News

"Death Stalks the Night" was an upcoming arcade adventure from Ubi Soft where the player assumed the role as Count Dracula to take on “the usual Van Helsings”.

New software house EAS announced a space trading game called "STAG" for the Amiga and ST.

Mr Chip’s "Wrangler"would see the player take control over Clint Eastwood (yes, apparently) and his ‘droid in what looked like a puzzle game.

Budget label Alternative were moving into the 16bits with Don Priestly’s "Mad Flunky”, a follow-up to his Spectrum game "Flunky”. The retail price was £14.95.

Epyx’s classic "California Games"had been ported to the Amiga.

Microprose caused a bit of a stir at the 1988 PC Show with their Apache helicopter simulator (think actual full on hydraulic cockpit flight sim), and now an “Irish businesman” had bought a unit, shoved it on a truck and was touring it around the UK.

"Dark Fusion" was a new shoot’em up for the Speccy from Gremlin Graphics.

Following the complete failure of US Gold to release a home computer version of “Gunsmoke” due to the contracted developers putting in a dire effort, Infogrames announced a very similar game "Wanted”.

Electric Dreams assured Amiga owners that their version of "Super Hang On"was not a typical crappy ST port… though C&VG reviewers seemed to find the ST one superior.

The Wozzer Collection Ltd hoped their new toy, “The Wozzer”, would be the next world wide craze. C&VG seemed unconvinced. I can’t really find anything about it, so I guess they were right.

Digital Magic were new kids on the block and promised “incredible” “arcade quality” games. The two first ones were "Trained Assassin" and "Scorpion” for the Amiga.

Texas Instruments "Voyager" promised be the talk of the show at the upcoming British Toy and Hobby Fair. The toy was a pair of headphones with a connected microphone and harnessed “intelligence” to challenge the wearer to word games. It could understand four words.

Hewson had a bevvy of new games lined up for 1989. The two main new 16bit titles were "Custodian" and "Astaroth”, with a conversion of "Cybernoid 2” also on the way. 8bit owners could look forward to Raf Cecco’s "Stormlord”, conversions of "Eliminator”, as well as souped up versions of Andrew Braybrook’s classics "Heavt Metal Paradroid"and "Gribbly’s Special Day Out”.

EA were to publish player guide’s for "Bard’s Tale”, "Wasteland”, "Deathlord”, "Mars Saga"and "Sentinel Worlds”.

Mindscape got the game right’s to Lucasfilm’s movie "Willow”.

Cascade hoped to release what they felt was the “ultimate flight simulator” in the form of "The RAF Flight Simulation” (unreleased?). They were also releasing a “no-frills” budget compilation of 15 games for the 16bits called "Disk 15” (also unreleased?).

Titus was porting "Fire and Forget" to the Spectrum.

Canadian software house Readysoft were to publish their Amiga version of "Dragon’s Lair" which certainly looked rather impressive, but would come on an (for the time) unheard of 6 floppies.

Atari’s coin-op "Blasteroids" was making its way to home systems. Supposedly the ST and Amiga graphics were brought directly over from the arcade machine.

Features

Julian Rignall went behind the scenes to see just how the groundbreaking film “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” was done.

This month’s movie reviews covered: “Red Heat”, “Young Guns”, “Cocktail”, “Gorillas in the Mist”, “Dead Ringers”, “Manhunter” and “Heart of Midnight”.

Minson attempted to predict the coming year in video games. The ST and Amiga would lose ground to the PC, and Nintendo and Sega would make an impact with their upcoming 16bit consoles. Not bad - though he felt the only dead cert for success was the Konix Konsole.

Notable Reviews

• "TV Sports Football" Cinemaware/Mirrorsoft - Amiga 93% C&VG Hit ”It may be my bias as a keen American Football fan taking over here, but TVSF is the most entertaining, accurate and engrossing sports simulation I’ve ever experienced.”
• "Baal" Psyclapse - ST/Amiga 80% “The game is thoroughly engrossing, and there is a very large map and there are plenty of surprises - the load/save option is a godsend!“
• "Batman" Ocean - Spectrum 89% “Quite a fun game but, to my mind, not nearly as good as the first one. Nice packaging, though.”
• "Cosmic Pirate" Outlaw - Amiga 89% “Zippo games is the team responsible for the production, and Outlaw could hardly have asked for a more professional result. Starting with the impressive and user-friendly options screen, every tiny detail of this package is well considered and beautifully executed.”
• "Demon from the Darkside" Compass Software - Spectrum 81% “Compass Software, despite offering its adventures by mail order only, has always produced games of a quality equal to the best products. Jonathan Lemmon has come up with another very playable and beautifully presented adventure in The Devil’s Hard [I’m pretty sure this review was talking about Demon - very confusing].“
• "Devil’s Hand" Marlin Games - 82% “If you like a good old fashioned mystery-thriller with plenty of detail, this biggish adventure by Linda Wright should be just up your street.“
• "Dream Zone" Leisuresoft/Baudville - Amiga/ST/PC 89% “Every now and then, just when adventures seem to have settled down into a bit of a rut, along comes something completely new and off-beat, like a breath of fresh air. Dream Zone, written by American teenagers Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin, is on of those games, and there hasn’t been anything like it since Tass Times.”

  Charts

  Games

• "Operation Wolf" Ocean
• "Robocop" Ocean
• "Double Dragon" Melbourne House

  Worst Holiday TV Ads

• H’seasons Hol (B’tain)
• Lunn Poly’s Get Away Ad
• Don’t Book It Thomas Cook It