We’re back again for another semi- but eventually regular delve into an exactly forty-year old copy of Computer & Video Games magazine, which it turns out might just be quite the time capsule for anyone interested in gaming! Just to recap as is now usual, I started collecting C&VG in earnest a couple of months into 1985, and would then carry on without missing an issue until well into 1992. A couple of years ago, I decided to complete 1985 with a bit of help from eBay but inevitably then decided to keep heading backwards into 1984 to have my own copy of the ones I’d first read second-hand from a friend, then, while I was there, I thought might as well keep going back even further as the opportunity arose, as long as the price was right! As I write we’re still good to do these things monthly until May with the corresponding issues from 1984) but I’ll keep doing my best to plug any gaps as we continue through 2024, then no question we’ll be monthly after that!

We’ve done a few of these things now but as always, the plan is to flick through the magazine together, check out the news, reviews, features, type-ins (for as long as they last) and notable adverts (where that time capsule thing really comes into its own!), pulling out whatever catches my eye, in the order it catches it, and providing you with a bit of a commentary, starting with what’s going on in March 1984 in the Games News, which has now been pushed all the way back to page 32, so although there’s a few pages of letters and competitions before we get there, that’s an awful lot of adverts now appearing in this thing before you get to any proper content! Which, for our purposes today, is no bad thing, and at a whopping 162 pages in total, the rest of the mag seems to be keeping up with this trend too. Anyway, news, and we start with C&VGs ongoing mini-crusade against the glamorisation of nuclear war and Ground Zero, a war game that currently has no software house backing it but the author, Colin Smith, is so serious about sharing its awful (and carefully researched) realities with the public that he’s prepared to auction off his house to get it into the shops if necessary! Maybe we’ll find out if he ever did in a future issue, though I’m honestly not sure any child of the eighties needed that much additional convincing!

The threat of nuclear annihilation was a constant around this wonderful time but no such concerns about casual racism in 1984 though, and C&VG will gladly publish a stereotypical cartoon to accompany the news that China Miner is on the way to the Commodore 64 from Interceptor Micros, who also have no concerns about blatantly ripping off Manic Miner, as you platform your way around a jade mine with Miner Wally, no less! Big advert for this one elsewhere in this issue too, which couldn’t contrast more starkly with the moribund and almost impossible to read one across the page for The Lords of Midnight. Advertising clearly wasn’t everything though… Back to the news, also no concerns about promoting “no atrocity too great” in Dictator, and there’s effectively a bunch of other upcoming games of little note like Hell-Gate on the VIC-20, and Flak for the BBC, but I’ll close with the exciting news of an exciting new computer… Oh, actually, it’s the Sinclair QL! Not sure it was ever quite the £400 Quantum Leap it claimed to be, though it was a very early 16-bit machine with a huge 128K of RAM, and while it wasn’t compatible with any Spectrum software (and didn’t even have a cassette interface) we could expect “a large amount of games to appear shortly.” Er, yes…

Right, let’s move on to Software Reviews, which, as usual, covers the home computers, while console games will be found under “Video Gaming” later in the magazine. Some big hitters and personal favourites here too, which is always great to see, and in particular Jeff Minter’s bonkers horizontally scrolling shoot ‘em up, The Revenge of the Mutant Camels, being awarded Game of the Month! The “best Commodore 64 game to date” apparently, together with the best graphics and animation seen so far on there, but no argument about its ten out of ten for playability score though. If you fancy something similar but a little more grounded in military reality then you’ve also got the classic Falcon Patrol on there, or if you’re on an Atari 400/800 (or the new 600XL or 1200XL) you could spin the same concept around by ninety degrees for its excellent take on the Atari VCS (or 2600) classic River Raid! Demon Attack – one of my VIC-20 faves that was also great on the VCS – scored big too, although the £32.50 price tag for its cartridge-only release meant it was a very long time before I’d ever get my hands on it! However, I did pick up Pinball Wizard on there, which didn’t score so well this month but was the very first game I ever covered on this site, as well as being only the third game I ever bought (and look out for my upcoming deep-dive into Arcadia on the VIC-20 for more on that particular tale)!

There were also a couple of average pinball games on the Dragon 32 and BBC B, which also got a superb conversion of Pengo, but I’ll jump to the arcades now, and Arcade Action, which begins with a glimse at what arcades of the future might look like… As well as obviously looking like Tron, you’d be able to buy burgers, and home computer versions of what you’re playing to take home with you, possibly from a passing robot staff member! There’ll be lines of computers to do your homework on while you’re there too, and even “Japanese-style” accommodation modules so you never need to leave! They might have overestimated the longevity of the arcade as they knew it, and I’m not sure the stuff about converted submersible oil rigs in the North Sea offering a gamer’s paradise is any closer to reality today, but it’s funny how some of these ideas still ring true in a slightly abstract way! In the real arcades, we find out about Track & Field from Konami, which would soon become another absolute favourite of mine, but what I found really fascinating here was how it goes into great depth to explain this all-new button-mashing control scheme it employs, where they did correctly predict how your fingers were going to feel this time!

Over to the consoles next for that “Video Gaming” malarkey, where we hear about the upcoming port of Dragon’s Lair for the ColecoVision console, and it’s upcoming laser-disk add-on so you can play it on there! The latter would never materialise, but having spent $2 million on the license, Coleco would end up releasing a more traditional version of the game that’s actually still one of the more impressive pre-16-bit home conversions! It got a good one of Donkey Kong too, which gets a full-page, screen-by-screen walkthrough, which is mostly a very long-winded way of telling you to just get good. Another game I like more than the just above-average review score here might suggest is the Atari VCS port of Dig-Dug, although it deservedly scored well in the “Addiction” rating, but if you want real depth, as well as some of the best graphics on the system, then you might want to go for the undersea adventure Fathom instead!

There’s a little box for the game charts in the Video Gaming bit that doesn’t specify which system any of the ten top listed is for, but it’s all arcade ports and Battlezone is riding highest, followed by Pole Position and the aforementioned Donkey Kong. Those two also head-up the Atari 400/800 charts a couple of pages later, while The Hobbit takes the number one slot on both the BBC B and the Commodore 64 chart, which is really still trying to find its feet with very little of note making up the rest of its top ten. There are no less than four Ultimate games in the Spectrum countdown, with last month’s Game of the Month Atic Atac at number one, closely followed by Lunar Jetman. Krazy Kong keeps its place at the head of the ZX81 chart again, although I’m wondering how long we’ll see that one included in upcoming months. Not sure how long the VIC-20 will last now either, to what would have been my great disappointment whenever the inevitable did eventually happen, but for the time being the incredible Wizard and Princess is still number one there too, and that’s another game I really should cover that in its own right sometime! Just to round out the charts, no change at the top of the Dragon 32 one either, with epic but very odd text adventure Pettigrew’s Diary also hanging on to its top spot.

Obviously I can’t cover everything in every issue, and often skirt around stuff like the regular Adventure section (because it’s regularly just lots of words about games that are just lots of words!) or the Program Extra features (because short programs to disable a Dragon 32’s break key really aren’t very exciting) but I will have a look at this month’s special feature on the best joysticks in town! They’ve tested a bunch of them for responsiveness, ease of grip and fire, robustness, attractiveness and value for money, and they’re a mix of well-known names, some proper oddballs, and the one I’m still using to this day! I’m not sure they’re in any particular order but I’ll follow what’s there, starting with the Arcade Pro, which is a bit pricey at nearly £40 but can be repaired, and is amazingly not unlike the arcade sticks and fighting sticks you still get today! The original Quickshot is next and it’s apparently a bit too bulky for maze games but otherwise is a sturdy choice, but it’s no Quickshot II, which isn’t only my joystick of choice but theirs too. It’s a shame they don’t go into robustness on this one though because I bet they’d have never imagined it would last forty years! The Red Ball offers a deluxe take on that classic old Atari joystick design (which I think I was still using at the time but isn’t included here), with the Wico Extended Lever Stick and their Boss offering slightly cheaper alternatives. Then there’s the Trak Ball for the ultimate arcade feel on your Atari machine of choice and is a must despite the £40 price tag if you’re serious about Centipede! Suncom might think their Starfighter is the ultimate joystick but it doesn’t seem like anyone else shares that opinion, and similarly, the base-free approach of both Le Stick and Video Command is more unique than practical. Finally, and in total contrast, the TAC II is what you want for no-nonsense reliability but I think I’ll be sticking with my Quickshot II all the same!

As always, there’s a load of type-in games listings to keep you occupied once you’re done lusting over joysticks, and there’s a really special one this month, but first a quick look at the regular ones… Airstrike is a simplified but well thought-out version of Scramble for the TI 99/4a, while Wall Defence is the classic chuck stuff at climbing invaders game for the Atari 400, and 3D Maze is precisely that for the Spectrum. On the Dragon 32, there’s a really cool run and jump platformer in some rickety old mines in Gold Prospector, then there’s Slot Machine for a bit of pointless gambling on the Sharp MZ89k, where there’s also the last of the three part epic graphic adventure listing we’ve now covered in the two previous Retro Rewind features, Lost in the Jungle! Finally, on the BBC there’s a sci-fi gladiator game called Entrapment, but it’s not quite finally because there’s still Treachery, this issue’s cover star on the ZX Spectrum, that’s way more than just a type-in! It’s not even a regular video game, but a computer-moderated board game all about international espionage and intrigue that will take you all over Europe and beyond! And it comes with a full-colour, pull out “board” to play on! I think it came with some game counters too but unfortunately they’ve long-since been separated from my copy. The keyboard overlay for your Spectrum hasn’t been though! And, of course, there’s pages and pages of code to type in, resulting in what’s definitely the most wildly ambitious listing I’ve ever seen in a magazine!

We’re going to finish this month with a look at some of the adverts that aren’t just increasingly taking up space, but are also increasingly full-colour and increasingly for games rather than long, dry listings of hardware from Ace Computers in Scunthorpe and the like, which all combines to make them quite the time capsule I mentioned earlier too! I could be wrong but this is the first time I remember seeing Ocean spreading themselves across two pages even if you’ve still probably never heard of the majority of games on them, but for every Island of Death on the Oric 48K there’s also a big-hitter like Mr Wimpy, Hunchback or Kong on the Spectrum! There’s also an annoying trend emerging of games being advertised by overly long, double-paged comic strips, such as The Amazing Adventures of the Laughing Shark that accompanies a pricelist of about thirty Virgin Games releases you’ve also never heard of. Imagine have a nice spread of a spaceman seeing Alchemist, Zzoom, Stonkers and Zip Zap on his four monitors, and Melbourne House is introducing H.U.R.G. – High Level, User Friendly, Real Time Games Designer that I think was probably overshadowed by their The Hobbit at the time! I got a real kick out of seeing an understated big ad by Audiogenic, which includes the iconic Aztec Challenge, which was one of the first things I ever remember seeing on a C64, as well as Forbidden Forest, which, far more recently, Bitmap Books’ From Ants to Zombies: Six Decades of Video Game Horror suggested was its very first true example! Ultimate is also more understated than usual this month, with a very eighties melting joystick peddling all the stuff we just saw dominating the charts. Will it be the same story next month though? Well, check back again for a look at the April 1984 issue, which will be available here as usual on its fortieth birthday, but in the meantime I really hope you’ve enjoyed flicking through this one with me!

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