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This month in... C&VG '88

Mike Keith

News

This issue came with an audio cassette featuring music from 720º and Out Run.

Electric Dreams' Spectrum port of "Super Hang-On" narrowly missed the review window for the month, but a tasty screenshot of it was included instead. C&VG assured readers it was "simply brilliant".

The Edge was bringing comic cat "Garfield" to home computers.

"Crazy Cars" was a rather promising looking 16bit racing game from Titus.

"Robocop" had taken US movie goers by storm and was due to hit UK screens early in the New Year. Ocean's licensed game wasn't due to appear until the video release.

German software house Rainbow Arts struck a deal with Go! that would see their games on UK shelves. The first game would be "Garrision", an Amiga "Gauntlet" clone that was causing a bit of a stir. Following that would be "Bad Cats" and "Jinx".

Konami's Spectrum port of "Salamander" was shaping up.

Firebird's home computer conversion of "Flying Shark" promised "all the playability of the original". The Spectrum version was being handled by Graftgold.

"Test Drive" by Electronic Arts would see the player get behind the wheel of exotic cars like the Ferrari Testarossa and Lamborghini Countach.

Garfield wasn't the only comic strip character to get a game this month, with the Daily Mirror's "Andy Capp" featuring in a new game from Mirrorsoft.

"Black Lamp" was a "graphically splendid" game for the ST.

US Gold's Go! label acquired the UK rights for 10 Capcom arcade conversions for a cool £2 million. The first four would be "Street Fighter", "1943", "Black Tigers" and "Tiger Road".

Martin Walker was working on "Hunter's Moon".

The Darling brothers were to appear at the London HMV Store to sign copies of the newest Codemasters game.

A new label, Crysys, surfaced and their first game was to be "Phantom of the Opera", a horror arcade adventure.

Features

C&VG's excitement for "Outrun" was reaching fever pitch as they looked at the arcade machine, previewed the various home conversions and offered an actual coin-op as a competition prize (last month they said it would be a full hydrolic machine, but instead it would be a standup one).

There was a big "mega machine" (i.e. Amiga & ST) supplement. The 16bit machines had well and truly arrived, with an impressive number of games heading their way.

Tony Takoushi wrote a round up of current Amiga games and the software houses developing for the machine. He also looked at what Melbourne House was up after being bought out by Mastertronic - their focus was now on the 16bits.

The comics section looked at the two oldest comic superheroes - The Shadow and Doc Savage.

Movies reviewed this month were: "Masters of the Universe", "Predator", "Bigfoot and the Hendersons", "Innerspace", "Spaceballs", and "The Dead".

Tony Takoushi raved about "Test Drive" on the Amiga, and ranted about the magazine scene. He predicted the death of the single platform magazine with 15-18 months and poured scorn on Newsfield's effort at a multi-platform mag (The Games Machine).

Notable Previews

Notable Reviews

  • "Bangkok Knights" System 3 - C64 10/10 Game of the Month "The animation is superb and silky smooth and the music - by Rob Hubbard - is wonderful. Why not be clever this Christmas and have a knees-up, high-kicking, punch-drunk Christmas box."
  • "Octapolis" English Software - C64 9/10 Game of the Month "Quite simply, it's awesome. Brilliant graphics, sounds like you won't believe and addictive gameplay that shakes the C&VG scale."
  • "Rampage" Activision - C64 9/10 C&VG Hit "Overall, Rampage is a fun game - if you're a fan of the coin op then you won't be disappointed by the 64 version at least!"
  • "Blockbusters" TV Games - C64 10/10 Game of the Month "The Trivial Pursuit boys, Domark, have done it again on the quiz front with Blockbusters on their new TV Games label."
  • "Driller" Incentive - C64/Spectrum/Amstrad 8/10 C&VG Hit "Driller is definitely one of the best arcade adventure games to have hit the streets for ages. There is nothing I can say to downgrade this excellent piece of software even if I tried!"
  • "Skate or Die" Electronic Arts - C64 9/10 "Great sound effects and driving Rob Hubbard intro tune make Skate or Die a real must for skate-boarders."
  • "Slaine" Martech - Spectrum/Amstrad 8/10 C&VG Hit "Overall Slaine is a brave attempt at trying something new. However at times I felt the Reflex system was stopping me getting to the meat of the game - it looks to have real depth of gameplay."
  • "Zarch" David Braben/Superior Software - Archimedes 8/10 C&VG Hit "Entitled Zarch, it is a mixture of arcade and strategy rolled into an absolute hum-dinger of a game that will probably sell as many Archimedes systems as Star Raiders did Atari 400s back in 1981."
  • "Bobsleigh" Digital Integration - Spectrum/C64 9/10 C&VG Hit "The programmers, famed for their aircraft and bike racing simulations, have taken a step into the unknown and produced a truly excellent and original game based on this thrilling and dangerous sport."
  • "Annals of Rome" PSS - C64 9/10 "PSS have a really excellent game in Annals of Rome. If they took a bit more trouble with it they could have a world-beater."
  • "XOR" Hewson - ST 10/10 ST Hit "This is the definitive maze and problem solving game, and will certainly appeal to anyone who revels in a challenge, even the most committed arcader."
  • "Phoenix" Ere Informatique/Infogrammes - ST 10/10 "Although some people have proclaimed vector graphics as a thing of the past, this style of presentation can still work when used properly, and Phoenix is a perfect example of a simple, though well thought out and neatly presented vector graphics arcade game which doesn't need filled graphics to make it fun to play."
  • "Bubble Ghost" Infogrammes/Ere Informatique - ST 9/10 "Novel gameplay and ease of control make this one addictive and fun to play, although the 19.95 price tag is a bit on the steep side."
  • "Jack the Ripper" St Brides/CRL - Spectrum/C64/Amstrad 9/10 "Altogether I found Jack the Ripper pleasantly unpleasant to play. This is certainly St Brides' best to date."