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By Lloyd Mangram
March
1987
Issue 38
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The
March cover was a masterpiece of magical atmosphere,
a theme in blue mist. As usual time was a problem. The
subject was to be a composite image to suit the month's
two Smashes, Feud and Ranarama. Oliver
opted for lightly painting vague outlines, then airbrushing
blue and black over the surface, leaving himself with
the task of picking out highlights and the lightning
with a brush in white. The accuracy of the line is hard
to achieve but Oliver makes it look easy - and that
is his wizardry.
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 Some
of the big software houses seemed to be coming unstuck with
the new year; US Gold faltered with their licensed Masters
Of The Universe (Gremlin is making another attempt now)
which received only 28%. Melbourne House did little better
with Bazooka Bill (42%) and just as badly with 2000AD's
Judge Dredd - they were working on Inspector Gadget
too, but that would never see the light of day; Konami's Jail
Break was disastrous (47%); Electric Dreams's ancient
zapper Tempest raised only an average flicker at 62%;
US Gold tried ten-pin bowling, but Tenth Frame only
knocked down 56% of its skittles; Leisure Genius finally made
it out with Scalextric, and that got 57%. It was left
to Steve Turner's Ranarama for Hewson and a £1.99
budget game, Feud, on Mastertronic's Bulldog label
to win the Smashes.
What was going wrong? Hard to say, but the failed games had
a few things in common: a rushed appearance, little content
and often very poor graphics. We wondered whether Christmas
had knocked the stuffing out of everyone.
Things were little better in Ludlow. For several months it
had become clear that advertising revenue in the Amstrad CPC
field had almost dried up because the sales of games simply
didn't warrant software houses spending money to promote them.
So AMTIX! was badly hit financially, and during early February
it became obvious the magazine could no longer survive the
way it was. An attempt was made to change its nature dramatically,
but forecasts showed that wouldn't work either. Newsfield's
management decided to close AMTIX! down, and its editorial
team of five was told the bad news - they would become redundant
after their April issue went to press in mid-March. Only Richard
Eddy would be retained to work on CRASH.
But meanwhile CRASH had its problems too. The experiences
of February's issue were repeated, with Roger Kean being hauled
away from LM to help put together the reviews at the last
moment. He was alarmed at the way they were being written:
this was not the fault of the reviewing team - the reviewers'
sole responsibility was to play the games and write a short
critical comment on each - but derived from the lack of editorial
control. Roger and Ciarán spent a fraught weekend furiously
rewriting just about everything, and then Roger spent the
next two days in film planning, helping finish off the very
late issue.
It seemed like the last straw, and once CRASH had gone to
press, Newsfield reluctantly decided some rearrangement was
essential. The financial problem of LM was another story,
but editorially it was running very smoothly, so Roger Kean
returned to King Street and once again took up editorship
of CRASH, the magazine he had helped found. Lee and Hannah
left in the reshuffle, and Graeme Kidd was moved to Gravel
Hill to edit LM.
The full-time team Roger now inherited included myself (also
doing other jobs), Ciarán Brennan, who became Assistant
Editor, Richard Eddy and Ben Stone. For three days a week
Ian Phillipson came in to write 'intros', the long descriptive
sections of the reviews. He had been hired just before Roger
took over and was still uncertain how the reviews should be
tackled, but it wouldn't be long before Ian became an essential
part of the new CRASH. The young part-timers included Mike
Dunn and Paul Sumner, but there were a few others waiting
to try their hands as well. We all got ready for a revitalised
CRASH.
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