This month's mag included:
- A rather depressing Editorial which opened with "Boom-time for the computer games world is over, at least for the next few years." The Japanese consoles were wiping the floor with computers - the 8bits were barely hanging on, the ST not far behind them. There looked to be some life left in the Amiga, but it was the IBM PC that stood the best chance of lasting. Perhaps the grimmest thing about this was the high entry bar for console development - what would happen to all the small UK devs?
- In other not so happy news, the once great Infocom had been assimilated into Mediagenic (prev Activision). The office was moved to the West Coast, but it seemed no designers or developers relocated with it. Steve Meretzky and Dave Lebling were among the most recent to quit.
- An interview Level 9's Pete Austin about their upcoming Scapeghost. He was rather coy about their plans beyond this one, but now that we have the benefit of hindsight and know that it in fact would be their last, it did seem like they saw the writing on the wall.
- A look at "Ranch Wars" which was a Play By Mail game except it wasn't - it was an "on-going graphic adventure that comes through the post" and was a "strange amalgam of interactive fiction, graphical war-gaming and strategy all mixed together".
- The Encyclopedia Frobbozzica - an indepth reference of all things Zork.
- An interview with Joe Dever, author of the Lone Wolf books.
- A look at Role Playing Play By Mail game "Calvana".
- Was the icon driven Infogrames "Kult" the future of adventure games?
- Sandra Sharkey presented some general musings on writing adventures.
- Confidential went on a bit of LARPing with "Mythlore".
- A short story by Ian Urquhart.
In this issue you can find:
- A bit of a rant by the Ed on the "joys" of running a software mail order service and dealing with clueless, impatient and down right rude customers calling up.
- A report from the first European Computer Trade Show, which sounded like a right disappointment: "Where were the First Ever Showings? The Exclusive Demos? The Sneako Previews? Well, they certainly weren't present on the day I visited."
- The history of Sierra Online.
- A piece pondering why it was that more women seemed to be designing, writing and playing adventures compared to other gaming genres. It was a bit silly and unsurprisingly feels dated, but did include comments from the likes of Anita Sinclair (Magnetic Scrolls) and Amy Biggs (Infocom).
- A look at the "It's Murder" Play By Mail game.
- A deep dive on the impressive lookign "Bloodwych", which looked to marry "Dungeon Master" with "The Bards Tale" with "Archon". Supposedly the author had intended to call it "The Dungeonmaster" before FTL announced their game.
- Infocom had been in decline for a little while, but now they were back with three big releases: "Zork Zero", "Battlehawks - The Crescent Hawk's Inception" (the article kept referring to it as Battlehawks when it was in fact Battletech), "Journey" and "Shogun". Were they enough to raise Infocom back up to the top? The latter three games were examined in detail, and all three were interesting departures from (or, at least, tweaks to/re-imaginings of) the usual text adventure fare.
- An interview with Infomedia who were busy working on "Chronoquest 2".
- A write up of MOSAIC, a new concept for a "3rd generation adventure game" system, primarily aimed at Multi User Dungeons.
- A survey of the state of flight sims.
- An "interview" with Larry Laffer (AKA, I assume, Al Lowe).
- A short story sent in by reader David Holden.
This issue came hot on the heels of British Telecom's decision to bail out of the games industry. They were looking to sell off the Rainbird, Firebird and Silverbird labels as one lot, while winding Telecomsoft down. The official reason given was that games were no longer in line with the goals of BT, and the asking price was rumoured to be around £5 million. The editorial questioned the motives, highlighting a series of recent misteps resulting in significant financial losses, which included the purchase of Beyond Software (closed down soon after due to poor performance), and the US based Firebird Licensees Inc which lasted less than a year.
Contents:
- A look at the state of computer chess games and whether they were worthy opponents.
- Mini (tongue in cheek) profiles of the Confidential team.
- A visit to French game studio Lankhor.
- A space trading game face off: Elite vs Federation of Free Traders. Conclusion? FOFT had a long way to go...
- Keith Campbell delved into the adventure game development process.
- An introduction to Play By Mail gaming.
- Diverging somewhat from the adventure theme, Jeff Minter was interviewed.
- The results of the Golden Chalice Awards for 1989, which was held by the Adventurer's Club.
- A look at free BBS MUD game "MirrorWorld".
- A guide to mapping adventure games.
- A visit to "The Spirit of Adventure" LARP group.
- Michael Bywater lamented on the prospect that adventure games had now entered an evolutionary period with no revolutions anywhere on the horizon.
Postal strikes had caused delays to the first issue, and - whether it was due to this or some other reason - November came and went without the second issue. Going forward they would be sticking to the every-other-month schedule.
Contents:
- Interview with Philippe Ulrich, head of the EXXOS group at French software house ERE Informatique which had recently released the rather original and intriguing "Captain Blood".
- A somewhat tongue in cheek guide to playing adventure games.
- A gathering of five of the top adventure gaming columnists at the PC Show. The five were: Nick Walkind, Keith Campbell (C&VG, Commodore User), Mike Gerrard (Your Sinclair), Steve Cooke (ACE), Nik Wilde (Newsfield) and Kati Hamza (Zzap and Crash).
- A look at MUD, including an exerpts from an interview with creator Richard Bartle.
- Keith Campbell examined the evolution of puzzles in adventure games.
- Interview with Silicon Software, developers of "Legend of the Sword".
- An "interview" with Level 9 chatacter Ingrid.
- An in depth piece on the new Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game, "Pool of Radiance".
- A visit to play-by-mail specialists, KJC Games.
- The reveal of the new Magnetic Scrolls game, "Myth",that would be exclusively for club members.
- A short story by Jane Rowe.
- A visit to The Crazy Dwarf in the Sussex Downs, one of the latest LARP groups to spring up.
- Michael Baywater pondered puzzles in games and life.