News

The Audit Bureau of Circulations report showed that Zzap!'s readership had reached an impressive 77,483 in the first 6 months of the year.

Delta4 re-surfaced as Abstract Concepts and Fergus McNeil was busy working on a new fancy adventure system.

The next game from Stavros Fasoulas under the Thalamus label would be "Quedex".

Features

Part one of a series on the history of the shoot'em up.

Andrew Braybrook's development diary of "Morpheus" drew to an end. During this final month, Andrew was refining the difficulty, adding polish (including attract & high score screens), and doing last minute optimisations and bug squishing. The game had begun last December which made it quite a long project, although Graftgold switched to a PC dev system early on. While this did speed up the development process, it resulted in Andrew writing a much bigger program. "Uridium" had about 18K of code, "Alleykat" 20K and now "Morpheus" was up to 30K.

A lengthy preview of the upcoming PCW show, with many of the software houses discussing what they were planning to have on display.

Newsfield were about to launch their new magazine, The Games Machine, and there was a taster of what would be in store for readers.

Steve Jarratt took a look at Rainbird's "The OCP Advanced Art Studio" and seemed unconvinced: "I do recommend this, but with an element of caution - shop around, think long and choose wisely." (the software cost £24.95)

Notable Previews

• "Morpheus" Andrew Braybrook/Hewson
• "Shoot'em up Construction Kit" Sensible Software/Palace
• "Super Sprint" Electric Dreams
• "X15 Alpha Mission" Activision
• "Mean Streak" Mirrorsoft
• "Andy Capp" Mirrorsoft
• "Accolade's Comics" Accolade
• "I, Alien" CRL
• "Jet Boys" CRL
• "Discovery" CRL
• "Bangkok Knights" System 3

Notable Reviews

• "Bubble Bobble" Firebird - 97% Gold Medal "It's a rare and beautiful occasion when a great arcade machine is perfectly converted - but thankfully this is one such event."
• "Red L.E.D." Starlight - 93% Sizzler "A truly impressive product, brilliantly designed, implemented and executed."
• "Mega Apocalypse" Martech - 90% Sizzler "One of the better shoot'em ups this year - and one of the most polished programs ever."
• "B-24 Flight Simulator" SSI - 90% Sizzler "A convincing and absorbing game, which may well appeal to those who don't usually like conventional flight simulators."
• "Hysteria" Software Projects - 83% "An exciting, absorbing and highly visual adventure."
• "Ace 2" Cascade - 81% "A disappointment after Ace, but still enjoyable for budding combat pilots."

Charts

Games

1. "World Games" US Gold/Epyx
2. "Leaderboard" US Gold/Access
3. "Gauntlet" US Gold

Music

1. "Sanxion" Loading Music - Rob Hubbard
2. "Delta" Main Theme - Rob Hubbard
3. "Green Beret" Loading Music - Martin Galway