Crash08-Sep84.pdf

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No.8 SEPTE

AN ISSUE OF EXCLUSIVES!

n o mmr lummon

g i r

HEWSON CONSULTAtITS

C R E A

T I V E

SGARGOYLE GAMES

51A4ECOACH B L A C i a l o t t a t

THE LEGEND OF AVALON

TIR NA NO

Trade Enmities

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Pram

01-253 2277

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061.8725020

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021-520 7591

trghtning

01-969 8344

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;

u could be at

erstone,

urburgbring,

San Marino o r any o

ten circuits in the

world. You are at the

back of the ﬁeld of

forty riders. The start is

conds away the ﬂag dro

Can you ﬁght to the front

and stay there'?

DEATHCHASE

Av ailable t hrough s elec t ed

branc hes of

spoetaem

- Pr

MEGli

Compatible with Kempston, Protek/AGF,

and Interface 2 joystick types.

WOOLWORTH

and ot her g o o d c omput er stores

ev ery where

Motor

Bike Grand Prix

on the 48K

Spectrum — io.95

DSESPE BR94

SU8 ETME18

Editor

Roger Kean

,• Consultant E di t or

•rrfa nt•e l Pra to

Pr oducti on Designer

David Western

' Art Editor

Oliver Frey

Adventur e Editor

Staff Writer

Lloyd Mangram

Contr i buti ng writers

Matthew Utlindell

Chris Passey

Client Liaison

John Edwards

Subscription Manager

Denise Roberts

Circulation Manager

Tom Hamilton

All circulation enquiries shou .

ring 021-742 5359

'I 1

Crash Micro is published

monthly by Newelield Ltd.,

/2 King Street, Ludlow,

Shropshire

General correspondence to

s t

PO Box 10, Ludlow,

Derek Brewster

1 DB

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No 8 5

5 material may be

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Cover by Oliver Frey

(

–

TONOR A

DWY UWY

IWIEI HN G

H L TI

TG N

T LGNOAAO

REE ED FVL N

C CCO

O 1

N MOT N

TEI G SREE

HV I OCRR

KYORWROD

EBAD ALRS

NERH FHT I G

RBTOTEH S

ET RL

DO A

I I

CAHOU

! RSFRM

NWI P T

ES U

CAHAK

RSBC

AVNUER I

DETRT A

An Oasis of graphics design

A proﬁle of wargamers MC Lothlonen

And indexes

brief round-up tot the month

Looks at six months back arid further

A CRASH exclusive preview of an amazing 'computer

movie' from Gargoyle Games

The compact Downsway programmable interlace

A CRASH exclusive preview of Hewson's newest game

We take a look at a uniaue new proorammable interface

David Western talks to Virgin Games programmer Martin Wheeler

How Crystal became Design Design and another

exclusive CRASH preview of their super-fast Dark Star

Lloyd surfaces again from under his expense chits

Derek Brewster rips his shirt apart and turns green

SIGNPOST

TEDETRS FEMN

HAVNUEOJT A

CAHOL EAVNUEHR

RSH TI &DETRCAT

PAN T S

LYGI

I P

Your adventure problems and answers

Sevond the Eye of Oktuo

lus rna_p Of AntioS

Distribution by COMAG,

TR NL A 1

EMAMN

! 1 1 1 1

CAH U

RSQ I

G 1 T ODO PTO

BIS FGLC MEII N

CAHMSE

URSS AHS

A ETRS AH E UK

G VNUEMS- H HL

ail

CRASH September 1984 3

& Co enter The Burrung41

100 Rapscallions to be won'

Over E1000 of adventure software to win!

Black Hawk from Creative Sparks and Match Point from Psion

Plus plenty ro-ore ,

rn—

e v e r y o n

Its been a summer of gloom

and doom highlighted by the

disappearance of Imagine.

Carnell, Rabbit and some

others.

Software and computer retail

outlets have been moaning that

nothing is selling and software

companies have been upset

that stocks aren't being re-

ordered. Some people are even

saying that this coming

Christmas, usually the good

time, is going to be poor for

sales.

Boris Allan in the Ziggurat

column (Popular Computtng

Weekly, 19-25July) says tht at

one time software houses like

Imagine were thriving with so

much money boosting the

coffers that the small

disagreements which exist

within the company, hardly

seem to have mattered

now the money is no longer •

coming in at a rate that will

produce the enormously rich,

with enormous cars. He also

goes on to say, quite rightly, that

the problem with Imagine (and.

nearly every other software

house) is a lack of imaginatiore

But in the ﬁrst point, the full

coffers, is it really the case?

Imagine excelled at one thing

very well, publicity. In a short

space of time the company

became one of the best known

in the software business. It

never hesitated to point Out to

journalists (national press as

well as computer press) how

much every square loot of

carpet in the ofﬁces cost, how

much every hand-crafted nut

and bolt in Mark Butler's custom

motorbike cost, how many

thousands of pounds worth of

Sage computers it owned for

software development. It hit the

headlines again and again with

fanciful stories of teenage

programmers earning £35,000

a year. II you are very

successful at creating an image

of success, then its amazing

how willingly banks and other

investors will pour money in.

The partwork publisher

Marshall Cavendish was

prepared to front a quarter of a

million pounds to develop

games for their Input magazine

at which point it became clear

that despite all the ad

campaigns, despite Arcadia

and Zzoom, despite the media

hype, Imagine did indeed lack

imagination.

The point I'm making is this:

are we really looking at a slump

in the software market or are we

4 C R A S H September 1984

looking at a case of severe

indigestion?

Early in 1983, about the time

Imagine was forming around

the success of Arcadia, there

were only a handful of software

houses producing Spectrum

games. Today there are in the

region of four limes that

number. Then it was almost

impossible to purchase a

cassette from a shop - a few

W H Smith branches were

displaying about ten games,

computer retail outlets mostly

sold hardware and there were

only fractions of today's number

of shops anyway. Most

'software houses emerging from

the back page classiﬁed's of the

magazines were still doing

sales via their own mail order.

Today hardly any signiﬁcant

mail order sales are made and

there are literally hundreds of

computer retail outlets selling

software, and now newsagents

have joined in as well.

May it not be the case that we

are looking at a market that

certainly has grown with more

Spectrums sold but that has

not, however, expanded at the

rate at which the retailers and

producers have done? In other

words, there aren't enough

punters in the market to go

around41 would be very easy to

see thatdteing last summer

(also not particularly good for

sales) everyone did better than

during this summer, and

interpret it as a disastrous,

possibly terminal slump in the

market.

If you take this into account

along with the collapse of

apparently blue chip companies

like Imagine, then the situation

certainly does look gloomy. The

real point in Imagine's case is

whether they really ever made

the kind of money of which they

so openly boasted? I don't think

so. Flashy cars and big houses

can be easily bought with small

personal proﬁts from a rising

company's coffers using

mortgages and hire purchase.

Ofﬁces can be expensively

ﬁtted out using the goodwill and

credit of local suppliers who can

see from their newspapers and

telly that the purchaser is doing

well w h y worry about the

money? In truth Arcadia and

Zzoom were Imagine's only real

big sellers. Was their PR true?

At one point Mark Butler was

heard t o y that 75% of all

Spectrum owners had bought

Arcadia. Assuming at that time

that half a million Spectrums

were sold, that would have

meant 375,000 copies of

Arcadia had been purchased.

This is a ludicrous ﬁgure! As any

honest software house will tell

you, a sale of 25,000 cassettes

is good. 40,000 is a best seller

and anything over is simply

marvellous.

Something well in excess of a

million Spectrums sold may

seem a lot. In comparison with

the numbers of record players

or cassette decks in use in

British households it is probably

in the region of one-fortieth.

Consequently the market for

music is far larger and sales

ﬁgures in the music business

are going to be a great deal

higher. Companies like

Imagine, with all their media

hype, managed in a very short

space of time to convince

everyone that the British games

software industry was a boom

area like British music. Well

true, but to only one-fortieth of

the size.

As a result software houses

and retail outlets blossomed,

jumping on the software

bandwagon, and the market did

expand, but not to the tune that

the new entrepreneurs

expected it to - because they

hadn't seen through the hype.

And so many of the new -

software houses hadn't

through

.e n the gauzy haze of

delight that all you had to do to

make a few mega-bucks was

churn out yet another p a c

and punt it out at Ce. Rabbit is a

good example. Like Imagine,

k o nwere also capable of quite

they g

successful hype, not in the

press so much, but certainly

with dealers. Claims of 60,000

cassettes sold per month in the

summer seem highly

exaggerated. In truth the only

Iwo games of theirs I have seen

that were worth anything were

Escape MCP for the Spectrum

and Troopa Truck for the

Commodore. They too had

lacked imagination as a

company

In Ziggurat, Boris Allan adds

that more people seem to want

serious software, useful

software and not mega-games.

Our impression at CRASH is

that people certainly don't want

mega-games at £40. What

counts as useful or senous,

says Boris, can vary

tremendously with the

individual, Games are serious

and useful - they're entertaining

as well, of course, or at least

they should be. Our impression

is that people still want games,

good ones, imaginative one,

games that are serious and

useful in that they stretch the

skills and abilities of the player.

And we are fortunate that Britain

possesses some very talented

programmers who have been

busy this year stretching the

abilities of the Spectrum to

match the expectations of the

player.

I was asked recently what I

thought was most exciting

about the Spectrum as a ' , . .

computer and I replied to that

effect that it was the way

reviewers were able to say of a

game that it had gone as far as

the Spectrum could be pushed,

only to have to eat their words

the following month. As a nation

of computer buyers and users

we are going to have to make

some serious decisions very

soon. In fact the most serious

decision about the future of

British computing is being made

without our consent as users.

I'm talking about the

introduction of MSX as a so-

called standard Well

Commercial decisions are ' s

frequently taken without the

consent of the public in their t

presumed best interests. And

MSX is being sold as being in

the best interest of the

consumer- a standard

whereby any game written for

any machine will be available

for your machine, as long as it's

an MSX machine or can

interface properly.

The Japanese have failed or

faltered in their attempts to force

MSX on Americans and have,

instead, turned their eyes

towards the next best market -

Britain. We're being used as a

sort of test case. But it isn't just a

jingoistic or nationalistic urge

which makes me alarmed that

computers like the Spectrum or

the Amstrad may be swamped

by some foreign import

standard. It is quite simply the

fact that we don't need MSX

and MSX is no good. Simon

Bratell of Design Design (used

to be Crystal Computing) puts

the case strongly and well in our

article Rebirth of the Things. A

standard which is bound to

appeal to software houses

because of its ease of making

simple sprite type games on a

widely acceptable scale, is

being introduced and heavily

marketed which force

programming into narrow and

inescapable channels. If MSX

grabs a hold, then you can wave

goodbye to the exciting and

heady days of programming

advances such as we have

been privileged to see on the

Spectrum. Well be selling

British innovation down the

drain for the sake of a

convenient standard and

settling fora period of

stagnation in games

development. And make no

mistake. America may be able

to produce Hollywood on the

Commodore, but Britain

produces the high ﬂying ideas

on the Spectrum and will

probably do so on the Amstrad.

Development of innovative

software does take time; often

ﬁve months of a programmer's

time may go into a game (there

are many games we can see

where that's patently not the

case, but I'm talking here about

serious programmers!) and that

time mustbe paid for. It's quite

dear that a software house with

respect for its customers.

producing these more serious

types of games cannot do so for

a retail price of El .99. You don't

have to be the least bit

discerning to realise that few of

the games which have yet been

released at these low prices are

in any sense original or really

worth even the low price when it

comes right down to it.

In the same issue of Popular

Computing Weekly, its editor in

his Vewcolumn remarks on the

number of software houses

joining the budget software

bandwagon as a reﬂection on

the stagnation of software

sales. As I have already pointed

out, a lot of the so-called slump

is actually due to the glut of

cheap looking (if not cheap

priced) software. But a lot of

companies indeed are joining

the cheap bandwagon, and the

operative word here is 'budget'

software. That means the

game, its contents and its

program qualities are produced

down to a price. As with MSX,

by insisting on software houses

not charging the Di plus price

we have been more used to, we

are pushing the games

software market into a cut-de-

sac from which ii might ﬁnd it

difﬁcult to emerge- to our

detriment. Imagine have been

responsible for a lot - not the

least being that when anyone

wants to complain of software

house rip-oft prices for games

they always equate the

company with Imagine and

mention fast cars and hand-

made motobikes. Imagine have

created an image for the

software houses that doesn't sit

fairly on almost all of them.

At CRASH we have always

taken the view that, depending

on the complexity of the game,

a price of between E5 and, say,

E6.50 is a fair one as long as the

game deserves it. These prices

existed in the good times, they

exist in the bad times. If

software houses can really write

good programs at a price of

El _99, well ﬁne and good, we'll

support their efforts. But what is

most urgently needed is some

commonsense, an ability to

look beyond the immediate

muddle, to be able to strip away

the false hype from the real

enthusiasm: there's a need for

the inefﬁcient and possibly

uncaring retailer to cease

spreading despondency

because his false hopes

haven't been matched by tough

reality. Here at CRASH we hear

from a number of retail outlets,

and as many have done really

well this summer as have had a

miserable one. That's not

surprising because, just like

software houses, there are

innovative, knowledgeable

shopkeepers who offer quality

for money and there are those

who put proﬁts and commercial

considerations above the

customers' needs. Like retailers

and software houses, there are

good times and bad times - it's

a closed circle - we must make

sure we get the best from the

good times and support those

through the bad times who help

to make the good times even

better.

ADVERTISERS'INDEX

ADDICTIVE GAMES

ADVANCE MEMORY

SYSTEMS

AGF

ARCADE SOFTWARE

BUG-BYTE

CAMBRI DGE COMPUTING 18

CRASH MAIL ORDER 5 4 , 5 5

CROSS

CURRAH COMPUTER

COMPONENTS

DIGITAL INTEGRATION 6 3

DK TRONI CS 1 0 4 , 1 0 5 , 1 0 6 ,

107,108,109,110.111

DOLLAR SOFT

FANTASY

GARGOYLE GAMES 3 1

GILSOFT

INCENTIVE SOFTWARE 8 5

LEGEND

4 4 . 4 5

MI CROMANI A

MI CROMEGA

NEW GENERATI ON 2 5

OASIS

POPPY SOFT

POSITIVE IMAGE

powEnson

P.S,S•

R & R SOFTWARE

RAM ELECTRONI CS B a c k

Page

REALT1ME

SOFTWARE PROJECTS 56.57

STATCOM

ULTI MATE

MES

:INDEXTOGA REVIEWEDINTHISISSUE

ATLANTI S M and J Software 72

ATHLETE Buffer Micro 1 0 0

BLACK HAWK Creative

Sparks

BLOCKBUSTER

Compusound

' CO NQ UE S T Cheetah Soft 4 3

DECOR WRECKERS

Scorpio

LECTION Masterlronic 9 9

ALL OF ROME Ar gus Press

Software

OR MULA ONE Spirit

Software

MACHI NE CODE TUTOR New

Generation

MATCH POINT PsioniSindair 7

MICRO OLYMPICS

Database

PLANETFALL Argus Press

Software

RAINY DAYCC. S

SPECTIPEDE Mastettionic 4 0

SPOOF Runesoft

S.O.S. Visions

STAGECOACH Creative

Sparks

VOYAGE INTO THE

UNKNOWN Mastedronic 1

WARRI ORS REVENGE Video

Force

WHITE LIGHTNING Oasis 3 8

ZAPPER Anco Software 1 1

. E INFERNO Richard

_ Shepherd

E HULK Adventure

temahonal

ul,

COMINGTOTHIS

SCREENSOON...

As if to underline the points I

have been making so far, there

are two marked differences

between this and any previous

issue of CRASH. On the one

hand there are many less

reviews than usual because the

summer months have depleted

the market of as many new

games as there have been

before (although the handful

includes some excellent ones);

and on the other hand we have

been privileged to see rushed

preview copies of three games

by three very different software

houses which, in their varying

ways, are each going to push

the outer limits of Spectrum

programming even further out.

Yes, people have been right

- this summer has seen a

weeding out, although by no

means to the gloomy degree

predicted earlier. But it has also

acted a bit like a forge ﬁre,

tempering the steel of those

software houses determined to

offer value for money. I think this

issue offers happy reading on

several levels - Enjoyi

RO G E R KE AN

LETTERS

I am told by Lloyd Mangram that

several letters each month sent

to him enclose mail order forms

and payments. I know it's often

convenient to send two different

items in one envelope (and

cheaper on the postage) but

readers who enclose mail order

material with letters to the

editorial side run the risk of

delays in receiving their goods.

The reason for this is that

anything addressed to a

competition or to Lloyd may well

sit unopened for up to a week.

So, in your own interests,

please send anything to

CRASH MAIL ORDER

separately.

APOLOGYTOSALAMANDER

In the August issue ol CRASH we wrongly staled that Salamander Software had collapsed The information _

that they had done so came from seven independent sources. Salamander Software have been

understandably distressed by this, and as a retraction we print the following statement from them

•

As you are no doubt aware, there are a number of rumours that Salamander Software has gone bust:

even to the extent of being printed as a statement of fact recently by one of the computer magazines. This is

news to all of us here at Salamander. We feel that it would be useful and desirable to our loyal customers, and

to inveterate rumour mongers, 10 inform them in black and white that Salamander es alive and weli and

currently working on new projects designed for release towards the end of the year. We do not deny that the

annual summer slump of software sales has caused us to tighten our belts a notch or two, but we are not in a

position of having to cease trading and do not foresee this happening in the future. We are only a phone call

away, SO should anyone else feel the urge to write us off, we would appreciate the decency of a phone call

before organising the wake (don't forget to invite us!).

SALAMANDER SOFTWARE

CRASH September 1984 5

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