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This month in... C&VG '87

Mike Keith

News

Digital Integration's "Bobsleigh" was a departure from their usual flight sims and would centre around the winter event.

Incentive teased their impressive new Freescape engine with a couple of screenshots of the upcoming "Driller".

English Software were working on a Rambo-esque game: "Captain Courageous".

Atari dropped the price of the 520STFM to £299.99. They were also planning to re-launch the 130XE and position it as "the ultimate teaching computer".

The next RPG from Origin System's was to be "Moebius".

Starflight's "Hybrid" would see the player take control over three robots with different abilities which could combine at various stages (sounds rather like "Head Over Heels").

Probe were working another possibly similar game which starred two "droid like thingies" called "Brain or Brawn". Probe were also developing the impressive looking "Trantor".

The PCW Show at Olympia this month would play host to The International Arcade Player of the Year contest.

Ariolasoft's Reaktor label had two new titles on the way: "Deathride" and "Deadringer".

C&VG were impressed with the glimpse they got of Elite's "Buggy Boy" C64 port.

Steve Turner's followup to "Quazatron" would be "Magnetron".

The Battle Against Cruelty to Kids charity were releasing a compilation called "BACKPACK" to help raise money.

Bally/Sente were bringing "Starglider" to the arcades with their Amiga based cabinets.

Prism Leisure Corp were re-releasing "Boulderdash".

It took almost a year of work, but Chris Clegg solved the puzzles in Martech's "The Planets". His prize was a telescope and tripod.

Toy company Mattel launched a video disc system in the US.

Fantasycon XII would be held at the Midland Hotel in Birmingham.

Julian Rignal won an inter-magazine play off of "Mega Apocalypse".

Palace Software were launching a new publishing label, Outlaw. First up would be Sensible Software's "Shoot 'Em Up Construction Kit".

Ocean's "Taipan" ran into difficulties leading up to its launch. Apparently they were having trouble fitting the Spectrum 128K version into 48K, and the ST version onto disk.

Domark signed the rights to Jeffry Archer's "Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less". The author originally wrote the novel to help get out of bankruptcy.

Advance were embracing the 16bit machines with an ST port of "Butch Hard Guy".

Danish company Super Soft had created a new joystick which, for whatever reason, looked like a genuine grenade.

Features

The fantasy section covered Alan Moore's "Swampthing", comic fanzine "Escape", and Jim Whitings robotic art.

Movies reviewed this month were: "The Living Daylights", "Lethal Weapon", "Hamburger Hill", "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure", "Blind Date", "The Magic Toyshop", and the Comic Strip's "Mr Jolly Lives Next Door"/"Didn't You Kill My Brother".

Marshal M Rosenthal interviewed Jim Walls about his new adventure game for Sierra, "Police Quest".

Some weird "comic" style thing using digitised images of actors.

A large "mean machines" section looking at the new consoles from Nintendo, Sega and Atari.

This month's music reviews included albums from Statetrooper, Death, Fields of Nephilm, Geisha, and Holy Terror.

Wayne checked out the Isle of Dread LARP event run by the Labyrinth Live Role Playing Society.

Tony Takoushi raved about "Garrison" for the Amiga and started a campaign to get a proper games show on TV.

Notable Previews

Notable Reviews

  • "Road Runner" US Gold - C64 10/10 ST 9/10 Game of the Month "To my surprise, it was almost an exact copy [of the arcade], in both graphics and gameplay, and to be quite honest, is one of the best arcade conversions I've ever played."
  • "Solomon's Key" US Gold - Amstrad 9/10 C&VG Hit "Loads of screens, tons of fun and hours of totally absorbing gameplay make Solomon's Key a must for you [sic] summer holiday entertainment."
  • "Re-Bounder" Gremlin - C64 9/10 C&VG Hit "Graphics and sound are excellent - in fact the whole package is extremely well presented, including the intro messages which feature some amusing bits of coders trivia."
  • "Centurions" Reaktor - C64 9/10 "Centurions transcends the normal arcade shoot-'em-up type of game while retaining instanteous [sic] action and hoards of aliens who'll put up a quick fight if that's all you want."
  • "Star Paws" Software Projects - C64 9/10 C&VG Hit "There is a great title screen, brilliant super smooth Paralax [sic] scrolling, and a great Rob Hubbard title tune, that is one of the best."
  • "Mega Apocalypse" Martech - C64 9/10 C&VG Hit "The game features speech, but everything in Mega (except the seven and half minute music track) is sampled to give brilliant Star Wars-style sound effects. Five channel sound and, for the first time on a 64, nothing slows down for the speech."
  • "Barbarian" Psygnosis - Amiga 10/10 C&VG Hit "So at last we've got a Psygnosis hit, great graphics, brilliant sound and for once, excellent gameplay."
  • "Battleships" Elite - C64/Spectrum/Amstrad 10/10 C&VG Hit "But the trouble truth [sic] is that Battleships - a 50 year old game! - is simply horribly addictive."
  • "Auto-Duel" Origin Systems - C64 9/10 C&VG Hit "Auto-Duel has created a varied, ingenious and entirely believable world in which it is possible to lose yourself for hours."
  • "Rigel's Revenge" Smart Egg/Mastertronic - Spectrum/C64/Amstrad/Atari 8/10 C&VG Hit "If Mastertronic continue to release adventures of this quality at this price, they could well revolutionise the cassette-based adventure market."
  • "Knight Orc" Level 9/Rainbird - C64, Atari 800, Amstrad PCW/CPC, Atari ST, Amiga 9/10 C&VG Hit "Here is an adventure that is like nothing you've ever played before."
  • "Lurking Horror" Infocom - C64, Atari XL/XE/ST, Amstrad, Amiga 9/10 C&VG Hit "Very much in the style of a modern horror movie, this is an Inforcom shocker from Dave Lebling, whose graphic text makes graphics redundant."