Features Index
1 - Amanda's Diary
2 - Support Scene
3 - Cartoon strip
4 - Main Menu
Amanda's Diary
With great dismay I'd taken back my fourth copy of D&H's Football Director 2 to the fourth different shop I'd bought it from and still it didn't work. Yes I had got the right +2 version thanks very much! If anybody has a working copy of this game please sell it to me....So with a refund slip in my hand I studied the shelves for a replacement. Match of the Day? Hmmmm, Zeppelin have put out some crap in the past.
I settled for FM3 as the previous two versions had been pretty enjoyable in their day. On the bus home I kept thinking how long it had taken this program to get into the shops. It had been demoed as far back as YS Sep 91. Back home I loaded it up in 48 just like the instructions said and the old anticipation level remained high. The 'manual' was tiny and the bytes title over-wrote the loading screen.
I don't know about you lot but these are not very good signs of a quality program as far as I'm concerned. I started feeling just a little uneasy in the gut dept. The game loaded first time and presented a pleasing menu. Being up to date it was nice not to be faced with Newport County again but it seems Aldershot were still with us. I wondered how much extra memory was needed to include a team/name editor. In 48K then and its taking me ages to click onto the right icon as the highlighter is jumping two at a time (not very logical). Oh and the transfer market doesn't seem to be working at all. So I re-load the game in 128 mode with my flag at half mast and await developments. Oh look, there seem to be funny moving lines over everything. The game is working properly now but I think this screen corruption could get a football fan down after a while. I then loaded the game with various interfaces, joysticks and finally standing on a chair with a slice of spam clenched between my bum cheeks and it still didn't work as it should. Did Addictive release a game that didn't look finished or work on certain Spectrums? Does it work on any Spectrum? And does Kevin Toms still have that stupid beard?
Support Scene
This issue we try out PRISM PD. The Spectrum now has quite a healthy PD scene which seemed to spring from nowhere. One of the biggest at the moment is Prism who recently merged with Total PD. The deal is you send off a blank cassette, disk or microdrive plus £2 to cover expenses and you choose up to 12 pieces of software from the extensive list. Various utilities, music and graphic demos, clip art, digitized pictures and even arcade games are all available.
I duly choose twelve titles (mainly from the utility section) and sent off my tape and £2 in a good old jiffy bag. Within the promised 6-7 days my jiffy returned. All the programs loaded first time and very good they were too. My only gripe being that the 48 FILE COPIER didn't seem to want to work on my +2 but this may all be totally normal! The HEADERREAD programs are recommended. Most of the Demos mentioned in YS are available from Prism too and I'll be ordering those myself quite soon! I'm not quite sure what sort of person wants assorted digitized pictures of East Enders and Neighbours characters (or quite what you'd DO with them) but PRISM has a few... I much prefer a game called BasicBing! With a title like that its just got to be great!. We've been told by our lawyers (ha ha) to say that we have no personal connection with Prism or any of the services that we will be featuring in subsequent Support Scenes. So if we say that your service is shoddy crap you can sue us if you like... well you can sue our mate Richard Waaaah if you prefer because he owns a house and loads of records and stuff. We've got sod all. Honest. (DAVE)
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