From Vultures to Vampires Volume Three by David John Pleasance and Trevor Dickinson - Book Review

It has arrived. Finally. The culmination of a Kickstarter project that successfully closed on the 19th of July 2020, From Vultures to Vampires Volume Three is not the book that backers originally pledged for. Nope, that particular tome was delivered back in October 2021. The second volume arrived in July this year, and now, after a chase up email prompted by another backer sharing a message from David Pleasance on the original Kickstarter's comments page, here we are. Was it worth the wait?

Short answer is "mostly." For the £33 paid (including delivery), this 326 page book brings us the Amiga (and wider Commodore story, cos you've got to fill that page count somehow) story from 2010 up to 2023, completing the saga begun in those dark days of 1994. It very much follows the pattern set by the first two entries, and you still get some adverts at the back. 

As you can see from the seven chapters, it's a pretty comprehensive coverage of the various initiatives, hardware, and developments that have featured the Amiga (whatever that name actually means now). It's well written for the most part and once again has plenty of imagery. Individuals are evenly handled (as far as I can tell), and whatever your position on the legal fights within the Amiga community, sides are not chosen either way. Basically, if you've got the first two books, the third will be an essential addition and it's an enjoyable read in its own right. But it's not flawless. And neither is the trilogy as a whole.

There is padding, and a fair bit of it. Over the trilogy, there's a ton of imagery, the inclusion of which is questionable. Three pictures of an individual when most just get one (and pictures of some who get literally a one sentence mention). David with a C64 Mini. A Philips CDi. And the focus on side products (C64 Mini, the MEGA65 and general FPGA devices) means that, since the authors announced volume two (and later the third one), it feels like a serious effort has been made to bulk things up a bit. Let us not forget the adverts at the back either. 

And that really is the crux of this review. This book works, but I really do question the need for a trilogy. Yeah, they started the Kickstarter saying that they were planning one book, but to over shoot the expected page count by two and a half times is quite the feat. If you cut out the ads, extra pictures (as noted above, and the tangents to the story - do we need to know about Penti Kouri's son, or the City of Kent Arena that wasn't even built until way after Amiga's involvement?), then I can see a way that this could, with proper planning, have been a two book set. And yes, gentle reader, this does sour my opinion of the trilogy and the authors slightly. 

My original Kickstarter pledge was for £30 plus £6 p&p, which ended up totalling £93.50. If I'd known that the total price would nearly triple over three years, I probably wouldn't have pledged. But once caught up in it, I went along with the ride, and thus became one of the many enablers of the odyssey. Oh, I have three in-depth and informative books, it's just that if I'm going to pay for something, I'd really like to know upfront the total price. Maybe this was an experiment for Books As A Service? No-one tell John Riccitiello!

But seriously, after a couple of years of drip fed updates, requests for extra cash outside of the initial funding process, and some downright weird behaviour (asking backers to complete a spreadsheet via Facebook was a new one for me), all three books are here, even if there had to be a final chase up at the end. Pointer for future projects David: wherever you announce updates, use the original platform too and don't rely on backers to share your communications. 

Anyway, a rant or two ago, I said that if you had the first two volumes, then this is an essential addition. But what if you're coming to this without any prior buy in? Should you? Well, that's up to you, but since each volume retails for £35 plus p&p on top (£6 per book for UK buyers, more for outside the UK), putting aside the above rants, then no, I wouldn't recommend them. £35 is at the upper end of niche, and if you choose all three, then £105 plus £18 p&p is a huge chunk of change. You could comfort yourself with the cheaper ebook option (which I know required work to design but carry zero on-going physical costs) which come in at £15 a piece. I'm sorry, but that's robbery. I mean, hey, your book gents, you sell it for what you want, but £45 for three ebooks frankly smells of profiteering, especially considering that their design costs for book one were covered by the Kickstarter, and the follow on books were at the very least partially funded externally of Kickstarter utilising the existing backers. Oh, and at some point, the ebooks will be the only buying option.

It took a long time, but they got there in the end, and this well-produced tome will sit next to its compatriots ready for future reference. If you're interested in getting this volume (or the whole set), David Pleasance has his own website for you to hand money over. But before you do, one final note:

There was going to be a follow up post about the Kickstarter and how things escalated over the last three years, but you know what, David J Pleasance and Trevor Dickinson have finally delivered on the original premise - just over a much longer period and at much greater cost to the backers. I don't agree as to how they've done it, and I am as culpable as any other backer for feeding the money machine, but the books are here. It's been a learning experience to say the least, and I'd be very wary about any future projects the authors wish to crowdfund, as without doubt, out of over thirty or so successful campaigns I have backed over the last three and a half years, this has been the most poorly organised of the lot. 

Curious Video Game Machines by Lewis Packwood - Book Review

Over the last decade, there has been an explosion of interest in the history of video games. This shouldn't be surprising as although the mainstream market is barely passed its fiftieth birthday, it's certainly been eventful, even if it does become a little tiresome when (mainly) US based writers/content creators et al bang on about the Great Video Game Crash of '83 - in the UK and elsewhere, that was a fart in the wind. My point is that many stories have been told about the early days of mass market video games, so is it reasonable to wonder what Lewis Packwood can bring to the discussion with this new release from the White Owl imprint of Pen and Sword Books?

As you peruse the contents page below, you may be thinking, maybe not. After all, the Enterprise 8-bit micro has received a bit of historical interest (from UK retro gaming people at least) so its inclusion here might just be a rinse and repeat chapter. 

But did you know what happened to the Enterprise after it bombed in the UK? Or the second life of the Amiga CD32? Or that the Casio Loopy was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to specifically targeted gaming hardware? And what fresh hell was the Avatar Machine? You'll know exactly what by the time you've finished this book. 

And that's the thing, whereas the subjects covered may be familiar (to a degree) to some, the author's research expands those stories far beyond what you may have already read, seen or heard. It gets better though, as Mr Packwood covers kit that has had little to no mainstream coverage.

A prime example is the Galaksija, Yugoslavia's home built micro that still has a following to this day. Everything in that chapter was a wonder - here is a machine the story of which deserves to be told, and it is told extremely well, as are the stories of the people behind it. Another chapter features the Kimtanktics, an ingenious and highly specialised way to bring the table top war gaming into the high tech of the 1970's. Their inclusion in this book meant that this was the first time I was introduced to either machine.

There are some real gems in here and the author has done a fantastic job in bringing the various computers to life. There are plenty of photographs and screenshots, and yeah, I did head off to YouTube to see some of the games in action - the VHS flight games are... well, of their time... Another bonus was that the chapter on the Barcode Battler not only (belatedly) justified my decision not to ask for one for Christmas thirty years ago, and it also clearly explains the concept of the hardware and of barcodes themselves.

From the foreword provided by Time Extension's Editor-in-Cheif, , to the section on recommended reading and the nine pages of endnotes, Curious Video Game Machines is a highly entertaining read. The author has succeeded brilliantly in shining a light on some of the most obscure gaming machines from the earliest days of the hobby. Some were technical dead ends, others quick money grabs. Yet still more were simply unheard of due to either their country of origin or pure niche appeal. But here, in yet another worthy White Owl publication, you will learn about these, either for the first time or in expanding your understanding of what they achieved. Put simply, if the history of video games interests you in the slightest, you need to pick up a copy of this book.

Speaking of which you can do so directly from the publisher's website, as well as the usual physical and online bookstores. You can also follow the author on X (@LewisPackwood).

RPM - Issue One - Review

RPM: The Unofficial Retro PlayStation Magazine is the latest creation by Sandeep Rai, a name you might be familiar with if you're a fan of the PlayStation Vita or the PlayStation 3, as he has previously written tomes about those consoles. With RPM, however, Mr Rai has chosen to focus on the wider gaming catalogues of every Sony console from the original PlayStation to the PS3, as well as Sony's handhelds. Funded via Kickstarter, the well packaged first issue arrived in a timely manner, so let's have a look at what he's offering. 

The first feature is a round up of the launch titles for the PS1 for both North America and Europe. Each game is given space for a brief write up, a handful of screenshots, and a couple even get case art too. This is followed by a short history of Gran Turismo over the generations, with twelve pages dedicated to the racing sim. There are plenty of screenshots, and the text isn't just a puff piece - criticisms of the series are noted. 

Syphon Filter gets some time in the spotlight next with an eight page interview with lead designer Richard Ham, followed by a two page review of the first title in the series as it's available on the PS+ service. The interview is really interesting and provides some great insight into not only the trials of a games developer in the 1990's, but also the hazards of developing a title in a specific genre when a bigger name is also due out. It's a series worthy of a re-master/re-make, although to be fair, the controls would probably be an area requiring improvement. But I digress. 

There are four more PS+ reviews, covering The Legend of Dragoon, Killzone: Liberation, Rain, and God of War: Ascension. A good mix of genres and periods, each is scored out of ten. It's not all older titles though, as a Retro Revival piece brings Ratatan to the fore. A spiritual sequel to the Patapon series, this new release is due out in April 2025 following a very successful Kickstarter campaign. 

The Five Times Table feature covers the most notable games from five to twenty five years ago on the various Sony platforms. Great for those who wish to reminisce, less so for those who are reminded that Metal Gear Solid hit the PlayStation 25 years ago. Pass me the Seven Seas cod liver oil and Ibuprofen!

A second interview takes up six pages as Nagato, one of the developers for Sony's online community Home, details the origins of the project. This is also an extremely informative interview and more than justifies its inclusion in this issue. To finish off the magazine, we have two retrospectives: Ultimate Spider-Man and Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe. 

As an extra, a Photo Mode booklet was also included, twenty eight pages of rather excellent captures from Spider-Man and Spider-Man: Miles Morales. It's a nice add-on.

The physical quality of the mag is faultless and the design is spot on too - not too busy yet not leaving massive amounts of blank space either - credit to Jason Maddison for that. As for the magazine as a whole, this is a cracking first issue - varied in topics and well written. 

Fans of the printed word should rejoice at RPM. I look forward to seeing what Sandeep and team have in store for future issues and I will be happily backing future Kickstarters. You can pick up your own copy of RPM from Sandeep's Etsy store here. 

Magazines of Yesteryear - MacUser Vol. 9 No. 1 - 8 Jan 1993

To 1993 now and a change in format as we delve into the pages of a fortnightly publication for the Apple Mac. Yes, gentle reader, thirty years ago, the computer magazine market could handle a fortnightly title for a format that, whilst not quite niche, was still pretty small compared to the Windows/DOS market, especially n consumer circles. It wasn't until the launch of the Mac Classic in 1990 that you wouldn't need to spend four figures to join the Mac party, and with an ABC figure of 30,072 for Jan-Jun 1992), it seems that Apple's attempt at bringing the Mac to the masses had kind of worked. But how were things going in early '93?

Well, this issue is a bit of a side step from the usual order of business. There's still the regular news section, and the labs feature is about the entire Mac range, but the rest of the 124 pages are pretty much dedicated to a buyers' guide for current and prospective MacUsers (couldn't resist, sorry). 

The editorial focuses on an early demo of the Newton technology and a comment that there were 60 new computer models expected that year. 60! That's an insane number, then and now. But as Apple proved in the mid-90's, when the going got tough, the tough spaffed even more cash on trying to sell kit that just confused buyers. But I digress.

£399 plus VAT for a Classic - still not a bargain.

In the news, Apple were launching a Colour Printer for £1,995 (£1,495 to education buyers), along with a Colour OneScanner for £1,145/£845 respectively. There's a piece about a delay in deliveries, with Apple having something like a $1bn order backlog. Education purchasers benefitted from a price cut for many models, whilst the Mac Classic and LC ranges were in short supply after pre-Christmas price cuts saw the former hit just £399. A bargain (for a Mac), but as the group test will show, not a bargain in general.

Ah, the group test - every Mac model available in the UK at that time, from the Classic to the IIvx, Quadra's 700 and 950, plus the ever-growing portable range - Powerbooks 145, 160 and 180, plus the then brand new Powerbook Duo 210 and 230. Each machine range gets a bit of a write up, there are group tests (the synthetic benchtests using the Classic as a base of 1, a feature table and a final report card. And what a report card it is.

The 68000-powered Classic was the cheapest of the desktops and for good reason. Slow, mono only and lacking expansion options, it might have had a list price of just £525 but it wasn't worth it. Just like the base Amiga A600 could be had for about the same money (but including separate colour monitor) that machine had been superseded by the 68020-toting A1200. The Classic was obsolete tech, as was arguably any 68000 powered desktop in 1993. If you wanted some sweet 68020 moves, the Mac LC was your only bet in the entire range, and with a price of £825 including a monitor, was worthy of consideration but for one thing - every other Mac and portable Mac were packing at least a 68030, so the base LC model was likely soon to meet its end. 

Both the Classic II and LC II rocked 16MHz 68030's, so your choice was simple - mono and no expansion with the Classic II, colour and only limited expansion with the LCII. Prices were around £700 and £925 respectively. Essentially though, these were just tasters for the poor people. What Apple really wanted you to do was get on board the Mac II range. The Mac IIsi and IIvi occupied the £1500-£2000 price point, whereas the IIci and IIvx were £2,200 plus. If money really wasn't an issue, the Quadra 700 started at just over £3,500, and the top of the range Quadra 950 was £5k plus. That's more than £10k today, adjusted for inflation!

Portables were split into two ranges - the Powerbooks 145/160/180 and the Powerbook Duo 210/230. The former were the main sellers, offering a low/mid/high mix of spec for £1395/£1695/£2645 respectively for their base configs. Colour wasn't an option yet but that would soon change. It was the Duos, however, that were really interesting. Take a subnotebook style Mac, slot it into a dock and you had a desktop Mac that was also a portable. The Duo's were priced in line with mid-tier Powerbook 160 (£1,695 and £1,925) but to partake in the technological raison d'etre, you need the accessories. The Floppy adaptor (as they contained no removable drive as standard) was £90. A MiniDock would set you back £395, whilst the full Dock was an eye-watering £845, and that didn't include a monitor, keyboard or mouse - items that were essential given the whole Duo slotted into the dock like a video cassette. Sure, the Dock offered expansion options beyond even some of the desktop models, but a Duo 210 suitably kitted out would take over £3k from your bank balance.

Naturally, having a computer meant that you'd need accessories and software, and this is where some of the most dramatic changes in pricing have occurred since the early 90's are shown in the Buyer's Guide.

It has to be remembered that MacUser catered not only for personal users but also for professional and semi professional bods. This explains the prices quoted for some of the kit in the Guide. For example, the cheapest black and white scanner listed comes in at £795. Want a flatbed scanner? £1000. Many options head into five figures, with the most expensive coming in at £55,450!!!

Yeah...

Printers didn't seem so bad, crapping out at about £18k for a top of the range specialist mono job, although most were low four figures. Want colour though? IRIS offered two 300dpi colour models in this guide: the 3024 PS for £81k and the £3047 for £112k! Again, consumer level stuff was much, much cheaper, but a high quality HP DeskWriter was still £425. The initial price barrier for these things was much higher back in '93. Storage was much the same story - hard drives per se weren't covered as there were too many options, but removable drives were: the Iomega Lasersafe erasable 650Mb drive was a couple of golden beer tokens off £4k. And yes, I am reliably informed that beer was around £1.50 a pint at our local, despite me been a couple of years shy of proper (Sorry, Eric!).

Monitors were also something else - but then this was the golden age of the cathode ray tube. A "hi-res" 14-inch Apple RGB display was listed at £395 (640x480 resolution - so high it'd give you a nosebleed!), the 16-inch model was £995 (832x624 plus audio connectors), whereas the 21-inch model cost £2,695! That gave you 1152x870. Pricey, but compared to the 9-inch squint box Classic, pure nirvana. 

Of course, it is easy to jest now. technology has advanced, prices have tumbled and specifications that looked tremendous thirty years ago now seem charmingly quaint/how the fuck did we live with that (delete as applicable). 

Software next and this, more than anything else, demonstrates how times have changed. I am typing this on a 2020 Macbook Air M1, and with it came literally every application I could possibly want aside from games. Back in '93, you had to buy stuff, and software wasn't exactly cheap. 

ClarisWorks, an integrated office package had a list price of £195. Claris Office was £595. In comparison, Microsoft were running an advert for MS Works (with a free copy of MS Flight Simulator chucked in) for £145. CAD/CAM (Computer Aided Design/Computer Aided Modelling) packages were a specialist market to themselves. AutoCAD, a one time market leader, came in at £2,500, and MacDraft (an entry level drawing and drafting program, cost £295. Even good old MS Word 5.1 came in at more than half the price of a Mac Classic at £295. Some dealers bundled software though, and an advert from Micro Anvika offered an LC 4/40 with colour monitor and Claris Works for £892.77, a saving against the £825 simply for the machine listed above. 

Games were a thing on the Mac, despite appearances to the contrary, although the market was hampered by the lack of decently priced colour machines for many ports. Still you had point and click adventures like Loom (£30) and The Secret of Monkey Island ($99) mentioned. Real time strategy game Harpoon is listed in the Adventures section strangely - an "electronic submarine techno-thriller." No, MacUser, that is really not what it was. There are a few other titles mentioned, but the range is pretty limited. There again, the UK Mac leisure market was pretty small compared to contemporary PC and Amiga's. That didn't stop one reseller bundling MegaDrive's to entire potential customers...

Don't forget to add VAT to these prices at 17.5%

There we have it - not an exciting issue by any means, but one that gives valuable insight to the Mac market in the UK of the time. This was before the real push into the consumer market (Argos catalogues included), clones and the near destruction of our fruity friends, and shows that the company itself was transitioning much like Commodore had from their original 8 and 16-bit machines to a 32-bit future. Unlike Commodore, Apple then were still big enough and ran just about well enough to survive the early 90's. Mid 90's Apple, well, less so. 

Next time, we'll check back in with a Computer Shopper issue from early 1994.

Legends of 16-Bit Game Development by John Harrison - Book Review

Treasure Co are a company who, since 1992, have created some of the most finely crafted shooter experiences on any platform. You may be more familiar with their later games (Radiant Silvergun, Bangai-O, Sin and Punishment, and Ikaruga), and fine works they are too, but when I saw John Harrison's Kickstarter for a book about their earliest titles on the Mega Drive/Genesis, it was a very simple decision to back it. Little did I know. 

Like most projects begun in 2020, there were delays, and the estimated September 2021 delivery date passed by all too rapidly. Mr Harrison, however, was very timely in his updates and re-assurances as to what what going on, what he was doing next and what his longer term plans would be. Truly, this in one of the few massively delayed projects that always felt like it was still coming (cough, Vultures, cough - and still waiting on volume 3...). As it was, when the book was delivered, alongside its companion volume, I dropped everything else and started reading. Oh boy.

Legends begins with the origins of Treasure and the travails of Masato Maegawa in a) getting into the competitive Japanese software industry in the late 1980's and b) forming his own company. Through the foundation of Treasure and the support Sega heaped upon the company (as well as just pure blind luck), the author follows the ups and downs as the fledgling team try to get a first title released. That game, Gunstar Heroes, is still a fantastic shooter today, and after finishing the books, I revisited Heroes just to remind myself of its brilliance. In fact, I did the same for each of the titles covered. Emulation is definitely your friend considering the availability and cost of Treasure's 16-bit releases (although some of these were included in the region specific Mega Drive mini-consoles released last year). A quick check on CEX in the UK showed a boxed copy of Gunstar Heroes for £100 (mint condition for £180), whereas Alien Soldier is £270 and £340 respectively! Far cough! 

Alongside Gunstar Heroes, the author has covered McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure, Dynamite Headdy, Yu Yu Hakusho: Makyo Toitsusen, Alien Soldier and Light Crusader. Throughout each chapter, there are quotes and comments from the developers from contemporary publications, as well as in-depth appraisals of the development process for each game and what happened post-release. The are multiple box outs featuring snippets from Beep! Mega Drive magazine and copious illustrations and screenshots, all of high quality, the usual (and entirely understandable) exception being some of the period photography. 

This really is a hugely informative tome, and by the time I had finished it, I had a very solid understanding and appreciation of who Treasure were during the Mega Drive/Genesis years, the struggles they faced developing these titles for a machine that, whilst Japanese, also had to cater to a primarily US audience, and how they maintained their ethos. Indeed, the sections describing the fate their games suffered due to Sega of America management politics were eye-opening. It remains a truism - corporate is gonna corporate. However, it is also true that Treasure's legacy is assured, a legacy founded on these six corkers.

That's not all, however. There are two appendices: the first detailing the technical side of the Mega Drive's graphics capabilities. This is clearly written and very much of interest to me. The second is a list of the developers who worked at Treasure during the period covered by this book and which games they contributed to. Finally, there is a comprehensive references section and a list of Kickstarter backers.

The fun doesn't end there yet though. A companion booklet contains interviews with the development teams of five of the games featured, as well as re-prints of interviews with Mr Maegawa. 

With high quality writing and excellent production values, this duo will be of great value to anyone with a yearning to know more about Treasure and the Japanese software scene in the early 1990's. It is a credit to Mr Harrison that all of his hard work (and translation skills, for he did most of it himself) has resulted in a publication that was well worth backing and definitely a keeper. Well done, sir!

If you want a copy yourself, as at the time of posting, there were some physical copies still available from Raster Scroll here. You can also follow the author on X/Twitter by searching for the username @MegaDriveShock. 

Magazines of Yesteryear - What Personal Computer Issue 29 - December 1991

The tail end of 1991 and Brian Adams had finally been dethroned from his sixteen week domination of the UK singles chart. City Slickers, The Fisher King and Point Break gobbled up cash at the cinemas, whilst on the goggle box, Murder Most Horrid, Noel's House Party and the forgotten gem that was Dark Season kept those indoors entertained. Meanwhile, Amstrad was trying to make a comeback. 

SPOILERS!

Hitting the shelves in mid-November, the December issue of What Personal Computer from EMAP displayed Amstrad's latest and greatest on its cover with a headline that wasn't exactly flattering. Features on DR-DOS 6, Publisher for Windows and how to PostScript your printer may have appealed, but Alan's latest baby was front and centre.

A side note first and one of the funny things about picking up old computing magazines is that researching them is a bit hit and miss. EMAP at one point published numerous video games titles as well as more serious computer related ones, but could I hell find out much about WPC. For a title that had, as of this issue, an ABC figure of 42,318, it is a sad situation that it is almost lost in history. Sure, people remember Computer and Video Games, but mention of their serious output is surprisingly rare.

£999 for a multimedia PC? A bargain! 

Anyway, onto the news, and the main piece concerned the arrival of big name word processors to Windows, this being a time that DOS still ruled. Windows 3 was making in-roads though, and this was further evidence that the times they were a-changing. Seikosha were dipping their toes into the low-cost laser market - their OP 104 was released at just £904, whilst Philips were launching a range of multi-media PC's - the 20MHz 386SX model at £2,499 would be available in the first half of 1992 (4MB RAM, 80MD HD and SVGA graphics), but those too impatient to wait could have a 40MB 286 model for £999 (which also included Wing Commander). Remember that price...

Arguably yes. History says not.

It was also the time of Comdex Fall, the report of which crowed about Apple's new Powerbooks, IBM's continued delay of OS/2 version 2 and a colour Dell 386 laptop for under £3,000! In Shop Talk, Diamond Computer Services had opened a new shop on Tottenham Court Road. Diamond were a common advertiser with their superhero themed Captain Diamond persona, and Tottenham Court Road was, at one point, the place to go for tech in London. It had dulled a little by the time I managed to wander down it in early '98, but back then, retail was still king.

What can I say? It was the 90's.

A fascinating piece talks about the future of Intel. the rise of Unix, the ACE (Advanced Computing Environment) consortium - Wiki entry here, and the threat posed by Sun and their SPARC chip. Ah, the 90's - if only you'd known that Wintel was unbeatable, at least for that decade. The arrival of the Internet and the changing means with which people interacted with computing technology would mess up/make things interesting as the new millennium arrived. With thirty years hindsight, little did they know...

As befits a December issue, "Oh, no there isn't!"

Anyway, to the cover story and just plain Alan (he would be knighted in 2000), was trying his luck with a new range of machines to recapture the glory days of his budget PC empire. The 5000-series used a tiny case in the same style as its previous 4386 "executive" desktop, designed to be a simple unit you plugged in and never opened. Although it lacked spare drive bays, it wasn't entirely expansion free - two half-length 16-bit slots promised not very much - and if you got the 1MB model, zero free SIMM slots, but what else did you need? The 0.29 dot pitch VGA monitor could handle 800x600 rather well, and it worked, albeit a tad more slowly than other similarly specc'd 286's. The problem was the price. £999. If you recall, Philips would happily drop a multi-media equipped 286 on you for that. Amstrad was no longer cheap and cheerful. A competing machine from Chipset (who are they???) would give you Super VGA with a 1MB Trident card capable of 1024x768 for £899. Another clone manufacturer was Atomstyle, whose colour VGA option came in at just £715. It had room for two 5.25" drives, four spare SIPP memory slots and a free 16-bit card slot, as well as two 8-bit slots if you needed them. Things didn't get better for Amstrad either. 

Nope, you could buy better for less.

A couple of pages on there is the 5286 Games Pack review. Taking the compact desktop as before, switching the monitor to a slightly lower quality one and packing in speakers, a joystick and three games, this was an £899 package that, as the reviewer put it, was decent for someone who couldn't be bothered but you could find better DOS-based value elsewhere. Against the Commodore Amiga upgraded to match the features included, it was decent, although not spectacular, value. It should also be considered that both the A500 and the 286 processor were rapidly approaching obsolescence. What was interesting about the software pack is that as time passed, the same bundle would be attached to other Amstrad models in a manner that suggested that they massively overestimated demand at the time. Needless to say, the 5286 Games Pack bundle was quickly discounted and would end up being something of a missed opportunity. 

Moving on, we have a bench test of communications software featuring some of the best 90's tech names you've can imagine. SmartCom III, Trans-Send (see what they did there) and DynaComm (surely an evil corporation with that name?) fight it out with the more mundane Datatalk 4, WinComm and Relay Gold 5 (a 70's tribute act if ever there was one) in getting users on to bulletin boards and multi-user dungeons. Such an innocent time.

Por favor?

DR-DOS 6 gets a five star review for being better than MS-DOS 5, in a repeat of how DR-DOS 5 was miles ahead of MS-DOS 4.01, although that particular Microsoft product was indeed terrible. However, questions over compatibility when running alongside Windows 3.1 remained and MS were nasty bastards/legitimate hard-headed business people - delete as applicable. It was only ever going to end one way. 

A review of the Canon Ion RC-260 digital camera is an interesting read. For £490, you got a fun little camera that could take up to fifty images and store them on tiny 2 inch floppy drives (not the same format as the 2-inch floppy's Zenith tried flogging with their laptops) that cost £5.10 each. You could preview your images on your TV, save them to your PC (using the £496 connection kit), and then re-use the storage. As a review, it lacks details on the sensor and battery life (tiny lead-acid unit, a sure sign of the times), but the reviewer really does like it. They do recommend saving the images to VHS cassette via your TV rather than on your PC as a full 50 images when de-compressed onto your hard drive would take up 60MB! Thinking of the price, the reviewer states that if you are struggling to justify the cost for professional desktop publishing purposes then knowing the kid'll love it should clinch it for you. Wait! What? £500 (that's over a grand today!) for something to hand to the kids to play with??? 

The author remembers that children are given mobile phones that can cost a similar amount these days. Shakes fist at clouds then returns to laptop.

One final regular feature before we get to the adverts is the Consultancy section. Companies could apply for £1,000 of free consultancy regarding IT equipment and be featured in the magazine. Only the first £1,000 was free and at £100 per hour, that could get quite pricey. Still, makes an interesting read about a fabrics company that got shafted by a supplier and how a definite lack of knowledge damaged the company. Reading between the lines, it looked like the consultancy form used by the magazine was a) going to have a decent payday considering the mess they found and b) earning their pay rather well.

As for the rest of the mag, the back contains various hardware and software review directories, a yellow page small ads section and 16-page pink section devoted to shareware. Anyway, now it's onto the fun stuff - the adverts!

Multiplex - but do they include an operating system?

Amstrad have a page dedicated to their 20MHz 4386SX (4MB RAM, 80MB hard drive) - £1,699 ex VAT for the colour model, £1,499 ex VAT for the mono model. Leaving aside the minuscule 10" display and the small case, Multiplex a few pages on could sell you a 386 SX 25MHz with 4MB/115MB for ££1,099 ex. You got both 3.5" and 5.25" floppies too, but possibly not DOS or Windows (ad doesn't say and doesn't give prices either but say add on an extra £100 ex as this was the time that many companies advertised headline prices without an OS to make offers look even cheaper - and yes, it was a shitty way of doing things). The case would be much bigger, but so would the monitor at 14'. If you wanted to spend the same amount as Amstrad wanted you to, then for £1,699 ex VAT, Multiplex would give you a big box 486 DX 25MHz with 115MB of hard drive storage and 8MB of RAM. Sure, adding an OS would bump that up but it just shows how... misguided Amstrad's attempts were at this point. 

Amstrad do include the OS but at that price, they bloody ought to!

Commodore were still trying to flog DOS PC's, rather that focussing on what should have been their core product, the Amiga. A top tier 486 model would set you back over three grand exclusive of VAT, a 286 portable came in at £1,199, and their base 16MHz 286 cost a lowly £689. 

Time was a reseller of note for most of the 90's, and their business-focused advert neatly shows that the 286 was the budget processor of choice - £600-£700 ex for branded machines, whereas if you had a grand upwards, the 386 was your best bet. Portables were also a thing, and a budget Sanyo 286 for £849 wasn't bad. 

Don't care if the printer is free, I still don't want it.

Evesham Micros were venturing into their own range of desktops, but would still sell you Amstrad and Olivetti desktops. Not sure how popular a single floppy drive 12' mono monitor equipped 5086 for £399 inclusive was, but hey, you got a cheap dot matrix printer thrown in. Whether you'd want the trash that was the Amstrad DMP3160 is another question. Even for 1991, this was a terrible package. You could get discounted 2000-Series Amstrads which seemed decent, until you realised that the 086 models are obsolete and the 286/386 range come with DOS 4.01. And as for that twin drive PC1640 EGA model for £349 inclusive, well, as a retro fan, hell yeah. As a sober adult, not a chance in hell, even then. 

These are NOT the bargains you're looking for.

Silica Systems (an almost constant presence in the ST and Amiga Format publications amongst others), had the Goldstar range on show (Lucky Goldstar is now better known as LG). They might look cheap (and to be fair, they were decent value), but those prices exclude the monitor. Still, a secondhand GT-212 model was my first DOS machine and it was a good little runner.  Silica also had some portables on show, and I still like the idea of that PC XT notebook, even if adult me realises it would have been an ergonomic and practical nightmare to use. 

They may include the OS, but screens are extra.

I so wanted one of these - even if they were shite.

So there we have What Personal Computer. An issue that's at that slightly awkward point in PC history where the 286 was just starting to fade away as the 386 muscled into the sub £1,000 market. There are still the old '086 holdovers but their days were numbered, as were those of Amstrad. It would take another five years or so before they retired their computing range (the Pentium P75-powered PV/TV combo Integra range was I think their final attempt), but the days of selling via dealers were ending. Direct was the way forward, and price conscious clone makers were leading the way. Alongside the 386, Windows was becoming the default means of interacting with your PC - DOS was still the OS, but Windows was getting there. Wherever there was.

But what if you didn't want the kludge that was the DOS/Windows mash up? There was always the Mac, but that's for another time.