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This month in... C&VG '87

Mike Keith

News

"Indoor Sports" by Mindscape was to feature a set of "unusual" sports, such as air hockey.

Creative Sparks announced not one but four new budget titles: "Little Alien", "Smudge and the Moonees", "Super Shuffle" and "Cyber I". It doesn't look like any of these were released.

Melbourne House's "Murder at Arkham Hall" was to be a detective style adventure with the player taking on the role of a reporter investigating a murder. Mike Lewis, who had previously worked on "Redhawk", was at the helm.

Apologies were offered after a recent C&VG subscription promotion didn't quite go according to plan. The offer for C64 owners was a free copy of "Ikari Warriors", but Elite was no longer going to develop a C64 version. Well, they did, but it was another year before it was released.

Something a bit different from Firebird: "Microrhythym" would turn your C64 into a drum machine.

Ariolasoft was to release a couple of Jeff Minter classics ("Voidrunner" and "Hellgate") for the C16. They had also lined up a game based on Len Deighton's bestselling book, "Blitzkreig".

Konix won New Enterprise Award in the Welsh National Business Awards 1986.

The next Level 9 adventure in the "Adrian Mole" series, "The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole", was due for release any day.

A long time reader of C&VG's arcade coverage and Arcade Championship competition winner had just joined Zzap!64. That person was, of course, Julian Rignall.

Probe Software wasn't exactly struggling to find work. They were working on a slew of projects for various publishers: "Arkanoid", "Quartet", "Enduro Racer", "Project X", "Slapfighter", "Rampage", and "Metro-Cross".

Sixteen year old Paul Exley from Bury, Lancashire, won C&VG's Adventurer of the Year. As part of his prize he got to go on set and see some episodes of "Grange Hill" being filmed.

Incentive bundled their "Ket Trilogy" games into one tape and included a handy map drawing program.

Stavros Fasoulas's "Delta" was going head to head with the home computer versions of classic arcade shoot'em up "Nemesis". Both were due for release in the next couple of months.

"West Bank" was a wild west game developed in Spain and published by Gremlin. It would feature "life like animation of the citizens of a Wild West Town".

"The Sydney Affair" was the next murder mystery from Infogramme.

The next batch of Activision games to be released in the UK by Electric Dreams were: "Star Raiders II", "50CC Grand Prix", "Bactron", and the Spectrum port of "Koronis Rift".

The hero of Advance Software's Rambo-esque game "Hardguy" would be named... Butch Hardguy.

Features

Tony Takoushi did a rather scathing round up of 18 recent C16 games.

Marshall M Rosenthal checked out Cinemaware's 16bit games.

There was a player's guide for "Cholo", and a profile of the two programmers - Glyn Williams and someone who would only be referred to as "Joey". A little odd.

Gerry Anderson was interviewed and his new project, "Space Pilot", was revealed.

Marshal M Rosenthal pondered what overpriced gadgets he would buy if he had a million dollars.

This month's video reviews were of "The Last Star Fighter", "Rocky IV" and "Iron Eagle". The latter two got the thumbs up, but the reviewer wasn't so impressed with Last Star Fighter.

Tony Takoushi had been enjoying "Killed Until Dead", and ranted about games not delivering on the playability front, and how hard it was for small developers these days to handle the publishing themselves (he had written two C16 games which he had taken to a publishers, and the royalties from them had paid for a BMW 628 sports car).

Notable Previews

Notable Reviews

  • "10th Frame" US Gold - C64/Spectrum/Amstrad 9/10 Game of the Month "This game has to be the best thing to come out of America since Leaderboard was released."
  • "Nemesis" Konami - Spectrum/Amstrad/C64/MSX 9/10 Game of the Month "It's here! The Number One Arcade Game of 1986 is now on YOUR home computer. Konami have released this coin-op classic on their own label - and it's a real blast." (Only the C64 and MSX versions were played)
  • "Ranarama" Steve Turner/Hewson - Spectrum/Amstrad/C64 10/10 C&VG Hit "Great fun, thoroughly absorbing game play and very addictive. Turner triumphs again."
  • "Ninja" Mastertronic - Spectrum/Amstrad/C64 7/10 C&VG Hit "Ninja is a basic martial arts bash - nothing new, but if you enjoy this type of game then it's great value at under two quid."
  • "Sky Runner" Cascade - C64/Spectrum/Atari 9/10 C&VG Hit "Ace was mainly flight simulation, Sky Runner is primarily a shoot'em up. I favour Sky Runner to be honest."
  • "Labyrinth" Lucasfilm/Activision - C64 10/10 "This is a terrific game, only spoiled by delay whilst loading up each new scenario - a small price to play [sic] for such a brilliant game."