THOR OUT
7 o'clock tonight then T'zer? Oh! Sorry...
    Dear YS, on your December ish, the pic on the front cover (I used it for a poster) caught my eye. The two warriors Thor and Sheba from the new game Dandy were wearing some very funny things. I would've thought that they're too old for 'early learning' face paints. (Don't worry mums, it comes off the carpets!). Thor had a Sony Walkman strapped to him and must've got his C&A trousers at half price. As for Sheba's frock... well! Keep up the pics! They make great pin-ups!
Robin Maunder
Lancaster

Of course, they make great pin-ups. Look who did the modelling...

Was it really necessary to portray the Ed and T'zer scantily clad on the cover of the December issue? After all, you do have young readers and my mummy says it's a bad influence!
Michael White
Hexham,
Northumberland

There you go, I've always said we were influential people. Bad but influential! Ex Ed

I have a complaint about your (so called) mega brill mag. It's the cover design. How do you think it looks, me a mature 13 year old, walking out of John Menzies with what looks like a comic under my arm. Well, I tell you, I get laughed at by people in the street.
Scott McKellar
Port Glasgow,
Renfrewshire

So, you get laughed at in the street, do you? But what's that got to do with YS? And don't tell me you only get laughed at when you're carrying it 'cos that one won't wash. Ex Ed

RSVP
Dear T'zer, I saw your picture in the December issue of YS and thought I'd write to you. I also saw the star letter. I have written in to some companies and here's what happened.
    1 Firebird - five posters and a new price list.
    2 Gremlin Graphics - no posters and a price list.
    3 Mirrorsoft- five posters, catalogue and price list.
    4 Melbourne House - three posters and a price list.
    5 Hewson - no posters and a price list.
    6 Electric Dreams - two posters (both Back To The Future) and more of a fact sheet than a price list.
    7 Ocean - five posters and a price list.
    8 Your Sinclair - (hopefully) a picture of T'zer!
    And why is the pic of T'zer in the December ish a bigger shot of her head from the May issue. Can we have some new pictures of T'zer?
Matthew Landor
Gaspart, Hants

Now T'zer's the Ed, I'm worried that we won't have anything but pics of her in the mag from now on...

I am writing to redress the balance of the software firms that Mr McSherry had problems with. I wrote to the following software companies asking them two questions. 1. Do you have posters and if so, how much are they? 2. Do you do 128K upgrades of your programs? I got the following results:
    Hewson - six days, four posters, yes to upgrades
    Mikro-Gen - No reply
    Mastertronic - 13 days, yes to posters, no to upgrades
    Ultimate - nine days, three posters, no upgrades
    US Gold - No reply
    Melbourne House - 22 days, no posters, no upgrades
    Elite - 26 days, only replied after I bought some games. Three posters sent.
    Firebird - 17 days, yes to posters, yes to free upgrades
    Imagine - 12 days, yes to posters, no to upgrades
    Ocean - 13 days, no to posters, no to upgrades
    Software Projects - four days, four posters sent, no to upgrades
    CRL - No reply
    PSS - six days, two posters sent, no upgrades
    Design Design - 14 days, three posters, no upgrades
    So, Elite does reply to queries but you have to buy its games first! Could I also add that Hewson, Firebird, Design Design, Software Projects, Melbourne House and Mikro-Gen have been extremely helpful with other queries. US Gold's PR department wants shooting!
Jon Rose
Bognor Regis, W Sussex
PS Mike Gerrard took only six days to reply - thanks a lot Mike!

We've had loads of letters detailing your experiences of writing to software houses and no two are the same. A few companies come out consistently well and some seem consistently bad - they know who they are! But remember that most companies are quite small and spend most of their time just trying to get out games they started advertising six months ago, so do try to be patient. Ex Ed

ALAS SMITH...
In the December issue of YS, Rachael Smith reviewed Druid. For her benefit and any other Druid owners, it is possible for another player to control Golem. Choose the type of joystick you want to control Golem with, start the game, press H, toggle the P key until the screen displays 'joystick' and press H again. Once you've invoked Golem, player 2 can now control him. My best personal rating so far is Love Seeker but with my friend Chris Hubbard who controls Golem we have destroyed two skulls and attained Cleric.
Martin Wilson
Leeds

By a strange coincidence, Rachael's best personal rating is Love Seeker too - if only she'd use her talents in Druid rather than practising them on Gwyn! Ex Ed

UM... AR...
A few months ago now, when I read your review of Tasword 3, I was most upset. Why? Because you regarded some of the foreign characters as "funny" and called them "dingbats" (whatever they are!) (You use them to hit dingballs! Ex Ed).
    These "funny characters" just happen to be the pride of our language.
    Some of the other characters are the pride of some other language.
    I also get very angry when you don't print the [Funny characters - NickH (who can't be bothered to look up the HTML codes for them...)] in someone's name (yes, I know you do it sometimes). It really hurts my feelings as a Swedish citizen.
Roger "Katal" Lindberg
Uddvella, Sweden
PS It really sounds funny when an Englishman tries to pronounce [More of 'em - NickH].

Er.. .ah. ..oooooh! It's true. All your little foreign fiddly bits keep dropping off but we'll be more careful in future. Hurdie hurdie ho! Ex Editor

MARCO GOES SOLO
I really like We've Got a Spectrum in the December issue of YS! Okay, I really like everything else in YS, apart from T'zer's interruptions in the Letters, (That makes two of us! Ex Ed) but this one was a very good article. Mmmm...Ram Music Machine... I'll buy one! Mmmm... Dataskip Video Digitizer... I'll get one! Mmmm... CZ-1017 I'll... er, I already own one! (I think I'll take another.) You know, (No, I don't. Ex Ed) I was once a professional musician and hobbyist programmer. I was the singer in a not-so-well-known-but-quite-well-paid dance group. We played the sort of songs you hear on the radio - Michael Jackson, Scritti Politti, Madonna, Peter Gabriel, that sort of thing. (You mean they paid you to stop! Ex Ed). And I used my Spectrum on stage to drive all the keyboards, sequencers, drums and so on. Or at any rate, the audience was expected to believe this.
    Now my question: will I be able to drive my Simmons drum kit with the Ram Music Machine? And will I be able to trig the Ram Music Machine with my Simmons? Any clue about this? (Better you do have, or I'll never trust a YS Make-It-Big Special for the rest of my life!)
Marco Fasola
Crocifisso Di Savosa,
Switzerland

Are you suggesting we might be clueless at YS ? Well that's all right then. The answer to both your questions is yes. The Ram Music Machine is fully MIDI compatible. You can even trigger two sounds at once via the Ram which you can't do using the keyboard. And how do I, the man with two tin ears who thought that a Simmons was a type of gazelle, know all this? Phil's just told me, that's how. Ex Ed

GAZ BORED
Please give me your verdict. I've just seen an ad for Elite's new compilation tape called Hit-Pak and I was shocked. The games that feature are Airwolf, Frank Bruno, Commando and Bombjack. I was disgusted. I think it's appalling that less than six months ago, the latter two were selling for £7.95 each. So, if you total up, it comes to £15.90. So, I spent the £15.90 on those two brill games and then I find out that they are being flogged for £9.95 plus two other games. I feel ripped off. It wouldn't affect people who've got either one or none of the games, but I think differently. What d'you think?
Gaz Davenport
Cranleigh, Surrey

I think you're wrong. Look at it this way. You brought the games at the time because they were new and exciting. You wanted to play them when all your friends were playing them - not a year, or even six months, later. It's the same with books. If you want to read something as soon as it's published you have to cough up the cash for the hardback. You could wait a year and it might, but only might, appear in paperback. If you don't want to gamble, you have to pay up. Compilations are great for people who weren't really tempted first time round but are willing to give a game a whirl when it's at cut-price. Ex Ed

PRODIGAL SON
My mum has gone and bought me, dare I say it, a BBC Master computer with disk drive. What with having to type in *ADFS everytime you want to use a disk and Chain"?" whenever you want to load anything, I was quite happy at first. So happy in fact that I gave my 11 year old brother my Speccy, 100 odd games, light pens, joysticks, speech synthesisers, the works. I decided that I would betray YS and go for another mag for the Beeb. I went down to my local newsagent and looked at the mags for the Beeb. I then saw the price. 'Sugar' I said to myself. The mag was all adverts and info. Blah awful.
    Then I saw YS and picked it up - a sight for sore eyes. I paid for it, left the shop, went home and told my brother to go away and use the Beeb. What a relief to be in control of my Speccy once again. Thank you.
Howard Draper, Surrey

And the moral of this truly heartwarming story is - if your mother's got enough spare dosh to buy you a Beeb, send it to the Society for the Preservation of Redundant Editors, 14 Rathbone Place... before she has you joining the Chain "?" gang! Ex Ed and President of the SPRE.

TRAINSPOTTER AWARD BATTLE OF HASTINGS Uridium, your Frontlines pic,     Awards me one Trainspotter tick.     The review of Revolution,     £8.95 is cheap     I paid £1 extra, so two I leap     On page 71 I went cross-eyed     Swapping adventures I easily spied     Much harder to see, in 1942     Where are the planes that you review?     Don't try telling me, I've heard it before     You've shot them all down and claim top score.     I counted much more, to list them won't please her     Just pass on a dictionary to "wahay" Teresa. John Hastings Scarborough, N Yorks To spot so many mistakes takes a real rafter.     Still, you're a terrible poet and this month's trainspotter! Ex Ed

TRENDSPOTTER
Wow! I have just experienced another YS. That picture of Caroline Clayton really blew my fuse. Wottasmasha! 'Ere what about some more piccies? How about coming up the rub-a-dub, Caroline?
    Anyway keep up the good work team. Laugh, I nearly sold my VIC-20. What a great mag - it's hard to believe it's about computers. (No-one told me it was supposed to be about computers! Ex Ed. That's why you're the Ex Ed! T'zer).
    Oh Ed, let's have some more machine code pages, I would gladly send in handy routines, tips and so on as my friend is trying to learn Z80. (Send them in and we might. T'zer) And another thing, not all programmers are long haired, spotty freaks. I've been programming for five years and I'm a trendy (I hope Caroline's reading this), unemployed 18 year old programmer.
Kevan Thurstans
Mitcham, Surrey
PS How old are you Caroline? Fancy a date?

Caroline tells me that she's old enough to be your sister! And anyway she prefers figs to dates. Ex Ed

OFF HIS NUT
Dear YS followers, nay beloved YS followers,
    HELP! sorry, please HELP! (sob). I'm desperate, I'm foolhardy (sniff), I'm irrecoverable, irremediable, irretrievable, irrepressible, irrational, irritable, irr...irrun out of words beginning with irr...
    I'm afraid that I've gone crackers. I listen to Wham! records. I turned my treasured cut-out of Caroline towards the wall, would you believe it. You see I told you I'm insane. I even thought about swapping my Speccy for a... (excuse the language) Commodore. Yes, I know, I should be locked up. I even tried to end it all by watching... the Terry Wogan Show... (You are sick! Ex Ed).
    It all began on that terrible day when I had the misfortune to spot an adventure at the give-away price of £1.99. This computer game has wrecked my life - forcing me to wear a brown paper bag over my head. It's not even as if I'm inexperienced. I've completed such brain bashers as Tir Na Nag, Lords Of Midnight, Shadowfire and Frankie Goes To Hollywouldn't. But this...pardon? What's that? Oh, the name of the game? I dunno if I can say it ... it's ... Sea Base Delta from the zombie producers, Firebird.
    And I'm not alone in my world of misery - three of my mates have also failed to complete this game. We've tried everything. We made complex maps, we made a list of the vocabulary, we even resorted to cheating. Yep, we broke into the program but before we could find an end to our misery one of my mates came over all conscientious and cleared the memory.
    Maybe we're not meant to complete this game and it's our destiny to wear brown paper hats the rest of our days.
Seamus "nuttier than
KP" Fitzsimons
Downpatrick, Co Down

I've just thought of another word beginning with irr. .. IRRIOT! Take the brown paper bag off your head, fashion it into an envelope and send it to Mike Gerrard. Meanwhile, take your shirt off, then put it on again with the buttons at the back and ask someone to tie the sleeves together. It won't help but it'll stop you writing another nutty letter to me! Ex Ed

...GOGOGOCH
Annwyl Your Sinclair Rwyf yn ysgrifennu atach chi o Cymru. Rwyf yn prynnu eich cylchgrwon pob mis, and, pom? Rwyf yn meddwl y buasoai'n well cael mwy o eitemau Cymraeg or gyfer pobl fel fi, rydd ddim yn daeall saesneg.
    Hefyd yn y cylchgrown mae yna cartwn Wally Monthly beth am "Twpsin pob mis"?
    Wet dyna dim and rhai ryniodau. Hwyl am now!!
Gary Jones
Harlech, Gwynedd
PS So there!

I've printed this as a warning to all other YS readers with bad handwriting. If I can't read what you've written you might just as well write in Welsh. What's that? It is Welsh. Oh. And it's no use asking Gwyn to translate it. The boyo's never been closer to the Land of his Fathers than a day trip to Windsor Safari Park. Well, he said he saw Wales there! Ex Ed

STRIPT'ZER
Because of the outcry about a certain card game and a certain young lady, I've decided to write the game. It's called StripT'zer and you'll find the promotional poster for it with this letter. I hope all male Speccy freaks will appreciate
    

    it. There's only one problem -- I'll need some help with the program. I don't suppose T'zer could come up to Scotland for a couple of weeks to pose for the graphics, eh? I didn't think so.
William Harbison
Auchinleck, Ayrshire

And you'd be jolly well right! T'zer

STAR LETTER VERSE LUCK My mum bought a Speccy -     an "early Christmas" gift -     for me and my two sisters     and it caused an awful rift.          We hardly see our mother,     the house has gone to pot,     we never know on coming home     if dinner's on or not.          She's always at the keyboard!     Glued to the ZX+2     wandering in a labyrinth     when she 'should be making stew.          If she's not down in Middle Earth     She's scaling Everest -     her life is all adventure games,     she thinks it's just the best.          She signs herself Sigismo     in the Hall of Fame.     What's it mean?     Will life ever be the same again?          At least she can't read YS     and program at the same time.     I get to read about computers     and write you a little rhyme! Sara Stenhouse Gateshead, Tyne and Wear I really liked your little rhyme,     I thought it very twee,     But if you think your mum is bad,     You really should see me! Ex Ed

PLAYING OUR TOONE
A certain well known games review mag recently had a letter comparing two issues to the slight detriment of YS. In support of my favourite mag (YS rules), the comparison between the two equivalent issues now out leaves YS with more games reviews!!!
    Keep up the programming features (I liked that Speech Melba program you published in August!) and don't just cater to the 'nanas who can only type in LOAD"".
Andrew Toone
Nuneaton

Speech Melba... August issue... who wrote that... let's have a butchers...oh, look, a Pyracurse preview... big pic of T'zer (again) in the Megacompo... Pentagram map... World Cup Carnival at number one... Paperboy... The Price Of Magik, shame about the colour scheme...ah, Speech Melba by...Andrew Toone. Well, I never. What a coincidence that you should both share the same name! Ex Ed

TWO TIMER
I must admit straight away that I buy your mag for the great games I can type into the old Speccy. But I felt cheated by the November game, re-called Time Bomb by Robert Burgess. In Computer Gamer, May 86 (I don't get it now, I hasten to add) I found the very same listing called Time For Action. As I typed this in at the time I've now got nothing to type in this month, so I've time to write. I wonder if this is the first time Mr Burgess has changed the name of the game and said it as a new game. I'll still stay with Your Sinclair but let's have new listings and not ones as old as me. I'm 36!
Brian Dixon
Glenrothes, Scotland

You weren't the only one who felt cheated, Brian. I won't repeat what I said in last month's Letters but it's interesting that "Mr" Burgess pulled the same sting on Computer Gamer. Where will Time For Action turn up next? Outer Mongolia along with its programmer if I have my way. Ex Ed
    

SMALL PRINT Teresa Maughan, will you marry me? I'd swap my Speccy for you any day! Davie Brewster Fife, Scotland But how could I marry a man without a Spectrum? T'zer Hang on, don't you think you ought to ask me for her hand in marriage first. Though when you've seen her hand it's unlikely you'll want the rest of her! Ex Ed Have I worn out all the question marks on your typewriter????????? Lol Pritchard, Staines, Middlesex What was the question again????????? Ex Ed Gwyn's a silly name for a bloke, isn't it? B Murphy Charleville, Co Cork Not for Gwyn, it's not-- you haven't met him! Ex Ed

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