This month in... The One '93

News

The first images of the fighters in Team 17's "Body Blows 2" surfaced.

Domark snapped up the rights to the F1 championship, with the appropriately named "F1" being the first title out the door.

The infamous "Night Trap" had resulted in politicians & law makers wanting to create a new mandatory classification scheme for games.

After Ocean signed a large deal with them, Digital Image Design revealed two upcoming games: "TFX" and "Inferno: The Odyssey Continues". Looks the latter never saw the light of day, while "TFX" only saw a release much later on a cover disk.

Manchester United had just won the Premier League and Krisalis looked to put out a third licensed game, "Manchester United: Premier League Champions".

Speaking of footie... Rumours were there might be a new combined European league and Ocean decided to get in early by renaming "Premier League Manager" to "Super League Manager" and incorporating teams throughout Europe.

And in yet more football news... Virgin announced a competition in conjunction with the Game chain of stores to find the best "Goal!" player. The prize was rumoured to be a trip to the following year's World Cup in the US.

Newcomer Far Out announced their first game, "Muzzy" and teased a "Sensible Soccer beater".

The UK Government launched an inquiry into whether video games could trigger epileptic fits.

Commodore cut A600 and A1200 prices, with the latter now starting at £399.

Mirage had created a new label, Instinct, to focus on CD based games. Sean Griffiths (formerly of The Bitmap Brothers) was to head it up, with their first game "Rise of the Robots" due to hit the shelves in time for Xmas (cough).

News hit that Sony had snapped up Psygnosis in a multi-million pound deal. The Liverpool developer promised it'd be business as usual, with their support for the Amiga continuing.

A trial of a new interactive TV system was set to take place in 50,000 London homes. Sky's "Game World" show would feature a "Try Your Luck" multiple choice competition where viewers could win prizes.

Distribution company Capri had signed a deal with Commodore to sell the "entire catalogue" of CD software.. It doesn't actually say what that included.

ITV's game show "Bad Influence" was set to return on September 9th.

Sky TV was starting a teletext game magazine called "Power Zone".

HMV re-iterated its commitment to selling games by creating the "largest games department in Europe" in its Oxford Street shop, clocking in at 8,000 square feet.

Thalion released an updated "No Second Prize", fixed for the A1200.

The One apologised for mistakenly stating that US Gold's "Scrabble" was for the A1200 only. They also said sorry for forgetting to include the score in last month's review of "The Ancient Art of War in the Skies" (73%).

Features

On the two cover disks this month:

• "Cannon Fodder" Sensible Software/Virgin
• "Global Gladiators" Virgin
• "F1 Challenge" Team 17
• "Baldy" Public Domain

The One paid a visit to Thalion in Germany for an indepth interview.

This month's Work In Progress looked at:

• "Jurassic Park" Ocean (big feature for this)
• "The Legacy of Sorasil" Gremlin
• "Simon the Sorcerer" AdventureSoft
• "The Settlers" Blue Byte
• "Stardust" Bloodhouse
• "Blob" Core Design
• "Global Gladiators" Virign
• "The Patrician" Daze
• "Twilight 2000" Empire (unreleased)
• "Dogfight" Microprose

An article looking at games stuck in "development hell" - i.e. protracted periods of development. Those included were:

• "Cannon Fodder" Sensible Software/Virgin
• "Apocalypse" Virgin
• "Frontier" Frontier/Konami

The second instalment of the "Alien Breed 2" development diary saw the team make progress after sorting out their hardware woes, Martyn and Mick pay a visit to Sweden, Martyn collect the Golden Joystick award for Software House of the Year and the announcement that the game would also be out for OCS/ECS Amigas.

PD games reviewed:

• "Bop 'n' Plop" 74%
• "Elevation 2" 82%
• "Spectrum Emulator" 58%
• "Zalycon" 81%
• "Games Galore 14" 76%
• "Arcade Classics Vol 5" 89%
• "Arcade Classics Vol 6" 83%
• "Thrallbound" 79%
• "GX-200" 68%

Notable Reviews

• "Ishar 2: Messengers of Doom" Silmarils - 86% "Those prepared to invest some time and thought in the game will, however, reap more than ample rewards."
• "War in the Gulf" Empire - 82% "I don't know what to say about this as it's so similar - well, exactly the same - to the previous two Empire tank games."
• "Dune 2: The battle for Arrakis" Westwood Studios/Virgin - 90% "It's one of the most absorbing games I've come across - after all, there aren't many games where you can spend upwards of an hour and a half playing through the same mission, attempting to achieve the same goal and still be desperate for more when you finish."
• "One Step Beyond" Ocean - 83% "Ocean have once again come up with a puzzling classic. The beauty of One Step Beyond is that, unlike most puzzle games, it's actually strangely relaxing, with the player hardly ever forced to up his pace to an impossible level."
• "B.A.T.2" Computer's Dream/Ubisoft - 84% "I've got a lot of time for games wth a decent storyline, and a nice bit of atmosphere, and this has both."
• "A320 Airbus" Thalion - 81% "If you like flight simulations of a technically accurate nature, you'll like this. If you don't - you won't."
• "Gunship 2000" Microprose - 90% "I never thought I'd see the day when a game wold combine the depth of a full-blow [sic] 'serious' simulation with the sheer fun of an arcadey 3D shoot-'em-up."
• "Syndicate" Bullfrog/Electronic Arts - 88% "It may not be quite in the league of Bullfrog's other hits but it's a close run thing and, I must admit, there's not many games that have kept me glued to the monitor screen for as long or as keenly as Syndicate. Good, violent stuff."

Charts

Full Price

1. "Flashback" US Gold
2. "Graham Gooch's Cricket" Audiogenic
3. "Championship Manager '93" Domark

Budget

1. "Final Fight" Kixx
2. "Alien Breed '92: Special Edition" Team 17
3. "Pirates" Kixx XL

This month in... The One '92

News

The upcoming Christmas battle for number one looked to be between Konami’s “Batman Returns”, Acclaim’s “Alien 3” and Ocean’s latest movie license signing: “Lethal Weapon 3”.

Commodore continued their run of stupid business decision with the announcement that they were to stop selling the A500 Plus in favour of the new A600.

The ‘92 Barcelona Olympics would soon be starting and Ocean was preparing “Espagna 92” [sic] to take on US Gold’s “Megasports”.

Electronic Arts had found great success with its “Desert Strike” on the Megadrive, and now it was headed to the Amiga.

The home computer rights for “Street Fighter 2” had be snapped up by US Gold, with Creative Materials handling the Amiga port. Would it be up to snuff? (No).

Delphine Software had been working on an adventure based on The Godfather, but it looked like that had been canned in favour of a game called “Moebius” (unclear if that ever saw the light of day).

Could the rumors be true that Lucasfilm were working on a sequel to “Monkey Island 2? The One cautioned readers that even if that were the case it wouldn’t be arriving on the Amiga until late next year... Also news arrived that Lucasfilm had been rebranded as LucasArts. A “wing commander”-esque Star Wars game was in development and would “probably” make its way to the Amiga (it didn’t).

Palace Software were revisiting a couple of classics from their back catalogue with “Super Barbarian" (unreleased?) and “Super Cauldron”.

While not quite on par with the license grabbing efforts of Ocean, Alternative had gotten the rights to Hulk Hogan movie “Suburban Commando”.

The Amiga was getting a conversion of Rare's mega successful "Battletoads".

Evangelsoft was a new software house specialising in what appeared to be Bible related games. First up were "King Solomon's Mines" and an educational title based on the holy land.

Two movie tie ins were heading to the Amiga courtesy of Disney: "The Rocketeer" and "Dick Tracy" (I assume The One were being sarcastic about both of them when they referred to the latter as "equally 'amazing'").

A jam packed release schedule meant Ocean were having to delay the superb "Wizkid" another month.

Features

On the cover disks this month:

• “Red Zone” Psygnosis
• “Galactic” Stavros Fasoulas
• “Hollywood Trivia”
• “Megatron”
• “Battlements”
• “Dragon Tiles”
• “Omega Race”
• and the final instalment of reader submitted “Microprose Golf” shots.

An in-depth look at the A570 CD-ROM drive. Were Amiga owners ready for "the bizarre world of Multimedia and Hypergames"?

An interview with Gary Roberts - the first member of Electronic Arts' internal UK dev studio.

The first instalment of a new series called "The Ultimate Challenge" where a reader would take on three of The One's finest in a series of games.

This month's PD Zone covered:

• "The Assassins Vol. 22"
• "Escape"
• "Siege of the Beast"
• "E-Type"

Notable Previews

• "Lotus 3" Magnetic Fields/Gremlin
• "Wing Commander" Origin/Mindscape
• "The Carl Lewis Challenge" Psygnosis
• "Curse of Enchantia" Core Design
• "Sleepwalker" Ocean
• "Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis" Lucasfilm/US Gold
• "California Games II" Epyx/US Gold
• "Troddlers" Storm
• "3D Pool" Virgin

Notable Reviews

• "The Lure of the Temptress" Revolution/Virgin - 90% "I feel slightly guilty, but I have to admit that I didn't expect much of this so-called home-grown giant-killer - I foresaw something that, like this month's Hook, had fine intentions but didn't quite cut the mustard. Fortunately, Lure of the Temptress is every bit as professional and polished as anything the Americans and French have been able to offer us recently - if not more so."
• "TV Sports Baseball" Cinemaware/Mindscape - 88% "Less technical and tortuous than the management-led simulations, more playable and immediate than Domark's RBI 2, TV Sports Baseball is probably the soundest rendition of the sport so far."
• "The Secret of Monkey Island 2" Lucasfilm/US Gold - 94% "Once again Lucasfilm has come up trumps. Monkey Island 2 is a game that is surely destined for The Computer Games Hall Of Fame, a dazzling triumph of game design laced with humour and drenched in atmosphere."
• "Ishar: Legend of the Fortress" Silmarils - 87% "Silmarils is to be congratulated on trying something a little different and personally I thought this much better than Eye of the Beholder 2 and those games typical of this genre."
• "Risky Woods" Electronic Arts - 84% "If you've got a high endurance threshold and reckon yourself as a bit of a master gamer, I'd recommend Risky Woods unreservedly as a long-lasting blast."
• "Striker" Rage - 80% "Ultimately, Striker's good points just about outweigh the bad, and such [sic] I'd recommend I'd recommend it heartily to everyone fro the Kick Off school of computer football. Its no-nonsense action makes it more accessible than Sensible Soccer, but ultimately less rewarding."
• "D/Generation" Minscape - 89% "Because it's not too heavy, it's very easy to have fun with, and allows for five-minute throwaway sessions that you simply can't have with other games in the genre, because of their long-winded nature."
• "Graham Taylor's Soccer Challenge" Krisalis - 89% "Nevertheless, Graham Taylor's authenticity is remarkable, boasting accurate real-life information on all the clubs and players in the league, and the ability to change names so as to keep the game constantly updated."
• "Championship Manager" Domark - 89% "If there's one thing that strikes you after a few lengthy playing sessions with Championship Manager, it's that it really does FEEL as if seven year's work at the the hands of two avid football fans."
• "Hook" Ocean - 82% "Hook is a pretty impressive game. Certainly, when you bear in mind that this is the first every [sic] graphic adventure to come out of the Ocean stable, it's an achievement worth applauding."

Charts

1. "Epic" Ocean
2. "The Manager" US Gold
3. "John Madden American Football" Electronic Arts

Confidential Magazine #5 June/July 1989

In this issue you can find:

• A bit of a rant by the Ed on the "joys" of running a software mail order service and dealing with clueless, impatient and down right rude customers calling up.
• A report from the first European Computer Trade Show, which sounded like a right disappointment: "Where were the First Ever Showings? The Exclusive Demos? The Sneako Previews? Well, they certainly weren't present on the day I visited."
• The history of Sierra Online.
• A piece pondering why it was that more women seemed to be designing, writing and playing adventures compared to other gaming genres. It was a bit silly and unsurprisingly feels dated, but did include comments from the likes of Anita Sinclair (Magnetic Scrolls) and Amy Biggs (Infocom).
• A look at the "It's Murder" Play By Mail game.
• A deep dive on the impressive lookign "Bloodwych", which looked to marry "Dungeon Master" with "The Bards Tale" with "Archon". Supposedly the author had intended to call it "The Dungeonmaster" before FTL announced their game.
• Infocom had been in decline for a little while, but now they were back with three big releases: "Zork Zero", "Battlehawks - The Crescent Hawk's Inception" (the article kept referring to it as Battlehawks when it was in fact Battletech), "Journey" and "Shogun". Were they enough to raise Infocom back up to the top? The latter three games were examined in detail, and all three were interesting departures from (or, at least, tweaks to/re-imaginings of) the usual text adventure fare.
• An interview with Infomedia who were busy working on "Chronoquest 2".
• A write up of MOSAIC, a new concept for a "3rd generation adventure game" system, primarily aimed at Multi User Dungeons.
• A survey of the state of flight sims.
• An "interview" with Larry Laffer (AKA, I assume, Al Lowe).
• A short story sent in by reader David Holden.

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