Advanced Lawn Mower Simulator

“Well Done! You’ve Earned Yourself a Corned Beef Sandwich!”

“Go get that grass.”
Your Sinclair: Smash Tape 21 cassette inlay.

Welcome to our third year “celebrating” April Fool’s Day. As has become established tradition in those previous years, I’ll use this space to explain to readers how I don’t much care for the typical festivities and pranks webmasters are expected to pull; where I guess I’m supposed to change up the appearance of the entire site for the day, or post a complete farce of an article? Apparently, doing so is meant to be “funny” — as opposed to just “obnoxious,” which is how it has always felt to me on the receiving end. Of course, there should be absolutely no room for humor when it comes to writing about video games: This is serious subject matter we’re attending to here, and it deserves nothing less than impartial, unfeeling academic treatment. That’s the Bad Game Hall of Fame promise, and I do what I can to keep it.

All that being said: I am not entirely without whimsy. Even the professorial heart primitively yearns for the good humours on occasion! What I’m trying to say is, I’m willing to budge a bit this year in the interest of acquiescence. With this in mind – for the first time ever in the history of this reputable website – I hereby authorize the use of “Jokes” in this article. Now, seeing as I am not a comedian (a person of comedic disposition) myself, I will instead be sourcing these goofs and gags from author Hayden Fox’s authoritative text on the subject: 300 Video Game Jokes: The Ultimate Joke Book for Kids and Teens. Bearing this in mind, I shall now proceed in recounting the inaugural joke in this article:

“Q: What is the name of Minecraft’s boy band?
A: ‘New Kids on the BLOCK.’”

Now, with that initial bit of merriment out of the way, let’s talk about the subject of today’s article. In keeping with our other recurring Fool’s Day theme of covering “gag games,” we’ve got ourselves a proper prank of a program: A joke dragged out by a games magazine over the course of eighteen months. What was first envisioned as a one-off April Fool’s joke – a fake game “reviewed” in an April 1988 issue of ‘Your Sinclair’ – would be continually teased and referenced across multiple issues, and finally distributed as an playable product by means of a cassette sampler compilation in September 1989. That’s pretty serious commitment to a bit, right there. But was the punchline worth that year and a half of set-up? The only way to find out is to hear the whole joke through, from start to finish. The time has come for Advanced Lawn Mower Simulator to take the stage.

“One Man Went to Mow!”

“The Best Ever Slash ‘n’ Slice ‘Em Up!”
Your Sinclair, Issue 28 (April 1988).

First of all, let’s talk about mowing lawns: A chore to most, a hobby for some, and an altogether tedious concept to center a video game around. Regardless of which side of the proverbial fence you might land on – whether you find the task of mowing mind-numbingly dull, or a pursuit which brings you inner zen – we can probably all agree that basing a video game on the subject is inherently unappealing. Simply put, it makes for one of the most mundane premises you could possibly imagine for a video game — right up there with folding laundry or counting sand. But let’s give this pitch the fairest shot possible, and think of what a “good” lawn mowing game might entail.

In distilling the concept down to its most pure and simple gameplay interpretation; your mind might picture something along the lines of Snake, but without the challenge of a trailing tail to contend with. Or perhaps your imagination might go the way of Pac-Man, as you struggle to imagine what might constitute “mazelike” lawns or possible hazards? In either case, you’re probably not gonna get credited as actually managing to improve on those classic formulas — at least not if you’re planning on playing the whole grass cutting subject matter straight. Surely, no legitimate game developer would think to actually present a lawn mowing game as anything resembling straightforward simulation… would they?

As it turns out, there are at least two examples of games predating Advanced Lawn Mower Simulator which took and presented the concept at face value: In 1981, users of Commodore PETs (a home computer line introduced in 1977) could experience the raw thrill of Lawn!, as developed by one Bob Carr. Coincidentally, this game would also be distributed by means of a monthly subscription — specifically, a monthly PET-compatible cassette subscription known as ‘CURSOR: Programs for PET Computers.’ Effectively, subscribers to the service would receive a cassette by mail every month, with an accompanying newsletter and table of contents detailing the programs and utilities contained on said cassette. Naturally, including games on the cassettes became something of a tradition, where publisher The Code Works would evidently accept submissions from programmers for distribution. And so, Lawn! would slot in nicely between such other titles as Frog!, Skeet!, and Mwhiz!.

As for the game itself? Well, it’s a straightforward lawn mowing simulator, as presented in top-down view on the PET’s fittingly 1-bit black and green display. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to mow over dithered-green tiles [representing grass] until the screen is free of them, while avoiding some small variety of outdoor obstacles (including the house itself) and taking care not to get stuck in the weeds. You have limited fuel to contend with, and higher skill levels increase the speed at which your mower moves, but that’s about all you get as far as progression. And really, that’s the whole of the game as well! An infinitely more interesting game by Mr. Carr is 1983’s Stroker for the Commodore 64, which features a graphic simulation of masturbating a penis to climax (NSFW). So, y’know: Pretty standard game dev trajectory, there.

Lawn! for Commodore PET (The Code Works / Bob Carr, 1981)

And then there’s 1987’s Lawn Mower as released on DOS-compatibles, and developed by Christopher D. Orr. While I unfortunately have no clue how the game was initially distributed (most likely by mail-order / advertised in computer magazines of the era), I can tell you that it follows in much the same presentation and gameplay formula as its 1981 predecessor — using the same top-down view, now bolstered by more colorful ASCII graphics. In addition to a decidedly more advanced presentation, there are also multiple different lawns / screens to mow in this iteration, as well as additional hazards (including pop-up gophers and holes) to be avoided. Still, there’s only so much that can be done with this basic-most premise, and so much gameplay you’ll be able to endure before Lawn Mower grows quickly tiresome. For me, I managed about 15 minutes, before I’d determined I had enough.

I reckon there’s the question of the intentions behind the developers of these games, and what futures they foresaw for their digital lawn mowing titles. Did they earnestly believe they were the possible innovators of a previously untapped / potentially lucrative genre, or did they acknowledge their own software as existing on the fringe of worthwhile game concepts? Did they at some point realize that they were attempting to gamify an inherently tedious chore, or did they earnestly believe it would wind up translating as an exciting test of player reflexes? While the mindsets of these lawn pedicure pioneers may forever be relegated to mystery, we can pretty safely assume the parodical intentions which drove Your Sinclair and writer / programmer Duncan MacDonald. Speaking of satire, how about another wisecrack courtesy of our new favorite joke book?

“Q: What does a gorilla wear to the beach?
A: ‘Donkey Thong.’”

A brief bit of background on Your Sinclair seems appropriate here. With it beginning its life in publication as ‘Your Spectrum’ in January 1984 (switching over to the broader “Sinclair” branding two years later in January ‘86); you can likely figure out that the magazine centered around the prevalent ZX Spectrum microcomputer, as manufactured by Sinclair Research. Without delving too deep into the history of that particular hardware: The Spectrum line represented the most popular home computer line within the United Kingdom, as result of their budget price points (initial pricing for the ZX80 model began at £79.95) and a nationwide boom in microcomputer purchasing / ownership. Naturally, this meant that magazines centered around the platform – with a focus on the latest game releases – served a viable market opportunity, and saw the likes of competing publications ‘Sinclair User’ and ‘Crash’ appearing as rivals to Your Sinclair [among others].

For a time, Crash was briefly the top-seller among this lot, at one point peaking at 100K monthly sales.^[1] But fortunes supposedly turned around the point that competing publications started carrying “cover tapes” — Spectrum-compatible cassettes loaded with “free” games and demos, as occasionally provided by some of the major publishers of the era. It was the first issue of Your Sinclair that is credited as carrying the first cover tape, containing a demo for Firebird’s upcoming Rasputin. From there, it was off to the races… which is to say, the concept of the cover tape was not actually picked up again until a year and a half later (in May 1987), when Your Sinclair’s 17th issue came packed with “An Easter Gift from Ocean Software”: A full-value racing title by the name of Road Race, released exclusively through this magazine method. It wasn’t much long after until the cover tape concept became regularly recurring, and where Your Sinclair’s so-called ‘Crash Tapes’ became a reason in and of themselves to subscribe to the magazine.

EDITOR’S NOTE: For a more thorough perspective on the history of ZX Spectrum samplers and magazine cover tapes, consider checking out Wizwords’ article made to cover the “Spectrum Covertape Wars.”

Lawn Mower for DOS (Christopher D. Orr, 1987)

Of course, at the same time these magazines were pulling out all the stops in compiling compelling cover cassettes, there was still the matter of actual written content to fill out their pages. And arguably the most vital portions of these publications were reviews of the latest game releases; where consumers would commit the scores on 100-point scales to memory before heading down to their local Woolworths or what have you, and likely pick out the top-rated that month. In investing your quid on one of the popular magazines: Crash were typically hailed as the “least corruptible” in determining their scores, to where games which earned the ‘Crash Smash’ distinction were generally regarded as the genuine top of the tops. Your Sinclair and Sinclair User were – how you say? – a bit more susceptible to outside influence; but you were still unlikely to be led too far astray by [most] games meeting Your Sinclair’s ‘Megagame’ criteria (a score of 90 or above). Which brings us tidily to a particular Megagame as scored in Your Sinclair’s 28th issue, published April 1988.

Your standard issue of Your Sinclair already carried a jokey tone — considered as a conscious direction / shift in attitude following the move from the Your Spectrum branding, which was originally much dryer in terms of straight reporting. With this in mind, the April issue of Your Sinclair doesn’t seem to stand out too much from the typical fare; carrying all the expected content of a typical issue, and never seeming to acknowledge or hint at any April Fools tomfoolery being contained within. Without checking the veracity of every last code in their ‘Practical Pokes’ portion (a recurring section with consistent title outside of any April Fools connotations) or fact-checking every paragraph across the issue’s 106 pages, I can only tell you that it appears on the surface to be a fairly consistent volume in the Your Sinclair canon. That is, save for one review: A 9 out of 10 assigned to one ‘Advanced Lawn Mower Simulation’ (note the original titling), appearing in the ‘Screen Shots’ section [containing game reviews]. That score, of course, would qualify the title for Megagame status, and see the game stand out as the only software in that issue to receive said merit.

With credit for the game’s development assigned to a previously unheard of ‘Gardensoft,’ a purported premium price point of £14.95, and a claimed advertising blurb describing the program as “The most advanced domestic chore simulation yet to hit the home micro”; it should have been fairly obvious to readers that they were looking at an April Fools prank in the making here. As the review (penned by none other than the aforementioned Duncan MacDonald) continues to extol a range of features – including randomly-generated gardens, a points system for upgrading your mowing equipment, and hazards to avoid including the likes of “Lady Talbot-Smythe’s prized pink perpetuals” – you almost want to believe there’s a real game being described here. Those hopes likely die though the moment they begin advertising for future Gardensoft releases including a “spring cleaning game,” a “washing-up simulator (which incorporates a drying-up simulator),” and a “launderette” game involving sorting and washing bags of clothes. At that point – and after seeing the game receiving rare nines across all of Your Sinclair’s review category criteria (Graphics, Playability, Value for Money, Addictiveness) – the joke should be well and fully spelled out, and the fake game’s title should begin to fade from your memory like so many other elaborate April Fools ruses.

“Classic simulation game from an exciting new name in Speccy software.”
Excerpt from Your Sinclair, Issue 28 (April 1988).

… Except, Your Sinclair’s editorial team decided to truly commit themselves to the bit — past the month of April, and eventually well into the following year. While May 1988’s issue may have come and gone without acknowledgement of the mowing simulator, June is where a new recurring bit would emerge within the ‘Letters’ section of the magazine, wherein supposed gossip mail and publisher updates received by the staff would continue to perpetuate the myth of the game’s existence. This first letter came direct from ‘G Miller’ of the ‘Gardensoft Publishing Empire,’ and held the Your Sinclair team to task for neglecting to mention a slew of additional merits in their review of ‘Advanced Lawnmowing Simulator’ (start counting the changes to the title from here); including a “full colour A3 poster of a Qualcast Concord mower” bundled with copies of the game, compatibility with a range of Spectrum peripherals (the ‘Interface Two’ ROM cartridge loader, ‘Currah Microspeech’ sound device, and ‘Trojan lightpen’ for touchscreen interfacing), and failure to run full-page colour advertisements for the game within the magazine. Mr. Miller also uses the opportunity here to plug even more upcoming Gardensoft products; including ‘DIY Wallpaper Simulator,’ ‘Household Chores Compendium,’ and ‘Boiled Egg Timer.’

A new thread would begin in July and continue into August; where a disgruntled ‘WL Griffiths’ would first write in to claim that his original program ‘Qualcast Rota-Mo’ had in fact been stolen by Gardensoft, and renamed as Advanced Lawn Mower Simulation (consistent again with the original title) as an attempt to obfuscate the theft. Claiming that he had initially responded to a job posting in ‘Gardener’s Monthly’ – run by a company going by the name ‘Greensoft’ – he was surprised to find the game being reviewed under a new name in Your Sinclair, and notes that “the review fitted the game exactly and the screenshot is the same.” Come August, Your Sinclair would reprint a message intended for ‘Mr IJL Griffiths’ (his name changing between issues here) as issued by the law firm of ‘Wibble, Bibble & Boing,’ ostensibly on behalf of Gardensoft Ltd. Their letter attempts to dissuade the original creator in question from pursuing further legal action, while making some unclear allusion to a line of code being altered regarding the “Gardensoft Ltd 1988” copyright — insinuating either that Griffiths stole the game himself and removed the copyright, or that Gardensoft should legally own the game due to their own revisions made? Not the most clearly-written letter of the lot, to be sure.

Re-emerging in October, a series of four supposed letters were all reprinted within the same issue, further expanding the lore surrounding Gardensoft. First, a proclaimed “spy in the Amstrad CPC camp” submits photo evidence of a ‘Professional Lawnmower Simulator’ game slated for release on that competing hardware. Next, ‘JJ Ball’ of Gardensoft’s Australian division writes in to advertise an exclusive Aussie-market version of ‘The Advanced Lawnmower Simulator’ (Title #3); titled ‘Flymo Action,’ and featuring an updated range of electric mowers. After that, none other than the Managing Director of Gardensoft’s “rival company” – ‘Loungesoft Games’ – submits a list of their own upcoming titles (including ‘Professional Sofa Simulator,’ ‘Advanced TV Simulator,’ and ‘Stereo Simulator’), before attempting to recruit Mr. Griffiths to their company. Finally, one ‘Bimbo Baby (alias John Hunt)’ writes in to discuss details seeming to confirm the theft of ‘Advanced Lawnmower Simulation’ (#4) by Gardensoft from IJL Griffiths; claiming that the admission came from the director of Gardensoft himself, as a drunken confession during a friendly get-together.

Dream Warrior for ZX Spectrum (US Gold / Tarann, 1988)

By this point, the editorial team likely realized they had gone a bit overboard with all the twists and turns emerging all at once, and finally decided to let the bit rest for a moment. Readers would see reprieve from this convoluted storyline for the next eleven months — even skipping April 1989’s issue, with nary another fake game to take ALMS’s place in the reviews section. The only mention of an ‘Advanced Lawnmower Simulator’ (the only time it is referred to by this specific moniker, despite it becoming the most commonly accepted in years since) in the issue came with one editor’s top five games of the year list for 1988; wherein Sean “King of the Custard Cream” Kelly wrote in the horticulture simulator as his pick for fifth favorite. Beyond that – with continued radio silence on the part of Gardensoft or Griffith – readers would have to wait until that September for the culmination of the magazine’s long-term prank.

With Your Sinclair’s 45th issue came attached their 21st Smash Tape: The feature program being a complete version of US Gold’s Dream Warrior, presenting players with a thoroughly middling (and particularly eye-straining) action adventure made to ape the likes of Xenophobe. A tennis title by the name Passing Shot serves to support that starring software, and provides a half-decent conversion of a Sega coin-op. This is curiously followed by a so-called ‘YS Speedlock Hack,’ allowing users to bypass security checks / enable cheats in games protected by the prominent Speedlock software protection system. But it is with the fourth program on this tape that the whole Gardensoft saga is finally put to rest; as Your Sinclair finally saw fit to present players with ‘Advanced Lawn Mower Simulator’ as a playable product, and to reveal the truth of its creation. Within the Crash Tape’s dedicated two-page spread in the magazine, a description for the game spills the beans that the software was “programmed especially for YS by our very own Duncan MacDonald” — no longer adhering to their own established canon. It would otherwise make for an astounding anticlimax, if not for the fact they actually went and put the damn game in players’ hands.

In finally concluding a year-and-a-half long prank – having seen no less than five different variations on its title (honestly the most frustrating aspect of this whole over-long bit) – Advanced Lawn Mower Simulator had finally come to fruition as a finished product. Would it encompass the full range of features that had been hinted at / advertised over the course of the past eighteen months? Would it contain further clues and implications regarding the Gardensoft saga? Or would it ultimately serve as the simple-most interpretation of the basic gameplay concept, as cobbled together by an amateur programmer incapable of any much more than that? Of course, the only way to find out is to load the program for ourselves, and boldly mow where no man has mowed before. But first, another joke:

“Q: Why did Sony hire Justin Timberlake after PSN went down?
A: They hoped he could bring Sexy Back.”

For those unaware: ASCII graphics refer to the presentation of various text elements and unicode characters in place of sprites or other drawn assets. Different combinations / arrangements of colored letters and symbols can be used to abstractly represent game worlds and player characters, and were often utilized in the top-down perspective. The probable most popular example of a game displayed in this way would likely be the original release of Rogue — as in the inspiration for the “rogue” portion of the “roguelike” genre.

“A Bit of a Shoddy Job, That. Do it Again!”

“Have you got it in you to become a
top class ‘mower’?”
Your Sinclair: Smash Tape 21 labelled cassette.

As a junior in the UK’s Youth Training Scheme program – an initiative instituted in the early ‘80s as an attempt to ~~exploit the labor of young adults~~ encourage so-called “school leavers” to attend to apprenticeship programs – your current engagement is as a lawn mower, offering your services door to door. Though the Your Sinclair review mentions something or other about starting with “one can of petrol and a standard issue Campari ‘Lawn Master’ motor mower”; you’ll quickly find that petrol is a non-factor, and that Campari’s offering is unavailable to you. As a matter of fact, out of six mower options presented on the game’s title screen (which does include a slightly re-titled ‘Campari Grassmaster’), only the sixth option (a ‘Patio Sprintette’) is functional — where all the rest are supposedly “broken at the moment.” Something something Thatcher’s Britain, et cetera et cetera.

Having made your choice – be that as it may the only one available – you are briefly informed as to the grand sum of the game’s mechanics: “Pressing ‘M’ engages the motor. Releasing ‘M’ disengages it.” And from there, you are taken to a crude screen depicting an overgrown lawn in front of a simple house and setting sun, where the gameplay is set to commence. As you begin to hold down the M key on your keyboard, your character will begin mowing horizontally across the screen from right to left; clearing each individual row before returning to the right-hand side, and moving up to the next line. It’s effectively like holding down the backspace key in order to delete a long block of text — cleaning up after accidentally having held some other key down for several seconds. There’s no control over your direction or variation in speed (aside from releasing or alternatively tapping on the M key), or any other input to speak of: You may only bear witness to your character’s inefficiency, and endure the full 38 second cycle alongside them.

On completion of a given lawn, you’re taken to a post-job briefing, where your client either congratulates or admonishes you on the job you’ve done — as randomly plucked from a small library of pre-written lines. With the best luck, you’ll “earn yourself a corned beef sandwich” courtesy of your employer! Next step down, your mowing skills will be tastelessly compared to the likes of Helen Keller. With the absolute worst luck; you won’t even make it mid-way through mowing the lawn, before the screen flashes red and proceeds to abruptly inform you that “You have been killed.” Yes, at any moment in time during the business of lawn-mowing, you may be randomly and unceremoniously cut down by some unseen assailant — possibly your mowing apparatus itself. It’s an inspired design choice to be honest, the likes of which would not be seen again (to my knowledge) until Tale of Tales’ The Graveyard in 2008.

And with that, I do believe I’ve summed up the full contents of the game. As you likely expected, the punchline to whole this drawn-out prank was almost guaranteed to be the most basic / succinct program Duncan could muster. In creating a game to match a single recycled screenshot across multiple issues of Your Sinclair – one of the most simplistic, clearly amateurish frames you could possibly imagine – they accomplished that task with aplomb. And while I could go into my typical spiel here about “what the developers could have done better,” or pitch the idea of actually incorporating all the features that had been promised in the game’s original review; I’d obviously be missing the point of it all in doing so. I may not be a comedian, but even I can tell when the joke is ultimately on the players themselves.

I suppose it couldn’t hurt to imagine, though: What if ‘Advanced Lawn Mowing Simulation‘ – feature-complete, as originally advertised, and not intended as a joke – had actually been released as a proper retail product? Imagine the likes of Christopher D. Orr’s Lawn Mower, as combined with the simulation aspects of budgeting for petrol and upgrading your mower — possibly going so far as to remotely manage a whole fleet of lawn mowing youths, and eventually founding your own landscaping service! Would such a game have been worthy of the coveted Megagame status, and come to be fondly remembered as part of the pantheon of classic ZX Spectrum programs?!

… Nah, probably not. Lawn mowing, after all, is boring. Hit us with another joke, book!

“Q: Why do Fortnite players have nice teeth?
A: Because they Floss.”

To be clear, the program was a failure by most measures: Where roughly 60% of youths enrolled in the program ended up just leaving it early, and where the remaining half who stuck through it were rewarded with no job or employment opportunities at the end of it.^[2] Of course, I’m just an American commenting on decades-old policies in a country I’ve never lived in, so who the hell am I to speak with any authority on this?

The Graveyard puts you in the proverbial walking shoes of an eldery woman, as she pays visit to a graveyard. The entire sum of in-game content amounts to walking down a row of gravestones, sitting on a park bench, and listening to a song play in game; before returning the way you approached the bench, and ultimately leaving the titular graveyard. The gimmick is – at any point during gameplay – you may spontaneously keel over and die. Of course, that is only if you pay $4.99 for the “Full” version of the game — where the free demo otherwise contains the whole content of the games, only sans the potential for death. Needless to say, The Graveyard has since been criticized as “pretentiousness to the point of self-parody,” and is generally held up as an example by folk critical of the walking simulator sub-genre.

“Vidal Sassoon’s Not a Patch on Your Good Self We’ll Say!”

“Yikes! The Nazis have raided
your Smash Tape!”
Your Sinclair, Issue 45 (September 1988).

With the long-teased game finally out there in the wild, what remained for Your Sinclair was to finally tie up the loose ends of their surrounding storyline… by which I mean, they continued in neglecting any of that established continuity, and began printing letters from readers playing into the joke nature of the program. That November’s issue contained testimony from an impressed player whose experience with Advanced Lawn Mower Simulator had convinced them not to sell their Speccy, as well as a submitted walkthrough by a ‘Sir Tobias of Ilford’ claiming to be “the first person to finish that spanky game.” For reference: Their guide details choosing the Patio Sprintette, keeping the ‘M’ key pressed, and “That’s it!” The next month saw a reader from Cornwall pitching their own services / sequel plans to Gardensoft, and recommending that a future installment feature his “own personal favourite [mower], the Mountfield Turbocut 3.2L with a sunroof and fluffy dice.” They also go on to additionally suggest a minigame surrounding starting the mower running — “Perhaps a joystick waggler? Oo-er!”

From here, Advanced Lawn Mower Simulator would only see sporadic mention across the remaining run of publications. May 1990’s issue included a helpful POKE command for speeding up the mowing process, so that readers might get to the post-job briefings that much quicker. That August’s issue featured a section rounding up / reviewing ‘YS Reader’s Games’ — programs submitted to the publication by readers who apparently dabbled in programming themselves. And of the nine games revealed as part of this feature, two of them just so happened to be tributes to ALMS? The first reviewed would be ‘Advanced Lawnmower Simulator The Trilogy’ (named as such despite including four games within), as developed by one Rodney Sproston. During the review, editor Rich Pelley contests that “someone should shoot Duncan MacDonald” for his role in spawning this particular game, before writing off the reader’s efforts at recoloring the original program twice over (as well as programming one original game from scratch; wherein you pick up the money earned from your job off the ground) as “Utter crap.” The second page in the feature includes a review of Jake Dovey’s ‘Football Janitor,’ which appears to be just another reskinning of the original ALMS with a football net standing in place of the house.

And that would basically be the end of things “officially,” as far as Your Sinclair was concerned with regards to Advanced Lawn Mower Simulator. See, by October 1989, much of the Your Sinclair staff who had overseen the ALMS saga – including Duncan himself – had left the magazine to begin contributing to a new publication: Titled ‘Zero,’ and published under the same imprint as Your Sinclair (‘Dennis Publishing’). As such, this was obviously less a matter of dissatisfied staffers walking out of YS en masse, and more a matter of relying on experienced writers in attempting to launch a broader games magazine [as Zero’s scope expanded beyond the Speccy]. That is, until Your Sinclair was later sold to a rival publisher (‘Future plc’) in April 1990, and the two magazines / editorial teams could no longer co-exist. At this stage though, neither magazine was that much longer for the publishing world: Zero would fold by October 1992 [after a controversy surrounding a cover tape containing a demo for Cover Girl Strip Poker], and Your Sinclair would wrap up by September 1993.

In the case of Your Sinclair: The simple fact of the matter was that publishing had continued well past the point of the ZX Spectrum’s obsolescence, and that there wasn’t enough of an enthusiast market remaining at a certain stage to warrant a continued run. Near the end of the magazine’s lifespan, its monthly issues were clocking in at well under 40 pages — down from consistent 100-page volumes in the years prior, packed to the brim with Sinclair and Spectrum news. They had petered out of content to cover, and even their last hurrah in their so-called ‘BIG FINAL ISSUE’ could only manage to fill out 66 pages. At the very least, in covering the “highs and lows” of each year of their publication, they managed to squeeze in one last mention of ‘Advanced Lawnmower Simulator’ (apparently canonizing the most commonly-seen titling) as a highlight for 1988 — not to mention including the game in their complete review score compendium, keeping its 9/10 score intact. A shame they couldn’t fake one more letter from a disgruntled Gardensoft rep or something along those lines.

Since Your Sinclair’s closure, numerous tribute sites have since been erected in its honor / to catalogue its contents. The pre-eminent page dedicated to the cause would most likely be YourSinclair.co.uk — serving up details on the publication in a Wiki-style format. Additionally, they have pages dedicated to the celebration of Duncan MacDonald (“one of the funniest people in the entire world”) and Advanced Lawnmower Simulator. As far as the latter page is concerned, I personally don’t find it up to par: Not only do they punctuate the title in what I’ve personally decided is the incorrect manner (with no space between “Lawn” and “Mower”), but they also get the history of the game itself wildly wrong — claiming that the game was first reviewed in April 1990, and featured on covertape “the following month.” About the only credit I can give them is their commitment to maintaining a downloads directory for ALS fan games and homebrew.

Of course, the end of Your Sinclair did not represent the end of actual retail games based on the premise of lawn mowing. I mean, not that I’m insinuating the two concepts here are anything other than mutually exclusive, but… Look, all I can tell you is that there are way more games about lawn mowing than you might even begin to believe. It’s as if nobody got the message that Your Sinclair turned the whole idea into a joke, and so we’ve wound up with no less than sixteen lawn mowing games since then — not counting Flash games or seemingly machine-generated Play Store apps or whatever else have you. While some of these titles obviously attempt to play their conceit as comedy (successfully or otherwise), there are still a number of them that seem to play it straight as an arrow. All I can do on my end is catalogue as many as I can here, or otherwise have to take this knowledge to my grave.

Lawn Mower Racing Mania 2007 for Xbox / PC (Vivendi Games / EV Interactive, 2006)
Momma Can I Mow The Lawn? for Gizmondo (Warthog Games, cancelled 2006)
Sunday Lawn for Browser / Mobile (Donut Games, 2007)
Mower for Xbox 360 (Diamond Bullet Studios, 2010)
1950s Lawn Mower Kids for Nintendo DSi (Zordix AB, 2011)
Lawn Mower Madness for Mobile (HVilela.com, 2011)
Mower Ride for Mobile (Vivid Games, 2011)
Lawn Cutter for Mobile (GP Imports, 2012)
Sunday Lawn Seasons for Mobile (Donut Games, 2013)
Grass Cutter for eighth-gen consoles (Usanik Std / Nikolai Usachev, 2017)
Law Mower for PC (Scoria Studios, 2017)
Lawnmower Game for PC (Tero Lunkka, 2017)
Lethal Lawns: Competitive Mowing Bloodsport for PC (Dime Studios, 2018)
Mowy Lawn for Mobile (PlayStack, 2018)
Hair Mower 3D for Switch (Rising Win Tech, 2020)
It’s Literally Just Mowing for Mobile (Protostar, 2020)
Mowing Simulator for PC (Hydra Games / Blinkclick, coming Q4 2020)

There’s really not much more I can say after that. I suppose there will continue to be lawn mowing games for as long as video games are still a thing — in spite of how inherently tedious the idea of it is, or perhaps due precisely to that reason. And where some of these developers might think they can elevate one of the world’s most tedious chores to the level of high comedy, they should probably be made aware that the gag has already once been elevated to the level of high art. For as uneven as their execution may have been, and for as many months have well had been spent failing to continue moving the gag forward; Your Sinclair’s effort in paying off a punchline eighteen months in the making should never be forgotten or discounted, and neither should the game that came of it. Now, having successfully planted that proverbial seed in all your minds, there’s nothing left to do but end this April Fool’s Day article on one last laugh: