Skipping ahead over a bunch of spaceship covers, the Space Gamer of February 1981 is now monthly and sporting a sweet cover by K.C. Ellis, who I have never heard of. Its another spaceship cover, and probably my favorites out of the issues I own.

At this point, Spacegamer is free of Metagaming, brought along in Steve Jackson’s back pocket after the messy divorce. That happened about a year previous, in March of 1980. A lot of the stuff in this issue flies over my head, but it does have part ten of Steve Jackson’s ongoing column about game design. This one is on combat mechanics. The whole series is fascinating. Jackson also reviewed Akalabeth, one of the serious contenders for the title First Videogame RPG.