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This month in... C&VG '89

Mike Keith

News

The industry was abuzz with talk of Nintendo’s Game Boy. The handheld had seen a very successful launch in Japan with over 500,000 units being sold (300,000 of which were on the first day), and now the question was when would it reach the UK. Nintendo were unable to give any dates, but confirmed they had plans…

The FIST telephone game was getting a sequel (I have no idea what this was).

London was getting a new light gun game (Quasar) in a converted cinema.

C&VG apologised for incorrectly printing the phone number of Activision’s adventure helpline. The number they gave turned out to be that of a Mr Davy from Reading, who wasn’t terribly impressed with the balls up.

US Gold snapped up the home computer rights to the Crackdown coin-op.

There was a kinda bizarre new section called Bug Report. As the name suggests, this covered bugs discovered and sent in by readers. C&VG seemed surprised by the large number of responses, but they only gave two: a loading bug in “Kick Off” for the ST and one in “Fantasy Zone II” for Sega’s Master System where the player sprite would disappear when things got to frantic.

Notable Previews

Notable Reviews

  • ”Phobia" Tony Crowther/Image Works - C64 88% C&VG Hit “Apart from the lack of music, Phobia is superb - pretty graphics, extremely addictive blasting gameplay, even the multiload isn’t too intrusive.“
  • "Datastorm" VDT - Amiga 95% C&VG Hit “A superlative shoot ‘em up which knocks Forgotten Worlds off the top slot as the best Amiga blaster. Unmissable.“
  • "Silkworm" The Sales Curve - Amiga 87% ST 84% Spectrum 80% C&VG Hit “Tremendous sound, super-smooth graphics and fiendishly addictive gameplay puts this amongst the cream of Amiga shoot ‘em ups.”
  • "Chicago 30’s" Toposoft - C64 85% ST 78% Amstrad 71% “Fast and colourful - it makes a change from all those little metallic spaceships whizzing around.“
  • “Honda RVF” Microstyle - ST 80% “A twisting, turning, screaming, gut-wrenching, metal-melting and incredibly satisfying belt around the tarmac.”
  • “Black Tiger” US Gold - ST 86% C&VG Hit “An excellent conversion of the cult arcade machine which has a brilliant mix of platform and shooting action.”
  • "Test Drive II” Accolade - Amiga 90% PC 85% C&VG Hit “This is the one you’ve been waiting for; all the pretty colours and flash of Test Drive, with a real game added to it.“
  • "Vigilante" US Gold - Amiga & Spectrum 81% “Vigilante has all the stuff which made the street ninja arcade machines so popular, and is very slickly produced. BUT… it is just a variation on the same theme.”
  • "Zork Zero" Infocom/Activision - Amiga 94% C&VG Hit “A superb adventure that places Infocom back in the number one slot. A must for all adventure fanatics.“
  • "Rick Dangerous" Firebird - Amiga/Spectrum/C64/ST 87% C&VG Hit “An excellent platform game which is both incredibly enjoyable and highly addictive.”
  • "New Zealand Story" Ocean - Amiga 88% C&VG Hit “A superb game in every respect. Ranks alongside Bubble Bobble and PacMania in the Amiga coin-op conversion stakes.“
  • “Super Mario II” Nintendo - NES 97% C&VG Hit “A stunning sequel which oozes class and playability. The best Nintendo game yet released - miss it at your peril.”
  • "Xybots" Domark - Spectrum 84% ST 83% “A brilliant conversion - one of the best two-player Spectrum games in ages.“

Charts

Amiga

  1. "Falcon" Mirrorsoft
  2. "Populous" Bullfrog/EA
  3. "R-Type" Activision

All Formats

  1. "Robocop" Ocean
  2. "Treasure Island Dizzy" Codemasters
  3. "Turbo Espirit" Encore