Unconfirmed rumours are circulating that David Bradforth of the company much publicised in EUG (although rarely anywhere else!), ProAction, may have given up "supplying" the 8 bit world with his own and Superior Software's products.

The revelations flow from the computer message interchange service at www.deja.com where Bradforth regularly posts messages and advertisements for software for the Archimedes machines. The editor of Risc OS user and the man who has constantly insisted all Superior Software titles should be removed from the internet due to copyright laws, recently put up ads there offering the remainder of his stock of Play It Again Sams (advertised in EUG #55) and his BBC Master in bulk for £50. He also notified EUG he was "passing copyright back" to Superior on all such products, including those manufactured by ProAction itself. Presumably this now means all copyright on all Play It Again Sam titles (including the elusive 19th compilation and the brand new Uggie's Garden rests with Superior (although whether Bradforth ever had copyright on many of the Superior titles seems unlikely).

The actions have led the 8 bit world to assume that, as far as 8 bit is concerned, the reign of ProAction may have come to its end. However, it may be that Bradforth has simply shifted his target onto the 16 bit Archimedes emulation sites. Over Christmas, 'ProAction Special Projects' (yet another alias?) stated it had set to work on a PC CD of several hundred emulated titles (originally for the Archimedes) by Superior. One cannot help but wonder whether, when this CD is completed, Bradforth will direct emails to internet sites which offer the games for free, similarly demanding their removal for breach of copyright!

Just a quite worthy addition to the Electron Contact Information for High Street Micro, a self-styled Aladdin's Cave of retro gaming. They have now got their entire catalogue of brand new Acorn Electron and BBC games on line at:
    http://www.highstreetmicro.co.uk/acorn.htm

The prices, typically from £3 to £5, will net you items in pristine condition, items like Pipemania and Project Graphics even come factory sealed! Now, to break the seal or not break the seal, that is the question!

Two more places BBC owners might like to try are:
    http://www.fairgame.co.uk/ and
    http://www.retro-warehouse.co.uk/

These also stock a fair amount of retro games for all formats. However, retro-warehouse does not yet have its catalogue on line (even though it's been promising it for over a year now!). Pretty site though. Not.

The "early EUG rejuvenation" project, aimed at transcribing everything from the early paper-based EUGs to the disk format all new readers are accustomed to, has been boosted over the previous two months with the arrival of full disk versions of EUG #3, #4 and #5! As EUG originally became a disk magazine at EUG #9, this leaves only three issues to be completed.

The compilation of these three recent disks has been much more problematic than their predecessors due to the large amount of Clip Art and original new drawings (by then editor Will Watts) displayed in the original versions. Although the Clip Art was tracked down to ex-BBC PD disks now present in 8 Bit Software's 'BBC' library, the full-screen images produced by Will on his Electron ten years ago had long since been erased. Numerous images therefore of everything from covers ("openers") and illustrations to screen displays had to be painstakingly and pixel-perfectly replotted to be recreated on disk.

The results, well worth seeing for an adjudgement of the success of this task alone, appear across the mags in "Will Watts Art Slideshows". There will hopefully be reviews of each disk by EUG readers in time too.

The scurrilous scoundrels who incensed us all with the perverse, disgusting and immature demo Rape Of The Alectro Module (available from the Stairway To Hell web site) would like to announce their second demo, provisionally entitled The Yellow Room, will be followed by a reduced number of Xs than the first.

Dave E