The Sailor and the Dancing Girl by Andy Copestake - Book Review

With a title that sounds like a back-catalogue effort from the Hallmark Channel, or maybe a mid-career musical theatre number by David Essex, The Sailor and the Dancing Girl is instead one of the latest releases in Helion and Co's "From Reason to Revolution" series from the keyboard of Andy Copestake.

Having known Andy a good few years (politeness demands that I state not the actual figure, but a driver of a similar age would have a considerable no claims bonus by now!) and being fellow TWATS (Tantobie Warfare And Tactical Society), I'd known that this tome was coming for a while now. Full disclosure: I paid for this copy with my own money, and neither Andy nor Helion & Co have had any input in to this review. Nor have they had sight of its contents prior to its public posting.

As soon as the title was announced on the Helion website, I signed up for release notification, and on day of publication, ordered it. Even with the vagaries of The Royal Mail these days, the package arrived a few days later, and upon opening it...

"Well, hello there little fella! You're a wee bit dinkier than I recall!"

Presumably for cost and sustainability reasons, the book that arrived was indeed smaller than previous volumes in the series - here's a comparison between Andy's first Helion release and his latest. 

Whilst the text is a bit smaller and thus slightly more testing on these ageing peepers of mine (even with the reading glasses - yes, gentle reader, I'm at that stage of life), the overall result isn't too bad. Indeed, popping the book into my work bag for a couple of commutes to the office made me realise that the new format is certainly better if you want to carry the tome around. And as always with Helion's publications, the actual physical quality cannot be faulted.

Coming in at just over 210 pages, The Sailor and The Dancing Girl's subtitle tells the reader everything they should expect. The campaigns of General George Thomas and the Begum Somru are an intriguing mix of politics, warfare during the decline of the Moghul Empire, and inter-personal drama. Such events require background, and this is supplied by the opening chapters detailing the roles of mercenary's in 18th Century warfare, and the nature of the British involvement in Bengal.

From there we are introduced to the mercenary Walter Reinhardt. His marriage to a dancing girl, Farzana, allows the lady to inherit his brigade of troops, and rule the principality of Sardhana as the Begum Somru.

The narrative then switches to the life and times of George Thomas. Warfare and politics intertwine as battles are fought, alliances made (and betrayed), and the reach of economic colonialism asserts a new order on India.

This is another quality piece of work from Mr Copestake and one that has been a bit of a passion project for him. The narrative has a well-researched depth, and the bibliography contains a wealth of primary and secondary sources. The author isn't afraid to question existing histories on the subject matter, and where he does, the rationale provided is capably supported by references to the relevant sources. 

Battles and machinations are described with clarity, and the imagery provided varies from contemporary illustrations and Victorian artwork, to a handful of modern photographs of the Red Fort. There are maps of general locales as well as for specific battles, and the usual mid-section artwork is nicely done. 

Outside of the core text, there's a useful timeline, a chapter on the uniforms and organisation of the forces commanded by our principal pairing, and finally a list of known Europeans officers who held positions within those commands.

All in all, this is a very readable tome on an intriguing subject. Kudos to Andy and the team at Helion & Co for an excellent addition to the 'From Reason to Revolution" series, suitable for both historians and wargamers who wish to add verisimilitude to their on-table efforts. 

You can pick up a copy of The Sailor and the Dancing Girl from HMV and David Essex's website the Helion & Co website here.

CTRL - Essays on Video Games - edited by Dean Fee - Book Review

It's been a while, but work's been more than a tad hectic the last couple of months, and I've had little spare time. Fortunately, the bus trips to work have meant at least some time for reading, and I do love a good essay on the subject of video games. It so happens that, thanks to this fine tome from The Lilliput Press of Dublin, there's a lovely collection of them in CTRL. 

From John Patrick McHugh's 'Name Your Character' opener, which delves into the deeply personal significance video games can hold, to Brenda Romero's unique take on a house in 'Chasing Lilacs', a great deal of thought has been given to each contribution. 'Tip Of My Joystick' is possibly the most off the wall example in the book, but there is distinctiveness in each author's work. Every chapter brings something new to the reader's attention, and in the couple of weeks since I finished reading it, I still find the occasional realisation popping into my head.

With fourteen authors covering titles from Urban Chaos to Wanderstop, via classics such as Doom, Tomb Raider and Disco Elysium, the variety on display brooks no criticism either. I have read essay collections in the past on a variety of topics where the quality varies as much as the subject matter, but I can honestly say that in CTRL, editor Dean Fee has curated a faultless selection. 

Apologies for this being a short review. Spare time is still rather limited, but if you're a fan of video games and fancy delving into some truly intriguing and thought provoking essays on the matter, then CTRL is a highly recommended read.

You can pick up a copy of CTRL direct from The Lilliput Press' website here. 

The Acorn PCW? Well, not quite...

Hold up! Before anyone gets too excited, no, we're not talking about Acorn making an actual equivalent to the computing legend that was, and is, the Amstrad PCW. No, what we're here today to talk about is the form factor due to an intriguing little nugget from the Business column of Acorn User's January 1995 issue. Something to make you think, what if...?

Not the original PCW 8256, but something more akin to the aesthetic of the era... ish.

By that point in Acorn's life, it was becoming clear that the range of machines launched in 1992 - the home-focused A3010, the school-centred A3020, and the slightly up market (and designed for business/higher education) A4000 - were in need of replacement. Times they had a changed, and whilst the '92 range were not exactly underpowered, their capabilities were starting to look a little stale. For example, sure, they could handle 640x480 at 256 colours in Mode 28, but higher resolutions such as the more prevalent 800x600 of the DOS/Windows world were limited to 16 colours rather than the PC's 256. This mattered to serious users, and the Business column had some thoughts...

Could Acorn have done it? Absolutely.

Did they do it? Obviously not!

Would it have worked if they had? Well...

To be fair, it wasn't a silly suggestion back then, but for those unfamiliar with either the original Amstrad PCW or the 1990's Compaq Presario all in one's, here's a brief refresher. 

Although there were many computers that could have been described as fairly inexpensive as and of themselves in 1985, adding printing to the mix was not cheap at all. Amstrad tackled this issue with the PCW (Personal Computer Word-processor), shoving a Z80 running CP/M into an all in one design rocking a 90-column display and a bundled printer, all for £399 ex VAT. Despite feeling a tad cheap, it and its successors sold by the bucket load because many people wanted the ability to print their works. Previously that had meant either dealing with the limitations imposed by the cheaper home micros, or the added expense of an MS-DOS PC, as well as pricing in a printer. The PCW bridged the gap nicely and thus sold like proverbial hot cakes.

The later Presario 460, but the form factor was the same for the 425.

Cut to the early 1990's, and Compaq were experimenting with the all in one concept with the original Presario 425, a 486SX machine running at 25MHz that would do what every other Windows 3.1 machine could do, just with the gubbins in one, fairly un-expandable, box. 

The "Family" PC.

That was 1993, and by late 1994, multimedia was king in the world of the PC compatible, and thus the Presario CDS 520 became a thing (as seen above in this December 1994 advert in Personal Computer World). Naturally, given the all-singing, all-dancing nature of the machine, it was pricey, so the ad leaned heavily into the "Family PC" concept because paying north of £1,500 to play Doom was worth it back then, 'onest, G'vnor! Having said that, despite rocking a ton of CD software and an integrated 9,600bps modem (think Virgin Media fibre on an average day...), the end result still felt compromised - only 4Mb of RAM, and that 486SX/2 might be running at 66MHz, but was seriously missing the D - that's the maths co-pro of the DX, you dorty minded porvorts!

So the question raised by the AU comment if Acorn had gone for an all in one form factor, what would the result have been? 

Undoubtedly the same specs as the A7000 that eventually did launch in the summer of 1995. A 32MHz ARM7500 that in effect made the A7000 equivalent to an unexpanded original Risc PC. The case was compact, offering space for either a CD-ROM or an expansion card, and yes kids, the CD-ROM would have been the better option for most, and all for roughly £1,100 inclusive of VAT for the 2Mb RAM, 425Mb hard drive model. That also included Acorn's AKF60 monitor, so actually fairly close to what the business column hinted at. Educational prices were somewhat lower - that bundle coming in at £799 ex VAT, but that was strictly educational only!

Acorn User's feature on the then new A7000.

Of course, if it were an all-in-one, the design would have been a smidge different. Expansion might have been a little better considering the extra space fitting the 14-inch display into the case would have entailed. The footprint of the CDS 520 was something like 36x38cm compared to the A7000's 36x28cm (rounded figures from what I have read), so a couple of podules and the CD-ROM could have been do-able. Some may have had concerns over that display size since users would have been stuck with it built-in. However, a quick check of a contemporary Watford Electronics ad in Personal Computer World shows a £40 difference between their own brand high end 14-incher and a 15-inch display. Not much, but still additional cost to Acorn if they'd have plumped for the extra inch - and yes, I am aware of the difference between consumer pricing and manufacturing costs. The difference would have been negligible but not zero. Also, let's also not kid ourselves here, 800x600 was going to be the sweet spot for the ARM7500 and fourteen inches was good enough. 

It would have been a reasonable offering for the new entry-level/mid-range RISC OS machine, fitting in quite nicely below the more expandable and powerful Risc PC700. However, there would be no room for a cheaper "headless" offering, and the cost of entry in to the world of RISC OS, already higher than it was when the A3010 was released, would have been kept relatively high due to nature of the all-in-one design. I also don't think Acorn had the resources or the desire to have two near-identical models to muddy the entry point market, either.

There was also the issue of price competition from the PC market. Using the CDS models alone, by the autumn of 1995, those pricey 1994 specifications were no longer as expensive. As you can see above and below, the CDS range was cheaper and re-spec'd by the time of these ads in the October 1995 issue of Personal Computer World. The SX model (sans modem) was now just £799 ex VAT, and a proper D-equipped computer (stop it, all of you!), although more expensive at £1,039 ex VAT, was still some £250 cheaper than the older CDS 520. The slightly re-jigged DX offering (the CDS 523 below rather than the CDS 524 above) could be had from another dealer for even less - £899 ex VAT. The point being that aside from changing the designs, there was no way Acorn could compete against the speed at which the PC market was advancing specs and lowering prices. That was the nature of the beast for every non-DOS/Windows platform, but raises the question as to how could Acorn reduce costs when one of the biggest considerations was the display. It made far more sense having just a box, and not only for ease of manufacture, logistics, and pricing flexibility. This also allowed the customer the freedom of using an existing display or Acorn being able to tack on a self-branded monitor for them to get a few extra quid for the balance sheet.

An all-in-one would have been funky, but nothing so great as to attract non-RISC OS users to the fold. It would also have done nothing to make the Acorn range price competitive for long against the juggernaut that was the PC. The fact that someone thought it might have been a go-er is still something to consider, and as we have seen here, park it in the "hmmm, interesting..." folder for reference.

P.S.

An all-in-one could have been an option in 1992, replacing both the A3020 and the A4000, but that thought doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. The A3020 was the new school machine, leveraging the same design as the A3010, with economies of scale for design and manufacturing. The A4000 was a business machine rocking a business-like case and EU-compliant separate keyboard. Their price points were similar, but not the same, as the A4000 offered a slightly bigger hard disk for serious users, and the A3020 could be had minus a hard drive anyway for those who just wanted a network machine. And what if you already had a perfectly good monitor but wanted something more than an A3010 but without the expense of the A5000? No, the 1992 range as it was made perfect sense for the time, and an all-in-one would have been pretty redundant. So effectively the same as 1995 then.

Apple: The First 50 Years by David Pogue - Book Review

Apple is the last of the original "Holy Trinity" of personal computer manufacturers. Whereas Tandy and Commodore are long gone, by luck, good judgement, and even more luck (especially in the 90's!), Apple have not only survived but have become, at the time of writing, the third most valuable company in the world by market capitalisation. That doesn't mean much to the average person but some people's boats are floated by such things so, yeah, whatever. Anyway, to mark its fiftieth year, David Pogue has written what is intended to be a comprehensive history of the corporation. 

Before we dive into this absolute chonk of a tome, gentle reader, let us get the obvious out of the way first. Apple is, to put it mildly, a divisive company. Some absolutely love its products, corporate outlook, and sense of style (although not all at the same time), whereas others consider it an over-controlling crusher of personal choice and expression. This review isn't going to be a polemic either way. It's just a review of a book after all.

Must... resist... the... urge to caption the back cover photo!!!

Beginning with the two Steves, the author delivers a cleanly written and engaging history of the company. The layout is spacious and there's plenty of room for imagery to breathe. With a few sidesteps here and there, the narrative is delivered chronologically, and where hardware is discussed, boxouts provide the dates of availability, price at the time, some basic specs, and a factoid. Similarly, where significant individuals are introduced, they also receive a box out with a mini-bio including areas of interest before and after their time at Apple. 

Style, power, lead-acid batteries. What's not to like?

There isn't much left uncovered, with even cancelled hardware getting an airing too, although as a hardware person, I would like to have seen a smidge more detail on the "what might have beens." That being said, the book is already at near six hundred pages and the paper quality does come across as a compromise between print reproduction and sheer bulk. And if you ever wanted to know how the iPhone came about, well, you'll be well covered here.

If Robert Ludlum had written The Matrix novelisation. 

The tone can vary somewhat. Where criticism of the company is due, it is delivered with a light tough, perhaps too light, although to the credit of the author, it does not descend into full on fawning over the Church of Jobs and co. And yet, given the company's recent (cough) publicity (cough) with the current US Administration, no matter how warm and fuzzy using an Apple product might make you feel, they are, at the end of the day, there to make money and that's about it. 

Yes, cynical, I know, but it's true. The company just happens to be very good at it.

For all of their age, somehow the content still feels relevant.

Another (minor) flaw, but funnily enough only around the sections about the early 1990's, is that the dates get a bit confused. Events are mentioned in the wrong year, and the foretelling of ARM's contribution to Apple's financial survival is pushed a decade out. These aren't huge issues by any means, and it calms down once we head towards the millennium, but readers beware: using this tome as a reference will require additional confirmation before you start quoting it. Mind you, as I was taught at school, any and every source should be supported if being used as a reference. 

If forced in 1991 to pick either System 7 or Windows 3.0, I choose RISC OS 3.0 ;-)

All in all, this is an interesting read, and one that sheds a good deal of light on a tech company that was there at the very beginning of the personal computer revolution (as far as America was concerned - the Apple II was always stupidly over-priced in the UK), and one that has, in many ways, influenced the direction of travel for personal tech over the last 50 years.

As a single volume summary on the history of one of Tech's biggest companies, this one is hard to beat even once you take into account its idiosyncrasies. Leaving aside politics and corporate ethics (an oxymoron, surely?), it is a decent history and is an overall worthwhile contribution to the literature documenting Apple. You can pick up or order a copy in at the usual physical and online bookstores. 

Super Nintendo by Keza MacDonald - Book Review

It's exceedingly easy to view the video games industry with a cynical eye these days, where late stage capitalism and the general crappiness of the real world have combined to certainly leave your humble scribe more than a little jaded with the whole concept of gaming. So to avoid spiralling further down that particularly dark path, how about reading a book focused a company that is both synonymous with the industry and still, more than forty years after its first home console, striking out on new, inventive, and more importantly, fun directions? As luck would have it, Super Nintendo by Keza MacDonald is just the tonic. 

Coming in at nearly three hundred pages, the reader is taken on a historical tour of the Kyoto-based company via a dozen of its best know products and game series (I am not using the f-word here, that's too corporate and we're not talking about spreading fast food joints around the country!). Beginning with the Ultra Hand and ending with Splatoon, each chapter fuses the history of Nintendo and key individuals within a narrative that weaves in facts, amusing morsels and all out love for a company that remains as inventive today as it was when the Famicom landed in Japanese stores. 

Along the way, you will learn how Nintendo has managed to not only create genre defining video games, but also inspire others to celebrate that achievement in their own way. It's not just about video games either. I salute the level of collectorship of a certain gentleman in Alsace!

It has to be said that this is not an overly critical appraisal of the Japanese gaming giant. They have deserved criticism in the past (one does recall writing a missive to Edge back in the day - issue 97, the one with the Galleon cover - questioning their GameCube release strategy for the UK... I was a sarcastic so and so even then!), and yes, their legal teams make even Games Workshop's look like talented amateurs, but when it comes to delivering fun to gamers and non-gamers alike, they're among the best at what they do without behaving like many of the other large corporations that inhabit the video games world these days, as I'll note below.

What this book is, however, is a study Nintendo and its creations delivered with warmth and a genuine appreciation from an author who has decades of experience in reporting about the company and meeting its employees. This close connection shines through the text and as you discover more, you realise that by following its own path and indeed thinking like games players Nintendo has managed to thrive to this day, despite the odd mis-step and setback. This includes the Wii-U, the only Nintendo home console I have never owned, and the failure of which (alongside a tepid start to the 3DS's life) led then President of Nintendo, the late and sorely missed Satoru Iwata, to halve his salary and cut director payouts due to low sales figures, rather than let developers go. Then you have, as just one recent example, Microsoft's chainsaw approach to their gaming ambitions over the last couple of years. 

Anyhoo, gentle reader, you are not here to read about my deeply rooted cynicism of all things C-suite and AI related. 

Super Nintendo is a fantastic tome about a company that has made having fun the key reason to play video games, and one that should restore your faith in video games as a whole. Illuminating and uplifting, it is very much a reminder that gaming can, and indeed should, be joyous. Even if you're not a fan of Nintendo's vast array of gaming greats, I can still heartily recommend that you pick up a copy of Super Nintendo from the usual online and physical book stores.

You can follow the author on BlueSky: @mackeza.bsky.social, and you can read more of her work at the Guardian where she is the video games editor - that publication's weekly gaming newsletter is well worth signing up for too. 

Frenzy by Jamie Lendino - Book Review

Has it really been two years? Yep, I had to check but it was indeed March of 2024 that I last reviewed a tome from the keyboard of Jamie Lendino, and it really hadn't feel like that long ago. But here we are with his seventh book: Frenzy.

The ColecoVision was but a minor player in a small game as far as the UK, as home consoles were kind of lost in the home computer scrum of the early 1980's, but it is a machine that was part of my collection back in the day. And one that I do have fond memories of playing Donkey Kong on, but these days, RetroArch scratches the Coleco itch. Genuine hardware is lovely, but so is having space to swing a cat (so to speak).

Anyhoo, Mr Lendino is back to talk us through the history of the ColecoVision, the hardware it spawned, and the software that endeared the format to millions of fans. Regulars will know what to expect, but for the newbie, we have a well put together paperback of some 240-plus pages. This is a little more svelte than previous volumes, but not by a great deal, and this is determined by the subject matter anyway.

The book is divided into ten sections: the ColecoVision story and the hardware take up the first two, with the following four concentrating on the arcade conversions the system was renowned for. Console exclusives/conversions make up the seventh, whilst computer conversions are the eighth section's highlight. The Coleco situation today makes for an extremely interesting ninth category, before the final part details the rather active homebrew scene of the format. An epilogue ties everything together before the as-always comprehensive bibliography and notes list. 

This is an excellently written guide to one of the stand out formats of the original console era, and one that certainly had me pining for some spare time to re-visit more than a few games. There are a fair few photographs and screenshots, albeit in mono, and as with the author's previous tomes, this will remain part of my library for years to come as a go-to reference on the subject. 

What really caught my interest was the acknowledgements, and the casual comment of further books to come. The editor of the series wants a TI-99/4A entry, but there are ten more to come before that! Tongue in cheek maybe, but since Scullion hasn't agreed to do an Amstrad GX4000 Encyclopaedia yet, maybe Lendino will??? I mean, 250 pages, only 20-ish released games - that's got to be a winning ratio, surely??? No? Just me? Bugger!

Yeah, I'm being silly, but what isn't silly is Frenzy, and once again, the author has delivered a high quality history about a classic gaming format. I only hope that it won't be two years until the next book. In the meantime, you can pick up a copy from Amazon here, and check out his previous titles here. These are the UK links but you get the idea. You can also follow the author on BlueSky here. 

P.S. Although only briefly mentioned in the text, if you'd like to know more about the absolute dumpster fire that was the Coleco Chameleon, then check out my review of Smoke and Mirrors here. 

Gamers 2 - Ghosts in the Machine - The Golden Age of Micros by Mel Croucher - Book Review

Mr Croucher is back with a second entry in a planned five volume set of Gamers tomes, this time casting an eye on the glory days of the microcomputer - the 1970's and 80's. Twenty machines are featured within this near two hundred page tome and as with the first book, the presentational style is a first person view from the machine itself written in a style fitting to that computer's background.

The Altair 8800 is the first Ghost to speak, followed by the Commodore PET, Apple ][, and so on, until we reach the last micro of the 1980's the ill-fated, but oh so funky, SAM Coupe. As you can see from the contents page, there are a lot of familiar names for those who either lived through the period or know their history, and for this tired and cynical late forties enthusiast, the only entry that foxed me was for the Matra Alice. 

"Alice? Alice? Who the fu...?" as some of you of a certain vintage may ask (or sing), and to be fair, for a computer that only had 125 units produced and never left the borders of France, well, it was a fascinating tale to read. 

With each entry, you get a short fact sheet that provides details of the computer's creators, sales numbers, price, specs etc. I would have liked to have seen the sources for the sales figures, given how muddled various stated totals can be once you go down that particular rabbit hole, but there you go. The core texts prove to be entertaining potted histories/commentaries, and a nice line in humour abounds. There are also some photographs and software screenshots to spice things up a bit, albeit in mono, which is totally fine. 

At the back of the book, we have a Hall of Fame and separate Roll of Honour for those who paid a little bit more to support the publication effort, then details of the entire Gamers series. These comprise of the cover designs and contents pages, as well as the expected dates of availability for both backers and the general public. The schedule seems to be pretty consistent (assuming the following Kickstarter's are successful), with Gamers 5 due out to supporters by July 2027, and to a wider audience by December 2027. 

This is another interesting publication from Mel Croucher, and one that filled in some gaps in my knowledge as well as being an overall enjoyable read. For those wanting a compact reference on the subject, it is a worthy effort. Whether the author can land the following three Gamers tomes without the presentational style becoming tired remains to be seen, but so far, I am looking forward to the third volume's Kickstarter.

Gamers 2 is in the hands of backers now, and general availability is due in July this year. The publisher's page for this volume can be found here. Gamers 1 is available from all good bookshops - you can check out where exactly from the publisher's page here.