News

Star Trail is the follow up to Blade of Destiny and the second in
Sir-Tech's Realms of Arkania series. It has scrolling 3D movement,
intelligent keyword dialogue, a detailed automap with zoom, move
and edit capabilities, isometric 3D combat (including auto combat)
and a diary to record in-game events.

Doug Barnett, the designer of Return to Zork is working on an
interactive CD game based on Clive Barker's Hellraiser book /
film. It won't be available until Christmas 1995.

Following the success of the two Gateway adventures, Companions of
Xanth and, more recently, Death Gate, Legend have forged a link
with Del Ray Books (who are part of Ballantine Books and Random
House) to bring out yet more adventure games based on fantasy and
SF books. Del Ray's authors include Terry Brooks, David Eddings,
Anne McCaffrey, Alan Dean Foster, Katherine Kurtz, Jack Chalker
and many more.

Shadows of Cairn is a CD-ROM adventure featuring a thief called
Quinn who is too honest for his own good - he's too honest to
steal from anyone and his master has now set him up to take the
blame for the planned murder of the Duke of Cairn. Quinn must stop
the murder taking place.  Shadows of Cairn looks like a sideways
scrolling arcade adventure along the lines of Heroes of the Lance.
The bonus is that the game has an excellent rock score as
background music.

The latest SSI RPG on the way is Menzoberranzan. As well as the
usual features you'd expect from a game like this, you will have
some extra abilities such as being able to levitate and fly during
combat. The 256 high-res VGA graphics look colourful and very
similar to those of Ravenloft. It will be available on floppy or
CD-ROM and is based on R. A. Salvatore's Drow novels (The Legacy,
Starless Night and Siege of Darkness).

Heroes of Might and Magic is the next game from New World
Computing but unlike the previous M&M games it won't be an RPG,
more a strategy game. John van Caneghem has taken themes from his
earlier program King's Bounty, but set them in the M&M world, even
using maps from the series, and adding a dash of Civilization. It
uses SVGA graphics and comes with many scenarios, some preset,
others random. Add-on scenarios and possibly an editor will
probably follow later.

New World Computing are also working on another RPG - yes, Might
and Magic VI is on its way!











                              - o -