SAM REVELATIONS

Shock! Horror! A new software house set up solely for SAM Coupé products! Yes, it’s true. Revelation is a subsidiary of SAM Computers and has been set up to help supplement the software coming from Enigma Variations.

The first products planned for release include Quiz Ball, a cross between Trivial Pursuit and Radio 1’s Give Us A Break (£9.95, disk only), educational software like Highway Code and Spelling, and possible conversions of the Fun School games. These are planned for the end of March. There’s also talk of converting Digital Integration’s F-16, using the Atari ST graphics and Spectrum code.

SAM Co have also been talking with software companies in Spain with hope of converting some of their older products to SAM format. Companies like Palace, Ocean, Mastertronic and Domark were on the visiting list so we can hopefully look forward to some impressive games using the original gameplay with SAM’s 128-colour graphics and stereo sound!

Of course, it’s not just the big companies that have the potential to produce good software. Some of the PD software about is of a very high standard. This has not gone unnoticed at SAM HQ and they’re interested in using the talents that have been displayed through PD to create new games. If you consider yourself a bit of a whiz at graphics, sound, machine code or even game designing, get in touch with SAM Co.

On the hardware side of things SAM Co have a lightpen in the pipeline. The main reason for producing it is for use in conjunction with educational software. Young children would find it much easier to point to the screen with a pen rather than have to use a joystick or keys. The lightpen obviously would come in useful for art utilities, too.

The SAM Messenger should be making an appearance around the end of March, priced £29.95. This is a Spectrum-to-SAM interface using the same technology as the MGT +D and Disciple disk drives. It allows programs to be loaded on the Spectrum and transferred onto the SAM with ease. Using this method of loading up games you do not encounter any of the compatibility problems. The Messenger also comes in useful for incorporating the SAM into Spectrum network systems.

SERIOUSLY...

For the serious SAM users, Lerm Software have a couple of new products to show off. SAMDISK is a disk utility that any SAM Drive owner shouldn’t be without. It includes all the usual disk options such as ERASE and DIR plus new ones which are exclusive to this disk. You can unerase files which you accidentally deleted, repair faults on a disk — retrieving data you thought you’d lost — and copy files from one disk to another. SAMDISK is available in two versions. The standard version is £10.99, and there’s a special edition for fast disk duplication available for £19.99 which needs two disk drives.

SAM Toolkit includes SAM Assembler 3 and is the latest in the machine code assembler line from Lerm. The source code editor is simple to use after a good read of the manual and you can soon be producing your own machine code programs. The package includes a guide to writing SAM machine code, a reverse assembler and a single-step program. I managed to wriite some small machine code programs using this package, so if I can do it almost anyone can! All I need now is a good machine code book to teach me all the ins and outs.

SAM Toolkit is not for the complete beginner — you do need a basic knowledge of machine code. It costs £14.50 and both the Toolkit and the SAMDISK are available from: LERM SOFTWARE.

HAVE A TERMINATOR TO TEA!

More digitised demo action from G Middleton. This time he’s plugged his Coupé into the Terminator and come up with a two-disk set of animation sequences to boggle your mind. There are seven digitised scenes from the film, including the best ones where Arnie rips out his eye and opens up his arm with a scalpel (don’t try this at home kids!).

Each scene is made up of a total of 64 screens, making the animation smooth and a real joy to watch. Unfortunately it doesn’t last long. All seven scenes added together make about one minute of animation and the long gaps between scenes are slightly tiresome.

The Terminator animation demo is an essential purchase for any SAM owner. You can get your copy for £5 (both disks) from G Middleton.