Editorial

Scanning down this Editorial, it's got a different slant from
usual. Most of it seems to be covering news that doesn't really
fit into the official News section.

For starters, just after last issue went out, Grue rang me to say
he'd read that Steve Meretzky had left Legend and set up his own
company called Boffo Games. Love the title! The first game he will
be releasing will be a graphical board type game similar to Fool's
Errand. Grue and I wondered if maybe he didn't like the way Legend
was going with their graphical interface and wanted to get back to
text/graphic games like Spellcasting ... wouldn't that be good?!

Then Ron Rainbird rang to say that he'd ordered the Ishar 3 hint
book from Daze Marketing and when it didn't come he rang and found
the phone line was disconnected. A chat to the operator turned up
the fact that they have gone. Now, about the same time, I had
ordered Ishar 1, 2 and 3 for Alex through a firm called
Chartshooters and, when 28 days had passed without the goods
coming though the cheque had been cleared, I rang them and their
phone was disconnected too. Chartshooters seemed to specialise in
cheap games from Daze and Silmarils (who are distributed by Daze
over here). Strangely enough, the booklet did eventually turn up
for Ron (and, by the way, he said it isn't worth even the œ4 he
paid for it!) and it came from Chartshooters. I wrote to their
head office, and heard nothing for, oh, must be a month. Then an
apologetic letter came from Daze saying the software would be with
me soon. They'd changed offices and had forgotten to put an
explanatory message onto an answering machine at the old place.

In the mean time, Alex had given up hope and bought Ishar 1 and 2
on CD-ROM in the Netherlands. So I rang Daze and said I wanted a
refund - which they agreed to and sent. I cashed the cheque faster
than greased lightning! You can probably guess what happened next?
Yes, two weeks later, all 3 games arrived! Back on the phone to
Daze, I told them to send me a cheque for the postage and I'd post
'em back, but the guy said, forget it, keep them. So Alex and I
both ended up with some free software. A happy ending, for us, if
not for Daze ...

Next I had two letters from Tim Kemp, editor of The Armchair
Adventurer. Due to being let down over the price of photocopying
the magazine, he decided to make it disk-based in future in
hyperbook format. In order to 'read' the magazine, you'll need a
PC with 256-colour VGA, 640K base memory (not FREE base mem), a
3.5" 720K disk drive and a Microsoft compatible mouse. However,
when he sent out a demo issue to a few people to test, all had
problems loading or running it. So for the moment, it's all
stations stop.  He has contacted Neosoft, authors of Neobook,
which is the program he's using, hoping they can throw light on
the subject but it has delayed the release of issue two. Tim
doesn't reckon he'll have anything ready this side of Christmas
so, in the mean time, all cheques have been returned. I hope Tim
gets everything sorted soon.

If you're a subscriber to Strategy Plus magazine who thought
they'd gone bust because you hadn't had an issue for months, well,
they haven't. Lol Oakes rang to tell me that SP decided to use an
in-house system back in the States and Select Subscriptions over

here wouldn't give them the names and addresses of subscribers -
nice people! So SP are sitting back, waiting for readers to
contact them and say, hoy, where's my mag? If you want to say
something similar and get your sub honoured, ring them on
0800-96-1793. It's a Freephone number but it takes you direct to
their HQ in Vermont, USA, so remember to allow for the time
difference.

I am still plodding through Yserbius! This game is so vast, I
can't see an end to it. I thought my character, Zeke the Wary (now
Zeke the Very Wary as the monsters get tougher!) was doing well,
up to Level 34. Then Graham told me his character was Level
50-odd! He's finished it now, by the way, so congrats to Bertha
aka Bert the Basher on bashing her way through Yserbius. When I
think that I haven't even started Twinion, the other game in the
package, it shows what good VFM the game was.  The crazy thing is
that Sierra have evidently deleted it, according to a mail order
firm I was talking to recently. If you see a copy, snap it up. If
you like RPGs, I am sure you'll love it, though the primitive
display may be a bit off-putting at first after the graphics of
Lands of Lore et al.

PC Mart is up to Issue 40-something and I am getting a very good
response to the Venture Forth (text PD/shareware adventure)
column from ST and Amiga owners as well as PC users. I would like
to start including a few solutions and hints in future issues and,
as with the reviews, I'd like to reuse readers' contributions from
SynTax if you're in agreement. There's no money involved, just the
fact that you get your name in print.  If you're NOT willing to
let me reuse your reviews / solutions / hints etc, please let me
know. This column is a great way to get SynTax known to a large
number of interested readers so you'd be doing me a big favour.

Finally, I wasn't sure where to put this request from Neil - it
isn't really a Help request or a Wants ad. Besides which I thought
this is the best place to put it so everyone sees it! Neil is
doing an A Level adult education class in English Lierature. His
tutor is looking for a video of Ibsen's Wild Duck but can't find
one in the UK. Can anyone on Internet advise where in the UK,
Europe or anywhere on PAL standard he might be able to get one,
preferably in English but that's not essential. If you can help,
please contact Neil Shipman, 1 Heath Gardens, Coalpit Heath,
Bristol BS17 2TQ or phone him on 0454 773169. Thanks.

Right - see you next year ... where did this one go?
                                                     Sue












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