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.