Happenings

DUH-DUH-DUH-DUM!

Let’s face it folks, everybody’s family racks ’em off every now and then — it’s an irreversible fact of life. But nothing, NOTHING, could be as bad as the Addams Family, who get their kicks from torture, electrocution and poisoning, consider a holiday in the Bermuda Triangle as the ultimate and keep floating hands as pets.

The recent smash hit movie based on the crazy clan grossed 20 million big ones (ie, pounds — what did you think we meant?!) in its first two weeks. They first emerged as a cartoon, written by some fella called Charles Addams, who apparently based the characters on his own family — poor chap! In the mid-Sixties they landed their own TV series.

Now Ocean — ever on the ball when it comes to scooping big film names — are converting the terrifying tribe, who make Hannibal the Cannibal look like a pussy cat, into a Speccy game! Keep your eyes peeled for our preview piece, coming soon...

BORN TO BE WILD

Ah, motorbikes. Wonderful machines. Cruising along the highway, free as a bird, with all that throbbing power between your legs (oooooooo-errr!), the wind whistling in your face and no traffic jams.

And, if you ride ’em fast enough, you could knock spots off Arnold Schwarzenegger as The Terminator — look at Barry Sheen, he’s got more metal in his lower regions than Arnie’ll ever have. Thing is, you’d have to smash your bike up at several hundred miles an hour and endure excruciating pain before the Hollywood bods would even think about auditioning you. Oh, and you might die, but nothing comes easy in this life.

Our esteemed editor’s first experience on a brum-it gave her one hell of a buzz — zooming along a little country road on a racy little 125cc trial bike with her sexiest mini-skirt on, an inquisitive little bee decided it was a damn good view and went to investigate further. Yep, you’ve got it, one bee, straight up the skirt decided an upper thigh looked like a great stinging spot, screech of agony, one Hickman splattered all over the road!

Zeppelin Software are pretty keen on motorbikes, so (surprise surprise) they’re creating a game all about them, specifically the go-fast Kawasaki (give me a Harley Davidson any day — Ed), so that’s what they’ve named the game. Let’s have a butcher’s at what it’s all about:

Opening sequence

Biker chuggs along on 125 and pulls up outside Kawasaki UK HQ offices. (Gets off and goes in.)

Man at desk: “So you wanna join Team Green?”

Form on desk:
Name............
Previous Experience: Yes ( ) No ( )

You enter your name and if no experience is selected you’re sent to the track for a practice session. If yes, previous data under that name is presented as a race history.

The bikes

Over a number of seasons the user progresses through the bikes starting with:

The bigger the bike the faster it accelerates and the higher the speed needed to bank round corners. Banking too far causes rider to part company with bike. The bike displays speed, revs, fuel and gear.

Each bike has six gears and manual change. Under normal usage, a tank of fuel is enough for 16 laps, no matter what the bike. Excessive accelerating and incorrect use of gears wastes fuel.

Race sequence

A season consists of 12 races on the same bike against 11 other riders on six courses. Each race consists of: -

  1. Display of bike and its specification followed by a display and details of the course.
  2. A practice session.
  3. A timed lap to determine grid position.
  4. A race of 15, 20, 30 or 40 laps depending on bike size.
  5. If the user wins, a ‘lap of honour’ animated sequence is displayed.

Crashes

All bikes can crash, not just the user’s. A bike that drives into the back of another could be disqualified. Where two bikes have collided ahead of the user, a yellow flag appears as a warning to slow down and take evasive action. In the event of a single incident causing the collision of one third or more of the bikes, a red flag indicates a restart.

Collisions result in damage that must be repaired at the next pitstop. A serious, high speed collision puts you out of the race.

Well, there you have it, watch out for Kawasaki in our preview pages — coming soon...

CRASH GOES GREEN

It’s a jolly welcome to Big Al Green, who joins the CRASH team after the traitorous defection of Corky Caswell to our Commodore counterpart, ZZAP!

Big Al comes to the magazine fully qualified (many years of experience and research in tea making) and not only is he in the process of revolutionising the entire magazine, he’s also a beacon of fashion in the office with designer sportswear (baggy Lee T-shirt and flappy ‘MC Hammer’ trousers) and a ‘bad’ haircut (in other words he’s as bald as Captain Picard).

He often rolls erratically into the office carpark of a morning in his flash motor (a beaten up Lada), after wild nights in his heady home town of Wolverhampton. On arrival he’s usually dozy and generally useless, having spent all his spare time listening to extremely loud music of bizarre nature (Bucks Fizz, The Brotherhood Of Man, Gilbert O’ Sullivan etc). In fact he’s now completely deaf (watch out for this one’s sound ratings!).

Alan likes toast, sleeping at his desk, falling out of tall trees, driving very fast and boogieing (his greatest ambition is to appear on Dance Energy). On the other hand, he particularly dislikes boring games, his van breaking down, and zoos — he can’t get any girlfriends from there!

So bye-bye, Corky Caswell, we’ll miss your ugly mug around here, and hello to Big Al (this one’s so much more fun to whip — he screams much louder — Ed)