Your Sinclair

Crash, Newsfield’s Spectrum magazine from Ludlow, handed the Spectrum version eighty-nine percent and a Crash Smash in issue forty-four.

Your Sinclair, Dennis Publishing’s, uh, Spectrum title, stamped MegaGame with nine out of ten in issue twenty-two.

A Smash badge and a MegaGame stamp in the same month is the Spectrum desk cheering at full volume.

Did the other Spectrum titles climb that high as well?

Pretty much.

Uh, Sinclair User, uh, EMAP’s, uh, Spectrum magazine went eight out of ten.

The Games Machine, uh, Newsfield’s brand-new multi-format title launching that autumn, scored eighty-two in its first issue.

ACE Future’s new multi-format magazine, um, loved the Spectrum build at, uh, eight hundred and forty-five out of a thousand.

No, I imagine Crash goes the same way.

I don't know how small Crash gets, but Your Sinclair got down to 24 pages before they mercy killed it.

Ooh.

[laughs]

But yeah, also, um, they'd still had the magazines.

They still had Your Sinclair.

They still had Crash, still had Sinclair User.

But by that time they were giving away a lot of full games, wasn't it, on the cassettes?

Heavens, yes

...

Your Sinclair.

[laughs] Yeah.

They gave the Amiga version 93.

Uh, Your Sinclair went 90 and a Mega Game.

Future had bought it, um, that spring, and the, uh, news pages joked they'd meant to buy a Sinclair C5 and got the magazine by mistake.

Buying a magazine by mistake instead of a C5 is very Your Sinclair, Lee, and honestly it was the better deal.

93 and 90 are huge scores though, so I'm guessing somebody on the other side of the newsagent didn't agree.

Quite a few didn't.

Uh, Crash, which had started putting whole games on the cover the year before to keep up with Your Sinclair, gave the Spectrum 174.

Uh, Sinclair User, uh, the eMap mag, uh, gave it 75 and said there wasn't a speck of originality in it.

Crash, uh, the Spectrum mag out of Ludlow, first on sale back in February '84, gave it ninety percent and a Crash Smash.

Uh, Sinclair User, uh, eMap's Spectrum title, um, and, um, uh, the oldest of the bunch said eighty-one, and Your Sinclair from Dennis Publishing went seventy-seven.

So depending on your machine and your mag, uh, Final Fight was either a classic or a stinker.

stinker.I love that, Lee, because it means two kids in the same playground could read totally different verdicts and both be right about their own machine.

Over on the Spectrum, Sinclair User, the long-running Spectrum monthly from EMAP, gave it 10 out of 10 and its Classic Award.

Your Sinclair, the cheeky, uh, Spectrum magazine from Dennis Publishing, made it a mega game with nine out of 10.

10 out of 10 from Sinclair User and a mega game from Your Sinclair.

That's about as good as it gets on the Spectrum, but I've got a feeling one of the big names wasn't quite so sure.

Am I right?

Time for our scores then.

Quick reminder of the magazines.

Zzap on ninety-four, Sinclair User on ten, Your Sinclair on nine, Crash on seventy-seven, The Games Machine on ninety for the Amiga, and, uh, Amiga Computing on seventy.

It's possible for him to collect a bell which panics the guards and renders them vulnerable, exactly like the, uh, power pill in Pac-Man.

The title was available on the ZX Spectrum, the Commodore 64, and the Dragon 32, but the ZX Spectrum version was marketed and distributed by Sinclair themselves.

So he was kind of like a mascot for the Spectrum itself as well.

After this, in 1983, you had Horace Goes Skiing, where Horace must cross a dangerous road that's full of traffic.

Basically, it's Frogger.

Once you get across, you rent a pair of skis, then you get back over the road, and you then try and navigate a ski course.

This title, again, was available on the ZX Spectrum, the Commodore 64, and the Dragon 32, with Sinclair themselves distributing the Spectrum version and Melbourne House distributing the Commodore 64 and Dragon 32 versions.

This was followed in 1983 by Horace and the Spiders, which is sort of a platform game.