Autumn '93 E.C.T.S report by Richard Hewison With Christmas only a few months away now, it was time to head for sunny Islington (avoiding the drunks along the Pentonville Road) and pay another visit to The Business Design Centre in an effort to work out what should be coming out between now and December. As always, I tried to find out what adventure/RPG and strategy games are in the pipeline from the exhibiting companies. And as usual, there was a mixture of interesting and predictable titles on offer. Virgin Interactive Entertainment had on show a couple of conversions on the Mega CD and Megadrive of Dune and Dune II - The Battle for Arrakis. They also revealed The Legend of Kyrandia II on PC (what is it with sequels?) which looked much more like Monkey Island 2 than its predecessor did. Also due out soon is the CD Rom version of KGB renamed 'Conspiracy' and featuring the videod talents of Donald Sutherland, in a cameo role as the main character's late father. Also due out on PC very soon is Westwood's 'Lands of Lore' which bears a passing resemblance to 'Eye of the Beholder II' but with a much nicer interface. You can get this game already on import from the U.S but be warned - the U.S version contains many bugs that the official U.K release won't have. Despite recent changes behind the scenes at Microprose, they have managed to retain a large number of their forthcoming titles on the PC. The two that caught my eye were 'Subwar 2050' and 'Starlord'. 'Subwar 2050' is admittedly an excuse to do yet another flight simulator style game but with a new futuristic (and underwater) theme. It moves quite fast from what I saw, but it's a shame that the visual underwater effect seems to be limited to lots of featureless blue ground (sea bed?) which disappears into darkness further away. It's planned for releasing on PC in November. 'Starlord' on the other hand is a game that I've known about for the last five years, when it was originally being developed for the ST and Amiga. The game has changed beyond all recognition from the design spec I remember if what I saw was anything to go by. Again, Microprose have slipped in a space flight simulator for the space battles but having said that it looked quite interesting. The real meat of the game though should come from the strategy side, as you plan, negotiate, trade and battle for supreme galactic power. The in-game bitmap graphics looked very poor, but the game as a whole should be very interesting. Let's hope they don't screw it up (remember 'Darklands' anyone?). Starlord is due for an October release on PC, but the version I saw running was still split up into separate runnable demos. Somehow I think October is being slightly optimistic. The PC version will run on a 286 or higher, and will take up 8 meg (which isn't much by today's standards). An Amiga version is due next March (1994). Incidentally, the Amiga version of their recent PC wargame 'Fields of Glory' is also scheduled for a March '94 release. Through Spectrum Holobyte, Microprose are also going to be releasing 'Star Trek - The Next Generation' and it turns out to be a game that looks very similar to Interplay's '25th Anniversary' game based on the original series. It will initially only be available for the S.N.E.S console. Talking of Interplay, they had a stand made up as a cavern, for the sole purpose of showing off 'Stonekeep' on a large screen (and a few smaller ones too). What was shown looked like a very early development version. It moves a bit like the graphics in 'Ultima Underworld' but the graphics didn't seem to pixelate when you moved closer. The skeletons that were walking about looked okay, but they were obviously digitised and thrown in and I admit to not being a fan of that method in general. What was interesting was that the 3D display seemed to occupy the entire screen! According to the press blurb, menus on screen are distracting and all of the game decisions will be made intuitively. How you do this with a mouse and no menus or icons I don't know, but we should find out soon as 'Stonekeep' is due for release in the "4th Quarter of 1993". The game will run on a 386SX or better with 4 meg of RAM, and will take up 30 meg on your hard disk! I was quite disappointed to be unable to squeeze through the narrow passages that lead to Interplay's main meeting area so that I could get a look at 'Dungeon Master II'. It wasn't on any of the main machines so I can only guess that they are showing it 'behind closed doors' at the moment. It will be released on Sega Mega-CD, PC and Amiga before Christmas. Bear in mind how late 'Chaos Strikes Back' was from F.T.L back in 1989 so don't hold your breath! Gametek have taken on the publishing role for Konami's floppy product, and this includes the soon to be released 'Frontier' which is the sequel to Elite that has been on the go for over five years now. Whilst the graphics don't have the wow factor of games like 'Strike Commander', 'Frontier' puts these hard disk eating games to shame in the gameplay department. A mix of strategy and arcade, 'Frontier' is an excellent game that should be out by the end of October '93. Work your way up from being 'Harmless' to attaining the 'Elite' status, or maybe concentrate on reaching the higher ranks of the Federal Military or the Imperial Navy. You can always take the risky route of trading in illegal goods, or favour the assassination missions and become a wanted man in 12 systems, pursued by Bounty Hunters wherever you go. Frontier will retail on the PC at œ39.99 and will also be available on the Amiga (1mb). Mindscape have secured the rights to publish PC Windows and Mac and PC CD-Rom versions of Icom's 'Deja Vu', 'Deja Vu II', 'Shadowgate' and 'The Uninvited'. It must be deja vu for Mindscape, as they were the original publishers of these games when they first appeared on the ST, Amiga, PC and Mac some eight years ago! The only other relevant release from Mindscape will be 'Captive 2 - Liberation' in November only available on the new Commodore CD32 machine. Accolade have just released 'Gateway II' from the Legend Entertainment Co. They will follow this up with Piers Anthony's 'Companions of Xanth' adventure. Tsunami's 'Blue Force' is also now out, as is 'Protostar' on CD-Rom. Activision have 'Mechwarrior', a strategy arcade game with a very flash 3D engine based on the Battletech series for PC and S.N.E.S. They also have 'Return to Zork' which still hasn't been released. It will be available for PC, CD and MPEG. Being honest the game is looking like all flash graphics and video footage of bad actors. Only time will tell, but the game is bound to be expensive (as in the 7th Guest league!). Grandslam are lining up four role playing games for release in the future, including 'Realms of Darkness', 'The Seventh Sword of Mendor', The Sword of Mendor' (surely some mistake?) and 'Reunion'. It's always encouraging to see a new company enter the RPG scene, and let's hope that at least one of the four turns out to be a worthwhile addition. 'Realms of Darkness' has been on their release schedule for the last two years! It has to be said that for RPG, adventure and strategy players the industry doesn't have much on offer in the coming months and being honest, not many of the titles I saw offered much promise in the gameplay department. The move towards very flash graphics and less real interaction and gameplay is a worrying trend. This concern is admittedly based on gut reaction to products that I've (mainly) watched but not actually played, but the direction the industry is heading is obvious. Hopefully games like 'Starlord' and 'Kyrandia II' will prove me wrong.