In 1992, Fred Magazine issue 18 contained a menu by Simon Cooke, which was described as a “Noesis Software” production. Other names mentioned in the credits included Chris White and Stuart Leonardi. In the words of the editorial that month:

You will have noticed the company Noesis mentioned in the menu credits, well this is actually a software house. The first title should be finished by now and is SAM PRINT. This enables you to design posters, letter headings etc and dump it out to your dot matrix printer. A review will appear shortly with full details.

Boing! by Rob Holman also credited Noesis.

You’ll notice at the bottom of person/company pages there is now a new “Related Products” section. This contains an automatically generated list of product pages which cite this company or person.

(That’s the theory anyway. In fact, it performs a rather fuzzy search on the full-text index, and gets several false positives. But it’s better than nothing, and can be improved in the future).

Dr Andy Wright ran BetaSoft, a one-man software house through which he sold BetaBASIC: an improved version of BASIC for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. When MGT were designing the Sam, they approached Doctor Wright and contracted him to provide the ROM and DOS.

The Sam ROM includes a full BASIC interpreter, floating-point maths library, and command-line user interface. The DOS, which is bootstrapped from disk to memory via a small ROM routine, supports file operations onto one or two floppy disk drives. Later on, Dr Wright wrote MasterBasic and MasterDos; extended versions of his earlier work, which he sold through BetaSoft.

He also wrote GamesMaster, an original sprite-based games creation system. Because of its flexibility, and that it was very easy to learn, GamesMaster games became very common as contributions to disk magazines such as Fred, and even the occasional commercial title such as T 'n' T.

An interview with Andy Wright featured in Sam Revival issue 14.

Currently working at SEGA.

Founder of the famous Fred Magazine and Fred Publishing

Studio Manager for Real Time Worlds

FRED Publishing

Steve Taylor

Frantisek Fuka

Impatience is not your average puzzle pack - Impatience is a nightmare! In Triltex use skill, judgement and memory to do battle against the ever ticking clock - match the bombs and you may blow up an important tile, don’t and you may never know what was underneath…

The Viking Game is the ideal way to battle it out against a friend - can you capture your opponent’s king before he escapes? Or will he get you first?

Both of these great new games have been designed specifically to use MODE 4 graphics, 6 channel music and of course, and SAM mouse interface (although both games work just as well with keys or joystick). So, if your mouse and brain cells need a good workout you know where to get it.

Your Sinclair review, courtesy of The YS Rock ‘n’ Roll Years.

Crash review, courtesy of worldofspectrum.org

Review by Steven Pick from the Sam Coupé Scrapbook

Hooray! At long last, the SamDisk office recieves a huge pack! Yes, we have in our midst the first ever release from FRED… Colin Macdonald’s new software house, Fred Publishing! On this pack, is a feast of code for all puzzle addicts and arcade junkies alike! There are 2 games - Triltex, and Viking. Both can be played by mouse or keys, which is a very good thing for SAMCo as more software should be mouse compatible.

Viking Game

This game was played by Vikings you know! (So it sez on the inlay package!). Seriously though, the game is set so two players can play! And with two players, things can get very hairy indeed, as you capture your other players pieces! The plot is that the black pieces are around the outside of the board, while in the centre is a cluster of white pieces surrounding a king! To capture a piece, 2 pieces should sandwich the opposing piece while it takes 4 to capture the king (Because he’s a mean bloke!). The king has to go to one of the corner pieces to win! Music-wise, there is a good ditty which plays at the start. Also the layout is good, with more than functional graphics. An excellent 2 player game!

Is there any way to generate a related items link at the bottom of an item, for example on a software vendors page like ‘FRED Publishing’ it can link all other items can link to it?

FRED Publishing was the commercial arm of Colin Macdonald’s FRED Magazine PD empire.

FRED Publishing’s first release was Impatience and eventually Colin managed to secure the most famous licence of them all for Lemmings.

Enigma Variations

Dave Tonks

A compilation of simple games written in basic.

Crash review courtesy of worldofspectrum.org

Enigma Variations - later by Colin Jordan

Colin Jordan

Colin Jordan

A text adventure, based on Enid Blyton’s novel, “Five On A Treasure Island”.

A novel feature is that you can switch your point-of-view between any of the four children, each of whom may spot different details when you examine an object or location.

ENID BLYTON’S FAMOUS FIVE IN FIVE ON A TREASURE ISLAND

Loading
———-

Reset the machine.

Tape: Press the F7 key and then press play.
——
Disk: Press the F9 key. Users with the original rom press F9, then type CALL
——-
229385 (or CALL 491529 for 512K machines). Press F9 again.

256k disk users should leave the disk in the drive while playing. 512k users
may remove it after loading.

NEVER LEAVE THE DISK IN THE DRIVE WHEN YOU RESET OR TURN THE POWER OFF. YOU
COULD DAMAGE THE DISK. ENIGMA CANNOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR DISKS DAMAGED IN
THIS WAY.

The story
————-

The plot and characters in FAMOUS FIVE are closely based on Enid Blyton’s
book “Five on a Treasure Island”. No knowledge of the book is assumed
at any point, enabling people who have never read any of the Famous Five
hooks to get to grips with the game without difficulty.

The Famous Five are Julian, Dick, Anne, their cousin George (short for
Georgina) and George’s dog Timmy. At the start of the game, George’s mother,
Aunt Fanny, has invited them to stay with her in the seaside village of
Kirrin, during the summer holidays.

You start the game playing the role of Julian, but you may assume the
identity of any of the four human members of the five, swapping between them at
will, and even splitting up ! This will be explained in detail later on.

Crash review courtesy of worldofspectrum.org

Nettverksgruppa (NVG) “The networking group” within Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim.

Known as ‘NVG’ after it’s location and custodians
ftp://ftp.nvg.ntnu.no/pub/sam-coupe/ is the original and still the most comprehensive repository of Sam software.

There are a number of ‘ROMZ’ collections such as the infamous GoodSamC on the Net but the difference with NVG is that it is maintained with intelligence after the NVG Dskification:

1. All the disk images are in a common format.
2. All the disk images are checked and working.
3. All the disk images are bootable.

Also home to the Sam Users Mailing List.