16/48 Tape Magazine 01 - November 1983
Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2018 1:13 am
Had a few of these back in the day, so thought it's be a laugh to work my way through them all, starting with #01...! All I recall is that the quality ranged from quite good to fairly bad.
16/48 Tape Magazine 01, November 1983
The standard 16/48 menu loads first - showing a brief description of all the programs on the tape.
First up is Copter.
You control a helicopter (no surprise there) and also a gun turret. You can switch between the two. Enemy helicopters descend from the top of the screen and home in on your copter. You can either lead the enemy copters into the floaty balloon things to destroy them, or try to shoot them.
You only have 10 shots so after exhausting your supply of shots, the rest of the time is spent controlling your copter, trying to avoid the smaller red copter homing in on you. You can apparently replenish ammo by flying to the other hangar, but I didn't bother doing that as I was fairly useless aiming the rockets and switching between the copter and the turret anyway.
Fortunately your copter moves twice as fast, so avoiding the little red copter is pretty easy - you could probably go on playing this game for hours without being hit with your score gradually increasing. I got bored after a few minutes and gave up.
Next up is a short Editorial. "Can you contribute??????" we're asked. I would have been fairly happy with £50 per submission back in 1983.
Then we have Stroke 4. Could be interes.... Aaaarghhh, an educational program..!
I don't ever remember learning about how a 4 stroke engine works, but I successfully managed to identify the inlet, exhaust, power and compression 'bits'. I think. Fairly short and painless.
Continuing along the tape, we have a review of the DK'Tronics Light Pen and the RD Digital Tracer.
tl;dr - the Light Pen is a bit ropey when it comes to freehand drawing (I recall Paul saying this when he reviewed it in the Spectrum Show). The Digital Tracer is half decent:
Right.. What next... Ah yes, it's Of Dungeons and Green Men..
Fairly unexciting this month, with some hints for Planet of Death (Artic), and some Misty Mountain directions for The Hobbit. Well, not really hints, they're basically bits of the solution. I read them quickly and moved on... (Oh yeah - £5 if your contribution is published don'tya know..).
Chessfire - sounds... erm... potentially exciting, what is it going to... Oh. No. It's basically just chess. Without a computer opponent. And slightly unfathomable pieces:
...I didn't quite grasp the 'fire' aspect to the game unfortunately - something to do with some of the pieces having 'lives' - that might add an extra dimension to the standard game. Or something. Not too sure.
Next up are some machine code sound effects which you can use in your own programs. A lot of ascending bleeps, whistles and sirens, nice idea if you were learning BASIC and wanted some 'snazzy' sound effects I s'pose. At one point a prompt came up on screen saying "When you get bored, press ENTER". Made me chuckle.
Next on the tape is a nice feature enabling you to animate large graphics. You load 4 graphic frames as SCREEN$ files (well, the top bit of the screen at least) and can run animations on them.
An animation competition is also offered, with the winner appearing in a later issue, although the expected standard as spelled out on screen could potentially put a few amateurs off:
Prize is a digital tracer (oooh..!) or a light pen (meh..!).
Finally there's a look forward to next month's edition. Not too bad a start, not particularly incredible either... Part of the nostalgia value for me was The Long Way Home adventure series, so I'm looking forward to giving those a go when they appear.
16/48 Tape Magazine 01, November 1983
The standard 16/48 menu loads first - showing a brief description of all the programs on the tape.
First up is Copter.
You control a helicopter (no surprise there) and also a gun turret. You can switch between the two. Enemy helicopters descend from the top of the screen and home in on your copter. You can either lead the enemy copters into the floaty balloon things to destroy them, or try to shoot them.
You only have 10 shots so after exhausting your supply of shots, the rest of the time is spent controlling your copter, trying to avoid the smaller red copter homing in on you. You can apparently replenish ammo by flying to the other hangar, but I didn't bother doing that as I was fairly useless aiming the rockets and switching between the copter and the turret anyway.
Fortunately your copter moves twice as fast, so avoiding the little red copter is pretty easy - you could probably go on playing this game for hours without being hit with your score gradually increasing. I got bored after a few minutes and gave up.
Next up is a short Editorial. "Can you contribute??????" we're asked. I would have been fairly happy with £50 per submission back in 1983.
Then we have Stroke 4. Could be interes.... Aaaarghhh, an educational program..!
I don't ever remember learning about how a 4 stroke engine works, but I successfully managed to identify the inlet, exhaust, power and compression 'bits'. I think. Fairly short and painless.
Continuing along the tape, we have a review of the DK'Tronics Light Pen and the RD Digital Tracer.
tl;dr - the Light Pen is a bit ropey when it comes to freehand drawing (I recall Paul saying this when he reviewed it in the Spectrum Show). The Digital Tracer is half decent:
Right.. What next... Ah yes, it's Of Dungeons and Green Men..
Fairly unexciting this month, with some hints for Planet of Death (Artic), and some Misty Mountain directions for The Hobbit. Well, not really hints, they're basically bits of the solution. I read them quickly and moved on... (Oh yeah - £5 if your contribution is published don'tya know..).
Chessfire - sounds... erm... potentially exciting, what is it going to... Oh. No. It's basically just chess. Without a computer opponent. And slightly unfathomable pieces:
...I didn't quite grasp the 'fire' aspect to the game unfortunately - something to do with some of the pieces having 'lives' - that might add an extra dimension to the standard game. Or something. Not too sure.
Next up are some machine code sound effects which you can use in your own programs. A lot of ascending bleeps, whistles and sirens, nice idea if you were learning BASIC and wanted some 'snazzy' sound effects I s'pose. At one point a prompt came up on screen saying "When you get bored, press ENTER". Made me chuckle.
Next on the tape is a nice feature enabling you to animate large graphics. You load 4 graphic frames as SCREEN$ files (well, the top bit of the screen at least) and can run animations on them.
An animation competition is also offered, with the winner appearing in a later issue, although the expected standard as spelled out on screen could potentially put a few amateurs off:
Prize is a digital tracer (oooh..!) or a light pen (meh..!).
Finally there's a look forward to next month's edition. Not too bad a start, not particularly incredible either... Part of the nostalgia value for me was The Long Way Home adventure series, so I'm looking forward to giving those a go when they appear.