Editorial Welcome to Issue 42 of SynTax - the end of its 7th year. It's amazing ... I can't believe how quickly the time has flown. The magazine is busier than it's ever been, mostly due (as I've mentioned before) to the permanent advert in PC Mart. It has changed a lot over the years too - from its early days when it was ST only and contained only about 300K of info. Now it's mostly for the PC / CD ROM with a Windows version too though there are still some ST and Amiga readers. One introduction over the last few years is the Contributor of the Year award (full details in the Contributions section), and once again it's THAT time of year when we hand out the SynTax equivalent of the Oscars. This year's winner is ... ta-da! ... Richard Hewison, who also programmed the Amiga version of SynTax. Congratulations, Richard! James Judge came second (as he did last year, he won the year before that), Alex (who won last year) third, Jean Childs (aka Nogwidget) fourth and Graham Cluley (who programmed the PC version of SynTax) came fifth. They should all have their Myth and Magic figures by now and I hope they will enjoy them. One year I'm going to treat myself to one when I buy the awards - I've lasted 5 years and not given in yet, but it's getting harder each year... The award was a very close run thing because last issue Richard had been about 60K ahead of James, so it was touch and go whether or not he would be overtaken at the last minute. In the end he won by under 20K. All the winners deserve a big thank you for their contributions to SynTax over the years so here it comes ... TTTTTTT H H A N N K K Y Y OOO U U ! T H H A A NN N K K Y Y O O U U ! T HHHHH AAAAA N N N K K Y O O U U ! T H H A A N NN K K Y O O U U ! T H H A A N N K K Y OOO UUU ! Incidentally, for anyone interested in the history of the awards, here are the results for the four previous years they've been running, winner first, then the runners up: 1991/92 Neil Shipman - Graham Wheeler, Dave Barker, Colin Campbell, Alex van Kaam 1992/93 Brian Burke - Roy Sims (aka Richard Hewison), The Grue, John Barnsley, The Bitmap Kid 1993/94 James Judge - The Bitmap Kid, Brian, Alex, Roy / Richard 1994/95 Alex van Kaam - James, Neil, Phil Darke, James Jillians As you can see, though some readers have received more than one prize, no-one has won it twice ... yet. Congratulations too must go to Brian Burke who was the only entrant in Alex's competition to win a copy of Ecstatica. Alex wanted someone to say what his name, Borimir, on MSN was. Brian said it was from Lord of the Rings, which is true. We were also looking for the answer that it was also spelt incorrectly but ... never mind, Brian was close enough! I hope he's enjoying his prize. SynTax has a bit of a new (or should that be 'old'?) look this issue as I have gone back to small disk labels. The large ones looked great but weren't they awful for coming unstuck? I miss having all that space on the label but better to make sure the labels stay fixed. Everyone who has mentioned the latest version of SynWin has been very impressed with the changes made to it by Alex. Incidentally, Alex asked me to publicly thank Bill Commons for testing the last version for him. Alex and Bill have been in contact via the Internet and anyone else on there should check out Alex's homepage at: http://www.iaehv.nl/users/drkside/index.htm. He has set up a SynTax page at: http://www.iaehv.nl/users/drkside/syntax.htm where people can download the shareware version and VBRUN300.DLL. Tell your friends! Alex tells me you'll need Internet Explorer to see it in all its glory and that can be downloaded at http://www.microsoft.com/ie/ie.htm - for free! More news on SynWin soon, there are more changes afoot! Right, a few odds and ends to mention. A couple of readers have had problems recently with disks from the library, either because (1) the programs were provided archived using PKZIP and they didn't know how to unzip them or (2) because the programs ran too fast for their machines. Zipping first - wherever possible, programs are provided unzipped for convenience, but sometimes they have to be archived to get them to fit onto a disk. I've added brief details for `how to use PKUNZIP' at the start of each of the PC library sections. If you still have problems, please give me a ring and I'll talk you through it. Secondly, programs running too fast - some of the graphic adventures ARE old now (written in the `80s) and will run too quickly on, say, a Pentium. If you have problems, post the disk back to me for exchange for a different game. Remember that it's the lower numbered disks in the lists which are the oldest and most likely to cause problems so avoid these if you have a modern machine, or ask when you order if it will be suitable. Despite the advent of super-duper, whizz bang games with 6 CDs, FMV and wotnot, it's amazing how many of us are playing golden oldies. I recently started the Eye of the Beholder Trilogy (1990 onwards) and, probably because I was playing it myself so it was a bit of a coincidence, noticed 6 or 7 people ordering solutions or solution disks for it over the last month. Mind you, EOTB1 is a damn fine game, I'm thoroughly enjoying it. I'm thinking of doing some solution compilation disks and/or booklets - the LucasArts collection, one for the Ultima games, Infogrames, Legend, King's Quest series etc. If anyone DOESN'T want any solutions that they have sent in included on the disks / booklets, please let me know, otherwise, as with reusing contributions in PC Mart, I will assume it is okay. Everyone will be given full credit, of course. I've started a new section this issue in the Reviews section. It is called 'A Quick Look at ...' and will cover games which have been recently released and not yet reviewed, just so you can have a bit more information that I give in the news section. These are NOT reviews as such and I would still be grateful if readers would write in with proper reviews when they play the games because these 'Quick Looks ...' won't usually give any personal opinion on the games. Another change of plan; most of you have said you find the SynTax indexes very useful but they take up a lot of room so I have decided to extract issues 1-40 (a nice round figure) and put them into a booklet which will be given free of charge to all readers with this issue. From now on, just current references will be added and every few years I'll update the booklet and clear out the indexes again. In this issue, Richard has reviewed the Iomega Zip Drive. I've just bought one too and it is great, though I must admit it took hours to get it working due to a conflict which suddenly cleared ... goodness knows how or why, I'm just glad it did. I can recommend the drive for convenient storage for those of us with (relatively) dinky hard drives. I remember the days when 40 meg was heaps ... Talking of specs, Steve McLaren made the suggestion that all reviewers, if possible, put the specs required for a game on the end of their review. Good idea, Steve. Last issue I mentioned that I had 3 solutions for The Dig and was going to put all of them in this issue - change of plan. When I thought about it, it seemed silly to put three solutions for the same game in one issue so I have started this time with Arnie's solution, Alison's will be next issue and Phil's the issue after that, as that was the order in which they were received. Well, I think that's it for this issue. Please consider writing a review for next issue. Whether you love a game and want to recommend it, or hate it and want to warn people about it, please take the time to write >something<. A magazine is only as good as its contributors make it ... so please make SynTax even better in its 8th year! Sue - o -