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By Lloyd Mangram
April
1986
Issue 27
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After
the cosiness of February's Mikie cover and the
intricate interweaving of Max Headroom elements
on the March cover, Oliver felt it was time again for
an out-and-out shoot-'em-up picture. The arrival of
the British 128K Spectrum gave him his opportunity for
another surreal space painting, with the new machine
figuring as a giant craft like something out of Star
Wars. As with so many illustrations during this
year, it was painted fractionally smaller than you see
it reproduced, because it had to be done in a hurry.
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What was life like in CRASH Towers as 1986 began to speed
up? 'Crammed' is the answer. The art department had expanded
to cope with three magazines. Dick Shiner, a freelance designer
whose background was London advertising agencies but who had
been living in Ludlow for some years, had helped out over
the busy Christmas period . . . and stayed on as Art Director,
relieving Oliver Frey of some workload. This also let David
Western become Production Controller full-time. Then there
were the two layout artists, Gordon Druce and Tony Lorton,
and Matthew Uffindell looking after picture reproduction and
film planning.
Next floor down, life had become a joke. The administration
of accounts, advertising, mail order and subscriptions for
three magazines meant every spare inch was used. And on the
lowest floor the three titles fought for editorial space to
write and room to photograph the screenshots. CRASH had been
moved into the smallest of the three main rooms and housed
its editor, newcomer Hannah Smith (she arrived near the end
of this month's schedule) and the regular coterie of reviewers.
I floated to land wherever space opened up for me. It would
be nice to say that despite the cramped conditions we were
all a jolly bunch, and for the most part that was the case,
but tight schedules, sometimes missed, led to friction and
patches of bad feeling here and there.
The arrival of the 128K Spectrum was a diversion though,
and it was well and truly dissected through several articles,
not least one written by ZZAP! Staff Writer Julian Rignall,
which investigated games upgraded to take account of the new
machine's capabilities. These included Robin Of The Wood,
Nodes Of Yesod, Three Weeks In Paradise and
the engagingly renamed Sweevo's Whirled.
Sweevo's came in for the heavy treatment in Robin
Candy's Playing Tips Supplement, 24 pages of tips and maps,
and the massive listing by Phil Churchyard that created a
Sweevo's World screen editor. The value of this unique
program has since been underlined by the number of mappable
3-D games that now offer game designers as a matter of course.
And the success of this screen editor's cassette version,
then available from CRASH, was one of the first sparks that
led to thoughts about a Newsfield software house - but realisation
of that particular dream would take some time.
I had a busy time with the Forum, what with the many letters
about the Friday The 13th cover (December) and Tony
Bridge, adventure columnist with Popular Computing Weekly,
complaining bitterly about how he had been ripped off by the
CRASH Christmas Special edition. His comments were to lead
to a massive vote of confidence for that issue in later Forums.
 Less
confidence was apparent with tie-ins. We were entering the
period where software houses would grab anything licensable
whether it was suitable for a game or not, often rushing out
the result to capitalise on the licensed character's popularity
in other media. Elite came off best with a Smash for the venerable
arcade original Bombjack, but Ocean's Transformers
was disappointing from Denton Designs, CRL's Blade Runner
was a sad affair and Britannia's Play Your Cards Right,
based on the Bruce Forsyth TV game, was dreadful. There was
a warning here, but few took heed, rushing madly into more
licences, while letters began suggesting that the very idea
of a tie-in meant a poor product. Originality would soon become
a keyword, and in the CRASH Readers' Awards announcement that
was made plain - it was Firebird's Elite that swept
the board.
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