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By Lloyd Mangram
January
1988
Issue 48
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This
was our fourth Christmas cover, and the conflict between
a seasonal picture and the decision to feature a particular
game was a problem. On the other hand, in a year of
violent games, Pac-Land at least offered a more
peaceful theme. I confess a disadvantage: as I write
this, the painting hasn't be done, but the idea is to
have loads of Pacs playing about in the snow, and so
you, as well as I, can be the judge of the result when
we see it.
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It is now almost exactly four years to the day that Roger
Kean, Matthew Uffindell and myself sat around the only two
typewriters we possessed, staring at blank sheets of paper,
wondering what it was Spectrum-owners wanted to read, trying
to conceive of the first edition of CRASH. I am not sure whether
the three of us harboured ambitions of seeing the company
grow; probably, but magazines are organic things, and somehow
they grow of their own accord.
Newsfield was six people then: Roger, Oliver and Franco Frey,
Matthew, Denise Roberts and myself part-time. At the moment
of greatest growth (in terms of personnel), when LM was launched,
it employed 60 full-time staff, also using eight college-age
reviewers and some 30 regular contributors. Today there are
just 34 full-time staff. It is a much slimmer operation, but
also a much more streamlined and effective one.
We have seen Sir Clive Sinclair's 'toy' computer become the
best seller in Britain, enjoying unrivalled software support
from games which have ranged from utter drivel to demonstrations
of the kind of skills that even mainframe programmers would
envy. Recently we saw the 8-bit market start to falter as
budget-priced games took hold and unit sales fell; this has
particularly hit the Spectrum, yet the games are still being
produced and we are always capable of being surprised by some
new piece of cleverness. And despite the much discussed fall-off
of sales generally, Spectrum magazines continue to ride high.
The 'Shropshire fanzine' of early 1984 attained the highest
sales in Britain of any computer magazine - and at one point
the highest world-wide sales of any British computer magazine
and is still the market leader, along with its sister publication
ZZAP!
It is difficult to predict what the next four years will
bring, but you can be sure that CRASH will aim to be the best,
whatever the incidental difficulties; as I write this, upstairs
in the Art Department Markie Kendrick and his fellow designer
Wayne Allen are laying out the Christmas Specials of CRASH
and ZZAP!. We thought it would be a tough task for three,
but unexpectedly just two people are doing it, because Art
Director Gordon Druce has recently decided to leave. By the
time you read this, however, you will know they succeeded
nonetheless.
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