Well goodness me, we've gone all enthusiastic about the Acorn Electron again and, a mere six weeks after the release of EUG #70, we proudly present EUG #71 - another ever so many courses of digestible 8 bit junk.

Articles

No "That Was The Year That Was" article for obvious reasons (The year's still far from up!) - so you'll have to content yourself with the latest news, lessons in hacking tape-based games from Mr. Spock and an article from our friends at Retro Gamer about The Making Of Exile!

It's a bumper crop of demos this issue with the opening EUG Morph Demo and all of side 2 of the companion disc filled with the Organ Grinder's Monkey's latest masterpiece The Ricky Gervais Demo. Each of these have introductions by way of articles. However, you will find two BBC demos on this disc that were originally submitted to 8BS by Stuart McConnachie, the author of the PCBBC emulator: The 8BS Demo and The Marbles Demo. These are both very impressive 100% machine code demos which really show off the power of the BBC.

The 8BS Demo takes splits a message into wavy sinus-style lines which wend and weave over the screen. The Marbles Demo plots a scrolling chess-board over which a string of marbles fly over. It also includes a scrolling message.

Games

Invaders from IJK gets a makeover adding new speeds in firepower, descent and playability in Evil Invaders. Bobrowski PD's long-lost Octagram makes it into PD World at last. Steven Flintham's Human Skeleton Quiz improves your trivia of the human skeleton and we rescue Your Computer's scrolling Alphatron-clone Jump Jet Assault!

Reviews

There's a distinctly obscure feel to this issue's collection of reviews - BBC PD's little-known Assorted Demos #3 and The Sicksoft Collection measure up, whilst Licence To Kill and Start Programming do not. We spotlight perhaps the only French collection of programs - Graphisme Et Sons Sur Electron - and cast our eyes over lesser known arcade game Gorph from Doctorsoft.

In addition, two new compilations hit Acorn Electron World - BBC Micro Wargaming and Personal Computer Games Programs and, whilst demos from the returned 8BS site are foremost in his mind, Dave E looks at Electron User 7.04 which contained perhaps the best graphical Electron demonstration of all time.

Solutions

Cast aside all the tat from Electron User and Impact Software, and even Epic's own hint sheet, and walk through this graphical extravaganza with our lavish solution to The Lost Crystal.

Plus!

Having given us two Ricky Gervais Show demos in as many weeks, the Organ Grinder's Monkey is currently working on a new film quiz project entitled Ultimate Film Quiz, which shows hi-quality trace drawn memorable moments from classic films. To whet our appetites they've sent on one of their images, from the film Carrie, rendered with Image2BBC.

Dave E