Magazines of Yesteryear - Personal Computer News - Vol 1 Issue 13 - June 3-June 9 1983

One of the great joys of rummaging through the history of computer magazines is that, on occasion, you'll come across one that you've never heard of before. Until an eBay listing for a CD-ROM filled with (I think) every issue, I'd never heard of PCN, and this was popular enough to be a weekly magazine between March 1983 and May 1985! There again, this was the time of twelvty gazillion (I exaggerate only slightly) micro formats on the UK market, so I guess that made sense, and at only 35p!

We'll get to the cover star in a moment, and delve into the news first. The big thing here was the forthcoming 1983 General Election. Computing was becoming a hot topic and all of the main parties had something to say about it. Whether those words would have swayed the voters of 1983 is impossible to say now (sarcasm alert), but the gist of the replies to PCN's questions are telling. The Conservative's is littered with numbers, of amounts spent or to be pledged, Labour's is all about ideas and concepts, whilst the SDP-Liberal Alliance's is rather evasive on key points. 

There's a pub based "Thatcher's Foot" joke here somewhere...

There is more about the election in the news which focusses on the hardware ITN would use for their coverage. Peter Sissons would operate a VT80 graphics computer with "amazing colour graphics" at a resolution of 1024 pixels, 256K of memory and using 16-bit words. A VAX 11/750 with 4Mb of memory and a total of 500Mb worth of Winchester disks ran everything, a second VAX did the number crunching, and there was a third on stand by. Peter Snow of the BBC would also be using a VAX with some slightly different hardware attached. 

How many???

In other news, Kodak was promising a 10Mb 5.25" floppy at no more than double the price of a typical disk, whilst both Telesoftware and Acorn's Teletext (ah, Mr Biffo in the 90's!) adaptors had been delayed until August. And of course there was the PCN chart - the top 20 computers under £1,000, and the top 10 over that amount. As you can see, the sheer number of sub-£400 machines is mind-blowing. It's not surprising that the market slumped from around mid-1983 to the dramatic Christmas of 1984. By the spring of 1985, only Sinclair, Amstrad and Commodore would have a reasonable business chance of standing on their own feet. Sinclair would later fall foul of Clive's fascination with the C5 electric vehicle, Amstrad were sitting pretty because Alan knew how to make money, and Commodore was an international giant. Of the rest, Atari would be a different company by then, and Acorn would be under the wings of Olivetti after the Electron mis-step/fiasco. 

A few more observations: even at this point, the Apple II was stupidly over-priced, and it would take a hell of a loan/wage to put one in the family home. As for the over £1,000 lot, the Osborne 1 was a outlier being (semi) portable and all, the IBM PC was a niche high-cost unit, and pretty much everything else (aside from the obvious exclusions) ran C/PM. In the real world, if you were lucky, you got a Spectrum, or maybe a Dragon. If you were rich, you got a BBC, and if you were blessed with the luck of the Spartans, you got a Jupiter Ace. Oops!

Moving on, we have a letters page, a Microwaves section (where readers submitted tips for a £5 reward), some book reviews (a goodly selection this issue), before we get to the first of the features: how to get a Tandy Color talking to a Dragon. A useful piece if you had one or the other considering their basic (and BASIC) similarities. Next is part two of a guide to making music, and other sounds, on your Oric, before we head to the graphics world and transferring programs from the Genie to the Colour Genie. 

The first review is for a word processor for the Dragon, the second an attempt at putting Forth on the Specturm - each to their own, I guess. The review of GPS (Graphics Processing System) for the Apple II is vaguely positive but notes that it hangs quite often although its graphics capabilities have aged well since it's long distant launch. 

Two out of three ain't bad.

Putting the stick in joystick. 

A joysticks round up next, pitting the Kempston Competition Pro against the Spectravision Quickshot (I owned both of these, though not at the same time), the standard Atari stick, and the BBC Joystick. There isn't an overall winner, although the BBC option does get some stick (not sorry at all) for being a pain to hold - which is literally the whole point of its existence. 

Ooohhhhh! Pretty! 

And now to the cover star: the Ajile, an IBM compatible from Canada (originally the Canadian Dynalogic Infotech Hyperion - yep, I prefer Ajile!). On the plus side, it's lighter than an Osborne, rocks an 8088, 256k of RAM, two (count 'em) 320k IBM format floppy drives and a seven inch 80 x 25 amber CRT. If it's graphics you're after, high res 640 x 250 is available. The downsides include the keyboard (feels tacky and cheap), a botched software package (it includes the Multiplan spreadsheet package, a comms package and a text processor that can't print...), and the price - this would have set you back £4,100 including VAT. Wowzer!

Games coverage includes Everest Ascent on the 48k Spectrum, a series of titles for the Colour Genie, Qix for the Atari 400/800, and Micro Maze for the Jupiter Ace. 

There's programming stuff too, with PCN ProgramCards (11 this issue), for you to cut out and keep - this month an action game called Cupid for the 48k Oric-1. Following this is a guide to user clubs around the country - and a varied lot they are too. Not just the aforementioned formats, there's also a Comal user's group. one for the Casio FX-500-P, and two (!) for the DEC PDP series. 

I feel the need, the need for telecoms speed!

The back of the issue is taken up with the Databasics section  - a guide to printers, monitors, disk drives, plotters, and modems (up to 1200 baud for the top of the range models). Three pages of classified ads leads the way to the Microshop small ads, before the final page offers us the usual light-hearted banter that many mags used to include. 

But what about the adverts? Oh boy! Buckle up, kids!

An ad for computer rental is the first to catch the eye - have an Apple IIe from £4.58 per week. The Apple III could be had from £12.98 pw, whereas the IBM PC was a princely £13.98! Fittingly for the age (and younger readers should Google it if they don't know), you could contact the company (OEM - nicely done) via telephone or Telex. What communication wonders we have lost!

A lost age where renting a computer could be cheaper than buying one. 

Next is a regular for PCN, the Software Centre (see end of post), offering games for everything from the BBC Micro to VIC 20 via Atari, the ZX81 and the Dragon 32. Many start from under a fiver, but could go as high as £30 and over, especially for Atari software. 

Hewlett Packard was flogging its HP-86 with PPP (Personal Productivity Pac), although no prices were mentioned (look back up this post, it's in the over £1k category), where as CAL were trying to convince potential buyers that its machine was better than an IBM, as well as being British (see end of post). 

Some mixed messaging there between desktops and portables. 

Epson had their QX-10 "Human compatible business micro" that thinks you should be impressed by the machine on your desk... if you had much of a desk left by the time that base unit was plonked on it. To be fair though, most business machines were similarly as huge. 

Akhter Instruments Ltd were going all in on the Texas Instruments TI 99/4A, selling it for a low price of just £149.95. They had plenty of peripherals and tons of software too, so if that was to be your machine of choice, they had you covered. 

But what's this? Could it be? Yep, it is Silica Shop (whose adverts were ever present once the 16-bit generation kicked in). Their first page is a cornucopia of retro gaming goodies: the Mattel Aquarius for just £79, the Colecovision for a fair bit more (£147), where are the Vectrex was a bargain £149 - remember, it had its own display. Those Atari 400/800 prices don't look too bad either. 

Page two is less starry. Although that VCS price looks tempting, that's for second hand machines, and the Intellisvion seems to be forgotten even though it's quite the bargain at £98. There again, this was the time of the home micro in Britain so consoles were less of a thing. 

One last ad (and a tangent) is for a Sales Executive. Based around London and the Home Counties, this position offered a £9k basic wage, £16 on target, and a company car. Convert that to today's money, that's about £29-52k now. There again, average house prices were around £24k and interest rates were around 9.8%. Makes you think...

Anyway, that's a PCN issue from 1983. Like most, if not all things past, a different country, but interesting to see how things were before DOS slowly took over the world. The question is now, which year do we go to next?

Software Centre

CAL

The History of the Adventure Video Game by Christopher Carton - Book Review

This is a bit of a belated review as I didn't get round to reading Mr Carton's fourth book until after Christmas, which is quite bad considering I bought it on back in September! Sorry! Anyway, I've had the time to give this a considered read and, with maybe one minor niggle, this is a very good book on a video games genre that, having peaked in the early 1990's, is now experiencing very much of a renaissance. 

This 150 page hardback is up to the usual high standards for a White Owl publication. Stock quality is good and the plethora of screenshots within pop off the page. The text itself is quite large, making it an easy to read tome with no chance of eye strain even for my tired old peepers - and yes, I mentioned this last week too! Separate reading glasses are inbound as I type. 

There are six chapters in total, starting with the very beginning of the adventure game genre and text adventures. Colossal Cave Adventure, Zork, and The Hobbit are specifically mentioned, although there are countless more of their kind. My personal enmity is reserved for The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy which had me stumped on the CPC back in the day, although a recent couple of RISC OS text adventures (Gateway to Karos and The Mirror of Khoronz - http://www.boulsworth.co.uk/intfict/) did keep me entertained in the run up to the festive period.

The second chapter moves on to the beginning of the graphical adventure and the works of Ken and Roberta Williams. Yep, Sierra On-Line were the name in adventure throughout the 1980's and early 90's. As well as their early titles, each of the main series (King's Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest) are covered along with Leisure Suit Larry, Gabriel Knight (a personal favourite) and the later CD-ROM adventures such as fantastic Phantasmagoria. 

Next up is LucasArts, from their take on Labyrinth to their final effort, The Dig. Between those two titles are some of the most revered examples of the genre, and this chapter highlights the love and affection the author has for adventure games. It can be difficult to write about specific releases when they've already been covered to death, but Mr Carton manages to bring a freshness to the descriptions of these gaming legends.  

That's got to be a caption competition opportunity.

Chapter four is all about influential classics and goes through a whole menagerie of them. From The 7th Guest to Putt Putt, Broken Sword to Discworld, Simon the Sorcerer to Myst, this collection highlights the different styles and approaches to the adventure game as it developed throughout the 90's and beyond. That some series are still in active development is testament to the appeal of the adventure game, and if I could justify the expense (and accept Meta's data collection policies, which is a big deal), I'd be playing The 7th Guest in VR now. Modern day examples such as the Life is Strange series also get a mention. 

Telltale Games is the subject of the fifth chapter, with their (mostly) licensed output, becoming a near standard in the genre as the noughties became the teens. Prolific doesn't begin to cover how many games they released, and there are some gems in there too. 

The final chapter details the return of the classic adventure game, with the likes of Thimbleweed Park, Broken Age and Return to Monkey Island featuring, again demonstrating the ever present love of the genre by its fans and the support they give to new releases. It is also a fine way to end the book. 

However, I mentioned a niggle in the opening paragraph, and although absolutely nowhere near enough to even consider not recommending this book, it should be noted. 

It would have been nice to have a bit more coverage on the indie scene. These efforts have brought weird and wonderful titles to adventure game aficionados. The Mystery of Woolley Mountain, Lamplight City, Lucy Dreaming - just three releases from outside of the mainstream market that thrive on the likes of Steam et al (and which I have reviewed for Fusion magazine, as well as the more recently released The Will Of Arthur Flabbington). I know this book isn't a comprehensive guide to the field of adventure games, but some of the best games of their type in the last few years have come from that arena. That being said, to give full due the indie adventure scene would probably need separate book all of its own. 

Still, this doesn't take away from my opinion that if you want a general overview of adventure games, then this one from Christopher Carton has you covered. Easily readable and handsomely bedecked with pictures galore, it's another fine addition to the bookshelf. You can pick up a copy from the usual online/physical book retailers, as well as direct from the publisher here. You can also follow the author on Twitter/X - search for @chriscarton89.

The Video Games Guide by Matt Fox - Book Review

I love a good rummage around charity shops. There is something to be said about finding old or out of print books, CD's etc, and also supporting a charity where you can. In this instance, a quick visit into the (now sadly closed) Oak Tree Animals charity shop in the Washington Galleries led me to this, a review compilation I'd never seen before, for three quid. Sold!

Published in 2006, the guide offers to take the reader from Pong to PlayStation 3, and given that it clocks in at 550 pages, it feels like it could do decent work. Flicking through the pages shows a clean layout and decently sized text - not too large to pad the tome out, not too small to cause eyestrain to your humble scribe.

The foreword is from Tim and Chris Stamper, whom at the point of publication were still at Rare (they would depart the company they co-founded the following year), and is a nice kick off to the contents proper - the games. 

Arranged alphabetically, each title gets a star rating, details of developer, publisher, platform and year of release, then a write up by Mr Fox. Games are awarded scores out of five, with five going to a classic and one being poor. It's the in between that only kind of makes sense to me - four stars denotes excellence, three is good and two is fair. This does, in my humble opinion, weigh the scoring system to good or better titles. Given that the "comprehensive guide" wouldn't want to focus solely on bad games, and it could be argued that unless you deliberately target the crap end of the spectrum, you're going to have a predominance of three star games and above. In any case, every five star title gets a screenshot in the colour plate section in the centre of the book. The screenshots aren't huge but make a nice break from the text. 

Starting at A, it soon becomes clear that the author knew his stuff when he started writing this book. Commentary is fair, albeit within the bounds that these are his opinions, and yours (and mine) can and will differ. Airwolf on the ZX Spectrum, for example, isn't worth two stars any day of the week, and the two stars Headhunter for the Dreamcast gets is a travesty! I also wouldn't consider SSX or Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2003 absolute classics (best spoken in a Welsh accent), but there you go. 

Once you've passed Z, there's a chronology of the entries, from 1962 (Spacewar, naturally) to 2006 (too many to mention), followed by the similar list for hardware (DEC PDP-1 to Sony's PlayStation 3). Programmers and Designers get their own section, with a curated selection of games awards lists falling between those and the glossary. 

Covering a five decade period, of course there are going to be games that are missed out, but at the same time, there are some obscure releases that get a proper mention, so swings and roundabouts abound. If I am going to be really picky, the entry for Zarch/Virus did grate a little. The full article is under the Virus entry, with Zarch's referring the reader to that. Virus may be the name people of a certain vintage remember the mouse-threatening controls, but the original was Zarch and as it's rated a four, surely deserves to be remembered under its original and best guise? 

To be fair, The Video Games Guide is, to most, a curio of a long gone era - 2006 was a long time ago, yet it also provides a well written, handy resource for those who wish to learn about some of the less well known gems as well as the clunkers that tend to be forgotten. Voyeur on the CDi, anyone?

I am pleased I picked this up, not only for the charitable cause but also for the different points of view it gives on a wide selection of (now very) historical games. If the history of the art form holds your attention, then you'll get much use out of this book. Secondhand copies are available (at the time of writing) on Amazon for not much more than I paid for my copy, so have at it if you wish. I know I'll be referring to my copy for years to come. 

Magazines of Yesteryear - What Personal Computer? Issue 14 - September 1990

The last issue of What Personal Computer? I looked at carried the news of Amstrad's latest attempt to become relevant with a 286 in late 1991. That didn't work out too well for them, but what about the company that began the whole x86/DOS shenanigans in the first place? In the September 1990 issue, Big Blue provided an answer to the question: what PC do you sell to the average consumer?. Well, they thought they did, but at least it got a cover photo. And yes, kids, computers were both as beige and as downright ugly back then too. 

The main news item was rapidly decreasing PC prices. Elonex were knocking £200 off their 386V/33 (a 33MHz 386 system as if you couldn't tell, featuring the EISA (Extended Industry Standard Architecture) bus - an open competitor to IBM's more strictly controlled MCA (Micro Channel Architecture) bus), taking the headline price down to £2,295 ex VAT for the 40Mb HD mono model. Similarly, their 286 40Mb VGA colour system was down to £1,145 ex, and the 386SX equivalent comes in at a "mere £1,395." Mere, they say? Olivetti took £100 off both their PCS86 and PCS286 ranges, whilst Gandlake (1990's computing equivalent to Accrington "Who are they?" Stanley) priced their entry 286 at £899, a £96 cut.

In other news, DR-DOS was hitting version 5, adding additional memory management for those 640/384Kb blues, as well as a disk cacheing ability to improve disk access times. A new release of MS-DOS was rumoured but the report notes that it probably wasn't going to be called MS-DOS 5. Oh, what little faith yea had in imaginative marketing types... MS-DOS 5 would land in June 1991. Apple also gets a mention in the news - a new model rumoured to be called the Classic, which did in fact hit the market in October 1990.

The first feature we get to is the Bunch Test, this month comparing laser printers under £2,000. You may snigger at the back, but in 1990, that was budget level. The winner was the Panasonic KX-P4420, rocking a £1,395 price tag, quick performance and extra fonts. It only emulated a LaserJet (the then-defacto standard for laser printers), and was a tad chunky, but was otherwise good enough to take the crown. 

The cover star is next, and it really does look nasty. Expansion by additional slices can work (the pinnacle of which was Acorn's Risc PC in 1994), but here it just looks clunky. That second, 5.25" floppy, looks like it'd be blocked by the keyboard on smaller desks, yet the 3.5" drive, for all of its weird angular looks, defined IBM's aesthetic of the period, and I still kind of like the cut of its jib - just not the box it's attached to. As for the rest of the hardware, this home-targeted machine was merely average. A 10MHz 286, 3.5" 1.44Mb floppy, a 30Mb hard drive and VGA graphics. However, the negatives outweighed even these slight benefits. Standard RAM was 512Kb, although you could buy a board with an extra 512Kb to experience the joys of that 640/384Kb split. Two proprietary slots (IBM, proprietary? I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked!), could handle a modem and a joystick/audio card, but if you needed 16-bit ISA slots, an additional expansion box could be purchased. No tools were needed for fitting said box, but as it followed the design footprint of the base unit, full length cards were excluded. The final verdict? To quote the boxout, "If you know enough about computers to read this mag, you know enough to leave the PS/1 alone." Ouch! It didn't help that UK pricing wasn't confirmed either, and the recently launched Amstrad PC2286 could give you a larger hard drive and monitor (14" instead of 12" - back in those CRT days, the extra inches often counted), for around a grand excluding the Chancellor's cut.  

A feature on the NeXT machine posits that next-gen PC's will probably look like the NeXT Cube, as well as offering a new GUI-based operating system. A complete package offered 8Mb of RAM, a 40Mb hard drive, 17" Mega Pixel (their words, not mine) display and a 230Mb capacity optical drive for £6,495. At that price, the GUI may be wondrous, but Macs were cheaper (well, some were), and Acorn had RISC OS on its £649 A3000. 

286 workstations go head to head on page 54, with Mitac and Compaq both trying to justify why you should spend £1,399 and £1,895 respectively. They're mostly evenly specc'd - the Mitac edges out the Compaq with its 12.5MHz chip (as opposed to 12MHz), and it's extended VGA display options (800x600). It's a smidge faster than the Compaq but the latter has the option of up to 13Mb of RAM - at a price, of course - £2,730 on top of the base config. The reviewer does note that corporate buyers would go for the Compaq name, but as he's not a large corporation, he'd go for the Mitac, and I can't say I blame him. 

CAD packages receive a round up (EasyCAD 2 for the win), before we reach the reviews section, the most notable of which is the Sygnos 68 LCD monitor. For £799, you got an 8 x 6 inch mono VGA (black on white or white on black) display. Whilst very restful on the eyes for text entry, ghosting made it marginal for anything else, but the review notes that it is recommended to pregnant women worried about CRT display radiation. Yes, that was.a thing. and it wasn't until 1992 that the Swedish Govermnent legislated for the maximum amount of radiation a person could experience at half a metre from the display - MPR II was your friend. A preview of the next issue promised a trio of 386's and a round up of accountancy packages, Woohoo, I near nobody cry.

As is expected, we now come to the adverts, and it's relatively slim pickings as WPC? was not the tree destroyer that PCW or Computer Shopper were. Diamond Computers are the first major advertiser, offering A500 trade ins for Amiga 2000's. The new A3000 was also on sale, but starting at £2,499, it was a niche machine for most. Page 14 continues the Commodore interest with a double spread on their PC Starter Packs. You could save up to £300 on one - naturally, that was the most expensive PC30 model. The small print points out that the PC30 was £1,199 ex VAT (£1,378.85 inclusive) for a colour VGA 286, and the main blurb about getting sorted for less than £500 was for the 8088 powered mono dual floppy PC10 at £499 ex, (£573.85 inc). 

MBC were selling 8088-powered hard drive equipped VGA models for £845 inclusive, 286's for £995 and a 16MHz 386 for £1,245. These had tiny hard drives though, so extra money was needed to get up to 40Mb, but MBC were a rarity in advertising VAT inclusive prices. 

Time Computers were shifting Amstrads, Olivettis and Tandons. As noted above, Amstrad's 2286 was a budget wonder. The 12' High-Res VGA colour option sneaked under a grand ex VAT, and the PC1640's replacement, the 2086, could give you proper VGA colour for three figures including the Treasury's take. The pesky hard drive issue was sorted by this point, but the damage to Alan's reputation was done.

Page 68 offered an ad from American Research Corporation of Croydon, Surrey. A 386SX laptop, it boats of "a complete business partner, ergonomically designed, weighing a slim 15.4lbs." To borrow from Senor Inigo Montoya, they kept using those words but I do not think they mean what ARC think they mean. Looking at the pic, "slim" and "ergonomic" seem to be doing as much heavy lifting as that NFL player. 

Silica make an appearance with Atari's ABC PC compatible. Sadly, the headline £899 (ex VAT) for a 30Mb and EGA toting 286 fails to point out that the EGA is mono. Colour takes the price up to £999 ex, whilst the Turbo model with SVGA adaptor, monitor and fast disk controller is a much more considerable £1,299 ex. What Atari should have been doing at this point was try to rescue the ST from its fate, but no, they pissed around with DOS compatibles and the Portfolio (Silica add on page 85 - a terrific little handheld for the price, by the way, but not really a core product for Team Tramiel) instead. The same comment could be aimed at Commodore as well.

If you were really flush, however, you could grab yourself a 486. G-Com Computers offered a good selection of PC's - that 286 wasn't bad even considering the added cost of colour VGA, the 386's provided more power with the caveat that really there was nothing much yet the typical user could take advantage of, but that 486... £2,995 ex for a mono system. You were paying for the power, most surely, but it was just for bragging rights.  

What this issue demonstrates, especially when compared to the last PCW post, is that the DOS PC market was evolving. Sure, it wasn't totally out of the mid-80's business machine category just yet, but it was getting there, a point easily made by the presence of VGA graphics on machines costing way less than a grand inclusive. Hard drives and faster processors would rocket up the price, but a key element of the DOS machine - the display - was now capable of standing against the more home orientated 16-bit competition. 

It would take another year before the 286 hit the mass market, and by then, a grand in cash would buy you a 286 with VGA,  hard drive, and with a smidge left over for a sound card. Compare and contrast to the Amiga and ST - both were still cruising off the glory days of the 68000 and a TV. Arguments over operating systems would continue (and worthy of some consideration), but the point I am making here is that what might have seemed like a completely outclassed business only machine in 1987 was, by late 1990, developing into the supreme home computer format. Combine that progress with the frankly crazy corporate attitudes of Commodore and Atari to their homegrown formats, and it wouldn't take much for those who were looking for the best thing in computer games to gravitate towards the PC. 

Next time, a journey further back into the mists of UK computing journalism, with a look at an issue of Personal Computer News, a weekly publication from the early to mid 1980's. 

Tailships by John Rodgaard - Book Review

There has always been something about Cold War anti-submarine warfare that has fascinated me. From reading (and watching) The Hunt for Red October to devouring Red Storm Rising, playing 688 Attack Sub and Cold Waters, the subject has always had a depth (no apologies) that intrigues. And it is in the less well documented area of the Mediterranean that Helion and Co's recent release focusses its attention: Tailships - The Hunt for Soviet Submarines in the Mediterranean 1970-73.

You may think that this will be a bit of a dry text considering the topic and the brevity of the period it covers. That cannot be further from the truth. What the author, a 41-year veteran of the US Navy who retired at the rank of Captain, has done is integrate not only the technical and operational aspects of the small fleet of (outdated and obsolete) converted Destroyer Escorts, but also the social aspects of their crews, the process of manning them as well as the effect their deployments had of their families. There is much more to this than just "one ping only, Vasiley." 

The first couple of chapters set the scene - the Cold War and the importance of anti-submarine warfare. From there, we are given a guide to the theatre of operations, and how the Med was a tricky prospect for those in the ASW game due to its physical characteristics. The core details how the staging of the aging Destroyer Escorts was initiated as well as their operational deployments in-theatre. They quickly demonstrated their usefulness and became a valued capability, despite their mechanical weaknesses and rapid platform obsolescence. Would it be waspish of me to compare the situation to the current Type 23 debacle in the RN? Probably, but no less true. Where that particular organisation is at has many reasons, but running ships with 18-year design lifespans well into their fourth decade has come home to roost. I know, a discussion for another time, but the GP's are thirty plus year old and even the newest ASW ship commissioned nearly 22 years ago, and will be 33 when she reaches her planned decommissioning.

Back to the Med, and Tailships finishes off with a "what happened next" chapter, running quickly passed the SURTASS ships and the current much needed requirements for having towed array equipped vessels in service. 

Throughout, there are many contemporary photographs, with diagrams and maps detailing deployments, concepts and locales, and the centre section artwork is, as always, a feast for the eyes.  The author writes clearly and is as good with technical descriptions as he is with the social studies. The more than comprehensive bibliography at the back is certain to be a source of future reading too. For those looking for action packed sonar hunts, this isn't the book for you, but if you wish to learn more about how such an important capability came into being, and remains as critical today as it did then, then Tailships is the book for you. You can pick it up directly from Helion and Co here.

Supercade - A Visual History of the Videogame Age 1971-1984 by Van Burnham - Book Review

Now this is a coffee table book and a half. First published in 2001, Supercade: A Visual History of the Videogame Age 1971-1984 (hearby just called Supercade 1, for as Yoda said, there is another), aims to address the requirement for demonstrating the aesthetic beauty of videogames as well as its evolution. Over 440+ pages, Van Burnham and a gaggle of contributors lay out the history of the art form as well as the hardware and characters between 1971 and 1984. And it is stunning.

Seriously, this is an art book first and foremost, with full pages dedicated to photography and screen grabs. Artwork pops off the page, and what would now be considered archaic graphical resolutions are celebrated in luxuriously high detail. Indeed, on my first read through, I pretty much ignored the text and looked at the (very) pretty pictures. But there is more to Supercade 1 than just the eye candy. Oh, much, much more...

As Maria told the von Trapp children, the beginning is a very good place to start, and this they do in Supercade 1. From the foreword by the late Ralph H. Baer, the history lesson begins at Brookhaven National Labs with Tennis for Two before moving on to MIT. It is this grounding in the very early history of computer entertainment and the intertwining of imagery and historical research that makes Supercade 1 a perfect introduction to videogames, what they started out as and how they evolved in their formative years. Every entry is well researched and written in an easy style. Tear yourself away from the visual feast and you will learn stuff too.

You heard the but coming, didn't you?

Yes, but only a little one. This is a US-centric tome and, to be honest, that's understandable. Due to the coverage of arcades, there is a hefty dose of Japanese titles, but only two pieces of Japanese home hardware: Sega's SG-1000 (giving useful context to who Sega were before their 16-bit glory days) and Nintendo's Famicom because, well, obviously! But what about everyone else? You do get the ZX Spectrum. I am not going to deny its obvious importance to the UK gaming scene, and the ZX81 did see a US release as the Timex 1000, but where are the others? The Amstrad CPC? The BBC Micro?? The Grundy NewBrain??? Honestly, some people! ;-)

In truth, it is rather churlish of me to complain too much - this is a visual history of videogames and the early days were heavily driven by US and Japanese companies. There is only so much you can include in a book this size (remember, it's a hefty beast at nearly 450 pages), and what it does cover, it covers extremely well. There are certainly many other resources for those who want to look from a UK/European perspective, and when all is said and done, most of the titles mentioned in Supercade are, at worst, genre classics, and at best, defining examples of the art form. 

Supercade 1 is a superlative feast for the eyes (and the brain) on a subject that, although covered in various guises over the years, really deserved the coffee table treatment, and it sure has received that here. While it is currently sold out at the US-based webshop here, have a Google and you may pick it up from an online retailer for not stupid money. This is the perfect coffee table book about video games, and one that deserves to be on yours. if you don't have a coffee table, buy one or, if you must, place this book carefully on a sturdy bookshelf.