DOMARK, the software house which thinks style is what you sit on in a country field, has withdrawn its gross ad for Friday the 13th. Not, alas, because it's had a sudden and uncharacteristic surge of guilty conscience, but because hordes of mums and dads think it's nasty, violent dreck.
The pic on the cassette inlay will also be changed, according to Mark and Dominic, Domark's revolting owners - Gremlin, February. Pity. At least the original artwork put people off buying the game ...
Meanwhile a new tasteless ad arrives in the form of US Gold's Legend of the Amazon Women. Never in the history of hype has such an ill-proportioned bundle of breasts, thighs, buttocks and rampant molars appeared on page three of a reputable computer magazine.
Is this a new trend in advertising - producing offensive pictures in order to cancel them in a blaze of publicity when folks complain? Or has US Drool spent so much on advertising games which it never produces that it can't afford decent artists any more? Gremlin thinks V should be told.
Many thanks to mad Glaswegian software house Talent who sent us all a haggis with which to celebrate Burns Night. Opinion differed on how to cook the reeking beast. Ad manager Louise 'WPC' Fanthorpe removed the outer skin, fried half, grilled half and consumed it with chutney. John 'disgusting' Gilbert bunged the whole thing into a frying pan and ate it "like a hamburger, with fried eggs on the side". (Some of us didn't get one at all! Ed)
This is no more than you'd expect from Gilbo, who thinks James Herbert is a writer and believes the sun shines out of Alan Sugar's three-inch disc drives ...
Incorruptible Bill Scolding hasn't entirely missed out on freebies, though. He's currently sporting a rather natty black plastic bobbie's helmet and running around shouting "You're nicked, sonny" at innocent visitors.
The helmet is not entirely unconnected to a new Mirrorsoft game, The Force. This is a strategy game about policing the inner cities and has the seal of approval of the Met itself.
Apparently if you maintain too high a profile - i.e. send hordes of killer dogs into large housing estates - you lose respect. If you do nothing at all, though, the crime rate mounts. All very educational. It sounds a riot, muses Gremlin ...
Oh dear. Nearly halfway through the column and it's still all so sordid. Brazen Backslappers of the Month Award goes to a coy piece of drivel about Posthorn, a new release from Satyr Software, and no, Gremlin ain't saying where you can buy it. According to designer Ian Paterson it's the 'first ever naughty computer game', combining 'the excitement of Strip Poker with the fun of Postman's Knock'.
Ian says the Spectrum persuades players to take their clothes off and then leave the room. "It's not up to me what people do outside the room ", says Ian. Gremlin remains unimpressed but supposes it beats throwing the car keys onto the Burgundy Axminster and diving in.
Anyway, it's not the first naughty computer game. Gremlin well remembers Soho Sex Quest from educational software house Malan. But there must be older stuff around. A particularly grubby fiver to the reader who can shed light on the earliest known smutty computer game ...
Talking of which, congrats to John Gledhill who sends copious extracts from the thoughts of Chairman Fergus as encoded into Bored of the Rings. Fergus' message to the world was in fact "Death to the world doom and gloom be happy if you can" - Gremlin, January. John also includes various coded protestations of love to various women called Trevor and Derek. Delicacy forbids delving further ...
Hot on the heels of John's grubby fiver flies a crumpled rubber cheque to H J Gallacher, who has solved the mystery of the first computer-generated screen kiss - Gremlin, February. He tells a tale from prehistory of the Atari game console and a production called Superman. It seems Superman has to kiss Lois Lane in order to regain his powers after tripping over some kryptonite. Yecchh ...
The infamous Clive print awarded to Sinclair User for the Biggest Official Litigious Lawsuit involving Computer Known Subjects. Incorruptible Scolding has waited years for this, and would like to thank Crash magazine for making it all possible. |
Meanwhile Gremlin wonders what Beyond thinks of it all, given it has the UK rights to the musclebound hunk. Not that it should affect Spectrum owners. According to weekly trade paper Microscope the Spectrum version isn't worth bothering about because "It's atrocious". Who told the energetic hacks? Why, Beyond itself, of course ...
Which brings us to the coveted Scooby awards - Gremlin, February. Readers will recall that these go to games which are "beyond criticism of any kind since nobody's actually seen them except in advertisements". D W May writes in to nominate three US Gold games - Fort Apocalypse, Up'n'Down and F15 Strike Eagle. Those were all advertised in January 1985 and have never been heard of since.
Between them, US Gold and Ocean appear to be cornering the market in the handsomely mounted gold-finished fake doggy-doo trophies. And the stream continues. Watch out or not, as the case may be - for Superbowl, again from Ocean. This American football game was advertised last month for release on January 14.
Gremlin discovers that the programmers wanted to watch the actual match before they finished the game. To learn the rules, perhaps ...?
Finally, you'll have seen Chris 'lunchbreaks' Bourne getting all arty-farty about iD elsewhere in the magazine. ID's the first release on CRL's Nu Wave Label, specially formed for what Clement 'sex symbol' Chambers calls punk and Ian 'Rambo' Ellery calls "something quite revolutionary, never been burble, burble etc."
Gremlin went straight to the forked tongue of designer Mel Croucher, loony co-creator of the Piman. The ageing architect says he's doing a new Commodore game as well, called Darkness at Dawn, an adventure with no text and no graphics. Apparently the entire thing is based on sound effects.
Commode users love this sort of thing. It fortifies their belief that you don't have to be able to read or write to feel moderately successful. Educated Spectrum buffs may scoff, but there's many a poor underprivileged cretin out there needing comfort. Next month - the loneliness of the cut-price Electron owner ...