[{"TitleName":"The Island","Publisher":"Virgin Games Ltd","Author":"Martyn Charles Davis","YearOfRelease":"1983","ZxDbId":"0006491","Reviews":[{"Issue":{"Name":"Crash Issue 2, Mar 1984","Price":"£0.75","ReleaseDate":"1984-02-23","Editor":"Roger Kean","TotalPages":112,"HasCoverTape":false,"FlannelPanel":"Editor: Roger Kean\r\nDesigner: Oliver Frey\r\nConsultant Editor: Franco Frey\r\nStaff Writers: Lloyd Mangram, Rod Bellamy\r\nAdvertisement Manager: John Edwards\r\nProduction Designer: Michael Arienti\r\n\r\n©1984 Newsfield Ltd.\r\n\r\nCrash Micro is published monthly by Newsfield Ltd. [redacted]\r\n\r\nNo material may be reproduced in whole or in part without written consent from the copyright holders.\r\n\r\nMono printing, typesetting & finishing by Feb Edge Litho Ltd. [redacted]\r\nColour printing by Allan-Denver Web Offset Ltd. [redacted].\r\nColour origination by Scan Studios, [redacted]\r\nDistributed by Wells Gardner, Darton & Co. [redacted]\r\n\r\nSubscriptions: 12 issues £9.00 UK Mainland (post included)\r\nEurope: 12 issues £15 (post included).\r\nSingle copy: 75p\r\n\r\nIf you would like to contribute to CRASH please send articles or ideas for projects to the above address. Articles should be typed. We cannot undertake to return them unless accompanied by a stamped addressed envelope\r\n\r\nCover Illustration:Oliver Frey"},"MainText":"Producer: Virgin Games, 48K\r\n£5.95\r\nAuthor: Martyn Davies\r\n\r\nApparently you live in a clutch of South Sea islands, one of which contains gold. Find the map, find the correct island and get rich quick. A mostly text adventure with arcade sequences to add to the fun - that's the idea - the reality is something else. It's had one good review we've seen, but goodness knows why! This isn't a real adventure at all in the proper sense. You're led by the nose along the correct guessing path until you end up with an impossible arcade sequence which demands you sail your ship through a rock-infested sea. Deviation from the author's intended path results in terminating the game. Excellent response tiems to nowhere. Sorry, it's rubbish. Overall CRASH rating below 20%. M/C","ReviewerComments":[],"OverallSummary":"","Page":"67","Denied":false,"Award":"Not Awarded","Reviewers":[],"ScreenshotText":[],"BlurbText":[],"TranscriptBy":"Chris Bourne","ReviewScores":null,"CompilationReviewScores":[]},{"Issue":{"Name":"Crash Issue 4, May 1984","Price":"£0.75","ReleaseDate":"1984-04-19","Editor":"Roger Kean","TotalPages":128,"HasCoverTape":false,"FlannelPanel":"Editor: Roger Kean\r\nConsultant Editor: Franco Frey\r\nProduction Designer: David Western\r\nArt Editor: Oliver Frey\r\nClient Liaison: John Edwards\r\nStaff Writer: Lloyd Mangram\r\nContributing Writers: Matthew Uffindel, Chris Passey\r\nSubscription Manager: Denise Roberts\r\n\r\n©1984 Newsfield Ltd.\r\nCrash Micro is published monthly by Newsfield Ltd. [redacted]\r\n\r\nTelephone numbers\r\nEditorial [redacted]\r\nSubscriptions [redacted]\r\nAdvertising [redacted]\r\nHot Line [redacted]\r\nNo material may be reproduced in whole or in part without written consent from the copyright holders.\r\n\r\nColour origination by Scan Studio, [redacted]\r\nPrinted in England by Plymouth Web Offset Ltd, [redacted].\r\nDistribution by Comag, [redacted]\r\nAdditional setting and process work by The Tortoise Shell Press, [redacted].\r\n\r\nSubscriptions: 12 issues £9.00 UK Mainland (post free)\r\nEurope: 12 issues £15 (post free).\r\n\r\nWe cannot undertake to return any written or photographic material sent to CRASH MICRO unless accompanied by a stamped addressed envelope.\r\n\r\nCover by Oliver Frey"},"MainText":"Producer: Virgin Games, 48K\r\n£5.95\r\nAuthor: Martyn Davies\r\n\r\nApparently you live in a clutch of South Sea islands, one of which contains gold. Find the map, find the correct island and get rich quick. A mostly text adventure with arcade sequences to add to the fun - that's the idea - the reality is something else. It's had one good review we've seen, but goodness knows why! This isn't a real adventure at all in the proper sense. You're led by the nose along the correct guessing path until you end up with an impossible arcade sequence which demands you sail your ship through a rock-infested sea. Deviation from the author's intended path results in terminating the game. Excellent response tiems to nowhere. Sorry, it's rubbish. Overall CRASH rating below 20%. M/C","ReviewerComments":[],"OverallSummary":"","Page":"75","Denied":false,"Award":"Not Awarded","Reviewers":[],"ScreenshotText":[],"BlurbText":[],"TranscriptBy":"Chris Bourne","ReviewScores":null,"CompilationReviewScores":[]},{"Issue":{"Name":"Sinclair Programs Issue 17, Mar 1984","Price":"£0.95","ReleaseDate":"1984-02-16","Editor":"Nigel Clark","TotalPages":60,"HasCoverTape":false,"FlannelPanel":"Editor: Nigel Clark\r\nManaging Production Editor: Harold Mayes MBE\r\nDesign: Elaine Bishop\r\nAssistant Editor: Rebecca Ferguson\r\nProgram Reviews: June Mortimer\r\nAdvertisement Manager: Gary Price\r\nAdvertisement Executive: Frank Humphrey-Gaskin\r\nEditorial/Production Assistant: Dezi Epaminondou\r\nManaging Director: Terry Cartwright\r\nChairman: Richard Hease\r\n\r\nSinclair Programs is published monthly by ECC Publications Ltd.\r\n\r\nTelephone\r\nAll Departments\r\n[redacted]\r\n\r\nIf you would like to contribute to Sinclair User group of publications please send programs, articles or ideas for hardware projects to:\r\nSinclair User and Programs\r\nEEC Publications\r\n[redacted]\r\n\r\nPrograms should be on cassette and articles should be typed. We cannot undertake to return them unless a stamped-addressed envelope is included.\r\nWe pay £10 for each program published and £50 per 1000 words for each article used.\r\n\r\n©Copyright 1984\r\nSinclair Programs\r\nISSN No. 0263-0265\r\n\r\nPrinted and typeset by\r\nCradley Print PLC\r\n[redacted]\r\n\r\nDistributed by\r\nSpotlight Magazine Distribution Ltd,\r\n[redacted]\r\n\r\nCover Design/Illustrations: Ivan Hissey"},"MainText":"SOFT FOCUS\r\n\r\nNew this month. Softfocus will be a regular feature, providing short reviews of the newest software for the Sinclair Computers. This month the focus is on the way ahead for software.\r\n\r\nLate last year, programs produced for the Spectrum Christmas market pointed the way for software in 1984. Ant Attack by Quicksilva and Android 2 by Vortex both included stunning animated graphics routines, setting a new standard for other programmers.\r\n\r\nArtic Computing has now produced Bear Bovver for the 48K Spectrum, a shining example of animated graphics, which are used in an arcade-style game. Satan's Pendulum by Minatron Computing (48K) also includes animated sequences and, for keen programmers, gives a guide to how they were produced in the accompanying booklet.\r\n\r\nWhile such excellent original software is being produced, software houses which cling to versions of Space Invaders and Pac-man are looking more and more outdated. The Romik Galactic Trooper and 3D Monster Chase are competent and bug-free games but do not have sufficient new ideas to make them attractive in 1984.\r\n\r\nRealistic screen displays are becoming more and more common. Wheelie, from Microsphere for the 48K Spectrum, sends the player hurtling past obstacles and through caverns in search of the ghost rider. In the program, crash sequences are very graphic and tend towards the tasteless, while in Deathchase from Micromega - 16K Spectrum - the view from a motorcycle is shown in realistic detail but the death of another rider is not depicted at all.\r\n\r\nProblems as to how players should be made to suffer for the misdeeds of their on-screen persona, whether they should watch deaths in graphic detail or miss them completely, are resolved in the new Automata game for the 48K Spectrum, Pi-Eyed. The hero, the Pi-man, wanders from pub to pub, drinking beer and avoiding obstacles. Wandering into other buildings for safety results in the telling of very bad jokes, a fate far worse for the player than any graphics representation could be.\r\n\r\nWith programs such as the Legend Valhalla (48K) and Melbourne House Hobbit (48K) on sale, other adventures fade into insignificance. The Island, produced by Virgin Games for the 48K Spectrum, is an enjoyable adventure, with added sound effects and short games contained in it. Demon Lord by Javlin Software is an enormous adventure, made up of four 48K adventures on two separate cassettes. Pictures are given, in painstaking detail, of each location, but the vocabulary is small, making it extremely difficult and very frustrating to play.\r\n\r\nComputer magazines receive a constant stream of letters enquiring about software other than games for computers. Mansfield Park and Nineteenth Century England, both by Sussex Software for the 48K Spectrum, act as secondary-school-level revision aids. Their subjects are those suggested by the titles and each subject is divided into different areas, for which questions and detailed answers are given on which the user can be tested.\r\n\r\nNew ZX-81 games, so plentiful a year ago, are becoming rarer and rarer. Contrast Software has produced Fort Apache, a 16K strategy game, in which the player takes the part of a general with 300 men to command, laying siege to an Apache fort. It is a game involving thought and forward planning rather than fast reactions.\r\n\r\nCyborg Wars, by Stratagem Cybernetics, is a more complex 16K strategy game involving up to four players in an imaginary galactic conflict between four nations of androids. The game relies more strongly on the instruction booklet than could be expected from a computer program but it is a carefully-thought-out and exciting game.\r\n\r\nThree games for the ZX-81 are included on the cassette accompanying the book ZX-81/TS-1000 Programming for Young Programmers, published by McGraw Hill. Bomb Run, written in machine code for the 1K ZX-81, is a version of the popular City Lander type of program in which the player must bomb buildings from an aircraft to avoid running into them.\r\n\r\nMazer, also for the 1K ZX-81, is a simple maze game in which the aim is to avoid the ghost for as long as possible. More complicated is Golems, on the same cassette, for the 16K ZX-81, a strategy and fantasy adventure in which the aim is to outwit the Lord of the Black Tower.\r\n\r\nMore detailed reviews of all these games, together with their respective Gilbert Factors, can be found in Sinclair User.","ReviewerComments":[],"OverallSummary":"","Page":"9","Denied":false,"Award":"Not Awarded","Reviewers":[{"Name":"June Mortimer","Score":"","ScoreSuffix":""}],"ScreenshotText":[],"BlurbText":[],"TranscriptBy":"Chris Bourne","ReviewScores":null,"CompilationReviewScores":[]}]}]