This month in... Zzap!64

News

Gary Penn bid farewell as he strode off "on a secret mission". Ciaran Brennan was to take the reins, with Julian Rignall as his assistant. Phillipa Irving's war game section took a break as she was busy with exams. There was also a small change to the review format, with the "Value" rating being dropped.

Arnie's latest film "Predator" had grossed $12 million at the box office in its first 3 days and Activision had signed the license.

Richard Branson's Atlantic balloon race had been all over the news, and Virgin were releasing a game to mark the occasion.

There hadn't been a whole lot of goodies for C128 owners, but CRL were to release a special 128 version of their upcoming"Stratton" which would feature more locations and an animated intro.

Zzap's sister mag Crash featured a 16 page pull out "Oink!" special.

The Commodore Show took place last month at the Novotel in London, and it was a little disappointing for C64 fans. The only C64s on display were by dealers selling them off cheap. The star of the show was of course the Amiga, though software was still lacking.

Graeme Kidd was busy beavering away on a new publication from Newsfield: The Games Machine. Everything from 8bit to 16bit to consoles, arcades and more would be covered.

"Quedex" would see programmer Stavros Fasoulas taking a break from shoot 'em ups, with more of a puzzler - though quick reactions would still be required.

The next release from Software Projects was to be "Star Paws". I remember back in the day I got it into my head that Matthew Smith was involved with this, but I have no idea what gave me that idea.

Fans of "Bounder" from Gremlin Graphics could look forward to a whole lot more bouncing action in "Rebounder".

Spanish developers Dynamic were following up their rather flawed "Army Moves" with a "Game Over". Zzap! wryly stated that it was looking even more frustrating, which was a fair comment given it was only really notable for the scandalous cover/ad art (and a pretty good Galway tune).

James Clavell's novel "Tai-Pan" was being turned into a game by Ocean.

John Cumming was working on Hewson's latest shooter: "Zynaps".

Features

This month's "Morpheus" dev diary saw Andrew wrestling with drones, remotes, and intermittent bugs. He was also rather peeved that an unnamed person on Compunet had used "Uridium" sprites in the C64 conversion of a (also unnamed) Spectrum game.

Episode 8 of Mel Croucher's "Tamara Knight".

Zzap paid a visit to Pinewood Studios to have a chat with John Richardson, the special effects wiz behind the upcoming Bond movie, "The Living Daylights".

The results of the Zzap! questionnaire were in... 99.5% of responders were male, the average age of whom was 16 (30 for females), 73% went to school, 69% spent £2-5 a week on games, and only 15% were planning to buy a new computer in the run up to Christmas.

Notable Reviews

• "Head Over Heels" Ocean - 98% Gold Medal "From the very first go this had me hooked... and a fortnight later I'm still itching to get back to it. Head Over Heels is quite simply the finest 64 program so far this year." (this was the first Gold Medal of the year!)
• "Thing Bounces Back" Gremlin Graphics - 86% "An unusual and challenging arcade adventure which is a worth sequel to Thing on a Spring."
• "Oink!" CRL - 84% "Possibly disappointing for fans of the comic, but still a piggin' good game."
• "Treasure Island" Mastertronic - 84% "It's very heartening to see a budget game using an original programming idea for an adventure rather another GAC or Quill release - well done to the programmers Phase Two Software, whoever they may be."
• "Lurking Horror" Infocom/Activision - 90% Sizzler "All of this is carried out in Infocom's usual meticulous style - and there's no doubt that Dave Lebling has a wonderful talent for bringing both locations and those that inhabit them to life."
• "Revs Plus" Geoff Crammond/Firebird - 83% "An excellent racing simulation which provides a realistic challenge."
• "Slap Fight" Imagine - 80% "A superb arcade conversion and a great shoot 'em up in its own right."
• "Defender of the Crown" Cinemaware/Mirrorsoft - 94% Sizzler "An experience which should not be missed by any disk drive owner." (98% for graphics!)
• "Twin Tornado" Doctor Soft Simulations - 85% "An innovative piece of software which is the only true one-on-one combat game presently available for the 64."
• "The Last Ninja" System 3 - 94% Sizzler "Enough depth and action to satisfy both adventurers and martial artists."

Charts

Games

1. "World Games" Epyx/US Gold
2. "Leaderboard" Access/US Gold
3. "Gauntlet" US Gold

Music

1. "Sanxion" Thalamus - Rob Hubbard - Loading Music
2. "Delta" Thalamus - Rob Hubbard - Main Theme
3. "Green Beret" Imagine - Martin Galway - Loading Music

This month in... Zzap!64 '87

News

Software Projects announced that they were reducing their prices to £5.95 in the run up to Christmas. Others were expected to follow suit, though that did seem somewhat unlikely as that’s a steep drop down from £9.95. Gary Penn pondered how lower prices might affect the quality of games - lower budgets for development? less licensed tie-ins? (The latter was considered a good thing)

Ciaran Brennan was promoted to Assistant Editor, and Gary Liddon was due to make his return next month.

Mastertronic had spun off a subsidiary called Arcadia which would focus on arcade coin-ops. They had licensed boards based on the Amiga hardware from Commodore, with extra RAM (1.5mb) and games supplied on ROMS which could hold up to 6.5mb of data. The first two games were to be "Road Wars" and an enhanced version of "Boulderdash".

"Enterprise" from Melbourne House was space trading game sporting vector graphics and the ability to interact with alien computer systems via text (unreleased on C64?).

A sequel to "Druid"was on its way.

It looked to be a busy few months for Piranha, who had eight releases in development which included"Trap Door II", "Flunky" and "Yogi Bear".

Simon Nicol's "Mega Apocalypse" had been two years in the making and was finally done. The game looked to be rather technically impressive, sporting up to 144 non-flickering sprites on screen, 100 spinning stars and 5 channel sound (with 2 of those channels being used for speech).

"The Tube" from Quicksilva would feature three kinds of shoot'em up action over three different play areas.

The re-release of Actvision games on the Firebird Silver label got pushed back a month or so. Meanwhile, the next title on the Gold label would be "Flying Shark".

Rumours were circulating that Activision had snapped up the home computer rights to "Bionic Commando", "Side Arms", "Gunsmoke" and "Legendary Wings". Elsewhere it looked like US Gold may have acquired the "Out Run" and "Super Hang-On" licenses.

Gremlin had the sequel "Re-Bounder" and a new 3D "exploring and blasting game" in the works.

The next game in CRL's controversial horror adventure series was to be "Frankenstein" and would feature more gruesome digitised graphics. On a lighter note, they were also going to release "Ninja Hamster" and "Traxxion".

There was a small over exposed screenshot of Ocean's "oriental mega-game" "Tai-Pan".

Features

This month's instalment of Andrew Braybrook's "Morpheus" developer diary saw him tackling the pause menu (which was complicated by his new sprite multiplexor), ship upgrades and tuning the ship controls and weapons. He found himself fighting the assembler on the Opus PC a number of times, and exclaimed "Remind me to write the next game in COBOL - it's wonderful!". Things must've been bad. Garys Penn and Liddon swung by, apparently while on vacation, but didn't get to see the game. The diary ended with Andrew spelling out the arguments of why the Amiga was superior to the ST, and of course he was right.

Zzap! cast their critical gaze towards the newly released Nintendo Entertainment System. Was it any good? Julian Rignall was certainly impressed: "Super Mario Brothers is a fine example - arcade perfect (flawless actually), and I can truthfully say that it's the finest computer games [sic] I've ever played."

Notable Previews

• "Road Runner" US Gold
• "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" US Gold
• "Accolade Comics" Accolade/US Gold
• "Street Sports Baseball" Epyx/US Gold
• "Last Mission" US Gold
• "Rygar" US Gold
• "Solomon's Key" US Gold

Notable Reviews

• "Wizball" Sensible Software/Ocean - Sizzler 96% “Wizball is undoubtedly the finest release so far this year. The scenario and game design are so original that it’s almost off-putting at first, but it only takes a short time to aster controlling the Wizball and cat and the to work out exactly what’s going on.“
• "World Class Leaderboard" Access/US Gold - 94% Sizzler “Quite simply the apex in golfing simulations. Tough, demanding, challenging and requiring far more skill and strategy than previous versions.“
• "I, Ball" Firebird - 80% "An unusual and competent blend of shoot 'em up and racing action."
• "Super Sunday" Nexus - 92% "A superlative product - the best football simulation on the market."
• "GFL Championship Football" Activision - 82% "Plenty of padding surrounds a fine strategic game. Try it out if you think you can stand the play limitations."
• "Superbowl" Ocean - 80% "A brilliant two player game, but only a novice would find the computer opponent challenging."
• "Bureaucracy" Infocom/Activision - 90% "Bureaucracy is a very enjoyable game. [Douglas] Adams and Infocom obviously share a certain vein of highly infectious humour - I guess they must eat yogurt together. As it is, if you save up your pennies and blow them on this little number I doubt very much if you'll be disappointed."
• "Battle Cruiser" SSI - 89% "'Battle Cruiser' is an impressive concept, if nothing special as a piece of software; whether or not you will enjoy it depends very much on what you're looking for."
• "Barbarian" Palace Software - 87% "Yeah! All the thrills and spills of a nightmarish abattoir - blood spurts, decapitated heads flying around, guts and gore and hunchback cripples [yikes] dragging away corpses - this is what I call a real hack 'em up!"
• "IQ" Nu-Wave - 84% "An innovative and highly appealing logic game."
• "Killed Until Dead" Accolade/US Gold - Disk 88% Cassette 86% "A superbly executed binary who'lldoit, let down slightly by a lack of variety and depth."
• "The Great Escape" Ocean - 89% "One of the best arcade adventures available - an essential purchase for fans of the genre."

Charts

Games

1. "World Games" Epyx/US Gold
2. "Leader Board" Access/US Gold
3. "Gauntlet" US Gold

Music

1. "Sanxion" Thalamus - Rob Hubbard - Loading Music
2. "Delta" Thalamus - Rob Hubbard - Main Theme
3. "Green Beret" Imagine - Martin Galway - Loading Music

This month in... Zzap!64 '87

News

Firebird closed a deal with Activision/Electric Dreams which would see the budget publisher re-releasing a slew of older titles from the US for £1.99 each.

No changes at Zzap! this month, though Julian Rignall got engaged to Glenys Powell, the “ever-effervescent” Editorial Assistant.

Zzap! launched in Italy. Note the lack of “64” - Speccy, Atari, MSX and C16 gamers would all be catered for.

The Sensi Software lads were wrapping up their next game: the awesome "Wizball”. Interesting that the news snippet makes mention of a “do-it-yourself” tune from Martin Galway?

Palace’s rather nice looking sword fighting game "Barbarian" was about to hit the shelves. The head chopping action would commence next month.

Compunet “legend” Ubik had written a compilation of four classic arcade games, namely “Space Invaders”, “Asteroids”, “Snake” and “Space Wars”. "The Big Four Pack"would be released by Firebird, who had also snapped up the rights for what would become one of the best coin-op conversions around: "Bubble Bobble”.

"The Detective" from Argus Press would see the player attempt to solve an Agatha Christie style murder in a big mansion. I actually randomly played this the other day and was baffled… maybe next month’s review will help.

Ocean had published Dinamic’s "Army Moves”.

Production delays had kept Ariolasoft’s "They Stole a Million" from reaching retail, but those looked to be resolved.

TV cartoon series "MASK" was getting the game treatment by Gremlin. The team handling the development were the same ones responsible for the well received "Gauntlet" ports. The Sheffield based software house also had "Thing Bounces Back" and "Deathwish III" on the way.

Andrew Spencer, creator of the absolute C64 classic "International Soccer" was back with "Street Sports Basketball”.

Martin Sneap (aka MAT from Compunet) was handling the C64 conversion of "Shadow Skimmer”.

Even though Jon Williams was still working on "Oink!" he had already begun to plan out his ”Knight Games" sequel.

Features

An interview with Douglas Adams about his recently released projects: a book called “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency” and a new Infocom adventure, “Bureaucracy”.

A comic that had started out as a fanzine a year earlier had ended up a surprise hit. Zzap! talked to two of “Oink!” mag founders, Mark Rodgers and Patrick Gallagher, as well as Jon Williams who had been tasked with bringing it to home computers.

The issue came with a cover tape packed full of some special goodies:

• "Gribbly’s Special Day Out" Andrew Braybrook/Hewson
• “The Day the Universe Died” Sensible Software (Demo of some 3D objects for an upcoming game.. maybe)
• “Made in France II” Llamasoft (Mini-game)
• "Revenge of the Mutant Camels II" Llamasoft (Demo)
• “Mix-E-Load” Thalamus (Special version of the interactive music loader from Delta)
• “The Last Ninja” System 3 (Just a series of screens as a teaser for the upcoming game)
• “Thalamusic” Rob Hubbard (Perhaps the highlight of the tape - a recording of the Sanxion loading music performed by Rob on actual synths).

The developer diary of Andrew Braybrook’s "Morpheus" continued. This month saw him wrestling with artist’s block (unable to come up with any good sprite designs for the first 2-3 weeks), unreliable hardware and the details of the control scheme.

Zzap! Back took another look at the big games reviewed in the January & February 1986 issues. These were:

• "Koronis Rift" Lucasfilm/Activision
• "Ballblazer" Lucasfilm/Activision
• "Robin of the Wood" Odin
• "Fight Night" US Gold
• "Bounder" Gremlin Graphics
• "The Eidolon" Lucasfilm/Activision
• "Revs" Firebird
• "Desert Fox" US Gold

Notable Previews

• "Shadows of Mordor" Melbourne House

Notable Reviews

• "Zenji" Firebird/Activision - 91% Sizzler “It’s simple in concept, incredibly addictive and hellishly difficult to put down.“
• "Gods and Heroes" Power House - 84% "An excellent platform game which offers plenty for those willing to perserve."
• "Zolyx" Firebird - 90% Sizzler “One of the simplest and most addictive programs around. Try it if you think you can stand the pace.“
• "HERO" Firebird/Activision - 86% “HERO looks awful, sounds terrible but plays beautifully.”
• "The Big Sleaze" Delta 4/Piranha - No score? “The graphics are great and the vocabulary has been very well thought out - in fact I’d go so far as to say that what’s here is the best of Delta 4’s programming efforts to date.“

Charts

Games

1. "World Games" Epyx/US Gold
2. "Leader Board" Access/US Gold
3. "Gauntlet" US Gold

Music

1. "Sanxion" Thalamus - Loading Music - Rob Hubbard
2. "Knucklebusters" Melbourne House - Main Theme - Rob Hubbard
3. "Green Beret" Imagine - Loading Music - Martin Galway

This month in... Zzap!64 '87

News

Thanks to a tweet from Julian Rignall I finally noticed that the ships getting blown up by Zzap!64 on the cover represented Commodore User & C&VG. Cheeky.

The reason for such a cover? Sales had climbed to 67,728 per month and showed no signs of letting up. The mag would be undergoing a few changes - they looked to be broadening the scope of what they were covering, including “unusual, but relevant” features. This issue also saw the inclusion of a cover tape which resulted in the price rising from a quid to £1.50.

Features

A round up of current compilation offerings. The pick of the bunch was Beau Jolly’s “Five Star Games”, followed closely by Jeff Minter’s “Yak’s Progress”. Perhaps a little unsurprisingly the next two were Gremlin’s “Zzap! Sizzlers I” and “Zzap! Sizzlers II”.

This month’s instalment of Andrew Braybrook’s "Morpheus" diary saw him tackling rotating starfield numerical drift, but progress was interrupted when he had to prepare for a US trip to hand over "Uridium" source code & assets to a developer who would be working on ports to the Amiga, ST, Apple and PC. He was a bit disappointed in not getting to do the Amiga version himself. I’m curious as to who that dev was - I’m pretty sure nothing came of it. Perhaps most significantly, the (in)famous photo of Andrew in a dog costume was front and centre.

The centrefold was an Oli Frey poster.

Notable Previews

• "Stifflip and Co" Binary Vision/Palace Software

Notable Reviews

• "Ranarama" Graftgold/Hewson - 87% “Ranarama is graphically and sonically weak, but it’s beautifully designed, rewarding and incredibly playable.”
• "Into the Eagles Nest" Pandora - 90% Sizzler “A tried and tested theme, commendably developed into a glorious game.“
• "Shockway Rider" Faster Than Light - 86% “An original and deceptively playable game - and a worthy Light Force follow-up to boot.“
• "Hollywood Hijinx" Infocom/Activision - 90% Sizzler “Apart from the usual high standard of programming, parsing, and general gamesmanship, the real merits of Hollywood Hijinx lie first in the simplicity of its storyline and secondly in the way in which the atmosphere so vividly conjurs up all the trivia of Tinsel Town.“
• "POD" Mastertronic - 84% “A wonderful little shoot ‘em up - highly polished and very playable.“
• "Nemesis" Konami - 80% “A good, fast arcade blast. Check it out if you’re keen on the arcade version.“
• "Sailing" Activision - 80% “An atmospheric and surprisingly playable boat racing game.“

Charts

Games

1. "World Games" Epyx/US Gold
2. "Leader Board" Access/US Gold
3. "Gauntlet" US Gold

Music

1. "Sanxion" Thalamus - Rob Hubbard - Loading Music
2. "Knucklebusters" Melbourne House - Rob Hubbard - Main Theme
3. "Miami Vice" Ocean - Martin Galway - Title Screen