Your Sinclair , or YS as it was commonly abbreviated, was a commercially published and printed British computer magazine for the Sinclair range of computers, mainly the ZX Spectrum . It was in circulation between 1984 and 1993.
73-614: The magazine was launched in January 1984 as Your Spectrum by Sportscene Specialist Press. (Sportscene would later be renamed to Dennis Publishing in April 1987.) Initially, it was published bimonthly, changing to monthly in June 1984. With the January 1986 issue, the title was relaunched as Your Sinclair , with the intention of expanding coverage of the QL into the main magazine (previously, QL User had been
146-528: A Sinclair C5 and had ended up buying the magazine by mistake. Publishing of the magazine ended in September 1993, after the commercial life of the Spectrum ended and the magazine had shrunk to fewer than forty pages per issue. A 94th issue, a retrospective on the magazine, was published in 2004 and given away free with Retro Gamer magazine. It featured interviews with some of the writers and reviewers from across
219-534: A level editor for games such as Atari's Gauntlet ), while Program Power also included games. Program Pitstop also featured contributions from well known programmers, such as the Rainbow Processor by Dominic Robinson , which allowed the Spectrum to display more than two colours per character. Spec Tec (Adam Waring) and its descendant Spec Tec Jr (Simon Cooke) were home to readers' technical queries. The introduction to these columns were typically written in
292-513: A palette of 128 colours . The palette values consist of 2 bits for each of the red, green and blue components as well as an extra bit which increases the intensity of all three components by a half-step (a 'brightness' bit). The ASIC can be configured to generate interrupts when a line on the display is starting to be emitted, allowing video effects to be synchronised with specific display lines with little effort. By default, it will generate an interrupt for every frame. Typically this interrupt
365-617: A 16-colour TTL monitor. Access to internal RAM was shared between the display and the CPU, with CPU accesses incurring a speed penalty ( memory contention ) as it was forced to wait for isochronous ASIC memory-accesses to complete. As a result, the SAM Coupé's CPU effectively ran only around 14% faster than the ZX Spectrum CPU, yet was required to do much more work in SAM's high-resolution modes to produce
438-525: A Spectrum to the Internet . Before the magazine's relaunch as Your Sinclair in 1986, Your Spectrum contained a plethora of technical articles, including guides on programming in machine code and Forth , and information on how to upgrade the basic Spectrum set-up to incorporate better sound and more memory. From the magazine's inception, letters were answered mainly by the magazine's editor. The letters page contained several subsections, which varied through
511-432: A company spun from Format Publications which lasted until liquidation in 2005. The capitalised SAM is an acronym for 'Some Amazing Micro' according to Alan Miles in an interview with ZAT magazine. The ‘Coupé’ part has two sources: one being an ice cream sundae called the “Ice Cream Coupé” and the other because the machine resembles a fastback car in profile with the feet as the wheels. The SAM Coupé's hardware
584-769: A foothold in the computer magazine business; until Maxim ' s success in the United States in the late 1990s, computer magazines were the mainstay of Dennis' magazine holdings, second only to Future Publishing in the UK. In 1987 the publisher was renamed from Sportscene Specialist Press to Dennis Publishing. Dennis Publishing, Inc. published one of the most successful modern men's lifestyle magazines in America: Maxim (2.5 million rate base) – along with Stuff (1.3 million rate base) and general interest music magazine Blender (800,000 rate base). On 5 February 2005, Maxim Radio
657-667: A freelance basis. YS's content varied widely, occasionally ignoring the subject of computers entirely. As the Spectrum scene diminished and there was less software to review, this happened more frequently. The tone of the magazine was inspired by teenage magazines such as Smash Hits and Just Seventeen . In 1992, under the editorship of Andy Hutchinson, several 'lifestyle' type sections were introduced. These included Haylp! , an agony aunt column, and The World (later retitled Flip! ), which contained reviews of films and books. This section included The Killer Kolumn From Outer Space , dedicated to science fiction news, rumours and reviews. It
730-504: A number of magazines. By October 1988, the magazine had committed itself to including a cover tape every month. Content typically included an older full game, and a specially-made single-level demo of a new, high-profile game such as Cybernoid II or Power Drift . Other content included game soundtracks and user-submitted demos . In December 1988, the magazine became the first to include two tapes. Between October 1991 and January 1992, contributor Stuart Campbell compiled his list of
803-451: A panel. In 1988, Joystick Jury was superseded by Joystick Jugglers, and the familiar cartoons of reviewers were introduced. Screen Shots was removed as a self-contained section in 1989, and reviews began to appear throughout the magazine, generally with the bigger games being reviewed towards the front. Budget games had their own section, Bargain Basement (later replaced with Replay when it
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#1732872562006876-534: A platform to support productivity and CP/M applications via additional software. Being based on 8-bit technology at a time when 16-bit home computers were more prevalent, coupled with a lack of commercial software titles, led to it being a commercial failure. When MGT went into receivership in June 1990 two further attempts were made to restart the computer and brand, firstly under SAM Computers Limited and then in November 1992 under West Coast Computers ,
949-468: A possible lawsuit against them, and wrote as an acknowledgement "The Sceptical driver is copyright Delta 4, who are really nice and hardly ever sue". In 1999, a webzine , YS3 , was launched by comp.sys.sinclair newsgroup regulars Nathan Cross and Jon Hyde, and managed to recreate something of the original magazine's style and humour. It ran irregularly until 2002. It has since returned in blog form. Dennis Publishing Dennis Publishing Ltd.
1022-498: A pull-out section within the magazine), and any future computers produced by Sinclair. However, the magazine remained focused almost entirely on the ZX Spectrum games scene. In 1990, the magazine was sold to Bath -based Future plc , and the April 1990 issue was the first to be published by the new company. That issue's news section contained a feature on the change in publishers, which jokingly suggested that Future had intended to buy
1095-575: A sense of community with its readers through the letters page, and many readers wrote in regularly, becoming almost part of the team themselves. Indeed, several letter writers went on to write for YS in a freelance capacity, including Leigh Loveday and Rich Pelley. Along with Jonathan Davies, Pelley had formerly written for the fanzine Spectacular , and both became regular contributors for the magazine between 1988 and 1993. After YS closed, Davies went on to become editor of Sega Zone , Amiga Power and PC Gamer , while Pelley regularly wrote articles for
1168-613: A similar movement on the display. A Mode 3 or Mode 4 screen uses four times as much RAM as a ZX Spectrum Mode 1 display, so four times the work had to be done in the same time when updating it. A small compensation was the straightforward arrangement of colour pixels in this memory, instead of the ZX Spectrum's more limited display and attributes memory. Low-level graphics software operations could be much simpler than their Spectrum equivalents and therefore somewhat faster to execute. The penalty of memory contention delay applied to all memory accesses to RAM, and not just to memory associated with
1241-507: A standard PAL signal which is interleaved, the SAM is designed to emit two identically positioned fields at 50 FPS, giving something closer to a 312 lines progressive signal than the 625-lines interlaced broadcast television signals common in the UK at the time. The display is surrounded by a large border area to provide a title-safe display zone for the CRT televisions of that era. The colour of this region can be changed in software by using
1314-555: A supplied utility and a skeleton ROM image (containing no original code) or by loading a complete copy of the ZX Spectrum ROM (obtained from a ZX Spectrum). In order to match the processing speed of the ZX Spectrum (3.5 MHz), the SAM Coupé introduces extra wait states in display Mode 1 (the ZX Spectrum-compatible graphics mode) to slow down the CPU to roughly match the rate of that system. The 128K model's memory map
1387-550: Is the interactive Internet and mobile division of Dennis Publishing, which publishes Maxim , Stuff , and The Week , and previously published (now defunct) Blender . Dennis Publishing titles up until Autovia Limited spin-out and Future plc acquisition including: SAM Coupe The SAM Coupé (pronounced /sæm ku:peɪ/ from its original British English branding) is an 8-bit British home computer manufactured by Miles Gordon Technology ( MGT ), based in Swansea in
1460-607: Is used to double buffer the frame, read the keyboard/mouse state, and output music. The interrupt state can also be polled directly from the ASIC's status register. The Motorola MC1377P RGB to PAL / NTSC video encoder creates a composite video signal from the machine's RGB- and Sync -signals (output by the ASIC) for the RF modulator . The non-standard SCART display connector includes both composite and RGB output, as well as signals to drive
1533-551: The Euroconnector on the back of the system. The computer has a direct connection for a cassette recorder for data storage but two 3.5 inch floppy disk drives can be installed within the case as well or externally using an interface. The SAM Coupé was designed primarily for the UK market, and is designed around the PAL television standard, which refreshes at 50 frames per second. Unlike
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#17328725620061606-554: The IBM PC and Atari ST , and programs were available to read FAT formatted disks. A large array of expansion ports were provided, including: Up to four devices could be connected to the Coupé's Euroconnector port, through the use of the SAMBUS, which also provided a built-in clock. When using more power-hungry peripherals, the SAMBUS required an additional power supply. The SAM's Power Supply
1679-472: The SAM Coupé . It was named after and originally written by Teresa Maughan, but the column remained after she left the magazine, as it was felt 'T'zers' was an appropriate title since it contained 'teasers' for future games. Rock Around The Clock , which first appeared in 1991, was a small column dedicated to looking at a particular back issue, as well as news and current affairs from the same time. Perhaps one of
1752-459: The Spectrum Soft section, later called Joystick Jury . Games were reviewed by a panel of reviewers and given a mark out of 10. In practice this was a score out of 9, since no game ever received a perfect 10, on the rationale that a better game could come along at a later date. After the name change to Joystick Jury, games were judged by each individual reviewer to be either a 'hit' or a 'miss' (in
1825-717: The United Kingdom and released in December 1989. It was based on and designed to have a compatibility mode with the ZX Spectrum 48K with influences from the Loki project and marketed as a logical upgrade from the Spectrum with increased memory, graphical and sound capabilities, native peripheral support ( floppy disk , MIDI , joystick , light pen / light gun and a proprietary mouse ). The inclusion of support for higher graphical modes allowed for 80-column text presentation, providing
1898-541: The YS Tipshop Tiptionary . Dr. Berkmann's Clinic (renamed The YS Clinic With Dr. Hugo Z Hackenbush after Marcus Berkmann left to go freelance), originally set up to provide help for the game Head Over Heels , allowed readers to provide solutions to each other's gaming problems, more often than not solved by Richard Swann. Practical Pokes , hosted mainly by Jon North, was the successor to Hacking Away, and contained both type-in and Multiface POKEs. The Tipshop
1971-466: The covertape . YS reviewers were often 'interviewed' in a column at first called Joystick Jury (the same as the reviews section in Your Spectrum ), then Joystick Jugglers , and finally (when there were fewer games to review and they wanted to introduce the team as a whole, including design staff) The Shed Crew , a reference to the recurring joke that after the move to Future Publishing, their office
2044-544: The BORDER port to select a colour from the palette. The SAM Coupé has four display modes: The 'attribute' modes borrow their design from the ZX Spectrum , where a bitmap is used to select between a paper and ink colour from two groups of eight colours. The group to use is selected by a 'brightness' flag. The colour block can also be set to 'flash' - that is, alternate between the two colours used for paper and ink. All modes use palette-based colour look-up tables , selecting from
2117-521: The Coupé hardware. This led to the development by MGT of a special hardware interface called the Messenger which could capture the state of a connected ZX Spectrum to SAM Coupé disk for playback later without the Spectrum connected. The Messenger plugged into the Coupé's network port, and the Spectrum's expansion slot. Due to unsuitable onboard break ( NMI ) buttons (needed to activate the Messenger software),
2190-458: The Top 100 ZX Spectrum games of all time. In the months leading up to the final issue, readers were invited to vote on their ten favourite games, which was then compiled into a 'readers choice' top 100, which was published in the final issue alongside Stuart Campbell's list. As reduced advertising and lack of material to review caused YS 's page numbers to drop, the magazine introduced YS2 , which
2263-486: The UK accounted for almost 84% of total revenues. After Felix Dennis' death in 2014, Dennis Publishing was owned by the Heart of England Forest Charity, a charity set up by Dennis to replant trees. In 2015, Dennis Publishing invested £3million in the launch of Coach , a free health and fitness magazine for men with a circulation of 300,000. The launch editor was Ed Needham . In 2017, based on DoG Tech 's rapid growth in
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2336-449: The United States and other markets, Dennis Publishing entered into a joint venture agreement with DoG Tech LLC. In July 2017, Dennis Publishing acquired MoneyWeek , UK's best-selling financial magazine. In July 2018, Dennis Publishing was bought by Exponent, a British private equity firm. The proceeds from the sale went to the Heart of England Forest charity and the speculated figure for
2409-406: The acquisition was £150 million. In October 2018, Dennis Publishing launched Driving Electric , a website focused on hybrid and electric car reviews, news, features and videos aimed at UK consumers. In February 2019, Dennis Publishing acquired Kiplinger , an American publisher of personal finance and business publications such as the personal finance magazine Kiplinger's Personal Finance and
2482-410: The block graphics region starting at 128 (0x80). This meant the cursor characters were overwritten so the accompanying BASIC loader set the cursor to * and + for lower and upper case respectively. The following table show the predefined character set arrangement: Six channels of 8- octave stereo sound are provided by a Philips SAA1099 sound and noise generator chip. The machine allows for
2555-423: The company including a possible sale of the company. In June 2007, all of Dennis's United States holdings – minus the U.S. edition of The Week – were sold to the private equity firm Quadrangle Group . This included the editions of Maxim , Stuff and Blender . In January 2008, Dennis Publishing acquired the online news site The First Post for an undisclosed sum. In February, Dennis Publishing announced
2628-532: The computer to the ULA in the ZX Spectrum. The Z80B CPU accesses selected parts of the large memory space in its 64 KB address space by slicing it into 16 KB banks and using I/O registers to select the memory pages mapped into each 16 KB bank. The basic SAM Coupé model has 256 KiB of RAM , internally upgradable to 512 KiB via a connector on the main board accessible via a trapdoor underneath, and externally up to an additional 4 MiB , added in 1 MiB packs via
2701-555: The cursor is composed of the Blocks off characters (128/129) for lower and upper case respectively regardless of current Blocks setting, so overwriting these positions will also change the cursor. If this is undesirable, then systems variable (SVAR) 1 can be set to a 2-character value for the new lower and upper case cursor characters to be used. The Utility Tapes and SAMDOS disk operating system media included an international character font loader to allow additional characters to be loaded into
2774-558: The drive's controllers. The double density disks used a format of 2 sides, 80 tracks per side and 10 sectors per track, with 512 bytes per sector. This gave a total capacity of 800 KB, though the standard directory occupied 20 KB leaving 780 KB free for user files. Files were stored in the same structure as MGT's original +D interface, but with additional codes used for SAM Coupé file types. The disk encoding (NRZ), encoding strategy (linear angular velocity), and track and sector header formats were compatible with those used on
2847-454: The drives but also the drive controllers, a WD1772-02 , with the effect that the SAM could use both drives simultaneously. Due to a flaw in the Coupé's design, resetting the machine while a disk was left in a drive would be liable to cause data corruption on that disk, as while the RESET line is held logic low the ASIC (that generates the 8 Mhz clock) is halted thus no clock signal is sent to
2920-587: The end of the magazine's life, and particularly under the editorship of Jonathan Nash, the style was further influenced by magazines YS had itself inspired, in particular Amiga Power and fanzine The Thing Monthly . The original 1986 Your Sinclair team included Kevin Cox (editor), Teresa "T'zer" Maughan (deputy editor), Sara Biggs (production editor), Pete Shaw (editorial assistant), and Phil "Snouty" South (writer). Marcus Berkmann joined as staff writer in early 1987 when Maughan took over as editor. Freelance writers of
2993-567: The last columns of its kind, a remnant of an era when computer magazines would dedicate entire sections to BASIC program listings. Most of the programs were in Sinclair BASIC, although some were in hexadecimal machine code , for which a special interpreter, the Hex Loader, was written. It replaced the pull-out section Program Power ; the main difference was that Program Pitstop mainly included listings for utility programs and demos (for example,
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3066-638: The launch of iGizmo , a free fortnightly interactive digital magazine dedicated to gadgets and consumer technology, launching on 11 March. In November, Dennis Publishing acquired the online games and hardware enthusiast website Bit-Tech for an undisclosed sum. For 2012, Dennis Publishing, producing more than 50 magazines, increased its group pre-tax profits by 35% year-on-year from £4.1m to £5.5m. Group operating profit climbed almost 12% to £4.9m. Group turnover, excluding share of joint venture revenues, rose slightly year on year to just over £70m. Revenues including joint ventures climbed 3% to £77.7m. Operations in
3139-562: The machine and a BASIC interpreter ( SAM BASIC ) written by Andrew Wright and heavily influenced by his earlier Beta BASIC for the ZX Spectrum. The ROMs contained only the bootstrap code and the DOS was instead loaded from disk using the BOOT command, or the F9 key. The majority of disks shipped with SAMDOS, the system's first DOS, on them so that they could be directly booted. An improved replacement, MasterDOS,
3212-439: The magazine business in the late 1960s as one of the editors of the counterculture magazine OZ . In the mid-1970s, Dennis Publishing was born, beginning with a kung-fu magazine, Kung Fu Monthly . Dennis followed this up in the early 1980s by publishing titles in the emerging computer enthusiast sector, including Your Spectrum (later renamed Your Sinclair and sold to Future Publishing ). Dennis has since maintained
3285-403: The magazine's history, a four-page memoir written by former staff writer Phil South , and several new reviews and tips, keeping the style of the original magazine throughout. The magazine introduced a unique writing style, inspired by launch editor Roger Munford and expanded upon by subsequent editors and writers. Influences can be found in titles ranging from Private Eye to Viz . Towards
3358-481: The magazines' lifetime, but included: The Star Letter was awarded three full-price Spectrum games. When asked what qualities a star letter possessed, editor Linda Barker answered "A star letter is one that makes the entire Shed crew rock with mirth, or touches their hearts", although other editors had their own criteria for the type of letter they awarded Star Letter status to. Like many later computer magazines (such as Zero and Amiga Power ) Your Sinclair created
3431-438: The manner of television show Juke Box Jury , after which it was named). The hit and miss system was abandoned with Issue 19, and with the transition to Your Sinclair , the review section was renamed Screen Shots . In Screen Shots, games were still rated out of ten, but they were also given separate ratings for graphics, playability, value for money and addictiveness. They were also now reviewed by individual writers, rather than
3504-518: The music magazine Blender . In 2007, the company sold all its American holdings, with the exception of the U.S. edition of The Week . Felix Dennis died in 2014, leaving ownership of the company to the charity organization Heart of England Forest . In 2018, the company was sold to Exponent, a British private equity firm. Future plc acquired the company and its 12 titles in August 2021, absorbing them into Future Publishing. Felix Dennis started in
3577-490: The odder sections of Pssst was the Peculiar Pets Corner . Editor Matt Bielby originally intended this to be a showcase for YS readers' exotic pets such as snakes , pigs , monkeys or spiders , but these "pets" also included such things as a purple fruit gum and a tuba . When an editor or member of the writing staff left, the magazine would often concoct fanciful stories surrounding their leaving. Matt Bielby
3650-468: The playback of sound samples under software control as well as supporting four-channel Amiga Tracker modules at 3-bit sample resolution of 10.4KHz and 4-bit at 15.625 Khz. To provide backwards compatibility with the ZX Spectrum , the SAM also provides a single-bit 'beeper' channel which can be used to emit simple tones by toggling the bit on and off as per the original Spectrum. The machine shipped with 32 KB of ROM containing code to boot
3723-473: The review scale, giving Count Duckula 2 a mere 9˚ and Mercenary 99˚. The final change in review style came in late 1992 when the various ratings for addictiveness, graphics, and so forth were replaced by a summary of the game's good and bad points, with an overall mark (now as a percentage) below that. Games which were scored at more than 90˚/90%, or 9/10 before the degree scale was introduced, were awarded YS 's coveted "Megagame" status, though this
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#17328725620063796-454: The speed penalty of a BASIC interpreter in between was provided. The machine is capable of running CP/M 2.2 using the Pro-Dos software with support for both 720 Kilobyte format disks and IDE drives The SAM originally used Citizen 3.5 inch slimline drives which slotted in below the keyboard to provide front-facing slots. Like IDE hard disks, these enclosures contained not just
3869-400: The style of a Philip Marlowe monologue, occasionally including ongoing plots. Other technical columns included Rage Hard , an occasional page which brought news of peripherals and other enhancements for the Spectrum; Steve's Programming Laundrette , in which Steve Anderson took the reader step-by-step through producing a BASIC game; and Simon Hindle's Dial Hard , which helped you connect
3942-418: The time included John Minson (writing under various pseudonyms, including Sue Denham, Gwyn Hughes and Rachael Smith), Mike Gerrard, Max Phillips, Tony Worrall and David McCandless . The final 1993 team consisted of just two permanent staff members: Jonathan Nash (editor) and Andy Ounsted (art editor). Steve Anderson, Rich Pelley , Tim Kemp, Simon Cooke, Dave Golder and Simon Forrester were among those working on
4015-524: The tips section of the magazine was called Hack Free Zone , to distinguish it from Hacking Away , which was dedicated to type-in POKEs . Hacking away was written by Chris Wood and "ZZKJ", while Hex Loader was written by Phil South under the pseudonym of Hex Loader. The sections were merged in 1987 to become the Tipshop . It contained all tips, cheats and complete solutions sent in by readers, and spawned its own book,
4088-517: The video circuitry (as in the case of the ZX Spectrum). Hardware sprites and scrolling would have greatly improved the performance of games, unfortunately there was insufficient wafer space on the VLSI ASIC to include such circuitry. While the main 256 × 192 area of the screen was being drawn, the processor could only access memory in 1 out of every 8 t-states. During the border area this
4161-514: The weekly business and economic forecasting newsletter The Kiplinger Letter . The company also owns the website Kiplinger.com. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Later that year, Dennis Publishing divested its share in Den of Geek World Limited to its partner, DoG Tech LLC. In February 2020, Dennis Publishing announced plans to launch a United States version of The Week Junior, a weekly subscription print magazine aimed at children aged 8 to 14 which
4234-442: Was incompatible with the Coupé's memory model and the machine featured an entirely different sound generator. It was possible to convert some games and demos by directly hacking the 128K code or by using a software patcher with the 1 megabyte RAM expansion to provide the address space. Because the Coupé did not run at exactly the same speed as the Spectrum even in emulation mode, many anti-piracy tape loaders would not work on
4307-978: Was 1 out of every 4 t-states, which had no effect on the many instructions whose timings were a multiple of 4. In modes 3 and 4 the display could be disabled completely, eliminating these memory contention delays for a full 6 MHz running speed. Code running in ROM or external RAM was unaffected by contention, though any RAM accesses they performed to shared internal RAM would still be affected. The character set includes block graphics and international characters . Font size can be altered to make text display in 32, 64, or 85 columns, and double height characters are also possible. Users can freely define their own characters by creating User Defined Graphics (UDGs). A large number of character codes (144 to 255) are available for this purpose. Block graphics (code 128 to 143) can be turned off in order free more characters for UDGs . When in BASIC,
4380-524: Was a British publisher. It was founded in 1973 by Felix Dennis . Its first publication was a kung-fu magazine. Most of its titles now belong to Future plc . In the 1980s, it became a leading publisher of computer enthusiast magazines in the United Kingdom. In the 1990s, it expanded to the American market, where it published the lifestyle magazines Maxim , the consumer electronics magazine Stuff , and
4453-505: Was a modified Amstrad CPC MP1/MP2 modulator unit, with the RF modulator built in and connected via a joint power/TV socket to the computer. This made signal interference from the AC/DC converter common and it was a popular but entirely unofficial modification to remove the modulator and keep it as a separate unit. Emulation of the ZX Spectrum was limited to the 48K and was achieved by either using
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#17328725620064526-490: Was also developed offering faster disk access, more files and support for the real-time clock accessory to provide file timestamps amongst many other improvements. The BASIC was very advanced and included code for sprite drawing and basic vector shapes such as lines and circles. The screen co-ordinate system for these was variable and could be arbitrarily scaled and centred. A provision for "recording" sequences of graphics commands so that they could later be repeated without
4599-432: Was carted off to the funny farm after declaring himself to be God , Andy Ide became a Green Party ambassador, and Andy Hutchinson left to design a skate park at Alton Towers . In actuality, the majority of ex- YS staff went on to work for other magazines, such as Amiga Power . Your Sinclair ' s reviewing system varied throughout the magazine's life. During the Your Spectrum era, game reviews were confined to
4672-411: Was designed by Bruce Gordon of Miles Gordon Technology . The computer included custom silicon to handle display, memory and IO functionality. This was originally prototyped using wire-wrapped 7400-series logic chips, before being produced as a VLSI VGT-200 gate array ASIC . The machine is based around a Z80B CPU clocked at 6 MHz and a 10,000-gate ASIC . The ASIC performs a similar role in
4745-406: Was felt that original budget games should be reviewed alongside full price games). The magazine also began using a rating out of 100, rather than ten, when reviewing games. However, this was referred to as a 'degree scale' rather than a percentage scale, with a graphic of a thermometer representing the rating; the higher the rating, the "hotter" the game. Reviewer Jon Pillar embraced both extremes of
4818-405: Was hosted variously by Phil South, David McCandless, Jonathan Davies and Linda Barker. While YS is often thought of as primarily a games magazine, throughout its life it hosted a variety of technical columns, mainly dedicated to programming technique. Program Pitstop , first hosted by David McCandless, then Jonathan Davies and finally Craig Broadbent, contained type-in programs and was one of
4891-528: Was incorporated on the cover tape, and contained a teletext -like viewer program and a collection of around fifty extra pages of content largely written by then editor Jonathan Nash and regular contributor Steve Anderson. It contained, amongst other things, short stories , surrealist and absurdist humour, and Private Eye -style news satire . The code for YS2 had been taken (supposedly without permission) from adventure game company Delta 4 's similar Sceptical program. The writers often jokingly referred to
4964-645: Was initially published in the UK in 2015. In March 2021, Exponent separated Dennis Publishing's automotive assets into an independent division within Dennis called Autovia Limited . In August 2021, Future plc acquired Dennis Publishing Ltd and its 12 titles (including The Week ) while Exponent moved Cyclist , Expert Reviews , Fortean Times , and Viz into a separate holding company called Broadleaf Group . Dennis Publishing's automotive assets were transferred to now-independent Autovia Limited. Dennis Digital, formerly known as MaximNet, which launched in 1999,
5037-461: Was launched on Sirius Satellite Radio . On 12 November 2008, Sirius and XM merged, and five days later Sirius XM Stars Too debuted on Sirius Satellite Radio on Sirius 108 and XM 139. In May 2011, Stars Too moved to channel 104 on both services. On 15 February 2007, Dennis Publishing, Inc. announced that it had retained media investment firm Allen & Company as its exclusive financial advisor to explore various strategic alternatives available to
5110-499: Was now a garden shed . The Jugglers were depicted with caricatures mostly drawn by Nick Davies, although some writers (such as Jon Pillar/Jonathan Nash) drew their own and art editor Andy Ounsted drew most of the latter reviewers. The Juggler caricatures took on something of a life of their own, and in 1990, a game, YS Capers , was given away with the magazine in which you had to shoot the YS crew, depicted in their cartoon forms. Originally,
5183-405: Was originally called Frontlines and dealt with Sinclair news and rumours. It also regularly contained mock celebrity interviews (such as the "At The Bus Stop With..." series) and trivial charts, as well as features about the writers themselves. Subsections of Pssst and Frontlines included T'zers , a column which contained rumours about possible forthcoming releases for the Spectrum and, later on,
5256-436: Was undermined slightly when Duncan MacDonald gave it to his own deliberately bad Sinclair BASIC creation, Advanced Lawnmower Simulator , in a moment of surreal humour . The logo was used in advertisements for games, big and small. Reader games were also reviewed for a while in the "Crap Games Corner", many being inspired by Advanced Lawnmower Simulator or being just as deliberately bad. Good reader games sometimes ended up on
5329-550: Was written by Dave Golder, who went on to be the second editor of the successful SFX . Writing in the 100th issue of that publication, Golder cited his earlier work on YS and described SFX as "like hundreds of Killer Kolumns stapled together". Flip! was discontinued, but the Killer Kolumn was kept on until the penultimate issue in 1993. A similar page to Flip!/The World had existed in 1987–88 called Street Life , but this had also contained Spectrum game charts. The news section
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