News

Gary Liddon was leaving Zzap! to join Newsfield's new software house, Thalamus, as Technical Executive. The company was headed by ex-Activision Press Officer Andrew Wright. The first game was due to be released in September on the C64 and Spectrum, with an Amstrad version following.

Gremlin were readying four new titles in time for Christmas: "Pentacle" (unreleased?), "Future Knight", "Bounder II" and "Trailblazer".

Arkana's BBC game "Powerplay" was heading to the C64.

It turned out that two images shown in the Art Gallery in issue 15 by "Chris" were taken from Audiogenic's Koala Touch tablet.

Microclassic's "Ultra Games" would feature 9 events, but rather than the usual sporting theme it would have Target Shoot Out, Urban Hellchase, Cyberball 2000, Pinball Wizard, Dawn Raid, Mind Twister, Tripple [sic] Draw Poker, Into the Abyss and Space Pool. Doesn't appear to have been released.

Activision's next releases would be: "Hacker II", "Two-On-Two Basketball", "Golf" (a C128 only game - unreleased?), "Portal" and "Big Trouble in Little China".

US Gold were bringing five coin op games to home computers, one of which was the hotly anticipated "Gauntlet". They were also to release five Epyx games in the UK: "Super Cycle", "World Games", "Movie Monster", "Destroyer" and an unnamed wrestling simulation.

Features

Zzap! visited Salute '86, a wargaming convention held in South London.

Zzap! gathered four of the top C64 musicians for a chat. Rob Hubbard, Ben Daglish and Tony Crowther (WeMUSIC) and David Whittaker were all present.

Jeff Minter's developer diary of "Iridis Alpha" continued, and this month featured details about ACONT (an instruction interpreter for his "wave language"), GENESYS (which was responsible for passing data to ACONT), his time at the recent Commodore show (where he did some "serious partying"), and his progress on the CORE section of the game.

This month's Zzapback featured games from September '85: "Hyper Sports", "Summer Games II", "Frankie Goes to Hollywood", "Skyfox", "Finders Keepers" and "Rescue on Fractalus".

Notable Reviews

• "Green Beret" Imagine - 93% Sizzler "Makes Rambo and Commando feel like a Sunday stroll throw the park."
• "Tau Ceti" Pete Cooke/CRL - 93% Sizzler "A brilliant and polished program that will appeal to strategenarians, adventurists, arcade zappers and just about any self-respecting Commodore owner."
• "Murder on the Mississippi" Activision - 89% "Novel approach to an interactive murder novel. Agatha Christie would be proud."
• "Superstar Ping Pong" US Gold - 85% "A great and addictive sports simulation."
• "Kik Start II" Mastertronic - C128 version 96% Sizzler "The original Commodore 64 version of Kik Start is extremely playable and is one of my all-time favourite games. The 128 version is even better though, and is hellishly addictive."
• "Time Trax" Mind Games/Argus Press - 80% "One of the more interesting (if demanding) arcade adventures to have appeared recently. But patience is a virtue."
• "Infiltrator" Mindscape/US Gold - 92% Sizzler "An unusual, but impressive approach to an arcade adventure."

Charts

Games

1. "Uridium" Andrew Braybrook/Hewson
2. "Paradroid" Andrew Braybrook/Hewson
3. "Mercenary" Novagen