This month in... The One '93

News

Comic artist Dave Gibbons (of "Watchmen" fame) had been collaborating with Charles Cecil and Revolution Software on the cyberpunk point-and-click adventure "Beneath a Steel Sky". It transpired that his involvement came about after he contacted The One to complain they'd forgotten to credit him for "Watchmen". The mag decided to lend him an Amiga and a copy of "Deluxe Paint" for a followup article, which sparked his interest in computer art and lead to an introduction to Cecil. The game was due out during the Summer.

Flight sim specialist Simis was developing a "Flight Sim Tool Kit" for Domark which would allow players to create their own scenarios (doesn't appear to have been released).

Amiga 1200 owners might have something to look forward to in the form of "James Pond 3" and "Alien Breed 2". Both games were supposedly leading with the 1200 rather than the usual crummy barely enhanced AGA versions.

The previous month's Amiga price hikes looked to be delayed for a few more weeks.

Sky TV were getting into gaming TV shows with "Games World", set to air an ambitious five days a week.

Coin-op manufacturer Bell-Fruit were planning to bring Gremlin's "Zool" to the arcades.

Commodore teamed up with Ocean on another Amiga pack, this time with £10 of each sale going towards the Comic Relief charity. The bundled game was to be "Sleepwalker".

Things were looking up for the Amiga following a gangbusters Christmas period. Sega's Megadrive was the only machine to do better, which The One put down to it being a "popular choice with the kids". US Gold took out the top game slot with "Street Fighter II", trailed by - in order - Ocean, Microprose, Gremlin Graphics and Virgin.

After six months the "Sensible Soccer" Netbusters competition was drawing to a close, with the last finalist spot going to Sheffield's Alasdair Brownsword.

Board game maker Waddingtons had spun out a new company, Super Vision, to create computer/console versions of the likes of "Monopoly".

The One apologised for getting the price of "Dalek Attack" wrong - it should've been £25.99 instead of £15.99.

More prehistoric platform action was on the way from Mirage in the form of "The Humans: The Jurassic Levels".

There was a somewhat unorthodox competition launched by The One, the prize being... a job as a Staff Writer.

Virgin announced plans to open a further six megastores around the UK.

ELPSA stepped up their campaign against pirates, with two raids taking place in Essex and Kincross. Around a thousand floppies valued at £25,000 were seized.

The 1993 Daily Mail's Ideal Home Plus exhibition would feature a section dedicated to games and, later in the year, the people behind the Consumer Electronic Show in the US were staging a UK spinoff, Live '93, at Olympia in London.

Retailer John Menzies had dropped Spectrum and Amstrad software before Christmas and were about to do the same for the C64 and ST. WH Smith looked likely to follow suit.

Features

Included on this month's two coverdisks were demos of :

• "Flashback" US Gold (this time an actual playable demo)
• "Woody's World" Vision Software
• "Superfrog" Team 17
• "Turbo Terminator" Psygnosis
• "Oblivion" Shareware

The Blitter now had their own regular column to dish the game industry gossip. The Ocean xmas parties were rather notorious, and this year the awards doled out to staff for dubious achievements included:

• "Person who has delivered the best chat-up line in 1992" : Gary Bracey (Software Director)
• "Biggesr Whinger award" : Ken Lockley (PR Manager)
• "Fat Waster award" : Ian Richardson (Sales Manager)
• "The Boss least likely to know all his staff are in the pub" : Jon Woods and David Ward

Ian Richardson got a further mention for taking a couple of unnamed sales execs out on the piss, only for them to accidentally flood their hotel corridor due to some fire hose hijinx. Most of the column was dedicated to slagging off Amiga Power for reviewing incomplete games, and ended abruptly mid-sentence with something about Stephen Fry providing starter tips for "Sleepwalker".

The One paid a visit to Dino Dini to discuss "Goal!". There was an attempt to pry some details out of him about the split from Anco, but Dino - understandably - did not bite.

There were work in progress features on:

• "Captive 2" Tony Crowther/Mindscape
• "Woody's World" Vision Software
• "Hardcore", "Bene. Factor" and "Malfunction" all from Digital Illusions. Only the 2nd one appears to have been released.
• "Ishar 2" Silmarils
• "Blastar" Core Design

The A1200 offered considerable more grunt than the A500/A600 and the One rounded up a selection of games expected to take advantage of it:

• "Wing Commander" Origin/Mindscape
• "Street Fighter 2" US Gold
• "Magic Pockets" Bitmap Brothers/Renegade
• "Nick Faldo's Championship Golf" Grandslam
• "Formula One Grand Prix" Geoff Crammond/Microprose
• "Monkey Island 2" Lucasfilm/US Gold
• "AV8B Harrier Assault" Domark
• "Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis" US Gold
• "Legends of Valour" US Gold

In this month's PD Zone:

• "Graham Benham's Quiz Challenge" 51%
• "LCD Dreams" 82%
• "Transplant" 86%
• "Quiz Master" 49%
• "F.U.R.M.Y.R.E." 63%
• "Escapade" 48%

Andrew Braybrook's "Uridium 2" dev diary had reached its penultimate instalment. It started off with him noodling around on his shiny new A1200, trying to get an idea of how much faster it really was. Initial findings suggested 3x, but the 68020's instruction cache may have inflated the numbers. Gameplay wise, he went back to the drawing board with the subgame, pondering something related to billiards. Then, towards the end of the month, Graeme (from Renegade?) stopped by with a A4000 - I'm not sure whether the machine had even been announced by this point. On the plus side, it was a beast - the downside, however, was that their sound routines weren't running correctly. They spent days trying to get to the bottom of it, including infuriating hours wasted trying to call Commodore Technical Support...

Notable Previews

• "Litil Divil" Gremlin
• "A-Train" Ocean
• "Championship Manager '93"
• "Bart vs the World" Acclaim

Notable Reviews

• "Body Blows" Team 17 - 92% "Before we go any further, I wish to go on record as saying that I don't like Street Fighter II on the Amiga at all. I disagreed with the 89% we awarded it (something mid-70s was more to my taste) and am generally of the opinion that the game has sold more than it really deserved to on its own merits. Which is why it warms the very cockles of my heart to see something come along that really DOES deserve all the hype it's had and will inevitably show SFII up to be the mediocre beat-'em up that it is."
• "Lionheart" Thalion - 91% "The variety of the game is amazing - one minute you can be swinging from vines, hacking at monsters, the next leaping up a giant tower as a bursting river creeps higher and higher, constantly threatening you with instant death."
• "Universal Monsters" Play Byte - 84% "Universal Monsters can't hold a candle to the likes of Head Over Heels, but that said it's a darn sight better than most isometric-3D adventures available for the Amiga." (unreleased?)
• "Flashback" Delphine Software/US Gold - 93% "Even though it's only March and there's over two-thirds of the year left, I can honestly say Flashback is the game of the year."
• "Walker" DMA Design/Psygnosis - 81% "Walker is really nothing more than a twist on those old 'shooting gallery' coin-ops like Operation Wolf and Line of Fire and as such shares their fundamental weakness, i.e. for all its short-term appeal endlessly zapping things does get boring."
• "Lemmings 2" DMA Design/Psygnosis - 91% "Lemmings 2 isn't quite the milestone that the first game was (few sequels are) but it manages to recapture the first game's charm and humour while adding features that alter the gameplay enough to make it fresh without ruining it."

Charts

1. "Street Fighter II" US Gold
2. "Premier Manager" Gremlin
3. "Sleepwalker" Ocean

This month in... The One for Amiga '92

This month in... The One for Amiga '92

News

A new TV show catering for gamers had recently debuted and The One wanted to hear from readers about what they thought of it. Did Gamesmaster provide what gaming fans were looking for?

Electronic Arts were to publish "Castles", a "SimCity" meets RPG game from Interplay.

A new book from Sigma sought to help players struggling to get to grips with adventure games. "The Adventure Gamer's Manual" would contain a mix of game specific and general adventuring tips. I actually found a copy of this in a local bookstore around 2000 - completely random.

The highly anticipated next instalment in the "Bubble Bobble" series was heading to home computers. Ocean would be publishing the conversion of "Parasol Stars".

Rather than having to break out, Inforgrames's "Alcatraz"would see the player having to raid the prison and take it back from terrorists.

While Nintendo had Mario and Sega Sonic, the Amiga had yet to find a platformer mascot of its own. Would the upcoming "Titus the Fox" from French software house Titus fill that void?

Core Design was working on not one but two racing games with the Jaguar license. "Jaguar XJ220 Sports Racing" would take place in 12 different countries, while the second would be based around the Le Mans 24 hour race. Both games were being programmed by Mark Avory, who had apparently also made good progress on a 3D vector racing engine (the two Jag games would be sprite based).

Were we about to enter the golden period for Sensible Software? They revealed their next three games: "Wizkid", "Sensible Soccer" and "Cannon Fodder". All three rank amongst the greatest Amiga games ever made.

The demise of Mirrorsoft the previous year left a lot of developers without a publisher. Some games were being transferred to Acclaim, but others were in limbo. One such title trying to find a home was Graftgold's rather excellent "Fire and Ice".

Spielberg's "Hook" had been a hit at the box office and Ocean hoped that would translate into a big selling game.

Infogrames struck a deal with Disney to bring Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and the like to home computers. The first game up for release would star Roger Rabbit in "Hare Raising Havoc".

The programmer behind "Switchblade 2" was working on an impressive looking platformer. "Zool" would see the player take on role of a ninja ant (yes, Gremlin's Ian Richardson described it as a "ninja ant") in colourful candy filled levels, and was expected to be on shelves sometime in the summer.

Grandslam was going to have a crack at the rather crowded golf sim genre with "Nick Faldo's Golf".

200 exhibitors and 40,000 visitors were anticipated for the upcoming Spring Computer Shopper Show at Olympia in May.

Joystick manufacturer Spectravideo were adding a few more models to its Logic3 range.

Talking Birds, developer of "Football Tactician", promised a year of free update disks of all 440 players in the first division.

The next subject to be tackled by sim specialist Maxis would be... ants. According to Jeff Braun, "SimAnt" was an "apology for "SimEarth"."

Adventure game legend Fergus McNeill had turned his attention to spaghetti westerns with "Town With No Name", an FMV game for the CDTV.

Hex, a team that had specialised in visuals for music videos, felt that games looked "sterile" and that their new technique of video sampling would remedy that in "Top Banana"... they certainly succeeded in producing something that could not be described as sterile. This game was examined in one of my favourite Amigos podcast episodes. Extra amusing as the programmer is an old workmate & friend.

When one thinks of player characters, I doubt the role of a tomato comes to mind, but Psygnosis were doing that in the appropriately named"Tomato Game".

Running a successful airline was the goal of biz sim "Air Bucks" from Impressions.

The classic footie management game "Championship Manager" was about to debut.

Features

This month Al Lowe ("Leisure Suit Larry" etc) and Steve Turner ("Dragontorc", "Ranarama" etc) got the developer profile treatment.

The One gave “The Miracle” - a piano tutor package complete with keyboard - from Mindscape a whirl. The verdict? The software was decent, but the keyboard wasn’t up to much - especially for £299.

Games PR person Danielle “Woody” Woodyatt described her ideal compilation.

Notable Previews

• "The Addams Family" Ocean
• "Dune" Virgin

Notable Reviews

• “The Adventures of Willy Beamish” Dynamix - 84% “And not only does it look good and sound good, it also plays well. You can do what YOU want, go where YOU want, and basically do everything and anything that comes to mind.” (one would hope so the graphics and audio were good - it came on a whopping 12 disks!)
• “Indy Heat” Storm - 86% “To release this type of game years after the original concept came out seems a bit strange. But I must admit, getting back to the basic race-around-a-track type of game is good mindless fun.”
• “Video Kid” Gremlin - 82% “Video Kid is good fun and good value and could be just what you’re looking for to pass a few boring hours with, that is simple, unadulterated fun.”
• “Dynablaster” Ubisoft - 87% “As always in this type of game, the multi-player option is by far the best bet and this one will have you coming back time and time again.”
• “Black Crypt” Electronic Arts - 92% “It has to be said, Black Crypt is easily the best 3D role-playing game available on the Amiga.”
• “PGA Tour Golf: Tournament Course Pack” Electronic Arts - 85% “For the regular player who’s grown bored of seeing the same old courses, a data disk is just fine (and the presence of a ‘next page’ icon on the course selection screen, indicating that there are presumably more courses to come will no doubt also please) but it’s an overhaul most of us are looking for and is what is needed to put it on par (no pun intended) with the superior... [the review stops abruptly there, but I imagine he was going to say Microprose Golf]”
• “Harpoon: The Med Conflict” Electronic Arts - 84% “Apart from the scenarios and extra craft, this game is essentially unchanged from the original. This comes as a bit of a disappointment really, as there are plenty of enhancements that could have been made.”
• “Shadowlands” Domark - 93% “Shadowlands owes a lot to a number of previous RPGs, but even more to the fine talents of Teque London: it’s one of the best dungeon-delving role-playing games to come along since Eye of the Beholder.”

  Charts

  Games

• "Grand Prix" Microprose
• "WWF Wrestlemania" Ocean
• "Birds of Prey" Electronic Arts

This month in... ZZap!64 '87

News

Gary Penn wrote a long editorial on a matter that had been on a lot of people’s minds: had quality and innovation taken a dive as software houses relied more and more on coin-op, TV and film licenses? The market seemed to be full of these unimaginative and often shoddy tie ins which, aside from the attached IP, only had good presentation going for them. Developers were feeling the pinch as well: publishers would “guarantee 100,000” copies sold, giving them an excuse to lower royalties. Lump sums also went out the window as all the money had been blown on the license. The piece ended with: “Unfortunately, software houses will continue to release repackaged versions of the same old thing if that is what the customers want. Is this really what YOU want - or is it all you can get?”

Andy Wilson, the programmer behind "Dan Dare”, was working on a ”Laurel and Hardy”game for Advance.

Ocean had a "Short Circuit" game just in time for the UK release of the movie.

A couple more screenshots of Stavros Fasoulas’s next shooter, "Delta" surfaced. There was also mention of a tape loader that would allow a the player to muck about with a Rob Hubbard track while they waited.

Upcoming "Stifflip and Co" from Palace was described as an icon driven “spoof English game in the tradition of Ripping Yarns, set in the closing days of the British Empire.”

Gremlin Graphics were launching a new £4.99 range of games, the first of which was "West Bank”.

Load-It were offering a DIY kit to enable precision adjustment of the C64’s datacorder (i.e. casette player).

Ocean had three new arcade ports on the way: "Taipan”,”Arkanoid" and "Renegade”. The latter two would appear on their Imagine label.

Apologies from ZZap! to Peaksoft, mail order sellers of heavy duty power supplies. Seems the mag got the price and phone number wrong.

And another apology: the review of "Sigma Seven" stated a RRP of £14.95, when it was actually £9.95.

Features

A “lengthy and somewhat harrowing interview” with John Hare and Chris Yates, i.e. Sensible Software.

A look at the current state of dialup MUGs (Multi-User Games).

The 1986 Readers’ Awards results were in:

• Best Game Overall: "World Games" Epyx/US Gold
• Best Platform Game: "Ghosts’n'Goblins" Elite
• Best Shoot ‘Em Up: ”Uridium" Hewson
• Best Arcade Adventure: ”Dan Dare" Virgin
• Best Adventure: ”The Pawn" Magnetic Scrolls/Rainbird
• Best Strategy Game: "Vietnam" SSI/US Gold
• Best Simulation: "Leader Board" Access/US Gold
• Best Graphics: "World Games" Epyx/US Gold
• Best Music: "Sanxion" Rob Hubbard/Thalamus
• Best Sound FX: "World Games" Epyx/US Gold
• Best Programmer: Andrew Braybrook
• Best Software House: US Gold
• Best Advertisement: "World Games" US Gold
• Least Pleasing Game: "Knight Rider" Ocean
• State of the Art Aware: "The Sentinel" Geoff Crammond/Firebird

The first instalment of a new developer diary from Andrew Braybrook, this time for what would become "Morpheus”.

Notable Reviews

• "Chameleon" Electric Dreams - 84% “An unusual, imaginative and surprisingly compulsive shoot’em up.“
• "Nosferatu The Vampyre" Piranha - 88% “A superlative forced perspective adventure - try it if you dare.“
• "Mutants" Ocean - 90% Sizzler “A new and exciting concept which should interest shoot’em up fans.“
• "Brian Clough’s Football Fortunes" CDS Software - 93% “This is a very socially interactive game - such delights as screaming, shouting, persecution complexes, losing friends, and falling to the floor and frothing at the mouth because your two star players have been killed in a car crash are all part and parcel of this excellent board game.“
• "Escape From Singe’s Castle: Dragon’s Lair Part II" Software Projects - 90% Sizzler “An excellent arcade conversion consisting of eight varied and addictive mini-games.”

Charts

Games

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

Music

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

This month in... C&VG '89

News

Michael Jackson’s “Moonwalker” movie had only just come out and US Gold had already snaffled the game license.

Titus announced their futuristic deadly sport game "Titan”.

The Vocalizer 1000 was a music gadget where the user would hum/whistle/sing a tune at it and it would detect the varying pitches and allow playback of the tune using a selection of 28 instruments.

Gary Liddon was teaming up with renowned game artist Paul Docherty to develop "Tyger Tyger" for Mastertronic’s Ricochet label. It was never released.

A rather disturbing underground scene had emerged in West Germany with neo-Nazis developing anti-Semitic games like “Hitler Dictator” and distributing them anonymously on bulletin boards. The software was managing to make its way to school playgrounds.

Elsewhere in Germany… C&VG had been relegated to the magazine top shelves in select retailers out of the reach of kids as the government had decided it promoted games that had been banned (i.e. war sims).

Electronic Arts were bringing their Amiga racing sim "Ferrari Formula One"to the ST and 8bits. They were also working on "Abrams Battle Tank”, though I can’t find further mentions of it.

Bullfrog’s groundbreaking”Populous" was revealed.

Canon launched their Zap Shot camera which could store up to 50 photos on a special video floppy disk. The pics could then be viewed on a TV, or captured using appropriate video hardware.

"Vindicators"was next in Domark’s series of Tengen coin-op licenses.

Cinemaware’s "Defend of the Crown" was getting a new PC CD-ROM release which would feature a new soundtrack, “film quality sound effects” and dialogue. The gameplay would remain the same, though.

In what was surely one of the most obnoxious 80s things ever, “Safe and Sound Stereo Jackets” from Sports Electronics Inc would let the wearer (or their.. friends.. I guess) connect a walkman to their jacket for all to listen… ugh.

For owners of the BBC Domesday System (BBC Micro + video disc player), Virgin’s “North Polar Expedition” would give them a taste of the Artic. It retailed at £199.

Huh. Sony were launching a series of designer blank VHS tapes in the US.

Features

The movies reviewed this month were: “Die Hard”, “Maniac Cop”, The Dead Can’t Lie”, “Short Circuit 2”, “Ghost Chase” and “Elvira - Mistress of Darkness”.

Clare Edgely and Julian Rignall swung by the Amusement and Trade Exhibition in Olympia to check out the latest and greatest arcade machines.

John Minson got to have a sneak peak at the Konix Multi System console. Conclusion: “The result is, quite simply, the answer to every games player’s dreams.”

It was Winter CES time and Minson spent a whole two weeks in Vegas for it. How on earth he survived that, I dunno - two to three days is enough for me. There was a large contingent of UK devs present, but it was Nintendo who stole the show. The first HDTVs (in the West) were on display too.

Notable Reviews

• "Blasteroids" Image Works - Spectrum 87% ST 90% C&VG Hit ”Still, the gameplay is adrenalin pumping, and Blasteroids is easily the best ST shoot ‘em up to date.”
• "WEC Le Mans" Ocean - Spectrum 83% Amstrad 82% “The Spectrum version is of similar high quality and the game doesn’t seem to lack anything in spite of the machine’s graphical and audio shortcomings. Strange, isn’t it, how well driving games translate to the old Speccy?“
• “Battlehawks” Lucasfilm/US Gold - PC 85% “I didn’t find it quite as compelling as Strike Fleet, but it kept me engrossed for many an hour.”
• "Pro Soccer" CRL - Spectrum 84% “The best way I can describe Pro Soccer is that it’s Football Manager 2 with more player interaction, more fun, better graphics, playability, design and generally better game play.“
• “Purple Saturn Day” Infogrames - ST 84% “Purple Saturn Day is an excellent package, accomplished with all the graphical style and audio effectiveness of Exxos’ other game, Captain Blood.”
• “Andes Attack” Llamasoft - ST 88% “Andes Attack is a raw and uncompromising shoot ‘em up that’ll have you on the edge of your seat - and essential purchase for the maniacal blasting fan.”
• “Zany Golf” Electronic Arts - ST 81% “Play is such an enjoyable combination of luck and skill (with a fair bit of frustration thrown in for good measure) that you’ll be coming back to it for ages.”
• "Manhunter" Sierra Online/Activision - ST/Amiga 88% “Having persevered with it, I am currently impressed and intrigued by its puzzles, and even becoming a bit nonchalant as I breeze through the occasional arcade section.“
• "War in Middle Earth" Melbourne House - Spectrum 88% “The game has all the hallmarks of a game which has been crafted slowly and painstakingly. I can thoroughly recommend this game to Tolkien fans and anyone who enjoys a strategic challenge. Great stuff.“

Charts

All Formats

1. "Operation Wolf" Ocean
2. "Robocop" Ocean
3. "Afterburner" Activision