PCW Plus - The magazine for the Amstrad PCW

For being one of the most prominent productivity computers for home users of the late 1980's, the Amstrad PCW never seems to get much appreciation. Released at a time when DOS PC's were a four figure purchase (unless you also went to Amstrad for those as well), the PCW became a success because it offered the basic office computer experience by bundling a printer and the software you needed for a very competitive price. Naturally, this led to dedicated publications, one of which was 8000 Plus. In 1992, Amstrad launched the 9000 series of the PCW range so the magazine changed its name to PCW Plus. Join me, then, on a quick look at two issues of this fine publication.

As I only have two issues of this magazine, March '92 and November '94, I may be missing out on the heyday of the format, but these still offer intriguing insights as to the state of the PCW market at the time of their publication and, perhaps more poignantly, demonstrate the decline of a format specific magazine.

The cover of March 92's issue headlines the way you can get music from your PCW. You might be surprised at this as the machine was launched with a focus purely on office productivity. Yet being a 256kb/516kb CP/M machine meant that it was much more than a word processor. The are also articles offering LocoScript advice, a guide to memory upgrades for owners of 256kb machines, and how to make the most of copy programs. 

As befits the period, the cover is glossy and has a nice feel to it. The stock quality is also quite good, and although there is colour throughout, it is limited to specific features and adverts. Page count comes in at 84 including the covers. All that for £2.25. 

The editorial is quite bullish when covering the news that Amstrad had made a trading loss. With the prospect of price cuts and possibly a higher level of ownership of the format, the editor believed the future looked bright. Never mind that this completely ignores the growing popularity and decreasing prices of the DOS PC but there you are - the editor seems very happy preaching to the converted. The news section that follows takes up three pages, and there are plenty of adverts too, yet throughout the magazine, I can only find a couple that are actually selling the new 9256/9512+ computers. 

Ah, yes, the machine. A 9256 with a dot matrix printer would set you back around £400 inclusive, which wasn't too shabby even for 1992. 8086 PC's were still hovering around that mark excluding VAT and that didn't include a printer (and probably not any software either). The 9512+ with daisy wheel printer was about £500 inclusive, and the 9512+ with a Canon BJ10 inkjet was just over £600. The issue here that for £600, you could get an Amiga, Atari or a DOS set up with a printer. It might not be the best of specifications, but it would be more than a match for the Z80 in the Amstrads. By the end of the year, Acorn would have the A3010/3020 series out that would hover between the £500 and £700 mark, whilst even Apple would see sense and release the Mac Classic that would give you that famous single button experience for about £600 inclusive. You'd need to add a printer for those, but then you had the freedom of choice. Sad to say, one of the key selling points of the PCW in the 1980's (the cheap integrated package) had been superseded by faster and increasingly cheaper machines. But I digress.

It was lovely to see a column in PCW by Dave Langford, whose work in SFX magazine was always a good read, and I never knew he wrote for PCW Plus. The other features are well written and seem like they would have been useful to PCW owners. 

Back to the adverts and there are quite a few, although I suspect this was the sum of PCW retailing at the time. There's plenty of software advertised, including a few games, although I believe the company selling the space saving desk on page 36 had been watching too much BBC sci-fi... Another thing to note is the sheer number of add-ons and improvements for the machines - external disk drives, ram packs, and interfaces.

Straight off the set of Star Cops...

On to the November '94 issue, and it's here that we see the magazine epitomise the decline in the format. 

The cover is still shiny but feels thinner than the one from '92. There seems to be more colour but the stock is also of lower quality. The cover price has increased to £2.95 yet the page count is down to 68 including the covers. Mr Langford is still present and there is a cracking feature on how to add flash storage to your PCW! 

It is in the advertising that you really notice the difference. Sure, there are still many advertisers covering the format and its add-ons, and one that was still selling the 9000 series, although not the PCW10, which very much seems to have been the odd model out, despite being launched only the year before. A note on prices - the 9512+ had not changed in price since the March '92 issue. What was borderline competitive in then was massively over-priced by 1994. 

Anyway, back to the advertising, and it's the inclusion of three adverts for PC's that stand out. One, from S.C.S. (not the sofa people) offers a 386SX 40MHz with 2MB of RAM, a 170MB hard drive and a 14-inch SVGA monitor for just £469 excluding VAT. You need to add DOS, Windows and a mouse to that (£70 ex VAT) for a total of ££539 ex VAT, or £630-ish inclusive. Source a printer from somewhere and you have a much faster, capable and expandable machine than any PCW. If you were spending several hundred pounds on a computer, you'd want a degree of longevity and even a 386 in 1994 offered that compared to a PCW.

The back cover - and that is NOT a PCW!

It also highlights a sign that the magazine was in decline. It is a similar story to Amiga Format and Acorn User. Towards the end of their print lives, advertisers were covering anything from actual hardware to internet providers and the like (this was 2000 and 2003 respectively). Anything to fill the space in the mag and bring in the money. As far as mass market magazines went, the platforms were dying. 

Confirming this are the Audit Bureau of Circulation figures. The '92 issue has the figures from January-June 1991, stating that an average of 27,186 copies were sold every month. The July-December '93 figures in the '94 issue is 16,335. I know that figures like that are pretty standard now, given the changes to the market and people's reading habits, but for the early 1990's, they were not looking good 

As it was, time was running out for the PCW. Amstrad pulled the plug after the PCW10. Well, I say pulled the plug. There was the PcW16 launched in 1995 for £299 that was a last gasp for the name. It wasn't directly compatible and you couldn't use the floppy drive to run new programs. It was a sad way to end the PCW name. As for PCW Plus, it soldiered on until December 1996, which isn't bad considering the lack of hardware. 

It's always cool reading format specific magazines from decades past (do you feel old yet?) as it gives you an look at how computing used to be before Windows cemented itself as the OS for the masses, MacOS survived long enough to hitch a ride on the iPhone business (only half joking there) and Chrome OS became the defacto Linux distribution(!). It's partly the reason why I love retro computing so much, the variety of machines and operating systems. 

Would I want a PCW on my desk today? Hell, yes! Is there any chance of that? Not really, space and cost being the prime issues, but for the period they were around, they demonstrated that you could have practical, productive computing at a reasonable price, and a magazine such as PCW Plus is a perfect reminder of that.

The N64 Encyclopedia by Chris Scullion - Book Review

Let me take you back to October 1997. The Spice Girls were threatening to "Spice up your life", Aqua were living their "Barbie Girl" best and The Verve were telling us that "The Drugs Don't Work" Speaking as a gentleman in his mid-forties with the back of a 90-year old, it seems they were right, as far as painkillers go anyway! But I digress. What I was actually doing in that autumnal month twenty five years ago (Jesus f-ing wept!) was eagerly dismounting an escalator in the Bentall Centre in Kingston upon Thames to visit HMV where, armed with a debit card and a student loan (those were the days, kids), I was going to pick up a Nintendo 64. And Turok: Dinosaur Hunter. Ok, nobody's perfect...

It seems fitting that in the year of the 25th anniversary of the N64's European launch, Mr Scullion has written about that very games console. His second book this year (his wrists are either made of steel or he has his PC's cooling system plugged directly into his wrists...), this is a continuation of the Encyclopedia series and the most in-depth one so far. By that, I mean that each game has received a larger entry than would normally be expected due to the lower number of games that were released for the system. However, in the case of the N64, quality had a quantity all of its own, so to speak. 

If you've read any of the previous entries, you'll know the score. If you haven't, what you'll get is the US/UK games library for the N64 in alphabetical order. The smallest entries get a quarter page, the largest get a full page. Each entry contains details of the games' year of release, publisher and developer, as well an an indication of which territories it was released in. There is also a screenshot or two and a fun fact. As always, these fun facts vary from funky trivia to observations connected to the game in question, and compliment the style and content of the main articles. This book once again demonstrates that the author is at the top of his game when it comes to writing about videogaming.

Compared to the likes of the PlayStation, the N64 suffered in comparison towards the number of games released for the system, but when you have the likes of Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Mario Kart 64, it's hard to argue that from a first-party perspective, Nintendo had you covered. Third-party support wasn't brilliant but the likes of Acclaim, Infogrames and THQ supplied some respectable gaming experiences. 

Of course, the elephant in the room was Rare. Never before (or arguably since) has one developer had such a consistent run to genuinely classic hits, and the ones that might not be described as classics are at least worthy of being called great. I can't think of a single Rare title on the N64 that was naff. Annoying and overly long maybe (looking at you, Donkey King 64!), but not naff. 

As an extra for this volume, space permits the inclusion of all of the Japanese-only releases, including the ten titles released for the 64DD add-on. These are useful for both collectors and those, like me, who didn't know much about the domestic titles that never saw the light of day outside of Japan. 

As you can no doubt tell, this is another of Yer man, Scullion's brilliant books and deserves to be picked up not only by those who loved the N64 the first time round, but also those who maybe missed out or were too young to experience it (and the joys of late 90's Brit-pop). You can pick up a copy of the N64 Encyclopedia directly from the publisher here or from the usual online stores. You should also be able to order it from your local bookshop. I would also advise you to follow the author on Twitter here to keep up with his work as well as his day job at VGC. 

Like A Brazen Wall by Ewan Carmichael - Book Review

Those of you of a certain vintage and from the UK may recall an advert for milk from the late 1980's where two young whippersnappers talk about the benefits of the juice of the moo-cow. By drinking milk, you could be worthy of playing for Liverpool, and if you didn't then you'd only be good enough for Accrington Stanley. Indeed, who are they? (Thanks to Wikipedia, this is who they are in case you were interested...)

Anyway, the reason for the diversion is that, prior to reading Ewan Carmichael's excellent tome on the Battle of Minden, my appreciation of the British Army's involvement in that fight was pretty similar to those lad's opinion of two football clubs. The infantry were obviously Liverpool and the cavalry were Accrington Stanley. As noted above, after the battle was over, the rest of the combatants may have asked a similar question (although maybe/maybe not in a Scouse accent): "The British Cavalry? Who are they?" This book, gentle reader, will answer that question.

The Battle of Minden occupies a key part of the British narrative of the Seven Years War (aka French-Indian War, 3rd Carnatic War). Here was a battle that involved British troops in mainland Europe, which in turn was one of many theatres Britain found itself fighting in. Reputations were forged and legacies destroyed, and the author has written a clear and balanced account of not only the battle itself, but where it fits within the history of the wider conflict. 

The book begins with scene setting and providing that strategic context. This is important as Britain, whilst dealing with two other major theatres (as well as the naval struggle), also had to maintain a presence in Europe, and that wasn't easy. We then get an appreciation of the French and Allied armies of the period, as well as the personalities of the battle itself. Theatre context comes next, then a description of the locale around Minden. Once the set up is out of the way, we get to manoeuvres and fighting.

The Battle of Gohfield is presented first, as it is very much connected to the events of Minden. Minden itself is described with great clarity and uses numerous first hand accounts. The immediate aftermath and the butchers bill are then detailed, before we get to the courtroom proceedings of Sackville's court martial. The main section of the book ends with the strategic effects of the battle, a retrospective of the battle within the context of the Seven Years War and a modern day guide to visiting the battlefield.

The appendices are a sight to behold, giving a timeline of events (which is very handy), the orders of battle for both Minden and Gohfield, details of the combatants uniforms, the (very long) orders given by Contades, and finally the account of the Comte de Lusace. A very comprehensive bibliography tops the whole lot off. 

There are numerous images and maps, as well as a colour section for some uniform plates. The present day photography, although lacking in colour, is well done and ties in fittingly with the description of the historical action. 

Having read a couple of other accounts of this battle since buying this book, I will say that in my humble opinion, this is the best so far. Every action and counter action is described with detail and lucidity, and at no point do you feel lost as to who is where and what they were (or were not) doing. For the historian and warmer alike, this makes Like A Brazen Wall an essential purchase no matter whether your interest lies in Minden itself or the wider conflict. Also apparent is the author's background, focusing where appropriate, on the topic of medical support, a necessary and important subject that can be forgotten or glossed over. 

It was also interesting for the coverage on Sackville, who although he had his faults, was treat harshly (I feel) due to the politics of the day. Alas, there are few, if any, perfect commanders, and as readers will be well aware, the history of conflict is littered with poor taken or missed chances.

Like A Brazen Wall is another superb release from Helion & Co and joins my growing collection of books of the subject of 18th Century warfare. Fans of history will enjoy the detail and the depiction of the battle, whilst wargamers can enjoy the same as well as the orders of battle that will help you in putting troops on the table. You can purchase Like A Brazen Wall directly from the publisher or from the usual online retailers. 

Starflight by Jamie Lendino - Book Review

PC gaming largely eluded me back when I was but a wee lad. As I hit double figures, the Amstrad CPC 464 was my gaming computer, later replaced by the Commodore Amiga 500. Why no PC? Well, they were expensive. Very expensive. When average wages were around £12-15k, an Epson EGA 286 would set you back about £1,600 in 1988. Even the budget Amstrad PCs (and Amstrad pretty much had the budget PC market to itself back then) were about £600 (PC1512 single drive with CGA) or £900 (PC1640 single drive with EGA). Those prices include VAT at 15%, compared £200 for your green screen CPC, £399 for the Atari STFM (including 22 games) and £449 for the Amiga 500 - all prices from June 1988 Computer Shopper magazine. The point being that, in the UK at least, PC's were a very very pricey computing option. By 1990 however, 8086 machines with VGA colour could be hand for just under a grand, and 286 machines were heading down to that all important £1,000 barrier. It would take another year for them to dip below that but things were improving, culminating in the PC's advancement to general consumer electronics status by the middle of the decade.

To cut a long story short (too late!), PC gaming remained the domain of the relatively wealthy (or credit worthy) well into the 1990's, so my exposure to PC games came from reading magazines. As such, Jamie Lendino's latest book is a worthy reminder not only of the games that defined the PC as it transitioned from business machine to consumer kit, but also of the advancement of technology that literally changed the game when it came to computer entertainment. Indeed, you could fill many books with tales of how the titans of the 16-bit market (well, as far as the US wasn't concerned) were felled by the more flexible, adaptable and prevalent technology of the PC (it also helped that there were countless manufacturers using standard tech, not single companies with all of the business acumen of a comatose Freddie Laker - one for you older readers there...) Whilst Starlight is not exactly one of those books, it does chart the changes and the games that clearly demonstrated that the PC was the future. 

Once again, we are taken on a chronological journey of the author's gaming history, this time from 1987 to 1994. Two things become immediately apparent. One, the US PC market seems to have been much more accessible than the UK one. Two, how the hell did the author get any academic work done??? I would say there is more to like than computer and videogames but that would at best be a half truth... ;-)

In all seriousness though (why start now?), what you get here are nearly 350 pages dedicated to the software that defined DOS PC gaming. Add to that count a very detailed bibliography and a notes section that could take up hours of further reading (and yes, I have tried), and this is, much like the author's earlier books (and those by Richard Moss), pretty much the definitive title on its particular subject. 

The format pretty much covers one year per chapter, each chapter detailing significant software releases as well as hardware developments that improved the PC's gaming potential. From the initial beginnings with the 8086/8088 processors and 4-colour CGA graphics, to the powerhouse Pentiums and 256 colour SVGA (with Ad-Libs and Soundblasters along the way), it is the very modularity of the PC that proved its main strength. That and the improvements in technology. As the author notes, once the 386 processor arrived, it heralded pretty much the end of other formats. Motorola 68020/68030 chips would remain very pricy (Apple), or hit "consumer" level price points far too late (Atari Falcon/Amiga1200 in 1992), whereas the Acorn ARM3 chip would be too late and expensive - launched in 1989 and initially appearing in the A540 for £3,000 in 1990 (which would have bought you a monster 386SX 25MHz with a huge (300MB) hard drive) and later the A5000 in late 1991 for £1,500 - the PC was always going to be better value, certainly in the UK against UK available formats.

As with the author's previous books, there is no colour imagery except for the covers, but that doesn't detract from the screenshots within. Hell, the early chapters would be CGA-agogo and no-one wants that, surely? Despite the lack of colour, images are clean and crisp, and every game given a detailed entry gets a picture too. 

And what games are mentioned. You get the familiar favourites: Wing Commander, Sierra's adventures, LucasArts and the like, but it's the more esoteric (and poorly selling) titles that, for me, provided the most intriguing. I genuinely can't remember Dragon Strike as I would have loved playing that title as a kid, but here it is, given the love and attention in deserves. Yes, many of the titles mentioned in this book were available on the Amiga and ST (on the former of which I played Falcon, 688 Attack Sub and The Secret of Monkey Island), but as the PC overtook the capabilities of those machines, it became the computer format to play games on. Anyone who played Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis on the Amiga will remember the almost mandatory hard disk requirement due to the number of floppy discs the game came on - but such devices were add-ons (and not particularly cheap ones) and I, like many others, swapped like a mo-fo...

Starflight is yet another wonderful book by Mr Lendino and continues his gaming journey that began with Adventure. Where will he go next? Windows gaming? The formative years of 3D gaming? I know not,  but what I can say is that whatever his next book might be, I'll be waiting to pick up a copy.

You can purchase Starflight from Amazon here, as well as check out the author's other titles here. You can also follow the author on Twitter here. 

Jumping For Joy by Chris Scullion - Book Review

Yer Man Scullion has been writing again (when does he ever stop, I hear you ask) and has given us a guide to that ever-green species of gaming, the humble platformer. Conceived as the first of a series celebrating different video game genres, Jumping For Joy will sadly be the only volume to see the light of day. This is a crying shame as, if this book is anything to go by, that collection would have been a corker. (I don't suppose once you've finished the Encyclopaedia set with the combined GX4000/C64GS/Gizmondo pamphlet that you might return to this, Chris?)

As the cover states, Jumping For Joy aims to give you the history of platform video games and it does so by dividing the subject into three parts. The first is the most obvious, start at the very beginning of this jumping platform malarkey - Mario. Well, Donkey Kong, but you know what I mean. From there, every home, handheld and arcade game that has a platform in it is included. There are, for me, some pretty obscure titles here, and it made this book another educational read along the lines of his previous books. Speaking of which, yes there are entries for games already covered in the NES and SNES volumes but there is no repetition, no copy and paste. Each entry in each volume is unique. As with the encyclopaedias, each game gets either one quarter, one half or a full page entry with a write up, release details, a screenshot and, with most, a fun fact. Especially the fun fact for Sonic 3 on page 45 - what the literal F did I just watch???

Following on from Mario, much like the sunshine after the rain (get that ear worm out of your head now, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha - hey, it's better than that Right Said Fred "tune"), is Sonic (I may have given that way at the end of the last paragraph...), and whilst you have to admit that the quality of the Sonic games has never been consistent, their treatment here from Mr Scullion is. 

With the two headliners out of the way, we're only 65 pages in out of 167. The rest of the book is taken up by the 50 iconic platformers you need to play. At this point, I must admit that I agree with the author. This is his 50, you will have your 50, and I have mine. Accept that and enjoy what he has to offer.

Each of the 50 titles gets a two page entry, a detailed write up, a few screenshots (most get four to six) and a fun fact. Besides that, there are also three other titles listed as recommendations (value fans will know that adds up to 200 titles listed in total), and whilst some of them might make you question what a platformer is, the justifications included make perfect sense. Really, what this section does is demonstrate how varied and rich the platforming genre actually is and I know I spent the next couple of weeks after reading this book trying out as many of the titles mentioned here as I could.

Jumping For Joy is a love letter to the humble platformer, with great writing, a fine sense of humour (you have to be able to take a joke to listen to that Right Said Fred song), and the usual quality production values from Pen and Sword. Even if you consider yourself jaded about the genre, pick up a copy and I think you'll find it will re-kindle some of the passion you once had. The only negative I can think of is that this will be the only volume of the series. Still the latest encyclopaedia is now out as well (the N64) and looks to be another worthy addition - and kudos to Chris for getting two books out in a year! Expect a review of the N64 volume on here as and when.

You can buy Jumping For Joy direct from the publisher here (as well as the author's other books), and from the usual high street booksellers and online retailers. You can also follow Chris on Twitter here.

Shareware Heroes by Richard Moss - Book Review

As an Amiga kid in the early 1990's, I never had much awareness about shareware, being all the more familiar with the public domain scene on Commodore's 16-bit behemoth. It wasn't until I gained access to a 386SX at a friend's house that I found out about the idea of having a few levels of a game on a disk as a taster then paying for the rest of the game, that particular title being Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold, a shooter that took up far too much of my spare time. Unfortunately for me, I never played the rest of it as I had no means of paying the required fee - I was a teenager who had parents disinclined to sending cheques overseas. Over the years, I saw other examples of the concept but never really knew much about it. Until now.

Shareware Heroes is Richard Moss' second gaming focused book after the excellent Secret History to Mac Gaming and takes the reader through the sometimes controversial history of non-retail software distribution from the early 1980's to the modern day. Over 300-odd pages, you'll be led through a finely-researched narrative detailing the highs and lows of what would popularly be termed shareware. 

The story is told pretty much in a chronological order, with coverage of the US and overseas markets, primarily the UK and Europe. Imagery is mostly kept to the central photograph section, although mono screenshots are present throughout the text, as well as at the beginning of each of the chapters. These are cleanly reproduced and the lack of colour isn't an issue. At the back of the book, there is a handy glossary and a small section giving details on the various shareware developers, the years they were active, key personal and important software titles.

There is some crossover between this book and the author's previous work, as shareware was a big part of the Mac's gaming scene as more commercial publishers/developers stayed away from the platform. That is not to say there is repetition, more that you will see familiar names pop up if you're read "Secret History..." It is the author's ability to weave what is, at times, a complex tale into a very engaging narrative that makes this book worth reading, especially if you grew up with shareware software all those years ago. If you didn't, then you'll learn things. For me, a surprising discovery from reading this book was the number of names that are still around today in the PC gaming world, a good example being Epic Games. 

What I particularly liked was that there was no stereotype for who became associated with shareware. From those who promulgated the distribution of free software as a concept, to those who tried just to make beer and pizza money out of it, to the megastars who burned brightly even if just for a short period of time, and to those who stuck to a niche and did rather well out of it, the cast of characters you'll meet is brought wonderfully to life in this book. Never a get rich quick scene (unless you were very lucky), Shareware Heroes not only gives you an understanding of the history, but of also the causes of it's evolution. And evolve it did, as software tastes, budgets and marketing trends changed, yet the ethos still remains valid to this day, albeit it in a very different form from its early years.

This is a fine history on the subject and one that should, in my humble opinion, be the reference book on the topic for years to come. It certainly informed me as to the nature, breadth and depth of shareware, and did tug a few almost forgotten memories from my teenage years and early PC usage. 

Shareware Heroes joins The Secret History of Mac Gaming on my bookshelves as a volume that will be re-read and referenced time and again in the future. It not only tells you what shareware was (and has become), but also cements its place in computer gaming history as a key development in software distribution. I heartily look forward to the next topic the author casts his eyes upon.

You can buy Shareware Heroes in hardback form direct from Unbound here, and in paperback form from the usual online retailers - in the UK, the includes Amazon, Waterstones and WH Smiths. You can also follow the author on Twitter here to keep up with what he's up to.