News

US Gold had signed a deal to sponsor race driver David Hall's car for the Formula Forward season.

Meanwhile, US Gold released "Deeper Dungeons" for those "Gauntlet" fans wanting more.

The British Open AD&D Championships were held at the Reading University Students Union building. Up to 600 people were expected.

Laser tag guns were the toy of the moment. The two main contenders were "Laser Combat" from Action GT, and "Laser Tag" from Mattel.

Tony Crowther's latest game was "Challenge of the Gobots" for Reaktor. The game featured music by We MUSIC.

Melbourne House provoked some head scratching as they canned their "Inspector Gadget" game on all formats at the very last minute. The official line was that it wasn't up to snuff, but there were rumours it may have been a tad too similar to US Gold's "Metro Cross".

Following on from the very well received "Sweevo's World", "Hyrdofool" was the next amusing offering from Gargoyle Games.

At long last the Nintendo Entertainment System was about to hit UK shelves. Expected to cost around £100 for the console and £15-20 for games, the NES looked like it would provide stiff competition for the Sega Master System.

Ray Lewis from Warton, Lancashire won US Gold's Xevious competition.

Queen's bass player John Deacon was spotted at the Atari Show checking out the new STs.

The new adventure from St Brides was a bit of a departure from their usual humorous games: "Jack the Ripper". The game would go on to court a lot of controversy from the UK press for its "graphic" imagery (which all looks so, so tame and amusing in this day and age).

Andrew Braybrook's classic C64 shoot'em up "Uridium" was being ported to the ST by a software house in the US.

Telecomsoft scored a deal to release around 40 Activision titles on its silver budget label.

Kevin Toms' company Addictive had been purchased by Prism Leisure. As a result, the price of "Football Manager" was dropped to £2.99.

Command Software was a new developer on the scene and its first release would be "Apocalypse", which was based on the Games Workshop board game.

Speaking of board games, Origin Systems was finishing up "Ogre".

A new console was incoming from Atari. The 65XE was due to hit shelves at Christmas and would support expanding with keyboard, joysticks, data recorder and light gun.

June would see Micrprose's "Pirates!" arrive, and the developer was busy working on a new flight sim.

Gremlin were producing a game of the kids cartoon series "Mask".

US Gold snapped up the rights to two new arcade machines, "Rygar" and "Solomon's Key".

Features

A look at Palace Software and the development of "Barbarian" (which naturally included a Maria Whittaker photo).

RPGs (of the non-computer variety) were examined with some recommendations for readers to check out. In addition, there was a guide for anyone interested in painting their own figurines.

The new James Bond film was due to be released soon and C&VG took a look at Domark's "The Living Daylights" tie-in, along with profiles of the developers involved. Mastertronic owned Arcadia (US) were handling the Amiga, Sculptered Software the C64 and ST, Design Design the Spectrum, De Re Software the 8bit Atari and Exasoft the BBC.

A big "The Sentinel" players guide.

Tony Takoushi gushed over getting an Atari 7800 and ranted about the prices of Nintendo and Sega cartridges. "I wish these people would get their heads screwed on the right way", he said about the £25 asking price.

Notable Previews

• "The Last Ninja" System 3
• "Hades Nebula" Nexus
• "Zynaps" Hewson

Notable Reviews

• "Nemesis the Warlock" Martech - C64/Spectrum 9/10 "This MUST be the first computer comic spin-off to actually capture the feel of the character it's based on."
• "Barbarian" Palace Software - C64/Spectrum/Amstrad 10/10 Game of the Month "Barbarian's actually isn't a really original concept. You've all seen something like it before in the myriad of combat games. What makes it so special is that Palace panache and faultless quality and craftmanship of the designers, artists and programmers."
• "Into the Eagles Nest" Pandora/Interceptor - C64/Spectrum 9/10 C&VG Hit "Eagles Nest is a four-way scrolling arcade adventure very much in the Gauntlet/Dandy/Druid mould but far superior to all three."
• "Professional Snooker Simulator" Code Masters - Amstrad 7/10 C&VG Hit "That said, PSS is still perhaps the most playable and engrossing snooker game this reviewer has had the pleasure of playing and a budget price!"
• "Frankenstein" CRL - C64/Spectrum/Amstrad 9/10 "If you enjoyed Dracula then you are going to like Frankenstein. The same formula of going back to the original story, and not holding any punches with the suspense and horror, has worked again to make what I think is an even better adventure."