You know that you are in trouble when your competitor sells its new flagship cheaper than your old computer. This happened to Atari in 83 when the Commodore 64 was available for a mere 350£, and the still 16k Atari 800 was trading for 400£. At the same time in CVG some reader was pointing out, how inferior the ZX Spectrum was compared to this machine, but we all know that in the long run, the price difference justified the ZX Spectrum‘s existance.
Graphics… yummm…
The Seventh Empire play-by-mail game is heavily advertised this month in CVG. On the computer game front we can see more and more ZX Spectrum releases. I am not saying that many of these are quality releases, but the market was definitely expanding for the little Speccy. It is interesting to see that many games already require 48k, which I think is a definitely good thing. In the end more RAM means that there is more gameplay and information which can be put into work. There is a text adventure released for the system, called The Hobbit, which is based on Tolkien’s story, and with 48k and the Speccy’s advanced capabilities, it displays graphics next to its textual descriptions. It is not a new thing though, but something which turns into a standard around this time, and something which was very difficult to achieve under 16k.
Rising support for the Atari
Over the sea, the Atari was still gaining ground. Among others, SSI was considering porting more and more games for it. SEUIS(Apple II/48k) tried to combined strategy and arcade this month, Armor Assault(Atari/48k) provided gameplay for the strategy hungry on the Atari and SSI released their ship designing/ space combat game Cosmic Balance for both the Atari and the Apple II.
oldegames 