Revelation Software (Software Direction by FRED Publishing)

John Eyre

John Eyre

Andy Monk

A complex roleplaying simulation, along the lines of Lords Of Midnight.

The story starts at a time of unrest with Barquin the Witchking massing a great army of Orcs in the north. Barquin’s evil influence is most powerful in his own realm but it extends beyond the plains of Krette and of Anga. If he can sieze control of the Palace of Avorell in the far south his control will be complete and the freedom of Avinell will be doomed forever.

Eshan has received word from Barton the Marshal that Avorell the Noble as been taken captive while on a hunting trip on ther plains of Anga. Without the wise council of Avorell the armies of the south squabble amongst themselves knowing this is the signal that the invasion of Barquin’s legions of evil is about to begin.

Eshan and Barton must unite and mobilise the warriors in the defence of freedom, to repel the attck and deny Barquin the supremacy that would come with the fall of the Palace of Avorell.

Nigel Kettlewell

Nigel Kettlewell

Phil Glover

A text and graphic adventure exclusively for the SAM

A review was written for Your Sinclair but never published.

FRED Publishing

John Vincent

Neil Holmes

Craig Turberfield

An arcade/adventure in the Dizzy mould written in GamesMaster.

Review by Steven Pick from the Sam Coupé Scrapbook

Yipe! Talk about a scary cover for a computer game - a Gothic affair covered with women in beards and mad images! Though, the game is not a patch on the Gothicness of the cover. The Witching Hour, as it is, is the period of time which you, Gretta the good witch or Beardy the wizard (non-sexism on the Coupe!!) have got, to destroy the Demon Master, who has captured all the villagers of a small sea-side town, bar a few remaining survivors. The non-Gothicness shows in the game, straight after a nice looking introduction, we are in the thick of arcade action… Well, a Dizzy type of game, but a game which oozes a certain amount of atmosphere.

Yep - you know that sort of game by now! Pick up objects, take them to places and use them. The game has some added dimension about it, though. For a start, you can enter doors of buildings and look inside them for objects. The game also gives you some helpful (or non-helpful depending on your game-playing) tips when you examine objects. You can only pick up two objects at a time, and there are certain hazards to overcome, including some rather large ghosts, a hazardous (and well animated) river, and much more. The game itself has been written using the Gamesmaster utility by John Vincent, and it is quite a triumph to write a complex game like The Witching Hour (in programming terms) on Gamesmaster.

Though this leads to two minor niggles. One is that there is a s hort pause while you pick up objects, use objects, etc. where the screen turns black, but this is bearable. The other is that it is a bit awkward to control your character, especially when he/she is jumping. You have quite a wide berth when you jump, and sometimes you know that you are dead just as you leave the ground, knowing your flight path will lead to a ghost. Though it is something I am getting used to very quickly, a bit like when Spectrum owners got used to Dizzy, so I am reserving this niggle on the marking.

Revelation

Daren Yeomans

Andrei Nadin

Mike Dyke

A cross between an arcade-adventure game (such as Boing!) and a puzzle game (such as Hexagonia).

Review by Graham Goring from the Sam Coupé Scrapbook

Oh dear. This game came out at almost the same time as the SAM, and it shows. The sound is screechy, the controls slightly sluggish and some situations in the game are almost impossible to get out of.

It all revolves round you (and Tomato with wings and a ball orbitting your body - it get’s odder) flying round a castle, trying to get objects to use in some other place. Now the thing that cripples the game, is it’s gimmick.

You can only control your character when he is touching a wall, as soon as you become detached you can only sit back and home that he gets to another wall before he hits some nasty. If it weren’t for that, this could be a decent ‘explore and map’ game. But the fact that you have to have leaps of faith all the time (which mostly end up in you dying horribly) means that exploration of a previously unseen area will normally end up in a little ‘Game Over’ message being displayed on the screen.

Luckily, to slightly combat this, you do have an ample supply of lives at the start, but I feel that less lives and an energy bar would have been better.

This game is a missed opportunity. With a little fore-thought and planning I would have loved it. Shame.

FRED Publishing

Steve Taylor

An expansion pack to the original Triltex, which was available in the Impatience compilation. Here’s another 25 levels to keep your addicted and frustrated all over again!

Boot up your original Impatience disc and load in Triltex. Once loaded insert the Later Levels disc and go to the password system (“CODE”) and enter the following code:
White Line
Black X
White Triangle
Black Star
White Star

Issue 11a

ZX Spectrum high street magazine that carried a lot of news and articles on the Coupé.

INDUG

Gloucester Sam and Speccy Shows sponsored by Format Publications.

Held Bi-Anuually in Quedgeley Village Hall in Gloucester (see Google Earth link as ‘disk image’) with a migration to The Weavers Arms upon finishing.

After first migration wave, a second migration wave usually followed… although often attempted, the real facts on the second migration will probably never be fully told, since the legends contain too many gaps - for which we may need a new section - but parked in trivia for now.

Pictures:

• Carol Brooksbank’s pictures.
  
• Simon Cooke’s pictures.
  
• Andrew Collier’s pictures.

Issue 10

Issue 9