IT’S CHRISTMAS, HURRAH!!
Andrew ‘Santa’ Hewson
Golly gee, so it is! The snow falling on the roof tops,
chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Mr Robin Redbreast doing his head in trying
to crack the ice on the bird bath and Hewson about to release a Christmas
compilation — The Christmas Collection.
Gosh, it seems only last month Hewson released its summer compilation,
Heatwave! (It was — Ed). Anyway, The Christmas
Collection, available October, £12.99 cass and £17.99 disk,
features six smashing games: Uridium, Lightforce,
Cybernoid II, Eliminator, Exolon and
Hydrofool. Anyone for sherry and mince pies?
BUSTING AGAIN
Activision have snapped up the rights to Ghostbusters
II, the sequel to one of the most popular films of the decade. The film
opened on 16 June in the States and grossed $10 million on its first day!
Mind you, the original Ghostbusters game did jolly well itself, and
has sold over 2 million copies!!!
Force Field, the programmers who wrote Time Scanner, are working on
the Ghostbusters II game which is planned to have four different
arcade scenarios. Activision are pitching this as one of their smash hits for
Christmas alongside Power Drift and Galaxy Force II.
Ghostbusters II, from Columbia Pictures, opens in the UK in
December. Don’t call us — we’ll call you.
UNCLE SAM’S COUPE COLUMN
Yippee! The launch of the new ‘mega-Spectrum’ will
be upon us soon — yup, MGT’s SAM COUPE is nearly up and running.
From now on we’ll be taking a look at the final developments of the new
machine. Next month we’ll be taking a trip to MGT to peruse the
Coupe’s capabilities, but for now here’s what the beast will be
offering:
- The Sam Coupe has four modes of operation. Mode One is normal Spectrum
mode, so it’ll do everything a Speccy does, but a hell of a lot faster!
Mode Two is an advanced Spectrum mode and does away with any attribute clash on
games loaded in. Mode Three is an 80 column text mode, very useful for word
processing and the like. And the fourth mode is where the Sam really comes into
its own: 64 colour mode, 256 x 192 resolution, and all 64 colours can be
on-screen at once, as long as there are only 16 colours in one horizontal line.
- To make full use of Sam’s graphic capabilities Bo Jangeborg, creator
of the Fairlight duo of games, has written a graphics utility especially for
Sam.
- Music to blow your brains! SIX channel sound, in stereo, eight octaves with
256 tones per octave. Using full envelope and amp control, Sam can play some
decent music!
- Apparently, it will be very easy to convert new Speccy games to run on Sam
using the Programmer’s Development System written specially for Sam!
- Mel Croucher is writing the quick-start user manual, and cartoon artist
Robin ‘Mercy’ Evans is livening it up with humourous scrawls!!!
- The custom chip is back from Japan and ready for duplication!!!
- The Sam isn’t finished yet. We’ll bring you the full report
— properly — when it is. Unlike some other Spec mags.
NOT ANOTHER JOYSTICK!!
It’s another joystick! And this little beauty is called
the QS-118 Wizmaster (But you can call me Whizzy). It comes from
Spectravideo, makers of the incredibly popular QuickShot II, and
features three different control mechanisms, push button, thumb and finger
control, two different sized levers, two fire buttons, auto fire button and
computer system select button. Rumour has it that a kitchen sink will feature
in later versions.
Out now, and a snip at £11.95.
A CHUM FOR YOUR DISKDRIVE — THE PLUS 3 DISKMATE!
Just because MGT are busy constructing Sam, it doesn’t
mean they’re going to rest on their proverbial laurels. No sir! For here
is another spectacular utility from the Welsh wizards — the +3
Diskmate!
It’s a piece of utility software running in +3 basic and adds a myriad
(well, seven) useful commands to the disk driver. There’s BFORMAT which
is a formatting routine giving an 80 track, double-sided double-density disk
with 760K of space; DRVUSR a small routine to change the user area and drive
default mode; CATALL sends a complete catalogue to the screen or printer;
HEADLOADER allows the modification of file types; HEADCOPY reads a cassette
based program’s header and informs you if it can be transfered to disk
— if it can it lobs the program onto disk; BOOT forces the +3 into a
reset within a program, and READER is a disk header reader which copes with any
file type.
It sounds jolly useful to us and comes on a disk costing £19.99 from
MGT direct.
THIS LOOKS LIKE A JOB FOR THUNDER KNIGHT!!
Titus, who brought you the excellent Crazy Cars II,
have just announced a new arcade combat game called Knight Force.
Playing a mean looking, sword wielding, hero — The Knight of Thunder
— your quest is to enter the time warp (it’s just a jump to the
left, and a step to the ri-i-iight and past the pond...) and battle through
five different time zones, including prehistoric, medieval and present day.
Knight Force features 25 levels in all, with ‘graphically
outstanding’ backdrops of the periods, and enemies such as gnomes (?!),
dinosaurs, skeletons, ghosts and an assortment of mystical creatures.
‘Fast action and ultimate game play make Knight Force the
unprecedented creation in the history of computer games’ (hem hem), it
says on this piece of Titus paper. Do we believe them? Do we hell. But the
proof of the so-called pudding is in the eating, eh viewers?
SUPER DRAGON SLAYER!
Hello, Supes here. Look, awfully sorry about this, but it looks
like I’ve only just been released, although the reviewing blighters
featured me in issue 65. I’m from CodeMasters Plus, come on two cassettes
and cost £7.99! Pity I’m only worth 57% really.
IT’S THAT BLIMMIN’ FORCE AGAIN!!
It most certainly is, and any moment now Domark are releasing
The Star Wars Trilogy. It’s a three game compilation featuring the
coin-op conversions of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return Of The
Jedi from the Atari arcade machines.
The trilogy is Domark’s first ever compilation and it retails for
£14.99 on cassette and £19.99 on disk
Commenting on the pack, Domark’s Marketing Foxtress Clare Edgeley
said: ‘Gerrowl, snurfffulem, rooooawwr...’. But then, she was doing
her Chewbacca impression at the time.
DON’T MYTH OUT ON OFFICIAL SECRETS!!!
There’s a fab new adventure doing the ‘rounds’
at the moment; it’s called Myth, written by Paul Findley of Magnetic
Scrolls. It’s reviewed this issue and is a... find out for yourselves!
But you can’t buy it, nope. It’s free!! As long as you join
Official Secrets that is.
Official Secrets is a smashing and jolly useful adventure club run by Tony
Rainbird who started Rainbird Software years ago. Club membership costs
£22, and for that you get Confidential, a regular 32 page magazine which
mainly deals with adventures, but also covers simulations and role playing
games.
Plus a copy of Myth on +3 disk (if you don’t own a +3 you receive the
a Supreme Challenge compilation), and a copy of Gnome Ranger from Level 9 (if
you have it already, you receive Captain Blood). And you get access to the
Official Secrets Helpline, where they can solve any adventure problem.
And (gosh! what a lot!!!) there’s free membership to Special Reserve
(normally £5), another club, which offers members games at very cheap
prices!!
Official Secrets has nearly 3,000 members already and is looking for more.
Write to Official Secrets for details. A wonderful service and no
mistake!!!
HECK! IT’S A LIGHT GUN FROM CHEETAH!!
It’s just like the number 63 bus — you wait years,
and then three turn up at the same time! Or rather, two — and we’re
talking about Light Guns (which have no resemblence to buses really).
After Sinclair’s efforts to bring a new age of gaming to our itchy
trigger fingers with the Magnum, Cheetah (peripherial producer of old) hit back
with the Defender, another new light gun, which should be released in September
retailing around £25, £5 cheaper than the Magnum.
Cheetah are producing the hardware side of the Defender, which is planned to
have a more realistic gun look to it than the futuristically shaped Magnum, and
CodeMasters have the job of producing six quality games exclusively for the
Defender. Yet to be seen, the titles are: Super Trans-Am, Bronx St Cop, Harrier
Attack (a working title, expect something like Mig-29), Billy The Kid (a wild
west shoot out game), Jungle Warfare (again a working title, looks a bit like
Green Beret), and Advanced Pinball Simulator.
Top engineers at Cheetah have been working on the design and hardware for a
year, with special attention paid to the finer details like weight, trigger
balance and precision accuracy to make the gun’s ‘feel’ just
right.
Next month we’ll be bringing you the full details, with news of the
six CodeMasters games plus a smashing competition, where you can win FIFTY
— 50! — Defender light gun packs from Cheetah.