25th February 2010
If you fancy yourself as a future Director General of the BBC, then there's a new game for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum that might interest you
Retro Mart: Channel 6
Would-be Television executives will soon have a game in which to hone their skills, thanks to Jonathan Cauldwell's forthcoming Tele Heroes, which is scheduled to be published this spring by Cronosoft for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum.
This game puts you in charge of the newly formed Channel 6, the latest UK terrestrial channel. You control everything from buying programmes on the open market to commissioning your own. Even better is that you get to decide the daily schedule, and you have nine categories of programmes to pick from, such as documentaries, dramas or even those of an adult theme. But beware, campaigner Mary Frighthouse is watching and will phone the regulator if you flout its strict broadcasting rules with regards to showing any inappropriate content before the 9pm watershed. There's also the branding of your channel to think of, as well as your website and teletext service, all of which will cost you from an initial budget of just 60,000 and thereafter. That doesn't sound like much cash to play with, but people will watch any old rubbish, won't they?
This management simulator has been created very much in the style of Codemasters' 1989 hit Rockstar Ate My Hamster, with some of the same humour, and although I find it a little sedate, it's very well done and several of the jokes really are hilarious. Prices will be announced through Cronosoft shortly, and expect it to be released as an emulator image as well as real cassette tape.
Old Timer
After 20 years of development, Cinematic Intuitive Dynamix's "epic production" Newcomer is almost at its final 'Ultimate' version. This tells the story of a near-future world in which the most serious criminals and offenders are cast off to a remote island for a rather cruel rehabilitation. The game's main character, Neil, has been arrested for murdering his wife and her lover, and wakes on this desolate and baron environment. And so begins one of the biggest and most comprehensive role-playing adventure games for the Commodore 64.
The game features over 180 characters to interact with, and you can assemble up to six of the locals to join your team should they be willing. You may also go it alone if you choose. With no random events and thousands of puzzles to solve, this new version is one game that I've been looking forward to for some time, but the fact that it's stored on 11 sides of a 1541 (5.25") disk means Ultimate Newcomer will load from a much broader range of storage devices than its previous versions, including Creative Micro Designs (CMD) drives and the IDE64 interface. The game engine will detect if you're using a C128, or have a CMD SuperCPU plugged in, and take advantage of the extra processing power where appropriate as well.
The two most likely publishers for this expansive production are Protovision and Psytronik Software, with the possibility of it being released by both, as the game is multilingual, being available for Hungarian, English and German speakers. Therefore, unless you speak other languages, Psytronik is probably the best place to look. A word of warning is that with it requiring so many disks (and 5.25" floppies being in short demand), don't expect it to be cheap!
