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| BACKLASH | ||
| Max Phillips has no scruples? Yes, no or depends.... | ||
A........................... Done that? Sorry, you're wrong. Don't you just love trick questions? There is a big game doing the rounds at YS this month. But it's never going to get a megagame sticker or get its picture on the cover of Smash Hits. But you can tell it's big by the way people keep disappearing early from work. By tired, exhausted faces crawling into Castle Rathbone forty minutes late. By knowing looks, stifled giggles and frenzied arguments. Everyone who's anyone is playing it. The funny thing is that it's not a Spectrum game. In fact, it's not a computer game at all! It is... shock... horror... expose... FRIEND OF PRINCESS DI'S MOTHER'S SON'S COUSIN IN NUDE BATHING PARTY... a board game. It's called Scruples. A Trivial Pursuit clone, with lots of little questions on poorly printed cards to get you chatting and laughing when you're getting it together at a get together. If you've not seen the ads, then you've gotta be that Sid person British Gas was whittering about. Scruples is an expensive game by Speccy standards - a jolly £14.95 and it hasn't even got a tape in it, let alone a program. What you get is loads of embarrassing questions and 'moral dilemmas'. Sort of... "Your friends are amazed by the high scores you left running on the screen. You hacked the program. Do you tell?" or "Your boy/girl friend buys a Commodore. Do you ditch him/her?" The real questions get much ruder and a lot more difficult to answer as play continues (and stops for heated arguments, lurid disclosures of your past atrocities and people bursting into tears), you find out a lot about your friends. Like who the b***s are, who the goodie-goodies are, who'll lie to save their skin and what really did happen on that school ski-ing trip all those years ago. Trouble is, after you've played a few times, you get to know all the questions and how everybody answers them. No problem sez the rule book - just make up your own questions as you go along. It's much more fun too! So you're left, after spending £14.95, with a game you can play anyway just by buying a pack of postcards and scrawling a few things on 'em. It wouldn't last five minutes in the real megagame stakes. The question is... "You find out how to play a game for next to nothing that costs £14.95 in the shops. Do you buy the real thing?" Write your answer in the space below: A........................... As they say in the ads, it's a question of scruples. Back to the Speccy and you've got a similar dilemma. Because as we all know, but ain't supposed to say, you can get hold of almost any Speccy game for next to nothing by shoving your friend's original into a twintape ghetto-blaster. But should you? Not even the biggest game lasts forever... So software houses have to keep chucking out new games like the government does excuses. Which is why you get some dud ones and why they'll try anything to hype a game to the top. And if you don't buy a game but steal it, then they'll have to produce the next game even more quickly to make up. Until the month when they don't sell any games at all, retire hurt from the Speccy business and open a fish and chip shop. With the Speccy already considered a touch passe by some companies, that means every game you steal brings the day nearer when there are no new games at all. And the only game you're left playing is 101 uses of a dead Spectrum. Unfair you cry. When you can't scrape the pennies together for one Mastertronic title a month. When you simply want everything that's got a 9 in its score box... It takes real guts to choose and then go out and plonk your money down. But you've got to do it if you want to keep the Speccy alive. It's called doing your bit to help. Because if you stick to the straight and narrow then software houses can relax a little and put more time into producing better games. And maybe even drop their prices a bit - after all, we know that budget doesn't mean nasty any more. If the cheapies carry on at the rate they're going we may well see an end to £7.95'ers at long last. And software shops can help too. Because they've got to let you try games out for a decent amount of time and most of them don't. Next time you get chucked out of a shop, remind them that if you can't try it, you won't buy it. If they still insist on being stupid s-p-e-l-i-t-o-u-t - if no-one buys games off them, they'll starve to death. Which just leaves the software houses. Who've already discovered that putting out old games at more reasonable prices, or stuffing five of them onto one tape, encourages people to buy them. It wouldn't take a genius to realise that you can do cut-down versions of a game too. Like the demo Rasputin tape YS used to tempt you into buying the first issue. Put playable demos for all the month's top games onto one tape and flog. It for £1.50 and you make a lot of money. And sell a lot of games. That's the solution. Learn it. Consider the arguments. Then answer the following question... which really is in Scruples... "A friend offers to sell/swop you some expensive computer software which you know is illegally copied. Do you do it?" A........................... Not if you've got half a brain you don't.
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