We’re back once again for our regular monthly dive into the pages of an exactly forty-year old copy of Computer & Video Games magazine, which is quite the time capsule for anyone with any interest at all in video games! As always, a quick recap of where it’s coming from – I started collecting C&VG in earnest a few months into 1985, and carried on without missing an issue until well into 1992. A few years back, I decided to complete the set from 1985 with a bit of help from eBay, then inevitably decided to keep going backwards into 1984 so I had my own copy of the ones I’d first read second-hand from a friend. And obviously, while I was doing that, I thought I might as well keep going further back, as and when the opportunity arose and the price was right, as well as trying to expand out of the other end of my collection too, although that’s still proving a lot more difficult than the older ones for some reason! Plenty of time to keep working on that though, so without any further delay, let’s jump into the September 1985 issue, where, as usual, the plan is to flick through the magazine together, checking out the news, reviews, type-in games listings, features and notable adverts (which are often the best bits), pulling out whatever catches my eye, in the order it catches it, and providing a bit of commentary on top…

Well check out the cover first though, which is unusual in that it features a central image on a white background, and as such has certainly always stood out in my massive pile of these magazines! It features a hand-painted and very stylish martial arts bloke with a big sword, which is a weapon you won’t find in the game it’s there for, The Way of the Exploding Fist, but you will find an associated competition in this issue, where you can win a trip to Melbourne House in London followed by dinner with a karate world champion! I’d rather the runners-up prize of a copy of the game, thanks all the same, after its big-scoring Game of the Month review last issue, although the intact entry form here does indicate I wasn’t that fussed either way! Other competitions on the cover include a chance to win a BMX care of Beyond Software, who were sponsoring some BMX event, or for something a bit less extreme, how about an hour’s squash coaching from Jonah Barrington of Jonah Barrington’s Squash game? Or you could just have a go at some lovely Rupert Bear stuff instead, which we’ll return to shortly…

First though, we’re going to check out the Games News this month, and although I didn’t realise it at the time, huge news for me too, because Datasoft, the folks behind Bruce Lee and Zaxxon, have got a bunch more “programs” on the way, starting with conversions of Pole Position II and what would soon become one of my all-time (just outside my top ten) favourite games, Elevator Action! The Goonies is on the way from them too, which I’m sure would have also been pretty exciting to me right around now! Elsewhere, there’s something very futuristic-sounding called M.U.D. that’s about to be unleashed by British Telecom… Multi-User Dungeon had started life as a big interactive adventure played down the phone lines by a load of nerds at Essex University but now anyone with a “modem add-on for your micro” can get in on the black magic multiplayer action too! There’s one more taste of the future too, with a footnote about Microsoftware Magazine, a new publication for the ZX Spectrum that comes on a cassette, and includes a full text adventure as well as more traditional features. Proper sci-fi stuff!

I’ve missed going through the charts while they’ve been missing in action over the past couple of issues, but they’re back, albeit not quite in all their sponsored by The Sun glory of old… That said, as lacklustre as it now looks on the page, we are getting an individual “Top 10” (each consisting of thirty games!) for the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC, on top of the multi-system top thirty countdown. Whatever, The Way of the Exploding Fist is straight in at number one both overall and on the C64, with Hyper Sports also straight in at number two and in the top spot on the Spectrum, while Beach Head, at the top of the Amstrad chart, is down at twenty-eight overall, which gives you a pretty good impression of where that machine still stood in September 1985 (and beyond)! We’ve also got new entries in the top ten for the great-looking (if a little derivative) boxing game Rocco on the Spectrum, and Jet Set Willy 2 on there and the C64 now, as well as Clumsy Colin Action Biker (care of KP Skips crisps), on both formats, which was also the highest charting budget game this month. The brilliant Soft Aid is still hanging around the top of several charts, hot on the heels of Live Aid a couple of months earlier, and the rest is simply a list of some of the greatest 8-bit games ever released… And a bunch of CPC stuff!!!

I just noticed I’d cut out the image (but not the logo) from an International Karate advert just before the Hot Gossip section, which ended up on my bedroom wall for years after! Anyway, Hot Gossip (another form of which I’d have happily had on my bedroom wall around this time!), an extension of the news of sorts that I still don’t really get, this time headed up by a preview of Astro Clone on the Spectrum, which I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of when we’re looking at reviews in the next couple of issues, but for now is such a cool and ambitious game by the same bloke who did Avalon and Dragontorc. Also news of Nightshade from Ultimate Play the Game on the Spectrum, which we might also return to shortly right here if I have space, plus a 60K ZX Spectrum memory expansion we’ll never see again from Mikrogen, the Pyjamarama folk, but all of that pales into insignificance with our last bit of hot gossip, because there’s a Russ Abbot’s Basildon Bond game on the way too! Right, unable to top that, I’m going to jump to reviews now, starting with the game behind that Rupert Bear competition from earlier, Rupert & The Toymaker’s Party, and as massive fan of Rupert Bear as a little kid, the C64 screenshot that went with this always stuck with me – it’s just gorgeous, and fully deserving of the ten for graphics score! Not so sure about the Spectrum version, also apparently being reviewed, and I’m definitely dubious of the eight for playability whichever the system… You want to stick with the Ice Palace sequel when that turns up in a couple of months instead!

Or you could go with Game of the Month over the page, which is the C64 version of Elite! This had been around on the BBC for a while by now but only nerds had them, and this port was really special, although I’m going to question the eight for value score this time because forty years on, I’m still playing the thing! There’s loads reviewed this month, so I’m afraid I’ll probably have to stick to a few highlights, but there’s loads of them too, starting with Beach Head II right across the page, which never had quite the same impact on me as the original but objectively was probably the better game, and this C64 version had some awesome early voice synthesis as well! Sticking on the C64, I’ve still never played it but the screenshot for the arcade combat sim Skyfox was another that simply looked out of this world compared to everything else on the page (which you can see above). Weird that it got exactly the same score for graphics as One-on-One on the Spectrum right below it though, which looks terrible but was actually a decent game of basketball! 

I realise I could have gone with a shot of the page of reviews here that included the genius of Spy vs Spy on both the Spectrum and C64, and the original truck simulator, Juggernaut on the Spectrum (which I was also very fond of at the time), but in a bid to ensure I do actually come back to Nightshade later, I’m going with the one that’s got an advert for my beloved old school and university calculator instead! And the Spectrum games on the page opposite aren’t so bad either, with the brilliant but brutal platformer Dynamite Dan, the even more brilliant isometric shooter-puzzler of sorts, Highway Encounter, and Bond tie-in A View to a Kill, which was a bit crap, but the movie remains my second favourite Bond (behind Live and Let Die), and that’s despite going to see it on my first ever date with a girl who then never turned up! Luckily there’s still loads of games to cover so I can change the subject, including the iconic Thing on a Spring on the C64; a bunch of big scoring MSX games like Sky Jaguar and Mopi Ranger that no one ever heard of again; a few TI-99/4A stragglers including excellent versions of Frogger and Miner 2049er; the stunning in-cockpit 3D racer Le Mans on C64, MSX and, er, Einstein; and one of the all-time great 8-bit arcade conversions in Hyper Sports on Spectrum, C64 and Amstrad. What a month, and as said, there’s at least as many more new releases reviewed again that I skipped over here!       

Actually, before we move on, I just spotted weird horror platformer Go to Hell on the Spectrum got a right pasting, and they also thought Alice Cooper on the title screen was an evil monk! Check out my deep-dive into its sequel, Soft & Cuddly, where I get into my thoughts on that too, and a few interesting tales besides… Anyway, it’s time we moved on again, and we’re now at the first of this month’s type-in games listings, which is Darts on the Amstrad CPC, and it might not be 180 but is probably as good a darts game as you’re getting in 1985, apart from the ubiquitous real thing back then, of course! Massive listing too, unlike Chopper Rescue on the Spectrum, which sounds like a simple take on Choplifter, while the final game listing this month runs on the BBC, and is called Defuse, some kind of bomb disposal game, although I must confess I was totally distracted by the advert for Street Hawk across the page from this, and I’m officially sold however it reviews… There are a bunch of music-making listings later on too, accompanying a feature I’ll come back to, but quick mention of the one for my beloved VIC-20, which I not only typed in at the time (it was rubbish!) but might just be the very final listing of any kind for it here. Which makes me sad, but not as sad as when I still didn’t have a Spectrum yet!

The last of this month’s regular features to get into is Arcade Action, still on the single page, black and white naughty step for some reason, but I can see a big picture of a right nerd playing the boring stand-up version of one of the all-time greats, Atari’s Star Wars! He’s one of three students from Leeds who spent over five days getting a world record score on there, raising £50 for charity in the process. And I know inflation and stuff but honestly I’m a little underwhelmed at this point! In new arcade games, we’ve got Bally / Sente’s Hat-Trick, a one-on-one ice hockey game that’s actually a bit Windjammers, which is good! That said, even the Atari 2600 managed two players per team, which reminds me, still no sign of any consoles of any kind anywhere – it’s now been ages! Next is Dig Dug II, which I’ve never been as much of a fan of as the original, and might explain why I had no idea it was about Santa, which not only the headline but about a third of this review of sorts also implies! Really not helped by the fuzzy black and white screenshot either. Nintendo’s Hogan’s Alley didn’t get one at all though – just a comparison to Sega’s recent (and admittedly similar) gallery shooter Bank Panic. And that’s that for Arcade Action, but I really hope business picks up again soon because I really miss those double-pages full of sights to behold on that vibrant yellow background, although the Terrormolinos advert across the page does compensate a bit in that regard!

Regular readers might have noticed that as usual, I’ve skipped past the five page text-fest that is the Adventure section, and we’ll have a really quick look at some of the other features in the mag instead, starting with the aforementioned Melody Makers, which, as well as those type-in listings from earlier, we’ve also got a guide to making your own hit record with a Yamaha CX5M – effectively an MSX with a piano keyboard and some synth functionality! Honestly, it’s a bit of an advertorial for all sorts of Yamaha stuff, so we’ll have a look at some music making software reviews instead, which are strangely scored on graphics and ease of use, and by those measures, Music Typewriter is the best of the bunch on the Spectrum… Hang on a sec, I’m just looking through the rest and this is even more boring than the Adventure bit! Let’s go to Letter From America instead, with all the stuff on its way over the Atlantic in time for Christmas, and they’ve only been hands-on with The Goonies from earlier, and there’s a screenshot, and it looks great! “There’s Someone Living Inside My Computer” sounds great too, and it’s from the legendary David Crane, and has you looking after the titular little computer person, although I reckon they’ll need to work on the name before it releases… Also news of the upcoming Commodore 128, and a load more voice synthesis stuff, and legendary stuff like Ballblazer and Rescue on Fractulus inching ever closer, but as understated as what accompanies them is here, the words “Winter Games” jumped out at me the most, and a very first reference to what would become yet another all-time favourite of mine!

Right, there are a few other bits and pieces but nothing of particular note, so I’m going to finish off with a look at a few of the adverts that didn’t end up on my bedroom wall (which I’m afraid is going to become an increasingly frequent occurrence over the next few months), and I’m going to start with Nightshade, which I managed to squeeze in after all! Following all that build up though, I’m not even that fussed about the game, but if I ever do one of my top ten countdowns on favourite game adverts (watch this space) then you can be sure this is going to be placed pretty high! I really like the Abu Simbel Profanation one you can see back up the page too, and Frank Bruno’s back with the single-page variant of his game’s iconic ad, and there are more lovely C64 screenshots to be found on Rupert Bear’s, but I have to say the Exploding Fist advert has aways been a letdown – kind of airbrushed bloke punching a load of wood accompanied by half a page of magazine and newspaper quotes. Okay, they love it, but boring all the same! Not as boring as the sweaty pic of Nic Faldo mid-stroke on his golf game though, and I’ve probably said it before, but Jack Charlton on his fishing game’s advert takes some beating too! The Beach Head II one is all-action though, so we’ll finish on that literal bombshell, and I’ll thank you as always for flicking through this month’s issue with me, and hopefully see you again when October 1985 rolls around!

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