Retro Gamer

RETRO GAMER is well into year 26 of an incredible run. It feels like it should be one of the oldest computer magazine in the world, let alone the UK, and yet it turns out to be quite a long way down the list. EDGE and PC GAMER both started in 1993 and are still going. Then you move on to the magazines no one (ie, me) has ever heard of, like APC (AUSTRALIAN PERSONAL COMPUTER) which started in 1980 and is still going strong. Then you step back and consider non-computing titles like PRIVATE EYE (1961), or the RADIO TIMES (1923), or NEW STATESMAN (1915) and suddenly RETRO GAMER looks like a positive sapling in a forest of old growth.

Mosaic Publishing

187 Upper Street, London N1 1RQ

"What's the oldest computer game based on a book? This is obviously a trick question because I expect people to say The Hobbit (Melbourne House 1982) or if they are feeling clever Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Supersoft, 1981) which was released with the permission of Pan Books. The actual boring correct answer is probably Space War which was inspired by science fiction stories including the Lensmen series by E. E. "Doc" Smith. This game was playable on a PDP-1 mainframe and written in 1961; I said it was a trick question [1].

Gargoyle Games

74 King Street, Dudley, DY2

TO THE STARS!

Birmingham, generally lagging behind Manchester and Liverpool for games programming is now making a sterling effort to catch up. Brand new company Gargoyle Games, has launched its first game for the 48K Spectrum. It's called Ad Astra (to the stars), and is a 3D shoot em up like you've never seen before. The 3D perspective view is quite astonishing - see the review in this issue. 

Bubble Bus Software

87 High Street, Tonbridge

This is why I'm not allowed to make jokes.

Enterprise / Entersoft

31-37 Hoxton Street, London, N1 

Once upon a time there was a company called Samurai Computers Ltd. Unfortunately for boring business reasons it had to change its name to Elan. This name also didn't stick and the company briefly toyed with the name Flan but everybody laughed. So the company changed its name again, to Enterprise. And then it finally released the computer it had been developing for nearly three years.