ST Format Issue 4 - Download
[btw - just a little something about why I post news from the previous month.. the magazine is marked as November 1989 but it comes out in October, so I talk about October].
The World in October 1989
In the UK we had our first World Wrestling Federation event. Rover launched the 200 series, and England qualified for Italia 90 by drawing with Poland. The stock market fell dramatically fuelling fears of a recession, while the party formed from the merger of the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party renamed itself to the Liberal Democrats. They were irrelevant then, had a brief spell in coalition in the 2010s but then faded back to irrelevance. The Guildford Four, wrongly convicted of terrorist activity in 1975. Labour had a 10 point lead over the Tories, but with the previous election in 1987, they would have to wait until 1992 to have a crack at the Tories, and in reality they had peaked too soon. British rail announced YET ANOTHER delay to the Channel Tunnel.
In America the Dow Jones hit a record high of 2791.41 (at time of writing it's currently 26501.60). The Galileo Probe was sent on its journey to Jupiter (I love shit like that), and the Flag Protection Act came into effect, sparking protests. It was eventually struck down.
Elsewhere, Communism was in decline, with East Germany having to close its border with Czechoslovakia to prevent emigration among other things, with Hungary declaring its Third Republic, marking the end of Communism.
On TV Jeremy Paxman made his first appearance as presenter of Newsnight where he would gain a reputation for a combative style. Michael Palin began his career in travel TV by debuting his Around The World In 80 Days. ITV added a third weekly episode of Coronation Street, contributing to the over-saturation of soaps on British TV. Birds Of A Feather first appeared on BBC1 - it was billed as comedy but it was never funny. It would last for 11 years, and then return in 2014 for fuck's sake.
The
film charts see Robin Williams being fucking brilliant in Dead Poets Society at #1. At #2 was the silly but kinda fun in a cheesy way K9, with Lethal Weapon 2 at #5, and The Fly 2 at #7 (I honestly didn't know there was a sequel).
The
album chart sees a new entry from Kylie Minogue, the difficult second album which saw a continuation of the Stock, Aitken and Waterman formula with some absolute bangers. Tracy Chapman's Crossroads and Tina Turner's Foreign Affair follow with Gloria Estefan next, in a female-dominated top 4.
The
singles chart has Jive Bunny at #1 but there is at least some decent stuff below with Black Box, Technotronic, Sydney Youngblood and Rebel MC. The big stand-out is of course Billy Joel with We Didn't Start The fire.
The Magazine
Issue 4 has quite an interesting cover, showing the mythical 4160 STE, along with a screen showing Interphase, a game they seemed curiously obsessed with but which to me was a tech demo in search of a game, a curio no doubt but of little real interest. The news is somewhat critical of Atari's poor effort at the PC show, where the TT and Stacy (ST laptop though at 13lb it's bloody heavy) were in hiding, with the STE also ignored, as Atari tried to flog a 286 PC. Atari hid them because they didn't think they'd sell. That lack of confidence in their product shows the lack of professionalism in Atari at this time.
We have a hands-on of the new STE, including damning verdicts from a number of game developers (back when developers spoke their minds with no PR handlers). Atari would later complain about this, but the feedback is fair and perhaps explains the lack of support for the STE's featureset, given it was such a minor upgrade from the STFM, with such muddled marketing.
The disk had a demo of Interphase, though a later issue would feature the full game, prompting a ban on full games being attached to magazines. We have an interesting feature on viruses, which worked a little differently in those days. These days viruses are written by criminals looking to make money, either by stealing data from you, or locking it cryptographically (eg CryptoLocker), or using your machine in a botnet. In the old days however, STs generally weren't connected, so viruses were transferred on disks, usually doing so by writing themselves to the boot sector so that when the disk was run they would remain in memory and write themselves to any unprotected disk that was later inserted. Some would even stay in memory after a reset. They were generally done for fun by hackers, rather than for profit, and in many cases would just do something mischievous like inverting the Y-axis of your mouse.
We have a feature on laser printers, but that's not very interesting as they were still pretty niche and VERY expensive (£1-2k in 1989 money... ouch). More interesting is a section on cracking, giving advice on how it's done using a demo game for the purpose. Remarkably brave, but then this is from the days when magazines included things like addresses of hardware registers. It was a different time, more techie and more dedicated to nerds learning how the box works. I miss those days.
Previews
Elvira got her tits out for Elvira Mistress of the dark, while Ubisoft were preparing Pro Tennis Tour, and we continued to wait for Damocles from the wonderful Paul Woakes (spoiler - it's one of my all-time favourites). There were a few other games which weren't terribly notable but the remaining standout is Tower Of Babel, which I've never played but remember having a huge buzz around it when I first got my ST on Christmas 1989.
There's an adventure game preview for some reason, covering Larry 3, Space Quest 3, Colonel's Bequest and Hero's Quest.
Reviews
Games reviewed this month:
Indiana Jones - The Graphic Adventure (SCUMM adventure - US Gold - £24.95 - 77%)
Interphase (Abstract 3D shooter - Mirrorsoft - £29.99 - 93% Format Gold)
Altered Beast (Beat Em Up - Activision - £19.95 - 82%)
Continental Circus (Racer - Virgin/Mastertronic - £19.99 - 83%)
Stunt Car Racer (Racer - Microstyle - £24.99 - 74%)
Ferrari Formula One (Racer - EA - £24.99 - 62%)
TV Sports Football (American Football - Mirrorsoft - £24.99 - 68%)
Rainbow Warrior (Greenpeace Propaganda - Microstyle - £24.95 - 47%)
Battletech (RPG - Infocom - £24.99 - 72%)
Space Quest 3 (Comedy Adventure - Sierra On-line - £29.99 - 83%)
Not as exciting a selection as last week - I think Stunt Car Racer will likely be my main review, and I'll have a look to see if the SCUMM system runs a little better in Indy than it did in Zak, but otherwise I think this is an issue to move on from as quickly as possible. I'm aware that Space Quest 3 might be of some interest but I feel that's one of less value for me to review given it's still available today from gog for instance. That said, again I might poke around to see if it's any fun, and if I feel I can get anything worthwhile out of it I'll put something together.