Get CRASH direct from Fusion Retro Books at: fusionretrobooks.com/pages/crash-...
Oh, and in case you missed it, our expanded Ocean Software book reprint is on Kickstarter: www.kickstarter.com/projects/zza...
We’re also making a 64-page companion mag, celebrating our favourite Ocean games. Thanks.
Cover for CRASH 32
CRASH 32 drops any moment now 😉 Our lead review is Samera & The City Of Thinis. Also reviewed: Welcome To The Machine, Full Spectrum Defence & Perseus, plus plenty more (and a few Smashes). Who needs Resident Evil Requiem… 😉 plenty of cool features too, covering MPAGD and Shift Comics. Enjoy!
Happy to see your success with BubbleBack mate. I agree with you though, I think Cubix is going to sweep. Mind boggling technical achievement, plus the game itself is a lot of fun.
Spectrum Game Of The Year awards happening live now:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1RC...
Fun game with two different play style if memory recalls. Truly does recall the simple days of video games.
Cover Tape Wars - Feb 1991: YS adds more heat to the cover tape wars by bumping up to a Six Pack - ancient Dun Darach and Biggles gets re-released, top notch reader game Earth Skaker gets released, and there are demos of Switchblade and (1/3)
Truth is it's incredibly close. These tapes are each holding over a solid month's worth of fun. If I had to pick..... yeah, probably CRASH. Side Arms was a solid shooter and even CHIRON was a good riff on the Commando format. Topped off with a look at Chip's Challenge, yeah, give it to the smasher.
For YS, it's another strong collection. Dun Darch is a classic, but not for me. Fans of this style should check out the recent Sinclair City. Biggles was a surprisingly decent mix of flying and platforming too. The Back To The Future 3 demo was great, hard as nails, spent all afternoon on it!
Side Arms was great and I remember enjoying Draughts Genius with the wonderfully animated Albert Einstein. A demo for Chip's Challenge is a nice get too. For SU, Survivor was a bloody odd game, haha. Dynamite Dan 2 was a great get and the Viz demo was a lot of fun, with some great detailed sprites.
I know that feeling! Just opened up In Design, haha.
I remember enjoying this on the Spec. This looks like a nice conversion.
This was an amazingly ambitious game for the Spec. So much work went into the art and map. The only thing which held it back from top tier greatness was that stutter in the engine, every time you attacked an enemy. Can't wait to see what the team is cooking up next.
Just finished our review of it! It's quite the game!
You'd want to reach out to Chris at Fusion Retro Books. If you're on Facebook, feel free to post the question in the CRASH group (www.facebook.com/groups/18349...) as I think a lot of fans would be interested to know more about that and Chris monitors that page reasonably closely.
Next month's mag is starting to take shape. Another incredible selection of games. We'll have to see which of these get picked next month! #zxspectrum #retro #print
¡S1ncla1r C1ty es Crash Smash (n. 31, versión inglesa, enero 2026)! Felicidades compartidas con @molomazo.bsky.social y nuestro compi Javier Fopiani, de cuya idea original partió todo el desarrollo, ¡mereció la pena todo el esfuerzo! 🌃
As another year winds down, the CRASH team want to thank every one of our readers for their support this past year. A very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you. Plenty more to come so keep it CRASH. 👍
Hard to complain about any of that really. The CRASH offering was superb though, Lightforce is top tier, an exclusive Dizzy game and demos of NARC and SWIV, two fantastic games from the Spec's twilight era. What a Christmas! The Robocop 2 demo was quite a scoop for Sinclair User though. Good times.
There's a few games I can fire up and just pick up like it was 35 years ago. Batman: The Movie is very possibly peak Ocean. The platforming levels were well designed and well balanced. The arcade and puzzle levels were clever and it looked and sounded great. I still speedrun it every year. 🕹️
A fine looking game to be sure, yaaar, yaaar.
My totally neutral and completely unbiased view is that gaming magazines are great to still have around. 😀 It's just a different experience to online viewing, especially if you design your pages to capture the essence of the games you're reviewing. #longLivePrint
It is the eve before I start the layout on CRASH 31! Some great games this month. We're finally checking out Speccy Saga and the intriguing S1nclair C1ty, our very own Cyberpunk action adventure. We're also catching up on the ZX Touch, to see how it's evolved. I'll share updates as I go. 👍
Hope everyone's annuals are successfully landing on door mats. 🙂 Thanks for all your support. 👍
Crash Live 2025 is in 10 days! Here's the guest line up for the whole weekend:-
As ever, thanks so much for your support. It's such a privilege to work on this mag and give Spectrum software developers a place in print to showcase their work. You can subscribe over at Patreon (bit.ly/3LFrH1r) and purchase separate issues at Fusion Retro Books (bit.ly/43OhdD8). Thanks all. 👍
If you can make it, we'd love to see you on the 15th / 16th of November at the Holiday Inn in Kenilworth for our annual get together. The whole CRASH team will be there this year, so do come and say hello. The Saturday is sold out but tickets remain for the Sunday (bit.ly/47SnkZA).
CRASH 30 cover.
CRASH 30 is wrapped and it's stuffed tighter than Wally’s Christmas stocking! We've got reviews (Asymmetry, Magenta Sky & Zak McDrucken etc.), a look at the Currah Microspeech, an interview with Chris Hinsley and an Investigation into what Spectrum devs were paid back in the day.
It's that time of the year again and the CRASH annual is currently being funded on Kickstarter. 116 pages of A5/A4 goodness, with about a third of minty fresh new content. If you'd like to support us (and why wouldn't you 😀), then you can back your copy at:
www.kickstarter.com/projects/zza...
I think it's a lock for the January issue mate. Thanks so much to creators like yourself. Where would CRASH be in 2025 without the ingenuity and efforts of the Spectrum's fantastic independent scene. 👍
Well it's taken a few years but we have finally made it. It took quite a bit to get it over the line in the end, but Lee Bee has done a phenomenal job on the music
BubbleBack, our sequel to Forward to the Past, now available for free on Itch.
Enjoy!
sloanysoft.itch.io/bubbleback
#ZXSpectrum