The last issue of CGW for 1987 set 2 things into the center: american
football and Zork.
Getting into the magazine, there is an advertiement from EA for Chuch
Yeager’s Advanced Flight Trainer. It had a remarkably good advertisement
campaign for a game which featured fighter jets, yet lacked air combat.
The editoral was very important this month. It gave insight into how the
magazine was made. Firs they started to use an IBM AT to put together the
pages, this was pared with a full-page monitor and Ventura Publisher. The
choice is important in my opinion. Mainly, because it was not a Mac, not an
Amiga nor an Atari ST, but a standard IBM PC. I wonder what made them to go
with this decision, but I suppose the price was better than with a Mac and
it had more features than anything on the Amiga or the ST.
According to the magazine, they managed to cut the time and cost
significantly, with 15% and 25% respectively. The articles were mostly
written on MS Word, and I suppose that many writers used Macs. Another
interesting factor, that the articles were sent to the magazine not only on
by mail on floppies, but over the early net. This setup was becoming the
standard at the time, and I think it interestingly highlights the dominance
of the PC in every possible market.
The first review of the month was from Scorpia. She reviewed the usual
Infocom offering. This time it was Plundered Hearts, and even this was
still the good old text adventure genre, they tried to improve the
contents over the years, and put some twists here and there. Surely by 1987
this worked less and less. Sierra’s attack on multiple fronts (Leissure
Suite Larry, Police Quest, Space Quest) was heavily leaning into the
traditional Infocom territory, and UK titles like those from Level9 and Magnetic Scrolls were adding beautiful images to the traditional text adventure formula.
After the first review, there is a survey of football games. These were
still pretty primiteve compared to the upcoming Megadrive-era, their roots
were closer to the clunky gameplay of the mid-80s. GFL Football and
Gridirion are two titeles that are worth mentioning, Gridirion especially,
because it was one of the first Bethesda game.
There is also a report about Dragon Con 87. The famous RPG con was attended
by game designers and by CGW too. The designers were asked about their
development advice and future ideas. And this is the place where the game
award of CGW took place.
For adventure games, Starflight received the crowning achievment. I would
argue that it is even better than Mass Effect. The action category had an
interesting choice, Gunship, for the simple reason that CGW did not
consider it as a simulation. And even if I agree that it was not Flight
Simulator, this was the top combat flight sim for 1987 that is for sure.A
special award was given to Cinemaware for Defender of the Crown, for its
careful game design. Even if it lacked some depth, it filled it with
imagingation, and it was probably the most captivating game of the year.
The strategy title went to SSG for Gettysburg, and finally the game of the
year was Ultima, a very fine choice indeed. I am said a bit that Pirates
nor Maniac Mansion was not mentioned, probably they did not have the impact
at the time.
Another review, Project Stealth Fighter, which was probably the top 8-bit
combat flight simulator. This was the genre which moved first to the 16-bit
computers, and Project Stealth Fighter was kind of a swansong for that. The
game was the usual very slow 3D game on the limited architecture, but the
mission details were the finest yet to be seen on the C64.
This is followed by the Beyond Zork review, which added RPG elements to
text adventuring. The next article was another guide for Warship, someone
surely liked this game, and the new SSG strategy game, Battles in Normandz
was reviewed. Then a 16-bit title, Firepower was reviewed for the Amiga.
Unfortunately the game was still unable to merry the arcade genre with the
new power of the next generation machines.
Going on to C+VG, the news section was loud with the announcement of
Universal Military Simulator, which was the most promising 16-bit wargame
up until then. There was a racing game for the Atari ST too, 500 Grand Prix
that wanted to be the first next generation racing game. A third game was
showing off for the 16-bit systems, The Hunt for Red October, based on the
book, was another colorful 16-bit title.
The first real good game reviewed in this issue was BuggyBoy, a very good
conversion from the arcades. The C64 version was fluid and sounded good,
the ST version looked good and the Amiga version unified the advantages of
these two versions. The game itself is not as good as Pit Stop II with its
crazy speed and fast levels and the actual pitstops, but it was still
entertaining.
There is a Captain America game, it is available both on 8 and 16 bit
platforms. Unfortunately its only redeeming quality is that it is a movie
tie-in, aside from that it is a truely subpar game. The next is Terrorpods,
an early Psygnosis game for the 16-bit platforms. It is a strange game,
which tries to innovate in gameplay but it fails horribly. The testers
thought otherwise, and gave it 10s and 9s though.
Shoot’em up Constructur Kit for the C64 is an important release, I am sure
there were tens of thousands kids trying to create their own game with it.
The big release of the month is Chuck Yeager’s Advanced Flight Trainer, the
top flight sim for 1987 Christmas. The IBM version was fast on 8MHz PCs of
the time, the only disadvantage was that it did not support EGA graphics.
Star Trek – The New Generation started around this time in the UK, what a
big year, though I have to admit there are things which I loath in this
series. Also, there is a preview of Nigel Mansel’s F1 World Championship,
and by the looks it was not necessary something that could overcome Revs or
Pit Stop II for C64 racing.
There is a huge Comodore advertisement in the issue. This is the first hit
Christmas for the Amiga. The price was right, the software was right and
the marketing was right, everything for good sales to the next year.
In the arcades Operation Wolf was released, we had one in the local pub in
my small village. Having a machinegun shaped controller was awesome, and I
remember that it had a kickback which added greatly to the immersion as a
kid. In this issue not just the then-current, but the upcoming arcade games
were surveyed, things like Street Fighter or Afterburner.
The adventure section is some French stuff and some Infocom stuff, nothing
that was not mentioned before. The console section is only slightly more
interesting. Golf and Soccer for the NES are the games for the month, and I
am sure these sold a few NESs. Especially Soccer, the first game that was
better than International Football for the C64. Faster, more colourful and
with more players. The gameplay was still pretty far away from actual
soccer which was not helped by the rudamentary AI.
In the mail section there are a few words about games and racism and
sexims, similarly to CGW, adult gamers were quite sensitive for these
topics around the time. There is a mail that asks for what are the ten best
ST games. The reply is horrible: The Pawn, Addictaball, Arkanoid, Road
Runner, Indiana Jones, Mercenary, Super Spring. Some of these are aweful,
some are mediocre or a bit too complex or a bit too simple for the time
especially compared to the C64 games. It is suprising that neither Flight
Simulator II or Defender of the Crown or Gauntlet are not mentioned.
Zzap had a good Christmas. Maniac Mansion, Buggy Boy, Shoot’em Up
Construction Kit, C64 couldn’t really wish for more. Russia and Lords of
Conquest were reaching the shores of UK, two more American style wargames.
Zzap 16-bit section compares the ST and the Amiga and they asks some
programmers about the hardware. Developers prefer the Amiga, but the price
of the ST was marvellous. One developer even mentions how overpriced the
Spectrum +3 is, and that the days of the 8-bit hardware are over. Another
developer was saying that Atari was heading in the right direction and that
their customer service was wonderful. Most developers were complaining
about the OS on both platforms.
There is the Commodore Christmas advertisment. A C64 + a disk drive was
almost the price of an A500, another reason to go 16-bit. The titles of the
16-bit machines were also getting more and more impressive, Defender of the
Crown, Gauntlet, Bard’s Tale were all more impressive on the not-so-new
machines.
ACE reached its 3rd issue. The arcade section had Afterburner, the most
attractive arcade game until that time. There was an article about music
sapling, and the legendary Roland MT-32 was also introduced. There was also
a comparision made between the ST, the A500 and the Archimedes, with very
high hopes regarding the later.There is also an article about raytracing
and another one comparig paint programs for the Amiga.
One of the new games was Ogre, the computer implementation of the famous
wargame. Druid 2 got good reviews in this magazine too. There is one early
game from Codemasters, Professional Ski Simulator. There is a 3D game for
the Archimedes reviewed, Zarch, probably one of the fastest 3D games on a
home computer yet. Grand Slam was released for the Amiga and the ST became
the first succesful 16-bit tennis game.
The strategy section contained a good selection of awesome games. Annals of
Rome, Balance of Power, Battle of Britain, Desert Rats, Doomdark’s Revenge.
Some very good games for 16-bit computers, some very good games for 8-bit
computers. It was Universial Military Simulator that was expected to bring
strategy games to the next generation with its 3D combat theatre. The
adventure game of the month was Gnome Ranger, another great game from
Level9.
This was the first time that AmigaWorld could be optimistic about the
future. One of the few things that is mentioend in the Zeitgeist column
that the office of the maagazine was using Amiga computetrs to write the
articles. The number of software packages available grew rapidly in 87, the
new Amigas were out, and they were good. So there was a good reason to be
optimistic this time.
There is a review of WordPerfect, the big release for the end of 87 for the
Amiga. One of the big names of word processing became finally with this and
it greatly added to the viewability of the system.
The holiday software buyers guide was a very long list of available
software for the Amiga. By this time, there were tons of software available
and some of these were real professional grade software.
The main topic of the month was Amiga in performing arts, it is basically
makink presentations with the Amiga. In the review section, a new
DTP software CityDesk is reviewed, with some games like Starglider or
Uninvited.
There is a very big hardware advertisement section. Unfortunatelly the
price of the A2000 is not listed, but the A500 was available with 1MB RAM
and a monitor from 999USD. That was a very good price for this powerful
machine. A similar set of C64, costed 530USD, but obviously the difference
between these two systems was more than twice as much. A basic A500 was
available for 600USD, which was also a fine price.
The Christmas issue of Atari ST User was also in a happy mood. The
ST finally had good software availabily for all platforms.
The ST also saw WordPerfect released. Atari was also in a good financial
shape, though they made their largest commercial mistake by purchasing a
chainstore called Federated. Unfortunatelly new hardware was not available,
aside from the MegaSTs which prouved very little improvement over the
original machines.
Gnome Ranger was reviewed in the magazine and there was also a new Pascal
IDE available. There was an advertisement about multitasking replacements
for the ST, I wonder how well those worked in practice. After these there
is a gallery, which shows images that use the limited palette of the ST in
an excellent way.
Back to the game reviews, Terrorpod is reviewed, which was highly praised,
but I don’t know why… Then there is Addictaball, which I mentioned above
for another magazine. After this, there is some assembly language
programming, then a Forth compiler and a sound sampling article.
The DTP reviewed this month is Timework’s Desktop Publisher, which is as
far as I understand was targetting the entry level market.All in all there
were plenty of professional news for the ST by the end of 1987.
On the Famicom, the Zelda clones were pretty much unstoppable. This month
had Outlanders. There were a few not too bad movie tie-ins, Star Wars,
Superman, Top Gun and Rambo. Exciting Baseball was an important sport title
for the system.
The first Final Fantasy was introduced, and honestly it immediately put up
some tough competition to the Dragon Warrior series. So much so that I
prefer the first FF to the Dragon Warrior series on the NES, though
probably partly because I played this game first.
Megaman was also released this holiday, with some other lesser titles like
Karnov or Empire City or the bad port of Metal Gear. Megaman, in Japan
Rockman was amazine, it was a very good crowning achivement for the end of
1987, even if the difficulty level was way too hard with this game. The
control was tight, the stages were memorably and the enemy design was a
very good one for a limited system such as the Famicom.
Lastly, Wizardry was launched on the console, which made the definite debut
of the series in Japan.
The US also had MegaMan by this time and Wizards and Warriors, so it was
clear what to buy for the children for Christmas.
So this is the end of 1987, which was an explosive year for the game
business. The C64 was still the king in the west, but the first time, that
the alternatives were quite good. The C64 was not particularly good in
anything asides from games. It had limited memory, a very small screen, a
very slow disk drive, so it was natural that business interest faded in the
system.
There were still some titles released on this platform first though. Maniac
Mansion was probably the most famous, and it demonstrated that a complex
modern adventure was definitely possible on the platform. Also, there were
new hights in terms of graphics as The Last Ninja demonstrated.
On the low-end however, the NES was widely available by the end of 1987,
and some very hot games were only available on this platform. Mario,
Metroid, Zelda and Megaman was good enough reason for kids to wish for an
NES. Also there was no disk loading and it was easier to operate the syste
for kids.
On the top-end, 16-bit computers were faster and they had more RAM and
colour, and they could be used for some real work as well. The Mac was
still very expensive, but the others were available for the common people
too.
The PC finally had EGA graphics as common as CGA. This give the platform
colour, and the latest Sierra games all used this capability. The sound was
still horrifing though, with the Roland MT-32 being the only alternative.
For about 1000USD/GBP, one could by a 8MHz 8088 with 2 disc drives and
EGA graphics, and this was a good start for a PC gamer.
The Atari was going strong, they cut the price under the Amiga, it costed
almost as much as the C64, but it had some major issues. Choppy scrolling
and weak sound. However strategy and adventure games did not have issues
with that, and some fairly major releases were available for the platform,
like the King Quest series or Flight Simulator II. Also, the black and
white display was bloody amazing for word processing at the time.
The new contender, the A500 was the ultimate game machine, getting almost
arcade perfect ports. However the original price was still a bit too much.
For the price of the A500 one could by a 1MB ST and an additional disc
drive. The worst thing was though, that software was unable to use the
capabilities of the A500 yet, some were more colourful than the ST, some
had better music, but the big scrolling layers were not as common yet.
If I were to choose something, I would go with a black and white MegaST.
Not a game platform, but 2MB of RAM and a HDD was a very good workplatform
to choose, though as faster PCs started to spread, the speed of this
platform would be inadequate in 2 years.
If gaming considered, the ST was the king of simulators because it had
Flight Simulator II and one of the best versions of Gunship and Silent
Service. For adventure games, it was also the ST, because of the cheaper
price and the high availability of software. The action adventures, like
Cinemaware games were best on the Amiga, the music was important element of
these games. The C64 was still the king of the RPGs with the huge number of
titles available. However the PC was coming up, and I think it was an
equally viewable wargaming platform. The C64 was also king of the
shootem’ups, but the NES was improving on that front and the best
platforming action was definitely on the NES. 1988 started in a way that
all available platform had its own advantage.
oldegames 