This month in... C&VG '89

News

Two years after it launched in the US, Atari were bringing the 7800 ProSystem to the UK. On paper the specs weren't up to much when compared to Nintendo and Sega's offerings, but at £69.95 it looked decent value for money. Stateside the 7800 was the number 2 selling console ahead of the Master System.

Spectravideo's popular range of Quickshot joysticks (the Quickshot II Turbo was my personal fave back in the day) was being joined by their new Wizmaster gamepad. There were three varieties - one for the standard home computers, and two for the NES (one of which was wireless via infrared). The price started at £11.95.

Meanwhile, the Megablaster was Konix's new rather uninspired joystick (£8.99).

Bullfrog were to release a data disk for "Populous" that featured four new landscapes. They were quite varied and included one where the landscape looked like LEGO blocks, and a programmer themed world with printer paper land, covered with fag ends and the like, and houses made out of old computer parts.

Domark exacted some revenge on C&VG by winning the next match in their Tengen Trophy - this time the coin-op was "Xybots".

A new C64 compilation from Rainbow Arts looked interesting as it came on CD. Apparently any old CD player could be hooked up to the C64 via the supplied interface, with games loading in 30 seconds. The games included "Impossible Mission", "Loderunner", "Dropzone" and "MULE", with the price expected to be around 20 quid.

Features

The most reported bug this month was in "Operation Wolf" for the Speccy: "On level five, when you shoot a hostage, you get a flying armoured car, and the game crashes."

NEC took out an ad in the Mean Machines section to warn people that any PC Engines bought in the UK were from unauthorised dealers and therefore completely unsupported.

Notable Previews

• "Hammerfirst" Visual Image - Amiga/ST/PC/C64/Spectrum/Amstrad/Konix
• "Cabal" Ocean - Amiga/ST/Spectrum/Amstrad/C64
• "Paperboy" Elite - Amiga/ST
• "Chase HQ" Ocean - Amiga/ST/Spectrum/Amstrad/C64
• "Attack of the Mutant Camels" Llamasoft - Konix
• "Pictionary" Domark - Amiga/ST/C64/Spectrum/Amstrad
• "Last Ninja II" System 3 - Amiga/ST
• "Operation Thunderbolt" Ocean - Amiga/ST/Spectrum/Amstrad/C64
• "Super Wonderboy" Activision - Amiga/ST/C64/Amstrad/Spectrum
• "Hard Drivin'" Domark - Amiga
• "Ghostbusters II" Activision - Amiga/ST/Spectrum/Amstrad/C64
• "Bomber" Activision - Amiga/ST/Spectrum/C64
• "Galaxy Force" Activision - Amiga/ST/Spectrum/C64/Amstrad
• "Space MAX" Hewson - Amiga/PC (unreleased?)

Notable Reviews

• "Strider" US Gold - ST 93% Amstrad 88% C&VG Hit "The best conversion from US Gold to date, and an utterly brilliant game in its own right."
• "Tusker" System 3 - C64 83% "Last Ninja meets Indiana Jones in an adventurery beat 'em up par excellence."
• "Dynamite Dux" Activision - ST 82% "Weird and wonderful cute beat 'em up with a wonderful sense of humour, marred only by a lack of combat moves."
• "Xenon II" Bitmap Brothers/Imageworks - Amiga 96% ST 94% C&VG Hit "Using the samples from the recording, David Whittaker has transferred the whole Megablast track into the Amiga version, and the bass line backs the action throughout the game. Utterly superb."
• "Indiana Jones III The Adventure Game" Lucasfilm/US Gold - PC 91% C&VG Hit "A highly enjoyable and addictive arcade adventure in the mould of Zak McKracken which combines great graphics and sound with superb playability."
• "Space Quest III" Sierra/Activision - ST 83% "An enjoyable and addictive addition to the Space Quest series, and a good buy for adventure fans."
• "Fiendish Freddy" Mindscape - Amiga 85% C&VG Hit "A bit pricey - but the zany humour, brilliant animation and simple addictiveness make this a worthy addition to anyone's software collection."
• "Omni-Play Basketball" Mindscape - Amiga 80% C64 79% "A vast range of options and good graphics are marred by minimal sound effects and a slow loader."
• "Rainbow Islands" Andrew Braybrook/Firebird - ST 93% C&VG Hit "Not just another coin-op conversion. Put your ST out of sight and you could believe you had the arcade game in your bedroom."
• "Pacland" Namco - PC Engine 90% C&VG Hit "An utterly superb conversion: this IS the coin-op, right down to the very last detail."
• "Final Lap Twin" Namco - PC Engine 93% C&VG Hit "A classic two-player race game with excellent graphics, superb playability and massive lasting appeal."
• "Ninja Warriors" He Systems - PC Engine 82% "A tough, action-packed and addictive beat 'em up which budding ninja assassins should find very enjoyable."
• "Gunhed" Hudson - PC Engine 96% C&VG Hit "Urbleburbleburble. Utterly incredible, super-smooth, ultra-fast mega-blast that blows all other shoot 'em ups out of the water."
• "Cyber Cross" Face - PC Engine 80% "A novel twist on the beat 'em up theme with plenty of action and lots to do."
• "Thunderforce" Sega - Megadrive 80% "A great shoot 'em up. It's tough, but the appeal is a bit short lived due to the lack of live's."
• "Wonder Boy III" Sega - Master System 86% "Cute and cuddly platform adventure with piles of addiction guaranteed."

Charts

Amiga

1. "Populous" Bullfrog/EA
2. "Kick Off" Dino Dini/Anco
3. "Lords of the Rising Sun" Cinemaware/Mirrorsoft

All Formats

1. "Robocop" Ocean
2. "Enduro Racer" Hit Squad
3. "Postman Pat" Alternative

This month in... C&VG '89

News

Atari unveiled their impressive handheld, the Lynx. Julian Rignall got to check it out and was gobsmacked: "Erm... hmmm... What can I say about the most exciting thing to happen to the games industry since the invention of the home console?"

Sinclair (aka Amstrad) were to launch a new bundle. The "Action Pack" would consist of a Spectrum +2 (£149) or +3 (£199), a Magnum light gun and 6 games.

US Gold's KIXX label had some classic C64 games lined up for £2.99 cassette, £4.99 disk including: "Summer Games", "World Games", "Pit Stop II", "Cybernoid", "Mission Elevator" and "Gauntlet"/ "Gauntlet II". Amiga & ST owners would be getting "World Class Leaderboard" and... er... the rather bad "Outrun", both at £9.99.

C64, Spectrum and Amstrad owners had more new compilations to look forward to, this time from Hewson. All platforms would be getting "Nebulus", "Firelord", "Ranarama", "Zynaps" and "Netherworld". The C64 pack also included "Alleykat", while both the Spectrum and Amstrad would get "Impossaball". Overall a solid lineup, especially for £12.99.

If you ever thought "I wish I had a digital stopwatch attached to this joystick" while playing games, De Gale Marketing had a joystick for you. The Quikjoy V Superboard featured ten microswitches, variable speed and - yes - a digital stopwatch with alarm. How much would such a thing set up back? £19.95. They also had a series of lower end ones too.

The 20th anniversary of Monty Python was fast approaching (January 1990), and Virgin had enlisted the help of Core Design to deliver a game to coincide with it.

Cheetah hoped to produce their Terminator light gun for Spectrum, C64, ST, Amiga, Sega and Nintendo.

Features

Having worked in the games industry for many years, I have to admire how few bugs were actually reported...

The bizarre mag section "Bug Report", in which readers would write in to, well, report bugs, had it's second outing - this time there was a whole page's worth. It included such gems as "Microprose Soccer", "Kempston selection does not work." There were only two games with more than 1 report: "Renegade" and "War in Middle Earth" which both had 2 reports. Perhaps I'm being a tad harsh here - it's easy to forget how frustrating bugs were when you had no idea if it was just you.

It was time for the Summer Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago and John Cook (my old boss!) was C&VG's man on the ground. Sega were showing off their new Megadrive/Genesis console, while NEC had the US version of the PC Engine, renamed the TurboGrafx-16, and Atari had the Lynx. It was, however, Nintendo who would dominate the show with the NES and Gameboy. There was also a "small firm called Maxis" which caught John's eye with a game "cleverly billed Sim City". I wonder if that did well...

Notable Previews

• "Hard Drivin'" Domark
• "Star Trek V" Mindscape (unreleased?)
• "Harley Davidson" Mindscape
• "Fiendish Freddie" Microprose
• "Power Drift" Activision
• "Action Fighter" Firebird
• "Falcon Mission Disks" Mirrorsoft
• "Altered Beast" Activision
• "Trained Assassin" Digital Magic Software
• "Starglider 2" Argonaut/Rainbird
• "Ferrari Formula One" Electronic Arts
• "Rainbow Warrior" Microprose (yes, for realz)
• "Passing Shot" Imageworks
• "Verminator" Rainbird (unreleased?)
• "Castle Warrior" Palace

Notable Reviews

• "Shinobi" Virgin - C64 87% Spectrum 85% ST 79% Amstrad 75% C&VG Hit "An excellent version of Shinobi, faithful to the arcade game in every way [C64 version]."
• "Licence to Kill" Domark - ST 80% "Plenty of variety, colourful graphics and recognisable Bond ditties make this an addictive and enjoyable game."
• "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Action Game" US Gold - Amiga/ST 81% "A thoroughly enjoyable platform romp with everybody's favourite hero."
• "Kult" Infogrames - Amiga/ST 85% C&VG Hit "Another weird and wonderful product of Exxos Imagination. Excellent in every respect."
• "Bloodwych" Mirrorsoft - Amiga 81% C64 79% "Role players who don't care about flash graphics should love Bloodwych but, unlike Dungeon Master, it won't hold equal appeal for more mainstream gamers."
• "Mr Heli" Firebird - C64/Amstrad 86% Spectrum/ST 84% C&VG Hit "Loads of action, colourful graphics, a thumping good tune and oodles of playability. In short, a great blaster. [C64 version]"
• "Citadel" Martin Walker/Electric Dreams - C64 87% C&VG Hit "Very classy thinking shoot 'em up. Give that programmer a cigar."
• "Conflict in Europe" Mirrorsoft - Amiga 83% "An exciting, atmospheric and easy-to-operate war game that will appeal to all computer users."
• "Stunt Car Racer" Geoff Crammond/Microprose - ST 93% C&VG Hit "Stunt Car is utterly brilliant and offers adrenalin-pumping, gut wrenching high speed action that'll keep you engrossed for months."
• "Personal Nightmare" Horrorsoft - Amiga/ST 84% "Personal Nightmare is a great adventure and shouldn't be missed by those who like typing things rather than wibbling their joysticks."
• "Spellcaster" Sega - Master System 84% "Another of Sega's huge arcade adventures, with a bias a bit more on the 'arcade' than the 'adventure' for once."
• "Twin Heli" Taito - PC Engine 89% "An ab-so-lutely marvelous shoot 'em up, well on a par with the likes of Dragon Spirit and R-Type."
• "Pro Football" Sega - Master System 92% "A brilliantly designed and executed American Football simulation with excellent graphics and sound and superb playability."
• "Ghostbusters" Sega - Master System 85% "The action might get a bit samey after a while, but apart from that, Ghostbusters is a very entertaining game."

Charts

Amiga

1. "Populous" EA
2. "Lords of the Rising Sun" Mirrorsoft
3. "Blood Money" Psyclapse

All Formats

1. "Robocop" Ocean
2. "Microprose Soccer" Microprose
3. "Populous" EA

This month in... C&VG '89

News

The industry was abuzz with talk of Nintendo’s Game Boy. The handheld had seen a very successful launch in Japan with over 500,000 units being sold (300,000 of which were on the first day), and now the question was when would it reach the UK. Nintendo were unable to give any dates, but confirmed they had plans…

The FIST telephone game was getting a sequel (I have no idea what this was).

London was getting a new light gun game (Quasar) in a converted cinema.

C&VG apologised for incorrectly printing the phone number of Activision’s adventure helpline. The number they gave turned out to be that of a Mr Davy from Reading, who wasn’t terribly impressed with the balls up.

US Gold snapped up the home computer rights to the Crackdown coin-op.

There was a kinda bizarre new section called Bug Report. As the name suggests, this covered bugs discovered and sent in by readers. C&VG seemed surprised by the large number of responses, but they only gave two: a loading bug in “Kick Off” for the ST and one in “Fantasy Zone II” for Sega’s Master System where the player sprite would disappear when things got to frantic.

Notable Previews

• "Licence to Kill" Domark
• "Rainbow Islands" Graftgold/Firebird
• "Dragon Spirit" Domark
• "APB" Domark
• "Strider" US Gold
• "P-47" Firebird
• "Mr Heli" Firebird
• "It Came from the Desert" Cinemaware
• "Ghouls ’n’ Ghosts" US Gold
• "Beast" Psygnosis
• "Super Scramble Simulator" Gremlin
• "Oriental Games" Firebird
• "Hard Drivin'" Domark
• "Jaws" Screen 7
• "Batman - The Movie" Ocean
• "The Lost Patrol" Ocean
• "Untouchables" Ocean
• "Bloodwych" Imageworks
• "Hawkeye" Thalamus
• "Chase HQ" Ocean

Notable Reviews

• ”Phobia" Tony Crowther/Image Works - C64 88% C&VG Hit “Apart from the lack of music, Phobia is superb - pretty graphics, extremely addictive blasting gameplay, even the multiload isn’t too intrusive.“
• "Datastorm" VDT - Amiga 95% C&VG Hit “A superlative shoot ‘em up which knocks Forgotten Worlds off the top slot as the best Amiga blaster. Unmissable.“
• "Silkworm" The Sales Curve - Amiga 87% ST 84% Spectrum 80% C&VG Hit “Tremendous sound, super-smooth graphics and fiendishly addictive gameplay puts this amongst the cream of Amiga shoot ‘em ups.”
• "Chicago 30’s" Toposoft - C64 85% ST 78% Amstrad 71% “Fast and colourful - it makes a change from all those little metallic spaceships whizzing around.“
• “Honda RVF” Microstyle - ST 80% “A twisting, turning, screaming, gut-wrenching, metal-melting and incredibly satisfying belt around the tarmac.”
• “Black Tiger” US Gold - ST 86% C&VG Hit “An excellent conversion of the cult arcade machine which has a brilliant mix of platform and shooting action.”
• "Test Drive II” Accolade - Amiga 90% PC 85% C&VG Hit “This is the one you’ve been waiting for; all the pretty colours and flash of Test Drive, with a real game added to it.“
• "Vigilante" US Gold - Amiga & Spectrum 81% “Vigilante has all the stuff which made the street ninja arcade machines so popular, and is very slickly produced. BUT… it is just a variation on the same theme.”
• "Zork Zero" Infocom/Activision - Amiga 94% C&VG Hit “A superb adventure that places Infocom back in the number one slot. A must for all adventure fanatics.“
• "Rick Dangerous" Firebird - Amiga/Spectrum/C64/ST 87% C&VG Hit “An excellent platform game which is both incredibly enjoyable and highly addictive.”
• "New Zealand Story" Ocean - Amiga 88% C&VG Hit “A superb game in every respect. Ranks alongside Bubble Bobble and PacMania in the Amiga coin-op conversion stakes.“
• “Super Mario II” Nintendo - NES 97% C&VG Hit “A stunning sequel which oozes class and playability. The best Nintendo game yet released - miss it at your peril.”
• "Xybots" Domark - Spectrum 84% ST 83% “A brilliant conversion - one of the best two-player Spectrum games in ages.“

Charts

Amiga

1. "Falcon" Mirrorsoft
2. "Populous" Bullfrog/EA
3. "R-Type" Activision

All Formats

1. "Robocop" Ocean
2. "Treasure Island Dizzy" Codemasters
3. "Turbo Espirit" Encore

This month in... C&VG '89

News

This month saw C&VG getting a revamp based on reader feedback. Coin ops and consoles would get more pages, the adventure section got a make over, there was more space dedicated to previews and overall there would be a lot more colour. The announcement of these changes referenced the fact that some features were dropped, but they didn’t actually specify which. Somewhat worryingly, there were no adventure game reviews - just some tips. The beginning of the end?

Rumours were circulating that Acorn was on the verge of doing a deal with Amstrad to have the main Archimedes boards repackaged as something targeted towards the game market. The Archimedes was an undeniably impressive machine, but the costs put it way out of reach of the average consumer (the A440, a top end model, retailed for an eye watering £2499 plus VAT), so a more budget focussed model would make sense.

Microprose bought Telecomsoft from BT and signed up the next two Freescape 3D games ("Dark Side" and "Total Eclipse”) from Incentive.

Charity OXFAM were on a drive to take donations of unwanted games.

Electronic Arts launched a new range of budget re-releases. The “Software Classics” range included such titles as "Bard’s Tale”, "Marble Madness" and "The Archon Collection”.

Frustrated adventurers would now be able to call Activision’s help line (apparently staffed by one person: Julie Barwick) for assistance with titles from Infocom, Sierra and Micro-Illusions.

C&VG apologised for a “cock up” in last month’s review of Pac-Land. The game should’ve been awarded a healthy 77%, but instead got 57%. Amusingly enough, the correction included a misspelling of “report”.

Features

The Golden Joysticks winners for 1989 were:

• Best Graphics 8 Bit: ”Armalyte" Thalamus
• Best Graphics 16 Bit: "Rocket Ranger" Mirrorsoft
• Best Soundtrack 8 Bit: "Bionic Commandos" US Gold
• Best Soundtrack 16 Bit: "International Karate Plus" System 3
• Programmer of the Year 8 Bit: John Phillips
• Programmer of the Year 16 Bit: The Bitmap Brothers
• Best Simulation Game 8 Bit: "Microprose Soccer" Microprose
• Best Simulation Game 16 Bit: "Falcon" Mirrorsoft
• Best Adventure Game 8 Bit: "Corruption" Rainbird
• Best Adventure Game 16 Bit: "Fish" Rainbird
• Best Coin-Op Conversion 8 Bit: "Operation Wolf" Ocean
• Best Coin-Op Conversion 16 Bit: "Operation Wolf" Ocean
• The C&VG Console Award: “Thunderblade” on the SEGA
• Software House of the Year 8 Bit: Ocean Software
• Software House of the Year 16 Bit: Mirrorsoft
• Game of the Year 8 Bit: "Operation Wolf" Ocean
• Game of the Year 16 Bit: "Speedball" Image Works

Notable Previews

• "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" Lucasfilm/US Gold
• "Crazy Jet Racer" Probe
• "RVY" Microprose (unreleased?)
• "Tangled Tales" Origin
• "Vette!" Mirrorsoft (unreleased?)
• "Out Run Europa" US Gold
• "Xenophobe" Microprose
• "Navy Moves" Dinamic
• "Silk Worm" Virgin
• "Xenon II - Megablast" Bitmap Brothers/Image Works
• "Skweek" Loricels
• "Red Heat" Ocean
• "Microprose Soccer" Sensible Software/Microprose (16bit conversions)
• "Let Sleeping Gods Lie" Empire
• "Power Drome" Electronic Arts
• "Licence to Kill" Domark
• "Gemini Wing!" Virgin
• "Shinobi" Virgin
• "Xybots" Domark

Notable Reviews

• "Stormlord" Hewson - C64 89% Spectrum 87% C&VG Hit “Another terrific arcade adventure from Raf Cecco, who once again shows there’s life in Clive’s old dog yet.”
• "Forgotten Worlds" US Gold - Amiga 92% C64 90% Amstrad 88% Spectrum 87% ST 87% C&VG Hit ”On the Amiga, the graphics are wonderful, with beautifully-drawn parallax scrolling backdrops and excellent alien sprites. It’s an absolutely stunning conversion - the best I’ve seen from US Gold - and is easily THE BEST Amiga shoot ‘em up to date.”
• "Bio Challenge" Delphine/Palace - Amiga 88% C&VG Hit “Fabulous music, unusual gameplay and exotic graphics make up for a basic lack of variation in the gameplay.“
• "Voyager" Ocean - Amiga 85% ST 83% “Voyager brings the classic Battlezone concept up to date by keeping the same basic formula, adding hordes of different aliens and play strategies and stunning Starglider II 3D filled vector graphics.“
• "Renegade III" Ocean - Spectrum 84% Amstrad 83% C64 82% “The graphics on all versions are excellent, with whacky cartoon-style sprites giving the game a humorous look and making the game even more fun.“
• "Blood Money" DMA Design/Psyclapse - Amiga 85% PC 85% ST 84% “A smidge more variety would have helped the quality of the gameplay match that of the graphics and sound more closely, but there’s still no denying that Blood Money is a damned good blast.“
• "Lords of the Rising Sun" Cinemaware - Amiga 90% C&VG Hit “Superb graphics, sound and gameplay are combined to produce one of the best Cinemaware games to date.”
• "Kick Off" Dino Dini/Anco - Amiga 88% ST 84% “The options available may be little more than you’d expect and the display at best functional, but what makes Kick Off special are its playability and atmosphere - especially when there are a couple of rabid footie supporters competing.“

Charts

All Formats

1. "Robocop" Ocean
2. "Treasure Island Dizzy" Code Masters
3. "Dragon Ninja" Ocean

Amiga

1. "Falcon" Mirrorsoft
2. "TV Sports Football" Mirrorsoft
3. "Super Hang-On" Activision