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This month in... Crash '87

Mike Keith

News

More changes at Crash towers this month with three new staff members: Ian Phillipson, Gareth Adams and, perhaps most notably, Ciaran Brennan.

Mastertronic was branching out into the video and music markets by launching the Master Vision and Master Sound labels.

The Tau Ceti system was to once again be the setting for a new game from CRL called "Traxxion".

Piracy was rife in the USSR with the "Raid Over Moscow" and "Rambo" proving particularly popular.

Several flight sims were about to arrive with "Gunship" and "F-15 Strike Eagle" from Microprose, and "F-16 Fighter Falcon" from Digital Integration. It's a bit hard to tell if the F-16 game was "F-16 Combat Pilot released in 1991 by DI, or actually "F-16 Fighting Falcon" by Codemasters in 1989.

Activision were to start re-releasing their back catalogue with nearly 40 of them due in the coming year.

Prism Leisure bought Addictive Games, the company behind "Football Manager" and made famous by Kevin Tom's smiling face.

Palace announced that their next game to hit the shelves would be "Stfflip and Co" - a co-production between Binary Vision and Electronic Pencil company.

Features

This month saw the return of the much loved Terminal Man comic series.

Notable Previews

Notable Reviews

  • "Enduro Racer" Activision - 92% Crash Smash "A risky Spectrum conversion that has paid off handsomely, providing all the thrills and spills of the original."
  • "The Sentinel" Geoff Crammond/Firebird - 97% Crash Smash "Highly playable and addictive, The Sentinel is one of those rare games that makes owning a computer a delight."
  • "Auf Wiedersehen Monty" Peter Harrap/Gremlin - 85% "A fine continuation of the long-standing Monty Mole theme."
  • "The Sidney Affair" Infogrammes - 86% "The Sidney Affair is a superb idea but I'm not totally convinced it has been presented that well on the Spectrum."
  • "Kobyashi Naru" Mastertronic - 83% "Kobyashi Naru is a superb piece of microcomputer programming for the paltry sum required."
  • "Matt Lucas" Players - 84% "But small niggles apart, Matt Lucas is a really fine game for the asking price."
  • "The Professional Adventure Writer" Gilsoft - 97% Crash Smash "The Professional Adventure Writer is just that, a professional's aid, even if only for developing games for later coding. BASIC or machine code additions are catered for and a SAVE'd database can be verified. I found the program exciting and am excited by its possible achievements."
  • "Amaurote" Binary Design/MAD - 48K 92% 128K 94% Crash Smash "An amazing achievement in budget software, highly playable and addictive."

Charts

Hotline

  1. "Gauntlet" US Gold
  2. "Cobra" Ocean
  3. "Paperboy" Elite

Adventure

  1. "The Boggit" Delta4/CRL
  2. "Heavy on the Magick" Gargoyle Games
  3. "Spellbound" David Jones/Mastertronic