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"Hello, Phil, it's Dizzy here. Just to tell you that US Gold has absolutely nothing to tell you. The big summer press conference is on next week, but until then... sorry." Brill. Now, let's have a snout around. What's going on? Who's got what coming out through whom, when, how, why and where's my lunch? Sara, call the sarnie shop and get them to fix up a bacon, lettuce, tomato, cucumber, chicken and peanut butter roll, salt and pepper, hold the mayo, with a side salad of, well, make it a lightly roasted ox with a sprig of parsley. I'm feeling peckish today. Ah, wossis, a release from Gremlin. More info about Nimrod, the game you read about first in YS (or second if you picked up the mag and read it again). Nah, nothing to do with a big snouted aircraft with wacky early warning systems to tell you a whole three minutes before everybody else finds out that the world is going to be nuked to ciggy ash. No sir, this Nimrod's a friendly little alien, a member of a very friendly race of robots called the Bioptons, who like parties and firing off fire extinguishers just like any normal person. Naturally the evil Cratons don't like this sort of thing, so they crash the Bioptons' party (really wild, by all accounts - lots of clanking noises from the darker corners) and imprison them individually on space prisons stretched across the galaxy. Seems a bit harsh - most gatecrashers I know just drink all the booze and frighten the cat. Nimrod's the only one to get away from this all-nighter, though, and he has to rescue all his comrades. And he's got only 99 eons to do it in. Nimrod's out in June, as is Mask 1, the game of the TV series of the T-shirt of the super dooper action toys of the book of the film of the foil-wrapped sarnie of the same name (where's my lunch, Sara?) Y'know the drill, heroes battle against the evil Captain Meany, or whoever. Sounds like the Ed. Ahem. And we've also got a screenshot of the Thing On A Spring sequel, Thing Bounces Back. Boinnggg! Oi, I'm getting hungry. Ah, Sara, you're back. Where's my sarnie? You haven't got it? You're fired. Er, why are you rushing towards me with what looks suspiciously like a razor sharp meataxe? AAAAAAAARRRGGGGHHHH! Right, that's better, normal service has now been resumed - Sara here. Phil's just, er, nipped off for a bit, so I'll take the reins. Oh hang on, who's this on the phone? "Hello, Sara, it's Ian Faux of Infogrames here. I just rang up to tell you about a couple of games coming up. First there's Murders On The Atlantic, a crime thriller set on board a transatlantic cruise ship just before World War II. It's a quick follow-up to Vera Cruz and The Sidney Affair, so big things are expected of it." Yes yes, what else? "And Apocalypse is being rereleased on the new Command label. You remember, the first real war game that ever came to the Speccy, the one that started it all off. It's been jigged up a bit - it's faster and smoother running - and it's being bunged out for £9.95. Good stuff, eh?" Yes thanks, good, now where was I? Oh yes, Konami. It turns out that the games it was releasing and beginning with S and J are Salamander and Jackal, two bip-de-bop arcade coin-ops which Konami has licensed to itself (convenient, that). They'll be out in the autumn along with Iron Horse but there's nowt more from Konami until then. You'll just have to make do with Nemesis (got a cheat mode, anyone?) Mastertronic is still pouring out the games. Among the latest releases are Masterchess, due out May 6, Ballcrazy (sounds interesting) and Galletron, and they'll both slap onto the shelves on May 20. And guess what else you'll be able to feast your peepers on - yeah, David Jones' long awaited Stormbringer. The third part of his Magic Knight trilogy has been delayed for yonks while Jonesy put the finishing touches to it, not to mention the starting touches. But now it's ready, she wrote with her fingers crossed behind her back. What other news have we? Well, Macsen has gone down the plughole, owing around £350,000 - phew! It was famous for its Speccy versions of TV show[s] like Blockbusters, and let's not forget EastEnders, the game so bad we didn't even get a review copy! Now we know why. Still, it's never good to hear of a firm going kerplunk, especially when it's one of the '83 veterans that some really old people may remember from the early days (though not me, of course!) At Mikro-Gen, now part of Creative Sparks but being run independently, big cheese Rod Cobain reports some interesting new releases on the horizon. Strike Force SAS is finally coming out, with Digital Graffiti and Bounty Hunter to follow. I'm enjoying this. Power at last. With Teresa gone and Phil... er, recovering, I'll be able to run the mag my way. Lots of reviews of Gauntlet. Features on the playing of Gauntlet. Gauntlet - The Deeper Dungeons, screen by screen. That's the sort of mag we should have. Hang on a second. Why is Marcus setting up this noose above my head. We don't have any pictures to hang up, do we? Hallo, there's something wrong here... hold on... stop it... AAAAAARRRRGGGGHHHH! At last. It's taken enough. I've been here five long months but now I'm editor. We'll soon have things moving around here. (Brief nap.) Ah, that's better. Let's get down to some news. The British Micro Federation has announced that it's going to award silver, gold and platinum cassettes to best-selling games. So if a game sells 50,000, it goes silver; 100,000, and it goes gold; 200,000, and it's platinum. Now to all these screenshots littering up the place. First, Barbarian, the hunky new slice 'em up from Palace. Designer Steve Brown's the man behind such wizard wheezes as Cauldron and Cauldron II, and here he's fashioned a nifty little package of two games in one. Part one lets you perfect your swordsmanship against another player or the computer, so that in part two you can save the princess from the clutches of the evil Dark Sorcerer, Drax. Enter Ian Ellery from Nexus. Isn't Nexus the company that produced a game called, no, let me guess, it's on the tip of my tongue... Nexus! Yus, that's the one. Now Nexus is leaping headlong into the Speccy market (splat!) with two new games due soon, or even earlier. Hades Nebula is a blam blam shooter from Paranoid Software, and it looks a must for joystick fiends everywhere. Due May 21st, it features double parallax scrolling, and even Nexus doesn't know what that is. According to the blurb you'll need "awesome stamina in the fire-button finger, brilliant dexterity to dodge all the nasty and pesky baddies, and acute hearing to enjoy the Commodore/Atari FX sound, or the funny little blips on the Spectrum..." Meanwhile, Micronaut One is also being wound up for summer release from Nexus. We've seen a demo version and it's pretty spectacular, a high speed whoosh through corridors and tunnels, a bit like The Hive but with more game. It's also got a menu system similar to the Apple Macintosh so you can see we're talking serious coolness here. Your Micronaut ship patrols the inside of a massive computer, transferring energy from place to place and fighting off the inevitable alien intruders. Not so much to report from Ocean except that Nintendo's follow-up to Donkey Kong, entitled Mario Brothers is out very soon at £7.95. Justa one Cornetto, give it to meeeee... And finally Databyte is not a name you may have heard of, but its been releasing a number of A1 old games on the Commie, including my favourite Montezuma's Revenge. Now it's developed an interest in the Speccy and the first release is a belated conversion of another corky old number, Spy Vs Spy II: The Island Caper. A full review next month, and... oh hello Kevin, what do you think? Like the column? Not that it matters much anymore, now that you're only a humble Managing Editor! Hee hee! Kevin, why is your moustache quivering at Warp Factor 8? No, I didn't mean it... no... no... AAAAAAARRRGGGGHHHH!
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