Part 5 - AA Comes of Age - 1989 Adam Waring (Technical Editor,
“...Let’s come clean about Last Ninja 2: we looked at it, and decided it was the biggest load of old rubbish since Psycho Pigs UXB...” - Steve Carey, October 1989 Gary Barrett’s last issue, AA41, before he left for another Future publication. “He-ee-ere’s Trenton! Not quite as wacky as his name might suggest.” Steve Carey introduced new games reviewer (Staff Writer) Trenton Webb. Regular reader, and Cheat Mode contributor, Mike Wong got his own verdict for R-Type published in the letters pages. AA’s Gary Barrett gave the game a poor 51% where as Mike rated the game highly giving it a ‘Mastergame’ score of 91%. The AA accolades are looking their best as they appeared from their latest redesign. Readers David Patient, Gavin Hawkins and Matthew Whelan produced their own opinion box comments for several of the games reviewed. AA43 (April’s issue) started a new regular ‘Forum’ feature where readers’ technical queries were answered by the Technical Editor. Emma Broadley began her new outspoken column ‘Broadley Speaking’ in AA44. AA celebrated the CPC’s fifth birthday with the feature ‘A machine called Arnold’: a look back at the origins of the CPC and its past five years. Issue 45 was the football special issue with four football games reviewed: Emlyn Hughes International Soccer, Gary Lineker’s Hot Shot!,
Trenton Webb (Games Editor) Arrived as the new Staff Writer, later becoming Games Editor. Left to work on Amiga Format as Reviews Editor. It was during this time that he appeared on the GamesMaster TV show as a reviewer. Then became Editor of Commodore Format, Game Zone and ST Format. Left Future Publishing around 1995 to work at Binary Asylum with Bob Wade, as a Games Designer. After Binary Asylum closed in 1999, Trent went to work for Internet firm Zehuti as Project Manager.
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AMSTRAD ACTION
Reviews Editor) Programmer who had written several CPC games including Lost Caves and Ninja Massacre. Joint second longest serving editorial staff, along with Bob Wade, Adam was the Technical Editor/ Reviews Editor for 34 issues. Reviewed Rick Dangerous 2, which is the joint highest rated AA game. Also wrote the ‘Spec Tech’ column in Your Sinclair. Left AA to travel the world and spent several years in Australia during which time he edited the Sega magazine Megazone. After his stint in Australia he came back and has worked on many magazines including PC Format, Max Magazine, Spanish Magazine. Can be seen currently writing for Death Ray, a Sci-Fi magazine.
n AA49, October 1989, fourth birthday celebration issue with cover tape. Microprose Soccer and Streetgang Football. Emlyn Hughes won the ‘AA Mastergame’ award with a 93% overall rating. Stuart Whyte won AA’s first ‘Adventurer of the Year’ award. Phil Howard, regular ‘Cheat Mode’ contributor, started a new feature called ‘Insider Dealing’, showing the secrets of hacking. The cover price for July’s issue (AA46) had the first rise for two years: £1.45. A common query among mystified computer magazine readers is how the overall rating was
never the average of all the other ratings: graphics, sound etc. As stated in the Editor’s reply, magazines never use averages to rate games overall, for the simple reason that one poor rating out of the four ratings would, unjustifiably, bring the overall rating down. New series ‘First Edition’ started in September featuring Desk Top Publishing, with contributions from Adam Peters (future AA Staff Writer) and his House Of Dolls fanzine. October (AA49) and it was AA’s fourth birthday with another cover tape giveaway: a playable demo of the excellent arcade game Shinobi, plus the usual extra tools and utilities. Pat McDonald’s last
issue before going back home to Frome. The infamous independent attitude of AA was evident in the reply to a letter about the lack of Last Ninja 2 / Robocop reviews; (see main quote at head of section); “...As for Robocop - which incidentally we liked very much - we had such problems getting a review copy out of Ocean at the time that we thought, ‘Stuff ‘em, we’ll review something else.’” Laser Squad, a consistent favourite among AA staff, was awarded a Mastergame with a 91% rating. AA50 introduced new Technical Editor, Adam Waring. Steve Carey announced that this would be the last issue that he would edit. He moved on to edit ST Format. Balrog took over The Pilgrim’s adventure pages. December and Rod Lawton arrived as the new editor for AA51.
Rod Lawton (Editor) Previous stints working on New Computer Express and ACE, Rod arrived at AA51 and became the longest serving editor, spanning 38 issues and over three years. Left to work in Future’s Leisure publishing section, and has written and co-written many computing and games books. Has worked freelance since, including PC Answers, PC Format, PC Plus, Computeractive and many more.