LUCY THE EDITOR’S DIRTY DEED
Ian Osborne tell of a dirty deed!
Ian Osborne recalls how the CRASH team carried out an ill-thought-out April Fool joke, but managed to avoid the repercussions.
As the CRASH team got started on the 98th issue, the magazine was on a high. Previously criticised for its low page count, for this issue, it went up from 68 to 84 pages. There was a couple of decent games on the covertape too; former CRASH Smash Glider Rider and perplexing puzzler πR2, along with a
playable demo of Beyond Belief’s Biff, which was very welcome as new games were thin on the ground at that stage in the Spectrum’s life. Things were looking up.
Issue 98 was to be coverdated April 1992, so the team planned an April Fool joke. As who doesn’t love an April Fool? Led by editor Lucy Hickman, they got their heads together and came up with an idea. Let’s invent a brand new Spectrum game from a brand new software company; Flashsoft, and its debut title, Danny Duster’s Dirty Deeds.
Sega Force journalist Adrian Pitt had a reputation for being a funny writer, so he was drafted in to write the fake review. As he wasn’t a CRASH team member and the designers didn’t have a reviewer head made up for him, the review was credited to Nick Roberts, with second and third opinions by
Lucy Hickman and Warren Lapworth. Nick mocked up the screenshots. The colours look suspiciously good for a Spectrum, don’t they? That’s because he made them with an art package on a Sam Coupé.
The game saw the eponymous Danny Duster clean up the house for his owner, a little old lady who could no longer do the housework. Not exactly an eight-bit Call of Duty, but if the gameplay was there, who cares? And if the review was to be believed, this non-existent buttonbasher was amazing. According to Lucy’s secondary comment, “It’s very rare I have time to do reviews these days, but one glance at this game and I was quite literally gob-smacked, and knew I’d have to make an exception. I’ve never, ever seen anything like this on the Speccy before. It’s hard to describe how good it is.” High praise indeed, though it leaves one wondering if she was ‘quite literally gobsmacked’, who smacked her around the gob? She gave the ‘game’ 98%.
Warren’s secondary review was less positive, but only slightly. “Detailed and colourful, the graphics are as lively as the wacky gameplay, and though fairly hissy, the sampled sound effects are wonderful”, he gushed. “It’s not often a game this good crops up out of the blue, but when they do it makes you glad the Speccy was Invented. A classic.” He rated it 96%.
The main review, attributed to Nick but actually by Adrian Pitt, was
equally gushing. “Flashsoft have a sure fire winner on their hands. It’s worthy of more than a CRASH Smash! I can’t wait for a follow up! If you don’t buy
Dirty Deeds, you’re more of a fool than I am!” Praise indeed. For its overall score it was rated 98%, with the scores for Presentation, Graphics, Sound,
Playability and Addictivity all in the nineties. For a closing comment, they opted for “As Tina Turner might say, simply the best – ever!”
The narrative was clear;
Danny Duster’s Dirty Deeds was the best game ever to have been released on the Spectrum. So buy it.
Unfortunately, although the April Fool fake was undoubtedly fun to produce, it wasn’t a very good April Fool. Why? Because there was no
April Fool in it. A really good April Fool gag should contain clues that might warn the victims they’re being played. For example, fellow Newsfield/Impact hack Barnaby Page played a corker of a trick a few years earlier. As editor of Prepress, a publishing industry title for the Apple Mac, he wrote a short news item about a new piece of software. With hackers in the news, the nonexistent app claimed to keep
Mac users safe from prying eyes by wiping the hard drive every time you powered down your computer. Useful, eh? And if the self-defeating nature of the application wasn’t enough, the story also offered a quote from the company MD, Mr Mac N Tosh. Believe it or not, the magazine received a few serious enquiries asking how they can get hold of it. They must’ve been kicking themselves when they realised they’d been had.
The review of the delinquent dishrag’s dodgy doings contained no such clues. There was nothing at all to suggest this “highly original game, with some of the best graphics yet seen on the Spectrum” was a fake. There was no way of knowing that “with this game, your Speccy’s
gonna think it’s died and gone to heaven” was a made-up complement for a made-up game. There’s nothing in the three-page ‘review’ that gives even the slightest hint that it’s a fake. Even the alleged interview with the software company look like a tongue-in-cheek send-up rather than correspondence with a fictional company. Where’s the fun in fooling someone with a joke that couldn’t possibly be spotted? As you’ve probably anticipated, the lack of April Fool in the April Fool isn’t the only problem with the ‘review’. Worse still was the aftermath. How would the readers react when they found that the ‘best Spectrum game ever’ didn’t actually exist? Who would break the news to the excited Spectrum owners who contacted the magazine to see where they could buy it? As it happens, the CRASH team would dodge that particular bullet. The April 1992 issue of the magazine was to be its last. Just as Issue 98 went to press, we were told as a result of a deal struck with a rival publisher, CRASH was to be incorporated into its long-standing rival, Sinclair User.
This was doubly frustrating for the CRASH crew. Not only was an expected renaissance for the title nipped in the bud, with the issue that enjoyed an increase in pages proving to be the magazine’s swansong, but this legend of the Spectrum scene, which revolutionised video games journalism, rolled over and died just two issues from its centenary. They were gutted. On a more positive
note, they were also spared the correspondence caused by the April Fool gag. With all the phone calls and letters sent to CRASH being redirected to Sinclair User, it was down to the staff of the EMAP title to deal with them.
They weren’t pleased. In issue 128 of Sinclair User (October 1992), a letter was printed about Danny Duster’s Dirty Deeds in the Suck Up for Software section, a regular where Sinclair User readers were encouraged to beg for games. “[CRASH] said it was probably the best game ever out for the Speccy, and it looked fab”, it said. “I’ve been looking everywhere for a copy, but just cannot find it. So, pur-lease could you send me a copy?!” The response was not kind.
“Sit down, Matt, for what I am about to tell you may not only shock you, but will make you out to be a completely gullible git in front of some 90,000 people”, it began. “Did you notice what month this issue was? Yes, April. And what day is April the 1st? Yes, April Fool’s Day. CRASH was playing a sad April Fool’s joke, basically wasting three pages of magazine space. And who was the muggins that fell for it? Yes, you! It was so obvious!”
This was very harsh. There was nothing in the ‘review’ that made it ‘obvious’ it was an April Fool, and tellingly, the response failed to point out anything that clearly showed it was a joke.
But Sinclair User got one thing right. “Although it is a it bit of fun thinking up and writing [the April Fool review, opening and answering all the enquiries such as yours most certainly isn’t.”
It looks like the nowclosed CRASH magazine got the last laugh.