Be Excellent To Each Other

Yeah, but Dominick Diamond and that TWAT in a bandana. Tainted the entire brand for me.

Note the fake backdrop. He didn't dare take that photograph outside.

I don't even know who he wrote for. Didn't he have the same name as someone else? Dave Perry?

*googles*

Apparently worked on Games World, Play, PowerStation, X-Gen, STATION and Mega Power. Not a proper Fewtch bloke.

Even worse, the headline says "Dancing with the Spectrum" and he's clearly holding a ZX81.

Why do they crack those games?
Why are they breeding viruses?

What will they think of next?!

Where is his chin?

Does he want to go large for only 50p extra?

He looks like Paul Merton.

Is that how hackers dress?

No, certainly not back then. That's just the pie-eating Bitmap Brother.

Fire? Yes, I think fire would sort that out.

Retro Gamer is actually worth picking up this month. Good cover-story for the first time in 100 issues, "The 30 Greatest Power-Ups Ever" , Gollop(!), Civilization and Side Merieiririeirieirerererrrrrrr.

My first lesson in business involved Sonic the Comic.

An older boy who lived near me was an aspiring comic artist. He was dead good as well actually. We were about 8 or 9 at the time (I guess) and he was a teenager. He had loads (and I mean LOADS) of comics. The British classics, though, none of this American shite. Whizzer and Chips, Beano, etc. One day he gave them all to me and my mate. Piles of them. I guess he'd moved onto more adult themed stuff.

We began selling them to other kids from my front porch. After a couple of days we had made about £2.

In our infinite wisdom, we went to the newsagent and spent it all on a Sonic the Comic to sell at our little store.

(The lesson, by the way, was "entrepreneurialism isn't for you, mate".)

The Quad Damage better be in the top 5

Malc

Unfortunately it just lists them in no order.

Is it in the 30?

Malc

Quad Damage from Quake? (Just to be certain)

Yeah.

Malc

Nope! HA! No other quad damages either. The oddest one (and not a powerup) is the Gravity Gun from Half Life 2.

*sadface re my Lode Runner cover story from last issue*

Sonic speed boots?

Nope!

My many and various gods Amiga Force was a fucking terrible rag.

Allegedly was once offered editorship of that magazine.

Ooh, I did not know that. Looks like he dodged a bullet, to be honest.

How many photos of Elvira can a magazine have on its cover?

About four, it seems.

Reminded me that someone was coding a CPC version of that game.



Seems its stuck in development hell as the coder appears to have bitten off more than he could chew.

Of course, what Dimrill doesn't know is that I've actually just posted him 8.6kg of sofa foam and not old magazines. Lets stick around for the reaction......

I'm suddenly surrounded by Amstrad mags. Amstrad Action went even pamphletyier than Your Sinclair .

I'm astounded that the 8-bit magazines survived as late as 1995. Most 16-bit publications barely survived past the middle of 1996!

People kept buying AA for the tape. Only way for many CPC owners to get software. So it became a tape attached to a 16 page mag. They even cut the plastic tape case and replaced it with cardboard.

Tapes were also insane quality. Games like North and South and Crazy Cars 3 which had never even been on budget.

Mag itself became shit though. Articles were ok but a series of journeyman editors after Lawton left. Dave Golder was ok but IMHO not an enthusiast.

People underestimate the user base of the 8 bits at this stage.

Games for these formats didn't vanish from the shops because they didn't sell. They vanished because 16 bit and latterly console games were far more profitable to sell per unit. More than twice the profit on an Amiga game than a CPC tape!

In sept '93 the owner of a local software shop when asked if he would drop his 8 bit sections said that his sales were healthy enough but his problem was getting stock.

The C64 and CPC scenes hung on in there until 1995. The Speccy went into a nosedive earlier. Just seemed to be the lack of a "scene" to sustain it. With the CPC and C64 smaller guys moved in to fill the void left by the big software houses. Speccy didn't have that.

Didn't D. Golder simultaneously edit AA and Commodore Format, or am I thinking of something else?

There was a period where CF and AA were produced by the same team. Presumably made both more viable. Dave Golder, Tim Norris and Karen Levell all edited the two mags at the same time.

There was also a bizarre month after Rod Lawton and Adam Peters had left at the same time when the YS team produced AA. So Linda Barker was editor and Jon Nash was doing some of the staff writer duties.

I must be ill. I nearly cried when I saw an Action Replay advert in Amiga Format.

Anyone have any spare issues of Amiga Format? Specifically, from memory, issues 97, 102, 103 and 135?

You wait until the pamphlet for the home computer club falls out of one of the Amstrad mags.

Just had a look at my Formats and I've not got anything above issue 54 which had Cannon Soccer on it. I can't even remember it but I must have played it!?

Ha! Yeah that happened with one of the Amiga Formats.. I didn't look at lest I lose my shit.

The ball is a grenade which blows up randomly killing anyone nearby. Winner is the last man standing.

There's quite a lot of flat topness in there as well. Gamesweek towards the rear of the later NCE's + a HILARIOUS photo in the AA with the pink DTP cover. That ish also has a nice behind the scenes at Future IIRC.

Mr Gran! Are the books manufactured by Imagine reprints of articles in Retro Gamer? Specifically the Speccy/C64 one and the new Atari one? I notice the two Hardware guides go for supah boffo money when they come up on eBay.

Yes, they're all reprints, although the more recent ones have new layouts (although, frustratingly, the original artwork, so my Battlezone piece is still all messed up).

Hmm. Still, I suppose it's nice to have all the stuff clumped together in one place.

Maybe. I've never seen one myself, despite in some cases having written a massive chunk of them. Ah, for the heady and exciting days of reprint rights…

Werl I needed a new binder for my Retro Gamers, so I's gone and ordered the Atari one as a sampler for the others. Pity the rest are out of print, really.

Edge has a nice interview with Warwick Davies this month where he reveals his Speccy and Amiga past.

It's not just Amiga Action that were lazy and blatantly dishonest. Amstrad Computer User was a mag passed around between publishers like an unloved child and that in its later years just couldn't be fucked.

They awarded Flimbo's Quest a "Gold" award. But which version exactly?



Meanwhile here's the game every other CPC owner got to play:



Over in Bath the game itself was given a more realistic 73%, and with actual Amstrad screenshots. Although in the same issue Adam Waring manages to review a game he wrote himself and gives it 81% (Ninja Massacre). Has anyone else ever in the history of computer games magazines had to review and score their own game?

Mike Gerrard went one better. He didn't review his own game himself - he got the game's publisher to do it instead.

That Flimbo's Quest review reeks of a PR release that has been re-written. I don't believe the reviewer ever played the game, or at least the CPC version.

Dunno why, AA reviewed it the same month unless it just missed the deadline or ACU were criminally lazy.