THE UNIVERSE'S BEST-SELLING SPECTRUM MAG! magazine Speccy © BBC Enterprises 1993 outrageously The We interrupt this magazine cover to bring you a special announcement from the President of the United States, Telly Savalas. (Click.) ‘My fellow fellows. You should not be able to hear this message as it is designed to be covered up by a tape. This tape, I am reliably informed, contains the spook French game Captain Blood 128K and, to protect it from the rising tide of International Communism, has been taken into protective custody by the proprietor of this very newsagent. Retrieve this tape at all costs! Even though it’s free, or something. This message will self-destruct in 127 years.' 3 They're destroying everything in their path! Commando, Swords □ □ And Sorcery and WWF get very (very) violent The Remote - □ □ new Speccy hardware rolls in Infamy! Infamy! Ooh, Sourcey! 7 returns Input Output gallops off madly in all directions E-Tracker and Wop Gamma 9 r□ turn out for the SAM Pitstop, ulure Spec Tec Jr and Dial Hard tussle Your guarantee of value Run up a staircase to page 3' for the soup Or something 20,775 Editor Dennis Nash V Art Editor Dennis Ounsted V Contributors Dennis Broadbent, Dennis Campbell, Dennis Cooke, Dennis Forrester, Dennis Golder, alutations, Spec-chums, and welcome to Dennis Hindle, Dennis McCardle V S ISSUE 91 / July 93 another friendly issue of YS. Sharp-eyed Deputy Ad Manager Dennis Garford V readers will already have noticed the Production Co-ordinator Dennis Brock y Ad Design Dennis Cockroft y Lino absence of Tipshop. This is because Linda was Bods Dennis Gover, Dennis Parsons y taken seriously ill this month. It was a bit hairy Production Technician Dennis Stocker at one point, but everything seems to be okay y Scanning Dennis Windsor, Jon Moore, now, and it’s just a case of waiting for our Dennis Chittenden y Publisher Dennis A beloved ex-Ed to recover. Apparently she’s Campbell y Promotions Manager already getting through about half a box of Dennis Ward y Group Publisher Dennis porridge per day, so things must be looking up. Ingham y Circulation Director Dennis I’m sure you’ll all join us in a hearty Hartley y Group Production Manager Dennis Middleton y Production Controller Dennis Thomas y Production Get well soon, sausage! Control Assistant Dennis McKeown y Paper Controller Dennis Deane y If you read the newsflash below, you’ll see the Administration Assistant Dennis rise and fall of what I have little doubt would Angelo-Sparling y Your Dennis, Future have been a dandy Speccy game. The decision Publishing, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath to drop it is excrementally bad fortune, as BA1 2BW. Tel (0225) 442244, fax (0225) we’ve seen a demo and it looks and plays 446019 y Managing Director Dennis Anderson y Printers Riverside Dennis, rather damn well. Tragically it looks as if you’ll Gillingham, Kent y Back Issues Future not get the chance to actually buy the game - Publishing Ltd, Somerton, Somerset TA11 particularly ironic when two of our reviews this PIPEWORK MIKROPOL SCREEN COMPRESSOR 7BR. Tel (0458) 74011 V © Future month are of SAM programs. I’d welcome your COMPLETE GAME! PD UTILITY! Publishing 1993. No part of this magazine letters on the subject. may be reproduced by Kid Silly (and his This month sees Input Output clearing its THE BOGGIT PART TWO, sidekick Man With A Pole Man) y ISSN monstrously large backlog of reader ads in one ISSUE TWO OF YS2, THE 0269 6983 V Dennis Format, Dennis three-page spectacular. Guess who had to type Action, Dennis A Format, Dennis Plus, BOGGIT PART THREE AND out the whole thing? Yup. Anyway, enough Dennis Answers, Dennis, Dennis Play, DEAR OLD POKERAMA.JbU! Dennis A Plus, Dennis Power, Dennis A wibble. As Screaming Jay explodes into the Power, Dennis Shopper, Classic Dennis, Shed, it’s time to head for the rest of the mag. SCUTTLE CRABUKE Denniscraft, Cycling Dennis, Dennis UK, Happy trails, Gamesdennis, Dennis B Format, Dennis Jonathan OVER TO PAGE C Format, Dennis!, Caravan Dennis, Dennis Woodworking, Dennis Music, Dennis D Format and Cross Dennis are all slightly embarrassed to associate with YS. ‘Your guarantee of value’ SPECCY PRINCE OF This magazine comes from Future Publishing, a company founded just seven PERSIA ‘NOT VIABLE* years ago, but which now sells more computer magazines than any other The mysterious Thingy from Thingsoft that keeps popping up in YS publisher in Britain. We offer: can at last be revealed as that famous platform swashbuckler, Better advice. Our titles are packed with Prince Of Persia. Yup, the game, er, YS said couldn’t be done was tips, suggestions and explanatory features, being converted to the 128K Speccy by the Coupe incarnation’s written by the best in the business. programmer, Chris White. Stronger reviews. We have a cast-iron Chris, being a loopy stepladderish sort of chap, had started policy of editorial independence. converting the game and then taken the idea to Domark (the Clearer design. Our designers highlight licence holders) instead of the other way round. He was gambling key elements by using charts, diagrams, summary boxes, annotated photos, etc. on the fact that if most of the coding had been done, Domark would be more likely to award the licence and take a cut of the profits for Greater relevance. At Future, editors operate under three golden rules: essentially doing nothing, as Chris was planning • Understand your readers’ needs. • Satisfy them. to release and promote the game via his SAM • Never argue with seven men if you're only company Noesis-Entropy. packing a six-gun. Initially Domark were very interested, and More reader interaction. We draw wanted to release the game themselves, but, strongly on readers’ contributions, resulting in the liveliest letters pages and the best after talks between their directors and American reader tips. Buying one of our magazines is company Broderbund, who originally released like joining a nationwide user group. Prince- ‘most of the coding had been done’. (Amiga the game, it was decided that a Speccy version Better value for money. More pages, screenshot, for some reason.) would not be economically viable. higher quality: magazines you can trust. Obscure words. Like saltimbanco. uiure PUBLISHING YOUR SINCLAIR July 1993 mm JULY *91 REVIEWS 30 Commando 9 Doctor Who - Dalek Attack 11 SAM E-Tracker (well, it's sort of gamesy) (ish) Jonathan Nash. Editor • Favourite Doctor? Tom Baker • Why? Yes. I know it's predictable. I really wanted to express my support for that most underrated and forgotten of Doctors. Colin Baker, m mm mm but we couldn't find a picture of him. Km 34 Back Issues i 4 Beaut Box I1 26 Dial Hard ^ 25 Ernie The Psychotic Madman 22 Input Output special 35 Killer Kolumn From Outer Space 12 Letters Remote Compo Win, win and, er, win! There’s a new bit of Speccy hardware on the market, and here’s your chance to get hold of it before everyone else VEST ST does! (Oh, it’s a remote controlled joystick interface, by the way.) 35 Next Month 18 Ooh, Sourcey! 20 Program Pitstop 16 Spec Tec Jr 47 That old zucchini magic Input Output Shakeitallaboutput It’s an Inny Outy special! Three pages of Steve’s Review Spesh • Arts And prime classifieds, plucked from the Crafts • The Adventures Of Batmac ripest bunches and presented to you on • Where Are They Now? • The Irregular Shed • More stuff! bone china and with a sprig of parsley. s for his >r? Arthur s purple pills xt to no time. 1993 3 Simon Forrester is a real fan of Captain Blood, and has actually completed it. He’s magnanimously agreed to reveal a few starter hints, seeing as how it’s all so incredibly complex, and nobody’s as good at it as him (he says). The real skill behind Blood is your interviewing technique. Whenever you There’s only one way to follow last speak to somebody, always ask about month’s Number One Game of All the Numbers, Teleport (if they agree, Time, and that’s with a spook French they’re undoubtedly friendly), Co¬ game. YS and la belle France have enjoyed a ordinates (if you’re lucky, they’ll reel off long and fruitful friendship, with French a nice list of other inhabited plants), and M CAPTAIN LE programmers writing games that YS, er, finds Ondoyante (everybody fancies her). SANG (or extremely strange. Captain Blood is no ’Certain characters are a bit tricky to get whatever) is just exception. A recent study has shown it to be along with. Giving everything away would be to the right a bit. visibly stranger than Vacuum and Willlllllllliam, a bit pointless, but here’s something to go on the Odd brothers of Ilfracombe, who were with. Yoko, the unspeakably nice Izwal, has bright blue and spent their time building had his pater kidnapped, but blubs so much Water, water icosohedral towers out of pineapple chunks. you have trouble getting a word in everywhere. The Cap of the title started life as a edgeways. So as a fine, upstanding, sneaky PIPEWORK is ' programmer named Bob Morlok. Seized one Captain Blood player, you should lure him on day with the desire to write a top-selling game, your ship with promises of help, take him to he found himself transported to an alternate an uninhabited planet, and drop him off. He dimension bearing not a small resemblance to scares easily, y’see, and lets fly with all sorts that very game.