Contributor
Martyn has been writing about video games since 1997. He launched Retro Gamer magazine in 2004 and has been typecast as a lover of rubbish old games ever since. His specialist subject is actually the Crabs novel of Guy N. Smith.
FeatureRetrospective: Die Hard Trilogy
What you talkin' bout? Willis.
There's a scene in Die Hard 4.0 where John McClane propels a car into the air and brings down an enemy helicopter. I remember sitting in the cinema, watching this ridiculousness unfold and hearing audible groans from the audience.
FeatureTomb Raider Retrospective
Who's that girl?
Tomb Raider is back on track. Following 2003's berated and broken Angel of Darkness, which saw Eidos relieve Core Design of its duties and ship Ms. Croft over to Crystal Dynamics, the series has made a solid return to form. Tomb Raider Legend was a promising if cautious reinvention, while Anniversary was a glorious update of the original game. This week sees the release of Underworld, the ninth game in the series.
FeatureBroadening the Spectrum
Somewhere over the rainbow.
In order to fulfil Sir Clive Sinclair's noble aim of delivering affordable machines to the masses, the Spectrum was a bare bones computer with very few external connectors. But through its single expansion port, users could bolt on all manner of hardware devices. Joystick interfaces were very common, as the 'zombie flesh' keyboard didn't exactly lend itself to gaming. Other popular add-ons included the Currah Microspeech, the Cheetah Specdrum and Romantic Robot's Multiface. Sir Clive was not about to leave the market completely open to third parties, however. His Cambridge-based team had been working on the official Interface 1 and 2 add-ons ever since the Spectrum's launch.
