News

Elite announced "Scooby-Doo in the Castle Mystery", teasing gamers with a couple of amazing looking screens. It promised to provide cartoon like quality graphics but the game then promptly disappeared, only to resurface some time later as a very good, but very different game developed for Elite by Gargoyle Games.

Christian Urqhart (programmer behind games like "Daley Thompson's Decathlon" and "Hunchback") had left Ocean and formed his own company, Alphabatim. The first game would be "Robot Messiah" which received a luke warm reception and would be the company's last.

CRL revealed that Pete Cooke's new game would be "Tau Ceti", which would turn out to be a blinder.

A new software label NuWave revealed its first release would be "Darkness at Dawn" - an adventure with no text or graphics, just sound. Judith Child was apparently developing it, but it doesn't look like it ever made it out. Judith would go on to make some fantastic adventures with Delta4.

"Alternate Reality" was a new ambitious role playing game from DataSoft (published by US Gold).

Denton Designs and Beyond were collaborating on "Bounces" which was to combine martial arts and sci-fi, all with "giant graphics."

Scott Adams was finishing up the third instalment of the Questprobe series, this time featuring the Fantastic Four. A fourth game was mentioned, but I don't think it was ever produced.

Virgin was to release a "mega-collection" called "Now Games" with 6 games including "Lords of Midnight" and "Pyjamarama". Meanwhile, Ocean had their own compilation, "The Sold a Million", which would include "Sabre Wulf" and "Jet Set Willy". Would this be a new trend? Yes, yes it would.

Adventure International had secured a deal to publish games based on the Fighting Fantasy series of books by Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson. The first title would be "Seas of Blood".

15 year old Matthew Woodley was the winner of the £25,000 prize for solving the riddle in Domark's "Eureka". He planned to buy a C128 with "all the peripherals" and invest the rest. Smart lad.

There was some buzz about a new game from Martech which was a reproduction of the arcade game "Mad Planets." "Crazy Comets" featured music "written by the same person who did the music for 'Thing on a Spring' and 'Month on the Run'. Need I say more?"

Tony Crowther was working on a sequel to "Death Star Interceptor" for System 3. The game would be based on the Trench run scene from Star Wars, but it doesn't look like it ever made it out.

"Marble Madness" was to be ported to the C64 and Amiga. This was one of the first games I saw on the Amiga and it knocked my socks off.

Activision teased an intriguing new game by David Crane in which one would be able to observe and interact with the little person living inside one's C64. This of course would turn out to be the brilliant "Little Computer People".

Features

There was a two part article on the latest advances in video technology. In the first part, C&VG talked to the folk responsible for the Dire Straits "Money for Nothing" video (which was ground breaking at the time). Apparently they used a German machine called the Bosh FGS 4000 which was dedicated to producing graphics. The second part looked at the new techniques for colourising black and white films.

Notable Reviews

• "Starquake" Stephen Crow/Bubble Bus - Spectrum/Amstrad/C64 10/10 Game of the Month "Whatever you do, DON'T miss out on Starquake. Rush out and beg, borrow or steal a copy now!"
• "Month on the Run" Gremlin Graphics - Spectrum/C64 10/10 "The Commodore game explodes into life with the best sound we have yet encountered."
• "Chop Suey" English Software - Atari 9/10 "With nice, smooth graphics, Chop Suey is a good game for Atari readers to get their teeth into."
• "Speed King" Meryvn Escourt/Digital Integration - C64 8/10 "Speed King is well presented fun to play. Recommended."
• "Highway Encounter" Costa Panayi/Vortex Software - Spectrum/Amstrad 10/10 Blitz Game "Highway is a terrific mixture of action and strategy - with neat wall [sic] animated graphics and sound."
• "Rescue on Fractalus" Lucasfilm/Activision - C64/Atari 7/10 "Conclusion: if you've got an Atari, get this game. If you're a Commodore owner - well, play your friend's copy before making up your mind." (the C64 version was much slower than the Atari)
• "McGuigan's Boxing" Activision - C64 10/10 Blitz Game "Barry McGuigan's World Championship Boxing is quite simply an excellent game. Great fun. Great value for money."
• "Paradroid" Andrew Braybrook/Hewson - C64 9/10 Blitz Game "Paradroid will keep zappers and thinkers happy - an unusual combination. One of the best 64 games out right now."
• "Karateka" Ariolasoft - C64 10/10 "The release of Karateka probably comes to late to challenge the supremacy of The Way of the Exploding Fist on the Commodore. But if you're still making up your mind whether to buy a martial arts game, it's certainly worth considering Karateka."
• "Nightshade" Ultimate - Spectrum 10/10 "Nightshade is another instant classic from Ultimate - it'll keep you guessing for some time. But how long can they keep using a similar format for their games?"
• "Blackwyche" Ultimate - C64 10/10 "Ultimate have done it again. They've created an entertaining and enthralling game which will have you super-glued to your joystick for hours!"
• "Daley Thompson's Super Test" Ocean - Spectrum/C64/Amstrad 9/10 Blitz Game "DT's Super Test is a fine sequel to Decathlon and will wreck many more joysticks!"
• "Marsport" Gargoyle Games - Spectrum/Amstrad 9/10 Blitz Game "Marsport is quite simply a great game. Get it!"
• "Astroclone" Steve Turner/Hewson - Spectrum 9/10 Blitz Game "Astro-Clone is great fun, great value and a great challenge."
• "Fighting Warrior" Melbourne House - Spectrum/C64 10/10 "Fighting Warrior is an action adventure packed with surprises - a worth successor to Fist."
• "On the Run" Design Design - Spectrum/Amstrad 9/10 "The graphics on both Amstrad and Spectrum versions are excellent - and the game is extremely playable."
• "The Secret of St Brides" St Bride's - Spectrum/C64 5/10 "Lovely idea, not too sure about the game!"

Notable Previews

• "Dan Dare" Virgin - "We confidently predict that Dan's computer game debut is going to go down well with his fans - new and old."