News

Lots of new games are on the way which is great news for all of us
who have been looking forward to something new to play. Games
released in the summer months are notoriously thin on the ground.

A planned new series of RPGs is called the Santa Fe Mysteries. The
first two games are provisionally called Legend of the Kiva and
Sacred Ground. Blizzard Entertainment are also releasing an RPG
called Diablo which has SVGA graphics, multi-player options and a
random dungeon generator. New World are working on Anvil of Dawn
(3D RPG, 100s of NPCs and monsters) and Sir-Tech have Druid :
Daemons of the Mind, Odyssey and Realms of Arkania : Shadows Over
Riva on the way. From SSI come Entomorph (a World of Aden game)
and Deathkeep (25 dungeons of 8 levels each; enough to keep you
busy for a while!), while Synergy have Zeddas : Servant of Sheol
in development and Virgin have, amongst others, Rivers of Dawn.

More old Infocom adventures are being repackaged in sets - SF,
mystery, adventure, fantasy and comedy. There is still little info
on Zork Nemesis or Planetfall : Floyd's Next Thing, but a further
Infocom game on the way is The Great Game, due this year, and the
start of a spy thriller series.

Capstone were working on a graphic adventure called ChronoMaster
in collaboration with Roger Zalazny who, sadly, died recently.
However, it is still planned that the game will go ahead. On the
other hand, Chewy, Escape from F5 is Blue Byte's forthcoming
humorous graphic adventure.  They also have plans for an RPG
called Albion with mixed top down and 3D views, 6 character
parties, auto mapping and realistic NPCs. Gremlin also have two
graphic adventures on the way. First is Realm of the Haunting,
with a first person 3D horror theme and high-res graphics and the
second is Normality Inc, a 3D point and click game. Also look out
for Timelapse from GTE Interactive Media and Knight's Chase from
I-Motion plus the intriguingly titled Orion Burger from Sanctuary
Woods who will also be releasing Buried in Time and The Riddle of
Master Lu which were mentioned in the News sections of the last
few issues. Sony Imagesoft will be releasing Eastern Mind : The
Lost Souls of Tong Nou.

Those of you who, like me, enjoyed Under a Killing Moon, will be
pleased to hear that the follow up, Pandora's Box, looks very
similar to the original.  Chris Jones plays Tex again, and will be
joined by more actors, no doubt famous in the USA, but not
familiar to me, apart from Tanya Roberts (ex-Charlie's Angels).
Other sequels to look forward to are Star Control III, Shadow of
the Empire (in the Battle Isle series), The Romans (Settlers II),
Syndicate Wars (sequel to Syndicate but using the Magic Carpet
engine), Lands of Lore II : Guardians of Destiny, X-COM The
Apocalypse (X-COM 3), Descent 2, Project Morph (Flashback 2) and
Warcraft II : Tides of Darkness.

Bullfrog have several games on the way. One is Dungeon Keeper, an
RPG where one player designs the dungeon and others try to beat
it. The other is Theme Hospital, first mentioned several issues
ago, which a kind of follow up to Theme Park.  On the sims /
strategy side, Caesar II (Roman SimCity 2000) is coming soon from
Impressions, Space Bucks is a space version of Air Bucks and Race
for the White House has you aiming to be President of the USA.

There are also a number of games of various sorts based on films
coming from Fox Entertainment. These are the Die Hard Trilogy,
Planet of the Apes, Independence Day, The X-Files (RPG) and The
Simpsons (Virtual Springfield).  More details are appearing of
Legend's forthcoming games with a tie-in to novels. Ones announced
are Shannara (Terry Brooks) and Magic of Xanth (Piers Anthony
again). Others mooted are based on the following books (some are
follow-ups) - Gateway (Fred Pohl), Death Gate (Weis and Hickman),
Pip and Flinx (Alan Dean Foster), Well World (Jack Chalker) and
Callahan's Crosstime Saloon (Spider Robinson). It has also been
announced that Michael Dorn (Worf from ST:TNG) will have a role in
Legend's other newie, Mission Critical.  Talking of Star Trek, the
Deep Space Nine tie in will be called Harbinger and will come from
Viacom New Media.

Some puzzle based games are also on the way. Look out for
Icebreaker and Hellraiser, both from Magnet Interactive Studios,
Diabolical Digits from Microsoft and Necrobius from MicroProse.

Take 2 Interactive are following up Hell with Ripper, based on
Jack the Ripper who has resurfaced in 2040's New York. It has
taken 17 man years development time and cost $2 million. To
reflect this, the game will come on 4 CDs with over 2 hours of
FMV, a sound track by Blue Oyster Cult ('Don't Fear the Reaper')
and a full cast including Christopher Walken, John Rhys-Davies and
Burgess Meredith. The game, which is first person perspective,
will be divided into 4 acts and will have 4 different endings as 4
people can actually be the Ripper.

On the bargain front, 3 MicroProse biggies have been released at
under œ20 each on their PowerPlus label. These are Sub War,
Dragonsphere and Master of Orion.

Finally, JJ told me of a text adventure creation utility called
The Adventurer which retails at œ40. However, you can't type text
in, you have to select words from a limited list.


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