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This month in... C&VG '88

Mike Keith

News

The big buzz this month was the arrival of "Xenon" for the Amiga and ST which heralded the first true coin-op quality game on home computers.

Electronic Arts were working on a graphic adventure for the Amiga called "Return to Atlantis".

Infocom were trying something a bit different with their Infocomix line of interactive comics. Rather than a typical adventure game, each issue would allow the reader to choose their path through the storyline. Each comic was expected to take around 4-5 hours to read. The first three releases were to be: "Lane Mastadon vs The Blubberman", "Gamma Force in Pit of a Thousand Screams" and "Zorkquest: Assault on Egreth Castle".

Gremlin were adapting the fighting fantasy books "Blood Valley" for home computers.

"Programming delays" had resulted in Cascade's "19 - Boot Camp" (yes, based on the Paul Hardcastle song) missing Easter.

Raffaele Cecco's next shoot'em-up for Hewson would be "Cybernoid".

Realtime/Rainbird's amazing "Carrier Command" had been delayed due to a "programming hitch". Adverts in last month's magazines boldly stated it was "available now!" so customers who had placed orders were offered their money back.

Ocean's David Ward said that the software house was cutting back on the number of games in development. He expected 24 titles out this year, which was about a third of the previous year. Ocean had created a new label, Special FX, and was launching it with "Firefly". Other upcoming titles included "Target Renegade" and "Robocop".

"Death Wish on wheels" was how CRL's new game "Roadwarrior" was described.

Another month, another apology. A screenshot that appeared in the review of "Outrun" last month implied the game had splitscreen multiplayer. Which it doesn't.

Steve Brown, the designer behind Palace's "Barbarian", was busy working on "Rimrunner". "Barbarian II"was also in the works.

Winter CES had taken place and C&VG had a bunch of news from the show. The NES and Master System were all the rage ("forget the Atari ST and junk the Amiga"... uh, ok) with a ton of games revealed for the consoles. The games on show for the Amiga and ST were relatively underwhelming, with only Cinemaware's "Rocket Ranger" really standing out.

Features

A profile of the Bitmap Brothers, complete with typical Bitmap's photo with sunglasses standing in front of a convertible.

This month's movie reviews covered: "Stakeout", "A Night on the Town", "Dead of Winter", "Barfly", "Withnail and I", "White Mischief", "The Courier", "Teen Wolf Too", and "Bellman and True".

Tony Takoushi raved about "Salamander" on the MSX. A rant was strangely absent.

Notable Previews

Notable Reviews

  • "Xenon" Bitmap Brothers/Melbourne House - Amiga/ST 9/10 Game of the Month "It's difficult for me to tell you how good Xenon is. All the cliches are too well worn. You know what I mean, statements like "it's worth buying an ST just to play this" - that kind of crap. All I will say is that in five years of reviewing computer games this is the best shoot-'em-up I've played."
  • "Black Lamp" Firebird - ST 9/10 "Black Lamp gets my vote as the best Firebird game I've seen. In Jack they have a neat character we could be seeing more of. Let's hope so anyway."
  • "ECO" Denton Designs/Ocean - ST/Amiga 8/10 "Although it may not appeal to hardened arcade freaks, ECO is a beautifully conceived and implemented piece of software, that is not only fun to play, but could also be used to illustrate Darwin's theories of evolution in the biology classroom. Full marks to Denton and Ocean."
  • "Platoon" Ocean - C64 8/10 C&VG Hit "Ocean has made a competent job of what appeared to be one of the most difficult films to turn into a game."
  • "Traz" Cascade - C64 9/10 "Traz has a few new twists to the bat, bricks and ball formula and, most importantly, a construction kit which allows you to design your own scenes."
  • "Nigel Mansell" Martech - Spectrum 9/10 "I'm no Nigel Mansell when it comes to racing but this sim gives you a taste of life in the fast lane. Experience it."