N·E·W·S

WIDE BOY CROWS AS +3 SOFTWARE SWELLS

ALAN SUGAR’S much derided notion of several games on a +3 disk has come true with Martech’s Four Top Games. On one £14.99 disk are the new Slaine (review next issue), Catch 23 (56% Overall in Issue 43), Nemesis The Warlock (61% in Issue 40) and Pulsator (66% in Issue 42) — that’s just £3.75 each!

Amstrad Chairman Alan Sugar: ‘Arthur Daley of the computer world’

Even cheaper is budget house Pirate Softwares Pirate 3 +3 at £9.95. Titles on that are Call Me Psycho (47% in Issue 46), Holiday in Sumaria (16% in Issue 46) and Smash Out! (11% in Issue 46).

Software Publishing Associates, Pirate’s parent company, is also putting full-pricers like Erik: Phantom Of The Opera (based on Gaston Leroux’s classic horror novel, and out November 27) on +3 disk — at a two-quid premium. That one’s £9.95 on disk but just £7.95 on tape.

US Gold has also announced its support for the new machine with Gauntlet, World Class Leaderboard and Outrun due for disk release before Christmas at £12.99 each.

And on the utilities front, Tasman’s word processor Tasword is available for the +3 at £19.95. It’s ‘the most comprehensive version of Tasword ever released for the ZX Spectrum,’ the manufacturers claim.

Backing up Amstrad boss Sugar’s scheme to make disk software viable — the actual three-inch disks are pricy at £1.75 each earlier this year, and having just one game on each wastes pounds worth of memory — Martech’s David Martin said ‘we believe people who buy the +3 will be looking for good quality titles in a single value-for-money package’.

Meanwhile, despite being called the ‘Arthur Daley of the computer world’ on a late October Wogan show, Sugar has other reasons to be pleased — his Amstrad was named Britain’s fastest-growing company by Business magazine.

The survey of 500 top firms showed that in the year 1986-87 Sugar’s electronics giant, which bought the rights to the Spectrum from Sir Clive Sinclair’s Sinclair Research in April 1986, had a turnover of £304 million — that’s 123% up on last year.

£75,284,000 of that was profit (before tax), making Amstrad the country’s 107th most profitable company too.

DK GETS RAMMED

RAM ELECTRONICS has taken over DKTronics’s products. The manufacturer of the Music Machine has acquired all rights to manufacture and sell DK’Tronics branded products and is now the sole owner of the DK’Tronics brand name, an official statement said.

Ram assures buyers that DK’Tronics products will ‘continue to be available’.

CHILDLINE JOINS COMPUTER CHARITY CROWD

ESTHER RANTZEN’S charity for children in danger, Childline, is appealing for secondhand software — to raise funds for a free year-round telephone service for children in need.

Childline’s appeal comes just after the release of Kidsplay on the Back Pack label, a charity compilation which organisers hope will raise £270,000 for the National Society For The Prevention Of Cruelty To Children (see CRASH news story in Issue 43). The Back Pack team raised over £1,000 of that on their stand at The PCW Show — though trade reports suggest it’s not been as successful as previous software fund-raisers.

Also at The PCW show was a Jensen car covered in Domark logos, which took part in a ‘treasure hunt’ from London to Monte Carlo — sponsored by Domark as part of a fund-raising event called An Extremely Trivial Pursuit. It didn’t win, but contributed to the £30,000 raised to help drug-users at the London-based Chemical Dependency Centre.

The Worcester branch of the Cancer Research Campaign is hoping to involve celebrities in its 72-hour nonstop game-playing marathon on December 18.

And those 75000 Micronet and Prestel networkers are tuned in to the charity act too — organisers of the TV and radio Children In Need appeal on November 27 will be connected to both, and to Information Technology Centres.

There’ll be donations and auctions on the networks: viewers can see Wogan’s pretty face or Sue Cook’s prettier one giving a running total of the cash as it comes over the lines.

CHRIS HOLLAND