Ask any long-time computer user what they miss about the 'good old days', and they will invariably say it's the monthly magazines that they yearn for. On the Commodore 64 and Sinclair ZX Spectrum, it was titles like ZZap! 64, Crash! and Your Sinclair that evoked a sense of community and belonging (something that many magazines don't do these days, Micro Mart excluded), bringing gamers the big developments as they needed them. Even Sinclair User had its devotees. And if you were an Amstrad CPC owner, you'd probably have purchased Amstrad Action, which had its humble beginnings in October 1985, ending nearly a whole decade later in June 1995.

As with ZZap! and Your Sinclair, which saw their own tribute issue, there is now such a thing available for CPC users, as issue 118 of Amstrad Action has hit the virtual shelves. This is available as a free download (in PDF format), or as real printed matter thanks to the services available through www.Lulu.com. This has come about thanks to the hard work of the publication's joint editor and art editor Neil Reive, with Ali Halabi in the deputy chair along with a team of dedicated enthusiasts who pulled out all of the stops to provide the Amstrad community with a splendid foray into the past and present of the magazine and scene surrounding it.

Containing over 130 pages, with 32 games reviewed, in-depth emulation guides, a history of the CPC technology and of Amstrad Action itself, and so much more, this is your essential guide to both the modern and olden days Amstrad 8-bit scene. The professionally printed version will cost just under 15, but is a brilliant tribute to the CPC's most popular monthly. It certainly won't look out of place in your collection, that's for sure. And, as mentioned earlier, you may get a free digital copy anyway; just point your web browser to www.lulu.com/content/2685625 and click on the download button. It's really that simple.

Web forums have always been a hive of activity, and none more so that those over at Atari Age. And it's here that you can find out about an internal 65816-driven accelerator board for the Atari XL range. This processor was used in Nintendo's SNES, of all machines, and is certainly a very capable 16-bit CPU.

This is expected to cost $50 USD (around 28), and is a replacement to the main CPU and RAM, running at just over 7MHz. It also offers faster access to your random access memory, as well as the enhanced instruction set. In the real world, it means the potential for faster 3D calculations (like anyone would be interested in 3D gaming though), and more 'multi-plexed' sprites over a standard Atari XL. One drawback is that it only has 64KB of RAM as standard, but this is to cut out compatibility problems, even though a full 16MB can be addressed by the CPU. Still, the upgrade is cheap enough for this not to matter so much.

The discussion thread will allow you to join in the discussion with the main developer.

While talking about Atari, there has been a rather splendid game released for the XE/XL range, called Gwobby's Adventure, which, although it looks like something from a magazine type-in from 1983, is actually a lot of fun. The task in hand is to guide Gwobby to the door on the opposite side of the screen. To do this, you must set a path before he starts to walk. The rules are that he can't fall more than one step, and there are obstacles to negotiate along the way. It really is that simple - kind of like Sleepwalker without the frills, if you like. The download is available here, which also has instructions on how to get the game to work on the Atari800Win Plus emulator.