The Lawnmower Man Review – PC Format

Posted on February 14, 2016 by Pix

Finding reviews of The Lawnmower Man proved unusually difficult. Looking through all those 1993/94 magazines, it’s clear that CD gaming was only just beginning to take off over here and didn’t get a whole lot of coverage. When they were covered, CD games were often relegated to short independent sections near the end and the titles weren’t even listed in the reviews index with all the floppy disk games.

I did find one brief review in the July 1994 issue of PC Format. This issue gave an introduction to CD-ROM gaming with buyers guide to drives and something of a catchup on CD games reviews.

I’d possibly be slightly less harsh on the gameplay but more or less agree with every word. The 32 colour graphics would explain why it looked so awful. Sam and Max above fairs considerably better and rightly so.

PC Review Scans

Posted on August 14, 2014 by Pix

Back around 1992, PC gaming was just starting to take off here in the UK. A gaming PC was a long way from being cheap but at least the price was no longer flat out ludicrous and sound cards and VGA graphics were within reach. I’d just upgraded to a 386SX which still wasn’t entirely up to the more power hungry games like Ultima Underworld but there were plenty of games out there and precious little information about which were worth getting. I’d got by with the 2-3 pages in the gaming section of PC Plus magazine for several years before finally spotting PC Review in a magazine shop and never looking back. For a while the buyers guide at the back was something of a bible as to which games I should buy.

I was clearly late to the party as PC Review was already up to issue 7 (May 1992) at the point I discovered it. The magazine also had a predecessor in the form of PC Leisure (several issues of which are available at Thonor’s Vintage Magazine Scans) but that was only published every few months rather than monthly. Neither of these were entirely gaming based with articles on PC upgrades and the like. This minor technicality stopped them claiming the Britain’s first PC gaming magazine title that PC Zone used when it showed up some time later.

I never subscribed but I bought PC Review most months for many years after which all of these magazines languished for 15 years in my parent’s loft until I rediscovered them. I scanned the first five copies I have around the time before I started on the PC Zone scans already uploaded on here. I thought I might as well share so there is now a PC Review folder in the PC Zone archive on this site. The pdf’s are on the unnecessarily large side as I must have decided not to compress them too much back when I did the scanning.

As far as any Origin references in these, you don’t have to look too far. I’ve already scanned in all the reviews for this site but in a quick glance I spotted letters about setting up DOS to run Wing Commander, a mention of the Wing Commander strategy guide + a complete guide to Ultima Underworld spread over a couple of issues. There are also reviews of other personal favourites such as Indiana Jones And The Fate Of Atlantis + Another World. Enjoy anyway and if you happen to have any earlier issues you are willing to donate, sell, scan or lend I’d very much like to hear from you.

Privateer 2 Review – PC Zone

Posted on July 11, 2013 by Pix

This is a review of Privateer 2 from the November 1996 PC Zone. I immediately side with the reviewer (Chris Anderson) when he starts out by saying how fed up he is of having to defend Wing Commander over X-Wing. There is plenty of room for both series which I’m intending to point out in the final part of my X-Wing playthrough if I ever actually finish it. Anderson goes on to conclude that Privateer 2 is better than either of them. Not sure I’d go that far but it’s certainly a classic and seriously overdue a GOG rerelease:-

This review comes courtesy of Magnus Björkbom who quickly responded to my last post with a couple more PC Zone scans for issues #41 and #44. Both of those are now available in full on here getting the archive past the halfway point in terms of scanning the first 110 issues. I also uploaded the cover CD for the first of those new issues while I was at it + the previously missing cover CD’s for #102. I’ll add another scan of my own soon but not before I settle a score with a certain Death Star.

Wing Commander Prophecy Preview – PC Gamer

Posted on February 26, 2013 by Pix

I was going to start blogging through another game tonight but those plans haven’t worked out all that well. My most recently acquired bit of hardware is a Commodore 128 – I’ve wanted a C64 for a long time but the 128 had to be the better bet for Ultima 5 alone. I was looking forward to giving that another playthrough but when I got it set up my C128 turns out to have a faulty RAM chip. No great harm done as a replacement chip is only 99p but soldering it in will be a pain and I have to wait for it to arrive in the meanwhile.

Having failed on that front, plan B was to start on Wing Commander 3 on the 3DO which should have been easy except I discover that every set of AAA rechargeable batteries in the house has gone flat simultaneously and I can’t swap my TV onto the AV channel without the remote. Plan C was Ultima 5 on the NES since that uses the RF connection and I don’t need a remote control for that. This did work but I quickly decided that for once emulation was going to be the better option due to the sluggish speed of the game on the NES. Despite the mostly negative things I’ve heard about it, I actually like the look of the NES port but there is no way I’d make it to the end if I can’t at least double the speed. The lesson with all this is that while the original hardware is usually better, there are definite advantages to emulators.

I thought I should at least post something as I may not get chance the rest of the week so it’s a scan from the August 1997 PC Gamer of a Wing Commander Prophecy preview. If you’ve seen any of the other PC Gamer scans you will know roughly what to expect from their Wing Commander articles by now. As ever they take the chance to have a go at WC4 but are more optimistic about Prophecy even if they didn’t manage to spell it correctly. Interesting to see that Billy Cain agreed with them to an extent saying that FMV was used too liberally in WC4 dominating the experience. Speaking for myself the copious use of FMV is one of the reasons why I love WC4 so much and I was disappointed at the time that it wasn’t kept going in Prophecy. There was a strong backlash against interactive movies by this time though so I’m sure I was in the minority with that opinion.