News Only a short news section this issue as Richard has given lots of info about forthcoming programs in his report on the ECTS. Coktel Vision have a new 'interactive movie' due out in January 1995 on CD-ROM. It will be called Lost in Town and the backgrounds are being created from film shot in Paris, the whole program being 100% FMV, not a blue screen production with superimposed actors. If you're interested in strategy games and you have a PC, High Seas Trader, a swashbuckling trading game set in the 17th and 18th centuries, will probably be your cup o' grog. Fleets can be built of up to 16 ships from a selection of 6 cargo vessels, warships and pirate ships. It is due out in November, priced at œ39.99 from Impressions. Sierra have released Police Quest IV:Open Season on CD-ROM. 4 meg memory is required and at least a 386-16 with 20 meg hard disk space. Price œ44.99. Sierra also have some bargain CD-ROM compilations available if you have a spare œ39.99. First there's The Space Quest Collection comprising SQ1-4, plus a VGA version of SQ1 (the original was in EGA), a hypertext history of the series, 3 mini arcade games taken from the series and a Windows video on the SQ developers including an interview with Scott Murphy, one of the co-creators of the programs. Secondly there's the King's Quest Collection. This contains KQ1-6, two Windows videos, one previewing KQ7, the other an interview with Roberta Williams plus info on the series, and other snippets plus another hypertext file, magazine clippings etc etc. The infamous and long-lived MUG, Shades, has moved. The new number is 0181 265 6500 (London cable line - free local call!) and the protocol is either 7E1 or 8N1. It also has some new features. The major problem with Shades of the past has been character loss - where rapidly entered strings (such as entered by function key) have 'lost' characters. This has now been fixed. Inf (Immortals Only) has now been removed, making for a classless society amongst immortals. (Well, nearly.) - o -