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| BACKLASH | ||
| This month Max Phillips finds something nasty under his bed. | ||
It's always the first place people look though, isn't it? You know, when they drop round for the first time and you pop out to the loo? You walk back in and they stand up sharpish. "Oh, just dropped my contact lens". "I didn't know you wore contact lenses behind your glasses". Funny business, isn't it? Anyroad, this happened to me the other day. Now, before you panic and turn over (which would be a bit stupid 'cos this is the end of the magazine), it wasn't as bad as it could've been. I just turned round to put True Colours on for the fifteenth time when my friend emerged from the bedroom. It was her first time - in the flat stupid - and she was looking around. And then she held it up. "What's this?", she asked. It was one of my most secret possessions. Something close to my heart. Something I've treasured for years. "Ah Diddums from Imagine Software." Naturally, at this point, she said she wanted to. And I loaded it up straightaway. Keep it quiet but I still like this game. I remember when I got my hands on it first. I remember phoning Imagine up to ask what you were supposed to do. "A lot of people have asked that", said the nice man, while explaining. But I reckon it's a great game once you know what to do. What struck me at the time was that it was the first Spectrum game I'd ever seen that really did amazing things with the machine. That made you stop and think "Wow!" - in between fighting for your next go. The best thing I thought you could do with a Spectrum was Horace Goes Ski-ing. Alright - so I wasn't completely with it in those days. Award yourself 100 points if you know what this shaggy dog story (I'll rephrase that - I may be shaggy but I ain't a dog) is leading up to. Yeah, Ah Diddums is a pile of bear droppings compared to today's games. Okay, it's fun, easy to play and was brilliant in its day. But it doesn't use the Spectrum anything like it's been used hundreds of times since. This is the same state that the 128's software is in now. So what's all this complete dribble from our dear software houses about the 128? Why is 128 software virtually non-existent? There's a rumour that the smart money has moved into the software business; that the experienced marketing men have taken over; that the big allied companies will squash all the little guys. How can we tell? Why not put your money where your mouths are? Talk to a couple of programmers about it. Maybe wearing jeans would help. This, Mr. Bigshot Marketing Man, is how it is... There is no demand for the 128 yet because you haven't backed it. Because you are trying to kill it. The demand will come when you get your programmers working on it. When you start turning out the software. Do you think Bugbyte, Imagine, Quicksilva, Artic and the rest all wimped about waiting for the Spectrum to take off? Would anyone buy a computer for which there was no software... just so that they could go ahead and develop some for it? Those guys didn't even have the money to take risks with. But they had what it took to make the Spectrum number one. Foresight, imagination, talent. Guts. And you won't get results right away. It'll take programmers time to figure out the tricks the 128 can do. And we could do with some big breakthroughs in game design to figure out what to do with all that space. You want to stay in business? You want a demand for the 128? Then start stacking those bricks and climb into the next toy box. Support the 128 now! Mastertronic's Knight Tyme, I love you; Eugene Evans, Matthew Smith we need you now more than ever; everyone else get their fingers out. Or all our Speccies will end up hidden under our beds.
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