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'Back in
Time' is a
monthly feature where we look back at the classic video gaming
magazines twenty years ago this month. This month it's October 1990
when three brand new magazine launched, two new games consoles
launched, Ivan 'Iron Man' Stewart's Super Off Road raced all over the
major gaming formats and Wonderland proved a wonderful hit.
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A fresh-faced young Richard Leadbetter joined
the C&VG
crew for issue 107. One of his first duties was to review
six different versions of Ivan 'Iron
Man' Stewart's Super Off Road by
Virgin, including the Amiga, Atari ST, PC, C64, Amstrad CPC and ZX
Spectrum conversions. Amazingly, every version was rated 94% and given
a ‘C+VG Hit!’. However, that wasn’t the highest rating that month as
that honour went to Ocean’s Pang on
the
Amiga.
Robert
Swan
gave
the
arcade
conversion
96%, stating that “both the graphics and sound match
the arcade machine pixel for pixel… sound effects are spot on too…
These combine with the horribly addictive gameplay to make Pang a
really brilliant game.”
Other ‘C+VG Hit!’ games were Cadaver
(Atari ST, Image Works) 95%, Super
Monaco Grand Prix (Mega Drive,
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94%, Wings (Amiga,
Cinemaware/Mirrorsoft) 94%, Simulcra
(Amiga,
MicroStyle) 93%, F-19 Stealth Fighter
(Amiga, MicroProse) 92%, Splatterhouse
(PC
Engine, Namco) 92%, Hammering Harry
(Arcade, Irem)
91%, Rick Dangerous 2 (Atari
ST, MicroStyle) 90% and Columns (Arcade,
Sega)
87%.
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It was the second
birthday of The
One and to celebrate the team looked back at the history, so
far, of 16-bit software. To coincide with the release of Clive Barker’s
Nightbreed game,
Clive
Barker
himself
was
interviewed.
It
was
a very
successful month for high rated games this month, with nine 90%+ games.
Clear pick of the month was Powermonger
on the Amiga by Electronic
Arts, which managed 95% and some high praise: “In its quest to create
not just a game, but a
living breathing world inside a computer, Bullfrog has done a
commendable job.”
Closely behind were Battle Command
(Atari ST, Ocean) 92%, Wonderland (PC,
Virgin
Games)
92%,
Wings
(Amiga, Mirrorsoft) 91%, 4D Sports
Boxing
(PC, Mindscape) 90%, Cadaver (Atari
ST,
Image
Works)
90%,
The Immortal
(Amiga, Electronic Arts) 90%, Pang |
| (Amiga, Ocean) 90% and Rick
Dangerous II (Atari ST, Microstyle) 90%. |
In issue 37 of ACE,
Rik
Haynes
looked
at
the
current
and
upcoming
gaming
consoles,
including the C64GS, Amstrad GX4000, Nintendo Super Famicom, Sega Game
Gear, Sega Mega Drive, Nintendo Gameboy, Sega Master System, Nintendo
Entertainment System and Atari Lynx.
The first ‘ACE Rated’ game of the month went to Captive, coming away with a
rating of 930. The game, developed by Tony Crowther, was originally
titled Federation War, but
was renamed Captive following
an
ACE readers
competition, which was won by John Millward from Dudley. “Fans of Dungeon Master
will find Captive an
essential buy,” commented Alex
Ruranski in his review. “combining the elements which made the former
so successful.”
In ‘Bit Blitz’ a bunch of ACE readers
went
on
the
road
to |
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| Mirrorsoft’s
HQ
to
get
the
low-down
on
their
forthcoming games, including Cadaver,
Speedball 2,
Duster and…
er, Back to the Future II. In
‘CPChoice’ ACE looked at the
new Amstrad machines, the CPC
464 Plus, CPC 6128 Plus and
the GX4000. |
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For Zero
issue 12,
Mike Gerrard play tested Wonderland
on the PC and swiftly gave the game
95 and a ‘Zero Hero’ award. “Wonderland
is set to knock people’s socks
off… so better put some socks on now and be prepared,” commented Mike.
“The Scrolls/Virgin team says that if Wonderland is a success, it’s
inevitable they’ll want to do the follow-up, Through the Looking Glass.
If I were them I’d start writing it now.” Battle Command on the Atari
ST and Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles
on the NES were also given ‘Zero
Hero’ awards with 91 and 93 ratings respectively.
The Amstrad GX4000 was featured in a hardware special along with racing
game Burnin’ Rubber, which
came free with the console. “The GX4000 is
unquestionably more powerful than the 8-bit Nintendo and Sega, but
that’s about it. At £100 all in, Amstrad’s
console is going to sell and sell.
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| Software houses are familiar with the CPC format, so there’ll be
no shortage of good titles. It’s got a good future me thinks.” (Note to
self: never try to predict the success of a newly launched gaming
console). |
The Games Machine
may have gone, but, as promised,Razewas here to
replace it. Editor
Richard Monteiro, along with writers Derek Chapman, Les Ellis, Julian
Boardman and Jason Holborn, produced a magazine that dedicated more
time to the ever-growing gaming consoles and 16-bit computers market.
In ‘Sheer Dynamite’, touted as the “first computer entertainment
magazine to have a regular column,” Paul Rigby checked out the latest
CD hardware and games. ‘Entertainment USA’ and ‘Big in Japan’ would
keep the readers abreast of the latest developments in North America
and Japan respectively. ‘Which Console?’ looked at all the major
players in the emerging battle of the gaming console wars. Flight of
the Intruder on the PC was undoubtedly Raze’s pick of the month with
95% and |
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a
‘Raze
Rave’
accolade.
“Flight of the
Intruder is a tour de
force in simulation programming,” enthused Paul Rigby. “The program
shows that care and attention had been applied to the project… For the
moment at least, Flight of the Intruder is the king of the skies.”
Also ‘Raze Raved’ wasDevil Crashon the PC Engine
with 93%,Rick Dangerous II(Amiga, ST,
90% & 91%), Todd’s Adventure in
Slime
World (Lynx, 92%),Future Basketball(Amiga, ST,
92% &, 89%), Super
Monaco GP (Mega Drive, Master System, 91% & 87%). PD Reviews
section pick was All New Star Trek
on the Amiga from GTS. The PD game
was given an impressive 91%.
For the ‘Hot Slots’ column, Suzy Uki reported on the latest happenings
on the world’s arcade action. Games of interest included Pigskin 621 AD
from Bally/Miday, G-Loc from
Sega, Smash TV from Williams,
Race Drivin’
from Atari Games and the Mega-Tech system from Sega. |
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It finally
happened. After many years of having its own section in
mother magazine Computer & Video
Games, a test run of Complete
Guide to Console bookazines and an issue zero, editor Julain Rignall
finally launched issue one of a regular monthly edition ofMean
Machines. Yes, a completely dedicated console gaming
magazine that
would cover the likes of the Mega Drive, NES, Master System and the new
Amstrad GX4000.
The Revenge of
Shinobi was the first game to get the ‘Mega Game’
treatment. The Sega Mega Drive game was given 94%. “An absolute treat
for the ears,” enthused Julian Rignall. “Each level is a graphical
masterpiece… The sprites are simply superb… All that would be useless
without decent gameplay, but Revenge
of Shinobi doesn’t disappoint
here. It’s a challenging and amazingly |
addictive and keeps you glued to
the machine for hours...”
Other ‘Mega Games’ includedWonder Boy IIIon the Master
System with 95%, Impossible Mission
on the Master System
with 94%,Ghouls ‘n Ghosts on the Mega
Drive with 92%, Gauntleton
the
Master System with 92%, Golden Axe
on the Mega Drive with 91% and Teenage
Mutant
Hero
Turtles on the NES with 90%. Super
Mario was riding
on top of the NES chart, while Golden
Axe topped both the Mega Drive
and Master System charts. |
Sinclair
User issue 104’s Double Hits covertape featured Gift From the
Gods and four levels of Puznik.
The
highest
rated
game
this
month was Time
Machine
from Vivid Images, which was given 90%, although there was
no sign of the ‘Sinclair User Classic’ logo. Garth Sumpter described Time Machine
as “an absorbing and innovative game with excellent mono
graphics… A brain buster.” Other worthy games included Plotting from
Ocean with 88% and Monty Python’s
Flying Circus with 88%.
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‘Game Thrills’ on
the Crash 81 covertape this month
were Gunrunner (hewson), Supercom (Atlantis), Mango
Jones (Psychaedelic Hedgehog
Software) and Talking Hedz
(Theo Develegas). No ‘Crash Smash’ games
this month, with Plotting coming
closest
with
86%.
Richard
Eddy
commenting
that the game is “well presented, graphics are clear and
colourful,” which make that game “feel more exciting than many other
puzzle games.” |
The Spectrum
covertape
wars was hotting up and Your
Sinclair introduced their first ever ‘Your
Sinclair Four Pack’ with four games, including Tau Ceti (Virgin
Mastertronic), Rebel (Virgin
Mastertronic), a playable demo of Ivan
‘Ironman’
Stewart’s
Super
Off-Road
Racer (Virgin Mastertronic) and Feud (er… Virgin Mastertronic).
In ‘The Complete YS Guide to Flight Sims’, Jonathan Davies named the
best… flight sims on the Speccy, with the likes of Chuck Yeager’s
Advanced Flight Trainer and Project
Stealth
Fighter coming away with
the better ratings of 92 and 90 respectively.
‘Son of Crap Game Corner’ followed on from last issue’s look at reader
games sent in. Highlights for good and wrong reasons were Yet
More
Advanced Lawnmower |
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Simulators and Things
by S Young and Steven Anderson
with a rating of 5, The Castle of
Quizzard Wizzard by Anon with 0 (yes, zero). D Alderson saved
further embarrassment with his fine Destrux
game and a 93 rating.
The Time Machine
travelled back into the pages of YS’ reviews pages and retruned with
91. “I hope you can understand what I've been dribbling
on about (unlikely),” wrote Rich Pelley, “but in case you haven’t I'll
sum it up in a couple of words. Erm, it’s good. In fact, it might even
be very good, and it’s certainly like nothing else you’ve seen before.”
Monty Python’s
Flying Circus was close behind with 90. |
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On YC issue
72’s covertape
were Championship Dominoes, Liberte and a demo of Time Machine. ‘Megablast’ with Sean
Kelly guided the readers through some
of the C64’s best blastin’ games around. Best of the best included Turrican, Uridium, Delta and Silkworm.
In the reviews pages, U.N. Squadron
was given a ‘YC Fun One’ with an overall skore of 87. Rik
Henderson said that the “game, although offering very little that is
new, is a very good blasty. Now run along and buy it you arcade freaks
you!!!” Lords of Chaos was
also given the ‘YC Fun One’ treatment with
an 86. |
MegaTape delights in
issue 66 of Zzap!64
Amiga included Foxx Fights
Back, Scorpion, Monster
Munch and a playable demo of the forthcoming Creatures. With The Games
Machine morphing into Raze,
and
the
editorial
team
based
in Trowbridge,
Warren’Wozza’ Lapworth became the newsest recruit to the Zzap team.
Editor Stuart Wynne evaluated the chances of Commodore’s new C64GS,
which was basically a keyboard-less, cartridge based C64.
Once again, the Apex posse reported back from the development of their
upcoming Creatures game. But
with hot summer days, their Commodore 128
crashing, writing up development diaries, it’s a wonder any work was
done at all.
Two Amiga titles were the ‘sizzler’ games this month with
Delphine’s Operation Stealth
awarded 92%. The game |
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| was praised highly: “Graphics,
Music, FX and animation all wipe the floor with Sierra On-Line’s games.
And Delphine definitely beat Sierra at their own game(s).” Venus the
Flytrap was the other sizzler with 90%. |
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Launched relatively
late in the Commodore 64’s life was Future Publishing's Commodore
Format. Steve Jarratt (former Zzap!64
and Commodore User writer)
headed
an editorial team that had a distinct feel of Zzap!64 about it: Sean
Masterson (Deputy Editor had written for Zzap!64), Andy Dyer (Staff
Writer), Gordon Houghton (contributor and a former Editor of Zzap!64)
and Kati Hamza (contributor and former writer at Zzap!64).
The CF Smash Hits tape included Revolution
(an unreleased shoot-‘em-up
from Simon Pick), Tau Ceti, Rebel, playable demos of Iron Man and St.
Dragon. In special feature ‘Gimmer CDTV’ Damien Noonan checked
out
Commodore’s latest hardware release the CDTV. This was a multimedia
system comprising of a CD player, an Amiga 500 with CD drive, an
‘Interactive Graphics Player (so basically an
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Amiga with a CD drive).
Steve Jarratt was first to dish out the new ‘It’s A Corker’ accolade
following his 91% rated review of Time
Machine. “Time Machine
is a
cracking game,” Steve wrote, “beautifully put together and just
dripping with quality. Rush out and buy one yesterday.” Lords of Chaos
was also ‘corker’ed with 90%.
“Old computers never die – they just turn into consoles!” began the
feature on the C64GS. Phil South went to Commodore HQ to see the new
console for himself and speak to Kelly Sumner, Commodore’s National
Sales Manager. The first edition of ‘The Gauntlet’, a one-on-one games
playing
competition between two readers, began with Mark Hill and Kevin Sibley
playing Turrican. “The
under-dog had deservedly won… Kevin Sibley is
the very first Commodore Format
Gauntlet champion!”
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For the October 90
issue of Amstrad
Computer
User, John Cook dived once more into the
arcade breach to bring the readers news on the best offerings on the
arcade gaming scene. New machine, Neo Geo, was praised for its great
hardware, but because it was being marketed as an arcade machine, the
games come in at around £150 each. Also played this month were Alien Storm, Hydra and Bonanza Brothers.
In the Gameplan section, Escape From
the Planet of the Robot Monsters
managed to get a Jackpot final verdict. John Taylor said that “If
you’re after mindless fun and something that will keep you glued to
your screen til the bitter end, look no further than the challenge laid
down by the Reptilons.”
Monty Python’s
Flying Circus got the centre page spread |
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and a jackpot
verdict. Chris Knight had heaps of praise for the game: “…plenty of
colourful graphics… the sound effects more than live up to the weird
happenings throughout what must be one of the most playable games of
the year. It’s certainly the most original. Maddingly so!” Other games
to get positive verdicts were Vendetta
with a thumbs up and International Tennis
with Dynamite.
Also this issue, the ACU team
looked
at
the
new
Amstrad
range of
machines in the feature ‘Plus Mania’. Guy Matthews spoke with Roland
Perry, the man behind the new CPCs. Then the machines themselves were
looked at: the cassette based CPC 464 Plus, the disk based CPC 6128
Plus and the cartridge based GX4000. |
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With issue
61, Amstrad
Action celebrated its fifth birthday with another covertape,
including a demo of Iron Man
and the complete game of Tau Ceti.
The
team
(editor
Rod
Lawton,
reviews
editor Adam Waring, writer
James Leach and art editor Ollie Alderton) looked back at five years of
AA. And then
there was ‘Magmania – the official Amstrad
Action board
game’, essentially a cut out homemade style game (oh, dear).
On ‘Action Test’ this month was Iron
Lord, the impressive looking
adventure game from Ubi Soft, which was given a ‘Master Game’ rating of
92%. Brave Sir James ‘Iron-Britches’ Leach said that the game was “fun
to play, and wonderful to look at. There is enough here to satisfy the
most demanding adventurer, but the game is never dense of
impenetrable.” |
GX4000 game Fire & Forget II
from Titus was given 94%. “It isn’t a
revolutionary idea for a game, nor does it have the imagination of many
current and recent software releases,” commented James ‘Fired and
Forgotten’ Leach, “but it plays beautifully and it looks good.”
Elsewhere, Monty Python’s Flying
Circus came away with 84% and an ‘AA
Rave’, Satan from Dinamic
was given 83% and Skate Wars
was given 80%,
but no AA Rave? Top of the CPC Gallup charts this month were Shadow
Warriors, Turrican and
World Cup Soccer ’90.
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Issue 13 of Amiga
Action contained their first cover disk. Included on the disk
were playable demos of Bar Games and
The Killing Game
Show.
Two high rated games this month, especially for Amiga Action, who have
been pretty stingy on the awards in previous months. First up was F-19
Stealth Fighter, which managed 90%. Steve Merrett wrote, “F-19 should
appeal to beginners and veterans alike… A classic not to be missed…”,
while Alex Simmons mentioned that “with every detail carefully catered
for, F-19 is currently the
flight sim to buy and must not be missed.”
Corporation
was the other 90% winner this month. Michelle Bowden
commented that “Corporation is
one
of
the
most
original
and polished
games I have played in a long time |
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| and,
needless
to
say,
I
recommend
you
enrol for a ZODIAC mission.” And Doug Johns described Corporation
as “a brilliant game that will last you for ages…” |
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Amiga
Format
issue 14 coverdisk gaming delights included a playable demo of Flip-It and Magnose and a PD game
called Girl Actions (a Space Invaders clone and certainly
not was inplied in the title).
Operation Stealth
was given a ‘Format Gold’ award with 90%. Trenton
Webb described Opertation Stealth
as “a worthy successor to Future
Wars. With the improved Cinematique system, the game flows smoothly,
maintaining pace and atmosphere.”
Trenton also gave Supremacy a
similar rating of 90%, praising the
game’s strategy as being “strong enough to engross even ardent armchair
generals, but is instantly playable enough to win over arcade freaks
too.” |
The October 1990 CU
Amiga ‘Disk Action’ coverdisk contained two complete games in Sky Fight
(shoot-‘em-up) and Bouncer (Arkanoid style bat game) along
with other
software and utilities.
Wonderland was
given
a
‘CU
Super
Star’
screen award with its impressive
96% rating. Keith Campbell said that “here is an outstanding game that
is a pleasure to play, extremely entertaining, and with widespread
appeal to gamesters from nine years of age to ninety.” An equally
impressive rating of 94% and a ‘CU Super Star’ was given to Wings and a
‘CU Screen Star’ and 86% was given to Captive.
In the ‘Arcades’, Smash TV
was given 92%, with John Cook describing Smash TV as
“a game with a body count higher than Total
Recall and Terminator
put together. But it’s |
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funny,
exhilarating,
colourful,
slick
and
a lot better than staying in to watch The Price is Right.” |
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On The Disk in
issue 29 of ST
Action was The Spy Who Loved
Me (Demo), Super Off Road
Racer
(Demo) and Ran Xerox (Demo).
Inside were two page
spreads on the making of each game.
Simulcra from
Microstyle
was
the
pick
of
the A1 rated games this month,
with a final rating of 91%. To accompany the cover review of Murder there was a feature on
famous murderers! The
game itself was given an
A1 rating (just) with 80%. Other A1 rated games were Gold of the Aztecs
managed 86%, International Soccer
Challenge 84%, Rick Dangerous
II 82%, Cadaver 85%, Operation Stealth
87% and Battlemaster 84%. |
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Format’s
issue
14
coverdisk included Days of Thunder racing
demo,
Manix and
other programs and utilities. Achieving
‘Format Gold’ status this
month were Operation Stealth
(Delphine /US Gold) with 93% and The
Battle of Britain (Lucasfilm/US Gold) with 91%. |
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Issue 11 of S
featured only one new game review with Summer Games on the Master
System. It was not “the toughest game to have appeared but it's fun to
play and will provide a group of you with a good few hours of
competitive fun.” However, due to a printing error, the review score
was omitted from the pages and the readers would not know the ratings
until the next issue (63%).
Pick of the “Past Master” reviews were Shanghai and Thunder Blade, with
91% and 86% respectively. In a special look at Master System light gun
games, Operation Wolf came
top with 9, followed by Rambo III,
Rescue
Mission and Shooting Gallery,
all
with
8
each.
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