This month in... The One '93

News

Digital Image Design had two new titles on the way. The first up was a "pseudo-sequel" to "Epic" - called "Odyssey" - set 90 years further in the future and would feature more of an open world feel. Sadly it looks like it was never released.. The second was another sequel, jet fighter sim "TFX Inferno".

Relative newcomer Miracle Games were rather bullish about their upcoming platformer, "Miracle Bat". They declared: "Miracle Bat is cooler than Zool, harder than James Pond, faster than Sonic and the game is more complex than any of Mario's adventures" Ooo-ok then. Perhaps unsurprisingly it would not see the light of day.

Cheetah unveiled a new, weird, Geiger-esque joystick called the Argostick.

The A1200 had only been out for a month and Gremlin were amongst the first to support it with a souped up version of "Zool". They also had a full sequel in the works.

Psygnosis had signed "The Second Samurai" from Mev Dinc's Vivid Image.

"A futuristic driving game where rocket car things race on a track around the inside of a giant sphere" doesn't sound terribly interesting, but supposedly it was created/designed/thought of by Syd Mead (designer of Blade Runner, Aliens etc) and developed by Cyberdreams. They were also working on a new adventure due next year, "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream" (which was released, but not on the Amiga).

Team 17 had decided to write the sequel to "Project X" for the A1200 and then cut it down for older machines (unreleased?).

System 3 were working on a follow up to "Putty". Little did we know then that it would take 20 years to surface.

The One writers Gary Whitta and David Upchurch were set to appear on the Gamesmaster TV show as guest reviewers.

US Gold and Delphine had to release a statement pointing out the non-interactive rolling demo of "Flashback" included on last month's cover disk was just that, and assured readers the actual game was indeed playable.

Features

On this month's two cover disks:

• "Psycho Santa" Bullfrog
• "Doctor Who" Admiral Software
• "Gunship 2000" Microprose
• "Archer Maclean Pool" Archer Maclean/Virgin (rolling demo)

Just how compatible was the new A1200? The One put fifteen titles to the test and found four that either failed to run or had corrupted graphics: "Lotus III", "Legend of Kyrandia", "Robocod" and "Super Monaco GP". While "The Addams Family" did run, it suffered from "oddly bugged title music".

The Magnificent Seven returned for a slap up Christmas dinner at a pub and a lot of chat. Well, it wasn't quite the same line up as before: Molyneux, Jez San, Michael Powell and David Braben weren't able to partake for various reasons and were replaced. Those in attendance: Martin Kenwright, Andrew Braybrook, Eric Matthews, Archer Maclean, Jon Hare and Mev Dinc.

The games featured in the Work In Progress articles this month were:

• "Microcosm" Psygnosis
• "Dracula" Psygnosis
• "SuperHero" Kage/Psygnosis (unreleased)
• "Dune 2 - Battle for Arrakis" Westwood Studios/Virgin

The One reached out to a bunch of industry folk for their thoughts on the year past and what to expect from 1993: Andrew Wright (Virgin), Gary Bracey (Ocean), Martyn Brown (Team 17), Kelly Sumner (Commodore UK), Stuart Dinsey (Computer Trade Weekly), Jeremy Smith (Core Design), Simon Jeffery (Electronic Arts), Tom Watson (Renegade) and Dominik Diamond (Gamesmaster).

The One Awards 1992 winners were:

• Best Graphics: "Another World" Delphine
• Bet Sound: "Wizkid" Sensible Software/Ocean
• Best Technical Achievement: "Legends of Valour" DCD/US Gold
• Most Original Game: "Wizkid" Sensible Software/Ocean
• Best Programming or Programming Team: Sensible Software
• Best Software House: Team 17 and Renegade
• Best Game of the Year: "Sensible Soccer" Sensible Software/Renegade

What were the most anticipated games of 1993 according to The One?:

• "Jurassic Park" Ocean
• "Batman Returns" Konami
• "Syndicate" Bullfrog
• "Lobo" Ocean (unreleased?)
• "Apocalypse" Virgin
• "Splash Jordan" Millennium (unreleased?)
• "Alien Breed 2" Team 17
• "Body Blows" Team 17

• "Sensible Soccer 2" Sensible Software/Renegade

  The games covered in this month's PD Zone were:

• "Baldy" 84%
• "Atoms" 82%
• "Pacman Deluxe" 90%
• "Hellzone" 77%
• "Top of the League"31%
• "Leap!" 37%

In the 6th instalment of the "Uridium 2" dev diary, Andrew Braybrook decided to go with dual playfields, wrestled with hard to find bugs, got the dreadnaught melting routine in, imported the enemy movement patterns from the C64 and attended a couple of trade shows. Right at the end of the month, after grumbling from the publisher, Andrew reluctantly ditched dual playfields.

Notable Previews

• "B-17 Flying Fortress" Microprose
• "Combat Air Patrol" Psygnosis
• "Arabian Nights" Krisalis
• "Fatal Strokes" I.C.E. (unreleased)
• "Darkseed" Cyberdreams

Notable Reviews

• "Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis" Lucasarts/US Gold - 88% "In its favour, it's one of the best graphic adventures ever produced.... [but....] I know it's part and parcel of the genre to put up with lots of disk accessing and swapping, but Fate of Atlantis pushes its luck at times."
• "Street Fighter 2" Creative Materials/US Gold - 89% "It's not as good as the SNES version, it has to be said, but if you view it as an Amiga conversion it certainly is one Hell of a game."
• "KGB" Cryo/Virgin - 86% "The adventure itself is huge (to say the least) and the only reservation I have about it is that it is, on occasions, very time sensitive. Sometimes it is very easy to miss appointments and subsequently mess up a particular aspect of the adventure."
• "RoboSport" Maxis/Ocean - 80% "'Yeuch!' That was my immediate reaction to RoboSport. If my years in the games-reviewing business have taught me anything it's that any game that runs in Workbench is 99% certain to be a pile of old doggy doo-doo. Fortunately RoboSport proved to be in that tiny 1% of games that aren't..."
• "Krusty's Super Funhouse" Audiogenic/Acclaim - 84% "Games that are hybrids of gaming styles very rarely seem to work. Because the programmers are trying to cover more than one base the differing aspects of the game are invariably diluted, resulting in a mish-mash crossbreed that doesn't appeal to fans of either camp. Krusty's Super Funhouse, however, is the welcome exception to the rule."

Charts

1. "Sensible Soccer 1992/93 Season" Sensible Software/Renegade
2. "Zool" Gremlin
3. "Archer Maclean's Pool" Archer Maclean/Virgin

Confidential Magazine #8 December '88/January '89

As we bid goodbye to the 80s, the Editor pondered what lay ahead in the coming decade. After the world had lived in fear of nuclear annihalation for so many years, the arrival of the likes of Gorbachev meant we could now focus on the "prospect of irreversible doom" thanks to global warming. Technology would, of course, play a significant role in what was to come: "Our ability to manipulate information and communicate the results to the whole World within seconds, could lead us into chaos."

Overall, a cheerful way to open this issue.

As for the rest of the mag, it featured:

• A report from the PC Show at London's Olympia.
• An interview with the team behind the Cthulu inspired adventure, "The Hound Of Shadow" from Electronic Arts.
• With the bombshell news reported in a previous issue that "Scapeghost" would be the last adventure game from genre legends Level 9, Confidential wanted to find out what was behind the decision, and what to expect next. There were a raft of reasons, but declining sales was - unsurprisingly - the primary, and they were tight lipped about their plans aside from saying "Contractual secrecy prevents me saying much about Level 9's future games, except that they are 16-bit, with state-of-the-art animated graphics."
• A guide to the Kingdom of Kerovnia, the setting for the games of Magnetic Scrolls.
• A look at to the upcoming titles from Sierra: "Hero's Quest", "The Colonel's Bequest", "Codename: Ice Man", "Leisure Suit Larry 3" and "Sorcerian" (unreleaased).
• Game agent Jacqui Lyons continued her reporting from behind the iron curtain.
• This month's Play By Mail game was "Pop Star" from Ideal Games.
• An interview with adventure game reviewer/journo Keith Campbell.
• A preview of Novalogic's naval sim "Wolfpack".
• The Adventure '89 convention saw twenty multi-user games represented.
• The third part of "Writing Your Own Adventures".
• A guide on running your own LARP events.

Confidential Magazine #2 Dec 1988/Jan 1989

Postal strikes had caused delays to the first issue, and - whether it was due to this or some other reason - November came and went without the second issue. Going forward they would be sticking to the every-other-month schedule.

Contents:

• Interview with Philippe Ulrich, head of the EXXOS group at French software house ERE Informatique which had recently released the rather original and intriguing "Captain Blood".
• A somewhat tongue in cheek guide to playing adventure games.
• A gathering of five of the top adventure gaming columnists at the PC Show. The five were: Nick Walkind, Keith Campbell (C&VG, Commodore User), Mike Gerrard (Your Sinclair), Steve Cooke (ACE), Nik Wilde (Newsfield) and Kati Hamza (Zzap and Crash).
• A look at MUD, including an exerpts from an interview with creator Richard Bartle.
• Keith Campbell examined the evolution of puzzles in adventure games.
• Interview with Silicon Software, developers of "Legend of the Sword".
• An "interview" with Level 9 chatacter Ingrid.
• An in depth piece on the new Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game, "Pool of Radiance".
• A visit to play-by-mail specialists, KJC Games.
• The reveal of the new Magnetic Scrolls game, "Myth",that would be exclusively for club members.
• A short story by Jane Rowe.
• A visit to The Crazy Dwarf in the Sussex Downs, one of the latest LARP groups to spring up.
• Michael Baywater pondered puzzles in games and life.

This month in... Zzap!64 '87

News

In his editorial, Gary Penn lamented the fact that for the first time there had not been a single Sizzler or Gold Medal awarded in an issue. Well, that’s not entirely true as "The Bard’s Tale" picked up a very respectable Sizzler, though apparently it didn’t count as it was “a role playing game”. It seemed that software houses were spending as much time as possible before Christmas to polish up their hopeful hits. On the bright side, there was a lot to look forward to next month…

Not one but two new games from Andrew Braybrook?! Well, not quite, but there was still good cause to be excited. Braybrook had produced enhanced versions of "Uridium" and "Paradroid" which Hewson bundled together. Not bad at £8.95.

Gremlin’s followup to "Way of the Tiger”, "Avenger”, was making its way to the C64. This time it would ditch the side on beat’em up gameplay in favour of something obviously inspired by "Gauntlet”.

"Escape from Singe’s Castle" from Software Projects would feature “eight more representations” of scenes from the “Dragon’s Lair” arcade machine.

Steve Crow’s "Firelord" was to get a C64 port, published by Hewson.

Audiogenic was developing an enhanced version of "Graham Gooch’s Cricket" for the C128. It would feature all seven test countries, an all time XI, a world XI and digitised speech. Also on the way from Audiogenic was "Psycastria" which looked like a Uridium style shooter but would heavily feature Tracey Diane Nicholson, the girlfriend of Gary Partis, because… ¯\(ツ)/¯

"Mutants" from Denton Designs was a multi-directional shoot’em up, while their upcoming "Double Take" was an arcade adventure taking place in two parallel universes.

Strategy specialist PSS announced two new games: "The Annals of Rome" and "Battlefield Germany”. Interestingly the former was developed by adventure game specialists Level 9. The latter was never released.

The second title to be released by Thalamus would be another Stavros Fasoulas shoot’em up: "Delta”.

The main selling point of "Tarzan" by Martech seemed to be “digitised jungle screams” (and a Rob Hubbard soundtrack).

"Molecule Man" was an isometric arcade adventure from Mastertronic and would come with a level editor on the flip side of the cassette.

Domark was continuing their “Trivial Pursuit” series with "Young Players”.

Durell’s "Sigma Seven"was a three stage arcade game. The first stage was “Zaxxon” style, the second a sort of 3D PacMan, and the third a puzzler.

Features

There was a section of profiles on all the Zzap! lads. Julian Rignall’s was a little surprising as it turned out his burning ambition was to “become head of the Labour Party.”

Zzap! caught up with Denton Designs. After a string of critically acclaimed games (and the occasional stinker), rumours had started to do the rounds earlier in the year that the company was closing up. As it turned out, three of the four co-founders had split, but Ally Noble remained to steady the ship and the Liverpudlian developer was still going strong. John Gibson had become an independent contractor for Ocean, Steve Cain co-founded Canvas, with Graham Everitt and Karen Davies frequently contracting for them.

Eleven of the C64’s finest coders were asked what they would want to have on them if they were ever stranded on a desert island. Jeff Minter’s luxury item, perhaps unsurprisingly, was: “A Llama, definitely a Llama. Darling The Female Llama, so I could just say ‘come ‘ere darling’ and I’d get a lot of pleasure out of it.”……

There was a multi-page round up of all the 64 gaming highlights of 1986.

The first instalment of Mel Croucher’s monthly “Tamara Knight” story.

The inter-magazine Reviewers Challenge saw teams from Zzap!, Crash and Amtix battle it out in a series of games. Crash’s Ben Stone came first with 15 points, narrowly followed by Julian Rignall on 14 points. Amtix’s Massimo Valducci and Richard Eddy brought up the rear, both scoring a measly 6.

A collection of photos from the “Zzap!64 Scrapbook”. Working there really must’ve been a pretty special time.

Notable Reviews

• "Super Huey II" Paul Norman/US Gold - 89% “One of the best flight simulations available on the 64 today. An essential buy for any budding pilot.“
• "Flash Gordon" MAD - 89% “To be honest I had my doubts whether Mastertronic could do it justice. But they have, and the final product is superb. Three games of quality, with a superb soundtrack which makes one excellent buy.“
• "The Bard’s Tale" Interplay/Ariolasoft - 94% Sizzler “The Bard’s Tale is addictive and usually actually fast to play once you get used to the keyboard controls. There are a few of these but never so many as to become unwieldly and that’s good implementation. I suspect the game will be more successful than many of its predecessors.“
• "The Colour of Magic" Delta4/Piranha - 74% “In fact, the game lives up to the reputation of Terry Pratchett’s novel very well. Those who aren’t familiar with the novel will probably find themselves rushing out to buy it after playing the game. Funny as it is, you will want more.“
• "Bugsy" St Brides/CRL - 56% “The game itself is always on the verge of becoming really good but never quite makes it. And for the first time in quite a while, I think the faults can largely be blamed on The Quill itself.“
• "Warrior II" NEXUS - 88% “At long last the Psi Warrior returns in another weird arcade adventure. This game is very similar to its predecessor, but there are more puzzles to solve and lots more to discover and learn.“
• "Nuclear Embargo" Micropool - 85% “This is a really original program which has plenty in it too keep any player happy for some time.“

Charts

Games

1. "Leader Board" Access/US Gold
2. "Super Cycle" Epyx/US Gold
3. "Green Beret" Imagine

Music

1. "Knucklebusters (Main Theme)" Rob Hubbard/Melbourne House
2. "Miami Vice (Title Screen)" Martin Galway/Ocean
3. "Parallax (Title Screen)" Martin Galway/Ocean