up game Dragontorc of Avalon and it was even better than its forerunner, Avalon. US Gold had two smashes in the arcade conversions of Spy Hunter and the pre-karate rage Bruce Lee. A software house that had been a bit quiet since its Ket Trilogy adventures, was Incentive, but they put that right with the furious puzzle game Confusion, and at long last Ocean made its second CRASH Smash with World Baseball Series although that was under the newly acquired name of Imagine. Even Elite, about whom we had been despairing of a game to match the graphics, came up with a strong product in the endorsed Grand National — the best yet horse racing game and one which boasted excellent equestrian animation. On the adventure front, Derek was pretty thrilled with Level 9’s latest graphic and text Emerald Isle. By and large, everyone was so pleased that even Robin Candy went psychedelic in the Playing Tips.

JUNE

A mixed bag this month with some disappointments and one or two pleasant surprises. The one ‘dead cert’ was Beyond’s Shadowfire, the first fully icon-driven graphics adventure. There was a danger that the novelty of the icons might disguise the lack of a game, but Denton Designs did a good job and the game matched its tremendous look, although Dentons themselves admitted to wanting more game elements in the follow up when they got going on it. The other Smashes for the month fell to adventure and strategy with Gremlins from Adventure International, Games Workshop’s Runestone, a ‘landscaping’ adventure to rival Lords of Midnight and Witches Cauldron, an adventure based on Mikro-Gen’s famous Wally graphics and reviewed a bit later than it should have been as it proved too difficult for Derek to get through without help! And on the strategy frontline, Angus was pleased with Arnhem from CCS, a company he had always regarded with mixed admiration and amusement for their dogged struggle to convince an uncaring world that war games could be fun. He was also surprised that Lothlorien turned in another worthy strategy game called Overlords. Lothlorien was about to be taken under the expanding wings of Argus Press Software — would it make any difference to their performance?

Legend fought back against the poor publicity generated by the flop of The Great Space Race by providing us with the graphically interesting 3D game Komplex, but despite its programming worthiness and its immense size, it still seemed to lack something in play. A&F were also back with a follow-up trying to recapture the enigmatic success of Chuckie Egg with the appropriately named Chuckie Egg 2. In addictive terms it wasn’t a patch on the first game, but it did offer numerous platform leaping locations and plenty of adventure elements to keep fans happy for some hours. Another follow up was Falcon Patrol 2 from Virgin Games (although the original had only been on the 64). This was a disappointment, a rather thin game and graphics that didn’t look as though they had progressed beyond Durell’s much earlier Harrier Attack, which the game strongly resembled.

One surprise hit was Tapper from US Gold. The game appeared a month before on the 64 and looked like a difficult one to translate well, but the Spectrum version from Platinum Productions was well up to scratch despite the inevitable animation clashes, and proved to be one of those hugely and enjoyably frustrating no-win games and one of my personal favourites.

Tie-ins and endorsements were on the increase this month; after much pre-publicity, DK’tronics released Minder, their tie-in game, based on the Thames TV series of the same name. CRASH had seen one or two very early versions, and wasn’t particularly impressed. A number of points made by Derek Brewster were passed back to the programmer, but in the event the finished game failed to excite us over much. Another tie-in was Give my Regards to Broad Street, a novel travel-and-search adventure with arcade overtones based on Paul McCartney’s musical film, which Argus Press Software brought out under their ‘Mind Games’ series. As mentioned previously, there was Gremlins, our preview of Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Jonah Barrington’s Squash and 911TS. The latter, from Elite, seemed to play too heavily on the graphics used in Grand National to be very different and the tie-in with Dunlop Tyres turned out to be more of a marketing element than it first seemed, inasmuch as the game had originally been developed purely for Dunlop. Dunlop also make sports equipment, possibly even Jonah Barrington’s squash balls (I’m no expert!), which featured in the tough simulation by Malcolm Evans of New Generation.

On the budget front Mastertronic released the unpronounceable Nonterraqueous, not a bad big-maze semi-shoot-’em-up, and to underline, as it were, the joke about budget software, Firebird came out with Don’t Buy This, a compilation of the worst ever programs that had been sent in over the past few months. Naturally enough, it sold rather well.

JULY

Into the second half of the year; traditionally the first of the slump summer months. Yet Spectrum software was holding up very well and many more good quality games were being released than during the same months of last year. One which arrived too late to do it justice in a full review was Odin’s Nodes of Yesod, so it merely got a Mangram and more of that later...

Tie-ins had a veritable field day with the big guns — Rocky Horror Show from CRL and A View To A Kill from Domark. The former, based on the decadent seventies stage show and film did rather well to capture some of the film’s feeling, and the graphics were pretty good too, sadly the game just lacked enough content to make it great. Domark’s effort (programmed by Softstone, who took over Perfection Software, who produced the early CRASH success Odyssey 1) was far weaker. The three-part game followed some of Bond’s exploits from the movie, but the game ideas were thin, Bond looked like a stick insect and all the publicity over how much money Tony Crowther was paid to write the music was wasted on Spectrum owners anyway. Nevertheless, the CRASH review was pretty kind and the game was better on the Spectrum than on the 64.

A third tie-in, however, managed to be even more awful — Super Gran from Tynesoft sent the ageing maternal heroine of Tyne & Tees TV fame hurtling through landscapes of appalling graphics with a control over her actions that only a World War I flying ace would remember. Looking at Super Gran was like looking through a time tunnel and seeing the past — at least graphically it was. Quicksilva also held a mirror up to us in the beautiful looking Glass. It had some fine points but missed one or two in the shoot-’em-up stakes and ended up giving a slight feeling of dissatisfaction on completing it. Mirrors seemed to be in the news when we Smashed Dynamite Dan from Mirrorsoft, one of my favourites (though Robin Candy has never agreed — his tough luck). The graphics lifted this platform game above most others, but some clever innovations, incredibly tough gameplay and jolly music added the spice.

Endorsement of the month award went to Alligata for their Jack Charlton’s Match Fishing. Some people reckon fishing is as interesting as watching a river cutting a valley, but the valleys are busy enough with weekend anglers and the sport is among the most popular. Match Fishing boasted an absolutely excellent lakeside scene by David Thorpe and, although the rest of the graphics weren’t up to much, the atmosphere it lent carried the rest of this enjoyable simulation along quite happily.

On the Smash side of things apart from Dynamite Dan, there was Herbert’s Dummy Run, the enjoyable romp of Master Week through a department store full of Mikro-Gen arcade games, but with a tinge of warning that perhaps the Wally Weekers were getting a touch too similar in style and content; there was Cauldron from Palace, a hit on the 64 that had been really well translated to provide a broomstick Defender and a very hard series of platform games; and surprise of the month was Lothlorien’s Battle of the Bulge, their first under the Argus banner, which left Angus Ryan nonplussed with admiration for both Lothlorien and Argus, two companies for whom previously he had had few good things to say. But for many, the big thrill was Gargoyle Games’s Dun Darach, starring Grego-celtic hero Cuchulainn in his second graphics adventure. It was a big thrill for then CRASH editor Roger Kean, who got credited on the inlay for inventing the idea of door numbers used in the game. This was one of Robin Candy’s personal favourites, and I don’t know whether that says more for him or less for the game (but at least he can spell Kookulainn, when I can’t).

Two other games in July worthy of note were Archon, a weird mix of chess-like board game and arcade action from Ariolasoft, and Super Pipeline II by Taskset, a company venturing off the 64 onto the Spectrum for the first time. The game suffered in translation with colour clashing characters, but still managed to be addictive and difficult.

AUGUST

The August issue of CRASH suffered a bit of a setback when it ran into trouble with EMAP and their Sinclair User magazine — but enough of that...

Somewhat belatedly, Nodes of Yesod got its airing and a CRASH Smash. The graphics action and ideas all contributed to making a great game from Odin (who had previously been Thor). In fact there were some great Smashes in August. Frankie Goes To Hollywood arrived and proved again that Denton Designs could come up not only with an extraordinary mixture of fluent graphics but also with some extraordinary game ideas. They also gave Ocean (proper) a real CRASH Smash. Ocean got yet another through the Imagine label with Hypersports. Not to be outdone Beyond released the two totally hateable Mad Magazine espionage experts, the Black and White spies in Spy vs Spy. Once again, the graphics were excellent, using split screen simultaneous displays for the two players, but it was the humour (taken straight from Mad) that made the game a great one.

Clever graphics were also responsible for the slick presentation of the adventure Smash The Fourth Protocol released by Hutchinsons and programmed by The Electronic Pencil Company — a name to be reckoned with in the future. Here, for the first time, Macintosh-like business icons were used to drive the adventure along, and it worked a treat — so did the adventure.

The tendency to ‘self copy’ was once again rearing its head with all sorts of people about to release karate games, but first came the boxers. Elite produced just about their best ever game in the endorsed Frank Bruno’s Boxing. The fluidity of the animation just had the edge over Rocco, a game from Spanish software house Dinamic and marketed here by Gremlin Graphics. Gremlin had won a battle with Silversoft for the rights to this and another game called Profanation, a very tough jump-and-seek game that was, in theory at least, the third part of a trilogy of which Silversoft ended up with only the first two parts, Saimazoom and Baba Liba. Gremlin Graphics got the best of the bargain.

We finally reviewed Artic’s latest release Paws, having deemed it sensible to leave it until Artic had made up their minds what to call it. Originally named Cats, after the famous musical, Artic had trouble in obtaining copyright clearance so the name changed but the game didn’t, and it was cute but hardly mega-stuff. The Covenant from PSS was much better as was CRL’s unusual Juggernaut — the sort of vehicle that gets hung up under the low half-timbered frames of quaint Ludlow town. Biggest disappointment of the month, perhaps even the quarter, was Jet Set Willy II. Software Projects had, of course scored an enormous hit with Jet Set Willy, and there was always rumoured to be a sequel on its way (Jet Set Willy and the Taxman — or something). So news of a second game was good news indeed, except that it turned out to be 40 more rooms added onto the existing game and that was pretty disappointing, especially as programmer Matthew Smith had nothing much to do with it.

SEPTEMBER

The last month of this unusually busy summer turned out a handful of goodies. Everyone had been awaiting Costa Panayi’s latest 3D developments, and expectations were well rewarded with Highway Encounter from Vortex — a very linear game with extraordinarily attractive graphics and a hero-bot looking not unlike a Dalek. It was voted a CRASH Smash within minutes, and protracted play didn’t diminish the delight. Gremlin Graphics, after much pre-warning, launched the proper follow-up to their huge molar hit of last year by Peter Harrap — Monty on the Run followed a similar pattern to its predecessor, but there were more rooms and some of the nastiest little traps yet devised for the unwary platform gamer. It tended to rather over-shadow the other Gremlin release, written by Chris Kerry, Metabolis. I thought this attractive and unusual maze/search game deserved better than it got, and its sense of humour was refreshing.

One game based more on a humorous character than on incipient humour that just arrived in time to be reviewed and Smashed, was Popeye from Dk’Tronics by the venerable author Don Priestly. Not only did the game boast super large graphics, but ones that suffered no attribute problems.

Attractive graphics have characterised 1985, often giving new life to well tried ideas. The usually novel and innovative Design Design turned their hands (or Graham Stafford’s hands) to a collect-’em-up maze game with great graphics by Stuart Ruecroft (who had been responsible for the graphics in Backpacker’s). Despite the obvious format, On the Run turned out to be likeable, fast and difficult and a Smash.

There were two ‘red’ releases in September, one an adventure and a Smash from ace writer-explorers Level 9, and one a flight simulator from Database. Red Moon impressed Derek as much for its indication of Level 9’s durability as for the game’s undoubted qualities of excitement, atmosphere and entertainment value. Red Arrows was another matter however, a disappointment after the drawn-out wait for the program’s release. It put you in the cockpit of a Red Arrow team jet, flying exhibition formation aerobatics. Unfortunately the simulation turned out slow and somewhat unrealistic.

Probably biggest disappointment of the month, though, was Ocean’s Roland’s Rat Race, a TV tie-in with really very little tied into it. Thinly disguised as a platform/maze game, you had to untangle the knot of passages in search of Roland’s kidnapped friends and get to TVAM on time. US Gold also turned out a disappointment in Buck Rogers, although a very good conversion from the 64, it lacked any real spark, not perhaps surprising in such an old arcade game.

However, another, even older game made its appearance on the computer in the form of Cluedo from Leisure Genius — the official version of this ever popular board game. The Spectrum version was rated pretty well, with everyone looking forward to the following release of Monopoly.

If the Red Arrows simulation was a let down, two others this month were not, ASP’s Nick Faldo Plays the Open turned out to be the best golf game yet using fashionable icons to make setting up shots as easy as pie and comfortably realistic; while for choo choo fans, Hewson Consultants’ Southern Belle gave us the freedom of the engine driver’s footplate on an old steam locomotive doing the Brighton run. An unusual area for simulations, and one which led one reviewer to think it easier to control an aeroplane than a train! Southern Belle, however, captivated all those who had ever wanted to grow up and be an engine driver.

That more or less rounded up September except for Domark’s release of our very own Derek Brewster’s Code Name Mat II, the follow up, not surprisingly to Code Name Mat. We had loved the latter game, with its complex 3D graphics, but the sequel seemed too similar to score heavily, and got hit hard by reviewers for not having ‘advanced’ with time. The resulting review upset Derek, a man who hardly ever complains unless it’s about me, but at least it shut up critics who had made great capital of the fact that all his other games had been CRASH Smashes, and was something funny going on?

OCTOBER

As if to calm everyone down before Christmas, October turned out to be a bit arid with only the Spectrum version of Way of the Exploding Fist from Melbourne House really standing out. Of the long promised spate of self-copy karate games, this was the first to arrive. It converted from the 64 quite successfully, and playing it well meant combining hand and eye co-ordination skills with action in such a way as to offer plenty of enjoyment and mirror the real martial art in as realistic a manner as possible on a computer.

It’s true that Ultimate scored with Nightshade, but nevertheless, there was an undertone in the reviewers’ comments that they were taking Knight Lore/Alien 8 a bit too far, and that something original was required to revitalise the classic software house image. It also wasn’t missed that a company other than Ultimate was credited with the programming...

The only other Smash was Touchstones of Rhiannon, an adapation of the Robin Hood story from Adventure International and based heavily on the recent TV series.

There was a handful of ‘solid’ games, two from US Gold having been heralded for some time — Dambusters and Bounty Bob, both big hits on the 64, both slightly flawed on the Spectrum. Bounty Bob especially seemed unable to carry its cult status across from machine to machine and resulted merely in a good platform game. Beyond’s second label Monolith offered us a rockin’ good time with Rockford’s Riot, the follow up to very successful Boulder Dash which, while still a fine game, mostly contained the same gameplay elements as its predecessor.

It was left to Derek to discover the two most unusual games of the month in the adventure section, The Rats from book publishers Hodder & Stoughton and The Secret of St Brides by a dubious organisation purporting to be St Brides School for Young Ladies, whose packaging came complete with supporting literature of a slightly off beat British ‘gels’ school type a la St Trinians (a feeling reinforced by your playing the heroine, Trixie Trinian). The Rats, based on the best seller Herbert book, made a strange combination between adventure of the ‘select an option’ type and strategy covered in a thick custard of gory horror as the player waded knee-deep through the bloodied remains of rat-gnawed London (reminding me yet again why I left the place)!

Another slightly unusual game turned up from PSS, marketing a French pinball table construction kit under the name of Macadam Bumper (it led to the review compiler being able to use the joke: Language: French machine code — yawn). With this you could play a preset table or redesign it. An excellent offering, but there’s still room yet for a really flexible pinball designer program. We also reviewed a program from our old friends at Eclipse aimed at the then-about-to-be-current craze for comet spotting and aptly named Halley’s Comet.

But if there were few heavenly bodies to be seen screaming across October’s software sky, our forward-looking telescopes were trained on deep space at new games from Gargoyle Games and Hewson Consultants, an extraordinary looking one with the appropriately heavenly body name of Tau Ceti from CRL and one set on the Zoids planet from Martech...

NOVEMBER

Hewson’s Astroclone saw veteran 3-D progger Steve Turner back in space from his sojourn in the remote past of Maroc and pitted once again against those indefatigable foe the Seiddab in a complex combination of space shoot-’em-up and 3-D room exploration game. To some degree Steve and the men from Gargoyle Games seem to have been moving on parallel courses in recent months and Astroclone had uncanny similarities to Gargoyle’s release Marsport. This introduced us to a new hero, John Kepler Marsh and the return of Gargoyle to space. Marsport was the first of a planned trilogy of space games called The Siege of Earth, complete with an excellent background story from the pen of Greg Follis about man’s meeting with aliens and its consequent results. The subtle additions to the previous Dun Darach together with Gargoyle’s inimitable mix of puzzle, pun and action made Marsport a sure-fire hit.

Tau Ceti and Zoids got previewed, but The Edge got Fairlight out for us to rave over. Here was another 3-D room exploring game with puzzles to be solved, using graphics that improved upon those employed by Ultimate and one in which objects behaved realistically in interaction with the playing character. Fairlight has been the outstanding achievement of The Edge to date. Turning the page of that issue, another Smash emerged — Elite. Firebird had purchased this cult BBC game for a fabulous sum from the programmers, converted it to the 64, where it was well received, and had spent considerable time making the Spectrum version even better (though alas, not the music)! It’s the sort of game (space trader/shoot-’em-up) you either love to death or hate. If the former, then you can’t put it down for months.

Bubble Bus also flew us to the deepest regions of space and a black hole with Stephen Crow’s follow up to his excellent Wizard’s Lair called Starquake. It had visual overtones of Underwurlde and the more recent Nodes of Yesod in its superb graphics and offered a high degree of playability with many neat touches and novel ideas.

Back on Earth, Melbourne House disappointed us slightly with Fighting Warrior, a sort of ancient Egyptian martial arts program, where it was felt that there wasn’t quite enough going on to overcome the fact that much of its content was actually the Exploding Fist control mode.

Ocean, too, brought us and our joysticks back to earth with a thump and Daley Thompson’s Super Test. Although undeniably fun, Super Test really offered nothing new over Decathlon and was over-shadowed by Hypersports.

US Gold’s November game was another monster hit from the 64, Impossible Mission, but like its stable mate Bounty Bob, it somehow failed to carry the adulation with it over to the Spectrum, resulting in a respectable enough and tough platform/exploring game.

We also saw the first ever release of a new software name, Electric Dreams, backed by Activision and fronted by ex-Quicksilva boss, Rod Cousens. The game was called Riddler’s Den and sparked a bit of a controversy with US Gold, who were also launching a budget label under the same name. Riddler’s Den was a good start priming the market for their December release...

DECEMBER

Last month is still fresh in everyone’s minds, so l won’t dwell too long on its bright points, which were numerous. At last Tau Ceti arrived and Smashed, Sandy White (of Ant Attack fame) gave us Electric Dreams’ Smash I, of the Mask. In similar visual vein, Melbourne House came up with Gyroscope and got a Smash. Microsphere surprised us with the quiet release of their skool follow up, Back to Skool and proved you can add even to a fabulous program and get another Smash. Durell got one as well with their Critical Mass, and at long, long last Digital Integration brought out Tomahawk — the game we waited almost 18 months to see. This flight simulator showed some advances over Fighter Pilot and convinced everyone of its Smash merits. Derek enjoyed (and Smashed) the Melbourne House spoof ‘adventure’ Terrormolinos, although he failed to rate Beyond’s Sorderon’s Shadow quite as highly as the Mike Singleton Midnight trilogy which it vaguely resembled. On the other hand he gave a Smash to The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole from Mosaic/Level 9.

And that just about brings us up to date. So what characterises 1985 as a software year? One thing that stands out to my mind is the way that this summer software kept on coming out, and good software too. 3-D has been almost an obsession with many programmers working in all its aspects and proving that last year’s ‘comprehensive’ 3-D article is way out of date! Gameplay has been worked on very carefully too, supporting our earlier optimistic view that computer games would not die, only improve and change their nature. But to balance the increasing complexity of games like Dun Darach and Frankie Goes to Hollywood, we’ve also seen the rebirth of the classic shoot-’em-up — except the graphics have been vastly improved over earlier efforts. Software prices have crept up of course, but budget software has come of age with Mastertronic leading the way, and on the pricier end of the range, we’ve generally been given much more for our money to make up for it.

Some software houses have disappeared — or been swallowed up or revamped, Bug-Byte for instance, one of the oldest companies, has just re-emerged as a budget label for Argus Press Software, having been bought out of receivership. Some well known names like Artic and, sadly, Micromega seem to have faded into the background and some companies have dropped out wilfully like the sadly missed Games Workshop, who after toying with some games and producing some excellent material, chose to get out of software altogether. But new names have emerged, often with startlingly strong product.

This year has also seen the growth of professional programming design teams like Denton Designs and The Electronic Pencil Company, who write games but don’t market them, leaving that to software houses who buy their talent in. In itself this is a fine idea, leaving the designers to concentrate on doing what they are best at — designing good games. I would say 1985 has been a vintage year for the quality and range of games, and current trends bode well for 1986. Games in the pipeline are promising indeed — we still await Zoids from Martech as I write — and the software business seems content with the results and hopeful of next year.

We wait with bated breath...
LM

LOOKBACK — 1986

Without doubt the prevailing trend of 1986 was for coin-op conversions, with the field being led by Elite (Capcom) and Imagine (Konami). As a result of the success of such conversions, Konami have now decided to go it alone, forego licence royalties and capitalise on the immense commercial possibilities of ‘sourcing their own product’ to slip into the jargon so beloved of the trade.

The trend towards budget games was difficult to avoid spotting during the year. A host of new labels were launched, most of them coming from established ‘mainstream’ publishers, and most of them turning out mediocre product — although there were a few bright spots on the budget front.

It has been an interesting year, ending with dark rumours that at least one of the giant corporations that have been acquiring smaller software houses (another ’86 trend) is planning to leave the market in 1987. Whatever rumblings this move may cause if it takes place, the TV, film, book, personality and toy tie-ins look set to continue almost unabated. The views on licence deals expressed by the Canvas team in our feature on Denton Designs [in issue 36] are very interesting...

But on with the appraisal of 1986, a year which saw the departure of Clive Sinclair from the home computer market, and which produced some vintage software as well as some games that have already been cast into the murk of the CRASH Towers cellar, never to see the light of day again... some might even argue that they should never have seen the light of day in the first place....

JANUARY

The Christmas Special for 1985/6, which is really the January issue, got the year off to a good start for Mastertronic, who collected a Smash for Spellbound, scoring a very respectable 95% overall. This was a good beginning to the year for programmer David Jones and his cute character Magic Knight — and it wasn’t to be his only Smash of the year...

The year also began auspiciously (LMLWD) for Walsall-based software house Elite, who collected one Smash for a surprise game which they were sent from out of the blue: Roller Coaster, and another for the first of many coin-op conversions they were to produce during the following twelve months: Commando. In fact, Elite had decided to go for a placing in the upper echelons of the software industry during 1986 — and during the year they released a lot of very strong products, concentrating mainly on coin-op conversions.

The end of 1985 saw Mikro-Gen’s brave attempt at improving the Spectrum’s capabilities with the launch of the Mikro-Plus, an interface that included a ROM, and allowed programmers to write larger games for the basic 48K machine. Sadly, the first (and only) game to appear on the Mikro-Plus system, Shadow of the Unicorn, wasn’t anything terribly special. At £14.95 it was expensive: retailers, however, didn’t get to make their standard percentage of the selling price — the hardware add-on cost over £4.00 to manufacture — and it wasn’t a very attractive proposition to the trade. The whole concept, greeted with enthusiasm in some quarters and as the answer to piracy in others (a Mikro-Plus game could only run with the hardware, and each game needed its own special interface), fizzled out rapidly. Mikro-Gen were left with an embarrassingly large quantity of redundant units, and entered 1986 licking their corporate wounds. Innovation doesn’t always pay off....

After one of the longest delays in software publishing history (but not the longest!), PSS released Swords and Sorcery — the innovative dungeon-exploring game they had been working on for an embarrassingly long period of time. Derek Brewster was impressed, and the game duly collected a Smash. Later in the year, role-Playing purists were to attack S&S in Signpost, but there was no doubt that Mike Simpson had broken new ground and crammed his game with artificial intelligence routines. Still no news, at the end of the year, of the promised expansion modules for dungeon explorers though...

Liverpudlian software house Odin followed up their excellent Nodes of Yesod with Robin of the Wood, a graphically stunning arcade adventure. They then began to put themselves on the software map as the producers of quality games — an epithet that their sister company, Thor never quite managed to achieve. Coincidentally, Robot Messiah from Alphabatim, a new company, was also reviewed in the Christmas Special. Early in the New Year, Odin and Alphabatim were at legal loggerheads over graphic routines — a little dispute that was quickly settled.

Clive Townsend, a newcomer to the Spectrum programming scene groomed by Durell, waded in with his first game Saboteur, and collected his first Smash. What a start to a programming career! Insight also stepped into the CRASH Smash Hall of Fame with a neat shoot-’em-up, Vectron, which was to emerge later in the year as a re-release from Firebird. 1986 was to be a year of corporate acquisitions.

FEBRUARY

Christmas has become a landmark for the software industry. Obviously, people are in the mood for spending money during the festive season, and software houses have always rushed to get their best products on the shelves in time for the shopping boom. Last year a lot of games missed the peak selling period and to quite a few people’s surprise, still sold remarkably well. Again in 1986, games continued selling well throughout the year — we heard reports that even the slump in demand during the summer was hardly noticeable.

The February Issue wasn’t short of Smashes. After living on tenterhooks for months (ever since Jeremy ‘I want a Zoid’ Spencer first talked to Martech and the Electronic Pencil Company), we were finally treated to the finished Zoids in CRASH Towers. To a being, we were impressed, awarding the game 96% overall. I have spotted one or two voices of dissent in my mailbag since then, but looking back I still maintain that the game was a major achievement. One of the better toy tie-ins, that shines like a beacon above Transformers, for instance...

The new Imagine, run and owned by Ocean — who purchased the name from amongst the ashes of the original debacle (LMLWD), also kicked into February with some powerful products. Two coin-op conversions from the Konami arcade achieved Smash status: Yie Ar Kung Fu and Mikie. Imagine managed to keep up this pressure throughout the year...

An unbroken track record was maintained by Ultimate with Gunfright, which used the same techniques as Nightshade, but included a great deal more in the way of gameplay. Sweevo’s World finally caught up with our deadlines, and was finished in time for a proper review in February — having been treated to no less than two previews in the months before as it neared completion. The game was a gentle departure for Gargoyle — it was more of an arcade adventure than previous releases, so much so that Greg Follis described it as ‘a piece of whimsy’. More radical departures from the puzzle-intensive style of programming were due from the Dudley trio later in the year...

A frustratingly simple game arrived from Spanish software house Dinamic, courtesy of Gremlin, who also ‘imported’ Rocco, one of three boxing simulations that vied with each other in the Spectrum ring for supremacy. West Bank took the reaction-test type of game to its logical limit — all you have to do is press one of three keys to fire through one of three doors presented on the screen. Shoot the right person or object and points are won, shoot the wrong person or a bomb and lives are lost. Almost minimalist in its simplicity, the game proved mightily addictive. As a budget game it would almost certainly have been a Smash, but at £7.95 it earned a respectable 84%.

Regarded by some as the best of the boxing simulations, Activison’s boxing game was endorsed by Barry McGuigan. Although it arrived months after Rocco and Frank Bruno entered the ring, the extra training appeared to give it the edge. On the adventure front, Activision did particularly well with Mindshadow, which Derek recommended heartily to anyone with the vaguest interest in adventuring.

Budget masters Mastertronic provided a rapid illustration of the way in which ‘cheapies’ can vary in quality. They followed up on their Christmas Smash with an appalling little game called 1985 (this would have been more aptly titled 1982), and the more respectable Soul of a Robot. It just goes to show that reading reviews is highly important when contemplating the purchase of budget titles.

Two companies that were to fade away quietly during 1985 appeared in Frontline: Central Solutions who specialised in ‘budget’ budget games (most of their catalogue had a retail price of 99p), weighed in with a mediocre strategy game called Just Imagine, while Reelax Games revealed their approach to commerce with The Trading Game. Neither impressed our tame strategist, Sean Masterson.

Firebird, who had been quiet for a while, popped out with a re-tuned, machine-coded version of Runestone, which they had snapped up when The Games Workshop decided that publishing software wasn’t a game they wanted to play.

MARCH

The Ides of March proved favourable for Mikro-Gen — they staged a dramatic recovery from the Mikro-Plus setback by pumping three games onto the market and collecting Smashes for two of them. Sir Fred was ‘imported’ from Spain, and the endearing cartoon graphics combined with tricky gameplay had the hero knight trying to rescue his damsel in the middle of a game which became a Smash. Three Weeks In Paradise, which proved to be positively the last of the Wally Week games (so it seems, at least) also collected a Smash. Another Mikro-Gen game, an in-house shoot-’em-up vaguely tied in to the TV series behind its title, Battle of the Planets, fared slightly less well at the hands of our reviewing team.

The talented team at Denton Designs also paraded two games in front of the CRASH joysticks — the follow-up to Shadowfire, called Enigma Force and an original, multi-faceted romp featuring sludge monsters and slime beasts entitled Cosmic War Toad. Both games missed Smash status quite narrowly.

In fact, Liverpudlian companies featured very prominently in March — Ocean turned in Rambo and NOMAD, achieving parallel ratings of 79%, while Imagine released the work of a Hungarian programmer in the form of M.O.V.I.E., gaining not an Oscar but a Smash.

In fact, releasing games in pairs seemed all the rage. Design Designer Simon Brattel completed work on Forbidden Planet, which was in effect a follow up to Dark Star, and Graham Stafford sent us a production copy of 2112AD, the game which starred canine hero Poddy.

Two Commodore specialists also released Spectrum games. Yabba Dabba Doo appeared on Quicksilva’s label and was written by the Taskset programmers, and Wizard Developments, the company set up by Commodore star Tony Crowther, gave Spectrum owners the benefit of a conversion of William Wobbler. They didn’t regard it as much of a benefit, it seems...

March was positively a month of twos. Two adventure games were Smashed: Lord of the Rings and Worm in Paradise, the third part of Level 9’s Silicon Dream trilogy. Two games came from the US Gold stable, one good, one poor — Winter Games and Zorro respectively. And the World War Two strategy/wargame that put you in control of Britain’s airborne defences during the Battle Of Britain, Their Finest Hour was looked at twice, by both Derek and Sean, collecting a Smash from Frontline. Mirrorsoft completed the Spitfire picture for avid fans with the release of their flight simulation, Spitfire 40, which zoomed up to the heady heights of a CRASH Smash.

Mel Croucher, the man behind Deus Ex Machina and Pimania amongst other things, came back from a short self-imposed exile researching into new hardware and the software possibilities it opens up, to produce ID for CRL — an unusual, text-based entertainment in which the player had to coax and cajole a frightened personality hiding in the Spectrum into revealing details of its past.

A few weak games arrived, including some budget titles and a very tedious football quiz, but all things considered, March was a very good month for Spectrum software...

Not a bad month for the Spectrum itself, come to that. We took a look at the new 128K machine Sir Clive launched on the public, and the speculation as to whether it would be a success began. Now that Christmas is here, if the contents of my postbag reflect the real world there is still plenty of speculation about the viability of Amstrad’s relaunched 128, the Spectrum +2.

APRIL

Whatever ‘old wives’ say about showers during this month — it doesn’t hold true for games. Although it rained games at CRASH Towers there was only one Smash in the shower. Elite turned in a straightforward implementation of Bombjack, which was devoid of frills but deliciously playable. Not a case of pushing the Spectrum to its limits, but a very entertaining and faithfully executed conversion.

A trio of games from Firebird’s so-called ‘hot’ range turned out to be not-so-hot. Worst amongst the bunch was Gerry The Germ, a game full of wit — well alright then, well-worn puerile humour — which lacked in the playability department and attracted a very lukewarm 45%. The duo behind Costa Caper, Messrs Marsden and Cooke (remember Technician Ted?) got a bit warmer and collected 64%. ‘Hotrangewise’ as Herbie Hyperbole Wright of Firebird might so easily have said, the lead game was Rasputin, a jolly 3-D romp against the forces of evil.

Star newcomer to the software world during April was Richard Welsh, whose homegrown program Frank The Flea warmed everyone’s heart, and earned a very respectable 57% for the novice programmer. We haven’t heard from Richard recently, but his last stated intention was to buy a compiler and start writing games that run in machine code.

Julian Rignall, one of the ‘Spiky Haired Ones’ from ZZAP! who terrorise the Competition Minion, filled a guest slot by looking at the new games released for the 128K Spectrum and found himself gently impressed by the capabilities of the new machine. Praise indeed, from a dedicated Commodore arcadester.

As things turned, the final review for the rather strange surfing game, Surfchamp created by Irish software house New Concepts, was not as disparaging as most people in the Towers expected it to be. Perhaps the psychological effect of using a rather silly-looking plastic surfboard didn’t have as detrimental an effect as we first supposed... The New Concepts advertisement hit an all-time low in terms of artwork standards, while their promotional sweat shirts hit an all time high in the office. Isn’t life strange?

The new Bug Byte, now owned in name by Argus Press Software, chipped in with a couple of budget games, the best of which was the rather tweely named Sodov The Sorceror in which you were involved in asking marauding dragons to go away. Well, Go Away The Sorceror wouldn’t have had much of a ring to it according to Bug Bytesupremo, Peter Holme... Roboto contributed little to the world of budget games, but Realm of Impossibility contributed nothing positive to the games-playing world or Ariolasoft’s credibility. At £1.99 it would have been a very weak title, better suited to release back in the pre-Issue One days, but at £7.95 in 1986 it was lucky to collect 10% overall. For the same money, Ariolasoft were offering Think!, a very compelling icon-driven puzzle game designed by Tigress, or for a pound more you could buy Skyfox from the same company — a very competent flight simulator. Perhaps Realm of Impossibility was Ariolasoft’s April Fool joke...

Other disappointments for April (apart from Robin Candy’s face on the cover and all over his Playing Tips supplement) included a new release from Electric Dreams who had got off to a reasonable start with I, of the Mask and Riddler’s Den. Winter Sports was less than state of the art, and arriving as it did almost in parallel with US Gold/Epyx’s Winter Games, a newly formed reputation was dented. Blade Runner from CRL was another disappointment — this time for film fans. No doubt the licence was an expensive one, but the product it inspired wasn’t... well, wasn’t inspired.

Overall, April was an interesting month, which saw a wide range of software released including a football league strategy simulation, a couple of puzzle games, a show jumping simulation (from Alligata — who resisted the temptation to get their product endorsed and ended up doing a reasonable job on an offbeat subject), a surfing simulation and a collection of more usual, run-of-the mill releases. Most embarrassing game of the month had to be Transformers, released by Ocean and programmed by Denton Designs. Not their best work by a long chalk.

MAY

‘Never cast a clout ’til May’s out’ my grandmother used to remind us all. Now we’ve entered the Binary Age, maybe software houses should update the saying and make sure that they never master ’til the bugs are out. May’s games were bug-free, and although rather fewer in number than other months, they tended to be rather higher in quality.

Lead Smash of the month was the eagerly awaited Starstrike II from the Masters of 3D (joint holders with Simon Brattel), Realtime. According to Plan A, Starstrike II was due for release before Christmas, and the trio at Realtime invested a significant sum advertising the fact. Sadly, as is so often the case, deadlines slipped and the game was ready for release (without bugs) several months later than scheduled.

Nevertheless, it went down well in the Towers. Earning gasps of admiration from every reviewer who saw it on the CRASH office Spectrums, it was clearly worth the wait. As I sit in my cramped office penning (well Hermes-ing) these words, all the reviewers in the CRASH office are currently gasping in admiration in front of another Realtime game, this time Starglider, released by Rainbird. They haven’t lost their touch...

Ultimate released their penultimate game for 1986 — Cyberun, which duly scraped a Smash and joined another Konami conversion from Imagine, Ping Pong at the 90% mark. Match Day programmer Jon Ritman launched his slick 3-D version of Batman on the world via Ocean, impressing Batman fans everywhere with the gloss and attention to detail invested in the program. And Gremlin’s combat game Way of the Tiger collected a creditable 93% which pleased the firm’s boss, Ian Stewart, and meant that the tie-in with Knight Books and the Way of the Tiger series of interactive ninja fiction had paid off. Three companies had very near misses on the Smash front: Durell still haven’t completely forgiven us for spoiling their unblemished run of Smashes by awarding Turbo Esprit 88% overall: Mike Daniels of Global winced audibly when he phoned in to discover that Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, the first of his ‘Golden Turkey’ film tie-ins, had just been pipped at 89%, while Imagine remained inscrutable about the 88% awarded to their conversion of Konami’s Green Beret.

Rather unusually, a game from Atlantis got a double rating! Opinion was so firmly divided in the office as to the merits of Supercom, a hacking game, that it received 86% overall AND 21% overall. Nothing like breaking with tradition...

Another combat game, this time a simulation of the pointy-stick school of karate, was launched on the world by Mirrorsoft but failed to add anything significant to the genre. Exploding Fist seems to be the classic in this field, even today. Another fighting game, this time of the bombs and bullets variety, came from Alligata, who dared to upset Elite, holders of the official Commando licence, with Who Dares Wins II which finally appeared on the Spectrum screen after some legal wrangling. With licences being expensive commodities, the precedent for defending game scenarios and concepts was set — a major departure from the early days, when I can remember a host of ‘clones’ appearing around every ‘original’ idea...

Electric Dreams set off on the path to film tie-ins with a disappointing rendition of Back to the Future, while on the licence front Max Headroom broke the barrier to arrive on the Spectrum. Deliciously different, Martech decided to licence a front — Samantha Fox’s — which appeared in pixellated form in Sam Fox’s Strip Poker. Some commentators suggested that Ariolasoft should have been awarded that particular licence...

The first of the Lucasfilm games appeared from Activision in the shape of Ballblazer — another delayed release — but this time one which was greeted with a measure of apathy, and Atlantis did their best to squeeze the last dribbles of humour out of the C5 in Revenge of the C5.

JUNE

Halfway through the year, and the June issue was very thin on the ground as regards licence deals and tie-ins. Ocean’s game about the lizard-aliens that starred in the series V, The Young Ones from Orpheus and the belatedly-reviewed Friday 13th from gore masters Domark were the only games that featured characters who had appeared on screens that weren’t attached to a computer. There was nothing special about any of the three, and in fact The Young Ones was a fair old disappointment.

An octet of Smashes appeared, including the first ever Smash for a 128K game — Knight Tyme written for Mastertronic by David Jones (and later to appear in a 48K version). Phil Churchyard, a regular contributor to Playing Tips POKEwise, collaborated with Paul Shirley to produce Spindizzy which collected a Smash for Electric Dreams, and made up for a couple of mediocre releases from the Southampton-based company started by Rod Cousens.

Two adventuresome games collected Smashes, Heavy on the Magick from Derek and Redhawk from the reviewing team. It looks as if Gargoyle are going to be giving their adventure/puzzle games a bit of a rest for a while as they concentrate on their arcade label, but Melbourne House released the follow-up to Redhawk, Kwah! just in time for a review in this issue. And second time around, Derek Brewster gets to evaluate the caped (or should that be feathered?) crusader’s deeds of derring-do.

Mr Masterson took the unusual step of re-Smashing Desert Rats from CCS when it arrived in 128K form — claiming that he’d forgotten first time around on the 48K version! And the issue concluded with three more Smashes — Ultimate’s last game of 1986, Pentagram, Gremlin’s vertically-scrolling platform variant with yet another ball as hero, Bounder, and Quazatron from Steve Turner on the Hewsons label.

As months go, June was quite high quality — only five games received less than 60% overall, which indicated that a summer slump in games of quality was going to be avoided this year: as indeed it was.

Large and complicated arcade adventures were flavour of the month during June: A&F waded in with Core, Probe went all robotic with Mantronix, and Glass programmer Paul Hargreaves completed the monster game Tantalus for Quicksilva.

A pair of sequels came under our reviewers’ metaphorical microscopes — they liked Alien Highway from Vortex, the follow-up to Highway Encounter, but disliked Mugsy’s Revenge from Melbourne, which was only saved from a trashing by the fact that a free copy of Mugsy was included on the tape.

Despite the awful artwork in the advertisement, Legend of the Amazon Women proved to be a passable beat-’em-up from US Gold, while the budget arm of the same enterprise offered the pseudo-mystical Secret of Levitation, which failed to rise above the half-way mark in percentage terms.

The Telecom team at Firebird went hedgehog crazy with Spiky Harold, but failed to take advantage of the licensing opportunity on the doorstep of CRASH Towers — the British Hedgehog Preservation Society has its headquarters a few miles away from my home and I regularly encounter its leading light, one Major Adrian Coles, as he constructs little ramps for the spiky creatures to use to clamber out of cattle grids ... Firebird’s other June offering, rather late for the event it parodied, was The Comet Game, a space romp loosely based on the arrival of Halley’s comet — which had turned tail and travelled deep into space when the game was released.

Time and celestial bodies wait for no man, and nor do American Footballers. All the razzmatazz surrounding the Superbowl had faded in the memory of Channel 4 viewers by the time Ocean got to the shops with Superbowl.

Unexpected Arrival Of The Month award went to Addictive who came to CRASH Towers without Kevin Toms, without Football Manager and with Kirel, a cute jumping game that won the heart of our Girlie Tipster, Hannah Smith...

JULY

The summer season began with a quartet of Smashes — and four very different games they were. Over in adventureland, Derek was knocked out by Level 9’s Price of Magik — a follow on to Red Moon — which sends the player on a quest to learn about the mystical arts. Derek insists that each of Level 9’s successive releases contain that bit more magic, in terms of what they can do with the Spectrum. Another classic coin-op conversion left the Elite stable in the form of Ghosts ’n’ Goblins, and marketeers extraordinaire Domark, finally collected their first ever Smash for Spitting, sorry, Splitting Images. A very simple, and indeed ancient concept — the sliding block puzzle — gained a new lease of life.

Could Gremlin get the hat-trick? In May they had a Smash. In June another. July came, and with it the terrible antics of a wicked character who could so easily have been the creation of an artist working for The Beano. Jack The Nipper put an interesting slant on the arcade adventure format, amused everyone and did indeed collect a Smash.

Three games that everyone had great expectations for also arrived this month, and each of them proved a disappointment. Biggles from Mirrorsoft certainly hadn’t been flying an undercover mission — the game was tied in with the film of the same name, and the level of promotion and publicity which it received meant that few people could have missed its impending arrival. When the game came in to land, however, it proved to be quite unremarkable. After a good six months’ delay, Melbourne House released Rock’n’Wrestle, which had lost the ‘rock’ on the way to the ring and, without the endorsement of Big Daddy, had very little to offer. July was also the month that we looked at the game which fell shortest of expectations; the most contentious game of 1986, World Cup Carnival. A major licence deal, a large box crammed with ‘goodies’, a cassette — a cassette containing a marginally revamped football game that originally appeared on the Artic label and was now very long in the tooth.

A handful of budget games arrived, most of them mediocre but Snodgits from Sparklers — a sort of detective game — took an unusual approach and proved very playable. Firebird entered the budget arena with a combat-decathlon variant Ninja Master, and the adventure scene with Seabase Delta which somehow captured the imagination of Derek’s readers, and was to appear in his letters page on a regular basis over the next few months.

Frontline looked at a pair of games from PSS, one good, one not so good. Theatre Europe, a game with a rather sensationalist subject, was the better of the pair and seemed likely to encourage players to think about the implications of nuclear war, involving them as it did in making decisions about the launch of nuclear missiles. ‘Everyone makes mistakes; this is PSS’s’ wrote Sean Masterson about Iwo Jima. You can’t win ’em all!

Molecule Man from Mastertronic and Equinox from Mikro-Gen offered quality fare for fans of the arcade adventure, while Martech’s cunning space game, which was tied-in with an astronomer, threw new light on the arrangement of our universe. The Planets managed to combine elements of arcade, adventure and educational games and presented a complicated and slightly daunting challenge to the player who set out on a mission to — yes, at least that part was ‘standard’ — to save the Earth from destruction.

AUGUST

The summer of this year was nothing spectacular — maybe people kept releasing games because there was nothing more pleasant to do? Whatever the reason, we were flooded with budget titles this month — unfortunately they were mostly uninspiring.

Games involving balls were popular in 1986. Apart from kicking them and hitting them in sports simulations, they also had to be bounced, rolled and jumped through hostile terrain. Bobby Bearing from The Edge rolled cut into the Metaplanes this month in search of his cousins and found a Smash on the way, and an anonymous football negotiated fire, nasty sharp pins and boxing gloves amongst a host of other nasties in Mirrorsoft’s flip screen arcade adventure Action Reflex.

Pumpkin fans got their chance to strike back in Cauldron II, Palace’s sequel in which a cute bouncy pumpkin (nearly a ball, but not quite) had to make his way round a flip screen castle in the best arcade adventure tradition, collecting the wherewithal to depose the evil Hag. Another Smash.

Firebird (perhaps spotting Sean Masterson’s favourable comments about an old Red Shift game, Rebelstar Raiders some months ago), launched a revamped version on their budget label and collected a Smash for their trouble. Spotting a gap in the market and then filling it is without doubt the route to commercial success!

Two quality arcade adventures also collected Smashes: Pyracurse from Hewson in which a large South American temple/tomb had to be explored Raiders of the Lost Ark style, and Heartland from Odin who by now had handed over the headaches of publishing games to Firebird and were concentrating on writing them.

The first games arrived from the new budget label launched at Chateau Interceptor — Players — they were met with an almost unanimous lukewarm reception, despite the hip-hop packaging. Our very own Derek Brewster also met with a poor review for his new game, Con-quest which appeared on Mastertronic’s M.A.D. label.

A couple of clones poked their noses above the ramparts — Alligata’s Budgie label turned in a fair rendition of the Wizard’s Lair theme with Labyrinthion, earning 60% overall, while Ariolasoft published another game from Dave Harper, Toadrunner, which bore a very striking resemblance to his earlier work for Electric Dreams — Riddler’s Den. Electric Dreams themselves gave film tie-ins a rest to release Hijack, which puts the player in the role of a harassed American official dealing with a terrorist incident.

Even though they collaborated with Ocean, US Gold didn’t manage to do a particularly good job on their conversion of the ageing coin-op Kung Fu Master, and their second budget release on the Americana label, Subterranean Nightmare turned out to be a bit of a bad dream.

The rush to budget software didn’t appear to be producing anything special, with mediocre products from Mastertronic, Central Solutions and Atlantis filling the remaining review pages....

SEPTEMBER

Things quietened down over September, but at last Oli was able to do the cover he’d been waiting to get to grips with, ever since he heard that Dan Dare was on its way from Virgin. Despite repeated requests, the team at Virginsimply hadn’t allowed a single early screen shot out of their programming chamber, and when the game arrived it was a complete mystery .... Moments after it had loaded it became clear that the game did justice to the cartoon hero and a Smash was on the cards. Virgin’s other game, Atlantic Challenger (which gives the player a chance to control Virgin supremo, ocean racer and litter campaigner Richard Branson) did less well. Maybe there should have been an arcade sequence in the park with one of those pointed sticks...

This was a good year for Mikro-Gen, but perhaps a slightly bad month — their new game which introduced ‘Teenage Superhero’ Ricky Steele missed Smash status by a single percentage point to the disappointment of all down in Bracknell, where Wally Week is in comfortable retirement.

Rod Bowkett’s keenly-awaited follow up to Dynamite Dan was completed in time for review and lived up to expectations — another fairly straightforward platform game, but one with so many added touches that a Smash was inevitable. And two Smashes were awarded in the adventure world — one for The Boggit, a delightful spoof on Tolkien created by Delta 4 and published by CRL, and another Smash for Incentive’s adventure-writing utility, The Graphic Adventure Creator which went on to take the homegrown adventure world by storm.

Flight simulator fans were treated to ACE by Cascade, a company whose reputation was founded in the budget compilation market, and which moved towards mainstream games publishing with a very neat airborne combat simulation.

Saving film tie-ins for later in the year, Electric Dreams went aquatic, producing a whimsical undersea romp by the name of Mermaid Madness, and an aqueous version of Panzadrome written by RAM JAM and called Xarq.

Rupert Bear and Dangermouse starred in games from Bug Byte and Sparklers respectively, but failed to achieve superstar status, while Santa Claus made an unseasonally early appearance in a game from Alpha Omega, the budget label created by CRL. No-one was likely to leave out a glass of sherry and a couple of mince pies for this Father Christmas....

After the problems they experienced with The Young Ones, Orpheus decided to stop publishing games in their own right, and instead concentrate on providing a programming and conversion service for other companies. Tujad had been completed before the decision was taken, and duly appeared on the Ariolasoft label, winning some admiration for the graphics, but breaking no new ground as an arcade adventure. French software house Infogrames did try to break new ground on the adventure/role playing front, but somehow lost direction along the way with Mandragore.

As the September issue was being written, companies were gearing up for the Personal Computer World Show and seemed to be saving the best for their stands... with a massive preview section completed, the rest of the CRASH team departed for Olympia leaving yours truly to hold the fort.

OCTOBER

The Personal Computer World Show, as always, was an event and a half where all the leading lights of the software industry paraded their promises for Christmas. C&VG carefully avoided parading Melissa Ravenflame. Despite a hard-fought sticker war, the cartoon tipster failed to materialise leaving the Show floor to our own Girlie Tipster Hannah Smith.

Trivial Pursuit arrived on the Domark stand at the show, and collected another Smash for the marketeers in the October issue — after a period in the doldrums (as far as ratings go anyway), Domark seemed set to make their mark. Elite continued their coin-op conversions, launching Paperboy and 1942 — Paperboy came remarkably close to being a hit in the ratings, while the general consensus of opinion surrounding 1942 was that it was an accurate conversion of a rather dull game. But Elite wasn’t left out — Scooby Doo, a different version to the one originally planned in late ’85 — collected a Smash. Domination of the Hotline Charts seemed to be Elite’s aim ...

After a fairly long absence from the scene, Vortex bounced back with a ball game from Costa Panayi — an elegant 3-D puzzle-cum-arcade-adventure entitled Revolution which completed the trio of Smashes for the month.

Another bevy of budget games scurried in for review and were all poor to awful except for Lap of the Gods from Mastertronic, which followed on from One Man and His Droid and collected 80%.

Tennis from Imagine got a poor reception — the best of the Konami coin-ops had already been converted, but the reception that Knight Rider received was even less favourable. Despite the interminably long wait (and the release of an early, completely different game through a mail order catalogue) Ocean had very little to offer.

The seeds of controversy were sown in two reviews — Head Coach (see the Christmas Forum) and Zythum. Mirrorsoft weren’t terribly impressed with our review and felt that we hadn’t done the game justice... The favourable review Strike Force Harrier attracted did little to mollify the affront.

Newcomers Piranha got their teeth into the software market, kicking off with Trapdoor and Strike Force Cobra and narrowly missing a Smash with Don Priestley’s colourful interpretation of the TV series starring Berk and a host of strange creatures confined below the trapdoor.

The Spectrum +2 moved closer to being reality — sample machines had been on display at the PCW Show, but didn’t get into the shops until much later....

NOVEMBER

Once again, lots of budget games came under scrutiny, and despite entries from Mastertronic and Americana, Firebird lead the field in terms of quality with Bombscare, Happiest Days of Your Life (a Wally Week clone — maybe the hero’s in retirement but the format still lives), Olli and Lissa and Thrust. The Telecom team were let down a little by Kai Temple, but no-one’s perfect, especially in the budget world...

Smaller companies led the Smash field this month — Durell provided a very unusual 3-D game with an equally unusual title, Fat Worm Blows A Sparky, Gargoyle treated everyone to an attribute-clash-free shoot-’em-up, and CCS impressed our tame strategist with Napoleon At War. Infogrames, though by no means a small company, came very close to a Smash with L’Affaire Vera Cruz, as did Gremlin with Trailblazer and Ariolasoft with the original concept of Deactivators.

Street Hawk finally got into the high street and proved to be a disappointment, but not as great a disappointment as Knight Rider. Asterix was another long-awaited game that proved less than wonderful, despite the protracted development time, and Melbourne House did nothing to improve their gently slipping image by releasing Conquestador, a cute but unremarkable arcade adventure.

Controversy began to rear its head again, when we awarded Glider Rider a Smash for the 128K machine, but didn’t make a song and dance about it because the 48K game only merited 80%.

Another bumper 164-page issue was planned for December, to cram in all the game reviews that we expected to have to cope with...

DECEMBER

With Christmas fast approaching, software houses began revealing their prime programs. Out of some thirty games which we looked at last month, only five scored less than 60% overall. Alpha Omega somehow don’t seem to have penetrated the budget market with quite the right approach — their games have consistently failed to achieve good ratings. More Omega than Alpha, in fact, with Dr What collecting a mere 17%.

Code Masters entered the budget arena with a pile of titles, which received a warm reception.

Otherwise no major surprises as promised Christmas games arrived for review... Another twelve months of CRASH History was ruled off in the ledger, and the New Year awaited eagerly.

LOOKBACK — 1987

TRENDS noticeable in 1985 and 1986 continued not only unabated throughout 1987, but even accelerated; and most major software houses fronted with licences and conversions. There are some very good reasons why coin-op arcade games should find their way onto home micros — about the same sorts of reasons why good novels find their way onto the TV and cinema screen — but good reasons aren’t enough alone; just as books can be ruined in their adaption, so can arcade originals in their conversion.

Licences are really much harder to defend, since the source is frequently unsuited to a computer game theme, and if it wasn’t so often sad, it would be an amusing sport to watch frantic programmers desperately struggling to pick on something in ‘their’ film on which they might hang a reasonable game. During 1987 the commercial notion that a ‘name’, whether it be a famous person, incident, book or fictitious character, can sell a computer game, whether it be good, indifferent or poor, took a much firmer hold. It’s a cynical notion, that reckons people are so gullible that because they adored Rombo Clone Wars starring Arnold Stalnegger at the cinema, they’ll go out in their droves and buy the licensed game from Slipshodsoft without waiting to see whether it’s any good or not.

Yet 1987 has seen at least one major software house come to terms with its reputation for unevenly implemented licences and tackle the problem in the only sensible way — place more stress on better game design, programming and, most importantly, better playtesting. A pointer to the future, and a hope, perhaps, that the more professional this industry becomes, the better the product may be, rather than poorer and less caring.

The other 8-bit trend, most noticeable with Spectrum software, has been the growth of budget labels and titles. Had CRASH opted for a ‘budget review ghetto’ a few months back, as had been internally suggested, then today there would be few pages of reviews! No-one has quite agreed yet whether the burgeoning budget is a Good Thing or a Bad One. On the whole the quality of budget releases is still universally poor when you consider how many there are, and despite the notable exceptions Mastertronic (in its various guises) and Code Masters have given us occasionally.

The saving grace has been the sheer size of the 8-bit market. Software houses don’t yet seem prepared to let full-price games slip away, and ironic as it may be, the advent of a 16-bit market with competitively priced machines like the Atari ST providing a real alternative for upgrading, is likely to force companies to produce even better Spectrum and CBM64 games to maintain the 8-bit sales.

Bearing all this in mind, let’s take a trip down cliché lane and rip through some of the good times and some of the bad of 1987...

JANUARY

AFTER a prestigious launch with The Art Studio and some complex music utilities, British Telecom’s Rainbird label had remained quiescent on the Spectrum, now it kicked off the New Year with two Smashes, Starglider and Jewels Of Darkness. The 48K Starglider was hailed as amongst the best games to grace the Spectrum, but it was the 128K version that kept the office minions working after hours, and rated at 97%, it was one of the highest Smashes ever. Written by Realtime Software (3-D Tank Duel, Starstrike), it featured incredibly fast 3-D vector graphics, an assortment of enemies to kill as well numerous missions to be undertaken, Rainbird gave it the VIP treatment from its lavish packaging to a 64-page novelette which gave clues as to how the game should be played.

Later in the year the Atari ST version featured on the TV programme Get Fresh. So impressive was Starglider that since then it has reversed natural trends to be converted into an arcade machine. It has been Rainbird’s only arcade game to date, but the company has become noted for its adventures. They took over veterans Level 9 Computing and Jewels Of Darkness was a compilation of three of Level 9’s early hits, Colossal Adventure, Adventure Quest and Dungeon Adventure. Each game was revamped with improved text and the addition of graphics. Once again Rainbird packaged it lavishly with a short novella by Peter McBride. The compilation was highly recommended by Derek.

The undead were dragged into the Spectrum’s 3-D isometric sphere with Nosferatu, licensed from the silent Twenties film of the same name. Pitting the player against the dastardly demon vampire, Nosferatu consisted of three main stages, the middle one of which had the player controlling three characters! The game was an instant Smash with reviewers, which was nice for Design Design who wrote it, and for Macmillan’s fledgling label, Piranha, who marketed it.

Piranha’s second release of the month, Rogue Trooper, again programmed by Design Design, and based on the comic-book hero made famous in 2000 AD, wasn’t received with quite the same enthusiasm as Nosferatu. Comments ranged from ‘too boring’ to ‘I could play this game for hours’, but one aspect all the reviewers agreed on was that it was just too easy to play.

Other licensed games of the month included Marble Madness, Tarzan and Space Harrier. Marble Madness clones had been floating around for months, many failing to impress. Melbourne House tried topping the lot by releasing the Marble Madness Construction Set. The inclusion of a screen designer did little to push its ratings up and many felt it was a poor effort when compared with Gyroscope, a previous variant on the same theme also by Melbourne House.

Martech’s Tarzan had you hurtling through the jungle in a loin cloth in a bid to rescue your beloved Jane from the hands of the Usanga tribe. We recognised that it contained some pretty pictures but at 73% overall the game was nothing special. Neither was Elite’s anxiously awaited conversion of the arcade hit Space Harrier, which projected the Midlands company into the New Year on a continuing spate of licensed arcade games. In truth most aspects of Space Harrier were reasonable, but it wasn’t ideally suited to the Spectrum, and without the original’s moving cabinet, the game seemed to lose something and came out with a score of 77%.

The Edge started 1987 with Fairlight II: Trail Of Darkness, sequel to the 1985 Smash Fairlight. What seemed destined to be a hit failed to live up to our expectations, falling short of a Smash with 81%. Author Bo Jangeborg was praised for the the highly detailed two-colour graphics, but was criticised for the game’s slowness and the extreme similarity that it bore to Fairlight. Just going to show that graphics maketh not a game.

January also saw Microsphere’s first release for quite some time. Could they keep up the standard set by earlier hits such as Skool Daze and Back To Skool? Contact Sam Cruise certainly did nothing to harm Microsphere’s image as a producer of original, high quality software. A Smash with 93%, Contact Sam Cruise written by Dave Reidy, was credited with having a Raymond Chandler flavour about it, as the player roamed the city streets trying to solve a case while avoiding gangland heavies partial to a bit of bashing.

Pete Cooke scored his first hit of the year for CRL with Academy, the long awaited sequel to Tau Ceti. Following in the same vein as its predecessor, Academy set tasks of varying difficulty for the player to overcome. The game also included an option to define your own skimmer, but as weight had to be taken into consideration it was impossible to equip yourself as an indestructable super fortress. Described as ‘amazingly good’, Academy was Smashed at 92%. Pete Cooke’s programming abilities seemed to have improved with his last few games, and as it turned out, Academy was not to be his last hit in 1987.

FEBRUARY

FEBRUARY deluged the Towers under an avalanche of software — obviously lots of Christmas releases that had just missed the seasonal deadline. It seemed to be the month of the tie-in with Gauntlet and Top Gun topping the bill. Incidentally a third of February’s releases came from either US Gold, Imagine or Ocean. It was also the first time in CRASH history that the ratings system was overhauled to bring it more in line with the times. From February forth the reviewers’ comments would be credited with their names.

After months of clones and poor imitations the official US Gold conversion of Gauntlet arrived, and blasted away the competition. Smashed with an overall of 92%, Gauntlet was a great game and one not to be missed. To accommodate the original’s great size the programmers had elected to use a multiload system to expand the game’s potential — not the first time a Smashed game had used this system and certainly not the last. Nevertheless even with this system the graphics were not very impressive. Where Gauntlet differed from many of its imitators was with its simultaneous two-player option, not quite as much fun as the four-player original but nevertheless a vast improvement on the one-player, antisocial clones and a huge saving in 10ps.

Electric Dreams’s first release of the year was a licensed game based on the scary movie Aliens. The player controlled Ripley, four space marines and an android as they entered the Alien Queen’s egg-laying chamber to kill her. The graphics were neat and it certainly had atmosphere, but thankfully the game wasn’t as gory as the film. We had no real complaints but just felt that it wasn’t quite good enough to warrant a Smash.

Ocean fared a touch better with their film licence, the fine aerial dogfight simulator Top Gun, which tested the player’s flying abilities to the hilt. Although it lacked Tom Cruise, and while the graphics were simplistic vector affairs, the game made up for these shortcomings in its gameplay. The player chased the computer’s plane through the heavens, trying to gun it down before it got you. If this became boring then a two-player option allowed for head-to-head combat with your best friend. Yet another hit game which proved that playing computer games isn’t necessarily antisocial.

Eccentric tie-in of the month awards went to The Archers and Donkey Kong. The Archers was released by Mosaic, but it was the skilful programming by the bunch at Level 9 that turned what was potentially a very dull game into an enjoyable experience. The object was actually to keep up the long-running radio show’s audience ratings. As with Adrian Mole, also released by Mosaic, you didn’t have to input replies but were given a number of options to choose from. Strangely, although its overall rating was 90% it wasn’t a Smash, probably an oversight between editorial and art, rather than Derek’s intention.

Ocean’s Donkey Kong was an oddity because they had released Kong some years previously. In those dim and distant days people didn’t seem to bother so much with the proprieties of licensing so perhaps Ocean thought it was time to redress the balance and do it properly. In the event, this version was licensed from the Nintendo arcade machine, and while the reviewing minions thought it a good conversion, they also felt that it was just a few years too late.

Speaking of Ocean, February saw them releasing Highlander, another game based, although loosely, on a film. Programmed by Canvas (the splinter from Denton Designs), it centred on only one aspect of the film, the fight sequences. You played the part of McLeod set against three opponents, Ramirez (very strange as he was McLeod’s friend in the film), Fizir and Kurgen (the mighties of the bunch), and each character had to be loaded separately. On the whole it was a disappointing product that bore little resemblance to events in the excellent and quirky film.

Imagine released a real clutch of games including Yie Ar Kung Fu II, Super Soccer and Konami’s Golf. Probably best of the bunch was Terra Cresta, yet another coin-op conversion. This shoot-’em-up with its vertically scrolling format bore a striking resemblance to that old arcade favourite, Xevious, the Spectrum conversion of which US Gold also released in the same month but it got a lower rating. Graphically Terra Cresta was nothing special, but shoot-’em-ups can always be great fun and this was no exception. Given an 81% rating, it was felt to be just a touch too expensive, considering what you got.

Torus, the programmers of Gyron and the Spectrum version of Elite unveiled their third game, Hive on the Firebird Gold label. Set on the insect-populated planet of Gamma V, the player penetrated the hive’s complex defences to eliminate the Queen at the centre of a network of tunnels, and needed to find a laser and other assorted goodies such as key cards to gain admittance into areas sited about the tunnels. We were divided in our opinions of the latest Torus game. Some thought it looked impressive but lacked enough real excitement to make it brilliant, while Ben felt that the game would become a cult. I guess Ben’s prophetic powers aren’t fully developed yet...

Impossaball narrowly missed out on Smash status by receiving 89%. Written by newcomer to the Spectrum John Philips and marketed by Hewson, it had the player guiding a bouncing ball down eight progressively harder corridors. The scrolling of the graphics was excellent, and in general the whole package was very polished, but it just lacked that little something that turns a good game into a Smash.

Then spring arrived...

MARCH

AFTER flushed February mordant March was most notable for its absence of good software. Perhaps the spring hadn’t quite sprung then...

Most games released hovered around the sixties mark with Feud and Ranarama standing head and shoulders above the rest.

The major event of the month was the take over of veteran Melbourne House by budget software giants Mastertronic for a claimed seven-figure sum. Both software houses still published under their own names with Melbourne House occupying the full-price range and Mastertronic concentrating its labels on the budget market.

In a doubtful attempt to prove they were still in operation, Melbourne House finally released Judge Dredd. Based on one of comics’ most famous cult characters from 2000 AD, it was always going to be a risky licence in the eyes of Dredd fans, and perhaps Melbourne House took it in entirely the wrong direction. It was basically a platform game with the player jumping around the screen shooting perpetrators (perps to the cognoscenti) who threatened Mega City One. Judge Dredd was inevitably a great disappointment to CRASH Towers, especially after waiting so long for it. The comic stories provided plenty of scope for a game but Melbourne House failed to implement any elements that made the strip a hit.

Perhaps we could be kinder to Melbourne House’s second March release? Fist II, sequel to The Way of the Exploding Fist, set you the task of finding a temple, entering it thus making you invincible, and overthrowing the evil Warlord who ruled your land with terror. Sadly, we couldn’t. Expectations ran high but the game didn’t quite deliver the goods. Despite the 16 fight moves available, the action in between fight sequences was dull, and it gave the impression of being very mundane.

Programmed by Binary Design and released by Mastertronic’s Bulldog Software label, Feud was one of the highspots of the month. Playing the part of one of two feuding medieval brothers, the object was to run around the playing area collecting ingredients to mix spells and potions which created havoc for your sibling. Feud was the first Bulldog release, and further showed how Budget games were coming of age. At £1.99 the game provided excellent value for money, with large, well animated graphics and the real bonus of gameplay which really kept the player on his toes.

Greyfell was the first release for another new games label, Starlight Software. An evil wizard had brought misery to the forced perspective world of Greyfell, and only by stomping on meanies to kill them, and by collecting useful objects, did you have a chance of ridding the land of the wizard’s baleful influence. Greyfell was well presented but its gameplay left a lot to be desired.

After eons of waiting Activision’s The Little Computer People (LCPs) finally emerged from our Spectrums, although it transpired that only 128K machines were big enough for them to inhabit. You remember the story; not so much a game more a way of life, the package supposed that Pet People were little beings who lived inside your (128K) computer, and you were responsible for feeding and keeping them happy. Each pet had its own personality and preferences, and simple keyboard instructions could request the pet to do things such as play records, take a bath or play a game with you on its (128K) computer.

But it had taken too long in coming out on the Spectrum and excitement created initially by the CBM 64 disk version had worn off. Novel it may have been, but the Spectrum’s limitations imposed on the program made it less flexible, and in truth it was a touch tedious.

Ever one for turning principles into frogs, Steve Turner took the Gauntlet theme a step further for Hewson with Ranarama. Much in the same vein as the original, Ranarama expanded on the idea and improved it a great deal. Turner, author of Dragontorc and Quazatron among others, cast the player as Mervyn, a failed sorcerer’s apprentice who, by a series of miscast spells, ends up in amphibian form. The castle has been overrun by evil warlocks and other assorted unpleasantries and Mervyn must save the day by annihilating them, and restoring himself to human form in the process. Its presentation differed from Gauntlet, fitting more than one room on screen at a time, and while the graphics were good the animation tended to get a bit messy at times. But once again it was the highly addictive gameplay that made this game a Smash for Hewson.

On the down side, Brian Clough’s Football Fortunes, which had featured on the Christmas Special cover, enjoyed less favour than fortune, with 42% for CDS, occasioning comments typical of many hybrid board/computer games reviews before it — it seemed the software side had been neglected.

US Gold’s Masters Of The Universe licence hit rock bottom, while Leisure Genius fared only slightly better with the licence they had been working on for well over a year, Scalextric. Electric Dreams, too, seemed to be a software house in search of success after its pre-Christmas launch; Explorer, the game boasting a ludicrous 40 billion mappable screens, and Tempest, the wire-frame shoot-’em-up from the arcades, failed to impress deeply.

Fortunately there was a highlight though, and undoubtedly the event of the month was an interview with Bernie Drummond and Jon Ritman, the men behind the hit game Batman, which gave the reviewing team their first glance at Head Over Heels — but more of that in a moment.

APRIL

THE APRIL issue of CRASH saw some spring-cleaning at the Towers. Founding editor and all-round slave-driver Roger Kean was taken off the mantlepiece, given a good dusting and reinstated at the helm while Graeme Kidd departed with the wintry weather for the editorship of trendy magazine LM. Hannah Smith departed from the Playing Tips for the sweet smell of pastures new, and a newcomer to these hallowed pages was Richard Eddy, who made the transition from AMTIX! to CRASH reviewer with the minimum amount of fuss besides the odd cry of ‘bwah, monster’ and his driller killer laugh.

US Gold’s CBM 64 hit Leader Board finally made it on a Spectrum green. It took us all hours of persuasion to dissuade Roger Kean from donning his flat cap and awful houndstooth-check plus-fours and giving it a bash. Leader Board was the very best golfing simulation we had seen. Featuring a four-player option, budding golfers could play on any of four 18-hole courses with three levels of play. Notorious for their boredom factor, reviewers don’t look forward to golfing simulations, but Leader Board surpassed all past expectations, and although a bit slow to play at the start, perseverance resulted in an enjoyable game which got 80%.

A strong contender for game of the year was Head Over Heels released by Ocean and written by the duo Ritman and Drummond. It had the reviewers raving.

Set in a far away galaxy, four planets ruled by the tyrannical Emperor (from the planet Blacktooth) are in turmoil. Two spies from the planet Freedom have been sent to provoke revolution and recover the lost crowns from the slave planets. Head Over Heels utilised the isometric forced perspective now a commonplace. It led to an immediate comparison with the earlier Batman as well, but Ritman and Drummond injected much into the stale format. For a start the spies Head and Heels, separated at the start, had different abilities, and were controlled as separate units or could be united to perform tasks that each alone could not. Added to this novel approach were the many puzzles, collection of objects whose purposes were not immediately apparent, and the marvellous arcade action. Head Over Heels more than adequately proved that good computer games do not depend merely on appearances but on game design as well, and it certainly deserved its rare accolade, a Smash at 97%.

Breakout games enjoyed a comeback, and Imagine’s Arkanoid received an overall score of 59%.

This souped-up version of the ancient hit, despite some odd programming which made some of its idiosyncracies a bit hard to handle, proved to be thoroughly addictive. After five years the game hadn’t made any major improvements on the original, but just went to show that some games never die, they simply get rewritten. The review led to a battle when many readers, horrified at the low rating, attacked in the Forum, a fight which was to hot up in the following month when Gremlin Graphics’ version, Krakout, received a higher percentage.

Breakout was not the only golden oldie to be rewritten this month with the advent of Classic Muncher from Bubble Bus, a variant on the well worn Pacman theme. Consisting of six infinitely repeating screens, Classic Muncher played exactly like its inspiration, and while bringing back flashes of nostalgia, it did little to impress, scoring a miserable 41%.

Telecomsoft’s first Smash of the year came in the form of Firebird Silver’s I, Ball. At £1.99 it provided astounding value for money, and after some tediously sub-average product, showed that Firebird still had it in them to produce an excellent low-cost game and give Mastertronic a run for their budgets. Most notable was the excellent digitised speech, best heard through some sort of amplifier as the Spectrum’s own inbuilt buzzer wasn’t really up to it. The gameplay was terrific and it had us all addicted within a short time.

If addiction be the food of love, then indigestion is much the same as repeating things — we had Elite’s Bombjack II which didn’t do too badly at 71% but failed to satisfy as much as its predecessor had done, there was The Growing Pains Of Adrian Mole from Mosaic (but marketed by Virgin Games this time round), which did almost as well as its ancestor at 88%, and there was Software Projects, striking back with Escape From Singe’s Castle: Dragon’s Lair II, which also did pretty well with 83%. In each case the game was more than reasonable, but the surfeit may have caused the reviewers to sicken. It looked like it was time for May...

MAY

MAY’S edition of CRASH was a bit fat as spring/summer issues go due to the inclusion of a giant 32-page Playing Tips bonanza lovingly complied by yours truly over many sleepless nights. Past years had always seen the so-called summer slump, but May managed to produce a remarkably good crop of games from a surprisingly large selection, including the latest releases from both Firebird and Ultimate.

Over 24 months Activision had not found much success with its Spectrum games but with the advent of Enduro Racer they set the record straight. Licensed from the arcade machine of the same name and programmed by Giga Games, it followed the original closely. The object of this bike race game was very simple — outrace the other bikers and complete each course in the quickest time possible. Each course contained different backdrops with logs, rocks and opponent racers acting as obstacles. Race games have always been firm favourites with the public and each year they improve in ingenuity, Enduro Racer lodged its way firmly amongst the greats of this type.

After Silver, it was Gold’s turn; following hot on the heels of the budget I, Ball, Firebird secured themselves a second Smash in as many months. Costly at £9.95, The Sentinel still provided wonderful value for money. Once again we had a game that had been a huge hit on the CBM 64, and had then taken an age to appear on the Spectrum, but the implementation was finely tuned. The daunting task of rescuing 10,000 planets from the Sentinel and its Sentries through a process of power absorption, offered the player a game of thoughtful, chess-like strategy — where much consideration had to go into each move to ensure success — and sometimes furious activity. Its originality and the sheer depth of play made it a winner.

Martianoids was Ultimate’s first release of the year — and for some time. A 3-D forced perspective game, it cast the player in a defensive role with lasers for protection against marauding Martianoid machines. The tide had been slowly turning against Ultimate over a period, and Martianoids was criticised for below-standard graphics and poor gameplay, receiving only 58%. And it wasn’t the only disappointment in May; World Games from US Gold/Epyx didn’t quite live up to expectations either. Like Winter Games it was divided into several events with the player having to wait what seemed an eternity for individual events to load. Its graphics didn’t impress as much as had its predecessor’s, but it was otherwise an adequate sports simulation.

Indigestion was narrowly avoided by Gremlin Graphics when they released Auf Wiedersehen Monty, latest in the long line of Monty Mole games which had started back in 84 with Wanted: Monty Mole. Written by Monty’s creator, Peter Harrap it followed his usual style of game, a complex platformer with devious traps and neat graphics and sound. It also sparked off a controversy within the reviewing ranks between those who were bored stiff of Monty, and those who still reckoned a game could be good despite its formulaic convention. The latter won out and Auf Wiedersehen Monty got 85% as Monty trekked across Europe to buy himself a nice Greek island so that he could be safe from the prying attentions of Intermole, the international crime fighting organisation. But in that missing five percent that would have made it a Smash like the previous Harrap ‘Monty’ games, perhaps there was a buried message that the formula was risking staleness.

Ocean hoped to give everyone a pleasant shock with Short Circuit, based somewhat loosely on the movie. It contained two distinct games, an arcade-adventure and a chase sequence. The arcade-adventure saw the hero-robot Number Five searching offices for extra parts and a means of escape, while the chase sequence, staged on a horizontally scrolling background, had him attempting to reach a van at the end of the track and escape to further adventures. Unfortunately the shock was more of a tingle, for despite the above-average graphics, the game suffered from tie-in-itis, a failure to pinpoint the film’s best aspects.

In a bygone age Gilsoft released the marvellous Quill, a machine code utility which acted as a writing system for those who wanted to create adventures but couldn’t program. Later they gave us the Quill Illustrator, and between them they supplied many a good game but were equally responsible for an influx of many bad ones. In 1987 Gilsoft excelled themselves and achieved a Smash with The Professional Adventure Writer, or PAW as it became known. A continuation of adventure writing systems, PAW was extremely well documented, making it much easier to use than existing systems. As with many adventure writers, graphics could be drawn, but PAW really came into its own with its handling of vocabulary. Derek Brewster gave it 97% — and made it a must for hopeful adventure programmers.

Reeling from the shock of a Firebird budget Smash the month before, Mastertronic hit back through their M.A.D. label with the peculiarly named Amaurote — and they got a Smash too. In Amaurote you freed sectors of a city from invading insect armies, destroying the Queen before she could produce more insect warriors and overwhelm you. Binary Design’s highly original monochromatic graphics made it look stunning. It was both playable and addictive and, in 128K mode, boasted extraordinarily atmospheric music which Ben Stone kept playing until we all felt like lasering him into oblivion.

For two years Mike Singleton had held Derek Brewster in his ‘Land Of Midnight’ thrall. Now he reappeared somewhat outside the adventure area with Throne Of Fire for Melbourne House. Though in fact he hadn’t programmed it, Mike played an important part in the game and graphics design. Throne Of Fire — three brothers battled for the throne of power with the player taking on the part of one of the brothers and the computer controlling the others — used a split-screen format similar to that of Spy vs Spy. It looked very good, but we felt it was a bit too easy to be really satisfying, although the game scored through an option for two players to take on a brother each while the computer played the remaining brother.

JUNE

TALK OF THE DEVIL, having just mentioned it, in June Spy vs Spy II popped up. Beyond’s prequel had been a Smash some years before. The follow up, titled Island Caper and released through Databyte, saw the familiar black spy and white spy running around a tropical island searching for parts of a missile, using the Trapulator to lay devious traps as the means to exterminate each other. Oddly, the monochromatic presentation of the earlier game was dropped in favour of colour — too much in fact, and ugly attribute problems gave it a rather garish appearance. This wasn’t really progress, with slow, jerky scrolling letting down a reasonably playable game, and reducing it to only 53%.

You didn’t have to be on a tropical island to enjoy the heat — this was a sunny June for a change, and there were 37 games in review! Could this really be summer? I can remember past Junes when we were lucky to scrape 15 games together. Mind you, a lot of the titles were budgets. No, we lacked not for games, but the Smashes were few.

Luckily Hydrofool from FTL, the Gargoyle Games label, gave us something to rave about — and kept us cool, for the sequel to the acclaimed Sweevo’s World had Sweevo on a new mission this time under water, cleaning out the filthy world known as Deathbowl. The famous Gargoyle sense of humour clearly emerged in Sweevo’s task, pulling out each of the four plugs that held the water in, as assorted nasties tried anything to get rid of him. Stunning 3-D isometric graphics set on several levels, amusing animation and devious puzzles made it a hit, but Hydrofool was very derivative of Sweevo’s World, and more likely to appeal, it was felt, to fans of the previous game.

In quick succession Ultimate slipped out another release in a marble vein of madness — Bubbler. It was an improvement on Martianoids, though not by sufficiently large a margin to improve their flavour to full. The planet Irkon, under the sway of the evil wizard Vadra, could be saved by corking magical bottles that controlled his power. Once again Ultimate chose to use monochromatic 3-D graphics with smooth screen scrolling. Inertial effects coupled with the awkward control method made movement along the walk-ways difficult. Presentation may have been fine but gameplay was lacking, and mixed feelings amongst the reviewers, led to an overall rating of 78%.

Not one to be outdone, June saw Derek Brewster following the Playing Tips supplement with his very own Adventure extravaganza. Rainbird finally released a Spectrum version of The Pawn, an acclaimed Atari ST hit. Sadly it came minus the pretty graphics but still enjoyed Derek’s approval at 90%.

Melbourne House managed to top this, however, with Shadows of Mordor, follow up to The Lord Of The Rings. Following the further adventures of Frodo and Sam in The Two Towers, it left the player to choose which character to play. Shadows Of Mordor retained the use of Inglish (the vocabulary system which made The Hobbit such a big hit), but only 128K Spectrums had enough memory for the graphics to be displayed.

Durell were also in full sequel mode and chasing another Smash with Saboteur II (or should it have been called Sister Of Saboteur?). With the hero of Saboteur dead, it was his sister who took up the central role in a bid to stop the Dictator from using his hi-tech missile systems, while android warriors were out to stop the avenging angeline. There were improvements, but in style of play and graphical presentation it followed the first game very closely. These similarities resulted in a rating of 83%. Had a little more originality been used it might have made it to Smash status.

Elsewhere the software front was dismal. Ocean’s Army Moves looked good but odd collision detection made it frustrating, Hewson slipped up with Gunrunner, a scrolling shoot-’em-up with a stale format, Quicksilva’s wire-frame Red Scorpion was a poor Battlezone rehash that left everyone wondering whether the once-great software label would ever find a game of merit again. Even quirky Piranha disappointed with Mr Weems, while Mario Bros from Ocean was hardly the coin-op/games console conversion we were hoping for, and most ludicrous licence (probably) of the year to date came from Activision in the quacky shape of Howard The Duck — and it was out for a duck as well.

At the very last moment Barbarian dashed to the rescue. Palace Software not only caused controversy with their adverts, but the review of the game didn’t go down too well in some quarters. Simple enough in theme, it was a savage beat-’em-up with swords in a gladiatorial arena, but the first-rate practice mode and two-player option (on the cassette’s B-side) together with fine monochromatic animation, made Barbarian one of the best fight games to emerge for a long while. Not quite a Smash, but very nearly.

JULY

NOW the ‘summer slump’ really started — it seems to get later every year — and not only did the number of games decrease but there was also a distinct lack of quality software, only Zynaps and Killed Until Dead saved the day.

Recovering from the uninspiring Gunrunner, Hewson’s next shoot-’em-up (an old-fashioned genre which had hardly ever been in their repertoire) saw a change of pace, ideas and presentation. Zynaps was a classy, high-speed, horizontally scrolling game, just about the ultimate in Nemesis clones in fact. Additional weaponry could be collected, improving your chances against the aliens but, basically you were on your own. With code by Dominic Robinson and snazzy graphics by Steve Crow looking like colourful, smooth-moving works of art, this shoot-’em-up was a joy to play. Zynaps served to relieve the boredom of a software-starved month.

The big surprise, however, was Killed Until Dead — a surprise because although the reviewing began early enough, no-one noticed how much this quiet game affected everyone else... but more of that below.

Before the month descended entirely into a slough of despond, we had Stormbringer on M.A.D., latest in the long line of Mastertronic’s ‘Magic Knight’ games. Having returned from Knight Tyme the hero had split into two personalities: one good and the other decidedly off colour. In merging the two egos you restored White Knight to his former glory. Programmed as usual by David Jones, it followed the same format of the previous Magic Knight games in collecting objects and grouping them together to solve the numerous problems. And although it lived up to expectations already set with colourful, detailed graphics and devious puzzles, we were split over it; two reviewers reckoned it an excellent buy at £2.99, the other pointed out that it added little to the well-worn formula. The result averaged out at 86%.

And then there was Thing Bounces Back — a sequel without a Spectrum predecessor. Gremlin Graphics’s Thing On A Spring had been a big CBM 64 hit with its uniquely cute boinging character in battle against wicked toys in the evil Goblin’s toy factory. In the unprecedented sequel Thing attempted to stop the flow of evil playthings by collecting components of a computer. The toy factory was an industrial complex of platforms and pipes which provided a game on par with the Monty Mole series, but disappointing documentation and awkward controls let it down considerably.

In the same month Gremlin released, at the slightly lower price of £4.99, Alien Evolution. A 3-D scrolling game with more than a passing resemblance to the ancient hit Ant Attack (reviewed in Issue One), it had the player ridding the planet’s surface of invading aliens. Though very derivative, it remained playable and reasonably addictive, but the passage of time elapsed since Ant Attack lowered its rating to 75%.

The MicroProse association with American Origin Systems, noted for their accurate attack-flight simulations and software personality boss, ace fighter pilot Wild Bill Stealey, finally resulted in the Spectrum release of F-15 Strike Eagle. Flight sims rarely look their best on the Spectrum, but this one contained as many thrills and spills as could be expected. and scored 84%.

As for the rest — well July is probably better forgotten except for...

Killed Until Dead. So there we were, sitting at the back end of the schedule, putting the last of the reviews together, when suddenly Paul Sumner noted that he’d given it 93%. Roger Kean looked at the other comments already in and let fly with a gasp! A Smash had crept up on us! US Gold’s detective game was set firmly in favourite sleuthing land, a closed environment with only fellow amateur sleuths as the victims, murderers and hunters. At the Gargoyle Hotel all the worlds greatest mystery writers had assembled for a reunion but one is a murderer and another the intended victim. Your task was to solve the mystery before the event could actually take place. Killed Until Dead was an enjoyable and involving mixture of intrigue and action in a race against time, topped off by atmospheric graphics and compelling gameplay — it illuminated gloomy July.

AUGUST

NOT CONTENT with resting on their recently regained laurels, Hewson followed up July’s Smash with yet another all-blasting shoot-’em-up called Exolon. The theme was hardly new — mercenary is hired to rid a world of numerous beasties and unfriendly military installations using a powerful laser system and grenades for the more stubborn obstacles. But Exolon’s main assets lay in its very large, brightly coloured and highly detailed graphics and the smooth animation of its central character. And the gameplay was all you would expect from a lavishly presented piece of action software. The 125 screens also showed that there was more to Exolon than just pretty graphics.

It has always seemed strange to me that no-one had picked up Flash Gordon to turn him from celluloid hero to a pixellated one, but M.A.D. finally did it and obliged with the game. Sadly the result aped some of those features which are nostalgically regarded today with fondness in the films but which don’t look so endearing in a computer game — such as a poor plot and dreadful effects. Divided into three sub-games, Flash dashed through jungles, beat up cave dwellers and showed off his prowess as a motorbike rider. The graphics were quite dreadful, and as one reviewer remarked, Flash looked somewhat like a deep-sea diver. A disappointing game that held few surprises in store for the player.

After many rumoured launches and subsequent delays, Ocean scored a Smash with the 128K version of a game based on James Clavell’s best-selling novel Tai-Pan. Central to the plot was trader Dirk Struan who wanted little out of life other than a vast fortune and to be boss of a trading empire — its Tai-Pan. It was, not unsurprisingly, a trading game where you started with a £300,000 loan to be paid back within three months. Trading games have a long and sometimes respectable Spectrum history, but they’re usually let down by repetition. Tai-Pan’s action couldn’t be described as high speed but the wealth of things to undertake, such as purchasing and crewing ships, risk taking and avoiding the depredations of pirates on the high seas, made it one of the most enjoyable games of the month.

Derek’s adventure Smash for the month marked a return to form of Macmillan’s software arm Piranha. The Big Sleaze was written by Fergus McNeill and it was a different approach for the writer renowned for his hilarious parodies of better known works such as The Lord Of The Rings (Bored Of The Rings). Cast as film noir private detective Sam Spillade you had to solve various cases that fell into your tawdry office. As with Fergus’ earlier hits it was the wit and humour perforating the text that made Derek give The Big Sleaze 93%.

Veteran 3-D Smashers Realtime Software released Starfox, their second game of the year, this time marketed by Ariolasoft offshoot Reaktör. Piloting the mighty craft Starfox, the player had to save the universe yet again from marauding aliens. It had many of the good points that made Code Name Mat and Elite such classics, and it deviated slightly from Realtime’s shoot-’em-up format. Planets had to be located, mother ships docked with, enemies destroyed and numerous other tasks had to be carried out. A combination of filled-in graphics and vectors were used to represent the enemy ships. While both Mike and Robin thought it highly impressive, Ben was not so convinced. He labelled it ‘unplayable’ and brought the overall rating down to 77%.

US Gold’s Road Runner, a conversion from the arcade game which was, in turn, based on the cartoon, failed to convince everyone. The game design wasn’t entirely satisfactory — Road Runner hurtled along roads collecting seed chased by the infamous Wile E Coyote, while trucks, crevasses, boulders and exploding mines all barred his path to long life. Through a multiload system, US Gold tried to capture the cartoon’s atmosphere with garish multicoloured graphics, but this led to the dreaded attribute problem rearing its ugly head once again, and together with complaints about the awkward character control led to an overall rating of 73%.

The other big licence was Domark’s second attempt at a James Bond film, The Living Daylights. It was divided into several levels following the main action scenes from the film. In the game this took the form of several similar scrolling sectors where you killed baddies. The only thing that seemed to change were the sector backgrounds, giving an all round sense of disappointment. Poor on-screen presentation and slack game planning let down what was potentially a fine game.

As a refreshing change from coin-op conversions and tie-ins, Pete Cooke released his second hit of the year. Micronaut One represented two changes in direction for Pete, he had moved from CRL to Nexus, and after two Tau Ceti games, abandoned the formula to do a very fast wireframe 3-D tunnel game. At that, it might have been quite ordinary, but the underground network of tunnels were infested by an insect form with three distinct biological stages to their lives which added interest to the game. And of course there was the by now accepted intricacies of Pete’s front end with multiple options, plus a racing game to improve the player’s steering abilities. Rated at 92%, it reaffirmed Pete Cooke’s position as a top programmer.

A pity as much couldn’t be said for most other programs reviewed in the issue. Ariolasoft’s licensed Challenge Of The Gobots palled very quickly, Ocean’s attractive looking Mutants turned out to be unaddictive, Reaktör had three disappointing sisters in Killer Ring, Deadringer and Mountie Mick’s Deathride (such an obsession with death!), the much-heralded Leviathan from English Software flapped and then flopped, Championship Baseball made Activision look dull and even Martech slowed up with the interesting but sluggish Catch 23. At least Virgin Games stuck firmly with their collective tongue in cheek and amused us with (was it a licence?) Trans-Atlantic Balloon Challenge. The game couldn’t possibly detract from adventurer-boss Richard Branson’s brave exploit, because it was really too silly to be taken very seriously, and we couldn’t resist giving it the very first (and probably last) CRASH Splash.

SEPTEMBER

IF CRASH had a Game Of The Month award it would undoubtedly have gone to Novagen’s Mercenary. Almost two years in the making, Mercenary must be the longest-awaited conversion ever. And the Spectrum coding by David Aubrey-Jones resulted in Mercenary’s fastest incarnation — a triumph for both programmer and machine. The player has crash-landed on the inhospitable planet Targ, and the essence of the game is to seek a craft to escape from Targ’s gravitational well. It’s to your benefit that war has raged on Targ between the Mechanoids and the Palyars for years, because to gain enough credits to buy a super ship you can be a freelance fighter for either side.

Novagen used vector graphics to represent structures above and below the planet’s surface. And while the game featured exceptionally fast, smooth-moving graphics, it also mixed in puzzle-solving to give a sense of depth. The reviewers were united in their opinion of Mercenary, giving it an Overall rating of 96%.

Virgin Games’s uneven record improved a touch with Rebel, another in the long line of bird’s-eye-view scrolling games that characterised 1987. The graphics were attractively detailed, but Rebel split reviewers over the value of its content — Paul thought it hard, Ben unoriginal. It got 76%. US Gold’s attractive but strange-looking Survivor also split the reviewers, coming in at 70% Overall.

On the budget side, there was little to recommend though quite a lot of it, few of the games achieving more than 45% (the same could be said of the full-price games, to be fair). Players made a fine exception with Joe Blade, but even that caused controversy; Mike and Paul loved the game (90%) while Mark thought it only above-average at 65%. After a few nasty scenes involving a nerf ball and a Biro our exalted editor Roger Kean intervened with a cry of ‘enerf’s enerf’ (I’ve been waiting to pull that joke for months) and an Overall rating of 84% was agreed. Playing the part of Joe Blade you explored the evil Crax Bloodfinger’s stronghold to rescue six world leaders, armed with disguises and a trusty machine gun. The cartoonesque but monochromatic graphics enhanced play, and it was agreed that Joe Blade had playability in abundance with enough thought required to keep the player returning to it time after time.

Odin had developed an ultrafast horizontal-scrolling routine which at one point they hoped might be used by Thalamus for a Spectrum conversion of Stavros Fasoulas’s Commodore 64 hit Delta. In the event nothing happened on that front, but shortly afterwards Firebird put out Odin’s Sidewize, which did bear more than a passing resemblance to Delta. Other magazines rated it quite highly, but it found less favour with CRASH at only 50% because the attack waves were all the same and predictable. And with Quicksilva going down the tubes, Imagine sliding disappointingly out with Game Over and even Piranha failing to impress much with Don Priestley’s Flunky, it was left to Ocean, Palace and Elite to score top arcade marks along with Novagen.

Continuing the spate of beat/maim/kick-’em-up-type games, Ocean served up Renegade, much to the gratification of certain bloodthirsty reviewers. Here was one of the very best street-fighting games of all, where you had to cross five landscapes to reach your lady love Lucy; the basic theme of each was to defeat muggers before they stretched you out. The graphics were detailed, marred only by the odd attribute problem. And there was certainly plenty of action, though perhaps home-computer entertainment needs a little more variation than games in the arcades.

In CRASH it looked like Novagen, not content with just one Smash in a month, had scored a second with Stifflip & Co — but it was, of course, a terrible error that apparently occurred in layout, and fortunately fooled no-one, for the game belonged to Palace. And a fine oddity it was too, featuring Viscount Stifflip and some friends in an attempt to scupper Count Chameleon’s dastardly plans for that last bastion of British hope and glory, the beloved cricket ball. By manipulating icons, you could control all four members of your team. Windowing techniques just like those in The Fourth Protocol showed the action, which programmers Binary Design had helped create. The presentation was polished and garnished with humour; plenty of puzzles and a second game on the cassette’s B-side contributed to a great product.

Elite’s contribution was Batty. Through the year there’d been a resurgence of the old Breakout-type games; we’d had Arkanoid from Imagine and Krakout from Gremlin Graphics, but Batty was the main selling point of Elite’s 6-Pak Vol.2 rather than a solo game, and is best described as an improved version of Arkanoid. Elite pushed the Breakout theme about as far as it could go, with beautiful presentation and simple but compelling gameplay. Batty went to show that good ideas never fade, they just get rewritten.

Derek’s Smash of the month was a budget game from The Power House. Custerds Quest, a humorous adventure about the antics of Sir Coward de Custerd, may have been a cheapie but programmer Craig Davies sacrificed nothing and provided a first-rate game. Derek was also pleased with Masters Of The Universe from US Gold, who successfully made amends for earlier releasing the abominable arcade version of the same game, also based on the TV series. Programmed by a large group including Mike Woodroffe (Gremlins) and Teoman Irmak (graphics for Touchstones Of Rhiannon), it played much like other, pricier Adventuresoft releases and Derek rated it at 84%.

OCTOBER

THE month’s most obvious feature was The CRASH Sampler precariously taped to the front cover, with demos such as the graphically breathtaking Driller from Incentive and GO!’s Trantor — The Last Stormtrooper. Christmas and The PCW Show loomed large, so many software houses were holding back on their latest products. Nevertheless the October issue contained its fair share of fine games.

Software Projects had been noticeably absent since Dragon’s Lair II but Hysteria marked their return. Reminiscent of Ocean’s Cobra, it failed to live up to the high standards set by the hit game despite well-defined, colourful graphics and reasonably compulsive gameplay. We felt Hysteria offered little long-term challenge. Perhaps the appeal of the beat-up-the-baddies genre was waning...

Ocean had two high-class games, Athena and Wizball. The industry watchwords were ‘computer nasty’ and sexism’. In September CRASH had reviewed Soft And Cuddly from The Power House, which unfortunately coincided with the Hungerford massacre and thus became associated with psychopathic violence, while for Game Over Imagine had pushed women about as far forward on packaging as the marketing men dared decently go, and the portrayal of women in derisory passive roles was being watched closely.

But Athena reversed the traditional stereotyped roles of men and women, with the Goddess Of Wisdom herself wielding destructive weapons in a bid to clear six levels of nasties. Unhindered by stiletto heels and running mascara, Athena could do anything the typical male hero could.

For all that, in SNK’s arcade game Athena is more Bambi than Rambo, and on the Spectrum screen she was more cute than killer; Ocean also undid their sexual-equality programme by portraying her on the packaging in male droolerama style. The gameplay closely resembled that of Ghosts ’N Goblins — Ben thought it unplayable but Ricky and Nick rated it an excellent conversion.

Wizball, on the other hand, was a different cauldron of frogs, for once uniting all the reviewers. For a start, its scenario was involving: Zark and his unpleasant horde had invaded Wizworld and bleached the once-colourful land and, so the local wizard set out at once to paint the town red and annihilate the colour-blind swarm. A big hit on the Commodore 64 from Sensible Software, it was translated faithfully to the Spectrum. The graphics were were good, with lots of attention paid to detail such as the magnificent Mount Rushmore. And even the odd colour clash didn’t stop it being Smashed.

The other two Smashes of the month were for the Firebird labels, one Gold and one Silver. I, Ball 2 (Firebird Silver) was the follow-up to the equally Smashed I, Ball. Unusually for a follow-up, I, Ball 2 was not derivative of its predecessor. It was a neatly-presented game but the real crux was its instant playability.

Bubble Bobble gave Firebird their Golden Smash. Though retailing at a higher price, the pretty Coin-op conversion wasn’t a complex game (just expensive in licence fees, no doubt). The conversion was competently carried out, and helpfully the coin-op graphics were already suitable for smaller home computers. Simple it may have been, but all the original’s addictive qualities were retained.

Plexar was good too. The M.A.D. game had distinct echoes of Gremlin’s Trailblazer — you controlled a ball bouncing along treacherous crystal roads. The playing area featured highly detailed monochromatic graphics, and the lack of colour in the playing area was cleverly disguised by colourful backgrounds. Again, it was a very simple idea but proved frustrating in the right way — just enough to keep you coming back for more.

As the year wore on, we were seeing more and more budget games. and they were better than ever before. Hewson, presumably reckoning that if you can’t beat-’em-up, join up, launched their budget label Rack-It with Draughts Genius and Ocean Conqueror, and both performed reasonably well. Draughts Genius was a good implementation of the ancient game, but apart from offering a one-player-versus-computer option it didn’t have much advantage over an ordinary draughts set. Ocean Conqueror got 77% for being an accurate submarine warfare simulation with 3-D periscope graphics and plenty to do once you’d got started.

TV cartoon series continued to spawn Spectrum tie-ins with Gremlin Graphics’s release of MASK I (possibly the first game to add the numerical suffix — they were already working on MASK II). Playing hero Matt Trekker you had to enter a time vortex and rescue your fellow MASK agents from the clutches of the VENOM organisation. It was a bird’s-eye-view, multidirectionally-scrolling shoot-’em-up-cum-puzzle-solving game played across four different backdrops. Though small and monochromatic, the graphics were well-defined, and the gameplay was enjoyable enough, but the story line bore little resemblance to the TV series.

NOVEMBER

WE had 33 games to review — not so bad, perhaps a bit on the low side for the time of year, but what was disappointing was that few of them really grabbed the attention, only four getting over 75%.

The one Smash went straight, and without argument, to Elite for Thundercats — yet another tie-in with a TV cartoon series. But the accolade really went to Gargoyle Games, who wrote the game, firmly underlining their 1987 status as developers rather than as a software house involved in marketing and distribution. Thundercats was a frantically fast, horizontally scrolling slash-’em-up that made you want to get on to the next screen just to see what happened there — the prime quality of addictiveness. And if Lion-O rather resembled Gargoyle’s older Celtic hero Cuchulainn, who cared? It was nice to see him back again.

Another TV cartoon tie-in flopped miserably for us, and that was Virgin Games’s Action Force by the ubiquitous Gang Of Five. Its neat concept was wrecked on the rocks of poor scrolling, unfair gameplay and mind-numbingly absent game. One suspected it had been rushed like mad into production without much playtesting.

Just missing the top by a few per cent, Gremlin Graphics’s rerun Jack The Nipper II In Coconut Capers proved again that the adage ‘if you have a good formula then do it several times over’ makes financial sense. The reviewers all agreed in their comments that this was a good sequel, with perhaps fewer puzzles to solve but more to see. Paul’s only grudge was that the Nipper wasn’t as naughty as before... strange, coming from an aspiring policeman.

From mid-1987 onward, Code Masters had been pushing like mad to make themselves the top budget house, with massive coverage in both computer and general media (including several national papers), much of it concentrating on the two youthful whiz-kid owners, David Darling and Richard Darling. By November there was a touch of hysteria in the publicity machine’s hype for the company’s products and the young celebrities, characterised in so many headlines and captions as ‘The Darlings Of The Industry’. In fact they had produced some very good budget titles, but everyone happily overlooked the fact that they also produced some terrible ones. November was no exception: of the four games, Professional Ski Simulator scored 79%, Dizzy received 78%, ATV Simulator scored 65% and White Heat got 17%, being described by Ben as ‘... the most simplistic, primitive and dull game I’ve had the misfortune to play...’

Professional Ski Simulator was regarded as an admirable attempt at recreating a difficult sport. Nick gave it 87%, but Robin Candy, who had developed an expensive taste for the sport and regarded payment for his CRASH writing as a slush fund looking for hard snow, gave it 71%. Dizzy, written by the Oliver Twins (made almost as adorable by the media as their bosses The Darlings), was a playable arcade adventure of sorts, but to a raucous bunch like the CRASH reviewers its cutesy appearance was something of a drawback.

US Gold, as themselves and as their new label GO! disappointed, especially with the latter’s Trantor — The Last Stormtrooper. Who could forget the graphics? They were tremendously exciting and it looked so atmospheric, but what happened to the game? Through its slick, glossy appearance Trantor received 68% from a grieving reviewing team.

And Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom and gloom fared a little worse. Ironically, Spectrum-owners enjoyed the best version of all (apart from the Atari ST’s) because the inevitable monochrome graphics lent clarity to an otherwise muddled and confusing series of screens. Gameplay was poor too: three screens wasn’t enough and they were too easy in one sense, being made hard only by frustrating factors such as pop-up thugs that killed you on the edge of the screen.

Electric Dreams also came a cropper with what should have been a great game, Supersprint, converted from the Atari coin-op. A few values carried over from the original earned it 58%, but the Spectrum implementation added nothing.

Even Derek, despite a dreadful dose of 3-D red-and-greenness he picked up on holiday, only managed a minor fit of enthusiasm with two adventures, one of which was a GAC-ed Incentive release, Karyssia Queen Of Diamonds; the other, a budget double bill from Tartan consisting of The Prospector and The Crown Of Ramtohep, was Quilled.

All in all, apart from some bright spots later in the month, it was a gloomy few weeks for software that left the Spectrum addicts feeling a bit like Indy — plunged in that temple of doom.

DECEMBER

FOR THE LAST month of the year, things picked up to give us two Smashes of great merit. First and foremost, 18 months of hard work paid off for Incentive’s new solid 3-D technique Freescape, and Driller — the first game to use the routines — proved to be among the all-time top-rated Smashes with 97%.

Flight simulations have always been a difficult area, and CRASH are often accused of not understanding them enough to be able to review them sensibly. It’s an unworthy accusation, though it’s true they tend to have a limited appeal; not so Gunship, which received 92% and so earned MicroProse a Smash as one of the best-ever helicopter simulations.

And there were five other highly-rated and entertaining games. US Gold skated back on boards with the novel 720°, Digital Integration gave us the very dangerous ice-sport simulation Bobsleigh, thrilling high-speed 3-D, Hewson showed with the unique rotating game Nebulus that the sudden loss to Telecomsoft of their long-term program-developers Graftgold (a team which includes Steve Turner and Andrew Braybrook) couldn’t deter them, and Mastertronic finally provided U.C.M. on the M.A.D. label.

Wrapping up last year’s Lookback, I noted that at the very last Code Masters ‘entered the budget arena with a pile of titles, which received a warm reception...’. And despite the occasional bug-ridden cheapie, it certainly has been the year when budget titles came of age, though often enough along the lines of ‘might is right, or never mind the quality fill the length of shelf’.

The fear of full-price software houses such as Ocean — that a danger of budget games is their price relative to the shelf space they occupy — is still real.

One shelf-foot of full-price Ocean games earns the shopkeeper some five times what the same foot of budget games would. But if a shopkeeper has a few feet of budget games in there with his full-pricers, that drags down what he sees as the per-foot profitability of his whole computer-games section. Will he (or his counterpart, the executive at a high-street chain) decide it no longer makes economic sense to sell computer games AT ALL?

And then I still contend that the lack of advertisements from budget houses (which they simply can’t afford out of the low profit they make on each game) does far more damage than merely denting magazines’ revenues — it actually creates a lower level of awareness about computer games, and with a lower thrill factor, fewer people are interested and the whole market becomes depressed.

On the other hand, the growing strength of the 16-bit market is forcing 8-bit software to grow up as well, and one thing you can say of 1987, some three years after it was firmly declared that the humble Spectrum had gone as far as it could, is that the barriers of what is possible have been pushed outward yet again, in many different ways but always to our benefit as games-players.

Already, I can see 1988 will be another interesting year...