Let's talk about video games journalism 1983-1996

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

Mainly apropos of me mentioning Julian Rignall on an ILM thread the other day.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a3/Zzap64_issue1.jpg/424px-Zzap64_issue1.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/15/Crash_Magazine_Cover_Issue_1.jpg/410px-Crash_Magazine_Cover_Issue_1.jpg

― Dom Passantino, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 12:10 (eighteen years ago)

No YC64 no credibility

― stet, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 12:18 (eighteen years ago)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a9/YourSinclairCover.jpg/450px-YourSinclairCover.jpg

I mean, this thread would be equally great as an image one.

― Dom Passantino, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 12:20 (eighteen years ago)

Despite never owning a ZX Spectrum I spend a hugely happy day or two at University doing nothing but drinking cans of lager and reading my housemate's collection of CRASH. He also had the pilot issue of the hugely misguided LM: The Lively Magazine

The only gaming magazine I remember buying and reading myself, nerdily enough, was the early 80s one devoted entirely to text adventures.

― Groke, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 12:22 (eighteen years ago)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/79/Spower073001.jpg

FUN FACT: Unfunny comedian Danny Wallace started his career off as a writer for Sega Power

― Dom Passantino, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 12:25 (eighteen years ago)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/26/Cvg_magazine_cover.jpg

Really :( that I can't find the C+VG cover that was shared by Parappa the Rapper and Louise Nurding.

― Dom Passantino, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 12:28 (eighteen years ago)

http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/277/asm198609jd6.jpg http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/3716/asm199010pw6.jpg

― fies, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 12:33 (eighteen years ago)

the first games mags i read were Amiga ones circa 1991. Amiga Power started that year and is frequently touted as a cut above the rest but it had some flaws (hating on Turrican being the main one). i was buying about five a month around then for the coverdisks if nothing else.multi-format magz Zero and C&VG were much funnier (if also coarser) tho thanks to the likes of Dave McCandless and Paul Rand.

― blueski, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 12:36 (eighteen years ago)

I bought Commodre Format in the early 90s. Not the time to be seen with a commodore mag in the playground.

― Frogman Henry, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 12:42 (eighteen years ago)

Digitiser 4 Life, suckas.

― Noodle Vague, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 12:44 (eighteen years ago)

[img][Removed Illegal Link]

i had an atari 65

― That one guy that quit, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 12:47 (eighteen years ago)

You can't beat 2 hours of typing in a ZX81 program from Sinclair Programs only to lose it to a ram-pack wobble on the penultimate line.

― Noodle Vague, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 12:48 (eighteen years ago)

the only computer games magazine i read with any regularity was the one that got delivered by the mail order club i was conned into joining, which gave every game an excellent review.

Turrican (xposts) deserved hating on. as i recall, you couldn't save it at any point and there were no level passwords, so every time you had to play the whole, huge goddamn thing from the start, which was made worse by there being mulitple bosses of increasingly difficulty at the end.

― Roberto Spiralli, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 12:48 (eighteen years ago)

http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/3623/180pxatariusermagazinebz8.jpg

― That one guy that quit, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 12:49 (eighteen years ago)

as i recall, you couldn't save it at any point and there were no level passwords, so every time you had to play the whole, huge goddamn thing from the start, which was made worse by there being mulitple bosses of increasingly difficulty at the end.

this is just pussy talk for people who suck at pre-SNES game design/culture, no offence ;)

― blueski, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 12:50 (eighteen years ago)

Turrican had the first double screen end level boss in video games, right?

― Dom Passantino, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 12:53 (eighteen years ago)

imagine playing Chaos Engine without getting level passwords - at that was the apex of the Amiga!

― Roberto Spiralli, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 12:54 (eighteen years ago)

or Alien Breed, for that matter.

― Roberto Spiralli, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 12:54 (eighteen years ago)

Shit, I'd forgotten about Digitiser. It carried on the surreal 'not actually about games' torch admirably after Your Sinclair shut down. I loved them both dearly.

Why doesn't this kind of journalism exist any more?

xpost

― jng, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 12:55 (eighteen years ago)

Because all the video game magazines are now in thrall to PR agencies and "relationships" with specific developers.

― Dom Passantino, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 12:57 (eighteen years ago)

so every time you had to play the whole, huge goddamn thing from the start,

But this was how we played games back then, because mostly the whole game was a delight to play. Loading up that Booty after school ready to take on all those levels again was something I always looked forward to, and a great achievement if completed. But I never did.

― Ste, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 12:57 (eighteen years ago)

the games are a lot different too now of course.

― blueski, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 12:57 (eighteen years ago)

but yes i agree games got a lot bigger so therefore start to require pass codes.

― Ste, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 12:58 (eighteen years ago)

timing xpost

― Ste, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 12:58 (eighteen years ago)

you didn't need pass codes for Roland Goes Digging or Harrier Attack, i grant you.

― Roberto Spiralli, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 12:59 (eighteen years ago)

Fuck, now I'm depressed that I remember never completing Booty

TO THE EMULATOR MACHINE!

― Ste, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 12:59 (eighteen years ago)

I remember Creatures didn't have password codes because the guys who programmed it didn't want the game to be ruined by people finding the codes in a magazine and then just playing the final level.

You know what's the most overrated videogame ever? Mayhem In Monsterland.

― Dom Passantino, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 13:00 (eighteen years ago)

you made that up.

― Roberto Spiralli, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 13:01 (eighteen years ago)

Which bit?

― Dom Passantino, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 13:02 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.c64gg.com/Images/M/Mayhem_In_Monsterland_menu.gif

my apologies. wtf is this?

― Roberto Spiralli, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 13:02 (eighteen years ago)

Allegedly the last "great" C64 game.

― Dom Passantino, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 13:03 (eighteen years ago)

underrated game; Run Baby Run

― Ste, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 13:03 (eighteen years ago)

Mayhem in Monsterland, released in 1993, was for many people the swan song game produced for the Commodore 64 home computer[citation needed]. Its titular hero, "Mayhem", was a yellow triceratops blessed with the gift of speed. In basic appearance, he resembled Sonic the Hedgehog. His goal was to return his world from sad to happy, ridding the world of monsters along the way. The game featured effects not previously thought possible on eight-bit computers, and was the first C64 title to have a real feeling of speed, a "console-esque" feature the developers wanted.

― Dom Passantino, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 13:03 (eighteen years ago)

being a games journalist in the late 80s/early 90s = fucking awesome job surely. not as much as actually making the games of course, but it must've been a lot of fun working on those magazines without the same pressures you would have in music writing or other entertainment forms that were taken much more seriously then. i suspect the games journalism industry mirrored the games industry itself in this respect. bedroom coders vs bedroom DJs tho...and all pre-Internet. a totally different age.

― blueski, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 13:03 (eighteen years ago)

what happened, in 1996?

― That one guy that quit, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 13:04 (eighteen years ago)

it was released in 1993?! shit, i didn't know they were still churning them out then. looks quite nice, tho, for the C64.

xp

― Roberto Spiralli, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 13:05 (eighteen years ago)

1996 seems a good cut-off point, games of note stopped being made for the SNES and Mega Drive then.

― Dom Passantino, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 13:05 (eighteen years ago)

Oh man, i loved Creatures.

― Frogman Henry, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 13:06 (eighteen years ago)

I mean, it _is_ still far too early to call PSOne and N64 games retro, isn't it?

― Dom Passantino, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 13:06 (eighteen years ago)

i used to get those magazines that featured code for you to programme your own games on them, but i have no recollection of it ever working. what a dull childhood i must've had.

― Roberto Spiralli, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 13:06 (eighteen years ago)

BASIC games: all shit.

― Dom Passantino, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 13:07 (eighteen years ago)

best machine coded game i typed in from a mag was something called Duel, a tron light cycle game. You could only see a small section of the grid. The sound effect on the speccy was awesome.

― Ste, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 13:08 (eighteen years ago)

Sinclair Programs i remember was littered with Basic listings, and yes they were indeed all shit.

― Ste, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 13:09 (eighteen years ago)

'96 = Playstation changing everything

― blueski, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 13:10 (eighteen years ago)

I started buying games mags in 1986 or so. Magazines I read frequently over the years were Crash, Sinclair User, Your Sinclair, C&VG, ACE, TGM, Amiga Format, Amiga Power, Arcade & Official Playstation. I had a huge collection but eventually they all went in for recycling except for a couple of particularly great issues of Amiga Power.
Of those I really loved Crash, Amiga Power and Arcade.
I miss magazines that have personality, humour and intelligence that aren't entirely in hock to the PR machines of the games companies.
Last games magazine I bought was a wii preview issue of nGamer. It sucked.

― treefell, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 13:11 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.cpcgamereviews.com/h/harrier_attack.png

BOOM! now that's a goddamn computer game. 99p on cassette from Tesco, probably.

― Roberto Spiralli, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 13:13 (eighteen years ago)

i still have dreams of going into newsagents and seeing rows upon rows of old computer magazines, but never having enough money to buy them all.

― Ste, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 13:16 (eighteen years ago)

pic blocked at work, is that the game that horizontal scrolling bombing and shooting?

― Ste, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 13:17 (eighteen years ago)

like Scramble

― Ste, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 13:18 (eighteen years ago)

not quiet as advanced as Scramble. half the screen is blue, half the screen is green. your Harrier moves through the blue and drops bombs. someimes you hit the ground, sometimes you hit enemy tanks - you got the same points for both, so it was just a matter of bombing constantly and avoiding getting shot down [insert topical gag about US military strategy]. as i recall, even the buildings, when you flew over a town part, were green, like a natural growth from the soil.

― Roberto Spiralli, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 13:23 (eighteen years ago)

Ooh, the font in that screenshot looks like an Amstrad CPC. Hurrah!

― Forest Pines, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 13:27 (eighteen years ago)

with built-in tape deck. fancy!

― Roberto Spiralli, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 13:31 (eighteen years ago)

Nah, I had the CPC6128 with 3" disk drive. And double the memory, even if hardly any software touched it. Fancier!

― Forest Pines, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 13:37 (eighteen years ago)

you win this round!

― Roberto Spiralli, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 13:38 (eighteen years ago)

Did Turrican really not have passwords or saves? That's nuts.

Was Spy Vs Spy a C64 game too? I can't remember if I liked it or not but I'm sure it was one of the biggies.

I remember waiting and waiting soo long for a Knightmare game to come out, really excited about it then when it loaded up it was some shitty colourless piece of crap and I couldn't get out of the first room (a cell, if I remember rightly). Sorry for sidetracking the thread about games, is there a C64/Amiga thread on here?

I loved Zzap64 too, that logo is excellent.

― NI, Thursday, 12 April 2007 00:36 (eighteen years ago)

Was Spy Vs Spy a C64 game too? I can't remember if I liked it or not but I'm sure it was one of the biggies.

i had this for the bbc - fantastic fun...

― stevie, Thursday, 12 April 2007 08:34 (eighteen years ago)

Did Turrican really not have passwords or saves? That's nuts.

i don't remember any Amiga games from around that time having save-game options. a lot of cheats provided a way round this but yeah, tough times!

― blueski, Thursday, 12 April 2007 09:15 (eighteen years ago)

Football Manager had a save game option, and that's going back to... 1983?

― Dom Passantino, Thursday, 12 April 2007 09:33 (eighteen years ago)

For those fellow lovers of Amiga Power. You will spend a lot of time rifling through this -

http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/ap2/

― cheasyweasel, Thursday, 12 April 2007 10:02 (eighteen years ago)

on world of spectrum you can browse almost every single old speccy magazine via the archives section, they've scanned virtually the lot - even the advert pages.

very good times

― Ste, Thursday, 12 April 2007 10:11 (eighteen years ago)

Is there a Digitiser archive anywhere? The saga of Mr T and his bins will stay with me forever.

― Not the real Village People, Thursday, 12 April 2007 14:07 (eighteen years ago)

so, anybody read the publications that came out of the 16-bit console warez scene back in this era? the "charts" or "disk mags" or whatever nomenclature you prefer.

― modestmickey, Thursday, 12 April 2007 14:23 (eighteen years ago)

NtrVP: http://www.moleman.freeserve.co.uk/

― Dom Passantino, Thursday, 12 April 2007 14:25 (eighteen years ago)

download-em-up : here
http://theweekly.co.uk/digiworld/

― zappi, Thursday, 12 April 2007 14:43 (eighteen years ago)

Awesome. I'd completely forgotten Insincere Dave, although I feel he has influenced me greatly. I might start posting entirely in the style of ID from now on.

― Not the real Village People, Thursday, 12 April 2007 16:02 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.crashonline.org.uk/57/images/sdaze2.gif

― DavidM, Thursday, 12 April 2007 17:17 (eighteen years ago)

I spent years believing Lloyd Mangram (of Crash and LM fame) was real. Is Crash the best thing to come out of Ludlow?
(though Sinclair User became the better mag, circa the release of Uridium).

I don't think I'll ever really be
http://www.clive.nl/images/001.jpg

― DavidM, Thursday, 12 April 2007 17:24 (eighteen years ago)

Lloyd Mangram isn't real?

― Alba, Thursday, 12 April 2007 18:00 (eighteen years ago)

(though Sinclair User became the better mag, circa the release of Uridium).

Do you mean Your Sinclair? Sinclair User (Unclear User, more like, ha ha ha ha ha!*) was always a bit square and rub.

I have a notion LM was ahead of its time. I'd love to see it now.

* I still have the unexpurgated issue, available only to subscribers

― Alba, Thursday, 12 April 2007 18:04 (eighteen years ago)

I went to the Crash stall at an Ally Pally ZX Microfair once and complained to Robin Candy that he'd spelt my name wrong when they'd published my Frank Bruno's Boxing level codes. He grunted in incomprehension and I said it didn't matter.

― Alba, Thursday, 12 April 2007 18:06 (eighteen years ago)

Sinclair User was a bit dry up until an overhaul in the late-mid '80s when it got it's act together and became the Melody Maker to Your Sinclair's Select to Crash's Q. I subsequently dropped Crash due to its comparative fuddy-duddyness (cf their blinkered worship of the Imagine brand).

― DavidM, Thursday, 12 April 2007 22:35 (eighteen years ago)

a late correction to my hex listing in a Your Sinclair/Spectrum http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/science/2006/08/a-late-correction/

― Alan, Thursday, 12 April 2007 22:44 (eighteen years ago)

Nice, Alan!

― Keith, Thursday, 12 April 2007 22:57 (eighteen years ago)

dig around the YS archive and you'll find my Boot Hill game too :-D

/blowing own trumpet

― Alan, Thursday, 12 April 2007 23:08 (eighteen years ago)

I used to do this sort of thing too. Trouble is I never managed to finish a single one of them. Did one on the ST that I kept the disks for and managed to recompile under emulation about 8 years ago, on the basis that the ST had 'normal' disks that you could just shove into a PC, but have sadly lost since.

― Keith, Thursday, 12 April 2007 23:14 (eighteen years ago)

Incidentally, why didn't they print the assembler?

― Keith, Thursday, 12 April 2007 23:15 (eighteen years ago)

Crash was never like Q! It was more NME. And Ultimate were their Morrissey.

What were those two megagames that someone (Ocean?) were supposed to be developing./ They took out full page ads in the mags with updates on the number of cans of Coke etc consumed by their development teams. There was one for the C64 and one for the Spectrum. Bandersnatch and something else.

― Alba, Thursday, 12 April 2007 23:16 (eighteen years ago)

Were these the ones that were featured in a BBC documentary, about 1985? It required an extra piece of hardware? Vague recollections...

― Keith, Thursday, 12 April 2007 23:16 (eighteen years ago)

Oh. Googling has answered my question. Psyclapse.

― Alba, Thursday, 12 April 2007 23:17 (eighteen years ago)

And it was Imagine, again, not Ocean. Almost vaporware, but Bandersnatch did eventually surface for the QL!

― Alba, Thursday, 12 April 2007 23:18 (eighteen years ago)

Sorry, I'm not remembering/reading properly. Was developed for the QL but was never released.

― Alba, Thursday, 12 April 2007 23:21 (eighteen years ago)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/ba/BandersnatchAdvert.jpg

― Alba, Thursday, 12 April 2007 23:21 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/x1/x5358.jpg

― Spencer Chow, Thursday, 12 April 2007 23:31 (eighteen years ago)

from '82 but hey...

Zaxxon vs. Xevious
Fantasy art related to game FITE!!!

― Spencer Chow, Thursday, 12 April 2007 23:36 (eighteen years ago)

sorry, the book is from '82.

― Spencer Chow, Thursday, 12 April 2007 23:36 (eighteen years ago)

I've read that! It's fascinating to see Amis get so excited about the colour palette for various Defenders-clones.

― Dom Passantino, Thursday, 12 April 2007 23:37 (eighteen years ago)

Incidentally, why didn't they print the assembler?

To answer my own question, I expect it's because it didn't actually have an assembler to assemble it in... I never had a Spectrum.

― Keith, Thursday, 12 April 2007 23:37 (eighteen years ago)

Radion Automatic.

― the next grozart, Friday, 13 April 2007 09:31 (eighteen years ago)

KICK MONKEY ASS!

― g-kit, Friday, 13 April 2007 09:44 (eighteen years ago)

btw, the original Football Manager was 100% basic, and it was great.

― g-kit, Friday, 13 April 2007 09:44 (eighteen years ago)

that amis book is the only major book cited in Poole's Trigger Happy and he has to keep apologising for it (cos it's the only other book like it).

― Alan, Friday, 13 April 2007 09:49 (eighteen years ago)

I still have an issue of LM in the cupboard. I think it prob was ahead of it's time. The only thing I remember about it right now is that it has the same style illustrated cover as Crash etc and it features a full page review of Sign O' The Times.

When mentioning Crash and ZZap64 lets not forget Amtix which is where my pennies went at that time.

Amiga Power remains the only publication to which I've written a letter - I wished them a happy new year at the end. They printed it in April. Also I won a prize in a competition to name as many songs as possible with the words Fire or Ice in the title. Was meant to get a t-shirt that never arrived, wrote to chase it up and got a copy of the game instead. Result!

― cheasyweasel, Friday, 13 April 2007 10:03 (eighteen years ago)

The big reason the best of these mags was successful was the air of informality, the silly in jokes and a sense that you were in on something along with those who wrote the mag. They also seemed like a bunch of people who genuinely loved what they were doing and had a great time doing it. Also most importantly, you trusted their opinion, esp in the case of AP who some publishers stopped sending games to because they kept writing honest reviews. (Team 17 I seem to remember)

I imageine it's a difficult thing to achieve in a magazine and precious few manage it now. Smash Hits seems to have had the same sort of air about it. Not to everyone's taste but The Word seems to be certainly the only music mag that strives for this, no surprise that it was started by Smash Hits alumni. Can't imagine any current games mags have this - too tied to the PR machine.

― cheasyweasel, Friday, 13 April 2007 10:06 (eighteen years ago)

Lloyd Mangram isn't real?

i thought robin candy wasn't either. but alba claims to have met him. weren't they both pseudonyms for someone else? i'd check this out in more detail but i need to get ready for work.

i'm disappointed that we're so far through this thread and nobody's mentioned big K magazine. that said, it was never on a par with crash, which in turn was never on a par with sinclair user at its mightiest. i still have a few issues of these things in boxes somewhere in this very room. happy, happy days.

cheasyweasel's right: esp with sinclair user, you did feel part of a gang, along the smash hits model. computer shopper - NO, REALLY - was quite good at this too, in the very late 1980s.

i was in london late last year, drinking in a pub just round the corner from rathbone place. i was delighted by that!

― grimly fiendish, Friday, 13 April 2007 11:50 (eighteen years ago)

Lloyd Mangram didn't actually exist, really. It was just a false name used by a plethora of journalists at Crash. So it was a big con really! A false identity! While Roger Kean spent most time acting as Lloyd, two others were Barnaby Page and Eddie McKendrick.

― Dom Passantino, Friday, 13 April 2007 11:51 (eighteen years ago)

oh, hello this thread.

i was a total obsessive Spectrum + user til about '88 and worshipped YS and indeed SU. I got my picture in the former once as well - with Sticky Up Hair! - aged about 11.

― CharlieNo4, Friday, 13 April 2007 12:22 (eighteen years ago)

check out the February edition 1987 of Sinclair User. My name is listed in the competition winners for the Howard The Duck game. Right at the bottom on the left, I'm the geezer from Cheshire.

― Ste, Friday, 13 April 2007 12:26 (eighteen years ago)

and they ran out of posters so they sent me a poster of Quartet instead. It was pants.

― Ste, Friday, 13 April 2007 12:26 (eighteen years ago)

Sorry Ste, but Charlie wins because YS >>>>>> SU (plus, Quartet = shit game)

wp to both, though

― g-kit, Friday, 13 April 2007 12:30 (eighteen years ago)

gratuitous screenshot:

http://wii.advancedmn.com/images/content/misc/forgotten-ghostbusters-game.jpg

― CharlieNo4, Friday, 13 April 2007 12:31 (eighteen years ago)

and as a side note for Sega folks, D4n Curl3y, UK Sega champ 1990-94, works in our office as Games Editor!

― CharlieNo4, Friday, 13 April 2007 12:35 (eighteen years ago)

Who actually graduated from these kind of magazines to something... I hesitate to use the word "greater" when it comes to Danny Wallace's career, but still.

Charlie Brooker's the obvious one. The only times he's still lulz these days is when he's basically being an early 90s video game writer, except he's talking about The Wire instead of Beneath A Steel Sky

― Dom Passantino, Friday, 13 April 2007 12:52 (eighteen years ago)

old green eyes is back

― g-kit, Friday, 13 April 2007 12:56 (eighteen years ago)

marcus berkmann (sp?), ex-YS, has written for (may be employed by) one of the london what-we-used-to-call-broadsheets. i'm sure i've come across other examples, but i don't think i've ever worked/dealt with any of them. i'd probably be a bit of a twatty fanboy if i did. really, i fucking loved some of these magazines, and i'm glad i wasn't alone.

seriously, though, people. big K? nicky xicluna (sp, again)? nobody? think there are some links from that site that's got all the zzap archives.

― grimly fiendish, Friday, 13 April 2007 17:21 (eighteen years ago)

that Ghostbusters game was the fuckin' bollocks. you had to go for the station wagon every time, just-like-in-the-movie style. that game taught me what a station wagon is.

― Roberto Spiralli, Friday, 13 April 2007 17:46 (eighteen years ago)

The only "cheat" I ever discovered and didn't read anywhere else was that if you press 0 on the Ghostbusters car select screen instead of 1-4 you get a... giant rolling graphical glitch as wide as the screen instead of a car. This is not actually in any way useful but I did it all the time anyway because it was MINE.

Nobody has mentioned 16-bit late-80s multiplatform mag Ace, which I bought a few times despite not having any of the computers just because it was so damn nicely designed. A stepping stone between C+VG (funny, terrible design - though, wait, remember later SU reviews, bright magenta text on a background with a diagonal stripe from eye-popping cyan to completely can't-even-see-the-text red) and Edge (really pretty but completely humourless writing). And those Amiga screenshots with their lush colour gradient backgrounds parallaxing smoothly past made us Speccy kids cry.

― a passing spacecadet, Friday, 13 April 2007 18:14 (eighteen years ago)

Oops, treefell mentioned Ace, sorry.

I don't know why I bought Sinclair User for so long when it's the one Spectrum mag I don't have any fond nostalgic memories of. At least towards the end it started putting tons of games on its tape to make up for the magazine's awfulness. Some of them were even OK. Eventually I saw the light, switched to YS, and wrote them an embarrassing colour felt-tip letter which must have looked like the work of someone half my age (about 10?) about how they were great and more importantly 35p cheaper than SU. They didn't print it, thankfully. Probably because two issues later their cover price went up by, oh, 35p.

― a passing spacecadet, Friday, 13 April 2007 18:25 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.fraserking.co.uk/spectrum/screenshots/Football_Manager2.png

to compound the photo-realistic quality of these graphics, at the time i was playing this i had a green screen monitor.

― Roberto Spiralli, Friday, 13 April 2007 18:27 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.overlans.com/joystick/xevious.jpg

― Spencer Chow, Friday, 13 April 2007 18:29 (eighteen years ago)

When I first saw in big letters, "PSYCLAPSE & BANDERSNATCH," the letters that immediately jumped out at me were "CLAP" and "SNATCH," what the hell is wrong w/ me?

I think i'm a bit young for these mags, but I do recall early 90s (16bit era) Gamepro's pioneering of the "It's April, which means it's time for the gaming press to try their best to fuck with you" vehicle with great success. I still can't believe, to this day, that people still fall for that "April Fools, that 400-digit code was made up / N1ntendo did not buy Squar33nix" shit. Honestly. This has been going on for, what, almost 20 years?

― Will M., Friday, 13 April 2007 18:35 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.freewebtown.com/storex/ss1.gif

http://www.freewebtown.com/storex/ss2.gif

http://www.freewebtown.com/storex/ss3.gif

http://www.freewebtown.com/storex/ss4.gif

http://www.freewebtown.com/storex/ss5.gif

http://www.freewebtown.com/storex/ss6.gif

― Roberto Spiralli, Friday, 13 April 2007 18:54 (eighteen years ago)

if you were to ask me if i just spent 15 minutes photoshopping screenshots from a bunch of my favourite old games to make them look like they're on a green screen monitor, i would have to say yes. if you were to ask me why, i would not be able to supply an adequate answer.

― Roberto Spiralli, Friday, 13 April 2007 18:54 (eighteen years ago)

> being a games journalist in the late 80s/early 90s = fucking awesome job surely. not as much as actually making the games of course...

there's not much glamour in coding anything, a lot of it's drudge. some nice bits when things start working or you stumble onto a nice new effect but there's also a lot of tedium. (speaking only as aforementioned bedroom coder, not a professional.)

― koogs, Friday, 13 April 2007 19:02 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.freewebtown.com/storex/ss5.gif

Rockstar Ate My Hamster = video game that's not as amazing as you remember

― Dom Passantino, Friday, 13 April 2007 19:04 (eighteen years ago)

i've just realised (maybe it's this talk of clap and snatches) that it's YS i have to thank for introducing me to viz comic: they gave away a cut-down, sanitised version one month, and i thought it was the single funniest thing i've ever seen. i'd have been 13, i think. don't think i've missed a viz since.

― grimly fiendish, Friday, 13 April 2007 19:39 (eighteen years ago)

so, not wanting to believe Dom's lies, i've download a CPC emulator and a copy of Rockstar Ate My Hamster. so far, i've hired Dorrissey and Lemme to be in my new band, Heaven Knows I'm Motorhead Now, and i'm having a gay old time. i'll report back when we're topping the charts.

― Roberto Spiralli, Friday, 13 April 2007 20:14 (eighteen years ago)

I refuse to believe Dom also, I used to love that game. I'm resisting the urge to play it again tho just in case.

― Ste, Friday, 13 April 2007 20:20 (eighteen years ago)

teh '80s lol

http://www.theatticbug.co.uk/catalog/images/su%20jan%2087%20(412%20x%20574).jpg

play a speccy game here!

― DavidM, Saturday, 14 April 2007 09:26 (eighteen years ago)

play a speccy game here!

did they forget to actually write a punchline?

also, FFS, it was LOAD "", not load. and "ManicMin?" good god. if you're going to write tragically unfunny affectionate homages, at least pay a tiny bit of attention to the detail :/

― grimly fiendish, Saturday, 14 April 2007 09:57 (eighteen years ago)

http://www2.b3ta.com/heyhey16k/

― Alan, Saturday, 14 April 2007 10:03 (eighteen years ago)

i totally had that issue of SU, i seem to recall that when the Dredd game finally came out it was shit.

also no one has said "Computer & VEGETABLE Games, more like" yet, so i thought i better had.

― CarsmileSteve, Saturday, 14 April 2007 11:49 (eighteen years ago)

also to get that website to work properly you should have to press K, shift P, shift P, enter...

― CarsmileSteve, Saturday, 14 April 2007 11:51 (eighteen years ago)

http://amr.abime.net/amr_popup_picture.php?src=megazone/magscans/mz_1991_02/005.jpg&c=55072

― Dom Passantino, Saturday, 14 April 2007 12:00 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.freewebtown.com/storex/screen1.gif

http://www.freewebtown.com/storex/screen2.gif

http://www.freewebtown.com/storex/screen3.gif

Lumme dying in an orgy did not prevent us from getting 2 number one singles, a number one album and two gold discs. wildcats!

it was fun, but not quite like i remembered, after all. it's so brazenly formulaic it's easier to pick than the football manager game i made in Access. but i can see how, as a 13 year old, i would've found the whole thing absolutely hilarious.

― Roberto Spiralli, Saturday, 14 April 2007 12:38 (eighteen years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.