| Gremlin |
Nick Faldo contemplates oblivion as his Argus spin-off seems set to follow his British Open hopes down the plughole. |
THE GREAT boxing contest enters its second round as the youthful Elite claims victory for Frank Bruno. It seems a taxi was hired to convey 1,500 extra copies of the game to distributor Micro Dealer who had sold out. The kindergarten was so pleased about being able to afford a taxi that it wrote a press release to inform the world.
Milk prefect Steve Wilcox says Bomber Bruno's game is going to be "one of our best-selling games since Airwolf." Shouldn't be difficult to beat the sales of the appalling Dunlop commercial 911TS ...
Meanwhile Activision, purveyor of American Junk Games to gullible Brits, has signed up world lightweight champion Barry McGuigan for World Championship Boxing. Barry must have been feeling left out as positively the only major sporting figure with no computer game to his name.
Now he's got his big chance, and Activision win this month's Brazen Backslapper's Award for its proud claim that the game is a 'totally new concept'.
Spectrum users are unlikely to feel so enthusiastic after being battered into submission by Elite, Alligata, Gremlin Graphics and the other 734 software houses who reckon a black eye and a thick ear is where it's at this summer ...
Gremlin was delighted to receive a large scroll through the post the other day entitled Cow Boils Head. The unusual missive tells the story of a cow which forced a woman to boil her head in a bucket.
Veteran Gremlin fans will immediately recognise the delicate touch of Geoff Davis and Micro-Arts, who have devised a program which chums out endless variations on the tale.
Micronetters may soon be compelled to stomach it, as the high priests of pretension have taken 200 teletext pages to purvey their manic drivel. "We don't want to totally freak people out at first," says the suspiciously mild-voiced Geoff ...
Clare 'ligger' Edgeley lets off steam after tanking up at Hewson's Southern Belle launch. As usual, nobody knows why she's giggling. |
'A man who knows his chips' is how his publishers describe Peter Ellis, instigator of the Home Tutor course in computers. Ellis used to work in the rag trade, but if you pay him the princely sum of £131 you get 12 monthly lessons on tape or disc designed to teach you how to write 'programmes'.
It is intriguing to see that the course is elsewhere said to teach pupils 'how to design their own computer systems'. Move over Sir Clive ...
Deal of the decade has been struck by Mike Daniels of Global Software with none other than Mad Medven, creator of the notorious Golden Turkey Film Awards. Devotees of Channel 4 may recall a series of the most dreadful films of all time. Now the rights to the series have been bought by Daniels, we can expect to see Attack of the Mushroom People appearing shortly.
Unfortunately there are no plans yet to computerise The Creeping Terror, in which a giant carpet consumes the entire Horlicks-crazed clientele of a small discotheque, but Gremlin reckons there's no sin in hoping ...
Whatever became of The Neverending Story, David Ward's epic game of the film of the translation of the obscure German fairy story?
The Empire's reluctance to release the game is because court advisors reckon they'd better wait for the film to hit the provinces first. Considering how the movie bombed in London, perhaps they'd be better off going for the punters and to hell with the spin-off ...
"Products," says old Incorruptible Scolding. "Gremlin should write more about products." Gremlin obliges with a tremendously useless Fact courtesy of Scotch, which makes sticky tape and cassettes and stuff. "The UK consumer spends more on videotape than on packet tea, overcoats, wholemeal bread, yogurt, flour, DIY tools, cinema visits or underpants," claims Scotch.
Incredible. A million unsold copies of any grotty game which the UK consumer buys less of than videotape, to anyone who can tell Gremlin why the tape merchants wanted to send Sinclair User the information in the first place ...
Finally, it was nice to see young Fergus McNeill in the office the other day. Fergus is a bit of a cult, what with the Holy Joystick series of adventures and Bored of the Rings winning a Sinclair User classic.
Fans of Fergus and Delta 4 may have heard of Judith, featured on Skeptical, a pastiche teletext magazine thrown in free with Bored of the Rings. Fergus freely admits that Judith has been one of the driving forces behind his career in software, and let Gremlin have a quick peek at the photo he carries close to his chest.
Gremlin now understands why Fergus spends 95 per cent of his time writing adventure games ...