Curious eyebrow-raisers from Sinclair User's Gremlin column

[PeteProdge]

Sinclair User started out as quite a spoddy magazine, heavily concentrating on the 'new horizons' that home computing could bring, rather than focusing on what most of us got a Speccy for - games.

It gradually got the hint that game reviews should be the bread and butter of a ZX Spectrum magazine, what with the success of Crash. Anyway, as it moved away from lengthy articles about the Speccy as a synthesiser and photo-based covers showing morris dancers and even a vicar holding a Spectrum, it started a regular 'gossip' column under the name of Gremlin (nothing to do with the Sheffield-based software label, which did confuse matters).

Filled with a sardonic take on industry happenings, it could be seen an anonymous SU writer trying to imitate Private Eye for the ZX Spectrum generation. It's nothing new for magazines having cheeky digs at figureheads and organisations, and it's like a breath of fresh air compared to a publication that just slightly rewrites press releases.

Anyway, the first Gremlin column began in January 1985.

Some highlights:

• Di's Baby by Bad Taste Software is a publicity-seeking gambit, but if you go looking for the game, it's probably the most MIA-est Speccy game there is. Not even hinted at on this site, and the reality is that it ended up on the Commodore 64 and nowhere else. It's a terrible Space Invaders clone. Wherever you stand on being a monarchist or a republican, it's objectively awful. Bad Taste Software only ever put out one other game (unsurprisingly, also not very good) and seemed to be a one-man outfit.
  
• That awful Hareraiser by Haresoft has a press release brilliantly ridiculed about the mostly-ignored game/competition.
  
• Bruce Everiss, formerly of Imagine Software has been punting his version of the software company's demise to any journalist who will listen. Gremlin then brings up the fact their sales director Colin Stokes got bugged and other software companies were tailed by private detectives hired by Imagine. Apparently Bruce is going to bring out a book on how the games industry works.
• Hewson gives a gold cassette to its programmer Mike Male for reaching 100,000 sales of his games Nightflite II and Heathrow Air Traffic Control and apparently has been "able to buy his own aeroplane".
  
• A photo of Mikro-Gen staff, one of them dressed up as Wally Week.
  

Quite a bit to unpick there. I'm glad the C64 was lumbered with that terrible game. Bruce Everiss never did bring out that book. And did any of you give a solitary s--- about Hareraiser?

[SteveSmith]

I used to love the Gremlin section, it was really entertaining.

[PeteProdge]

I used to love the Gremlin section, it was really entertaining.

That and C.O.D.E. Talk were my favourite regulars in Sinclair User. Really eye-opening stuff!

[merman]

ZZAP! had the equivalent column, known as The Shadow, for several issues. And then Mel Croucher wrote his Under The Baudwalk column that seemed to exist solely to make fun of Alan Sugar and programmers with unusual names...

I would love to read Bruce’s meanderings, but I wouldn’t pay for ‘em

[PeteProdge]

I would love to read Bruce’s meanderings, but I wouldn’t pay for ‘em

https://www.bruceonshaving.com/

Yes, this really is Bruce Everiss.

[SteveSmith]

He does (did) have this blog, but it hasn't been updated for years.

https://www.bruceongames.com/

I used to read it, but IIRC he got into some legal problems. I assumed the Bruce on Shaving was some way of diverting attention from it or something.

[Matt_B]

If you want something truly deranged, you could read this.

https://www.bruceonpolitics.com/about/

That said, his games blog wasn't much better. For someone involved in the industry for the better part of four decades, he seems to have remarkably little knowledge about how games and the hardware they're running on work.

The highlight was attracting, and successfully defending, a SLAPP suit from the Chinese developer Evony after criticizing their involvement in "gold farming."

https://itwire.com/government-tech-news ... drawn.html

[clebin]

If you want something truly deranged, you could read this.

https://www.bruceonpolitics.com/about/

The Dunning-Kruger effect is strong in Bruce, bless him.

[PeteProdge]

That said, his games blog wasn't much better. For someone involved in the industry for the better part of four decades, he seems to have remarkably little knowledge about how games and the hardware they're running on work.

I'll never forget Stuart Campbell's absolutely devastating evisceration of Bruce's blog on piracy.
https://web.archive.org/web/20221203082 ... iracy.html

[Nitrowing]

I'll never forget Stuart Campbell's absolutely devastating evisceration of Bruce's blog on piracy.
https://web.archive.org/web/20221203082 ... iracy.html

I actually got half way through that!
Bruce comes across as a real prick and Stuart's knowledge is pretty unassailable.

[AndyC]

I actually got half way through that!
Bruce comes across as a real prick and Stuart's knowledge is pretty unassailable.

I dunno, I think they're both arguing from extremes. It's certainly true that Imagine's had become complacent in shipping games of a quality that might have passed in the early days of the Speccy, but weren't really keeping up. And the whole mega games thing was a massive mistake.

It's true that piracy was (and still is) a problem for games developers, but it's clearly also not an unmanageable problem. The megagames were a terrible "solution" to the problem, because when you reach the point that the cost of your copy protection is vastly higher than the price people are willing to play for games you've clearly missed the mark. Believing that your back catalogue can continue to sell indefinitely at full price was hopelessly naïve, not just because of piracy but because there is a limited pool of customers who would ever want to play the game regardless.

But Stuart's argument that piracy makes companies more successful is blatantly disingenuous, it's a weak argument cherry picking a few details that tend to match the outcome he wants. If you follow it through to it's ultimate conclusion, the most successful company would have never sold a single title because everyone would be pirating.

[AndyC]

I do love flicking through these old issues of SU, not just for things like the Gremlin column but all the old adverts for weird and wonderful add ons and such. It amazes me, given how many replacement keyboards were advertised, that you almost never see them on eBay. I wonder if they were all garbage or just not something anyone cared enough about to spend actual money on.

[merman]

https://www.bruceonshaving.com/

Yes, this really is Bruce Everiss.

Bruce got banned from another forum of various strange rants, including a very sexist phrase he used about women and claiming that because men HAD to wear trousers, then they should be 0% VAT-rated...

[PeteProdge]

Bruce got banned from another forum of various strange rants, including a very sexist phrase he used about women and claiming that because men HAD to wear trousers, then they should be 0% VAT-rated...

All I know of that, is that the 'trousers' thing was his argument on Twitter. It's um... well, see for yourself.

[SteveSmith]

Bruce proves he knows as much about women as he does about the software industry.

[XTM]

Bruce really seems like a not very nice bloke. I came across the link to this article called "Fanboys" and in it he lays into the very group that no matter its shortcomings at least helps game companies survive the huge piracy onslaught by buying lots and lots of games ... plenty of comments below that too but I didn't bother reading them.

[PeteProdge]

Job interviewer: "So, you've got decades of experience in marketing to the computer/console gaming market. Tell me, what observations have you got on the key demographic here?"

Interviewee: "They're all man-children! Pathetic cry babies! They're mentally deficient and deserve mockery!"

Job interviewer: "On your way out, ask the next guy in."

[Wall_Axe]

I was under the age of ten or thereabouts so couldn't understand any technical articles.
So I just settled on crash and the occasional ys.
I think there was room in the market for a small technical magazine for the spectrum though.

[PeteProdge]

I was under the age of ten or thereabouts so couldn't understand any technical articles.
So I just settled on crash and the occasional ys.
I think there was room in the market for a small technical magazine for the spectrum though.

Sinclair User went from being very spod-focused mag that was utterly heavy on the technical side, to the complete opposite, turning into what can be described as a cheap comic with game reviews and a tape.

It went from this, to this...

[Wall_Axe]

Thanks for getting the covers

My 30 year and older self would have loved the Morris dancer issue and hated the cartoony one.

Under the age of 16 I'd have gone for the cartoony one though. Seen as it was a new industry i assume 30 and older blokes were in short supply.

The article that Stuart posted on: it's funny when he mentions specific game titles that imagine released

[SteveSmith]

I think it's fair to say that all the mags were pale shadows of their former selves, due to dwindling readerships and those that did remain were getting younger as a lot of their original readers had moved on to the Amiga etc...

@PeteProdge are you planning on making this a thread with updates from future Gremlin eyebrow-raisers, or was it one off?

[PeteProdge]

@PeteProdge are you planning on making this a thread with updates from future Gremlin eyebrow-raisers, or was it one off?

It's planned to be a weekly update each Sunday. (I already wrote tomorrow's post, a few days ago!)

[PeteProdge]

Moving on to the second outing of Gremlin, in Sinclair User #35 (Feb 1985)

• Sorcery has a competition embedded within it, arranged by Virgin Games. The first person to call the number of a hidden screen in the game would win a trip to New York. "Trouble was, nobody knew about the competition."
  
• Another catch-up with whatever former-Imagine man Bruce Everiss is doing, and it seems he's now in hardware, dealing with Oric to "establish the Oric Atmos" in its rightful market position". Erm... yeah, I don't think the Oric Atmos ever kept Sir Clive Sinclair, Jack Tramiel or Alan Sugar from sleeping. Even the Dragon 32 was more prolific.
• There's a dig at Personal Computer news for having Ghostbusters appearing on their Spectrum charts at #4 over a fortnight before it was actually released.
  

Finally, um, something that really really hasn't aged well.

[Wall_Axe]

Fair play to ghostbusters for actually resembling the movie and not being a superficial platformer.

[SteveSmith]

You could argue that St Bruce did put the Oric in its rightful market position... Also, it's funny to see that even in 1985, no-one took him seriously.