News

First of all, if you have a look at the adverts section, you'll
see that from this issue, Interactive Technology's range of
adventures are available from SynTax. Weird Tales is their latest
game and joins Dead End and Dark Sky Over Paradise. The next
IT adventure should be out in a few months and is called Opaline.

I just heard from Martyn Westwood of Interactive Technology and
he is making a very special offer to SynTax readers! If you buy
a copy of Weird Tales before 22nd August, you can buy either
Dead End or Dark Sky Over Paradise for just œ5.00.

And that's not all!! There is a prize-draw running with Weird Tales.
A ticket will be included with each game and these will be entered
in a draw on December 15th. The first prize will be a year's sub to
SynTax and there will be two runners-up prizes of six month's
subs to Adventure Probe. Howzabout that, then?

So what else is happening? Well, Sim City is out (hooray!), but
the Sierra games haven't materialised (you'll be pleased to know
I look pretty fetching in my dunce's hat!) and Magnetic Scrolls'
Wonderland has been put back till the autumn. A recent special
feature on Wonderland in ACE showed that the game will have icon
and mouse control with multiple windows which can be resized and
moved around the screen to suit yourself. It certainly sounds a
most impressive system.

Battlemaster from PSS is fantasy game in which four kings, an Orc,
Wizard, Elf and Human, have to be conquered and their crowns taken
to a tower in order to bring peace to a war-torn land. It has
elements of strategy and some arcade sequences. It will be out
some time during the summer at œ24.95.

Rainbow Arts will be releasing Khalaan in the near future. Again,
it is a strategy game where four (why is it always four?) Caliphs
must unite to defeat a common enemy. Trading skill will play an
important part and you'll also have to defeat your enemy during

battles at sea. The graphics look excellent and the game will
retail at œ24.99.

Rainbow Arts are also putting the final touches to Legend of
Faerghail. This sounds like a really complex RPG with eight, big,
four-level dungeons! You have to learn new languages too so you
can converse with the other races in the game.

Corporation is an RPG/arcade adventure along the style of Dungeon
Master but evidently has better graphics. Not only do the other
characters in the game (mutants, humans and robots) move more
smoothly than those in DM and have a range of facial expressions
but there are inanimate objects (furniture etc) in the game which
are shown in 3D and can be seen from any angle. For all this, you'd
expect a high price but it will be a mere œ24.99.

Finally, Bullfrog, who brought out Populous some time ago and got
lots of us hooked on it, are bringing out a new game, Powermonger,
in late September. It's best described as a strategy game and looks
similar to Populous only much, much better! It starts as you land
in an new and previously-undiscovered world with just 20 followers.
Setting yourself up as the new ruler, you'll have to "convince" the
inhabitants that this is a really great idea! The detail in
Powermonger is truly amazing with different classes of people
creating a proper society so not only must you conquer the land,
you must take the social and economic consequences of your actions
into account as you do so. 

Powermonger is also multi-player with up to four human players and
many more computer opponents and there are five Captains in the world
who each control a large settlement so if you can defeat them, their
armies will come under your control. The whole idea sounds
fascinating to me (which is why I've gone on (and on) about it!)
and as it's all icon-driven, should be fairly easy to get to grips
with. If you liked Populous, I reckon you can expect to lose a lot
of sleep as you stay up late at night playing Powermonger!