News News broke as the mag went to press that Commodore worldwide had basically filed for administration in the Bahamas, where the company was registered. Just what this meant was unclear, but things did not look good. It wasn’t terribly surprising considering the losses the company had posted over the last couple of years, though Commodore UK had performed well. While this move was obviously concerning, The One were...
News Andy Nuttall (aka “Nutts”) joined the mag as Deputy Editor after having done five months hard time at ST Format. Third time’s the charm - or so Commodore hoped with its third CD32 bundle since launch. The Voyage pack included “Microcosm” and “The Chaos Engine”, plus four games from the two existing bundles while stocks lasted, all for £299.99. Codemasters were bringing “Captain Dynamo” and the “Dizzy CD...
When I made the decision to join Magic Leap back at the start of 2013, I told my friends that I had no idea where it was going to lead, but I knew it would be a ride… and that it was. It’s two weeks to the day that myself, my team here in NZ and over 1,000 of my workmates at offices across the world were laid off. Well, technically those of us in NZ entered into a “consultation” period of a few days as mandated by NZ law, but that ended on Monday with all of us being made redundant....
News Contrary to last month’s news, while ex-The One editor David Upchurch had been assigned to a new mag, it was to EMAP’s latest launch, PC Games, and not a reboot of Sinclair User… which made a little more sense. Ocean struck a deal with Virgin to release twelve of its games on Hit Squad, their budget label. The lineup included “Cannon Fodder”, “Dune”, “Dune 2”, “Jimmy White’s Whirlwind...
News This was to be David Upchurch’s last issue as Editor as off to head up EMAP’s relaunch of… Sinclair User. Apparently the Speccy had been seeing a resurgence, though I find that a little hard to believe. At any rate, Simon Byron was to take over the helm. Team 17 were embracing the CD32 starting with “Ultimate Body Blows”, a revamped version of their beat’em up featuring...
News Editor David Upchurch saw a bright 1994 ahead for the Amiga. Word on the street was that Commodore UK were close to striking a deal with LucasArts that would see them bring their PC hits “Rebel Assault” and “Day of the Tentacle” to the CD32. (It didn’t happen) While England had suffered the shame of failing to qualify for the upcoming World Cup, Virgin were keen to...
News Late breaking news was that Maxis were porting “Sim City 2000” to the Amiga. The PC original was impressive, but would it survive the translation? It looked like “The Second Samurai” would be Vivid Image Design’s last title for a little while as they were going all in on CD gaming. Mev Dinc and his team were taking the interesting approach of insisting that all design and illustration...
In this issue…
The editor reflected on 2 years of Special Reserve: memberships had shot passed 25,000, with 5,500 of those also subscribing to Official Secrets (and, therefore, Confidential). While there had been the usual summer lull in game sales, they were expecting a bumper Xmas due to the Amiga’s popularity and had decided to also carry Atari Lynx, Sega Megadrive and CDTV titles.
The news included details of SSI’s “Secret of Silver Blades”, a bunch of upcoming flight sims, Alexey Pajitnov’s “Tetris” followup “Welltris”, along with rumours of a new adventure from Level 9 (“Billy the Kid”), a game based on the book “Neuromancer”, and Sierra bringing “King’s Quest IV” and “Colonel’s Bequest” to the Amiga.
News Editor David Upchurch had “deserted” the mag for a couple of months which left Simon Byron in charge. The CD32 received some encouraging news as high street retailer Menzies announced they would be stocking it in time for Christmas. After some months of silence (on the Amiga at any rate), Thalamus was about to release “S.U.B.” (unreleased). The One wondered what had happened to “Arsenal” - rumour was...
News The CD32 launch hadn’t exactly gotten off to a great start, with sales looking rather lacklustre. To try to turn things around Commodore kicked off a marketing push starting with a big presence at the Live ‘93 exhibition and an upcoming TV advert. Satellite stations would be targeted first before switching to ITV and C4 over the Christmas period. Apparently Live ‘93 was such a big hit that...
