The novelist Andy Remic is bringing his latest book, BioHell, to life on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, which is Andy's favourite 8-bit machine of all time. This was after being approached by large games developers such as iD Software, Rockstar North and Rare, to bring the pages to life on modern games consoles. As Andy states in his press release, "I decided against the glitz and glamour of worldwide gaming domination, and instead set out to develop a 48K Spectrum adventure myself. You always remember your first computing love affair: and mine was a sleek black little Spectrum number. It was October 1984, and I got my Sexy Speccy along with Ultimate's Knight Lore for Christmas. It changed my life!"

The game is set on a planet that is entirely corrupt, with the native population being 'upgraded' with the injection of microscopic nanobots, created by the firm Nano-Tek corporation. This technology finds itself on the black market, seeing millions injecting themselves with pirated biomods, then being transformed into violent and mindless zombies. This leads to the streets being strewn with blood-thirsty beings who carry shotguns and explosive devices. To the rescue comes the Combat K squad tasked with cleaning up and controlling this new threat, eventually leading them to the Nano-Tek corporation itself. The game is described as a "fast-paced hardcore first-person epic graphical text adventure", and is expected to be released this May, published by Psychedelic Hedgehog Software and being free to download. For more information, head over to www.andyremic.com.

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The extremely cute collect-'em-up BipBoi, created by Robert Pearmain, is nearing completion for the Speccy and is being submitted to Cronosoft for evaluation purposes. The graphics look like they could be taken out of the pages of a Dick Bruna 'Miffy' book, being well animated and using the machine's colour palette rather well, and although there's also the age-old problem of colour clash, this doesn't distract too much from the proceedings. Rather unusually for a new Speccy game, it includes beeper music and sound effects instead of utilising the AY sound chip. The task in hand is to guide

BipBoi or one of his friends to collect the stars, while avoiding the on-screen nasties such as the killer jelly monsters and such like. BipBoi feels like a very authentic game that wouldn't have looked in any way out of place if released in the early 1980s, and will be an ideal way of introducing the joys of 8-bit entertainment software to younger members of your family. To get hold of the latest preview, you can contact Rob by visiting his web page at www.peargames.co.uk

Sean Huxter is working on a clone of Bejewelled for the Commodore 64 and 128 graphical user interface GEOS, which will be presented as a 'desk accessory', meaning that you can load the game from your geoWrite or geoPaint (word processing and imaging packages) should you want a break from either. The game will be free to download, and should work on any version of GEOS from v2 onwards. To catch up on the current development status, head over to www.huxter.org/c64/geos/geoglyph/dey.htm. Sean also has some other GEOS games to download if you'd like to see some of his previous work, available from www.huxter.org/c64/cbhhtm, and the operating system may be obtained from www.cmdrkey.com, coming in the form of a free download for use with the Commodore emulator VICE.