Official feedback for issue 37

[SirClive]

My only concern is that some of the articles are getting ridiculously long. 2 big features on Pitfall was too much, 25 pages (exagerated for effect)on JSWO was excessive etc. I don't rally like any features to be more than 4 pages, except maybe the the features on individual machines (e.g. the latest one on the Dragon), but any more than 6 and I dread starting the piece.

[andrew_rollings]

My only concern is that some of the articles are getting ridiculously long. 2 big features on Pitfall was too much, 25 pages (exagerated for effect)on JSWO was excessive etc. I don't rally like any features to be more than 4 pages, except maybe the the features on individual machines (e.g. the latest one on the Dragon), but any more than 6 and I dread starting the piece.

short attention span much? hehe

I liked the longer articles. I especially liked the JSWO article.

(Just to put a contrary opinion out there )

Andrew

[yethboth]

Great Issue!

[Antiriad2097]

I too am a fan of the longer article and thought the Pitfall two parter was great. I'd rather have had it all in one mag, but as it was spread across two games I'll let you off .

[kiniki]

I also like longer articles, but not at the expense of losing other pieces.

I wasn't looking forward to the Jet Set Willy article as JSW has never really been something that particularly interested me. However in this case the informal writing style made it far more interesting.

In general I tend to find that articles written in a creative way can sometimes lose the plot by concentrating too hard on their own cleverness and forgetting the importance of the content. However the JSWO article was good with just enough nob jokes to satisify...

Although I am a little sad that you crammed all the phallic humor till the end... A more liberal sprinkling of penis jokes across the article would have worked better

[CraigGrannell]

My only concern is that some of the articles are getting ridiculously long. 2 big features on Pitfall was too much

Um, which two big features on Pitfall!? We had one standard-sized making-of (four pages) on Pitfall! and another standard-sized making-of for the sequel, not the original game. Seeing as the sequel is a fundamentally different game and the making-of was centred on entirely different aspects of games-creation, I thought that was easily justifiable (as compared to my Exploding Fist piece, which rolled Fist+ into a few hundred words at the end, for example, rather than doing it as a separate article).

Horses for courses, I guess, although I'm finding it rather bizarre that the Pitfall! articles seem to have polarised readers on this forum more than anything else I've written for the mag! Very odd.

[Duddyroar]

I think it made perfect sense for the two Pitfall features to run over two issues. If the second piece had been pushed back, people would have forgotten about the previous feature. As for putting the two together - if Craig is anything like me, he will hate the idea of cramming everything into one article when it's obvious there's enough good stuff for two.

On a side note, I noticed that several screen captions from my 'Making of Starfox' piece in issue 28 had managed to infultrate the Thanatos feature.

[CraigGrannell]

As for putting the two together - if Craig is anything like me, he will hate the idea of cramming everything into one article when it's obvious there's enough good stuff for two.

That's exactly right. For Exploding Fist, I pretty much knew the entire thing could be crammed into six pages, with the balance roughly 50/40/10 for Exploding Fist/Fist II/Fist+. However, once I had the material for the Pitfall! pieces, it was not only evident that I had eight pages' worth, but that there was a clear, concrete split between the two games in almost every way, hence the separation into two articles. Still, for those readers who don't like this happening, they should be happier with my contribution to next issue, which has a two-games-for-the-price-of-one feel, as far as space is concerned.

[chinnyhill10]

Fab issue.

Great to see the old adverts and nice to get the Q+A's going on Desert Island Disks. The new improved map style screenshots for the spreads are a vast improvement as well. More please!

I'd like to see Stu doing more articles as well. His current work seems to be well received and with his quite frankly scary knowledge of old games, he's be ideal for digging out the gems. Take a look at his article in the final ever Your Sinclair http://worldofstuart.excellentcontent.c ... gotten.htm to see what I mean. Opening peoples eyes to obscure old games is always fascinating IMO.

[Steve Halfpenny]

Issue was just okay. But...

The Pitfall articles remind me of the summer of 91 (I think it was 91...). Pitfall II came free with Commodore Format and I remember spending all of my six weeks holidays being completely mesmerised with this (even then) ancient platformer. Commodore Format was good at sticking stuff like that on their covers (Park Patrol was another very old but jolly Activision game they shot on a free tape).

Unlike the original, I think Pitfall II is still superb and so atmospheric that somebody should remake it with an entirely new level design or even a level editor (imagine that!). To a lesser extent, the arcade is alright too (I only remember seeing this on an actual cabnet once).

Good on ya for covering this without tossing out a load of screenshots and over information on the unoriginal and poor sequels and spinoffs.

[CraigGrannell]

Park Patrol is fab. As for a new Pitfall II level, you have tried the Atari 8-bit version, haven't you? If not, that's an entirely new and much tougher challenge for you to try,

Good on ya for covering this without tossing out a load of screenshots and over information on the unoriginal and poor sequels and spinoffs.

Anything that had nothing to do with David largely got ignored, aside from things directly to do with his work (the arcade game and the TV show, which I tried really hard to get some grabs from, but the contacts I made at Warner never got back to me, sadly).

[fredghostmaster]

Decent issue. Loved the Dragon feature even though it was too short. Nice to see the Pitfall II article and JSWO. Archer's article was very interesting as was the VF feature. So much more interesting than reading about some obscure Jap import (yawn).

[Steve Halfpenny]

I was aware of the Atari computer version but I never played it. I may check that out...

That's a shame about Warner. I would have loved to have seen something from that lesser known toon.

[Spiff]

Park Patrol is fab.

One of my favourite ever sound effects is the squeak the ants make when you kick 'em!

[MikeHive]

By the way, being a die-hard kung fu movie nutter, I can't help but point out a very small error in your information. In your write-up for the Bruce Lee game in the 'best platformers' article, you said that Lee's films were in the 'late 1970s' - actually, he died in '73. The posthumously-constructed film Game of Death was released in 1978, although this was the only one (apart from a couple of very cheap "movies" that actually just recycled footage from the sixties' TV show The Green Hornet). The point is that neither of the films you mentioned were released in the late 1970s, but oh well.

Nobody cares except me anyway, so I wouldn't worry about it