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This month in... The One '92

Mike Keith

News

Team 17 were having another crack at the beat 'em up genre with "Body Blows", along with a top down racer, "Overdrive".

Rumours started to circulate that there was yet another Amiga model on the way: the A800. It would be a 32bit machine with 68030 CPU and would sit between the A600 and the A1500. Commodore's Market Director Kelly Sumner was adamant there would be no machine called the A800, but did confirm there was another machine on the way... I assume it was the A1200.

Alternative Software snapped up two popular UK TV show licenses: "Doctor Who: Dalek Attack" and "'Allo 'Allo".

Following on from their MiG flight sims, developer Simis had turned their attention to the Harrier Jump Jet. "Harrier Assault" would once again be published by Domark and would also include a strategy element which would see the player assume the role of Commander of the Rapid Response Force. It just so happened that Vektor Grafix & Microprose had their own Harrier game due around the same time. Domark also planned to release a head-to-head multiplayer add on pack for "MiG 29 Superfulcrum".

Anco announced that "Kick Off 3" would be their final title for the Amiga as they were going to focus on the Sega and Nintendo consoles.

With Christmas approaching, Ocean had a bevvy of games in the pipeline for the festive season: "Universal Monsters" (unreleased), "Cool World", a "new Golf game which, we're told, blows everything else away", "WWF Wrestlemania 2", "The Addams Family 2" (unreleased), "Sim Earth" and "Robosport". They also decided their "Lethal Weapon" game would draw from all three movies rather than just the latest - presumably because there wasn't enough material...

Team 17 were hoping to get Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer to lend their voices to "Superfrog", but the comedy duo turned them down.

"Silly Putty" was a rather nice looking puzzler/platformer from System 3.

There was some further re-shuffling of the magazine's editorial team with Jim Douglas leaving to head up EMAP's Nintendo mag, and Dave Upchurch stepping into the editor role.

Soccer games were popular, as were pinball games... so Codemasters figured why not kill two birds with one stone with "Soccer Pinball".

Psygnosis were promising that "Armour-geddon II" would be "much better than the original".

Not to be left out of the sequel action, Domark were to follow up their world cup rugby game.

Features

On this month's cover disks:

Part 2 of an exclusive look at "Frontier" - you can probably tell Gary Whitta was a tad impressed by the fact that the cover for this issue sported the question: "Is Braben God?".

Whitta also visited Vivid Image Design to check out "The Second Samurai".

Following on the success of "Another World", French software house Delphine dished some details on "Flashback" (which I'm pretty sure was a completely unrelated title, but really looks as if it were).

The second instalment of the "Uridium 2" dev diary saw Andrew Braybrook implementing his sprite multiplexor, squashing bugs in the shawdow plotter and going to see Spinal Tap at the Royal Albert Hall.

Featured in this month's PD Zone were: "Quick Money", "Biplanes 2", "Mr Brick", "System 4", "The Ultimate Gameboy Simulator".

Notable Previews

Notable Reviews

  • "Premiere" Core Design - 81% "As platform-based arcade adventures go, Premiere is certainly one of the most polished, and amongst the most fun to play as well."
  • "Shadow of the Beast 3" Reflections/Psygnosis - 90% "It's difficult to mix two genres and make the resulting game work, the tendency being or it to fall between two stools and hence not really appeal to fans of either game style. In Beast 3's case I'm pleased to say (and I bet you saw this coming) that Psygnosis and Reflections can be justly proud of Beast 3 - they've got the mix just right."

Charts

  1. "Sensible Soccer" Sensible Software/Renegade
  2. "Monkey Island 2" Lucasfilm/US Gold
  3. "Fire & Ice" Graftgold/Renegade